Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  Losh nodded.

  “I get you. I know the type. Quite a lot of them about still. Believe in Church and State, and one law for the man and another for the woman, and to hell with all this new-fangled jargon of the day, if you tell them anything they didn’t hear in Queen Victoria’s reign. I see.”

  “But he’s very nice,” said Laura weakly.

  “Oh, quite.”

  The niceness, or otherwise, of the subject under discussion, was evidently a matter of the utmost indifference in the psychological scale of values.

  “Then I take it that there’s no hope of your friend’s being able to go to her husband quite simply and naturally, as you or I might do, and saying: ‘Look here, old thing’ — or whatever she calls him— ‘as you and I don’t seem to click quite as well as we should like, what about giving the other lad a week at Weymouth’ — or wherever they want to go— ‘and getting a little fun out of life, and then coming back a better and a brighter girl, so to speak?’”

  “I don’t think you understand,” said Laura. “For her — it’s most horribly serious.”

  “But, my dear, it can’t be. Otherwise she’d do a bunk with the other fellow,” said the medical student simply.

  “The children. I told you she had children.”

  “I know. That’s all right. If she puts the children first, well and good. Then obviously she must either chuck the blighter she’s in love with, or start an intrigue — week-ends, and so on, like I said at the beginning. But you say, it’s most horribly serious. And I say, it can’t be. Because if it was, the kids simply wouldn’t be in it. She’d leave ’em, and go to her man.”

  Laura stared at her adviser in the stricken silence of utter spiritual devastation.

  “Would she?” she said at last.

  “Obviously. But most Englishwomen have the maternal instinct much more strongly developed than the mating instinct.”

  “For the sake of the argument,” said Laura in a slightly tremulous voice, “you can take it absolutely for granted that the woman I’m speaking of won’t ever leave her children.”

  “Right,” said Losh cheerfully. ‘Then it’s not what the Russians call a Grawnde Passiong. Is the husband the kind of bloke who’d divorce her?”

  “I don’t know. I — somehow I don’t believe he would.”

  “Good. What about the other johnnie? Is he married, too?”

  “No.”

  “Well, honestly, the best thing she could do would be to go off with him for a bit. She must use her own judgment about putting the husband wise. From what you tell me, I shouldn’t think it would be any use. No object in making the poor chap wretched.”

  “It’s she who’ll be wretched if she has to tell lies and deceive him.”

  Losh shrugged his shoulders.

  “She sounds to me pretty spineless altogether. Not that I blame her. Women have a rotten time all along the line. But she’s lucky, really, your pal is, to have a chance at all. Hundreds and thousands of women in this country would give the eyes out of their head for what you might call one illicit thrill, and there simply isn’t anybody to provide it. I say, are you sure I’m not boring you?”

  “Perfectly certain. I — I’m really interested in this particular question. I think my friend is rather — she isn’t absolutely an average woman, in some ways.”

  “No? Well, of course you know more about it than I do. Only one gets a bit fed up with the woman who’ll let a fellow go all out after her, and tell him that he’s the love of her life and so on, and then, when he very naturally asks, Well, what about it?’ throws a fit and says she couldn’t ever wrong her husband and won’t he just go on being friends?”

  “When it’s put like that, I agree — in a way.”

  “Well, of course. Any sensible person would. The fact is, of course, that such a lot of women live in their imaginations. They’ve no other outlet. A woman like yourself” — Laura hoped that she did not start— “can let herself go a bit in her writing. But these wretched, inarticulate souls, who can’t do anything but yearn in silence — half of them are neurotic before they’re forty. It’s all rot, that about women not getting neurotic if they’ve plenty to do. Very often the more neurotic they are, the more they try and do, and then they get nervous breakdowns, and are worse than ever.”

  “And if they didn’t do things?”

  “They’d still be neurotic,” said Losh.

  “Oh!”

