“Rather interesting,” commented Alec. “I haven’t seen one at close quarters since I was at the ‘Varsity.”
“This is a very harmless specimen, and quite a good dancer. We’ll dance to-night.”
Alec and Marjorie responded with the catchword of the moment. They appeared to have started a chaffing argument in the train as to the applicability or otherwise of the adjective “magnetic” to Marjorie, and this they continued, with only the most cursory appeals to the others for a verdict to which, if it had been given, they would obviously have attached no weight at all. Theodosia remembered that she, herself, had often been utterly absorbed with other similar problems and had found it strange that other people, when they were present, neither cared to join in with vehemence, nor to listen appreciatively.
Alec and Marjorie, however, were not really very amusing and, besides, it might make Felton Fleet and Mr. Milton feel out of it. Theodosia talked to them all the evening.
She danced with them, too, after dinner, much oftener than with Alec, whom, indeed, she rather ignored.
He was not, she decided, in the mood in which she preferred him. Probably the conventional atmosphere of a Merry Christmas, diffused by Theodosia’s parents, was on his nerves.
It was slightly on Theodosia’s own nerves, too. At least, she was feeling rather on edge without quite knowing why. Her married cousin annoyed her, with her continual prattle about the children, and the children themselves were too noisy. Marjorie Kane was too noisy. (Theodosia hoped that she was not developing a noise-complex. If so, it was probably due to the strain of having to listen to those inharmoniously-rendered Christmas carols every year.)
Marjorie was about seven years older than Theodosia, although she certainly did not look it. She was very dark, and very vivacious, with black hair that fell into the confusion of bobbed curls usually only seen upon magazine-cover pictures, an impertinent nose, and a pair of lovely, long-lashed grey eyes that looked very dark, set in the colourless delicacy of her small, pointed face. She was not nearly as tall as Theodosia, and her extreme slightness made her look smaller than she really was, and also much younger. She talked a great deal, all that evening and all the next day — mostly to Alec Forrest. It seemed to Theodosia that Alec was doing more listening, and less talking, than he usually did. This, she thought, ought to settle once and for ever the question as to his manners which had occasionally been forced upon her by the old-fashioned strictures of her parents.
Though it was absurd to think about manners, nowadays. Theodosia’s thoughts, however, were much less rational, controlled, and well-ordered than usual.
All day long, on Christmas Eve, she felt actually cross.
Noise, again.
Too much noise, altogether.
Even Theodosia’s mother, at tea-time, began to talk a great deal too much, as though to distract attention — Heaven alone knew whose — from something — Heaven alone knew what. It was impossible not to feel very impatient. The party wasn’t being a success, Theodosia was convinced, and to a hostess that was disturbing. She helped to amuse her cousin’s children after tea, and listened to their mother’s tedious comments on everything that they said and did, and every now and then she threw a lively contribution of her own into the loud discussion raging between Alec, Marjorie and Felton Fleet as to the new divorce facilities.
General Renton had taken Mr. Milton off to the smoking-room, but presently the clergyman strolled back again into the hall. The children were sent up to bed, and Theodosia, feeling sure that the divorce argument would not amuse the clerical guest, sat down beside him and began to tell him why she did not approve of the Public School system.
She could not help hoping that Alec realized the sense of courtesy that caused her to devote herself to the superfluous visitor, and when Mr. Milton, in a quiet, agreeable, but slightly pedantic manner, began to answer her, she was thinking so much of what Alec might be thinking that she quite forgot to refute him. He did not, however, seem to notice it. Perhaps, reflected Theodosia, as the dressing-gong sounded and she stood up, clergymen were accustomed to having the last word.
She looked up at Mr. Milton, who was very tall, and as he smiled down at her, she observed, a trifle absent-mindedly, that he had a very nice face. Obviously, he was nearer forty than thirty, but in his youth he must have been a good-looking man, she thought.
It seemed quite a pity that he should be a parson and a schoolmaster.
