Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  Cecil, with the boys and Prudence, had gone.

  Palliser, after a despairing look at the unnaturally quiet and tidy house, rushed out of it. He went straight into the office of the nearest house agents, and placed the house in their hands.

  But he had to go back, in order to pack a suitcase with indispensable necessities.

  Ghostly coughs — shadowy, infantile wailings — sounds that had irritated him in the past almost beyond bearing — seemed still to lurk in every corner.

  Where was he to go?

  The familiar doubt as to expense tugged at him, then, with a jerk, he realized that he had only himself to think about. There was no need to wonder if there would be a sufficient number of rooms available — if children were catered for — whether Cecil’s coughing would be said to disturb other inmates. All these questions would in future be resolved by another man. Julius Palliser was free.

  It was, actually, the first time that he had fully realized it.

  The sense of failure, of degradation and misery, fell from him.

  Slowly and with a dawning wonder at the blindness that had held his eyes for so long, Julius Palliser began to understand that freedom was his again.

  Cecil and the children had gone.

  In a little while — impossible not to know it — almost, it would seem to him that they had never been.

  More and more filled by new and bewildering perceptions, Palliser found himself, automatically, crossing the Park, taking a direction grown familiar to him.

  For the first time, he saw that the spring flowers were out. The gayest daffodils nodded at him in the March winds.

  The sky was blue, and the sun shone on the waters of the Serpentine.

  An insane, reactionary excitement possessed him. Joy and relief flooded his whole being. He was free again.

  Incredibly, the colossal mistake of eleven years ago had been blotted out.

  Had any man ever had such luck? Palliser checked the thought, even as it swelled within him. Such exultation wasn’t decent.

  But to come out of a dark tunnel, of seemingly endless length, into spring sunshine — any man might lose his head! He actually laughed aloud, at the hackneyed simile.

  It seemed a natural expression of his mood, to stop in Oxford Street and buy an armful of slim scarlet tulips for Thelma Fontaine.

  He owed it all to Thelma. She was marvellous — the only woman in the world.

  He could think that, now, with no faint, pricking sense of disloyalty to Cecil.

  The door, so well known to him now, was opened to him, as always, by Miss Fontaine herself, a little pale and heavy-eyed, with a pale blue scarf wound round her graceful throat.

  “Nothing — it’s nothing at all. Just one of my tiresome winter throats. I’m liable to them — but it’s nothing.”

  “Do you take care of yourself, living here alone?” he urged anxiously.

  He thought that, actually, the blue scarf and the pallor became her. Or was it that she always looked beautiful?

  “Tell me about yourself,” she begged, drawing him inside. “It’s over now — all the worst is behind you. I knew that if you followed the gleam you would come out, through it all, into security and freedom!”

  Her eyes shone.

  “You know everything,” breathed Palliser, clasping her two hands. “You understand everything. You’re wonderful! Thelma, do you understand that I’m free, now?”

  Raising her eyes to his face, she coloured deeply, and then was shaken by a fit of coughing.

  “You’re ill! For Heaven’s sake, take care of yourself. What should I do if anything —— —”

  He broke off, his heart pounding in his throat. Clasping her hands yet more closely, Palliser could feel his emotion communicating itself to her.

  Sudden passion shook him.

  “Thelma!” he said deeply, taking her into his arms.

  And silently, ecstatically, his lips pressed into her hair, Palliser saw Thelma Fontaine as his wife, as the mother of his future children.

  HISTORY AGAIN REPEATS ITSELF

  THEODOSIA was a very modern girl. So really, thoroughly modern, that it wasn’t in the least necessary for her to talk about it, in the way that modern girls of more than twenty-five years old sometimes had to talk about it, in order to make perfectly certain that they weren’t mistaken for the pre-war generation of girls. Theodosia, at the date of the Armistice, had been exactly nine years old.

  She knew nothing about the Great War, except that middle-aged people could be very boring about it, and she thought that any allusion to it was in bad taste.

