“It isn’t that.”
“No, I know it isn’t. You’re always so brave. It’s just that you’re thinking how very much they’ll miss you at Cloverleigh, isn’t it? So they will, naturally, but you mustn’t fret, and feel that things will go wrong. Your brother is certain to come up to-morrow, and then you and he can talk things over. Meanwhile, I’m going to give you something that’ll make you sleep.”
2
Edward Blunt was greatly dismayed at the news of his sister’s accident. He was an affectionate creature, and it grieved and startled him to think of the competent Helen helpless and in pain.
Her frowning pallor, when he hastened up to see her, filled him with pity.
“She’s getting on all right, though of course there’s the shock to the system to reckon with, as well as her poor leg,” said Dr. Arrows, “but I’m afraid she’s worrying about all of you very much. She’s afraid the children and you may be less comfortable — less happy — than when she’s there to look after you all.”
“Indeed, we shall be,” said Edward. “Everything will go to rack and ruin without her—”
He broke off, unable to understand why the doctor was frowning at him and violently shaking her head.
But Helen laughed feebly.
“Never mind, Marian dear. I’ll do my best not to fret, and they say no one is indispensable. But Edward dear, do remind Miss May about the dancing-class on Tuesday — she’ll have to hire a car to take them in — and if from time to time you could just look at the children, and see if they seem all right—”
“Of course, of course,” said Edward, ready to promise anything. “But there isn’t any reason why they shouldn’t be all right, you know—”
“I know. It’s so stupid of me. But Miss May, treasure though she is in many ways, is a tiny bit inclined to be vague and forgetful, and it would be such a pity to let the children slide back — I mean, to let them get out of their nice, regular ways.”
“Come, come,” Dr. Arrows interposed. “It’ll be all right, Helen. You simply must not worry like this, or I shall feel that you really do think you’re indispensable!”
“But so she is,” said Edward, seriously and tactlessly.
He went away entirely convinced of the truth of his own statement and, in the train, reflected gravely that he really ought to give more personal attention to the welfare of his household. It was Helen who had done everything, had engaged the governess and the servants, had studied the children and planned out their little lives for them.
What would happen to them without her — with only himself to depend upon?
Edward, dejected and apprehensive, walked from the station to his home. He had forgotten to order anything to meet him, and Helen had not been there to do it for him.
The weather had suddenly become hot, and the road was dusty and shadeless.
At the end of the two miles in his thick, heavy London clothes, Edward was tired, and so much wrought up that he almost expected to see his home in flames and his children the victims of unspecified disasters.
But not at all.
They were all in the garden, watching for his arrival. Miss May, her fair head uncovered, was gazing anxiously down the road, her hand shielding her eyes from the sun. The children ran to meet him.
“How is Aunt Helen, daddy?”
“How is she, Mr. Blunt?”
“They say it will be all right, everything is being done. Of course she’s in pain, but the doctors are perfectly satisfied that she’s going on well. They’ll telephone to-morrow.”
“Won’t Auntie come home to-morrow?” said little Simon.
“I’m afraid not, Simon. They say it’ll be five or six weeks before she can think of moving,” he added to Miss May.
“Oh dear! Poor Miss Blunt!”
“Her one concern is for us.”
“We shall miss her dreadfully, all of us. I don’t know what the children will do. But we’ll all try and manage as well as we possibly can,” said little Miss May.
She certainly did her part valiantly.
Edward, conscientiously setting himself to observe her so that he might report fully to Helen upon his weekly visit, was much struck by her gentleness and kindness with the children, and their obvious affection for her.
The weather continued to be lovely and they seemed to play in the garden a great deal, and to go out for picnics. One Saturday afternoon — the first one of Helen’s absence — Edward went with them and drove them to a common where they picked wild flowers. They did not get home again until long after Simon’s and Celia’s bedtime, but Miss May suggested that the two little ones should be allowed to sleep late next morning, if they wanted to, and then, she said, it wouldn’t matter.
And apparently it didn’t.
He paid particular attention to the looks of the children, whenever he could remember it, in order to report reassuringly to Helen, and he was always able to do so. By degrees it dawned upon him that he was seeing more of them than he had done for some time.
For one thing, they always waited for him now at meal-times. At first he protested, but Miss May said meekly that she did not know how to carve, and in any case it would be much nicer to wait — if he didn’t mind.
Edward did not mind at all. He even tried to be rather more punctual. And they all had meals together, in a very pleasant and dilatory way, and very often lunch was finished so late that the children went out of doors without having their afternoon rest, which they were delighted to omit.
Nearly four weeks after Helen’s accident Edward, glancing at the calendar, was struck by the date.
Had they really been four weeks without her? How had they managed?
With a strange, startled feeling, Edward reviewed the past month.
Not only had it fled by with marvellous swiftness, but there had been an easy, débonnaire atmosphere about his home that he had, unconsciously, been missing for months.
There had been no driving sense of urgency, no hastening on to the next thing — none of that incessant activity of mind and body that he found so tiring.
The children had seemed very happy — not particularly undisciplined and certainly in splendid health. They had, apparently, all four of them inherited his liking for an easy-going way of life.
