Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  They talked about the church, whilst the land-lady tossed pieces of cutlery here and there about the white-clothed half of the table and finally put down a loaf of bread and a dish of sliced ham.

  “I’m sorry I’ve nothing cooked,” she said, in a tone that indicated no intention of making good the deficiency.

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” Susan returned — and her voice, also, held an implication — to the effect that she and Rupert were not accustomed to this kind of thing, but would put up with it because they could not very well help themselves. The hot tea was much the best part of the meal, and they lingered over it, still talking spasmodically about the church, and both of them glancing from time to time at the window.

  The sleet continued to lash more and more wildly, the wind to shriek and the temperature to fall. At last Rupert said:

  “I really don’t quite see how we’re to ride home in this. What about trains?”

  “There’s no station that I’ve ever heard of, for miles and miles. Granville must be the nearest, and that’s eight and a half miles. Besides, I don’t know about trains. Perhaps there’s a time-table.”

  They obtained a time-table.

  “Only one afternoon train — 4.50 — and that’s marked e,” said Rupert — and his suspicions of e were almost immediately justified. “Not Thursdays.”

  They looked gravely at one another.

  “You see,” said Rupert, “we had the wind behind us, on the way here. We should have it right in our teeth, going home, and it’s blowing a hurricane now.”

  Susan, although surprised to hear that the wind had ever been anywhere else but right in their teeth all the time, was quite prepared to believe that it held even worse bufferings in reserve.

  “It would practically mean walking the whole way.”

  “It’s out of the question,” Rupert declared. “We must get hold of a car, and they’ll have to hitch the bicycles on somehow. I’ll talk to the woman.”

  He went out, and Susan looked at the pink paper in the grate, and wished heartily for a fire.

  Presently Rupert returned.

  “They’ve got a car, but her husband is out with it. She thinks he’ll be back by four o’clock, and then he’ll want some tea, but he’d take us home afterwards. I’m afraid there’s nothing for it but to wait. Of course, if it clears up in the meantime, we can go.”

  Nothing could have looked less like clearing up. But it was only two o’clock.

  Rupert sat down, and began to smoke, after offering Susan a cigarette that she refused.

  They talked about the church, and about architecture, and about Ceylon, and about people they knew, and books they had read.

  And all these subjects were exhausted before the hands of Susan’s wrist-watch had crept round to three o’clock. She got up and walked to the window.

  “I think it’s clearing a little,” she suggested — untruthfully.

  “I’ll go outside and have a look,” Rupert promptly responded.

  While he was gone, Susan strayed into the small entrance in a forlorn quest after possible entertainment. It was even less promising than the sitting-room, for it contained nothing whatever except oilcloth, a thin bamboo table, and a door with a ground-glass top. Next to the door was the staircase, of yellow pitch-pine.

  Susan mounted it dejectedly.

  She was unexpectedly cheered, on reaching the fop of the stairs, by the sight of another bamboo table, on which stood, under a glass case, a musical-box.

  It was a very old-fashioned musical-box, probably French, with a pallid little doll, dressed in faded pink sateen and wearing flaxen ringlets, standing on the top of it. A key lay at her feet.

  A rush of wet air from below made Susan look down. Rupert had come in again.

  She wasted no breath in asking him if the weather showed signs of improving, for she knew that it did not and would not. Instead, she called out quite excitedly:

  “Come up here, and see what I’ve found!”

  Rupert came.

  “Do you suppose it’s in working order?”

  “We might try.”

  Susan lifted off the dusty glass case, and Rupert, after a little peering about, inserted the key and turned it.

  The musical-box emitted a spasmodic jangle of notes that presently resolved itself into a rather ghostly rendering of Les Cloches de Corneville, and the pallid little doll gyrated slowly and uncertainly on her pedestal.

  At the end of about three minutes the tune died away, and the doll rocked and tottered into immobility again.

  “Do you suppose it has any other tunes?” said Susan.

  “Perhaps it has. We’ll try.”

  Rupert wound again.

  It was Les Cloches de Corneville once more.

  Susan remarked, resolutely: “It’s rather nice, isn’t it? I mean, it’s nice and old-fashioned. And I like the doll.”

  “Yes,” said Rupert, without much enthusiasm.

  He, also, glanced surreptitiously at his wrist-watch. Susan saw him doing it.

  Ten minutes past three.

  “I think,” said Rupert, “that as we are here, and there’s still a little time to put in, I’ll just go across and have another look at the church. Don’t you think of coming, Susan, unless you really want to — you’re bound to get wet, even crossing the road.”

  “Did you ever read a book called ‘Eliza,’ by Barry Pain?” was Susan’s strange reply.

  “I don’t think so. Why?”

  “Only that I — I was just reminded of it. They spent a day in the country, in the book, and it rained, and — and they looked at the church.”

  “Did they? Well — if you’re sure you don’t mind —— —”

  “Sure,” said Susan — almost too heartily.

  She remained, still thinking of Barry Pain’s Eliza, and at the same time absently watching Rupert hurry downstairs — (why hurry, when even things done slowly seemed to occupy no time at all?) — and struggle into his wet mackintosh and out at the door.

