Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  “Since when do you do your work at High-gate?”

  “Since — to-morrow.”

  “I see. You’d better ask her, Desmond.” And Lady Lucassin added with the air of inconsequence that she so often gave to her shrewdest and most apt observations: “Pamela Carew never goes anywhere or speaks to anybody, except the curate and his wife. She married the terrier-breeder when she was nineteen, I believe.”

  “Any children?”

  “Yes, but she never tells one anecdotes about them.”

  Adaire followed her down to the foyer.

  Already he was wondering if Pamela Carew was really as exquisite-looking as he remembered her.

  When his eyes found her standing in conversation with Charlie Lucassin, he perceived, with incredulous relief, that she was even more so.

  “Lady Lucassin tells me that you have to be at Highgate to-morrow morning, and as I have to be there, too,” said Adaire glibly, “perhaps you will allow me to call for you, and drive you back to Eaton Square?”

  She gazed at him for a moment, and he could not be certain that she had not guessed at his duplicity.

  “Please!” He smiled at her.

  “I’d love it,” she answered quickly, and her smile replied to his.

  “One o’clock — if that suits you. Where shall I come?”

  “Two hundred and five, Shepherd’s Hill. I won’t keep you waiting.”

  “I shall be there from one o’clock until whatever time you’re ready,” he replied with his eyes on hers.

  He thought, but could not be certain, that she blushed faintly.

  “There’s Charlie! Good-night, Desmond.”

  “Good-night. Good-night, Mrs. Carew.”

  “Good-night, Mr. Adaire.”

  He wondered whether she would look back, before getting into the Lucassins’ opulent car.

  At the last possible moment, she did so — the merest, most fleeting glance.

  But it sent him back to his rooms in Duke Street with a ridiculous feeling of exultant anticipation.

  And instead of “Good-bye, Dolly,” he found himself humming the “Intermezzo” played between the acts at the theatre that evening.

  There is always a risk that a woman who is lovely by artificial light may prove disappointing next day.

  Adaire told himself that he should expect disillusionment, as he drove out to Highgate next morning at an hour when he should have been still in Whitehall.

  He had ascertained the whereabouts of Shepherd’s Hill before starting, and only delayed on the way to purchase violets.

  He passed number two hundred and five, turned the car round at the end of the road, and saw her run down the steps as he came to a standstill opposite the gate.

  She was more entirely adorable than he had dared to remember her.

  Adaire, who had driven from Whitehall to Highgate in twenty minutes, took rather more than double that time to make the return journey. Pamela Carew sat beside him, and every now and then buried her face in his violets.

  The lady from the provinces....

  Already he was indignant with himself for ever having described her, derogatorily, to himself. He had seldom met a woman of so quick and responsive an intelligence, and her sense of humour was as subtle as his own. Margaret Lucassin had said that she never told one anecdotes about the children. She didn’t mention the garden, nor the dogs, either, nor even her husband’s illness.

  Adaire had to ask her how long she was remaining in London.

  “About ten days more, I think. Fred won’t be out of the Home for another month, I’m afraid, but I shall be quite able to leave him in ten days.”

  She sounded tepid, about Fred, he hoped.

  “I make this journey every day,” he said recklessly. “I do hope you’ll let me be of use to you. My man could take you down in the mornings, and bring the car back, and then perhaps you’d let me drive you to Eaton Square in time for lunch.”

  “But you don’t lunch at two o’clock.”

  “Always. I prefer it.”

  “It’s very kind of you to suggest it. But of course I couldn’t hear of it. Sometimes, perhaps—”

  He caught the note of relenting in her voice and was satisfied. Her companionship pleased him more every moment, and he would have liked to prolong the drive for ever. It was a relief to know that at Eaton Square he need not leave her at the door, but could come with her, and spend the next two hours in the same room with her.