Theodosia waited a moment for Marjorie, at the foot of the stairs, but Marjorie did not stir. She and Alec went on talking. It was Felton Fleet who rose, and Theodosia’s mother. Theodosia, carefully adjusting her Eton crop before her looking-glass, heard Marjorie flying along the passage just twenty minutes later, and then Alec humming to himself as he came up the stairs.
Theodosia, who had meant to wear a black lace dress, suddenly changed her mind, and put on the new petunia velvet frock.
She decided that after dinner they should dance. Theodosia danced remarkably well.
So did Alec Forrest.
So, also, did Marjorie Kane.
This, Theodosia had perhaps not altogether realized, until she stood with Felton Fleet, watching Marjorie and Alec Charleston.
“How beautifully their steps go together,” said Fleet.
“Yes, don’t they? If Marjorie was just half an inch taller—”
“Oh, but men always prefer dancing with girls less tall than themselves,” Felton Fleet ingenuously declared.
Theodosia, who stood five foot ten inches, laughed.
“Hark! Here are the carol-singers! We ought to stop the gramophone — oh, mother’s doing it.”
The dance-music ceased, and the sound of male and female voices singing in unison was faintly audible outside the window. A harmonium accompanied them. General Renton threw open the double doors of the hall. His guests gathered round, and some of them, at least, listened to the familiar strains of Good King Wenceslas.
Marjorie and Alec kept aloof, but although they still talked, it was in the lowest of murmurs.
Theodosia would have felt it to be against her musical principles, which were austere, actually to listen to Good King Wenceslas rendered, to the accompaniment of a harmonium, by the village choir — but she was not sorry to remain silent. She thought that perhaps she was rather tired.
After Good King Wenceslas came Hark, the Herald Angels Sing! Then Mrs. Renton spoke to the singers, and one of the servants brought a tray of coffee and sandwiches, and they were all invited into the hall.
Theodosia found herself helping Mr. Milton to hand round cups and plates. Her father and mother, and the two cousins, were talking to the singers, and Felton Fleet was standing by the table, looking rather shy, but interested.... The other two were nowhere to be seen. Theodosia was not looking for them, but she was aware of this.
They did not appear until the carol-singers had concluded their evening’s entertainment with The Mistletoe Bough and had all gone away again. Then Alec Forrest came and asked Theodosia to dance with him.
Marjorie danced with Mr. Milton, and Felton Fleet with Marjorie’s married cousin.
Alec danced Theodosia out of the big hall, and into the empty library, where the electric light was still burning.
“I’m afraid I left it on,” he said. “I retired in here while the rustics were warbling their lays.”
“What were you and Marjorie talking about?” asked Theodosia lightly, very much engaged in plaiting the little tassel on a cushion. “I hadn’t realized, by the way, that you two knew one another so well. I’m awfully glad I asked her here.”
“Oh, but we don’t!” Alec exclaimed. “Or at least we didn’t, until yesterday. You know how sometimes one knows a person for months, just casually, without really finding them out — and then suddenly something seems to happen — and one discovers that there’s something tremendously vital there — the sort of thing that makes a difference ever afterwards—” He stopped abruptly.
“Yes,
rather,” said Theodosia tonelessly.
“Marjorie’s wonderful, really, isn’t she?”
“Her work is very—”
“I don’t mean her work — though, of course, it’s first rate, and she’s going to do something pretty big one of these days — but in herself. I’ve never met a girl as young as she is who understands Life as she does.”
“You said that about me, when you first knew me,” said Theodosia, far too quickly.
Alec stared at her.
“Your view of life,” he said at last, “is quite different to hers. You’re so — so academic, aren’t you? Of course,” he added hastily, “it’s one of the things one admires so tremendously about you. But Marjorie — well, she’s about the most stimulating, alive sort of person I’ve ever met.”
In a flash of intuition, Theodosia suddenly understood that Alec, in the library whilst the carol singing was going on, had kissed Marjorie. And it was Marjorie’s reaction to the experiment that he characterized as her understanding of Life.
