It was the answer that her sense of the appropriate had already instinctively framed for him.
He opened the door of a taxi for her, tipped the porter who brought her luggage, and got in beside her.
“Right!”
The door banged.
“Laura!” said Duke Ayland, gazing earnestly at her.
He retained sufficient presence of mind to take off his hat immediately and throw it upon the floor, and Laura retained sufficient powers of observation to notice that he did so, and to make her own deduction as to his motive for the action — nevertheless, both of them were nearly suffocating with excitement.
The atmosphere was charged.
“Laura, I must kiss you!”
“No,” said Laura.
Duke Ayland took her into his arms, tilted her face gently up to his, and kissed her repeatedly. Then he asked her to forgive him.
“I couldn’t help it, sweetest. It’s such an age since I’ve seen you, and I’ve wanted you so dreadfully.”
“So have I — —”
“Laura, we can’t go on like this. We need one another. …”
Laura, equally convinced of the impossibility of what was implied by “going on like this,” had nevertheless no solution to offer. She gave herself up to the extraordinary rapture of being made violent love to by a man with whom she was violently in love.
In an incredibly short flash of time, the hotel was reached, and the taxi stopped.
“Can I come in with you?”
“No, I don’t think so. But ring me up to-night, at seven o’clock.”
When Christine met her sister she exclaimed:
“How well you look, Laura! That is a becoming hat. How are the children?”
“Quite all right. Edward only coughs occasionally at night, and Johnnie really had it very lightly. You wouldn’t know that there’d ever been anything the matter with them.”
“How splendid! I hope they’ll like the little girl bridesmaids.”
“The white Cromwell shoes for Johnnie are half a size too small. I’ve brought them up to get them changed at the shop.”
Wedding preparations engulfed them both. Laura, whose shopping activities had for years been limited by a slender income to the resources of the shops in Quinner-ton, and a very occasional order by post to the Army and Navy Stores, enjoyed herself very much.
She met numbers of Jeremy’s relations, was assured by Christine that she had made a favourable impression upon them all, and saw again the pale and distinguished Mrs. Vulliamy and the serious Mr. Vulliamy. (It disconcerted her a little to find that she and Mr. Vulliamy instantly began to talk about hotels in Normandy, with words, phrases and sentiments identical with those employed at their last meeting — but then, as Mrs. Vulliamy might have said, some people are like that.)
She dined with Duke Ayland on the night after her arrival, and in the extraordinary relief and satisfaction of being with him again, and of finding him as much in love with her as ever — for Laura’s inferiority complex had not allowed her to take this in any way for granted — she allowed the evening to pass without any very definite reference to the future.
“When can I see you again?” he asked her. “You come to London so seldom. Can’t we go somewhere to-morrow ?”
“I’m here on purpose to help Christine — and Alfred and the boys are joining me in a day or two. We could do one thing more, perhaps, before they come. But meals are most difficult of all, because there are all sorts of Vulliamy relations, and if we’re not lunching with them, then they seem to be dining with us.”
“Keep your last free evening for me, won’t you, Laura?”
“I’ll try,” she promised, and wondered why nobody had ever asked her so fervently for the privilege of an evening’s tête-à-tête in the days when she could have acquiesced with no underlying sensation of guilt.
They made one other appointment, to look at a collection of pictures in a public gallery.
The suggestion was Laura’s.
“I don’t in the least want to talk to you in a place like that,” protested Ayland.
“If you don’t want to talk, we can look at the pictures,” Laura replied flippantly. She felt very happy.
But, as usual, after they had separated and after she had talked to Christine about the trousseau, and the bridesmaids’ bouquets, and her own new frock and hat for the wedding, and after she had gone to her bedroom — as usual, Laura fell a victim to reaction.
It was a relief to her that the two or three remaining days before the wedding were crowded ones, and gave her no time for thought, and very little for conversation. Christine was very nice to her, and so radiantly cheerful that it was impossible not to be infected, and she and Laura found themselves giggling like schoolgirls together in a fashion that neither ever achieved with anybody else.
“We ought to be more sentimental than this,” Laura protested. “We never seem to do anything but laugh.”
“A very good thing too. I think you ought to laugh a lot more than you do, Laura.”
“Who with and who at?” inelegantly retorted Mrs. Temple. “Apart from Alfred and the children, nobody at Quinnerton is particularly likely to do or say anything very funny.”
“Except Baybay. She is capable of almost unlimited funniness, isn’t she? For heaven’s sake, Laura, write and tell me at the first possible moment what she says and does when she gets home with her Yankee Tub-Thumper.”
“They are going to spread the Blog creed in England.”
“Beginning with unfortunate Lady Kingsley-Browne, I suppose,” declared Christine. “And very likely ending with her, for that matter. Can you see Mrs. Bakewell, for instance, allowing herself to be converted by Bébée?”
“Neither Mrs. Bakewell nor anybody else in the neighbourhood, after the scandal she’s caused. Everybody knows about A. B. Onslow.”
“At least Blog hasn’t got a wife, has he?”
“I believe not.”
