“No,” said Valentine, still with the new note of cold decision in her voice. “No, Venetia. Not for me. I know what there is to know, and anything that Primrose has to say can be said to me. It concerns nobody else.”
“I couldn’t agree more than I do,” Primrose drawled, addressing her words to Lady Rockingham—who made a fluttering, rather absurd, little movement with her hands.
“What the devil are you all talking about?” the General asked. He looked angrily and suspiciously at each of them, and underneath the anger in his voice there was also a dull fear.
“What is all this?” he muttered. “What’s Val talking about, eh, Venetia? Do you understand her? She says she’s going to marry this fellow and at the same time she talks as though he and Primrose” He stopped, his clouded, puzzled eyes fixed on Venetia Rockingham.
He had always admired her, as a beautiful woman and a successful one, and a woman of the world, and it was to her that he turned now, instinctively feeling that only from her would he get an explanation in terms that he could reconcile to his own deeply-rooted sense of social and ethical values.
“What is it they mean, eh, Venetia?” he repeated.
Lady Rockingham laughed softly—a gentle little spiteful sound, with no mirth in it but with unmistakable enjoyment.
“My poor old Reggie! You’re like me—quite, quite at a loss in these too extraordinary mix-ups, that I suppose means we’re all becoming exactly like the Russians, and going to live as promiscuously as we please. Though I must say, I’m quite as shattered as you can be, to see darling Val, of all people, turning Bolshevik.”
“Bolshie? Val?” was all that General Levallois found in reply.
“Bloody nonsense,” Primrose ejaculated, with cold detachment.
She turned her eyes on the General.
“She’s about as likely to turn Bolshevik as you are, or old Sallie. That’s just a label and a dam’ silly one at that, the way aunt Venetia uses it. She doesn’t so much as know what the word means.”
“Need you be rude, darling?” murmured Lady Rockingham. And I think I must have a cigarette, if we’re really going on sitting in this quite icy spot indefinitely.”
It was the General who fumbled in the pocket of his old velveteen coat and extracted a crumpled packet of cheap cigarettes and handed it to her.
Primrose continued to look at. him and address herself to him.
“Get this, uncle Reggie, and don’t have a fit if you can help it because the thing’s finished and over anyway, and ac’chally it’s nobody’s bloody business, now. I’m only telling you so as to spike that dam’ woman’s guns. Rory Lonergan and I have had an affair together, and we did go the whole hog, and it’s through and over, and no bones broken. He’s welcome to turn his attention elsewhere, for all of me, and the fact that it should be my mama just doesn’t mean a thing. And now for God’s sake let’s all go and get some sleep.”
General Levallois made an indistinct sound, his tired face became suffused with a deep crimson and he swung round on his sticks to face Valentine.
“If that’s true, she’s utterly corrupt. But I don’t believe it.”
“Reggie, you do believe it—but you don’t understand it. Primrose is not corrupt,” said Valentine. “She has standards that our generation doesn’t know about, and she’s faced all the facts and she’s made me face them. It’s quite true that she and Rory have been lovers and that I’m not going to let it make any difference to what I feel about him. I don’t expect you, or anybody else, to understand. There’s no reason why you should.”
“That’s right,” said Primrose detachedly.
A rapid step came up the stairs, and before they knew it Charles Sedgewick was in their midst.
Lady Rockingham broke into edgy laughter. She rose and went into her room.
“Let me pick up some of these books,” said Captain Sedgewick with calm politeness.
He had given them all one quick look and then stooped down to gather up the books.
“Wizard idea,” muttered Primrose.
The General slowly turned away.
One of the sticks slipped and Valentine picked it up and then gave him her arm.
Primrose watched Sedgewick neatly piling up the wet and disordered yellow-backs.
“Tidy, aren’t you?” she said in a tone of not unfriendly mockery.
“Quite,” replied Sedgewick imperturbably. “Why don’t you give me a hand?”
His red-brown eyes looked up at her.
Primrose sat down on the floor beside him, pulled a book or two towards her, and then suddenly began to laugh.
“It’s all so bloody silly and dramatic. And your marvellous discretion is the last straw.”
“Fancy a book being called Ready-Money Mortiboy!” said Sedgewick.
Side by side in the midst of the chaos they looked at one another, laughing.
XVI
“In Heaven’s name,” said General Levallois. He was muttering and gasping, stamping on the floor with one of his sticks.
Valentine, with quite unwonted decision, turned when they had reached the door of his bedroom.
“I’m going to send Madeleine to you,” she said. “Go in, Reggie, and sit down. Madeleine will look after you.”
“What the devil has Madeleine to do with any of all this? I tell you, I’ve never been so upset in all my life.”
“I know. I’m sorry. Madeleine can make you one of her tisanes and it’ll help you to sleep.”
“If you think I can sleep, after the things I’ve been hearing to-night—! Do you realize, Valentine, that you, and that precious daughter of yours, and the whole world, has gone simply raving mad?”