It did not seem to be doing them any harm.
Indeed, Edward had noticed, almost unconsciously, that there never seemed to be any arguments between Miss May and her charges. The children seemed almost to drift from one thing to another, without any urging at all.
The housekeeping seemed to be done by Miss May and the cook, amicably and without fuss.
Edward’s meals were still excellent, and he had not followed Helen’s advice of relegating Miss May to supper in the schoolroom.
On the contrary, they spent very pleasant evenings together and he found that she knew and liked many of his favourite books.
Almost every night they told one another what a blank Helen’s absence made, and how delightful it would be to have her at home again.
Helen’s absence, however, was to be prolonged beyond the original five or six weeks predicted. Her broken leg was progressing satisfactorily enough, but the shock to her whole system had been severe, and Dr. Arrows wanted rest for her.
At the end of the fifth week she spoke to Edward. “Of course it would be possible to get Helen back to Cloverleigh now — or very soon. But I must honestly tell you that I’m afraid of her over-exerting herself once she gets there. She is so energetic — and I needn’t tell you how completely she forgets herself when it’s a case of what is best for the children.”
“I know she does.”
“I don’t think that any mother could be more devoted to them, really, than she is.”
“She’s been wonderful.”
“She is a most exceptional woman, in every way, I always feel. Please don’t misunderstand me, if I say that I almost grudge her to you. Oh, not only selfishly, for my own sake. But for that of all h
er friends here, and even, a little bit, for her own sake. She seems so made for London, somehow, and all the world of music, and books, and pictures, and clever people, that she belonged to for so many years.”
“I suppose that she has given it all up — for me,” said Edward, rather startled.
“She is a wonderful person,” Dr. Arrows repeated. “I remember her telling me, when she first went away, that she had to go. She said: ‘But I must go! I shall have to go! Four little motherless children — and if I don’t go the governess will marry Edward!’”
“What!!!”
The doctor jumped.
“How you startled me! I beg your pardon — I’m afraid I must have sounded very impertinent. I really didn’t mean to be — I was almost thinking aloud.”
“Miss May, I am perfectly certain, would never consider such a thing.”
“But it was Miss Prendergast, in those days.”
“Oh,” said Edward. “Oh! Miss Prendergast! Yes, I see.” And after a silence in which they both looked rather embarrassed, he added, with a peculiar intonation: “In the case of Miss Prendergast, it was I who would never have considered such a thing.”
Very shortly afterwards he took his leave. Helen’s last words to him were:
“Remember, that I can come, any day now. It’s all very well for Marian, dear kind thing, to say that she wants me to stay on until I’m absolutely sound — she doesn’t altogether understand. But — I know what a tremendous lot there is to see to, at home, and I’m longing to get to work again, and put everything in order.”
“You’ve been too good to us, Helen,” said her brother gently.
“Nonsense!” she returned brightly.
That evening, at dinner in the little Cloverleigh dining-room, Edward was so silent and abstracted that Miss May became nervous and ceased to attempt conversation.
Directly the meal was over she said: “I think I’ll go straight upstairs, Mr. Blunt. I have a good deal of sewing to do.”
Usually, she spent from ten to twenty minutes in the drawing-room before going up to her schoolroom.
“Wait one moment,” said Edward, “if you don’t mind, that is. Let’s go into the garden.”
She meekly went with him, looking completely bewildered and rather alarmed.
Edward, on the terrace, stood stock still.
“Are you happy here, Miss May?”
“Very,” she faltered.
“Absurd!” said Edward abruptly, and with much more vehemence than he usually showed.
“Oh, but why, Mr. Blunt? You’re so kind, and the children are darlings, and I haven’t any home of my own—”
“I don’t mean that it’s absurd that you should be happy here. I’m thankful that you are. I meant that it was absurd that I should call you Miss May. You see, I — but what is your Christian name?”
“Margery.”
“Do you think, Margery, that you could — that you would be willing to marry me? Take time to think it over, if you like. I shall understand. The actual idea,” said Edward conscientiously, “was only suggested to me to-day, although I believe that I have been subconsciously wishing it for some time. So I shall understand, if it startles you at first.”
“But it doesn’t,” said Miss May, in a small, shy voice. “At least not very much.”
“It doesn’t?”
“I have thought lately that we seemed to understand one another very well,” she murmured, “and I think I could make you happy, and not ask too much of you. I would do my very best for you and for the children. And I know that — that the children’s mother must always come first. I should never expect anything else.”
“But you’re not thinking of yourself at all!” cried Edward. “Could I make you happy?”
“Indeed you could.”
Her voice was so earnest and sincere, and she looked so small and fair in the moonlight, that Edward — to his own surprise — suddenly took her into his arms and kissed her.
He had not contemplated anything of the sort — it had never occurred, to him that he might wish for it — but he found the experience so pleasant that it was agreeable to repeat it.
Edward wrote to his sister Helen and Miss May wrote to her.
She read the letters on her sofa in the doctor’s drawing-room, and her stifled exclamation brought the devoted Marian to her side.
