“But why should you have any, my dear? They won’t interfere with your work at Questerham. If you want to know about Plessing, I can tell you in two words. Your Uncle Charles doesn’t want any change made until after the war, so that I can either let it or go on living in it, as I please.”
Decorum took Miss Bruce as far as the door of the dining-room, but was not strong enough to put her outside it while Grace Jones still remained, with no apparent consciousness of indiscretion, sitting unmoved in her place, and in full hearing of this discussion, which every tradition would restrict to a family one.
Even Char said: “Hadn’t we better come to the library?”
Joanna rose.
“I’m going there now, for the very good reason that Lesbia Willoughby is to be shown in there in half an hour’s time. I shall have to see her some time, and I may as well get it over.”
“Mother, must you? Why not say that you’re not seeing any one?”
“My dear,” said Joanna dryly, “I’ve already answered two telegrams and three letters and several telephone messages in which she offered to come to me, and I think that nothing but word of mouth will have any effect upon her. But I’ll talk to you this evening, if there’s anything you want to know. John is dining here to tell us the result of his Medical Board.”
Joanna left the room, with her decisive, unhurried step, and Char, ignoring Grace, said to Miss Bruce: “I have a lot of letters, sent on from the office. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to give me a little help this afternoon?”
“Certainly, Charmian.”
Miss Bruce was gratified; but when Char had walked away without so much as glancing at Grace, she could not help saying to her, with a sort of flustered kindness: “I hope you’ll find some way of amusing yourself, Miss Jones.”
She had loyally adopted Char’s prejudice, but was too kind-hearted not to try furtively to make up for it.
Miss Jones, however, was not destined to spend a solitary afternoon. Mrs. Willoughby was driven to Plessing by Captain Trevellyan in his car; and although Miss Bruce, casting sidelong glances from the window of Char’s boudoir, where she was busily taking notes from her dictation, distinctly saw him enter the house, she felt certain that he proceeded no further than the hall, where Grace sat reading by the fire.
Mrs. Willoughby went at once to the library, where she enfolded the resigned Joanna in a prolonged embrace.
“My poor, poor dear! Words can never tell you how I’ve felt for you — how much I’ve longed to be with you!”
But despite the inadequacy of words, Mrs. Willoughby had a shrill torrent of them at her command, with which she deluged Lady Vivian for some time.
“Poor Lesbia!” Lady Vivian remarked afterwards to Grace; “she enjoyed herself so much that I really couldn’t grudge it to her!”
“He was so much, much older than you, dear, that it must almost feel like losing a father, and I know that that unfortunate girl of yours isn’t very much comfort. She must be racked with remorse. Now, do tell me, Joanna, would you like me to take her off your hands for six months? Let her come back to London with me next week, and get her married off before it’s too late.”
“Too late?”
“Well, Joanna, she must be thirty, and, mark my words, whatever people may say about there being no men left, things are happening every day. Half the mothers in London are getting their girls off now, what with officers back on leave and officers in hospitals, and those dear Colonials. Girls who never had a look in before the war can do anything they like in the way of nursing, or leading the blind about, or working in some of those departments where the over-age men are. Char is just the sort of creature to prefer a man old enough to be her grandfa—”
Mrs. Willoughby’s jaw dropped, and she made a repentant snatch at Joanna’s hand.
“Forgive me, darling! How idiotic to say such a thing to you, of all people! But if you’ll give me your girl, I’ll undertake to find chances for her. She’ll be very good-looking when she doesn’t look so sulky and take such airs, and one could make capital of all the patriotic work she’s been doing down here. And I always think it’s rather an asset than otherwise to be in mourning, especially in these days. Black suits her, too, with that sandy colouring. Does she choose her own clothes, Joanna?”
“She does, Lesbia, and has chosen them ever since she was out of long clothes, as far as I remember. But—”
“Joanna, you’ve been culpably weak, and of course that poor, dear old man had simply no idea of discipline. But I can put the whole thing right for you in six weeks, when the dear girl comes to me.”
