“It might revolutionize the whole standard of moral values in the country,” he said very simply. “You know, just put things in a light that hasn’t struck home in England yet at all. Of course, on the continent they’re far more advanced than we are, on those sort of points. That’s why I want to travel, before I start serious work. Of course, I’ve got a mass of notes already. Just ideas, that have struck me as I go along. I’m afraid I’m fearfully observant, and I generally size up the people I meet, and then make notes about them — or else simply dismiss them from my mind altogether. My idea is rather to classify human nature into various types, so that the book can be divided up under different headings, and then have a sort of general summing up at the end. Of course, that’s only a rough sketch of the whole plan, but you see what I mean?”
“Yes, I do,” said Alex with conviction. “I’ve always, all my life, thought that people mattered much more than anything else, only I’ve never found anybody else who felt like that too.”
“It’s rather interesting to look at things the same way, don’t you think?” Noel enquired.
“Oh, yes,” Alex answered with shy fervour, her heart beating very fast.
She was only anxious to prolong the tête-à-tête, and had no idea of suggesting a return to the drawing-room, in spite of the damage that she subconsciously felt the damp ground to be doing to her satin slippers. But presently Lady Isabel called to her from the window, and she came into the lighted room, conscious both of her own glowing face and of a certain kindly, interested look bent upon her by her seniors.
X
Noel
In the ensuing days, Alex met that look very often — a look of pleased, speculative approval, pregnant with unspoken meanings.
Noel sought her company incessantly, and every opportunity was given them of spending time in one another’s society. For five glowing, heather-surrounded days and five breathless, moonlit evenings, they became the centre of their tiny world.
Then Lady Isabel said one night to her daughter:
“You’ve enjoyed this visit, haven’t you, darlin’? I’m sorry we’re movin’ on.”
“Oh,” said Alex faintly, “are we really leaving tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow morning, by the early train,” her mother assented cheerfully.
The true instinct of the feeble, to clutch at an unripe prize lest it be taken from them, made Alex wonder desperately if she could not postpone her departure.
But she dared not make any such suggestion, and Lady Isabel, looking at her dismayed face, laughed a little as though at the unreason of a child. Alex blushed with shame as she thought that her mother might have guessed what was in her mind. That evening, however, Lady Isabel came into her room as she was dressing for dinner.
“I thought you’d like to put this over your shoulders, Alex,” she said negligently. “It will improve that cream-coloured frock of yours.”
It was a painted scarf that she held out, and she stood gazing critically while the maid laid it across Alex’ shoulders.
“You look so nice, darling child. Are you ready?”
“Yes, mother.”
They went downstairs together.
Alex was acutely conscious of a certain maternal pride and tenderness, such as she had not experienced from Lady Isabel since the first days of her return from Liège, when she had finally left school. She did not let herself speculate to what such unusual emotion might portend.
But at the sight of Noel Cardew, better-looking than ever in evening clothes, a chaotic excitement surged up within her in anticipation of their last evening together.
Almost as she sat down beside him at the dinner-table, she said piteously, “I wish we weren’t going away tomorrow.”
“You’re not?”
“Oh, yes. Didn’t you know?”
“I hadn’t realized it,” said Noel, and although she avoided looking at him, she noted with a feeling of triumph the dismay in his voice.
“Oh, I say! What a shame. Must you really go?”
“We’re going to pay two more visits and then leave Scotland altogether.”
“I shan’t stay much longer myself,” observed Noel nonchalantly.
Alex was conscious of keeping the words as it were at the back of her mind, with the implication which she attached to them, while the conversation at the small table became general.
As she followed her hostess and Lady Isabel from the room, Noel, holding open the door, said to her in a rapid, anxious tone, very low:
“You’ll come out into the garden afterwards, won’t you?”
An enigmatic “perhaps” was not in Alex’ vocabulary.
She gave him a quick, radiant smile, and nodded emphatically.
It never occurred to her eager prodigality that she ran any risk of cheapening the favours that so few had ever coveted.
In the garden she moved along the gravelled walk beside him, actually breathless from inward excitement.
“There was heaps more I wanted to say to you about the book,” Noel remarked disconsolately. “I shan’t have any one to exchange ideas with now. They’re all so old — and besides, I don’t think English people as a rule care much about psychology and that sort of thing. They’re so keen on games. So am I, in a way, but I must say it seems to me that the study of human nature is a good deal more worth one’s while.”
“People are so interesting,” said Alex. She was perfectly aware of the futility of her remark as she made it, but in some undercurrent of her consciousness there floated the conviction that one need not put forth any great powers of originality in order to obtain response from Noel Cardew.
“I can be perfectly natural with him — we think alike,” She defended herself against her own unformulated accusation with inexplicable anger.
“I think they’re frightfully interesting,” said Noel with conviction. “Of course, men are far more interesting than women, if you don’t mind my saying so, simply from the psychological point of view. I hope you don’t think I’m being rude?”
“Oh, no.”