“You’re in love with her,” said Theodosia, before she could stop herself. Then she felt ashamed of her words. It was not that they struck her as being indiscreet — a word that had no place in the vocabulary of either Theodosia or Alec — but that so prompt a deduction might almost be open to the accusation of Victorian sex-obsession.
Alec, however, was not annoyed, although he did raise his eyebrows in apparent astonishment.
“Well, my dear,” he said easily, “we can’t all be as sexless as you are. I’ve always told you that you belong to the purely mental type. You’re temperamentally frigid, without emotions.”
“No, I’m not,” said Theodosia crudely.
“You bet you are,” said Alec, equally crudely.
They stared at one another.
A singular experience then befell Theodosia, and one that was entirely new to her.
She quite suddenly lost control of herself, and instead of speaking with her usual detached, analytical lucidity, she found herself uttering — in a very much raised voice — a series of impassioned assertions, many of which had not even the elementary merit of being true.
“I’m not frigid — it’s all nonsense. It isn’t that I care a damn what you think of Marjorie — or what she’s like — or you think she’s like. It’s just that I can’t bear to be so totally misunderstood. Just because I don’t make myself cheap, you think — you say — not that it matters to me what you say, or that I’m in the very least bit annoyed — I’m only amused — it’s laughable—” said Theodosia, and burst into tears.
She had never done such a thing since her twelfth birthday, and Alec himself could scarcely have been more surprised than was Theodosia. And at so utterly inopportune a moment, her mother came into the room.
Alec was standing, quite helpless, gazing at Theodosia, and Theodosia, her face blazing, had been compelled, by stark, unromantic necessity, to pull her handkerchief out from the top of her stocking. It was the sort of situation in which it is quite impossible, in real life, to disguise anything at all.
Nancy Renton caught her breath for a moment, and then she exclaimed:
“Theodosia, darling! I can see your toothache has come on again. This poor child, Alec, had a sleepless night, last night, with pain, but she wouldn’t give in—”
“Mother! It’s not—” Theodosia’s voice broke down again.
“I can see she’s awfully bad,” exclaimed Alec. “You’re on edge, Theodosia, and no wonder, if you’ve had a night with toothache — it’s the most beastly thing in the world.”
“Alec, I wish you’d go through into the hall, and get my bag. It’s on the piano, and I’ve got some aspirin in it,” said Mrs. Renton calmly.
Alec, with the utmost celerity, obeyed her.
“Mother, how dare you — what on earth do you imagine?” Theodosia chokingly began.
“Don’t try to talk, darling,” begged Mrs. Renton — and indeed to talk, when one is crying passionately and uncontrollably, is entirely disastrous, and very often quite impossible. It had become so now, in the case of Theodosia.
Being forced to recognize this, she sat violently down upon the sofa, which faced away from the door and held her handkerchief — which, surprisingly, was already soaked — to her face. She heard Alec’s return, and her mother’s calmly spoken thanks, and assurances that he could do nothing more, and had better return to the gramophone.
And then, after a moment, the door shut.
Theodosia waited until she felt that her voice was steady again, and then, rather tremulously, tried it.
“Mother, if you think that I need that sort of — of help, I can only say that you understand me even less than I thought you did.”
No answer. But at least Theodosia had ascertained that her own powers of speech had returned.
“If you want to know, Alec and I had had a — a sort of quarrel, I suppose you’d call it — though it wasn’t exactly that, because we’ve always understood one another perfectly — and please, anyway, don’t think that I was cry — that I was upset because of anything to do with him — it wasn’t — it was simply—”
Theodosia stopped, waiting for her mother to interrupt her and remove from her the onus of explaining away further the unexplainable.
Still the silence continued, and at last Theodosia, her eyelids smarting and her face burning, turned round.
The room was empty.
“More of mother’s tact!” reflected Theodosia, with great bitterness, and wondered how in the world she was to get upstairs to her own room without passing through the hall where they were all dancing.
