“I’m terribly sorry about being late,” she said at once. “I know I ought to be shot. I meant to come along and tell you I was sorry.”
“It isn’t good for Maurice to be up so late, and besides it vexed Daddy.”
“Naturally,” Sylvia agreed cordially. “Was he furious?”
“No, of course not. Didn’t he say anything to you in the garage?”
“I wasn’t there. I went to hang up the bathing things on the line.”
“I see.”
Claudia paused.
Sylvia powdered her nose lightly before the looking-glass and jumped into bed.
“Cuckoo! Why do you powder your nose just to get into bed?”
“I always do. There might be a fire in the night,” returned Sylvia very seriously. “Not that it would wake me up, most likely. I shall sleep like a log after that heavenly bathe.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Frightfully.”
“I wish I’d been there too,” said Claudia, after another pause.
“Did you do any work?”
“No.”
“Oh, that’s good,” said Sylvia. “I wish you didn’t work so fearfully hard, always.”
“I like it,” returned Claudia — her invariable answer when any of her children spoke as Sylvia had just spoken.
“Good-night, darling.”
She stooped and kissed Sylvia’s soft, fresh cheek.
Sylvia hugged her in return like a child.
“Good-night, Mother.”
“Shall I put out the light as I go out?”
“Yes please.”
With her hand on the switch, Claudia stood for an instant on the threshold.
“By the way, what do you think of Andrew Quarrendon?” she asked, her voice carefully casual.
“He’s very nice,” said Sylvia in a cordial, natural, and quite unmeaning tone.
“Good-night, dear.”
“Good-night, Mummie.”
Claudia turned off the light and gently shut the door. She felt as though something had struck her, hard and unexpectedly.
So that was how one’s children deceived one — shut one out of their confidence — told one nothing at all of their real thoughts and feelings.
The idea shocked her profoundly, the more because she had felt completely sure of her relation with Sylvia, always. There had been no need, in thinking or speaking of Sylvia, to make those careful admissions of her own possible deficiencies as a mother that she had always made so readily in the case of Taffy.
Sylvia had been open with her, frank and affectionate and trusting. They had talked things over together. It had been Claudia’s secret pride and joy to know that, contrary to every theory and to most experience, there had been no faintest hint of antagonism between her eldest child and herself.
But she must be fair.
There wasn’t any antagonism now.
It was just that Sylvia didn’t choose to share with her mother something that, Claudia was perfectly certain, had happened, or was now happening, to her. There had been an inward radiance shining through Sylvia’s control, that her mother could not miss.
Claudia went to her own room in a turmoil. She felt suddenly tired almost beyond bearing. She had meant to go to Frances Ladislaw’s room and say good-night, but it was too late and she was too tired.
She leant out of the window. It was still oppressively hot. But the garden below lay drenched in moonlight: there was no sign of a coming storm.
It has passed over, thought Claudia drearily.
There was a tap at the door, and Copper came in, a lean, slouching figure in his tussore pyjamas.
His first words followed her thought.
“The storm’s passed over here. I expect they’ve had it somewhere. We shall have a scorcher again tomorrow.”
“I was just thinking the same thing.”
She sat down wearily before the looking-glass and began to brush her hair carefully. When she parted it in the middle, there was much more grey to be seen.
“What are you going to do with ’em all tomorrow?”
“Mother will go to church, and I dare say Frances will too. I should imagine the sea will be the best place for most people. I think I shall send the children off for the day. I can take them somewhere in the car directly after breakfast, and fetch them when it gets cooler.”
“Better let that fellow go with them.”
“Why?” she asked rather sharply. “If you mean Andrew Quarrendon.”
“You don’t want him on your hands all day.”
“I don’t mind,” said Claudia. “After all, he came here to talk to me.”
“Did he?” said Copper indifferently. “If you ask me, he’s inclined to make himself a bit of a fool over Sylvia.”
