Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  “He felt, you see, that that was the best way of treating her — as a person who really hadn’t, for the time being, been quite responsible for her words. And if you ask me, it was extraordinarily generous of him. It’s not every husband who’d have given her another chance at all. And how do you think she repaid him?”

  I shook my head helplessly, not having the slightest idea of what to say — although I had a very fair idea of the answer to Miss Verschoyle’s question, rhetorically intended though it was.

  “She left him.”

  “With another man?”

  “I believe not. One’s bound to give her the benefit of the doubt, I suppose, and after all, she’d completely lost her looks and might have been taken for twice her age any day. As dear Adelaide said, if Rose had still been pretty and attractive, one would have taken it for granted that she had run away with some other man. However terrible these things are, it’s idle to deny that they do happen, and Adelaide and I, of course, being women of the world... But when Rose specifically stated that there wasn’t anybody else, it was easy enough to believe it — and everybody did believe it. Of course, it’s quite bad enough without that. A name like ours — so well known all over the county — and poor dear Humphrey left alone like that — It was the worry and upset of this miserable affair, and nothing else, that caused my poor Adelaide’s death.”

  I had forgotten all about Miss Verschoyle’s poor Adelaide, and recollected with some difficulty that it was to account for her death that the whole long story had been embarked upon in the first place. Miss Verschoyle, I felt tolerably certain, had equally forgotten it in the interest of her own narration. It was to myself, rather than to her, that I spoke aloud the comment that came uppermost into my mind.

  “So that was the end of the story!”

  I meant of the story of Rose Allison and Copper Gifford, of which I had had a glimpse once, in the glare of a tropic sun, on a morning that seemed very long ago.

  Miss Verschoyle, as was natural, misunderstood me.

  “Yes,” she said, with a rather vicious intonation. “That was the end of the story of poor Humphrey’s long faithfulness and patience. His marriage brought to an end, through no fault of his own, in less than ten years.”

  “Then — how long ago did this happen?”

  “Only a few months ago. I’ve scarcely seen Humphrey since. Dear Adelaide became quite an invalid and I never left her until...” Miss Verschoyle’s voice faltered and died away.

  She and I were both wrong.

  It was not, after all, quite the end of the story. The final echo had still to reach me. It did so less than a year later, and it came, once more, through Miss Verschoyle. This time it was not quite fortuitous. She had given me a London address — it appeared that the sisters had moved there when Miss Adelaide’s health failed — and had asked me to come and see her. I had thanked her, fully intending never to go near the woman. Nevertheless I went, solely because I could not forget the story that she had told me. In the most curious way, it haunted me continually.

  I could see, in imagination, the gentle, sensitive creature that had been Rose Allison, “dependent on personal relations,” married to a husband who was out all day and only wanted to be left in peace to snore over a fire when he came in.

  Well, after all, she had married him knowingly and it had, evidently, been endurable whilst she had her mother to give her sympathy and talk and laughter. It was only after her mother’s death that Rose Allison had said she couldn’t live without companionship any longer. I couldn’t help wondering whether she had found it, and how. Women, even nowadays, who have married early and lived in the country without forging new links, cannot easily break fresh ground and find friends. Nor had I got the impression that Rose Allison was sufficiently vigorous in mind or body to have accomplished the next-to-impossible.

  Humphrey Verschoyle wasn’t a brute. I had deduced that easily, even though his aunt had unconsciously done her best to make one hate the sound of him. I felt sure that he was only a very stupid man, who couldn’t understand what had happened. He probably loved his wife within the narrow limits imposed upon him by nature. It didn’t seem to me that he was the kind of man to let her drift away, ill, unstable, and without money or the skill to make any.

  All the same, I was hardly prepared for the final instalment of the story, as it was given to me by Miss Verschoyle.

  She was as emphatic and as talkative as ever, and had exchanged her mourning for some dashing, curiously top - heavy arrangement of mauves and violets that gave as riotous an impression as though they had been scarlet and gold. It needed no questions on my part, scarcely a reference, to call forth her information.

