Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  Lydia refused to see that the last words always made Jennie scowl furiously.

  On Sunday they went to church at Ashlew, and to lunch at Quintmere afterwards, after a fashion that had grown to seem almost immemorial.

  Lydia never discussed Jennie with Joyce Damerel, whose trenchant judgments, always abruptly and unhesitatingly spoken, seldom coincided with her own.

  But she had decided to mention the affair of Mr.

  Roland Valentine to old Lady Lucy, whom she suspected of appraising the young airman at much the same valuation as she did herself.

  Lydia had no definite intention of breaking her old rule, and of talking about herself — but her mother-in-law would hardly fail to notice the unwonted expression of fatigue that worry had given to her face.

  The day was an unusually hot one, and the slight fatigue engendered by the walk across the field, and by a lengthy and rather tedious sermon, had not detracted, Lydia felt, from her already strained appearance.

  Outside the church Lady Lucy made her usual pause at the twin adjacent stones consecrated to the memory of William and of Clement Damerel, and the older monument to their father.

  Joyce never stood beside her there, but Lydia joined her mother-in-law for a few moments.

  Lady Lucy spent a briefer time than usual at the graves.

  She turned, unfurling her shabby black silk parasol, and Lydia moved away beside her.

  “Oh, my dear,” said Lady Lucy in distressed accents — and Lydia turned her encircled eyes full upon her— “have you heard what they seem to be saying in London? Billy is full of it. There is to be war between Germany and France, and they say that England can’t honourably keep out of it.”

  Lydia was confounded.

  All through luncheon Lady Lucy would talk of nothing else.

  Joyce Damerel was sturdily optimistic, and said that there would be no war. The Germans were too civilized. Billy predicted war in a week — a war that would be ended by the British Navy in three months.

  “And the aeroplanes!” cried Jennie. “Oh, Billy, it’ll be a chance for the aeroplanes at last.”

  “Of course,” said Billy loftily.

  He was very much excited, and was going up to London that night.

  They talked about the chances for and against a European war all the afternoon, and Lady Lucy sent Jennie to find maps, and then pored over them tremulously, appealing very often to her grandson.

  Billy, the only man present, was uplifted and instructive, and Lydia was rather surprised at the deference which his mother and grandmother accorded to what they apparently considered to be his superior knowledge.

  She said to Joyce quietly: “Why, Billy can’t even remember the Boer War.

  You and I can, of course; but these children, who are so excited — they don’t know what war means. We do.”

  Joyce looked at her strangely.

  “Don’t you understand, Lydia, that if there’s a war, it won’t be ours? — it’ll be the children’s. Our generation won’t count at all — it’s Billy and Jennie that’ll count now — the boys of Billy’s age.”

  “England won’t go to war,” said Lydia sharply.

  She intensely disliked to hear the anguished note that had suddenly come into Joyce Damerel’s voice, as she looked at her only son.

  If England went to war, Joyce would see Billy go away to fight.

  Lydia had only a girl — there would be no supreme sacrifice for her to make.

  Joyce had said that only the children would count now, but Lydia thought that the mothers and wives who gave of their nearest would be held to count too.

  Those who could not go themselves, and who had no one to send, would be the ones that would not count.

  The thought roused in Lydia a deep and impassioned resentment, that she did not attempt to analyze.

  She put the thought of war from her as far as possible, but Jennie would talk of nothing else, betraying a childish eagerness and excitement that almost made it seem as though she would be disappointed if nothing happened after all.

  “Couldn’t I go as a Red Cross nurse?” she asked babyishly, and Lydia patiently explained that entire lack of training would make such a thing impossible.

  In her heart she thought that, even if Jennie did attend the Red Cross lectures that Nathalie Kennedy was organising, she was much too young for her services to be accepted in any serious emergency.

  But she engaged that both Jennie and herself should attend the classes.

  On Tuesday Mr. Roland Valentine came.

