Encounters Stories-Elizabeth Bowen

0:001. Section 1 of Encounters Stories This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit libriVox.org, read by Cristiana Popisco. Encounters. Stories by Elizabeth Bowen. Breakfast. Behold, I died daily. Thought Mr. Rosetta are entering the breakfast room. He saw the family in silhouette against the windows. The windows looked out into a garden close to darkly in upon by walls. There are so many of the families, sinned as though they must have multiplied during the night. Their flesh glimmed pinkly in the cold, north and light, and they were always moving. Often, like the weary shepherd, he could have prayed them to keep still that he might count them.

1:02They turned at his entrance, profiles, and three quarter-faces towards him. There was a silence of suspended munching and little bulges of food were thrust into their cheeks that they might wish him for functury good mornings. Miss Emily further inquired whether he had slept well with a little vivacious uptilt of a chin. Her voice was muffled. He gathered that the contents of her mouth was bacon because she was engaged in soping up the liquid fat from her plate with little dyes of bread which she pushed around briskly of the circular movement of a fork. It was not worth sitting down till she had finished because she would be expected to take her plate away. Why was the only empty chair always beside Miss Emily? Last night, in the lamp light, he had almost begun to think he liked Miss Emily. She was the only lady present who had not bitten time with hand or foot or jerking head while they played to read a song on the gramophone.

2:07But here, pressed in upon her by the thick fumes of coffee and bacon, the doggie smelling carpet, the tight glazed noses of the family ready to split loudly from their skins. There was contamination in the very warm edge of her plate as she took it from her with the vetted head and clattered it down among the others on the sideboard. Bacon insinuated Mrs. Russell. A little chilly, I'm afraid. I do hope this plenty, but we early birds are sometimes inclined to be rather avanous. She added, there's an egg, but there was no invitation in her tone. She could never leave a phrase unmodified. He could have answered with the facetious emphasis that he was almost inclined to believe he would rather have enjoyed that egg. Dumbly, he took two rashes of the moistened muttled bacon. And then, Hillary Bevel was recounting, it all changed and we were moving very quickly through a kind of pinkish mist,

3:15running it felt like only all my legs and arms were somewhere else. That was the time when you came into a tent willow bee. You were winding up your sewing machine like a motor car, kneeling down in sort of a bunching bathing dress. She had had in delicacy, reaching out for the marmalade with a little, educated rustle, break up the silence with which her night amazing experiences had been received. Miss Emily, always kindly, titted into her cup. She kicked the leg of Rosetta's chair, then apologized, and he watched her thin, sharp shoulders shining through her blouse. Mrs. Russell's eye traveled slowly around the table. There slowed and seized the rotatory mastication of her jaws. Above her hand was a square of white lights reflected across from the window to the overmantle. He wished that the sheen of the tablecloth were snow and that he could heep it over his head as the eye came round to it's him.

4:21Now for it. He braced himself, clenching his hands upon his knife and fork, and squaring his elbows still one touched Miss Emily, who quivered. I'm afraid you couldn't hardly have heard the gong this morning, Mr. Rosetta. That new girl doesn't hardly know how to make its sound yet. She seems to me just to give it the sort of a rattle. Damn her impudence. She censored him for being late. Oh, I, um, I heard it. Thank you. They had all stopped talking and ate quite quietly to hear him speak. Only job is beveled, drained his coffee cup with a gallpin' gurgle. The fact is, I was, um, looking for my collar stud. Oh, yes. I'm afraid you've sometimes been a little reckless about buying new ones before you were quite sure you'd lost the others, haven't you, Mr. Rosetta?

5:24Only fancy. She looked around to collect the attention of the breakfasters. There was a sensation to follow. And he found three good ones, really good ones, under the wardrobe when she was turning out your room. I can't think how they get there. He protested conscious of humanity. Perhaps he took little legs onto themselves and walked, suggested Hillary Bevel. Perhaps the wardrobe got top in the night and set on top of them. Betted, Miss Emily. There was a russle of laughter and she cast down her eyes with a deprecatory titter. The remark was a success. It was really funny. It was received by Mrs. Russle with a warm benignity. Really, Emily, you do say silly things. She laughed her gentle, breathy laugh gazing at Mr. Rosetta who regaled. I say, um, Bevel, when you finished with that newspaper, Joseph's bevel looked insulently at him over the top of the paper.

6:34Sorry, I've only just begun. I left it lying on your plate sometime. Then I didn't think it would have much time to read it being rather rushed. Rosetta hated Bevel with his leak head. He was not aware that he was rushed. What business had Bevel got to tell him so? Well, when you have finished, Hillary Bevel was staring at him across the table as though she had never seen him before. She had eyebrows like her brothers, owls, eyebrows, and long-lit, slanting eyes, and affected the childish directness and ingeniousness of speech, which she considered attractive. The scarlet, loose, leaped mouth curled itself from her utterances, making them doubly distinct. Mr. Rosetta's got another tie on. A crimson tie, said Hillary Bevel. Rosetta was instantly aware not only of his tie, but of his whole body visible above the table edge.

7:36He felt his ears protruding fanwized from his head, felt them redden, and the blush burned slowly across his cheekbones, down his freaking skin to the tip of his nose. Mrs. Russell's attention was temporarily directed from himself by his curmish with Aunt Willoughby. The click of Swords was audible to all. Oh, but you wouldn't, Aunt Willoughby. Not when they've got five or six rooms to settle up every day you wouldn't. You see, with you, when poor uncle was alive, it was a different thing altogether. What I mean to say is, in proportion to the size of the family, had more of them, I mean, a kind of a way. It was a larger stuff. Ah, then Rosie. But what I always used to say. You do what I expect a few, and we won't expect any more than that. I'm reasonable. I used to say I won't expect any more than that.

8:38And he could tell you that was I used to say to her. As my dear husband used to say, and Willoughby raised her voice in dissipating an interruption. There are those that can get good work out of their servants and those that can't. We mustn't be set up about it. It's just a gift, like other gifts that many haven't got. I've had such a happy, happy home. She sighed towards the attentive Miss Emily. Always so comfortable it was. Any is a funny girl, reflected Mrs. Russell. She said to me, of course, I never take the things those girls say seriously. I wouldn't go back to Mrs. Willoughby, not for anything you might give me. I wouldn't. I said, but she spoke so well a few any, and she just whacked her head at me sort of. She is a funny girl. Of course I didn't know how to tell you, but it made me laugh at the time. It did, really.

9:44I came down in her rather hard, admitted and Willoughby swiftly. I was so particular you see, and she had some dirty ways. I shouldn't wonder. When was it you lost those colour-starts, Mr. Rossiter? I don't exactly remember. Said Rossiter, basically. He felt Mrs. Russell's approval warm upon him, but was sorry to have failed, and Willoughby, who disconcerted, relapsed, into irrelevancy. Miss Emily harked back. Oh, Hillary, you are awful. Why shouldn't he? Well, I didn't say he should, and I simply said it was one. There'll be jealous of you at the office one day, Mr. Rossiter. Mr. Rossiter, I and her contemplatively suppose that Miss Bevel was a merry girl. It may mean an occasion for Mr. Rossiter. Said Mrs. Russell from her old MPI behind the urn.

10:46You shouldn't draw attention to it, girls. Light-glassed on Hillary's suave and burnished hair as she turned her head towards Aunt Willoughby. Nobody takes any notice of little me when I go guarding, do the ante. Why it's all around the table in a minute if I come down with half an inch of new coloured cammy ribbons sticking out, above my jumper? You wouldn't put it in at all if you didn't think it was going to notice. Remark her brother without raising his eyes from the daily express. I wouldn't put on anything at all if I was quite invisible if that's what you mean. Miss Emily glanced apprehensively at the unshaken barricade of newspaper. Oh, Hillary, you are awful. Jervis had apparently not heard. Hillary said Mrs. Russell. I'm afraid you are shocking, Mr. Rossiter. She lingered on the name as though he was something delicious to eat.

11:48I believe, thought Rossiter, they all want to marry me. Is this inside or delirium? Perhaps not, Aunt Willoughby, but... He appraised Jervis from the edge of the newspaper. Surely he was showier, more attractive. Why couldn't he divert some of their attentions? Take on say, Miss Emily and Mrs. Russell. Mrs. Russell was old enough to be the mother of either of them. A hand shot out suddenly from behind the urn. Rossiter jumped. Had your second cup of coffee yet? Mrs. Russell was saying, You look quite poetic, Mr. Rossiter. She was referring to his abstract glare. Aren't you going to pass along the cup? Thank you. Half a cup if you please. There's no hurry. She glanced over her shoulder at the round, relentless clock face on the mandol.

12:49You see, you eat rather faster than the others, Mr. Rossiter, though they have had a bit of a start this morning. Did he really bolt his foot and make perhaps disgusting noises with his mouth? That's why I always say, with rather breakfast early. All of us, even the ones who haven't necessarily got to rush. At so much home-ier, one feels, then the rough and tumble, modern breakfast nowadays. Everybody sort of rushing in and scrambling and snatching and making grabs at things of a table that the side. There's nothing so homely, said Mrs. Russell, with conscious brilliance. As a comfortable sit-down family to breakfast. My God, said service irritably. There's going to be another strike on that damn railway. They're cutting down the trains again. Why pretend railways are a convenience? That's what I should like to know.

13:50No one could tell him. He pushes chair back from the table impatiently and across his legs. Poor off thing, then, drilled Hillary. Didams, wasams, quas. They're not taking off the 847, are they? Not the 847. They are. That means either the 827 or the 853. The 853. The 827. They decided unanimously. Then they'll just have to mean breakfast earlier, said Mrs. Russell, brightly. You won't mind, will you girls? Her appeal included Aunt Woolaby, who made no response. You see, we couldn't hardly rush them over their breakfast, could we? This was home-conforts. This is one of the privileges for which Rosita paid her 24-sheelings a week. Being set round and wide while you were eating.

14:52Not being rushed. He had a vision of rushed breakfast. Of whirling endlessly through space while one snapped to the sausage with little 30 bites. Of munching bread and marmalade with the wind of one's velocity was sling through one's teeth. Would it be better? Could it be worse? Not worse than his chair-edge creaking against Miss Emily's. The unseasing consciousness of her unseasing consciousness of him. Not worse than Hillary Bevel, vis-a-vis, with her complete and prettiness, her tinkling, labored wittices. Not worse than Aunt Woolaby's beffold, bearded morosity, then Jervis Bevel sleet the stain. He would escape from Mrs. Russell, her advances, her criticisms, her fumbling arguments that crushed you down beneath their heavy gentleness, until you felt you were being trampled to death by a cow, by a blind cow that fumbled its way backwards and forwards across you.

16:00The girls delivered their ultimatum in chorus. England expects, declaimed Hillary, turning her eyes towards the ceiling, every woman to do her duty. It's nice to be down early, said Miss Emily earnestly, with a nice long day stretching out in front of me. Breakfast will be at a quarter to eight sharp, said Mrs. Russell. Mr. Rossiter, we really must try not to lose our color studs. All his days and nights were loops, curving out from breakfast time, curving back to it again. Inexorably, the loops grew smaller. The breakfast slunger, looming more and more over his nights, eating more and more out of his days. Jervis Bevel's eyes swerved over to the mantelpiece. He put his chair back further over the bristling carpet pile.

17:01Well, he said, I think it's almost time. The room broke up, the table grew smaller again as they all rose from their chairs. Mrs. Russell and Ann and Willoughby gather themselves together. Hillary seized Miss Emily by the back of the waist and punted her laughingly towards the door. The coffee and the bacon and the hostility and the Christian forbearance blew out before them into the chili hole. End of section 1 Section 2 of Encounters, stories. This is a Libra Vox recording. All Libra Vox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibraVox.org. This recording is by Michelle Fry, Matan Rouge, Louisiana, in August 2022.

18:04Encounters, stories by Elizabeth Bowen. Defadils. Miss Merchison stopped at the corner of the high street to buy a bunch of defadils from the flower man. She counted out her money very carefully, pouring a little stream of coppers from her purse into the palm of her hand. Nine pints, ten, eleven pints, say penny, a sheeling. Thank you very much, good afternoon. August of wind rushed up the street, whirling her skirts up round her, like a ballet dancers, and wrestling the rickets blue paper round the defadils. The slender gold trumpets tapped into quivered against her face as she held them up with one hand and pressed her skirts down hastily with the other. She felt as though she had been enticed into a harlequinade by a company of column bonds who were quivering with laughter at her discomforter, and looked round to see if anyone had witnessed her display of checkered moirette, penny-coat, and the inches of black stocking above her boots.

19:12But the world remained unembarassed. Today the houses seemed taller and farther apart, the street wider and full of a bright clear light that cast no shadows and was never sunshine. Under archways and between the houses the distances had a curious transparency as though they had been painted upon glass. Against the luminous and indeterminate sky the abbey tower rose distinct and delicate. Miss Merchison, forgetting all confusion, was conscious of her wings. She paused again to hitch up the bundle of exercise books slithering down beneath her elbow, then took the dipping road as a bird swings down into the air. Her mouth was faintly accrad with spring dust and the scent of defadils was in her nostrils. As she left the high street further behind her the traffic sounded as a faint and murmurous home, striking here and there a tinkling note like wind bells.

20:14Under her detachment she was conscious of the houses, the houses, and the houses. They were square, flat-faced and plaster-fronted, painted creams and graze and buffs. One a purple-ish rose-color. Venetian shutters, flat against the wall, broadened the line of the windows. They were colored fan lights over all the doors, spiked railings before them shut off their little square gardens of grass or gravel from the road, and between the railings branches swung out to brush against her dress and recall her to the wonder of their budding loveliness. Miss Merchuson remembered that her mother would be out for tea and quickened her steps in anticipation of that delightful solitude. The silver birch tree that distinguished their front gardens slanted beckoning lead to her across the pavement. She hesitated as her gates swung open and stood looking up and down the road. She was sorry to go in.

21:14But could not resist the invitation of the empty house. She wondered if tomorrow would fill her with so strange a stirring as today. Soon in a few months it would be summer and there would be nothing more to come. Summer would be beautiful, but this spring made promise of a greater beauty than summer could fulfill. Hinted out a mystery which other summers had evaded rather than explained. She went slowly up the steps, fumbling for her latch-key. The days dinner still hung dank and heavy in the air of the little hall. She stood in the doorway with that square of light and sound behind her, craving the protection and the comfort with which that dark entrance had so often received her. There was a sudden desolation in the emptiness of the house. Quickly she entered the sitting room and flung open the window which set the Muslim curtains swaying in the breeze and clanked the little pictures on the walls. The window in Brasier was so deep that there was little light in the corners of the room.

22:18Arm chairs and cabinets were looking in the dusk. The square of daylight by the window was blocked by a bamboo table, groaning under an array of photographs. In her sweeping mood she deposed the photographs, thrust the table to one side and pulled her chair up into the window. I can't correct my essays in the dark. She asserted, though she had done so every evening of the year. How tight laced you are, poor column-bonds. She said, throwing away the paper, seeing how the base cut deep into the fleshy stems. You were brave above it all, but there now she cut the base and shook the flowers out into a vase. I can't correct, she said, with you all watching me, you are so terribly flippant. But what a curious coincidence. She had set her class to write an essay upon David Ilz. You shall judge, I'll read them all out loud. They will amuse you. She dipped her pen in the red ink pot with an anticipatory titter.

23:23With the creek of Wills, a young woman went by slowly, wheeling a perambulator. She lent heavily on the handlebar, tilting the perambulator on its two back wheels, and staring up wide-mouthed at the windows. How nice to be so much interested, thought Miss Margesson, pressing open the first exercise book. But I'm sure it can't be a good thing for the baby. The essay's lack of originality. Each paragraph settled up self-consciously to openings for a suitable quotation to rush each one through with a guessp of triumph. And then my heart with pleasure fills and dances with the Davideels. Fair Davideels we leap to sea, you fade away so soon. She wondered if any of her class could weep for the departure of a Davideel. Mostly they had disclaimed responsibility for such weakness by the stern prefix as the poet says.

24:23Flora Hopwood had, she remembered, introduced a quotation dictionary which must have been the round of her circle. I must forbid it. Why can't they see things for themselves? Think them out. I don't believe they ever really see anything. I must accept things on the authority of other people. I could make them believe anything. What a responsibility teaching is. But is it? They believe me, but they wouldn't care. It wouldn't matter, really. They're so horribly used to things. Nothing ever comes new to them that they haven't grown up with. They get their very feelings out of books. Nothing ever surprises or impresses them. When spring comes, they get preoccupied, stare dreamily out of the windows. They're thinking out of their new hats. Oh, if only I didn't know them quite so well. Or knew them a little better. If I had a school of my own, she meditated, writing her eyes down the pages and mechanically underlining spelling mistakes, I would make them think.

25:29I'd horrify them if nothing better. But here, however, can one teaching at a high school. Miss Peterson would... They do like me. At least one set does, I know. I'm rather occult. They appreciate my tish and hair. They'd like me more, though, if I knew how to do it better, and knew better how to use my eyes. Their sentimentality embarrasses me. In a way, they're so horribly mature, I feel at a disadvantage with them. If only they'd be a little more spontaneous. But spontaneity is beyond them at present. They're simply calves, after all. Rather sophisticated calves. She dreamed and was awakened by familiar laughter. Nobody's laughter, in particular, but surely it was the laughter of the high school. Three girls were passing with arms close linked, along the pavement underneath her window. She looked down on the expressive tilted ovals of their sailor hats, then on an impulse smacked the window sill to attract their attention.

26:34Instantly they turned up three pink faces of surprise, which broadened into smiles of recognition. Hello, Miss Merchison! Hello, children! Come in for a minute and talk to me. I'm all alone. Millicent, Rosemary, and Doris hesitated, I ain't one another, poised for flight. Righto, they agreed unanimously. Miss Merchison, all of a flutter, went round to open the front door. She looked back at the sitting-room as though she had never seen it before. Why had she asked them in? Those terrible girls whom she had scarcely spoken to. They would laugh at her. They would tell the others. The room was full of them, of their curiosity and embarrassment, and furtive laughter. She had never realized what large girls they were, how plump and well developed. She felt them eyeing her stack of outraged relatives. The photograph she swept off, fun to a chair. Their eyes flitted from the photographs to the daffodils, from the daffodils to the open red-scored exercise books.

27:40Yes, she said, your writings, I dare say, do you recognize them? I was correcting daffodils, and they made me dreary. So down, won't you? Dreary, I wonder if any of you have even used your senses. Smelt or seen things? Oh, do sit down! She seemed to be shouting into a forest of thick bodies. They seated themselves along the edge of an ottoman, in a bewildered row. This travestied their position in the classroom, and made her feel facing them terribly official and instructive. She tried to shake this off. It's cruel, isn't it, to lie in wait for you like this, and pull you in, and lecture you about what you don't feel about daffodils? Her nervous laughter tinkled out into silence. It was a beastly subject, said someone heavily. Beastly! Oh, mill! Rose, Mary! Have you never seen a daffodil? They giggled.

28:41No, but looked at one. Her earnestness swept aside her embarrassment. Not just heard about them. Oh, yes, daffodils, yellow flowers, spring, mothers' vases, bulbs, borders, flashing past flower shop windows, but taken one up in your hands and felt it? How she was her ranging them. It's very difficult to be clever about things one's used to, said Millicent. That's why history essays are so much easier. You tell us about things, and we just write them down. That's why you're so lazy. You're using my brains. Just giving me back what I gave to you. A little bit the worse for the where. They looked hurt and uncomfortable. Doris got up and walked over to the fireplace. Good, thoughtness, merchantson. It will relieve the tension a bit if they will only begin to prowl. What a pretty photograph, Miss Mergeson. Who is it? Not you.

