Late and Soon

by E M Delafield

  “Was it?”

  “Well, no. I can’t say that. I don’t mean at all that my life has been an unhappy one.”

  She paused.

  Lonergan guessed that she was finding it difficult, for a moment, to go on.

  He thought: “Give her time. She’ll tell me,” and he remained motionless.

  “I suppose by happiness I really meant falling in love and getting married. And that’s what happened.”

  Lonergan experienced the onslaught of a sharp, furious jealousy.

  He had seen the portrait of Humphrey Arbell hanging in the hall, and he had — he now knew — assumed that Valentine had never been in love with him.

  Keeping his voice carefully neutral, he said:

  “You were very young, when you fell in love and married.”

  “Nineteen. I met Humphrey when I went, to stay with his sister, Venetia Rockingham. Charlie — her husband — was in Palestine and she was using their house at Maidenhead as a convalescent home for officers. Humphrey was there. He was one of the wounded officers. There was a sort of glamour about them, you know—”

  She broke off, and said with a kind of mirthful distress:

  “What a thing to say! And yet it’s perfectly true. That sort of glamour was responsible for a lot of love-affairs in the last war.”

  “Of course.”

  He would have liked to know whether it had been responsible for her marriage to Humphrey Arbell, but would assail her with no crude questions.

  Presently she said:

  “A week-end can be a very long while. Humphrey fell in love with me — and I thought about him a lot, and Venetia asked me to come back again the next week-end, and I did. It was really a very obvious and straight-forward affair I suppose — only one never feels that about oneself. Humphrey and I were engaged three weeks after we first met, and then he was given sick leave and we got married. We thought he was going back to the Front, but he never did. The Medical Board wouldn’t pass him.”

  Valentine stopped speaking, and again Lonergan refrained from breaking in on her train of thought.

  When she turned towards him again it was, once more, to surprise him.

  “Those are just facts, aren’t they, and facts all by themselves convey so little. I could tell you that Humphrey and I came to live here when the war was over, and that I had two children — and you still wouldn’t really know much about my life.”

  “Were you happy?” he asked.

  Valentine smiled suddenly at that, as though he had pleased her unexpectedly.

  “That’s the question I always want to ask people myself. I don’t think men do, as a rule — I mean, want to know about that. I wasn’t unhappy but I didn’t ever want to think about happiness. That’s the nearest I can get to explaining.”

  “It’s near enough,” Lonergan told her.

  “What I minded most, when I was younger, was that life seemed so very uninteresting. I thought it oughtn’t to be like that. I liked living in the country, and we had just enough money, and there were the children, and Humphrey and I got on together quite well. Perhaps that was really what was wrong. I thought — and I still think — it isn’t nearly enough, just to get on quite well.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Humphrey was killed in a hunting accident, twelve years ago. Quite a lot of people told me I was sure to marry again. I used to think so, too. But no one ever asked me to and I stayed on here, and Reggie — my eldest brother — had to retire on half-pay, and came to live with me. And I thought it was important for the children that Coombe and I should always be there — something they could depend on, that didn’t change. When I was a child I used to long for a settled home that would always be the same. But I don’t know, really, that it made much difference to them. It seems to me now that I didn’t realize they’d stop being children after a few years, and of course that’s what has happened. Naturally. It would have happened anyway, only the war seems to have made it come suddenly. And even that’s not really true. Primrose has lived away from home ever since she was eighteen, practically.”

  The mention of Primrose’s name stabbed Lonergan with an acute discomfort. He moved quickly, noisily pushing apart the logs on the hearth with his boot.

  Immediately, he was aware of a complete change in the atmosphere that had enveloped them all through their long conversation.

  The logs, in falling apart, sent up a little volley of sparks of which one landed on the shabby, discoloured hearth-rug and Lonergan stamped it out.

  The spell of the evening was broken.

  “Good-night,” said Valentine. “I do hope you’ll ask for whatever you want. Please tell me, if there’s anything, won’t you?”

  “I will. Thank you.”

  “I must go to bed. Good-night,” repeated Valentine.

  Lonergan said good-night, and as she moved away he added:

  “I’m so glad we’ve met again.”

  She looked back at him and smiled, saying “I am too” with a sound of shyness in her voice that made her, more than ever, seem strangely youthful. He was glad of the words and yet he felt as though a chill had fallen upon their evening so that her going-away left him with a sense of desolation.

  VI

  Valentine lay in bed, wakeful.

  She felt stimulated as she had not felt for many years, and she was aware both of a new and precarious sense of happiness and of strange, inescapable pangs of pain related to all that Lonergan had told her about the house at Saumur, Laurence, who had come to him and lived with him in Paris, and their child Arlette.

  Neither happiness nor pain owed anything to the early love of Rory Lonergan and Valentine Levallois They had been two children, disappeared long ago into the lost world of childhood. Through half a lifetime they had all but forgotten one another. Neither had ever had any claim on the fidelity of the other.

  So that it was, Valentine acknowledged to herself, on account of Lonergan as she had known him for the space of one evening that she lay awake now.

  She recalled, word for word, things that they had said to one another, and she saw again certain expressions that had passed over his dark, intelligent face.

