“I suppose it is. She was meant for the primitive things, you think?”
“Lucilla always said so. There is the cottage, Owen. Will you wait outside, or come in?”
“I should like to come in with you.”
Life was inartistic, Quentillian reflected whimsically, while Flora delivered her father’s message to a middle-aged woman in an apron.
To accord with all literary conventions, there should have been a sick child in the cottage, and Flora’s tender soothing of its fretfulness should have proved a revelation of the unfulfilled maternal instinct within her.
But there was no sick child to provide a clou for Quentillian’s observations in psychology, and he was by no means assured of Flora’s powers of soothing. Rather would she urge the silence of resignation.
He was convinced that never in her life had Flora Morchard been the centre of a pretty picture. That her personality seldom dominated any scene was not, he felt, from any conscious effacement, but from an innate and instinctive withdrawal of her forces to some unseen objective, to her infinitely worth while. He reflected with dismay on his own undertaking to make enquiries concerning the death of David Morchard. But he did not think that Flora, whatever the result of the enquiries, would be dismayed. Dismay implied mental disarray, a quality of taken-abackness. Flora, as she would herself have told him, was strong in a strength not her own.
They walked back together almost in silence.
“Your little expedition did Flora good,” the Canon told Quentillian that evening. “I am grateful to you, dear fellow, very grateful. Let us see something of you still, from Stear. It means a great deal to us both. There must not be ‘good-bye’ between us, save for the beautiful old meaning of the word, ‘God by you.’ God by you always, dear Owen.”
Quentillian went to London, made no discoveries at all, and wrote to Flora.
She replied, thanking him, in the briefest of notes. A week later he received another letter from her.
“My Dear Owen:
“The Indian mail came in yesterday, and brought me a letter from David, written a week before he died. He asked me to break it to my father that a Major Carey, in his regiment, was on his way home to take divorce proceedings against his wife, citing David as co-respondent. David asked me in the letter to do anything I could for Mrs. Carey, as she is by herself, with no relations in England. The case was to be undefended, and David had decided to leave the Army and come to England as soon as possible to marry Mrs. Carey. I gather that he was very unhappy, especially at having to leave the regiment. I still do not know whether he found a dreadful solution to the whole question, in taking his own life.
“Mrs. Carey has written to Father, a strange note, which he showed me. She says nothing of the divorce proceedings, but only writes as a great friend of David’s, imploring to be allowed to see us. Naturally, Father is only too anxious to see her, and as she says that she is on her way to Scotland at once, we are coming to London on the 10th so as to meet her.
“I have told Father nothing whatever of David’s letter to me. I cannot imagine that Mrs. Carey will want to make the facts known to him, but I shall be able to judge better when I have seen her, which I have decided to do, by myself, before the appointment with Father.
“I can arrange this a great deal better with your help than without it, therefore will you come and see us on the evening we arrive — Thursday the 10th, at about six o’clock, Carrowby’s Hotel?
“Please destroy this letter.
“Yours sincerely,
Flora Morchard.”
Quentillian, as he read Flora’s unvarnished statements, felt a sensation as of being appalled.
He could not believe that Flora, fanatically single-minded as her determination to shield her father from the knowledge of the truth might be, had any conception of the difficulties that probably lay before her, and he asked himself also whether she had in any degree realized what the consequences must be to the Canon, far more than to herself, of a deception that should break down half way.
His absolute conviction of Flora’s inflexibility, and his own strong sense of the impertinence, in both the proper and the colloquial sense of the word, of offering unasked advice, were not enough to restrain him from the mental composition of several eloquent and elaborate expositions of opinion. But they sufficed to restrain him from transferring the eloquence to a sheet of notepaper.
He went to Carrowby’s Hotel, to keep the appointment summarily made by Flora.
“You dear man!”
The Canon’s exclamation of pleasure rang through the dingy hotel sitting-room in which Quentillian found them. He always showed the same pleasure in seeing Owen, and Owen’s old sense of inadequacy had insensibly given place to a rather remorseful gratitude.
