Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  Clarissa, after her wont, was talking exclusively to her newest guest. Her carefully modulated voice went on and on; my car... the management of my estate... to be perfectly candid about it, my money... my work here and in London.... Radow said little. He could not, in fact, have said very much even had he wished to do so, for Clarissa gave him no opportunity, but Lucien did not feel sure that he was even listening. His large eyes were roaming round and round the room, resting on the pictures, the silver, and iridescent glass, and lace upon the table, the gilt candelabra, the faces and arms and dresses of the four women.

  Leila Delmar, unable to check Clarissa’s monopoly, was making eyes at Radow. She looked particularly well in her deep blue evening dress, cut low in front, and still lower at the back. Her diamonds were beautiful. Rather clever of her, thought Lucien, not to challenge any comparison with Clarissa’s pearls, dripping in lustrous curves over her powdered neck and shoulders to her jade-coloured velvet robe de style. Delphine Wingate, on the other side of the table, was, as usual, negligible. Her pale chiffon frock and little necklace were the commonplace of every debutante, and she had nothing with which to lend them individuality. Bat Clutterthorpe was not even bothering to talk to her. He was listening to Clarissa, interrupting her from time to time, and then glancing surreptitiously, from under his eyelids, to see whether he was thought amusing.

  Sophie, smiling while Leila Delmar’s husband talked to her about revue stars, looked as though she might have been a little pale and tired had her small face been less carefully made-up. There were tiny shadows, that were not artificial ones, beneath her eyes. She wore the mauve dress with little flounces that she had worn one night in Berkeley Square, when they had gone together to the Sampfords’ dance. Lucien experienced a curious emotion as he recognized it. Their relation to one another had been more secure, even more defined, that night in London than it was now.

  Perhaps Sophie did want to marry Bat Clutterthorpe after all. He was supposed to be extremely amusing and attractive, besides being the object of every mother’s ambition for her daughter.

  “Aren’t you going to give me even one word, Lucien?” Leila inquired merrily in his ear. “What have I done?”

  Lucien roused himself.

  When Clarissa rose from the table, she turned to Fitzmaurice.

  “Bring them to the library,” she decreed. “We’ll have some music. Monsieur Radow, your luggage is here.”

  The violinist bowed. Lucien wondered whether he had grasped the implication that he was expected to play to them after dinner.

  He was not long left in doubt.

  “My luggage is here, yeh, “said Radow sombrely. “My violin and two bows, they are insured for two thousand pounds. One bow for five thousand. They are in London.”

  “Then you haven’t brought — ?”

  “I have a violin — yeh — and a bow, for practice. But my pianist, too, is in London.”

  “That’s all right,” interposed Delmar, “we’ve a pianist here, good as any pro. Clutterthorpe.”

  “I play,” said Clutterthorpe, suddenly leaning across the table.

  “Yeh?”

  “He’s as good as any professional,” Delmar repeated, with jovial conviction.

  “Rot, of course I’m not. But I just happen to be able to pick up any single thing by ear if I’ve heard it once.”

  Radow turned his gaze on the young man.

  “You play by ear?”

  “I do,” said Clutterthorpe.

  The professional, without disguise, groaned in dismay.

  “You play by ear?” he repeated. And again there broke from him the exclamation that he had uttered from the lawn: “Ah, mon doux Jesus!”

  This time it was clearly audible to all present.

  XII

  BROTHER AND SISTER

  CLARISSA’S conviction that the strange arrival of monsieur Radow in their midst would give her guests something to talk about was justified.

  They talked about Radow, and about his music — for Clarissa compelled him to play to them on the day after his arrival — and about his relationship to Sophie’s mother — and, in lowered voices and distant corners of the garden, about the probable reactions of Reggie Fitzmaurice to his presence at Mardale.

  The topic brought into being those temporary alliances and animosities that are so helpful to the vitality of every house-party.