The General looked distraught, and exhausted and suddenly like an old man. It was evident that he scarcely knew what he was saying.
Valentine opened the door of his bedroom and turned on the light.
“I’ll send Madeleine,” she repeated and, her heart wrung with compassion, pushed his favourite old shabby armchair forward. He lowered himself into it, groaning.
“It’s knocked me out,” he muttered. “Completely knocked me out. But if you think we’re going to leave it at that, old girl, you were never more mistaken in your life. You and I are going to have this out to-morrow morning.”
“You can say anything you like to me to-morrow, Reggie. It won’t make any difference, but I’ll hear anything you want to say,” Valentine answered.
She went to Madeleine’s little room.
The Frenchwoman’s light was, as usual, burning late, and she sat at her needlework.
She stood up when Valentine came in. Her brown eyes, shrewd and kindly, showed no surprise.
“Will you go down to monsieur le général, Madeleine, please? He is in his room, very tired, and I think you could give him something hot to drink that might help to make him sleep.”
“Naturally, madame. And shall I bring some to madame’s room also? It is she who has need of sleep, it seems to me.”
“I’m all right, Madeleine, but we’ve all been upset. I daresay you heard——”
Madeleine nodded and threw up her hands.
“Yes, indeed. These family scenes. Terrible, but inevitable. Mademoiselle Jess, fortunately, had gone to bed and heard nothing, through the snores of her miserable dog. Mademoiselle Primrose can take care of herself, and it is only on your account, madame, that I feel distressed.”
“You needn’t, Madeleine. I’ll talk to you to-morrow. But try and calm the General.”
“Leave him to me, madame.”
Madeleine folded up her work and went to the corner cupboard on the wall in which she kept a number of private commodities. She fiddled amongst small bottles, little packets of herbs, a saucepan and battered silver spoons.
With her back turned to Valentine, she spoke.
“Madame will allow me to speak, out of my great affection for her? It is more than time—I permit myself to say this—that madame should consider her own happiness. If on
e is given a second chance in life, it is ingratitude to God to refuse it.”
A rush of emotion so moved Valentine that tears came into her eyes.
She could say nothing.
Madeleine turned round and placed her little saucepan and a cup and saucer on the table.
“Ah, madame!” she said, with great gentleness and affection in her voice. “Madame will forgive me, but I have so long been in her service, and seen and thought so much. And this brave officer—this kind and distinguished Colonel Lonergan—one looks at him, and one knows that he understands what a woman means by love. Believe me, madame, he is a heart of gold. And there are not so many of those.”
“Madeleine!” Valentine smiled, but there were tears in her eyes. “You know everything.”
“But naturally, madame. All good servants know everything and repeat nothing,” Madeleine remarked simply. “I am in the old tradition, as madame well knows. And when I saw monsieur le colonel, and heard him speak, and listened to all that Miss Jess told me of his charm and his kindness, I thought: Here is a gentleman—an Irish Catholic—a man of the world—and he knew madame long years ago in the old days, and he loved her then. He has been sent in answer to my prayers for madame.”
“Madeleine, you are very kind and very good,” Valentine said, and bidding Madeleine good-night, she kissed her.
Then she went downstairs again, to find Lonergan.
There was no one now on the landing and the books had been stacked anyhow in the bookcase.
Venetia’s door was shut and no light showed beneath it.
What an evening, thought Valentine, and felt strangely inclined to laugh at the recollection of such unaccustomed drama at Coombe.
When she went into Lonergan’s office he was sitting by the fire, staring into the embers and doing nothing.
“Did you think I was never coming?”
He stood up and drew her into his arms.
“I knew you’d come when you could. What’s been happening? I’d a feeling young Spurway was up to no good, out there colloguing with the General—and then I heard your voice, and then the two of you going up together. I knew you’d send for me if there was anything I could do. Sit down, love—you’re tired.”
He put her gently into the armchair by the fire.
“I’ve told Reggie about us and tried to make him understand that I know what I’m doing. He didn’t take it terribly well, I’m afraid. And then there was a disturbance upstairs, and the bookcase on the landing was upset and some of the books fell half-way down and so I went up, and Reggie came too.”
She told him what had followed.
“God Almighty!” Lonergan ejaculated. “What a frightful scene for you to have to go through by yourself, my Val. I ought to have been there with you.”
He paused, thinking over what she had just told him.
“Well, it’s come to a crisis, and all the cards are on the table. That’s so much to the good, in my opinion. And from now on, love, I’ve the right to take care of you and you’ll not be facing these things alone.”
She looked at him, her eyes wet, her hands held in his.
“I love you, Rory.”
“I love you, my darling.”
Presently Lonergan uttered aloud a further comment.
“I’m sorry for that unfortunate Hugo, making a holy show of himself like that. Primrose has something to answer for, the way she’s played cat and mouse with him. But isn’t it true, the way I told you, that she’s capable of certain nobilities? She did play up when it came to a show-down between you and her.”
