We finished our meal in rather gloomy silence, but afterwards, in the garden, I asked him about his own future. The Australian offer mightn't remain open for long, I hinted broadly.... Had he yet made up his mind about it?
"Not quite," he replied. "Very soon I'll let Severn know definitely.... But a few days can't matter, surely?"
It was all (to me) very disquieting, and I was glad to talk of something else.
June came about tea-time. She had driven from town in under the hour, and her arms, hands, and face were almost nut-brown. She seemed depressed about her father's condition, though she said very little about it. She said very little, in fact, about anything; I had never known her so taciturn. After tea, though the sun was still hot, she went with Terry to the tennis-court, while I stayed in Taplow's garden with a pipe, a bottle of beer, and Severn's Disraeli. I hadn't read far before I knew that it was easily the best thing (in the way of literature) that he had done, and that it would cause something of a sensation. That pleased me a great deal; it was fine to think that he had it in him to excel in a rôle to which his condition offered no impediment. Disraeli, of course suited his ironic treatment; there was much in common, I thought, between the author and his subject. Both posed strenuously all their lives, and both are still enigmas.
Yet even Severn's delightful style (more French, by the way, than English) could not keep sleep away from me for long. I closed my eyes at six o'clock or thereabouts, and when I opened them it was quite dark, though not late, because the bar was still lit up. Taplow laughed when I went in. "You was sleeping, sir," he said, "and I didn't see no reason to disturb you. The others are out—said they didn't want any supper. Yours is laid ready in the coffee-room.... Will you take beer or wine, sir?"
Beer.... The coffee-room windows were wide open, and the night air, slightly cool, drifted in with waves of flower-perfume and moths that fluttered noisily round the lamp.... Beer, cold beef, pickles, bread, and a dig out of a huge Stilton.... Idyllic meal, almost (but not quite) sufficient to dispel all the fears that ever a human mind possessed.
Afterwards I sat out in a deck-chair under the blue-black sky and smoked a cigar. It was past eleven; Terry and June would be back soon, no doubt. Perhaps they had driven somewhere in the car, and there had been a breakdown. Was the car in the garage? I was too lazy to go and look....
There was no moonlight; only the silver stars. The yellow glow from the coffee-room window died down slowly; Taplow was carrying out the lamp.... The wind breathing idly through the trees, and the scent of hollyhocks, and sleep-sleep-sleep again....
II
Voices in the garden....