Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  She was never at a loss for conversation with him, as she had often been with Philip, saving up small remarks and comments that occurred to her during the day in order to produce them at meal-time and promote talk.

  With Nicholas, there were no weighty silences. He was almost always ready to talk, and Lily found it very easy to please him. He always seemed to find her amusing, and was equally ready to laugh at her jests and at his own.

  Even his love-making was of a jovial, exuberant kind now, and he often exclaimed joyously and loudly that it was a topping world.

  “Isn’t this simply great now, little pal? Isn’t it all splendid?”

  An odd self-consciousness invaded Lily on these occasions; she wished that her replies were less perfunctory than she felt them to be.

  She did not, somehow, feel exuberant, as Nicholas did, but oddly bewildered and tired.

  Sometimes Nicholas was solicitous for her and asked anxiously whether she had a headache, or felt fatigued, but he was curiously lacking in discernment, and seldom made the enquiry’ on occasions when Lily really was tired.

  She decided, after a time, that he only did so when prompted by some lassitude of his own.

  Lily was not consciously disappointed by a certain lack of sympathy between herself and her husband, partly because it was only evinced in small and infrequent ways, and partly because she conscientiously recalled to her memory the many warnings received from Cousin Ethel and other authorities.

  Marriage was a thing of give and take, they had said.

  Nothing was perfect in this world.

  Romance was an affair of the imagination, and imagination was something to be kept strictly within bounds.

  With these and other platitudes Lily contrived to stifle the memory of her old day-dreams, so kindly and gravely condemned by Miss Melody.

  There were a great many lighter aspects of her new life that gave her a childish sense of gratification.

  She liked the glances of surprise which strangers occasionally cast at her wedding-ring, and the polite astonishment of the shop assistants when they discovered her to be “Madame” instead of “Mademoiselle.”

  The many compliments that Nicholas received from acquaintances upon the beauty of his young wife he faithfully transmitted to Lily, and they added to her pleasure in her new dignities.

  She enjoyed wearing her new and beautiful jewels, and when Nicholas, regardless of her already elaborate trousseau, begged her to buy Paris frocks, Lily declared herself desirous of a black velvet evening dress, because “only married women wore black velvet.”

  Nicholas laughed heartily at her pretensions, took her to the most extravagant couturier in Paris, and had her photographed in the black velvet gown, that admirably enhanced her fair, child-like beauty.

  He praised her looks continually, and Lily presently discovered that she could please him very much by allusions to his own height, the breadth of his shoulders, and his fine carriage.

  Sometimes he suggested that they might be taken for father and daughter, but he obviously wished the idea to be received with friendly derision, and Lily never failed to gratify him.

  Nevertheless, Lily in her own mind very often contrasted Nicholas with her father.

  On the whole, life was very much easier and more natural with Nicholas than it had been with Philip. Each, in widely different ways, was exacting, but Nicholas only demanded an intensification of display, where Philip had required a suppression of natural characteristics. Nicholas was actually pleased when Lily admitted that she liked sweets, and did not at all appear to think it a waste of money to buy her fondants and marrons glaces.

  Sometimes she thought that the most child-like qualities in her were the ones that he most valued. She wore a different frock almost every day, and knew that he delighted in her display of vanity. The new frocks themselves pleased her, too, and the novelty of her independence, and even such trivialities as her new address.

  “Mrs. Aubray,” she read aloud with a certain triumph, on the envelopes of newly-arrived letters.

  Mrs. Aubray glanced self-consciously at her wedding-ring, visualized herself in her new clothes, and the graceful disposition of her wavy hair as manipulated by her new maid, and read her letters from England.

  “My dearest little child,

  “The house seems very sad and empty without you, especially now that Kenneth has left it too. However, it is very pleasant to think of your happiness, and no doubt you are greatly enjoying your time in Paris with your husband. Poor little Kenneth went off to school very pluckily, and showed no signs at all of feeling upset. I was vexed at receiving no telegram from him to announce his safe arrival, although I gave him the money for one when I saw him off at the station, and begged him to ask some elder boy to see to it for him the moment they arrived. I wish now that I had done this myself, as no telegram came.

  “I had to send off a wire myself, with answer prepaid to the school, and received a satisfactory reply yesterday afternoon.

  “Your letters are a great pleasure, and your descriptions of your sight-seeing most clever and interesting. Cousin Charlie is very kind about enlivening my solitude, and we have had some capital games of chess. Your Cousin Ethel is in London with Dorothy, and has kindly been to the new house several times to see that all is in good order for your return. She is, I believe, writing to you about this, and also to give you a piece of news, which will doubtless interest you greatly, but which is to be kept a secret at present, I understand. I will therefore say nothing further until I hear from you “We have had very poor weather here since you left, but I hope that Paris is in sunshine.

  “My love to Nicholas and to yourself, my dear child, and may God Almighty bless you both.

  “Ever your devoted Father, “Philip Stellenthorpe.”

  “I hope poor Kenneth wasn’t dreadfully furious at having that prepaid telegram,” was Lily’s reflection.

  She opened Ethel Hardinge’s letter.

