She wondered if she should go up herself.
“I do hope I haven’t kept you waiting,” said the voice of Mr. Roland Valentine, suave and yet indescribably casual. “I’m awfully sorry.”
He came downstairs two steps at a time.
“You mustn’t miss your train,” said Lydia coldly.
She walked downstairs, followed by the young man.
“Be quick, Jennie.”
Jennie hung over the banisters.
“I don’t think I’m coming, mama.”
Her voice sounded rather uncertain, and Lydia was for a moment entirely nonplussed.
Was it a childish display of pique provoked by Lydia’s intention of accompanying the expedition? Or had Mr. Valentine made some ill-bred demonstrations of admiration that had offended and perhaps frightened Jennie? Lydia felt a certain relief as the idea crossed her mind. In any event, the point could not be debated now.
“My daughter has a good many little jobs in the garden and the village that take up her time,” she said in smiling but purposely formal apology for Jennie’s capriciousness.
“It’s very good of you to drive me yourself, Mrs.
Damerel,” said Valentine, and they got into the jingle and Lydia took up the reins.
XXV
LYDIA was not destined ever to forget that expedition to Ashlew Station in the jingle, nor the sense of shock with which she heard Mr. Roland Valentine’s first level pronouncement, delivered before they were out of the short, steep approach that led into the lane outside: “I suppose you’ve realized, Mrs. Damerel, that I was clean bowled over at very first sight.”
So much astonished was Lydia at the rapidity with which had come a crisis that she had as yet barely foreshadowed even to herself that she could only gaze at the young man beside her in silent dismay.
He seemed heated, but not at all discomposed.
“Do you mean — Jennie?” said Lydia at last.
“I do. From the very first minute I saw her,” repeated Mr. Valentine emphatically, “I knew that there was the only girl I should ever marry. The only question was whether she’d see it too.”
“That is very far from being the only question” Lydia began severely, but the young man went on unheeding: “However, it’s all right, thank God. You may say that with the country on the eve of the most appalling war that this world has ever seen, it’s no moment to think of such things. But, on the other hand, it’s every man’s instinct to get what he can, while he can — and the opportunities of the younger generation will be curtailed a bit from now on, I fancy. It’s just a case of cramming into a few weeks — or days maybe — what you older folk have had all your lifetime to enjoy.”
Lydia, beyond a sense of indignation at the youth’s assumption of his ability to enlighten her knowledge as though she were already outside the full current of life, hardly heard his earnestly spoken speech. She was aware of only one preoccupation.
“You haven’t said anything to my daughter yet, surely?”
“Why, yes, Mrs. Damerel. That’s the very thing I came down to do, though I don’t say I should have had the nerve if it hadn’t been for this war-news. But it’s every man’s duty now, in my opinion, to fix himself up, and the duty of every healthy young woman to help carry on the race. I didn’t put it that way to your daughter,” Mr. Valentine admitted, “but I guess there wasn’t any need for arguments. She and I understand one another, Mrs. Damerel.”
“After meeting three times — or is it twice?” said Lydia ironically. “I assure you, Mr. Valentine, that things are not done like that in this country, whatever they may be in Canada. I don’t at all understand your having spoken to Jennie, who is a very young and inexperienced girl, without first obtaining my leave to do so; but in any case, you must see that I can’t discuss the matter with you until I’ve spoken to her.”
“She thought you might say something like that,” observed Valentine thoughtfully.
“What do you mean? Why didn’t she speak to me herself, if she had anything to tell me?” Mr. Valentine looked straight in front of him.
“You see, you’ve made Jennie a good deal afraid of you, Mrs. Damerel.”
The pang of grief and mortification and anger that shook Lydia from, head to foot kept her silent from its very intensity. Her shaking hands gripped one another.
“I saw that, of course, the very first evening I met you together at Quintmere,” went on the calmly judicial young voice. “And I’ve had some talk with Jennie since, you know.”