“Yes. I think,” Valentine said, with a sudden colour flooding her face, “that Primrose has more generosity than I have.”
“Why do you say that?”
Valentine hesitated for a long while and then spoke with some difficulty.
“I took something away from her. She’s young and I’m not—and in spite of that, a man who’d made love to her, in the end wanted me. I know it hasn’t broken her heart, but it’s hurt her, and it’s been a humiliation. She could have made capital out of that situation, Rory—there’s almost no one who wouldn’t feel that she had a right to. But it’s as you said—Primrose is completely realistic and, whatever her standards may be, she has courage enough to abide by them openly. To-night, I thought we came nearer together than we’d been for years. Just for a minute. It won’t last, but it was … something.”
Her voice faltered—failed altogether.
After a minute she lifted her head and smiled.
“One always remembers the times when they were children, and it was all different. The summer holidays, and reading aloud to them in the evenings, and their little excited faces looking up at one before a Christmas tree, or a morning’s cubbing.… There must be so many mothers, all over the world, who can’t bear to look back on all that now, Rory.”
“Ah, God help them!”
They were both silent for a little while.
Then she said:
“I’ll have to go. It must be very late.”
“It’s only just after one.”
She laughed.
“Just after one is very late for me to be sitting here talking to you, at Coombe.”
“There’s a very great deal to be said, my darling, and perhaps only a very little while in which to say it.”
Valentine leant back in her great chair again.
She remembered thoughts that had come to her earlier in the evening.
“I shall have to readjust in so many ways, Rory— alter so many habits that I’ve formed and lived with ever since I married Humphrey and came here.”
His dark-blue eyes looked keenly at her.
“You’re afraid, aren’t you?”
“A little bit, sometimes.”
“Well, so am I.”
“Are you, Rory?”
“Yes. I’m afraid of being clumsy,—of hurting you—of not being able to understand, always. I don’t mean of not understanding you. I know we’ll understand one another in the end. But any two people, finding one another so late in life and coming from such entirely different backgrounds, with such different traditions behind them, are bound to fail in understanding certain things, sometimes.”
“Like when you asked what it all meant, because I was upset at having forgotten the First-Aid class in the village?”
“I was thinking of that,” he admitted. “And of your feeling of responsibility towards all those local meetings, and people. I don’t even understand why you go to Church when it’s clear that religion—in the Church-going sense of the word—doesn’t mean anything to you.”
“Do you want me to become a Catholic, Rory?”
He shook his head, laughing.
“I do not. I’m not so set on converts, anyway—God forgive me for saying such a thing. I’m not a good Catholic, Val, at all. But I was born in the Faith and brought up by priests—it’s in my blood. I couldn’t ever be anything else. If you and I had a child I’d want it to be a Catholic, the same as Arlette.”
“Arlette— When shall I see her? I’d like to have her here, Rory.”
“I know you would, love. You’ve the most generous, loving heart in the world.”
Valentine could not have put into words, even to herself, any reason for the pain that assailed her: a fear, not amounting to conviction—a sense of some subtle and infinitesimal withdrawal of his spirit from hers.
Arlette was the child of Laurence.
Jealousy flared, instantly and insanely, within her.
Characteristically, she said very gently:
“You mustn’t ever let me come between you and Arlette. I want never to.”
“Dearest.”
His eyes fixed on the fire, Lonergan spoke with sudden impetus.
“I can’t see how I can ever make you understand about Arlette.”
Valentine gave no sign that the words hurt her profoundly.
“Try. Please try,” was all she said.
“Arlette stand
s for everything that’s been real, and true, in my life. It doesn’t matter that she’s not in the least like Laurence—never was and never will be. It’s not any question of a sentimental recalling of Laurence. It’s something that’s complete in itself. Hard. Fundamental. A sort of crystallization of my whole life with Laurence. I can’t explain any better than that. Arlette is the only responsibility I’ve ever willingly accepted and it’s something I can’t ever fail in, even though I fail in everything else. It’s something I owe to Laurence.”
Valentine thought that she could have endured it better if he had said that it was something he owed to Arlette, herself.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he urged, his voice anxious.
“I can’t.”
“Ah—you can. I’ve hurt you?”
“It’s all right. Only there’s so much—so much in your past that I can never really know, and that I can never share in. The things that, as you’ve said, Arlette stands for.”
“You have children, too,” he reminded her gently.
“I didn’t love their father as you love Laurence,” Valentine said. “It’s Laurence, and your life with her, that you see in Arlette. It’s still a living thing to you.”
Lonergan bent his black head in silent assent.
After a moment he said:
“Val, you’re right. It’s a great thing I’m asking of you, in asking you to accept it. I’ve had many loves, God forgive me, and some of them have been lively and happy, and good relationships—and most of them have been false and ephemeral—ending in pain and disappointment and humiliation for others besides myself. But my relationship with Laurence was—cast-iron. It had integrity. If ever I denied that, or forgot it, I believe I’d damn my own soul for all eternity.”
Late and Soon Page 22