  Then, after standing undecidedly at the top of the stairs for a moment or two, she turned back to the glass case and the musical doll, and listened to Les Cloches de Corneville all over again.

  At twenty minutes past three she went downstairs slowly, reminding herself that the landlady had said that her husband and the car might be home “at four or five o’clock.”

  Twenty minutes past three was practically halfpast three, and from then until four o’clock was only half an hour. Only half an hour, and the car might be there.

  “It’s having nothing to do,” said Susan to herself with vexation. “At home, I’d give anything for a whole free afternoon. But here—” She very nearly decided to go and join Rupert at the church, but reflected prudently that they had probably some time longer to spend in one another’s society, and had better husband their conversational resources. At seven minutes to four Rupert returned, and said that it was raining harder than ever.

  “But the car ought to be here any minute now,” he added hopefully.

  Susan cynically deduced that Rupert’s computation of the probable extent of their tete-a-tete had run on parallel lines to her own.

  “Let’s ask the landlady if there’ll be time for some tea before we start,” she suggested.

  Having tea would be something to do.

  The landlady said:

  “Oh, I ought to have told you. There’s been a message, to say that Fred’s party missed their train. He’s taking them on, now, so I don’t suppose he’ll be back here before seven. It wasn’t his fault. I’ve never known him miss a train before with the car. But it’s this storm. It must have delayed him, you see — Fred’s ever such a careful driver — and then, when they got there, well, the train had gone. But he’ll take you on to-night, some time. Fred’s like that; he doesn’t care how late it is, nor what sort of a day he’s had. He’ll take you, even if it’s not till ten o’clock at night.”

  Testimonials to Fred’s energy and devotion to d
uty, however, left Susan and Rupert cold. They looked at one another in a dismay that neither attempted to conceal.

  At last Susan, in a flat voice, heard herself say: “Well — perhaps we can have some tea?”

  “Oh, certainly,” said the landlady.

  “And could we, do you think, have a fire?” Rupert added.

  “Certainly. I shall have to charge you for it, of course.”

  “Of course,” said Rupert with immense dignity. And he added, perhaps rather unnecessarily, to Susan: “It would be worth it, anyway.”

  In silence they watched the fire being laid and lit, emitting green smoke, then no smoke at all, then a thin, disheartened flame.

  The landlady brought in a tea-pot, cups and saucers, a plate of bread and butter and a glass dish of jam.

  Tea took up a little time, but not as much time as they had hoped.

  Susan thought for a wild moment of suggesting the musical-box again, but the fire, after all, was burning, although by no means extravagantly, and it seemed better to sit down beside it on the green plush sofa, and try and think of something to talk about. On the other side of the hearth, on an upright green plush chair, Rupert sat — and he, also, was trying to think of something to talk about.

  He liked Susan very much, and had often thought what an intelligent woman she was. In Rupert’s opinion she was, indeed, the only intelligent woman in the neighbourhood. They had, he considered, a very great many things in common. Only it seemed that all of the things had been exhaustively discussed between them already, so that there was little or nothing left with which to fill up the next five hours or so.

  Rupert, to his own startled dismay, found himself wishing that Susan was quite another kind of girl altogether. Neither intelligent nor well informed, but more like the type of woman that he was accustomed to meet in Ceylon. He thought of girls whom he had known out there far less well than he knew Susan, and of how easily an hour or two slipped away in their society.

  With girls of that sort, an afternoon and evening of enforced waiting together, alone over a fire, would be simply an entrancing opportunity. Was Susan as academic as she appeared to be?

  Rupert looked yet once more at his watch, saw that it was barely a quarter past five, and in sheer desperation, decided that so much tedium was no longer endurable.

  In spite of his predilection for ancient churches, Rupert was not entirely without experience in other branches of knowledge.

  He began to talk to Susan about herself. Susan, surprised, nevertheless did not lose her head. She responded readily, and encouraged the pursuit of the personal element — but she gradually shifted it from herself, to Rupert.

  Without consciously noticing that he was doing so, Rupert began to tell Susan things about himself, interesting and illuminating things he could not help feeling them to be, that threw a light upon his whole character. Susan, after all, only saw him as an amateur of church architecture, a dutiful son, and a country neighbour. She knew nothing at all about Rupert as he saw himself.

  Fluency gained upon him every moment. Both of them forgot to look any more at their wrist-watches. The fire, untended, grew warm and glowed.

  They were no longer making conversation, they were talking.

  “You’re the only person that I’ve ever talked to like this,” Rupert said, towards six o’clock, oblivious of the inaccuracy of this statement. “But I do feel that you understand, Susan.’

  “I think I do,” Susan responded.

  They looked at one another rather shyly.

  Then Rupert stood up — moved nearer the fire — poked at it aimlessly with his boot — drew his chair forward — and gained his true objective, which was the possession of Susan’s hand.

  He rather ingeniously gave a false air of casualness to this gesture by remarking —

  “You don’t wear any rings.”

  “Why should I?” Susan inquired. “No one has ever left me any jewellery — nor ever will, probably — and I certainly can’t afford to buy any — and I’m not, and never have been, engaged.”

