Presently he asked her: “What are we going to do about it, darling? Are we going to marry? Would you?”
Rosalie softly moved her face against his hand in a kittenlike caress.
“I don’t think I want to talk about anything like that, now. This is perfect.”
“Tell me you love me.”
“I love you, Lucy.”
“Do you remember when you said it was a ridiculous name?”
“I do still.”
They laughed, and kissed again and again.
By and by Lucy asked her once more: “Wouldn’t you marry me, sweet? I can’t possibly ever let you go again.”
She made no answer, but her hands clung to his. “Men have asked you to marry them before, haven’t they?”
“Only one or two,” she replied, in a naively defensive tone, “and I never really said yes to any of them.”
“Tell me why not. Didn’t you care for any of them?”
“Only for about five minutes. I always knew it wasn’t going to last.”
“Do you feel like that now?”
“Not at this very minute.”
“Then, my beautiful one, promise you’ll marry me.”
“Do you know that I’m most terribly fickle?” asked Rosalie.
“So am I,” said Lucy.
“Have you been in love with a great many other women?”
“I’m afraid so. I’ll tell you, some day. But I haven’t ever asked any single one of them to marry me. To be perfectly candid with you, Rosalie — (I adore your name, though you don’t like mine) — I never intended to marry anyone.”
“Tell me why.”
“Partly for the same reason as yours. I’m not the kind that stays faithful. And The Grove, where Mama insists upon living like a matriarch surrounded by her family, isn’t any place for the only sort of woman who could endure to spend her life with me — or I with her.”
“What sort of woman would that be?” Rosalie asked, deliberately provocative.
Lucy continued to kiss her without making any further attempt to obtain from her a promise.
6
Rosalie, essentially of the type that lives for the moment, combined great susceptibility and an ardent temperament with a very simple candour.
She was intelligent also.
Intelligence and candour combined had taught her very early that she wanted, beyond almost anything else, to retain her freedom.
She could not bear to hurt anyone, least of ail anyone whom she loved, and she regretfully suspected that anyone to whom she was bound by anything stronger than the ephemeral link of passion, must sooner or later be hurt by her.
She possessed neither worldly wisdom nor acquisitiveness, and it scarcely crossed her mind that marriage with Lucy Lemprière would bring material advantages with it.
She only knew that she was attracted by him, as he by her, that she wanted him to make love to her and that he was doing so, far more subtly and skilfully than any other man she had ever met.
Rosalie was still a virgin: should Lucy attempt to seduce her she felt that, for the first time in her life, she might find resistance very difficult. The thought covered the surface of her mind only: she had no intention of dwelling upon it, or upon anything outside the drowning bliss of the moment.
7
The two elderly women, Mrs. Joe Newton and Cecilia Charlecombe, sat in the long drawing-room on yellow-satin upholstered seats, the French windows wide open and the green and silver of the birch-trees reflected in the great gilt mirror above the white marble mantelpiece.
The scent of roses and magnolias outside mingled with the underlying permanent odour of the room itself, at once strong and fresh, compounded of the French polish on the shining parquet floor and the pot-pourri that filled the Chinese bowls on the cabinets.
Mrs. Joe broke silence abruptly.
“Is Lucy in earnest about her? Would it be a possible thing?”
“Oh, quite,” said Cecilia. “Money doesn’t matter, and she’s a nice child. I very much want Lucy to marry, as a matter of fact.”
“Yes, it’s time. Thirty-three, isn’t he? And Fred must be thirty-four.”
“Fred isn’t likely to marry.”
Mrs. Joe’s wooden face expressed nothing. In her own mind she thought that Cecilia didn’t wish Fred to marry, and was probably trying to square her conscience by pushing her second son — if he needed pushing — into the society of an obviously attractive girl.
She did Cecilia injustice.
Her conscience required no squaring.
She had seen at once that Lucy and Rosalie Meredith were mutually attracted, and had decided that their marriage was a thing to be desired.