  “No one will think of anything but this war now,” Lydia warned her daughter, not without a certain inward satisfaction in making the prediction. “Very likely Mr. Valentine won’t turn up — one can be surprised at nothing, and a young man of that sort might be very useful, with his aeroplane.”

  “Of course,” said Jennie, and her voice held no clue as to whether she were acquiescing in the former or the latter half of her mother’s dictum.

  Soon after twelve o’clock, however, Lydia made the unwelcome discovery that Jennie was gone out. Gone out, without any hint as to her intentions, and, as Lydia felt no doubt whatever, for the express purpose of meeting Mr. Valentine on his way to the house! Nothing was to be done, except to await luncheontime and to hope, in the interests of maidenly discipline, that Jennie would presently return crestfallen without the Canadian.

  Just before one o’clock, however, they came in together.

  At first Lydia’s discouraging prediction to her daughter seemed about to be fulfilled.

  They talked only about the war.

  Mr. Valentine was decided in his expressions. He believed in a short but terrible war — perhaps three months, perhaps longer. The war would be fought in the air. Not on land and not on sea, although there might be an immense naval battle, in which the German fleet, seeking to invade England, would certainly be crushed.

  But everything would really be settled in the air.

  He was on his way to London to offer his aeroplane and his own services to the War Office Authorities.

  He already held a pilot’s certificate — they would certainly send him to the Front, with other aeroplanes and other airmen, as soon as an Expeditionary Force was organized. That, said Mr. Valentine, might take a week, might take a fortnight — impossible to tell. Every hour must count, and no doubt the authorities would act as rapidly as possible.

  “Then you think war is certain?”

  “Absolutely certain,” Roland Valentine declared.

  “Oh,” said Jennie suddenly, “we can’t stay down here, where we hear nothing and know nothing. Mama, we must go to London.”

  “Can you speak French?” Mr. Valentine abruptly asked Jennie.

  “Yes, yes.”

  “They’ll want women in Belgium — nurses, you know.”

  “I’d go,” Jennie said, with shining eyes.

  “She has no training, and is too young. I don’t suppose they would accept her,” said Lydia calmly.

  “Dr. West said I was a born nurse!” Jennie cried.

  “Only the other day he said that. A born nurse!” And Mr. Roland Valentine — who could know nothing whatever about it — looked across the table, and said with emphasis and conviction: “I’ll bet you are!”

  “Will you have some cherry-tart, Mr. Valentine?” said Lydia prosaically. “And some of our Devonshire dish — junket?” She herself had never taken kindly to the Devonshire junkets, and, disliking stewed fruit, sat with an empty plate before her.

  “I’m not going to be alone, surely?” said the Canadian bluntly.

  “Oh, no! This is Jennie’s favourite pudding — that’s why I ordered it,” said Lydia, smiling.

  “I wish you wouldn’t!” burst childishly from Jennie, “It’s horrid to see you eating nothing, while I’m stuffing! Why didn’t you order something we both like?”

  “My dear child!” Lydia’s tone conveyed a half-humorous rebuke for Jennie’s exaggerated vehemence.

 
; “Well,” said the child pettishly, “I can’t bear people to sacrifice themselves for me. It makes one feel beastly. Doesn’t it, Mr. Valentine?” she applied to him boldly.

  “Why, yes — that is so,” agreed the youth heartily.

  “When my young sister first went out to dances I used to take her, my mother being a bit of an invalid. But the dear old lady would insist on sitting up for us, and heating milk on a spirit-lamp for Dorothy, and truck of that sort.”

  “Oh!” cried Jennie, glancing at her mother. Roland Valentine glanced at her too, with impudent laughter in his eyes, and yet a hint of apology in his voice.

  “Of course, you know, it was kind of rotten for Dorothy. It simply spoilt all her fun for the whole evening.”

  “But why?” Lydia said. “I should have thought she would have been grateful, I must say.”

  “But gratitude is such a beastly feeling!” cried young Valentine in candid dismay.

  Jennie burst out laughing, half nervously.

