The Way Things Are

by E M Delafield

  The conversation concerned itself with relations whom Laura never saw, and whom Cousin Louisa and Poor Selina seldom saw, but in whose doings they nevertheless kept up a pathetic interest.

  “I had a post-card from Annie last month.”

  “We hear that Bob Temple’s second boy—the one who had rickets—is being put on to this new food—this milk extract.”

  “Barbara—(I don’t think you know her, Laura, she’s Alfred’s third cousin, lives in Yorkshire)—she has such trouble with her servants. I hear she’s going to try having all men.”

  Laura replied with suitable ejaculations, and as many comments as she could think of, and produced innocuous pieces of information about life at Applecourt in order that they, in their turn, might be retailed to subsequent uninterested visitors. Remorse at her own boredom, and relief at having accomplished her pious excursion, lent a spurious fervour to her farewells, and Laura plunged gladly back into the Tube, that seemed airy, light and gay by comparison with old Cousin Louisa’s stuffy and congested atmosphere.

  “And if Alfred hadn’t married me,” Laura, according to her wont, relentlessly informed herself, “Aunt Isabel and I might have come to that.” But she did not say it with quite the old amount of conviction.

  Since Duke Ayland had found her beautiful and desirable, Laura no longer really doubted that she could be both of these things, at least in flashes. She went and had her hair waved, in preparation for the literary soirée, and permitted herself to arrive with absolute punctuality at the tea-shop indicated by Ayland. (Another one of her mother’s maxims had been to the effect that a Man should always be Kept Waiting a Little, but Laura was belatedly reaching the conclusion—long since urged upon her by Christine—that the maxims of parents are usually quite inapplicable to the adult existence of their children.)

  Duke had so many things to say to Laura, and she so much liked hearing them, that it was only with difficulty that she was able to issue her ultimatum.

  Ayland did not appear to take it very seriously.

  “How different things look in the daytime,” thought Laura, unable to recapture any of the earnest frenzy that had possessed her thoughts throughout the night. She also, like Duke, felt that nothing mattered very much beyond the present.

  In this dazed and happy frame of mind, that in itself had a mysteriously becoming effect upon her personal appearance, Laura went with Christine to the party that evening.

  A. B. Onslow was there, as guest of honour, and almost as she recognised him, Laura heard Christine’s disgusted comment:

  “Will you look at Bay-bay! He isn’t allowed to move an inch away from her. I’ve a good mind to tell her that a girl of her age must be hard up for an admirer, if she can’t annex anybody but a man who already belongs to another woman.”

  “He’s the most celebrated person here. That’s why.” Mrs. Temple curtly and elliptically explained her young neighbour’s indecent display of her preferences. She was herself gratified, later on, when Onslow came up and talked to her, and as far as possible she ignored Miss Kingsley-Browne, still hovering at the elbow of the distinguished object of her favours.

  With a self-confidence that was in gratifying contrast to her habitual attitude towards society, Laura was able to exchange literary opinions with Onslow.

  “Mummie is here, somewhere about,” said the insufferable Bébée, interrupting them. “She’s been looking for you, Mrs. Temple.”

  “How nice of her! I must—but do tell me about the new Published Letters. I’ve always thought—”

  “There she is!”

  Laura continued to look at A. B. Onslow and A. B. Onslow to look at her, as though exchanging a mutual hope that by strenuously ignoring Bébée’s officiousness, they might render it innocuous.

  “There are only two letters, but they throw a wonderful light on the whole question. You’re interested in it on the psychological, as well as the literary side, I take it?”

  “Yes, I am. In fact, principally on the psychological side, I think.”

  Laura, without looking round, was aware that Bébée had successfully hypnotized her parent to her side.

  “Mummie, here’s Mrs. Temple. I know you and she are dying to talk gardening.”

  Lady Kingsley-Browne’s quiescent rejoinder was such as to leave Onslow little alternative. He bestowed a valedictory smile upon Laura, and moved away beside his insolently self-satisfied disciple.

