“Are you happy?”
“Very.”
“Yes, you look happy enough,” said Fred coolly. “But not utterly radiant.”
“Don’t you think you’re being rather impertinent Fred?”
“Very likely. Don’t you think you’re being rather silly, Rosalie?”
As she heard him pronounce her name Rosalie knew, with a sense of blinding horror, that she was not free after all.
Fred still had power over her, and she could only escape from it if she need never see him again.
He must go back to Barbados.
“Don’t let me hurt Lucy”, thought Rosalie, who had seldom prayed in her life although she recited a daily and nightly formula of words to which she attached no real meaning.
She looked across the table and saw Lucy’s black head bent towards Mrs. Joe Newton, to whom he was listening. Without perceptibly withdrawing his attention from her, his eyes, as though magnetically impelled, turned to his wife.
He sent her the slightest of smiles.
Rosalie took a sudden resolution.
“The thing I want most in the world is not to hurt Lucy,” she said, very low and clearly, to Fred.
“You don’t mind hurting me?”
“It’s your own fault if I do — but Lucy’s worth more than either of us,” Rosalie replied, scarcely knowing what she said.
“I agree. I suppose I ought to have kept away.”
“Yes, you ought.”
“Then,” said Fred, “you do realize that you and I are still madly in love with one another?”
“My dear,” called Cecilia to her daughter-in-law, “Captain Durant wants to know whether you are related to the Shropshire Merediths. He knows some of them.”
“No, I’m afraid not. I’ve been asked that before, but so far as I know we’re not related,” said Rosalie.
She was astonished to hear her own voice, light and careless, sounding exactly as usual.
“The Shropshire Merediths?” echoed Bob ffillimore from across the table. “Feller who used to play polo at Hurlingham?”
The conversation became general.
After dinner Cecilia, the Newtons and Lucy, played whist. Rosalie took up a seat exactly behind her husband and earnestly watched his play, not seeing a single card.
She could hear Fred at the piano, at the far end of the long room.
Kate and Captain Durant were standing beside him, suggesting all the popular music-hall tunes of the moment, and the elderly Mr. ffillimore, in a great armchair that made him look even more spare than he was, leant back in silence, presumably listening to the piano.
At The Grove it was always Cecilia who gave the signal for dispersal, and when the third rubber was finished and she rose, picking up her white gloves and long net purse, Mrs. Joe Newton accepted it obediently as an indication that the evening had come to an end so far as the ladies were concerned.
Rosalie, who had longed for it to finish, followed the two elder ladies without having exchanged any good-night with Fred.
Although she had thought that she wanted to be alone, she found herself calling Kate into the big first-floor bedroom where she was now lodged.
They talked a little about the two men who were staying in the house — Cousin Joe Newton didn’t count — and Kate told Rosalie about Mr. ffillimore’s four old-maid sisters, one of whom actually spelt her name “fflorens.”
Rosalie encouraged her to stay. She didn’t, after all, want to be alone and think things out.
There was nothing to think out, for she knew already that she loved Lucy and that the fear of making him unhappy hurt her unbearably, that she and Fred were violently attracted towards one another, and that she trusted herself no more than she did him.
Even while she answered Kate, and made laughing comments, her mind was racing round and round in a sick inconclusive jumble of dismay. The only distinct thought that emerged was the one: “Lucy must never know.”
Kate stopped talking and knelt down on the hearth to make up the fire.
In the silence of the heavily curtained, warm room Rosalie heard, as clearly as though a voice had spoken, an inexorable warning.
Whatever she might tell, or leave untold, Lucy — because he loved her and had intuition — would know, and would suffer.
2
Lucy was in the workshop — a big, light room at the bottom of the garden where he had accumulated tools and a turning-lathe and cricketing tackle ever since his schooldays.
He sat astride the carpenter’s bench and, automatically skilful, adjusted the binding of an old cricket bat. His thoughts were inescapable, and were reflected in the bitterness of his eyes and the hard set of his. mouth.
But when Kate pushed open the door and looked in he smiled at her.
“I didn’t know you were here,” said Kate.
Lucy’s eyebrow went up.
“What a curious way of accounting for your arrival. Having made it clear to me that your visit is in no way connected with my presence, supposing you sit down and talk to me. I haven’t seen you to talk to since I arrived. No, don’t trouble to say that it hasn’t been your fault.”
“I wasn’t going to, Lucy.”
“As a matter of fact, my love, I’m quite extraordinarily glad you’ve come. Are you any happier than you were?”
Kate looked at him with startled eyes.
She shook her head without speaking.
“Kay, you must be. I don’t think I was very nice to you about your being unhappy before, was I? I feel rather sorry, now.”
“I wouldn’t like you to feel sorry, Lucy. Mama said I behaved like a — like a silly schoolgirl and that I’d vexed you very much.”
“You and I know one another a good deal better than Mama understands either of us. Forget anything she may have said,” Lucy suggested. “And tell me what you’re going to do with yourself all the winter.”
“Only stay at home, unless Fanny asks me to go to Rock Place.”
“There’ll be the hunting.”
“Yes.”
