“Oh no, nothing. Edward doesn’t seem in the least ill, although nurse says he coughed in the night, and Johnnie hasn’t got it at all yet.”
“The only thing to do is to go on just as usual then and keep them away from other kids.”
“I shan’t be able to go to Great Quinn,” said Laura suddenly.
Alfred looked mildly surprised.
“I thought you weren’t going anyway, because of the cook. I daresay I can run you in another time. In any case, Wednesday is early closing day.”
CHAPTER XV
A New and painful line was inscribed in the domestic calendar of Applecourt forthwith.
“The summer when the boys had whooping-cough,” was what it would ultimately become, but in these early stages, time, for Laura, was measured by “The day before Edward really began to whoop,” or “Just after Johnnie was sick in the night for the first time.”
The boys did not have to go to bed, as invalids. They pursued all their usual avocations, excepting their lessons, and every time that Edward ran across the lawn he had a severe fit of coughing, and every time that Johnnie thought his mother was not sufficiently harrowed by their plight he whooped until he was violently sick.
Sometimes they seemed to be getting better, and Laura said: “I daresay they’ll have it quite lightly,” and nurse replied: “Whooping-cough is like that. Coming and going. You’ll see, they’ll start again the first wet day.”
And they always did start again, sometimes without even waiting for the first wet day.
Laura took Johnnie into her room at night, banishing Alfred to his dressing-room and forgetting to make even a pretence of compunction about it, and Johnnie’s cough — which very often failed to wake him at all — destroyed her rest and seemed to tear at the muscles of her own throat and chest.
The telegram that Laura had sent Duke Ayland, explaining that she could not meet him in Great Quinn, seemed only one calamity amongst many, although on the day that she sent it, a phantasy, on stereotyped lines, had come unbidden to her mind. A mother and a dying child. Parents brought together again over a little cot. A passing infatuation driven away for ever in the stark light of tragic reality.
But Laura’s love for Duke was not a passing infatuation. If there was one thing that she was certain about, it was that.
She had disgustedly dismissed her own morbid imaginations, and sought and found reality in the farewell speeches of Mr. Mindy, fetched away for his meeting.
The new cook came, and within twenty-four hours left, declaring that she hadn’t known she was coming to a children’s hospital.
The usual period of stress ensued.
Then, gradually, Laura found that she was becoming inured to the sounds of whooping-cough, to the smell of creosote, and even to the presence of a terrible little pink bowl carried about by nurse for emergency use, and callously spoken of by Edward and Johnnie as “the sick-bowl.” Once more there were two servants — faintly unsatisfactory — at Applecourt, once more Laura tried to write short stories in the evenings, once more she exchanged letters about books with Duke Ayland.
Then Christine wrote her.
Darling
It does seem a pity that I can’t come to stay, and that you, I suppose, can’t leave the boys, because we could have rather fun just now. The fact is, that I am now formally and properly engaged to the richest commoner in England, and we shall be in “The Times” as soon as we’ve seen his parents. You’ll like Jeremy when you know him more, although he’s not in the least clever, but he has a sense of humour, and is quite-quite. I’m sorry for poor Lady K.B. but it’s Bay bay’s own doing. He was honestly in love with her, and wanted to marry her and I am what Losh calls the “reaction.”
I’ve met the parent Vulliamys — both very nice, in a Du Maurier style — and I think Jeremy has prepared them. He’s writing to them to-day, and I daresay they’ll ask you down there, when I go.
Anyway you simply must come up here for a day or two, when we begin to make plans. It’ll have to be a Church wedding, of course, though not “obey” — and I really prefer it myself, because of a wedding-dress and so on. Is there any hope that the boys will be well in time to be pages? I am now — incredible to relate — in a position to say that I can give them their suits — and of course, I’d adore to. We shall probably be married in the last week of October, but I’ll write again directly.
My engagement ring is one colossal emerald, square, set in platinum — absolutely heavenly.
