Helen interrupted and got up.
“Stuff and nonsense, you old darling,” she said. “There, give me a kiss, and don’t listen to such rubbish.”
“Rubbish?” began Simpson.
“Yes, rubbish. A pack of rubbish like when you and I used to play ‘Beggar my Neighbour’ in the nursery. And will you call me at half-past eight? Sleep well.”
Helen did not follow her own advice to Simpson, and for a long time that night she did not sleep at all. On getting into the Napoleon bed, she reminded herself by way of suggestion towards sleep, that she was now far away from London, away out in the peaceful, somnolent fen-country, and that for miles upon miles round her stretched quiet pastures dotted over with farm-houses to which the news of the war had scarcely more significance than the report of a storm at sea. Here and there, as in the case of the station-master at Ashmore, someone might have suffered an intimate bereavement, but for the most part crops and cattle remained paramount as the topics of life. She had left the uneasy city where at every turn she was confronted by something that reminded her of all that she wished to forget and drew an insincere sigh of relief to think how far she was away from it all.
To-morrow, after a long night, she would spend the day as she would have done in autumns of other years: perhaps Aline would drive her into Cambridge: she would visit curiosity shops, she would read, she would walk, she would sit and discuss the endless topics that sprang up so plentifully when you talked. Aline had hoped that she would stay here for at least a week: that she would certainly do, and after that, instead of going back to town, she would go down to Grote and spend October there.
It would be easy to collect Mr. Boyton and a few people of that sort who disliked the war as much as she did. She would make a Hermitage, a Boccaccio-refuge for those who had the sense to avoid the plague. The busier sort of folk should come down for week-ends, to refresh themselves with the sense that the old pleasures and interests of life still existed. They were still there unimpaired; it was only necessary to put yourself back in the old atmosphere, and shut the window against the poisonous gases that blew in from those infernal furnaces.... October mornings at Grote, with the hoar-frost on the lawns, and the mist which the sun would soon disperse, lying thin over the beech-woods, so that their smouldering gold showed through it, mornings with the clean, odourless odour of the cold night still lingering.... The days would be beginning to close in: by tea-time the house would be curtained and lit, and the sparkle of wood-fire prosper on the open hearths....
Yet, though she could enumerate the details, as she might have enumerated the pieces of furniture in a room, she could not visualize them in her imagination, or from them construct a living and coherent whole. Still very wide awake and assuring herself how delicious it was to revel in this sense of remoteness and peace, she travelled back to the evening she had just spent.
It occurred to her with added force how little she knew of her hostess, and what she was like when she was not one of a crowd. Hitherto they had met but in the great world where everyone to some extent wears a mask. But, to-night, had Aline taken off her mask only to put on another, or was it the real Aline who was more English than the English, and delighted in harvest festivals, and was rude to her guests? Perhaps she would show more of herself in the days to come, and even be glad to know of the sympathy of a friend for one who at heart must be torn by the strife of two nations to both of which she belonged.... And thus she was back at the very subject which she had come here to escape.
Robin....