“What is it, dear?”
Helen had flushed brightly.
She compressed her lips and kept silent for a moment as though afraid of trusting herself to speak.
But she handed Edward’s letter to her friend. Dr. Arrows read through.
“Oh!” she said.
It was an exclamation compounded of surprise, sympathetic annoyance, and indignation.
“And then to say that it’ll set me free for the life I’ve always been used to in London! I don’t think I’ve deserved that, I must say. Oh Marian! I shall make the best of it, of course, if it’s really going to happen — and in many ways it might be worse, I suppose. She’s really a good little thing, and I suppose it wouldn’t have been human nature not to take advantage of the position. I knew something awful would happen, the very moment you told me I shouldn’t be able to get back to them for five or six weeks.”
“You were right,” said Dr. Arrows solemnly.
However, the indispensable woman had been wrong.
Miss May has been Mrs. Edward Blunt for nearly four years now, and her husband and stepchildren are devoted to her. They are unpunctual, casual, and very happy.
Helen Blunt lives in London once more, with her friend Marian Arrows. She seldom leaves home, for fear of what might happen in her absence.
OPPORTUNITY
“THIS is the kind of day,” said Mr. Hancock, “for which to thank God upon one’s knees.”
He did not, however, thank God upon his knees but stood in the middle of the floor in his striped Viyella pyjamas, vigorously doing exercises, and looking out of the open window whenever his head was not bowing towards his dressing-slippers.
Roses and clematis were clustered thickly round the sill, and through a frame of green and cream colour could be seen part of the garden below, brightly variegated, the cob wall that bounded it, and the slope of the hill beyond, covered with purple heather, and appearing to rise straight into the brilliant and cloudless blue of the sky.
It was mid-July, and a faint, quivering bloom lay over everything, denoting the heat of the day to come.
“There’s no place in the world to touch England, when you get a really perfect summer day like this. I grant you it may not happen very often, but when it does, by Jove! it’s worth getting.”
Mr. Hancock’s wife, who was still in bed, did not remind him that the only place in the world, besides England, that he knew anything about at all was Belgium. She lay in the large bed, enjoying the only ten minutes out of the twenty-four hours of the day and night in which she ever had the length and breadth of it all to herself.
“You ought to get up, Fan,” said Mr. Hancock. “A day like this!”
He turned away from the window, and Fan instinctively clutched at the bedclothes.
“Now then!”
Mr. Hancock made playful demonstrations.
“I shall in one minute, dear, truly,” said Mrs. Hancock, smiling in dutiful recognition of Harry’s fun.
“A day like this,” repeated Mr. Hancock. “Well, I’m going to the bathroom. You’ve only twenty minutes before the gong rings.”
He went, and his wife lay back and relaxed her grip of the sheet. From her pillow she could see the slope of heathery hill, and the arch of the sky, and the shimmering heat haze. She gazed entranced.
“Fan!”
The bedroom door burst open.
“It is the MOST extraordinary thing that I cannot get hot water in this house.”
“Oh dear, oh dear, isn’t it hot? I’m so sorry, Harry, I’ll speak to her at once after breakfast—”
“Speaking to her doesn’t seem to
do any good. No, I shall have to go down to the kitchen myself and—”
“Oh don’t do that, dear, please. You know what cook is like, and it really would be dreadful if she gave notice just now, with the house full. I promise you it shan’t happen again,” said Mrs. Hancock, although well aware that this promise was worth exactly nothing.
“It’s because the house is full that the servants don’t attend to their work properly,” declared her husband, suddenly veering off on a new tack. “It’s ridiculous to try and cram six people and two maids into a house that barely holds four comfortably. Now Fan, you’ve got exactly twelve minutes left.”
“Is the bath hopeless, dear?”
“It’s miserably uncomfortable, but I suppose I shall have to put up with it.”
Once more Mr. Hancock, his sponge, his bath-towel, his dressing-slippers, all went out again.
Mrs. Hancock, remembering that she had only twelve minutes left, reluctantly tore herself from the comfortable bed and the sight of all the beauty outside, and began to dress, wondering all the time if the house really was too full.
Naturally, since it was holiday time, Billie and Dinah were at home, and each occupied a bedroom, and Dinah’s school friend Isobel was sharing her room, and the only spare bedroom was occupied by Mrs. Hancock’s own beloved only sister, who lived in America and hadn’t been to stay with her for three years. She couldn’t have put off seeing Millie, and besides, she had so wanted her to come when the children were at home, and the garden looking nice.
“Four minutes more!” said Mr. Hancock returning. He was a very punctual man, and although his wife was punctual also, he seemed always to fear lest the good habits of fifteen years of married life might at any moment break down.
“I’m practically ready, dear. Did you manage the bath?”
“Oh, I managed it,” said Mr. Hancock gloomily.
Under the window childish voices became audible. From a pleasant, picturesque murmur, they rose to loud, tuneless, and unintelligible singing, expressive of nothing whatever except the youth, and absence of musical talent, of the performers, and their satisfaction in finding themselves alive on such a fine morning.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 583