Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  “Was he? Well, you could do that later,” said Elsie. She was nearly breathless with triumph, but strove to make her voice sound matter-of-fact. “But I hope to goodness he will come to Torquay. It’ll make all the difference to Horace.”

  Geraldine sneered. “I daresay you think it’ll make all the difference to you, too. It’s anything in trousers with you, old girl, whether the fellow belongs to another girl or not. But I’m not afraid of anything of that sort while Horace is about. He knows how to keep you in order, as Mother said.”

  “I’ll thank you, and Mother too, to keep your opinion of me till it’s asked for.” Elsie, however, spoke mechanically.

  She had immediately become obsessed by visions of herself and Morrison, walking, swimming, sitting beside one another on the sands, or in the intimate closeness and darkness of the picture palace...

  “I’ll just tell you this, young Elsie. Leslie Morrison isn’t the sort of fellow you’ve been used to — not like Johnnie Osborne, and that truck. And as for carrying on with a married woman — why, he’d be ashamed to think of such a thing.”

  Elsie smiled, and said nothing. She hardly heard what her sister was saying.

  A hand laid upon her shoulder made her jump violently.

  “Are you in the moon, Elsie? I’ve been making signs to you for ten minutes, I should think. It’s more than time we had our sandwiches,” said Horace Williams querulously.

  “Oh, all right.”

  By tugging and pulling at piled-up packages, they succeeded in getting hold of the basket in which Elsie had packed ham sandwiches, seed-cake, and bananas.

  The train sped onwards...

  III

  The Williamses and Geraldine stayed in a boarding-house that proudly advertised itself as being situated “right on the front,” and young Morrison had a room in an apartment house, much cheaper and more remote, half way up one of Torquay’s steepest hills. He arranged to have all his meals except breakfast at the boarding-house.

  The weather was very hot, and sunny, and breathless.

  Elsie felt as though she had never lived before. Every morning she came downstairs, her face sunburnt and glowing, but never unbecomingly freckled, her open-necked, short-sleeved blouses and jumpers indefinably smart and well put on, her undependable and essentially variable good looks seeming always to increase.

  She was greatly admired in the boarding-house, and Williams for the first time did not appear to resent this.

  He had suddenly become absorbed in a new and obscure digestive complaint, and would discuss the subject endlessly with his neighbours at meal times. An elderly widow without any companion took a fancy to Geraldine, and as she sometimes gave her presents of clothes, or took her for a drive, Geraldine always sat next to her at the long table in the dining-room, and listened to her with a fair pretence of amiability.

  Breakfast was a long, hot, abundant meal. The boardinghouse knew its clientèle and catered for it according to the views of business men who never allowed themselves to eat as much as they would have liked on week-day mornings during all the rest of the year. Tea and coffee, eggs and bacon, and fish and sausages were provided, toast and jam and marmalade and potted meat.

  Elsie, who never ate anything but bread-and-butter with jam, and drank innumerable cups of tea, at her own home, enjoyed the novel fare because it was novel, and because she had not bought and ordered it herself, and because she was living in a haze of happiness that made everything enjoyable.

  The prophecy of the clairvoyante had come true. Elsie knew the love that she had never yet known.

  Every morning they went down to the sands and met Leslie Morrison there. They sat in deck chairs, and ate fruit from paper bags, and listened to a pierrot entertainment. At midday Elsie and Geraldine ran back to the boarding-house, undressed, and put on their bathing-suits, and came back to find Morrison already in the water and Horace Williams asleep in his deck-chair behind a newspaper.

  Elsie’s bathing-dress was blue, trimmed with white braid, and she wore a rubber cap with a blue-and-red handkerchief knotted over it. Her bare legs and arms and neck had tanned very slightly; Geraldine’s showed scarlet patches of sunburn.

  As they joined Morrison in the water, both girls always screamed, clinging to one another’s hands. But once the water was high above their waists, Elsie, a naturally strong swimmer, struck out boldly, consciously enjoying the cold water and the exercise of her muscles. Geraldine, of poor physique and defective circulation, only bobbed up and down in the shallows, still uttering staccato shrieks.

