Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  “Is that you, Miss Vivian?” came the voice of Miss Bruce from the stairs.

  Char turned and went slowly up to her.

  Trevellyan did not see her again that evening, and Miss Bruce told him later, with rather a reproachful look, that poor Miss Vivian was not fit to be up.

  “It was a shock to her, I’m afraid.”

  “Yes — oh yes; but she really was dreadfully ill when she went out this morning. She ought never, never to have been allowed to leave the house.”

  “You don’t mean to say she’s going to be ill too?” exclaimed Trevellyan in tones of dismay.

  He was thinking that Joanna had enough anxiety as it was; but Miss Bruce attributed his tones entirely to concern on behalf of her adored Miss Vivian, and looked at him more amiably.

  “I’m afraid it’s influenza, but a couple of days in bed will make all the difference, and now that, of course, there’s no question of her leaving the house, she’ll be able to take care of herself for once.”

  “There she is,” said Captain Trevellyan, and strode across the hall to meet his Cousin Joanna and the doctor.

  Miss Bruce waited to hear Dr. Prince’s verdict, and then went quietly up to Char’s room, with offers of service that aroused the unconcealed wrath of Char’s devoted maid.

  “I don’t want anything,” Miss Vivian declared wearily. “As soon as I know whether I may see father, I can go to bed — or go up to him, as the case may be. But I suppose my mother means to come down to me some time?”

  There was more than a hint of resentment in her wearied voice.

  “Shall I tell her ladyship you’re here, miss?” asked the maid gently.

  “She knows it,” said Char shortly. “I brought Dr. Prince.”

  The zealous Miss Bruce slipped silently from the room and down into the hall again.

  Lady Vivian, oblivious of her daughter’s claims, was discussing Dr. Prince’s verdict in lowered tones with Captain Trevellyan.

  Miss Bruce felt a sort of melancholy triumph in beholding this justification for Char’s obvious sense of injury.

  “Miss Vivian is in her room, and waiting for you most anxiously,” she said reproachfully. “She thought you were still with Sir Piers. She won’t go to bed until she knows whether she may see him.”

  “Poor child, it wouldn’t do her any good to see him,” said Joanna. “There’s no sign of returning consciousness yet, though Dr. Prince thinks he may come to himself almost any time, and then everything depends upon his being kept absolutely quiet. But I’ll go up to Char.”

  She went upstairs, but came down again much sooner than Miss Bruce approved.

  “I’ve told her to go to bed,” she placidly informed the secretary. “She can’t do anything, and she looks very tired.”

  “She is far from well, I’m afraid,” stiffly remarked Miss Bruce.

  “Well, I leave her to you, Miss Bruce. I know you’ll take the most devoted care of her. Let her sleep as long as she can in the morning.”

  “Cousin Joanna, is there anything I can do?” asked Trevellyan wistfully.

  “I don’t think so, Johnnie. You’ll come round tomorrow?”

  She was smiling at him quite naturally.

  “The first thing. You’re sure there’s nothing I can do tonight — sit up with him, or anything?”

  “My maid and I are going to do it between us. We shall have a nurse down from London by midday tomorrow, I hope.”

  “Let me sit up instead of you.”

  She smiled again.

  “Certainly not. I’m only going to take the first half of the night — much the easiest. Then I shall probably go to sleep, unless there’s any change, when, of course, they’ll fetch me. But Dr. Prince doesn’t think there will be yet, and I shall take all the rest I can. I’m much more likely to be wanted at night later on.”

  Miss Bruce went upstairs again, much more nearly disposed to wonder at such reasonableness than to admire it.

  Her ideals were early Victorian ones, and although she knew that she could not hope for hysterics from Lady Vivian, she would have much preferred at least to hear her declare that sleep would be utterly impossible to her, and that she should spend the night hovering between her unconscious husband and her prostrate daughter.

  But Lady Vivian went to bed at half-past twelve, and did not even insist upon merely lying down in her dressing-gown, nor did she reappear in Sir Piers’s room until eight o’clock on the following morning.

  There had been no change during the night.

