“Yes,” said Flora.
It was the first appeal to which she had felt able to give any assent.
“You said that so like David!” cried Mrs. Carey clasping her hands together. “We were the greatest friends, and he used to come to me about everything. I used to tell him to marry...”
Another pause, and another look.
“I always want my young-men friends to marry. That just shows, doesn’t it, what nonsense it is for anyone to talk as though there were anything wrong about it? I don’t know whether your brother ever hinted anything to you, in his letters, about any horrid gossip. Between ourselves, he used to get angry, I know, at the things that were sometimes said, and of course he knew that I wasn’t — well, very happy. You’re not married, I know, so perhaps you won’t understand what it means to a woman, especially a very sensitive one, which I am, to have a husband who is jealous. I’m not blaming Fred, exactly, I suppose he can’t help it, and he was madly in love with me when we married. Of course, I was much too young and ignorant of life to marry, but I had an awfully unhappy home, and if it hadn’t been Fred, it would have been somebody else — men were always pestering me, somehow. Besides, people made mischief between us. How people can be wicked enough to come between husband and wife, I can’t think! I’ve been through hell once or twice in my life, I can tell you!”
Looking at the fear and the craftiness and the sensuality written on Maisie Carey’s small, ravaged face, Flora could believe it without difficulty.
“I don’t really know why I’m telling you all this, exactly. It’s not like me. I’m terribly reserved, really. But you’ve got such an awfully nice face, somehow, and you’re David’s sister. I can’t tell you how fond I was of David — we were just tremendous chums. It upset me awfully, that he should die in that sudden way.”
She began to cry in a convulsive, spasmodic way. Flora still remained silent.
“I wish you’d tell me if he ever wrote anything to you about me,” sobbed Mrs. Carey.
In the midst of the tears which seemed to be really beyond her own control, Flora caught a glimpse as of a terrible anxiety. She suddenly knew that in the answer to that last, sobbed-out question lay, for Mrs. Carey, the crux of their interview.
“He did write,” said Flora. “But what he wrote is safe with me. It will never go any further.”
The figure in the gay silk kimono seemed to cower further back into the armchair, but there was no self-betraying exclamation.
“I suppose he told you about Fred and me?”
“And about himself too,” said Flora.
“Men are all alike! Why did he want to tell you?”
“So that I could tell my father and sister. David was afraid of Father.”
“Your father knows?” This time the note of alarm was undisguised.
“No. The letter was only found and posted after the ones that told us of David’s death. And I have told my father nothing.”
Mrs. Carey broke into vehement, hysterical speech. “There’s nothing to tell! You people at home make such mountains out of molehills. I swear to you that there was nothing between us, that I never—”
Flora interrupted her.
“He told me everything,” she repeated. “He told me that the case would be undefended, and that he was coming home to marry you. So you see I know.”
“You! What can you, who’ve never married, never seen anything of life, know of things? You see evil where none exists — you’re like all these good and holy people ... intolerant...” Tears poured unchecked down her face, making streaks across the white powder. “You don’t even begin to know what I’ve gone through. My husband is a beast — a beast. You don’t know what that means.”
She flung herself backwards, almost prone, and wept hysterically.
“What are you going to do?” said Flora.
“Kill myself!”
The rhetorical answer came almost automatically.
Flora waited for a moment and then said very gently:
“As you say, I don’t know anything about these things, but perhaps you would tell me what you want. We might think of some way of making things better. And you can see for yourself that your secret — and David’s — is safe with me. I’ve deceived my father, sooner than let him guess. I don’t think he need ever know, now.”
“Why don’t you want him to know?” said Mrs. Carey with sudden curiosity that seemed to check her crying.
“It would make him very unhappy. He was proud of David and he thinks that David had a career before him. Perhaps you’ve read in books,” said Flora, speaking as though to a child, “about people thinking death is better than dishonour. Well, my father is like that.”
“He’s a parson, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Carey shrugged her shoulders.
“Where is your husband now?” Flora enquired. She felt that she could ask this woman questions without fear or rebuff, but she thought that it would be for her to disentangle the truth from the false in Mrs. Carey’s replies.
“Fred’s in Scotland. He’s staying with his mother. She’s a beastly old woman and I hate her. If she’d been a decent sort, you’d think she’d have used her influence to put things right between us, now wouldn’t you? But she’s never let Fred alone ever since we married. Always telling him tales about me, and saying I’m extravagant, and a flirt, and wanting to know why I’ve never had a baby. It’s not my fault if I’ve got rotten health, now is it? I’ve always been delicate. I’m sure I only wish I had got a child. It might have made Fred nicer to me, and I should have had something to care for.”
She began to cry again.
“I’m sure I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. Perhaps you think I’m mad.”
“I’m dreadfully sorry for you,” said Flora truthfully.
