Her eyes stared back at her from the mirror, large and full of alarm, and she saw that what she had been aware of all the evening as a slight pallor was in reality a sickly, greenish-grey shadow, round her mouth and under her eyes.
Laura, like Mr. Vulliamy, was suffering from reaction.
It was almost a relief to her that, on the following morning at least, her chief preoccupation should be, not with Duke Ayland, but with her own exceedingly distasteful embassy to Highgate.
“I should go early and get it over,” advised Christine. “I’m frightfully sorry for you.”
“Will you come with me?”
“How can I? I’ve never even met the Onslows. I can’t walk in on perfect strangers and say that I’ve come to help my sister get rid of their incubus for them.”
“I don’t know that I shall get rid of her. Probably I shan’t. I shall ask to see her — not the Onslows at all.”
“Be sure to come back to lunch and tell me all about it; I shall be on thorns till I know. And Laura, if it’s any help, you can tell Bay-bay that she’s dished herself for good and all with the richest commoner in England. We had it all out last night. What he can’t get over is her having said to him that polygamy is a necessary concomitant of genius, and one of its highest forms of expression.”
“I shouldn’t have believed that any woman on earth could be so lost to the most elementary sense of decency,” said Mrs. Temple trenchantly.
“Or of common sense either,” Christine remarked thoughtfully. “Jeremy is quite a difficult person to shock — he’s thoroughly modern, and not particularly stupid, and she must really have gone out of her way to do it. I always said she was an ass.”
“So am I, for ever having undertaken this ridiculous mission,” said Laura.
Nevertheless, she went.
The austere-looking butler did not open the door to her, rather to her relief. A footman did so.
“Is Miss Kingsley-Browne staying here?”
“Yes, madam.”
“I should like to see her, please.”
“I don’t think Miss Kingsley-Browne has left her room yet, madam.”
Laura nearly exclaimed “All the better!” but substituted, “I would rather see her in her room. I should prefer to go straight up to her.”
“Very good, madam.”
Feeling more like a house-breaker than a caller, so fervently did she hope not to meet the owners of the house, Laura crept upstairs behind the footman, waited — resisting an inclination to flatten herself against the wall — whilst he exchanged murmurs with a housemaid, and finally was ushered by the housemaid into the guest room from which it had become at once so difficult, and so desirable, to eject the guest.
Bébée was sitting on the bed, in a pale-pink garment bordered with flame coloured feathers, smoking a cigarette in a long amber holder. Flimsy silk clothing, and tissue paper, lay over the chairs and on the floor.
“Do come in. Good-morning,” said Miss Kingsley-Browne affably. “Can you find somewhere to park yourself? I hope you don’t mind all this muddle.”
“Are you packing?” asked Laura hopefully.
“Unfortunately, yes. A. B. has to go to America. It is quite unexpected, and he is in despair about it, of course, but his publishers have cabled most urgently.”
Laura, although aghast at the extreme expedient to which her fellow-writer had been driven in order to escape from his admirer, felt relief surge over her.
“Do they go at once?”
“We sail on Saturday.”
“We?” Laura echoed incredulously.
“I have offered to go as his secretary. He hesitated a good deal about accepting, but I simply said I was coming and that ended it.”
“Your mother—”
“Have you seen Mummie? Poor dear, she’s taking such a distorted, exaggerated view of the whole thing. Has she talked to you at all?”
“A little. She is terribly upset.”
“I’m afraid she is. Well, do try to persuade her that this is nineteen-hundred and twenty-seven. I have the greatest admiration for A. B., and I can help him in a way that nobody else can. His wife has never understood him.”
“What does she say about your going to America?”
“She very ridiculously insists upon coming too,” said Miss Kingsley-Browne morosely.
“And what does he say?”
“He will have to let her come. The truth is — you see I am perfectly dispassionate about it — he hasn’t the courage to face a scandal. I should be perfectly prepared to go away with him. I make no secret of it — but he won’t hear of it. He wants us to say good-bye to one another, in fact, but as I’ve told him, he owes it to his work not to turn his back on love.”
