They remained there until half-past nine, when the Canon read prayers to the assembled household.
“We break up early,” he said afterwards to Quentillian. “Lucilla and I have work to do — she is always my right hand. Valeria and Flora, I believe, discuss mysterious questions of chiffons upstairs. Don’t prolong the conference too late, though, my dears. I heard voices last night as I came upstairs, which was not as it should be — not as it should be. Owen, dear boy, Adrian will look after you. Good-night to you all.”
The Canon kissed Val and Flora each on the forehead and laid his hand for an instant upon either head with a murmur that was evidently an habitual nightly blessing.
Then he went into his study with Lucilla, and Adrian and Quentillian sat in the smoking-room making desultory conversation that bore not the slightest resemblance to the wise, deep talks of the Canon’s forecastings.
The forecastings of the Canon, in fact, like those of many other dominating personalities, were scrupulously carried out in his presence, and thankfully allowed to lapse in his absence.
As of old, it was only Lucilla who was completely at ease in her father’s company, and Quentillian presently came to the conclusion that her silence, her unemotional acquiescences, denoted a mind that was merely a reflection of his.
Flora, remote, gentle, preoccupied with her music, gave him the odd illusion of being slightly withdrawn from them all.
Only in Valeria were to be discerned suppressed, but unmistakable, flashes of rebellion, and with Valeria, Quentillian, as usual scrutinizing his own impressions under a microscope, presently suspected himself of falling quietly in love.
In common with most young men of his day, Quentillian considered himself to have outlived passion. In effect, the absorbing episode of his young manhood was in fact over, and Val, ingenuous and beautiful, was provocative of the normal reaction.
One night she joined Adrian and Quentillian in the smoking-room, after the Canon’s usual disappearance into his study.
With a look half-frightened and half-mischievous, she lit a cigarette.
Adrian laughed.
“Don’t look so guilty, Val. It isn’t a crime, and besides, no one will know.”
Val coloured in a childish way, and said to Quentillian:
“My father knows that I smoke — at least, I think he knows, in a sort of way. He doesn’t like it, and that’s why I don’t do it in front of him,” she concluded naively.
“You’re wrong, Val,” said Adrian. “You and Flossie ought to assert yourselves more. It would make it much easier for me, if you did. Father’s ideas about women are so old-fashioned, one can’t introduce him to any of one’s friends.”
Quentillian exchanged a glance with Valeria. It required small acumen to translate the plurality of Adrian’s “friends” into the singular, and the feminine singular at that.
“Father is very broad-minded,” said Valeria conscientiously. “He never says that smoking is wrong; only that it’s unfeminine.”
“It isn’t anything of the sort,” Adrian declared with the most astonishing violence. “Some people — girls — require it for their nerves. It soothes them. It doesn’t make them in the least unfeminine. I met a girl the other day — you’d have liked her awfully, Val — and she simply smoked perfectly naturally, the whole time, just like a man.”
“Who was she?” inquired Val smoothly.
“Let me see — what was her name now?”
This time Quentillian avoided Valeria’s eyes, positively abashed by the extreme hollowness of Adrian’s pretence at forgetfulness.
“Oh, yes — Olga Duffle — Miss Olga Duffle. She is staying with the Admastons — the people I was with the day you arrived, Owen. Don’t you think you girls might ask them all over to tennis, one of these days?”
“I suppose so — yes, of course we will. Would Father like Miss Duffle? He doesn’t much care for the Admastons, does he?”
“Absolute prejudice, my dear girl. You’ve got into a rut, all you people down here — that’s what you’ve done. You’d like Olga most awfully — everybody does. She’s the most popular girl in London, and not a bit spoilt, although she’s an only child and her people adore her. Mrs. Duffle told me herself that Olga was just like a ray of sunshine at home.”
“What an original woman Mrs. Duffle must be,” murmured Val.
“I always think there must be something remarkable about any girl, if her own nearest relations speak well, of her,” Quentillian said in detached accents.
