“Perhaps,” said Sir Julian to himself, as he climbed the sand slopes with long strides, “perhaps I ought to have said ‘Good-bye,’ or ‘Remember,’ or ‘God bless you’ or something like that to her. But whatever the rights or the wrongs of her point of view, her sincerity is worthy of respect. And I will mock her unhappiness with no catchwords, poor child.”
As he went towards Culmhayes in the gathering dusk, he met a frantically-bicycling figure violently urging forward a machine that was devoid of lights.
“Fuller!”
“Sir Julian?”
Fairfax Fuller came to attention, as it were, with a promptitude that nearly sent him over his handle-bars head foremost.
“You had better not go through Culmouth at that rate and without a light, surely?” said Sir Julian mildly. “Can I give you a match?”
“Are my lamps out?” enquired Mr. Fuller negligently.
Sir Julian felt convinced that they had never been lit, but he handed the Supervisor a box of matches without observation.
“Thank you, Sir Julian. The fact is,” said Fuller, with an air of candour, “that I’m upset and I hardly know what I’m doing.”
“What’s wrong?” ‘This resignation,” elliptically said the Supervisor.
“My dear chap, I’m very sorry about it, but we’ve got to make the best of it. I’ve told Miss Marchrose that we accept her resignation from a week yesterday.”
Mr. Fuller groaned.
“May I ask, Sir Julian, whether you have any idea where the girl is now?”
“Isn’t it Saturday afternoon?” was Sir Julian’s rather pointed reply.
Mr. Fuller brushed aside this suggestion of the liberty of the individual.
“I’m uneasy about her. I tell you quite frankly, Sir Julian, that I didn’t like her looks this morning. One never knows.”
“She strikes me as level-headed enough, you know, Fuller.”
Mr. Fuller bent down and examined his rear light, but Sir Julian knew very well by the mere set of his shoulders that he remained, and would continue to remain, entirely of his own opinion.
“I think that’s all right now. Just as well not to run any risks, perhaps,” easily observed Mr. Fuller, once more preparing himself to bestride his machine. “Good evening, Sir Julian.”
“Good evening.”
He watched the red glimmer of Fuller’s rear light shoot away into the dusk, and then descry a sudden curve.
“By Jove!” said Sir Julian.
Mr. Fairfax Fuller, guided by some unexplained instinct, had swept away from the road and taken the path that led down to the sea-wall. The incident, for reasons which he did not seek to analyse, rather amused Sir Julian as he went on his way.
His thoughts remained occupied round the subject until he entered his own house, to find it in possession of the two most unwelcome guests possible, in the persons of Miss and Master Easter.
“Daddy went away at lunch-time and we’re all alone,” proclaimed Ruthie with pathos. “And Sarah said, she said Sarah said, to come and see if Lady Rossiter wouldn’t like to invite us to tea.”
Sir Julian had his own opinion to the amount of liking bestowed by his wife upon the suggested festivity, but evidently she had fallen a prey to Sarah’s unblushing design for dispensing for a while with the society of her charges.
“We’ll all sit round the table and have nursery tea,” said Lady Rossiter, brightly endeavouring to make the best of a situation that, from the Rossiters’ point of view, left much to be desired.
“Have you any of you heard from Auntie Iris?” enquired Julian.
“She wrote to Daddy, and she sent her love to us. She didn’t say anything about that baby,” remarked Ruthie in a tone of regret.
Sir Julian felt that Edna could have dealt with Miss Easter’s tendency to call a spade a spade a good deal more fully had he not been present. He could almost hear the few strong, tender phrases in which she would have bade the child refrain from the public consideration of such matters of eugenics as now appeared to be engaging her attention.
Proceedings varied but little when Mark Easter’s children were entertained at Culmhayes. Sir Julian began by indifference, proceeded to annoyance, and ended in a mood but little removed from infanticide. Edna remained forbearing throughout, but became less maternal and more repressive as the necessity for repressment increased.
Ruthie monopolised the conversation with as much determination as ever; Ambrose whined quite as much as usual, and surpassed himself in the degree of stickiness to which he attained; and the séance ended with the usual violent quarrel between the two and their eventual expulsion from the room and from the house Ruthie rampant and Ambrose in tears and the inevitable valedictory wish expressed by the host that they should never be permitted to return.
Edna said, “Poor motherless children,” in a tone that sounded rather more evidently exasperated and less compassionate than she had intended it to sound, and Sir Julian retired to the smoking-room.
He remembered presently that Edna probably knew nothing of the complete victory signalised by Miss Marchrose’s resignation from the College staff; but he realised that the episode, in all essentials, was already past. That which he termed “atmosphere “was dissipated, and he knew that it was almost as an afterthought that Edna, that evening, asked him whether Miss Marchrose was going.
“Yes, she is.”
“At once?”
“I don’t know. I’ve left her to settle that with Fuller.”
“She must go before Mark comes back. It’s far better so.”
“I think probably she will.”
