Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  And Joyce Damerel’s prophecy came true.

  Later on, Jane did not like being Jane. She disliked it so much, as a determined little grey-eyed thing of nine years old, that she announced an intention of becoming “Jennie.”

  Lydia, already frightened at certain of her own characteristics reproduced with astonishing vigour in her daughter, combated this on principle. But Joyce Damerel supported her niece, and she and Billy called her “Jennie.” The servants said “Miss Jennie” because otherwise they could get no attention from the little rebel — the villagers took to calling her “Miss Jennie.” Everyone called her Jennie, even — most illogically — Lady Lucy.

  It was Lydia’s first defeat, and took place before Jennie was ten years old.

  Lydia had been married nearly twelve years.

  She seldom let herself own that marriage had been a disappointment to her.

  Indeed, it was only sometimes that she realized it, for her position, her energetic life in the country parish, the liking and respect that she had certainly won for herself from all these people amongst whom she had come as a stranger from another world, all brought her a very real satisfaction and contentment.

  Sometimes, however, the change that had crept gradually and almost imperceptibly over her husband, obtruded itself before her notice, and vexed her.

  Clement had ceased to make any demands upon her.

  Why? It was unjust.

  Lydia knew that she had never failed to smile in response to a caress from him, to express interest in anything of which he spoke with enthusiasm, even when her judgment sometimes told her that the enthusiasm was misplaced, or exaggerated, and to take her due share, and sometimes more, of the work to which he gave his life.

  Yet it was impossible for her shrewd perceptions, developing yet more as the years went on, to fail in perceiving that her husband mysteriously — unjustly, she could not help feeling — was failing her more and more in spontaneity of intercourse.

  “Clement, you never told me the mare had behaved so badly this afternoon. Billy says you came off.”

  “I was up again in a few seconds — nothing to worry about, dear.”

  “I wish you’d told me.”

  “Always let the other people talk about themselves,” Clement laughed as he made the quotation, of which Lydia had told him long ago.

  “But that’s my rule!” cried Lydia quickly. “You know I always do let the other people talk about themselves — it’s a sort of habit now. I don’t talk about myself, do I, Clement? Please tell me if I do.”

  “But you don’t, dear.”

  Why should the quick assurance leave one so vexed and dissatisfied? Twelve years married.

  It had all gone by very quickly. The old, ridiculous boarding-house days seemed like something read of in a book a long while ago, and half forgotten.

  Lydia had never seen Miss Nettleship, or any of the boarders, or any of the girls at Madame Elena’s, since her hasty departure from London and the house of the Honorets. At first Miss Forster had written to her occasionally — gushing, reminiscent letters, that never failed to hold broad hints of Miss Forster’s readiness to be invited down to Devonshire.

  Clement had urged Lydia to send for her friends — any of them. Wouldn’t she like Rosie Graham, the little pale cashier girl about whom she had told him? or some old school friend from the Regency Terrace days? Anyone.

  But Lydia explained that none of them had really been friends, and it wasn’t at all necessary for them to be invited. Clement, she added to herself, might be nice to everyone — in fact, it was part of his job — but what would old Lady Lucy, conventional and narrow-minded, think of some of those old associates, when she had really only just begun to like, and cordially accept, Lydia herself? So the old associates, who had none of them really been friends, were allowed to disappear altogether from the life of Mrs. Clement Damerel.

  She did see her Senthoven relations, after a long interval of years.

  Uncle Robert died rather suddenly, and very shortly afterwards Aunt Beryl wrote and told Lydia that Beatrice had married Stanley Swaine, much against her mother’s wishes. Bob, taking most of the little capital left by his father, had gone to Canada. Olive and Aunt Evelyn had left Wimbledon and had gone to live at a flat in Earl’s Court.

  It was there that Lydia, taking nine-year-old Jennie to London in order that a really good dentist might give advice about a plate, met them in the street.

  Aunt Evelyn was unaltered, but Lydia would hardly have recognized Olive in the stooping, emaciated woman with a hard-looking flush burnt into either cheek.

