Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  “If you like, I will, ‘m.”

  Hilda went away to her husband in the kitchen. Laura, who knew the telegram by heart, read it again.

  Quite impossible to let a new cook arrive, and find her mistress gone out for the day. Equally impossible to bid her postpone her arrival, and thus leave Applecourt without a cook at all — even such a cook as was Laura herself — for an entire day and a half.

  Perhaps the Prices would stay on until the new cook could arrive.

  But they would not.

  Hilda returned, having accomplished her mission with a celerity seldom brought to bear upon her legitimate duties, and said:

  “I’m sorry, m’, but we’ve made our plans, and Price can’t see his way to altering things.”

  “It doesn’t matter at all,” said Laura coldly, “I quite understand. I can easily get in someone from the village just for one day.”

  “Perhaps Mrs. Raynor could oblige you, ‘m. It’s only the one day.”

  “I know, but it happens to be the day I want to go to Great Quinn.”

  “Wednesday’s early closing day at Great Quinn,” Hilda pointed out all over again.

  “Yes, I know. Well, that’s all, thank you, Hilda.”

  Laura went up to the village to find Mrs. Raynor.

  She did not like Mrs. Raynor very much, and she gravely distrusted her habit of always arriving with a smallish bundle in the morning, and going away with it, altered in shape and size, at night.

  After all, it was only for one day.

  Mrs. Raynor was at home, but informed Laura that her heart had come on again.

  Laura, understanding that this meant a more or less complete inability to exert herself, condoled with Mrs. Raynor, explained that she had wanted to go to Great Quinn on Wednesday, heard without surprise that Wednesday was early closing day, and took her leave.

  “Perhaps they could have cold food on Wednesday. It would only be Wednesday. But there’s laying the table and the clearing away and washing up afterwards — and the new house-parlourmaid won’t like it.”

  Laura felt annoyed, and helpless, and impatient, but the more these emotions gained upon her, the more determined she became not to abandon her intention of meeting Ayland at Great Quinn on Wednesday.

  “Early closing day or not,” she added viciously.

  On her way home she stopped at two cottages where occasional “help” could be found, but both Miss Weald and Mrs. Potter were already engaged. This exhausted the possibilities of the immediate neighbourhood.

  “Could I get a temporary cook for a week — but if I put Johnson off she’s certain not to turn up at all — and anyway, there never are any temporary cooks. Besides, the expense — —”

  Indulging in such familiar arguments, Laura went home again.

  “Alfred, I’ve had a telegram from the new cook. The tiresome woman isn’t coming till Wednesday.”

  “Why not?”

  “She doesn’t say why not.”

  “Possibly she’s taken another job, and doesn’t mean to come at all.”

  “Oh no!” said Laura passionately. “I think it must be genuine. Otherwise, why Wednesday? It would have been simpler just to say she wasn’t coming. But she does say Wednesday. Only, it’s awkward, because that’s the day I’m going to Great Quinn.”

  “Better put it off.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not? Wednesday isn’t a very good day — it’s — —”

  “Yes, I know. But I told Duke Ayland I’d meet him for lunch, and that we’d look at the new University Buildings.”

  “Better tell him you can’t manage it. Unless the Prices can stay on for an extra day.”

  “They can’t,” said Laura shortly. “And Mrs. Raynor can’t come, nor Miss Weald nor Mrs. Potter.”

  “If she comes on Wednesday, it practically only means a day and a half without anyone. I should think it could be managed, though I’m afraid the cooking is a great nuisance for you. Couldn’t we have cold beef or something ?”

  “Oh Alfred!” said Laura.

  “Well, well, well,” said Alfred, in acknowledgment of her emotion.

  He went into the house just as the gong rang, and when he and Laura met again at lunch, he spoke only of the political situation — and of that briefly, as was his wont.

  Laura’s replies were neither intelligent nor ready. She was thinking about Duke Ayland, and the new University Buildings, and the failure of the cook, and the surpassing difficulty of explaining to everybody why it was so important that she should get to Great Quinn, on an early closing day.