  The look that had come into his eyes when he spoke of Laurence and said that only one word — luminous — could describe the quality of her beauty, was vividly before her in the darkness.

  It brought with it the sharp, unpredictable and uncontrollable onslaught of jealousy.

  Valentine thought, lucidly and with the realism that belonged to her: “I think I’m falling in love with him. Perhaps I am in love already,” and she remembered with a kind of astonished awe that both she and Lonergan were free to love as they chose.

  The romantic miracle, in which she had all her life secretly believed, might come to pass.

  The fourteen-year-old village girl, Esther, who bounced through the duties of housemaid and supplementary parlour-maid at Coombe and was so evidently convinced that she had nothing left to learn concerning them, called Valentine at half-past seven.

  She slammed down a tray with a tiny early-morning tea service on it, pulled at the curtains and rattled up the blinds with noisy exuberance, and banged the door smartly behind her.

  Valentine felt glad that the competent Madeleine always performed these offices for the General, that two soldier servants were responsible for her visitors and that Primrose was never called at all in the mornings.

  She wished, as often before, that Primrose would allow breakfast to be taken up to her room.

  At least, she reflectively told herself, it was nowadays no longer possible for Primrose to substitute for breakfast, and frequently for other meals as well, a succession of bananas, of which the skins, curling and discoloured, seemed always to be left lying about on pieces of furniture, mantelshelves and the edges of the bath.

  Even three years ago Primrose had been fairly ready to regard her trail of banana skins as a household joke. Valentine had always felt that, with occasional references and mi
ld jibings about the banana skins, she could still share a look or a smile with Primrose that momentarily lessened the strain in their relationship. Now, nothing at all could do that.

  She had been terribly conscious on the previous evening that Primrose’s hostility towards her had hardened. She felt that it was now something which Primrose had acknowledged and justified to herself, and would take no further pains to hide. Accustomed to stifle a misery for which she could nowhere find alleviation, Valentine made the effort of turning her mind away from it.

  She went from her cold bedroom to the still colder bathroom, dressed as quickly as possible in a dark-blue knitted dress that she had always liked and went downstairs.

  There she automatically noted the signs of Ivy’s and Esther’s light-hearted disregard of all but the more obvious of their morning duties: she straightened some of the chair-covers, turned off an electric light left burning unnecessarily, and pulled a leaf off the day-by-day almanack that stood on the desk.

  It was Sunday morning.

  Valentine remembered how punctually her father, as Sunday after Sunday came round, had quoted the line: “Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright.”

  She herself, with equal punctuality, had recollected the triviality once a week for more than twenty years.

  She went into the dining-room, shivered, and began to make the coffee.

  Presently Ivy brought in toast and the breakfast-tray that Madeleine was waiting to take up to the General.

  Valentine added what was necessary to it and Ivy went out and a minute or two later sounded the gong in the hall.

  In a few minutes, Valentine told herself, she would see Lonergan.

  She suddenly felt very young and very happy.

  Almost immediately Lonergan and Captain Sedgewick came in together.

  Valentine smiled at them both, telling young Sedgewick with genuine concern that he should have slept longer.

  “Thanks very much, Lady Arbell, but I had a marvellous night. I feel fine. I can’t tell you what it’s like to be in a civilized home again after being in camp.”

  The soldiers all said the same thing, and it always rang true.

  She knew that both the men would be away from the house all day, but, remembering Jess, invited Sedgewick to join the tea and games that her younger daughter had projected for the evening.

  “Mr. Banks, who was here the other day, is coming and he was to bring a friend with him.”

  “Good old Buster,” said Sedgewick leniently.

  “It’s very kind of you to have them,” Lonergan told her. “They’ll love it, poor lads.”

  “Perhaps you’ll be here, too?”

  “In the office, I expect. Will you ever recognize that charming little sitting-room under the name of the office, I wonder?”

  Jess with unwonted punctuality came into the dining-room before breakfast was over. She wore, as usual, her riding-clothes and Valentine noticed that she had taken a great deal of trouble with the management of her hair.

  “Hallo! Good-morning,” said Jess.

  She went to the sideboard, forestalling both the men.

  “Please don’t do anything. If you’re going to be billeted here we’d better begin as we mean to go on, hadn’t we, and it’ll be such a frightful bore for you if you once start waiting on me. You’ll see, it’ll be quite bad enough at cold Sunday supper to-night when we’re supposed to wait on ourselves and everybody gets into a flat spin and no one can sit and eat in peace. In some ways, I think this house is frightfully like a madhouse.”

  “Will you shut the door, darling?”

  “I can’t, mummie. Aunt Sophy’ll want to come in at any minute. Aunt Sophy! Good little dog!”

  Jess whistled and called, dashed from the table to the door and back again, and when no puppy appeared, shut the door briskly.

  “I’m training her,” she said to Sedgewick.

  The talk, from which Jessica had dispelled any possible constraint, circled round the dogs, the weather, Valentine’s intention of going to church and Lonergan’s assertion that it would be impossible for him to do so.

  “Being Irish, are you a Catholic?” asked Jess.

