Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  Ruthie ate on.

  Lady Rossiter deepened the look and sought to convey its full inner meaning by dropping a pained glance at the jam-laden slab in Ruthie’s hand and then raising her eyebrows and slightly contracting the corners of her mouth.

  These signals being stolidly disregarded, there only remained to say, in very gentle accents:

  “Are you always allowed cake and jam together, dear?”

  “Always,” said Ruthie, with a face of brass, and in her voice an intensity of assurance that conveyed with certainty, to anyone as well conversant as was Lady Rossiter with the extremely low standard of truth prevailing in the Easter nursery establishment, that she was lying.

  Edna turned her gaze upon Ambrose.

  His face already bore the peculiarly glazed and pallid look that characterises over-eating, but on meeting Lady Rossiter’s eye he made a mighty effort to cram his remaining cake into an already bulging cheek.

  “You’ll choke, Peekaboo,” warned Ruthie, with only too much reason.

  Thereafter the conversation was adjusted to the accompaniment of the exceedingly distressing sounds proceeding intermittently from Ambrose.

  “Dear, dear a crumb gone the wrong way?” said the unobservant Iris. “You’ll be better in a minute, dear.”

  “I choked “began Ambrose wheezingly, obedient to the unwritten law which decrees that the victim of a choking fit should add to his own discomfort and that of other people by entering into a gasping analysis of the phenomenon.

  “Look at the ceiling, Ambrose,” advised Mark.

  Everyone in the room immediately set this desirable example by a sort of mysterious instinct, while the unfortunate Ambrose kept his head well down over his plate and continued to emit hysterical crows.

  “Look at me, Peekaboo!” shouted Ruthie. “I’m looking at the ceiling!”

  She hung backwards over her chair, glaring upwards with starting eyeballs.

  “Don’t do that, Ruthie,” said Mark, Iris and Lady Rossiter simultaneously.

  “Try and get your breath, laddie,” advised Mr. Garrett kindly, if with some superfluity.

  “He’ll be better in a moment. Go on talking,” was Lady Rossiter’s tactful suggestion, which had the immediate effect of paralysing the assembly into a silence upon which the paroxysms of Ambrose struck with greatly enhanced violence.

  Sir Julian threw himself into the breach, addressing himself to Mark Easter with an air of unconcern which he felt to be overdone.

  “Have you talked to Walters about the car for Tuesday? I told him you would let him know what time “Let’s pat Peekaboo on the back,” cried Ruthie hilariously.

  “Gently, then. Yes, Sir Julian, thanks very much, I... No, no, Ruthie stop that can’t you see you’re making him worse?”

  “Daddy, I just choked a crumb—”

  “For goodness’ sake don’t talk, Ambrose. You’d better go upstairs.”

  “I’m sure the child will have convulsions in another minute. Do look at his face! Douglas, don’t you think he’s turning black?”

  This last contribution of his Auntie Iris’ to the sum of calamities already overwhelming the distressed Ambrose caused him to burst into tears.

  “Do drink some tea, dear,” urged Lady Rossiter.

  “Take him upstairs, Ruthie,” said her parent wearily.

  The victim was removed, protesting inarticulately at the mirthful ministrations still insisted upon by his sister.

  Everyone was conscious of relief, and Lady Rossiter said tolerantly, “Poor little boy!”

  “He feels the wedding dreadfully” Iris observed.

  “Feels the wedding?”

  “Yes, you know, he’s afraid that it means losing me. I’ve always been so much with the dear kiddiewiddies.”

  “You’ve always been very fond of them, my dear, and they of you,” said Mark gratefully.

  “I should have liked little Peekaboo for a page,” said Iris sentimentally, “but he’s just the wrong size. And besides, poor darling, he hasn’t got his front teeth. Ruthie’s bridesmaid frock has come, Lady Rossiter.”

  Under cover of the polite interest evinced by Edna at the information, her husband made his escape from the room.

  He and Mark, smoking in the garden, turned with undisguised relief from the topic of the hour, and discussed instead the affairs of Culmouth College.

  “What about this Gloucester business? Old Bellew is patting himself on the back all right. He thinks there’s likely to be an opening in Cardiff, too.”