  “But you’ve been in love?”

  “No,” said Susan sturdily.

  “I shouldn’t have thought you were — cold,” Rupert hazarded.

  “I don’t know whether I am or not. But when you’re a parson’s daughter, and live all the year round in the depths of the country, and haven’t any brothers, you just don’t meet anybody to be engaged to, that’s all. I never see any men of my own class, at all — except here and there, at tennis parties, and so on. And, of course, they prefer the younger girls.”

  “Younger! What bosh! I don’t know your exact age, but you certainly don’t look a day more than twenty-five.”

  He waited a moment, but Susan did not enlighten him about her exact age, although she looked gratified by his compliment.

  Rupert was still holding her hand. Susan, in the silence that followed his last speech, made a slight, restive movement, as though to withdraw it.

  In the merest fraction of a second, a number of considerations flashed across Rupert’s mind.

  Some hours, in all probability, still lay before them. Until this last hour, they had suffered all but unendurable boredom. Now, however, the atmosphere had become warm, friendly, thrilling.

  But he knew quite enough about women to feel very certain that Susan would not allow things to go any further unless he very speedily put them upon a well-defined footing. She wasn’t the kind to let anyone hold her hand, or give and take an easy kiss, just to pass the time. Well — he respected her for it, in a way. And it made her more desirable, too, since it meant that she had never cheapened herself with other men.

  “Susan,” said Rupert solemnly, “you’re not like any other girl that I’ve ever known.”

  “I suppose,” said Susan rather wistfully, “that you’ve known a great many girls, in Ceylon.”

  But she discounted the wistfulness by taking her hand out of Rupert’s as she spoke.

  “I’ve danced with lots of them, of course, and played about, at picnics and races, and so on. But I’ve always felt that I should have to come Home to find the girl I wanted to marry.”

  “Haven’t you found her yet?” said Susan, flippant from sheer nervousness.

  “I don’t know. Don’t you think one ought to marry for companionship more than for anything else?”

  “It’s the only lasting foundation,” Susan said, in the tone of one reaching a careful and dispassionate conclusion.

  “Community of tastes.”

  “Yes,” said Susan, thinking of the church and the musical-box.

  “The same sort of outlook on life—”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Those sort of things really matter much more than just being in love.”

  With this, Susan disagreed, but not wishing to discourage Rupert she said nothing.

  “Susan, have you really never been in love?”

  “Never!”

  “But I bet heaps of people have been in love with you?”

  “If so,” said Susan drily, “they’ve concealed it very well. But I don’t mind telling you quite honestly that I’ve always thought I should make a good wife. I’m not stupid, and I’ve looked after Father so long that I know the sort of things men like and don’t like.”

  “A father,” said Rupert, not without hesitation, “isn’t exactly the same as a husband.”

  “I know that.”

  He put his arm round her.

  “Susan, I think you’re a darling. I do really, and I — I wish you’d be engaged to me.”

  “Of course I will, Rupert,” said Susan warmly and readily.

  The happy, blushing look on her face suited her. Rupert kissed her.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that for ages,” he remarked — not untruly, for the afternoon at the inn had indeed assumed the dimensions of ages, by this time.

  The more Rupert made love to Susan, the more he wanted to go on doing it. She was shy, with the rather pathetic shyness of a
woman unused to admiration, but she was also responsive, and after a time, as though secure of Rupert’s interest, she, too, began to tell him about herself.

  The time flew.

  There came a knock at the door that caused Rupert to spring backwards, and Susan to put her hands to her hair, and the landlady came in.

  “Fred’s back at last,” she proclaimed. “He stayed on in town a bit, not thinking he might be wanted, and took his time coming home. When I told him you’d been waiting ever since two o’clock, he wouldn’t hardly believe it.”

  The eyes of Susan and Rupert turned to their wrist-watches, as so often before, earlier in the day.

  It was eight o’clock.

  “If you wouldn’t mind him just having a cup of tea — he’s in the kitchen now. He’ll be ready to take you on in another ten minutes, for certain. And he says he can manage the bicycles.”

  They got ready, Rupert paid the landlady, and they both said good-bye to her.

  “I’m sorry you had to wait so long,” she remarked. “It was a pity, having such a dreadful wet day. There’s nothing to a place like this, on a wet day.”

  “There’s the church,” said Rupert. “I’m very glad to have seen it.”

  They got into the comfortable darkness of the shabby old car, closed against the driving rain, and Rupert held Susan’s hand under the rug.

  They were both extremely happy.

  They said things like:

  “I wonder if every engaged couple is as happy as this—”

  “When did you first think — ?”

  “Don’t let’s tell anyone just yet; we’ll let it be our own secret just for a day or two.”

  And just as the long drive was drawing to its close, Rupert, now deeply in love with his fiancee, murmured into her hair:

  “Darling, isn’t it wonderful? To have been half across the world as I’ve been, and then, after all these years, to find you, whom I’ve always been looking for, here at home! I believe in Fate, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “This — us — It’s Destiny,” said Rupert with supreme conviction.

  “I know,” Susan agreed.