Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  Quentillian was again and again made aware of this capacity in Val for the avoidance of any discussion between them on the subject of religion.

  It was as though the faint rebellion that he had discerned in her at her own way of life had been extinguished by the mere prospect of its coming to an end. Nor, when he finally forced an issue, did Val appear to possess his own capacities for impartial, essentially impersonal, discussion.

  “Can’t we leave it alone, Owen? You told me what your views were — and you know what mine are. We’ve been honest with one another — isn’t that all that matters?”

  “In a sense, of course it is. You don’t think that perhaps it’s a pity to know there’s one subject we must tacitly avoid — that we can’t discuss freely?”

  He spoke without emphasis of any kind.

  “It is a pity, of course,” said Val literally. “But how can we help it? I can hardly listen to you without disloyalty of the worst kind. If you look at it from my point of view for a moment, you do see that, don’t you, Owen?”

  “Yes, I suppose I do see that,” he said heavily.

  He felt strangely disappointed and disillusioned. “Do you wish me to say anything to your father about that?”

  Val blushed deeply, but spoke quite resolutely.

  “No, I don’t. I’ve thought it over, and I can’t see that it concerns anyone but you and me. Lucilla says so, too. I asked her what she thought. It’s not as though I were eighteen, and it’s not as though I didn’t trust you, absolutely, not to interfere with my beliefs, any more than I with your — unbeliefs.”

  Confronted with her grave trustfulness, no less than with the obvious justice of her words, Quentillian could only agree with her.

  His rather arrogant conviction of earlier days, that Val’s beliefs must go, gave place to an unescapable certainty that they would not even be modified. Rather would Valeria, enforced by tradition and by the inherited faith that was in her, expect with the course of years to influence her husband’s views.

  Owen felt strongly the hopelessness of such expectation, and still more strongly the inexpediency, not to say the impossibility, of urging that hopelessness upon Valeria.

  It was decided that the wedding should take place in January, and the engagement be made public just before Christmas.

  “You do not want to let the world in upon your joy too soon, young people,” the Canon told them with a grave smile.

  Val’s answering smile acquiesced in the assumption, as indeed the smiles and silences, no less than the spoken words, of his entire family were always apt to acquiesce in any assumption made by Canon Morchard, whether the facts warranted such acquiescence or not.

  The days slipped by, very much as they had slipped by before Quentillian and Valeria had become engaged. If Quentillian had expected a greater difference, a more profound element, he was destined to be disappointed.

  Val was charming and — he would not have to face loneliness at Stear,

  Indeed at one moment, it almost appeared as though Valeria would not be alone in accomplishing the destruction of the spirit of solitude at Stear.

  Adrian Morchard sought his prospective brother-in-law, and said, with singlarly ill-chosen colloquialism: “Tell me, old thing, have you had any talk with the governor about that living at Stear?”

  “Not yet. The present incumbent hasn’t even resigned.”

  “I suppose — ha-ha — you’ll laugh — in fact I shouldn’t be surprised if you thought it dashed funny — it makes me smile myself, in a way — you’ll roar when I tell you what I’m thinking of.”

  Quentillian felt as melancholy as do the majority of people thus apostrophised, and was aware that his melancholy was reflected on his face in a forbidding expression.

  Adrian had turned rather pale.

  “You know the old man’s always been desperately keen on my going into the Church? Well — I say, you can laugh as much as you want to, I shan’t be offended ‘ — I’m not at all sure I shan’t do it.”

  Quentillian felt no inclination whatever to indulge in the prescribed orgy of merriment.

  “You coming into the family like this, with a good living going begging, makes it a pretty obvious move in a way, doesn’t it — and then it’d please the old man frightfully — and really there are precious few openings for a man who hasn’t been brought up to anything special, nowadays.”

  “Yes. And what is the real reason?”

  Adrian laughed uncomfortably.

  “Sherlock Holmes! Well, between ourselves, I don’t mind telling you that I want to see some prospect of being able to marry, and if I had a definite thing in view, like Stear, I might be able to bring it off.”

