He remained with the two girls until the Newton eleven went in, with a score of one hundred and nineteen to beat.
“They’ll do it,” said Lucy pessimistically, as he pulled on his wicket-keeper’s gloves. “Old Cousin Joe is good for fifty any day of the week.”
His prophecy was justified. Cousin Joe Newton piled up a score of sixty-one runs and the Newton Players, long before stumps were drawn at seven o’clock, had won the match handsomely.
“We want Fred to show us a bit of hard hitting,” said Lucy.
“It won’t be so very long now before he’s home,” answered Fred’s mother.
Lucy and Kate saw Rosalie and her Aunt Maude into the pony-cart.
“I’ve simply loved coming,” Rosalie said, with her shining eyes on Kate’s face.
Kate thought once more how incredibly lucky she was to have such, a friend, who cared so much to be with her.
It seemed too wonderful to be true.
4
Rosalie’s aunt Maude Troyle, whom Kate had disliked, that night sat harmlessly in her sister’s small spare bedroom brushing out her greying hair over a mauve and white wrapper — for even in her dishabillé she presented a persistently widowed appearance.
In a creaking basket-chair with a faded red cushion sat Rosalie’s mother, a thin, angular woman whose tints, originally as golden as Rosalie’s, had faded to a uniform drab. She was built on the same long lines as her daughter, but all original grace was obscured by perpetually stooping shoulders and a middle-aged spread at the waistline that she took no pains to control.
She was fifty-two but might easily have been taken for sixty. Mrs. Troyle, who was her senior by three years, looked younger by far than she did.
“That’s quite an interesting family, Bertha,” said Mrs. Troyle in the midst of a languid discussion about wallpapers.
Bertha Meredith showed no surprise.
“We’ve never seen very much of them. Mrs. Charlecombe is so well-off, and although we’ve dined there once or twice we’ve nothing to offer in return. But I was glad when Rosalie made friends with the daughter; it seems a nice house for her to go to.”
“Oh, very, very.”
“Did you think anything, Maude?” asked her sister nervously.
“No,” returned Mrs. Troyle thoughtfully. “No, I can’t say I thought anything, exactly. Or perhaps that isn’t perfectly true. The son was there, as you know, and the other one expected to turn up any minute.”
“I remember the other one, the elder one. Last time he was home from Barbados. Very tall,” said Mrs. Meredith faintly. “Very tall indeed.”
“That may be all very well, Bertha. But is there, or is there not, any black blood in that family?”
“The first husband — the Lemprière one — was a Creole. But John says that simply means someone of European descent who happens — just happens — to have been born in the West Indies. I think the family, to be real Creole, have to have lived there for two generations or something.”
“Well, I see. But why is the young man as black as your hat?”
“But, Maude, he isn’t. At least, when I used to see Fred years ago he certainly wasn’t, and this one isn’t either.”
“You will admit, my dear, that he is extraordinarily dark, and his mother must quite obviously have been very fair, and that little half-sister with the bad manners.”
“Bad manners?”
“Well, I thought her rather uncouth and abrupt. What was Charlecombe like?”
“I’ve no idea. He died before we came here. He hadn’t been here very long himself — he inherited the place more or less unexpectedly.”
“I suppose it’ll come to the girl eventually, then.”
“I suppose so. Really, I haven’t thought about it,” said Mrs. Meredith in unconvincing tones.
“And the West Indies to these blackamoors.”
“Maude!”
“Well, dear, if you won’t see these things for yourself, someone has got to point them out to you, for dear little Rosalie’s sake.”
“Then you did think.”
“No, I did not. I’ve already told you I didn’t. But we all know she’s very attractive, — if only you lived in any reasonable part of the world, where she could see a few men, she’d have been married long ago.”
“She’s refused three proposals, and put off at least two more.”
“I know all about that, Bertha. Two of them were quite impossible — you told me so yourself — and one was that penniless curate whom she met, I’m sorry to say, at my house.”