  Although Theodosia was so modern, and an advocate of Communism, Legalized Polygamy, Birth-Control, and many other reforms, she had rather strict views about the privileges that should, and those, more particularly, that should not, be conceded to old people. With her own father and mother, she often found it necessary to be quite definite. Her father was at the rather difficult age of forty-nine — old, to all intents and purposes, and yet sufficiently active (especially at tennis, which he played remarkably well) to look upon himself as only middle-aged — and her mother at the still more difficult age of a young-looking forty-three.

  Theodosia was far too modern to dislike her parents, or to feel rebellious in their regard. There had, indeed, never been anything for her to rebel against And the parents did not rebel, because they admired Theodosia, and had been accustomed to her beneficent rule for nearly twenty years.

  She was quite willing to live with them, and remained at home whenever she was not paying visits, or spending a week at her club in London. When she was at home, she almost always had a friend staying with her.

  Most of Theodosia’s friends were young men. Her father and mother quite understood that nowadays girls didn’t flirt, or have love-affairs. They just had pals. And so even Theodosia’s mother — who could easily have been a sentimentalist, but for Theodosia’s bright, kind repressions of her — appeared to take Alec Forrest quite for granted. That was a relief, sometimes, for Theodosia, because occasionally she found herself wondering whether one day, in a very distant future, she might not marry Alec. And if her parents had wondered the same thing, it would have made it altogether obvious and impossible.

  Alec was twenty-five. He worked in the firm of his very rich father, and worked hard. His father had made him begin at the very bottom. It had, however, been possible for him to move steadily upwards from the very bottom with a rapidity unknown to hard workers who are not the only sons of very rich fathers. He shared a flat in London with two other men, and he had a powerful, steel-coloured car with disc wheels, and a ukelele.

  In person Alec was tall, good-looking in the prevalent style of 1929, and always clad in the very latest fashion for young men. He had of course written a book, and was preparing a collection of his letters for publication, written to a friend during his schooldays. To Theodosia, he admitted that the friend was imaginary. He was very frank with Theodosia, and she with him. They had danced together whenever Theodosia was in London, or Alec staying at her home in Buckinghamshire, every evening for nearly a year, and they had gone out together in Alec’s steel-coloured car, and in Theodosia’s Morris-Cowley two-seater, and they had had cocktails and cigarettes in the lounge of the Regent Palace Hotel together, and in a great many other places as well, and, above all, they had talked and talked and talked together.

  Theodosia had psycho-analyzed Alec, and Alec in return had psycho-analyzed Theodosia, and each had psycho-analyzed him or her self in the presence of the other.

  Almost the only thing that Alec had never done, was to make love to Theodosia.

  There were, of course, plenty of other men to do that, but Theodosia and Alec, dissecting Theodosia, had decided that she was almost a purely mental type, and not at all temperamental. So Theodosia very candidly told the men who, as occasionally occurred at dances, tried to kiss her, that she happened to be terribly highly evolved, and that it wasn’t any use. They might, if they wante
d to, of course, only they mustn’t expect Theodosia to be anything but bored.

  After that, they hardly ever did want to any more, but Theodosia danced so beautifully, and was so entirely unruffled about it all, that they still went on dancing with her.

  Mrs. Renton, the mother of Theodosia, was very proud of her daughter’s dancing. Really foolish about it, Theodosia considered, because, after all, it hadn’t anything to do with her. It wasn’t even inherited, since Nancy Renton wistfully admitted that she’d never been a good dancer. That was one reason why she had Theodosia taught dancing from the time she was four years old.

  “I so well remember the humiliation of being a wall-flower. I often was, especially in my first season. I wasn’t as pretty as you are, Theo.”

  “No one could have been pretty in the awful clothes you had to wear,” returned Theodosia, who had seen, and shuddered at, photographs of her mother in a very elaborate 1906 balldress and coiffure.