  “Even the cleverest men seem to go down like ninepins before Bébée,” murmured Lady Kingsley-Browne, with for once more anxiety than pride in her expression.

  Laura thought of several excellent rejoinders, but was unable to make any of them.

  “Well,” said her neighbour, “it’s very delightful to meet you here. Somehow I never expected to. This”—she waved a be-diamonded hand vaguely—”is all so unlike Applecourt, and so on, isn’t it? I never somehow quite realised this side of you before. You know, dear, I always associate you—we all do, in fact—with the country and those darling children, and all the dear things one enjoys in the garden so much.”

  Chapter XII

  “Lady Kingsley-Browne wants to come and see me,” announced Laura in a high key of astonishment two days after the soirée.

  “Can’t she wait until you’re home again? Her back-door is next to yours.”

  “Apparently she can’t. Look at this!”

  Laura handed a pale coffee-coloured sheet with a heading in white lettering to her sister.

  The Chesterfield Club,

  W.I.

  My Dear Laura,

  Should I find you at home, if I called at your sister’s flat this afternoon? I hope you and she will both forgive me for suggesting such a thing, but there is no quiet here, and I feel I must speak to you. If you would be kind enough to telephone a message, saying what time you are free, I can make any time convenient.

  Yours,

  Gertrude Kingsley-Browne.

  A telephone number followed.

  “After her iniquitous behaviour at that party, too! Perhaps she wants to apologise,” said Christine. “What time shall you say?”

  “Five o’clock—or six, then we needn’t bother about tea. Six.”

  “All right. I shall be here, but if it sounds in the least private, I’ll go out.”

  “It can’t be private,” Laura declared. “We aren’t on those terms at all.”

  But the first sight of their visitor, at six o’clock, caused Christine and Laura to exchange a swift glance of horrified incredulity.

  Lady Kingsley-Browne’s habitual air of prosperity had given way to one of flushed agitation, her hat was onesided, and her manner distracted.

  “Forgive me for this—for coming like this. I’ve been so upset—and possibly you might help me—we’ve always been such good friends.”

  “I’ll go,” said Christine.

  “Don’t go, please don’t go. I don’t in the least mind your hearing—or, rather, I mind most dreadfully, but nothing can make any difference, and you yourself are a modern girl.”

  “Bay-bay!” Christine mouthed silently at her sister, who nodded in agreement.

  Lady Kingsley-Browne sat in Christine’s largest armchair and began to cry.

  “Oh, dear, I’m so sorry. What is it?” Laura asked.

  “You will find it perfectly impossible to believe.”

  “Yes?”

  “I do myself,” said Lady Kingsley-Browne.

  “What has happened?”

  “I hardly know how to tell you. I can hardly imagine what you’ll say.”

  Laura gazed at her afflicted neighbour in a respectful silence.

  Christine said firmly:

  “You must tell us what it is. We can’t say anything till we know, can we? But we’ll do anything we can to help, whatever it is.”

  “You can’t! Nobody, I am afraid, can do anything. If you had told me, a year ago, that I should find myself in the state I’m in to-day, I simply shouldn’t have believed you. I sim
ply should not have believed you.”

  “I daresay I shouldn’t have believed myself,” Laura declared sympathetically. “I can’t imagine what can have happened. Is it about Bébée?”

  “Indeed it is! Have you heard anything?”

  “Not a word.”

  “But it can only be a question of time before you do,” said Lady Kingsley-Browne, again in tears.

  “Is she going to have a baby?” Christine suggested—giving Laura a slight shock.

  But the distraught parent of Miss Kingsley-Browne appeared to have passed beyond shocks. “No, she is not going to have a baby, as far as I know. But nothing could surprise me now—nothing in the world. Could you yourselves ever have imagined that any girl could behave so insanely?”

  “You haven’t yet told us how she has behaved.”

  “It seems so dreadful, put into words. Bébée—you know how fastidious she has always been, and what a choice of men she had always had at her feet—Bébée has fallen in love with a married man.”

