No One Now Will Know

by E M Delafield

  (7)

  Kate was not asleep, although she had slept at intervals throughout the day, always waking with an agonized start to the reality that awaited her.

  She had heard the arrival of her brothers and, pulling a dressing-gown over her shoulders, staggered rather than walked to her bedroom door and set it ajar.

  She crouched on the bed, waiting for the sound of Lucy’s step.

  When he came up at last, Fred was with him, but Kate was only aware of Lucy and it was his name that she called out.

  At the sound he stopped, turned, and caught her in his arms as she flung herself against him.

  “Lucy, Lucy, say it isn’t true!”

  He picked her up and carried her into the room, placing her on the bed again and closing the door behind him.

  “It’s true,” said Lucy. “It’s all true.”

  He laid his black head on the pillow beside hers and broke into sobs.

  For a long time neither of them spoke.

  Then Kate whispered: “Tell me what happened.”

  “I was driving like a fool—not thinking what I was doing. God knows I wasn’t thinking what I was doing—I’d other things on my mind. And the rain came lashing down and she was getting wet through—I ought to have turned back—and instead of that I let that brute have his head and going down the hill—the steep bit—the wheel went over a stone and that startled him and the cart gave this awful lurch—she was thrown over the side——”

  He stopped.

  “It was instantaneous, Kay. She fell with her head on one of those great rocks.”

  “Rosalie!” moaned Kate softly. “She’s so alive.”

  “I know. But when I got back to her I saw—It didn’t need any doctor to tell me. Williams was there quite soon, they said. Poor old Mr. Meredith got hold of him in the village, somehow. He was wonderful, poor old chap.”

  “But oh, Lucy! You——”

  “I couldn’t keep her,” said Lucy. “I wanted to, more than anything on earth, but I couldn’t.”

  “Could anyone?” asked Kate, half understanding.

  “I don’t know. We never shall know, now.”

  Lucy stood up. He looked unspeakably weary, but the wildness had passed out of his face.

  “Try and sleep, my love. You’ve helped me. Nobody else could, but you have.”

  “I loved her so much. I love you so much, Lucy.”

  “I know.”

  He looked down at her for a moment or two before speaking, as he often did, uttering aloud some thought of his own to which he knew that she held no clue.

  “The Lemprière blood must be very strong, and rather queer, in all of us. Fred and I, and even Fanny, in her own way. I suppose poor Mama has done practically everything in the world that a mother could do, to make us hate one another. And Fred and I——” He stopped, and met the look of undeviating, uncomprehending love in Kate’s eyes.

  “Everything,” said Lucy, “—everything has happened to Fred and to me. And yet, at the end of it all, I had to go to him. That’s what Fred himself said, when I found him in London and told him. He was right, too. There wasn’t anybody else that either of us could go to. Only one another.”

  Chapter X

  Mrs. Joe Newton cut a basketful of the last roses that the summer would see, her grim nut-cracker face and stiff little coat-and-skirted figure oddly at variance with the traditionally picturesque nature of her occupation.

  For many months now she had cut flowers at regular intervals to place upon Rosalie Lemprière’s grave.

  Joe, in his ancient riding-clothes, came stiffly and heavily up the steps that had long ago been made by his predecessor in the steep hillside against which lay the garden.

  He came to a standstill beside his wife.

  They were an inarticulate couple as a rule, but Mrs. Joe could find words upon occasion, and she spoke now.

  “There’s been a telegram. The ship put in this morning, and your brother is staying the night in London and coming on to-morrow by the ten o’clock train.”

  “Old Johnny!” said Joe Newton. “It’s a funny thing——” But he did not complete the well-worn sentence.

  “It’s taken Cecilia the best part of six months to send him back,” observed Mrs. Joe drily.

  “Why don’t she come home herself, or Fred, or one of them? But I suppose she knows what she’s doing.”

  “She’s taken against The Grove.”

  “Natural enough, natural enough. Though I hate to see the poor old place empty.”