“I can’t discuss with you either Jennie or my relations with Jennie, Mr. Valentine. You seem to forget that you are practically a stranger to us both.”
The young man turned and looked at her with something that was almost compassion.
“I suppose it must seem that way to you. But I’d like you to realize,” he said gently, “that Jennie and I really do mean to get married. Now, don’t say anything for a minute or two. Just let me put a few facts before you. I know I must seem almost like an adventurer to you folks down here, tearing about the country on a crazy flying-machine, and talking with what you probably take for an accent. But that isn’t so.
You ask young Billy Damerel, who brought me down here, anyway. He’ll put you on to the track of quite a lot of Oxford people who can tell you about me, and I’ve a respectable old aunt up there, too, a sister of my dead father’s. She’s all right — born in England, married an Englishman, never left England in her life.
Now I’m quite aware that you’ll want to ask a lot of questions about me, and I’m willing to answer you, or anyone you may appoint to ask them for you. But time is short, Mrs. Damerel, and may get much shorter.
I don’t know what they’ll do with me up there” — he jerked his thumb in a direction that vaguely indicated London and the War Office— “but I don’t suppose, anyway, it’ll be so very long before I’m over at the front.
If England won’t send me, then France will. And I want to get this business fixed up right away if it can be done.”
“But it can’t be done, Mr. Valentine.”
Lydia rallied the courage that, after all, she had never lacked in all her life. “Even if I, who am Jennie’s sole guardian, were to consent to a provisional engagement between you — which would depend entirely on the result of those inquiries which, as you rightly say, must be made — even then I should be doing quite wrong in allowing my child to marry yet. You must remember that I know Jennie through and through. She is quite undeveloped in every way, and even supposing that her first love-affair has taken her fancy, that would be no reason for letting her rush into matrimony before she’s ready for it.”
“Marriage is nature,” said Mr. Valentine bluntly.
“Why shouldn’t a healthy girl of eighteen be ready for it when, she cares for the man who offers it to her? I shouldn’t take Jennie to poverty, Mrs. Damerel. Of course, I quite understand that any assertion I make must be verified — and you’ll find that’s easily done — but I may tell you, right here and now, that I have a small private income, about four hundred a year, left to me by the old man. My mother is not dependent on me, and my sister — there are only the two of us — is married and provided for. And besides that, I have the offer of a job as Chief Assistant Engineer in the experimental department of Messrs. Gledhill and Swan, the big engineering firm in Toronto. This war may scotch that for the time being, but I don’t think I should have any difficulty in finding something else of the same sort after the war. And if Jennie didn’t like the idea of Canada, I’d be willing to stick to England; but I think personally she’d love the life out there, and just do fine in it.”
“But I thought you wanted to go to Belgium with your aeroplane,” Lydia said quickly, as though convicting the young man of idle boasting.
“Why, yes, that’s quite right. So I do, and so I mean to. So you see, if Jennie marries me, and then I get a German bullet through’ me, she’ll be left provided for under my will, and probably receive a pension as
well, as my widow.”
Thus cheerfully did Mr. Valentine dispose of Lydia’s challenge.
They drew up before the small station and Lydia fastened the pony’s head to the painted white rails after the country fashion.
“I hope the train hasn’t gone.”
But the train was not even signalled.
“She’ll be forty minutes late,” said the porter with gloomy importance. “’Tis the same all along the line, Mis’ Damerel. Do ‘ee sit down in the shade and have patience, now. ’Tis this war, as they say we’m coming to.”
Lydia and Mr. Valentine looked at one another.
“That philosopher is just about right, I guess,” said the young man. “If you needn’t hurry back, we can sit here and finish our talk.”
Lydia assented.
She felt that in the first moment of shock she had probably failed to express herself with sufficient decision. Mr. Roland Valentine should return to London under no misapprehension.
“There really is very little more to be said, Mr.