Adrian looked suspiciously at his audience.
“You’d like Olga awfully,” he repeated rather pathetically. “And I can tell you this, Val, she’d give you and Flossie no end of hints about clothes and things. She dresses better than any girl I’ve ever seen.”
Valeria was roused to no display of enthusiasm by this culminating claim of Miss Duffle on her regard.
“What sort of age is she?”
“She looks about eighteen, but I believe she’s twenty-four and a bit,” said Adrian with some precision. “She plays tennis, too, rippingly. You’d better ask the Admastons to bring her over, I can tell you. It isn’t everyone who gets the chance of playing with a girl like that.”
“We might have a tennis party next week,” Val considered. “I shall only ask one Admaston girl; we’ve too many girls as it is. One Admaston, and this Olga person, and Lucilla and I — Flossie won’t play if anybody very good is there. That’s four, and then you and Owen and Mr. Clover — and we could have Captain Cuscaden. I’ll talk to Lucilla about it, if you like, Adrian.”
“Oh, I don’t care about it. It’s for your own sake, really, that I suggested it,” Adrian explained.
His forefinger carefully traced out the pattern stamped upon the leather arm of his chair, and he contemplated it earnestly with his head upon one side, even murmuring a sub-audible— “One — two — three — and a corner” — before clearing his throat.
“H’m. No, my dear Val, don’t run away with the idea that I’m wildly keen on this tennis stunt for my own amusement. In fact, I may say I’ve been a bit off tennis lately, simply from seeing how extraordinarily good some amateurs can be. It discourages one, in a way. But I thought you girls might like to know Olga, I must say. She’d be an awfully nice friend for you to have, you know.”
There was a pleading note discernible in the tone of Adrian’s philanthropic suggestions that might have been partly accountable for the tolerance with which his sister received them.
Nevertheless, she said to Quentillian next day, with a certain hint of apology:
“We’ve spoilt Adrian, I’m afraid. You remember what a dear little boy he was?”
Quentillian remembered better still what a tiresome little boy Adrian had been, but this recollection, as so many others connected with the house of Morchard, he did not insist upon.
“I suppose he must have his Olga if he wants to, but I hope she’s a nice girl. You know how very particular Father is, and I think he’s especially sensitive where Adrian is concerned.”
“It struck me that perhaps he was almost inclined to take Adrian’s affairs too seriously,” Quentillian suggested, with great moderation. “Adrian, after all, is very young, isn’t he, both in years and in character, in spite of his soldiering?”
“I suppose he is. He’s very susceptible, too. I sometimes think that Father doesn’t altogether make allowance for that.”
Even the very negative criticism implied was so contrary to the spirit of the house that it gave Quentillian the agreeable illusion of partnering Valeria in a mild domestic conspiracy, and pleased him inordinately.
The sense of conspiracy was deepened on the day of the tennis party, when a Miss Admaston, gawky and unimpressive, duly escorted Miss Olga Duffle to St. Gwenllian.
She was less pretty, and possessed of more personality, than Quentillian had expected. Very small and slight, her face was of the squirrel type, her eyes very large and dark, her black crêpe hair brushed chil
dishly away from her little round forehead, her nose unmistakably retroussé. Two very white front teeth were just visible, resting upon an habitually indrawn underlip.
Quentillian, quite irrationally, immediately felt certain that she spoke with a lisp. She did not, but she certainly pronounced the name of Captain George Cuscaden, with whom she appeared to be upon intimate terms, as though it were spelt “Dzorze.”
She also called Adrian by his first name, but gave no other startling signs of modernity. Indeed, a very pretty, and most unmodern, deference marked her manner towards Canon Morchard.
“Father likes her,” Valeria murmured to Quentillian, who was more concerned with her charming air of imparting to him a secret than with Miss Duffle’s conquest of the Canon.
It was only at tea-time that the Canon joined the tennis party. Immediately afterwards he made courteous apologies and returned to the house.
