He gave her the careless kiss of a preoccupied man, and was gone.
“He doesn’t love me — he doesn’t need me,” she told herself — and thought of Antony Chisholm with a pang of longing.
She believed that she had put temptation behind her, and although a mortal weariness of soul and body possessed her, there was relief in cessation of conflict. She was going to the children whom she longed to love, and she tried to believe that she could make them love her, and want her.
“It won’t be like London, when I was always out, or always busy. I’ll give Nurse afternoons off, and they and I will play on the sands. There’ll be the baby—”
For Baba had joined the other children now.
Boscombe was a new discovery. A small, quiet spot, well away from popular Bournemouth, with pine-crested, chocolate-coloured cliffs, running down to the sea.
The children and nurses were in rooms. Arthur had only stipulated that matters should be so arranged that his party should occupy the whole of the house so long as they remained in it. His children were not allowed to make friends with strangers.
Isobel drove to the lodgings in a four-wheeled cab. The landlady received her with respectful enthusiasm. But the children were out on the sands.
“They didn’t know what time I should arrive, of course,” Isobel said hastily, and at the excuse she thought that the landlady eyed her rather oddly.
The nurses had been talking, then.
“I’ll go down and find them,” she said, on a sudden impulse.
She only stopped to put on white sand-shoes, and to change her dark travelling hat for a stiff, white straw one with a ribbon round the crown. Her grey bolero jacket she threw over a chair in the sitting-room, and went out in her trimly-belted grey skirt, and white shirt and blue tie. She had to hold the skirt up as she went down the slope that led to the sands.
There were very few groups on the smooth, yellow expanse. Isobel almost immediately caught sight of Nurse’s white drill uniform, the nurserymaid’s striped grey print, and the holland smocks of Robin and Ralph and Myra. The white mushroom linen hat that seemed to be in such quaint and immediate juxtaposition to bunchy, blue rubber “waders” must be Baba. Isobel, floundering towards them, through the loose sand, thought to herself:
“If I were really their mother, and they looked up and saw me coming, how excited they’d be!— ‘Mother! It’s Mother!’ They’d say that — and they’d come plunging to meet me over the sand—”
She could almost, in that instant of vivid imagining, feel their little hot, excited forms, hurling themselves against her.
Then Ralph looked up and saw her.
She saw him pull his brother’s sleeve, and then Robin and Myra, too, looked up.
Isobel waved to them, trying to urge into life the faint hope, that she yet felt to be unreasonable, that, after all, the children would be glad to see her.
Only Myra waved back again.
Robin turned his sturdy back upon her, and after a moment he and Ralph stolidly resumed their digging. The nurse and her satellite rose respectfully as Isobel came up to them, but Nurse did not attempt to detach herself from Baba, who clung to her skirts, turning away from the newcomer.
On the contrary, after a moment, she lifted the child into her arms, and held her there.
After a perfunctory ten minutes, Isobel could bear it no longer.
They did not want her — they were not at all glad that she had come.
She made a last, forlorn effort.
“I’ve brought some surprises for you, from London,” she said timidly. “Would you like to come back to the house with me, and unpack them?” She looked at Myra, not at the boys.
Myra hesitated, and Isobel, encouraged, half held out her hand.
“No, thank you,” said little Robin, in grave, surly tones. “We’d rather go on playing here.”
And at that his sister, turning very red, echoed, “No, fank you,” and took up her spade again.
Isobel heard the nursemaid ejaculate under her breath.
Unable to speak, she turned away and left them. Her misery was out of all proportion to the incident, but it brought the culmination of the long struggle that she had waged.
Even now, she could send one word to Antony Chisholm, and be with him in the space of a few hours. She need never be lonely, or unwanted, again.
Isobel France, at the head of the cliff path, engaged in her last and fiercest conflict with what she regarded as temptation to mortal sin.
Her husband did not love her, his children had been taught to dislike her. Antony, the man to whom her whole heart was given, and who loved her, asked only to be allowed to take her away.
