Rhoda sometimes alluded, smilingly, to her own appearance.
“I’m quite content,” she would say, in tones of quiet amusement, “to be as nature meant me to be. I’m afraid I’ve very little sympathy with girls who risk their health, slimming and dieting and drugging, and cut off their hair, or try and torture it into curls when it’s naturally straight. I’m afraid I’m just a very feminine, very old-fashioned girl.”
This speech had been a great success with Gilbert’s mother, and with a number of Rhoda’s own relations. (She was an orphan, and lived with two unmarried aunts.)
It had, on the other hand, been a complete failure with Shirley when she once chanced to overhear it. Perhaps this was because Shirley herself spent a great deal of thought on the question of her slim figure and never allowed her weight to exceed eight stone six. She also plucked her eyebrows, had her hair permanently waved, and was embarked upon an unfeminine career as a medical student.
She was Rhoda’s only contemporary relation, and had been invited to act as her bridesmaid. She was, in fact, to be the only bridesmaid, for Rhoda had never been to school and had no intimate friends of her own age.
Shirley, although so far from being a very feminine, very old-fashioned girl like Rhoda, had been quite good and helpful over the wedding preparations. She pressed and folded and packed most efficiently, and it was thanks to her that everything was now practically finished. Sitting back on her heels on the floor in Rhoda’s bedroom, Shirley lit a cigarette while Rhoda — who didn’t smoke — leant back in her chair and relaxed.
“You know, Shirley dear,” she said affectionately, “I can’t help wishing you were as happy as I am.”
“How do you know I’m not?” said Shirley.
“My dear! Do you mean — there’s somebody in your life?”
“Good gracious me, there are lots of people in my life. Not in the way you mean, though. That is to say, I’m not in love with anybody at the minute.”
“Shirley dear,” said Rhoda very gently, “I can’t bear to hear you talk like that. It’s like mocking at something solemn and beautiful. You see, ever since Gilbert and I found out that we cared for one another in that way, life has taken on quite a new meaning. I feel, now, that I can never be flippant or frivolous again. Oh, I don’t mean that Gilbert and I can’t laugh very happily together — have our little moments of fun — but life from now on is going to be something so much bigger — so much grander — than ever before.”
Shirley looked very attentively at her cigarette.
Then she said:
“What does Gilbert feel about it all?”
“Exactly the same as I do,” said Rhoda firmly. “We think alike on every single point.”
“Won’t that be rather dull?”
“Dear, when you can say a thing like that it only shows how very little you understand. As Gilbert’s mother — (she has such a deep, fine understanding of human nature) — as she said to me yesterday, Gilbert has had the very highest and truest ideals set before him ever since he was a little boy. He comes to marriage like a — a Galahad.”
Shirley ejaculated something to which Rhoda wisely and kindly turned a deaf ear.
Then she spoke again:
“Are you really going to try the experiment of living with his mother? It isn’t any of my business, I know, but it does seem a bit rash.”
Rhoda smiled benignly.
“That’s the conventional view, I know, and to a certain extent I agree. But Muggie — that’s my little pet-name for Gilbert’s mother — Muggie is rather an exceptional person, and perhaps, in some ways, so am I. We’ve talked it all out quite, quite frankly, and we both feel that Gilbert — who isn’t any too strong — needs a good deal of care. His mother can watch over his health, as she’s done ever since he was a baby — and I can perhaps help a little with his writing. Not that I’ve any pretensions to cleverness — I’m afraid all my talents, such as they are, just lie along the old-fashioned, womanly, home-keeping lines — but I can give a suggestion, here and there, and advice whenever he wants it. And there’s another thing, Shirley. Gilbert and I are going to be very, very poor as the world reckons poverty — though we shall be oh so rich, in other, more important ways. But until he’s making a real financial success of his books — as I know he will eventually — it’ll simplify our plans quite a lot to pay his dear mother a long, long visit.”
“And doesn’t he mind?” asked Shirley, in rather incredulous tones.
“But of course he doesn’t, my dear! Mind! Why, he’s never been away from his mother since he was born. She never let him go to a boarding-school, even. They’ve been everything to one another. And although he and I are to share our wonderful new life together, I wouldn’t for the world come between him and his mother. I’ve said so all along.”
“I suppose you know what you’re doing and it’s all right,” said Shirley, in a dazed kind of way.
“Why, Shirley dear, of course it is. Some day,” said Rhoda gently, “some day, dear, you’ll understand that a Great Love makes everything possible.”
“I dare say,” said Shirley. And she added — rather strangely—” Meanwhile I think I shall go out. I want air.”
3
Gilbert Catto, two days before his wedding, sought the solitudes of the moors beyond Whitlow.
He had told his mother that he was going to see Rhoda, and he had told Rhoda that he felt he ought, just now, to be with his mother as much as possible.
Each had received his explanation with a deep, profound, and generous understanding.
Gilbert was appalled, as he had been at intervals for years, by his own moral cowardice — but a horror of hurting people’s feelings, instilled into him by his mother from babyhood, still dominated him completely.
And where, he now asked himself frantically, had it landed him?