  “All the better. We always hoped the scheme would spread, Sir Julian.”

  “I know. Who could have guessed it would come so quickly, though? Look here, Mark, have you thought who ought to go and see these Gloucester fellows and start them off in their new premises?”

  “Well I left that to you,” said Mark hesitatingly.

  “Of course, you’re the man to send, but I don’t know that we can spare you at the minute.”

  “I’m quite at your disposal for anything,” said Mark cheerfully.

  “Would you go? After all, it could only be a matter of two or three days.”

  “That’s all. But the only thing I’m thinking is, whether it wouldn’t be a good thing to take one of the actual staff someone who’s really been working the thing from the inside.”

  For an insane moment, a surmise worthy of Iris herself crossed Sir Julian’s mind. Could Mark Easter be about to adjudicate to himself Miss Marchrose as a travelling companion?

  “What about Fuller?” said Mark. “He’s a good man of business, and got all the facts and figures at his finger-ends.”

  “He could be spared, I suppose?”

  “I think so. Miss Marchrose could quite well take on for a day or two. She’s won golden opinions from Fuller.”

  “H’m. The misogynist,” said Sir Julian reflectively.

  Interruption came only too soon.

  Sir Julian heartily wished that he had taken the more drastic measure of returning outright to Culmhayes when the garden was invaded not only by the lovers themselves, Edna walking slightly behind them with a rather consciously unconscious expression, but also by a triumphantly whooping Ambrose, glorying in his restored ability to render the day hideous with sound.

  Ruthie was for the moment, unwontedly enough, both invisible and inaudible.

  Iris instantly attached herself to Sir Julian. He had been regretfully compelled to realise that ever since the day, regarded by him with horror, of their conversation in his study, Miss Easter had assumed the existence of some intimate understanding between them, such as caused her to make him the recipient of many small personal confidences that filled him with embarrassment.

  “You know I wanted Douglas to be married in a kilt?”

  “Did you?”

  “But he’s so ridiculously shy. And what’s that other thing they wear?”

  Sir Julian looked unintelligent and Mr. Garrett’s deep voice behind him made suggestion.

  “Is the lassie thinking of the tartan?”

  “Ye-es,” said Iris doubtfully. “Or do I mean a plaid?”

  Sir Julian felt quite unequal to enlightening her.

  “I see that I shall have to teach you many things,” said Mr. Garrett gloomily.

  “Do you expect ever to live in Scotland?” Sir Julian enquired.

  “We toilers and sowers gravitate to London instinctively. I always say,” Mr. Garrett observed, in tones of great interest, “I always say that London is the modern Mecca. Pilgrims come there from all parts. It is, in many ways, a city of freedom. London, someone has said the name of the writer has escaped my memory is the only capital in the world where a man can eat a penny bun in the streets without exciting comment. Now, that seems to me quite extraordinarily descriptive.”

  It seemed to Sir Julian, on the contrary, quite extraordinarily futile, and he wished, not for the first time, that Iris would make her appeals to some other source, when she murmured in a trustful way:

&
nbsp; “Isn’t Douglas rather wonderful? You know what I mean I think he’s wonderful, sometimes. The things he says, I mean.”

  “We shall live in London for a time,” Mr. Garrett pursued. “My journalistic work will keep me there, and then we have to think of Iris’ literary career. I immensely want her to meet some of the great thinkers of the day.”

  Iris looked awe-stricken, clasped her hand, and said in a small, hushed voice:

  “Just think of the vistas and vistas and vistas that it opens up!”

  Sir Julian did so, and barely suppressed a visible shudder at the phalanx of journalistic luminaries, of whom he felt certain that the great thinkers of the day, as known to Mr. Garrett, consisted.

  “How is your book going?”

  “The sales haven’t been very large, but it’s been tremendously noticed, for a first novel,” said Iris hopefully.

  ‘You must help me to persuade Iris,” said Mr. Garrett, also adding his mite to the quota of appeal so ill responded to by the unfortunate Julian. ‘You must help me to persuade this little woman, that big sales matter very little in comparison with the meed of recognition that ‘Ben ‘has received from the thinking section of the reading world.”

