Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  Morris did not dare to ask her why she had not gone with them. He longed to hear her make the admission that she had been waiting for him, but contented himself with walking beside her in silence as she directed her steps towards the sloping paddock that had been converted into an orchard.

  There was a wooden bench set in the furthest corner, and Rosamund sat down there without speaking. Morris flung himself upon the grass.

  There was silence.

  Then Morris, looking up at her, said: “Tell me about everything. Everything that the Hungarian dance made you feel last night, and why you say that you’re not musical, and — everything.”

  She did not tell him everything. But she told him, with a curious mixture of childish simplicity and of a most unchildish vehemence, a great deal; more even than she knew.

  Morris listened, understood in a sort of passion of sympathy, and looked all the while at her beautiful, unsmiling face.

  He noticed that she was strangely impersonal. She hardly spoke of people at all, except once, when she said, “I have always got Francie. I love her better than anyone in the world.” Of her guardian she did not say anything. But a lesser intuition than that of Morris Severing would have felt an intense rebelliousness to be the keynote of her whole life at Porthlew.

  The magic afternoon sped by, and the shadows lengthened across the grass.

  Hazel Tregaskis called “Rosamund!” from the terrace, and they looked at one another with eyes that had suddenly awakened to another reality. Morris sprang to his feet.

  “Thank you, Rosamund,” he said softly.

  Suddenly the laugh appeared again in his blue eyes.

  “Do you know, we’ve known one another four — five — years, and I’ve never really found you till last night!”

  “I don’t think I found myself till you played the Hungarian dance,” Rosamund told him seriously.

  Hazel did not express any surprise at seeing Morris Severing. He surmised that she would not often express surprise. The charming assurance which characterized her seemed to imply that Hazel Tregaskis would accept or ignore very much as she chose, with little or no reference to any standards but her own.

  “Have you come to tea, Morris?” she inquired easily.

  “Mother’s on the terrace. Isn’t it a shame to think of leaving the garden and everything next week?”

  “Yes,” said Morris energetically. “It’s perfectly rotten.

  Where are you going? Must you go?”

  “I suppose so,” she returned, shrugging her shoulders.

  “We’ve both told mother how much we should prefer to refuse invitations to shooting-parties, but she won’t hear of it.”

  “You’ll enjoy them when you’re there,” morosely remarked Morris, with a sudden vision of Rosamund watching some ass bringing down partridges by the dozen. Morris was not a good shot.

  “That’s the worst of it!” cried Hazel with mock pathos.

  “Of course I shall! I always do enjoy going anywhere, and then mother says, ‘What did I tell you?’ Now Rosamund at least has the satisfaction of being consistent. She is quite genuinely bored wherever we go. She didn’t even enjoy going to dances.”

  Morris looked much relieved.

  “Didn’t you really?” he asked Rosamund.

  “Not much,” she admitted.

  It was the last satisfaction that he obtained that afternoon. Mrs. Tregaskis, with a readiness born of long habit, made her guest useful by requesting him to roll the tennis lawn, while Rosamund and Frances hunted languidly amongst the bushes for tennis balls lost the previous afternoon. Hazel had prudently disappeared.

  “Economy, economy!” shouted Mrs. Tregaskis blithely, and hacked with a racquet at the long grass concealing the roots amongst which possible tennis balls might be imbedded.

  Morris wondered if the same admirable virtue caused his hostess to refrain from inviting him to stay and dine at Porthlew that evening, but when she showed no such inclination at seven o’clock he felt obliged to exclaim: “I say, how late it is! I must be getting back.”

  “Give my love to your mother,” said Bertha cordially.

  “She must come over again before we go up North.”

  “I’ll drive her over,” declared Morris with alacrity.

  “Good-bye.”

  All that evening he was haunted by Rosamund’s deep eyes, by the sound of her sweet, serious voice. He told himself exultantly that he had met his ideal, and that he, and he alone was capable of loving her as she should be loved. He also cursed himself as a cold-blooded fool for not having told her then and there of his love. What senseless scruple had restrained him? He resolved to see her again the next day.