  “My dear Lily, “Delighted to hear such excellent news of you, the girls all enjoyed your letter. We have a great piece of news to tell you. Dorothy is engaged to be married. ‘One wedding makes another’ they always say. He is very nice, indeed, and we are delighted. It has all happened very quickly, and it’s quite private, so please tell no one, except, of course, Nicholas.

  “He is a Captain Durand, a soldier, and we greatly fear that it means many years of foreign service, but they are really in love, and I think I can talk Cousin Charlie into letting them be married before the regiment sails for India next year.

  “D. will write you all details, of course. You never saw anyone so radiant as she is — but I expect you know all about it I! I know you’ll be delighted at her happiness.

  “Your house looks lovely. D. and I have been round there several times, and hustled the workmen, and everything ought to be quite finished in another ten days. We go home to-morrow, after a very busy time, as you can imagine, with all this excitement. Everybody wearing yellow nowadays, it seems to me, and everything very frilly. Pink and blue seem to be quite out of fashion, such a pity, as D. always looks bilious in yellow or cream- colour. But, of course, you’ll tell us all about clothes and colours when you get back from Paris. I hope the new frocks are a great success. Did the black hat travel all right!

  “Best love, dear Lily. It’s such a real delight to think of your happiness.

  “Yours affec’ly and in haste,

  “E. H.”

  Lily searched hastily amongst the remaining envelopes for Dorothy’s letter. It was a very long one scrawled in Dorothy’s untidy handwriting at various intervals of time.

  “Dearest Lily,

  “You will be surprised. I’m engaged!!! Really, I can hardly believe it myself yet, and it’s deadly private at present, though why I can’t think, but you know what old people are like, taking about being caushus, and waiting and seeing, et cetera. But of course I said I’d have to tell you at once, you having had all the same excitement yourself
such a little while ago.

  “Well! I’ll try and begin at the beginning, and not to be too frightfully excited to write sense. His name is Frank Durand, and he is a soldier, taller than me, thank goodness, though not, I must say, nearly as tall as yours. He is honestly and truly good looking (not fust me thinking so, but everybody says so) with brown eyes, rather long eyelashes, and a short moustache, and brown hair, very short and thick. He’s got ripping teeth, which makes him look particularly nice when he smiles, which he pretty often does. He is a good deal sunburnt — brown, not red, I am thankful to say. He is twenty-eight, and has done frightfully well in the Army, for his age, though he doesn’t seem in the least clever, which is lucky, or I should have been terrified of him.

  “The whole story of it was that we met at the County Ball just after your wedding, and he asked me for hundreds of dances, and I must say Mother scolded me like anything afterwards, and very nearly threatened not to take me to London with her at all, but I knew she would, of course, all the time. In fact I’d told him I was going to London next day for a fortnight and told him the name of the hotel and everything. He came and called the very day after we’d arrived, and luckily Mother liked him, and asked him to lunch — this was Friday — and on Sunday we met him in the Park, and I had to pretend I was frightfully surprised. (I wasn’t in the least, really, having said in a casual way that Mother loved the Park and I always took her to sit there after Church.)

  “On Tuesday I wore my new saxe-blue frock — that I must say Miss Jones has made simply heavenly — and he came to tea, and asked if we’d come to a theatre party that had been got up frightfully hurriedly for the next night. (He told me afterwards he’d got it up on purpose, of course.) There was a man there for Mother, old and rather deadly — and two other men from his regiment, and his sister, rather pretty, but quite old, at least twenty- nine, I should think — and a Miss Ballantyne, who had the most disgustingly lovely hair, real auburn and very curly. You know how impossible it is to get mine to wave, even with tongs! However, I had on my new evening frock that you haven’t seen, a really good white satin, with plain pearl trimming, and I didn’t look bad.

  “We had dinner first at a restaurant, and I was feeling so excited all the time I could hardly speak. I didn’t sit next him at dinner, but I did at the theatre, and there was nobody on his other side, because he sat at the end of the row. I can honestly say, Lily, that I didn’t hear a single word of the play, though the other people were roaring away like mad, with laughter.

  “I simply can’t tell you the sort of things he was saying to me the whole time, but of course you can imagine!

  “Well, it was raining when we came out, and there was the usual fuss about cabs and things, and Mother keeping on about wanting a four-wheeler, and the other men went away by Tube, and the Ballantyne girl had a tiny sort of broom sent for her and took Phyllis Durand and there zoos room for one other, and of course it ought to have been Frank, but he found a hansom and said could he take me home in it, and Mother go in the broom?

  “Can you imagine Mother allowing such a thing! Of course I felt certain she wouldn’t, but I did look at her to give her a hint, and she said yes like a perfect lamb!!

  “Well, he did it in the hansom, just as we were turning out of Shaftesbury Avenue into Piccadilly Circus. I was frightfully surprised in a way, because it seemed so frightfully quick, but I was simply frantically happy, and only afraid I should wake up and find it all a dream.

  “I must say, I’d no idea life could be at all like this! When I think of how we all stodged away through the days at Bridgecrap, and thought ourselves quite happy! Doesn’t it all seem a long way off!

  “Well, my hand is getting frightfully tired, so I must end as quick as I can.