“One of these days someone’ll fall in love with you, Kay. You’ll tell me all about it, won’t you?”
“I will if it ever happens,” Kate said doubtfully. “Cousin Edith — she’s much nicer and more understanding than I ever knew before — said it wasn’t any good making up one’s mind to be first with someone.”
Lucy balanced his bat very carefully between his knees, looked at it intently, and said in a detached tone:
“She did, did she? The old girl seems to have found out quite a lot about life. Though I must say, I should have been fully prepared to bet all Lombard Street to a China orange that nobody but his own wife had ever been anything but first with old Joe.”
“Perhaps she wanted it to be somebody not so — well, somebody different from Cousin Joe.”
“That’s very clever of you, my dear. You’ve been learning things, too, haven’t you — like Cousin Edith, only in about one-fifth of the time. What a pity it is that all the really important things one has to learn seem to come so expensive.”
“Do you think they always do, Lucy?”
“It begins to look like it, by the time one’s reached my advanced years.”
“Then aren’t you happy?” Kate demanded with blunt, childish abruptness.
“I didn’t say that. What a very un-English conversation this is, isn’t it? I feel Tom Ballantyne would dislike it so intensely — but then fortunately he’s not here.”
“I like Tom.”
“So do I. Immensely. And so does Fanny, which is after all still more important. I only meant that he doesn’t approve of feelings, or emotions, as fit subjects for discussion — whereas you and I do.”
“You always understand, and it’s wonderful. I wish I could do something for you.”
“Well, you’ve done a good deal — whether you know it or not. Never mind the passing cloud of last summer to which I see you’re just going to refer. One either has a real relationship wit
h another person — in which case passing clouds, however distressing, don’t matter in the long run — or else the relationship isn’t a real one, and in that case the passing clouds probably don’t pass at all but just remain, and that doesn’t matter in the long run, either.”
“Is our relationship one of the real ones?”
“Absolutely.”
His eyes, quite grave, for a few seconds held hers.
“Don’t forget again, Kay. It’ll always be real, wherever we are and whatever kind of a muddle we may make of our respective lives, and whatever nonsense other people — dear Mama included — may talk.”
“Then if I’m — bad — again, it won’t really count? I don’t want to be, but I don’t know if I shall be able to help it.”
“It won’t really count,” Lucy repeated. “That’s once and for all. Don’t forget.”
There was a tiny silence, broken by a sudden scud of rain against the skylight.
Then Lucy rose from his bench.
“If you wish to oblige me, my little dear, look round for the glue-pot and tell me in what condition you find it.”
Kate obediently sprang to her feet.
3
“Married lovers, still. Charming. An idyll beneath one’s very eyes — give me my little embroidery scissors from the middle drawer of the marquetry table, Kate. Charming, charming!” absent-mindedly repeated Cecilia, seated in the drawing-room, a week or two after Fred’s return.
Upstairs, in the old schoolroom, were Rosalie and the two brothers.
Fred sat upon the piano-stool and his hands moved idly and very softly over the keys. He was looking at Rosalie, but she kept her head bent and was half turned away from him, seated on the broad window-seat with the faded cover that had once been red and was now a silvery faded pink.
Lucy was not looking at either of them. He stood leaning against the heavy, folded-back shutter of the window and was apparently gazing out at the drenching rain weighing down the last of the ragged chrysanthemums and swirling along the sodden garden paths.
Presently he spoke.
“This rather curious conversation had better be carried through to a finish, I suggest, since we have embarked on it.”
“You began it yourself,” said Fred mildly. “I don’t know that anybody else wanted it, particularly.”
“I began it, because I had a natural desire to know why Rosalie has become completely unlike herself ever since your arrival. And I gather that it’s because you’ve been making violent love to her.”
Fred picked out “Swanee River” slowly with one finger.
“Stop talking like a book, Lucy,” he advised. “I’m dam’ sorry if you want to know, but nobody can help these things happening. I didn’t ask to fall in love with your wife, did I?”
“Then you are in love with her?”
“Of course.”
There was a pause, and in it both men looked at Rosalie.
She remained motionless.
“I’m afraid, my love, that you’ll have to come into the open — though I quite see how very much you’d prefer not to do so,” Lucy said in his light, bitter voice. “Fred is under the impression that you love him, and — until a very little while ago — I’ve been under the impression that you loved me.”
“I haven’t said that I don’t,” Rosalie said in a low, troubled voice. She raised her eyes at last, pleadingly, to Lucy.
“It hasn’t been necessary. One isn’t a fool.”
“Lucy, I do care for you.”
“And for Fred?”
Rosalie was silent.
He made an inarticulate sound between his teeth. Fred drifted into “Maimie O’Rorke” and spoke through the muted rhythm of the common little tune.
“Don’t make a high tragedy of it. She’s married to you, after all, Lucy. But if you’re going to be as jealous as hell every time another man looks at her, you’ll have a hideous life of it — both of you.”
“Why don’t you clear out and leave her alone?”
Fred made no reply at all and Lucy turned to his wife.
“Rosalie, listen to me. I’m not going to give you up to Fred or anybody else, unless you want me to. Was it Fred you really wanted to marry?”