29:46Me, said Miss Mergeson with amusement. Yes, why not? Does it surprise you then? You got such a dinky hat on, cried the girl with naive astonishment. The others crowded around her. You look so different, said Doris, still scrutinizing the photograph. Offly happy and prosperous and cock sure. Perhaps it was a hat suggested, Millicent. Oh, Millicent. No, I'm sure Miss Mergeson was thinking about something nice. Or somebody? Oh Doris, you are awful. They all giggled and glanced apprehensively across at her. She wondered why she was not more offended by them. As a matter of fact, she enlightened them. That was because of Daffodils. It just illustrates my point curiously enough. They were still absorbed. Oh, Miss Mergeson. Miss Mergeson. When was it taken?

30:46Last Easter holidays, nearly a year ago, at Seabrook, by a friend of mine. Do give me one and me. I'm afraid that's the only print I've got. And that's Smothers. Were there more? Yes, various people took them. You see, I haven't faced a real camera for years. So when I got these snaps, they were scrambled for by people who'd been asking me for photos. People? She was rising visibly in their estimation. Oh, yes, friends. Why, Daffodils, reverded Rosemary. Somebody had just given me a great big bunch. She was impressed by their interest. I wonder if Daffodils will ever make any of you look like that. It all depends. You see, said Millicent Astudy. Nobody has ever given us any. If they did, perhaps. Really, said Miss Mergeson, with innocent concern. Take all those if they would really inspire you.

31:46No, Dears, I'd like you to. She gathered the Daffodils together and lifted them dripping from the vase. The girls retreated. Oh, no! Really, no, not your Daffodils. We don't mean. Not your Daffodils, Miss Mergeson. It wasn't that a bit. Evidently, a false move on her part. She was bewildered by them. Could not fathom the depths of their cinema-bread romanticism. Doris had put away the photograph and stood with her back to the others, fingering the ornaments on the chimney-piece. There are lots of things, she said rapidly, that you only feel because of people. That's the only reason things are there for, I think. You wouldn't notice them otherwise or care about them. It's only sort of, she stopped, her ears glowed crimson underneath her hat. Association, they side-ponderously. That's exactly what's the matter, cried Miss Mergeson. We've got all the nice, fresh, independent, outside things, so smeared over with our sentimentalities and prejudices and associations that we can't see them anyhow but as part of ourselves.

32:57That's how you're, we're missing things and spoiling things for ourselves. We don't seem able to discover. Live, said Doris, intentionally, is a very big adventure. Of course we all see that. The other two looked at her quickly. All three became suddenly hostile. She was encouraging them to outrage the decencies of conversation. It was bad form, this flagrant discussion of subjects only for their most secret and fervent whisperings. To her, they were still unaccountable. She had not wished to probe. I don't think that's what I meant, she said a little flatly. Of course your lives will be full of interesting things and those will be your own affairs. Only if I could be able, I'm always trying to make you care about the little fine things you might pass over that have such big roots underground. I should like you to be as happy as I've been and as I'm going to be, she said imposively.

33:59I should love to watch you after you've left my form, going up and up the school and getting bigger and then when you've left going straight and clearly to the essential things. The castle of the blind court tapped against the windowsill through the rustling curtains they looked out onto the road. They had awaited an disclosure, intimate and personal. The donor of those last used affidels had taken form portenches in their minds. But she had told them nothing, given them the stone of her abstract coaleside dealism while they sat there, open mouth for sentimental bread. Once she stayed to tea, she asked, oh do we'll picnic, boil the kettle on the gas ring and eat sticky buns, I've got a bag of sticky buns. We'll have a party in honor of the daffodils. The prospect allured her, it would be a fantastic interlude. They all got up. Doris and Millison are coming to tea with me, Miss Margisin, mothers expecting us, thanks most awfully, else we should have loved to.

35:05We should have loved to echo the others, thanks most awfully. She felt a poignant disappointment and relief. As standing with her eyes on the daffodils, she heard the children clattering down the steps. Tomorrow they will be again impersonal, three pink moons in a firmament of faces. The three released, I'd one another with a common understanding. Miss Margisin has never really lived, said Doris. They lay in arms again and sonntered down the road. End of Section 2, daffodils. Section 3 of End Countess, stories. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org.

36:05Read by Yoganan. End Countess, stories by Elizabeth Bowen. The Return. Mr. and Mrs. Totemham had come home. The moist, brown gravel of the drive and sweep bore in press of their flywheels. Lydia Broadbent listened from the doorstep to the receiving gritty rumble of the empty fly and the click and rattle as a gate swung to. Behind her, in the dusky hole, Mr. Totemham shouted directions for the disposal of the luggage, flustered servants pumped against each other and re-coiled, and pull off the gardener, shouldered the heavy trunks with gasps and lurches, clutching at the banisters until they creaked. Lydia heard Mrs. Totemham burst to open the drawing-room door and crossed threshold with a little customary ponds, as though she hoped to catch somebody on a wets. She pictured her looking recently round her and knew that presently she would hear a tweaking at a curtains.

37:06During her six weeks of solitude, the house had grown very human to Lydia. She felt now as if it were drawing itself together into a nervous rigger as a man draws himself together and suffering irritation at the entrance of a fussy wife. Well, these are all the letters, Lydia. I hope none may fall out to weekly. Paulock, do be careful of the paint. The fly was very stuffy, Lydia. I wish you had ordered one of Bickelspeals. His are always clean. Mrs. Totemham, had dotted out of the drawing-room, swept up her letters from the table and stood hesitating at the bottom of the stairs. You might order three immediately. Yes, the drawing-room for today. A red shimmer of firelight invited them through the open door. Her butt, her butt, Mr. Totemham was slaughtering the smoking-room. His face peered crossly at them, round the door. I wondered if you had gone upstairs. Paulock had been very careless of the paint. You might have watched in Lydia. She vanished slowly into the gloom above.

38:09Lydia went into the drawing-room and stood warming her hands before the fire. As she happened with a light taper, passed from gas-procket to gas-procket and the greenish lights sprang up bird in a wake. Outside, the brown gloom deepened over the normal garden. The young distorted trees, loomed dark and sullen. The air was thick with moisture, heavy with decay. Today, there had been no time to think. Lydia was aware but dimly of a sense of desolation and of loss. Something was shattered that had built itself around her during these coherent weeks, something violated, which had been sacred and a wets. Every fiber of a quivered with hostility to these invaders were the owners of the house. She was at odds with herself again, at odds with her surroundings. She stared at a gong reflection of the fireplace and knew that her best companion had drawn back again, forbidding her. She would be barefooted once again by the hostility of Lydia Broadbent, her deraition, her unsparing scorn.

39:10I was such friends with myself and they left us together. We were so harmonious and at ease with each other, me and myself and the house. Now we are afraid and angry with each other again. Mr. and Mrs. Tottenham were impossible. They were childless, humorless and despoptic. They were not even funny. There was nothing bizarre about them or tragic or violent or farcical. They neither loved nor hated each other. There was nothing they did not know about each other. No mystery or fear between them. In the early days of the marriage, they had been actively and articulately unhappy. She had had a lover. He had left her for months together and lived in some drug picketness elsewhere. Then her lover had deserted her. He had been left more money. They had drifted together again, bought the laurels, spun their shams and visories around them like a web and lurked within them. They visited were reputable and entertained and kept a home for Mr. Tottenham's review. They were expectant here.

40:10Lydia, the thin voice fluted over the banisters. Lydia hurried upstairs, flicked her to panel of Mrs. Tottenham's door, and entered her footsteps, knuffled among the willingness of many rocks. There was a blot of yellow light from a candle on the writing table. Mrs. Tottenham stood beside the bed, staring at two sheets of close written paper, and an envelope which she held out fan-wise between rigid fingers as one holding a hand at cards. Did Asma has been taken his mail yet? Did he overlook the letters? I think Mr. Tottenham's post is still lying on the whole table. Is there anything you want to show him? They're all their correspondence and common. It was quite impertinent. No, no, Lydia. Shut the door, please. Is tea up? It is drafty. I should have liked a fire. You might get the things out of my dressing bag. There, it's over on the sofa. This constant attendance was to begin again. Lydia was well-schooled to it. Why, had she forgotten? She unpacked the combs and brushes and Mrs. Tottenham fidgeted before the class.

41:15Light the gas please. I hate this half-light. There was resentment and at glance towards the window where the last daylight leaked infinitely through draperies of parchment-colored lace. Why, was Mrs. Tottenham so agitated, tugging her hat off and patting at a crimp and faded hair? She bent to a level with the mirror. Haggadide and grinning with anxiety, she searched for bleached and baggy face to find what prettiness was there. Lydia watched her with apathetic curiosity. From where, on a knees beside the sofa, she unwrapped the shoes and bottles from the little hole in bags. Have you seen the photo? Ask Mrs. Tottenham suddenly. Of me when I was 25, on the chiffon air, the plush framed one. You must know it. Lydia is in it. It's a good one, isn't it? Do you think it's like me? Now I mean? Quite a likeness, really considering. Considering how sharp a voice was. Oh, change of fashion make a difference, doesn't it? And well, time of course. Of course, I knew it wasn't taken yesterday, Lydia.

42:22I don't need telling, but I'm a lot younger than Mr. Tottenham to look at. There was a gentleman at Hydro who took us for father and daughter. Really, did. Her voice was by turns parametry, confidential, almost appealing. It died out into silence. The room was restyvern disturbed. Oh, you unhappy house, thought Lydia. They have broken into your silence and given you nothing in return. Tea will be ready, I think, she reminded. Mrs. Tottenham turned sharply from the glass and Lydia saw with amazement that she had reddened her lips. They shone with sticky brightness in a shallow face. Mrs. Tottenham was conscious of a glance. Shows, rather, doesn't it? She queried differently and rubbed a mouth with a back of hand till the red was smeared out over her cheeks. One looks so washy after a journey, just a touch of colour. One wouldn't notice it hardly if it wasn't for the glare. Her muttered extenuations were not addressed to Lydia.

43:24They heard the tea-train rattling through the hole. Lydia turned the light out and they prepared to descend. Mrs. Tottenham poured her in the twilight. You needn't mention to Mrs. Tottenham I opened any of my letters. I'll be showing in the rest. This one is rather particular from a friend of mine it was. An appeal still queried on her husky tones which her paid companion had never heard before. From the drawing room, they saw Mr. Tottenham scarring across the grass drawn tea-words by the lighted window. There was something quick and fervent about him. Lydia had never been able to determine whether it dodged and darted as per sewer a pursuit. A wretched evening, a wretched, he chatted his way across a crowded room. Been talking to Polock, gardens in an awful way, shrubberies like a jungle. Did he sell the apples? He dotted the inquiry at Lydia, turning a set sharply towards her, with his eyes awarded as though he could not bear to look at her. At first she had imagined that her appearance repulsed in. She knew herself for a plain woman, but now she had learnt that he never looked at anybody if he could avoid it.

44:32Oh, he sold them well I believe. I thought he wrote about them. Oh yes, yes, sharp man Polock. Did he been running round for his things? Not often. He says he wants to let us forward to Elham till further notice. The reference to Elham tickled Dickie's uncle. He put his cup down, giggled, mopped at his mouth and darted a side-lancer to his wife. Mrs. Totemham was not listening. She sat very stiff and upright, staring straight before her, crumbling at a quick. Hey Molly, Dickie's gone to Elham. Did she hear that? Oh, old Dickie, gone to Elham again. Never wrote and told me, never told me anything. The young dog. The silence was once more outraged by a false deterg giggles. He held his cup out for Lydia to refill and she watched with fascination the convulsing movements as throat made while he drank. Hey Molly, don't forget we are going to the Gunnings tomorrow. Write it down, my dear girl. Write it down and tell them about ordering the cap.

45:34He always defer to Lydia obliquely as they or them. Gunnings a good fellow, informed the fireplace. This cake is un-eatable, Lydia. Wherever did you buy it, her grumble lacked conviction. It was perfect tree concession to a disperse to her companions of skipping. Virtues. I'm sorry, Mrs. Totemham. I ain't too ready for more tea. It's nice and hot for you, isn't it? After the journey, Lydia felt as though she had caught her own eye and was embarrassed and disconfitted. She listened with derision to a glib and sugary banalities of speech, the perfect companion, torn to the hostile self. What about all those fine big truths and principles we recent up together? Yesterday we believed you were sincere, nice and hot after the journey. Buh! The mirror and the over mantle now fascinated Mrs. Totemham. She finished a tea mechanically, laid a cup down and stood before the fireplace, patting and tweaking at her hair.

46:35A husband looked at her contentlessly. Trady little daughter I've caught in mumble with a smout full of cake, with a bitter comment on the mistake made by the gentleman at the Hydro. Mrs. Totemham put her hands before her face and hurried from the room. Lydia began to gather up the tea things and a servant darkened the windows with a musty clatter of Venetian blinds. Mr. Totemham's chair creaked as he stretched his legs out to the fire. The room was hot with a smell of tea and tea cakes and the smell of the upholstery and wilting ferns was drawn out by the heat. The whole outside was cold and quiet. The sense of the arsonones invasion had subsided from it like a storm. Through a strip of door the morning room beckoned her with its associations of the last six weeks. She saw the tall uncut in windows grade white in the gloom. Her book lay open on a table. She shotted with a sense of desolation. It would never be finished now. It was too good a thing to be read while they were in the house to be punctuated by her petal and insystem chatter,

47:38his little shuffling furtive steps. If only this room were all her own, inviolable. She could leave the rest of the house to them, to mar and bully if she had only a few feet of silence of her own, to exclude the world from to build up in something of herself. If she did not go upstairs now Mrs. Totemam would call her and that in this room would be more than she could bear. Wagley she pictured headlines, laurels murder mystery, bodies in a sistan, disappearance of companion. The darkness was all lured with a visionary quain. Mrs. Totemam had not been around the house. She did not say the room smelled moldy and she left the curtain draperies alone, Lydia wondered deeply. Did you know Seven Oaks? The question abashed her. What had Mrs. Totemam to do with Seven Oaks? No, scarcely. Are we know over there sometimes for the day from Orpington? A friend of mine lives there, a Mr. Martin. He wrote to me today.

48:40He has come back from the colonies and bought a place there. It's funny to hear from an old friend suddenly. It makes me feel quite funny really. She did not sound funny. A voice was high pitched with agitation. Lydia had been told all about Mrs. Totemam's friends and seldom listened. But she did not remember Mr. Martin. He wants to come and see us. I really hardly like you know to suggest the idea to Mr. Totemam. I thought you had all your friends in common. How well these night dresses have washed. They must have laundered nicely at the Hydro. Ah, but this is different. You see, she laughed a little conscious laugh. Mr. Martin was a particular friend of mine. I, Mrs. Totemam didn't use to know him. I see, said Lydia Wagley. A friend of yours before your marriage? Well, no. You see, I was very young when I was married. Quite an inexperienced young girl, a child you might almost say. Lydia suppose that Mrs. Totemam had been young. She strained an imagination to the effort.

49:44I did very well for myself when I married Mr. Totemam. The wife said sharply. I must say I never was a fool. My mother had never brought me up to go aboard. But we did a good deal of entertaining at one time. Mr. Totemam's friends and my own. And we always had things very nice and showy. But it was a lonely life. Mrs. Totemam's confidences were intolerable. Better than 100 times that she should nag. So you liked the Hydro? Found it really comfortable? Oh yes. But it's a coming back to this. Lydia, you're a good sort of girl. I wonder if I ought to tell you. Don't tell me anything you would regret. Said Lydia defensively, jerking at the draw your handles. You see, Mr. Martin was a good deal to me at one time. Then we tore it and he went off to Canada and married there. I heard he had been unhappy and that there was the rumor of a split. Of course he didn't write to anything. We had absolutely torn it. But I couldn't help hearing things. And she seems to have been a really bad sort of woman.

50:45There were children too. He's bringing the children back with him to seven orcs. He wants to come and see me. He's been thinking about me a great deal he says and wondering if I've changed and wishing. He always was a straight sort of man. It was only circumstances throw him crooked. I dare say it was a good bit to blame. I kept his photograph though I know I didn't ought. But I light having it by me to look at. She had unlocked a drawer and held a stiff packed photograph up beneath the light, scrutinizing it. Lydia listened to a distance surge of movement in the house beneath her. Steps across the oil cloth, windows shutting, voices cut off by the swinging of the door. She felt revoltedly as though Mrs. Totman was stepping out of her clothes. He says his hardly changed at all. 17 years. They go past like a flash he says when you're working. 17 years, said Lydia deliberately, about to make a difference to a woman. Did you care for him? Mrs. Totman made no answer.

51:45She was staring at the photograph. Her eyes dilated and she'd lick the lips. I suppose she'd be glad to see him again suggested Lydia. She felt suddenly alert and interested as though she were watching through the lense of a microscope, some tortured insect twirling on a pin. Mrs. Totman sat down stiffly on the sofa and laid the photo on a lap. Suddenly she clasp her hands and put them up before her eyes. I couldn't she cast. Not after all these years I couldn't. Not like this. Oh Lord, I got so ugly. I can't threaten. I haven't got the heart to risk it. It's been so real to me. I couldn't bear to lose him. It's all gone. It's all gone. I've been pretending I used to be a fine figure of a woman. How can I have the heart to care when I couldn't keep him carrying? You broke it off. It was all over and done with you told me so. It was wrong besides. Why should either of you want to break it up when it was all past and done with 17 years ago?

52:46Because it was wrong. It is this awful rightness that is killing me. My husband's been a bad man too. But here we both are smirking and grinning at each other just to keep hold of something we neither of us want. Lydia was terrified by the dry, swift sobbing. She felt suddenly hard and pregushed an immature. All stresses, fears and passions, were such twilight things. Mrs. Tottenham stood upright and held the photograph from the flame of the gaschette watching the ends curl upwards. For all of frizzle hair and jingling ornaments and smudgy tentative cosmetics, she was suddenly elemental and heroic. It was over. Lydia went quietly out of the room and shut the door behind her. The place was vibrant with the humanity of Mrs. Tottenham. It was as though a child had been born in the house. The end of section 3 Section 4 of Encounters, Stories

53:47This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the pelvic domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Read by Yoganan, Encounters, Stories by Elizabeth Bowen The Confident You are losing your imagination quite modest. It was a bitter reproach. He stood over her, rumbling up his hair, and the wily tuff sprung upright, curvering from his scalp. Penalty gulped, then sat for a moment in a silence full of the consciousness of a brutality. She had never dreamed that her secret preoccupation would be so perceptible to Morris. Unconsciously, she had been drawing her imaginations in upon herself like the petals of a flower, and emotions bust and shrub within them like a pent-up bee. The room was dark with rain, and they heard the drip and rustle of leaves in the drinking garden. Through the open window the warm, wet air blew in on them, and a shimmer of rain was visible against the trees beyond.

54:51I never meant began penalty. A begaparent said Morris stiffly. I suppose I am becoming quite insufferable. I have been making perfectly un-distributable demands on your sympathy and patience and imagination. I am an ego-tistical brute, by the essay. Of course there is not the slightest reason why you, his indulgence, intimated that there was on the contrary every reason why she should. I felt a bit jarred just now. He excused himself with the simple pathos. I never meant a bit resumed penalty. I know, I know, said Morris all magnanimity. The sickly sweetness of his reconciliation overpowered her. What a pair of fools we are, she cried historically. Morris dear, we are wearing this thin thin. I am afraid I have been doing gallery to you and Veronica of the last six months, and you have both played up to me magnificently. But Veronica protested Morris. Oh yes, Veronica comes here too. She comes and sits for hours over there just where you are now.