  Char slept heavily until ten o’clock, then woke and rang her bell rather indignantly.

  Miss Bruce, who had been hovering about anxiously since seven that morning, appeared instantly at the door.

  “There is no change whatever, my dear. Now, do, do lie down again and keep warm. There is nothing that you can do.”

  Char complied rather sullenly. She was still feeling ill, and violently resented her own involuntary physical relief at this enforced inaction.

  “What on earth will happen at the office?” she muttered. “Have you told them that I’m not coming?”

  “I telephoned myself,” said Miss Bruce proudly.

  “What did you say?”

  “That you were in bed yourself with influenza, and quite unfit to move; and also that we are in great anxiety about Sir Piers.”

  “That’s the only reason I can’t go in to Questerham as usual,” said Char coldly. “It was quite unnecessary to mention my having influenza, Brucey. That would never constitute a reason for my staying away from my work.”

  Miss Bruce looked very much crestfallen.

  “You’d better telephone again, please, a little later on, with a message from me. Say that I must be rung up without fail when my secretary has gone through the letters, and I’ll come to the telephone and speak to her myself.”

  “The draughty hall!” moaned Miss Bruce, but she dared not offer any further remonstrance.

  Char’s conversation on the telephone with Miss Jones was a lengthy one, and Miss Bruce, wandering in the background in search of imaginary currents of air, listened to her concluding observations with almost ludicrous dismay. “The departments must carry on as usual, of course, but don’t hesitate to ring me up in any emergency. And no letters had better leave the office tonight — in fact, they can’t, since there’ll be nobody to sign them. What’s that?... No, certainly not. How on earth could I depute such a responsibility to any one in the office. I shall have made some arrangement by tomorrow. Sir Piers may remain in this state indefinitely, and I can’t have the whole of the work held up in this way.... That’s all. Remember, nothing is to leave the office for the present. You can ring me up and report on the day’s work at seven o’clock this evening. Good-bye.”

  As Char replaced the receiver, her mother entered the hall. They had already exchanged a few words earlier in the morning, and Lady Vivian only remarked dispassionately: “I thought you were in bed. By the way, Char, I’m sorry, but we shall have to have the telephone disconnected. The house must be kept quiet, and that bell can be heard quite plainly from upstairs. We can ring other people up, but they won’t be able to get at us. Did you want to talk to your office?”

  “I must,” said Char. “Things are absolutely hung up there; no one who can even sign a letter.”

  “Why not? Have they all got writer’s cramp all of a sudden?”

  Char, never very graciously disposed towards her parent’s many small leers at her official dignity, thought this one particularly ill-timed, and received it by a silence which said as much.

  Lady Vivian looked at her, and said rather penitently: “Well, well, I mustn’t keep you here when you ought to be in bed. My dear child, do you mean to say you’re wearing nothing but your dressing-gown under that coat? Do go upstairs again.”

  “I want to speak to you, mother.”

  “I’ll come up in five minutes. I’m going to give an order to the stables.”

  Lady Vivian walked brisk
ly down the drive, her uncovered head thrown back to catch the chilly gleams of winter sunlight.

  There were dark lines under her blue eyes, but the voice in which she gave her orders was full and serene as usual, even when she answered the chauffeur’s respectful inquiries by the news that Sir Piers still remained unconscious.

  Five minutes later Lady Vivian’s secretary had the gratification of seeing her enter Char’s bedroom and establish herself on a chair at the sufferer’s bedside.

  That afternoon Miss Bruce received a further satisfaction when Lady Vivian sought her in consultation.

  “It’s about Char, Miss Bruce. She’s fretting herself into fiddlestrings about that office of hers. She thinks all the work is more or less held up while she’s not there to see to it. And yet she may be kept here indefinitely. It’s quite possible that Sir Piers may ask for her when he comes to himself again, so there can be no question of her going in to Questerham at present, even if she were fit for it, which she most decidedly isn’t.”

  “That consideration by itself would never keep her from her work,” said Miss Bruce loyally.

  Lady Vivian waived the point.