If it had been Fred, it would have been a different matter.
Cecilia felt, obscurely, that if Lucy married and had sons to carry on the Lempriére family, Fred might be less likely to do so.
Chapter III
1
Kate’s elation was ebbing from her.
It had been slowly diminishing ever since the afternoon on which she had thought Rosalie was coming to the fête at Tintern, and Rosalie hadn’t come.
That, somehow, had never quite been explained. Rosalie had been eagerly affectionate when Kate got back, and delighted with the lavender bags, the papier mâché inlaid blotter and the little glass paperweight that Kate had brought her, and she had said:
“Oh, darling, I did miss you! Everything is all quite different, in this lovely place, when you’re not here.”
Kate had felt the familiar glow of pride and happiness in her heart, at the thought that Rosalie cared for her and missed her, but afterwards she wondered why, after all, Rosalie hadn’t come to Tintern, and hadn’t offered any reason for her defection. Surely, if Rosalie so much wanted to be with her —
Kate stifled the thought, angry with herself, but throughout the next few days it kept on coming back.
Rosalie was just the same as ever when they were together, but she spent less time now with Kate and the children, and often she was nowhere to be seen, and when, at last, Kate would suddenly find her on the terrace, or coming from the library or even — once — strolling up the lane with Lucy, she only said, “Hallo, darling! There you are,” and slipped her hand through Kate’s arm, and smiled her wide, sweet, careless smile.
She was still loving, still responsive, still kind, but Kate felt, with a horrible and increasing conviction against which all her own angry reasoning availed nothing, that Rosalie’s real thoughts were all the time elsewhere. Where, she thought that she did not know. But when the knowledge came to her, from without, she experienced no surprise — only the young, sick dismay of realizing, beyond the possibility of escape, that something too bad to be true was happening to her, that she was to be hurt where she was most vulnerable — through her passionate, undisciplined affections.
It was the night of Cecilia’s dance.
Only a dozen or so of young people had been invited, and a rather smaller number of their seniors. The dancing was in the yellow drawing-room, with all the furniture ranged along the walls and the grand piano standing forth in polished glory, round which was to gather a quartette of musicians to play waltzes and polkas and an occasional old-fashioned country dance.
There were card tables in the library, and supper laid out in the dining-room.
Kate, in a new white dress with a pearl necklace that her mother had taken out of her own jewel-case and told her she was to wear, stood and gazed earnestly at herself in the long mirror on her bedroom wall.
She gathered up her glistening satin skirt in one hand and looked at her new white satin slippers, then let the folds drop again. A familiar wish that she were prettier crossed the surface of her mind, but roused in her no emotion of any sort. She felt that, in a new evening dress, and with her curling brown hair elaborately coiled and twisted by a skilful maid, she ought to have appeared at her very best, and yet did not. Her hazel eyes looked dull and she was frowning as Mama was al
ways telling her not to do — Kate conscientiously smoothed her brow — and her waist, in spite of corsets as tightly laced as she could bear them, was not nearly as slim as that of Rosalie, who didn’t tight-lace at all.
At the thought of Rosalie, Kate remembered — with a tiny lift of hope — that she had put a little cluster of pale-pink roses and maidenhair fern, made up into a spray, on Rosalie’s dressing-table as a surprise, for her to wear at the dance.
Rosalie had no ornaments, not even a brooch, except one very old-fashioned, heavy garnet one that she had said would tear the lace berthe of her blue dress, so that she couldn’t wear it.
She would be able to wear the spray, and Kate had remembered to put two small gilt safety-pins beside it for her to use.
A knock came at the door and she sprang round, sure that it was Rosalie.
“Come in!”
Fanny came in, clutching a shawl round her shoulders.
“Will you do me up at the back, darling? Tom can never get the hooks right.”
Fanny’s dress was an elaborate orange silk, with tiers of lace and chiffon, and she had a diamond crescent in her black, heavy clouds of hair, and diamonds on her wrists.