“It’s no use, Lesbia,” said Joanna, half laughing. “It’s very kind of you, but Char wouldn’t hear of it and really at thirty I can’t coerce her — besides, there’s her work here.”
“My dear, you don’t mean to say that you’re going to allow that to go on?”
“To begin with, I couldn’t prevent it. To go on with, I think it perfectly right that Char should do what she can in the way of war-work. There wouldn’t be the slightest object in her giving it up now.”
“But Sir Piers — the memory of his wishes — his memory!” almost shrieked Mrs. Willoughby.
“His memory will survive it, Lesbia. Besides, as long as he was himself, you know, he didn’t mind her doing war-work. He quite understood the necessity, and was proud of her.”
“But, my dear, wrong-headed creature, when she so deliberately and heartlessly went against his wishes at the last?”
“Well,” said Joanna placidly, “she won’t be doing that now, so she can go on working with a clear conscience.”
“Joanna,” said Mrs. Willoughby, with an air of discovery, “upon my word, I don’t understand you.”
Nevertheless, she devoted the major half of the afternoon to the object of her perplexity.
“One word, dearest, I must say,” she declared at the end of an hour that, to Joanna’s thinking, held already more than a sufficiency of words. “Have you considered what is happening to that delightful lad?”
“Never,” said Joanna unhesitatingly. “And who on earth are you talking about, Lesbia?”
“That precious creature, Johnnie. Too guileless for words, my dear; but if there’s one thing I do understand, inside out and upside down, it’s men. I should have made a perfect mother — young things adore me. Look at my sweet Puffles! But I’m miserable about John, who really has a perfect passion for me, dear lad. Lewis always says that all the boys of his regiment go through it, just like measles.”
Joanna, who had heard this quotation before, ruthlessly disregarded it.
“What is happening to John?”
“My dear, do you mean to tell me you haven’t seen it? But of course you haven’t, at such a time. What a brute I am! Forgive me, Joanna, but you seem so utterly unlike a widow. I can hardly realize it. But, of course, that little secretary creature — she’s had her eye on him all along.”
“I suppose, Lesbia, that you don’t mean my poor old Bruce, who’s been with me almost ever since John was born?”
Lesbia uttered a screech between laughter and reproach.
“What an absurdity! Of course I mean the little Canteen girl — Jones, or whatever her name is. My dear, will you believe me when I tell you that when that poor innocent boy drove us up here just now and followed me into the hall, there she was, actually waiting to pounce upon him, sitting over the fire?”
“I can believe you quite easily,” said Joanna, “all but the pouncing. We none of us knew that John was going to drive you over, so she couldn’t have been waiting.”
“Blind, reckless one!” cried Lesbia excitedly. “I can only tell you that ever since those evenings at the Canteen I’ve seen what was coming. Do you suppose that a young man wipes up dripping wet mugs for nothing? Besides, Joanna, look at the air-raid! Of course, my poor dear, I know that just at that time you were thinking of something altogether different, but I was there, if you remember.”
“I rem
ember hearing about it,” Joanna admitted, with a vivid recollection of Mrs. Willoughby’s spirited behaviour on the occasion in question having been described in unflattering terms by Captain Trevellyan.
“My dear, after we’d all dispersed and the whole thing was over, that wretched girl lured him back into the basement, under pretext of fainting or something, and pretended to have hysterics on account of the fright she’d had. And I assure you that she hadn’t seen anything at all of the raid, because she was the very first person to make a bolt for downstairs. In fact,” said Mrs. Willoughby modestly, “really, for one moment there might have been a panic, if I hadn’t dashed into the middle of the hall and called out that we were all Englishwomen and not afraid of anything. And after all that, the miserable girl goes and faints away in his hands!”
“I did hear something about it — in fact, she told me herself, but it wasn’t nearly as dramatic as that, Lesbia. And his coming back and finding her was pure chance. I think it was the last thing she wanted.”