  “It’s all come right!” she cried jubilantly. “You wouldn’t believe it, would you? And I must say, it couldn’t have happened if Humphrey wasn’t a perfect angel of patience and goodness. You know what I told you about his wife? Not that I should have told you for one moment, if you hadn’t known her people and all that. But I remember, when we met last year, that I’d just been very much in the thick of it all, and you were so sympathetic and interested.”

  “I am interested,” I declared with truth. “Tell me what’s happened?”

  “Humphrey has taken her back!” Miss Verschoyle almost crowed in her triumph. “He’s taken Rose back — they’re together again at home.”

  “She — she came, then?”

  “Came!” echoed Miss Verschoyle. “What do you mean? How could she do anything but come, when he went out himself to fetch her and found her without a penny, so ill that she could hardly stand, and the landlady threatening to have her put in prison if she didn’t pay her bill? How she’d got into such a mess, Heaven only knows. I’ve never really heard the whole of it yet. But she made some insane attempt to earn her own living, I believe, and discovered what everybody could have told her beforehand, that women with no training, no experience, and no capital, don’t stand a chance. Added to which, there’s no doubt that her health was very poor. Threatened with tuberculosis, I believe. It makes me thankful that there are no children.”

  “Your nephew — he must have been very fond of her, if I may say so.”

  “Oh, very fond indeed. As I said to her frankly, I don’t believe there’s another man in the world who would have behaved as Humphrey has done over this. There she is, in his comfortable home in Oxfordshire, everything just as though she’d never run away. The only difference — ha-ha-ha — is in Rose herself.”

  “She is different, then?”

  “Very different, I’m glad to say. She’s learnt her lesson, poor thing! She’s contented now.”

  It was the last thing that I had expected to hear, and for a moment it took me aback.

  “Contented?”

  “She’s learnt the difference, I suppose, between having a home and a husband who’s a good man and a gentleman, and being thrown on her own resources. We shan’t hear any more, I fancy, about her being dependent for happiness on personal relations, as poor Mrs. Allison used to say. Rose has learnt to appreciate her husband.”

  “She’s happy with him?” I tried to keep the incredulity out of my voice.

  Miss Verschoyle nodded until the ebullient flowers on her large hat threatened to brim over on to her face in a mauve and purple cascade.

  “I’m sure she is, but not only that. She tries so hard to make him happy. Everything is as he wants it now, and she follows him about with her eyes like — like a dog, to see if he’s pleased with her. That alone,” said Miss Verschoyle, in her characteristically dictatorial manner, “proves that she has learnt to care for Humphrey as he deserves.”

  There was no comment that one could possibly make, and I made none.

  I thought to myself:— “Threatened with tuberculosis — yes. That will end it.” And with my mind’s eye, I saw the announcement of the death of Rose, wife of Humphrey Verschoyle, at no distant date.

  But Miss Verschoyle didn’t allow me that either. She said briskly:<
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  “It’s splendid to see the difference in Rose herself, since she’s shaken off that egotism that her mother only fostered. Why, she’s taken up gardening and talks about bee-keeping. She’s practically quite well too. Personally, I think she’s perfectly happy, which is a good deal more than she deserves to be.”

  It is, perhaps, a good deal more than most of us deserve to be. It is certainly a good deal more than most of us achieve.

  Miss Verschoyle declared that Rose was perfectly happy now. One might, of course, see it like that. Or one might wonder to what utter desolation of spirit a romantic woman had been reduced, so that she turned, at last, to uncongenial occupations and sought to please and to placate a Humphrey Verschoyle, sooner than be left without even such semblance of companionship as he could give her.

  Miss Verschoyle had no more to tell me, and I have not seen her again. I am not likely to seek her out, for what, indeed, can there be to add to so positive an assurance that it all came right in the end?