55:55There is not an aspect of your emotional relationship that we have not discussed. Veronica is coming here this afternoon. She is a chilly person. I'd better like the fire. God said Morris. Penalty was in her knees before the fireplace. I had almost inset the crate. A voice came all over you from the dark vices. I thought you would be surprised she said, damn, it will not light. Surprised, said Morris. Penalty is torn at the deadly reasonableness of a driven man's. I think you hardly realized what you are doing. I know you meant well my good girl, but really it puts us in such an impossible position. Surely you must see. I seek quite well, she has shown in. You and she both breathe and have your being in an atmosphere of conspiration. It's your natural element of course, to force you into the straighter, broader courses of the uncomplex, would be asked Kroelas to upset a ball of coalfish in it and leave them gasping on the tablecloth. Oh, she sat back on the heels and drooply beheld their grimy fingers.

56:59Morris tried his hardest to endure her. She heard him breathing heavily. It's really quite unnecessary to have a fire. She is solely look-o-est. But it makes a point in her room I always think. Keeps one in countenance. Humanizer's things are bit. Makes a center point for, she became incoherent. Morris' irritation audibly increased. They were both conscious of the oppression of the darkening, rain-loud room. He or Fosing her hands rather said Morris. Fosing you into the banality of meeting each other, insanely and normally in my drawing room, with no necessity to converse in allusions, insinuations and doubles on tone-dress, with me blessing you both and beaming sympathetically on you from afar, bullying you into that. I'm sorry, she flashed round on him impentently. You don't understand, he winced and looked round him for his head. I think it would be best for me to go. I suppose I mustn't keep you. She's considered polite reluctance. But I think you're really ought to see Veronica.

58:00She has. She will have something of particular importance to say to you. I shall go of course. Oh don't. But surely there's nothing we can keep from you. And it makes it easier for both of us as things are. But do you never want to be alone with her? Morris considered. I don't believe said Penelope Swiftly that you two have ever been alone together for a second since your acquaintance should begin. No said Morris, Somberly. There have always been outsiders, audiences, Muhammad Penelope. Vegapardon? Oh nothing. Well, you'll be alone this afternoon. I'm going out. She said with firmness. But don't you understand? Oh, I understand the strain would be colossal. Would have been. But there have been developments suddenly. Whereon I call have a great deal to tell to you. As it never occurred to you she might get free after all. There'll be heaps to say. She said significantly. For heaven's sake, he threw up his hands again and paced room in agitation stumbling over his tools.

59:02That was why I pulled up just now. She continued. Seemed hard, perhaps apathetic and unsympathetic. When you are talking all that about awfulness, refined irony, frustration and things. I was thinking how soon you would, if you only knew. And then you told me I was losing my imagination. For which I've already begged your pardon said Morris patiently. Moriss Lepi rose from the heart's rug and threw herself onto the chest of field. Morris turned to her with a gauded expression and she regarded him with shining eyes. Then the door opened with a jerk and Verenika entered stiffly with a rustle of agitation. Morris threw back into the shade and Verenika hesitated for a moment in the center of the room. Then groped out her hands towards Penelope as though she could see little in the sudden glow. Tell me, she cried without blin rays. You heard from Victor? Penelope would risen clasped across it Morris. He took his cue. Verenika, the quaver askily. Verenika shoulders twitched, shittoned on him in the dusk like a wild thing with an expression that was almost painful.

1:00:09You, she said. Yes, admitted Morris. I had simply no idea that I should just came in by chance you know. It is just as well as in her interpost Penelope. We have, you have simply got to talk things out Verenika. Tell him, show him Victor's letter. She moved towards the door. Don't go shriek Verenika. You've got to explain to him. I can't. She said with the finality of helplessness. The rain had stopped and through a sudden break in the clouds the water is sunshine streamed across the garden. Verenika sat down on an auto man facing the window and Penelope knelt beside her looking at her pitifully. The long pale oval of her face was marred and puckered by a motion. Fair hair, lane streaks across the forehead. Her clouds were glistening from the rain. Many tears it went through a mournful revolution through the lavish border on the nose. Her glowed hands lay across a lap and one was clutched a sheet of blue-gray note paper.

1:01:09She would not look at Morris but turned pathetic eyes on Penelope and made appeal with soundless moving lips. Verenika has had a letter from Victor, said Penelope, slowly and distinctly. He releases her from an engagement. He says, he explains, He is not so blind as you both seem to have thought and he has seen for some time that Verenika was not happy. He has noticed that she has been listless and preoccupied and has interpreted unhappiness quietly. He is convinced he says that Verenika has ceased to care for him but that she is too scrupulous or not quite brave enough perhaps to speak out and make an end of things hustle. He knows that her affections are elsewhere and he believes that he is doing the best thing he can for her by setting her free. Verenika had turned a little and sat facing Morris. Penelope saw the golden flicker of a lashes. The blue letter fluttered to the ground from between her writhing fingers.

1:02:09The trozio was all bought, she faltered. The going away dress came from Pam's this morning just before I got that letter. Penelope could not speak. She felt utterly inadequate. Morris shifted his position and stood leaning up against the window frame. With the intensity of interest, he turned a said and looked into the garden. It stopped raining he observed. Verenika did not know. But Penelope saw his slide sideways following his movement under drooping glitz. How do you know all this? Morris asked abruptly. What Victor says and that when he had no time to read his letter, he wrote to me to Sir Penelope. She heard her own voice, self-conscious and defiant. To you, why you? But we know each other rather well. Since much longer than he has known Verenika. And well, you see I'm a cousin. He thought I'd make things easier for her. Know the explaining as far as possible. Probably he thought I'd speak to you.

1:03:09She stealthily touched a pocket and smiled to feel the crisp, thick letter paper crackled beneath the hand. Then she wondered if the sound were audible to the others and glanced guiltyly from one to the other of them. But they sat there silent, embarrassed, heavily preoccupied, one on either side of her. So now she said with bright aggressiveness. She could have shaken them. I do not think said Verenika in a small determined voice that I'm justified by accepting Victor's sacrifice. He's extraordinarily generous said Morris without enthusiasm. Then loneliness went on Verenika, gazing wide at down some terrible vista. Picture it Penelope. There is a point when it turned blackness for him. I could never have loved him. But I would have been a good wife to him. A voice grows in the presence of surprise. She thought, how genuine I am. We had made so many plans she faltered. Fumble found no hand-courchered and spread her hands before her face. Penelope gave a little gasp half sympathetic.

1:04:12She is spraying heart for tight. Veronica said, I don't think you should let that stand between you and Morris. You mustn't be too soft-hearted dear. I don't think Victor's altogether unhappy. He's believed I know. You see, the last few weeks have been awful strained for him as well as other people. How do you know? He told me. You have been discussing me. How Penelope? This is intolerable. He had been talking to me. He had no one else. For a long time, I suppose he put me in the position of a sister-in-law. That was going too far, pride Morris. Have you neither of you the slightest idea of loyalty to Veronica? Penelope ignored him. She lends suddenly forward crimson-shaped and kissed Veronica. Oh, my dear, she said. Did you think that because he couldn't care about Victor and nobody else could? Do you expect him to go on giving you everything when you've got nothing to give him? You looked at her, dastardly by a flash of comprehension. When she rose from between them, she left a gap, a gap she knew to be un-vigible for both.

1:05:17They were face-to-face with the hideous simplicity of life. She had upset their ball and left the two poor goldfish, gasping in an inclement air. Now at last you two have caught each other. She cried, smiling at them from the threshold. Nothing more to bother or disturb you. Just be as happy and as thankful as you can. They sat in silence till the last ironical echo died away. Then don't go, they cried in your song. But she was gone. The end of section 4. Section 5 of Encounters' Stories. The slipper fox recordings in the public domain, read by Ben Tucker. Encounters' Stories by Elizabeth Bowen. Rick Wiescott. Majindi had bought the villa on his honeymoon, and in April three months after his death his widow went out there alone to spend the spring in early summer.

1:06:17Stewart, who had been in India at the time of Howard Majindi's death, wrote to Mrs. Majindi before starting for home and her reply awaited him at his club. He re-read it several times looking curiously at her writing, which he had never seen before. The name of the villa was familiar to him. Majindi had been speaking of it the last time they dined together. He said it had a garden full of lemon trees and big cipreses, and more fountains than you could imagine. It was these that Elleline had loved. Stewart pictured Mrs. Majindi walking among the lemon trees in her widow's black. In her letter she expressed a wish to see him, in a little while. I shall be returning to England at the end of June. There is a good deal of business to go through, and there are several things that Howard wished me to discuss with you. He said you would be willing to advise and help me. I do not feel that I can face England before then. I have seen nobody yet, and it is difficult to make a beginning. You understand that I feel differently about meeting you.

1:07:17Howard wished it, and I think that is enough for both of us. If you were to be in Italy I should ask you to come and see me here, but as I know that you will be going straight to Ireland, I will keep the papers until June. I will accept the very important ones, which I must sign without quite understanding, I suppose. In concluding she touched on his friendship with Howard, as for her alone it was permissible to touch. Stewart wired his apologies to Ireland, and planned a visit to the Italian Lakes. Three weeks afterwards found him in the prow of a motorboat, furrowing Lake Como as he sped towards the villa. The sky was cloudless, the hills to the right rose sheer above him, casting the lengthening shadows of the afternoon across the luminous and oily water. To the left were brilliant and rugged above the clustered villages. The boat shot closely under Caranabia, and set the orange-hooded craft bobbing. The reflected houses rocked and quivered in her wake. Colors flecked the broken water.

1:08:18«Sobito, sobito!" said the boatman reassuringly, and Stewart started. He did not know that his impatience was so evident. The man shot off his engines, let the boat slide further into the shore, and displacing Stewart from the prow, crouched forward with a ready boat hook. They were approaching the water stairway of the villa. For a few moments, after he had landed, while the motorboat went, chuffing out again into the sunshine, Stewart stood at the top of the stairway looking irresolutely through the iron gates. He was wondering why he had come to Italy, and whether he ever cared at all for Mrs. Magindi. He felt incapable of making his way towards her under the clustered branches of those trees. If there had been a little side-gate, it would have been easier to go in. It would not have been so difficult either, if he had ever been here with Howard Magindi. But this was her place. She had loved it because of the fountains. He pushed open the big gate, already cold in the shadow, and followed the upward curve of the avenue among the lemon trees.

1:09:23Beyond the villa disclosed itself, unlike all that he had expected. He was surprised at his own surprise and did not realize till then how clearly he must have visualized it. There was a wide loja, a flight of steps, a terrace on a level with the loja running along the side of the hill. Cypress trees rose everywhere, breaking up the view. He passed under the windows, climbed the steps, and crossed the loja, not looking to the left or right for fear that he might see her suddenly, or even one of her books. The loja had an air of occupation. It was probable that on any of those tables or among the cushions, he might see her book. Half open, where the long handled, lorn yets that Magindi had given her in France. The servant said that Mrs. Magindi was in the garden. She showed Stuart into a tall, cool parlor, and disappeared to find her mistress. Stuart, distracted by a scent of heliatrop, made an unseeing circle of the room. He was standing before a Florentine chest when the girl came back with a message. Mrs. Magindi would see him in the garden.

1:10:29It would have been easier to meet her here. He had pictured them sitting opposite to one another in these high-backed chairs. He followed the girl obediently out of the house, along the terrace, and down a long alley between hedges of you. The white plume of a fountain, quivered at the end. Other fountains were audible in the garden below. He could hear footsteps, too. Someone was approaching by another alley that converged with his beyond the fountain. Here, they met. She was less beautiful than he had remembered her, and very tall and thin in her black dress. Her composure did not astonish him, her smile, undimmed, and the sound of her voice recalled to him the poignancy of his feelings when he had first known her. His resentment and sense of defeat, she had possessed herself of Howard so entirely. She was short-sighted. There was always a look of uncertainty in her eyes until she came quite near one. Her big pupils seemed to see too much at once, and nothing very plainly.

1:11:30I never knew you were in Italy, she said. He realized that it would have been more considerate to have written to prepare her for his visit. I came out, he said, quite suddenly. I had always wanted to see the lakes, and I wanted to see you. But perhaps I should have written. I never thought it would have been better. It doesn't matter. It was very good of you to come. I'm glad that you should see the villa. Are you staying near? Over at Verrina. How beautiful this is. The lake? I meant your garden. They turned and walked slowly back towards the house. I hope I didn't take you too much by surprise. Oh, no, she said. It almost seemed as though she had expected him. Yes, it is beautiful, isn't it? I've done nothing to it. It is exactly as we found it. They sat down on a stone bench on the terrace, looking a little way from one another. Their minds were full of the essential things impossible to be said.

1:12:34Sitting there with her face turned away from him. Every inch of her had that similitude of repose which covers tension. His lowered eyes took in her hands and longed then fingers lying against the blackness of her dress. He remembered Howard telling him among those confidences which had later ceased. Although he had fallen in love with the whole of her, it was her hands that he first noticed when details began to detach themselves. Now they looked bewildered, helpless hands. I took you at your word, he said. I wanted to help. I hoped there might be something I could do. And in your letter, I took you at your word in asking for help. There's a great deal I must do, and you could make things easier for me if you will. I shall be very grateful for your help about some business. There are papers I must sign, and I don't understand them quite. There were things that Howard had never explained. She looked full at him for a moment, and he knew that this was the first time she had uttered her husband's name. It would be easier now.

1:13:42He had told me everything. He said quickly as though to intercept the shutting of door. I was always to be there if you should need me. I had promised him. She must realize that she owed him nothing for the fulfillment of a duty. He thought she did, for she was silent uttering no word of thanks. Why did you so seldom come and see us? She asked suddenly. Howard had begun to notice lately, and he wondered. I was in India. Before you went to India, a little inflection her voice made him despise his evasion. There was a time for all things, and that was a time for keeping away. Because he was married? Stuart did not answer. We wanted you, she said, but you didn't understand, did you? She did not understand. How could she? She must have discussed it all, those evenings with the magendi that belonged to her. He had not understood either. I was mistaken, I suppose, he said. I should have learned later. There was a slight contraction of her fingers, and Stuart knew that he had hurt her.

1:14:51If he had hurt her like this a little more, it would probably be possible to kill her. She was very defenseless here in the garden that magendi had bought her. Looking out at the unmeaning leg, he had crowded out all tenderness for her, and her loneliness was nothing but a fact to him. There were messages for you. She said, turning her head again. Were there? He said, her lips moved, she glanced at him a little apprehensively and was silent. I've written down everything that he said for you, and I believe he left you a letter. Can you remember the messages, he asked curiously. I wrote them down, I have them in the house. She looked at him again with that short-sighted intensity. She knew every word of the messages, and with an effort he could almost have read them from her eyes. Did he expect to see me? Yes, once he knew that he was ill, he knew that you could not possibly leave India before April, but he kept on expecting.

1:15:55I wanted to cable to you, and he wouldn't let me, but I know he still believed, above all reason, that you'd come. If I'd known, if you think I should have cableed without telling him? She thought he blamed her, and she evidently feared his anger. He had been so conscious of her in difference before. He had been a person who did not matter. The nice friend, the family dog, relegated. It was that that had stung and stung. After all, he never had gone to India. It had been a resource of panic. It had saved him nothing, and there had been no question of saving her. He wondered why she had not cabled. It was nothing to her whether he went or came, and howard's happiness was everything. Yes, I wonder you didn't cable. I am sorry I was incapable of anything. My resource was sapped. He looked at her keenly. It was a doctor's look.

1:16:55What have you been doing since? He asked, as the medical man to whom no ground was sacred. What are you going to do? I was writing letters, shutting up the house, and here I'm trying to realize that there's nothing more to do, that matters. And afterwards, well, I don't know, she said wearily. I'd rather not, please. Afterwards, we'll come of itself. A smile is now he took upon himself the brother-in-law, the nice, kind, doggie person. You should have somebody with you, Helaline. You should. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to... he realized there was no one else to whom she owed it. To yourself, he repeated. You must think. You must be wise for yourself now. She looked, half-smiling at him. While he counseled, he had never achieved the fraternal, so completely. It's not that I don't think, she said. I think a great deal, and as for wisdom, there is not much more to learn once one has grown up.

1:18:05I am as wise as I need to be for myself. When are you going back to England? If you would do one or two things for me, I needn't go back until the autumn. You can't stay here all this summer. No, she said, looking around at the ciprisis, how pitiful she was and how it's garden. They say I couldn't. It would be too hot. I must go somewhere else. But if you could help me a little this autumn, I could finish up the business then. I may have to be in Ireland then. He tore himself away from something brutally, and the brutality sounded in his voice. She retreated. Of course, she said. I know you ought to be there now, I was forgetting. Because he was a person who barely existed for her, probably, she had always been gentle with him, almost, perpetuatory. One must be gentle with the nice old dog. It was not in her nature to be always gentle. Perhaps she had said bitter things to Howard who mattered to her. There was a hint of bitterness about her mouth.

1:19:15At himself, she was always looking in that vague, half startled way, as though she had forgotten who he was. Sometimes when he made a third, he had found her very silent. Still with boredom, once or twice he had felt with gratification that she almost disliked him. He wondered what she thought, he thought of her. Now it was the time of the Angulous, and Bells answered one another from the componyls of the clustered villages across the lake. A steamer, still gold in the sun, cleft along bright furrow in the shadowy water. The scene had all the passionless clarity of a Victorian watercolor. It is very peaceful, Stuart said appropriately. Peaceful, she echoed with a start. Yes, it's very peaceful. David, she had called him this. Will you forgive me? Forgive you?

1:20:15I think you could understand me if you wish to. Forgive me the harm I've done you. Don't hate me. How weak she was now. How she had come down. What harm have you done to me, he asked, unmoved. You should know better than I do. I suppose I must have hurt you, and through you, Howard. And an intrusion isn't a happy thing. You didn't give me a chance to make it happy. You came at first, but there was always a cloud. I didn't want to interfere. I tried to play the game. Now that we've both lost him, couldn't you forgive? I'm sorry I should have given you the impression that I resented anything. That there was anything to resent. I didn't know that you were thinking that. Perhaps you rather ran away with a preconceived idea that, because you married Howard, I was bound to be unfriendly to you. If you did, you never showed it. I never imagined that I had disappointed you by anything I did or didn't do.

1:21:21It was not what you didn't do. It was what you weren't that made me feel I was a failure. So that was the matter. He had hurt her vanity. A failure, he said, laughing a little. I thought you were making a success. If I didn't come often or it was not because I did not think you wanted me. But you said just now. A third is never really wanted. I had set my heart on seeing Howard happy, and when I had, I went away to think about it. Oh, she said hopelessly. She had guessed that he was putting her off. Shall we walk a little down the terrace? There is a pergola above two that I should like you to see. She was taking for granted that he would not come to the villa again. They rose. She stood for a moment looking irresolutely up and down the terrace, then took a steeper path that mounted through the trees towards the pergola, steward followed her in silence, wondering.

1:22:21The world in her brain was a mystery to him, but evidently he had passed across it and cast some shadows. For a moment he almost dared to speak and trouble the peace of the garden, with what had been pent up in him so long, that he knew that he must leave her to live out her days in the immunity of finished grief. The silence of imperfect sympathy would still lie between them, as it had always lain, his harshness could no longer cast a shadow in her world that was now as sunless as an evening garden. His lips were sealed still, and forever by fear of her and shame for his dead loyalty to Howard, the generosity of love had turned to bitterness within him, and he was silent from no fear to cause her pain. Beautiful, he said, when they reached the pergola, and could look down on Lake Ingarden through the cluster roses. Will you be long at Beretta?

1:23:21I don't expect so, no. Some friends want me to join them on Lake Magiore, and I think of going on tomorrow afternoon. That will be better, she said slowly. It is lonely seeing places alone. They hardly seem worthwhile. I'm used to it. I'm going back to India in six months, he said abruptly. Oh, I didn't know, her voice faltered. He had not known himself till then. Her face was wider than ever in the dusk of the pergola, and her hands were plucking, plucking at the creepers, shaking down from the roses above white petals which he kept brushing from his coat. I'm sorry you're going back, she said. Everybody will be sorry. I won't go until I have finished everything that I can do for you. An expression came into her eyes that he had never seen before. You have been a friend, she said. Men make better things for themselves out of life than we do.

