To Joanna Vivian, presiding over the altered establishment at Plessing, time brought many outlets for the unquenchable spirit of energy that would always possess her. She brought gaiety to her work, and laughter that was as unofficial as her inveterate habit of referring all questions of discipline to Dr. Prince, and the management of each individual branch to the helper in charge of it. Joanna’s staff was not a large one, and each member of it had her own special and peculiar interest in the work given into her hands.
It was in vain that Lesbia Willoughby, from London, wrote impassioned accounts to her poor dear Joanna of the many activities in which her days and nights appeared to fly past. “Wounded Colonials, blinded officers, Flag-days, hospitals, canteens, Red Cross entertainments — I have my finger in every single war-pie that’s going, and I can’t tell you how too utterly twee some of the dear fellows are with whom I get into touch. If you’ll only trust that sulky girl of yours to me for six months, I could do wonders for her, and probably get her off your hands altogether. After all, dear, we can never forget that you and I were girls together, can we?”
“Lesbia never means to forget it, that’s clear enough,” was the sole comment of Lady Vivian.
She did not go through the form of transferring Mrs. Willoughby’s invitation to her daughter. It gradually became evident that the Director of the Midland Supply Depôt would accord but little of her fully occupied time to a convalescent home not supplied from her own depôt, and as Joanna said to Grace, with her habitual slight shrug: “It may be just as well, my dear. I’m not Miss Bruce, and Char and I haven’t the same way of looking at things. She vexed and disappointed her father, and no amount of eloquence about her high and mighty motives will ever make me altogether forget it. I shall never be able to hear her talk about her position as Director of the Midland Supply Depôt without thinking what a fool I was not to smack her well when she was a child.”
Thus Joanna, half laughing, but with the eternal loneliness that all John’s steadfast loyalty and Grace’s loving companionship would never altogether assuage still underlying the dauntless youthfulness in her blue eyes.
For Trevellyan the months succeeded one another, strangely monotonous. In company with a hundred thousand others “somewhere in France,” he moved between the mud and noise and blood in the trenches, and the eternal dreary billets where letters from home and the need of sleep were the only considerations. But to his Grace in England Johnnie wrote cheerily, of hope and good courage, and peace dawning on a far horizon, and of the prospect of ten days’ leave.
To Char Vivian, Director of the Midland Supply Depôt, the advancing year, imperceptibly enough, brought certain solutions and enlightenments.
The personal fascination that she could exert when she willed would always secure for her a following of blindly devoted adherents, but her influence was not always strong enough to retain their admiration. Insensibly, Char modified a little of her arbitrariness.
“They put so much else before the work,” she said helplessly to Miss Bruce.
But Char’s perceptions were never lacking in acumen, and she became more and more aware of the truth of Joanna’s prognostication that the work of the Supply Depôt would be done for its own sake, and for that of the cause in whose name it existed. And it was perhaps that awareness which brought to her a gradual realization of motives in her own self-devotion hitherto unacknowledged to herself.
The Director of the Midland Supply Depôt might sit day after day and hour after hour at her paper-strewn table, issuing orders and receiving the official interviews and communications that so clearly indicated the high responsibility of her position, but Char Vivian grew to exercise a certain discretion in the matter of her return to the meals and rest so anxiously watched over by Miss Bruce, whose adoring loyalty was hers beyond any possibility of shaking.
In those occasional unofficial concessions to her imploring solitude might, after all, be numbered the most creditable achievements of Miss Vivian.
LONDON, 1917.
THE END
THE PELICANS
Released in the same year as The War Workers, The Pelicans tells the story of two young orphan girls, who are taken into a convent. Largely based on Delafield’s own experiences in a convent for a year, the novel describes the cruel world of a convent and how Frances Severing, the unfortunate novice of the story, suffers from want of sleep in graphic detail. The first half of the narrative is written as a satirical comedy, though midway through the novel the tone changes when Frances decides to go to the convent.
CONTENTS
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII
XXIX
XXX
I
“AS a matter of fact — although one hates to say such a thing” Lady Argent paused, in order to give the thing its full conversational value. “As a matter of absolute fact, those poor children are really to be congratulated.”
“Because they are left orphans at five years old?”
“How you exaggerate, Ludovic! Rosamund is quite fourteen, and the little one can’t be less than ten or eleven years old. And she wasn’t much of a mother to them, poor thing.”
“Well, what form did her modified motherhood take?”
“Ludovic, she is dead, after all,” Lady Argent reminded her son. “But she was so much absorbed in her music, and they didn’t get any proper education, as far as one knows.
And then, of course, during this last year she was quite obviously dying — she ought really to have been in a sanatorium.”
“She must have been quite young,” said Ludovic Argent reflectively.
“Only about seven- or eight-and-thirty. Don’t you remember when she first settled here, just after the husband died, and we were all so excited about this pretty young widow and that enormous grand piano that had to be forced in at the front-door with such difficulty?”