Laura drew a long breath.
“My dear child, are you sure you haven’t lost your head over this? I know he finds you attractive, and pretty, and he may have made love to you — but when it comes to breaking up his home, and leaving a wife to whom he’s been married for years, and creating a considerable scandal — don’t you really think it’s expecting too much of a man of his age?”
The imperturbability of Bébée’s reply, delivered through a cloud of cigarette-smoke, left Mrs. Temple, if possible, more entirely convinced than before, of the futility of her errand.
“I daresay it is. But I am determined not to leave him until I have made him see that I am as necessary to him as he is to me.”
CHAPTER XIII
As The train gained speed, and Laura gazed out of the window, she felt that she had been away for a lifetime.
Duke Ayland had come to see her off at Paddington, and so had Christine. The memory of Duke’s eyes looking into hers, and of the grasp of his hand, had entirely obsessed her thoughts for the first half of the journey.
Later, she began to realise that she was coming home, and as the outline of flying fields and hedgerows on either side became familiar, the focus of Laura’s imaginings altered.
At the junction, she changed from the express to the local train, and crossing the platform, was reminded of her encounter there with Lady Kingsley-Browne. She remembered with amazement that it had taken place less than three weeks ago.
“If anybody looks like a rag now,” thought Laura, whose memory was as retentive as that of everybody else on certain counts, “it’s probably that unfortunate woman herself. Bébée is dancing attendance on a man who has a wife of his own already and doesn’t want her in the very least, and Jeremy — the richest commoner in England — is falling in love with somebody else. Shall I go and see her, or would it be more tactful to leave it alone?”
Laura’s charitable speculations occupied her until the end of her journey.
Alfred was on the platform, the two-seater, dusty, shabby and familiar, in the lane outside, and the two little boys waving excitedly from the back seat.
“Oh, Alfred, how nice of you to bring the boys! How are you all?”
Laura, absurdly inclined to tearfulness, had kissed Alfred fervently before remembering that she had been certain that her first kiss would recall Judas to her mind, sped through the barrier, was recalled in order to produce her ticket, failed to find it, searched agitatedly, recovered it, and was free to exchange rapturous greetings with Edward and Johnnie.
“Darling — oh! how did you get that bruise?”
“I just fell off the banisters. I wasn’t at all brave,” said Johnnie, anticipating his parent’s next inquiry. “I screamed and roared as if I’d been killed on the spot. Nurse said so.”
“Never mind! It must have been a frightful bump.”
“I’ve lost another tooth,” said Edward. “Look!”
“I see, darling.”
“Is this all?” Alfred enquired.
“That’s all. Oh — no — wait a minute—”
“Have you got my engine, mummie?”
“Yes, darling, and Edward’s football.”
“Did you say there was something else, Laura?”
; “My hat-box, I thought — Oh, it’s there. Then that’s all.”
“What’s in that basket, Mummie?”
“I’ll show you when we get home.”
“Well,” said Alfred, “how are you? I think you look better than when you went away.”
“I am. Have the boys been good?”
“Just as usual, I think.”
“But nothing special? That’s a frightful bruise on Johnnie’s forehead.”
“Mummie,” yelled Edward from the dickey, “Faunt-leroy caught a rabbit yesterday.”
“Did he, darling?”
“How did you leave Christine?”
“She’s very well, and oh, Alfred, you’ll never guess who—”
“Mummie!”
“Yes, Johnnie.”
“Mummie, will there be time to unpack our surprises before tea or shall we have to wait till after?”
“I think I can let you have them at once. I put them in on the very top of my suit-case on purpose.”
“Have you heard anything of the Kingsley-Brownes, Laura? There’s been a lot of chat going on.”
Laura twisted her head round again from the unnatural angle at which she was obliged to hold it in order to converse with her sons.