“Is this the doing of Flora? She told me that she should notify you of our coming, but it is good to meet with a friend’s face so early. Our stay is to be a very brief one. I have to return home for the Sunday. I cannot leave all in Clover’s hands. Besides, I trust there will be no need. You know the errand on which we are come?”
“I told him in my letter,” said Flora.
“This lady, this Mrs. Carey, had seen much of our dear fellow in India and her letter is full of feeling — full of feeling. She heard nothing of our tragedy until she landed in England. It seems that she had been in ill health for some time, she writes of complete prostration, and is on her way to Scotland now. So you will understand our hasty journey hither. Has it not indeed been with us, ‘Ask and ye shall receive’? Flora, here, knows what my yearning has been for one word with those who knew him, who had been with him recently. And behold! it has been given unto me, ‘full measure, heaped up, pressed down and running over’.”
The Canon leant back. He looked very tired and old.
“Do you see her tomorrow morning, sir?”
“We go to her, Owen. She is good enough to receive us on Saturday morning, and I understand that she leaves that evening. Tomorrow I have a conference in the afternoon, but the morning is our own.” He gazed wistfully at Owen.
“I had thought of a memorial window to the beloved David, and this is an opportunity which may not come again. I have the name of a place to which I half thought of going, if it be not too trying for little Flora.”
“Let me accompany you,” said Quentillian.
It was evidently what the Canon wished.
“Will you, dear lad? I own that I should be glad of your arm, aye, and your presence. Flora is overwrought and overtired.”
She did indeed look very ill, not at all to Quentillian’s surprise.
“She has been taking too much thought for me, dear child,” said the Canon, Quentillian could not help thinking with more truth than he realized. “I wish Flora to take some rest. Let the expedition tomorrow be yours and mine, Owen. Tell me, my daughter, what time am I free?”
“Tomorrow morning, till twelve o’clock. Your conference is at two.”
“Flora is my deputy secretary,” said the Canon smiling. “I trust it all to her, and her memory is unfailing. She is indeed my right hand.”
“Will you come at ten o’clock tomorrow, Owen, and start from here?” said Flora abruptly.
He assented, determined to obtain an opportunity of speaking to her alone. If he was to assist Flora in a scheme of concealment against which he inwardly revolted strongly, he must at least know of what that scheme consisted. His indignation waxed in proportion to his anxiety, until Flora said to him with deliberation:
“Ought we to keep you any longer, Owen? I’ll ring for the lift.” The suggestion took them both out of the room, and she closed the door after her.
“What is it you’re doing?” said Quentillian, his urgency too great for a choice of words.
She leant against the passage wall, white and rather breathless, but spoke low and very distinctly, as though to impress her facts upon him.
“Listen — I want you to be quite clear about it. The appointment with Mr
s. Carey is for tomorrow — Friday morning. I’m going to her house. I’m certain from her letter, that she’s not a woman to be trusted.
I don’t know why she wants to see us, but I think it’s to tell us things — things about David. I shall know when I’ve seen her.”
“But your father thinks the appointment is for Saturday?”
“I told him it was. I wrote the letter to arrange it.”
“And how are you to prevent his going there on Saturday?”
“She leaves for Scotland on Friday night.”
“You know that for certain?”
“Of course I do, Owen. One doesn’t leave these things to chance. But I shall telephone on Saturday and find out if she’s really left.”
“I still don’t understand altogether. How can you explain to the Canon that this lady isn’t there, when he goes by appointment to see her?”
“I shall have made a mistake. I’m keeping his engagements written down for him. And I shall have written down this engagement for Saturday, instead of for Friday. He will go exactly one day too late.”
“Flora, you can’t do it.”
She lifted tired eyes to his face, overwrought to the point of fanaticism.
“Don’t waste time. Only tell me if I can count on you. All I want you to do is to keep Father out, with you, tomorrow morning. I shall be at Mrs. Carey’s at half-past ten and I promise to be back here before one o’clock.”
