Now and then she smiled. And she was handsome; tawny; but scarred on the jaw. The scar lengthened when she smiled. She was dressed out of fashion as women dressed, years ago, in pictures. She did not seem exactly a guest, nor yet a maid. She had only a suitcase and the pheasants. She listened to what they were saying. She said “Chk.” Then she smiled.
“Chk,” said Miss Antonia.
Then she pinched her glasses on her nose. The damp leaves fell across the long windows of the gallery. Then the trees in the Park shivered.
“Chk,” Miss Antonia sniffed again.
The wind sighed. The room was draughty. Now and then a ripple, like a reptile, ran under the carpet. On the carpet lay panels of green and yellow. The sun rested there. Then the sun moved. Miss Antonia looked up as the light strengthened. Her forefathers—the Rashleighs—owned vast lands, so they said. Over there. Up the Amazons. Freebooter. Voyagers. Captives. Maidens. Miss Antonia grinned. The finger of the sun rested on a silver frame. Then on a photograph; on an egg-shaped baldish head; on a lip; and the name “Edward”.
“The King,” Miss Antonia muttered, “had the Blue Room.”
They were driving the pheasants out in the King’s Ride, across the noses of the guns. The birds spurted up from the underwood like heavy rockets. Reddish purple rockets. Then they faded. They dispersed gently.
In the road, a cart stood. Soft warm bodies, with limp claws, and still lustrous eyes. The birds seemed alive. They looked relaxed and comfortable. Then the Squire cursed and raised his gun.
Miss Antonia stitched on. Now and then a tongue of flame reached the grey log. Miss Antonia looked up for a moment, as a dog stares at a flame. Then the flame sank. She stitched again.
Then, silently, the enormously high door opened. Two lean men came in. They drew a table over the hole in the carpet. They went out. They came in. They laid a cloth upon the table. They went out. They came in. They brought a green baize basket of knives and forks; and glasses. They brought sugar casters; and salt cellars; and bread. They brought a silver vase with three chrysanthemums in it. Miss Antonia stitched on.
Again the door opened. A little dog trotted in, a spaniel. It paused. And then old Miss Rashleigh entered. A white shawl clouded her baldness. She hobbled. She crossed the room. She hunched herself in the high-backed chair by the fireside. Miss Antonia stitched on.
“They are shooting,” she said at last.
Old Miss Rashleigh nodded. She gripped her stick. They were waiting.
The shooters moved from the King’s Ride to the Home Woods. They stood in the field outside. Now and then a twig snapped. But above the mist and the smoke was an island of blue—faint blue, pure blue—alone in the sky. And in the innocent air, a bell gamboled. Then it faded. Then again up shot the rockets, the reddish purple pheasants. Up and up they went. Again the guns barked. The smoke balls formed; loosened, dispersed. And the busy little dogs ran over the fields. The men bunched warm damp bodies together.
“There!” grunted Milly Masters, the house-keeper.
She was stitching, too, in the small dark room. The jersey, the rough woollen jersey, for her son, was finished. This boy cleaned the Church.
“The end!” she muttered.
Then she heard the cart. She got up. She stood in the yard, in the wind.
“They are coming!” she laughed.
The scar on her cheek lengthened.
She unbolted the door. Wing, the gamekeeper, drove the cart over the cobbles. The birds were dead now. The leathery eyelids were creased over their eyes. Mrs. Masters the housekeeper, Wing the gamekeeper, took bunches of dead birds by the neck. Then they flung them down on the floor. The floor became smeared and spotted with blood. The pheasants looked smaller now.
“The last,” Milly Masters grinned.
The cart drove off.
“Luncheon is served, ma’am,” said the butler.
He pointed at the table. He directed the footman. They waited, the butler and the footman.
Miss Antonia put away her silk and her thimble. She hung her glasses on a hook upon her breast. Then she rose.
“Luncheon!” she barked in old Miss Rashleigh’s ear.
One second later old Miss Rashleigh stretched her leg out. She gripped her stick. Then she rose. Both old women advanced slowly to the table. And there was the pheasant, featherless, gleaming.
Miss Antonia drew the knife across the pheasant’s breast firmly. She cut two slices. She laid them on a plate. Deftly the footman whipped it from her. Old Miss Rashleigh raised her knife. Shots rang out in the wood under the window.
“Coming?” said old Miss Rashleigh.
She took a mouthful of pheasant.
“The Home Woods, now,” said Miss Antonia. “Hugh is shooting.”
She drew her knife down the other side of the breast. She added potatoes and gravy, sprouts and bread sauce. Methodically in a circle round the slices on her plate. The butler and the footman were watching. They were like servers at a feast. The old ladies ate quietly, silently. They cleaned the bird methodically. The butler drew the decanter towards Miss Antonia. Then he paused for a moment.
“Give it here, Griffiths,” said Miss Antonia.
She took the carcase in her fingers. Then she tossed it to the spaniel beneath the table.
The butler and the footman bowed and went out. The wind was rising. A brown shudder shook the air. The glass rattled in the windows.
Old Miss Rashleigh filled her glass. As they sipped their eyes became lustrous like half precious stones. Miss Rashleigh’s eyes were blue. Miss Antonia’s eyes were red. Their laces quivered as they drank.
“It was a day like this, do you remember?” said old Miss Rashleigh. “They brought him home—a bullet through his heart. A bramble, so they said. Tripped. Caught his foot.”
She chuckled as she sipped her wine.
“And John…” said Miss Antonia. “The mare, they said, put her foot in a hole. Died in the field. The hunt rode over him. He came home, too, on a shutter.”
They sipped again.
“Do you remember Lily?” said old Miss Rashleigh. “A bad girl. With a scarlet tassel on her cane.”
She shook her head.
“Rotten at the heart!” cried Miss Antonia.
“Do you remember the Colonel’s letter? Your son rode like twenty devils. Then one white devil—ah hah!”
She sipped again.
“The men of our house[25],” began Miss Rashleigh.
She raised her glass. She held it high. She paused. The guns were barking. Something cracked in the woodwork. Or was it a rat behind the plaster?
“Always women,” Miss Antonia nodded. “The men of our house. Pink and white Lucy at the Mill—do you remember?”
“Ellen’s daughter at the Goat and Sickle,” Miss Rashleigh added.
“And the girl at the tailor’s,” Miss Antonia murmured, “where Hugh bought his breeches, the little dark shop on the right…”
“…that was flooded every winter. It’s his boy,” Miss Antonia chuckled, “that cleans the Church.”
There was a crash. The great log snapped in two. Flakes of plaster fell from the shield above the fireplace.
“Falling,” old Miss Rashleigh chuckled. “Falling.”
“And who will pay?” said Miss Antonia.
They laughed like old babies. They were indifferent, reckless. They sipped the sherry by the wood ashes and the plaster. They fingered their glasses. They sat by the ashes. But they never raised