  Mrs. Joe marched with quick, short steps towards the tiny greenhouse that jutted out from the side of the villa.

  Joe followed her.

  “I suppose she might change her mind, and come back. There’s the little girl—Lucy’s little girl.”

  “Cecilia oughtn’t to have taken that child out to the West Indies. It was a ridiculous thing to do. And Fanny begged to have her at Rock Place with Kate, I know for a fact. But there it is. Cecilia’s always got to have her own way, no matter who suffers.”

  “Poor Cecilia,” protested old Joe, in mild rebuke. “She’s had her share of trouble, one way and another, and she’s not as young as she was.”

  Mrs. Joe Newton opened the greenhouse door, making no comment on that.

  Joe stood watching her as she cut maidenhair fern.

  “Cecilia was a very fine woman, when poor Charlecombe used to give his cricket lunches, in the old days, and Lucy and Fred used to knock up half the runs between ’em. Nice boys, both of ‘em.”

  “Kate was always my favourite,” observed Mrs. Joe with finality.

  But her husband was in a mood of most unusual loquacity.

  “A bad business,” he remarked, shaking his head. “You might say tragic. But I don’t understand their all sheering off like that, leaving the place empty. I suppose Fred had to go back to the plantations, but I don’t see why Cecilia couldn’t have stayed on at the old place and kept Kate with her, and poor Lucy’s little girl.”

  “Poor Lucy!” echoed Mrs. Joe, rather grimly.

  “Where’s the feller now? Does anybody know?” Mrs. Joe shook her head.

  “Just travelling. Kate thought he might go to the Klondyke. I don’t know why the Klondyke. Not that I hear from Kate very often.”

  It was old Joe’s turn to shake his head.

  “I don’t see the rights of any of it. Dashing about all over the place, all of them, and leaving the old Grove empty. I hate to see the place. It’ll go to rack and ruin if Cecilia doesn’t come back before long. Well, I suppose we shall hear something from old Johnny.”

  Mrs. Joe slipped the gardening scissors into the capacious pocket of her tailor-made skirt, shifted the basket from her hand to her arm and preceded Joe from the greenhouse, turning back to lock the door.

  “If Cecilia felt she had to go out to Barbados with Fred—though why she should I don’t know—she oughtn’t to have taken the baby. It was a wrong thing to do.”

  “Her own grandchild,” ventured old Joe timidly.

  “Own fiddlestick,” Mrs. Joe answered, in a mournful voice strangely unsuited to the colloquialism. “It was pure jealousy.”

  “Jealousy?”

  “Of Kate. Poor little Kate.”

  There was a silence before Joe replied to his wife’s tone, for it told him, so long had they lived together, more than did her words.

  “Still, missus, Kate wasn’t the worst of it—by a long chalk. The poor girl that died—and Lucy half off his head and sheerin’ off like that—and then Cecilia leaving The Grove at a minute’s notice as you might say and now sticking on at the plantations and driving poor old Johnny home again just because that idle fellow Fred never did know his job.”

  “D’you remember: ‘No Lemprière ever works’?”

  “No Lemprière does, that ever I heard of.”

  They reached the house. The door stood wide open, as usual, the tiny dark hall redolent of lavender mingled with the clean, pungent smell of floor-pol
ish.

  “I hope they won’t leave The Grove empty much longer. It’s not fair on a place,” Joe protested.

  His wife agreed.

  “No. Still, I can see why none of them could go on living there after the accident.”

  She placed her basket on the little Welsh chest that just fitted in the turn of the stairs.

  “Accidents are awful things,” said Mrs. Joe.

  Old Joe shook his head.

  “Shockin’!” he said sadly. “Difficult to understand what Providence is thinking about sometimes. Still, there it is—it’s not for us to question, eh, missus? Not for us to question.”

  THE END

  Epilogue

  “The lady has arrived, sir,” discreetly murmured the club page-boy. “She’s taking off her cloak. Shall I show her into the drawing-room?”

  “I’ll come down.”