  At first, Elsie and Morrison would keep near her, swimming short distances, and then returning, or splashing beside her in shallow water, but sooner or later they would both strike out, swimming side by side. They spoke very little.

  “I say, you swim simply splendidly, Mrs. Williams. Why, I’ve never seen a girl swim as well as you do.”

  “D’you think so? It’s nice, isn’t it?”

  “It’s ripping. I’ve never had a holiday like this one — I mean, one that I’ve enjoyed so much.”

  “Neither have I.”

  “I hadn’t looked forward to my holiday a bit this year. I never thought it would be anything like this. I didn’t know that anything in the world”

  It was always Elsie who suggested that it was time to go back.

  “Geraldine’s gone out already. She turns a funny colour if she stays in too long.”

  Once, when they were rather further out than usual, Elsie said that she was getting tired.

  “Put your hand on my shoulder — I’ll help you. Yes, do.”

  “Oh no, I couldn’t.”

  “Yes, you must.”

  “Well, if you are sure you don’t mind ...”

  “Mind!”

  His voice was very eloquent, and Elsie was abundantly satisfied.

  She laid her hand upon his shoulder, and kept it there after her feet touched the sandy bottom once more and they were almost out of the water.

  They raced to the bath-towel cloak that she had left under the wall, and as she put it round her Elsie said, without looking at him and in a peculiar tone:

  “Did you enjoy it?”

  “I loved it,” Morrison replied very low, and after a moment he added:

  “Better than any of our other bathes.”

  Elsie had never before conducted any one of her numerous love affairs in a key so reticent, and the very novelty of the experience rendered it strange and precious.

  Subconsciously, they might both be waiting for the spoken word, but on the surface each was supremely contented in the present.

  The presence of Geraldine did not disturb Elsie in the least. Geraldine had been jealous of her intermittently ever since the days of their earliest childhood, and her manifestations of temper were always latent, rather than active. Elsie was used to them, and indifferent to them.

  Besides, Leslie Morrison was always very nice to Geraldine. He sat between the sisters at the entertainments to which they went frequently, he gave chocolates and sweets to Geraldine oftener than to Elsie, and he was always ready to talk of Geraldine’s favourite topic, the old days in the office.

  Only his dark eyes sought Elsie’s face with increasing frequency, his pleasant young voice altered slightly and indescribably when he found himself alone with her.

  It seemed part of the magic of those enchanted days that Geraldine should make no scene, Horace Williams appear to perceive nothing.

  On Sunday evening a band played in the public gardens. They decided to go and hear it.

  Then Williams developed his mysterious symptoms, and refused to come out.

  “You girls can go with Morrison. I shall take a glass of boiling water with peppermint,” he declared, “and go to bed. I’m in agony.”

  “Would you like me to stay with you?” Elsie asked, her heart sinking.

  “No, no, go and enjoy yourself.”

  “Perhaps you’ll feel better in a bit, and come and join us,” she suggested,
and thankfully made her escape.

  The gardens were lit with Japanese lanterns and crowded with holiday-makers. Pale frocks and scarves flickered oddly in and out of the shadows and beyond the bright circle of glaring white light thrown out from the raised and roofed circular platform of the bandstand.

  “No hope of chairs, I suppose,” said Geraldine disconsolately. “We’re late, thanks to Horace. Just look at the people.”

  Morrison volunteered to try and find a seat, and they watched his tall figure disappear into the throng of people.

  “I shall be sick if I have to stand for long, that’s certain,” declared Geraldine. “I believe the sun was too hot for me this afternoon. My head’s splitting.”

  “Take off your hat, why don’t you?”

  Elsie’s own hair was only covered with a blue motor veil, knotted at either ear, and with floating ends.

  “My hair would be all over the place. I like to look tidy, thank you.”