It was undeniable that the absence of the Canon caused the conversation, which had circled uneasily round cathedral subjects, to lapse into triviality. The super-critical Quentillian could not decide which form of social intercourse he found least to his taste. “Jam?” said Adrian.
The Canon had said, a few minutes earlier:
“You must try some of our strawberry jam, Miss Duffle. My daughter Flora is responsible for it, I believe. Lucilla there is our housekeeper, but I am given to understand that her younger sisters are allowed to try experiments. I will not quote: Fiat experimentum”
“Jam?” repeated Adrian.
“Oh, there’s a wasp in the jam! Oh, save me!” Olga laughed as she uttered little cries of alarm, and her laughter really suggested the adjective “merry.”
“Save the women and children!”
There was much ineffectual slapping of teaspoons against the air, the tablecloth, the jam pot, and many exclamations.
“Yonder he goes! Passed to you for necessary action, Miss Admaston!”
“Be a man, Cuscaden; he’s right under your nose.”
“Dzorze, do be careful — you’ll get stung!” Olga cried across the table.
Captain Cuscaden neatly captured the wasp beneath an empty plate.
“That’s got him. He’ll never lift up his head again.”
“Oh, then may I have my jam?”
Olga, with her head on one side, might have been imitating a little girl, but Quentillian could not decide whether or no the imitation was an unconscious one.
“The wasp has eaten all the jam,” Adrian rejoined in the same tone as Olga’s.
“Oh! he hasn’t eaten all of it.”
“No, he hasn’t eaten it all.”
“Oh! the wasp didn’t eat all the jam, did he?”
“Not quite all.”
“There are still a few spoonfuls left that the wasp didn’t eat, Miss Duffle.”
Neither Olga, Adrian, Captain Cuscaden, Flora nor Miss Admaston appeared to regard themselves as being amongst the extremest examples of brainless fatuity produced by a fatuous century. Yet thus it was that Owen Quentillian was regarding them, whilst at the same time another section of his brain passionlessly registered the conviction that his nerves were still on edge and his tendency to irrational irritability passing almost beyond his own control.
After tea he remained idly in a long chair beside Valeria, while they watched Olga’s little nimble figure on the tennis court, where Adrian was her partner. Lucilla played against them with George Cuscaden, and Olga several times called out gaily: “Dzorze, I hate you!”
When Lucilla sent an unplayable stroke across the net, she only cried: “Oh, well played!”
“I don’t like her voice, do you?” Val murmured confidentially.
“Hideous,” said Quentillian, briefly and candidly.
“I wonder if Adrian thinks he’s in earnest. Of course, I don’t suppose she’d look at him. And of course he couldn’t think of marrying anybody for ages. He’s too young, and he’d have to get a job.”
“He’ll have to do that anyway, won’t he? He says he doesn’t dislike the idea of business, and I could give him an introduction to a man who might be useful.”
“It’s very kind of you. I know Father wants to get him settled. Dear Father, he was so disappointed that Adrian isn’t going into the Church after all, and he’s taken it so beautifully.”
Quentillian regarded the Canon’s disappointment with so much more astonishment than sympathy that he wished only to avoid a discussion on the beauty of its manifestation.
“Curiously enough, I have a living in my gift, belonging to my very small property at Stear. The old man there wishes to retire, and I want to consult your father as to a new appointment. No one could be less fitted than myself,” said Quentillian with an emphasis not altogether devoid of satisfaction, “to nominate a candidate for that sort of thing.”
Val looked at him with all her peculiar directness of gaze.
“Sometimes you talk as though you rather despised the Church,” she said bluntly.
There was a pause.
“If I have given you such an impression, I must apologize. It was most discourteous of me,” said Quentillian stiffly.
He was fully prepared to acknowledge and to defend his own purely rationalistic views, but the implication of a lack of taste in his behaviour as guest in an orthodox household offended him.
