Rory wouldn’t feel the pattern of life at Coombe to be a really true thing. He would, for all his intelligence and his insight and his sympathy, find himself for ever unable to view seriously the traditional and long-since out-moded forms of existence that to Valentine still seemed natural.
It’s I who’ll change, she thought. Not Rory.
She felt a swift lightening of her spirit within her and knew a long-forgotten sense of exhilaration.
She would be glad to change, to abandon at last the personality that marriage, and the years, and the children, had gradually manufactured for Valentine Arbell, for the protection of the true self of Valentine Levallois.
XIV
When Hughie Spurway, gulping and grimacing, had left the schoolroom and regained his own room the always-tenuous thread that bound him to sanity snapped temporarily.
He lost all control, throwing himself on the bed, gnashing his teeth and weeping, swearing and sobbing under his breath.
“She needn’t have been like that — she needn’t have been,” he repeated over and over again, saying the words aloud.
Primrose had danced with Charles Sedgewick in the drawing-room until Jess had clamoured for a change of partners and Sedgewick himself had said:
“Okay. Let’s change over.”
Jess had giggled and said apologetically: “Of course, you’re terrifically good, Charles, and I’m not. But I don’t mind if you don’t.”
They’d laughed about it.
Hughie wasn’t as good a dancer as Charles Sedgewick either, and, unlike Jess, he did mind. He had been afraid lest Primrose should comment on his inadequacy.
But she had said nothing at all — only pressed herself against him as they moved and given herself up completely to his guidance. And a measure of self-confidence had come back to him on that account.
“Darling, this is marvellous for me,” he’d ventured to say.
Primrose had replied with her favourite monosyllable.
“Why?”
“You know I’m crazy about you.”
Hughie had tried to make the words, in themselves so banal, sound casual.
“Idiotic.”
“Sweet, it isn’t. I swear it’s not. Oh, Primrose, can’t things go back to what they used to be? We were so terribly happy a year ago.”
“Were we? I don’t know what you were — you often looked to me pretty miserable — but I can assure you that I was bored stiff more than half the time.”
“For God’s sake, don’t take everything away from me. At least let me be able to remember that it was heaven once, even if it’s been hell ever since.”
“Aren’t you the complete neurotic hero of a pre-war novel! Going all tense and embittered and tragic.”
He’d tried to laugh, then, in the middle of the torture, thinking that perhaps if he followed her mood she might be placated and stop being cruel to him.
“It did sound a bit that way, I admit. But honestly, Primrose, I do simply adore you. There’s no other woman in the world, and never has been.”
“Good reason why.”
He’d driven straight on, crashing through his own agonies of pain and humiliation.
“That’s all over. You know as well as I do that there’s nothing and no one in my life now except you. Why can’t you be kind to me again?”
“Don’t be such a fool, Hughie. Can’t you see that when a thing’s over, it’s over?”
“Then don’t you care for me at all any more?”
It was the question that had burned in his heart and on his lips for months past and that he had sworn to himself never to ask, lest he should have to hear the answer.
Even as he did ask it, Hughie had known an additional twist of self-contempt at his lack of resolution.
Failed — once more.
The punishment had come very swiftly and surely.
“I’m afraid I don’t, Hughie. Since you ask me. Anyway, it wasn’t ever very much of a thing. I’m not much of a one for what the poets call Lâhve — as I’ve always told you.”
“You’ve had lovers?”
“Naturally. But I’ve never pretended to them, or to myself or anybody, that there was going to be any question of fidelity. For God’s sake, don’t grip my arm like that. You’re hurting like hell.”
“I’m frightfully sorry. I didn’t mean to. Look, Primrose, I accept all that. I do know how you feel, about fidelity. I don’t care. Will you marry me just the same?”
“No, of course I won’t.”
“Are you going to marry somebody else? That Irishman — who’s old enough to be your father?”
“He isn’t — and I’m not.”
“I believe you’re in love with him.”
“Believe anything you damn well please. If I didn’t think you practically barking mad, Hughie, I’d quite definitely hit you in the face for that.”
“Why? Why are you so angry? It’s because you’re in love with him. I’ve known it all along. You’re having an affair with him. That’s why you’re treating me like this.”
“I’ll say it is! I’m treating you like this, as you call it, because I loathe scenes and you do nothing but make them, and because you’re just as neurotic as they come and you make me sick.”
The gramophone had run down and Primrose had stopped dead, and detached herself from his arms.
The evening hadn’t been over, even after that. There had been more dancing, and Jessica had put on records of popular songs, and Venetia Rockingham had come in. But all that Hughie clearly remembered was that fragment of dialogue.
It had gone on and on, repeating itself in his ears.
It had driven him, after they had all gone upstairs, to follow Primrose — like a whining cur, he said to himself savagely — to the schoolroom and plead with her to unsay what he knew that she never would unsay.
He had pleaded, had debased himself, had even made a wild attempt that to himself seemed theatrical and false to act the virile lover and force her into his arms, and the thing had finished when Primrose, her mouth all pulled down on one side and her eyes dark with furious contempt, had said:
“Get this. You’ve had it. I couldn’t be more through with you than I am, Hughie. I ought to have known better than ever to take up with a hysterical degenerate. Not my cup of tea at all.”