“What do you think of my dress?” she asked wistfully. “Tom likes me in yellow. It’s his favourite colour.”
“It looks splendid,” said Kate sincerely. “Turn round, Fanny, and I’ll do you up.”
Fanny obediently turned.
“I’ve got an ostrich-feather fan — one of the wedding presents.” Fanny still referred to her marriage, four years earlier, as “the wedding.”
“I wish I had a fan,” said Kate. “Do you think I look at all nice? I was thinking, when you came in, how awful I was.”
Fanny, in her deliberate way, paused before replying. Then she remarked:
“I don’t suppose you look awful. I’ll take a good look at you directly you’ve finished me. When I saw you, when I came in, I thought: I must take a thoroughly good look at Kate as soon as I’m properly fastened. And I did see that your hair was looking lovely.”
Kate, cheered, continued to fasten hooks and eyes. When they were all done she came and stood in front of Fanny.
“Has Mama given you that pearl necklace?”
“Good gracious, no,” said Kate. “She said I had to wear it, that’s all.”
“I think she ought to give it to you. She has three, and this is the smallest one. It looks very pretty, and so do you. Honestly.”
“Oh no, Fanny, I’m not pretty. Not like Rosalie.”
“I suppose she is very pretty,” said Fanny rather doubtfully. “Tom thinks she’s too tall and skinny.”
“Lucy said she had a good figure.”
“Oh, well — Lucy.”
“Why did you say it like that?” Kate asked quickly, and she felt her heart beginning to beat very fast.
“I think he’s a good deal taken with her, don’t you? I’m rather glad,” said Fanny placidly. “I think she’s a very nice girl.”
“Yes,” said Kate.
She suddenly felt slightly sick.
“You — you don’t mean that Lucy is in love with Rosalie, do you?”
“I don’t know,” said Fanny. “It looks as if he were, of course, but one can never tell with men. Especially a man like Lucy.”
“Why?”
“He’s attractive, isn’t he, and he does flirt a good deal. Of course, I suppose you’ve never known anything about that, shut up in the schoolroom. But he does, and so does Fred.”
Fanny laughed amiably, praised Kate’s dress and her shoes, and went away to her own room.
Kate stood still, in front of the mirror once more, but this time she did not even see the reflection of herself.
A storm of rage and misery, the more bitter because she was unable to understand its meaning, was shaking her. She knew only that she didn’t want Lucy to be in love with Rosalie, nor she with him.
“I shan’t have either of them. Neither of them will care most for me,” she thought wildly, and felt as though a two-edged sword was turning and turning somewhere inside her.
With a gesture that was at once childlike and passionate, she wrung her hands together, driving her nails into the flesh.
“I can’t bear it. It isn’t true!”
She wouldn’t believe that it could be true.
Fanny had said it, but everybody knew that Fanny wasn’t at all clever — in fact, she was very stupid. She said so herself. Because Lucy was nice to Rosalie, Fanny thought it meant that he was in love with her. But he couldn’t be — he was friendly with her because she was Kate’s friend, that was all. Or if it wasn’t all, Rosalie couldn’t possibly be in love with him. She’d have told Kate. They hadn’t any secrets from one another, and Rosalie had often said that she never meant to marry.
Kate found that her forehead was wet, and her neck, and that she was shaking.
“I’m jealous,” she thought, ashamed and terrified. “I’m jealous of both of them. I want to be first with both of them, and I’m not, and I never shall be again.”
Mechanically she sponged her face and neck and hands, and the touch of the cold water calmed her.
“Perhaps it’s not true,” she thought. “After all, I don’t at all know that it’s true.”
She knelt down beside her bed and prayed.
“Please, God, don’t let it be true. Let me still matter most to Lucy and let that make him perfectly happy, please, and let Rosalie still be my best friend and love me best, and help me not to mind and not be jealous and — —”
Her thoughts became utterly confused again, and she felt unable to continue. Perhaps God would understand.