Mrs. Willoughby opened her eyes to their widest extent, flung back her head, and exclaimed emphatically: “You will have no one in this world, Joanna, no one but yourself, to blame if the very worst happens. Mark my words, that uninteresting little creature, without a feature to bless herself with, is going to make poor guileless Johnnie ask her to marry him.”
Joanna had some opinion of Mrs. Willoughby’s shrewdness, if none of her discretion, and this prognostication gave her a sense of comfort which she had had no slightest expectation of deriving from the visit of condolence. It even enabled her to thank Lesbia with sufficient cordiality for coming, as she at last escorted her into the hall.
“When we shall meet again, dearest, I am utterly unable to declare,” was a valediction which added considerably to her relief at parting. “My Lewis won’t let me stay down here any longer, now that I’m fairly fit again. He’s too sweet and self-sacrificing for words, poor lamb! ‘Go back to London where there are a thousand jobs and undertakings crying out for you,’ he says. I really can’t bear to leave him, and the dear regiment, and my beloved Canteen, let alone you, whom I’ve always looked upon as the oldest, dearest of links with my girlhood. But, of course, my poor committees must be getting into the most ghastly muddles, and I know that all my officer protégés are in despair. They write me the most heartrending letters.”
Lesbia shrouded herself in sables, wound a motor-veil round and round her head, and cast a piercing glance round the hall.
“What did I tell you, Joanna?”
“You told me that John was here with Miss Jones, but I don’t see either of them. Is he going to drive you back?”
“So he pretended, my dear, but I can’t answer for what she—”
Trevellyan came into the hall and greeted Lady Vivian.
“I’ve not kept you waiting, Mrs. Willoughby, I hope? I went to bring the car round.”
“Where is Grace?” asked Lady Vivian, not without malice.
“Just come in and gone upstairs. We’ve been looking at your turnips,” said John seriously. “A very fine crop, Cousin Joanna.”
“We shall all be living on turnips quite soon,” Lesbia declared with acerbity. “Good-bye, my poor dear Joanna, and do think over all I’ve been saying to you. Remember that a telegram would bring me at any hour, for as long as you please, and I’ll take your girl off your hands whenever you like. I could make her quite useful in some of my war-work.”
Joanna turned away from the door, thankful to reflect that neither her daughter nor Miss Bruce had been present to hear this monstrous assertion.
As she crossed the hall, Grace came downstairs. Lady Vivian smiled at her.
“You’ve a knack of appearing just when I want you. I’ve just seen Lesbia Willoughby off, since she mercifully refused to stay to tea. Has the second post come?”
“Yes. I’ve got a letter that I rather wanted to talk to you about, from Miss Marsh at the Hostel.”
Joanna sat down, her hands lying idly folded in her lap, while Grace read aloud:
“DEAR GRACIE,
“You’ll think it extraordinary, me writing to you like this, but we really do miss you here, especially in our room, and the whole place has been upside down since you went away. This is because poor Mrs. Bullivant has actually got the sack, if you can believe such a thing, for no reason on earth that any one can discover. She had a slip from Miss V. dated two days before Christmas — but it only reached her on Christmas Day — telling her that other arrangements would be made at the New Year. Of course, we’re all fearfully sick, as you’ll guess, and Mrs. Bullivant has been simply howling about it ever since, though she’s as quiet as ever and never lets on. But she looks rotten, and Tony can hear her crying in her own room at nights. You can imagine what a jolly Christmas we’ve all had! The point of bothering you with all this, however, is that perhaps you can find out what she’s expected to do. It’s all very well to say, ‘Clear out at the New Year,’ but Miss Vivian’s being away, and in such trouble and all, makes it all jolly awkward. We sent a petition signed by all of us to ask if Mrs. Bullivant could be kept on; but of course there’s been no answer, and she simply doesn’t in the least know what to do. Do you think it would be all right if she just hung on till Miss V. gets back? Perhaps then she’ll have read the petition and made up her mind to let her stay on as Superintendent. Of course, that’s what we all hope, and, in fact, some of the girls are so sick about it that I shouldn’t be surprised if some resignations were sent in. We’ve been hearing something that’s made us all sit up re Miss V. and—”
“That’s all about Mrs. Bullivant,” said Grace hastily.
