They were an inarticulate couple as a rule, but Mrs. Joe could find words upon occasion, and she spoke now.
“There’s been a telegram. The ship put in this morning, and your brother is staying the night in London and coming on to-morrow by the ten o’clock train.”
“Old Johnny!” said Joe Newton. “It’s a funny thing — —” But he did not complete the well-worn sentence.
“It’s taken Cecilia the best part of six months to send him back,” observed Mrs. Joe drily.
“Why don’t she come home herself, or Fred, or one of them? But I suppose she knows what she’s doing.”
“She’s taken against The Grove.”
“Natural enough, natural enough. Though I hate to see the poor old place empty.”
Mrs. Joe marched with quick, short steps towards the tiny greenhouse that jutted out from the side of the villa.
Joe followed her.
“I suppose she might change her mind, and come back. There’s the little girl — Lucy’s little girl.”
“Cecilia oughtn’t to have taken that child out to the West Indies. It was a ridiculous thing to do. And Fanny begged to have her at Rock Place with Kate, I know for a fact. But there it is. Cecilia’s always got to have her own way, no matter who suffers.”
“Poor Cecilia,” protested old Joe, in mild rebuke. “She’s had her share of trouble, one way and another, and she’s not as young as she was.”
Mrs. Joe Newton opened the greenhouse door, making no comment on that.
Joe stood watching her as she cut maidenhair fern.
“Cecilia was a very fine woman, when poor Charlecombe used to give his cricket lunches, in the old days, and Lucy and Fred used to knock up half the runs between ’em. Nice boys, both of ’em.”
“Kate was always my favourite,” observed Mrs. Joe with finality.
But her husband was in a mood of most unusual loquacity.
“A bad business,” he remarked, shaking his head. “You might say tragic. But I don’t understand their all sheering off like that, leaving the place empty. I suppose Fred had to go back to the plantations, but I don’t see why Cecilia couldn’t have stayed on at the old place and kept Kate with her, and poor Lucy’s little girl.”
“Poor Lucy!” echoed Mrs. Joe, rather grimly.
“Where’s the feller now? Does anybody know?” Mrs. Joe shook her head.
“Just travelling. Kate thought he might go to the Klondyke. I don’t know why the Klondyke. Not that I hear from Kate very often.”
It was old Joe’s turn to shake his head.
“I don’t see the rights of any of it. Dashing about all over the place, all of them, and leaving the old Grove empty. I hate to see the place. It’ll go to rack and ruin if Cecilia doesn’t come back before long. Well, I suppose we shall hear something from old Johnny.”
Mrs. Joe slipped the gardening scissors into the capacious pocket of her tailor-made skirt, shifted the basket from her hand to her arm and preceded Joe from the greenhouse, turning back to lock the door.
“If Cecilia felt she had to go out to Barbados with Fred — though why she should I don’t know — she oughtn’t to have taken the baby. It was a wrong thing to do.”
“Her own grandchild,” ventured old Joe timidly.
“Own fiddlestick,” Mrs. Joe answered, in a mournful voice strangely unsuited to the colloquialism. “It was pure jealousy.”
“Jealousy?”
“Of Kate. Poor little Kate.”
There was a silence before Joe replied to his wife’s tone, for it told him, so long had they lived together, more than did her words.
“Still, missus, Kate wasn’t the worst of it — by a long chalk. The poor girl that died — and Lucy half off his head and sheerin’ off like that — and then Cecilia leaving The Grove at a minute’s notice as you might say and now sticking on at the plantations and driving poor old Johnny home again just because that idle fellow Fred never did know his job.”
“D’you remember: ‘No Lemprière ever works’?”
“No Lemprière does, that ever I heard of.”
They reached the house. The door stood wide open, as usual, the tiny dark hall redolent of lavender mingled with the clean, pungent smell of floor-polish.
“I hope they won’t leave The Grove empty much longer. It’s not fair on a place,” Joe protested.
His wife agreed.
