Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  Mrs Peel moaned a quiet protest at this strange reversal of the customary order of things, but said nothing clearly.

  Frances, on the contrary, felt that perhaps the moment had come — although sooner than she had either expected or desired it — for helping Taffy’s cause, if any words of hers could really hope to influence so clear, so judicial a spirit as that of Claudia.

  “Taffy seems to me extremely intelligent and — and definite in her views,” she began timidly.

  Claudia interrupted her at once.

  “Oh yes. She is. I think she’s inherited my mentality, although at the moment she’s going through a phase of self-consciousness — I suppose most schoolgirls do — Sylvia was an exception. But that doesn’t worry me — she’ll outgrow her little poses and self-dramatizations. It’s really her attitude towards me that’s troubling me.”

  “It must be very disappointing — —”

  “Oh, it’s not on my own account that I mind. At least, I’m nearly sure that it isn’t. Not more than is inevitable,” said Claudia with her careful candour. “If one does mind — it’s all in the day’s work. The real point is the effect on Taffy. We’ve got to face the fact that I may, with the very best intentions, be the very worst person for her.”

  “No, no — don’t say that. But perhaps — —”

  “Frances, haven’t you found out yet that I’d rather face things quite honestly? It’s the only way by which one can ever hope to put them straight, after all.”

  “I think it’s very brave of you.”

  ‘No,” said Claudia judicially. “It’s my nature. I haven’t any temptation to shirk an issue, or to let my emotions run away with my judgment. I can see, and accept, the fact that Taffy — like a great many girls — is antagonistic towards me simply, I imagine, because I’m her mother. It’s nothing reasoned or specific. These things have their roots far below the level of conscious thought. And probably, in some way that I haven’t yet understood, I’m to blame — if you can talk about blame, in these cases. What I want to do is to get at the fundamental mistake — find out where I’ve gone wrong, and put it right.”

  Claudia drew breath, and in the infinitesimal pause, Frances had time to reflect that she need not, after all, commit herself just yet to her own opinion, for it was evident that Claudia, lost in her own earnest and dispassionate analysis, had temporarily quite forgotten having asked for advice.

  VII

  1

  The evening was hotter even than the one before. As soon as dinner was over, everyone drifted to the hall where the door stood wide open to the breathless, scented night.

  “How quiet it is!” Sal said.

  Claudia turned to Mrs Ladislaw.

  “It’s like the old days, isn’t it? One could almost think oneself back, away from the age of hustle.”

  “No motor-cars, no aeroplanes — only the horses looking out of their stalls, and the little clinking sounds that used to come from the stables,” said Frances reminiscently.

  She started as a sudden violent braying broke into the quiet.

  “That’s Lew Sydney playing a trumpet solo. Isn’t he marvellous?” trustingly enquired Maurice.

  “Marvellous indeed,” said Sal. “I shall go out, I think.”

  Claudia laughed a little.

  “We’re living in the present all right,” she said.

  “Don’t you want the wireless, Mother?”

  “You can have it on if you like, Maurice. I don’t mind a bit, though I don’t think I shall sit and listen to it.”

  She stood on the threshold, a slender figure, almost as youthful-looking as her daughters in the failing light, and looked round as though waiting for someone.

  “Where’s Andrew Quarrendon?”

  “Didn’t he stay in the dining-room with Copper?”

  “Did he? But he can’t want to do that on a night like this. How heavenly it is! — but I’m afraid there’s going to be a storm.”

  They stepped outside, and it was hotter without than within.

  Voices came from the end of the tennis court, where Sylvia and Mrs Peel had joined Sal Oliver.

  Claudia slipped her hand through her friend’s arm.

  “They’ll ruin their shoes on the grass. It’s soaked with dew. Though I dare say my mama has put on goloshes. But we’ll stay on the gravel, shall we?”

  “Yes,” said Frances, and she gave a little sigh. “One can’t really think oneself back, can one? There was a time when we should have ruined our evening slippers in the dew without giving it a second thought.”