How like Copper, reflected his wife, accidentally to hit on the truth, clothe it in foolish and inappropriate words, and miss altogether its real significance! There would be nothing at all to be gained by discussing it with Copper, and she felt, besides, a strong disinclination to enter on the subject at all.
In the morning I must find out why I don’t like the idea of discussing this problem of Sylvia, thought Claudia, conscientiously modern and analytical.
But I think I know. It’s almost bound to end in unhappiness for her, poor little thing, and to-night I’m tired out, and I haven’t the courage to face it all and decide what I’d better do. And it’s hurt me — incredibly — that Sylvia should shut me away out of her confidence.
Claudia threw back her head with a very characteristic movement.
I’ll look the thing straight in the face tomorrow, she told herself.
VIII
1
The next day a telephone message came through quite early in the morning.
Anna Zienszi and her husband suggested that they should drive down from London before lunch and spend the afternoon at Arling.
Mrs Peel, who had been moaning in a quiet, restrained manner all the week about Anna’s utter neglect and indifference, now exclaimed in concern:
“Motoring from London on a day like this, in the middle of a Bank Holiday week-end! She must be mad. And it isn’t considerate either. This house is full already, as she must know, and everything closed till Tuesday. Will your cook ever be able to manage, Claudia?”
“Certainly she will,” Claudia declared promptly. “Anna hasn’t been here for ages. I’m delighted she’s coming, and she especially wants to see Frances.”
“Yes, well,” Mrs Peel said reluctantly. “But I don’t like all this American hustle.”
Nobody sought to find out what she meant.
“I scarcely know Anna’s husband,” said Frances. “I should like to meet him.”
“He’s terribly nice,” declared Taffy emphatically. She shot a glance at her mother as she spoke, and Frances received the impression that she expected Claudia to disagree with her.
Claudia, however, said nothing.
She looked tired, with dark shadows beneath her eyes. But when Frances, later in the morning, ventured to remark upon this, Claudia replied rather brusquely that she was not tired in the least, she was never tired, and most tiredness was largely a matter of giving way to it.
A hint of the Spartan creed held by her friend had already reached Mrs Ladislaw. Mildly, but quite decidedly, she repudiated it.
“I don’t agree with you. Tiredness is a physical fact, surely.”
“That’s just what I mean. Most people — most women especially — are usually more or less tired all the time, after the age of forty anyway — and perhaps earlier. But if they don’t stop and think about it, it needn’t make any difference. I make a point of telling the people who work in my office that, and I only wish I could think they’d taken it in.”
“Haven’t they?”
“Not really. They don’t go all out on their work. They put other considerations first — the younger ones especially. Those two girls — Frayle and Collier — they can work splendidly, both
of them. They’ve got intelligence, and initiative — Frayle especially — but either of them is perfectly capable of saying she feels ill, and must go home — when all she really means is that she was up dancing late the night before and feels mildly sleepy.”
“Claudia, you must be a kind of female Napoleon, I think.”
“Nonsense. I’m not in the least — but when I do a thing, I do try and do it thoroughly. If I didn’t — well, frankly — where should we all be?”
She glanced round expressively.
“You work terribly hard, I know. I think all you do is wonderful,” said Frances humbly. “When I’m in London, looking for a tiny house, I wonder whether you mightn’t be able to make me useful from time to time. I know you provide escorts for children — or I could do shopping for old ladies — or any odd jobs. You see, I’m quite unattached. I would,” said Frances with a smile, “put the work first — and I don’t often get tired. And if I did, I’d promise not to say so.”
Claudia smiled also.
“You think me a brute, I expect,” she said good-humouredly. “Honestly, you don’t know what it’s like to see someone lying down on the job, as Sal calls it, when one knows it’s just simply that they won’t make the effort.”
“Like Mrs Dombey.”
“Very like Mrs Dombey,” Claudia agreed. “I’m sure I should have been very angry with Mrs Dombey — and then, I suppose, she’d have turned the tables on me by dying. That’s one thing that none of my office people will ever do, whatever they may pretend to think.”