“You couldn’t help it, Maude. Men do admire Rosalie, and I think she flirts with them. I’ve tried to make her see that she must marry — John and I have nothing to leave her — but I’m bound to say that she’s never had a really good offer, simply because she never meets any men worth meeting.”
“I suppose these Charlecombes — or Lemprières — are very rich?”
“I believe the elder one — the one in Barbados — is very extravagant.”
“He can probably afford to be. What was the daughter like?”
“Rather heavy and dull, as far as I remember. She married a man with red hair.”
“Yes, poor thing, I know. I suppose she was married for her money.”
“Really, Maude, I don’t see why you should suppose that, when you’ve never even seen her.”
Mrs. Troyle remained unmoved by this rebuke.
“Anyhow, it’s not of the least importance,” she declared. “The point is, that Rosalie is obviously going to be thrown a good deal into the society of these two young men — though I suppose, really, they’re not so very young but all the more reason why they should want to settle down — and are you and John satisfied, or are you not, that they aren’t some kind of niggers in disguise?”
“How absurd you are, Maude.”
They both laughed.
“Well,” said Mrs. Troyle, “it often skips a generation, I believe, and you wouldn’t like a pitch-black grandchild, I suppose.”
“Then you did think something.”
“I did and I didn’t. Of course, one couldn’t be sure of anything, but obviously he was rather attracted.”
“Men always are, by Rosalie.”
“I know. And I feel it may be an opportunity, and if so, you ought to be quite certain in your own mind whether you want her to make the most of it or not.”
Mrs. Meredith drew a long breath.
“Then, between ourselves, Maude, I do. I’d give everything in the world to see Rosalie safely and happily married. It did cross my mind, naturally, about the Lemprières when she first made such friends with that little Kate.”
“And John is really quite sure that it’s all due to the climate and that they aren’t — —”
“Absolutely sure,” said Mrs. Meredith firmly.
Chapter II
1
Rosalie, as her mother knew only too well, had no desire to get married. She had, indeed, very few unrealized desires, for she was by nature happy, always ready to enjoy herself, and temperamentally incapable of looking beyond the present.
It was true that, as her mother had told her aunt, she was attractive to men. What Mrs. Meredith had never understood was that Rosalie herself was only too easily attracted in return.
She took admiration and even a degree of love-making almost for granted, because she had been accustomed to both ever since her fifteenth year, and a natural responsiveness had led her much further than her mother, judging Rosalie by her own devitalized and inhibited temperament, could have been brought to believe. But Rosalie, although naturally frank and morally fearless, kept her erotic adventures from the knowledge of her parents. She had no wish to pain them, for she was very fond of both, no wish to live in an atmosphere of reproach or suspicion, and least of all had she any wish to be’ interfered with.
Her affections were both ardent and volatile, and she was capable of a flare-up of passionate feeling that would die down as quickly
as it had sprung up only to be rekindled by another encounter and to burn with equal intensity.
Sometimes she told herself that she was incapable of fidelity and that this was a grave deficiency, but such thoughts seldom troubled her for long. She knew, and inwardly acknowledged, that she did not want to be faithful if fidelity entailed the absence of those emotional excitements that gave colour to life.
Her response to little Kate Charlecombe’s adoring affection was a perfectly genuine one, for Rosalie was at once too ingenuous and too egotistical to simulate any emotion that she did not feel. She perfectly knew, and accepted, that she gave Kate much less than Kate gave her, and she hoped, from sheer kindness of heart, that Kate would never find this out until it should have ceased to matter to her.
When Rosalie met Lucy Lemprière at his mother’s house, she immediately perceived that he was more likely to interest her than any man she had so far met, but had he seemed to her far less attractive than he actually did, she would still instinctively have done her utmost to engage his attention.