  “I know more about the cost of evening slippers nowadays,” returned Claudia smartly — and Frances felt slightly snubbed.

  As they went past the open window of the library, the two men came out.

  The sounds from the wireless had been abruptly cut off.

  “I soon stopped that row,” Copper said. “I call it an insult to a night like this.”

  Sylvia’s slim form flitted rapidly towards them and Quarrendon moved forward as if to meet her.

  “Wouldn’t it be lovely down by the sea now?” said the girl breathlessly. “Couldn’t we go? It’s hot enough to bathe.”

  “Why not?” said her mother indulgently. “Couldn’t they have the car, Copper?”

  “I suppose so. Yes.”

  “Oh thank you, Daddy. I’ll go and get it.”

  Sylvia fled, followed by her little brother.

  “Why don’t you go with them, Copper? I’d be happier if you would. I know Sylvia’s careful, but there is any amount of traffic on the main road at this time of night. People dashing back to London.”

  “I’m not going,” said Copper positively. “Either the girl can drive the car, or she can’t. you said she was to learn, so that they could go off by themselves without bothering one of us the whole time.”

  “Yes, I know I did. Very well. Frances, I don’t suppose you want to bathe at midnight, do you? Or Sal? Is it too hot for a game of Bridge? Grand-mama would love it.”

  Feeling that she was intended to do so, Frances agreed to play Bridge.

  “Sal’s always ready for a game — and Copper, of course. I suppose I really ought to do some work.”

  The headlights of the car threw their long beams of light across the garden as Sylvia drove up to the hall door.

  She jumped out and came up to them.

  “Where’s Taffy?” Claudia asked quickly.

  “In the car, and Maurice says can he go too?”

  “Yes, if you’re not too late getting back. It’s too hot for him to go to sleep, anyway.”

  “Andrew, are you ready?” said Sylvia shyly.

  Her mother exclaimed in surprise.

  “But he doesn’t — —” she turned to Quarrendon. “You don’t really want to go, do you? Please don’t think you need, because of what I said.”

  “But I’d like to,” said Quarrendon.

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t! Stay and talk in the garden instead.”

  Quarrendon hesitated. He seemed not to know what he ought to say.

  Claudia took his acquiescence for granted. She turned to her daughter.

  “Don’t stay too long, darling, or it’ll be so late for Maurice.”

  Sylvia — without answering — stood motionless, looking at Andrew Quarrendon expectantly.

  “You’re coming, aren’t you?” she said to him.

  “Yes — yes — I’ll come.”

  “No, no,” Claudia protested. “They’ll be all right. Don’t go unless you really want to.”

  “You’d like some Bridge, I expect,” Mrs Peel suggested hopefully.

  “I’m afraid I don’t play Bridge,” Quarrendon said hastily. “And if Mrs Winsloe wants to work — —”

  “No, that doesn’t matter. It was only conscience, and I can easily disregard it,” Claudia said, laughing.

  “Oh dear! Of course you ought to relax, at this time of night. Nobody but you,” wailed Mrs Peel, “would think of doing anything else
— and in this heat too.”

  “I think,” said Quarrendon gently, “that I must see the bay by moonlight.”

  He turned and followed Sylvia to the car.

  2

  Claudia, after all, did no work that evening.

  The Bridge four was made up without her, and the table drawn close to the open window.

  She watched them for a minute or two, then lit a cigarette and strolled down to the stream at the bottom of the garden.

  Claudia was perturbed.

  In a formula that she did not, herself, realize to have become habitual to her, she murmured under her breath:

  “Now, I must look this straight in the face.”

  To be looked straight in the face, was the sudden knowledge that Andrew Quarrendon, her contemporary and possible friend, was attracted by Sylvia.

  Claudia had no illusions as to the nature of that attraction. Sylvia was neither intellectual nor an especially stimulating companion — but she was very, very pretty.