  As usual, Margaret Lucassin was entertaining half a dozen people to luncheon. Adaire knew most of them, and had to abandon Mrs. Carew to an earnest Swede, in glasses, who talked about the educative value of folk-dancing.

  He saw with an amusement that was wholly gentle, that she did not attempt to hold her own, conversationally, with the other women. They talked about people, and Mrs. Carew knew no people. Her clothes too, he was aware — and saw that she was aware — relegated her to another sphere. Even her looks might be said to be dimmed, beside the sophisticated powdered and lip-sticked attractiveness of Lady Lucassin’s world.

  He might have been sorry for her — but admired her infinitely more when he saw that there was no need to be. Pamela Carew was graciously, almost merrily, undaunted by her surroundings — and it was the undauntedness of intelligence, not that of insensitiveness. He could not help suspecting — he hoped not too fatuously — that the consciousness of his own liking was helping to sustain her. She was aware of it now, he knew, and there was a certain provocativeness about her occasional glances in his direction.

  Adaire had no opportunity for talking with her until after lunch, when he deliberately crossed the big room in order to sit beside her on one of the gilded rococo sofas of the Lucassin tradition.

  “Does this amuse you?” he inquired, his tone, in itself, a subtle advance in intimacy.

  Hers matched it, as she replied in an undertone.

  “Very much. Of course, I’m not in it at all, and it’s rather like a foreign language. But one enjoys it, after the bulbs, and the Harvest Festival, and the local flower show.”

  “The bulbs — yes.”

  He wondered whether Margaret Lucassin had repeated to Mrs. Carew his original reference, and preferred to think that the use of the same symbol was a coincidence, denoting similarity of outlook.

  Decidedly, he was in love again. Life was once more an affair of suspense, excitement, misery and — he hoped — rapture.

  He manoeuvred the conversation round to Lady Lucassin’s activities, ascertained that she was attending a couple of functions the following evening, and asked whether he might take Mrs. Carew out to dinner and the theatre.

  “Thank you so much — I’d love it,” she answered frankly. “I’m having the best time I’ve ever had in my life, just now.”

  Then she wasn’t — and never had been — in love with “Fred.” He breathed a sigh of thankfulness. Only — did the best time she’d ever had in her life mean that anybody else, besides the Lucassins, was taking her out?

  The doubt was not serious enough to damp his anticipations.

  He got stalls for a comedy that was sophisticated enough for his own taste, and that he felt certain she would appreciate, and himself ordered dinner — with her favourite flowers on the table — at a restaurant where he had been known for years. He judged it safe to guess at her taste in wine, and order a dry champagne.

  It was one of Pamela Carew’s admirable qualities, that she did not keep one waiting. A taxi stopped at the door of the restaurant and she stepped out of it, at the precise hour agreed upon.

  “She is too lovely, too altogether regal, for the cheap trick of enhancing her value by delay,” reflected Adaire, as he greeted her on the threshold. “She’s perfect!”

  It caused him a certain tender amusement, to notice that, in his honour, she had faintly and not very skilfully, reddened her lips. Nothing could spoil the beautiful shape of her mouth, and her soft, childlike complexion she had wisely left alone. She wore the same black
frock that she had worn on the night he first met her, but in the front of it was fastened a slim sheaf of lilies-of-the-valley that he had sent her that afternoon.

  It was not till they were halfway through dinner, and a conversation that had never for one instant languished, that she thanked him.

  “You’re giving me a wonderful time,” she ended. “Lady Lucassin must be a great friend of yours?”

  “Not especially.” He cast poor Margaret Lucassin, and a liking of many years’ standing, ruthlessly to the winds.

  “Then — ?”

  Her delicate eyebrows went up in enquiry.

  Adaire shrugged his shoulders. His heart was beating perceptibly faster.

  “You know,” he declared, and looked full into her eyes. —

  There was no doubt about her blush this time. It was divine, he thought.

  “Do you like me — very much?” said Pamela Carew.