Anything else we can talk over when we need. No, I won’t be a pig! I know you’re dying to ask if I’m in love with him. Darling Laura, I’ve never been in the least romantic, and I’m not now, but I’m quite enough in love not to feel that I’m taking a mean advantage of having been the first decent woman he met after the affaire Bébée. I truly think we shall understand one another very well, and ought to be very happy. For goodness’ sake, try and think of something I could call him instead of that awful “Jeremy”
Yours,
Christine.
Although Laura had exchanged speculations with her husband on this very contingency, and had hoped, and yet felt ashamed of hoping, that it would come to pass, she felt something like a shock.
Christine and the richest commoner in England. …Not that Laura wanted to dwell only on that aspect of the case, but it persisted in obtruding itself. She strove frantically to recall what Lady Kingsley-Browne had told her. Norfolk and rhododendrons, and a general impression of great opulence, was all that she could recapture. She could not, even, recall Vulliamy himself with very great distinctness.
Certainly she would have to go to London. She thought what fun it would be to help choose Christine’s trousseau.
She sat down and wrote four excited pages to her sister.
“Alfred?”
“What?”
Alfred was doing something to a small plant that stood in the bed just beneath the drawing-room window.
“Guess who’s engaged to be married!”
“Bébée Kingsley-Browne.”
“Good heavens no! She’s still chasing A. B. Onslow round America as far as I know. I don’t suppose any decent man will ever look at her again.”
“There are very few decent men about, nowadays.”
“Well, one of the ones there is, is engaged to someone who’s not her,” said Laura, her sense of construction temporarily in abeyance.
“That friend of Christine’s — the musical fellow — what’s his name?”
“Do you mean Duke Ayland ?”
“Yes.”
Laura felt as if she had received an unexpected blow.
“No. Certainly not.”
“Then it’s Christine, I suppose?”
“Darling, you’re quite right. How clever of you! Christine is going to marry that Mr. Vulliamy who played tennis here once. I saw him again in London. I think he seemed nice. I believe,” said Laura as casually as she could, “that he is very rich indeed — or his parents are.”
“If they’re the Northfolkshire Vulliamys, they are very rich indeed,” Alfred assented. “Well, well, I’m delighted to hear it. Congratulate her from me.” And he went back to the little plant again.
Laura thought, not for the first time, that men were odd. Personally she felt that she could have gone on talking about Christine’s engagement for at least another hour. Alfred, however, evidently considered that the last word on the subject had been said.
“Nurse will be excited, anyhow,” thought Laura rather forlornly. “Servants always are.”
After that, letters, and even telegrams, fell upon Apple-court in profusion. Dates were settled, and unsettled, congratulations were exchanged, and Laura and Alfred were invited by Jeremy’s parents to spend a few days in Norfolk.
“It really is impossible,” said Laura wistfully. “I’d love to go, and it’s nice of them to ask us, and of course Christine wants us to — but I don’t see how I can leave the boys.”
“What d’you keep a nurse for?”
“Do you mean that you’d like to go, Alfred?”
“I think a change would be good for you.”
She looked at him almost incredulously.
Theoretically, Laura was perfectly well aware that her husband loved her, and was solicitous for her welfare, but actually, he said so little about it, and that little so very seldom, that she was apt to receive any demonstration from him in touched astonishment.
“We needn’t be away for more than three or four days, I suppose, and it seems to me only fair to Christine for us to accept. You’re her nearest relation.”
“The kindest thing might be to keep away,” said Laura, humorously and quite insincerely, since the thought that the acquisition of the Temples as connections would be of advantage to the Vulliamys, who had made their fortune in trade only two generations earlier.
She accepted Mrs. Vulliamy’s invitation, and passed in strict, and rather discouraging, review, Alfred’s wardrobe and her own.
Nurse, who had been quite as much excited as Laura had hoped by the news of the engagement, and who had discovered for herself without having to be told, the wealth of the bridegroom, declared that the boys could be left without any hesitation. She even, reversing every former prediction, sought to persuade Laura that they could safely act as pages at the wedding.
