Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  Madame was hovering just outside her little office, black and rather baleful-looking. She held, grasped in one hand, the bundle of notes that Hilary had just counted out in front of her. There was no amiable farewell smile on her swarthy, watchful face, nor did she come out on the steps to see him start.

  The concierge, without any undue haste, did so instead, at a sign from Courteney.

  “Good-bye, Moon,” said Courteney, with his usual cordiality. “We’ll look after Mrs. Moon till you get back again.”

  Hilary looked him full in the face and said nothing.

  The chasseur, shoved by the contemptuous concierge, opened the door of the car, and Hilary got in and instantly started the engine.

  When it became evident that there was to be no tip, the chasseur slammed the door upon him violently, and looked round at the concierge, who shrugged his shoulders.

  The chasseur, turning to look after the swiftly vanishing car, expressively spat upon the ground.

  “Quelle drôle d’idée, un départ à cette heure-ci!” exclaimed little Madame Duval.

  “Mais du tout. Il a raison,” her husband immediately contradicted her. “Le train de onze heures....”

  They began to argue cheerfully about the train service. Other people were calling for cold drinks, and the powerful head-lights of Mr. Muller’s car were rushing towards the Hotel, appearing and disappearing round the sharp curves of the avenue.

  “Dulcie, it’s time you went to bed,” said Courteney abruptly. “Good-night. I hope she’s not been a nuisance, Waller. Run along, kid.”

  Dulcie made piteous eyes at Denis, and the thought crossed his mind that she had hoped for a more affectionate good-night. If so, she gave no further sign of disappointment, but went away at once.

  (3)

  In her own very small room on the top floor, Dulcie gave herself up to a wild orgy of day-dreaming. She had invested Denis with every charm and quality that she most admired, and now visualised a hundred imaginary scenes, from her own early death whilst saving Denis from drowning, to their elopement together by aeroplane.

  Nothing was too highly coloured to be seized upon by her ill-regulated fancy, nourished entirely on the cinema, the chatter of semi-educated Latins, and monthly-magazine fiction.

  The mere thought of Chrissie Challoner drove her almost to frenzy. And Denis had thought himself in love with her, Dulcie was sure of it. He wouldn’t any more now, after the way she’d let him down. Dulcie felt certain that Chrissie had done something to hurt poor Denis frightfully, although of course he was too honourable to say anything about it. A great gentleman, thought Dulcie solemnly.

  She was far too much excited for sleep, and wondered whether she could hope to find a bathroom disengaged. When the Hotel was full, especially with English and Americans, the bathrooms — there was only one on each floor — were seldom to be found free, and everybody else, naturally, had a right to them before Dulcie, whose father was really part of the Hotel personnel.

  But the Hotel was not very full now, and besides, it was late.

  Dulcie fluffed up her thin fair hair, and put on her cheap pink cotton kimono. She hoped, at the bottom of her heart, that she might catch another glimpse of Denis, whose room was at the far end of the passage on the same floor and opposite to the salle de bain. Their abrupt and public goodnight had been, to Dulcie, an anti-climax, after the intimacy of the evening.

  The type of vulgarity that naturally enjoys and seeks after any form of intrigue, however trivial, was essentially hers. So completely had she convinced herself that she was the heroine of a romance that it scarcely surprised her when the door of Denis Waller’s room actually did open, and he came out of it, carrying a bath-towel and sponge.

  “Oh, Denis,” she fluttered, “did you want the bathroom? Do have it first, I can easily go afterwards — yes, really. I’d love you to go first, yes, do.”

  Denis protested.

  “It’s quite all right, Dulcie, I’m not in any hurry. I can read a book for a little while, in my room. I’m always glad of a little spare time for reading, you know.”

  “No, no, you must go first.”

  “Really not — —”

  They bandied small phrases about, leaning against the passage wall outside Denis’s room.

  Suddenly Dulcie said, in a high, kittenish voice:

  “What’s your room like?” and darted inside it.

  Denis knew the quick apprehensive qualm that always seized him at any invasion of his privacy. There was so much that he didn’t want anybody to find out.