  “You can’t be ordained in five minutes. Don’t be absurd.”

  “I’ve got to wait, anyhow,” said Adrian gloomily. “She won’t even be engaged, yet. I thought I might as well fill in the time at Cambridge or somewhere, if it’s going to lead to something. I’m quite willing to wait if I must, and of course I shall never change.”

  “It’s Miss Duffle, I suppose. I can’t say I should have thought she’d enjoy the life of a country parson’s wife.”

  “You haven’t the least idea of what she’s really like.”

  “Perhaps not.” Owen’s voice implied the contrary. “What about yourself? Do you really suppose you could stand it?”

  “Of course I could, if it meant her. My dear fellow, my mind’s absolutely made up, I may tell you, and has been for — for days. But, of course,” he added ingenuously, “it does depend a good deal on whether you’ll promise me Stear or not at the end of it all.”

  “What about your father?”

  “Oh, he’ll jump at it, of course. It’s been the one wish of his heart, all along,” said Adrian easily.

  Quentillian wondered how it was possible that any youth, brought up in the intellectual atmosphere of St. Gwenllian, could be so entirely devoid of insight. To his own way of thinking, it was utterly incredible that Canon Morchard, ardent Christian and idealist, should contemplate with any degree of equanimity, his son’s proposed flippant adoption of a vocation which he regarded as sacred.

  Owen committed himself to no promises.

  “I should like to talk it over with Val.”

  “I suppose if you must you must,” said Adrian, grudgingly. “But don’t let her tell anyone else.”

  Valeria’s views were not far removed from Quentillian’s own.

  It sometimes, indeed, seemed to Owen that the identity of their points of view on every other subject only rendered more evident the deep gulf dividing them on the topic that Valeria had decreed should be a barred one — that of religion.

  Spoken, their very difference might have brought them closer together. Unspoken, it seemed to Owen to pervade all their intercourse since their engagement as it had never done before.

  VI

  Valeria had been engaged for nearly a month when she wrote a letter.

  “Dear Captain Cuscaden,

  “I thought I would like to tell you myself that I am engaged to be married. It is to Owen Quentillian, whom I have known all my life, almost, and we hope to be married in January.

  “I hope you will have very good luck in Canada, and that you will sometimes let us know how you get on. We are expecting you on Saturday, to come and say goodbye.

  “Yours sincerely,

  “Valeria Morchard.”

  Val spent a long while over the composition of her brief letter, re-read it a great number of times, and finally tore it up very carefully into small pieces. “What’s the use?” she said.

  Captain Cuscaden, however, did not seem to have been dependent upon Valeria for news of Valeria’s engagement. He congratulated her formally on the Saturday afternoon when he came to pay his farewell visit to St. Gwenllian.

  Olga Duffle was there, too, and Miss Admaston. “No more tennis this year. It’s going to rain again,” said Flora.

  “Here it comes,” Mr. Clover pointed out.
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  “It may clear up later — let’s have tea.”

  After tea the rain was still falling heavily.

  “How are all you young folks going to amuse yourselves?” genially enquired the Canon. “Lucilla, can you not organize some of our old jeux d’l’esprit, with pencil and paper?”

  There was an inarticulate protest from the Captain, to which no one paid any attention except Valeria, who heard it, and Olga, who replied to it: “I’ll help you, Dzorze, if you’re very good.”

  Mr. Clover was zealous in finding paper and pencils. “I can’t resist this,” said the Canon boyishly. “I must give some of my old favourites a turn before going to more serious affairs. Now what is it to be?” No one appeared to be very ready with suggestions. Captain Cuscaden was gloomily gazing out of the window. Olga and Adrian were talking in undertones, and Miss Admaston was telling Quentillian how very much she dreaded and disliked any games that required the use of brains.

  “Are we all ready?” said Mr. Clover joyously.