  It was the first time that Claudia had fully understood that Sylvia was no longer a schoolgirl. Mentally, she had realized and accepted the fact and had even supposed herself to welcome it. Actually, she had never before watched any man falling in love with her daughter.

  It’s natural I should mind, a little tiny bit, she told herself — even smiling a little, just as she would have smiled if she had said the words aloud to somebody else. “No woman can accept, without any pang at all, being definitely relegated to the generation that looks on … No, that’s exaggerated. I’m not quite that. I’ve had friendships — companionships — I’ve had men in love with me. It’s not been their fault that I haven’t found myself involved in a love-affair, even at forty-three.”

  It was true that several men, always of the literary, intellectual type, had attempted to lure Claudia from the Platonic paths in which she, from inclination as well as expediency, preferred to linger. None had ever succeeded.

  It had seemed reasonably likely — had she consciously thought about it — that Andrew Quarrendon would follow in the footsteps of these defeated ones. He was Claudia’s type of man; he was obviously taken with her intelligence, her vitality and good looks, and he was sufficiently perceptive to realize the emotional barrenness of her carefully displayed kindness towards her husband. He, like the others, might well have wished to hold long, intimate, and analytical conversations with Claudia, ending in a regretful and admiring acceptance of the inevitable — a few kisses — and eventually an intellectual friendship, nourished upon correspondence, infrequent meetings, and a shared sentimental recollection.

  Quarrendon, however — beginning as almost all Claudia’s men friends began — had now broken with tradition. He was falling in love with Sylvia.

  Claudia clearly stated the fact to herself. She looked it, in her own phrase, straight in the face. She soon decided that she had fully accepted it. She was not, after all, in the least in love with Quarrendon, nor could she ever imagine being so.

  Her natural woman’s vanity had suffered a slight shock.

  That was all.

  She smiled to herself again, as she reflected on the slightness of the effort — one frank and courageous admission of the truth — that had enabled her to put all personal feeling away. It was Sylvia of whom she must think.

  She heard, as if for the first time, the tone in which Sylvia had said:

  “Andrew, are you ready?”

  Sylvia — poor darling — was attracted, or thought she was attracted, by Andrew Quarrendon. It was typical of a very young girl to let her fancy be captured by a man much older than herself, far cleverer than herself, and probably wishing to make love to her for no other reason than that she was young and lovely to look at.

  Claudia sighed.

  Oh heavens, she thought, how I wish it had been a boy of her own age! That’s where she ought to get her emotional experience — not with a man like Quarrendon.

  I can’t live my children’s lives for them. I shall have to see her suffer, if she takes this at all seriously.

  He’s going away on Tuesday.

  Three days of summer — three nights of moonlight and sea-waves.

  Claudia involuntarily shook her head, as if violently dismissing the possibilities thus conjured up.

  3

  When the car returned it was just eleven o’clock. (Mrs Peel, from ten o’clock onwards, had repeatedly looked at the clock, which was out of order and remained permanently at ten minutes to seven, and said “Oh dear!” and “I hope they’re all right. With all this terrible traffic on the roads …”.) The beams from the headlights could plainly be seen from the library windows.

  Claudia half-rose from the seat that she had taken and then sat down again.

  Sal Oliver glanced sharply at her and she smiled faintly in reply.

  “It’s much too late for Maurice to be up. I oughtn’t to have trusted any of them.”

  “It’s the last time I shall let Sylvia take the car, if she can’t do as she’s told,” grumbled Copper, only giving half his attention to the question. “Now I suppose I must go and see that she shuts up the garage properly.”

  “Oh Copper, she can do that quite well!”

  “How do I know? She doesn’t know how to do as she’s told.”

  He left the room, and they heard him speaking peremptorily to Maurice outside.

  “Don’t waste any more time now. Cut along to bed. You can’t go in and say good-night.”

  Claudia moved again uneasily, and said under her breath: “I do wish he wouldn’t!”