“You’re a dear.” Mrs. Carey dropped the hostility out of her voice abruptly. “No one knows what I’ve gone through. And now about David — it’s simply awful!”
“Did you really mean to marry David, after your divorce?”
“I’d better tell you the whole story, I suppose,” said Mrs. Carey. She dried her eyes and her voice insensibly hardened from self-pity into tones of satisfaction.
“I suppose I’ve always been attractive to men. I can’t help it, after all. And I dare say I’ve played the fool, in my time — in fact I don’t deny it. But David and I were simply tremendous friends, to begin with. He was frightfully sorry for me, too. Everybody knew that Fred was simply hateful to me, and made a scene if I so much as went out riding with another man. He quite liked your brother, though, at first, I will say that for him. We used to have him to dinner pretty often, and one of the subalterns to make a fourth, and play Bridge. Well, I never guessed that your brother did more than just like me as a great friend, as heaps of men did — how could I? I used to advise him to marry, often and often. Some nice girl at home, who’d come out and look after him. Those boys all drink more than is good for them, out there, if they’ve no wife to look after them. And David used to talk nonsense about having no use for girls, and having met his ideal too late, but of course I never took it seriously. Heaps of men say things like that to one, now don’t they? We used to go out riding together a good deal, and of course I danced with him. (That’s another of the ways in which Fred is so frightfully selfish. He can’t dance himself ever since he was wounded in the war, so he hates me to.) Then people began to say the usual horrid things. The women out there are all cats, and besides, a good many of them wanted David for themselves. I didn’t take any notice. I think it’s so much more dignified not to, don’t you? As I said to the Colonel’s wife, when she had the impertinence to speak to me about it, I never have taken any notice of gossip, and I’m not going to begin now. I simply go my own way, and let people say what they choose. It doesn’t matter to me if they’ve got horrible minds. It’s themselves that are hurt by it, I always think, not me. But I think women are much braver and more unconventio
nal than men, don’t you? David minded ever so much more than I did, when he found people were talking about us. Well, things were going from bad to worse between Fred and me, and one night he was so perfectly hateful to me that I got frightened. He was — not drunk, but not altogether sober. And I ran into the compound and down the road to David’s bungalow. He shared it with another man, but the other man was away shooting. You see, I was so frightened and upset that I didn’t know what I was doing, and I just felt I must go to someone who’d take care of me.”
Mrs. Carey swallowed, as though something in her throat were hurting her, and lit another cigarette with a hand that trembled.
“It was a frightfully imprudent thing to do, I suppose, but I’ve never pretended to be a particularly prudent woman. I dare say I should have been much happier if I’d been less impulsive, all my life, but after all, one can’t change one’s nature, can one? Besides, I was nearly out of my mind. Fred came to find me next morning. I was far too miserable and terrified to go back to him that night. We had scene after scene, after that, and he threatened me with divorce proceedings.”
She glanced at her motionless auditor.
“I may have been a careless fool, and I’ll go as far as to say that I’ve flirted with other men, but it was wicked of Fred to think of such a thing as divorce — to ruin my reputation, and spoil David’s career.”
“Why was the case to be undefended?” said Flora steadily.
“Why — why, don’t you see, when it all came to a crisis, I told David how utterly wretched my whole life was, and how I couldn’t bear it and should kill myself, and we had to talk things over, and see what could be done with Fred, who was like a madman. And then it all came out — I mean David said I was the only woman he could ever care for, and if I was free, wouldn’t I marry him, and let him try to make up to me for everything.”
“Why was the case to be undefended?”
“It would make less of a scandal if it was all done quietly. I — I didn’t feel I could face the other.”
In the truth of that last assertion, Flora could believe absolutely.
“I think I know the rest,” she said. “David was going to send in his papers, and come home to England as soon as possible after you and Major Carey, and you’d promised to marry him when the decree had been made absolute.”
“How do you know those legal terms?” said Mrs.
Carey, pouting like a child that is trying to show displeasure.
Flora did not pursue the irrelevance. She was following a chain of thought in her own mind.
“David was in love with this woman. Otherwise he wouldn’t have written and asked me to do anything I could for her. As for leaving the case undefended — well, they probably hadn’t got a defence to put up. He meant to marry her — probably wanted to marry her. Besides he’d have felt that he owed it to her. And though he was afraid of Father, and very unhappy about sending in his papers, and though he may have had glimpses of what she really is — David wasn’t the sort to let her down. He didn’t kill himself.”
The certainty came to Flora with a rush of relief so profound that she could almost have thanked little Mrs. Carey for unwittingly bringing her to it.
It was characteristic of her that, instead, she glanced at her watch and said:
“I can only stay another twenty minutes, and we shall probably not meet again. Are you going to Scotland tonight?”
“Indeed I am. Fred is there now, at his mother’s, telling her all sorts of horrible things about me, I suppose. They’ve both written to me.”