It was then that the final humiliation had descended upon him and, sputtering threats of suicide, he had felt tears and sobs contorting his face down which the sweat was already streaming and shaking uncontrollably all over, had stumbled from the room as Lady Arbell came into it.
I’ll kill myself, I’ll kill myself, I’ll kill myself. She needn’t have been like that.
He raved and moaned and suffered until the fit had past and left him sick with exhaustion and self-pity.
He wanted to drink himself blind, so that he could attain oblivion, for although Hughie disliked the taste of spirits as a child dislikes it, he had recourse to them whenever his nerves had passed entirely beyond his control.
He emptied his brandy-flask, but there was very little in it and he knew that it would have no real effect.
There must surely be some drink downstairs, though they’d had precious little at dinner. Perhaps he could find someone and say that he was ill. He felt ill and he crawled to the mirror and gazed at himself to see whether he looked it.
His appearance was ghastly.
It gave him a sort of self-loathing satisfaction to see the stained pallor of his face, his black-ringed, starting eyes and pinched nostrils. At the same time Primrose’s description came back to him: A hysterical degenerate — and he writhed again.
Either he must obliterate misery by getting drunk, or he’d kill himself.
Hughie, for whom self-discipline held no meaning, knew of no other alternatives, and the second one, he was aware in the depths of his heart, would never be his.
He went to the door and opened it. He had no idea of the time, but it could not be very late. Lights were still burni
ng in the passage and at the head of the stairs. He moved with no particular attempt at silence. The subconscious craving of the introvert to be observed, and questioned, so that he could talk about himself and his wretchedness, was strong in him and he started eagerly, and then stopped dead, when he thought he heard a sound behind Lady Rockingham’s closed door.
But no one came out and Hughie went on, down into the hall.
The General was in his armchair, his head back and his mouth slightly open — asleep. The sheets of The Times lay scattered on the floor beside him, and his spectacles were still precariously grasped between his knotted fingers as though sleep had overtaken him recently and held him lightly.
Hughie had no wish to awaken General Levallois. He saw that the door of Colonel Lonergan’s office was open and that the room was lit and he went towards it.
The damned Irishman — But he’d have some drink there, for a certainty, and Hughie thought he’d only to show himself and he’d be offered one.
Sedgewick was alone in the room, writing rapidly at a small marquetry table that was loaded with files and papers.
He looked up sharply at Hughie standing in the doorway.
“Yes?”
“Are you frightfully busy?” stuttered Hughie. “The fact is, I — I’ve had a queer sort of turn. Got a chill or something. And it’s so damned cold upstairs, and the old gentleman’s asleep by the fire in the hall — it’s nearly out, anyway.”
He looked at the blazing fire on which logs had been heaped prodigally.
“I’ll say it’s cold upstairs, all right,” Sedgewick assented. “The Colonel’s going to give me a spot of work to do — he’s gone to fetch it. Come and sit down till he’s back, and get warm.”
His bright, alert eyes travelled curiously over Hughie, who crouched, shivering, before the fire.
“You look like hell,” Sedgewick commented dispassionately. “Are you feeling rotten?”
Hughie nodded.
“I’d sell my soul for a stiff drink. It’s the only thing to pull one together.”
Sedgewick raised his eyebrows.
“I couldn’t disagree more. I’m no faddist, but in my opinion it’s absolutely fatal to let yourself depend on drink. It simply means that when you can’t get one you go to pieces.”
“Don’t you ever drink?”
“Only at weddings,” said Sedgewick firmly.
“Do you despise everyone who does?”
“Don’t be an ass. Why should I care what anybody else does? I’m not interested.”
Hughie gazed at the soldier — younger than himself by several years but so much harder and more poised, and with a calm self-assurance that Hughie envied more than anything else.
“As a matter of fact,” Sedgewick conceded, “if the Colonel comes down and sees you looking like a sick cat, he’ll probably hand you a stiff brandy straight away. He’s about the most generous chap, and the kindest one, I’ve ever met in my life.”
“Is he?”
“I’ll say he is,” Sedgewick answered briefly. “You ask any of the men what they think of the Colonel.”
“Why isn’t he with an Irish regiment?”
“Better ask him.”
Hughie knew that Sedgewick intended to snub him, and he winced again.
“God, I’m cold,” he muttered in order to break the silence.
“Well, it’s warm enough in here. D’you mind if I go on with what I’m doing? I want to get it finished.”
“Of course.”
Sedgewick, who had availed himself of the permission some seconds before it was granted, wrote on without looking round.
Presently they heard Lonergan’s rapid tread and he came in carrying his papers.
Both the young men stood up.
Lonergan looked first at Hughie Spurway, giving him the friendly, intelligent smile that made faint lines spread out fanwise at the corners of his eyes.
“Were you wanting a decent fire? I thought you’d all got warm dancing in the drawing-room, the way you were after dinner. But you look frozen.”
“I’ve caught a chill, or something,” Hughie muttered again in the schoolboy formula that he had used before.