“Have I heard anything of them?” she ejaculated. “I defy you, or any sane person, to guess what I have been doing. Will you believe it, that Baybay is more utterly lost to any sense of decency than we supposed, even, and has insisted upon—”
“Take care! They can hear every word—”
“Oh, I suppose they can.” Laura lowered her voice.
“Alors je te dirai plus tard. Alfred, how is the garden looking?”
“Wants rain.”
“It hasn’t rained once all the time I’ve been in London.”
“Mummie, do you see that a tree’s been cut down there?”
“Yes, I do, Edward. Did you see it come down?”
“No, I didn’t see it come down, but I saw it when it was lying on the ground, and I guessed someone had cut it down.”
Laura’s head came round again.
“How have the servants been, Alfred?”
“All right. I had to speak to Hilda the other day.”
“You had to speak to her!” echoed Laura, aghast. “What about?”
“Only about her work. She wasn’t doing it properly, so I had to speak to her.”
A host of disquieting implications rushed into Laura’s mind.
“Was she upset?”
“I don’t know.”
Laura thought to herself, “If Hilda gives notice, then we shall lose her and the cook.”
Such possibilities had not presented themselves to her mind during the past ten days. Now they recurred with a tempestuous force that caused her to wonder how she could ever have permitted them to remain in abeyance.
She did not, however, comment upon Alfred’s indiscretion. If Alfred was left in charge of the household, it was inevitable that he should exercise his own methods of ruling it. Laura’s sense of justice admitted as much, in the midst of her forebodings.
Applecourt stood in the light of the afternoon sun, the purple clematis was out, Johnnie’s scooter lay on the front step, and Fauntleroy rushed round the corner of the house, jumping up and down in an ecstasy of welcome.
“It’s home,” she thought and experienced an intolerable mingling of pain and joy.
“Isn’t Fauntleroy excited?” said Edward, proudly. “Look, he’s got his new collar on.”
“And look,” cried Johnnie. “Daddy’s moved the cuckoo clock to the other side of the hall!”
They were joyful and preoccupied with all that they had to show her.
Laura permitted herself to kiss them once more, although aware that neither of them really welcomed the attention, gave them their presents, and sent them upstairs.
Through the open door of the drawing-room, she could see the excessive tidiness of books, magazines, bowls, and boxes, each scrupulously dusted and replaced on the wrong spot, and evidences of Nurse’s zeal in the presence of a vase containing two spiky red geraniums on her writing-table and another one of delphinium on the mantelpiece. A rather depressing selection of correspondence lay on the table in the hall.
“I didn’t forward things that looked like bills or advertisements,” Alfred explained, “and these came this morning.”
“Nothing interesting. The Bakewells want us to play tennis on the 10th; I suppose we can. The new nurse arrives the day before. Do you think it’ll be all right to leave her with the children?”
“I thought that was what you engaged her for.”
Laura laughed.
She had expected to feel guilty, remorseful and unhappy in the presence of her husband and children.
Sometimes she had wondered whether, like the heroines of novels read in her schoolroom days, she would suddenly discover, on returning home, qualities, hitherto unperceived in Alfred, and fall violently, passionately, and legitimately in love with her own husband. In that case, her London adventure would be as a dream, and duty and bliss — improbable combination! — would become one and the same thing. But no emotional reaction came to overwhelm Laura. In the presence of her husband and children she was happy, partly because it made her so to be with them again, and partly because of the underlying consciousness that never left her, of Duke Ayland’s love and her own. She did not experience a new and emotional reaction towards Alfred, although it was a relief to be able to talk eagerly to him without being consciously obliged to avoid the fatal topics of the children and the servants through sheer paucity of subjects.
She did not — astonishingly — feel remorseful. It was already incredible to her that she should ever seriously have contemplated a confession to Alfred.
“I wrote to you about Duke taking me out to dinner?”