  “Well, as she won’t do the only sensible thing, and transfer her authority to some responsible member of the staff, she’d better have one of them out here every day to go through the work with her and take back the instructions. The car is bound to be going in at least once a day.”

  “It won’t be the rest for Charmian that one had hoped,’’ said the secretary dismally.

  “But it will be better for her to do a little work than just to sit and worry about her father and the office — though, upon my word,” said Lady Vivian warmly, “I think she’s a great deal more anxious about the Depôt than about his illness.”

  Miss Bruce, not inconceivably, thought so too, but she was very much shocked at hearing such an idea put into words, and said firmly: “Then, would you like me to write to Questerham and tell Miss Vivian’s secretary that it has been arranged for her to come out here daily for the present?”

  “Dear me, you’re as bad as Char, Miss Bruce. Anybody would think they were all machines, to be dragged about without any will of their own. No, no! Ring up the office and get hold of the secretary, and give her a polite message, asking if she can manage it, if we send her in and out in the car.”

  Miss Bruce obeyed, and triumphantly told her employer that evening that all was arranged, and Miss Jones would come to Plessing on the following morning to receive Miss Vivian’s directions.

  “Miss Jones? You don’t mean to say that the genteel Delmege has abdicated in favour of Miss Jones? What a piece of luck for us!” cried Lady Vivian.

  “Miss Delmege is in bed with influenza.”

  “Excellent!” said Joanna callously. “I shall be delighted to see Miss Jones. I wanted to ask her here, but Char nearly had a fit at the idea. She’ll certainly think I’ve done it out of malice prepense, as it is. She’s got a most pigheaded prejudice against that nice Miss Jones.”

  “Lady Vivian!”

  Lady Vivian laughed.

  “You’ll have to break it to her, Miss Bruce, that it’s Miss Jones who is coming. And don’t let her think I did it on purpose!”

  “I am sure she would never think anything of the sort.”

  “Perhaps not. But Char does get very odd ideas into her head, when she thinks there’s any risk of lèse-majesté to her Directorship. I must say,” observed Joanna thoughtfully, preparing to go upstairs for her night watch, “I often wish that when Char was younger I’d smacked some of the nonsense out—”

  But before this well-worn aspiration of Miss Vivian’s parent, Miss Bruce took her indignant departure.

  IX

  “Rather strange, isn’t it?” said Miss Delmege in tones of weak despondency. “If it hadn’t been for this wretched flu, I should have been going out to Plessing every day with the work, I suppose, as Gracie is doing now.”

  “Yes, I suppose you would,” agreed Miss Henderson blankly.

  She sat on the foot of the bed, which was surrounded by a perfect wilderness of screens.

  Miss Delmege reclined against two pillows, screwed against her back at an uncomfortable-looking angle. The room was not warmed, and the invalid wore a small flannel dressing-jacket, rather soiled and very much crumpled, a loosely knitted woolly jersey of dingy appearance and an ugly mustard colour, and over everything else an old quilted pink dressing-gown, with a cotton-wool-like substance bursting from the cuffs and elbows. Her hair was pinned up carelessly, and her expression was a much dejected one.

  Miss Henderson was knitting in a spasmodic way, and stopping every now and then to blow her nose violently. She had several times during the afternoon ejaculated vehemently that a cold wasn’t flu, she was thankful to say.

  “It’s probably the beginning of it, though,” Miss Delmege replied pessimistically.

  “You’re hipped, Delmege, that’s what you are — regularly hipped. Now, don’t you think it would do you good to come downstairs for tea? There’s a fire in the sitting-room.”

  “Well, I don’t mind if I do. It’ll seem quite peculiar to be downstairs again. Fancy, I’ve been up here five whole days! And I’m really not a person to give way, as a rule. At least, not so far as I know, I’m not.”

  “It’s nearly four now. Look here, I’ll put a kettle on, and you can have some hot water.”

  “Thanks, dear,” said Miss Delmege graciously, “but don’t bother. My hot-water bottle is still quite warm. I can use that.”

  “All right, then, I’ll leave you. Ta-ta! You’ll find me in the sitting-room. Sure you don’t want any help?”