  Aloud, she was interspersing her comments — such as they were — with injunctions to Johnnie and Edward.

  Very soon, Alfred relapsed into silence altogether. Laura, in a worried, subconscious kind of way, was aware of this, and felt it to be her own fault.

  But, on the other hand, it was surely important that Johnnie should not be allowed to drink with his mouth full, nor Edward to sit with his elbows on the table.

  If only Alfred would talk about politics after dinner, instead of reading the paper and then going to sleep! (Although Laura knew well that their discussions were of no intrinsic worth, since Alfred never went very much beyond: “Look at Russia, if you want to see what the Labour Party is bringing us to!” and “The League of Nations idea may be all very fine in theory, but they can’t put it into practice, while human nature remains what it is.” Laura did not really agree with either axiom, but having long ago discovered that her husband disliked argument, she was weak-minded enough to differ from him very gently, and then gradually let herself be brought to the stage of repeating thoughtfully, “I see what you mean, of course,” which indeed was true. Thus did the Temples contribute the Power of Thought to the contemporary problems of the world in which they lived.)

  In the afternoon another telegram was brought to Laura.

  “To say the cook isn’t coming at all,” went in cold despair through Laura’s mind.

  But this telegram had been sent off from Quinnerton, by the honorary secretary of an organisation in which Laura took an active part, and a branch of which she had helped to found in her own village.

  Reply paid Mr Mindy Headquarters speaker requires accommodation to-night original arrangements fallen through can you possibly put him up if so arriving six o’clock bus will be fetched to-morrow for afternoon meeting here many apologies short notice — Smithson.

  Laura had known too many emergencies in her own career not to sympathise profoundly with those in Miss Smithson’s.

  She did not know Mr. Mindy, but outside contacts were good for one…and, in any case, she had assured Miss Smithson that her house would be available in such times of stress.

  She telegraphed back, “Will meet six o’clock bus,” and hoped that the brevity of her style might be a lesson to Miss Smithson.

  Before five o’clock the spare room had been prepared, even to a bunch of sweet-peas on the dressing-table, and Alfred had been told of the impending visitor.

  Laura went to the village to meet the bus. Mr. Mindy, carrying the little bag that all speakers carry, whether they have come for a night or for a week, was unmistakable — a tall, thin man, with a grey beard and a shock of pepper-and-salt hair in tight, irrepressible curls.

  Laura, shaking hands with him, wondered vaguely if Johnnie’s hair would ever look like that.

  Before the slow pony had drawn Laura and Mr. Mindy, in the governess-cart, as far as Applecourt, she perceived that he would provide his own entertainment.

  In a steady, pleasant, unfaltering way, Mr. Mindy talked, and talked, and talked.

  He was profoundly interested in his organisation, and took it for granted that Laura was also, and he had recently toured the United States, and whilst there had stored and neatly tabulated an incredible number of impressions.

  Laura listened to him in something that gradually became a minor form of hypnotic trance.

  How interesting Mr. Mindy might
be, if only he gave one less at a time, she reflected dreamily.

  After a while, however, she ceased to feel this. Mr. Mindy’s voice went on and on, and Laura said, “Did you really?” and “I see,” and finally said nothing more at all, as she reverted in her own mind to the problem of the cook.

  “What I said in Alabama, for instance, was quite different to what I said in Ohio.”

  “I suppose it would be. Yes.”

  “But this, Mrs. Temple, is one of the things that struck me most. In order to make myself clear to you, I must explain that the methods of organisation in the South, for instance, are not the same as those in the East. You’re sure I’m not boring you?”

  “Perfectly certain, Mr. Mindy. I’m most interested. Do please go on!”

  Laura assumed a more animated expression, and Mr. Mindy, satisfied, went on talking.

  No one, Laura supposed, had ever answered, in reply to such a question— “Yes, you are boring me, I am sorry to say. Indeed, I am only pretending to listen to you, and I therefore suggest that we should begin again, on a more equal basis.”

