Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  “I can’t live on you for ever,” said Morris angrily. His father’s will, made before Morris was born, had left everything unreservedly to Nina.

  “There’s no question of your living on me. You are my only child, and everything that is mine is yours,” tearfully exclaimed Nina, who gave her son a fixed moderate allowance, and had never allowed him to know the extent either of her fortune or her income, still less to infringe in the slightest degree upon her absolute power as mistress of the estate.

  “Besides, I want your help.”

  A servant opened the door.

  “If you please, madam, Mr. Bartlett is here, and would like to speak to you a moment.”

  Decidedly, the stars were fighting for Nina Severing.

  She rose, with a gentle, sorrowful glance at her son.

  “More business,” she sighed wearily, and left the room with her tardy, trailing step.

  Morris, left alone, became instantly inspired with a number of conclusive arguments and dignified retorts which should have left his parent defenceless. He went through several imaginary conversations, with eloquence and reason on his side. But imaginary victories are but poor consolation for a defeat. Presently Morris groaned, ran his fingers through his thick hair, and muttered half aloud: “Thwarted at every step. It’s enough to make one take the law into one’s own hands and go.”

  He was always slightly dramatic, even when alone.

  “What is there for a man to do down here? Mother won’t even get a car.”

  He reflected gloomily that few other chaps of his acquaintance were unable so much as to drive a motor-car, and then rebounded hastily on to the more exalted plane.

  “Besides — music! It’s the only thing on earth. I shall go mad if I can’t take it up properly.”

  His eyes lighted up, very much as he meant them to do, with the fire of the enthusiast, and he paced the room rapidly.

  Presently a note in his mother’s handwriting was brought to him. His brow clouded. Nina’s written appeals, of which she was, like most weak natures, prodigal, never failed to irritate Morris, who had not yet learnt to be eloquent on paper.

  “Darling,” she wrote with many dashes and splashes of her pen, “do not wait for luncheon. I shall be some time with Mr. Bartlett, and cannot interrupt business. Do think over our talk. I had a little surprise for you these holidays, which I meant to tell you later, but perhaps it may cheer you up. I am going to get the car you wanted so much, and Mr.

  Bartlett tells me he knows of a very good place in Bodmin.

  We might go in to-morrow and see, and perhaps arrange for some driving lessons for you. It will help you to get at some good music, too, and lessons, if you want them, later.”

  Morris stood confounded. By such unexpected volte faces and sudden generosities, did his mother cause all his resentment to appear ungrateful and futile. He felt angry with her, and at the same time touched, and ashamed of his own anger. Perhaps most of all he felt bewildered. Then he thought of the motor-car, his ambition for the past two years. It would make all the difference to Pensevern. He saw himself, a dashing, reckless driver, yet skilled in hairbreadth escapes, leaning back in the driving seat with his cap pulled over his eyes, and one careless hand on the wheel — negligent, cool, yet infinitely competent.

  These pleasing reveries were not new to Morris, but they had never before been illuminated by any spark of probability. He was happy for some time. But presently be became once more gloomy.

  No number of motor-cars would convey him to Germany or enable him to make music his career. The motor-car was his mother’s bribe to keep him at home.

  Morris flushed at the thought, and tried to ignore a subconscious conviction, rapidly forcing itself upon him, that a motor-car in the garage was worth more than a career in the future.

  It was, of course, absurd. Motor-cars did not alter the whole course of a man’s lifetime.

  Did his mother really mean it? Morris turned to her letter again. It was explicit enough, and he was also struck by the note of appeal sounded. Inspiration came to him slowly. The appeal of a widowed mother! Might not the whole ambition of a lifetime be worthily sacrificed to that? Motor-cars might, as it were, be flung in by an admiring Providence, but they should not be allowed to affect the main issue.

  The vision of the dashing young mechanic was hastily relinquished in favour of that of a morose, disappointed man, his career sacrificed to the whim of his mother, his passion for music thwarted by harsh circumstances in early youth.