  “It’s a vicious circle, I know. But I don’t believe in all this blinking optimism. Better face things as they are. I say d’you suppose Christine’s got run over or anything? She’s frightfully late, isn’t she?”

  “I expect she’ll be here in a minute. Are you in a hurry?”

  “No. So long as I’m not boring you.”

  Laura shook her head.

  “You’re interested in psychology, aren’t you?”

  “Anyone who writes fiction has to be.”

  “I suppose so. Well, do tell your pal that all this confession to the husband stuff is out of date. All she’s got to do is to break away from her own repressions for a bit, and keep her own counsel about it.”

  “You don’t think that lies and cheating matter?” said Laura bitterly.

  “Of course they matter. But we live under such damned artificial conditions that we can’t do without ’em. And anyway, other things matter more. Do you know what Freud says: ‘It is better to murder an infant in its cradle than to nurse an unacted desire?’”

  “Does he?” said Laura, considerably startled at this echo of her own recent self-communings.

  “Not, mind you, that I’m prepared to go with Freud the whole way, for — Hullo!”

  Christine, composed and smart, unhurried in spite of her lateness, walked into the hall of the hotel.

  She and Losh greeted one another with exclamations and tea was ordered.

  They were noisy and merry, all three of them.

  Laura perceived, without any very great surprise, that Losh assumed a considerable degree of intimacy to have been established between her and himself in their half-hour’s tête-à-tête.

  Presently she left him with Christine.

  She went up to her bedroom — filled, after the manner of all hotel bedrooms, with crumpled tissue paper and chilly squares of white crochet-cotton — and sat down on the edge of the comfortless bed. She felt extraordinarily tired.

  Losh had been interesting and sincere — if immoral. No, a-moral was the word that everybody used now.

  Laura wanted to remember what he had said, and to think it over quite dispassionately, but she found that she was so very tired she could remember very little, and was quite incapable of any thinking over at all.

  When Christine came upstairs and knocked at her sister’s door, Laura was still sitting on the edge of the bed.

  “You look tired, darling. Losh is so terribly in earnest, even when he’s playing the fool, that he wears one out. You must have been a great success, by the way, while you were waiting for me to come in. He said you were a most frightfully interesting person.”

  Laura felt uneasy, rather than gratified, at this tribute.

  “What sort of way did he mean?”

  “You may well ask, knowing what his tastes are!” Christine returned, looking at herself in Laura’s handglass. “(What shall I do, Laura, if I get a really plain fit on my wedding-day — such as I have now, for instance ? I suppose I really ought to say, what will Jeremy do?) Losh didn’t say, exactly, why you were so interesting, but I gathered that you’d been telling him the story of your life, rather. Losh is terribly discreet, really, although he does talk so much, and you’re perfectly safe with him.”

  Laura felt that at the moment she did not care whether Losh had penetrated the feeble disguise of her fable or not.

  “What are we doing to-night, Laura? I know Jeremy is taking us to another relation, but I’ve forgotten which one. That’s the only part of being married that’s rather a bore — all this d
igging up of relations that one’s never been to see for years, and will probably never go and see again.”

  “You’re lucky not to have old cousin Louisa and poor Selina to go and see. At least, Jeremy’s relations live in get-at-able places, or if they don’t, you can go to them in a car comfortably.”

  “Well, who is it to-night?” Christine took out her engagement book from a brand-new crocodile bag, with her monogram in gold. “Eaton Square. That’s his aunt, I think — Mrs. Arthur Hobbs. A widow with dogs, and plays Bridge. It’s a pity all his relations are such Philistines, but it’ll give the children a better chance. The children of parents who are both brainy generally turn out awful — either so precocious that they die young, or so nervy that one can’t do anything with them. Our children ought to have decent physiques, and quite good brains. Like your Johnnie, in fact.”

  “You do want to have children?”

  “Oh yes. Not immediately, of course, and not more than about three, at decent intervals. But we both want a family, fortunately.”

