“Won’t the lawyers advance you what you want?”
“Yes, I’m sure they will directly I get to England. It’s just that for the moment — But I’m not going to worry you with my affairs, Ivy. Forget it!”
Ivy didn’t forget it. There was a preoccupation about Mick’s manner that made it impossible.
Over and over again she asked herself whether he would be offended if she offered to lend him money — just till they got to England.
At last she did it, trembling a good deal.
As she had feared, Mick refused to touch it, saying that he would never have told her anything about it if he’d thought she would make such a suggestion.
Had she lost him by her tactlessness?
Ivy had difficulty in restraining her tears.
Then, suddenly, Mick relented. He would borrow fifty pounds if it would make her happier. He was a brute to have distressed her — of course it was all right, and sweet and generous of her. It was only that the idea of borrowing money from a woman....
Ivy laughed happily.
“That’s quite out of date,” she declared gaily. “Don’t you know that we’ve dropped those stupid conventions nowadays? A man and a woman can be friends, just like two men.”
“Can they?” said Mick Lawson.
He took her in his arms and kissed her.
Ivy, trembling with happiness, wondered when he would ask her to marry him.
The words of Mrs. Maitland were as though they had never been spoken.
Then Vera Lord, Ivy’s cabin - companion, spoke.
She was much more outspoken than the older woman had been, and she and Ivy quarrelled seriously.
“I know he’s making love to you,” said Vera Lord. “Not that that matters. I’m as broadminded as anybody, I should hope. But I do hate to feel you’re taking it all seriously. Why, the man’s nothing but a common adventurer.”
It was not in Ivy’s nature to tell Miss Lord to mind her own business. But she did, with courage, bear testimony to the faith that was in her.
“I know his story. He’s told it to me himself. And we’re friends, and I trust him. I dare say it sounds very stupid and sentimental but I — I’ve always believed that friendship means a lot. It doesn’t matter to me what anybody says about him, I just know I can trust him.”
In her heart, she repeated the formula of her schooldays: “I believe in love.”
The cruise came to an end, those who had travelled together went their several ways and for the most part, in spite of exchanging addresses and promises of writing, never saw one another again.
The Maitlands said good-bye to Ivy with a mingling of severity and compassion. They were good-hearted people, and they liked her, and were very sorry for her.
They saw her, looking radiant, leaving the train at Victoria Station.
Mick Lawson, his hat over one eye, was with her.
5
Ivy married Mick Lawson, and in the course of the next two years she learnt a great many things. She learnt that he frequently drank too much, that he made love to other women, and that most of the things he had told her about himself and his life were untrue.
He had all her money, and spent it on himself and his women. They led a wandering, incredible kind of existence, without any home, drifting from one place to another. Ivy had to realize that the estate and the fortune of which he had spoken would never materialize: they had never existed.
He was not unkind to her, and Ivy remained helplessly in love with him. Always, she hoped that by giving him more and more, and sacrificing herself to him in every way, she would bring him back to what he had seemed in the beginning.
The time came when Mick demanded her last reserve of money. The capital left by Aunt May had gone, bit by bit, so had her own tiny savings, and there was nothing left but the sum of one thousand pounds at Ivy’s bank.
“But I can’t,” she said, nearly crying. “You know what they said when I sold out all the investments. This is all we have left to live on.”
“I know. That’s why I want it. I want to put it into something better, that will bring you in a bigger return,” said Mick.
Ivy didn’t believe him.
She could not.
He tried bullying her, pleading with her, making love to her.
Everything failed.
Then Mick said:
“Very well. Then we’ll use it to insure my life. If anything happens to me, you’ll be provided for.”
At that, Ivy was touched and startled. She sobbed and cried, promising him the money.
He did love her, after all, she thought. Her mind refused to admit the possibility that he did not.
She knew that some women were married for their money, that there were rogues and cheats and liars in the world. But she could never believe that these things were true of herself, or of Mick, whom she loved.
After she had given him the thousand pounds, he brought her some papers to read.
“It’s about the insurance,” he said.
Ivy looked obediently at the papers. They did not convey very much to her.
“And I’ve got a piece of news for you,” said Lawson gaily. “I think I’ve heard of a job. They want a — a reception-clerk at the Montevideo at Brighton, and a man I know thinks he can get me in. I’m going down there to-day.”
“Let me come with you.”
“No,” he said with finality. “I’ll give you a telephone-ring to-night.”
He looked at her, and there was something in his expression that Ivy had not seen there for a long while.
Things are coming right, she thought wildly.
“Do let me come too,” she begged. “It’s so horrid, here.”
They were in cheap lodgings in North London.
“If this comes off,” declared Lawson, “we’ll clear out at once, and go into a decent place in Brighton. Why, they may take me in at once. If so, you can come down to-morrow.”
“Could you give me some money before you go, to pay the landlady?” she half-whispered.
Mick hesitated, then he took out of his wallet three new pound-notes and gave them to her.
Ivy did not ask where they had come from, although she knew that on the previous day he had had no money at all.
She had learnt not to ask questions.