“She never wanted to marry anybody. She knows as well as I do that she isn’t the sort to be tied down,” Fred observed, and slid his melody into a minor key.
“Don’t tell me what Rosalie wants or doesn’t want, damn you — she can tell me herself.”
“Yes,” suddenly said Rosalie. “I’m not going to be discussed like this between you. It’s my life and I’ve already settled what I’m going to do with it. I’m married to you, Lucy, and I did it of my own free will.”
Lucy looked at her and the hard line of his mouth did not alter.
“But you’re in love with my brother,” he suggested. “Why did you marry me?”
“Because I wanted to.”
“I believe that’s true. But I know Fred — and I know you. And if you and I are to remain man and wife, my dear, you’d better never set eyes on him again,” said Lucy, his face showing patches of white on the olive skin.
“Il ne faut jamais dire jamais,” quoted Fred. “And now perhaps you’ll listen to me. You know perfectly well that, with Mama what she is, I can’t possibly clear out at a minute’s notice without an explanation — and she won’t swallow any trumped-up cock-and-bull story, either. But until I go off to Barbados again, surely we can all three behave like civilized beings.”
“What a cad you are!” said Lucy contemptuously.
Fred shrugged his shoulders. His face suddenly showed almost exactly the same lines of strain and unhappiness as Lucy’s, accentuating the already strong resemblance between them. It was in Lucy’s voice and with his intonation, too, that he answered.
“I’m what I am, I suppose. Actually, neither she nor I is worth your little finger.”
He shot at his brother an extraordinary look of mingled contempt and affection.
“I suppose I ought to swear I’ll never speak to Rosalie again. But I’m not going to. One can’t do things like that in a family like ours. We’re bound to meet, over and over again, unless we want dear Mama and everybody else to know exactly what’s happened. The whole situation is pretty impossible, as a matter of fact.”
“It needn’t be,” Lucy said. “You can go out to Barbados — and till then, we can keep apart.”
Fred lightly touched a discord, and stood up.
“Three is always a bad number, so I’ll leave you. But not for ever. It can’t be that, we’re not living in a melodrama.”
As he went out of the room, Rosalie began to cry.
“It’s Fred you’re crying about, really, isn’t it?” Lucy said in a gentle, remote voice, not approaching her. “He’s hurting you in exactly the same way that you’re hurting me, I suppose. By caring just not enough. If he had, of course, you’d never have hesitated.”
He watched her as he spoke and saw that he had spoken the truth.
“I do love you,” said Rosalie. “I do, I do!”
She moved towards him and Lucy took her in his arms.
“For God’s sake, my sweet, don’t go on saying that. I know exactly what it doesn’t mean, and so do you. If it hadn’t been Fred — —”
He broke off.
“Rosalie.”
She lifted her face to his, all its golden beauty temporarily blurred and spoilt.
“I’m going to risk your thinking me an utter cad. Fred’s no good to you. He doesn’t love you — he’s just madly in love with you. If I thought he was the one person in the world to make you happy I might — No, I mightn’t. I won’t lie to you. I don’t suppose I’d give you up to anybody on earth. But if Fred was anything but what he is, he could have married you by special licence in London last September and taken you out to the West Indies with him. You wanted him to do that, didn’t you?”
“Don’t — —”
“No, all right, I won’t. It’s
only hurting you and myself too, and on the whole we’re likely to get hurt quite enough without adding to it gratuitously. It’s a fairly good muddle, isn’t it?”
He bent his head and kissed her, hard and passionately.
“Some day I’ll make you love me, just as much as I love you — I swear I will.”
“I love you now,” Rosalie said.
There was passion without conviction in her voice, as in his.
4
Fred had spoken truly in telling Rosalie that they could not look for a melodramatic finality.
Two days after the conversation in the schoolroom he went out riding and overtook Rosalie walking down the road by herself.
Fred dismounted.
“The devil looks after his own, they say. Not you, but me. Where are you going?”
“To the village.”
“Supposing we turn the other way, then. I want to talk to you.”
“Very well,” said Rosalie quietly. “I knew we’d have to talk, sooner or later — and it’s the last time. After that — —”
“After that, it won’t be what you think it will, or what I think either. Things never are. But one always has this illusion of finality.”
“Lucy says that.”
“How right he is. Lucy is rather good at saying things. I often borrow from him,” said Fred, slipping his arm through the bridle.
He led the mare, and he and Rosalie walked slowly down the road until they reached a gate leading to a steeply-sloping field where poppies still lingered beside the rough stubble.
“I’ll hitch her up here. She’ll stand for hours.”
They passed through the gate.
It was a still afternoon, damp and cloudy, and a drowsy stillness hung over the remote hillside. Only one distant farm-roof could be seen, and the sound made by a cawing rook seemed to come from a long way off.
Fred, towering above her, took both Rosalie’s hands into his at once and pulled her towards him.
“What are you going to do?”
“Go away — unless you do.”
“With Lucy?”
“Of course.”
“But you love me,” said Fred simply.
“I love Lucy, and I’m not going to hurt him any more than I’ve done already, and you ought never to have come back.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 508