Valentine. Apart from everything else, this is not a time for insisting upon one’s small personal affairs. If England really is going into this war, no one knows what may happen. Values will be all turned upside down, and nothing will ever be the same again. Why, the country might even be invaded, as poor Belgium has been. It doesn’t bear thinking of... you can sec for yourself that this is no time to take risks.”
“Now, why do you say that? I’m quite sure that you took risks in your time. Why do you grudge Jennie the experience of taking hers?” The question made Lydia very angry.
“Do you realize that you’re adopting a most offensive attitude in speaking as though I was Jennie’s enemy — as though I were anything but the best friend she has in the world? You said just now that I’d made her afraid of me. If Jennie has said or implied that to you, then it shows most heartless ingratitude. But I can’t believe it. Bitter though it is to me to own it, she and I have not always lived at peace together — but Jennie has never heard a harsh or unkind word from me since she was born.”
Lydia could hardly go on speaking for a moment.
Her passionate self-justification, made almost as much to herself as to Roland Valentine, was vibrant with intense sincerity.
It seemed to her that she was at last putting into words her own inner knowledge, the knowledge that loyalty to her disloyal child and the old habit of reticence had never before allowed her to formulate.
“Jennie was nine years old when her father died.
I was a young woman, but I lived quietly in the country for the child’s sake. I devoted myself to her. You understand that I’m not saying this as though I were boasting of it, but your attitude forces me to put the facts before you in so many words. I watched over her health, I worked for her, mended for her, did everything for her. And now I’m told, by a stranger who hasn’t known my child a fortnight, that I’ve made her afraid of me!”
“Well, that is so.” Mr. Valentine’s tone was impersonal, although he poked with his stick at the soft red gravel beneath the bench on which they sat, as though he wished to look at that, and not at Lydia.
“Jennie is very young, and perhaps undeveloped, as you say, Mrs. Damerel, but you don’t need me to tell you that she has a very strong individuality. And that’s just what the trouble is. She’s afraid all the time, whether she knows it or not, of your swamping that. Jennie very much resents your working for her, and mending for her, and doing everything for her, the way you say you always have. I guess she feels it just about time she shouldered some responsibility for herself.”
“But she’s not fitted for it! You don’t understand.
Jennie can’t do the simplest practical thing for herself — she couldn’t undertake any real responsibility yet.”
“Why, she knows that right enough. And, you see, it makes her feel that the sooner she buys her experience and learns, the better. It’s just your care and your protection that’s she afraid of, Mrs. Damerel. And because she’s just a child, and undisciplined, her instincts for asserting her own individuality take an ungracious form, that’s all. She hasn’t analyzed her own feelings the way I’m analyzing them now, because she isn’t the introspective kind. She just feels she’s up against it, and doesn’t quite know why.”
“No, she doesn’t,” said Lydia bitterly, “and I may add that, in my opinion, neither do you. Do you quite realize, I wonder, Mr. Valentine, the absurdity of this — that you — a very young man, and practically a stranger to both of us — should be endeavouring to explain to me my own child, whom I’ve been studying ever since she was born?”
“As to that,” said Mr. Valentine, still without heat, “your studying hasn’t led to any very great success, if I may point that out. It looks as though the result had only been to make you and Jennie fret one another considerably, and make Jennie think herself a wicked, ungrateful girl, when she’s only a perfectly natural one put into a false position. Now in Canada, a girl like Jennie would have been independent, if she’d wanted to be, some time ago. She’d have gone to school, for one thing, and she’d have been helping in the household work for another, and taking her due share of responsibility all the time. That’s the privilege as well as the duty, after all, of every human being, isn’t it? And she might have taken up school-teaching, or worked as a stenographer or a secretary in some business in the city, and just been home for her vacations.
I guess if that had been so over here, she’d have been glad enough to be waited on and made a fuss of when she did come back to you in holiday time. But as things are, it just seems as though you were refusing her the natural right of the individual — the right of experience.”
“And these are the thanks that I get for sacrificing myself for my child!” cried Lydia, almost involuntarily letting the words break from the sharpest pain that she had ever known.