  Candour of that sort, and to that extent, would not be a success. People might occasionally be glad to say such things, but never would they be glad to hear them. Probably, also, they would always find them unbelievable, said to themselves.

  “Forgive me,” said Mr. Mindy, “but I’m afraid you look tired. I know from our friend Miss Smithson how very hard you work for the organisation.”

  “Do I?” said Laura, much startled.

  “Surely. And what I feel about the way things are done over there, is that the individual — like yourself, Mrs. Temple — can get so very much more accomplished, by so much less personal expenditure of time and trouble. Efficiency seems to be the watchword of our friends across the Adantic. Now take this — —”

  Mr. Mindy was off again.

  “But how,” thought Laura, “will Alfred like this?”

  Alfred had a prejudice, entirely unreasonable and entirely ineradicable, against the whole of the United States of America.

  At Applecourt, Laura took the bull by the horns.

  “My husband, Mr, Mindy. Mr. Mindy has just come back from a most wonderful tour in the States, Alfred. He’s been telling me how efficiently they run things over there.”

  “I assure you that I was very much struck — —” said Mr. Mindy.

  Laura went into the house, and left them at the front door.

  Looking at herself in the glass, she felt that her visitor’s personal remark was in a sense justified. She did look tired. Never once, in London, had she looked like this. Her face was pale, there were shadows round her eyes and mouth, her hair hung limply over her ears, and her clothes seemed to hang limply on her body.

  “Forty years old, at least,” observed Laura trenchantly to her own reflection.

  From beneath her open window, fragments of Mr. Mindy’s monologue, and of Alfred’s occasional growlings, floated up to her.

  “New York…Prohibition…the check system for luggage…telephone…telephone…TELEPHONE.…Now, in Massachusetts, the organisation of the whole movement…I was greatly struck…efficiency. And again EFFICIENCY.”

  Finally, in antistrophe to a curt, inaudible word from Alfred, “Hundred per cent efficiency — neither more nor less.”

  At this, Laura felt impelled to hasten the powdering of her nose and to go downstairs again to Alfred’s rescue, if not to Mr. Mindy’s.

  “Perhaps,” said Laura, “Mr. Mindy would like to see his room.”

  “I’m in no hurry, Mrs. Temple, thank you. I was just telling your husband some of my impressions of America. There can be no doubt that it’s a wonderful country.”

  “It must be.”

  “Just to give you one example of the efficiency of their methods of organisation,” said Mr. Mindy.

  When he had finished, Alfred walked away, and Laura asked whether Mr. Mindy had seen the papers that day.

  Yes, he had.

  It would, therefore, be useless to attempt to shut him into the study with them.

  “Don’t, I beg of you, think of entertaining me in any way,” Mr. Mindy begged earnestly. “I am perfectly content walking about this delightful garden and talking to you.”

  Laura resigned herself.

  Her faint, scarcely recognised, hope that a miracle might take place, and a cook appear at the desired moment, had failed to eventuate, and she was able to spend the evening in justifying to herself her determination that, cook or no cook, she would go to Great Quinn on Wednesday.

  The Temples, by eleven o’clock that night, their heads buzzing with information, exchanged only one comment on their visitor.

  “Does that fellow ever answer anything with plain yes or no?” demanded Alfred.

  And Laura replied with conviction: “I should think never.”

  She woke next morning with the thought uppermost in her mind: “The servants are going to-day, and there’ll be no cook.”

  Dejection possessed her.

  On principle, Laura always pathetically strove to put worry away from her in the presence of her children. She resolutely produced a smile, and made her step elastic, as she walked into the nursery.

  “I’ve left Edward in bed, madam, after the night he’s had,” said nurse lugubriously.

  “Was he ill? Why didn’t you fetch me?”

  “He’s been coughing, off and on, the whole of the night. Sometimes in his sleep, no doubt, but sometimes the fits were so violent that he woke himself up.”

  “I’ve thought he had a little cold, for a day or two — he’s coughed once or twice — I’m afraid he must be in for a bronchial attack.” Laura hastened to the night-nursery.