“Good-bye, old girl,” said Mick.
“Good-bye, my darling.”
She lifted her face, and he kissed her.
“Good-bye, old girl,” he repeated.
There was a sound of real regret in his voice.
Ivy watched him from the window as he went off, his hat at its characteristic angle, over one eye.
As she watched him go she thought of nothing but that he did, after all, love her. She was sure of it — could never doubt it.
For she believed in love.
That evening, and all the next day, she waited for Mick’s telephone-ring. But it never came.
Nor did she ever see him again.
The lawyer who had once dealt with Aunt May’s estate did what he could for his client. Eventually he even found work for her, at her old trade, in the hotel business. But now, of course, she was not assistant-manageress, but only housekeeper.
The lawyer ever afterwards quoted her as the classic example in all his experience of the folly of women.
“The fellow was never seen again. Of course the scoundrel never went near Brighton — just cleared out, with her thousand pounds. We made all enquiries, and there’s reason to suppose that she wasn’t even legally married to him. He’d most likely got a wife already in the south of France somewhere. Yet that fool of a woman — Ivy Vernon — sticks to it that the fellow really cared for her.”
“What’s happened to her?” one asked.
“Nothing. She just goes on working. Lucky for her that she can. And I suppose” — the lawyer cackled—” that she still believes in him. If ever there was a fool of a woman!”
Ivy, working hard for her living, praye
d every night that a letter from Mick might come next day. He couldn’t be dead, she thought, because if he were she would have heard from the Insurance Company.
Nothing the lawyer could say would shake her on this point. On it rested her conviction that Mick had really loved her all the time, had thought of her welfare. His infidelity, his extortions, his lies, his desertion flayed her spirit and, in the classic and inaccurate phrase, broke her heart.
Only one thing could enable her essential self to survive, and, like some strange natural phenomenon left untouched by a tidal wave that has destroyed everything else, Ivy’s belief held, in defiance of proven facts.
We believe what we want to believe....
IT ALL CAME RIGHT IN THE END
“ROSE goes home next year.”
“Poor Mrs. Allison!”
“We all have to come to it. Once they’re five or six years old they have to go. The lucky people are those who have a younger child, so that they can anyhow keep one.”
The Allisons hadn’t a younger child. Rose was their only one. She was a very pretty child, sensitive and gentle and less spoilt than most of the English children in Johore. Everyone knew and liked the Allisons, and felt sorry that Rose would be left in England after their next leave. Mrs. Allison wasn’t the kind of woman who allowed herself to weary other people with incessant talk about her own affairs, and she only once spoke to me at all fully about Rose.
It was just before they were due to sail, and I had said something foolish about hoping the child wouldn’t realize all that separation meant.
“My sister is taking her, and there’ll be other children. It’s a nice house in the country,” said Mrs. Allison.
“That’s good. There’s so much to make a child happy in the country,” said I, no doubt with the heartiness of one who knew nothing about it.
“Yes, of course,” Mrs. Allison answered, but there was hesitation in her manner.
It struck me, so that I couldn’t help asking:
“You do feel it’s better and happier than having to leave her at school, or with strangers?”
“Oh yes, yes. It’s only that Rose—”
She broke off and then said, as though irresistibly compelled to put some long-felt uneasiness into words:
“Rose is so terribly dependent on personal relationships.”
Perhaps I smiled.
At all events she smiled too, though in a troubled way.
“It sounds absurd, doesn’t it, about a little thing of six years old? But it’s true, all the same. Nothing matters to her, except people. She’ll give away all her toys to anyone she’s fond of, and it’s not exactly a sacrifice either. Things don’t count with her — only people.”
“But that’s generosity — a delightful trait, surely.”
Mrs Allison shook her head.
“It’s only giving up what she doesn’t care about for what she does care about. Rose will always be at the mercy of her affections.”
I thought her fanciful, and she saw that I did. “One can tell, you know,” she assured me quietly, “much better when they’re quite little than later on. But it’s a theory of mine that the fundamental characteristics remain the same, although they get overlaid, as the children grow older and more — I suppose you’d call it more civilized.”
As an abstract proposition, rather than in its particular application to little Rose Allison, that interested me.
“You mean that the dominant factor at, say, seven years old remains the dominant factor always, in spite of the modifications of time and education and so on?”
“Of course I can’t expect a schoolmaster to agree with me,” she said, laughing a little, and the conversation branched off into a little friendly chaff.
Three days later the Allisons sailed.
Their procedure followed the usual course, that one knew so well after a decade spent in the East.
Allison had the summer at home, sailed again in October, and was back again at his Government post by the middle of November. Mrs. Allison stayed behind, had a full year at home, and then came out and joined her husband.
Rose remained in England.
It was just “life in the East” for the Allisons, as for everybody else. They came down to Singapore for Race-week, and occasionally for dinner at the Europe Hotel and a dance at the Tanglin Club; Allison played polo, and Mrs. Allison looked on and talked to the other women, about clothes, and new arrivals, and difficulty with the Chinese boys and the Amahs, and about the children left at Home. It was:
“Next mail I’m hoping for a photograph.”