“And walk up the church with the pink bowl between them,” said Mrs. Temple sardonically. “No thank you, nurse. I’m sorry in a way, of course, but the excitement would certainly have upset Johnnie for days afterwards, and you know what he’s like.”
Nurse, who knew well what Johnnie was like, still refused to find either argument unanswerable.
The Temples decided to go to Norfolk in the car. Laura, who did not drive it herself, was persuaded of the economy of this method of travelling. “It saves two railway tickets,” she declared, and ignored petrol, meals on the way, and the new tyre that Alfred was obliged to purchase before they could start.
It was long since Laura had stayed in a country house, longer still since she had stayed in one of the dimensions of Castle Gate.
Two centuries earlier, a coach-and-four was alleged to have passed round the hall, and up the staircase — although not driven by a Vulliamy, since at that date the Vulliamys, in so far as Castle Gate was concerned, had not existed.
But here they now were — very like a Du Maurier drawing, as Christine had said. Mrs. Vulliamy, tall, grey-haired, unjustifiably distinguished-looking, and wearing a string of very beautiful pearls under a carefully neutral-coloured woollen jumper, and Mr. Vulliamy, equally tall, grey-haired, and unjustifiably distinguished-looking, and with beautifully waxed tips to his white moustache.
They had produced Jeremy comparatively late in life and it was evident that they adored him. But they liked Christine. Mrs. Vulliamy called her “quite a dear,” and Laura surmised that this was as enthusiastic a description as Mrs. Vulliamy’s vocabulary would ever permit. She was as incapable of superlatives as though rank, instead of commercial ability, had characterised her ancestors.
Their plans for the well-being of Jeremy and Christine were astonishing.
They were giving them a house in Hill Street, a motorcar, and the services of their second chauffeur.
“When they want a little quiet in the country, they can always come here, and I daresay later on they’ll find a tiny cottage at Hindhead, or somewhere, convenient for the summer,” said Mrs. Vulliamy.
She was very nice to Laura, although it was a niceness that rather tended to make her into Christine’s mother, instead of her sister.
Christine and Jeremy went for walks, and drove in Jeremy’s car, and Mrs. Vulliamy and Laura strolled carefully up and down the immense terrace that was one of three terraces leading down to the lake, and went indoors as soon as the afternoon became a little chilly.
Nothing but the wedding, Jeremy, and Christine, was ever talked about.
“It’s quite natural,” Laura said to Alfred, dressing for dinner in a bedroom of great size and height, with thick and expensive rugs and curtains in profusion. “It’s perfectly natural, of course. He’s their only son, and of course his marriage is very important. I’m so glad they like Christine, and are so charming to her.”
“But they’re overdoing this wedding business,” said Alfred.
Laura privately agreed with him.
“The housemaid means me to wear my blue to-night,” she remarked pensively, looking at the mahogany bedstead and the lace coverlet, on the magnificence of which her blue looked very unimpressive indeed.
“Not that clothes matter very much here,” she added.
“They have a good cellar,” said Alfred.
“And a fire in one’s room — especially such a fire — is pure bliss.”
Thus did the Temples compensate themselves for the undoubted fact that, in the splendour of the Vulliamy establishment, they were slightly bored.
Laura did not actually count it a compensation, but it certainly crossed her mind frequently, that Lady Kingsley-Browne’s daughter — so openly and so offensively thrust upon the notice of her parent’s acquaintances — had, by her own unprecedented conduct, forfeited a very fair chance of occupying the position now awaiting Christine.
Mrs. Vulliamy only once referred in Laura’s hearing to this episode in the past of her son.
“Of course, one has always wondered a little bit about Jeremy’s wife,” she temperately said. “I daresay you know that at one time he was very strongly attracted — though it was never an engagement, or anything in the least like it — —”
“I know,” said Laura.
