He gave her a hand-down from the awkward height of the jeep and stood in the road and watched her go. He was bursting with ideas, memories—a rich confusion that made him decide, after she was out of sight, not to go home after all, just drive around a bit and watch the blowing leaves, the dusty, golden day, as if it had become a new-found treasure—this sense of being fully alive.

CHRISTINA’S JOURNAL—November 20

Things do blow over. But I have been absurdly anxious. Angry, I suppose, because after so many real anxieties—John, and Cornelius’s stroke, that I have faced without panic—this comparatively unimportant incident about Nick makes me feel as if I were walking on quicksand. I shan’t rest easy until I have seen Ellen, who maintains her absolute silence, as if we didn’t exist.

Cornelius says that if the New Yorkers are prosecuted for trespass as well as shooting after five, he cannot, in all justice, let Nick and Old Pete off. And I suppose he has reason as well as the law on his side. The trouble is that people just aren’t reasonable. If we are to stay on this winter, I can’t bear the idea that we shall be looked on as enemies by at least half the town, and as friends by people who are glad to humiliate Ellen and Nick. It appears that she is resented—she has always held apart from the town and gone her own way. For years it was because of the trouble Rufus got into. She was fiercely loyal and simply closed the door rather than admit Rufus was often in the wrong. Her rage has taken the form of adamant withdrawal and silence, and people who felt compassion for her in the hard days, and had the door closed in their faces, haven’t forgotten that.

I have tried to explain all this to Cornelius, to show how it is all a network of relationships, all of which will be troubled in some way if he insists on prosecuting Nick and Old Pete. He just says, “That is their business. Let them mind it as best they can. I am still able to mind ours.”

He put up the “No Trespassing” signs himself. I still remember how tired he was at the end of that long day. I sense that he is involved somewhere below the conscious level—and that is why talking about it does little or no good. Maybe, au fond, he wonders whether he was right to post our land and is on the defensive. He doesn’t even try to explain to himself why he decided five years ago not to hunt any more.