  “I told Mother next morning, and I must say she was very nice, and he came round and they had a long jaw, and seemed to hit it off very well together. Mother wrote her usual reams to Father, and pretended that it all depended on him, but of course we knew it was all right the minute she approved.

  “I haven’t got a ring yet, but Father is coming up here, or we’re going home early next week — it isn’t yet decided which — after that we can be properly engaged. Of course we really are, now, but we pretend to think we’re not, to please Mother, et cetera. Frank luckily has no relations except his sister. I am dying for you to know him, he is so awfully nice, and we’re simply too happy for words. Do write a long answer to this.

  “Best love from

  “Dorothy.

  “P.S. — I feel rather a selfish pig for writing all about myself, but I knew you’d want to hear the really interesting parts. I hope you’re having a heavenly time too, with your one, but of course you are. Your house looks simply ripping. Frank and I will probably live abroad in bungalows and things when we’re married, and not be a bit rich.”

  Happiness had positively endowed Dorothy with descriptive powers hitherto unsuspected in her.

  Lily felt excited and pleased, and oddly sad, all at once. She read Dorothy’s letter over again.

  Not a word about handy-pandy, footy-wootie and eyesie-pysie! Lily could not help wondering whether these adjuncts to courtship had been dispensed with. She was inclined to hope so. Dorothy’s happiness was, evidently enough, above the realm of trivialities.

  Lily read the letter through for the third time. Dorothy had always been inarticulate, but it seemed now that she was suddenly able to express herself. However colloquial the words that she might have selected, Lily felt that they somehow conveyed very vividly an impression of sudden, and overwhelming happiness.

  Lily, in a strange and confused way, felt as though, through Dorothy, she saw exemplified the brilliant descriptions given to her of the joys of early love, descriptions which, when she had tried to apply them to herself, had seemed extraordinarily unreal. Her will had repeated the assurances of her happiness, but her emotions had remained unstirred.

  She told Nicholas the news that her letters had contained.

  “By Jove! That’s excellent. I hope he’s a good fellow. When are they going to be married?”

  “She doesn’t say, but Cousin Ethel evidently thinks it will be before next year, when his regiment goes to India.”

  “Splendid! Funny you and she should be married more or less at the same time, eh? You’ll be able to tell her about the management of a husband — an old married woman like you.” His laughter, as always, prolonged itself considerably beyond the limits of his wife’s very faint amusement at the jest.

  “Give her my best congratulations, Lily. I’m so glad about it. She’s a first-rate girl, isn’t she? I should like her immensely even if she wasn’t a great friend of my little wife’s. Captain Durand is in luck, isn’t he?”

  Lily assented eagerly.

  “Don’t you think Dorothy is pretty, Nicholas?”

  “I know somebody who’s much prettier.” He laughed and kissed her.

  She felt ungrateful because she wished that he would give her the opinion she had asked for instead of caressing her.

  The next moment he did so.

  “Yes, I think she’s quite nice-looking. She’s got plenty of brains, too, hasn’t she?”

  His tone took an affirmative reply for granted, and Lily gave it because she was afraid that it would sound ungenerous to express the opinion that Dorothy was emphatically devoid of brains.

  She reflected, besides, that Nicholas was more likely to be a competent judge of brains than she was herself.

  Lily was always willing to tell herself that the judgments of Nicholas were more to be trusted than were her own. She liked to acknowledge to herself his superiority, believing that because she acknowledged it, she relied upon it.

  But in the recesses of her soul, into which she had been taught to shun investigation, her own intuitions and convictions remained unaltered.

  “Where are they going to live? In India?” Nicholas enquired.

  His absorption in any matter under discussion was always co
rdial and unfeigned, and always came as a joyful surprise to Lily, accustomed to Philip’s elaborately polite pretences at an interest which he in reality seldom felt in the affairs of other people.

  “I suppose they’ll live in India,” she said. “I don’t know how many more years of foreign service he has, but he’s only twenty-eight. Dorothy says something about living in bungalows and places.”

  “Good! She means to go with him, then?”

  “Oh, I’m sure she does,” said Lily, surprised. “Cousin Ethel will miss her dreadfully.”

  “So will someone else, I’m afraid,” said Nicholas kindly. “I hoped you were going to have her to stay with you when we were settled in town. I’m afraid it will be lonely for you sometimes, when I’m very busy, as I sometimes am.” He looked at her for a moment. “Perhaps we shall be able to put that right later on, eh, Lily?” She smiled at him.

  Such references did not discompose her in the least, and she was placidly glad that Nicholas should so much desire a child. It had pleased and relieved her to find that her husband did not consider the subject of potential babies as improper as she had always supposed it to be.

  “But there’s another sister, the little one at school. You like her better than Janet, don’t you? We can have her to stay with us, I hope. But I shall tell Dorothy that she’s let me down, by running off like this to India.” Nicholas laughed heartily.

  “All the same, she’s a plucky girl. It’s no joke for a woman to spend all the best years of her life following the drum. It means bad climates very often, and no fixed home, and perhaps separation from her children — certainly separation from her own people. All that means some pretty big sacrifices.”