“Suppose this lady is not what you think her, and you find that she will be — discreet — is your father to be disappointed of his hopes of seeing her?”
“I may be able to arrange something. Perhaps she’d put off going to Scotland, and see him on Saturday after all. It would be all right then, wouldn’t it? Or I might even be able to tell her the whole thing,” said Flora wistfully. “It isn’t very likely, though.”
He did not think that it was.
“You see, you didn’t see her original letter, and I did. It was the letter of a very hysterical person. She might say almost anything, I imagine and — well, there’s a good deal that mustn’t be said, isn’t there?” It was incontrovertible, but Quentillian said roughly:
“I detest maneuvering, it’s utterly unworthy of you. All this juggling with dates and letters”
“It’s no use doing things by halves,” said Flora stubbornly. “Yes or no, Owen, are you going to back me up if necessary?”
“If I say no, will it deter you from going through with this insane performance?”
“Of course it won’t.” She actually smiled. “What would be the sense of making up one’s mind if it’s to be unmade again just because one’s friends don’t agree with one?”
“Very well.” He shrugged his shoulders as one in desperation.
She evidently accepted it as the assent, however ungracious, that he meant it to be.
“Thank you very much,” said Flora with brief finality.
III
Flora followed Mrs. Carey’s maid upstairs, feeling as though the beating of her heart were causing each breath she drew to crowd thickly upon the next one.
Mrs. Carey’s house — she supposed it was Mrs. Carey’s house — was a very tiny one indeed, and looked tinier by reason of the number of pictures, draperies, and flowers that covered every available corner of the steep staircase and the small landing.
The drawing-room was small, too, and so dark that the maid turned on the rose-shaded electric lights as she ushered Flora into the empty room.
“Mrs. Carey isn’t down yet. I’ll tell her you’re here, m’m.”
“Mrs. Carey is expecting me. Please say that it is Miss Morchard.”
The maid went away.
“Unpunctual,” reflected Flora. “She said half-past ten.”
She gazed round the room, which confirmed the impression of Mrs. Carey’s personality that Flora had already received from her pale mauve note paper, her methods of expressing herself in writing, and that which she knew of her relations with David Morchard.
Nearly everything in the room was rose-colour, except the walls, which were grey, and laden with sketches, brackets, and a shelf on which stood innumerable framed and unframed photographs, nearly all of them of men.
A minute writing table, set corner ways, overflowed with papers, and more photographs, including one that Flora recognized instantly, although it had never been sent to St. Gwenllian.
The chair in front of the table supported a number of illustrated papers.
“Untidy,” was Flora’s next verdict.
She had resolutely closed the avenues of her mind to emotion and speculation alike. The habits of observation, which she mentioned in private spiritual consultation with her father as her own tendency towards a lack of charity, she knew subconsciously to possess a steadying effect.
A quantity of cigarette ash in a small receptacle, presumably placed there on the previous evening, and a general atmosphere of unopened windows, did not serve to modify Flora’s already unenthusiastic judgments.
Neither did Mrs. Carey’s delay in making her appearance.
When she at last came in, it was difficult to see what could possibly have delayed her, since she had apparently only stepped out of bed into a wadded silk kimono, a lace boudoir cap, and fur-bordered bedroom slippers.
She looked younger than Flora had expected her to be, and her little pallid face was pretty enough, with violet semi-circles under big, light blue eyes and a general air of fragility. Although nearly as tall as Flora herself, she was slight enough to produce an effect of daintiness, the adjective that Flora immediately felt certain would appeal to her most.
A short, thick plait of fair hair fell over her shoulders, and a certain babyish plaintiveness of utterance made Flora think of Olga Duffle.
“I’m sure you’re David’s sister,” said Mrs. Carey, to which proof of intuition her visitor offered no reply, thinking the fact sufficiently self-evident.
“Oh, do sit down. You must forgive me coming in like this, but I’m not strong, and I arrived worn out after an awful voyage — and then to get this news! Do you smoke?”
“No, thank you.”