“What is your husband going to do?”
“I don’t know.” She began to cry again. “His mother, for once in her life, wants to patch things up between us. She’s one of your religious people, and she thinks divorce is awful.”
“I don’t know whether a divorce is still possible, now that David—”
Mrs. Carey broke into a sort of howl that, in its reminiscence of a beaten animal, made Flora feel sick.
“That’s just it — Fred is a beast! He thinks there were other people — other men — as well.”
“Oh,” said Flora, and shuddered violently.
“You’ve been rather a dear, so I don’t mind telling you that your brother is out of it now, whatever happened. Oh, I don’t know what’ll happen. I never cared for anybody like I did for David — never. I was ready to go through anything for him, and we could have started fresh somewhere, and no one would have thought anything of it. People aren’t so narrow-minded as they used to be. He’s the only man I’ve ever loved!”
Flora felt no inclination to point out to the unhappy woman the inconsistency of her various statements.
She even found it easy enough to believe that Maisie Carey for the moment thought herself to be speaking the truth when she said that David was the only man she had ever loved.
“I’m sorry for you,” she said gently. “And I’m grateful to you, because you’ve taken a great weight off .my mind. My brother asked me to do anything I could for you. Is there anything?”
“I don’t know what you could do, I’m sure. It isn’t even as though you were married. Not that you haven’t been sweet to me, listening like this. You do believe in me, don’t you? Even if you hear beastly stories about me, ever, you’ll know they aren’t true, won’t you?”
She put out a hand that still trembled, to Flora, but she went on speaking rapidly, as though not daring to wait for an assent that might not come.
“You’re awfully like David, in some ways, you know. It’s been a comfort to see you. Don’t tell your father about my troubles. Just say I was a friend of David’s, you know. I’m glad he didn’t come with you. I hate parsons, if you’ll excuse me for saying so, and I’m so frightfully nervous and upset that I might have said anything. I wish you could have seen Fred — he always says I haven’t got any decent women-friends. Perhaps you could have made him give me another chance.”
“Don’t you think he will?”
“How do I know? He’s written me a horrid letter, and pages and pages of cant from my mother-in-law. I believe if I promised to live at their hateful place, right away in Scotland, and keep within my allowance, and never have any fun at all, Fred would chuck the army and manage the estate for his mother. Can you see me in thick boots and a billycock hat, trudging up and down those hills to go and carry tracts to some wretched old woman in a cottage?”
She laughed melodramatically.
“No,” said Flora, “I can’t see you doing that. But I shouldn’t think you’d have to. Couldn’t you come here, for part of the year?”
“I suppose I could. I don’t know. Fred got this house to please me, when we were first married. He’d have done anything for me, then. I little knew what a life he was going to lead me later on!”
Flora rose.
“I’ve got to go. I will burn the letter that David wrote me, about you. Only one person knows what was in it, besides myself, and he will never repeat it.”
“Was that your father?”
“No, oh, no. My father mustn’t know, ever.”
Flora paused for a moment, then judged that it would be useless to make any appeal to Mrs. Carey’s discretion. For her own sake, she might keep silence as to her relationship with David Morchard, and a fresh emotional disturbance would eventually displace the episode — to her, it could be no more — from her mind.
Mrs. Carey looked at her curiously.
“Of course, I remember you told me that your father didn’t know. Then are you engaged?”
“No,” said Flora, colouring slightly.
“All men are beasts — you’re quite right to have nothing to do with them. I’ve had such a rotten time, what with Fred’s jealousy, and other men never letting me alone, that I sometimes wish I’d stayed an old maid, like you,” said Mrs. Carey.
Flora recognized the impulse that sought to inflict a scratch, where Mrs. Carey’s self-revelation had left her vanity disturbed with the instinctive fear that sh
e had not been taken at her own valuation.
She said goodbye to her.
“I’ll let you know what happens,” Mrs. Carey promised. “I feel you really do care, you know. I shall think of you when I’m taking that horrid journey tonight all the way to Scotland. Perhaps I really will settle down there, if Fred is willing to make it up, and if he lets me have a decent allowance, and part of the year over here.”
She no longer looked desperate, and she bent over the banisters and waved to Flora with the little handkerchief that was still drenched by the tears she had been shedding.
Flora did not suppose that she should ever hear from her. Impressions made upon Mrs. Carey seemed to be transient affairs.
She was conscious of nothing so much as of extreme physical fatigue, and the intense relief of her new certainty that David had not, after all, sought the last desperate remedy. She could be certain of that,, now.
“Perhaps Owen won’t understand why I’m so positive of that now,” she reflected. “But after all, I knew David. She counted on him, and he’d promised to marry her. David would never have failed her deliberately — it wasn’t in him. And he was taken away from committing a frightful sin. Besides, who knows how much he repented, poor boy?”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 231