  Theodosia, herself, dressed particularly well. Her skirts stopped short just below her knees, and her chest was as flat as a boy’s, her Eton crop as close-cut. Her mother was quite mistaken in applying the word “pretty” to Theodosia. She was handsome, with large, alert, intelligent hazel eyes, a beautiful complexion, and perfect teeth. Her nose was straight, and her mouth rather large, but very well shaped. She usually wore small, felt hats crushed down over one eye, wool sweaters coming up to her chin in winter, and sleeveless silk frocks in summer. She spent more money upon her shoes and stockings than upon any other single item of her wardrobe. She always looked, what she always felt, thoroughly efficient. The only person who could ever make Theodosia feel less than thoroughly efficient was Alec Forrest, whose own efficiency was quite flawless.

  However brilliant, daring, fearless, and cynical Theodosia might be in expressing herself — and she and Alec fully recognized that self-expression was the duty, as well as the pleasure, of all highly-evolved moderns — Alec was always even more brilliant, daring, fearless, and cynical than she.

  He often stayed at Theodosia’s home, Palincourt. The year that Theodosia was twenty, he came to them for Christmas.

  “I’m afraid that father and mother are hopeless about Christmas,” she warned him, with a smile. “They like to have children in the house, if possible, and Christmas carols and presents, and mistletoe in the hall. In fact, they look upon the Christian festival as an excuse for giving the servants a great deal of extra work, and encouraging all their friends to eat too much.”

  “Will there be turkey and plum-pudding?” said Alec, slightly shuddering.

  “There will. And mince-pies and crackers as well.”

  “And church?”

  “For them, of course. Nobody else will be obliged to go.”

  Theodosia looked a little uncomfortable, but she was honest.

  “As a matter of fact, I do go, at Christmas — just to please them.”

  “Isn’t that rather feeble? I mean, it’s sacrificing your individuality, isn’t it?”

  “Alec, I don’t think so. They know it’s a concession to their weakness. And there’s never any question of my going at any other time; But there’s something about Christmas — well, they’ve always enjoyed it so, poor dears, one can’t grudge it to them.”

  Alec shook his head.

  “I’m not going to say that it’s very sweet of you, Theodosia, or anything like that. It’s revolting sentimentality and weakness, that’s all. Of course, don’t interfere with their pleasure, but don’t, for Heaven’s sake, be a hypocrite. That’s despicable!”

  Naturally, Theodosia, who had often agreed with Alec that plain speaking, at all times and upon all subjects, was the essence of friendship, and that no person of candour and intelligence could ever be anything but grateful for the truth, was not hurt as anyone less modern might have been hurt by such fearless criticism. She certainly experienced a very strange and unpleasant sensation, partly physical and partly mental, that seemed to find its culminating points in her throat, behind her eyelids, and in the middle of her breast-bone. But she gave no sign of these phenomena, and indeed refused to recognize their existence even to herself.

  “If you feel you can’t bear it, Alec, don’t come. I really hadn’t realized that you’ve never been with us before, at Christmas time.”

  “Last Christmas, I hardly knew you,” Alec pointed out. “We’d met at that studio rag of Marjorie Kane’s, but it wasn’t till February that we went to The Beggar’s Opera together.” It was from that night at The Beggar’s Opera that their friendship really dated. Theodosia vividly remembered the eager delight of first talking with Alec, and discovering, pell-mell, in enchanted haste, the number of points upon which they were in complete sympathy.

  Now, of course, the friendship was an old-established affair, and one couldn’t expect to experience the first glamour again. Alec, of course, took Theodosia for granted, and that — she told herself — was exactly what she wished and expected. In fact, it was so obvious that she wondered how she had come to think about it at all.

  At home, with a large party in the house, she wouldn’t have so much time to devote to Alec Forrest. She wondered whether he would resent it.

  Theodosia chose two new frocks for the Christmas house-party, with immense care. One was an afternoon frock of black taffeta, tightly swathed in gold round the hips, and with a square neck outlined with gold thread, and the other was a petunia-coloured velvet dance frock, with a short flounced skirt and a delightful travesty of Victorianism in the plain, tight-fitting corsage, cut very low.