“Yes. I daresay a restaurant was quite a good thing, after Christine’s cooking. Is he doing anything with his music?”
“Quite a lot. He’s finished the Operetta, and he’s going to send it to me to look at.” Laura had made up this speech beforehand because she wished Alfred to draw the deduction that she and Duke Ayland meant to correspond with one another.
She gave utterance to it with a self-consciousness that disgusted her.
It seemed to her that Alfred could scarcely fail to notice the unnatural lilt given by her voice to the end of the sentence.
“While you were away,” said Alfred, “we had trouble with that cistern again.”
Throughout Laura’s first evening at home, they exchanged similar detached, but interesting, pieces of information. The presence of Hilda in the dining-room early laid an embargo upon the subject of Miss Kingsley-Browne, but Laura, between the soup and the boiled chicken, was able to remark feverishly:
“I can’t tell you what a state poor Lady Kingsley-Browne is in — as well she may be! She actually came to us — Christine and me — for help, so you can imagine how reduced she is. As for Baybay, flogging at the cart’s-tail would be too good for her.”
“Would it? The whole neighbourhood would probably agree with you, I imagine. People have been talking about her quite a lot lately.”
“What people? What do they say?”
“I can’t remember any particulars. But I have a general impression that she is supposed to be going the pace, and that some young man or other, who was expected to ask her to marry him, hasn’t done so.”
“Oh, Alfred!” said Laura impressively, “I can tell you the whole story, practically.”
She did so.
Alfred’s comment was pithy.
Laura found that he was entirely correct in assuming that the amorous extravagances of Miss Kingsley-Browne were being discussed in the county. Even Mrs. Bake-well, at her own tennis party, subjected Laura to cross-examination on the subject.
“Is it true that the girl is positively living in the house of A. B. Onslow and that his wife has left him?”
“She hadn’t left him when I was th
ere. She was sitting at the head of the table, quite in the ordinary way.”
“Was she?” ejaculated Mrs. Bakewell darkly. “Poor soul!”
“She talked to Bébée just like anybody else.”
“Poor, poor soul!”
“She — they — are off to America, I believe.”
Mrs. Bakewell shook her large head, on the very top of which a little white hat clung in a detached, independent-looking fashion.
“America is not the place to go to, in those circumstances,” she observed. “Or, rather, perhaps, it is the place to go to, from one point of view. Sometimes one feels, does one not, that it is as though brains were a positive snare.”
“I don’t think that Bébée has any particular brains. In fact, I’m sure she hasn’t.”
“It was Mr. Onslow I was thinking about. His writing — and now this madness and folly! The Onslows have no children, have they?”
“None.”
“Ah! Little feet pattering about the house — they keep one from so many, many dangers.”
Laura felt a passing wonder as to the nature of the perils from which Mrs. Bakewell had been preserved by the pattering of Cynthia’s and Theodore’s feet.
“You and I, my dear,” said her hostess, “may be thankful that we are just humdrum every-day wives and mothers, with little ones to occupy our thoughts, and plenty of work at home.”
“What would she say,” Laura enquired of herself, “if I told her that I am in love with another man, and that I have let him make love to me, and that he has asked me to run away with him?”
Her imagination was entirely unable to supply any reply to the question.
She looked unseeingly at the Bakewell tennis court, upon which two strapping Crossthwaite girls were partnering respectively a very young man indeed, and a stout, elderly clergyman.
The young man’s mother and the clergyman’s wife sat and talked spasmodically to Major Bakewell and Alfred. From time to time the mother of the very young man called out to him:
“Play up, Dickie dear!” and from time to time the clergyman’s wife ejaculated: “Quite like Wimbledon, isn’t it?”
Presently Mrs. Bakewell’s children appeared.
Cynthia and Theodore were plain, and Theodore wore spectacles, but their manners were beautiful. They shook hands, and they smiled, though rather joylessly, and they sat down upon a rush mat at their mother’s feet.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 295