Duty bade her remain with Arthur France and his children.
In those terms, the lady of the nineties saw her problem.
Duty conquered.
The long-drawn hoot of a motor siren sounded from the street below, and the insistent whirring of an electric bell told Isobel that Baba, as usual, had forgotten her latch-key.
The woman stirred, and cast a curious look all round her.
The June sunlight of 1927 lay over the Belgrave Square drawing-room, the Chinese Chippendale, in all its austerity, stood out against the pale panelling of the walls, the Persian rugs quietly glowed.
Baba, in her brief, silk, sleeveless frock, her mauve picture hat swinging in her ungloved hand from its velvet streamers, came in.
She blew a kiss to her stepmother, and looked at herself in the small convex mirror on the wall.
“It’s all right,” said Isobel. “You look very nice, and your hair is charming, and your mouth as unnaturally scarlet as even you could wish.”
The girl laughed.
“That’s all right, then, because I’m going out again in half an hour. And, Mummie, are we doing anything on the 23rd — evening?”
Isobel consulted the engagement book on the writing-table at her elbow.
“Nothing in the evening.” She hesitated. “But it’s the Daleshires’ ball that night, and we shall get cards.”
“Don’t let’s go,” Baba said. “Lady Daleshire is going to give a little tiny dance for Monica every other Wednesday later on — those’ll be much more fun.”
Isobel considered how best to throw her bombshell.
She knew Baba.
“Maud Maddox has been here, and was as odious as she knows how to be — which is saying quite a lot — and declares that you won’t he asked to her Wednesday affairs, my poor child.”
Baba opened her velvet-blue eyes, whistled softly, and then dropped on to the floor, cross-legged, beside her stepmother’s chair.
“Have I gone too far, lately?”
“Maud Maddox says so.”
“How terribly absurd people are! It’s Terry Lamotte, of course. Nina’s been whining to her friends, lately.”
“Well,” said Isobel, “what are you going to do? I don’t want to be a nuisance, Baba, and of course you’re a free agent, but if you ever want to make a decent marriage, you’re ruining your chances. Is it worth it? is the question.”
“Between ourselves,” murmured Baba, “it is.” Isobel made a gesture of ironic resignation. “It’s serious, is it?”
“Terribly,” said Baba.
She drew out and lit a cigarette with great deliberation.
“It’s like this, darling. You’ve always been such an angel that I don’t mind telling you, and then we needn’t mention it again. Terry and I are perfectly madly in love, and we think that there’s quite a sporting chance that if we hang on a bit longer, Nina will be willing to let him have a divorce.”
“And then — ?”
“Then we shall get married. So much less complicating and tiresome than just going away together, which seems to be the only alternative.” There was a silence Then Isobel remarked reflectively:
“You don’t intend to give one another up?”
“Rather not,” said Baba, smoking contentedly.
When her ci
garette was half-finished she threw it into the fireplace, jumped up and kissed Isobel lightly.
“I always have adored you, Mummie,” she murmured. “I don’t know anybody else of your generation who can stand the truth about mine. You’re too wonderful. What is it? Did you ever — or is it cheek to ask — ?”
Isobel France smiled, a trifle crookedly.
“Oh, I had a problem, too — thirty years ago, or nearly.”
“What a fool the man must have been to let you go! What happened to him?”
“He was killed, in India. He didn’t ever marry.”
For a moment Isobel’s eyes were reminiscent. Then they hardened again.
“But it all happened in the eighteen-nineties,” she observed, with a small, cold laugh. “And in those days, my dear, we made what I imagine you’d call heavy weather, over our decisions. Right and wrong—”
Baba’s eyes widened.
“It was a problem?” she hazarded, sympathetic, but uncomprehending.
Isobel shrugged her shoulders, and rose.
“Well — it was a choice, if I don’t go and dress now, Baba, we shall be late.”
