It was impossible to wean him from his little rules, and the world must follow his lead—or live elsewhere. (Which course was adopted, he hardly cared.) I fought to preserve my prejudices against his—and he beat me. At ten-ten I was left in my stall at the "Round House," and he was half-way to Hale's. And when he decided that he could not and would not meet women at breakfast, I scarcely hoped he would make an exception in favour of Lake House. If my mother and Beryl persisted in breakfasting with their guests—I can see the very shrug of his shoulders as though he had put his objections into words—it was really, really simpler for me to meet him in Scotland where there would be no hideous domestic surprises in store for anyone.
So my autumn party in 1906 brought me Amy but not her brother. "Tell George I hope you're all missing me," he wrote to her. I hastened to assure him that with my uncle, O'Rane, the Daintons, the Hunter-Oakleighs from Dublin and four or five more, his absence had not been remarked.
III
I always doubted the wisdom of including O'Rane in a house-party, for the Lake House estate offered little but its snipe-shooting, and he refused to shoot. There was, however, a library, a garden, some purple, green, brown and grey mountain scenery and—for anyone who cared to do so—the mountains themselves to climb. For the most part he paced up and down the terrace at the margin of the lake, gazing dreamily over its mirror-like surface to the tree-clad hills on the other side. In the past twelve months he had lost much of his animation and had become curiously rapt and reflective. The change did not make him an easier guest to entertain. We have known each other these many years now and stayed together in a dozen different houses, yet I never quite get rid of the feeling that he is from another world and another century. Sometimes one or other of us would keep him corporeal company for a while: usually he was alone—thinking out the future. In the last days of July he had taken his First in Greats, and academic Oxford lay at his feet.
"What's the next stage, Raney?" I asked him one evening when we were alone in the garden. "All Souls?"
He shrugged his shoulders, linked arms with me and paced the lowest terrace by the lake's border. It was a night of rare stillness, and the moon was reflected full and unwavering in the black water: behind us, fifty yards up the side of the mountain, blinding squares of yellow light broke up the dark face of the house; a chord was struck, and a girl's voice began to sing with an Irish intonation.
"What a lovely place the world would be if it weren't for the men and women in it!" he exclaimed.
"Even with them it's tolerable," I said.
I was deliciously tired after a long day's tramp; a hot bath, dinner and the placid night set me at peace with all men.
"For you, yes," he answered reflectively.