  “It’s lovely, darling, but I think you show too much of your shoulders,” said Mrs. Renton, quite unexpectedly.

  Theodosia laughed indulgently. Criticism from her mother was so exceedingly rare, that she could quite afford to treat it as a joke, although she was slightly astonished by it.

  “You know, Theo, I really think sometimes that you don’t quite understand,” Mrs. Renton continued, more and more surprisingly.

  Theodosia laughed outright, at that. She really couldn’t help it.

  “Dear, do explain! What don’t I quite understand? One of those mysterious laws of etiquette that burdened your poor little conscience in the old, bad days when people danced square dances because round ones were considered improper?”

  Mrs. Renton did not respond to Theodosia’s playfulness at all. She replied rather pettishly:

  “Square dances had gone out some years before I began dancing at all.”

  “I dare say they had, mother, darling. But the principle remains the same. Which of your cherished conventions is my poor petunia frock going to outrage?”

  “It’s not that a bit, darling — indeed it’s not. Of course I know I am conventional, and perhaps old-fashioned, but there are certain things that haven’t got to do with conventions at all, only with human nature. And they don’t alter.”

  “Bravo, mother! Do go on. Yes, really, I mean it. I want to get at what’s in the back of your mind, and help you straighten it out. What is it?”

  “I hardly know how to put it, Theodosia,” her mother faltered. “But, darling, you really are very — very attractive and nice-looking, you know

  — and it simply isn’t fair to — to men who may admire you, to dress as you do, and let them take you about, and say anything they like in front of you — and then to get cold and dignified and cutting, if they attempt to — to — well, to make love to you.”

  “Mother!”

  “Darling, don’t be angry with me, please.”

  “I’m not in the least angry. But I’m disgusted — really, mother, there’s no other word for it. Apparently what you mean is that you hold such a low opinion of men, that you think they feel themselves unjustly treated if a woman allows herself, and them, ordinary social freedom, and then doesn’t proceed to the further length of being kissed every time he and she are left alone together.”

  “Oh, don’t! You make if sound so dreadfully coarse, and, indeed, I didn’t mean anything
in the least like that.”

  “Then what did you mean?” Theodosia enquired coldly.

  But Mrs Renton was quite incapable of explaining what she did mean. She was terribly confused and incoherent, and could find no reply at all to Theodosia’s frigid and dispassionate analysis of her parent’s point of view, as prurient, reactionary, and essentially early-Victorian.

  “As though,” said Theodosia scornfully, “sex was the only factor that counted for anything, between men and women.”

  Theodosia’s mother had become accustomed, in a way, to the word “sex,” although she seldom used it herself, but in this connection it certainly upset her very much indeed.

  “I never thought of such a thing. I — I haven’t got a horrid mind, Theodosia.”

  But Theodosia explained, very dispassionately indeed, that this was just what her mother had got. Almost all the people of her generation had, only some of the others had outgrown it.

  Mrs. Renton was left without any answer at all, and Theodosia hung up the petunia frock in her wardrobe, and reflected that Alec Forrest had once told her that she looked her very best in evening dress.

  The house-party was not a very large one. There were a married cousin and her husband, two babies, and a middle-aged schoolmaster, who had been ordered an immediate holiday. It was Theodosia’s father who had heard about him, discovered him to be an hotel acquaintance of some years earlier and made that an excuse for inviting him to Palincourt for a fortnight’s rest. Theodosia had raised her eyebrows good-humouredly, at the idea of the Reverend William Milton, but after all, she told herself that Xmas was the time of year when her parents expected to enjoy themselves. And neither they, nor Mr. Milton, need interfere with her own friends.

  Besides Alec Forrest, she had asked Marjorie Kane, the artist friend at whose studio they had first met, and a young man called Felton Fleet, who had written a great many plays, one of which had once been played at a suburban Repertory Theatre.

  These last three arrived together on December 23.

  “You’re just in time for the Christmas carols,” Theodosia murmured mischievously. “The waits are sure to come to-night. And, Alec, we’ve got a parson staying in the house!”