  Leila Delmar, who had not been successful in attracting Radow on his first evening at Mardale, frankly commiserated with Fitzmaurice, with whom she was on old-established terms of easy flirtation. She listened to his self-pitying grumbles, and only half-humorous abuse of Clarissa’s tyranny, and allowed him to drift into the semi-jocular form of love-making best understood by them both.

  Clarissa watched them with angry contempt, and swore at her maid, her secretary, and the dogs.

  Bat Clutterthorpe expressed no opinion to anybody except Sophie.

  On Sunday, two days after Radow’s descent upon Mardale, he asked Sophie if she was going to church.

  Sophie, who had scarcely been to church except on Christmas Day since she had left school, wisely glanced at Clarissa before answering.

  “I expect so, aren’t you, darling?” Clarissa directed her.

  “If you like, Bat,” said Sophie amiably. “Do you want to come?”

  “Certainly. The rake’s reform, you know.”

  Clutterthorpe blinked rapidly, and Delphine Wingate, Clarissa and the Delmars laughed. Sophie smiled dutifully.

  “The proper thing in the country is to walk, carrying a prayer-book and a clean handkerchief. The natives will be thrilled to the backbone,” declared Clarissa. “Why not let’s all go?”

  Fitzmaurice protested loudly.

  “I’ll come, Sophie,” timidly said Delphine Wingate.

  “So will I,” Lucien suddenly supported her.

  “Monsieur Radow?”

  Radow shook his head.

  “To-day I go away.”

  “Oh no, you don’t,” his hostess incisively told him. “The party doesn’t break up till Monday.”

  Radow looked helpless and unhappy.

  “I have to see my agent,” he said at last.

  “You can see him here. Didn’t you say he was in these parts and coming to meet you at the Princesse de Candi-Lacquerriere’s?”

  “Yeh, that is so, but—”

  “Tell him to come and lunch here to-day.”

  “No,” said monsieur Radow passionately.

  But it was of no avail.

  His evident desire to leave Mardale at once was as nothing to Clarissa’s determination that he should remain there for another twenty-four hours. Very soon after breakfast Radow, protesting, almost crying, was compelled to give her a telephone number that would establish communication with his agent, Mr. Lawrence, awaiting him in the county town. After a very brief conversation, Mrs. Fitzmaurice hung up the receiver again.

  “He’s coming,” she announced. “Lunch at 1.30 to-day. He’s been dreadfully worried about you, monsieur Radow.”

  “Yeh?”

  “That’s settled, then. He says he’s got a car. Perhaps he’d better stay the night. However, that can wait till I’ve seen him. Meanwhile, I must get these children off to church. Too sweet, their wanting to go.”

  In the hall Clarissa admonished the walkers.

  “Behave, won’t you? Bat, you’re in charge of them. I shall expect all of you to be able to tell me what the sermon was about at lunch.”

  She turned into the house again, the smile on her mouth, that had never reached her eyes at all, dying instantly.

  The four church-goers walked all together, through the park, and about a mile along the lanes to the village church.

  As they reached the gate, Lucien looked at Sophie.

  “Do you remember coming here with Mademoiselle?”

  She nodded.

  “I haven’t been inside it since.”

  “At home, mummie always makes me go,” Delphine
volunteered. “In London, she says it doesn’t matter, but in the country one has to because of the tenants and people. Of course,” she added hurriedly, “we’re down there quite a lot of the year. It’s different if one doesn’t live in a place.”

  “That’s right,” Clutterthorpe agreed — his unwonted perception of her existence causing Miss Wingate to look unspeakably gratified. But it was to Sophie that he turned with a final observation, made in a lowered voice just as they entered the porch.

  “I’m going into training as you perceive. It’s me for the family estates for the next few years.”

  They went into the dank little church that smelt faintly of hassocks and humanity and dust. It had tiled walls and was not at all pretty. Sophie remembered that as a child she had always been slightly depressed by its lack of atmosphere, after the warmth and colour and ornamentation of the foreign cathedrals and convent chapels that she had known, spasmodically, abroad.