  But his room gave nothing away.

  It was extremely tidy, as it always was, and the most compromising object in it was a framed photograph, cut from an illustrated weekly paper, of a girl in Court dress. He had not known her particularly well — her father had once employed him temporarily — but he considered that the portrait looked interesting, and gave a cachet to his dressing-table. So he always carried it about with him.

  Dulcie saw it instantly, and experienced a pang of jealousy. Some horrible girl who was in love with Denis, of course. She had a profound conviction that any girl who knew Denis must be in love with him.

  She said nothing about the photograph, but went to the window, which looked out at the back where a high, rocky hill sloped steeply upwards, showing no lights, and seeming to melt into the starry distance.

  “It’s lovely, isn’t it?” said Dulcie, who would have said the same whatever the view had been.

  “Isn’t it?” Denis agreed.

  He was fond of seeing himself as a person of acute artistic sensibilities, and could not resist adding:

  “I often watch the sun rise from this window.”

  “Do you?” said Dulcie.

  She looked round at him as she spoke, but without moving from the window.

  Denis, after hesitating for a moment, came and stood beside her.

  Dulcie immediately drew his arm round her. Denis, acutely conscious of the open door behind them, felt thoroughly uneasy but lacked courage to hurt her feelings by any lack of response. Instead, he said feebly:

  “You can’t stay, you know, dear. You must go and have your bath. I can wait for mine.”

  “No, I can. Anyway, I don’t take a minute. I’m frightfully quick going to bed, and getting up. Olwen takes ages. Fancy, Olwen reads something out of the Bible and says her prayers, every single morning. Isn’t that too sweet and old-fashioned?”

  The Hotel child spoke in all simplicity, but Denis was distinctly shocked.

  “Certainly not. Why do you talk like that, Dulcie? If you think it’ll shock me, you’re entirely mistaken. I know far too much about human nature ever to be shocked at anything, I assure you — but it doesn’t sound at all nice.”

  Dulcie perceived with horror that she had made a very false step indeed, and sought frantically to retrieve it.

  “Oh, Denis, I didn’t mean — indeed I wasn’t trying to shock you or anybody. I wouldn’t be so silly — truly, I wouldn’t. And I didn’t mean anything at all about Olwen, except just that I was so surprised. I thought it must be because she’s Welsh, and they’re always very superstitious, aren’t they?”

  “Do you mean to say that you haven’t any religion, Dulcie?”

  “Pops says it’s all nonsense, to think that creeds matter,” said Dulcie timidly. “He says only cowards need religion, to keep them straight.”

  “Do you think that I’m a coward, Dulcie?”

  “No, of course I don’t.”

  “Yet I pray every day of my life, and I believe that my prayers are heard. If it wasn’t for religion, Dulcie, I don’t suppose I could have borne all the things that I’ve had to bear in my life.”

  Denis had forgotten all about the open door, the lateness of the hour, and the fact that he and Dulcie Courteney were alone together in his bedroom.

  He was genuinely appalled by his discovery, and yet at the same time pleasurably excited at the thought that this unfortunate child had certainly
been sent to him to be helped.

  “I wish,” he said earnestly, “that you’d let me talk to you for a little, about this, some time. I think I could help you a good deal.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you could. I do wish you would. I know you’ve read so much, and thought, and — and everything.”

  “I’ve gone into all these questions very carefully, certainly,” Denis asserted sweepingly. “And I can only tell you that there have been times when nothing but my faith has kept me from — taking the easy way out.”

  “And you don’t think I’m awful?”

  “Of course not. I never,” said Denis gravely, “despise anyone. And I can quite see that it may not have been your fault at all.”

  “It wasn’t Pops’ fault, either.”

  Denis was silent.

  Dulcie, fearful of displeasing him, played her trump card.

  “You see,” she said quaveringly, “I haven’t any mother. I can’t even remember her.”

  Denis was instantly moved, although something in him recognised the cheapness of the appeal. But he, also, had known a motherless childhood, and a memory of genuine grief and loneliness was mingled with much sentimentalising of his own forlorn past.

