I know that I don't want to suspect
that girl, though she did treat me like a member of a lower race and
scored off me badly at the end; and I do want to suspect O'Brien. By the
way, was he a real drunkard? I rather begin to wonder.
And that is the very unsatisfactory end of the matter so far.
PART II
I
AN IDEA
I wish I had said that I felt sure my cousin's letter was not the last of
the business on Ransay. One would like to be the only correct prophet
this war has produced. It was not the end by any manner of means, as I
learned within two days of finishing that last chapter. I wrote it, and
the two or three before it, in the convalescent hospital at Winterdean
Hall, finishing it, I remember, on a Wednesday; and I picked up the scent
again on the very Friday following.
I had been laid out in an insignificant North Sea scrap, but though the
scrap was small the wounds were unpleasant and I was still rather glad to
lie easy in a moveable summerhouse on the terrace. I was well on the mend
but had walked a little too far that morning and there I lay stretched
half asleep in a deck chair, out of the wind and basking in the sun. It
was the end of the first week in February, but the day was mild as milk
and in my overcoat I felt positively hot. Rooks were cawing over the
winter woodlands below the terrace, a faint, restful line of blue hills
rose far away beyond, and a gorgeous peacock was strolling sedately on
the lawn.
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