  “Please yourself,” said Elsie indifferently. She was absorbed in watching for the first glimpse of Morrison returning to them.

  When she caught sight of him, elbowing his way through the crowd, it actually seemed to her as though the heart in her body leaped forward to meet him.

  As usual, his eyes sought Elsie’s and held them for an instant before he turned to Geraldine.

  “There’s one chair there. I’ve taken it, and a fellow is kindly keeping it for me. I thought you and your sister could take it in turns to sit down.”

  “I don’t know ...” Geraldine began ungraciously.

  “It’s quite a good place, and nice-looking people on either side. The chap that’s keeping it for us seemed very decent.”

  “Oh, go on, Geraldine!” said Elsie. “Hark, they are beginning again.”

  The band had struck into a selection from a popular musical comedy.

  Leslie Morrison put his arm beneath the girl’s elbow, and they moved away, Geraldine still grumbling sub-audibly.

  Elsie, motionless, waited.

  Never before in her life had she known this ecstasy of anticipation, so poignant as to be almost indistinguishable from pain.

  When Leslie came back to her, she thought that she must fall, and instinctively caught at his arm for support.

  Without speaking, he drew her away from the ring of light, into the deep shadow of a clump of trees. She stumbled against something in the sudden obscurity, and discerned the low railing that separated the ornamental shrubs and flower-beds from the crowded gravel paths.

  “Come,” said Leslie’s voice in her ear, hoarsely. They stepped together over the little railing on to the grass. Another few steps, and they were in an isolation as complete as though a curtain had fallen between them and the seething mass of talking, laughing, swaying people in the gardens.

  Even the sound of the band only reached them faintly as though from a great distance.

  Leslie Morrison halted abruptly, and they faced one another, their eyes already accustomed to the semi-darkness.

  By an impulse as inevitable as it was irresistible, they were in one another’s arms.

  Neither spoke a word whilst that long throbbing embrace endured.

  Through Elsie’s whole being flashed the wordless conviction: “This is what I’ve been waiting for...”

  “Elsie,” whispered the man. “ Elsie ... Elsie ... Elsie ... I love you! ‘‘

  “I love you,” she whispered back again.

  They stood clinging to one another, entwined, the hot summer darkness encompassing them.

  “What shall we do?” Morrison murmured at last. “I have no right to say a word to you, Elsie — I never meant to.” “What does it matter?” said Elsie recklessly. “Horace and I have never been happy together. I ought never to have married him. It’s you I belong to.”

  “My darling ... my sweetheart.”

  They kissed passionately, again and again.

  “What are we going to do?”

  Elsie pressed closer and closer against him. “Forget everything, as long as this holiday lasts, except that we can be together. It’s been so heavenly, Leslie! We can settle — something — later on, when it’s all over.”

  “I can’t let you go back to that man again. It would drive me mad.”

  “Take me away with you,” she whispered.

  “Oh, if I could ... if I only could, little girl!” They spoke as lovers talk, ardently, and tenderly, and with long silences.

  A sudden surging movement, and the distant sound of the National Anthem, penetrated at last to them through the darkness.

  “It’s all over!” Morrison cried, aghast. “Your sister? ...”

  “I’ll manage her,” said Elsie. “Leslie ... once more ...” ,

  Her mouth found his, and then she tore herself out of his arms.

  “Come with me.”

  Rapidly Elsie found her way to the little pay-desk outside the enclosure, in which the lights were already being extinguished.

  “She’s bound to come out this way.”

  They waited, Elsie’s eyes at first dazzled, striving to find her sister’s form in the crowd. Every fibre of her being was acutely aware of the presence of Leslie Morrison, standing just behind her, so that her shoulder touched his breast.

  Without turning her head she put out her hand, and felt it clasped in his and held tightly.

  Her senses swam, and it was Geraldine’s own voice that first warned her of her sister’s approach.

  To her relief, Geraldine was talking to a strange young man.

  “Good-night,” she said amiably.

  “Good-night, and thanks so much for a pleasant evening,” he returned, raising his soft hat.