“You see, women, as a general rule, are rather shallow, though, of course, there are a great many exceptions. But you know what I mean — as a rule they’re rather shallow. That’s what I feel about women, they’re shallow.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” said Alex, rather discouraged. She would not admit to herself that his sweeping assertion awoke no echo whatever within her.
To her immaturity, the essence of sympathy lay in complete agreement, and abstract questions meant nothing to her when weighed in the balance against her desire to establish, to her own satisfaction at least, the existence of such sympathy between herself and Noel Cardew.
“I’ve got another mad plan,” said Noel slowly. “You’ll think I’m always getting insane ideas, and this one rather depends on you.”
“Oh, what?”
“I hope you won’t mind my suggesting such a thing—” He paused so long that Alex’ imagination had time for a hundred foolish, ecstatic promptings, such as her reason knew could not be forthcoming, but for which her whole undisciplined sense of romance was crying.
“Well, look here: what should you think of collaborating with me over the book? I’m sure you could write if you tried, and anyway, you could probably give me sidelights on the feminine part of it. It would be most awfully helpful to me if you would.”
“Oh,” said Alex uncertainly. She was invaded by unreasoning disappointment. “But how could we do it?”
“Oh, well, notes, you know — just keep notes of anything that struck us particularly, and then put it in together later. We should have to do a good deal of it by correspondence, of course.... I say, are you a conventional person?”
“Not in the least,” said Alex hastily.
“I’m glad of that. I’m afraid I’m rather desperately unconventional myself. Of course, in a way it might be rather unconventional, you and me corresponding — but would that matter?”
“Not to me,” s
aid Alex resolutely.
“That’s splendid. We could do a lot that way, and then I hope, of course, that you’ll let me come and see you in London.”
“Of course,” Alex cried eagerly. “I don’t know the exact date when we shall be back, but I could let you know. Have you got the address?”
“Clevedon Square—”
She hastily supplied the number of the house.
“Oh, that’s all right. I’m sure to forget it,” said Noel easily; “but I shall find you in the books, I suppose.”
“Yes,” said Alex, feeling suddenly damped.
She herself would have been in no danger of forgetting the number of a house wherein dwelt any one whom she wished to see, but with disastrous and quite unconscious humility, she told herself that it was, of course, not to be expected that any one else should go to lengths equal to her own. In her one-sided experience, Alex had always found herself to be unique.
That Noel Cardew was not in despair at the idea of her departure was evident. But he repeated several times that he wished she were not going so soon, and even asked whether she would stay on if invited to do so.
“I’m sure they’d all love you to,” he assured her. “Then Lady Isabel could pay the other visits and call for you on her way back.”
“I’m sure I shouldn’t be allowed to stay on by myself,” said Alex dolefully.
“There you are! Conventionality again. My daughters,” said Noel instructively, “if I ever have any, shall be brought up quite differently. I’ve made up my mind to that. I daresay you’ll laugh at all these theories of mine, but I’ve always been keen on ideas, if you remember.”
But for once Noel did not receive the habitual ready disclaimer called for by his speech.
His easy allusion to his hypothetical daughters had reduced Alex to utter silence.
Afterwards, alone in the darkness of her own room, she wondered why such a startling sense of protest had revolted within her at his words, but her mind shied away instinctively from the question, and she found herself unable to pursue it.
The next morning, in the unromantic atmosphere induced by an early breakfast, and Sir Francis’ anxiety to make sure of catching the connection, politely concealed, but quite evident to the perceptions of his wife and daughter, Noel Cardew and Alex exchanged their brief and entirely public farewell.
“I’ll write about the book,” was his cheerful parting assurance.
“Don’t forget,” said Alex.
Lady Isabel was rather humorous on the subject of fin de siècle emancipation, amongst the house party in the midst of which she and her daughter found themselves that evening.
“What are boys and girls coming to? I hear young men gaily promisin’ to write to Alex on all sorts of subjects, and making private assignations with her,” she declared amusedly. “Aren’t you and that nice-looking Cardew boy writin’ a book in collaboration, or something, darling?”
The slight jest was made popular amongst her seniors, and Alex was kindly rallied about her modern freedom and assumption of privileges undreamed of by the older generation. The inference obviously placed upon her friendship with Noel Cardew was evident, and pleased her starved vanity even more than the agreeable amount of flattery and attention which at last was being bestowed upon her.
It was her first hint of success achieved amid standards which she had been taught to believe were all-prevalent. Brushed lightly by the passing wing of triumph, she became eager and self-confident, even rather over-clamorous in the assertion of her own individuality, as had been the child Alex in the nursery at Clevedon Square.
Lady Isabel did not check her. She made subtle exploitation of Alex’ youth and sudden, rather boisterous gaiety, and occasionally laughed a little, and alluded to the collaboration scheme between her and Noel Cardew. “But all the same, darlin’ child,” she observed to Alex in private, “I can’t have you correspondin’ with young men all over the country unbeknown to me. Once in a way is all very well, perhaps, but you’ll have to let me see the letters, I think.”