“Well, it’s only another kind of sacrifice that’s wanted, that’s all,” said Mr. Valentine calmly. “If you want to sacrifice yourself some more for Jennie, Mrs. Damerel, it seems to me the way you can do it best is just the way that’ll hurt you most. Let her take her own risks and shoulder her own responsibilities.”
“It’s the lot of parents, I suppose, to watch the children, for whom they would lay down their lives, spurn the help and tenderness that sheltered their childhood, and rush ignorantly and foolhardily to try their own wings.”
“See here,” said the young man earnestly. “Jennie isn’t going to be alone. Jennie’s going to marry me. I don’t say much about that side of the question, because I feel I’ve kind of butted in too much already, and you’d most likely rather not hear any more about me for quite a while — or, at any rate, until you’ve heard what Jennie has to say. But I’ll make her a good husband, Mrs. Damerel, as God Almighty hears me say it now.”
He bared his head for a moment with a curious, reverent simplicity.
“I’m not the romantic sort, and Jennie isn’t either.
But I kind of knew right away that she and I are just meant for one another, and I’ve never felt that way before, although in Canada we’ve a great deal more freedom than boys and girls over here, and get to know one another pretty intimately.”
Lydia’s strained mind turned instinctively to what already seemed to have become a side issue.
“Do you mean that you have already asked Jennie to marry you?”
“That’s what I came down to do. I’d have asked her that evening at Quintmere — that wonderful evening when she came to the field to look at my old machine under its tarpaulin — only I was kind of afraid it might scare her if I was too quick. Somehow,” said Valentine, with a slightly apologetic laugh, “that old house, and the old lady there, and all the old servants that seemed to have grown up there, made me feel like a sort of mushroom sprung up in the night. But Jennie didn’t seem part of it altogether — not the way that young Billy does, who’ll own it all some day, I suppose. Jennie’s outgrown it all, Mrs. Damerel. She�
�s just crying out for the new order of things — and I’m going to see that she gets it.”
As though to enhance the effect of ultimatum with which the words were spoken, a sudden stir traversed the sleepy little station. The porter came up again to Lydia..
“Signalled now, Mis’ Damerel. She’ll be in directly.”
Lydia and Roland Valentine both rose.
She looked at him with challenging eyes.
“I shall write to you, Mr. Valentine, when I have heard what Jennie has to say. And don’t consider, please, that I can give you any encouragement whatever.
The very way in which you have precipitated things shows a want of real respect for my daughter.”
“I guess the war isn’t going to wait for any of us,” said Mr. Valentine. “This card has my address — the club will always find me. But it’s only fair to tell you that Jennie has it too, and I’m expecting her to make use of it. I’m sorry things have happened this way, Mrs. Damerel, and I wish I had more time to try and put my view-point before you. But if I can fix things up in London the way I expect, and get leave to come down and fetch my machine away from Plymouth, you’ll be seeing me around again very shortly. Meanwhile, good-bye and thank you.”
The train came in to the station, and Mr. Valentine, unhampered by luggage, gravely raised his cap to Lydia in salutation and got inside.
Neither made any movement towards shaking hands.
Lydia turned away with the despairing sense that she did not know what to do next.
She felt unable to face Jennie — Jennie, who had given her no confidences, who had told the stranger with whom she thought herself to be in love, that she was “afraid” of her mother! Lydia thought that later on perhaps she might be able to talk to Jennie. For the moment she wanted only to assuage her own desperate pain.
As she turned out of the station, she came face to face with Nathalie’s husband, Colonel Kennedy. For an instant her first fear was lest he should notice the misery in her face and ask her what had happened.
But the Colonel only said abruptly: “London papers not come. I suppose you came on the same errand, Mrs. Damerel? But what’s the use — we shall be kept without news till to-morrow now, I suppose. My boy has promised to telegraph from Greenwich. You know his brother has had to rejoin his ship?”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 178