“Do you remember how we used to roar—you and Coralie and Tom and I? And about nothing! We were such good laughers!”
“I hope you haven’t forgotten how.”
“Not much! But I’m out of practice. Let’s go up on top of the fell to-morrow, and sit down on the ground and shriek.”
Randolph threw back his head and laughed so heartily that Lee caught the infection of it, and in a moment was leaping from peal to peal. She caught herself up.
“I shall have hysterics. And it’s nearly dinner time. I’ve got to go down and talk grouse prospects and the tantalising peculiarities of that loathsome bird for two hours. I don’t know if I dare put you on my other side. I’m afraid I’d giggle like an idiot all through dinner if I did. I suppose it’s reaction, but I really feel on the verge of idiocy.”
“The result of my sudden appearance. I am immensely flattered.”
“Oh, you would be if you knew! Cecil is simply perfect; don’t think I am casting the faintest reflection on him. It’s the life! Oh, I must! I must! I always did tell you things, Randolph, and you always were so sympathetic. Have you read many English novels that aim to initiate the outside world into the life of our class—the truth without any frills, and all that sort of thing? After I’d been here two years I made a terrible mistake: out of curiosity—to see the influence of England on the imagination circumscribed by conscience—I read, one after the other, about twelve novels of that sort—the sort that might be called the current history of social England. Then I realised what I had got into—that unchanging, inevitable, mathematically precise mise en scène, that wheel that goes round and round with never a change of spoke nor of speed. You know—begin with the twelfth of August: house-parties for grouse shooting. Men—same men—out all day. Women—same women—at home. Sporting talk at luncheon. Sporting talk varied with politics at dinner. Little gambling, little flirting, a rowdy game or two in the evening. Next month same thing in other houses for partridge and pheasant shooting. Next two months hunting and hunting talk for a change; otherwise the same, only a little more hard work for the women. Races and race talk thrown in all along the line. Then the Riviera for some, and for me two months of life in grime and fog and mud. Then the roasting crush of the London season, in which everybody works like a horse, and the women are reduced to a mere combination of bones and paint. Then more races, a few days’ breathing space, and again the Twelfth of August. I wish I hadn’t read those books; I wouldn’t have realised it so soon. But really, I’ve hardly admitted it before to-night. My own programme is slightly varied. I shoot, and I don’t go to the Riviera, and I’ve had no chance to get tired of London Society. But it surrounds me—that automatically shifting mise en scène. I know it is there. I am a part of most of it—a fly on its paint. I may get the whole thing any day. That is one reason I don’t really rebel against being out of it in London. Politics are the best there is in the whole thing, because there is some variety, and there is always the promise of some tremendous excitement—only there hasn’t been any yet.”
She sprang to her feet, overturning her chair.
“Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!” she cried, her eyes blazing, her voice pitched high with delight. “Do you remember how you and Coralie and Tom and I used to lock ourselves up in the schoolroom, and swear as loud and as fast as we could when Tiny had been primmer than usual, or Aunty had been holding forth on the South before the War? Well, that’s the way I feel to-day, and I’ve been feeling that way for a long time, only I didn’t know it.”
She stopped for want of breath. Randolph had risen too, but his back was against the light. If his voice was not as steady as it had been she was too excited to notice it.