BUT IF IT HAD BEEN A FINE DAY — ?
BOTH of them had, mildly, been looking forward to the expedition; Susan in the rather chilly, analytical fashion of a woman who has always been just one degree too clever for her surroundings, and Rupert more simply, taking genuine pleasure in his own academic appreciation of church architecture.
Besides, the heat-wave was congenial to both of them. It made them enjoy things more.
Susan had a poor circulation, and Rupert was accustomed to Ceylon. The English climate, especially in the summer, was a trial to both of them. “But in weather like this—” Rupert said, waving his hand towards the cloudless sky, the rich green-and-gold of the meadows, and the dust-powdered hedges of the Rectory garden.
Susan leaned agreeably over the white gate, feeling in herself a vague resemblance to a Randolph Caldecott illustration of the less robust kind.
“There are a good many hills between here and St. Nancie, but we ought to do it in a couple of hours without having to hurry. And we can either take sandwiches, or get something at the little inn. It’s a tiny inn, and I don’t suppose they often have visitors, but I dare say we can get bread and cheese.”
“What could be better than bread and cheese?”
Rupert inquired rhetorically. “I should far prefer that to sandwiches, personally. One carries sandwiches in a little parcel, and if one hangs it on the handlebars, the string breaks, and if one puts it in one’s pocket, the sandwiches get all squashed up together. No, no. Bread and cheese.”
Without commenting upon the peculiarity of Rupert’s experiences with sandwiches, Susan nodded.
She, also, preferred bread and cheese — chiefly because the halt at the inn would afford her an opportunity of powdering her nose, after two hours of bicycling on a hot day.
Susan, at thirty years of age, was sufficiently provincial to prefer an unpowdered nose to one powdered in public, and sufficiently feminine to dislike the thought of being seen by any man with a shiny face. Rupert, she knew, admired her in a pleasant, detached kind of way; and she, in return, liked him with a tepid friendliness based upon their common conviction of being persons rather superior to their neighbours.
Susan had spent all her life in her father’s parish, and until Rupert’s mother had come to live in the largest house in the village and Rupert to spend his leaves there, she had been devoid of congenial companionship. It was natural that she and Rupert should make friends.
No doubt, at first, people had wondered “if there was anything in it” — for Rupert was twenty-eight and unmarried. But Susan, quite level-headed and rather scornful, knew well that there was nothing in it. She had never been attractive to men, and Rupert only liked in her those qualities that he would have liked equally well in another man. Her acute critical sense — that her father the Rector sometimes called her lack of charity — had long ago informed her that Rupert was a sentimentalist.
He would certainly marry, but he would have to believe himself in love first.
In a way, it was a pity, Susan thought dispassionately. She knew that she could make him an excellent wife, and be an admirable mother to his children, and she had read intelligently the works of Havelock Ellis and others, and fully realized how unfortunate it was for a clever woman to have to remain unmarried just because there were not enough men to go round.
There was, however, nothing to be done about it, and a Platonic friendship was better than nothing. Very likely, when Rupert returned to Ceylon in the early autumn, all by himself, people would think that he had proposed to her and she had refused him.
Or would they know, only too well, that the daughters of rectors in remote country parishes never refused an offer of marriage, should they have the incredible good fortune to receive one?
Probably they would.
These cynical reflections pursued well-accustomed channels in Susan’s mind whilst she leant over the Rectory gate, amiably gazing at Rupert.
“Oh, rather,” he agreed. “I’ll be here at ten o’clock to-morrow, then. Sure that’s not too early?”
“Quite sure. We shall be well on our way before the hottest part of the day has begun. Although I, as you know, can never be too hot.”
“Nor I,” said Rupert firmly.
Susan went indoors, and ironed her most becoming frock — a dark-blue linen, that she intended to wear next day. She had bought a new hat, of dark-blue straw, with a blue-and-purple ribbon twisted round the crown, and she tried it on in front of the glass.