  Rosamund, that night, lay awake till dawn in an excitement that was as utterly out of proportion as were all her emotions. She told herself, in pure and single-minded earnestness, that this, which was to transmute her life to gold, was different to anything else in the world.

  Morris, who had fallen in love before, also told himself, with fiery determination, that this was different to anything else in the world.

  VI

  THE sooner I pack up my young lady and take her off to Scotland, the better, I think,” said Bertha decisively.

  “It’s all so silly,” sighed Nina vaguely. “But I really don’t know — I shouldn’t mind it, you know, Bertie, if he seriously wants it — only I think he’s too young. I’ve always hoped he’d marry a daughter of yours, and Rosamund’s as good as your daughter, though between ourselves, I’ve always been fonder of both the other two.”

  “Well — it may do very well when he’s a little older.

  But don’t take it too seriously, Nina, my dear; it’s only a violent admiration for a pretty face.”

  “He hasn’t been proposing to her, or anything ridiculous of that kind?” asked Nina nervously.

  “Not that I know of, dear. He must know very well that, situated as he is, he can’t possibly think of marrying — unless, of course, you made it possible for him.”

  “Of course, in a way, I want to see him married.”

  “Not at that age, dearest. Why, the boy can’t know his own mind.”

  “No. Poor Morris! And he is frightfully unbalanced.”

  “So’s she,” said Bertha Tregaskis quickly. “Her be a right-down fulish li’l maid, I tells ‘er.”

  “Oh, you’ve spoken to her?”

  “Only laughed at her in a wholesome way, my dear.

  Neither she nor Frances have a vestige of humour about them — everything is always au grand serieux. That’s one reason why I don’t believe she and Morris would ever really suit one another.”

  Nina deftly seized her opportunity.

  “Morris certainly has inherited my sense of humour,” she observed pensively.

  “Why, the other day he laughed so much at one of those stupid dialect imitations of mine, that I simply had to stop and chuckle myself. It was too infectious,” cried Bertie, with a laugh at the recollection.

  “Poor boy!” smiled Nina tolerantly, and leaving it uncertain whether or not she was pitying Morris for his easy appreciation of Cornish rusticisms as rendered by Mrs. Tregaskis. “But, seriously, Bertie dear, it would be no bad thing if later on they are both in earnest — only just at present I think we’d better be hard-hearted, and not let it come to anything definite.”

  “It’s unlucky that visit of ours having fallen through,” observed Bertha thoughtfully. “It keeps us here for another ten days before the Scotch visits, and I can’t very well forbid Morris to come to the house.”

  “He’s there morning, noon, and night, I’m afraid,” sighed Nina.

  “Oh, well, I flatter myself that I know how to manage a youngster of his age. I’ll see if I can’t get an opportunity to make Master Morris see reason.”

  The opportunity was ahead of her.

  At Porthlew Rosamund, coming downstairs, saw Morris wandering aimlessly round the hall.

  At the sound of her footfall he looked
up, and came towards her, impetuous and good-looking.

  “Oh, Morris!” she cried.

  He was halfway up the stairs and had caught both her hands in his.

  “Rosamund, darling!” The grip of her strong, slender hands answered his, but there was a sort of questioning sound in her exclamation.

  “Dearest,” said Morris with gentle surprise, “you know I adore you, don’t you? Don’t you love me?”

  Mrs. Tregaskis, entering the hall briskly, in spite of her long, hot walk, found them on the stairs, Morris holding Rosamund’s hands in his, and gazing up at her with adoration in his handsome, boyish face.

  “Tut, tut, what have we here?” cried Bertha, with sufficient lightness in her tone to render a reply unnecessary.

  “Rosamund, you ought to be out of doors on a day like this.

  Waste of God’s own sunshine to coop yourself up with a book. I shall turn you and Francie out on the moor the minute lunch is over.”

  “Francie has a headache,” said Rosamund, with the quick, defensive gleam in her eyes that her guardian’s cavalier treatment of Frances’ numerous minor ailments always roused.

  “She won’t get rid of it by sitting indoors,” returned Bertha decisively.

