“Please don’t talk to me about Rory any more. You know nothing about him and I know a great deal.”
“My dear!” The silken, mannered voice suddenly assumed the character of a squeal. Derision, vexation and a vulgar curiosity were all discernible in the unpleasing sound.
“Is this the Soul’s Awakening or Love’s Young Dream or what? Are you trying to tell me that you’re just starting a grande passion, or that he is? My dear, do forgive me if there’s really something in it. I simply hadn’t the slightest idea, or naturally I shouldn’t have said a word. You know I adore you.”
Valentine turned round then, so as to face her sister-in-law. She looked tired and pale, her eyes, distressed but no longer bewildered, fixed upon Lady Rockingham’s vivid, beautiful face, all alight with a kind of shallow, mischievous enjoyment of the situation.
“It’s difficult to tell you anything,” said Valentine, “because we’ve never understood one another, have we, all these years. It’s been partly my fault, I’ve never— never since I married Humphrey — been my real self. I think I’ve been more nearly my real self in the last two days than I ever have, since I was nineteen. That’s why I’m talking to you like this now, I suppose. I’ve somehow got to make you realize, Venetia, that I know what I want at last and that I’m going to have it.”
There was a second of silence, while Lady Rockingham’s eyebrows slowly lifted, giving to her face an expression of disapproving and rather contemptuous astonishment.
“Darling, you don’t mean you’re thinking of marrying this man?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you’re old enough to know your own mind. I suppose you realize that you’ve only known him two days, and another thing — too hateful of me to say it, I know, but if I don’t who will — that you’re at exactly the age when women do these insane things and simply live to regret them ever afterwards?”
“I know all that. I know that a great many people will say that.”
“My pet, all of them, I should imagine. I can only implore you to give yourself time, and think of the girls. Do they know, by the way?”
“No, not yet. Nor Reggie. I was going to tell them to-morrow.”
“Take my advice, and don’t tell a soul. I don’t suppose you mean to do anything utterly drastic this very minute, do you?”
“I don’t know. We’re at war, and Rory may be sent off at a moment’s notice. Anyhow,” said Valentine, smiling faintly, “we haven’t, either of us, a very great deal of time left, have we?”
“Well, darling, I assure you it’s utter madness to dash into marriage with a man you haven’t known three days and with whom you can’t possibly have a thing in common — and one simply can’t imagine how it could ever work out, don’t you know what I mean — but of course you’re your own mistress.”
Venetia rose from her seat and came over to where Valentine stood.
“You mustn’t think me too odious and unsympathetic, darling,” she said lightly. “I know your life has been a perfect hell of dullness, poked away down here, and God knows I don’t grudge you a last fling — only I do feel it’s too fatal if you’re going to do anything as final as marrying this man. Reggie, of course, will simply have an apoplectic fit, don’t you know what I mean.”
She put her arm round Valentine’s shoulders and deposited a butterfly kiss on her cheek.
“You poor darling! You look like a tragedy queen, standing there, and to think the whole thing is simply the damned old C. of L.!”
Valentine disengaged herself. She had coloured deeply.
Venetia laughed.
“I wish you’d tell me the whole story from beginning to end. You know that I’m a well of discretion, and I swear not to give you any more advice now that I’ve said my say. Sit down and talk to me.”
Valentine shook her head.
“No thank you, Venetia. I’m going now. Goodnight.”
Lady Rockingham shrugged her shoulders.
“As you like, my dear, of course.”
She turned back to the mirror as Valentine went out of the room.
In the passage Valentine met Charles Sedgewick.
“Good-night, Lady Arbell,” he said politely.
“Are you going down to work?”
“The Colonel wants to see me. I don’t think it’ll take long.”
“I hope not. Good-night.”
She went on to the schoolroom, hoping to find Jess there. It would be easier to tell Jess first, and she knew that because she had, on an impulse, spoken to Venetia Rockingham of her engagement to marry Rory Lonergan, she must not delay at all in speaking of it to the two girls and to her brother.
Venetia was not what she called herself: a well of discretion. She was a mischievous and relentless talker — a mauvaise langue.
Giving herself no time to think, Valentine went into the schoolroom.
Primrose was sitting on the old and shabby fender-seat, the folds of her long gown swathed round her and a tweed coat flung over her shoulders. She was smoking a cigarette and looking at the carpet.
Hughie Spurway stood in front of her and Valentine saw, with horror but with little sense of surprise, that he was crying. His face was twisted, like that of a weeping child, and the tears were pouring down it.
Primrose lifted her eyes as the door opened and she, too, raised her eyebrows as Venetia had done.
“Hughie, for God’s sake, clear out,” said Primrose. “It’s the middle of the night or something — I may as well say it first — and children ought to be asleep. I quite agree, for once.”
A terrible sound of sobbing broke from Hughie as he made some effort to say good-night and then pushed blindly to the door.
“Good-night,” said Valentine in very gentle tones, and she turned her eyes away from the wretched young man.
The door-handle slipped from his indeterminate grasp and the door banged-to behind him.
Valentine faced her daughter.
