Charles, unaware of anything that had happened, was full of well-being now that the sun had come out. He had plans to take Sally with him to see the farm, to drive up among the hills; he preferred to think of this as a journey with her alone. After all, Violet hated to be wrenched out of her habits and customs and really liked being in the house and garden better than moving about. Charles whistled happily as he strode about in one of the far plantations, marking trees to be cut. He did not think further than this plan to take Sally out. Nothing, in his own mind, could have been more innocent. It was a useful good idea to get her mind off that bounder, in any case. A minor flirtation would be the best thing in the world for Sally. She was a queer little thing, Charles thought, for he was not going to admit how powerfully attractive she had become in the last few days, and she seemed to be avoiding him. Probably more went on in her dark head than anyone knew. Possibly she was more attracted to him than she herself could admit. This idea startled Charles. He snapped the knife shut with which he had been marking trees and held it tightly in one hand. Then he told himself severely that he was an old fool. Then he laughed out loud and stamped noisily out of the underbrush and down the hill to the house. He felt younger than he had for a year, in a mood for practical jokes, for teasing Violet who hated above all be to teased. Life, he said to himself, is good.

He said it again aloud to Violet when he finally found her picking sweet peas in the walled garden. He stood just behind her and told her that life was good.

“Yes, dear,” Violet said patiently.

“Don’t be so priggish, Violet—it’s good, I tell you.”

“I’m not priggish, I’m just agreeing with you. What’s priggish about that?”

Violet was evidently in one of her perverse moods. She was paying great attention to each flower, rearranging the bunch in her hands, and not looking at him. Charles picked a bright pink sweet pea, came round behind her and tickled her neck with the crisp teasing flower.

“Darling, must you? I really want to get this done.”

“You and Queen Victoria,” he muttered darkly and then he laughed such a gay and simple laugh that Violet found herself laughing too. “You’re a perfect wretch, Charles.”

“You see,” he said in triumph, “you are amused. You can’t help being amused, because it’s such a lovely day. Let’s have a drink before lunch and sit out as if we were the rich and idle, on the terrace…”

Violet, hemmed in by two dangerous kinds of innocence, felt beaten. Why not enjoy the day and all that it held? Why worry and be responsible? After all, if Ian did come it might solve everything. She pressed her nose into the cool perfumed faces of the sweet peas.

“How can we be so old and beautiful?” Charles was saying in his caressing happy voice.

“How can we be so old?” Violet echoed, laughing at him now. “You are a very old frisky lamb, darling,” she said, taking his arm and turning down the path towards the creaking gate in the wall.

“A ram—a ram—a ram—” he said loudly. “But really, Violet, look at the wall. It’s in a terrible way, isn’t it? And I must do something about the gate.”

“Does it feel like a real life, Charles?” Violet turned to him gravely, as they closed the gate behind them.

“You sound like Sally.”

“She keeps asking what it all means, doesn’t she? I begin to ask myself…” In the shadow of the wall after the brilliant sunlight, it felt cold. She would have liked to lean her head on Charles’s shoulder, to be supported and enclosed and cherished. But she saw another light altogether in his eyes and saw that he was not at that second thinking of her at all, though he was looking straight at her.

“Of course it’s a real life,” he said briskly. “Come along. Let’s find the child and have a drink.”

“Sally thinks we’re useless, battening on the poor,” Violet said, grasping at an argument as one way of getting Charles’s attention.

“That’s what college does to women, fills their heads up with half-baked notions, sociology, what? Economics, what? She’d learn more by living on a farm for a year. I really must do something about the nettles,” he interrupted himself as they passed the neglected stables. “One of these days I’m going to take Sally around, give her a few lessons in practical economics right here.”

“Yes, dear,” Violet said patiently. But this time he let her tone pass in silence. He was running ahead, up the steps of the terrace, and Violet stopped to watch him, and found that she minded a good deal his blaze of energy, his unconsciousness, his self-enclosure. Sometimes she looked forward to their old age, to the peace of it. We’ll read she thought. The danger will be past. But she could not really imagine such a time, nor really wish for it. The house, she thought, looking up at it, is a challenge. It was not built in a safe time for safety, nor for any kind of peaceful dying. It was built to maintain, to endure, built in danger and on belief. Thinking of it thus, she felt an old courage in her. She felt armed.

“Where have you been?” Sally asked, finding them settled in deck chairs. “I looked all over. I’ve got news,” she said, carefully unfolding a cablegram. “Ian’s flying over for a few days next Friday—he’s really coming. I can’t believe it. Oh Aunt Violet, I’m scared,” she said, curling up suddenly at Violet’s feet, hugging her knees.

“What’s this?” Charles asked so angrily that Violet looked up and tried to warn him with a glance.

“Ian’s coming. Do you mind?” Sally said coldly.

“I don’t understand. Did you invite him, Violet?” Charles was standing now, glaring down at them like some god disturbed in his lair, Violet thought.

“Not exactly,” she said, laying a hand on Sally’s head as if to reassure her before the storm, for it was to be a storm. Charles had been taken by surprise, a thing he hated above all, and he had been left out, a thing he resented. “Sally told me she had asked him to fly over and by then it seemed too late to refuse.”

“And does Sally’s mother know this?” Charles asked.

“I’m not going to tell Barbie,” Violet said, looking him straight in the eye.

“Violet, I presume you consider this my house as well as yours?”

“Of course.”

“Why didn’t you at least ask me, then?” Charles didn’t know why he was so angry, but he knew that anger had taken possession of him like a temporary illness. Obscure humiliations out of the past, the fact that Violet’s family was a distinguished one in a sense that his had never been, that this was her estate and that the people on it looked to her rather than to him, her way of treating him sometimes as if he were a child, all these buried angers focused now on this given situation and burned inside him.