  “Oh, mama, isn’t that what I’m always saying? One would so much rather be a little bit uncomfortable, or tired, or hungry — even a lot uncomfortable — than feel that somebody else was just sitting there all the time, sacrificing themselves for one.”

  Lydia remained silent, almost surprised at the acuteness with which their youthful crudities could vex her.

  “I must say,” Jennie added to Valentine, as though she disliked the silence following on her outburst, “I do thoroughly sympathize with your sister. Did your mother always go on sitting up for her?”

  “Oh, by Jove, no!” said Valentine cheerfully. “My mother’s a dear, really, and we made her understand that really and truly that sort of thing is only a form of self-indulgence. Just keeping herself out of bed for nothing in the world except to make poor Dorothy feel herself the worst kind of selfish pig whenever she went out to a party and came in late. The old lady quite saw it after a bit, and just left the spirit-lamp and the milk and things in the hall, and toddled off to bed herself at ten o’clock or so.”

  Every word that the bold, self-assured young voice was uttering jarred upon Lydia, and his phraseology, no less than his sentiments, struck her as being in the worst possible taste.

  And oh! how bad for Jennie to hear! That was what really perturbed Lydia most.

  The spirit that Roland Valentine had epitomized in slangy, spontaneous speech, “gratitude is such a beastly feeling,” might have been latent since babyhood in the modern, essentially unsubtle, Jennie; but Lydia knew very well that the very circumstances of her upbringing had precluded the possibility of her child’s ever formulating definitely such dicta as those so unsparingly delivered by the young man who sat there calmly eating Lydia’s cherry pie and cream and junket.

  She decided that they had better not be left alone together after lunch.

  “What time would you like me to order the ponycart, Mr. Valentine? We can easily drive you to the station. I think my daughter told me that you wanted to catch the three-thirty from Ashlew?”

  “Thanks very much. I wish I could have stayed around a bit longer — there’s quite a good train at six — but everything is so dislocated one daren’t risk it, and I must get to London before to-night. Look here, I’ll send you a wire to say how things are up there.”

  “Oh, yes, do! Oh, thank you!” said Jennie ardently.

  Evidently gratitude was no longer an intolerable sensation when applied to a contemporary, reflected Lydia, not without humour.

  A rather strained quarter of an hour ensued in the shade of the small, pleasant garden.

  Conversation reverted to the war.

  “Has anything been heard of your young cousin, Billy Damerel?”

  “His mother may have had a letter this morning.”

  “I shall see him to-night, I expect. Only son, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” said Lydia briefly.

  “Of course, he’ll join the army at once,” said Jennie excitedly. “Would they send them out to Belgium immediately, do you suppose?”

  “Just as quick as they can get them across, I should imagine.”

  Silence fell again and Lydia felt both constraint and a certain hostility vibrating in the atmosphere. She had not any doubt now that Jennie, and Jennie’s barefaced admirer, resented her presence. But what in Heaven’s name could he want to say to the child — they had only met twice! Lydia did not waste wonder over Jennie’s only too evident predilection for common, good-looking Mr.

  Valentine.

  He was that romantic and mysterious being, a flyingman — he might be sent to his death within the next week — he gazed at Jennie with boldly-admiring blue eyes — and he was young.

  That, in Lydia’s opinion, was enough for any girl.

  She could remember that in her own girlhood the few attractions that she had felt had primarily been based upon grounds no more solid. Even her first inclination towards Clement Damerel had been merely an instinctive conviction that here was breeding superior to anything that she had as yet known, and a candid admiration for his good looks.

  In common with many women of her nationality, her class, and her passionless temperament, Lydia honestly believed that love should come after marriage if it were to be enduring.

  Quite lately, vague suspicions of other and more volcanic forces latent in Jennie had begun to render her uneasy.

  “Please, ma’am, Miss Quinch is here, and says you wanted to speak to her, ma’am.”

  “Oh!” Lydia was momentarily startled. She had quite forgotten her summons to the little village dressmaker.