The answer seemed to extend backward into the past and forward into the future.
Ever since he could remember he had been made to realize that his widowed mother lived for him and for him alone. He had been a delicate child, and she had watched over his health: an impressionable and sensitive little boy, and she had carefully taught him exactly what he ought to think and feel on every subject under the sun: a shy and self-conscious youth, and she had kept him away from every possible contact with the hard-boiled modern generation.
His friends had been his mother’s circle of kind, Bridge-playing, servant-discussing ladies.
Nor had Gilbert rebelled. His was not a rebellious temperament. He had found an outlet — much encouraged by his mother — in writing stories, and then two novels, that had been accepted and published.
They were novels that his mother and his mother’s friends liked immensely. Pretty little tales, with happy endings, with plenty of love-interest and — as Gilbert’s mother thankfully said — none of this sex.
Gilbert had quite enjoyed writing them. Besides, his writing gave him a good reason for remaining at home, where his mother wished him to be. Nevertheless, the two novels had slightly disturbed Gilbert’s mind. In each the heroine was a childish, gentle, innocent creature, deferring in all things to the manly hero and grateful for his protection. Gilbert had never met a girl of this description, but sometimes he felt that he would like to do so.
He unwisely uttered this aspiration in the presence of his mother. She compressed her lips in a way that denoted, as he well knew, that she was deeply hurt, and said that it was natural enough he shouldn’t be satisfied with an old woman. She had always known that he would fall in love, some day. It was only right and natural.
For nearly a week afterwards she ate scarcely anything, and frequently put her hand to her head, as though it pained her severely, and Gilbert registered a dismayed conviction that he had much better make up his mind at once never to fall in love with anybody at all.
Months later, he noticed a very pretty red-haired girl at the circulating library where he sometimes went to change his mother’s books.
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She asked him whether he was the Gilbert Catto — the author — and they entered into conversation. Gilbert would have enjoyed it even more than he actually did, but for knowing that his mother would disapprove. Feeling deceitful, he said nothing about the red-haired girl at home but merely offered — at the earliest possible opportunity — to go once more and change his parent’s books for her at the library.
For about three weeks he cherished his secret — which never reached to the dimensions of a guilty one. Then his mother — as he had known all along that she would — found him out. How, he never knew. But she changed her library, and again lost her appetite and had headaches, and in less than a week had introduced him to Rhoda, and invited Rhoda to come and stay with them for a fortnight.
Was it conceivable that she had foreseen what would result? Gilbert, for the first time in his life thrown into the society of a young woman, had slightly lost his head.
Rhoda — who in many ways reminded him of his mother — had talked to him about ideals, and about affinities, and about his health, and his books, and his soul. She had told him how much she liked his mother, and what a very, very simple and home-loving and feminine girl she was, and how lonely. A large tear had gathered in each of her large eyes as she lifted her face — also large — to Gilbert’s.
Feeling that she expected it, he kissed her rather timidly. Rhoda instantly accepted him — although Gilbert felt certain that he hadn’t proposed to her.
Still, he was ready to marry her. At the moment it seemed easier than to tell her that he hadn’t really meant anything at all.
Besides, he felt that his mother wished it, and for twenty-three years Gilbert had known that he ought always to do everything his mother wished.
So there he was, engaged to Rhoda Taverner, and at first it had all seemed fairly simple.
But it became less and less simple as the weeks went by, and Rhoda seemed to become more and more intense and less and less attractive.
The day came — although unfortunately it delayed its arrival until forty-eight hours before the wedding — when Gilbert could no longer avoid looking facts in the face.
He would go raving mad if he had to spend the rest of his life between Rhoda and his mother.
It was under the stress of this fearful flash of illumination that Gilbert had walked about the country-side for nearly the whole of the afternoon.
It was impossible for him to marry Rhoda.
It was equally impossible for him not to marry Rhoda.
4
Towards five o’clock Gilbert Catto and Shirley Taverner met. Gilbert had been walking in circles and Shirley in a more or less straight line, and their paths converged just on the edge of the moor.
They knew one another, naturally, already — although not very well. Gilbert, as a matter of fact, was terrified of Shirley, having been told by his mother that she seemed to be rather a hard, satirical little thing, and by Rhoda that Shirley was really a dear at heart, but quite under the influence of the horrid modern crew with whom she played about in London. Drugs and drinks and immorality — that sort of thing — had said Rhoda, spaciously.
Shirley did not, however, at the moment when she and Gilbert came face to face, look in the very least reminiscent of drugs, drinks, or immorality. She looked young and fresh and cheerful, swinging along in a blue suede golf-coat and brief skirt, with blown-back short hair.
Since they were the only two people within sight, and since it was obvious that sooner or later both of them would be taking the same direction, Gilbert saw that his solitude was at an end. Past caring, he replied to her exclamatory greeting, turned round, and fell into step beside her.
Preoccupied as he was, it struck him that she looked at him rather oddly.
He gazed back, guilty and alarmed, and tried to say something meaningless about the scenery.
“Yes,” said Shirley. “I was really thinking how frightfully wretched you look.”
“So I am,” said Gilbert, before he could stop himself.