“That’s bad luck.”
The Colonel was looking at him not at all as Sedgewick had looked — coldly, and with a faint hint of dislike — but as though he really felt rather interested in him.
“Could you do with a drink?”
“Thanks frightfully, sir.”
“Get out that whiskey, Charles. Sorry we’ve no soda-water, Spurway, but I daresay you can manage it neat.”
Sedgewick went to a corner cupboard, opened it and took out a decanter and glasses. Imperturbably he placed them on the corner of Colonel Lonergan’s desk.
Lonergan poured out two stiff drinks.
“Nothing doing with you, Charles, I suppose?”
“No, thanks, sir.”
“Ah, you’re a good boy — but mistaken.”
He handed the longer of the two drinks to Hughie.
“Knock that one back.”
Hughie obeyed eagerly.
“It’s a cold night, and this isn’t the warmest house in the world,” observed Colonel Lonergan.
He disposed of his own drink slowly.
“Thanks very much, sir,” Hughie said.
Already he could feel the edges of his misery becoming slightly blurred. He had a weak head, and drink acting on the state of nervous exhaustion in which he found himself now would, he well knew, rapidly produce in him that blunting of feeling and perception that was the nearest he could ever attain to peace of mind.
“That’s done you good,” said Lonergan kindly. “You look done in. What about bed?”
“It’s so cold, upstairs.”
“Ask for a hot-water bottle and a pair of bed socks,” suggested Sedgewick.
His tone was not agreeable and, to Hughie’s ears, contained unspoken reference to young men who were not, in war-time, serving in the Forces but complained of being cold in their beds.
Hughie wanted to explain, immediately, that he had been through the worst of the London air raids, had been bombed and shell-shocked, and was doing work of great national importance.
Lonergan laughed.
“Ah, you!” he said to Sedgewick. “No Englishman has any real understanding of what it’s like to feel cold. They’re brought up to it, God help them!”
“That’s right, sir,” Sedgewick agreed, unmoved.
He placed a file in front of his Colonel.
“Are you ready for these now, sir?”
“I suppose I am.”
Hughie saw that he must go.
He moved reluctantly away from the fire.
“Good-night,” said Lonergan. “I hope you’ll be feeling better by to-morrow.”
“Good-night, sir. Thank you very much.”
As he closed the door behind him, some curious intuition told him of Lonergan’s probable comment on his appearance: What on earth’s the matter with that chap?
He wondered what Sedgewick’s reply would be, and was glad that he would never know.
He felt better, thanks to the whiskey, and wished that he had been offered a second drink. He wasn’t nearly drunk enough, and the slight haze that was now mercifully enveloping his senses wouldn’t last.
“Hallo!” said the General, from his armchair.
He gazed at Hughie as though not quite certain whom he might be. Then he said:
“I say, d’you mind ringing the bell, like a good chap. Ring twice. Madeleine knows what that means. She’ll bring the whiskey. I don’t often touch it, nowadays, but I feel like a drink to-night. I hope you’ll have one with me. Sorry we couldn’t offer you anything at dinner, but there it is. Times aren’t what they were.”
Hughie rang the bell twice. In a slightly maudlin way, he felt touched by this old man who was apologizing to him for what he viewed as a lack of hospitality.
“I never miss the stuff, sir, and nobody’s got muc
h of it nowadays. But I’d be delighted to have a drink with you now.”
“Sit down,” directed the General. “I suppose the other chap — young What’s-his-name — isn’t anywhere about?
“Sedgewick? He’s in the office with the Colonel, sir, doing a job of work. But he tells me he practically never touches wine or spirits at all.”
“Ah,” said the General. And he added thoughtfully: “I believe a lot of these young chaps who go into the Services nowadays are like that. Quite right, of course. It’s the way they’re brought up, no doubt.”
“Sedgewick has a widowed mother, I fancy.”
“So have you,” said General Levallois sharply. “But she hasn’t made you into a chap who can’t tell good port from bad claret, I’ll be bound. Tell me something about your mother — I remember her before she came out, and her elder sister, too. Edith. What’s happened to Edith?”
Hughie obediently embarked upon a recital of marriages, deaths and divorces amongst the older generation of his relations.
Madeleine brought in a tray with a whiskey decanter, glasses and a jug of water.
The General’s knotted and twisted hands dealt with these things whilst he listened and interposed questions. It gave him evident pleasure to recall memories of that long-since broken circle in which he himself, young and uncrippled, had once held a place.
He prided himself on remembering names and family connections.
It was easy enough to listen to him and make such answers as were required. Hughie drank whiskey and felt thankful.
As usual, alcohol was giving him false courage and false optimism. He even began to wonder whether he couldn’t make another appeal to Primrose. Surely she’d be kinder to him this time — more like what she used to be.
Perhaps he’d go to her room later on — or she might still be sitting in the schoolroom.
His heart began to beat faster at the thought. He had forgotten that he had seen Primrose’s mother in the schoolroom with her. He imagined her alone, sitting on the fender-seat with a half-smoked cigarette between her lips, and he tried hard to believe that she might be glad to see him.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 532