  “No, thanks. I shall be quite all right. I only hope you won’t be in bed yourself tomorrow, dear.”

  “No fear!” defiantly said Miss Henderson, at the same time sneezing loudly.

  She went away before Miss Delmege had time to utter any further prognostications.

  In the sitting-room she busied herself in pushing a creaking wicker arm-chair close to the fire — which for once was a roaring one, owing to the now convalescent Mrs. Potter, who had been crouching over it with a novel all day — lit the gas, and turned it up until it flared upwards with a steady, hissing noise; said “Excuse me; do you mind?” to Mrs. Potter; shut down the small crack of open window, and drew the curtains.

  “Delmege is coming down, and we’d better have the room warm,” she explained. “She’s just out of bed.”

  By the time Miss Delmege, now wearing her mustard-coloured jersey over a thick stuff dress, had tottered downstairs, the room was indeed warm.

  “Now, this,” said Mrs. Bullivant cheerfully, when she came in to see how many of her charges wanted tea— “now this is what I call really cosy.”

  She looked ill, and very tired, herself. The general servant had given notice because of the number of trays that she had been required to carry upstairs of late, and had left the day before, and the cook was disobliging and would do nothing beyond her own immediate duties. Mrs. Bullivant was very much afraid of her, and did most of the work herself.

  She had written to the Depôt in accordance with the official Hostel regulations, stating that a servant was required there for general housework; but no answer had come authorizing her to engage one, and Miss Marsh had explained to her that in Miss Vivian’s absence such trifling questions must naturally expect to be overlooked or set aside for the time being. So little Mrs. Bullivant staggered up from the basement bearing a tray that seemed very large and heavy, and put it on the table in the sitting-room, very close to the fire, with a triumphant gasp.

  “There! and it’s a beautiful fire for toast. None of the munition girls are coming in for tea, are they?”

  “Hope not,” said Miss Henderson briefly. “I ought to be at the office now. I said I’d be back at five, but I shouldn’t have had the afternoon off at all if Miss Vivian had been there.”

  Miss Delmege drew herself up. “Miss Vivian never refuses a reasonable a
mount of leave, that I’m aware of,” she said stiffly.

  “Oh, I mean we’re slacker without her. There’s less to do, that’s all.”

  “Well, Grace Jones will be back presently, and I suppose she’ll have work for all of us, as usual. I wonder how Miss Vivian is,” said Mrs. Potter.

  “And her father.”

  “Grace will be able to tell us,” said Miss Delmege, not without a tinge of acrimony in her voice. “It does seem so quaint, her going to and from Plessing in Miss Vivian’s car, like this, every day. It somehow makes me howl with laughter.”

  She gave a faint, embittered snigger, and Miss Henderson and Mrs. Potter exchanged glances.

  “I hear the car now,” said Mrs. Bullivant. “She’ll be cold. I’ll get another cup, and give her some tea before she goes over to the office. I do hope she’s got Miss Vivian’s authority for me to find a new servant.”

  They heard her outside in the hall, making inquiry, and Grace’s voice answering in tones of congratulation.

  “Yes, it’s quite all right. I asked Miss Vivian most particularly, and told her what a lot of work there was, and she said, Get some one as soon as you could. I came here before going to the office so as to tell you at once.”

  “Well, that was nice of you, dear, and now you shall have a nice cup of hot tea before you go out again. Just a minute.”

  “I’ll fetch it, Mrs. Bullivant. Don’t you bother.”

  “It’s all right, dear, only a cup and saucer wanted; the rest is all ready.”

  In a few minutes Grace came into the sitting-room carefully carrying the cup and saucer.

  When she saw Miss Delmege she said in a pleased way: “Oh, I’m so glad you’re better. Miss Vivian asked after you. She was up herself this afternoon, and looking much better.”

  “And how’s her father?”

  “They are much happier about him since he recovered consciousness. He can talk almost quite well, and Dr. Prince is quite satisfied about him. And they’ve got a nurse at last. You know, they couldn’t get one for love or money; none of the London places had any to spare.”

  “I should have thought they could get one from one of the Questerham hospitals.”