  Maurice could be heard running upstairs.

  In another moment Taffy came in.

  “His Lordship has gone back to his old parking-place near the garage,” she remarked unconcernedly. “Close to the bed of mint.”

  “You’re frightfully late, Taffy. I don’t mind about you two, but Maurice ought to have been in bed ages ago.”

  “I suppose he ought.”

  The casualness of her tone held a hint of impertinence.

  Claudia took no notice.

  “Did you bathe?” Frances asked the girl.

  Taffy turned to her at once.

  “We did. Not the Professor. It was too utterly marvellous. Syl only stayed in a few minutes, but Maurice and I swam out a bit.” She glanced at her mother. “His swimming has come on simply marvellously. He’s definitely good for his

  Her conciliatory intention was evident, and Claudia smiled a recognition of it.

  Taffy moved across to the wireless.

  “We ought to get Henry Hall and his Band. I wish they’d play You’re just my olde-worlde girl. It’s a marvellous tune.”

  “It’s an extremely inappropriate one,” said Sal Oliver with a laugh.

  She began to take up the cards and markers.

  Mrs Peel picked things up, held them aimlessly for a second or two in her be-ringed hands, and then put them down again in a slightly different position.

  Then Copper returned, by himself.

  “What have you done with the Professor?” his wife enquired lightly.

  “He’s just coming. Is that fellow all there?”

  “So far as I know. Some people might even go so far as to call him a man of rather high ability,” Claudia resumed, mildly satirical.

  “That’s simply book-learning. I’m talking from the point of view of common sense. He couldn’t manage the fastening of those double-doors — he might have been a child of two — and I don’t think he has the faintest idea of time. I told Sylvia she ought to have been back hours ago, and he asked what time it was, and said he thought it must be ‘about ten.’ About ten! It’s past eleven.”

  “I’d better go and hurry up Maurice,” said Claudia quietly.

  3

  In the dark garden Quarrendon held both Sylvia’s hands, as they stood motionless, a long way away from the open door and the lighted windows.

  “Darling Sylvia, I love you.”

  “And I love you, Andrew. You’
ve made everything in the world quite different.”

  “But my sweet — I’m too old for you. And I’m not — oh my dear, it’s no use.”

  “Does anything matter except us?” said Sylvia very simply.

  “Sylvia, I’m not going to ask you to marry me.”

  “Oh, Andrew, how silly! What does it matter?”

  “I’m being utterly unfair. I shall hate myself for this when I come to my senses, and the best thing would be if you were to hate me — no! I’m dramatizing it all. Listen, Sylvia. I’m terribly in love with you, and I think I could teach you some things and give you some happiness, but you’ll suffer in the end. We both shall, but you will most, because you’re inexperienced, and sensitive, and young. Is it going to be worth it, for you?”

  “You know it is,” she answered, her voice trembling.

  “God help me, I knew you’d say that!”

  Quarrendon took her very gently into his arms and held her for a moment.

  Then he kissed her.

  4

  Claudia waited in vain for Sylvia to come into the library. She did not appear, and her mother was obliged to conclude that she had gone straight to her own room.

  Quarrendon came in by the window, blinking through his glasses at the light, and said vaguely that the sea had looked very beautiful. Then he said good-night and went away again.

  “What very extraordinary manners he has,” Mrs Peel remarked coldly. “Why clever people so often think it necessary to behave like wild beasts, I shall never understand.”

  “Hardly wild beasts, surely?” Sal Oliver suggested. “More like something timid, and clumsy, in a lair.”

  Mrs Peel took no notice. She said her own good-nights with extra elaboration, shaking hands with each person in turn, and carrying up to bed with her a glass of cold water from a tray in the hall.

  Everybody else went to bed too.

  Claudia went along the passage and tapped at Sylvia’s door.

  “Come in!”

  Sylvia was, unromantically, energetically brushing her teeth.

  She completed the operation with great thoroughness and then smiled brilliantly at her mother.