  “You’re quite right. Children,” said Laura thoughtfully, “keep married people together.”

  “Darling, what absolute nonsense!” exclaimed Christine ruthlessly. “What can you be thinking about, to say things like that? Married people who haven’t anything else to keep them together except their children, would surely be better apart. So terribly hard on the wretched children, too, just to serve as links for chaining an unwilling couple together.”

  “I suppose I’m old-fashioned,” gloomily said Laura, who would have repudiated such an accusation almost with frenzy at a more normal moment.

  Christine did not hesitate to take advantage of her sister’s mood of fatigue.

  “Not old-fashioned, exactly, but conventional. Yes, darling, you are, in some ways. Your ideas of right and wrong, for instance, seem to me stereotyped. As though you didn’t really feel that every single case in the world has got to be judged on its own merits, and not by some outside, arbitrary standard.”

  “If you lived at Quinnerton—” began Laura.

  “I know. I dare say I should. But I hope one of these days you’ll make up your mind that you aren’t actually rooted to the earth at Applecourt, and that—”

  The elder sister, long dormant in Mrs. Temple, had nevertheless existed in Laura Fairfield, and now woke again.

  “I go away from home quite as much as I want to — we both do — and I’m quite satisfied with such standards as I have got, thank you, Christine.”

  “Well, well,” said Christine thoughtfully. “I dare say my little head is rather turned by all this sort of thing,” she waved her left hand, with its enormous glowing square of green fire. “I’m sorry if I was tiresome.” She went away.

  Laura felt all the annoyance of the person put in the wrong by the generosity of her opponent.

  Christine could afford to be generous, and good-humoured, she reflected.

  Apart from an inconspicuous — but after all, comparatively short — childhood, during which she had been entirely overshadowed by the Grecian nymph Laura, Christine had made a success of her life. By this Laura meant, as almost all women do mean, that Christine had attracted men, dressed well, and kept her head.

  She was just about to be married to a man who was very rich, neither old, ugly, nor half-witted, and who appeared to be in love with her. Laura had not the slightest doubt that Christine would also make, a success of her marriage, although she was entering upon it, so far as could be seen, without earnestness, without illusion, and without emotion.

  Perhaps that was why.

  “Only what,” thought Laura — by this time on the verge of an uneasy doze— “what is to be done, if one is by nature earnest, and emotional, and desperately given to illusions ?”

  Probably there was nothing to be done.

  Perhaps other people, even the successful ones, sometimes had doubts of their own competence, their ability to impress upon the rest of humanity exactly that aspect of themselves which they most wished to present.…

  But did they take even such doubts seriously? Laura felt certain that they did not.

  An hour later, she was surprised by the discovery that she had slept.

  A symptom of middle-age, she decided pessimistically, this dropping asleep in the daytime. But it might also be regarded as a symptom of justifiable physical fatigue, after strenuous shopping, and as a result of considerable nervous tension. By the time that Laura had looked in the glass, and seen that her eyes looked less tired, and her skin clearer, she had adopted the latter explanation of her unprecedented daytime sleep.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Alfred Temple’s procedure, when travelling with his children — a thing which seldom occurred — was entirely contrary to that of his wife, as she perceived when she went to meet them at Paddington station.

  Nurse, Johnnie and Edward emerged from one third, class carriage, and Alfred, at the opposite end of the train, from another. He had deliberately separated himself from them. Laura’s own journeyings with Edward and Johnnie, on such occasions as visits to the sea, or to relations, had been of a very different description, as she could not help remembering.

  She had then read aloud, in a voice low enough not to disturb other people in the carriage, and yet loud enough to be heard above the noise of the train, she had told stories, had pointed out objects of interest to be seen from the window, and had provided — and prolonged as much as possible — a variety of meals.

  “A railway journey is a nervous strain for little children,” had been the explanation that she had given to both herself and Alfred.

  It had also been a nervous strain for Laura, under such conditions.