  “Ruthie is up that tree,” announced Ambrose loudly and suddenly, thereby for the first time becoming the unconscious object of Sir Julian’s brief and passionate gratitude.

  Iris, Douglas and Sir Julian all gazed upwards and became aware of Miss Easter, perilously grappling the bare limb of a leafless tree.

  Followed Ruthie’s inevitable discovery that the position so recklessly attained was both uncomfortable and insecure, her proclamation of immediate and excessive peril, and the issuing of annoyed ejaculations and peremptory advice from the upgazers gathered below.

  “Better fetch a step-ladder at once. She’ll only fall and hurt herself,” said Iris.

  “Where?”

  “Oh,” said Iris distractedly, “I don’t think we’ve got one anywhere.”

  “Better abandon the project, then,” Mark observed mildly. “I’ll go up after her.”

  “The tree will break,” wailed Iris.

  “Not it! Wish it would, and give the kid a lesson. Sorry to treat you to such a series of domestic calamities, Lady Rossiter.”

  “No, no,” said Edna, smiling. “You know I take things as I find them.”

  They waited to see the rescue effected, and left Mr. Garrett serenely observing, “You should remember to look up, and not down, when you climb, lassie.”

  “What a household!” said Julian.

  “One wonders what those unfortunate, motherless children will grow up into,” his wife responded thoughtfully.

  “It doesn’t seem to me that there’s much room for wonder.”

  “When this wedding is over I shall talk to Mark again about sending Ruthie to school. It would really be a great mercy if the boy could go too.”

  “Why shouldn’t he?”

  “He’s really not at all strong, I believe. But I’ll talk to Mark,” repeated Edna.

  Some subtle hint of complacency in her voice kept Sir Julian obstinately silent. He really did not know whether or not his wife’s influence with Mark Easter was as strong as she assumed it to be. Mark was of all things easy-going, and Julian did not know that the question of his children preoccupied him very deeply. Not improbable that he might even sacrifice Ambrose and his problematical delicacy of constitution for the sake of peace, and the satisfaction of Lady Rossiter.

  It remained to be seen, Julian thought, whether there were anything to which Mark attached sufficient importance to fight for it. Julian was oddly obsessed by the conviction that contest was in the air.

  XVI

  IT was always felt that the great disappointment in connection with Iris Easter’s wedding was the shock unconsciously caused by Mr. Douglas Garrett’s father.

  The representative of the Clan appeared in the guise of a stout, handsome old man with waxed moustache, in rather smart, tight, black clothes, wearing a top-hat, a white carnation buttonhole, and white spats, and speaking with an accent that, though exceedingly pronounced, was not to be recognised as that of any known part of Scotland.

  The conviction gradually filtered through the assembled guests that Mr. Garrett senior spoke with the tongue of Swindon. The blurred vowels and resonant r were unmistakable.

  But old Mr. Garrett made no pretence at the Keltic atmosphere so fondly affected by his son.

  “My dearr boy,” he affectionately apostrophised the bridegroom, “I’ve left the business to take cayurr of itself, for the first time in nearly twenty years. You don’t know what business is, loafing about London doing a little scribbling heerr and therre the way you do, otherwise you’d appreciate my presence heerr to-day at its full value.”

  Douglas Garrett made no audible response that could be interpreted into the required assurance, but old Mr. Garrett spoke so loudly and confidently that it was almost impossible to believe his observation to be anything but a sort of impromptu rehearsal of the speech that he would deliver at the wedding-breakfast.

  The interval of waiting in the church appeared likely to be of indefinite duration, and everybody heard old Mr. Garrett express to his son the hope that the “gurrel “hadn’t thought better of it at the last minute.

  “Therre have been such cases known, my dearr boy,” he dispassionately remarked, “And your Iris looked to me a highly nervous sort of gurrel.”

  Lady Rossiter, in the front bench, sank onto her knees, less from a sudden access of prayerfulness than from a very obvious desire to make evident the unsuitability of old Mr. Garrett’s behaviour to his surroundings.