Long before the end of the day at The Grove she knew that she had succeeded, although Lucy had done no more than twice look at her when she was not looking at him, so as to draw her glance round like a magnet, and cock an eyebrow at her while he was exchanging idle repartee with his fellow cricketers at tea.
Rosalie’s farewell kisses to Kate, the enthusiastic assurances of enjoyment that she had spoken to Kate, had all been directed at Lucy.
She felt quite certain that he knew it.
A familiar exhilaration possessed her. She neither questioned nor sought to analyse it. Something was in course of happening that would add glamour to the summer, and enhance her own joy in being alive.
With that conviction Rosalie was blithely content.
Nor did she trouble herself as to the possibility of further meetings with Lucy. She felt, with perfect serenity, that he would see to it that they took place.
So for two days after the cricket match Rosalie gaily made conversation with Aunt Maude, helped her mother in the house, drove her father out once or twice in the pony-cart, and played the piano in the evenings after dinner.
And on the third day Lucy Lempriére rode over with Kate in the early part of the afternoon. They had come with an invitation.
“Mama would be so pleased,” gabbled Kate, wide-eyed and excited, “if you would come and stay for a few days with us next week. We’re going to have a carpet dance on Saturday night, and there’s a garden fête at someone or other’s house — I forget where — but it’ll be fun. Do, do, come, Rosalie.”
“How kind to think of her,” said Mrs. Meredith politely.
She looked at her daughter.
“I’d love to,” Rosalie said.
“My mother will send the carriage over for you on Monday, if she may,” Lucy told her, and his hazel eyes gazed boldly straight into Rosalie’s happy, smiling blue ones.
After a very little while, she suggested that the visitors should come out into the garden. The drawing-room was small and overcrowded with furniture, and she knew that her mother only wished them out of it, for she was both nervous of people whom she did not know well, and permanently too busy to sit and entertain callers.
“There’s nothing much to look at,” said Rosalie, “but I like sitting in the summer-house. I’ll fetch some lemonade.”
“Can I go?” enquired Lucy, without stirring from the wooden support of the summer-house, against which he stood leaning in an attitude of the utmost indolence.
“How dismayed you’d be if I said yes.”
“I should indeed,” he agreed placidly. “But you can send Kate. She’s always kind, and — which is so much more important — always quick.”
“Yes, I’ll go. Of course I’ll go. Where shall I find it?” Kate cried, gathering up the skirts of her riding-habit as she spoke.
Rosalie put a hand through her arm.
“We’ll both go. You can carry the glasses for me. Mr. Lemprière, I should hate to think of your tiring yourself.”
“So should I,” said Lucy. “I’ll wait here for the lemonade.”
He smiled amiably as the girls went away.
When they came back again, carrying a large jug of lemonade and three glasses, he had extended his length in a deck-chair, and made but a feint of rising on their approach.
“Please don’t move,” mocked Rosalie gently. “You might get hot. Or doesn’t one ever get hot in this country, after the West Indies?”
“On the contrary. One never gets hot in the West Indies from what I remember of them, and from what my brother Fred tells us. Life there is specially arranged so as to avoid getting hot. Work is done, when at all, at the times when it’s coolest, drinks are properly iced — an iced rum-swizzle is the best drink in existence excepting Miss Meredith’s lemonade — and one’s waited on hand and foot.”
“How you must wish you were out there too!”
“Sometimes, but there are compensations,” murmured Lucy. “Cricket, for instance, on green, English grass.”
“And being with us again,” suggested Kate.
“Some of us — Yes.” He smiled at her lazily.
For an hour they sat in the little summer-house, talking idly, laughing at nothing, Lucy and Rosalie feinting verbally with an increasing excitement of which Kate remained innocently unconscious, each acutely aware of the other.
Rosalie wondered whether Lucy would make any opportunity for being alone with her before going away. She resolved that she would do nothing to hinder it, but nothing to help it either.
Just as they walked round the house to the little yard where the horses had been stabled, Rosalie’s father returned from his day’s work at the estate office where he sat on market days.
