“Rather tired, that’s all.” Merry sat in the chair, she didn’t stagger but this didn’t seem right. She had come to say something, wasn’t saying it. Why did she stare white and white, jasmine-white? “Old Trent?” Darrington was a brute. You could see that Darrington was a brute. It couldn’t be possible that he said it and it hadn’t happened. They were in the wrong play. They are firing on Richmond to-night. This was the wrong play. They should be wearing crinolines, being Southern ladies, all made up crinolines, on with the dance let joy be unconfined. Soldiers weren’t real. There were boys wearing flowers but they were different. Darrington wore no flower. He would not be killed. You could tell when they would be killed for the flowers were white and ghost-white and white and jasmine white and the fragrance of the flowers reached you across dead Fritzes, across bread scrounged, across scrounging and billets and tight places and Mademoiselle in the family way. There were flowers and soldiers. The boys were flowers. Darrington was a soldier but why if he now felt it that way couldn’t he have gone in the beginning? Captain Trent (pre-war Captain) was at least a real soldier not this pretence and was it true that Darrington had got the gas-helmets when he was a runner (a private, Private Jerrold Darrington 171892 and the rest of it, how often she had written it) was it true that he had got the officers out of a “tight place,” someone said he had done something decent but he was a runner and got somewhere and there was a gas attack and they sent him back for his commission. Maybe it was true. Private Jerrold Darrington and what difference now? What difference now? She liked him better then and the men (navvies) had called him Jerry and now things were different and things were different and the things were different. “Old Trent?” Who exactly was he? They are firing on Richmond to-night.
There was death and they had died a certain death and Jerrold hadn’t. Had Merry absolutely died? She seemed in a state of just not-understanding, for so little she would understand, what was it that was lacking? The story was all right. The story had body, continuity, unity, all the things the right sort of impossible story would have. All the stories now were of a low level of art but they made good stories. Life is, isn’t it, damn bad art, but who had said that? It was the sort of thing Darrington used to say but didn’t any more say. Darrington with his “to the chaste all things are unchaste” and Darrington to the rescue and his Theseus like a sea-rock with the weeds still clinging and his Astraea like a star, a child. . where was that Darrington? There was a chasm, a split, the volcano had so split them and across the other side candles were flaring up and George was reading and it was George saying, “almost thou persuadest me to be a heathen.” People didn’t say things like that, anyway they were silly things to say, but why should they? Why be démodé, it wasn’t à la mode any more to be witty, it was Fritz and Fritz and such vile repetition and his breath breathed into her lungs was that curious death and that curious emanation. He had been in a gas attack for his breath breathed into her lungs bit and burned and she coughed violently after he had gone, thank God that time, he had been hurried up north again, up north, his commission and a little pat from somebody though he was only 171892 for all he was a navvy with the navvies, Jerry, a navvy but rather nice coming back rather brown, rather nice if his breath hadn’t been filled with gas, making her cough, making her cough. Cough. Across a chasm there were candles and daffodils and the hydrangeas that had lifted porcelain blue and wedgwood blue and delft blue and porcelain white and porcelain Sèvres china, Dresden china pink. There is always a tulip on Dresden and sometimes an iris. Flowers on china. Merry was like that, French rather, the Irish were when you came to think of it, after you had had your full dose of England. Merry was like that. Merry already looked different, it took her no time at all to recover. The jasmine had faded from her lips. There was the old pre-chasm red and fox-red though now it had faded to the burnt pale hectic colour of fire swept leaves. She was burnt out, pale in her burning. But there was no jasmine. She was not yet ghost. Merry was sitting there and talking quite naturally. These stories were so natural. “They met us at the corner and Ned said I was to leave him. I don’t know where they took him.” This had happened before. It was always happening. Plain clothes men like some odd, old pre-chasm detective story. Sherlock Holmes. Doctor Watson. All, all those incredible, impossible things had come into life. Life had found its level and those things were on its level. “He asked me to come here. He said Hermione will understand.” Hermione looked at Merry. She did understand. Merry was no ghost jasmine. Colour came back, blue eyes, that looked blue, blue, blue, the delft-blue, the porcelain blue of conservatory hydrangeas. She was not a real flower, not an orchid though her mauve and gold gave her quality, gave her frailty. Was she frail? Didn’t she burn simply where life burned? Didn’t she cultivate Hermione for the life that burned about her? What did Merry see in Hermione? “What are you staring at, seeing?” Merry was staring, her eyes staring. Blue. Blue. “You look — odd.” “I feel odd rather. Nothing the matter. Odd simply.” Hermione was odd. She wasn’t in it, wasn’t out of it. She didn’t love Merry Dalton, didn’t hate her. She couldn’t condemn poor Trent, though she couldn’t wholesale admire him. It was stupid and the guns had stopped. There was something in the uncanny odd quiet of it, the streets quiet, no (however distant) rumble, no whistles nor rumbles, things you don’t think, in London, you are hearing but which (in London) you miss when they stop. As if a heart stopped simply. “Somethings stopped.” “It’s the guns.” “Yes. It must be.” Darrington was pulling the other couch out from behind the screen that shut their enormous room into sections. The other big couch would do for two of them. Which two? What was this? What was her mind doing? People thought like that those days. Thoughts came from outside like swallows suddenly appearing, wheeling, appearing, wheeling, turning. Spring and the swallows of her freedom. Birds. “O Merry. Yes do stay.” Darrington was already beginning to remove bits of himself, a belt, bits of things, a belt. The leather belt lay where he flung it among the ring of glasses. Ring. A ring. Ring around a rosy. A ring. A ring. A ring. Brides of God. What kind of a bride? Of God. What kind of a God? O yes, pretend. Don’t think. You are so tired, take Merry into your bed. They can arrange it after you have gone to sleep. Swallows were dipping and wheeling and this world was not real and she had left her husband on the rocks at Capri. . swallows had reeled and Odysseus had turned that corner for the Syren voices. . voices. . voices. . almost (not quite) Hermione could hear voices for the food wasn’t worth eating when you got it and “O do stay Merry. O of course, it’s too late. You can’t go home now and you can’t sleep in the kitchen. There’s an extra munition worker in the little old room we used to have at the back. Stay here.” “How wonderful. How beautiful.” Darrington went on undressing. “O yes. If you want one.” Merry didn’t want a night dress. She pulled off the mauve and old gold and she was gold and mauve underneath. “I don’t take up much room.” “I don’t take up much room either and the couch is wide. Are you all right Jerrold?” Jerrold out of delicacy seemed to have removed bits only, rolled in his great coat. He was simply “rolling in” as people did nowadays. People didn’t sleep, pulled off bits of things and Hermione pulled off bits of things. Darrington seemed to be asleep. “Who’ll blow out the last candle? But it must be almost day. Goodnight.”