  The young officer, who was very lame, reached for his stick. In December 1918 it was no longer unusual to see a lame man, nor a young one holding the rank of Major. Actually, Cecil Ballantyne looked much older than his twenty-three years. He had been once shell-shocked and once severely wounded, in France.

  He went down in the lift, reaching the hall before his guest.

  Two minutes later she came down the three steps that led from the Ladies’ Cloakroom.

  Callie was slight and pale, with a thick, straight bob of brown hair that made her head look unduly large, and beautiful brilliant hazel eyes set between long dark lashes.

  Every now and then an odd family resemblance appeared between them, making their first cousinhood no matter for surprise.

  “Cecil! How lovely to see you again.”

  “Hallo, Callie dear! Isn’t this wonderful?”

  Both voices were warm with pleasure, but Cecil’s instantly betrayed his lack of the vitality that rang, equally unmistakable, in hers.

  “How long have you been back, Callie?”

  “I landed this morning.”

  “I’d have come to meet you if I hadn’t had to go before the Medical Board. Did you get my wire? Yes, of course you did or you wouldn’t be here. I was terrified you wouldn’t turn up.”

  “Of course I turned up. That’s why I didn’t answer, because I thought you’d take it for granted. Besides, I forgot.”

  They both laughed.

  “Come up and have a cocktail before dinner,” suggested Cecil. “And would you like to do a show? I’m afraid I can’t suggest going somewhere to dance.”

  “I don’t want to do either. I’d rather sit and talk.”

  “Oh, good,” said Cecil, looking much younger suddenly.

  They went upstairs and ordered cocktails.

  “What did your Medical Board say?”

  “Told me I’d hear from them. I think I shall probably get about twopence a year disability pension out of them, which is quite a good thing. We’re all going to be as poor as church mice. In fact, we are already.”

  “Never mind,” said Callie. “The war’s over.”

  Her face changed and they exchanged a long look.

  “If only Reggie were coming home too,” she said.

  “I know. It seems so awful that he should have been the one to be killed, when he enjoyed life so tremendously, and got such fun out of everything.”

  “Well, if he had to go, he’d have wanted it to be like that, in action.”

  Cecil nodded.

  A waiter brought them their drinks.

  “Here’s luck!” said Callie, raising her glass.

  They smiled at one another.

  “Heavens, what a lot we’ve got to talk about!” she cried. I thought I was never going to get demobilized from that awful Unit.”

  “Did you hate it?”

  “Not really, no. It was much more exciting than driving in London. But after all, the war’s over, and I’ve been dying to get home. I haven’t been in England for over a year and a half.”

  “If you’d been in France, instead of Salonika, we could probably have met in Paris or somewhere. My last go in hospital was at Boulogne. That was the time Aunt came down there.”

  Another sudden silence fell.

  Then Callie, with an appearance of effort, said: “I do want to hear about everyone. Tell me while we have dinner. Awdry and Juliet aren’t much good at letters, and besides they were busy. Tansy was the best, about writing.”

  “Good old Tansy! She wrote to me, too—awfully grand letters with tremendously long words in them and beautiful phrases about Youth and Democracy and Sacrifice. I read one of her letters just before the Hill Sixty show, and I shall never forget it. She said she felt sure I often recollected the beautiful Devon countryside and heard again in fancy the feathered songsters of the hedgerows. Come and have some dinner, Callie.”

  Seated opposite to one another in the warm, brightly-lit dining-room, they talked eagerly, at first about themselves, and the time that was to follow the peace. Then Callie said:

  “Tell me about home. Are we all frightfully poor?”

  “Frightfully, I believe. Of course, we were getting poorer and poorer, long before the war, but I should think it’s about finished us. Father sounds calm, in a desperate sort of way, and whatever happens we’re going to hang on to Rock Place.”

  “Of course. How’s Aunt Fanny?”

  “She’s calm, too. She keeps on saying the girls will marry and then it won’t matter.”

  “I suppose they will,” said Callie rather doubtfully. “Juliet did get engaged to some Australian, more or less, didn’t she?”