“Well, I’ll undertake not to, either, if you’ll find me an occasional job.”
“Of course I will. Look here — talk to Sal Oliver about it. She really sees to that side of things. And Frances — look in at the office one morning, and we’ll put you on our card-index, formally and in order.”
“Thank you,” said Frances. “Shall I see you if I come to the office?”
“Unless I’ve got a rush on. Sometimes I have — it’s mostly writing-stuff. We advertise an expert staff of translators, research-workers, and so on — but actually I am the expert staff in person, with occasional help from Sal.”
“Couldn’t Sylvia and Taffy do something to help you?”
“No,” returned Claudia very crisply and decisively. “Amateur help, for that kind of thing, is of no use whatever. Anyway, I don’t want either of them in my office. Taffy’s too young, of course, and it isn’t in Sylvia’s line. I sometimes think—” Claudia hesitated, “I sometimes think I ought to let Sylvia go abroad and get thoroughly at home with, say, French.”
“But why? It would be expensive, surely. And I thought she was going to some publishing firm in London.”
“I shall let her decide, of course, but I doubt if it’s quite her line of country really. I’ve thought for some time,” said Claudia, “that it might be quite possible to find an opening for her in Paris. She’s very clever with her fingers, and our old madame — you remember madame, don’t you? — is running a most successful dressmaking business. She’d simply love to have Sylvia working there, and it would be a wonderful experience for Sylvia — or for any girl for that matter. Still, as I say, it’s entirely for her to decide.”
Frances felt quite surprised.
She had somehow received the impression that Sylvia’s initial step into the world of wage-earners had been to all intents and purposes decided upon already, and now depended only on her interview with the firm of publishers.
Evidently she had been mistaken.
2
The Zienszis arrived most unobtrusively and silently in a very large and perfect Rolls-Royce driven by a young, slim, grim-faced chauffeur.
Anna Zienszi’s most noticeable quality was poise. Her unfailing taste, combined with enormous expenditure, in clothes was — like the Rolls-Royce — unobtrusive. One observed it consciously only after a little while.
Like her sister, she was tall. Although Claudia was slight, Anna was so slim and apparently boneless that she made Claudia seem almost sturdy. Her naturally fair hair had been artificially platinumed and suited her smooth, painted little face, her shaven eyebrows, and carefully-applied scarlet Cupid’s-bow of a mouth. Nature, supplementing the successful efforts of art, had bestowed upon her very beautiful teeth and exquisitely-shaped hands.
Anna’s personal appearance was the cause of continuous conflict in the mind of poor Mrs Peel. She was unable to resist a feeling of pleasure in possessing a daughter whose appearance attracted attention wherever she went, and she was equally unable to overcome her conviction that Anna’s cult of the fashionable was a subtle form of insult to her mother, her Creator, and the canons of good breeding as conceived by Mrs Peel’s generation. Most people, however, greatly admired Anna, who had none of the affectations that her appearance suggested, and was generous, and in many ways simple.
Adolf Zienszi was small, dark, silent, and rather embittered-looking. He was slightly, quite genuinely, bored by most people, whom he found lacking in accuracy either of thought or of words. He was an American Jew and had made his fortune in Wall Street. He was still making money.
The only woman whom he had ever really admired was his wife, and after ten years he was still intensely grateful to her for having married him and for never reproaching him that he had been unable to give her a child.
The Zienszis gave and received greetings, and the whole party sat on rugs beneath the giant willow-trees.
Anna was delighted to meet Frances Ladislaw again. She sat next her and poured forth eager questions and answers.
However much she might have succeeded in altering her appearance, Frances felt that fundamentally the young Anna was still there, unchanged but matured.
I don’t get the same feeling with Claudia, she thought dimly. Why is it she’s so competent, so brave and splendid and hard-working, and yet at the same time gives one an impression of — what is it — instability?
Remembering her conversation with Claudia on the evening of her arrival at Arling, she wondered about the relationship between the sisters. They seemed sufficiently at ease together, and there was no doubt of Anna’s interest in, and affection for, the children.