“Well,” said Shirley, “I’m not in the least surprised. When I first arrived, a week ago, I thought you looked miserable, and you’ve been getting worse and worse ever since. Perhaps it’s a good thing we met. You can get it off your chest.”
“No. That’s just what I can’t do,” Gilbert assured her, clenching his teeth in manly restraint.
“Nonsense. Of course you can. I shan’t tell anybody, and you need never see me again after the wed—” She stopped abruptly, and again their eyes met.
“I suppose,” Shirley said, “that it’s about your marrying Rhoda?”
Gilbert nodded faintly, feeling somehow that this was less treacherous, less unspeakably caddish, than would have been a spoken word.
But it served the same purpose.
Shirley had understood.
“I always rather wondered,” she said reflectively, “why anybody should want to marry Rhoda. And after I’d seen you the first time, I still wondered. Then I began to wonder whether you really did want to marry her at all. But after I’d seen your mother, of course I understood.”
“My mother?” enquired Gilbert, dazed.
“Well, of course it’s all her doing, isn’t it? Though mind you, I think she’s making a mistake, even from her own point of view. Rhoda, underneath all that home-girl stuff, is nearly as possessive as she is. I expect it’ll be a case of pull devil, pull baker.”
“My God,” groaned Gilbert, as the frightful aptness of this simile struck home, as it seemed, to his very vitals.
Shirley waited for a moment, as though giving him time to recover, and then asked in reasonable accents, what he was going to do about it.
“I can’t do anything,” Gilbert said frantically. “Even if I could — could throw Rhoda over, I couldn’t break my mother’s heart. You don’t know what she and I have been to one another.”
“I can guess,” said Shirley — not in a very nice way.
He stared at her aghast.
They were both standing still by this time, and although it was a hot evening Gilbert felt a cold sweat breaking out all over him.
He had an awful feeling that he knew exactly what she meant, and whilst part of his mind protested against it, another part shrieked agreement.
“Listen,” he said hoarsely, “I want to try and explain — to try and get things straight—”
He scarcely knew what he was saying, but in another moment he and Shirley were sitting on the dry heathery ground and he was talking — as never before in his life had he talked.
No psycho-analyst, solemnly listening in a London consulting-room, could have asked for more candid or detailed revelations, or for more of them. Plunging back into the earliest recollections of his infancy, Gilbert rushed through the whole story of his repressed childhood, his starved boyhood, his unnatural youth. He put into words thoughts and feelings of which he had never before so much as recognized the existence.
Nor did he stop at the past. He took the recital — or, it might rather be said, it took him — up to the very details of his entanglement with Rhoda, and his present state of utter despair.
When at last he stopped he felt exactly as though he had been battered for hours by a heavy sea, and then flung up, exhausted, on to a still shore.
His novelist’s mind took note, in a dim way, of the simile.
Then he perceived that Shirley was speaking.
It was evident that, after hearing his story, she realized much better than before the strength of the inhibitions that bound him.
She no longer suggested that he should tell Rhoda and his mother the truth. She admitted, in so many words, that it probably wouldn’t be any use if he did.
“Of course, I’m the most despicable coward that ever stepped,” Gilbert muttered, in the faint hope of being contradicted.
“That isn’t the point,” Shirley replied. “The point is, how you’re going to get out of this mess before it’s too late. There’s only one thing for it, th
at I can see. You must run away.”
“Run away?”
“Disappear. Don’t go home at all. It’s your only chance. Go straight from here to the station.”
“But where shall I go?”
“Anywhere you like,” said Shirley impatiently. “Not Plymouth, because that’s the first place where they’ll look for you. How much money have you got with you?”
“About five pounds, I think.”
“That’ll keep you going until you can find a job,” Shirley said cheerfully. “And once you’ve got a job, you’re O.K. You can write to them then, and explain. And you needn’t give any address.”
“But my mother — she’ll break her heart — she’ll think something dreadful has happened to me — she’ll go mad.”
“I shouldn’t think your mother would go mad very easily. But if you like you can write her a note, saying you’re safe and well, and I’ll post it in London — in two days’ time. All the better if you’re somewhere quite different.”
“The whole idea,” said Gilbert, “is perfectly preposterous. I can’t do it.”
“Then go back and face the music like a man,” Shirley retorted.
But Gilbert felt he couldn’t do that either.
“Or marry Rhoda on Thursday.”
Still more impossible.
His silence apparently spoke for him.
Shirley pulled a letter out of her pocket, tore off a blank half-sheet and gave it to him.
“Have you got a pencil?”
The author almost mechanically drew out his fountain-pen. It hung poised above the paper.
Shirley considerately turned her back.
5
Justifying Mrs. Catto’s description of her as “rather a hard little thing” Shirley left Gilbert’s note unposted for five days.
She then put it into a very cheap and common envelope, typed the address, stamped it and made a special expedition by bus in order to post it at Stoke Newington — a quarter of London with which, she rightly conjectured, neither Gilbert nor his mother was likely to have had any connection whatever.
The arrival of the letter was duly reported in certain sections of the press. Mrs. Catto — again interviewed — once more appeared in print.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 586