“I suppose I didn’t tell you because of the way you are behaving now. I thought Ian might not come and there was no point in making an issue of it. I’m sorry, Charles”—she shrugged her shoulders, a gesture which negated the apology—“I should have told you, of course.”

Sally felt as if she had been transported into the middle of a storm. Because she was sitting on the step, close to Aunt Violet’s knees, and Charles was standing over them, both he and her aunt loomed very large and quite terrifying. This fierce grating of their natures hurt her as a dog is hurt by music and she would have liked, like a dog, to howl. She didn’t at the moment care at all whether Ian came or not, but only that this frightfully painful scene should stop. If only, she thought, I could just vanish. But there she was between them, with no escape possible, short of making a scene herself.

“You are always taking decisions out of my hands, Violet, and in this case it’s inexcusable. I suppose we can cable and tell him not to come? You may feel you can do this behind your sister’s back but I cannot. After all, she trusts us.”

If they had been alone, Violet would have had an answer to that; she bit her lip. Instead she turned and deliberately looked out at the grove of oak trees as if she could project herself into its cool shade in a single concentrated look.

“Violet, I asked you a question. Can we cable and put this madness off?”

“I’ll tell mother myself,” Sally said then.

“You’ll do nothing of the sort. This is my responsibility,” Violet answered quickly. “Charles,” she tried to smile, “please be reasonable. He’ll only be here a weekend.”

“After all,” Sally said for she was getting angry now too, “I’m engaged to the man.”

“You’re nothing but a child.”

“I’m twenty-one.” She glared at Charles who glared back.

“You’re both children,” Violet announced and laughed her slightly theatrical laugh. But it had been the wrong moment to choose to break Charles’s rising fury of impotence.

“Damn it, Violet, I’m not a child and I’m sick and tired of being treated as one. Will you listen to me!” he roared, quite red in the face. Sally instinctively withdrew farther along the step. He looked as if he would become violent at any moment.

“Yes, dear,” Violet said in her patient voice.

“And don’t put me off with that priggish smug tone of voice. All my life I’ve had to listen to that tone of voice—”

“Poor Charles,” Violet said ironically. “You have had a hard life.” She knew very well that all he wanted was to make her really angry. Then the whole thing would blow up and blow over, but Violet would not give in this time. And there was Sally who evidently minded this very much and did not understand it and would not forgive. It must not turn into a serious argument, at all costs.

Abruptly Charles sat down. He felt sore from top to bottom, sore and at cross-purposes with himself and with everyone else. It was humiliating beyond words that Sally should witness his defeat. All his joy in himself, in the morning, in the goodness of life had withered away and Charles felt old and diminished.

Both he and Violet were too absorbed in themselves to notice that Sally was crying. But once the tears began she could not stop them and now she gave a little sobbing croak.

“What is the matter, Sally?” Charles said crossly. He felt ashamed. “Now look what you’ve done, Violet.”

“What I’ve done!” Violet was suddenly furious. “You talk about responsibility, Charles, but you can’t take it.”

“Oh please—please—please don’t.” Sally, sobbing, got up. ‘It’s all my fault,” she said in a desperate attempt to appease the jealous gods. “Only…” and she broke down completely, and ran down the terrace steps and off down the road, where she did not know. All she wished was to get away from them, from the house, from all that was happening so much beyond her control, so deeply disturbing.

“Let her go, Charles,” Violet said harshly, as Charles moved to follow. “Don’t you dare follow her.”

She was standing now too. They faced each other. For a second all they could feel was the immense vacuum Sally left behind her. The letdown was as great as the tension had been. They were actors alone on a stage before an empty house. It was Violet, with her quick honest perception who knew this and so was the first to drop into her chair with a sigh and pick up her drink. Then she said in a normal tone of voice, quite quietly and as if she had complete confidence in Charles, and all the words they had spoken were just a scene they had played out, but now they had become real people again and left the play,

“This is all about Sally, really, isn’t it, Charles?”

Charles looked down at her quizzically, humbly, tenderly, and said, “The maddening thing about you, Violet, is that you always know these things about half a second before I do, so you always win.”

“Dear,” she said then and it was her turn to look a little ashamed of herself, “don’t you see, that’s why I thought it quite clever of me to let Ian come?”

“But Violet,” he protested, “I never meant—”

“Of course, darling, but she is very attractive—and vulnerable—and innocent—and so, darling, are you.”

Charles resisted her smile, but he was ready to capitulate. “I hate the idea of this actor, this—this—self-satisfied success-boy who can fly about as if it were nothing at all. A weekend indeed!”

“I don’t think it’s such a foolish idea either to let Sally see him in these particular surroundings.” Violet added, “I’m hoping he won’t altogether fit in.”

But Charles was not listening. He had had a shock. He was beginning to see what the summer madness had almost led him into and felt shaken. It was hard, feeling guilty as he did, to forgive Violet for her prescience. He could not quite forgive her, as a matter of fact.

“We are getting old, Violet. It’s disgusting to get old,” he said out of all this.

“If you fight it with the wrong weapons, it may be disgusting,” Violet said tentatively.

“Whatever are you talking about?” Charles bristled.

It was not the moment to try to talk this over and Violet knew it. “Never mind, darling, you said yourself a half-hour ago that we are old and beautiful—remember?”

“I was boasting,” Charles said cruelly.

“I expect you were, darling,” Violet said, lifting a hand to her face as if to shield it. “I think the truth is that we’re both rather spoiled, far more spoiled than Sally, for instance. We have rather a lot to learn, Charles, you know…” but this Charles was not ready to concede, not yet.