“Do you mind if I do? I smoke too much, but my nerves are in an awful state. A doctor friend of mine — the dearest thing — made me promise faithfully never to inhale, but I’m afraid I do. It was the ship’s doctor, on the way home, as a matter of fact. There were one or two nice men on board, but the women were dreadful. Miss Morchard, I should think other women generally confide in you, don’t they, and like you most awfully. Now, I’m not enormously popular with other women. I don’t mean that I haven’t got women friends, devoted ones, who’d do anything in the world for me — but most of my very best pals have been men. It’s funny, isn’t it? Your brother was one of my dearest friends.”
The blue eyes looked warily at Flora.
“That’s why I felt I had to see you, and oh! you are so like him! It’s hardly like talking to a stranger at all!”
It certainly was not, Flora reflected.
“I feel I’m so dreadfully in the dark — I know nothing. Only the awful, awful fact. When I got the cable — it was cabled to me, by a dear friend at Government House — when I read it, I simply didn’t believe it. I said, it can’t be true.’ But it was.”
Flora did not feel it incumbent upon her to reply. “When your father got my letter, I daresay he was astonished, but I’m frightfully impulsive, Miss Morchard, and I felt I must know more or I should go mad. That’s why I begged you to let me see you. I’m a thoroughly unconventional woman, as you may perhaps have guessed, and I always act on impulse.” Flora looked at the frightened, furtive little face, and wondered what purpose and what concealment lay behind the flood of words.
“I’m going to be perfectly frank with you, because
I feel I can trust you. May I call you Flora? My name is Maisie — a silly little name, isn’t it, but my friends all say it suits me. I don’t know why. Tell me, did David write to you about me? He said h
e was going to, but it was such a — such a short time before”
Mrs. Carey’s tongue moistened her lips as though they were dry.
“I don’t know whether you’ve ever lived abroad, but if you haven’t, you don’t know what the East is like for people who have to live there. There’s a frightful amount of slander and gossip going on, and people put a wicked construction on all sorts of innocent things. It’s awful. It used to make me simply miserable. You see, live and let live has always been my motto. I like to go my own way, and have my own friends, and not do any harm to anybody, but simply be happy in my own little way. After all, it’s what God meant for all of us, isn’t it? But in India one can’t do that. My dear, you wouldn’t believe what it’s like. I went out when I was awfully young — I was married at twenty — and I know for a fact that the most beastly things have been said about me. You see, I feel I can tell you this quite frankly, Flora, because of your being David’s favourite sister. I know you’ll understand, and that I can trust you.”
Again that anxious, furtive glance was shot at her from under Mrs. Carey’s long lashes.
“I’ve had heaps of men friends, of course — especially in the Regiment. I’m going to be perfectly honest with you, and own up that one or two of them got rather silly, and fancied themselves in love with me.
That wasn’t my fault, was it? I just wanted to be friends, you know. A nice woman can do such a lot for young men. I couldn’t help it — possibly — if they went and fancied themselves in love with me. Now could I? But would you believe it, people — it was mostly women, I must say, and some of them actually called themselves my friends — went and invented the most disgusting lies about me. Out of jealousy, you know. I was a good ten years younger than any of them, as it happened, and you’d have thought the Colonel’s wife, or anyone like that, might have wanted to mother me a little bit. (I lost my own mother when I was only fourteen, and had a rotten time at home.) But instead of that, my dear, instead of that, they simply spread these filthy stories about me and all my best friends. However, I don’t want to go into all that. It was soon after I first went out, and of course nobody who really knew me believed for an instant that there was anything in it. They heard something about it at Government House, you know, and the Governor was simply furious, I believe. My friend in the Secretariat told me about it. The Governor said that Mrs. Carey was the only real lady in the place, as well as being the prettiest woman in India. Of course, that may have been nonsense, because I happen to know that he did like me most awfully — personally, I mean — but I know I was most awfully touched at his taking up the cudgels for me like that. It showed what the people who really mattered thought of me, didn’t it, and after all, the Governor of a place does represent the King, doesn’t he?”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 230