“No. Still, I can see why none of them could go on living there after the accident.”
She placed her basket on the little Welsh chest that just fitted in the turn of the stairs.
“Accidents are awful things,” said Mrs. Joe.
Old Joe shook his head.
“Shockin’!” he said sadly. “Difficult to understand what Providence is thinking about sometimes. Still, there it is — it’s not for us to question, eh, missus? Not for us to question.”
THE END
Epilogue
“The lady has arrived, sir,” discreetly murmured the club page-boy. “She’s taking off her cloak. Shall I show her into the drawing-room?”
“I’ll come down.”
The young officer, who was very lame, reached for his stick. In December 1918 it was no longer unusual to see a lame man, nor a young one holding the rank of Major. Actually, Cecil Ballantyne looked much older than his twenty-three years. He had been once shell-shocked and once severely wounded, in France.
He went down in the lift, reaching the hall before his guest.
Two minutes later she came down the three steps that led from the Ladies’ Cloakroom.
Callie was slight and pale, with a thick, straight bob of brown hair that made her head look unduly large, and beautiful brilliant hazel eyes set between long dark lashes.
Every now and then an odd family resemblance appeared between them, making their first cousinhood no matter for surprise.
“Cecil! How lovely to see you again.”
“Hallo, Callie dear! Isn’t this wonderful?”
Both voices were warm with pleasure, but Cecil’s instantly betrayed his lack of the vitality that rang, equally unmistakable, in hers.
“How long have you been back, Callie?”
“I landed this morning.”
“I’d have come to meet you if I hadn’t had to go before the Medical Board. Did you get my wire? Yes, of course you did or you wouldn’t be here. I was terrified you wouldn’t turn up.”
“Of course I turned up. That’s why I didn’t answer, because I thought you’d take it for granted. Besides, I forgot.”
They both laughed.
“Come up and have a cocktail before dinner,” suggested Cecil. “And would you like to do a show? I’m afraid I can’t suggest going somewhere to dance.”
“I don’t want to do either. I’d rather sit and talk.”
“Oh, good,” said Cecil, looking much younger suddenly.
They went upstairs and ordered cocktails.
“What did your Medical Board say?”
“Told me I’d hear from them. I think I shall probably get about twopence a year disability pension out of them, which is quite a good thing. We’re all going to be as poor as church mice. In fact, we are already.”
“Never mind,” said Callie. “The war’s over.”
Her face changed and they exchanged a long look.
“If only Reggie were coming home too,” she said.
“I know. It seems so awful that he should have been the one to be killed, when he enjoyed life so tremendously, and got such fun out of everything.”
“Well, if he had to go, he’d have wanted it to be like that, in action.”
Cecil nodded.
A waiter brought them their drinks.
“Here’s luck!” said Callie, raising her glass.
They smiled at one another.
“Heavens, what a lot we’ve got to talk about!” she cried. I thought I was never going to get demobilized from that awful Unit.”
“Did you hate it?”
“No
t really, no. It was much more exciting than driving in London. But after all, the war’s over, and I’ve been dying to get home. I haven’t been in England for over a year and a half.”
“If you’d been in France, instead of Salonika, we could probably have met in Paris or somewhere. My last go in hospital was at Boulogne. That was the time Aunt came down there.”
Another sudden silence fell.
Then Callie, with an appearance of effort, said: “I do want to hear about everyone. Tell me while we have dinner. Awdry and Juliet aren’t much good at letters, and besides they were busy. Tansy was the best, about writing.”
“Good old Tansy! She wrote to me, too — awfully grand letters with tremendously long words in them and beautiful phrases about Youth and Democracy and Sacrifice. I read one of her letters just before the Hill Sixty show, and I shall never forget it. She said she felt sure I often recollected the beautiful Devon countryside and heard again in fancy the feathered songsters of the hedgerows. Come and have some dinner, Callie.”