  “I had no mother, either, Dulcie. I’m so sorry for you.”

  Prompted by a genuine impulse of compassion, he stooped and kissed her cheek.

  The bedroom door slammed briskly.

  Courteney stood just inside the room, surveying them.

  Dulcie, white-faced and with dilated eyes, began to stammer something unintelligible.

  Denis was scarlet, casting wildly about in his startled mind for whatever pose might show him in a less unfavourable aspect than the obvious one.

  Courteney’s eyes were narrowed, and he strode up to Dulcie, and took her by the shoulder with no gentle grasp. His voice, when he spoke, was no louder than usual, but there was a very unpleasant note in it.

  “Don’t you know better than to play this kind of silly trick?” he demanded. “If you were a year or two older, it might be serious. As it is, you’re not too old to be punished. Did he ask you to come in here?”

  “No,” half shrieked Dulcie.

  Her father put his hand over her mouth.

  “Shut up, d’you want the whole Hotel to hear you?”

  He turned to Denis.

  “What have you got to say for yourself? Messing about with a child of Dulcie’s age, and keeping your wife — if she is your wife — hanging about waiting for you in London, while you pass yourself off as an unattached man.”

  “You can’t prove any of that,” Denis cried, quivering with wrath and fear.

  Courteney gave him an ugly smile.

  “Can’t I? I’m not so sure. And whether I can prove it or not, I’m not going to let you get away with it any longer. I think there’s at least one lady out here who’d be interested in a few details about Cicely Road, and I shall make it my business to see that she gets them.”

  “You can’t do that,” stammered Denis, wild with fear.

  He had forgotten all about Dulcie.

  All of a sudden she began to gulp and sob loudly.

  Courteney swore below his breath, and pulled her to the door. Opening it, he looked up and down the passage.

  “Go on. Get back to your own room. I’ll talk to you to-morrow.”

  Still sobbing, Dulcie went.

  The moment’s interruption had given Denis time to evolve a hasty conception of himself as a hero of chivalry.

  “Courteney,” he began earnestly, “I see that from your point of view, perhaps, you’ve a right to be annoyed. But in the first place, I give you my solemn word of honour that Dulcie simply came in here, innocently, like the child she is, and I said good-night to her as I might have said it to any child — little Gwennie Morgan — —”

  “Gwennie Morgan is nine years old, not sixteen. And I should like to know what her mother would have said, if she’d found you fooling about with her at eleven o’clock at night. Not that that’s to the point. The point is that my job, and Dulcie’s livelihood, depend on these Hotel proprietors, and others like them. Dulcie especially. She’s only here on sufferance. Any suspicion of her misbehaving herself, and out we go — neck and crop.”

  “I can’t tell you, Courteney, how extremely sorry I am that this should have happened. It was thoughtless of me, I quite admit, and if there’s anything I can say or do — —”

  “There’s nothing you can do, except behave yourself — and I’m going to see that you do — and the less you say the better.”

  Denis again turned cold with apprehension.

  “If you have any sense of honour at all — —” he began uncertainly.

  “I should let you go on making up for all you’re worth to a woman with more money than sense, at the same time making a little fool of my daughter, and I suppose of any other silly girl who gives you the chance?”

  “Please tell me what you intend to do,” said Denis with stiff lips.

  “Tell you! I’m not going to tell you anything. You’re not worth speaking to. You needn’t tell me you weren’t trying to seduce Dulcie. You haven’t got the guts for that. I believe I’d respect you more if you had.”

  At the contempt in Courteney’s voice Denis’s sense of outrage became unendurable. He clenched his hand and struck out.

  With one step sideways, Courteney evaded the ill-directed blow, and Denis barked his knuckles with extreme violence against the door.

  The sudden pain made him feel sick, and the room reeled for an instant round him.

  As from a distance he heard Courteney, quite low and calmly, level at him a stream of abusive epithets. Then the door opened, and shut again.

  Denis, quivering, lurched forward and turned the key in the lock, and then fell forward on to the bed, hiding his face against the pillow, and shaking with hysterical sobs.