  “I must see her a minute — I’ll come, Susan.”

  Roland Valentine and Jennie had both risen almost before Lydia had stirred from her chair. Jennie was looking down at the ground, but Valentine’s face showed an almost blatant triumph, and there was no longer constraint in the air.

  “I shan’t be a moment,” Lydia repeated, and was unable to resist adding: “It’s about your new frock, Jennie. You said you wanted Miss Quinch to make it, and I’ve got the stuff you liked. Do you want to see it?”

  “No, thank you, mama — I saw the pattern, I — I’d rather you arranged it all with Miss Quinch.”

  Lydia’s smile was finely ironical as she turned into the house.

  Miss Quinch was slow and also talkative, and it took time to dispose of her.

  When Lydia came back to the lawn at last she was vexed, but scarcely surprised, to find the encampment of deck-chairs deserted. Exactly what she should have expected — not only from young Valentine’s off-hand lack of manners, but from Jennie’s schoolgirl love of an escapade.

  Lydia looked at her watch.

  In less than half an hour’s time the pony-cart — in reality a hired jingle from the village that always served them when required — would arrive in order to convey Mr. Valentine to the station.

  Not very much could be said or done inside half an hour by two young people who knew one another so slightly, surely, Lydia endeavoured to assure herself, without much conviction. However, it would be altogether too undignified to go in search of them, and might encourage Jennie’s foolish and youthful tendency to look upon her mother, in reality her best friend, as an unreasonable tyrant, to be outwitted whenever possible.

  Heaven knew, Lydia reflected sadly, she had sympathy enough, and to spare, for Jennie’s youth. Had she not striven to shelter and protect and save Jennie as she herself during her girlhood had never been sheltered and protected and saved? Nor would she refuse to let the child try her own wings some day — though Lydia was conscious that therein lay the effort, as the thought brought its accustomed pang.

  But when Jennie should love and marry, her choice must fall upon such a man as her father had been, such a man as the Damerels had mated with from time immemorial.

  Lydia’s inward insistence on the point dated from Jennie’s birth, and before, and was the stronger in its intensity from her own never-spoken but never-forgotten realization of the strange and intangible g
ulf that had been crossed when Clement Damerel had married Lydia Raymond.

  It was a pity that Jennie and Billy Damerel were first cousins.

  A clock struck in the little drawing-room, the chimes audible through the open window, and Lydia looked again at her watch.

  In ten minutes the jingle would come.

  Was there, or was there not, a faint, occasional murmur of voices somewhere within the house? It might be Susan and Miss Quinch in the tiny sewing-room that was only an offshoot of the kitchen — or it might be another conversation proceeding from the old school-room upstairs.

  But what in the world could they be doing there? Lydia would not look up at the window, knowing, moreover, that a curtain of ivy and climbing roses would probably make it impossible for her to see inside the room even if she did so.

  But in another few minutes she went into the house and upstairs to her own room, to put on her hat and gloves preparatory for driving.

  If Jennie should resent the enforced chaperonage, as she certainly would, Lydia sincerely regretted it — but there must be no more tête-à-têtes with third-rate young men from Canada. Lydia suspected that there had been too many such already. From her room she heard the jingle’s arrival at the front door.

  “Jennie!” Lydia stood on the stairs, her shady mushroom hat already on her head, drawing on a pair of brown gauntlet gloves.

  “Jennie!” she called in reasonable and moderate summons.

  Susan appeared in the hall below.

  “The pony is at the door, ma’am.”

  “Thank you, Susan. Do you know where Miss Jennie is?” The door of the old school-room, one flight of stairs higher than that upon which Lydia stood, was wrenched open with an effect of violence.

  “I’m here, mama,” said Jennie. “Is it time to go?”

  “Quite time, if you don’t take more than a minute to put on your hat. Is Mr. Valentine there?” Jennie turned round to the school-room again. In the shaded gloom of the narrow staircase Lydia had been unable, peering upwards, to see her face distinctly.