He was a middle-aged man, inclined to stoutness, taller than either his wife or his daughter and always by preference wearing corduroys and leggings and a hard hat.
He had an open, genial manner and was inclined to be facetious in the company of young ladies. He went round with them to the loose boxes, discussed the horses with Lucy, and complimented Kate especially on her mount — a bay mare named Starlight.
When the horses had been led out into the yard he put Kate up into the saddle.
Lucy, his foot in the stirrup, turned to where Rosalie was standing, patting the horse’s neck.
“Goodbye till Monday, Miss Meredith. Are you afraid of a dog-cart?”
“It entirely depends on who’s driving it.”
“How right you are. I’ll see to it that you have no cause for alarm on Monday.”
“Thank you,” said Rosalie.
His eyes held hers for a moment as their hands met in the conventional goodbye.
Rosalie knew a slight familiar thrill at the contact.
2
She went to stay at The Grove characteristically unperturbed by the fact, distressing to her mother, that she had no new clothes, not even a special dress for the dance.
She would have to wear her white frock every night for dinner, and a blue silk that had already figured at all the Christmas parties for the dance.
“What does it matter?” said Rosalie with complete sincerity. “I shall enjoy myself just the same.”
Cecilia had invited several people to stay. She wanted to make it amusing for Lucy.
Lucy took his duties as host as he did most duties — very lightly. His major exertion was to drive a high, light two-wheeled Canadian buggy, and in it he went to fetch Rosalie from St. Brinvels.
“Couldn’t I come too?” asked Kate.
“Better not, my love. No room for the bandboxes. Besides, I’d hate you to sit on the back seat. It’s like sitting on a knife-board.”
“Lucy, you can’t go alone. Mrs. Meredith wouldn’t like it,” said his mother.
“Certainly not,” said Lucy coolly. “I shall take Tim or Tom — whichever his name is — the new stable-boy.”
“His name is Tim.”
“I’m glad it’s
not Tom, or we should get mixed up between him and Fanny’s husband. When is Fanny coming, by the by?”
“The day after to-morrow,” Kate answered, as her mother made no reply.
The fraternal affection of her sons, displayed openly in a most un - English fashion, for her daughters, Cecilia appeared always to receive with a rather unsympathetic astonishment. Nor was her indifference to Fanny and Fanny’s children in any way assumed.
She said: “Now, Kate, you can make yourself useful until your friend arrives. Go and see that the nurseries look nice, and then do the drawing-room flowers.”
She consulted a list.
“The Red room for Cousin Joe and Cousin Edith, the two South rooms for Fanny and her husband, and I’ve put Rosalie into the little Chinese room.”
“But, Mama,” said Kate, “I think she’d rather be near me.”
She stopped, as her mother instantly assumed an expression of exaggerated surprise.
“Tut-tut-tut, who do you think you are, my dear child? The Empress of China? I’ve given my orders, and there’s nothing more to be said. Run along now. Prompt obedience.”
Cecilia spoke quite good-humouredly and did not even glance up to see how Kate had received her reply, for it seldom occurred to her that her will could be questioned.
When Kate had left the drawing-room she spoke, in a gentler and less business-like voice, to her son.
“What do you think of that Meredith girl, Lucy? Kate is quite silly about her, but girls of her age get like that and then outgrow it.”
“Why shouldn’t Kate be silly about her?” mildly returned Lucy. “There’s no one and nothing else for her to be silly about, poor child, and I like to see her all giggling and schoolgirlish.”
“Nonsense.”
“I do indeed, Mama. When little Kate grows sensible I shall lose a lot of enjoyment and begin to feel like an old man.”
“My dear boy, I wish you’d marry a nice girl.”
“I don’t think a nice girl would care to marry me, Mama, or even to come and live here en famille.”
“Nonsense. This house is large enough for at least two families. Besides, I could get you a house somewhere else, and you could find something to do.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 500