  “Lyd, ole gurl! I don’t believe you’ve grown a day older — well, married life has suited you all right, that’s clear! Come and have tea at our little hole — do, now.”

  “You must, dear. It’s years since I’ve seen you — and dear little Jennie there! Come along — it’s quite close.”

  They went.

  The two-roomed flat was tiny and dingy, and perpetually lit by incandescent gas. Olive got the tea ready, and whilst they heard her clattering about in the adjoining room, which apparently served the purposes of double-bedroom and of store-room alike, Aunt Evelyn said anxiously: “She’s altered a bit, hasn’t she, poor girl? It’s an awful thing, this tuberculosis — goodness knows how she started it, they were all healthy children enough.

  It’s the Senthoven side, of course. Whatever you do, Lydia, take care of that child there. She looks splendid, and of course living in the proper country must make a difference — but one never knows. Look at me! If anyone had told me that Olive would go the way she has — or Beatrice marry a fellow like that Stanley” Poor Aunt Evelyn broke off with tears in her eyes.

  “May Jennie go and help with the tea?” Aunt Evelyn nodded speechlessly, and pointed to the door.

  When Jennie had gone, Lydia took her aunt’s hand in hers.

  “I do feel so sorry — I never knew — Aunt Beryl didn’t tell me how bad poor Olive was.”

  “Oh, Beryl! She’s been good to us, I must say, and had Olive there again and again — but one gets used to things, I suppose. I do myself — it was just seeing you unexpectedly like, Lydia, brought things back a bit — and poor Robert and all, and with that dear little child.

  She’s like you in face, only sturdier, isn’t she? But you’ve improved in style, you know, dear. There’s no denying,” said Aunt Evelyn candidly, “money does make a difference. I never thought we should come to what we have come, Olive and I. You remember that nice house at Wimbledon? This place is dreadful in the summer. It must look puny to you, too, after living in a real house in the country the way you do.”

  Poor Aunt Evelyn! Lydia saw the furtive, eager look at the tea-tray that Olive presently carried in, and noticed a shade of relief sweep across her face. Evidently she had wondered if the resources of the flat would be equal to unexpected visitors.

  “Does Jennie like bread-and-jam? That’s right, dear — it’s good, home-made blackberry, Lydia, it won’t hurt her. She can eat right the way through that dish if she likes — sweet things are good for children.”

  “Jennie is never ill,” said Lydia proudly. “Don’t you think she looks very strong?”

  “My goodness, yes! Aren’t her legs sturdy — and she’s more colour than ever you had as a child.”

  “You ought to see pore ole Bee’s kiddies,” said Olive gloomily.

  “How many are there?”

  “Three — no, four, isn’t it, mater? It’s awful, simply — and another one” Aunt Evelyn frowned and hushed, looking in the direction of little Jennie, who sat staring at her new relations with big, round eyes.

  The visitors did not stay very much longer.

  “I’d better not kiss that kiddie, I suppose,” said Olive abruptly, and looked at Jennie’s plump, freckled face with a sort of angry regret fulness. “My word, she’s a big girl for nine years old!” They knew Jennie’s age, and her birthday, and all sorts of things with which it surprised Lydia ve
ry much to find them conversant.

  Aunt Evelyn even said: “You’ve never written any more books since the one story, have you?”

  “No,” said Lydia, “never. You see, I married very soon afterwards, and a clergyman’s wife has plenty to do always. I did begin a second book, but I never finished it.”

  There were other reasons, besides the one alleged, for the non-fulfilment of Lydia’s literary ambitions, however.

  Nobody at Quintmere had seemed to think it particularly praiseworthy that she should have written and published a successful novel, and Lady Lucy had once owned, in ignorance of Lydia’s proximity, to an old-fashioned prejudice against women who “scribbled.”

  Clement, indeed, was proud of her novel, but he showed no disposition to tag an announcement of its existence on to her name whenever he introduced his friends to her, as Lady Honoret had done. Moreover, Lydia, perhaps more than she was aware, had been influenced by a violent reaction against Lady Honoret and all that her patronage had stood for.