  Elsie compelled herself to speak. “ Have you met a friend?” she enquired, with simulated interest.

  “Hallo! Where have you been, I should like to know? Isn’t it funny? — that’s a fellow who was at our place for nearly a month during the war. Belcher, his name is. He was the very one that kept the chair for me. Did you two get seats somewhere else?”

  “Yes,” said Elsie swiftly.

  “It was good, wasn’t it — the band I mean? Horace has missed something by staying at home.”

  Geraldine was evidently, and contrary to her wont, in high good humour.”

  They walked back to the boarding-house, Leslie Morrison between the two girls, Geraldine openly hanging on to his arm. His other hand was out of sight in his pocket, Elsie’s warm, soft fingers locked in his.

  At the door they parted.

  “Good-night and sweet repose,” said Geraldine indifferently, but she waited for her sister to precede her into the lighted house.

  Elsie moved in a dream. It startled her when Geraldine, looking curiously at her under the glare of the electric light in the hall, said suddenly:

  “What’s the matter with you, Elsie? You look moonstruck, and your hair’s all over the place, half down your back.”

  “Is it?” Elsie put up her hands and pushed up the soft, loose mass under her veil again. “I’m going to bed,” she said, in a voice that sounded oddly in her own ears. “Tell Horace, will you? I’ve a splitting head.”

  She felt an unutterable longing to be in the dark, and alone with her new and overwhelming bliss.

  “You’re a nice one, I must say, leaving me alone all the evening, and then dashing oh upstairs the minute we get in. I should think Horace would find something to say to you”

  Elsie neither heard nor heeded.

  She ran upstairs and into the small double bedroom. It contained two beds, and for the first time since their marriage she and Horace had occupied separate ones.

  To-night Elsie felt that she could never be thankful enough for the comparative solitude that would enable her to feel herself free again.

  She tore off her thin summer clothes, shook down her cloud of hair, ran across the room in her nightdress to snap off the light, and then almost threw herself into bed.

  In the blessed darkness, Elsie lay
with hands clasped over her throbbing heart, and relived every instant of the evening, thrilling to a happiness so intense that she felt as though she must die of it.

  She was perfectly incapable just then of looking beyond the immediate present and the glorious certainty of seeing Leslie Morrison again in the morning.

  Although Elsie had been attracted, in a sensual and superficial manner, by a number of men, she had never in her life loved before, and the passion for Morrison that had suddenly swept into her life held all the force of a long repressed element violently and unexpectedly liberated.

  Body, soul and spirit, she was obsessed almost to madness by this young man, several years her junior, whom she had not known a month.

  When Horace Williams came up to bed it was nearly midnight, and Elsie, her face half buried under the sheet, pretended to be asleep.

  IV

  The love-affair of Elsie Williams and Leslie Morrison swept on its course, and in the early days of their madness neither of them paused for an instant to count its possible cost.

  It seemed, indeed, as though Fate were deliberately simplifying their way.

  Horace Williams appeared unable to give his attention to anything beyond his newly-discovered digestive trouble, and remained constantly indoors through the hottest and finest of the summer days, experimenting upon himself with drugs, and studying tables of dietetic values. He questioned Elsie very little as to her movements, taking it for granted that she, Morrison, and Geraldine formed a trio.

  In point of fact, the youth whom Geraldine had met at the Sunday evening concert, and whom she spoke of as Percy Belcher, now almost always made a fourth in the party.

  Geraldine monopolised him eagerly, and openly showed her triumph at feeling that she could now afford to relinquish Leslie Morrison.

  Elsie and Morrison went swimming together, and lay on the hot, crowded sands, and dropped behind the others when they all went for walks, and sat with locked hands and her cheek against his shoulder in the stifling, thrilling darkness of the picture theatre, watching together the representation of a love that was never anything but the reflection of their own, the eternal triumph of a Man and a Woman, pale representatives on the screen of Elsie Williams and Leslie Morrison.