  She picked up a book at random, decorously holding it open in front of her, but not attempting to read. Instead, she thought about Bat Clutterthorpe. He was probably going to ask her to marry him. Apparently her lack of sex-appeal, that Clarissa so often lamented, did not matter to Bat. Sophie thought, without much interest, that perhaps he was aware of a similar lack in himself. It was evident that he really did intend to settle down, and that meant that his wife, when he married, might reasonably expect him to remain faithful to her. Sophie accepted marital unfaithfulness as something unpleasant, but not by any means extraordinary. She knew that her own mother had been unfaithful; she knew that Clarissa continually, with or without cause, suspected unfaithfulness in her husband. Infidelity was usually the chief topic of interest in such books as Sophie read, in almost all the plays that she saw, and in most of the conversations that she heard. She was thoroughly familiarized with the idea of it, without attaching to it any very particular emotional importance.

  If she married Bat, she supposed that she would be faithful to him, because it seemed unlikely that she would ever fall very violently in love. Children, thought Sophie, would be quite enough.

  She would like, very much, to have children.

  It was difficult to realize Bat as a father. Sophie unconsciously thought of the children as being hers only, spiritually and physically. The girl would be rather like herself, only cleverer, and the boy just like Lucien.

  She looked at Lucien, on the outside seat of the pew, as the congregation rose for the last hymn.

  It had been one of the favourites of their childhood.

  From Greenland’s icy mountains, From India’s coral strand, Where Afric’s sunny fountains Roll down their golden sand.

  Surely those preposterous words were never sung anywhere now, except in country churches? But it was a good tune.

  Sophie smiled as she met Lucien’s smile.

  It seemed a very long while since she and Lucien had stood on either side of Mademoiselle, two children, preoccupied only with the hope that Mademoiselle would develop migraine after church and allow them to wander alone together in the garden, playing as they pleased. Then the organist pulled out a number of stops as the organ broke into a loud, jerky march, and the congregation filed out.

  Sophie realized, suddenly, that if Bat Clutterthorpe could by any dreadful possibility have read her thoughts he would unfailingly have mocked at her as a sentimentalist.

  As they came out of the lych-gate, Bat fell behind with her.

  “Thank the Lord that’s over!” he said piously. “What a farce it all is. But, as Delphine said just now, one has to do it from time to time.”

  “But I rather like it,” said Sophie, with the tune of “Greenland’s Icy Mountains” still in her ears.

  “Oh, that’s all right, my dear. I’d loathe a woman who didn’t want to go to church from time to time. It’s part of their charm.”

  Sophie laughed frankly.

  “You haven’t always thought so,” she suggested.

  “That’s exactly where you’re wrong. I have always thought so where my mother and sisters, or — my possible wife — was concerned. I should never dream of marrying a woman like Leila Delmar for instance.”

  Sophie, for a moment, would have liked to say that a woman like Leila Delmar wouldn’t dream of marrying Bat either. But then, she most undoubtedly would, attractive though she was, because Bat was so well known, so rich, and had such a tremendous reputation for being invulnerable.

  “Everyone thinks that you never mean to marry at all,” she said.

  “Oh, I always knew I should have to some day. And I’ve always been perfectly clear in my mind as to the sort of woman I’d choose,” Bat replied coolly. “She’d have to be a lady, first of all. Not poor, because otherwise she might be marrying for money. Pretty, of course — blonde for preference, but I wouldn’t insist. Healthy, so as to breed decent kids. Not clever, because I can’t stick neurotic women, and not too highly sexed for exactly the same reason.”

  He looked at Sophie sideways.

  “And I bar every single girl who’s tried to corner me during the last six years. And all the ones I’ve seen making love in motor-cars during a dance, or getting drunk, or playing about with other people’s husbands.”

  “Is she to have any positive qualities at all, Bat? All those are so very negative.”