  “The world has lost a great musician there,” he fancied might be the sorrowful reply to inquiries about the strong, silent figure whose story would be so well known to every tenant on the estate in the long years to come.

  “I will stay. I will give it all up,” declared Morris to himself, and felt a genuine pang at the renunciation.

  The pang, recurring at ever-widening intervals, was destined to remain a source of satisfaction to him for a number of years.

  V

  MORRIS SEVERING reappears in these pages, after an indifferently successful but lighthearted career at Oxford, not as a disappointed genius, but as an extremely good-looking young man, in love with life, with his own universal popularity, and with the goddess of music.

  That he should seriously fall in love with a more earthly divinity was at once Nina’s hope and her terror. She watched the three little girls at Porthlew growing up rapidly, and spent the long vacations with her son abroad or in London. He was very little at Pensevern until the summer when Mrs. Tregaskis took Hazel and Rosamund to London.

  Frances Grantham, only sixteen, and delicate, remained at Porthlew with Miss Blandflower “to keep Cousin Frederick company,” Mrs. Tregaskis told her.

  Nina was not very much afraid that her son would fall in love with Frances. She was pretty, in a slender, classical style, but lacking in vitality, and though she came up to Pensevern and played tennis and, occasionally, golf, with Morris, she did so with the curious lack of conviction that was characteristic of her dealings with the material world.

  From a psychological point of view Frances was infinitely more mature than Rosamund, passionate and unbalanced, or than Hazel, possessed of a sense of humour (which both sisters lacked almost completely), and charming withal; but Nina Severing, with great acumen, decided that only Frances could safely be promoted to the rank of “my little favourite.”

  Her little favourite, being idealistic and impressionable, conceived a youthful adoration for Nina’s gentle tones, appealing prettiness, and tuneful graces, and refrained, with a completeness which spoke highly for Nina’s judgment, from transferring any of that adoration to Nina’s son.

  As for Morris, it was enough that he once heard Frances Grantham, with transparent sincerity, observe that the modern music she liked best was Mrs. Severing’s highly successful setting of half a dozen nouveau genre lyrics, entitled “Underworld.”

  “It’s rather odd that only one of them should have inherited the mother’s gift,” observed Nina thoughtfully, after this. “Of course she’s no performer, but that curious instinct for the right thing is absolutely inborn.”

  “I didn’t know Rosamund was musical,” said Morris, purposely and viciously misunderstanding his parent, and moreover making it perfectly clear to that parent’s acute perceptions why he did so. She set her lips together and assumed the look of pale self-control that habitually prefaced her most bitter shafts.

  “I’m just telling you that Frances is the only one of the two who has any music in her. Rosamund is absolutely devoid of it. If you had any spark of the Divine Fire in you, my dear boy, you could not have helped recognizing it in little Frances, even though she can hardly play a note. But, after all, one doesn’t expect much perception from youth.”

  She murmured the last words as though to herself, which added considerably to their effect.

  Morris, who was seldom able to think of any satisfactory repartee to his mother’s favourite gibe, hastily decided that a
good-humoured indifference would best refute it. He gave a slight laugh, shrugged his shoulders so as to make quite sure that Nina did not miss the point of the laugh, and observed lightly: “I hear Hazel Tregaskis sings delightfully. She always was good, even as a kid.”

  “Quite good,” agreed Nina, with that air of condescension best calculated to irritate her son. “Her voice is a charming one, but, of course, she has to live before she can really sing.” She hesitated for an instant, since the obvious slighting allusion to youth could hardly be brought in without some appearance of repeating a good effect ad nauseam.

  Morris, with his usual fatal perception, instantly took advantage of her slightly disconcerted pause, for which he perfectly grasped the reason, to say pleasantly: “I shall be able to judge when I hear her.” Upon which, having established his own perfect competence to form an independent opinion, he hastily left the room.

  That night they went to dinner at Porthlew, and he heard Hazel Tregaskis sing.

  Her voice, as Nina had said, was charming, and she played her own accompaniments.