“I didn’t come to disturb you, Primrose.”
“As a matter of fact, I’m damn glad to get rid of him. He was throwing an act, as you perceived, and going all hysterical on me.”
“I feel so sorry for him.”
“Why?” drawled Primrose.
She got up.
“I don’t know why aunt Venetia either turned up herself, or brought the pansy-boy. If she thinks I can cope, she was never more utterly mistaken in her life, and that’s saying plenty.”
She went to the door.
“Primrose, I came to find you. It’s about Rory Lonergan, and it’s about me too.”
Valentine heard her own voice wavering and she took a long breath and steadied it.
“He wants me to marry him.”
She could not look at Primrose.
The ticking of the old cuckoo-clock on the wall above the schoolroom piano sounded like the giant, irregular blows of a hammer jerkily wielded in the silence.
“The hell he does,” said Primrose, and her voice held no hint of any kind of emotion. “The hell he does. You’ve only known him about two days.”
“I know. But he and I were in love, all those years ago, in Rome.”
“Are you going to marry him?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” said Primrose slowly,” it’s okay by me. I mean, it doesn’t matter to me one way or the other, does it? I’m not living at home, anyway.”
Valentine raised her eyes now and met those of Primrose.
“Doesn’t it matter to you?” she said. “I’d better tell you, Primrose, I know he’s been in love with you.”
Primrose stared at her. The hostility in her eyes seemed slowly to lessen.
“That’s about the first realistic thing you’ve ever said to me, isn’t it?” she remarked detachedly. “No, as a matter of fact, I don’t mind particularly. Of course I think it’s utter nonsense, in two people of your age, and I don’t suppose you’ve the least idea what Rory’s really like — but that’s your funeral, isn’t it? I’m quit
e glad you told me.”
In her overwhelming relief, Valentine drove her teeth into her trembling lower lip to keep from the tears that would infuriate Primrose.
“Thank you,” was all that she found to say.
“What for? Rory’s a free agent, and he and I weren’t all out for a special licence or anything. He told me he’d fallen for somebody else, and I thought it might be you when Jess told me about your going off to lunch with him like that. Is Jess to be told about this, incidentally?”
“Yes, Jess is to be told, and uncle Reggie and everyone, I suppose. Because I had to tell Venetia.”
“Good God, all this talking and discussing,” said Primrose, her tone wearily contemptuous. “I should have thought it was your own show and not anybody else’s.”
Valentine, in her mingled confusion and relief, felt unable to reply.
She thought that it was not possible for her, at her age and with the involved responsibilities of a lifetime behind her, to break all her chains and take her own way.
Primrose would have denied that scornfully.
Perhaps, even, Primrose was right.
Rory will know, thought Valentine, and the feeling that she could trust him as she had never been able to trust anybody yet, gave her courage.
“I’d like to tell Jess to-night,” she said.
“She’s only fooling about in Madeleine’s sitting-room,” Primrose said.
She went to the door and Valentine heard her calling up the short flight of stairs that led to Madeleine’s little room.
“Hallo!” shouted Jess in return.
I ought to tell them not to make so much noise, thought Valentine, but she said nothing, and presently Jess clattered down the stairs and came into the schoolroom.
“D’you want me, mummie?”
There was something that hinted, so faintly as to be scarcely perceptible, at suspicion in her tone. Valentine wondered what she expected to hear.
Primrose opened her cigarette-case, found it empty and swore — coldly and unemphatically.
She glanced obliquely at Jess, standing by the door in her short printed silk frock that was both too short and too tight, her light flaxen hair tousled as though she had been romping, her hands on her hips in an attitude that vaguely suggested defiance.
“What’s up?” she demanded in abrupt, childlike phraseology.
“God, let’s not make a thing out of it,” Primrose said. “It’ll be all the same a hundred years hence, anyway.”
“What?”
Primrose shrugged her shoulders and looked at Valentine.
With that inescapable, unerring intuition that brings only pain where love is completely one-sided, Valentine knew that Primrose would have told Jess the truth then and there if she could have brought herself to refer to her mother directly. She was inhibited from doing so because there was no name by which she could endure to call her.
“Jess, Colonel Lonergan has asked me to marry him. I’ve said I will.”
“Oh,” said Jess.
It was no exclamation of surprise. It held reflectiveness, and a certain hard young disapproval. After a moment’s pause she added:
“How frightfully funny. I mean funny-peculiar.”
“Shall you— You won’t mind, will you? “Valentine asked.
The vitality that had moved her in Venetia’s room was ebbing from her so rapidly that she could scarcely choose her own words. They seemed to fall from her, weak and unmeaning, of their own accord.
Jess replied almost as Primrose had done.
“Why should I? It isn’t anything to do with me, anyway. I’ll be gone any day now and after the war I’m going to get a job. It’s entirely your own show, mummie. Uncle Reggie will be in a rage, though, won’t he?”
“Perhaps. I don’t know.”
“Gosh, I bet he will. He loathes Irish people, doesn’t he? When will you get married?”
“I think very soon,” Valentine answered, but the words as she spoke them carried no conviction to her at all.