  SOLILOQUY BEFORE A MIRROR

  IT’S wonderful, the way I’ve kept my looks. Of course, one isn’t what one was at eighteen — that would be absurd. But I suppose I can fairly claim to be still a beautiful woman at sixty. Well... sixty... Funny how I always think of myself as being only sixty. I’m certain nobody guesses I’m more. Though perhaps they don’t really think about it at all? Perhaps they only think about the other people, the young ones?

  I don’t believe it.

  Stephen used to say:— “You’ll always be interesting to your contemporaries.” I think he was quite right. Poor Stephen. Nineteen hundred and six — thirty-three years since he died — it really seems quite impossible. Although look at all the things that have happened — the children growing up, and getting married, and having children of their own — poor Gwen losing that dear little baby — and of course the war, and Dorriford having to sell Cathorne. Not that I really minded that frightfully. It never felt like home to me. Not as much as Belgrave Square. Even now, I’m glad Dorrie and Veronica settled to live there. If only they had more money, poor sweets. Really, Veronica might be much worse — I always felt sure I’d hate Dome’s wife — but I don’t — one can’t hate her. She’s too colourless.

  I wonder if she’s sometimes a tiny bit jealous of me? After all, it’s absurd that at my age I should attract more attention than she does. It’s personality. It can’t be anything else, of course. One has white hair — thank God it’s still thick — and lines — they always say lines give character to a face — and one can’t wear the pretty bright colours any more. Though black suits me. As for my figure, I can honestly say it’s marvellous. Why, I’m slimmer than Gwen, I do believe! If I hadn’t taken myself in hand though, years ago, I shouldn’t be. God! What time does to one!

  To think of oneself at sixteen — all that bright brown hair, and the marvellous colour one had after riding — no question about make-up then! And when did it all change? Nobody knows. So gradually, I suppose, that one couldn’t see it coming. Was there ever a day when I suddenly realized that I was middle-aged — growing elderly?

  When I knew I was a grandmother, perhaps?

  Only one didn’t think of it like that. Only that poor Dorrie was frightfully disappointed because it wasn’t a boy. Gwen’s first one was a boy — quite soon after Dorrie’s too, which made it so annoying — and by the time Veronica had pulled herself together and managed a son, one really didn’t think of anything except what a mercy it was that there’d be someone to carry on the title.

  Besides, what’s the use of pretending? I’ve always looked twenty years younger than my real age. It’s in our family. Mama was exactly the same. And when I was seventeen, good Heavens, I used to tell people I was twenty, and hope they’d believe me, because I wanted to look older! How furious it used to make Mama!

  One remembers....

  The primroses in the park at Branchley — poor old Branchley — and old Madge at the lodge—” Ah, you’re a pair of grand young ladies” — every time we met her — and lessons with Mademoiselle, and poor dear Violet crying over her arithmetic every single day of her life.

  “Mais dépechez-vous donc, Violette! Voyons, Isabelle a déjá fini!”

  Of course, I was far cleverer than poor darling Violet, which wasn’t at all fair, as I was so much prettier as well Sometimes I think that if only one had been properly educated in those days, I might have done something quite brilliant — perhaps written plays or something. I don’t remember ever finding my lessons difficult at all — and of course my memory was marvellous. It still is for that matter. I always say I only had to read a thing through once, as a girl, and I knew it for ever afterwards.

  C’etait pendant l’horreur d’une profonde nuit Ma mere, Jezabel, devant moi s’est montree —

  I can still say the whole of that — still, after — how many years?

  And other things too — why, I can remember the old, absurd, sentimental songs Mama used to sing in the Yellow Drawing-room at Branchley in the evenings — words and all. There must be very few young persons who have a memory like mine. When that goes, if it ever does, I shall know I really am growing old!

  Ma mere, Jezabel, devant moi s’est montree, Comme au jour de sa mort pompeusement paree Elle portait meme encore cet eclat emprunte —

  Oh, come in, Mason!