  “I suppose we’re as ready as we ever shall be,” said Captain Cuscaden.

  Thus encouraged, they began.

  Canon Morchard, Lucilla, and Owen Quentillian outmatched the rest of the players with ease. Each seemed to think with promptitude of great men whose names started with A, battles that began with M, or quotations — English — of which the initial letter was W.

  They challenged one another’s references, and verified one another’s dates. They capped quotations, and they provided original bouts rimes.

  The entertainment gradually resolved itself into one animated trio, with a faithful but halting chorus, in the persons of Mr. Clover and Flora, and a rapid and low-toned aside between Adrian and Miss Duffle.

  Captain Cuscaden played a listless game of noughts and crosses with Miss Admaston, and Valeria leant back in her chair and ceased to pretend that she was occupied.

  She looked at the sapphire and diamond ring on her finger, and thought about Owen’s cleverness. She remembered that Lucilla had said he would be a difficult person to live with. She remembered her own secret desires for a life of work, and her assurance to herself that such ambitions were out of place. She reminded herself that her father had been, in his own parlance, glad beyond words to welcome Owen Quentillian as a son. And she looked at Owen himself, and saw him intent, over his little slips of paper, and a sudden rush of tenderness came over her. His absorption in the game seemed to make him younger, and in more need of her. She could remember Owen as a flaxen-haired, solemn, rather priggish little boy, and she suddenly felt that perhaps he had not changed a very great deal since those days, after all.

  Val felt happier, in a subdued and wistful way. She woke to the realization that the games were ended.

  The Canon had arisen.

  “Look up that derivation, Clover, dear man, and let me have it. I shall be curious... Fare ye well, young people, I recommend Lucilla here as a veritable dictionary of dates, if you wish to continue your amusement.”

  Nothing could have been more evident, the moment the Canon had left the room, than that no one wished to pursue amusement on the lines indicated.

  Even Mr. Clover joined in the general movement that thankfully relinquished paper and pencil, and sent everyone to the piano, flung open by Olga Duffle.

  “Do play something,” Adrian pleaded.

  “Oh, not me. Make your sister play. She plays so much better than I do.”

  It was indubitably true that Flora played a great deal better than did Olga, yet nobody seemed to want Flora to play the piano, and Olga, even as she protested, slipped on to the music stool and ran her small fingers over the keys.

  “I say, how well you do everything!” Adrian murmured ecstatically above her.

  She looked up at him and smiled, showing all her little pointed teeth.

  They clustered round her.

  “Do you know ‘Oh, Kiss Me and I’ll Never Tell’ that comes in that revue — I forget it’s name — the new one? It’s lovely.”

  To the perceptions of Valeria Morchard, trained in the eclectic school of the Canon’s taste, the musical inspiration in question was not only undeserving of being called lovely, but was vulgar to the point of blatancy, ringing through the St. Gwenllian drawing-room in Olga’s little, high, soprano voice.

  She was not at all surprised that Owen should look at her through his pince-nez with eyebrows expressively elevated, nor that Mr. Clover, presumably in a futile endeavour to spare the Canon’s ears, should unobtrusively go and shut the door.

  Val looked at Lucilla.

  There was something not at all unlike amusement on Miss Morchard’s face, but Val did not think that it was caused by the humour of “Oh, Kiss Me and I’ll Never Tell.” Rather it might have been born of a gentle irony, embracing alike the puzzled distaste of Flora, the obvious terror of the curate lest he should be supposed to be enjoying the entertainment, the absorption with which Captain Cuscaden, Adrian, and even Miss Admaston stood and listened, the supercilious detachment of Owen Quentillian, the complacent unconsciousness of the small, pert singer at the piano. No doubt Lucilla could have detected, had she cared to do so, the unspecified emotions that Val suspected of being written upon her own unsmiling face.

  She felt suddenly impatient.

  “We’re all intolerable. Lucilla is superior, and Flossie takes this rubbish au grand serieux, like a crime, and Owen is thinking how deplorable it is that idiotic words should be set to inferior music, and put before the British public for its education.... I can hear exactly what he’ll say about it afterwards.”