“How’s His Lordship?” she tactfully enquired of Taffy.
“Feeling the heat, poor old gentleman. It’s such a pity he can’t go for a nice swim and get cool.”
“Are we going to swim this afternoon?” said Anna delightedly. “I’ve brought my things.”
“Oh, I bet you’ve got some marvellous new swim-suit!”
“I have, rather,” Anna admitted. “I’ve been dying for an opportunity to show it off.”
“We’ll take you down to the sea after lunch,” Maurice volunteered. “Will you be able to come, Mother?”
“Oh yes. We’ll all go.”
“If it isn’t too hot for you,” Adolf Zienszi remarked to his brother-in-law, “I was hoping you might give me a little exercise on the tennis-court this afternoon. This is the kind of weather I can enjoy.”
Thin and spare to the point of leanness, and keeping as he did to a rigid diet, it was nevertheless the fear of Adolf’s life that he might one day grow stout.
He seized avidly upon every opportunity for taking strenuous exercise.
Copper, with limited enthusiasm, promised him a game.
“I’ll play too,” said Sylvia suddenly. “Let’s have a set, unless you and Daddy frightfully want to play singles.”
“Not in the least,” said Copper. “Who’s your fourth? Quarrendon?”
“I’m told that I resemble a cathedral walking when I play tennis,” said Quarrendon with a glance at Taffy, “but I’m willing to provide the spectacle. My play, I ought perhaps to add, is very much what you’d expect from the description.”
The conversation continued, pleasantly trivial and discursive.
3
Suddenly, as it seemed to Frances, they were in the midst of a psychic disturbance.
It was afternoon. The set of tennis, which
had begun late, was still in progress; Mrs Peel, watching it, had fallen asleep; Taffy and Maurice — their bathe unaccountably deferred by their mother until some unspecified later hour — were entertaining themselves and faintly disturbing others with a variety concert of Hot Numbers from Luxembourg, and their mother and aunt, with Sal Oliver and Frances, sat in the shade and talked.
It was Anna who plunged, with cyclonic abruptness, from detached, aimless chat into more vital topics.
“Claudia, what about my plan for Taffy? May I have her?”
“Have her?” echoed Claudia blankly.
“Take her with us, either this year or next, to the States, and send her to Bryn Mawr. She says she’s taking School Certificate next term. Of course there’s no immediate hurry, but I’d like to fix things up in good time. Then the College authorities can put her name down for admission next year.”
“What a piece of luck for Taffy!” said Sal Oliver coolly.
The atmosphere seemed suddenly to have become electric. Frances glanced, almost surreptitiously, at Claudia. Was it fancy, or had she become rather paler? She was intent on measuring two blades of grass one against the other.
At last she looked up and spoke very quietly.
“You’re an angel, Anna dear, to think of it, but honestly — I don’t know what to say. Taffy’s only sixteen. I suppose you wouldn’t like to transfer the offer to Sylvia?” She laughed as she spoke, so that none could tell whether she was in earnest or not.
“I’m afraid not,” Anna said. “Sylvia is a darling, and gets prettier every time I see her — (that girl’s too wonderful, she’s always prettier than one expects her to be) — but I think Taffy suits Adolf better. Besides, she’s wild to come.”
“She’d be most unnatural if she wasn’t,” observed Sal briskly. “And I quite agree that she’s the one that ought to go. It’s none of it my business, Claudia, I know, but you know what I think about Taffy.”
“Quite well, Sal dear. So well that I don’t think we need go into it just now. Anna, may I think it over?”
“Well,” said Anna, “I don’t believe that means anything at all, unless it’s a civil way of refusing. So if you don’t mind, why not let’s discuss it here and now? Frances is your greatest friend — and one of my oldest ones — and Sal here knows all about all of us, and is cleverer than the whole of the rest of us put together. You like facing facts, Claudia, so let’s face them.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 433