Rosalie let the trouble that she felt within her at his words appear in her face.
“You’re too intelligent to be shocked, my love. Besides, faithful and unfaithful are words that mean different things to different people. To cease to love is to be unfaithful, to my way of thinking. After that, to love somebody else is merely a logical development and makes the situation only a little bit worse.”
“Are you jealous by nature, Lucy?”
“Probably. I’ve not experienced jealousy yet, but then I’ve had no particular cause given me.”
“Not even — —”
“Not even dear Mama’s unconcealed preference for her first-born? No, I never remember feeling in the least jealous of Fred. I like Fred. By the by, do you?”
The question took her by surprise.
“Never mind,” said Lucy, apparently aware of her hesitation with the rapidity of intuition peculiar to himself. “Never mind. He admires you, of course, but don’t tell me whether you’ve encouraged him or not. I’d so much rather not know it, if you have.”
“Do you think I would?” Rosalie asked, relieved because she was able to laugh.
“If you wanted to, I’m sure you would. Not that Fred ever requires a great deal of encouraging. He is, I believe, more or less irresistible to your sex.”
“Why hasn’t he married?”
“Mama has always discouraged the idea very strongly, for one thing, and for another, I regret to say that Fred’s intentions are never serious. At least, so he says — and he ought to know. Mine were never serious either — until I met you, my beautiful.”
Rosalie was glad to return to the familiar language of love-making.
Yet she found recurring, again and again, in her own mind, the words: He admires you, of course. They awoke in her a longing, fundamental to her nature, to find out whether or not they were true.
4
Mrs. Troyle obtained her way. She received Mrs. Meredith and Rosalie in her small, dark Kensington house, where black-beetles scurried about on the ground floor after nightfall and the stairs smelt perpetually of gas and cabbage-water.
They shopped intensively.
Rosalie, who was not very much interested in clothes, had scarcely arrived before she was thinking how glad she would be to get back to the country again.
Lucy wrote to her every day, and once came up to London and took her and her mother and aunt to the play.
Then, on the last afternoon but one of their stay, when the three ladies were exhaustedly drinking tea in the drawing-room after a long afternoon at the dressmaker’s, Mrs. Troyle’s little scared-looking maid, in cap and apron that always seemed too large for her, appeared in the doorway and breathlessly announced:
“Mr. Lemprière, please’m.”
Rosalie, with a sense of pleased surprise, looked up. When she saw Fred instead of Lucy, so violent an emotional revulsion overtook her that she very nearly fainted.
The room, already dark, grew black and swam before her eyes and she felt a cold sweat break out upon her face and neck and a sense of deathly sickness invade her.
Her mother’s voice, saying something inaudible, sounded strangely far away.
The next moment her aunt, always alert, had thrust into her face an enormous cut-glass bottle filled with pale-pink globules of aromatic salts that had long since lost all pungency.
“It’s nothing, it’s the heat, it’s standing all the afternoon at that dressmaker’s,” said Mrs. Troyle rapidly. “Sit down, Mr. Lemprière, please, she’ll be all right in a moment.”
“I’m all right now,” said Rosalie. She struggled to give her mother, who was looking terrified, a reassuring smile.
“Keep still,” ordered her aunt.
Rosalie was only too glad to obey. She closed her eyes.
She heard Fred asking whether he should go for a doctor and shook her head, but Mrs. Troyle, as usual, took the reply upon herself.
“She’ll be all right in a moment. It’s nothing. I used to faint continually as a girl. Don’t you remember, Bertha? Sit down, my dear, you look as pale as the child! Dear me, Mr. Lemprière, I’m very sorry to receive you in such an unconventional manner.”
Aunt Maude chattered on, Mrs. Meredith hung over Rosalie asking in a low voice if she felt better, and Rosalie mastered her feeling of inertia and forced herself to sit upright again and to open her eyes.
“I’m truly all right. I’m so sorry. I just turned giddy.”
“Fatigue. The heat. I’ll get you some sal volatile; I always keep it handy,” declared Aunt Maude, her tone expressing great enjoyment of her own capability.
She sped from the room, and as she closed the door, Rosalie compelled herself to look at Fred.
His dark, heavy gaze was fixed upon her, as she had known it would be.
“Is there anything I can do?” he asked.
“Oh no, thank you, nothing. It was very silly of me. But it’s been so hot all day.”
“We’re not used to London,” added Mrs. Meredith simply. “My sister is very kind, but she doesn’t understand how much one misses the fresh air. And all this shopping in the heat — it’s most exhausting. Even this room seems quite airless.”
She need not have said “even” for the small room, crowded with furniture and knick-knacks, was oven-like.
“I came,” said Fred slowly, “to suggest a drive. I have a carriage outside, and I hoped to persuade you and Rosalie to come down to Richmond and dine. I think we may find my sister and her husband there.”
Mrs. Troyle, returning with almost incredible speed, darted into the room in time to hear the proposal.
“The very best thing,” she declared briskly. “How kind of you! Fresh air will do her all the good in the world.”
“But do you feel well enough, Rosalie? “her mother asked. “I’m sure Mr. Lemprière will quite understand if you’d rather keep quiet.”