“Nonsense!” cried Joanna vigorously; “you’ve stopped at the most amusing bit. Unless it’s marked private, for goodness’ sake go on, and tell me what this scandal can be. I’m quite relieved to hear that Char’s past holds anything exciting.”
Grace began to laugh.
“It isn’t marked private, and there really isn’t much to read.”
“ — and there’ll be a good deal less said in future about how wonderful she is. Did you know that her father and mother, after he first got ill, simply begged her to stay at home, for his sake, and she absolutely wouldn’t? Work is all very well, but I must say that seems jolly callous, and one can’t help wondering whether it really was the work she was after, or just the excitement and the honour and glory of her position. I know you never—”
Grace stopped again, and Lady Vivian said: “She knows you never liked her — well, go on.”
“ — and most of the rest of us are feeling rather off the ‘personal influence’ stunt just at the moment. Delmege, of course, takes a high line and goes in for loyalty, etc., etc. — in fact, won’t speak to any of us at present. But, as I say, that’s her loss and not ours.
“Now, dear old thing, I’m going to leave off, as you’re probably sick of my scrawl by this time, and it’s high time I was off to my bed. Try and find out if there’s any chance of Mrs. B.’s being allowed to carry on for the present, and send me a line if you’ve time.
“Every one sends all sorts of love, and we shall all be most awfully glad to see you turn up again. This place is more putrid than ever without you, and with all this fuss going on about Miss Vivian; but I dare say it’ll all turn out for the best if it makes us a bit keener about the work for its own sake, and not for hers. After all, there is a war on!”
“Yours with best love,
“DORA MARSH.”
“Dora Marsh seems to me to be an uncommonly sensible girl,” observed Lady Vivian thoughtfully.
She gazed into the fire in silence for a few moments before adding: “I wonder who’s been talking to them about Char? The only person I can think of is Dr. Prince. I know he felt very strongly about it, and I don’t altogether wonder, though it may seem rather hard on her to have her reputation for infallibility destroyed at last.”
“I think,” said Grace, “that there would have been some feeling at the
Hostel, in any case, at Mrs. Bullivant’s dismissal. She’s been so kind and nice to us all, and worked so hard always, and, of course, every one knows that the loss of the position is serious for her. She’s very poor, and she has no home of her own to go to.”
“Of course, it’s unthinkable. Char must have some reason for dismissing her. I shall insist upon being told what it is!” cried Joanna.
There was more animation in her manner than Grace had seen there for some time, and she was quite ready to follow her upstairs in immediate search of Char.
The Director of the Midland Supply Depôt was at her writing-table, leaning back in the familiar attitude that invariably recalled to Grace old-fashioned engravings of an Eastern potentate, her eyes half closed, her slim fingers tapping upon the table in front of her, and her slow, deep voice drawling in fluent dictation.
Miss Bruce, far from possessing the skill of Mrs. Baker-Bridges, sat agitatedly scribbling on various odd half-sheets of paper. Further notes lay strewn all over the table and on the floor beside her chair.
She looked up with shamefaced but unmistakable relief at the interruption.
“Have you been victimized all the afternoon?” inquired Joanna kindly, but with her usual unfortunate choice of expression.
“Oh, no, no!” said Miss Bruce, almost with horror. “But Charmian must be tired. She’s been working without a moment’s rest, and it really does give one some sort of idea of all that she must do at the office every day.”
Char rewarded her with a melancholy smile.
“At the office there are the telegrams, and the telephone messages, and endless interviews to deal with as well. I don’t think I ever get a consecutive hour’s time there to deal with the correspondence without interruption. Now, all these letters which you see here could—”
Joanna interrupted the Director of the Midland Supply Depôt without ceremony.
“I want you to tell me, Char, why you want that nice little Superintendent of yours to leave the Hostel. The staff there is in despair.”
Char suddenly sat upright.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 53