  “Is that all?” said Christine. “But heaps of girls do that nowadays. Nobody thinks anything of it, truly.”

  “Is it A. B. Onslow?” Laura asked.

  “Of course it is. Why, I can’t think. Of course I know he must be very clever, and Bébée has always been very clever too, but when she could have had a choice of young men—”

  “What has happened to Mr. Vulliamy?”

  “What could have happened, except that he has gone away? He never even proposed. She let him see quite plainly that she cared for nobody but Onslow. She—I suppose one ought to admire her for it—but she seems to have no shame about it at all.”

  “I don’t think one ought to admire her for it in the least,” cried Christine. “It’s preposterous of her! What about poor Mrs. Onslow, after all?”

  “What indeed! Of course, being married to a writer, she may be used—but on the other hand, he’s not young now.”

  “It must be very much his fault,” Laura suggested, sacrificing both her fellow-writer and her own convictions out of pure compassion.

  “The terrible thing is that it isn’t. At least, not now it isn’t, though I don’t say he wasn’t attracted by her in the beginning. Men are always attracted by Bébée instantly,” said poor Lady Kingsley-Browne, with a reviving flash of her slaughtered pride.

  “I know they are,” Laura could afford to say.

  “It’s always been she who was the indifferent one. There have been times, I assure you, when I’ve begged her to be a little bit kinder to people, simply for fear of their blowing their brains out, or something like that. One never knows, does one?”

  “Never,” said Laura gravely, desirous only of calming the unhappy matron looking up at her with drowned eyes.

  Christine was less single-minded.

  “But about A. B. Onslow? Isn’t he—doesn’t he—you aren’t afraid of his blowing his brains out?”

  “Indeed no. He is much more likely to blow Bébée’s brains out, from what I hear.”

  “What a good thing! I don’t mean that, exactly, but surely, if he is being sensible, and not losing his head, it will put an end to the whole thing.”

  “You would think so, wouldn’t you? Any rational person would think so. But Bébée, poor, poor darling—that I should live to say such a thing—is not rational. She says—she says that whether he knows it or not, they are necessary to one another, and—and that nothing will induce her to leave him until—she has made him realise it.”

  A scandalised silence descended upon the room at this outrageous quotation, delivered amidst floods of tears, by the unhappy parent of its originator.

  “Leave him?” said Christine at last in low, aghast tones. “Do you mean, then, that she has—has gone to him?”

  “She went to stay there a week ago. I—I don’t think they invited her, exactly. Certainly Mrs. Onslow didn’t. But she went. And now they can’t get her to go away again.”

  “I saw her there the other day, of course,” Laura exclaimed. “I didn’t know she was actually staying, in the house—but of course I saw her there.”

  “How—how did they strike you?”

  “I didn’t notice anything very unusual. Bébée was rather—rather inclined to sit in his pocket perhaps.”

  “Yes, yes—I know she was.”

  “She was very—very—in quite good spirits, wasn’t she?” Laura hesitated, as the recollection of Miss Kings-ley-Browne’s unholy bloom and intemperate exhibition of her conquest rushed upon her afresh. “And he was more or less as usual—the fact is, I know him so little. Of course, one saw that they were on—on friendly terms, but, as you say, men are very apt to admire her.”

  “There is hardly an eligible man in London that she couldn’t have had if she’d wanted him,” Lady Kingsley-Browne exclaimed, in impassioned exaggeration. “And to think that she should lose her head about a man who is really old enough to be her grandfather, and who doesn’t even encourage her!”

  “I have never heard anything so dreadful in all my life,” Christine remarked, with entire conviction. “Do you actually mean that she has foisted herself upon that unfortunate man—to say nothing of his wife—and that nothing they can do or say can rid them of her?”

  The visitor winced.

  “You are putting it rather crudely, perhaps,” she said unhappily, “but—yes—in effect, that is exactly what she is doing.”

  “She must be mad!”