  “Yes. She’s got to be domesticated, and good at running a house, and fearfully clever about making parties a success. And know how to turn herself out so that she does me credit wherever I take her. She’ll have to be fond of children, too.”

  Sophie very nearly said “Yes, that will be all right” — so much did she feel herself to be listening to a catalogue raisonné of requirements to which she was expected to conform.

  She blushed a very little as the thought occurred to her. Clarissa would most certainly have told her not to count her chickens before they were hatched. To be selected by Bat Clutterthorpe would be such a colossal piece of luck that any girl in Sophie’s world would acclaim it with incredulous satisfaction, and not one would dare take it for granted that such a chance was actually going to be offered her until it had safely materialized.

  Bat’s voice went on.

  “I’ve got to ranger myself, unfortunately for me. My papa has taken it into his head that he wants to see my eldest chee-ild upon his knee before he dies — you know the kind of stuff. And there was a slight contretemps, with which I needn’t trouble you, that’s rather given him the upper hand, so that I haven’t much option about obeying. Forgive these sordid details, Sophie.”

  From the extreme unreality of his manner, she could perceive that he was slightly embarrassed and self-conscious. Sophie suddenly realized that Bat was going to propose to her and unreasoning panic seized her.

  She felt that he must be stopped.

  “Where are the others — where’s Lucien?” she asked, looking rather wildly round.

  “I don’t know, neither do I care. Lucien has probably taken the fair Delphine through a field or something to look at her relations the cows. Need we bother about them?”

  He sounded rather surprised — as well he might, Sophie admitted to herself.

  “What’s that place over there?”

  “Only a piece of common land.”

  “Only! Let’s go and sit down there in the shade.”

  “The next bit of lane is shady,” said Sophie. She was quite clear that she did not want to go on the common with Bat, nor to the quarry that she had visited with Lucien on their first morning at Mardale.

  It was with a queer sense of relief that she heard him give up the point without demur.

  “Just as you like, my dear. But let’s find a bank or something, and repose ourselves on that. I can’t think why I didn’t insist on driving you in the car, unless it was that your respected mamma was so terribly determined that we should all take exercise. A bit of a Tartar, isn’t she?”

  “Sometimes, perhaps.”

  “But a jolly good sort, all the same. Well—
”

  “How will this do?” interposed Sophie, as they neared a small stile leading to a cornfield.

  “Too rural and romantic for anything — except the films. Let’s be Mary and Douglas.”

  Sophie sat down on the wooden step of the stile. Bat Clutterthorpe still stood in the lane below looking at her. Their faces were practically on a level.

  “Have you got a cigarette?” asked Sophie nervously.

  “In a minute,” he replied coolly, and then leant forward, took her face in both hands, tilting it upwards, and kissed her.

  “There! Shall we call it settled?”

  “All right,” said Sophie in rather a faint voice. The kiss had taken her by surprise, and pushed her hat to one side, and in any case the weather was too hot for kissing... she felt that it had been a failure.

  “Thank God, that’s over!” said Clutterthorpe.

  He gave his usual little glance round from under lowered lids, but there was no one to applaud, although his intention had obviously been humorous.

  Sophie straightened her hat. Her first impulse had been to take it off, but she was afraid that if she did so Bat would think that she expected him to kiss her again.

  “You’re the only girl I’ve ever proposed to, Sophie,” he told her impressively.

  “Am I?”

  “Yes, I didn’t really expect to marry just yet, but one’s for it sooner or later, and I fancy we shall hit it off all right, you and I.”

  “I expect so, Bat.”

  “I say, I’m rather looking forward to telling everyone. It’ll come as such a surprise. Generally these things are so fearfully obvious long before they really come off. But I defy anybody to have guessed this. What a rag it’ll be.”

  “Don’t let’s tell people immediately, Bat.”

  “What, ‘keep our secret to ourselves for a day or two’ kind of thing?” he mocked good-humouredly. “You perfectly sweet child, I didn’t know you were so adorably old-fashioned. I adore sentimentality. Do let’s be sentimental.”