  Edward, sitting up in bed, and sharing bread-and-milk with Fauntleroy, looked perfectly well.

  “Nurse thinks you’ve got a cold, darling. Is your throat sore?”

  “No, not a bit,” said Edward brightly. “Can I get up after breakfast?”

  “We’ll see.”

  Reassuring discoveries followed. Edward had no temperature and no symptoms. He did not even cough.

  “Nurse must be an alarmist,” thought Laura. She made enquiries about Johnnie. Johnnie was quite well.

  “Well, I really see no reason for keeping Edward in bed. He can’t be sickening for anything, or he wouldn’t be so hungry and so eager to get up.”

  Nurse gave Laura a peculiar look.

  “Well, madam, there’s whooping-cough about, isn’t there?”

  “Whooping-cough!”

  “They can have it without ever whooping at all, for that matter, or they can begin with an ordinary cough, and then go on to whoop, and, as often as not, they’re perfectly well in between the fits.”

  “Do you suppose that Edward is beginning whooping-cough ?”

  “It sounded to me very like it,” replied nurse with a deadly calm.

  Laura felt as though she had never before so fully realised calamity.

  “If there’s the least doubt — certainly, there is whooping-cough in the village — we’d better send for the doctor. I suppose it’s no use trying to separate the boys now?”

  “Not the slightest use, madam. It may be days, or even weeks, before Johnnie begins it, but he’s bound to have it.”

  Nurse’s unconditional surrender to misfortune left Laura aghast. She herself had no experience of nursing infectious illness and she was fully prepared to believe that nurse knew what she was talking about.

  “How long does it usually last?” she asked faintly.

  “The actual catching stage would be about six to eight weeks, though I suppose they’re never really safe to be with others until the cough is gone. And my word, doesn’t it hang on! I’ve known a child to whoop the whole of the year round, when she’d started it in June.”

  “And this is August,” said Laura.

  “They say it goes in May.”

  “And that would be ten months.”

  Nurse shook her head.
/>   “Whooping-cough is like that, madam. I ought to know. I lost a little brother and a little sister with it, besides nursing the little girl in my last place. Poor little mite, she’d turn black in the face, when she’d a whooping fit on. Many’s the time I’ve thought she must choke to death.”

  “We must see what the doctor says,” Laura unhappily repeated. “Don’t let Edward or Johnnie know that we think it may be whooping-cough. Perhaps — perhaps after all it may turn out to be nothing.”

  But inwardly, Laura felt certain that it would turn out to be something.

  She went to find Alfred, in obedience to the usual instinct for passing on bad news, but he had already gone downstairs, and from the dining-room she could faintly hear the steady booming of Mr. Mindy’s voice.

  The attention that she was able to give him, during breakfast, was even more perfunctory than that of the previous evening.

  In response to a telephone message, the doctor came, assured Laura that Edward was probably beginning whooping-cough, and that Johnnie would in that case almost certainly catch it, and generally confirmed everything that nurse had said.

  “It’s like a nightmare,” thought Laura. She had the exaggerated horror of childish ailments that belongs to the mother of only one or two children, and that is necessarily outgrown by a woman with a large family.

  “He’ll be all right,” said the doctor cheerfully, referring to Edward. “Let me know if you hear a real whoop, or if he starts being sick after coughing. And watch the other little chap.”

  With this wholly superfluous injunction he went away.

  Laura went straight to her husband.

  “Edward has whooping-cough,” she announced tragically.

  “Who says so?”

  “The doctor.”

  “Picked it up in the village, I suppose. Is Johnnie bound to get it too?”

  “They think so.”

  “Well, I suppose it can’t be helped,” said Alfred — inadequately, his wife felt.

  “They’ll be infectious for about seven or eight weeks — perhaps longer, and it lasts ages and ages.”

  “I daresay. I remember being in the sanatorium with it myself at school, and I think I spent most of one term there. There’s nothing particular to be done, I suppose?”