“Then whatever she does, can’t be any worse than what she has done already.”
“Do you think — seriously, I mean — that the A. B. Onslow business was — was very bad?” said Laura, looking with very great attentiveness at the fastening of a bracelet.
“Bad?” said Christine vigorously. “I don’t so much mind the badness of playing the fool with somebody who is already married to another person, as the general futility, and senselessness, and utter vulgarity of it!”
CHAPTER XVII
“I’m Not going on like this.”
“But, Duke — —”
“Darling, you can see for yourself that it’s impossible. I’m madly in love with you, and I can neither marry you, nor take you away with me. And to meet as we do at present is more than I can stand.”
“You don’t mean that you’d rather we didn’t see one another any more?”
“Honestly, Laura dear, there are times when I feel that might almost be easier than — this sort of thing.”
Ayland glanced round the semi-deserted picture-gallery, in the middle of which, on a long red plush seat, he sat with Laura.
“You’ve told me that there’s no hope whatever of my having you altogether, because of your children.”
“And because of my husband, too,” Laura pointed out, with ill-judged honesty. “I’m fond of Alfred.”
Duke winced slightly.
“I know. You’ve said so before. I cannot imagine why you tell me so often.”
“Because,” said Laura, with spirit, “you might very reasonably suppose, from the way I’ve behaved, that I didn’t care two straws about him. And I do. I may not be in love with Alfred, but I’m very fond of him, and even if the children didn’t exist at all I couldn’t ever do anything that would hurt him.”
“Then, my dear, you are not really in love with me.”
“Duke!”
“How can you be! If you were, you’d want me as much as I want you.”
“It isn’t that — —”
&nb
sp; The things that they were saying were not new. Almost identical words and phrases had already passed between them, and every fresh impetus given to the discussion made Laura rather more unhappy.
She sat now and looked, almost without seeing it, at a large painting of five wolves devouring three dogs in the snow.
She felt that Ayland was on the brink of saying something that she earnestly wished him not to say.
The next minute he had said it.
“Laura, darling — there’s only one thing to do, if you can’t come to me openly. Aren’t you brave enough, or do you not love me enough?”
“You know I love you.”
“Then be kind to me,” he whispered.
“I can’t. Deceiving Alfred …and after all I did make a promise when I married him.”
“Which you’ve already broken, involuntarily, when you fell in love with another man.”
“That was something I couldn’t help. But what you’re asking me to do would really be treachery. If I wasn’t married, Duke, or if I was a widow, I shouldn’t hesitate for one instant. Won’t you believe me ?”
“Believing you doesn’t make things any better,” he returned. “How do you intend this affair to end, my dear? Am I to go on writing you letters once or twice a week in which I can’t say a single one of the things I really want to say, and meeting you once or twice a year when you come to London, in restaurants, and public places, and getting perhaps five minutes alone with you in a taxi to kiss you good-night? I don’t think you know what you’re asking, if you expect any man to be content with that.”
“At the very beginning, Duke, I told you that I was very fond of Al — —”
“Don’t say it again, for heaven’s sake!” He looked both angry and unhappy.
Laura also felt unhappy, but she was not angry. She was not angry with Ayland because she was still very much in love with him, and because she recognised that there was justification for his impatience, and she was not angry with herself because it seemed to her — as to so many — that acts and omissions that appear definitely wrong in theory, become, in practice, only unforeseen, almost unavoidable, results of the pressure of circumstances.
“Laura, will you give me one week? Come away with me somewhere?”
“How could I?”
“Of course you could. It’s always possible to arrange things. You could go abroad, surely, to Paris or somewhere?”
“I’ve never done such a thing in my life. If I said I wanted to, I’ve no doubt that Alfred would let me, but I should have to tell any number of lies, and I can’t do it, Duke.”
He gazed at her almost with despair.
“Don’t answer now. Think it over. I shall see you again — besides seeing you at the wedding, I mean?”
“Yes.”
Laura got up. For the first time she really saw the picture of the wolves and the dogs, bespattering the snow with their blood, and found it singularly revolting.
“How hideous that is!” she murmured. “We’ll talk about it again. I must go now, but we’ll talk later on.”
But of what good was all this talking?
It was talking, indeed, that had brought them to their present pass.
Sometimes, reviewing the course of her acquaintance with Duke, Laura found it difficult to remember through what successive stages they had passed, in order to reach their present relationship, so unsatisfactory to at least one of them.
She had been herself far more happy than unhappy. The inward certainty that she stood to one man for the romantic ideal had comforted her in her matter-of-fact relations with another, and Ayland’s love-making had brought to her the reassurance craved by her waning youth.
She felt that it would be impossible to let him go. But it would be impossible — and far more so — to break up her married life and leave her children.
A week — one week with Duke Ayland? “One week, out of all my life,” thought Laura, as others, similarly circumstanced, have both thought and said before her. “After all, it wouldn’t hurt anybody, as things are, and Duke and I would have something to remember.”
In her mind was the vague conviction, still uncrystallised, that after that one week, she and Ayland would not again see one another very often. It seemed inevitable.