  (4)

  St. Raphael, thought Chrissie, was a tiring place. She had met a party of American acquaintances there, they had all walked up and down the hot streets, and bought coloured handkerchiefs and coloured sandals, and Chrissie had selected enormous baskets of fruits confits as parting presents for the Morgan children; they had eaten ices, and drunk lemonade, and finally gone to one of the larger hotels for dinner.

  Chrissie, driving home in a hired car, had decided that it was too late, and she was much too tired, to stop at the Hôtel d’Azur and see Denis.

  If he’d really wanted to talk to her he could have rung up or come up to the rocks that morning.

  Besides, she was not at all sure that she wished to see him. The principal emotions that he now excited in her were an uneasy feeling of remorse, and a rapidly increasing sense of having made a fool of herself.

  When she reached the villa, her first enquiry was whether there had been a telephone message.

  “Nothing, dear,” said Mrs. Wolverton-Gush. She added:

  “I’ve had a very quiet afternoon and evening, and seen no one. None of our friends from the Hotel.”

  “Gushie,” said Chrissie abruptly, “what do you really think of Denis Waller?”

  Mrs. Wolverton-Gush looked at her employer, and her experience of the many women she had worked for and of Chrissie Challoner in particular told her exactly what she was required to think.

  “To be quite candid with you, dear, I’ve sometimes felt he wasn’t quite worthy of the interest you’ve shown in him. Even, perhaps, a little inclined to take advantage of it, if you know what I mean.”

  Chrissie involuntarily recollected the lunches, drinks, and dinners for which she had paid.

  “Well, I don’t suppose,” she said tolerantly, “that he’s ever had much of a chance.”

  “I dare say not. And then, of course — well, not being quite a gentleman does make a difference.”

  Ruth Wolverton-Gush was secretly very much relieved. She always dreaded these violent infatuations, which might so easily lead to the loss of her job.

  Now, at any rate, she
was safe for a little while longer.

  Her relief redoubled when Chrissie said abruptly:

  “I think we’ll go to Italy for a week, Gushie. I want a change, and to get away for a bit. See about rooms at that hotel I liked last year, will you? The address is somewhere in my book.”

  “Certainly, dear. You’d like to go as soon as possible?”

  “Well, yes. Not to-morrow, you know, but after that — the sooner the better.”

  She looked at her housekeeper-secretary, and there was an odd expression, half ashamed and half amused, in her big dark eyes.

  “I believe I’ve got a certain amount of copy out of this place. One always does, whether one means to or not.”

  CHAPTER XV

  (1)

  At ten o’clock next morning, the Hotel omnibus stood in front of the steps.

  The luggage of the Morgan family was being piled upon the roof. Mervyn Morgan was giving halting directions to the chasseur. His children were making their farewells to their fellow-visitors.

  “There’s one thing,” said Gwennie, “we shall look much browner when we get home than we do here. Everyone will think we’re marvellous.”

  She stuck out a round, copper-coloured arm from the short sleeve of her now unfamiliar frock, donned for travelling.

  “Where’s Mr. Waller? I just want to make sure that he sees I really am much more sunburnt than him.”

  “He’s here,” said David. “At the furthest table of all, over there. Everyone’s here to see us off, pretty nearly.”

  “Or because they haven’t finished breakfast,” observed Gwennie cynically.

  She walked over to the distant table where Denis Waller, haggard beneath his tan, sat drinking coffee and crumbling his bread without eating it.

  “Hallo, Mr. Waller! We’re going in a few minutes.”

  He stood up politely.

  “I’m sorry you’re leaving, Gwennie.”

  “So’m I, and I expect it will be boiling in the train. We shall think of you, swimming about in the sea.”

  “I expect I shall be at work most of the day.”

  “Why? You aren’t as a rule.”

  Denis gazed at the disconcerting child in silence. He had spent a miserable night, and opened his aching eyes to a yet more miserable waking. He did not feel at all sure that he was going to be able to remain at the Hôtel d’Azur. The thought of doing so was only second in horror to the thought of not doing so.