  Mason, I shall want you to pack my things to-morrow for Branchley. I don’t mean Branchley — what on earth made me say that — poor old Branchley, it was pulled down after the war — I don’t mean Branchley — what do I mean? I mean Inverdreary, of course. Fancy Mason, before you came in I was thinking of my old home — before I married, I mean — and the time when I was a girl in the schoolroom and had a French governess, who made us learn poetry by heart. And I believe I can still repeat every word I learnt then. Rather extraordinary, isn’t it? I don’t think, as long as my memory remains what it is, that I need worry very much about growing older, do you?

  All right, Madge — Mason, I mean — that’ll do. Just give me my opal bracelet, and the little handkerchief. And don’t forget — we go to Branchley to-morrow.

  THE REASON

  1

  THE little station was crowded, just as it had been on their arrival a fortnight earlier.

  There were girls in long coloured trousers, or in shorts, hatless and flannelled young men, peasant women in their ample black dresses and beautiful frilled Breton caps, with outstanding, stiff, lacy wings and crisp ribbons. There was even the brown desiccated old Englishman in khaki shorts, who so constantly came up to the hotel for drinks, and whom they had christened “Le Boy Scout.”

  “Look,” said Oliver now, “there’s ‘Le Boy Scout.’ Is he going away too?”

  The last three words sent a pang right through Catherine. She could feel it at her breast — quick and sharp — and then dying down again. She only answered:

  “No. He’s got no luggage.”

  “If we’d travelled together as far as Paris, I might have learnt his whole life-history. In fact, I’m sure I should.”

  “Jolly old schooldays at Giggleswick, the ‘shop’ and good old Poonah, what?” she returned, responding as she always did.

  Their private jokes about their fellow-English in Brittany had been fun. But she felt that Oliver had made this one mechanically, and that she had replied in the same way, because nothing could be fun any more until he came back.

  As though answering her thought Oliver pressed her hand more tightly in his and said:

  “Remember, you’re to find out the name of the Irish family, and whether Alphonse is really married to that blonde — and keep an eye on Miss Lump and Miss Dump — and tell me everything.”

  “I’ll write. But I expect you’ll be back before there’s been time for more than one or two letters,” she said eagerly, making herself more sure by saying it aloud.

  “You know I’ll come back the first minute I can, darling. And I shall be thinking of the marvellous time we’ve had. Blas
t! there’s the train!”

  He flung his suitcase up the high steps of the second-class coach, and then turned to her.

  Catherine felt as though his long, deep gaze into her eyes was a caress that had actually touched her body.

  “Be happy, my lovely darling,” he whispered.

  “Come back quickly,” she murmured.

  “En voiture, messieurs — dames!”

  Oliver kissed her — a long, hard pressure — and sprang up the steps.

  Catherine stood below, looking up. It was odd to see him in his dark blue suit, after the shorts, or the swimming-trunks, of the past fortnight, and with his dark hair smooth and closely brushed to his head instead of sea-wet and wind-ruffled. She felt as though her own gaily patterned blue cretonne beach-frock was out of place.

  But it wasn’t.

  She was staying on at Vieuxport by herself, whilst Oliver dashed over to London to see his chief, until he came back again to finish their holiday.

  “Write soon, darling.”

  “Of course. I’ll write from Paris, and then again directly I know when I can get back.”

  “It’ll be lovely to come and meet you,” she said desolately.

  The engine whistled hideously.

  “It won’t be long!” cried Oliver.

  The train began to move.

  “It won’t be long,” Catherine echoed.

  The crowded train began to move slowly out of the station. She moved along the platform beside it, her hand still held in Oliver’s.

  But at last she had to let go.

  “A bientot!” called Oliver.

  Catherine waved. He waved back and then — wisely, she felt — disappeared into the train. She stared after it for a minute or two and then turned slowly back to the station-entrance.

  This was where they’d arrived after the long, hot journey from Paris, and had climbed into the stifling little omnibus and rattled away down the narrow streets to the wide, white building on the very edge of the sands, that was the Hotel de la Mer.