  “I am. Not a very good one, I’m afraid.”

  “Fancy the Pope,” said Jess thoughtfully, and the eyes of Valentine and Rory Lonergan met in a swift look of shared amusement.

  Aunt Sophy whined and scratched at the door, Sedgewick and Jess rose simultaneously and raced for it. Jess, slipping, caught hold of his arm to retrieve her balance, shrieked with laughter, and almost fell again, picking up her dog.

  “I’m afraid you can see only too plainly why Jess thinks this house is like a madhouse,” Valentine said, gently ironical, to Lonergan.

  “She’s a riot,” he answered under his breath, and the mirthful exhilaration that lay beneath the odd little phrase communicated itself to her.

  She felt gay and irresponsible, as she had not felt for years, when breakfast was over, the two officers gone and Jess had taken the puppy out into the garden.

  The sensation remained with her all through the Sunday morning routine: Jess, bringing the car to the door and receiving without expostulation all assurances that if she didn’t go and change at once she’d be late, General Levallois’ appearance, in the weekly spruceness of a dark-blue suit, black tie and well-brushed hat, the triumphant return of Jess miraculously transfigured in Sunday clothes, and the familiar drive down the hill to the church.

  Valentine liked going to church, but she was aware that her liking was based on sentimental and traditional feeling. It had nothing to do with faith, or even with religion.

  The familiar and beautiful words of the Psalms always struck her afresh, the hymns, associated with childhood, gave her a faint nostalgic pleasure. She even found repose in listening to the sound, if not to the actual words, of the elderly clergyman’s gentle ramblings from the pulpit.

  He had been already for some years at St. Martin’s when she first came to live at Coombe.

  Prayer was not a form of self-expression natural to Valentine. On her knees, she thought of Primrose, Jess, her own dead parents and her dead husband, as she did always in church yet with a conviction that prayer in the true sense of the word must mean something more impersonal and deeper than anything within her comprehension.

  The congregation, a very small one, went out and Valentine exchanged greetings with her neighbours. Most of them were from farm or cottage homes, and most of them she had known ever since her marriage.

  They made comments on the war situation, the weather or local village news. One or two women who served with Valentine on the Women’s Institute Committee came up and spoke with her about past or future activities.

  Jess let the dogs out of the car, talked to people — especially those, mostly farmers’ sons, whom she met in the hunting-field — and held General Levallois’ two sticks for him while he clambered painfully into the seat behind the driver’s.

  “Mummie, I’m going to walk home by the short-cut with the dogs.”

  “Very well.”

  “Hadn’t you better start? Uncle Reggie is definitely frozen.”

  “Very well,” said Valentine again.

  She went back to the car.

  “The distributor!” shrieked Jess, starting off with the dogs.

  Of course. Jess never seemed to forget anything practical. Valentine did so frequently.

  She replaced the distributor and turned the car.

  Her brother, who seldom as a rule spoke to her when she was driving, leant forward from the back seat.

  “Val, did you find out whether this feller — the Irish one — was the chap you knew in Rome?”

  “Yes, Reggie. He is.”

  “Dam’ cheek,” said the General.

  She laughed.

  “How could he possibly help it?”

  “I grant you he couldn’t help being sent down here — that’s obvious. But I can see that he’s the kind who if you give him an inch will take an e
ll.”

  “I don’t agree.”

  “He managed to get himself billeted here on account of Primrose, I suppose. Jess let out that they’d been seeing one another in London. Look out, Val! You should never take a corner like that.”

  “I’m sorry. If he’s a friend of Primrose’s, naturally she might easily have suggested his coming here.”

  “There’s no if about it. What’s he doing, meeting her at Exeter and driving her out here with him, and what’s she doing, if it comes to that, dashing down from London for a week all of a sudden just as he arrives?”

  What indeed?

  Valentine felt as though she had been abruptly confronted by a quite new aspect of Rory Lonergan and his possible concern in her life.

  Because she was hurt and acutely, suddenly unhappy, she said at once:

  “But Reggie, it’s all perfectly all right. Primrose knows a great many men, and I think a lot of them admire her. Why shouldn’t Colonel Lonergan? He’s a good deal older than she is, but that’s all.”

  “He’s probably got a wife and half a dozen brats in that damned disloyal country of his.”

  “He’s not married at all.”

  “Good God, Val, the rate women go on. I suppose you’ve already made up your mind what kind of wedding-dress Primrose is to wear. Let me tell you that in these days people go every kind of length and marriage doesn’t enter into it at all. Not that I mean,” the General conceded rather grudgingly, “that Primrose would go off the rails or anything like that. All I say is, you’ll be a fool if you trust an Irishman. They’re plausible, that’s what they are. Plausible.”

  He went on repeating words to much the same effect until they reached Coombe.

  Valentine paid little heed.

  She was telling herself that she was forty-four, and Primrose twenty-four. That she knew nothing, in reality, of Primrose’s life in London beyond assertions, general rather than particular, of her attraction for men — assertions that had travelled to Coombe for the most part by way of Venetia Rockingham. That Lonergan was a man susceptible to women, and himself likely to charm them.