“Julian, I’ve been thinking about her. And it seems to me,” said Edna, “that we must help her. God knows, I can judge no one, least of all to condemn, but I think that her weakness and recklessness are going to make life terribly, terribly hard for her. And I, for one, can’t see her drift away like that without one effort to help.”
The depth of Sir Julian’s disapproval for the suggested scheme of philanthropy left him bereft of speech. Finally he observed:
“In my opinion, Edna, you have done rather too much already. Leave her alone.”
“What do you mean? Julian, you carry your mania against officiousness too far. Indeed you do. What are we here for, unless it is to help one another?”
Sir Julian shrugged his shoulders.
“I knew the character of this woman before she ever came here I couldn’t help knowing it I saw her trying to wreck Mark, as she nearly wrecked poor Clarence. I believe that I have saved Mark and I thank God for it, very humbly, and very proudly. As for her, I hold no brief against her. I condemn no one, and I seek only to help her.... If she cares to turn to me now, all the love that I can give that poor, struggling, feeble soul is waiting for her.”
“I don’t think she will ask you for it, Edna.”
Sir Julian thought of many things. For a moment he wondered whether he should say them aloud. Then the habit of apathy that had possessed him for a number of years asserted itself anew, and he did as he had almost always done he left things alone.
The episode was past.
He told himself so again, with a faint sense of surprise that already it should rank as an episode merely.
There had been no calamity, and, as Edna had said, nothing had been put into words.
He revised the collection of infinitesimal ripples that had momentarily disturbed the atmosphere common to the little groups of people with whom he was concerned.
Almost each one had contributed vibrations in a greater or lesser degree.
Miss Farmer, Miss Sandiloe, young Cooper each and all of them had tittered a little, wondered a little, talked foolishly.
Auntie Iris for the life of him, Julian could not feel as angry with pretty, ridiculous Iris as he thought that her folly deserved Iris, too, had played out her little comedies, her childish attempts at directing the hand of fate.
Old Alderman Bellew Julian gave only an instant’s half-amu
sed recollection to the dogmatic condemnations and assertions of old Alderman Bellew. He had merely found it easy to follow the lead given him, after all.
On the thought of Edna’s many activities Sir Julian dwelt not at all. Somewhere at the back of his mind lingered the echo of her specious gospel, her creed of “giving out.”
For himself, he preferred to think that the trend of events had been in no way deflected by all that Edna had done and said.
The whole had been fated to remain an episode, devoid of climax.
XX
NEVERTHELESS the last word remained to be spoken, and it was destined to be heard by Sir Julian when he made casual enquiry of Fairfax Fuller on Monday morning.
“Have you settled the day that Miss Marchrose leaves us?”
“Yes, Sir Julian.”
“Well?” enquired Sir Julian, after a moment, as his subordinate appeared quite indisposed to make any further communications.
“She’s not coming back here at all.”
“Is that with your sanction?” said the surprised Julian.
“I talked it over with her on Saturday evening, Sir Julian.”
“Then you did find her?”
“Down by what they call the sea-wall.”
Fuller, his dark face marvellously heated, looked full at his chief.
“I’ve asked the girl to marry me, Sir Julian,” he remarked.
Some weeks later, Julian wrote a letter, and addressed it to Miss Marchrose in London.
My dear Pauline Marchrose, Since you ask for my opinion, I send it to you for what it is worth, admitting that, as you say, I stand committed to a certain degree of officiousness already. That, however, is not the word of which you made use. Thank you, on the contrary, for the expressions that you have selected.
I am glad that you are marrying Fuller. He is a good fellow through and through, and the other side of his bull-dog tenacity is a very real and dependable loyalty. I think that that loyalty will be of great service to you. And don’t think that you are relinquishing the abstract ideal of which we spoke one afternoon down by the sea-wall. You were never false to your standards for a moment, and to recognise defeat is not always an implication of weakness. It may, as in your case, denote the courage of a perfectly sincere outlook. Humbug is the only thing to be afraid of. You have eliminated that, and Fairfax Fuller is not prone to illusion or self-deception. Besides, your intercourse took place at a time and in circumstances which admitted of the luxury of sincerity. For that, and for the fact that Fuller knows something of the extent of his incredible good fortune, I send you my congratulations and I wish you luck.
Sir Julian paused for a long while.
The episode was over. His letter was a postscript merely.
“Are you coming upstairs, Julian?” said Edna’s most forbearing tones, full of fatigue.
“Is it late?”
“It’s nearly twelve. It’s the servants that I’m thinking of. I hate keeping them up.”
“It’s quite unnecessary to keep any of them up. I am perfectly capable of putting out the lights in the hall without Horber’s assistance.”
“I shall not ring for Mason. I never do ring for her if I’m later than eleven o’clock. After all, it’s a very little thing, when once one realises that a maid is a sister-woman, when all’s said and done....”
All was so far from being said that Julian, taking up his pen again, slowly added the final sentence to his letter, unconsciously adjusting his speed to words that struck upon his hearing and penetrated hardly at all to his thoughts.
“I believe so much in little things, in the immense power of a thought, of a kind glance, of a smile...”