1:24:22They don't last, he said involuntarily. I should have said that so far as anything is immortal. He watched a little tightening of her lips. It takes less than you think to kill these things, friendship, loyalty. Years was unassailable, years in his, she spoke more to herself than to him. In those early days when we three went about together, that time in France I realized that. In France, he said stupidly. Yes, don't you remember? He remembered France. The days they had spent together, in the long evenings in Starlight, and the evening he had strolled beside her on a terrace while Magendi tinkered with the car. It was a chilly evening, and she kept drawing her first together, and said very little. The night after he had laying awake listening to her voice in Magendi's in the next room, and making up his mind to go to India. Yes, he said.

1:25:23Now will you let me have the papers, and we could go through them now? I could take any that are urgent back to town with me. I shall be there in a week. She twisted her hands, irresolutely. Could you come tomorrow before you go? I would have them ready for you then. If you can spare the time, I'm tired this evening. I don't believe I would be able to understand them. Do you mind? No, of course not. But may I come in the morning? I'm going away early in the afternoon. She nodded slowly, looked away from him, and did not speak. She was evidently very much tired. I think I ought to go, he said after a pause. If you hurried you could catch that steamer down in Katanabia, then I'll hurry, don't come down. I won't come down, she said holding out her hand. Goodbye, and thank you. He hurried to the end of the Prakola, hesitated, half turned his head, and stopped irresolutely.

1:26:23Surely she had called him. He listened, but there was no sound. She stood where he had left her, with her back towards him, leaning against a pillar, and looking out across the lake. Turning, he pushed his way between the branches, down the overgrown path. The leaves rustled, he listened again. Somebody was trying to detain him. As the slope grew steeper, he quickened his steps to a run, and scurrying the terrace took a shortcut onto the avenue, soon to lake glitter through the iron gates. She leaned back against the pillar, gripping and handfuls the branches of the climbing rows. She hurried his descending footsteps hesitate for a long second, gather speed, grow feinter, die away. The thorns ran deep into her hands, and she was dimly conscious of the pain. Far below the gate clanged, down among the trees. The branches of the roses shook a little, and more white petals came fluttering down.

1:27:26End of section 5. Section 6 of Encounters, Stories This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org, read by Kurt from Tucson, Arizona, and counters, Stories by Elizabeth Bowen. All Saints The vicar moved about the chancel in his casak, thoughtfully extinguishing the candles, even song was over, and the ladies who had composed the congregation, patterned down the aisle, and melted away into the November dusk. At the back of the church, somebody was still kneeling. The vicar knew that it was the emotional-looking lady in black, waiting to speak to him as he came down to the vestry.

1:28:33He feared this might be a matter for the confessional, and that she might weep. The church was growing very dark. Her black draperies uncertainly detached themselves from the shadows under the gallery. As he came down towards her, her white face looked up at him. She made a rustling movement and half rose. A curious perfume diffused itself around her, through the chilly mustiness of the pew. She murmured a request. The vicar bowed his head. I will wait for you in the church porch, she said in a clear voice with a suggestion of a tremolo. Perhaps we could walk across the church yard. He hurried to the vestry with the sense of a reprieve. She was waiting in the porch with her hands clasped and smiled anxiously at the vicar, who turned to lock the door behind him.

1:29:34Such a beautiful church, she said as they walked on together. We consider it very beautiful. How the people must love it. Her manner was very childlike. She have turned to him shyly, then turned away. Would you like another window? A window? A colored window for the lady chapel. I would love to give you a window. She made the offer so simply that the vicar felt as though he was being offered a kitten. But, my dear lady, windows like that are very expensive. I know, she said eagerly, but I would be quite well able to afford one. A memorial window? Memorial? Of some relation or dear friend who has passed over? Oh, no, she said vaguely. I know so many people who have died, but I think none of them would care about a window.

1:30:35Then you have no particular purpose. I think colored windows are so beautiful. They make one feel so religious and good. The vicar was nonplust. He wished to say a great deal to her, but did not know how to begin. Her ingenuousness, half touched and half offended him. She was not young either. He could hardly explain her to himself as young. Yet standing up so straight among the slanting tombstones she had no congruity with the years decline. The monotone of twilight, the solemn evening with its colorless falling leaves rejected her. She was now dolderly, he thought. She was perennial. There was that about her that displeased the vicar. She was theatrical. Having placed her, he felt more at ease. He said, I will place your very kind offer before the vestry, and took a few steps in the direction of the lich gate.

1:31:36She looked up at him with fine eyes that she had once learned how to use. She was so little conscious of the vicar's masculinity that he might have been one of the tombstones, but eyes that have learned their lesson. Never forget. What's do you go at once, she said pathetically? I want to talk a little more about the window. I would like to go and look from outside at the place where it is going to be. They retraced their steps a little, and took a path that skirted the north side of the church and passed underneath the two east windows. I know you're not a resident, said the vicar. Still a different man. He disliked these inquiries, however oblique. They savored too strongly of par sonic aficiousness, but still one ought to know. Do you think of paying us a long visit? The country is hardly at its best just now. Do you like the village? I think the village is sweet. It does appeal to me so quaint and homely. I am staying here in lodgings. They are most uncomfortable, but I sleep well in the eggs are fresh.

1:32:47And then I love the country. My real name is Mrs. Barrows. Do you intend to long stay repeated the vicar trying not to feel that her last sentence was peculiar? I want to watch them putting up the window. After that I don't know. I don't think I could bear to be long away from London. Perhaps I might buy a cottage here if you would help me. Evidently she was a person of means. This is the lady chapel window, said the vicar suddenly. Oh, she cried in consternation. I did not know it was so small. We must make it larger. I think this would never hold them. Hold whom? All saints. I wanted to be an all saints window. I went to church last Thursday. I heard the bells ringing and went in to see. I thought perhaps it was a wedding. I found a service so I stayed and you were preaching an all saints day sermon.

1:33:47It was beautiful. It gave me the idea. You said, call to be saints was meant for all of us. I'd never heard of that idea. I'd thought the saints were over long ago. I'd seen old pictures of them when I was a child. I thought yours was a beautiful idea. It helped me so. It is not only an idea. It is quite true. I know. But it was beautiful of you to think of it. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, said the vicar have allowed. But then of course I suppose there must still be saints. And I thought of two or three people. Then of quite a number. Ladies I have met who have affected me most strongly and one dear boy I know. We have most of us been privileged. Don't you think she said with round eyes that saints must often seem quite unconventional? And so far as conventionality is error. Yes. There she cried. I knew you'd agree with me. Wouldn't you describe a saint as somebody who going ahead by their own light?

1:34:55By light that is given to them. That's what I meant. Doesn't care what anybody says and helps other people. Really makes it possible for other people to go on living? Well yes, the vicar hesitated over this definition. Don't saints seem always very strong? There is great strength in them, but there is weakness too. They have a great deal in themselves to combat before they can fight other people's battles. Nobody can fight another's battle. We have got to fight our battles for ourselves against ourselves. Oh, she said a little flatly. Now that wasn't my idea. When I'm in a difficulty or even in the blues I just go to one of these friends of mine and talk it out and well, it's quite extraordinary the difference I feel. I see light at once. It's as if they took a burden off my shoulders. There is only one who can do that. Can't you try and get straight to the divine?

1:35:55Her voice out of the darkness. It was now very dark, sounded lonely and bewildered. No, I don't seem to want to. You see, I'm not at all good. All the more reason she ignored the interruption. It's power. That's what some people have. They're what I call good people, saints. And, you know, these friends I was talking about, they're not at all conventional and they never go to church except perhaps to weddings. And one or two of them are very unconventional. You'd be surprised. They walked across the church yard, just able to see the path by the reflected light on the wet flag stones. The vicar tried to help her and you find that contact with certain personalities brings with it healing and invigoration. She grasped eagerly at the phrase. Healing and invigoration? Yes, that's what I mean. It isn't anything to do with love or friendship.

1:36:55When I was younger, I thought that loving people was meant to help one. It led me all so wrong. Loving is only giving, isn't it? Just a sort of luxury. Like giving this window. It doesn't do you any good or the person either. But people like, she named a notorious lady. I can't tell you how she's helped me. She's so brave, nobody seems too bad for her. She never despises you. And I have another friend who is a spiritualist. There, she told me all about myself. She was so wonderful. Her eyes went through and through, she said, you're going the wrong way, and then it all came to me. She helped me so. And another, who was a missionary's wife, the seems simpler. But he wondered what he could get at behind it all. She didn't live with him. She had met him first at a revivalist meeting. She said he was too wonderful.

1:37:55But he couldn't have been as wonderful as her. She used to come and see me in the mornings when I was in bed. I was very lonely then a dear friend and I had just parted. She never talked religion, but there was something wonderful about her face. And all this has really helped you? For some example, I don't want to copy them. I only want to know they're there. What holds you in them isn't of themselves, isn't it? It's simply a manifestation. She failed to understand him. They are able to help you. That is their privilege and God's will, but they can't do everything. They do, you see. They see, I can't do anything to help myself. And I suppose there must be a great many other people like me. They get at something I can't reach and hand it down to me. I could put it like that, couldn't I? That's what saints have always done. It seems to me. Nobody was ever meant to be a go-between, he said, with energy. You've simply no conception. I get everything I want that way, she said placidly. I'm a very weak sort of person. I only want to be helped.

1:39:06Saints are the sort of people who've been always helping people like me. I thought I'd like to put up a window as a sort of thank offering to them. Crowds and crowds of people I wanted to put in all with those yellow circles, round their heads, dressed in blue and violet. I think violet's such a beautiful color. And one big figure in the foreground, just to look like helpfulness, holding out both hands with the look I've sometimes seen on people's faces. When can I know for sure about the window? I mean, when will you tell me if they'll let me put it up? I don't know, said the vicar agitatedly, herding towards the lich gate, and holding it open for her to pass through. I'll come round and see you about it. Yes, I know the house. Oh, would you, she said, shyly? Well, that would be kind. You know, talking about helpfulness, you're one of that sort of people. You don't know what it's meant to me to hear you preaching. You'd hardly believe, good nights of the vicar ag abruptly. He raised his hat, turned on his heel, and fled through the darkness.

1:40:14End of Section 6. Section 7 of Encounters, Stories. This is a Librevox recording. All Librevox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org, read by Ben Tucker. Encounters, Stories by Elizabeth Bowen. The New House. Coming up the avenue in the February dusk, you could see the flash and shimmer of firelight through the naked windows of the library. There was something unearthly in those squares of pulsing light that fretted the shadowy façade and lent to the whole an error of pasteboard on reality. The scrunch beneath his feet of the wet gravel brought his sister to the doorstep. Harvard, she cried. Odo come in and see it all. You've been such ages today. What were you doing?

1:41:16Your messages, he said. They delayed me. That stupid fellow at Billingham's had made a muddle over those window measurements for the blinds. I had to go over to the workshop and give the order personally. Standing in the hall, he was surprised to hear his voice ring out into spaciousness. I'd never realized how big it was. He said with gratification. Why? Sissley, you're all in the dark. You might have lighted up and made the place look a bit more festive. It's all very well to hear how big one's house is, but I'd like to see it with my own eyes. I'm sorry, Sissley. As a matter of fact, I'd only just come in myself. I was out in the garden. Gardening? No, just poking about. You never heard anything like the way the thrushes sing. I never knew before they could sing like that, or perhaps I'd never had time to listen. And then the snow drops are coming out, all along the kitchen garden border. Oh, Herbert! I should have thought that a house move was exactly the most leisurely time to listen to thrushes, but of course.

1:42:22But I had been working. His injured dignity was impenetrable, like a barrier of steel. She turned aside from it with a shrug. Come in and see what I've done. The library. Janet! She called down a dark hallway. Janet! Tea! The master's in! Down the far end of the long room was an open fireplace. His chair was pushed up to the fire, and an impromptu tea table covered with newspaper had been set beside it. His books were stacked in piles against the walls, and their mustiness contested with a clean smell of scrubbed and naked boards. A nice room, said Herbert. On Sunday I shall have a good long day at the picture-hanging. I can't have these windows, Sissley. They're quite indecent. Haven't you even got a dust sheet to pin up across them? Any tramp? I'll see. There won't be much light, though, anyhow. The man was in today about the fittings, and he says they won't be able to turn the gas on at the main till tomorrow afternoon.

1:43:22We shall have to do our best by candlelight. I've got some ready. She folded paper into a spill and lighted a long row of candles, ranged in, motley candlesticks along the chimney-piece. Tuck-tuck, said Herbert. We shall find it very difficult to work. I'll tire some of these people are. Yes, said Sissley. He resented her tone of detachment. She had blown out her spill and stood twisting the chart ends of paper between her fingers. Long streaks of hair had loosened to themselves and hung across her forehead. Her cheeks were smeared with dust. Her tall, thin figure had drooped with awareness, but her eyes were shining in the firelight with a strange excitement. She became conscious of his irritated scrutiny. I must be looking simply awful. Yes, said Herbert. I better try and tidy before tea. Yes, if we are going to have tea, if it doesn't come at once, I really can't be bothered. There's a great deal for me to do, and I can't afford to waste any time.

1:44:25He was a hungry man and peevish, having snatched a hasty and insufficient lunch. He thought that he detected a smile of indulgence as she raised her voice and shouted, Janet, hurry! They heard Janet stumbling up the three steps from the kitchen. She interred with the squat-brown teapot, one hand split against her heart. Such a house, she gassed. It's that unexpected really it is. They ate in silence. All Herbert's old irritation with a sister surged up within him. She was a vague, uncertain, feckless creature. The virtuality that had become her as a girl now sat grotesquely on her middle age uncommeliness. He contrasted her with the bucksome Emily. Emily would have known how to make her brother comfortable, but of course, Emily had married. She spoke. I suppose I might take mother's furniture. It really is mine, isn't it? Just that little work table in the bookshelf in the Esquiteoir?

1:45:25I don't see what you mean by take it. Be in the same rooms and same house as the rest. Of course, poor mother gave them to you, but I don't see how that makes any difference. I was thinking we might put that little Esquiteoir in the drawing room. It looked very well there. Cessily was silent. Herbert brushed the crumbs out of the creases in his waistcoat. Poor mother, he anxiously remarked. Come and see the house, said Cessily. She was aware that her quick speech shattered what should have been a little silent secret to the memory of the dead. Come and see what you'd like to begin on and what Janet and I had better do tomorrow. We got the bedroom's tidy, but you're basin and jugger odd, I'm afraid. The cases of crockery haven't arrived yet. I haven't got a basin and jug at all, she said defensively. Every step of Herbert's through the disordered house was a step in a triumphal progress. Every echo from the tiles and naked boards derided and denied the memory of that small brick of gillah where he and Cessily had been born.

1:46:25Where their mother's wedded life had begun and ended, that villa now empty and denuded, whose furniture looked so meager in this spaciousness and height. He carried a candlestick in either hand and raised them high above his head as he passed from room to room, peering round him into corners, looking up to molded cornices and ceilings. Standing in the big front bedroom, he saw himself reflected in the mirrored doors of a vast portentious wardrobe and beamed back at his beaming curiously shadowed face. Behind him he saw Cessily seered herself on the edge of the wire mattress and placed her candle carefully beside her on the floor. The mahogany bedrooms weed loomed up round them out of the shadows. She sensed his radiant satisfaction with relief. It is a lovely house, she said. Oh, Herbert, I do hope you're going to be happy. I hope we both are, he amended kindly. We must have some people staying, Cessily. The Jenkins, that lot, entertain a bit.

1:47:27After all my dear girl, we can afford it now. He was glad when she did not seem to realize how their circumstances had bettered. It gave him the opportunity for emphatic reminders. They passed out onto the landing and stood looking down into the depths of the well-stair case. I'm sure Mother did want us both to be happy, said Cessily, peering over the banisters. Herbert felt eerily as though she were deferring to the opinion of some unseen presence below them in the darkness. Of course she wished us the best poor Mother. He clad her little ostentatiously past her down the stairs. She would have loved this house. Her voice came softly after him, and he heard her limp hands slithering along the banister rail. Damn the gasman. He muttered feeling his way across the hall, where his candle flames riled and flickered in a drought. It was enough to give anyone the creeps, thus groping through an echoing deserted house with a ghost-ridden, lackadaisical woman trailing at his heels, if only they had the cast on.

1:48:27Cessily was a fool. He'd teach her. At the root of his malaise was a suspicion that the house was sneering at him, that as he repudiated the small brick villa, so the house repudiated him, that Cessily in the house had made a pact against him, shutting him out. He was no bourgeois, and no par the new. He Herbert Pilkington was good enough for any house-bought with his own well-earned money. He pushed savagely against the panels of the drawing-room door. This was the largest room in the house. A pale light fell across the floor from the scoops of two great-bow windows, and there was a glimmer in the mirrors, fixtures, paneling the walls. Herbert put down his candles and stood back in admiration. Next year, he said, we will buy a grand piano. It would look well there, slanting out from that corner. The shutters. We ought to shut the shutters. Bussily he wrestled with the catches. For all his middle-aged precision, he was like a child delirious over some new toy.

1:49:29It needs children. It's a room for children, said Cessily, when the clatter had subsided. Something in her tone filled him with a sense of impropriety. She was gripping the edges of the chimney-piece and staring down into the grate. Her knuckles stood out white and strained. Herbert Richard Evans wrote to me again yesterday. Today I answered him. I'm going to be married. Suddenly on the Chesterfield, Herbert scrutinized his boots. He heard his voice say, who was going to see about the furniture. His mind grappled with something immeasurably far away. Cessily repeated, I'm going to be married. Suddenly it flashed across him. He was full of angry light. Married, he shouted. Married? You? I thought it was too late, she whispered. Too, quite lately, then when mother went, everything was broken up. This move came. All my life I seemed to have been tied up, fastened on to things and people.

1:50:33Why, even the way the furniture was arranged at number seventeen, held me so that I couldn't get away. The way the chairs went into the sitting room. And mother, then when I stayed behind to see the vans off when I saw them taking down the ornamentals, and your books went out in the round table in the sofa, I felt quite suddenly I'm free. I said to myself, if Richard asked me again. But I thought he must be tired of asking me. I said, if only he asked me again, I can get away before this new house fastened on to me. With her stoop, her untightiness, her vagueness and confusion, her irritating streaks of mysticism, he wondered. Could any man find her desirable? He remembered Richard Evans, Zen and Jerky, and vaguely displeasing to his orderly mind, with his terrible spasms of eloquence and his straggly mustache. He'd come in often when they were at number seventeen and sat for hours in the lamp light with a shadow gesticulating behind him on the wall.

1:51:36Nobody needs me, she was saying. Nobody wants me really, except him. I see it now, and I've got to. What about me? Don't I count? Don't I need you? Don't I need you today? What about all these years, the housekeeping? As voice rose to a whale, And what the devilammied a do about the move? Of course, I'll see you through the move, really herbert. I've been a good brother to you. We've got along very well. We've had a happy little home together all these years. Haven't we and now poor mothers gone? His eloquence choked him. He was stabbed by a conviction that she'd said all this to him, instead she stood there, mullically hanging down her head. two old to Mary," he shouted. It's ridiculous." Richard doesn't think so. You don't seem to realize you're leaving me alone with this great house on my hands, this great barren of a house. Me, a lonely man, with just that one silly old woman, I suppose Janet will go off and get married next. Nobody's too old to marry nowadays, it seems.