Rosalie hesitated helplessly.
“Better come,” said Fred.
“Of course,” Aunt Maude supported him briskly. “But not you, Bertha. You’re tired out, I can see it. I’m sure Mr. Lemprière will take good care of Rosalie and bring her back early.”
“But—” said Mrs. Meredith.
“Yes, really, my dear. Mrs. Ballantyne will look after her, if you’re thinking of chaperonage, but really nowadays everybody does anything. Have you finished the sal volatile, dear? That’s right. Now, if you feel quite yourself again, Jane shall bring your hat and shoes into my room and then you needn’t go up to the top floor.”
It was decided, Rosalie thought dreamily. Decided for her.
She rose slowly and went up to her aunt’s room on the second floor.
5
Leaning back in the carriage with the air blowing gently against her face, Rosalie tried to believe herself calm, although the heavy thudding of her heart against her side was actually making her feel sick.
“Are you all right again now?” asked Fred.
“Quite, thank you.”
Seated side by side, each was looking straight ahead and not at the other.
“Where would you like to go?”
“I thought you said Richmond — —”
“I had to say somewhere. But it doesn’t matter. There are places nearer than Richmond where one can dine out-of-doors.”
“What about your sister Fanny?”
“Fanny, so far as I know, is in Devonshire.”
Rosalie was conscious of feeling very little surprise. She asked: “How did you know Mother wouldn’t come too? You asked her.”
“Naturally I asked her. I’d have asked your aunt too, if she hadn’t been in such a hurry to settle everything herself. But it would have come to the same thing in the long run. I came up to London to see you — and to see you alone, what’s more — and I should have done it.”
She made no reply.
Fred, still without turning his head, put out his hand and felt for hers and Rosalie let him take it.
“How b
eautiful your hands are.”
He was saying, almost in Lucy’s voice, words that Lucy had often said to her.
The remembrance caused her to make a movement of withdrawal as she said: “This isn’t fair to Lucy.”
“All’s fair in love and war. He’ll have you altogether in a week or two’s time. I’ve only got this one evening. Can’t we forget about Lucy?”
“No, I don’t think we can.”
But there was no conviction in her voice.
Fred said nothing further, but he found her hand again and this time Rosalie let him measure its slim length against his own, and the pressure of her palm responded to that of his.
They did not look at one another.
What on earth am I doing, thought Rosalie, her thoughts still hazy. I’m in love with Lucy, and I’m going to marry him. Nobody can feel like this about two people at the same time.
But although it was true that she was in love with Lucy, he had never roused in her the surge of emotion that Fred was rousing in her now.
Because her feeling for Lucy was as real as anything that she had hitherto known, because she genuinely wished to be loyal to him, and most of all because she could not bear the thought of hurting him, Rosalie made an effort.
“Please, will you take me back?” she asked in a low voice.
“No,” said Fred. “I’d never take you back, if I had my way. You’re the loveliest thing on earth, and if I’d come home six months ago, you’d belong to me now.”
He lifted her hand and held it against his face.
“It’s not too late, my lovely darling. Is it any good asking you to chuck Lucy?”
“I’ve promised to marry Lucy. Besides, I care for him.”
“I know that, and he’s insane about you. Who could help it? But you’re not married yet. Break it off, Rosalie.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because it would hurt Lucy most terribly Don’t you mind about that at all?”
“Damn it, I mind — but not as much as all that,” Fred said hardily.
Rosalie wrenched her hand from his.
“We can’t do this,” she said wildly. “I — I do love Lucy, and I know how much he cares about me, and I can’t hurt him.”
This time Fred turned round and his movement seemed to compel her to look at him in return.
“You love me too, don’t you?”
“You know I do.”
“Better than you do Lucy, Rosalie?”
“Don’t say my name! “she cried, breaking into tears. “I can’t bear it if you do that.”
Fred drew her towards him and kissed her, over and over again.
“Why won’t you come to me?”
Rosalie responded with kisses as ardent as his own, but she made no reply in words.
She was not analytical, either by temperament or by training. She knew that she was violently drawn towards Fred, that he moved her as Lucy could never do, and also that she could never trust or rely upon him.
Fred, whatever their relationship, would make her suffer: Lucy would never, so long as he lived, have power to hurt her as Fred could hurt her. Even now, she felt as though her heart must break. It was incredible and outrageous: she loved them both and it was still Lucy to whom her thoughts clung, while she sobbed at the sound of her name in Fred’s voice, and the clasp of his arms round her.
6
They went to Ken Wood. Fred knew an outdoor restaurant there, and he had brought wine in the carriage. When the coachman had taken out the bottles with their gleaming gilt-foil, he sent him away.
He ordered dinner under the trees and during the meal they scarcely spoke.
Fred’s dark eyes never left Rosalie’s face, and every now and then he touched her hand.
Lucy’s emeralds shone on her slim finger.
The simple meal, and the single glass of champagne that she drank, steadied her.
“What will happen?” she asked at last.
“Whatever you choose. If you’ll break with Lucy, I’ll take you out to the West Indies, or anywhere else you like.”
“How can you?”
“My mother won’t mind what I do,” said Fred, surprised.