  “Morris, you’ll stay to lunch, will you?”

  “Thank you,” he said, rather naively surprised. Mrs. Tregaskis had not been prodigal of invitations recently. A vista of the moorland sweep and Rosamund opened before him, only to be blotted out by the voice of Mrs. Tregaskis, its native ring of good-humoured decision somehow emphasized: “You and I will have a little ploy of our own, Morris, when I’ve driven my lazybones out to take some exercise. I want a chat with you.”

  She nodded, with her implacable kindliness, and asked where Frances was.

  “In her room,” said Rosamund rather sullenly. “She is lying down.”

  “Lying down at twelve o’clock in the morning! — and on a day like this,” added Bertha, with another reproachful glance at the cracked, baking ground and still sunlight outside. “Is her head very bad?”

  “Yes.”

  “I must go and investigate. I expect she needs one of my special compresses of eau de Cologne and cold water.

  Well, well!”

  She began to mount the stairs slowly, making no attempt to disguise that her walk had slightly tired her.

  “Stairs are no joke, at my age,” she panted laughingly over her shoulder to Morris; “and with my figure. I be growin’ a bit broad-like across, ma dear!”

  Morris laughed, and watched her disappear up the first short flight of stairs. He turned to Rosamund rather shyly.

  Shyness was not at all inherent in Morris Severing, but the advent of Mrs. Tregaskis and her few crisp, kindly sentences, had somehow cut across the atmosphere of joyous security in which he had met Rosamund that morning.

  As he turned to her, Bertha’s broad face, reddened by heat and exertion, appeared over the balusters.

  “Rosamund, my dear, come up here a minute, will you?”

  Rosamund gave Morris a look in which appeal and defiance seemed oddly to mingle, and in her turn disappeared.

  Morris Severing was left disconsolate in the hall. It was of no amusement to him, although he gave the purely perfunctory laugh of civility, when Miss Blandflower, hovering on the threshold of the porch, said to him with a nervous laugh: “Monarch of all you survey, I see.”

  “Have you been gardening?” he inquired with polite superfluity, at the same time relieving her of an earth-encrusted trowel and a basket overflowing with plantain and dandelion roots.

  “Oh yes,” she giggled. “Those horrible weeds! There’s no rest for the wicked.”

  “But you’re not wicked at all, Miss Blandflower,” he assured her gravely. “Only too good, to tire yourself like this. Come and rest in the hall.”

  Minnie looked doubtful.

  She compromised by hovering restlessly between the hall door and the window, thereby keeping Morris on his feet, while she gazed longingly at the sofa, set under the cool of a huge stand of white daisies and geraniums.

  “Very hot,” she sighed, passing an earthy hand over her heated face. “Well, if you won’t think me too fearfully lazy.”

  Miss Blandflower was always protesting feebly against accusations that no sane mind could ever have entertained against her.

  “Of course not. I should be much happier if you’d only sit down till lunch,” said Morris with truth. The exhausted Minnie sank down thankfully, murmuring “A jo-fia is always a luxury, isn’t it,” and the next moment bounding agitatedly to her feet as the gong reverberated through the hall, and Frederick Tregaskis was heard emerging from the study.

  Minnie looked at her large earthy hands with an expression of horror, muttered something about would these little hands never be clean, and fled.

  It was with a sense almost of fatality, as though such a thing must inevitably happen where Miss Blandflower was concerned, that Morris watched, without having time to prevent it, a collision between her and her host at the foot of the stairs.

  “Oh, Mr. Tregaskis,” shrieked Minnie, “I beg your pardon — I’d no idea — so stupid of me.”

  “Do not apologize,” said Frederick, in tones of ice and casting a look of concentrated venom at the overwhelmed Miss Blandflower. “And pray do not be late for luncheon.”

  “I’ve been gardening,” she gasped, displaying the trophies of toil in unattractively blackened finger-nails and hardened palms.

  “So I perceive. I believe the gong has sounded?”

  “Yes, oh yes. I feel I’ve earned my lunch,” cried Minnie, disappearing as fast as she could.