1:52:38No. She said, with placid conviction, you'll marry, of course. Me! She turned to look at him, pink, self-confident, idiotically pretty. But of course, that's what I've been feeling while I was here. Men are so conservative, but this is no sort of life for you, really Herbert. You want a wife? Pretty cheerful wife and children. Children? Oh, don't shout Herbert. Yes, you don't want the family to die out, do you? After you've made such a name for it, done such fine things. He felt that two springs were broken in the sofa and pressed cushions carefully with his hand to discover the extent of further damage. Damn it all, he said, queralously. I can't get used to another woman at my time of life! Herbert, you've got no imagination. Her tone was amused, dispassionate. She was suddenly superior, radiant, and aloof. His no longer another man's possession. Her speech chimed in with his thoughts.

1:53:41Every man's got to have one woman. Taking one of the candles, she turned and left the room. He set there almost in the darkness, putting one hand up he fidgeted with his tie. Sleeking down his hair, he smiled to find it crisp, unden-d and healthy. Slowly and cumbersly, the machinery of his imagination creaked into movement. He saw the drawing-room, suffused with rosy light. The tears and sofas were bright with the sheen of flowered chinses hung about with crisp and fluted frills. Over by the fire was the dark triangle of a grand piano. The top was open, and a woman, with bright crimpy hair sat before it, playing and singing. A pretty cheerful wife. There was a crimson carpet, soft like moss, and a tall palm shadowed up towards the ceiling. All of by the carpet, he heard the pattern of quick feet. The little girl wore a blue sash trailing down behind her, and there was a little boy,

1:54:45and a black velvet suit. They could do very well without Sicily's Esquiretoire. Into Section 7. Section 8 of Encounters. Stories. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org, read by Kurt from Tucson, Arizona. Encounters. Stories. By Elizabeth Bowen. Lunch. After all, said Marsha. There are egoists and egoists. You are one sort of egoist. I am the other. A ladybird had dropped onto her plate from a cluster of leaves above, and she invited it

1:55:47onto her finger and transferred it very carefully to the rail of the veranda. Differentiates, at the stranger, watching the progress of the ladybird. They were lunching on the veranda, and the midday sun fell through a screen of leaves and quivering splashes onto the tablecloth. The elusive pattern of Marsha's dress, the crudy, nammal brilliance of the salad in a willow pattern bowl. The dented plate and cutlery slanting together at angles of confusion. The water was spring water. So cold that a mist had formed on the sides of their tumblers and of the red glass water jug. They considered helpings of cold lamb, and their heads and faces were in shadow. Through the open window, the interior of the coffee room was murky and repellent, with its drabbed-to-shovel tables and chairs so huddled teta-teta that they travestied

1:56:52intimacy. It was full of the musty reek of cruits and the rates of long digested meals, and of a brooding reproach for their desertion whenever they turned their heads towards it. A mournful waitress, too, reproached them, flicking desalterally about among the crumbs. From under the veranda the hotel garden slanted steeply down to the road. The burning dustiness beneath them was visible in glimpses between the branches of the lime trees. Cyclists flashed past, and an occasional motor world up clouds of dust to settle in the patient-limes. Behind their screen of leaves they too sat sheltered and conversant. Looking out to where beyond the village the country fell away into the hot blue distances of June, and cooled by a faint wind that crept towards them through a rustle and glitter of leaves from hayfields and the heavy shade of elders.

1:57:58The jewels flashed in marshes' rings as she laid down knife and fork, and drumming with her fingers on the table proceeded to expatiate on egoists. Don't think I'm going to be clever, she implored him, and talk like a woman in a Meredith book. Well, quite boldly to begin with, one acknowledges that one puts one cell first, doesn't one. There may be other people, but it's ourselves that matter. He had relaxed his face to a calm attentiveness, and leaning limply back into his chair looked at her with tired, kindly eyes. With the eyes of a monkey between wrinkled lids. Granted, if you wish it for the sake of argument, but are you protesting inwardly that other people matter more? They do matter enormously, but the more they matter to you still the more you're mattering to yourself.

1:58:58It merely raises your standard of values. Have you any children? Six, said the tired man. I have three, said Marsha, and a husband. Quite enough, but I am very fond of them all. That is why I am always so glad to get away from them. He was cutting his lamb with quiet, slashing strokes of his knife and eating quickly and abstractedly, like a man whose habits of life have made food less than indulgence than a necessity. He believed that she was interesting him. My idea in life, my particular form of egoism is a determination not to be swamped. I resent most fearfully, not the claims my family make on me, but the claims I make on my family. There's our attribute to my indispensability, mine a proof of my dependence. Therefore, I am a perfectly charming woman, but quite extraordinarily selfish.

2:00:02That is how all my friends describe me. I admire their candor, but I never congratulate them on their perspicacity. My egoism is nothing if not blatant and unblushing. Now you go on, she said, encouragingly helping herself to salad. Tell me about your selfishness, then I'll define how it's different from mine. She did not appear inspired. Yours is a much better kind, she supplemented. Finer, you have given up everything, but the thing that won't be given up. In fact, there's nothing wrong in your sort of egoism. It's only your self-consciousness that brings it to life at all. In the middle of your abject and terrible unsolfishness, you feel a tiny strain of resistance. And it worries you so much that it has rubbed you sore. It's mere morbidity on your part. That's what I condemn about it. Turn your family out into the street and kuraos for a fortnight, and you'll be a better

2:01:03man at the end of it. Mine is healthy animal spirits. Mine is sheer exuberance. Yours is a badgered, hectic, unavowed resistance to the people you love best in the world, because unknowingly, you still love yourself better. You wouldn't know the meaning of healthy animal spirits with six children on my income. I suppose what you are trying to say about me is... The turning of the worm? No, said Marsha. Not exactly turning. I wonder if I am making a fool of myself. I don't believe you are an egoist at all. My ideas are beginning to desert me. I am really incapable of a sustained monologue on any subject under the sun. You see, generally, I talk in circles. I mean I say something cryptic that sounds clever and stimulates the activities of other people's minds, and when the conversation has reached a climax of brilliancy, I knock

2:02:05down my hammer like an auctioneer on somebody else's epigram. Cap it with another and smile round at them all with calm assurance and finality. By that time, everybody is in a sort of glow. Which believing that he or she has laid the largest and finest of the conversational eggs? Goodness, you finished. Would you just call through the window and ask that woman if there is anything else to eat? She's been taking such an interest in our conversation and our profiles. Say strawberries if possible, because otherwise, I have a premonition it will be blank mosh. The stranger put his head and shoulders through the window. Hershershersh studied his narrow back in the shabby tweed jacket. His thinning hair and the frayed edges of his collar. One hand gripped the back of his chair. She thought. How terrible to see a man who is in sunburned. She listened to his muffled conversation with the waitress and pushed her plate away

2:03:09deploring the oiliness of the salad. With flushed face he reappeared, and two plump arms came through the window after him, removed their plates and clattered onto the table a big bowl of strawberries and a small grayish, blunt mosh, in a thick glass dish. I wonder if I am tiring you, said Marsha remorsefully. I know you came out here to be quiet, and I have done nothing but sharpen my theories on you ever since we made common cause against the coffee-room. It was worthwhile, too, wasn't it? Never mind. I'll let you go directly after lunch, and you shall find the tranquility you came to look for underneath a lime tree, loud with bees. I never take the slightest interest in nature, but I always remember that touch about the bees. I came across it in a book. I see a book in your pocket. If I wasn't here you'd be reading with it propped up against the water jug, blissfully dipping your strawberries into the salt and wondering why they tasted so funny.

2:04:13But do let's eat them in our fingers anyway. I never eat them with a spoon unless there's cream. My husband says he finds me too exhilarating for a prolonged tett-tett. He smile at her with embarrassment, then lean to his elbow on the warm rail of the veranda and look down onto the road. It's so hot, he said, with sudden petulence so beastly hot. I didn't realize how hot it was going to be or I wouldn't have bicycleed out. It's not very hot here, is it? Those leaves. No, but I was thinking about the hotness everywhere else. This makes it worse. Fancy bicycling. Do let me give you some blunt mosh. I think it is an heirloom. Did you come far? From Luisham, he added, I work in a publisher's office. A publisher? How interesting. I wonder if you could do anything to help a boy I know. Such a charming boy. He has written a book, but he flushed.

2:05:15I am not an influential member of the firm. Oh, then perhaps you couldn't. Tell me why did you come here today? I mean, why here, especially? Oh, for no reason, just at random. Why did you? To meet somebody who hasn't turned up, he was going to have brought a lunch basket and we were to have picnic down by the river. Oh, nobody I shouldn't meet. You haven't blundered into an elopement. I've got no brain for intrigue. After lunch we were going to have sketched, at least he would have sketched and I should have talked. He's by way of teaching me. We were to have met at twelve, but I suppose he's forgotten or is doing something else. Probably he wired, but it hadn't come before I started. Do you paint? I've got a paint box. She indicated a diminutive winsor and Newton and a large watercolor block lying at her feet. I'm sorry, he said differently. I'm afraid this must be something of a disappointment.

2:06:19Not a bit, she clasped her hands on the table leaning forward. I've really loved our lunch party. You listened. I've met very few people who could really listen. I've met very few people who were worthless, too. She raised her brows. Her shabby man was growing gallant. I am certain she smiled, that with your delicate perceptions of the romantic you would rather we remained incognito. Names and addresses are... Benality. The leaves rustled and her muslins fluttered in a breath of warm wind. In silence they turned their faces out towards the distance. I love you, as she said. When there isn't anything to understand in them, there are no subtleties of emotion about June. She's so gloriously elemental. Not a month for self-justification, simply for self-abandonment. He turned towards her quickly. His whole face flushed and lighted up for speech.

2:07:22With a grind and screecher breaks, a big card threw up under the lime trees. Marsha leaned over the veranda rail. John, she cried, oh John! She reached out for her parasol and dived together up her sketching things. How late you are, she called again, how late you are. Did you have a puncture or what were you doing? She pushed back her chair with a greeting sound along the tiled floor of the veranda, and stood looking down bright-eyed at his weary, passive, disillusioned face. I was right, she said. There are two sorts of egoists, and I, and both. End of Section 8 Section 9 of Encounters, Stories This is a Libravox Recording. All Libravox Recording are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit libravox.org

2:08:22Read by Ben Tucker Encounters, Stories by Elizabeth Bowen The Lover Herbert Pilkington rang the electric bell, and taking a few steps back looked up to contemplate the house front. In the full glare of the Westernly sun it all looked trim and orderly enough. Sicily had not done so badly for herself after all by Mary and Richard Evans. Herbert congratulated himself on having foreseen the whole thing from the beginning, and furthered it with tact and sympathy. Of course it had been difficult to get poor Sicily off. The hall door was opened suddenly by Sicily's nervous little maid who flattening herself against the passage wall to allow of his entrance, contrived by dodging suddenly under his arm to reach the drawing-room door before him and fling it wide. Richard and Sicily were discovered seated at opposite ends of the sofa and looking very conscious. Sicily wore a pink blouse, she looked prettier than Herbert could have imagined, and curiously

2:09:25fluffy about the head. The white-walled drawing-room, dim in the ochreous twilight of drawn blinds, was hung with Richard's Italian watercolors and other pictorial mementos of the honeymoon. It smelled very strongly of varnish and seemed to Herbert emptier than a drawing-room ought to be. The chairs and sofas had retreated into corners. They lacked frilliness. There was something just as startled and staccato about the room as there was about Sicily and Richard. Poor mother and dear father eyed one another apprehensively from opposite walls. The very tick of the clock was hardly regular. She always gave one a warm welcome. Sicily was quite effusive, and long Richard Evans got up and stood in front of the fireplace, delightedly kicking the fender. Tee commanded Sicily through the crack of the door, just as she had done at number 17 and at the new house during the few short months of her reign there.

2:10:25«Hot day» said Herbert sitting down carefully. «Richard's hot» said Sicily proudly. «He's been mowing the lawn» «Oh, Merle? Well, yes, one must slack off a bit, this weather. Aitle dog said Herbert archley. «Doesn't, being engaged to grieve with Herbert» cried Sicily, slapping his knee. She had never taken these liberties at number 17. «Don't you feel wonderful, Herbert? Isn't it not like anything you've ever felt before? Herbert ran one finger around the inside of his collar and smiled what doors called his quizzical smile. Only three weeks more, contributed Richard, and how's the trousseau kind of going on? My trousseau? Haha, hers, of course, my dear Herbert. Those dress-maker women have got you in their fist if they don't choose to let her. Have the clothes and time, she'll put the whole thing off. Herbert was not to be alarmed. «Oh, they'll hurry up,» he said easily.

2:11:26I'm making it worth her while, my Gatsissally, she does know how to dress. The almost wonderful clothes she is lucky, isn't she, Richard? Herbert being complacency. «She deserves it all,» he said. «I think she's getting handsome her every day. Happiness does a good deal for us all,» said Herbert gallantly. «By the way,» said Sicily, winging across at Richard, an accomplishment he must have taught her. «Look carefully around the room, Herbert, and see if you see anyone you know. Herbert, who had taken Richard's place on the sofa, and was sitting with his hands and his pockets and legs stretched out, turned his head as far as his collar would permit, and made an elaborate inspection of the chimney-piece, the, what-not, the piano-top. «Very well, she looks up there, too,» he said, raising himself a little with arched back for a better view, then relapsing with a grunt of relief. He had seen what he expected. The portrait of his beloved looking out coily at him from between two top heavy vases.

2:12:29Where did you get that, Sicily? She brought it around herself the day before yesterday. She came in just before supper. I was out, but she stayed a long time talking to Richard. Oh, Richard, look at Herbert getting crimson with jealousy. Herbert, who never changed color except after meals or from violent exertion, beamed with gratification. «Never mind, Herbert. » said Sicily. «I'm jealous, too, you see. Herbert was often irritated, by the way, that Richard and Sicily looked at one another across him. He did not enjoy the feeling of exclusion, but of course, he indoors would be able to look at each other across people just like that when they were married. «Do bring it over here, Richard» said Sicily, nodding at the portrait. «I want to look at it again. Tee was carried in, not noiselessly, but quite unnoticed. The brother and sister were looking at the photograph. Herbert lent back, smiling at it, with an absent and leisurely pride. Sicily bent forward and eager in short-sighted scrutiny.

2:13:30She seemed to be looking for something in it that she could not find. A young lady with symmetrically puffed out hair returned both regards from out of a silver flame with slightly bovine intensity. Her lips were bowed in an indulgent smile. Perhaps the photographer had been a funny man. A string of pearls closely encircled at long, plump neck. She has it framed for you very handsomely, said Herbert. I said to her when we were first engaged, never stint over a present when it is necessary. I think that is so sound. Of course, I do not approve of giving indiscriminately. I said, but when they must be given, let them be handsome. It is agreeable to receive good presents and to give them always. Makes a good impression. Sicily looked guilty. Richard had insisted on consigning the coal-scuttle that Herbert had given them to the darkest corner of the study. Doris always understands me perfectly, continued Herbert, examining the frame to see if the

2:14:31price were still on the back. I think it will never be necessary for me to say anything to her twice. If I even express an opinion, she always remembers. It's quite extraordinary. Echoed Richard. His voice had often an ironical note in it. This had prejudice Herbert against him at first. He seemed rather a disagreeable fellow, but now Herbert knew that it did not mean anything at all. Richard, though, not showy looking, was really a good sort of chap. Sicily, a little pink, or perhaps it was only the reflection from her blouse, drew up the tea table and began pouring out. There was a short silence while Richard replaced the photograph. They heard two blue bottles buzzing against the ceiling. Richard hacked three-quarters of a new cake into slices, placed the plate invitingly at Herbert's elbow and sat down on a music stool. Lifting his feet from the floor, he rotated idly till Sicily passed him his cup, which he emptied in three or four gulps and put down, then sat gazing expectantly at his brother-in-law.

2:15:32Marriage is a wonderful thing, said Herbert conversationally, recrossing his legs. Look at you too now how comfortable you are, it's all been most successful. Sicily had never known till this moment whether Herbert really approved of them. The most surprising people, he continued, make a success of matrimony. Of course, people have varying ideas of comfort, everybody does not understand this, therefore, there have been, last, unhappy marriages. But the right people always find each other in the end, said Sicily dreamily. You did sort of feel didn't you Herbert when you first met Doors? Women have all these fancies, Herbert was all indulgence for them. Doors has confessed to me that she was affected, quite extraordinarily affected, by our first meeting. It made little or no impression upon me, but Doors is a true woman. What does a true woman ask Richard suddenly? Herbert thought it must be very uncomfortable to live with a person who asked these, disconcerting rather silly questions.

2:16:33He suppose Sicily was used to his ways, Sicily sat staring her tea and smiled facuously at her husband. Herbert after consideration decided to turn the question lightly aside. "'I think we all know,' he said, "'when we find her,' he wished Doors were sitting beside him instead of Sicily, he would have looked at her sideways and she would have been so much pleased. As it was, he looked across the table at the bread and butter, and Richard jumped up and offered him some more. He asked, but what does she consist of?' asked Richard excitedly, forgetting to put down the plate. Herbert was silent. He thought this sounded rather indelicate. "'Sensibility?' suggested Sicily. "'Infinite sensibility,' said Richard, and patience. Contrary-ness added Sicily. In consistency,' amended Richard. "'Oh no! Contrary-ness Richard, and weak will!'' Herbert looked from one to the other, supposing they were playing some sort of game. "'She is infinitely adaptable, too,' said Richard.

2:17:36She has to be poor thing,' said Sicily. This did not come well from Sicily. "'Darermy, Sicily,' introduced Herbert Blinking. "'So you consider women or to be petty, do you?' Sicily opened her mouth and shut it again. She clasped her hands. "'Listas not speak well for Richard,' said Herbert humorously. Doris would be much muse now. I suppose Doris is to be petty, isn't she?' "'Oh no, Herbert,' cried Sicily quickly. She doesn't seem unhappy. In fact, I believe there are very few young ladies' Doris would change places with it present. And I think you are wrong, my dear Richard. I consider woman most consistent, if she is taught, and she can be easily taught. She is simpler and more childlike than we are, of course. Her way in life is simple. She is seldom placed in a position where it is necessary for her to think for herself.

2:18:52She never dictates, except of course to servants, and there she is backed by her husband's authority, all women wished to marry. Richard and Sicily listened respectfully. A true woman continued Herbert warming to a subject, loves to clean. But she mustn't cling heavily, must she? Ask Sicily. She clings not only to her husband, but in a lesser degree to her household, and he coughs silently. The children, her sphere, is the home, said Richard quickly. But suppose she hasn't got a home. She may now hope to a quite advanced age to obtain a home by matrimony. If she cannot, she must look for work. It is always possible for an unmarried woman to make herself useful if she is willing, and he considered carefully. Bright! Do you like women to be bright? Ask Sicily eagerly. It depends, said Herbert guardedly. He hated Sicily when she was skittish.

2:19:52It had sat grotesquely upon her as a spencer, though now that she was married a little matronly playfulness to not ill become her. Doris is bright, bright and equitable. Remembering with resentment how uncomfortable Sicily had sometimes made him, he raised his voice a little. She has no moods. She has simple tastes. She is always very bright and equitable. So you really suit each other very well, summarized Richard twirling on the music stool. Appreciation is everything to a woman I congratulate her. Yes, said Herbert simply, but you should congratulate me. It is more usual, I think. But we are past all that now. There are many letters there were to answer, and now there are the presence to acknowledge a very handsome ink stand and a pair of vases came this morning. And another three weeks we shall be at Folkstone. His sister and brother-in-law were so silent that he thought they must have gone to sleep. They were an erratic couple. Matrimonies seemed to have made them stupid.