  At all events, she wrote no more, and had very soon ceased to regret even the unfinished story begun just before her marriage, when it became clear that all the literature in existence would never, in the eyes of her new relations, count for anything at all beside the physical achievement of having brought into the world a healthy, handsome child, even although of the inferior sex.

  She would gladly have repeated her success, but Jennie remained an only child, and, to Lydia’s secret jealousy, Joyce Damerel’s son Billy accordingly remained the only male representative of the younger generation.

  Lydia told Clement of her meeting with the Senthovens. He had never seen them, and Aunt Beryl but seldom, although on the rare occasions upon which Lydia was in London she made a point of taking little Jennie down to Regency Terrace to spend the day there.

  “Poor things — I wonder if the girl has a good doctor. Get her down here, Lydia, for a couple of months. Good air and feeding up must make a difference — and couldn’t her mother bring her? Then we could all talk things over.”

  But it appeared that Lydia was nervous on account of Jennie. People said there was no danger, but one never knew; anyhow, she couldn’t risk having her in the same house as the child. But she had thought, if Clement agreed — what about a really good sanatorium, and helping with the expense of sending Olive there for as long as the doctor recommended? Clement did agree, and took a great deal of trouble to arrange for Olive’s admission to a big sanatorium not far from London.

  “So that her mother can easily go and see her, poor thing.”

  It was Lydia who went up to London and saw the Senthovens, and begged Aunt Evelyn to let them do this, and soothed Olive’s pride, which at first seemed likely to prove an obstacle in the way of the kind plans, by promising her that when she was quite cured and able to earn money for herself, she should repay all the expenses incurred.

  “Because we aren’t cadgers, like that Stanley Swaine, who’s tried to touch every relation he or Beatrice have in the world for money,” said Olive, with a flaming face.

  “Olive! Don’t talk like that, dear,” cried Aunt Evelyn, bursting suddenly into tears. “Lydia is a perfect angel, and you don’t know what it’ll be to me to have you in proper surroundings.”

  Of course Olive gave in, if only for her mother’s sake, and she, too, said that she had never meant to be ungrateful and that Lydia was an angel.

  Their acquiescence was a great comfort to Lydia.

  Olive went to the sanatorium, and Aunt Evelyn gave up the flat and joined her sister and brother at Regency Terrace.

  Aunt Beryl, who never failed to send Lydia a weekly letter, wrote to her: “Aunt E. can’t say enough of your kindness. She was a wee bit hurt, I fancy, after your marriage, at your not seeing more of her and the girls, though I told her, dear, that you were very busy. But everything’s quite forgotten now, and the reports from poor Olive v cheering. Such a lot Aunt E. has to say of Jennie — calls her a splendid child and the picture of health. So glad, dear.”

  Everyone was glad, and everyone was grateful. It was all most satisfactory, and helped Lydia to master her increased inclination for lying awake at nights and wondering why Clement should have altered so much in the last four or five years; why his reserve should extend to his wife, who only wished to be sympathetic, and how it would be possible to curb that obstinate self-will of Jennie’s — little Jennie who was idolized by her father and tacitly upheld by her Aunt Joyce.

  Lydia, much vexed, could foresee already that Jennie was to grow up into the kind of girl “who doesn’t get on with her mother.”

  Twelve years married.

  “I am a widow,” reflected Lydia Damerel, almost with the same secret complacency with which, an intelligent and precocious little girl of twelve years old, she had said to herself: “I am an orphan.”

  Clement had been seized by the “new” illness, the terrible appendicitis that had caused the postponement of King Edward’s Coronation a few years earlier, and after the operation, which the doctors called an entirely successful one, he had only lived forty-eight hours.

  Everyone said that Lydia had been wonderful.

  She had never left her husband, never broken down; she had shown thought and tenderness in the midst of her racking anxiety, for poor, heartbroken Lady Lucy and for Mr. Palmer, the Rector, very old and shaken.