  “Most damnably much — Pamela,” he replied deliberately.

  She looked down.

  He longed to touch her hand, but the place was too public, in spite of the fact that he had chosen a discreet corner for their table.

  At last she raised her eyes.

  “I thought perhaps you did,” she confessed. “And I knew I ought to tell you that I — I’m not that sort of woman.”

  “I know that quite well, of course.”

  “Do you?”

  “That kind of woman doesn’t interest me. It was partly because you’re so obviously not, that I was first attracted.”

  “You’ve known all kinds of women of course. I’ve only known one kind of man. The kind that one meets in the country. They either hunt or they don’t hunt.”

  “Your husband?”

  “Oh, Fred hunts,” she said colourlessly.

  “Do you love him?”

  She made a tiny, expressive gesture with one hand, and smiled faintly.

  “I don’t think,” said Adaire, watching her closely, “that you’ve ever been in love in your life.”

  “No.”

  They exchanged a long grave look, and then she quite suddenly broke into the smile that he found so entrancing.

  “Not yet,” said Mrs. Carew.

  The waiter, tactless for the first time that evening, approached Adaire, and interrupted them.

  “Curse him,” said Adaire, with great heartiness.

  “It’s time we started, isn’t it? I should hate to miss one minute of the play,” said Mrs. Carew demurely.

  He followed her out of the room, aware that she was looked at in spite of her unstriking dress. He had hired a car for the evening, thinking a taxi unworthy of her, and having no desire to be driven by his own man.

  She was candidly delighted by its splendour, but Adaire could have wished both the spaciousness of it, and the electric lighting, less magnificent. It took them a bare five minutes to reach the theatre, and they were much too early.

  “I don’t mind,” she said. “I like seeing the people. At home I never see any people.”

  “Tell me what you do at home.”

  “Nothing — and everything. We’re badly off.

  I have two maids, and do a great deal of the work myself. I’ve three children.”

  “What do you look forward to most?”

  He saw by her quick start that he had touched a vital point.

  “How did you know? That’s just it, of course. There’s nothing for me to look forward to. Not even letters. No one writes to me except about characters for servants — or shops — or, sometimes, my sister-in-law in Canada. I look forward to the spring flowers — the daffodils in March and April — and to seeing my little girls do well at their dancing lessons. There isn’t anything else.”

  “And you, with the most wonderful capacity for happiness—”

  “But how lucky that I have!” she interrupted him, her voice mirthful, and as far removed as possible from a cheap cynicism. “Don’t you see it’s just that which makes it so endurable — for me? I can enjoy the daffodils, and the dancing lessons, and even the tea-parties.”

  “Shall you enjoy them still when you go back?”

  “Hush! The curtain’s going up.”

  Adaire would willingly have seen it go down again, with the play still unacted.

  In the interval before the second act, she talked about the first act. When the curtain fell again, she suggested that he should go outside and smoke a cigarette.

  “No, thank you,” said Adaire grimly. “Are you afraid of what I’m going to say next?”

  “I’m not quite sure.”

  “Pamela, I’m in your hands. I want to make love to you most damnably — but I shan’t, if you don’t want to listen. Unless,” he added hastily, “you go on looking at me like that. If you do, I won’t be responsible for what I may say — or do.”

  “Do you know that no one has ever made love to me?” she said looking away from him.

  “Then in your part of the country there are no men. Or they’ve no eyes, and no perceptions.”

  “None.” She agreed with him unhesitatingly. “I married when I was nineteen, you see. Fred was our next-door neighbour. I’d always known him. He just asked me to marry him, and I said ‘Yes,’ and it meant going from one rather shabby house to another, smaller one. And the babies came. They’re darlings of course — but I’ve often thought that there must be something else, for a woman.”

  “For the sort of woman you are — good God, yes!”

  “I’ve never been away anywhere, since I married, without Fred or the children. Generally, it’s been all of us together.”

  The curtain rose again on the last act of the play.