“I suppose I was at Oxford then, since I don’t remember the sensation which the grand piano must indeed have caused, if they got it through the front-door of that small place.”
Ludovic Argent and his mother both gazed across the valley below, because the front-door under discussion was immediately opposite their own, although separated from it by two slopes of hill and the River Wye. Only the windowpanes twinkling in the afternoon sun were visible.
“And what will happen to her grand piano now? I suppose it will have to be got out again,” said Ludovic nonchalantly.
“That’s what I was just telling you,” Lady Argent mistakenly reassured him. “In a way they really are to be congratulated, poor little things. I believe Bertie Tregaskis is going to look after them.”
“Is that the woman who pervades Cornwall with model dairies and good works generally, and if so, what is she doing in this galbre?”
“She was a cousin of Mrs. Grantham’s, and the very day after Mrs. Grantham became so much worse Bertie was down here to see after those poor little girls. So exactly like her, because it wasn’t a particularly near relationship or anything — simply one of her magnificent, generous impulses. They really have nobody, poor waifs; the mother doesn’t seem to have had any belongings at all, or if she had, they are Hungarians of sorts, and much better not raked up, in all probability.”
“It is difficult to see who is available to do the raking, certainly,” Ludovic admitted.
“Oh, Bertie would do anything that was right, of course, but she’s simply solved the whole problem by saying she’ll take them home
with her. A woman who’s got more responsibilities already than anyone I know — and a child of her own besides — it really is rather magnificent of her, Ludovic.”
“But haven’t they got any guardian or anything?”
“Nothing at all. That’s one of the things that shows you what poor Mrs. Grantham was. Although she must have known for at least a year that she was dying, she never made any sort or kind of will. As a matter of fact I don’t suppose she had anything to leave, and the father’s money is safely secured for the two girls, Bertie says.”
“So Mrs. Tregaskis won’t have to take them for charity, so to speak?”
“Oh no! I don’t think even she could do that, wonderful manager though she is. She’s not at all well off. But of course it’s everything for girls of that age — or of any age, for that matter — to have a home. And she’ll be such a mother to them! She always says she was meant to be the mother of a large family and is wasted with just one little girl.”
“So the children are to be congratulated,” remarked Ludovic meditatively, as though summing up the situation.
“Well,” said his mother apologetically, “you know what I mean. Poor Mrs. Grantham was so ill, and she really was erratic — those long earrings, and all that music, and she seemed altogether more Hungarian than English, which was natural enough, I dare say, but not the best sort of thing for the daughters of an English father. One wouldn’t say anything unkind for the world — de mortuis — you know what I mean, dear, though I can never recollect the end of that proverb — or is it some sort of text?”
“I know what you mean,” Ludovic gravely assured her.
This untruth had been for many years his conversational cheval-de-bataille in intercourse with his mother.
“You always do, darling,” she returned gratefully. “So much more like a daughter than a son.”
She sighed, and Ludovic wondered if the sigh were a tribute to the thought of her own non-existent daughter, or to the infirmity which had kept her only son at home, to limp his way through life in the Wye valley.
“Anyway,” his mother concluded as though presenting a final solution, “Bertie is bringing the poor children here this afternoon to say good-bye to me. It will be very good for them to come out, and Bertie is so wonderfully broadminded — there’s no conventional nonsense about her. I do want you to meet her, Ludovic.”
“Very well, mother dear. I’m rather curious, I’ve heard so much about her.”
Towards five o’clock of that crisp October afternoon, Ludovic Argent’s curiosity was gratified.
He limped into the library and found his mother in earnest conversation with her friend.
Bertha Tregaskis was a woman of forty-five, and the dominant impression produced upon Ludovic was one of intense capability. Her strong black hair, untouched with grey, sprang crisp and wiry from a capacious forehead, and the broad contour of her strong face revealed innumerable lines, hinting at the many activities indicated by Lady Argent. Her white, rather prominent teeth were freely revealed as she greeted Ludovic with the sane, ample smile in which she seemed to envelop all her surroundings.
“This is a sad expedition of mine, but I’m very glad to meet Sybil’s son at last; I’ve heard of you so often.”
Her voice was very much what he had expected from her appearance — full, rather deep, and with a native decision of utterance.
“And I of you, from my mother and — in Cornwall.”
“Ah, Cornwall!” She laughed outright. “I be Carnish wumman, sure ‘nuff.”
Her instant assumption of the Cornish burr, natural and almost instinctive though it appeared to be, irritated Ludovic.
With a quickness of perception which he was to learn was characteristic of her, Mrs. Tregaskis appeared to perceive it.
“I suspect you heard of me as ‘Miss Bertie,’ since I am never allowed to be anything else down there. I do believe that half Cornwall knew me as ‘Miss Bertie’ until I married, and the name has stuck. At home, when I’m in the village with Hazel, all the old women stand at their doors and tell each other “’tis Miss Bertie and her l’il maid.’”