2:20:53Richard sat biting his mustache and staring at Sicily, who with bent head absolutely smoothed out creases on the tablecloth. One might almost have said they were waiting for him to go. It was curious how little of this he had suspected in Sicily, although she was a sister. In the evenings he knew that Richard and she read poetry together, and not him probably kissed. Through the folding doors he could hear their cold supper being laid out in the dining-room. How could he have guessed that something inside her had been clamoring for these preposterous evenings all her life? She had seemed so contented, so in by the lamp while he smoked and read the paper and poor mother-dosed. It was wasting pity to be sorry for them. He turned from his anemic relations to the review his long perspective of upholstered happiness with Doris. One might almost say that the upholstery was Doris. Her birth feeling his heart grow great within him could have written a testimonial to all the merchants of romance. Having given love a trial he had found it excellent and was prepared to recommend it personally,

2:21:58almost to offer a guarantee. Their Doris would be waiting for him this evening. Demure, responsive, decently elated, he was going to visit her at home. This intention he communicated to Richard and Sicily, who rose in vague and badly faint distress. However, it had said nothing about going as it happened, but since they had so understood him well, they were scarcely entertaining. He had been there long enough. They saw him to the gate and stood together under the labyrinthum tree, watching him down the road. Richard's arm crept around Sicily's shoulders. But this, oh God, is love, he quoted. And Herbert had forgotten them before he reached the corner. End of section 9. Section 10 of Encounters Stories. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain.

2:22:58For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org, read by Christine Rutger, Encounters Stories by Elizabeth Bowen, 10. This is Windomir. In the doorway of Fuller's Regent Street, they came face to face. This is Windomir grasped both as May's wrists, drew them towards her bosom and cried in her deep tremolo, my dear. This May had not imagined Mrs. Windomir out of Italy. She had never pictured that little pug dog face without the background of flickering olives or a velvety, sun-gold walls, with ciprises dotted here and there, like the exclamation marks in the lady's conversation. Mrs. Windomir now regarded her with intensity through the long fringes of her hat-brim. She said, The same as May. And gently massaged the wrists with her thumbs.

2:24:01This is splendid, said as May inadequately, conscious of a rising pinkness and of the long stream of outcoming ladies damned by their encounter. What a funny coincidence. God guided me, dearest. Mrs. Windomir always mentioned the deity with confidential familiarity. One felt she had the entree everywhere. I meant to have lunch that steward's. I'm sorry you've had lunch. I will have more," said Mrs. Windomir recklessly. They pushed their way upstairs and stood over a little table in the window while it was vacated. As May untwined the dangling parcels from her fingers and propped up her umbrella in a corner. Mrs. Windomir scanned the menu with the detachment of the seashaded and as May confessed that she was hungry, Then it must be Rizolais, said her friend enticingly, Little chicken Rizolais.

2:25:02I will have a cup of chocolate and an acclare. She gave the orders to the waitress and sat looking at As May and tapping a corner of the menu card against her mouth. But you don't live in town? No, said As May. I'm up for the day. You would have written, wouldn't you? If we hadn't met, I should have been so much disappointed if we'd never. I hope to come and stay with you. That will be lovely, said As May, answering the smile. There was a moment silence. Do you miss Italy? Yes. There was an absent answer. Mrs. Windomir's thoughts were concentrated elsewhere. There's something strange about you, child, she said. As May now remembered how her conversation had been always little rushing advances on the personal. She had a way of yawning reproachily with a little click of the teeth and a surely we

2:26:04to know each other too well to talk about the weather. If one tried to give the conversation an outward twist. As May had found their first walks together very interesting. They had the chilly, unusual dream familiar sense of walking in one's skin. There is something strange, said Mrs. Windomir. You look just the same as ever. There's a stillness there, said the other, slipping a hand beneath her fur. Like the stillness in the heart of the whirlwind. Get right into it. Live in your most interior self. And you're unchangeable. You haven't found it yet. You're very young. You've never penetrated. I don't think I have perhaps, said as May thoughtfully, under the returning influence of Italy. Perhaps I'd rather like twirling. Yes, said Mrs. Windomir leaning back in her chair. Her lustrous eyes looked out mournfully, contentedly, from under pouchy lids, through the long

2:27:09fringes of her hat. Her ritruce nose was powdered delicately moth. The very moist lips had a way of contracting quickly in the middle of a sentence in an unpug Lake effort to retain the saliva. Curly bunches of gray hair lay against her cheeks. A string of Roman pearls was twisted several times around her plump throat. Her fur's were slung across her bosom and one shoulder. Her every movement defused the odor of a viala de barme. She had not removed her glows and opulent rolls of white kid encircled wrist and forearm. Her sleeves fell back from the elbow. She was an orthodox London edition of her Italian self. Twirling, she repeated narrowing her eyes. She looked round the mild bright crowded room, rustling with femininity. With its air of modest expensiveness, simply twirling, how, with an obvious connection

2:28:14of ideas, is your husband? Very well indeed. He would like so much, as may could not picture wolf red, meaning Mrs. Windomir. He would have liked to have come up with me today, she concluded, yes, said the other looking beyond at something. How did he ever come to let you go to Italy alone? I wasn't alone though, was I? I was with Aunt Emma. Someone had to take her, and I'd never traveled. Spiritually you were alone. You were alert, a tiptoe breathlessly expectant. I came. But it might not have been I. How did he come to let you go like that? Men of his type are not so generous. He isn't that type. The waitress brought a cup of chocolate, the eclair, and the risolets. Mrs. Windomir stretched out across the dishes, gently disengaged the fork from Esme's fingers,

2:29:17and turned her hand palm upwards on the table. That little hand told me everything, she said. And to you, no child, you have this image at the back of your eyes. I know the type, little loyal person. Well for it likes me to travel, said Esme feebly. He finds me rather a tiresome companion when he wants to talk about places, and you see he never has time to take me abroad himself. That was a very young marriage, said Mrs. Windomir leaning forward suddenly. Oh, do you think so? But you're younger now, after four years of it. Whereier, greedier, more dynamic, no children, never to be any children? I don't know. So wise and yet so foolish, she sipped delicately the hot chocolate, put the cup down, and once more slipped her hand under her fur. The mother heart, she said, is here.

2:30:19A crow's and grows, stretching hands out, seeking, finding. I expect there are a great many outlets, said Esme helping herself to another Rizalai. Even if one never has any children of one's own, but I hope what you are seeking, said Mrs. Windomir firmly, is a lover. She took her fork up, speared the eclair, and watched the cream ooze forth slowly with the smile of sensual contentment. She had been saying things like this repeatedly, all the time they were in Italy, but they didn't, somehow sound quite nice in fullers. As May thought, she saw women near them looking up. I don't think I am, you know. She argued gently, wondering at what date Mrs. Windomir had arranged to come and stay with them. Oh, child, child, you can't, you know, there's been too much between us, and the mother heart knows, you know.

2:31:21The yearnings in it bring about a vision. I see you treading strange, dim places, stumbling, crying out, trying to turn back, but always following the light. Mrs. Windomir laid down her fork and licked the cream from her lips. And then she said slowly. I see the light die out, extinguished. It was a pause. Thank you very much, said Esme earnestly. It saves a lot to know beforehand. I mean, if the light is going to go out, there's something rather desperate about my following it, isn't there? Wouldn't it be the light interruptiveness of Windomir? Is yours took a heart? But wouldn't it be? Mrs. Windomir bowed her head and drew her first together. Such a child, she sighed. I think I'll have an eclair too, said Esme timidly.

2:32:23Won't you have another one to keep me company? I started Mrs. Windomir. I eclair what? Oh, well, if it's going to make you shy, my watching, Esme ordered two more eclairs. What? She inquired are your plans? Did you think of going back to Italy? With the swallows, not before the swallows, I must smother down the panting and the tugging because my friends can't let me go. They just rise up and say I mustn't. Commands, of course, are nothing, but in treaties. Did I tell you in Italy what some people call me? She laughed deprecatingly and watched the waitress threading her way between the tables with the eclairs. They call me the helper. It sounds like something in a mystery play, doesn't it? Oh, yes, it's a beautiful name. It does seem to be a sort of gift.

2:33:23Said Mrs. Windomir, looking beyond her, something given one to use. You see, I do see things other people can't see and tell them. And then, and help them to straighten out. Well, take your case. And I have another friend in Italy, the one I was going to stay with after he parted. I don't know if I told you about her well, she left her husband. She grew up and found she didn't need him anymore. Well, I saw all that for her and was able to help her. I told the other man how things stood, such a manly fellow. He'd been hanging back, not understanding. Well, they went. I bought their tickets for them and saw them off to Italy. They've been having difficult times, but they'll straighten out. I'm still able to help them. I've been staying there a good deal. I am able to help them. I suppose they did feel it was the right thing to do, said Esme.

2:34:27Hedge you, said Mrs. Windomir, bringing her suddenly into focus. What is going to happen to you? I must come down and have a look at this husband of yours, this will for a lemmy see. She dived suddenly. Her bag was on the floor. She reappeared with it, and its moths sat in moth, gaped at Esme, while she fumbled in its depths. Out came a small swayed notebook, and Mrs. Windomir feverishly nibbling the point of the pencil, ran her eye down the pages. The 20th, she said, I could come then if you could have me, if not the 14th of the next for the weekend. But if I came on the 20th, I could stay longer, failing the 14th. As May pondered, lowering her lashes, I'm afraid, awfully afraid, it will have to be the 14th of next. All this month there will be Wilford's relations.

2:35:30Little cage thing, said Mrs. Windomir tenderly. Very well, before 14th. She jotted down something in her notebook, looked across that Esme, smiled, and jotted down some more, still with her head at one side, and a little secret smile. Ideas, ideas coming and going. And now, you, to your shoppings, and I, well, childy. Please, the bill, said Esme to the waitress, you must let me, please, she whispered to Mrs. Windomir. No, I don't like. Oh, well, well, I haven't got a Wilfred. Thanks, dear child. They pushed their chairs back, and went downstairs together. At the door Esme drew a valedictory breath. It's been ever so nice, she said, lovely, such a bit of luck, and now I suppose, which way?

2:36:30Oh, Peter Robinson's? Well, I'll come with you. It doesn't matter about my little shoppings is, firmly encircling Esme's wrist, with a thumb and forefinger she led her down Regent Street. End of section 10. Section 11 of Encounters, Stories by Elizabeth Bowen. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Read by Ben Tucker. Section 11. The Shatterway Third. He was a pale little man, with big teeth and prominent eyes, sitting opposite to him and a bus one would have found it incredible that there could be a woman to love him. As a matter of fact, there were two, one dead, not counting a mother whose inarticulate

2:37:33devotion he resented, and a pale sister, also dead. The only woman of value to him came down every evening to meet the 520 and stood very near the edge of the platform with her eyes flickering along the moving carriages. She never knew from which end of the train he would elite because, as he told her, it was only by the skin of his teeth that he caught it at all, and he often had to jump in at the nearest open door and stand the whole way down among other men's feet, with his hand against the rack to steady himself. He could have come down easily and luxuriously by the 6'5 in the corner of a smoking carriage, but he gave himself this trouble for the sake of three-quarters of an hour more with her. It was the consciousness of this, and of many other things which made her so speechless when they met. Often they were through the barrier and halfway down the road before she found a word to say. She was young, with thin features and light hair and eyes, and they had been married less

2:38:34than a year. When they turned from the road down the tree-shadowed lane, he would shift his back from one hand to the other, and still an arm round her shoulders. He loved her shy trimmer, and the little embarrassed way she would lean down to make a snatch at his back, which he would sometimes allow her to carry. Their house was among the first two or three on a new estate, and overlooked rolling country from the western windows, from the east, house backs of new roads. It had been built for him at the time of his first marriage four years ago, and still smelled a little plaster, and was coldly distempered, which he hated, but they said it was not yet safe to paper the walls. Today, she said, come down and have a look at the garden, Martin. I've been planting things. So he put down his bag, and they watched the end of the garden, where a new flower bed looked, scratched up and disordered, and was edged with little drooping plants. "'Very pretty,' he said, looking at her, and absolutely prodding at the mold with

2:39:36a zumbrella. I suppose they'll grow." Oh, yes, Martin. They're going to grow right up and hide the board fence. It's so ugly. If they're going to be so tall, you should have planted them at the back and put the smaller things in front, as it is, everything else would be hidden. "'Why, yes,' she cried disheartened. I never thought of that. Oh, Martin! It seemed such a pity to go walking over the new flower bed, leaving footmarks. That's why I put them near the edge, and now I can't unplant them. Well, a lot there is to learn. Will you take me to the gardening exhibition next summer? I was reading about it there, corners of gardens by all the famous people in stone seats and fountains. We might buy a sundial there, and there are lectures you can go to in prize roses. We should learn a lot." Next summer? Well, well, see. He said, meanwhile, don't overdo it all this gardening. They skirted the flower bed and went to lean up against the fence, resting their elbows

2:40:39on the top. She was half an inch taller than he, and her high heels gave her a further advantage. A little wind blew in their faces as they looked out towards the fading distance. The fields were dotted here and there with clumps of elm, with here and there a farm roof, the long roofs and gleaming windows of a factory. This open country stretches for such miles, she said dreamily. Years on these quiet, misty days, I began to think the seas over there, and that if the clouds along the distance lifted, I should see it suddenly shining. And with this wind I could be sure I smell it and hear it. Yes, I know. One often gets that feeling. Do you? Well, no, he said confusingly, but I'm sure one does, I can imagine it. One had said the same thing to him just here three or four years ago. You often understand before I say things, don't you, Martin? Isn't it curious?

2:41:40All sorts of women's discoveries that I've made about this house were nothing new at all to you. Like my idea about a fitment covered for that corner of the landing. Fancy that having occurred to you? He did not answer. He had taken off his hat, and she watched the wind blowing through his bare hair, as soft and fine as a baby's. Little wrinkles were coming in at the forehead that she thought so noble. And his face, well, one could not analyze it. But it was a lovely face. She pictured him swaying for forty minutes in the train with his hand against the luggage rack in order to be with her now, and said, Oh, Martin, Martin? Let's come into the house. No, not into the house. Why not? It's cold, your cold little woman. She drew her arm through his and shaved her hand. Let's stay out, she begged. It isn't time for supper. It isn't beginning to get dark yet. Do stay out, dear Martin. Why?

2:42:41He said looking around at her. One would think you were afraid of the house. She laughed. Afraid of our house? But he was still dissatisfied. Something was making her restless. She was out in the garden too much. And when she was not in the garden, she was always walking. About the house. One or two days when he had stayed at home to work, he had heard her on the stairs and up and down the passages. Up and down, up and down. He knew that women in her state of health were abnormal, had strange fancies. Still. Now she was talking about the new sundial, where they were going to put it. Nostertiums were to be planted round the foot. She said because Nostertiums grew so fast and made a show. Her mind had a curious wave, edging away from the immediate future. Next summer. Why? She should have other things besides sundials to think of then. What a funny little woman she was. I wonder you never thought of having a sundial before, she insisted.

2:43:45Did anybody ever think of it? Well, no, he said. I don't think it ever occurred to me. Or anybody? No. Nor anybody. She looked up at the house, silhouetted against the evening sky. It's funny living in such a new house. I never had. I wonder who will come after us? We're not likely to move for some time. He said sharply. Oh, no, only if we did. It seems so very much our house. I can't imagine anybody else at home here. We've made it so entirely you and I. What was it like the first month or two? Very damp. He said now wishing to return to the sundial. Did you have the drawing room? Very pretty. Oh, yes, there were a great many curtains and things. I had to take down all the pictures. They were going moldy on walls. It was always a pretty room, even with nothing in it at all. But it's nothing without you when it was he.

2:44:46You didn't miss me for a long time, she said, with her cheek against his. Always, he said. Always, always, always. Oh, no, she said seriously. You know you couldn't have been lonely. Lonely I was wretched. No hush. She cried with a start putting her hand over his lips. Anyway, he kissed her fingers. Nobody is lonely now. Come into the house. She hung back on his arm a little but did not, again, protest. They went in by glass door into the kitchen passage. As they passed through the archway into the hall, he put out his hand to sweep something aside. Then smiled, shame-vasedly. It was funny how he had always expected that, Portierre, she had declared that a draw came through from the kitchen and insisting on putting it up. She had filled the house with draperies and Pussy had taken them down. When the Portierre was there, he had always been forgetting it.

2:45:46And darting through to change his boots in the evening would envelop his head and shoulders ridiculously in the musty velvet folds. Funny how he could never custom himself to the changes. The house as it had been was always in his mind more present than the house as it was. He could never get used to the silence halfway up the stairs where the grandfather clock used to be. Often he found himself halfway across the hall to see what was the matter with it. It had been an entire some clock more troubled than it was worth, with the most reverberating tick. Pussy had put a bracket of China there in its place. Because it was a chilly autumn evening, they had lighted a fire in the drawing room. The curtains were drawn. What an evening they would spend together after supper. An armchair had been pulled forward and a work basket gaped beside it. He wondered what Pussy had been sewing. He stood in the hall looking in through the open door and rumored, her, making baby clothes by the fire and holding them up in her fingers for him to see.

2:46:51Sometimes he had barely raised his eyes from his book. She had never been able to understand his passion for self-education. As she finished the things, she had taken them upstairs and locked them away. And sometimes she would put down her sewing and rattle her work box maddeningly and look at him across the fire and sigh. It would be wonderful to watch Pussy sewing. You could hear her moving about in the hall. Such a Pussy hanging up his overcoat, then opening the oak chest and rattling things about in it for all the world as though she were after a mouse. I found some pictures. She said coming up behind him with a stack of something in her arms. Come into the drawing room and we'll look. The young fire gave out a fateful light and they knelt down on the hearth rug and put their heads together over the pictures. Nursery pictures said Pussy. She must have been up in the attic. He wished he had cleared the contents of it out of his house. He stared at the smiling shepherds' farmer-poise and woolly lambs.

2:47:56They are nursery pictures, aren't they, Martin? I didn't know you'd actually bought the pictures. Had... Had... Anybody chosen the curtains to? Did you get as far as that? I don't know, he said. I don't really Pussy, I don't remember. And did you take it all to pieces again? Did you alone or did anybody help you? I wonder you didn't leave it, Martin. You didn't want the room for anything else. But I suppose it would have made you sad or other people sad. Have you done anything to the room yet, Pussy? I just pulled the furniture about a little. Then I went to look for a fender in the attic and found these pictures. I don't know if there were any curtains, Martin. Shall I buy some more? I saw some cratons, especially for that kind of room, all over clowns and rabbits and little scarlet moons.

2:48:58I'll bring some patterns or come up to town someday and we'll choose them together. She did not answer. She was looking at the pictures. Martin, was that one going to have been called Martin to? Martin Ralph? I don't know, it hadn't been this sighted. Didn't anybody choose a name for him? Although he didn't live. He was a real person. It had never been decided, Pussy. I'm going to get you a longer sofa so that you can put your feet up. We can choose it when we choose the chances. Oh, you mustn't. This one is very comfortable. I never sin in it. But that's because I just don't take to it. I hate to look at it. Well, get rid of it, she said smiling. As neither of us wants a sofa. Did anybody ever sit on that one? As far as he remembered, it was the only thing in the room that she had ever sat on. She had never looked comfortable on it. She had a way of sitting with her head at the darkest end and straining her eyes over

2:50:01her work. Then blinking up at him when he spoke. Of course, she ought to have worn glasses. He hated women and glasses, and she knew it. But her short-sightedness annoyed him. And he had frequently said so. She used to come and meet him at the station. He came back by the six-five in those days, sometimes by the six-fourty-three. And it had so greatly irritated him to watch her grimacing and screwing up her eyes at the carriages that he had slipped through the barrier behind her, and pretended when she came home that he had not known she was there. Perhaps the little chap would have been short-sighted if he had lived. Made came in to say that supper was ready, and they were into the dining room. Here the curtains were undrawn, and they could see the lights twinkling out in the windows of the other houses. He often felt as though those windows were watching him. Their gaze was hostile, full of comment and criticism. The sound of the wind among the bushes in the garden was like whispered comparisons.

