“But elderly people,” I said, “don’t they get dirty too, if they’re not proud?”
She laughed at me, and all she said was: “I was talking about nice elderly people.” And there the conversation ended, just nowhere. I think it very silly in a man to go generalising about women, but if I were to start generalising I might say that most abstract conversations between men end nowhere, but you have a feeling that at least something interesting has passed, while with a woman an abstract conversation ends nowhere and you have a feeling that she has only been talking about whatever it was just out of politeness.
I remember that what struck me most about Lamoir at that time was how happy she was, happy and feeling safe in her happiness. That puzzled me then, for I knew she loved Hugh.
II
I would see a good deal of Hugh, sometimes going to stay with him at Langton Weaver, and often, in London, dining with him at his house in Charles Street, just he and I alone. It was very pleasant to know of a quiet house in which I might now and then pass an evening talking, as one always did with Hugh if one talked at all, of books and tapestries and fine things. I never knew a man who had such a passion for the touch of fine things as Hugh, and seeing him thoughtfully holding a little old ivory figure in his hand one might almost think his skin was in love with it.
But a few weeks ago, the last time I was ever to dine with my friend, it instantly struck me that he was in quite a different mood. And presently he told me about the garden and the tree. He didn’t preface it with anything in particular, he was thoughtfully twisting the stem of his port-glass when he said: “Nearly nine years since I have seen Lamoir——”
I said vaguely: “Yes....” Never once, you see, in all those nine years, had he so much as mentioned the name of Lamoir, and so I felt rather stunned at first.
Hugh went on thoughtfully, not particularly to me: “And the first time I saw her I was nine years old. She must have been seven.”
I said: “But I always understood that Lamoir passed her childhood in India and never came to England until she was twenty or so! I’d no idea you too were in India when you were little.”
“I wasn’t,” he said, and he smiled, I think out of shyness just because he was talking about himself. “I wasn’t. That’s why, you see, it was so funny——”