“Poor Gertrude Kingsley-Browne! I was always fond of her, and one was quite prepared to welcome the girl. I thought her extremely pretty, too.”
“She is certainly very pretty.”
But Mrs. Vulliamy continued to speak of Bébée as of the dead.
“But she must have been quite, quite without any morals at all,” she gently pursued. “Utterly depraved. One can only be thankful that it came out in time. Of course, I don’t attempt to judge her. One should never judge others, I always feel.”
“She is still in America.”
“Ah, I daresay. America is like that, I believe,” returned Mrs. Vulliamy.
What a woman, thought Laura, who might in theory agree that one should never judge others, but who frequently found herself doing so in no lenient spirit.
“Poor Gertrude’s husband was a strange man. One heard tales. Not that I wish to dwell upon them. As of course you know, he is no longer with us. But I have often thought that heredity — —”
Mrs. Vulliamy sighed, and Laura said, “Yes! Of course! One does,” and thought to herself, “How idiotic this conversation is!”
“Dear little Christine is very bright and sweet. A thoroughly natural, unaffected girl.”
“Bébée was never unaffected, whatever else she was,” declared Laura warmly.
“You felt that, did you? But I’m sure you must be a wonderful judge of character.”
“I don’t think it needed that — —”
“It was an infatuation,” said Mrs. Vulliamy more gently and solemnly than ever. “A sort of madness. Jeremy saw nothing but her beauty. And of course, having always been devoted to Gertrude, I was as blind as he was. But when I heard that it was all over and that the unfortunate girl had completely gone to the dogs, I said to my husband: ‘Mark my words, Anstruther, Jeremy is thoroughly well out of it,’ I said.”
Laura, unable to think of any adequate reply, could only bend her head assentingly.
“Is it perhaps growing a little bit chilly? We,” said Mrs. Vulliamy rallyingly, “are not in love. So I think we might perhaps seek the chimney corner.”
Although the implications in this small and mild pleasantry were displeasing in the extreme to Laura, she felt obliged tacitly to accept them, and to follow her hostess to the magnificent warmth and splendour of the chimney corner.
On the whole, she preferred the co
nversation of Mr. Vulliamy to that of his wife. He was a grave man, with a passion for his rain-gauge, and another, lesser passion for travelling in the Europe of tourists.
Every night at dinner, Laura sat next to him, and they discussed the scenery and the hotels in those parts of France, Norway and Switzerland that constituted Laura’s experience of foreign travel. She hoped, and believed, that he did not notice how very often they said the same things about these places over and over again.
Of her future brother-in-law Laura saw less than of his parents, but she perceived that Christine had been right in saying that he possessed a sense of humour.
“And does anything else really matter, after all?” was Mrs. Temple’s not-very-happily worded enquiry, after imparting this opinion to her sister.
“Not much, certainly,” Christine agreed dispassionately. “But as a matter of fact there are lots of other things I like about Jeremy. He is very generous, and easy going, and we both enjoy doing the same things in the same way, which is a great mercy. He can’t bear gardening, and he likes going abroad, and we both like London, and we neither of us can endure playing Bridge.”
“Have you ever thought what you’ll talk about in the evenings after dinner, when you’ve been married some time, and there isn’t anything new to say any more?” Laura solemnly enquired.
“I haven’t written out a list of subjects suitable for keeping a husband entertained, if that’s what you mean, but I have made up my mind that on evenings when we’re by ourselves, if I can’t be amusing, or amorous or interesting — then I shall go to bed with a headache and advise Jeremy to go to his Club,” said Christine.
Laura left the Castle Gate fully convinced that Christine was about to embark upon the most successful phase of a thoroughly successful career.
The wedding was to take place in London. Edward and Johnnie — subject to the approval of the doctor, and to the complete elimination, for some weeks previously, of the pink bowl — were to act as pages, and Alfred was to give away the bride.
“You and your husband, of course, will act in loco parentis” said Mrs. Vulliamy to Laura. “That will be so delightful.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 298