2:51:05He said they saw a good deal too much of the neighbors, and Pussy said she liked the friendly lights. I wouldn't like to be shut in all round, but I couldn't live without any people. The next doors had been so kind. She came in with some plants this morning in state, talking quite a long time, and said if there was ever anything she could do. She spoke so nicely of you, Martin. She's known you by sight ever since you were a little boy. Oh, it's funny to have lived in the same place all one's life. All these people, well, they're sometimes rather tiresome. Tiresome? When gets tired of there being the same. Would you like to travel Pussy? Oh, Martin. Her eyes grew whistful. The prospect seemed remote. Well, we will, he said, with energy. We'll go to Switzerland some summer. I'd rather go to Italy, Venice. Oh, not Venice.

2:52:06I don't think you'd care for Venice. It's nothing very much really. Have you been there? Yes, for a bit, but I didn't care about it. You never told me. Her eyes that had been looking into his looked suddenly away. The color surged up under her clear skin. She began to fidget with the spoons on the table. More, Martin? Yes, please. I say, Pussy, you're not eating. You must eat, darling. Oh, I am. Don't bother. I want to talk. She lifted her eyes again and glanced at him. The light glinting on her golden eyelashes and on her hair. I've been so lonely all day. Well, not lonely, but the house was so quiet I could hear myself think. I went into the east room and sat on a window-seat. It was a cold room. I don't know how we'll ever make it warm enough. It has never been used, you see. We must have fires there this winter. Has it never been used?

2:53:08Didn't anybody ever sit there or go in and out? Oh, they must have, Martin. It's not an empty-feeling room like the attic. Did you stay there long? No, I didn't. I was feeling restless. The white chest of drawers is locked. I wonder where the key is. We shall be wanting to use it. The key's lost. He said in sudden fear. I know it's lost. I'll go up there someday and force open the drawers myself. They're empty. How funny to lock them if they're empty. What did you imagine was inside? Yes, done easily. Oh, nothing in particular, Martin. I think I will go up to town and buy those chances myself. And there are other things I want. He remembered how he had heard her in the East Room those last two months before she went, opening and shutting the drawers. It had disturbed him, working at his desk in the dining room below. And he had come up angrily once or twice.

2:54:11He could hear her scuffling to her feet at his approach. And when he entered, she was always standing by the window, looking intently out. She used to say, yes, all right, I won't. I'm sorry, Martin, and come downstairs after him humming. She had never seemed to have enough to do. Before the child came, she had been in an aimless bustle. But afterwards, she did nothing. Nothing at all. Not even keep house for him decently. That was probably what had made her ill. That in the disappointment. All the time he had felt her watching his face, always on the verge of saying something. When they returned to the drawing room, the fire had burnt down a little. Martin piled on wood, then sat back in the shadow watching Pussy, who, with a reading lamp at her elbow, had begun to sew. He never read these evenings. A table of brick-a-brack had been pushed up against the doors of the bookcase with the

2:55:13gilt-bound classics and encyclopedias which had beguiled his evenings other years. Books, after all, were musty things, and all the book-learning in the world didn't make him more valuable to Pussy, whose eye wandered when he spoke to her of dynasties or carnivorous plants. He would pull her work box towards him and muse himself sorting its contents. One evening, he came on a thimble case which made him start. Where did you get that Pussy? He asked fiercely. It appeared that she had had it since she was a little girl. Strange that it should be the same as another. So familiar once. He confiscated it and brought her a maracco one next day with a new thimble in it that did not fit. This evening, watching her head and hands in the circle of light, he could hardly keep at the other side of the hearth-rug from her. She was preoccupied, working very slowly. At intervals she smoothed out her so-and-on-er knee with her head on one side.

2:56:15Pussy was long-sighted and always looked at things from as far away as possible. When he spoke her intent eyes fixed themselves on him unseeingly. What are you thinking about, Pussy? She evidently did not wish to tell him. She smiled, looked round the room a little, fearfully, smiled again and took up her work. Pussy? Oh, I don't know, I'm so happy. I'm so glad to have you back. I wonder if anyone was ever so happy. Then why do you look so sad? I was thinking it would be so terrible not to be happy. I was trying to imagine what I'd feel like if you didn't care. Didn't care. I-I couldn't imagine it, she admitted. She could no longer keep the length of the hearth rug between them when she smiled like that. She continued with his arm round her. You never let me know the feel of wanting just the littlest differences and you would

2:57:18make me eat my heart out. I should never be able to ask you for things. I should just look and look at you trying to speak and then you would grow to hate me. And then? Don't look at me like that, Martin. And then I should get ill. If you didn't want me to come back, I'd die. Silly, I was only imagining you shouldn't have made me talk. You shouldn't imagine things like that. You said somberly. What makes you do it? It's morbid. You might do yourself a great deal of harm. And besides, it's-it's-it's things like that happen. Good person go on loving and loving and never be wanted. How should I know? I think, she said, that not to want a person must be a sort of murder. I think a person who was done out of their life like that would be brought back by the injustice much more than anybody who was shot or stabbed.

2:58:21Are these the sort of things you think about all day? She looked at his white face and later head against his shoulder and began to whimper. So, Martin, don't be angry. I'm so frightened, I'm so frightened. Hush. We're not safe and I don't believe we're even good. It can't be right to be so happy when there isn't enough happiness in the world to go round. Suppose we had taken somebody else's happiness, somebody else's life. Pussy, hush, be quiet. I forbid you. You've been dreaming. You've been silly imagining these horrors. My darling, there's no sin and happiness. You shouldn't play with dreadful thoughts. Nothing can touch us. I sometimes feel the very room hates us. Nothing can touch us. He reiterated looking defiantly into the corners of the room. End of section 11. Section 12 of Encounters Stories.

2:59:25This is a Libravox Recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org, read by Kurt from Tucson, Arizona. Encounters Stories by Elizabeth Bowen. The evil that men do. At the corner by the fire station, where Southampton Row is joined by Theobald's road, a little man, hurrying back to his office after the lunch hour was run over by a motor lorry. He had been stepping backward to avoid a taxi when worse befell him. What was left of him was taken to hospital and remained for some days unidentified as no papers of any sort were to be found in his pockets.

3:00:29The morning after this occurrence, a lady living on the outskirts of a country town received a letter in an unfamiliar writing. The appearance of the envelope startled her. It was so exactly what she had been expecting for the last four days. She turned it over, biting her lip. The dining room was darker than usual. It was a dull, still morning, and she had risen and dressed with growing apprehension. Her husband was away, and the windows seemed further than ever now that she occupied his place and breakfasted alone. She poured out a cup of tea and raised the plated cover of a dish. The sight of a lonely sausage decided her. She opened the letter. Before she had read to the end, she leaned forward to think with her knuckles doubled under her chin.

3:01:30Other people have that sinister advantage over one of being able to see the back of one's head. For the first time in her life she had the uncomfortable sense that somebody had done so. That somebody had not only glanced, but was continuously staring. Her husband did not make her feel like this. Fancy, she thought. Just an hour and ten minutes exactly. Just that little time and all these years I never knew. Think of living among all these people, and never knowing how I was different. She folded up the letter for a moment and began betting against herself on his Christian name. Evelyn, she thought, or possibly Arthur or Philip, as a matter of fact, was Charles. I know you so well the letter continued.

3:02:33Before you drew your gloves off I knew that you were married. You have been living on the defensive for years. I know the books you read and what you see in the streets you walk in of that town with the terrible name. You live in a dark house looking over a highway. Very often you stand in the light of the windows leaning your head against the frame and trees with dull leaves and the sunshine and shadow shivering over your face. Footsteps startle you. You start back into the crowded room. The morning you get this letter go out bare-headed into the garden and let the wind blow the sunshine through your hair. I shall be thinking of you then. Your husband and your children haven't treated on you. Even your children hurt you with their little soft hands, and yet you are, as you always were untouched and lonely. You came slowly out of yourself at that poetry reading like a nymph coming out of a wood.

3:03:40You came towards me like a white thing between the trees and I snatched at you as you turned to go back. Her cheeks burnt. My goodness, she cried biting her thumbnail. Fancy anybody being able to write like that? Fancy living at 28, Abraham Road, West Kensington. I wonder if he's got a wife. I do wonder. I am a vicious warmth crept down her. Poetry! I thought he wrote poetry. Fancy him having guessed I read it. I am going to send you my poetry. It is not published yet, but I am having a type written. When it is published, there shall be just your one initial on the dedication page. I can't bear the thought of your living alone among those strange people who hurt you. Your unfamiliar faces and cold eyes. I know it all.

3:04:41The numb mornings, the feverish afternoons, the intolerable lamplet evenings, night. Now she thought, I am sure he has a wife. And your wanned-dazed face turning without hope to the first gleams at the window. Ah, guilty, guilty that she slept so well. The cook came in. When the meals for the day were ordered and her breakfast half surreptitiously eaten with the letter tucked inside the tea-cozy, she went upstairs to her room and tried on the hat she had worn in London, folding the side flaps of the mirror around her so that she could see her profile. She leaned forward, gazing at a point in space represented by the prismatic stopper of a scent bottle. With a long, slow breath, she went slowly through the action of drawing off a glove. Living, she said aloud, for years and years on the defensive.

3:05:45She looked into the mirror at the neat quiet room behind her with the reflected pinkness, from curtains and carpet over its white wall, and the two mohogity bedsteads with their dappled eiter-downs. There were photographs of her aunts, her children, and her brother-in-law's wife along the mantelpiece, a print of the good shepherd above the washstand, and, lumbling the ruins over the beds. On a bracket were some pretty vases of French-China, Harold had given her at Dieppe, and a photo-groverer of the Luxembourg Gardens she had given Harold. In a bookcase were several selections from the poets, beautifully bound and colored swayed, and another book, white, with gold roses called The Joy of Living. She got up and slipped a novel from the local library into the bottom of a drawer. What on earth would be the good, she reasoned, of going out into the garden when there is

3:06:50no sun and no wind and practically no garden? She considered her reflection. I don't feel I could go down the high street in this hat. There must be something queer about it. Half past nine. Harold will be back at half past eleven. I wonder if he's bringing me anything from London. She put a good deal of powder on her face. Changed her hat and earrings, selected a pair of half-soil gloves from a drawer and went down stairs. When she ran quickly up again and wiped off all the powder, like a wooden inf, she murmured, coming out of a wood. When she was halfway down the high street she found that she had forgotten her shopping basket and her purse. Harold came home at half past eleven and found his wife still out. He whistled for some minutes in the hall, looked vainly into her bedroom, the kitchen and the nursery.

3:07:50Then went round to the office to put in some work. Harold was a solicitor. Coming in again at lunchtime he met her crossing the hall. She looked at him vaguely. Why, you are back early! I was back two hours ago, said he. Did you have a nice time in London? He explained with his usual patience that one does not expect to have a nice time when one goes up to London on business. Of course he said, we're all out to get what we can out of London. We all, as you might say, pick it over. Only what I'm out for isn't pleasure. I leave that to you, don't I? I'm out for other pickings. Yes, Harold. This is very good beef. Yes, isn't it, she cried much gratified. I got it at Hoskins. Mrs. Peck deals there. She told me about it. It is much cheaper than at Bittles, Tuppens less in the pound.

3:08:53I have to cross over to the other side of the street now when I walk past Bittles. I haven't been there for three days and he looks as though he were beginning to suspect. She sighed sharply. Her interest flagged. Ah, yes, said Harold, encouragingly. I'm tired of buying beef, she said, resentfully. Oh, come, tired of going down the high street? Why, what else would you? She felt that Harold was odious. He had not even brought her anything from London. All my day she cried, messed up with little things. Harold laid down his knife and fork. Oh, do please go on eating. Yes, said Harold. I was only looking for the mustard. What were you saying? Got any plans this afternoon? You said after luncheon, according to precedent? I'm going to write letters, she said, pushing past him into the drawing room. She shot the door behind her, leaving Harold in the hall.

3:09:56There was something in doing that, living on the defensive. But were there any corners, any moments of her life for the last eight years which Harold had not pervaded? And horrible, she had not only lived with him but liked him. At what date in fact had she ceased liking Harold? Had she ever? She put her fingers quickly in her ears as though somebody had uttered the guilty thing allowed. Seating herself at the writing table, she shut her eyes and thoughtfully stroked her eyebrows with the pink feather at the tip of a synthetic quill pen. She drew the feather slowly down the line of one cheek and tickled herself under the chin with it, a delightful sensation, productive of shivers. Oh, she sighed with a shuddering breath. How beautiful beautiful you are! The top of a bus, lurching and rattling through obscure London.

3:10:57The cold air blowing on her throat moments under lighted windows when their faces had been mutually discernible. The sudden apparition of the conductor which had made him withdraw his hands from her wrist, their conversation which she had forgotten. Ride-ride together, forever-ride! When the bus stopped they had got down and got on to another. She did not remember where they had said goodbye. Fancy, all that from going to a poetry reading instead of a picture-house. Fancy, and she hadn't even understood the poetry. She opened her eyes and the practical difficulties of correspondence presented themselves. One could not write that sort of letter on Asia Bond. The note paper he had used had been so indefinably right somehow. She did not know how to address him. He had not begun with a deer or anything, but that did seem rather abrupt.

3:11:59One could not call him, dear Mr. Simmons. After an hour and ten minutes of such bus riding, how could you call a person Mr. Simmons when he said you were a nymph? Yet she couldn't take to Charles. Everything practical she found had been crowded into the post-script of his letter. People said that women did that. He said he thought it would be better if she were to write to him at his office in South Ampton Row. It was an insurance office which somehow gave her confidence. Dear Charles, she began. It was a stiff little letter. I know it is, she sighed distressfully rereading it. It doesn't sound abandoned, but how can I sound abandoned in this drawing-room? She stood up, self-consciously. That cage that it is, she said, allowed the intolerable cage, and began to walk about among the furniture. Those chinses are pretty.

3:12:59I am glad I chose them, and those sweet, roost-sat-and-crushions. If he came to tea, I would sit over here by the window with the curtains drawn a little behind me. No, over here by the fireplace. It would be in winter, and there would be nothing but fire-light. But people of that sort never come to tea. He would come later on in the evening, and the curtains would be drawn, and I should be wearing my, oh, like a nymph! How trivial it all seems! And Harold had wondered what there would be left for her to do if she didn't go down the high street. She would show him. But if she went through with this to the end, Harold must never know. And what would be the good of anything without Harold for an audience? She again reread the letter she had written. Of course my husband has never entered into my inner life. And underline the, of course.

3:14:00With short definite lines. It was quite true. She left books of poetry about, and Harold never glanced at them. She sat for hours gazing at the fire, or, as Charles said, out of the window, and Harold never asked her what she was thinking about. When she was playing with the children, she would break off suddenly and turn away her face and sigh. And Harold never asked her what was the matter. He would go away for days and leave her alone in the house with nobody to talk to, but the children, and the servants in the people next door. But of course solitude was her only escape and solace. She added this as a post script. Harold entered. I left this, he said, down at the office this morning by mistake. I thought I had forgotten it in London. I should not like to have done so. I was very much worried. I did not mention the matter as I did not want you to be disappointed. He extended a parcel. I don't know whether it is pretty, but I thought you might like it.

3:15:04It was the most beautiful handbag. Silver-grey with the delicate blue-monnet of perfect swayed. Darker when one stroked it one way. Lighter the other. The clasp was real gold, and the straps by which one carried it of exactly the right length. Inside it had three divisions. Drawing out the pads of tissue paper one revealed a lining of ivory-mawray down, which the light shot into the shadows of the sumptuously-centred interior and little trickles like water. Among the silk folds of the center compartment, we're a purse with a gold clasp. A gold case that might be used for either cigarettes or visiting cards and a darling little gold-backed mirror. There was a memorandum tablet and an outer pocket and a little book of Papier-Poudre. They sat down on the sofa to examine it. Their heads close together.

3:16:06Oh, she cried. You don't mind, Harold? Papier-Poudre? Not, said Harold. If you don't put on too much. And look, the little wee mirror. Doesn't it make me have a little wee face? Harold breathed magnanimously over the mirror. Harold, she said, you are wonderful. Just what I wanted. You can take it out shopping tomorrow morning. Down the high street. She shut the bag with a click. Brushed away the marks of her fingertips. And swung it by the straps from her wrist, watching it through half-closed eyes. Harold, she sighed in effibly. They kissed. Shall I post your letters, he inquired? She glanced towards the writing table. Would you wait a moment? Just a moment. There's an address I must write and a post script. My little wee wife said Harold contentedly.

3:17:10PPS, she added. You must not think that I do not love my husband. There are moments when he touches very closely my exterior life. She and Harold and the handbag went as far as the post together. And she watched the letters swallowed up in the maw of the pillar box. Another of your insurance policies asked Harold? She just to know the general particulars, she said. She wondered for some time what Charles would think when he came to the last post script and never knew that fate had spared him this. End of Section 12 13 of Encounters, Stories This is a Libravox Recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain.

3:18:11For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org Read by Kurt from Tucson, Arizona. Encounters, Stories by Elizabeth Bowen Sunday evening. It was six o'clock. The dusky sky was streaked with gold behind the beach trees. And the bells were already beginning. They had sat like this since tea. Mrs. Roche had turned half-round to watch the sunset her hands were clasped along the back of her chair. And her chin rested on her interwoven fingers. She blinked a little in the level light. And all the little lines were visible about her eyes and round her puckered mouth. Laura May and Mrs. McCannis sat on the low window seat. faintly or yold. Their empty cups beside them on the floor.

3:19:13Archie Manning was somewhere on the sofa away among the shadows of the room. Looking back with his legs so twisted that his big feet stuck grotesquely out into the light. They had almost forgotten his existence. And his masculinity did not obtrude itself upon the conversation. Cups and silver held the last of the sunlight. The tall room gradually obscured itself. Here and there a frame or mirror gleamed on the shadowed walls. They were talking about the first woman. Something had been said of her in the sermon that morning and the thought had germinated in their minds all day. Little Mrs. McCannis had had so far most to say. Now she paused to light another cigarette. And Mrs. Roche turned her eyes in Laura's direction. She did not move her head.

3:20:14Laura has been nothing but a dusky profile. What is she thinking about that makes her so silent? Laura is one of those primitive women said Mrs. McCannis inhaling smoke. She doesn't think she commumes. Laura was a big fair girl. Her silences made other people talkative. Her virginal starts and blushes stimulated Mrs. McCannis. She said twisting and untwisting a gold chain round her neck and said, Oh, I don't know really. I am very unoriginal, you know. But nobody is original, said Mrs. Roche and her deep voice. It's no good really. All the oldest ideas are the best. But I was thinking children, looking at the sunset, of her despair on that first night watching the light go out of the world. Look how it must have felt. I expect Adam was reassuring, said Mrs. McCannis.

3:21:17He'd seen it happen before. No, he hadn't. They were born on the same day, that is. Weren't they? Father, look it up in Genesis. Yes, they were, said Laura conclusively. She was full of information. So Adam had no time to be lonely. That was a pity. It would have made him so much more grateful. Psychologically interrupted Mrs. Roche. How interesting it all is, supposing it were true. Eve, of course, was at first no practical assistance to him. There were no chores, no mending. They didn't wear fig leaves till after the fall. That must have been nice, said Mrs. McCannis. I mean, the no fig leaves. But inexpressive. Yes, inexpressive. I was going to say rather impersonal. Oh, come, Gilded. If one's own skin isn't personal, what is? I don't know, said Mrs. Roche slowly.