But it was quite illogical, as part of her consciousness well realised.
The frantic hooting of motor-horns and the yell of a passer-by roused Laura to a violent momentary activity, as she sprang back to the pavement that she had absently-mindedly endeavoured to leave.
“Dreamy-eyes!” said the taxi-driver who had nearly cut short Laura’s perplexities for her summarily, jocosely satirical.
Laura blushed.
“Fool!” she thought.
She deferred the consideration of her problem until she had reached the Knightsbridge Hotel.
“There’s a gentleman waiting in the lounge, madam,” the porter told her.
Laura, in the hot, plush-and-cane chair discomfort of the lounge, saw Christine’s friend, the medical student called Losh.
He looked, as before, unkempt, shabby, cheerful, enthusiastic.
“Mrs. Temple, do forgive me. I shan’t be able to come and see Christine tied up, and I had to come and tell her so, and give her my final blessing. Any hope?”
“She said she’d meet me here for tea at five. It’s nearly that now. Do sit down and wait till she comes.”
“Thanks most fearfully, I think I will. Sure I’m not barging in?”
“Of course you’re not. I’m sorry you can’t come to the wedding.”
“So’m I, but I’m taking Mids. Only just heard about it, as a matter of fact. Well, it’s the beginning of the end for me, thank God! I shall have qualified by this time next year if I get through my Finals.”
“What shall you do then?” Laura enquired, to humour him.
“Go to America, if I can wangle my passage money out of someone. They have the most topping Psychopathic Hospitals out there, and one can always get a job, once one’s actually on the spot. I want to study their methods of dealing with juvenile offenders frightfully. They put them under psychological observation, I believe, for weeks and weeks.”
“That’s what you’d like?”
“Rath-er!”
“I suppose there must be a certain attraction about it. People are always interesting.”
“Yes, aren’t they, by Jove! You see, Mrs. Temple,” earnestly said the young man, excitedly gesticulating with his bony hands, “everybody has a streak of abnormality in them somewhere. You’re abnormal — I’m abnormal. Only we have it under control—”
Laura, gazing at him not without fascination, felt inclined to wonder whether we had.
“You’d be astonished if I told you of the impulses that perfectly decent, respectable middle-aged women sometimes experience.”
“Should I?”
“You see, the Unconscious is so terribly Primordial, Of course, it’s all hedged round and covered up with acquired things — civilisation and the fear of punishment, and so on and so on. But don’t you yourself often find—”
“Let’s not talk personally, if you don’t mind.”
“I beg your Pardon. Of course I won’t if you don’t want to.”
He looked so much disappointed that Laura feared that she had hurt his feelings.
She said hastily:
“I daresay you could help me about the case of a — a woman I heard about. I don’t know her at all well, but I — I hear about her quite a lot. I’ve often wondered—”
Losh was gazing at her with even more than his usual intensity, and since it is always gratifying to feel that one is being interesting, Laura was encouraged to pursue the case of the hypothetical woman.
Perhaps Losh really might have some new and helpful light to throw on the question, she told herself, seeking an excuse for the relief of talking about her own complicated and distressing affairs.
“It’s really this. She’s married to a man—” La
ura paused, and then said with violence, “to a man she’s really, thoroughly fond of — but with whom she isn’t exactly in love. In fact, not at all in love. They’ve got children. And she — the woman — has fallen in love with another man.”
Laura stopped again.
“Is the other man in love with her?”
“Oh yes. Yes, certainly.”
“I only asked because it’s quite usual for a middle-aged woman who’s had no satisfaction out of her marriage to go off the deep end about pretty nearly any sort of fellow, good, bad, or indifferent, whether he’s having any or not. It’s a mild form of hysteria, very often.”
“It’s nothing in the least like that,” Laura assured him, trying to keep a sense of profound indignation from quivering in her voice. “The man is quite as much in love as she is. More, if anything. In fact, he wants her to go away with him.”
“The best thing she could do.”
“But the children—”
“Oh, I see. Did you mean go off for good, or just take a week-end together?”
“He has asked her to go away for good, I believe, but she won’t. So it would be a — a — just a temporary experience.”
Laura looked at Losh, and he looked intelligently back at her.
“She can’t make up her mind.”
“Is she religious? That sort of thing? I mean, would that stand in her way?”
“She isn’t a conventionally religious woman.”
“Not a Roman Catholic, or anything like that? We have great difficulty with Roman Catholics, of course, because of their priests. They’re dead against honest analysis every time.”
“There isn’t anything of that sort,” Laura repeated.
“Then I don’t see where the difficulty comes in.”
“The husband. She hates the idea of deceiving him.”
“Then she’ll have to tell him.”
“How can she?”
“Well,” said the young man reasonably, “she must do one or the other, you know, mustn’t she? What sort of fellow is he?”
Laura hesitated. In what terms could she make Alfred’s personality apparent to Losh? At last she said:
“The kind of man who thinks that psycho-analysts are all humbugs, and that the people who go to them are always hysterical women.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 300