  Nurse, however, appeared calm, and the little boys cheerful and un-tired, although black with the unparalleled blackness only to be collected from the assiduous exploring of every part of a railway carriage.

  Alfred — as well he might, thought Laura — said that they had had a very good journey.

  Laura, clasping a little soft hand in each of hers, and looking from one small, beaming face to the other, was assailed by the quick rush of emotion that the sight of her children, after however brief a separation, would always rouse in her.

  They looked so small, so pleased and innocent, in the noise and smoke of the big station. They were so manifestly confident of her power to protect them, and make them happy.…

  “We’re not waiting for anything, are we?” inquired Alfred. “There’s no luggage.”

  “No, of course not. We’ll get into a taxi at once. They must want their tea, poor darlings!”

  In the taxi, Laura at once experienced the familiar difficulties of conversing satisfactorily with her husband and her children at one and the same time.

  “Well, I suppose you’ve been busy, and Christine too?”

  “Yes, but everything’s—”

  “Mummie, have I ever been to London before?”

  “Not to remember, Edward. You were once here when you were almost a baby.”

  “Why can’t I remember it?”

  “I suppose we go home the day after to-morrow? There’ll be nothing to stay on for, will there?” said Alfred.

  “Nothing. Mrs. Vulliamy is seeing about having the presents packed up and so on.”

  “Mummie, is—”

  “Wait a minute, darling. Don’t interrupt Daddy.” But Alfred said nothing more, and Laura turned back to Johnnie.

  “Is what, sweetheart?”

  She was absorbed in the inquiries, that she found stimulating and intelligent, propounded by Johnnie.

  Edward, in an endeavour to divert Laura’s attention to himself, began to ask foolish questions in a high, unnatural voice.

  “Is London as large as Quinnerton?”

  “Shall we see the King?”

  “Is it before tea, or after tea?”

  “He’s rather tired, I expect,” said nurse, reproving Edward kindly by shaking her head at him.

  “Now, what engagem
ents have you made for to-night, Laura, and is anything on to-morrow morning?” her husband inquired.

  “Christine and a few relations and people are dining with us to-night at the Criterion. It’s really Christine’s party, of course. And naturally, to-morrow morning there’ll be plenty to do getting ready. We’ve got to be at the church at two o’clock.”

  “Well, when can I go to look at pumps in Victoria Street?”

  “You could do that to-morrow morning, I suppose. It needn’t interfere, so long as you’re back for lunch at the hotel not one moment later than twelve o’clock.”

  “Shall we have all our meals downstairs with you and Daddy at the hotel?” Johnnie inquired, with round eyes

  “Yes.”

  “Even breakfast?”

  “Yes, even breakfast.”

  “Oh!” said Johnnie naively, “how lucky we are!”

  Laura glanced surreptitiously at her husband, to see whether he was as much moved as she was herself by the trusting joyfulness in Johnnie’s voice and face, but if he was, he gave no sign of it.

  And the next moment Johnnie, with even more fervour, had exclaimed:

  “What do you suppose there’ll be to eat?”

  The atmosphere of Quinnerton had, indeed, been transferred to London.

  Nurse, in consideration of her unbroken three hours on duty in the train, was encouraged by Laura to remember the existence of relations who appeared to be humble prototypes of old cousin Laura and poor Selina, and to go out and see them.

  Laura and Christine put the children to bed.

  The bride-elect was as hilarious as they were, and seemed as much unconcerned at the prospect of the next day’s ceremony.

  “Isn’t it incredible,” she remarked to Laura, as they endeavoured to restore order in the bathroom, “that after this evening I shall have a lady’s maid?”

  And Laura, seriously and in all sincerity, replied: “Utterly incredible!”

  “I need never darn another pair of stockings. It’s unbelievable.”

  “Mum-mee…”

  It was Johnnie’s well-known note, and Laura hastened to the room where one double-bed with a bolster laid down the middle of it received both the boys.