“But Lucy?”
“Poor old Lucy. It’ll be pretty damnable for him for a bit, but I can’t help it. You may as well know what I’m like, sweetheart. I don’t often want anything very badly — I’ve generally had everything without having to bother — but when I do want something, I don’t mind what I have to smash to get it. As a matter of fact, I’m very fond of old Lucy — I always have been.”
“Then how can you think of doing anything that will hurt him so?”
Fred shrugged his shoulders.
“At least I’m honest about it.”
“You’re cruel,” said Rosalie. “Cruel and selfish and mean.”
“I daresay,” said Fred. “I’ll take the responsibility for that, if anyone’s got to.”
He poured more champagne into her glass.
“I don’t want any more.”
Fred smiled.
“I’m not trying to make you tight, if that’s what you’re afraid of. It’s all right, my loveliest. I only want to talk this out with you. I want to make you see that you and I belong to one another and that I can’t let anybody else have you. You love me, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then nothing else matters.”
“I love Lucy too,” said Rosalie desperately. “It sounds impossible and mad and against all the rules, but I do love you both. And Lucy’s been an angel to me, and I’ve promised him I’ll marry him.”
Fred’s dark face turned patchy and his eyes sombre.
“Then before you marry him, will you —— ?”
“No,” said Rosalie, “I won’t cheat, either.”
“Do you want me to go away, and not see you again?”
“It’s what we ought to do,” said Rosalie, “ — and I can’t bear it.”
She was colourless, and trembling.
“Darling, darling — would you have married me if Lucy hadn’t asked you first?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t ever meant to marry anyone. I’d rather be free.”
“You’re the only woman I’ve ever known who’d say that,” Fred exclaimed. “And you’re quite right — that’s what you ought to be. Free. Then you and I might have loved one another and Lucy need never have lost anything. You’d have given him what you chose — but you wouldn’t have been tied by impossible promises. A woman like you isn’t meant to be faithful. It just isn’t in her.”
“Any more than it’s in you,” Rosalie said, with a flash of intuition.
“I’m a man, not a woman,” Fred retorted.
“But Lucy’s different. He wants this to be for always.”
“Well, it won’t be — with you,” Fred said brutally. “You’ll break Lucy’s heart before you’ve done with him, and you won’t be able to help it.”
“I will help it.”
“No. It isn’t your fault. You’ll always attract love, and you’ll give it — though never as much as you get.”
Fred pushed back his chair and got up.
“That’s enough talking. I don’t know what I’ve said such a lot for. I don’t, as a rule. Come out into the woods.”
“Are there woods?”
“Yes.”
“I’d rather stay here,” said Rosalie faintly.
“That’s not true.”
“I suppose it isn’t. And it’s only this one evening in all our lives. You do know that, don’t you?”
“I only know one thing,” said Fred, and his voice — suddenly gentle — might have been his brother’s.
Rosalie, likewise, only knew one thing — and it was like a tidal wave, towering and powerful and inescapable, before her. She did not, indeed, know whether she had any wish to escape it, but before allowing herself to be engulfed she made her last stand.
“You know we’re mad — we ou
ght not to be doing this — we ought not to be here together at all. Think of Lucy.”
“You’re not going to think of anybody but me,” said Fred.
His eyes and his voice and his touch alike compelled her.
“Very well,” said Rosalie, suddenly reckless.
The moment the decision was taken, she characteristically lost every thought except. that of the immediate present.
An insane happiness possessed her.
She forgot Lucy, and her own scruples, and there was no thought in her mind of the future, so inescapably rooted in the present.
7
John Meredith, on the return of his wife and daughter from London, grumbled that Rosalie looked washed-out and tired to death.
“It can’t be helped,” his wife told him. “Girls have a very tiring time, just before their wedding, always. Clothes and things. Besides, it was terribly hot in London.”
“I suppose you know what you’re talking about,” Meredith said doubtfully.
Rosalie, in reply to enquiries, answered that she was rather tired but that of course there was nothing the matter.
Her father believed her without question, her mother because she wanted to do so. Secretly, she thought that perhaps Rosalie was afraid of marriage and its unknown implications, and wondered whether she ought to talk to her.
She could not make up her mind to do so, and the days before the wedding slipped by.
Fred Lemprière had not returned from London, but Fanny and Tom Ballantyne were again at The Grove — Fanny constantly offering precedents for the wedding arrangements from her own experience, and being always either contradicted or ignored by her mother.
Kate had long since returned from her visit to the Newtons. She was very quiet, now, and helpful. Anyone noticing her specially might have seen that a new and curious uncertainty was gaining upon her almost daily and all her young, natural self-confidence slowly seeping from her. But no one, actually, was noticing Kate in any special way.
She was gentle and rather timidly affectionate towards Rosalie, but never claimed any of her time or made the old impetuous, imperative demands upon her. It was rather Rosalie who seemed to seek Kate, although she exchanged no confidences with her, but talked about the wedding preparations, and Kate’s bridesmaid’s frock, and the people who were to be invited by Cecilia to The Grove before the wedding day to see the presents, since there would be no room for the display in the Merediths’ little house.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 506