Seated opposite to one another in the warm, brightly-lit dining-room, they talked eagerly, at first about themselves, and the time that was to follow the peace. Then Callie said:
“Tell me about home. Are we all frightfully poor?”
“Frightfully, I believe. Of course, we were getting poorer and poorer, long before the war, but I should think it’s about finished us. Father sounds calm, in a desperate sort of way, and whatever happens we’re going to hang on to Rock Place.”
“Of course. How’s Aunt Fanny?”
“She’s calm, too. She keeps on saying the girls will marry and then it won’t matter.”
“I suppose they will,” said Callie rather doubtfully. “Juliet did get engaged to some Australian, more or less, didn’t she?”
“I think it was rather less than more — and anyway they broke it off. And Awdry turned down the new parson. What about you, Callie?”
He had spoken lightly but something in Callie’s unfortunately expressive face immediately caused him to add, very gently:
“I’m frightfully sorry, dear. I oughtn’t to have asked.”
“It’s all right,” said Callie. “I thought you might have known about it, that’s all. The others did.”
“I didn’t know anything at all. The only person I saw was Aunt, that time at Boulogne.”
“It happened after that.”
“Don’t tell me, if you hate talking about it.”
“There isn’t much to tell, Cecil. That was really the worst of it,” Callie admitted ruefully.
He noticed that, although she was smiling at him, two tiny lines had sprung into prominence at the corners of her mouth.
“I did fall in love — rather badly, I suppose — with a man I met in the second year of the war, when I was in London. It was when I was sharing Elisabeth’s flat. I met him at a party and we just seemed to know one another frightfully well already — you know how one does, sometimes.”
Cecil nodded.
“He’s terribly good at languages and he had a staff job. His name was Michael Lorac.”
“Lorac,” Cecil repeated meditatively. Then he suddenly looked up, meeting her gaze fully. “Isn’t that the name of the man Elisabeth has married?”
Callie drew a long breath.
“Yes. It is. You see, she was away looking after her mother, when I first met him, and he used to come and see me quite a lot and take me out in the evenings whenever I was off duty. And then she came back.”
“Yes, I see.”
“Of course, I hadn’t got a chance, with anyone like her. He just fell for her immediately.”
“Did she know about you?”
“We weren’t engaged,” Callie said quickly. “He hadn’t even made love to me — much. They were both quite within their rights, technically.”
“Is she terribly attractive? I haven’t seen her for years.”
“Yes, she is. A lot of people fall in love with her. It was just my bad luck that Michael did too.”
“And did she fall in love with him, do you suppose?”
“Cecil — you are understanding, aren’t you? That was just it. Elisabeth had been in love lots of times, even then, and had heaps of affairs. I used sometimes to think she only tried to attract Michael because she saw he was falling in love with me — and then she fell in love with him herself, because she wasn’t sure if she could get him or not.”
“It was bad luck for you, Callie.”
“It was, rather. Besides you see — I was always terribly fond of Elisabeth, wasn’t I?”
“I know you were. So they’re married.”
“Yes.”
They were silent again, and then Callie said rather anxiously,
“I’ve got over it, you know. I minded horribly at the time.”
“One does. Did they know about it at home?”
“Yes, they did. You know how one never can help one’s family knowing about these things, even if one wanted to. And you see, they’d heard me talk about him — and Awdry had met him with me, in London. They were angelic to me. I went home for a week’s leave just after the engagement was announced. They didn’t say anything much, but I knew they guessed. They were terribly kind and tactful.”
“Even Mona?”
“Mona didn’t say a word. The only person who did was Aunt Fanny. You know how unexpected she is. Quite suddenly one day she just said — quite irrelevantly— ‘You may say what you like about their both being free — but Callie would never have done a thing like that to Elisabeth.’”
“That,” said Cecil, “was perfectly true.”
“Yes. It was,” said Callie.
They had finished dinner and gone into one of the smaller rooms upstairs, finding it almost empty.
“What luck,” said Cecil. “Come and sit over the fire. Have a cigarette — and would you like a liqueur?”