  “You’re not feeling hysterical, are you?” suspiciously demanded Mr. Garrett, whisking round on the instant at this demonstration. “I know what you ladies are. It’s a very trying wait for all of us, and I’m afraid my poorr boy may break down if it goes on much longer. Don’t let yourself get upset on any account.”

  At last the sounds of arrival made themselves heard without the church, the bridegroom’s expression relaxed, and his father gave a loud gasp of relief.

  An explanatory murmur, of the kind that has an origin destined to remain for ever unknown, pervaded the church.

  “She’s been crying dreadfully upset no mother poor little thing. All right now.”

  “I said the gurrel looked to me nervous,” remarked the elder Mr. Garrett, with conscious triumph in his own omniscience.

  “How like Auntie Iris!” thought Julian, for the hundredth time.

  At all events, the bride’s pretty little face showed no trace of tears now, as she came slowly up the aisle on her brother’s arm.

  Following her, and casting triumphant and self -satisfied glances from left to right, was the solitary bridesmaid.

  Ruthie was a plain little girl, and it was impossible not to feel that attempt at embellishment had done much towards making her still plainer.

  Her short white skirts stuck out to ungraceful dimensions above brown-stockinged legs and strapped shoes that, to Julian’s disgusted perceptions, had never appeared of more solid proportions, and the broad sash tied firmly round her person was of a disastrous shade of salmon pink.

  A second edition of the sash reappeared round the wide straw hat that Ruthie, more suâ, wore upon the extreme back of her head.

  Her thick, stiff brown hair showed only too evident manifestations of having been severely treated by Sarah, in the manner known as “damp-plaiting “on the previous evening.

  The whole effect was rather that of a young South Sea Islander introduced for the first time into European garb and aware of novelty.

  The College staff was sufficiently well represented. Iris had expressed a sort of whole-hearted wish to see “all the dear people from Culmouth College “in the church, and this rather reckless aspiration had not been left without response.

  Cooper was prominent in immaculate gloves, with Miss Sandiloe beside him, coy and alert both at once and poised f
irst on one foot and then on the other, as though her shoes hurt her feet. Julian saw Miss Marchrose, looking better than he had ever seen her, in a bench at the bottom of the church. She wore a soft felt hat that became her, and her changeful face was full of colour.

  “She looks happier,” thought Julian, and immediately felt a doubtful foreboding as to the source of that look.

  He remembered that Miss Marchrose, on the day before the wedding, had officiated at a small ceremony at Culmouth College, when she had presented to Iris, on behalf of the staff, a silver mirror.

  Neither Sir Julian nor Lady Rossiter had been present, but Mark had described the occasion afterwards to Sir Julian alone.

  “Fuller did all the speaking, and did it uncommonly well, too. I didn’t know he had it in him, but it was just right awfully good little speech. Miss Marchrose presented the thing, and looked very pretty. Blushed like anything, too, when Fuller began something about her having been chosen to represent the staff. Fuller thinks she’s his discovery, you know, and he’s no end proud of her.”

  Julian was not a little inclined to wonder whether Fairfax Fuller, emphasising the claims of the Lady Superintendent, had not taken his stand upon the lines of championship. Nor did he care to dwell upon the actual or threatened attacks which should have aroused the never very deeply dormant combative instincts of Mr. Fuller. If Miss Marchrose should need an ally, she had at all events assured herself of one to whom half -measures were unknown. Julian only returned to the present when the bridegroom, in a voice which seemed full of deep protest against the archaic formula required of him, repeated after the clergyman the vows appointed to him. Iris was inaudible.

  The exodus to the vestry, and the usual rapturous displays of enthusiasm therein, duly took place, and Mr. Garrett gave his arm to his bride and conducted her down the aisle to the triumphant strains of the wedding-march from Lohengrin the characteristic selection made by Iris on the grounds of originality.

  There was to be no reception, and it was undeniable that a certain sense of anti-climax pervaded the villa when old Mr. Garrett, Sir Julian and Lady Rossiter, accompanied by Ruthie and Ambrose, found themselves at the gates, over which a slightly perilous triumphal arch wavered in the cold wind.