  She had sent Jennie to Quintmere, so that the little girl might have no frightening recollections of that closed door, with the hospital nurse moving swiftly in and out, bringing with her that faint, unforgettable whiff of ether.

  Jennie should only remember her father, Lydia told Lady Lucy, steadily, as she had seen him last, the grave, pleasant companion who took her everywhere with him, her hand clasped in his.

  Before he died, Clement said to his wife: “Where’s Jennie?”

  “At Quintmere. Joyce will look after her, and it was better for her.”

  “Did she want to go?”

  “It was better for her,” repeated Lydia inexorably.

  One had to think of that — what was best for the child, and for many reasons Lydia would have dreaded Jennie’s young, tempestuous presence in the house of death and mourning that the Rectory speedily became.

  But when Jennie’s father was dead, taken from them all in the midst of his work and strength and usefulness, Lydia had to tell his child of her loss.

  “Keep her at Quintmere,” she entreated of Joyce Damerel, “and let her come with you this afternoon and then go back again.”

  “Don’t you want her here with you?” Joyce asked, frankly disapproving.

  “I don’t want her to get frightened of this house and remember her father in connection with tearfulness and terror. And I don’t want childish, noisy grief here,” said Lydia in a low voice. “My poor little Jennie! I ought to have taught her self-control earlier, perhaps.”

  But, after all, it did not seem as though Jennie lacked self-control, when her mother, in the shaded drawingroom, told her with gentleness and without tears that she was fatherless.

  Lydia herself had broken down and wept violently that day, alone with old Lady Lucy, but she had purposely prepared herself to break the news as colourlessly and unemotionally as possible to Jennie, dreading an outburst of the child’s undisciplined grief.

  At first she was reassured.

  Jennie looked at her mother hard, as though to ascertain that she was not weeping, and then said nothing at all.

  “You understand, my darling? God wanted father with Him, and took him away, and we have to be very brave now, and comfort one another.”

  Then Jennie suddenly said angrily: “There! I knew father would die! Nurse said not, and was angry with me, but I knew he would, when they said he was ill.”

  She actually stamped her foot.

  “Hush!” said Lydia mechanically.

  But inwardly she was infinitely relieved.

  Jennie was too young to understand. There would be no agonized sorrowing, su
ch as she had instinctively dreaded.

  Then she saw that a different look, frightened and puzzled, had come over Jennie’s round, baby face — babyish, even for nine years old.

  “Shan’t I ever see him again, mother?”

  “Not here. You will when you go to heaven,” said Lydia, speaking as though to a much younger child.

  “But — but — I didn’t see him to say good-bye to!” There was sorrow enough and to spare in the sudden cry. It was as though realization had just come to the tardy, childish mind.

  “Poor father! He was far, far too ill. Come here, Jennie.”

  Lydia held out her arms, although demonstrations were very rare with her, and Jennie herself had never seemed greatly disposed towards any show of outward affection.

  She came towards her mother now almost reluctantly, and although she leant against Lydia’s shoulder, she did not put her arms round her neck.

  “Jennie, you’ll be a good child, and remember that we have no one but each other, now?”

  “Yes, mama.”

  Jennie’s voice was very low, and Lydia could not see her face, but she felt all at once that the sturdy little body pressed against her was shaking from head to foot.

  “Poor little thing!” said Lydia tenderly.

  She waited for the storm of tears that should follow, but none came.

  “Oh, Jennie, Jennie!” cried Lydia, and herself burst into tears, weakened by many sleepless nights.

  “Mama, you did see him to say good-bye to, didn’t you?” whispered Jennie presently. “He wasn’t all alone?”

  “I never left him for an instant. He was holding my hand all the time.”

  “Why couldn’t I see him?” wailed Jennie.

  “He was too ill, and you are too little, darling.”

  There was silence.

  Presently Lydia heard the sound of carriage wheels on the drive outside.

  “Aunt Joyce is coming to take you back to Quintmere for a little longer, and in a few days I shall come too.”