“I didn’t mean that,” said Val, calmly and gravely. “I know that a great many very clever people are not believers in the sense that my father is one, for instance; but they do respect the Christian ideal, all the same. I only wondered whether you were one of them. Do you mind my talking like this?”
The relentless voice of Quentillian’s inner monitor assured him that he was, on the contrary, ready to welcome any intimate discussion of himself and his views, on whatever subject.
Val looked at him expectantly.
“Where I differ from, for instance, your father, is in separating Christian morality from what might be called the miraculous element of Christianity. Frankly, I can’t accept the latter.”
“You don’t believe in the divinity of Christ?”
Her voice was a very much shocked one, and Quentillian replied only by a gesture. Val kept silence, and presently he glanced at her face and saw that tears stood in her eyes.
He was half touched and half impatient.
“Surely that point of view isn’t altogether a new one to you. You must know that the trend of modern thought is all very much in that direction.”
“I suppose I knew it, certainly. But it has never come very near me before. Father has sheltered us from everything, in the most beautiful way.”
She spoke very simply and sincerely.
The time-honoured cliché as to never wishing to deprive anyone of his or her faith — Valeria least of all — hung unspoken on his lips.
If the spiritual intimacy of which Owen Quentillian was beginning to dream should come to pass between them, he was quite clearly and definitely convinced that Valeria’s early beliefs must go.
“Have you really never felt any doubt at all — any inclination to question?”
Valeria looked troubled.
“I suppose I’ve never thought it out very clearly. One doesn’t, you know, brought up as we were.”
Her eyes were full of thought.
“Tell me,” said Quentillian gently, after a silence. “I was hoping,” said Val, with innocent eyes turned full upon him, “that Father would never know about you. It would make him so unhappy.”
IV
Val, in accordance with time-honoured tradition, nightly brushed out her long brown hair in her sister Flora’s bedroom.
They talked desultorily.
“Choir practice tomorrow. I wish we could have Plain Chant instead of those things....”
“Father doesn’t care for Plain Chant.”
“I know.”
“Give me a piece of ribbon, Flossie. I’ve lost all mine.”
“Val — here, will blue do? — Val, do you think O
wen is falling in love with you?”
“I don’t know. Well, to be honest, I think he is.”
“So do I.”
“That’s Lucilla going up to bed. How early they are tonight.”
They heard the Canon’s voice upon the stairs outside.
“Good-night to you, my dear daughter. May God have you in His keeping!”
Then came a gentle tap upon the bedroom door.
“Not too prolonged a conference, little girls! I have sent Lucilla to seek her bed.”
“Good-night, father,” they chorused.
“Good-night to you, my dear children. Good-night, and may God bless you.”
“Father would be pleased.”
Flora reverted, unmistakably, to the topic of Owen Quentillian.
“I suppose so,” said Val doubtfully.
“But you know he would! He is delighted with Owen, and it would be so close to us — only an hour’s journey. I think it would be very nice, Val,” said Flora wistfully, “and it’s time one of us got married. Lucilla won’t, now, and nobody ever asks me, so it had better be you.”
They both laughed.
“Nobody has ever asked me, except that curate we had before Mr. Clover, and I always thought he was more or less weak-minded,” Valeria remarked candidly.
“They may not have asked you, but they’ve wanted to,” said Flora shrewdly. “Don’t answer if you’d rather not, but didn’t Captain Cuscaden ever ...?” Val crimsoned suddenly.
“No. That was all nonsense. I believe he’s in love with that Olga girl.”
“After you? Oh, Val!”
“I don’t suppose it was ever me at all,” said Val with averted head. “I can’t think why we’ve ever imagined such nonsense. Anyway, it’s all over now, and I — I think I rather hate him, now.”
“Oh!” Flora’s tone was both highly dissatisfied and rather incredulous.
“One can’t hate a person and — and like them, at one and the same time,” Valeria exclaimed, with all the vehemence of those who affirm that of which they are not convinced.
“I suppose not. See if you can untie me, Val — I’ve got into a knot.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 217