Alex was only mildly resentful of the injunction. She surmised shrewdly enough that her mother was more anxious to establish the authentic existence of a correspondence between Noel Cardew and herself than to supervise the details of it. She herself waited with frantic, furtive eagerness for his first letter.
It did not reach her until after her return to London. Secretly bitterly disappointed, she read the short, conventional phrases and the subscription:
“I never know how to end up a letter, but hope this will be all right — Yours very sincerely,
“NOEL E. CARDEW.”
Across the top of the front page was a postscript.
“Next month I shall be in town. Don’t forget that I am coming to call upon you. I hope you won’t be ‘out’!”
Alex, to whom nothing was trivial, saw the proposed call looming enormous upon the horizon of her days.
Every afternoon she either sat beside Lady Isabel in the carriage in an agony, with only one thought in her mind — the expectation of finding Noel’s card upon the hall table on their return — or else took her part disjointedly and with obvious absent-mindedness in the entertainment of her mother’s visitors.
When, during a crowded At Home afternoon, in the course of which she had necessarily ceased to listen for the sound of the front-door bell, “Mr. Cardew” was at length announced, Alex felt almost unable to turn round and face the entering visitor.
Her own imagination, untempered either by humour or by experience, had led her to picture the next encounter between herself and Noel so frequently, and with such a prodigal folly of romantic detail, that it seemed incredible to her that the reality should take place within a few instants, amidst brief, conventional words and gestures.
Noel did not talk about the book that they were to write together, although he remained beside Alex most of the afternoon. Only just as he was leaving, he asked cheerfully:
“You’ve not forgotten our collaboration, have you, partner? I’ve heaps of things to discuss with you, only you were so busy this afternoon, looking after all those people.”
“We shall be in on Sunday,” Alex told him eagerly, “and there won’t be such a crowd.”
“Oh, good,” said Noel. “Perhaps we’ll meet in the Park before that, though.”
“I hope so,” said Alex.
They met in the Park and elsewhere, and Noel, all through the ensuing weeks before Christmas, called often at the house in Clevedon Square.
Lady Isabel twice asked him to dinner, but although he was once placed next her, on neither occasion, to Alex’ astonished resentment was he assigned to her as a partner.
Alex, for the first time conscious of being sought after, and receiving with avidity the fragments that fell to her share, forced herself to believe that they would eventually constitute that impossible whole of which she had dreamed wildly and extravagantly all her life.
Into the eager assents which she gave to all Noel’s many theories, she read a similarity of outlook, into her almost trembling readiness to fall in with his every suggestion, a community of tastes, and into his interminable expositions of his own views an appeal to her deeper sympathies that surely denoted the consciousness of affinity between them.
She was happy, although principally in a nervous anticipation of happiness to come. She was able, when alone, to imagine that from absolutely impersonal good comradeship, Noel would suddenly plunge into the impassioned declarations of her own fancy, but when she was actually with him, his cool, pleasant, boyish voice dispelled the folly, and her fundamental shyness, that never deserted her save in the realm of her own thoughts, was relieved, with an intense and involuntary relief, that it should be so.
She saw Noel’s father and mother again, and was greeted by the latter with a bright and conditional affectionateness that inspected even while it acclaimed.
It was after this that the trend of Noel’s thoughts appeared suddenly to change, and he spoke to
Alex of the place in Devonshire.
“One’s first duty is to the place, of course,” he said reflectively, “and I’m not at all sure that I oughtn’t to look into the management of an estate, and all that sort of thing, very thoroughly. Some day — a long, long time hence, of course — I shall have to run our own place, and I’m rather keen about the duties of a landlord, and improving the condition of the people. I used to be a Socialist, as you know, but I must say one’s ideas alter a bit as one goes on through life, and I’ve had some talks with the pater lately.”
He broke off, and looked rather oddly at Alex for a moment.
“They want me to think of settling down, I believe,” he said, almost shyly.
Alex spent that night in feverishly placing possible and impossible interpretations on the words, and on the look he had given her.
The sense of an approaching crisis terrified her so much that she felt she would have given worlds to avoid it.
The following evening it came.
Most conventionally, she met Noel Cardew at an evening reception, and he conducted her rather solemnly to a small conservatory where two chairs were placed, conspicuously enough, beneath a solitary palm.
An orchestra was just audible above the hum and buzz of conversation.
“It’s luck getting in here,” said Noel. “I wanted to see you very particularly tonight. I must say I never thought I should find myself particularly wanting to see any girl — in fact, I’d practically made up my mind never to have anything to do with women — but I see now that two people who had very much the same sort of ideas about life in general could do a tremendous lot for a place, and for the country generally; don’t you agree? — and, of course—” He became hopelessly incoherent, “... knowing one another’s other’s people it all makes such a difference ... I could never understand fellows running after Gaiety girls and marrying them, myself!! After all, one’s duty to the estate is ... and then, later on, perhaps, if one thought of Parliament—”
Alex felt that the pounding of her heart was making her physically faint, and she raised her head desperately, in the hope of stopping him. Noel met her eyes courageously.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 102