“‘L’il maid ‘ — how perfectly priceless,” murmured the sympathetic Lady Argent, as in duty bound. Ludovic, again conscious of unreasonable annoyance, found himself wondering captiously whether anyone ever spoke of anyone else as a “l’il maid” outside the pages of a novel in dialect, his pet aversion. The phrase seemed too probable to be possible.
“Have you come from the Granthams’ place?” he demanded abruptly, impelled by a vicious desire to abandon the cloying topic of “Miss Bertie” and the atmosphere of local adulation of which she seemed to him redolent.
Where else should she have come from? He was aware that the question was ridiculous to the verge of politeness, but she replied, with all her armour of cheery friendliness unimpaired: “Yes, I’ve brought those two poor little girls, but your mother very kindly let them go out and play in the garden. So much better for them, after being shut up these last few days. I shall be very glad to get them home to-morrow; a change is the only thing.”
Her eyes, charged with kindly meanings, sought the sympathetic response of Lady Argent’s gaze.
“Of course it is. And they are too young to feel any wrench at leaving the place. It will probably be a relief to get right away from the atmosphere — and then, of course, they’ll love to be with your Hazel.”
“They’ve seen far too little of other children, and so, for the matter of that, has Hazel,” declared Bertha Tregaskis briskly. “I expect half a dozen rows royal to begin with, but the prospect doesn’t daunt me, on the whole.”
“I’m sure you’ll cope with all and any of it,” returned Lady Argent with a glance of fond admiration.
Ludovic felt sure of it too, but his sureness was untempered by either fondness or admiration.
He felt a strong desire to be matter-of-fact, almost disagreeable as far as possible, in this atmosphere of competent kindness.
“I shall go and fetch them in to tea,” he announced, reaching for his stick that was almost a crutch.
“Do, dear.”
As he went out at the French window Ludovic heard his mother murmuring wistfully: “He is so fond of children.”
He knew that she fostered this idea because she wished him to marry. He told himself that, in point of fact, he was not fond of children at all, and supposed that she based her assertion on an isolated liking for the intelligent small boy of an under-gardener.
Presently he saw the two children, in very modified mourning, under a great ilex-tree at the bottom of the garden. They were sitting on a bench side by side, very quietly, but they both rose at the sound of his crutch on the gravel.
“How do you do?” said Ludovic gravely, and shook hands with them both.
His first thought was that it was not fair to speak of Rosamund Grantham, at all events, as a child, to bring her out to tea, as though she were in need of childish diversion to make her forget a childish sorrow, to send her to play in the garden. He thought that perhaps she also had felt it so.
Resentment smouldered in her dark-ringed eyes, and in the sulkily-cut lines of her very beautiful mouth.
There was much to recall the Slavonic type in her, in the high moulding of the cheek-bones, the straight, rather blunt nose, opaque ivory complexion, and straight black brows. Her eyes, sombre and heavy-lidded, were of a colour seldom seen in England — the true tint of clear deep grey. Her build, however, showed no trace of a squat, square-standing, Hungarian ancestry. She was very tall for her thirteen years, but gave the impression of having already almost attained to her full growth. Straight and square-shouldered, she was far too thin for beauty, from the defiant curve of neck and upheld chin to the long slim fingers, betraying sensitiveness in every outstanding blue vein and narrowed finger-tip.
Ludovic Argent, then and thereafter, thought that he had never seen a creature more at odds with her world and her passionate unbalanced self, than
was Rosamund Grantham.
Frances, her face at eleven years old already bearing the impress of the dreamer in the steadfast gaze of eyes as grey as those of her sister, gave a sense of reliance and purpose fulness that seemed to Ludovic amazing. Her small face had a classical delicacy of outline, her mouth was pathetically childish. Both had the same very soft brown hair growing in a curious little point on the low square forehead, and seeming too light in colour and texture for the dark brows and lashes beneath.
Both greeted Ludovic with serious self-possession, but Frances smiled at him a little, timidly, revealing teeth that sloped inwards.
“My mother sent me to tell you that tea is ready. She is in the library with Mrs. Tregaskis,” he said.
“Shall we come, then?” murmured Rosamund conventionally. Her manner was that of a princess, and he surmised that whatever the Hungarian past of Mrs. Grantham might have concealed, a very secure assurance in her own ineradicable birthright and breeding had descended to her daughter.
“You have been here before, I know,” he said, as they walked towards the house. “I expect I was at Oxford, or abroad,” he added hastily, cursing himself for the allusion which might recall expeditions with the dead mother.
But Rosamund adjusted the trend of the conversation as easily as she adjusted her pace to his halting steps.
“How nice to go abroad,” she said wistfully. “You must know a lot of places. Have you been to Russia?”
“No,” said Ludovic, and almost found himself asking, “Have you?” as though to a contemporary.
“Neither have I, of course,” Rosamund assured him rather apologetically, “but I am very much interested in it just at present; I’ve been reading about Siberia.”
“What was the book?”
“Oh, it’s only a children’s book — and I think it’s rather old-fashioned — one about Siberian exiles.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 57
