The Hollow

"Well, don't let's waste time on Edward!

None of these people count."

Henrietta said in a low voice:

"Sometimes, John-I'm afraid for you!"

"Afraid for me-what do you mean?"

He turned an astonished face upon her.

"You are so oblivious-so-yes, blind." "Blind?"

"You don't know-you don't see-you're curiously insensitive! You don't know what other people are feeling and thinking."

"I should have said just the opposite."

"You see what you're looking at, yes.

You're-you're like a search-light. A powerful beam turned onto the one spot where your interest is, and behind it and each side of it, darkness!" "Henrietta, my dear, what is all this?" "It's dangerous, John. You assume that everyone likes you, that they mean well to you. People like Lucy, for instance."

"Doesn't Lucy like me?" he said, surprised.

"I've always been extremely fond of her."

"And so you assume that she likes you.

But I'm not sure… And Gerda and Edward-or and Midge and Henry? How do you know what they feel towards you?"

"And Henrietta? Do I know how she feels?" He caught her hand for a moment.

"At least-I'm sure of you."

She took her hand away.

"You can be sure of no one in this world, John."

His face had grown grave.

"No, I won't believe that. I'm sure of you and I'm sure of myself. At least-" His face changed.

"What is it, John?"

"Do you know what I found myself saying today? Something quite ridiculous. "/ want to go home.9 That's what I said and I haven't the least idea what I meant by it."

Henrietta said slowly, "You must have had some picture in your mind…"

He said sharply, "Nothing. Nothing at all!"

At dinner that night, Henrietta was put next to David and from the end of the table Lucy's delicate eyebrows telegraphed-not a command-Lucy never commanded-but an appeal.

Sir Henry was doing his best with Gerda and succeeding quite well. John, his face amused, was following the leaps and bounds of Lucy's discursive mind. Midge talked in rather a stilted way to Edward who seemed more absentminded than usual.

David was glowering and crumbling his bread with a nervous hand.

David had come to The Hollow in a spirit of considerable unwillingness. Until now, he had never met either Sir Henry or Lady Angkatell, and disapproving of the Empire generally, he was prepared to disapprove of these relatives of his. Edward, whom he did know, he despised as a dilettante. The remaining four guests he examined with a critical eye. Relations, he thought, were pretty awful, and one was expected to talk to people, a thing which he hated doing.

Midge and Henrietta he discounted as empty-headed. This Dr. Christow was just one of these Harley Street charlatans-all manner and social success-his wife obviously did not count.

David shifted his neck in his collar and wished fervently that all these people could know how little he thought of them! They were really all quite negligible.

When he had repeated that three times to himself he felt rather better. He still glowered but he was able to leave his bread alone.

Henrietta 5 though responding loyally to the eyebrows, had some difficulty in making headway. David's curt rejoinders were snubbing in the extreme. In the end she had recourse to a method she had employed before with the tongue-tied young.

She made, deliberately, a dogmatic and quite un justifiable pronouncement on a modern composer, knowing that David had much technical musical knowledge.

To her amusement the plan worked.

David drew himself up from his slouching position where he had been more or less reclining on his spine. His voice was no longer low and mumbling. He stopped crumbling his bread.

"That," he said in loud, clear tones, fixing a cold eye on Henrietta, "shows that you don't know the first thing about the subject!"

From then on until the end of dinner he lectured her in clear and biting accents, and Henrietta subsided into the proper meekness of one instructed.

Lucy Angkatell sent a benignant glance down the table, and Midge grinned to herself.

"So clever of you, darling," murmured

Lady Angkatell as she slipped an arm through Henrietta's on the way to the drawing-room.

"What an awful thought it is that if people had less in their heads they would know better what to do with their hands! Do you think hearts or bridge or rummy or something terribly, terribly simple like animal grab?"

"I think David would be rather insulted by animal grab."

"Perhaps you are right. Bridge, then. I am sure he will feel that bridge is rather worthless and then he can have a nice glow of contempt for us."

They made up -two tables. Henrietta played with Gerda against John and Edward.

It was not her idea of the best grouping. She had wanted to segregate Gerda from Lucy and if possible from John also-but John had shown determination. And Edward had then forestalled Midge.