Then she noticed that the gramophone was no longer to be heard, nor the sound of voices from the hall.
Mrs. Renton must have shepherded them all into the billiard-room. It was impossible not to feel that that, at least, had been a good idea.
Theodosia, feeling oddly shaken, left the library. There was no one in the hall, but as she reached the top of the stairs, she met the Rev. William Milton.
It is well known that clergymen are accustomed to the sight of those in affliction, and Theodosia not unreasonably supposed that one of such a profession might be expected to display rather more, than less, tact than other people. Instead of which, Mr. Milton looked hard at her, looked again, and exclaimed in a tone of genuine dismay —
“Oh, my dear child! What is the matter?”
“Nothing,” said Theodosia — amateurishly, as she herself felt.
“Nonsense. Can’t I help — can’t you tell me what it is?”
There was something soothing about his concern, after Alec’s detachment and her mother’s unprecedented, managing interference. Unfortunately nothing except Mrs. Renton’s ridiculous explanation would come to Theodosia.
“It’s a — a sort of toothache,” she muttered.
Mr. Milton gazed at her, and his eyes smiled, though his mouth remained serious.
“Poor little girl,” he said simply. “I know that sort of toothache. I’ve had it myself.”
“Have you?” said Theodosia, and began weakly to cry again.
“It’s very bad while it lasts, but it doesn’t go on for ever, and sometimes it does help, a little, to tell someone about it. Couldn’t you tell me?” said Mr. Milton gently.
“It’s not very interesting — in fact, there isn’t anything to tell.”
“I think anything about you would be interesting,” said the clergyman.
Such discernment was extraordinarily comforting, besides being very surprising.
“Come into the gallery,” said Theodosia suddenly. “We can sit down there, and it’s quiet.
That is, if you really—”
“Of course,” said Mr. Milton.
The carol-singers came to Palincourt again, on Boxing Night, and the house-party went into the hall to listen to them.
Theodosia saw Alec Forrest raise his eyebrows slightly at Marjorie Kane, and Marjorie shrug her shoulders all but imperceptibly in r
eply.
“Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the feast of Stephen...”
came harmoniously from the darkness outside.
“My favourite carol,” said Mr. Milton softly in Theodosia’s ear.
“Mine too, I think,” she murmured, critically.
THE BREAKING POINT
IT was a strange friendship — stranger even than most, Miss Glanfield told herself. She had seen the beginning of it, and she had several times supposed that she was seeing the end of it — but always, it had survived.
Mrs. Montague and Mrs. Hamilton.
They had met in the East, when Mrs. Montague and Miss Glanfield were travelling, and had brought with them a letter of introduction to the Hamiltons. They had been asked to stay on the rubber estate, and had spent five days and six nights there.
In that space of time, Mrs. Montague had caused Mr. Hamilton to fall terrifically in love with her, had fallen terrifically in love with him in return, had had a scene with Mrs. Hamilton, and had started the famous friendship.
Never would Miss Glanfield, unfortunate spinster, forget it.
She still, sometimes, relived it, from her peaceful and familiar suburban villa. That first evening, when they had played Bridge, and Sara Montague had worn a blue-and-silver frock, and Humphrey Hamilton had never taken his eyes off her.... Miss Glanfield remembered well that she had said to herself at the time: This is going too far.
It had gone much, much further — and at a rate of rapidity surely unprecedented, even in the East.
The next morning, Mrs. Montague and Mr. Hamilton had gone out riding together, and in the afternoon they had all gone down to see the polo, and Mr. Hamilton had talked exclusively to Mrs. Montague between the chukkas. In the evening they had danced.
But of what use to recapitulate the stages through which they had passed? They were stages that Sara Montague, to the disapproving knowledge of Miss Glanfield, had often traversed before. And so, apparently, had Humphrey Hamilton. On the third day, Mrs. Hamilton, in an embittered voice, remarked to Miss Glanfield:
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 553