  “That is exactly what I said myself, when Mrs. Onslow—in despair, poor thing—rang me up on the telephone, to ask what they were to do.”

  “What they were to do!” ejaculated Laura in her turn. “What more can they do, beyond asking her to leave the house—and that you say she won’t do. Can they—can he—possibly have made it clear to her that they had rather she went?”

  “Perfectly clear, I gather,” said Lady Kingsley-Browne in a low and most unhappy voice. “She insisted upon quoting to me exactly what she had said to Bébée—I did not want to hear in the very least, but she insisted on telling me—and I assure you that if she said what she told me she said, nobody in the world could have failed to understand what she meant.”

  “And Bébée wouldn’t go?”

  “She said that she could perfectly understand Mrs. Onslow’s resentment, but that a—an admiration such as hers transcends anything like that, and that A. B. owes it to his work to—to—Her actual expression was, to take all that she has to give him.”

  “Good God!” said Christine.

  There was another silence, in which more, and worse, implications seemed to multiply themselves every moment.

  “I am more sorry than I can say, and so is Christine,” said Laura at last. “Is there anything at all that we can do?”

  “Yes—yes, I think there is. Of course, you must wonder why I’ve told you at all. It isn’t a story that any mother would tell for her own amusement, is it? But I can’t help thinking that you might possibly have some influence over my poor darling if only you would try.”

  Laura, in spite of herself, made a gesture of horrified protest at the suggestion.

  “Don’t, don’t say you won’t. You are my only hope, just now. You see, you’re literary yourself, and so she can’t say that you don’t understand about that side of things, as she does to me, and A. B. seems to have told her that he liked you, and thought you so very clever. I know you go and see them, and I thought perhaps you’d be so very, very good as to see Bébée, and perhaps talk to her, and bring her to reason. Please, please don’t refuse. I am in such despair.”

  It was evident that she was, and not indeed without ample cause, Laura reflected.

  “But what will the Onslows think?” she temporised feebly.

  “They would go down upon their knees to anyone who would get her out of the house,” said the mother of Miss Kingsley-Browne, with the reckless outspokenness of sheer despair.

  “I don’t see why she should pay any attention to me.”

  “
She might. Girls will almost always listen to anyone who isn’t a relation. And she knows you’re clever, and that you write, and yet—if I may say so—you are so—so—so respectable. Married, and in the county, and all that sort of thing. Oh, I am being so stupid—but if you only knew how much I’ve cried, you’d understand.”

  “I do understand. I’m so dreadfully sorry. I’ll try, if you like.”

  “I can’t ever thank you enough. No, don’t come with me, please. I’d rather go down alone. I can pick up a taxi. I’m very grateful to you both.”

  She tottered from the room leaving Christine and Laura looking at one another.

  At last Christine said in a hushed voice:

  “How utterly and absolutely incredible!”

  “I don’t know. I’ve always felt that I could believe anything of Bay-bay.”

  “Oh, good gracious, yes, so have I. I meant, how extraordinary to see poor Lady Kingsley-Browne in such a state. Reduced to asking us, of all people, for help. Poor, poor wretch! Did you see how she positively fled, after you’d said yes, before you had time to change your mind?”

  “She showed her sense,” said Laura gloomily, “for if I’d had even one minute more in which to think, I should have said that nothing would induce me to take on such a job. What on earth am I to do?”

  “You can only try, and if you do fail, there’s an end of it. But I can’t believe that even Bay-bay, if it’s put to her in black and white, will insist upon staying on with people who would go down upon their knees before anybody who would rid them of her, as her mother so explicitly put it.”

  “I suppose that I had better go to-morrow morning.”

  “Don’t let it spoil the theatre party for you to-night,” Christine begged. “If you can’t get it out of your mind, why don’t you talk to Losh about it? He adores anything to do with abnormality—and you needn’t say who the girl is.”

  “I might, perhaps. He’s the one who told us about that—that unfortunate German, who had a complex about his grandmother, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. Losh always tells one about cases of that sort. You didn’t mind, did you?”