Her complexion was fresh, her eyes and eyebrows good, and she had excellent teeth. These advantages did not amount to beauty — nevertheless, with the dark-blue frock, and her new hat, Susan was agreeable to look at, and although the mirror was too small to reflect it, she knew that she had a very nice figure, and could ride a bicycle vigorously and well. Rupert would no doubt notice these things, since he was quite observant on his own plane. He would not say anything about them, because his conversation was never personal. All the same, it was nicer to look one’s best than not, and if had a stimulating effect upon one’s general outlook.
Susan went to bed with quietly agreeable anticipations of the morrow.
She awoke to find them shattered.
The heat-wave had treacherously broken.
There was no more blue sky. Ragged grey clouds were tearing about all over the place, the tree-tops were swaying wildly, the wind was whistling, and the temperature had fallen to incredible depths.
“It will be raining,” said the Rector, “before night. Mark my words.”
Susan had no need to mark anybody’s words. She sullenly substituted a coat and skirt, and wool jumper for the dark-blue linen frock, an old hat for the new, fragile one, and disgustedly put on a burberry that she rightly considered to be shabby, shapeless and unbecoming.
“We shall go, so long as it isn’t absolutely pouring,” she said. For both she and Rupert belonged to the class of persons who do not allow themselves to be deterred by the weather. Our Island race breeds many such — as well it may.
Rupert arrived at ten o’clock, his mackintosh blowing about his legs, his face already slightly mottled with cold.
Both of them were too proud to say anything about the change in the weather. Rupert said, rather morosely: “Well — if you’re sure you’re ready—” and Susan replied, “Yes, rather—” and off they went, facing a disgusting wind that seemed to come from three different directions.
As Susan had said on the preceding day, there were a good many hills. They pushed their bicycles up them in silence. Even on the comparatively rare occasions when it was possible to free-wheel, they said little, because the wind compelled them to screech.
At last they arrived at St. Nancie, which was a very small village with a very ancient church.
They leant their bicycles against the wall of the churchyard and went
in.
Rupert at once revived slightly, and began his habitual progress — a kind of solemn creep — round the interior of the church. Soon he was talking, fluently and firmly, about corbels and capitals, and Early Perpendicular characteristics.
Susan replied intelligently.
She was quite reasonably interested — and besides, she had read up church architecture in the Encyclopaedia Britannica the day before — and exercise had restored her circulation. She found it, indeed, much pleasanter in the church than outside, and almost began to enjoy herself. Presently a smart, rattling sound against the windows informed them that hail, or rain, or sleet, or all three, had begun, and they went to the door.
It was sleet.
“The inn is only just across the road. Let’s go there. By the time we’ve had some lunch, this’ll be over —— —” Rupert suggested.
They hurried across.
By tacit consent, neither of them mentioned bread and cheese, so redolent of the open road, of picnics by the wayside.
Susan asked the landlady what they could have, and was told cold ham, and hot tea.
They had the dingy little dining-room entirely to themselves.
Susan prowled round it, rather as Rupert had prowled round the church.
There was a fireplace, with pink paper in the grate, and above it a mantel-piece, on which stood a china figure of a dog wearing a top-hat, a pair of empty red glass vases, a grey wool mat, a snapshot of a row of houses framed in white metal, a small nondescript piece of brass that you wouldn’t like to throw away because it might belong to something, and a tin lozenge-box containing tin-tacks.
There were three chairs — walnut and green plush. There was a sofa — walnut and green plush and horsehair. In the middle of the room was the dining-table, with a green wool cloth over one half of it, a whitish table-cloth over the other, and in the middle a small aspidistra, in a pot swathed with crinkled green paper.
The atmosphere conveyed chilliness and stuffiness at one and the same time.
“What a room!” ejaculated Susan.
“Well, well,” said Rupert, more tolerantly. “It’s very typical, I suppose. When one thinks of that beautiful building, not more than five hundred yards away—”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 563