  “My wife’s protégé,” remarked Frederick, as usual carefully disassociating himself from his spouse, “has, to my certain knowledge, made that remark before every meal for the past fourteen years.”

  “I’m sure it’s a very true one, sir,” said Morris with what he supposed to be a ready courtesy, and only the expression of rather sardonic amusement which his host disconcertingly turned upon him at intervals throughout the meal, betrayed to Morris that his ready adaptability had led him to make an almost too apropos rejoinder to Frederick Tregaskis’ peculiar form of pleasantry.

  Morris sat between Hazel and her mother, and was able to look at Rosamund on the opposite side of the table. She hardly once raised her eyes to his, but when she did so, he saw a light in them that brought an answering ardour to his own gaze.

  He had hardly a glance to spare for Hazel Tregaskis, whose tawny hair seemed to radiate sparkles, even as her charming personality radiated vitality. Frances, beside her, looked pale and languid, with dark circles round her eyes, and as soon as luncheon was over Morris heard Mrs. Tregaskis say to her affectionately: “You’d better go upstairs to the boudoir, Francie, and curl up on the sofa. I’ll come up in a minute and see if we can’t find something for the poor head.”

  “Thank you. Cousin Bertie.”

  Mrs. Tregaskis looked round, almost like a general arranging for the dispersal of a superfluous staff.

  “Hazel, on with the hat again! I’m not going to have you dashing out in this sun with nothing on your head. I suppose you and Minnie want to go up to the moors? and you must take this lazy child with you.”

  She laid a possessive hand upon Rosamund’s shoulder.

  “Dear Mrs. Tregaskis, there’s that tiny wee little patch down by the pond that I meant to finish this afternoon,” breathed Miss Blandflower, evidently uncertain whether she was supposed to be pining for moorland air, or eager to finish her weeding.

  “No, no, Minnie.” Mrs. Tregaskis’ tone left no further room for doubt upon the point. “You did far too much this morning. You know I’m always telling you not to choose the very hottest time of day for weeding. I dare say Morris and I will turn our energies to that patch by the pond, and surprise you when you get in. Now then, off with you!”

  “But am I not to go to the moors too?” demanded Morris, half amused and half vexed, and who
lly desirous of an afternoon in Rosamund’s company. Bertha appeared to consider.

  “How would it be if we took up tea to them, later?” she said, with an air of suggestion. “That’s what we’ll do, and you can help me to carry the tea-basket. I dare say Francie will be able to come with us by that time, poor child. It will be cooler for her.

  “Good-bye, you dear people. We shall meet again later — under the wych-elm, Minnie, you know. Four o’clock.”

  Morris dashed out and opened the gate for them.

  “You’ll walk back with me,” he said hurriedly to Rosamund, and read her answer in her eyes, before turning back with discontent in his own, to where Bertha Tregaskis awaited him.

  She surveyed him with unabashed gaze.

  “Well, you think I’m an interfering, tiresome old spoilsport, don’t you, Morris? But I really must have a talk with you, and I don’t feel you’re going to be very angry with me, somehow. After all, we’re very old friends.”

  She laughed at him with a sort of friendly pleading in her look, and Morris laughed a little too. He had always liked his mother’s friend.

  “Let’s sit down in the shade, and leave the weeding till it’s cooler. And now, my dear boy, I’m going straight to the point. I always face up to my fences boldly — at least I used to, in the good old days when Frederick could afford to keep a couple of gees in the stables. You mustn’t make love to my little girl.”

  Morris, to his fury, felt himself colouring hotly. He could not think what to say.

  “You see,” said Bertie, carefully looking away from him, “it isn’t as though you were both of you a few years older.

  You’ve neither of you seen anything of the world, and Rosamund is in some ways very undeveloped and young for her age. I don’t want either of you to take this attraction seriously — at any rate for the present.”

  “Has my mother been talking to you?” demanded Morris rather sullenly.

  Bertha hesitated for a moment.

  “She’s only said what I felt quite sure of already — that she thinks you too young to entertain any idea of — marriage, for instance.”

  She looked at him narrowly as she spoke, and Morris coloured again.