“No, thank you.”
“I can afford it — for the moment.” Callie shook her head.
“How are you going to earn any money, Cecil?”
“Try and wrest it out of the land, as they say. After all, I was at that Agricultural College place, and it’s what my father wants. What shall you do, Callie?”
“Come home for a bit, and then try for a job in London, I expect.”
“Awdry wants to try and get a job too — and Juliet. But I suppose one of them will have to stay with Mother and run the house. I don’t think it’ll be Mona’s cup of tea, and anyway she’s too young.”
“I can’t imagine anyone but Aunt — —”
Callie broke off, said she’d change her mind about the cigarette and let Cecil light one for her.
Then, leaning back in her chair and with her eyes fixed on the fire, she said:
“Isn’t Aunt coming home again?”
“Not while Uncle Fred lives, dear. And he may go on for ages.”
“Will you tell me about it, Cecil? All their letters were perfectly hopeless, from the point of view of really telling one anything, and I haven’t seen her since before I went to Salonika, in nineteen-sixteen.”
“The Boulogne time was after that. She got leave from her hospital and came down to see me and we fixed it up that if ever I got twenty-four hours’ leave I was to let her know at Auteuil, and we’d try and have a day or an evening or something, in Paris. Every now and then, Callie, it came over me how extraordinary it was — Aunt, of all people, in a red and grey uniform, sitting in the ward at the Boulogne Hospital, and talking about Reggie, and the dogs, and the garden at Rock Place — it was like two worlds overlapping. We talked a lot about you, Callie.”
“She did a good deal for all of us, one way and another, when we were children. Especially for me, I think.”
“She did. One took rather a lot for granted, I fancy, in those days. That time at Boulogne was the first time I ever thought of Aunt as a real, individual person — not just as somebody who was always there. And I remember thinking that she wasn’t nearly as old as I’d al
ways thought her.”
“About forty, would she be?”
“About that, I suppose. I don’t really know. Anyway, I was glad enough to see her. And then I did get twenty-four hours’ leave, months later, and I got her on the telephone. She asked me to fetch her from Auteuil, and we were to dine in Paris and do a show. I got out there — she’d got a room in rather a nice pension, with a garden. We had some coffee in the garden, and then a little maid came running out and said there was un monsieur — un gros monsieur — come to see her. Neither of us had the least idea who it was, and she went in and then, as she didn’t come back, I followed her. And there he was — in the salon — Uncle Fred more or less dropped from the skies, exactly as he used to turn up at Rock Place years ago without a word of warning.”
“How on earth did he get to France — in wartime?”
“He didn’t get there — he’d been there, for ages. Ill, off and on, and drinking like a fish. He told Aunt he’d been meaning to write, but of course he never had. He’d just turned up — as usual.”
“Was she glad or sorry?”
“As a matter of fact,” slowly said Cecil, “she was shocked, and so was I. Anyone would have been. You never saw anything like him, Callie. Gross, and bloated, and all the whites of his eyes gone yellow, and his hands shaking — it was simply horrible. Of course, he was obviously ill. But I don’t suppose he realized how ill.”
“Oh! Did she mind dreadfully?”
“She took it pretty well, on the whole. But there was one awful moment, when he sat down at the piano — of course, we didn’t go out anywhere — and he started to play — you know how he used to strum all the time — and to sing some old music-hall song or other, and looked up at her with a sort of dreadful leer on that great yellow face of his.”
“Oh, don’t!”
“It was quite the most grotesque thing I’ve ever seen. It was so utterly unreal.”
They gazed at each other in dismay.
“Is he going to die?”
“They thought he would — fairly soon. The doctors, I mean. That’s why they said it didn’t matter, his going back to Barbados if that was what he wanted. But, judging from what Aunt writes to my mother, he isn’t going to die in any hurry. He’ll just’ go on living out there, drinking rum-swizzles, and she’ll stay with him.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 512