3:22:19I don't think it's very personal. After all, it's only the husk of one. Unavoidably there. But once clothes are part of what one has got to say. Eve was much more herself when she began putting flowers in her hair than when she sat about in just no fig leaves. And she was much more herself than ever when she had got the fig leaves on. And you and I are much more ourselves than she was. And do you think covering oneself up is being real? Ask Laura? She entered the conversation with heavy, serious grace, as she would have entered a room. I don't know, said Gilded Roche. The less of me that's visible, the more I'm there. Laura, looking at Gilded's face so nearly on a level with her own belief that it was one of the dearest on earth, with those satirical eyes. It was in this belief that she came to stay for long weekends and was hurt by Mrs. Roche's

3:23:22other incomprehensible friends. That's your mind, she said. You mean you feel a deeper sense of identity behind reserve? Mrs. Roche looked at her for a moment, then out over her head at the sunset. Mrs. McKenna, fidgeted. She disliked this interchange of the personal note. I don't agree with you, she said, raising her voice to drown the insistence of the bells. I'm for off with everything, close, pose, reserve. Oh now, Fanny, keep a little pose. Perhaps she conceded unblushingly. A little, just a flower in the hair. Then to walk among things like Eve among the trees and feel them brushing up against me. But the world is so crowded, Fanny, said Gilded, who seemed to be enjoying Mrs. McKenna. Just think wherever you went it would be like walking in the park. I am, rather, mixed, said Laura.

3:24:22Are we speaking metaphorically or not? Not, said Mrs. McKenna, poking her. Oh, decidedly not. She had been longing to poke Laura for some time. Every line of the girls anatomy annoyed her. The bells came peeling, chime after chime. Their echoes pervaded the darkening room. Archie stirred on the sofa. Don't they make one feel holy, he said? Laura, who had blushed for Archie during the parts of Mrs. McKenna's conversation. And never knew what that little woman was going to say, her mind flickered about like a lizard. Thought that it might now be possible to turn the current. I like them, she asserted. I hate them. I hate them, cried Mrs. McKenna, putting her hands up over her ears and stamping her foot. They've been ringing for the last half hour, and you didn't seem to mine, said Gilded Roche. Bending down to knock the ash off her cigarette into Laura's tea cup.

3:25:24Yes, but they come in at the pauses so reprovingly, like Wilson putting his owl's face round the door. He longs to clear away the tea-things, but you give him no encouragement, and he is afraid of tumbling over Archie's feet. He's been in three times. I know, said Gilded penitently. But if he takes away the tea-things, it will leave us all sitting around in an empty circle, with no particular horizon that... Archie is feeling holy, said Mrs. McKenna, looking across at the sofa, not without respect. I wonder what it feels like. At present, his mind is in the past. When this present is the past, it will linger longest in this particular part of the past, how difficult that was to say. Seven or eight Sundays hence Archie, when you are in Africa, very lonely and prime evil. Leaning on your gun, you will think back to one Sunday evening in the country, and Gilded

3:26:26is drawing room, and you'll try and hum the chimes. Unconsciously you're learning them now. You'll shut your eyes and see the big windows and the beaches, and Laura and me, and think what sweet women we were. Oh, shall I, said Archie, in a discouraging tone? Fanny McKenna was coming a little too near the mark. She was a discordant person altogether and would have been better away. He was very happy with his head in the dark, listening to Gilded and watching Laura listen. He had been curiously attracted lately by the movements of her big head and big rather incapable-looking white hands. I should like a life in the wild, said Mrs. McKenna thoughtfully. It's a pity I can't go with you. Yes, said Archie politely. But it wouldn't suit me. I should be terrible, luxuriate, overdeveloped. I thought that was what you wanted, Fanny, said Gilded unwisely.

3:27:29Off with everything, you know? Not when there was nobody about. What would it matter if everything was off or on? Nobody would be the better for it. What's the good of being sincere when there's nobody to be sincere at? There'd be Archie. Well, anyway, there's William, said Mrs. McKenna conclusively, and I can't go. I'm afraid I don't love Archie enough, but he will be very lonely, won't you, Archie? Oh, I don't know, said Archie, evasively, rolling his head about among the cushions. I suppose so. I suppose one will live a good bit in the past and future if one has got too much time to think and not enough to do in the present. What future, Archie, said Mrs. Roche with curiosity? Oh, I don't know. Coming back, I suppose. I ought to be back in four years. I wonder where everybody will be. I shall be here, a little grayer-haired, perhaps, and stupid.

3:28:31Several of my friends will have given up coming down to see me, including Fanny, who will be wherever William isn't. Or I will probably be married. Oh, said Laura, consciously. And you will come down once or twice and be very retrospective and sweet, Archie, then drift away, too. Perhaps you will bring the girl you are engaged to down to see me, and she will kiss you on the way home and say I am a dear old thing, and not be the least bit jealous anymore. I know I shall be very stupid someday. I can feel it coming down on me, like mist from the top of a mountain. Laura will often come and see you console Mrs. McKenna, and bring all the babies. We must all write to Archie, interposed Gilda. He will never answer, but he will expect the most enormous posts. It's queer that we, three who have been talking so much about primeval simplicity, should have nothing much in front of us, but drawing rooms and gardens for the next four years.

3:29:35While Archie, who never asks for anything better than a sofa from all I've seen of him, should be actually going out into the wilds to do things. Why? Yes, said Mrs. McKenna. Archie is actually going to revert. Laura would do that easily, too. Now for you and me, Gilda, life is much more perilous. Archie and Laura would camp out quite happily, compassed about by a perfect cloud of lions, and so long as they weren't eaten, well, they just go on living. But for us, the next four years are going to be most terribly dangerous. I've been feeling so happy lately that I know I must be terribly insecure, right at the edge of something, the struggle for life. They'll never know the meaning of it, will they, Gilda? The feeling that if you stop for a moment, you'd go out. Gilda's eyes narrowed. Yes, it's desperate, Fanny, isn't it?

3:30:35You contesting every inch and eye longing to grow old beautifully, and murdering, said Fanny intensely, smothering your youth. Gilda began to laugh. I don't think you're right in saying that Archie and Laura live just negatively. They are a great deal more than not dead, and you're very sweeping, Fanny. Nobody likes to be dismissed as in complex. Archie is a man of action, strenuous in his mind, and Laura is reposful, which needs energy. That's why we love her. Yes, don't we, said Fanny generously. But we can't think how it's done. Oh, all big things are reposful, said Gilda. Look at the beach trees. I am a very wiry scotch fur, said Fanny, with relish. I stand against the skyline and cry out for gales. When they come, I ecstacise. Gilda, you are a large tree planted in a windy place.

3:31:37You look down and think you long for a valley, but every inch of you undulates. In a calm, you'd go quite limp. You in a calm. It's all I want, said Gilda. She raised her chin from her hands and leaned back to look round the shadows of the room. Her hands still resting on the back of the chair. She had an eternal youthfulness and gesture, and repos. Archie, watching her silhouette against the fading sky, thought she was like a girl of 19. Hurry, hurry, hurry, and tone Fanny suddenly echoing the church bell, which was now ringing for late comers with a little note of urgency. Don't you think we might take Archie to church? It would give him some more to remember. We might arrive before the second lesson, if we started now, and he could sit between Laura and you in a rather dark pew and share a book and sing, lead kindly light.

3:32:38Oh, don't, Fanny. Fanny had wondered how much of this they were going to stand. She loved to see Gilda defending her lambs. Oh, it's only that tiresome little Mrs. McKenna, she assured them. Terribly flippant, isn't she? She sighed. I wonder if anyone will ever think of me on Sunday evenings. Only if they want a fourth at bridge, said Archie brutally. It was extraordinary how nice boys could hurt. I've never been to evening church. I know nothing about it. Is it poignant? Ask Gilda? Laura, we will go next time you're here. You might go about eight weeks' hence suggested Archie disinterestedly. When I shall be there, you know, it would be rather amusing. And I say, suppose you always write on Sunday evenings. No, of course you couldn't. The house is always full of people. It's awfully funny to think of those bells going on all these chairs and sofas here and

3:33:41people in them and not me. It's funny to think of everywhere going on without one. And still going on if one never came back. I'll keep your corner of the sofa for you, Archie. No one else shall sit in it. Yes, you might. The room was getting so dark that it did not matter what one said. We're all lean back with her head against the window frame inside. Fanny, with her arms folded, peered down at her own little feet. Archie began to whistle under his breath. Turned down an empty glass, he said. Four years will fly, said Laura. Aldipan said Fanny. Four years' hence, she shivered. Funny if we all met here again, said Archie. We won't, said Fanny, with conviction. Who knows? Who knows, said Gilda? Who wants to know? We'd never dare go on. Oh, Fanny, dare? We've got to.

3:34:42We want to, said Laura quietly. Yes, by Joe, said Archie. It's all been jolly good so far. One feels they wouldn't let one down. They cried Fanny impatiently. They who? How dependent? How pitiful, how childish. Well, you don't believe we're in the dark forever now the sun's gone down, said Gilda uncertainly. We guess it may come up again. We chance it. We're such optimists, such cowards. Well, what do you believe? Believe? I wouldn't sell myself. I think that's pitiful, said Laura. The door opened. Yes, Wilson, said Gilda. I think you might come in and take away the tea. They heard Wilson fumbling for a moment, and the room sprang into light. They blinked a little, suddenly aware of the furniture, each other's bodies, and a sense of betrayal. Mrs. McKenna rose briskly. We might have some bridge, she said.

3:35:45What a pity some of us can't play. She looked down at Laura. End of Section 13 Section 14 of Encounters Stories This is a Libravox Recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org Read by Kurt from Tucson, Arizona. Encounters stories by Elizabeth Bowen. Coming home. All the way home from school. Rosalyn's cheeks burnt. She felt something throbbing in her ears. It was sometimes terrible to live so far away. Before her body had turned, the first corner, her mind had many times wrenched open their

3:36:48gate. Many times rushed up their path through the damp smells of the garden, waving the essay book and seen Darlingest coming to the window. Nothing like this had ever happened before to either her or Darlingest. It was the supreme moment that all these years they had been approaching of which those dim, improbable future years would be spent in retrospect. Rosalyn's essay had been read aloud, and everybody had praised it. Everybody had been there. The big girl sitting along the sides of the room had turned and looked at her, raising their eyebrows and smiling. For an infinity of time the room had held nothing but the rising and falling of Miss Wilfred's beautiful voice doing the service of Rosalyn's brain.

3:37:50When the voice dropped to silence and the room was once more unbearably crowded, Rosalyn had looked at the clock and seen that her essay had taken four and a half minutes to read. She found that her mouth was dry and her eyes ached from staring at a small, fixed spot in the heart of whirling circles, and her knotted hands were damp and trembling. Everybody behind her gently poked the small of her back. Everybody in the room was thinking about Rosalyn. She felt their admiration and attention lapping up against her in small waves. A long way off somebody spoke her name repeatedly. She stood up stupidly and everybody laughed. Miss Wilfred was trying to pass her back the red exercise book. Rosalyn sat down again thinking to herself how days she was, days with glory.

3:38:52She was beginning already to feel about for words, for darling-ist. She had understood some time ago that nothing became real for her until she had time to live it over again. An actual occurrence was nothing but the blankness of a shock. In the knowledge that something had happened, afterwards one could creep back and look into one's mind and find new things in it, clear and solid. It was like waiting outside the henhouse till the hen came off the nest, and then going into look for the egg. She would not touch this egg until she was with darling-ist. Then they would go and look for it together. Suddenly and vividly this afternoon would be real for her. I won't think about it yet, she said. For fear I'd spoil it. The house is gruescarser and the roads greener and Rosalyn relaxed a little.

3:39:55She was nearly home. She looked at the syringo bushes by the gate and it was as if a cold wing had brushed against her. Supposing darling-ist were out. She slowed down her running steps to a walk. From here she would be able to call to darling-ist. But if she didn't answer there would be still a torturous hope. She might be at the back of the house. She decided to pretend it didn't matter. One way or the other. She had done this before, and it rather took the wind out of somebody's sails, she felt. She hitched up her essay book under her arm. Approach the gate, turned carefully to shut it, and walked slowly up the path looking carefully down at her feet, not up at all at the drawing-room window. Darling-ist would think she was playing a game. Why didn't she hear her tapping on the glass with her thimble?

3:40:56As soon as she entered the hall she knew that the house was empty. Fox ticked very loudly. Upstairs and downstairs the doors were a little open, letting through pale strips of light. Only the kitchen door was shut down the end of the passage, and she could hear Emma moving about behind it. There was a spectral shimmer of light in the white paneling. On the table was a bowl of primrose's. Darling-ist must have put them there that morning. The hall was chilly. She could not think why the primrose's gave her such a feeling of horror. Then she remembered the wreath of primrose's, and the scent of it, lying on the raw new earth of that grave. A pair of grey gloves were gone from the bowl of visiting cards. Darling-ist had spent the morning doing those deathly primrose's, and then taken up her grey gloves and gone out at the end of the afternoon.

3:41:58Next one she knew her little girl would be coming in. A quarter past four. It was unforgivable of Darling-ist. She had been a mother for more than twelve years. The mother exclusively of Rosalind. And still it seemed she knew no better than to do a thing like that. Other people's mothers had terrible little babies. They ran quickly in and out to go to them, or they had smoky husbands who came in and sat, with big feet. There was something distracted about other people's mothers. But Darling-ist, so exclusively one's own. Darling-ist could never have really believed in her. She could never have really believed that Rosalind would do anything wonderful at school, or she would have been more careful to be in to hear about it. Rosalind flung herself into the drawing-room. It was honey-colored and lovely in the pale spring light.

3:43:00Another little clock was ticking in the corner, and there were more bowls of primrose as in black-eyed, lowering anemones. The tarnished mirror on the wall distorted and reproved her angry face in its mild moveness. Tea was spread on the table by the window. Tea for two that the two might never. Her work and an open book lay on the tumbled cushions of the window-seat. All the afternoon she had sat there waiting and working, and now poor little Darling-ist, perhaps she had gone out because she was lonely. People who went out sometimes never came back again. Here she was, being angry with Darling-ist, and all the time, well, she had drawn on those grey gloves and gone out wandering along the roads, vague and beautiful because she was lonely. And then, ask Emma? No, she wouldn't. Fancy having to ask her. Yes? Your mother will be in soon, Miss Rosie. Now run and get your things off.

3:44:02There is a good girl. Oh, no, intolerable. The whole house was full of the scent and horror of the primroses. Rosalind dropped the exercise book on the floor. Look at it. Hezotated. And putting her hands over her mouth went upstairs choking back her sobs. She heard the handle of the kitchen door turn. Emma was coming out. Oh, God! Now she was on the floor by Darling-ist's bed with the branches swaying and brushing outside the window, smothering her face in the eye to down, smelling and tasting the wet satin. Down in the hall she heard Emma call her, mutter something, and slam back into the kitchen. How could she ever have left Darling-ist? She might have known. She might have known. The sense of insecurity had been growing on her year by year. A person might be part of you, almost part of your body, and yet once you went away from

3:45:02them, they might utterly cease to be. That sea of horror ebbing and flowing around the edges of the world whose tides were chartered in the newspapers might sweep out a long wave over them, and they would be gone. There was no security. Safety and happiness were a game that grown up people played with children to keep them from understanding, possibly to keep themselves from thinking. But they did think that was what made grown up people queer. Anything might happen. There was no security. And now Darling-ist? This was her dressing table, with the long beads straggling over it. The little-colored glass barrels and bottles had bright flames in the center. In front of the looking glass, filmed faintly over with a cloud of powder, Darling-ist had put her hat on for the last time, supposing all that had ever been reflected in it were

3:46:05imprisoned somewhere in the back of the looking glass. The blue hat, with the drooping brim, was hanging over the corner of a chair. Rosland had never been kind about that blue hat. She didn't think it was becoming. And Darling-ist had loved it so. She must have gone out wearing the brown one. Rosland went over to the wardrobe and stood on tiptoe to look on the top shelf. Yes, the brown hat was gone. She would never see Darling-ist again in the brown hat coming down the road to meet her, and not seeing her because she was thinking about something else. Ho-Despania crept faintly up from among the folds of the dresses. The blue, the gold, the soft furred edges of the tea-gown dripping out of the wardrobe. She heard herself making a high whining noise at the back of her throat, like a puppy. Felt her swollen face distorted by another peroxism.

3:47:06I can't bear it. I can't bear it. What have I done? I did love her. I did so awfully love her. She was alright when I came in, coming home smiling. Then I stopped loving her. I hated her and was angry. And it happened. She was crossing a road and something happened to her. I was angry and she died. I killed her. I don't know that she's dead. I better get used to believing it. It will hurt less afterwards. Supposing she does come back this time. That's only for a little. I shall never be able to keep her. Now I found out about this, I shall never be happy. Life's nothing but waiting for awfulness to happen, and trying to think about something else. If she could come back just this once, darling, I st... And my came halfway upstairs. Rosalind flattened herself behind the door. Will you begin your tea, Miss Rosie? No. Where's Mother? I didn't hear her go out.

3:48:07I have the kettle boiling. Will I make your tea? No. No! Rosalind slammed the door on the angry mutterings and heard with a sense of desolation. Emma goes downstairs. The silver clock by Darling is sped, ticked. It was five o'clock. They had tea at a quarter past four. Darling isst was never, never late. When they came to tell her about it, men would come and they would tell Emma and Emma would come up with a frightened triumph and face and tell her. We saw the grey gloved hands spread out in the dust. A sound at the gate. I can't bear it. I can't bear it. Oh, save me, God! Steps on the gravel. Darling isst. She was at the window pressing her speechless lips together. Darling isst came slowly up the path with the long ends of her veil untied, hanging over her shoulders. A paper parcel was pressed between her arm and her side.

3:49:08She paused, stood smiling down at the daffodils. Then she looked up with a start at the windows as though she heard somebody calling. Rosalind drew back into the room. She heard her mother's footsteps cross the stone floor of the hall, hesitated at the door of the drawing room and come over to the foot of the stairs. The voice was calling. Lindy, Lindy Duckie, she was coming upstairs. Rosalind leaned the weight of her body against the dressing table and dabbed her face with the big powder puff. The powder clung in pace to her wet lashes and in patches over her nose and cheeks. She was not happy. She was not relieved. She felt no particular feeling about Darling isst. Did not even want to see her. Something had slackened down inside her leaving her a little sick. Oh, you're there, said Darling isst from outside, hearing her movements.

3:50:08Where did? Where were? She was standing on the doorway. Nothing had been for the last time after all. She had come back. One could never explain to her how wrong she had been. She was holding out her arms. Something drew one towards them. But my little clown said Darling isst wiping off the powder. Oh, she scanned the glazed blurred face. Tell me why, she said. You were late. Yes, it was horrid of me. Did you mind? But that was silly, Rosalind. I can't be always in. But you are my mother. Darling isst was amused. Little trickles of laughter and gratification ran out of her. You weren't frightened silly Billy. Her tone changed to distress. Oh, Rosalind, don't be cross. I'm not, said Rosalind coldly. Then come. I was wanting my tea.

3:51:08Rosalind don't be. Rosalind walked past her to the door. She was hurting Darling asst beautifully hurting her. She would never tell her about that essay. Everybody would be talking about it, and when Darling asked her and asked her about it, she would say, oh, that? I didn't think you'd be interested. That would hurt. She went down into the drawing room past the perm roses. The great gloves were back on the table. This was the mob and golden room that Darling asked had come back to from under the shadow of death, expecting to find her little daughter. They would have sat together on the window-seat while Rosalind read the essay aloud, leaning their heads closer together as the room grew darker. That was all spoiled. Darling asked up there alone in the bedroom, puzzled, hurt, disappointed, taking off her hat. She hadn't known she was going to be hurt like this when she stood out there on the gravel, smiling at the daffodils.

3:52:10The red essay book lay spread open on the carpet. There was the paper bag she had been carrying, lying on a table by the door. Macaroons all squashed from being carried the wrong way, discouraging through a tear in the paper a little trickle of crumbs. The pathos of the forgotten macaroons, the silent pain Rosalind ran upstairs to the bedroom. Darling asked did not hear her. She had forgotten. She was standing in the middle of the room with her face, turned towards the window, looking at something a long way away, smiling and singing to herself, and rolling up her veil. The end. End of Section 14 End of Encounters Stories by Elizabeth Bowen