The clock on the mantelpiece struck eight silver chimes.
Kate went to the door and opened it.
“It isn’t true,” she kept on repeating to herself. “I don’t believe it can be really true.”
On the wide landing she overtook Lucy, looking immensely tall and dark in his black-and-white clothes.
Instantly the mere sight of him reassured her. He looked just as she had so often seen him look — it became unbelievable that anything of overwhelming importance should have happened to Lucy without her knowing it. She felt a childish certainty that, if it had, he would somehow look different.
They stood on the landing, facing one another, and Lucy smiled at her — his affectionate, faintly derisive smile with one eyebrow raised a little.
“I forbid you to dance your first waltz with anyone but me, Kay,” was all he said.
Happiness — precarious, but still happiness — came back to her with a rush.
“Really and truly?”
“Naturally. Turn round.”
She turned, and felt his hand touch her hair lightly.
“Very, very successful. How wrong I was when I told you that I didn’t want you to grow up.”
“I don’t feel grown-up.”
“You will before the end of the evening, I expect.”
As he spoke, Lucy turned his head and, although Kate had heard no sound, she saw Rosalie coming towards them.
She called to them in her light, gay tones.
“Let me look at you, Kate. Oh, how pretty your hair is, and I love your dress.”
“Turn round,” Lucy again commanded his sister. “Slowly. I want her to get the whole effect.”
Kate knew they were looking at her as she revolved slowly.
Both these people whom she felt to be of such overwhelming importance to herself, and upon whom she was expending all the emotional force of her whole nature, were thinking about her, not about one another.
“It’s all lovely,” she heard Rosalie say, and happiness rang in her voice, as it so often did.
Kate’s tumultuous misery lifted.
She turned to face them again, raising her eyes almost timidly, and thus intercepted the locked gaze that held Lucy and Rosalie, spellbound, to one another. Rosalie’s hands were at her breast, and Kate saw that she was wearing there, no
t a spray of pale-pink roses and maidenhair fern, but two deep-red camellias, with varnished-looking, pointed green leaves.
Kate knew, as well as though she had been told so, that Lucy had given them to her.
2
Kate danced and danced.
She was the daughter of the house, and everyone asked her — even old Cousin Joe Newton, whose only other partner was his own wife.
Lucy whirled her round and round the room in the first waltz, and then took her out onto the terrace.
“What is it, darling?” he asked softly.
“Nothing,” answered Kate, startled.
“Yes, it is. Has Mama been scolding you?”
Kate shook her head.
Lucy said very gently: “Whatever it is, you shall come and tell me to-morrow in the orchard. Remember where I used to swing you, before I went abroad?”
“Yes,” said Kate, her voice quivering.
She suddenly felt terrified that she might be going to cry.
“It’s all right.” Lucy’s voice sounded as though he were smiling, although it was impossible to see his face in the shadow of the trees.
“It’ll be all right, you know, Kay love, whatever it is. I’ll take my oath it’ll come out all right. Things always do, for little girls who are good and sweet and pretty, and have intelligent elder brothers to take care of them.”
He wanted to make her laugh, and Kate, accustomed to make Lucy’s wish her law, did give a quavering laugh.
“You’re a silly little sweet,” Lucy told her.
Cecilia, gowned in low-cut black velvet, came sweeping along the terrace, her head turning from side to side.
Lucy, with an arm round Kate’s waist, drew her further into the shadows.
It was of no use.
Cecilia came up to them at once.
“Lucy, you can’t dance with Kate in that absurd fashion.”
“Too late, Mama. I have danced with her — though not in any absurd fashion. We were, on the contrary, much admired.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve got to dance with any girls who haven’t got partners. And, Kate, come back to the drawing-room at once. You ought to be dancing with other people, or else seeing that your friends are enjoying themselves.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 502