  Nina sat well in the lamplight, an absorbed, dreamy look on her face, and her long, slight fingers slowly twisting her wedding ring, with a gesture which through long years of conscious pathos, had become habitual to her. Frederick Tregaskis, smaller and more wizened than ever, was frankly asleep in an armchair. His wife, devotedly knitting socks, yet contrived to present an attitude of critical intentness for her daughter’s performance.

  Frances was sitting at the open window, her pure, vague gaze fixed unseeingly on the darkened garden without.

  Morris scarcely glanced at her a moment.

  His eyes sought Rosamund, who had been beside him at dinner.

  She was sitting, very still, just outside the circle of light cast by the great standard lamp. Morris had already noticed her capacity for extreme stillness, oddly at variance with the restless questing spirit that looked out of her grey eyes, and certain vibrant tones of her singularly beautiful speaking-voice. Watching her motionless profile, Morris thought that the Slavonic type was strangely emphasized in the sharply defined moulding of the salient cheekbones, sulkily closed lips, and straight black brows. Pier skin was very white, and her brown hair thick and silky. Morris thought her very beautiful.

  He wondered what her thoughts were, as she leant back in her low chair, immovable. Presently, with that sureness of intuition which is at once a pitfall and a safeguard, Morris perceived that she was listening — intently, with every fibre of her being drawn tense.

  Hazel’s voice was a soprano of no great compass, well-trained, and with an indefinably pathetic quality which gave it charm, but the drawing-room ballads she had chosen to give them seemed to Morris trivial in the extreme. He had hardly been listening.

  He wondered what Rosamund Grantham heard in the clear soft notes.

  When Hazel had sung once or twice, and had received Nina Severing’s judicious comments with a sort of halfmocking deference that recalled her father’s manner, she turned to Morris.

  “Now you’ll play to us, won’t you?” she appealed.

  “Do,” cried Bertha heartily. “I haven’t heard you for years, Morris.”

  “His execution has improved, of course,” remarked Nina, who was fond of discussing her son’s music in his own presence.

  “Bodmin teaching is not all it might be,” was the retort of Morris, addressed to Mrs. Tregaskis. “I’ve had to do the best I can by myself.”

  “My dear boy!” protested his mother, with a laugh that to her son’s practised ear betrayed annoyance. “As though you hadn’t had the best lessons obtainable in Paris!”

  “Half a dozen — oh yes. They certainly helped me to carry on alone afterwards.”

  “You’ve had your mother to help you, my boy; mustn’t forget that,” suddenly said Frederick Tregaskis from his corner. He chuckled a little: “Mustn’t forget that.”

  “Do play something to us, Morris,” interposed Hazel quickly. She looked at him with the eternal laugh dancing in her pretty eyes.

  But Morris had turned to Rosamund.

  “Shall I?” he asked her, aware of the subtlety of such an appeal.

  “Yes,” she said gently, looking at him.

  Morris possessed an almost irresistible attraction, one which is sometimes the attribute of weak natures — an exceedingly direct gaze.

  He looked straight at Rosamund, and his eyes smiled at her.

  “Then I am going to play to you,” he said under his breath, with the lightest possible emphasis. He turned to the piano at once, but not before he had seen the colour surge up into her face.

  He gave them the gayest, wildest, most heartrending of Brahms’ Hungarian dances. When he ceased there was silence for a moment. Nina Severing turned so that the lamplight fell on her long lashes, sparkling a little with tears.

  She always cried a little at music which deserved to be called good, and she had never heard Morris play so well.

  “Thank you, Morris,” said Bertha, less exuberantly than usual. “That’s a glorious thing — always rouses” the gipsy in me. It’s so full of life and joy and ecstasy.”

  “There is something curiously poignant underneath that ecstasy,” murmured Nina, partly to account for the sparkle on her eyelashes and partly to make it clear that Bertie did not by any means know all that there was to be known about Brahms.

  “Thank you very much,” softly said Hazel, elliptical, after the fashion of the modern generation.