  Adaire, seasoned playgoer, heard not a word of it. He could just see the profile of Pamela Carew beside him, gazing in apparent absorption at the lighted stage. It seemed to him that never before had he wanted so much to kiss a woman.

  When the play was over he asked her to come somewhere and have supper, but she refused.

  “At least,” he urged, “you’ll let me take you out again one night before you go back to Devonshire?”

  “Cornwall.”

  “Well, wherever it is.”

  “I’d like to come very much, if it fits in with Lady Lucassin’s plans and yours,” she answered primly.

  “My plans, as long as you are in London, will depend entirely on you,” he told her plainly. “And to begin with, I want you to use my car every morning to go out to Highgate and to let me fetch you away. I only wish I could drive you down myself, but I’m bound to be in Whitehall just then.”

  Her answer, if she made one, was inaudible, but he found, when he helped her into the car, that her hand was trembling.

  He gave his order to the chauffeur, and added:

  “You can drive slowly.”

  Then he got in, and sat down beside Mrs. Carew. She turned and looked at him as she did so, and her smile, whether consciously or not, was an invitation.

  “You mustn’t look at me like that, if you don’t want me to make love to you.”

  “I’m told that you make love to a great many women, Mr. Adaire.”

  “My name is Desmond — a ridiculous one, I know.”

  “I like it.” —

  “I’m so glad. Couldn’t you like me, too, Pamela?”

  “I’m afraid I could,” she murmured.

  “Pamela.”

  He put his arm round her shoulders, and she swayed towards him.

  Adaire kissed her.

  He met her every day after that, and took her out almost every evening. Margaret Lucassin evidently took it for granted that, having met Pamela Carew, he should wish to see her as much as possible, within the short limits of her stay. What Fred Carew thought no one inquired, or wished to know.

  And then one day she said to him:

  “I’ve got to go home, in three days. The cousin who is looking after the house and the children can’t stay any longer, and Fred is practically well again now. He’ll be coming home himself in
a fortnight.”

  He gazed at her in dismay.

  “But — you’ll come back.”

  “How can I? I never leave home — there’s no possible reason why I should — and every reason why I shouldn’t. And besides, this treatment, for my husband — it’s been fearfully expensive, for us. We shall have to be careful now, for months and months — perhaps years.”

  “Darling, have I got to do without you?”

  “We knew it would have to come to an end, Desmond.”

  “I didn’t know how much I was going to love you,” he whispered into her hair.

  He had taken her home after a concert, and the inexorable necessity for facing the footman who opened the door of the Eaton Square house to her, forced him to relinquish her hand as he said:

  “Good-night.”

  He crossed the pavement, and told his chauffeur to drive home. He should walk.

  Impossible to believe that Pamela Carew was going out of his life.

  She was unlike the many other women whom he had known and loved. Never once had she spoilt their hours together by reproaches, either of himself or of her, nor by a spasmodic and unconvincing remorse.

  Adaire, who had never penned an indiscreet line since a narrow escape, twenty years earlier, of finding himself cited as co-respondent in a notorious divorce case, actually wondered whether he and Mrs. Carew could at least write to one another.

  But that wasn’t any good! He wanted to see her, to touch her every now and then, to look into her shy, deep, laughing eyes, and to kiss her slim hands and lovely mouth.

  He wondered whether it would be possible to persuade her that she might still come up to London, on one pretext or another, even if it were to be only once or twice in the year, so that they might meet. He could not, however, imagine her engaged in transacting any such subterfuge as would be thus implied.

  She was being taken on an unnecessary expedition, next day, by the Lucassins, and he did not see her.

  In despair he telephoned to her at ten o’clock. “What about to-morrow? Can I see you?”

  “It’s my last day. I shall be at Highgate till three.”

  “I’ll come and fetch you. We’ll have tea somewhere. What about the evening?”

  “Lady Lucassin has some people dining here.”