“I had a little letter from Michael last mail. When I was at home he hadn’t yet learnt to write.... It’s such a comfort.... I shan’t feel so out of touch when I can get letters from him....”
“My sister writes that Joan has got her second teeth at last... she must look quite different....”
From time to time a new photograph appeared in the verandah of the Allisons’ bungalow.
“Rose has her hair in two plaits now.”
“How she’s grown!”
“That’s Rose in her school uniform. Doesn’t she look tall?”
Once in every two or three years Mrs. Allison went Home to Rose.
To her, I suppose the intervals were long.
Yet the years seemed to slip by very quickly, with no change of season to mark the passing of time. One was surprised, actually, to learn that Rose Allison was eighteen, and coming out to spend a year with her parents in the East — the last one before the Allisons went home for good.
There were no English girls in Johore. An occasional sister, or friend, came from time to time to stay, but those were only visitors, who spent as much time as possible amongst the gaieties in Singapore.
Rose Allison’s coming was a great excitement, especially when one or two old stagers, who had come out in the same boat, declared that she was the prettiest girl on board. She was pretty. She’d have been pretty anywhere, but her apple-blossom colouring and golden hair showed up almost dazzlingly against the bleached and faded looks to which the East becomes accustomed.
She had a royal time — practically the only unmarried girl amongst a crowd of men, most of whom had for years been dancing, and talking, and riding, and flirting with the same collection of no longer very young married women.
She could, of course, have become engaged a dozen times over.
Rose, however, wasn’t a modern girl, in the sense of distributing her favours lightly. She kept her head, and was discreetly charming, and when someone said to Mrs Allison: “Aren’t you afraid of her marrying out here?” Mrs. Allison shook her head.
“Not unless she falls in love, and I don’t think she’ll do that easily.”
I remember that I wondered what, exactly, she meant by that. Rose Allison didn’t strike one as being hard-headed, or lacking in impulsiveness — rather the contrary.
Assuming that a friendship of many years confers a certain privilege, I asked Mrs. Allison why she thought that her pretty Rose would not fall in love easily. “If ever,” I said, “there was a girl meant by nature to fall in love and make some lucky fellow happy for the rest of his life—”
“You know,” said Mrs. Allison, “Rose is a romantic.”
She added nothing more, and I was left to wonder whether the answer was as irrelevant as it seemed.
Then, only a month or two before they sailed, Rose Allison defeated her mother’s confident prophecies.
She fell in love — and desperately — with “Copper-top” Gifford. He was second-in-command of the Regiment, and hadn’t been in Singapore long, and he was a married man with two children. It seems fair to add that he and his wife were well known not to get on together. She was a hard-faced woman, and the other ladies of the Regiment had a fund of scandalous stories about her. Copper they liked and pitied. He was only too attractive to women.
The affair between him and Rose was a regular flare-up. Everybody seemed to know about it after one evenin
g at Tanglin, when they danced together all night long.
After that, one couldn’t ignore it. In a circle of which the interests are largely limited to the doings of its own members, such things are discussed and amplified, and above all watched, with exaggerated intentness.
It was said that Copper was going to follow Rose to England, that his wife was threatening divorce proceedings, that the pair were going to run away together — and again that the Allisons had made Rose swear to give it all up and to sail for Home by the next boat, and marry a man in Shropshire who had been in love with her ever since her schooldays.
Mrs. Allison spoke to me about it once one morning when I had ridden over to see her husband. She was very unhappy.
“But I knew it would come,” she said. “I knew Rose would care terribly for someone some day. Only I didn’t think it would be so soon, while she’s so young.”
I tried to console her, not wanting to be fatuous, but really believing what I said.
“Don’t you see that’s the most hopeful element — her being so young, I mean. She’ll get over it. The more violent these things are, at her age, the quicker they burn themselves out. Isn’t it better she should get it over now? With the temperament that you say she has, suffering seems to be inevitable for her — but she’ll get over it. Think of it — only eighteen! Why, her whole life is before her.”
Instead of answering, Mrs. Allison made a gesture, directing my gaze to the compound below the verandah, where we sat in the shadow, invisible from the glare of increasing sunlight without.
“Look at that,” she said.
Rose, with Copper Gifford, had ridden up to the gate. He sprang off his horse, and lifted her from the saddle, and she stood looking up at him, very slim and tall in her riding breeches and loose, short coat, while the syce led away the ponies.
Leaning against the gate, simply gazing at one another, they might have been alone in the world.
“They’re together all the time. He goes everywhere with her. We can’t stop it.”
“Hasn’t her father — ?”
“Oh, Tim has spoken to Copper Gifford. Of course he has. But you see, we’re all fairly modern people after all. The old days of horsewhipping a man and locking up a girl are over, aren’t they? And,” she added, with a touch of the humour that never quite deserted her, “as far as that goes, it isn’t easy to see where the horse-whipping would come in. The man must be six-foot-three, and broad in proportion, besides being quite fifteen years younger than my poor old Tim. You see, we like him,” she said piteously. “If only he wasn’t married!”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 578