If the Colonial scheme materialises rapidly, as I think it will, I shall send Fuller out. It is largely owing to his management that we have the funds in hand to extend the branches of the College, and I can see both you and him as pioneers, in the near future.
“Sometimes I think that when one has not received very much oneself, it only makes one readier to give. One knows the lack.”
Keep up a very good courage but that I believe you will always do. You have got your scale of relative values clear, and, once that’s done, you can afford to accept truth. Nothing else matters.
“Perhaps one would be less tired at the end of the day if one gave out less, but after all, it’s all part of the great, wonderful, Divine plan.”
“Have you finished writing, Julian? ‘Jorrocks’ is on the table.”
“Yes, quite finished,” said Sir Julian, and, first signing his name, he sealed his letter.
Cornwall, Jan., 1919. Surrey, June, 1919.
THE END
THE HEEL OF ACHILLES
CONTENTS
DEDICATION
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
DEDICATION
To YOE: my sister,
and always my greatest friend.
“Provinces twain o’er the land held sway, and the country was ruled by twain, I made the laws, as King, but you, as Premier, revoked them again.
You were my faithful A.D.C., when I was the Captain bold, But Watson I, to your Sherlock Holmes, in the Baker Street days of old.
We went through times that were strange and bad, and we shared and shared the same, And talked and dreamed and planned of the day when we’d come to freedom and fame.
And the dreams came true, and the times were changed, and we did the things we’d planned —
(Don’t you remember the two Fur Coats, and the trips to Weston sand?) —
So now you work at a real Career, and I’m writing, in Singapore, And send my book to my Twin — a token of all that has gone before.
A sign of the past — but a symbol, too, that is known to you and me.
Of the days together still to come, and the best that is yet to be.”
I
“I AM an orphan,” reflected Lydia Raymond, with immense satisfaction.
She was a very intelligent little girl of twelve years old, and she remembered very well that when her father had died out in China, three years ago, it was her mother who had been the centre of attention and compassion. People had spoken about her poor dead father, and had praised him and pitied him, but their real attention had all been for the widow, who was there under their eyes, pathetic and sorrow-stricken.
Lydia herself had been “poor little thing,” but Grandpapa and her aunts and uncle had all told her that it was her mother who must be thought of now, and she knew that they kept on saying to one another that “the child will be a comfort to poor Mary.” Her own individuality, which she felt so strongly, did not seem to count at all, and Lydia had, quite silently, resented that intensely, ever since she could remember anything at all.
Once her mother had read her some extracts of old letters from her dead father, letters which had once come so regularly every week in thin blue envelopes with the Hong Kong postmark.
“Kiss our baby Lydia for me. I hope she is a good little thing always... some day, when these years of hard work are over, you won’t have to sacrifice yourself any more, my poor Mary....”And, later on, in the last letter of all: “The child’s life is only a continuation of ours, my Mary.”
Long afterwards, Lydia, who never forgot the words, came to see them as the expression of man’s eternal wistful attempt to live on in the generation supplanting his own, but when her mother read them aloud to her, in a voice choked with tears,
something in Lydia revolted violently.
“My life is my own,” she thought stubbornly, “not just a continuation of somebody else’s.”
With that acute clarity of vision that enabled her to analyze certain aspects of her childhood’s world with such astonishing maturity, she once told herself: “They don’t love me for myself at all. Grandpapa doesn’t love me the least bit — he doesn’t love anybody.
And mother loves me because I’m her child, and the aunts love me because I’m father’s child, and they think I’m a comfort to mother.”
She could hardly remember her father, and though at first she had shed tears over his death, Lydia had quickly dried them.
“Now, dear, you must be a good little girl and not cry and make poor mother more unhappy than she is already,” had said harassed-looking Aunt Evelyn.
“You know you must think of her now. You’ll have to be her comfort.”
And almost immediately afterwards Aunt Evelyn had said to Lydia’s mother: “Do, do give way and cry, dearie. It will be so much better for you. I know you’re wonderful, but you’ll suffer for it later on. You’re bound to.”
After that it had not needed Aunt Evelyn’s further observation that “poor little Lydia didn’t know what her loss meant” to dry Lydia’s perfunctory tears with the sting of an inflexible pride.
She would not cry again until they were prepared to concede to her the major right to affliction! She did not love her mother very much. It is more common than is generally allowed, for an intelligent child, still in bondage to her natural instinct, reinforced by the tradition of allegiance to natural authorities, to couple that allegiance with a perfectly distinct antipathy to the personality of either or both parents.
Lydia’s dislike of her mother’s sentimentality, her constant vacillation of purpose, and her incessant garrulity, was only unchildlike in her calm analysis of it, and in the conscious restraint that she put upon it.
Mrs. Raymond had often said, sometimes in Lydia’s hearing, that she would welcome death.
“But for little Lydia, I think I should have put an end to it all long ago. But how can I leave her, when she only has me?” Mrs. Raymond, however, without any intervention of her own, when Lydia was twelve years old, reached the haven to which, since her husband’s death, she had so often aspired.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 145