“Gosh!” Jess repeated.
“Let’s not go on,” Primrose suggested. “All this talking things over.”
“I’m just going,” Valentine said.
She stood up and found that her knees were shaking and that she was very cold. She felt suddenly afraid of fainting.
Jess was looking at her, without unkindness and without kindness. Her fresh, open face wore merely a rather thoughtful expression, as though she were impersonally pondering a new idea of no great essential significance.
Primrose was examining the tips of her fingers and there was an air of faint distaste about the arrogant lines of her mouth, and her narrowed eyes.
They had nothing more to say to her, and there was nothing more that Valentine could say to them.
She moved slowly to the door, resisting the impulse to steady herself against the shabby pieces of furniture. “Good-night,” she said, and her voice sounded forlorn and unreal through the strange buzzing noises in her ears.
“’Night,” said Jess, with relief in her tone.
Primrose said nothing.
Valentine went out of the room, and shut the door, then stood quite still in the passage, unwilling for the moment to move further.
When her senses cleared again, she slowly went along the passage, uncertain where she wanted to go.
“It’s all right,” said Lonergan’s voice.” It’s all right, it’s all right.”
He was, miraculously, beside her — his hand grasping her cold ones and his arm steadying her.
“What is it, dearest? What have they been doing to you, to make you look like that?”
Valentine’s breast lifted in a short sob of pure relief. “It’s nothing, now I’m with you again. I had to tell Primrose and Jess, Rory, about us.”
“Why did you have to, darling?”
“Because Venetia knows and she’d have done it if I hadn’t.”
“The bitch,” said Lonergan coolly.” What has it to do with her, I’d like to know. Were the girls not kind to you, love?”
Valentine smiled.
“Primrose said it was the first time I’d ever said anything realistic to her — when I told her that I knew you and she had been lovers. It somehow made her kinder than I’d expected her to be.”
“I understand that. There’s a sort of nobility about Primrose, the way she’ll accept anything provided it’s a really true thing. It’s what one likes best in her. Was Jess all right?”
“I think she felt embarrassed.”
Lonergan laughed indulgently.
“She’ll get over it, the nice, poor child! I suppose she feels we’ve each got one foot in the grave, the pair of us, and should be thinking about making a holy death and nothing else besides. She’ll get over it.”
“They both said that it had nothing to do with them, because they wouldn’t be living here any more.”
“Neither will we.”
He spoke the words casually and matter-of-factly, but Valentine was startled by them and a profound feeling of dismay invaded her.
She instinctively and at once checked her first impulse to speak of this and stood quite still, leaning against him.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It’s nothing. Nothing that I can tell you about now.”
“Then you’ll tell me another time. We’re not going to have anything that can’t be said between us, darling. Will you be coming downstairs again later, or are you too tired? I came to get some papers I want Sedgewick to look at — we’ll be through with them in about twenty minutes. Would you be able to come to the little office then?”
“Yes.”
“Thank God,” said Lonergan with a grave simplicity that gave to the words a quality of reverence.
“Rory, is Reggie still downstairs?”
“He is.”
“I think I’ll speak to him at once. Now that Venetia knows, and the children.”
“If you think so, sweetheart. You know best. I s
uppose they’ve all got to be told, the way you’d think it was any of their dam’ business instead of being simply yours and mine. Tell me, will there be a lot of old talk about this — everyone telling you what to do, or not to do, and giving you all sorts of advice?”
“Perhaps. It won’t make any difference.”
“It’s a pity you wouldn’t be allowed to live your own life your own way,” he said. “I’ll never understand all this kind of nonsense. Interference and all that.”
“That’s one of the reasons why you haven’t ever married, isn’t it? Because it almost always means interference.”
“It does,” he agreed. “But all the interference in the world isn’t going to stop me now. Darling, I’ve to leave you while I get this done. I won’t be long. You’ll come to me downstairs?”
“I’ll come,” repeated Valentine.
She saw him dash into his room and out again with his handful of papers.
As he passed her, Lonergan, pausing for an instant, looked straight at her, unsmiling, and then he went on down the stairs.
Valentine, thinking of all that her lover’s eyes had said to her and unaware of anything else, slowly drew the fringes of her Chinese silk shawl away from the banister rails.
On her way down she passed Venetia’s closed door. There was a thin line of light beneath it.
The grandfather clock on the landing showed it to be a quarter to twelve.
But that isn’t really very late, Valentine thought, although she felt as though many hours must have gone by since she had come upstairs with her sister-in-law
For how many years had she assumed that all evenings came to an end before midnight!
In the wider world, outside Coombe and houses like it — in the world to which Rory Lonergan belonged — no such routine existed.
His world would be less unfamiliar to her than hers to him. And not only would Rory find her tiny world unfamiliar: Valentine knew that its conventions would always, to the artist and the Irishman, seem unendurable. He would never see in them anything worthy of respect or of toleration so far as his own conduct was concerned and he would never conform to standards that he saw as meaningless and unreal. What he had said of Primrose was equally true of himself: She’ll accept anything provided it’s a really true thing.
Late and Soon Page 19