  “I think it was rather less than more—and anyway they broke it off. And Awdry turned down the new parson. What about you, Callie?”

  He had spoken lightly but something in Callie’s unfortunately expressive face immediately caused him to add, very gently:

  “I’m frightfully sorry, dear. I oughtn’t to have asked.”

  “It’s all right,” said Callie. “I thought you might have known about it, that’s all. The others did.”

  “I didn’t know anything at all. The only person I saw was Aunt, that time at Boulogne.”

  “It happened after that.”

  “Don’t tell me, if you hate talking about it.”

  “There isn’t much to tell, Cecil. That was really the worst of it,” Callie admitted ruefully.

  He noticed that, although she was smiling at him, two tiny lines had sprung into prominence at the corners of her mouth.

  “I did fall in love—rather badly, I suppose—with a man I met in the second year of the war, when I was in London. It was when I was sharing Elisabeth’s flat. I met him at a party and we just seemed to know one another frightfully well already—you know how one does, sometimes.”

  Cecil nodded.

  “He’s terribly good at languages and he had a staff job. His name was Michael Lorac.”

  “Lorac,” Cecil repeated meditatively. Then he suddenly looked up, meeting her gaze fully. “Isn’t that the name of the man Elisabeth has married?”

  Callie drew a long breath.

  “Yes. It is. You see, she was away looking after her mother, when I first met him, and he used to come and see me quite a lot and take me out in the evenings whenever I was off duty. And then she came back.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “Of course, I hadn’t got a chance, with anyone like her. He just fell for her immediately.”

  “Did she know about you?”

  “We weren’t engaged,” Callie said quickly. “He hadn’t even made love to me—much. They were both quite within their rights, technically.”

  “Is she terribly attractive? I haven’t seen her for years.”

  “Yes, she is. A lot of people fall in love with her. It was just my bad luck that Michael did too.”

  “And did she fall in love with him, do you suppose?”

  “Cecil—you are understanding, aren’t you? That was just it. Elisabeth had been in love lots of times, even then, and had heaps of affairs. I used sometimes to think she onl
y tried to attract Michael because she saw he was falling in love with me—and then she fell in love with him herself, because she wasn’t sure if she could get him or not.”

  “It was bad luck for you, Callie.”

  “It was, rather. Besides you see—I was always terribly fond of Elisabeth, wasn’t I?”

  “I know you were. So they’re married.”

  “Yes.”

  They were silent again, and then Callie said rather anxiously,

  “I’ve got over it, you know. I minded horribly at the time.”

  “One does. Did they know about it at home?”

  “Yes, they did. You know how one never can help one’s family knowing about these things, even if one wanted to. And you see, they’d heard me talk about him—and Awdry had met him with me, in London. They were angelic to me. I went home for a week’s leave just after the engagement was announced. They didn’t say anything much, but I knew they guessed. They were terribly kind and tactful.”

  “Even Mona?”

  “Mona didn’t say a word. The only person who did was Aunt Fanny. You know how unexpected she is. Quite suddenly one day she just said—quite irrelevantly—‘You may say what you like about their both being free—but Callie would never have done a thing like that to Elisabeth.’”

  “That,” said Cecil, “was perfectly true.”

  “Yes. It was,” said Callie.

  They had finished dinner and gone into one of the smaller rooms upstairs, finding it almost empty.

  “What luck,” said Cecil. “Come and sit over the fire. Have a cigarette—and would you like a liqueur?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “I can afford it—for the moment.” Callie shook her head.

  “How are you going to earn any money, Cecil?”

  “Try and wrest it out of the land, as they say. After all, I was at that Agricultural College place, and it’s what my father wants. What shall you do, Callie?”

  “Come home for a bit, and then try for a job in London, I expect.”

  “Awdry wants to try and get a job too—and Juliet. But I suppose one of them will have to stay with Mother and run the house. I don’t think it’ll be Mona’s cup of tea, and anyway she’s too young.”