  “It’s your turn again now. Please sing this,” he said, with an engaging mixture of supplication and command in his tone.

  He had picked up one of the songs strewing the table, almost at random, but she took it without demur, and advanced to the piano. Under cover of the opening bars he moved straight to where Rosamund sat in the shadow.

  His eyes sought hers, with a question in them. For a minute she remained quite still, her dark head bent. Then she raised it, and he saw that her eyes were blazing with intense excitement. “Oh it’s glorious,” she breathed, “to be able to play like that! It takes one right away from — all this.” She looked contemptuously at her surroundings.

  “Do you care so very much?” he asked under his breath.

  “Is music all that to you?”

  “But I’m not musical,” she said with defiant honesty.

  “It only makes me forget everything else.”

  Understanding flashed into Morris’s expressive face. At the same instant Nina turned towards him with a sharp hissing sound of distress and a prolonged “Hush-sh — Morris.”

  He was silent instantly.

  When Hazel’s song was over Nina Severing asked for her motor.

  “It has been so nice, dearest,” she murmured, embracing her hostess. “I’ve missed you too dreadfully all the summer, and now you’ll be off again in a week, I suppose.”

  “Oh yes, escorting my two young gadabouts to various country houses. I’m an old-fashioned woman, and don’t let my girls stay away alone, you know, unless I’m very sure of the house they’re going to. One would prefer one’s own chimney-corner, of course, but that’s neither here nor there.”

  She laughed cheerily.

  “For the matter of that,” cut in Hazel incisively, “I should much prefer the chimney-corner myself, mother, and so would Rosamund. You know how we’ve begged you to let us spend the autumn here in peace.”

  “Oh yes, yes, yes,” scoffed her mother good-humouredly.

  “I’ve heard little girls say that before, my darling.”

  Nina, too, laughed softly.

  “We mothers make our sacrifices for these young things in spite of themselves,” she declared lightly. “Good-night, Hazel. I hear you dance better than any girl in London.

  Make the most of your time, my dear. Good-night, Francie dear. Why, you’ve been as quiet as a little mouse all the evening. It’s very hard to play Cinderella, isn’t it, with your two ugly sisters going to the Ball every night?”

&n
bsp; They all laughed as though the time-worn allusion had not been made with almost daily regularity by Miss Blandflower.

  Frederick opened the door and Nina swept gracefully into the hall. Frances ran eagerly for her cloak, and the others came out more slowly.

  On the dark threshold of the porch Morris spoke to Rosamund.

  “I want to see you — I want to talk to you,” he said urgently. “Can’t I play to you again — just to you all alone? Though for the matter of that I played that Brahms to you. You did know, didn’t you?”

  He spoke with an odd inconsequence that was characteristic of his ardent, eager temperament.

  “I thought perhaps you did,” she murmured, not coquettishly, but almost sadly, with a sort of uncertainty in her voice.

  “Can’t I come over to-morrow? I must come. Where shall I find you?”

  “Where’s Morris?” called Bertha Tregaskis.

  “Coming,” he cried, and gave Rosamund one look before dashing into the hall.

  She did not speak to him again, but he held her hand for an instant at parting and said “Good-night, Rosamund,” blessing the wonderful privilege of childhood which had allowed him always to use her Christian name.

  Only a week and she would have gone away again! But doubt and diffidence were almost equally strangers to Morris, and he wove illimitable dreams into that space of eight days as he drove from Porthlew to Pensevern in the dark of an August night.

  The following afternoon he went to find Rosamund.

  She had given him no trysting-place — had not even said that he might come — but Morris knew no uncertainty. He did not go to the house, but sought the shade of the terrace, and found her alone, in the short avenue that led to Bertha’s cherished rock-garden.

  She was even paler than usual as she gave him her hand, and Morris, with the intuition that was always his surest guide, greeted her very gently and gravely.

  “Where were you going to?” he asked. “May I come with you?”

  “I was going into the orchard. It’s cooler there. The others have gone out.”