  It struck her that the anticipation scarcely boded well for a life that was in future to be spent in Quentillian’s company.

  “My dusky gal is black as coal

  “But she’s just the whitest, brightest soul.”

  carolled Olga.

  “I love the darky girls, don’t you?”

  “Rather.”

  “Why does the English youth of today seek artistic inspiration from the uncivilized population of Central Africa, I wonder?” said Owen Quentillian. He addressed himself to Lucilla, but his very distinct utterance was perfectly audible to everybody else.

  Captain Cuscaden laughed, and Olga looked round with perfect good humour. It was Adrian who glared at Quentillian, and Mr. Clover who observed reproachfully:

  “I’m sure those old plantation songs are charming, as Miss Olga renders them.”

  “You shouldn’t be so superior, Owen,” said Lucilla tranquilly.

  It was what Val had been thinking, but she had found herself quite unable to say it, from the very intensity of her feeling.

  Lucilla placed an old album on the music stand, and they all began to sing together “Cornin’ through the Rye.”

  The music affected Valeria almost intolerably.

  All the Morchards had good voices, and both Flora and Lucilla sang well. Their true, deep voices gradually dominated Olga’s high pipe, and the four men sank to a mere murmur of accompaniment. Miss Admaston had never done more than crane over everybody’s shoulder in turn in an endeavour to see the page at close quarters, and murmur the last words of a verse in an undertone when everyone else was singing the first line of the refrain. She was now altogether silent.

  “Sing the Russian songs, Flora,” said Quentillian.

  Valeria pressed her hands closer together, and leant against the wall.

  It was growing dark.

  The air of the Russian song that Flora chose was wild and sweet.

  “You are my darling, you are my soul

  Light of my life, my sun, my goal...

  You are my being, my delight

  Star of my darkest night.”

  Direct, primitive worship of one man for one woman: Flora’s voice held all the passion that was not in her, save at her music.

  The ache at Val’s heart seemed to her physical in its intensity.

  She knew what she wanted, now, and she knew that Owen Quentillian would not give i
t her.

  To her own horror, a rush of tears blinded her.

  “But all is well for thou art with me “The world is full of only thee” sang Flora.

  “What is the matter?” said the low, troubled voice of Cuscaden beside her.

  Val started violently.

  “Val, you must tell me. What is it ...?”

  They looked at each other.

  It suddenly became the thing that mattered most in the world that Val Morchard and George Cuscaden should speak alone to one another.

  Regardless of the rain pouring outside, Valeria gently opened the French window behind her.

  “Come outside. I must speak to you,” she said urgently.

  She had no idea what she was going to say.

  Outside, in the rapidly gathering darkness, the rain fell in torrents and splashed up from the ground against the stone step of the low veranda that ran round the house.

  Cuscaden stepped out of the warm room and closed the window again behind him. It was as though he had shut them out of the world of music and companionship, into some colder, more virile atmosphere.

  “But all is well for thou art with me “The world is full of only thee.”

  Flora’s song reached them as faintly as possible, and neither heeded it.

  They faced one another, and Val found that she was shivering from head to foot.

  “Why do I never get a chance of speaking to you nowadays?” said Captain Cuscaden violently.

  “You could have,” said Valeria, and her voice broke.

  His arms went round her.

  “Val, Val, I love you so.”

  It was as though Quentillian had never existed.

  “And you’re going to Canada,” she wailed.

  “You’re coming with me.”

  “I must,” Val said, and surrendered herself to his kisses.

  “My daughter, how wet you are!” exclaimed the Canon.

  His daughter, hastening to her own room, paused under the light of a lamp, and inadvertently thereby gave the Canon an opportunity of verifying his statement.

  Val, beneath his astonished gaze, became acutely aware that her rain-wet hair was disordered, her face flaming, and showing all the marks of recent and violent weeping.