The Way Things Are

by E M Delafield

  “Very well. Would you send him here, at once?”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Temple. And I’m so very sorry to have to worry you like this.”

  Laura was sorry, too. She laid down her pen and assumed an expression of severity. Would Johnnie be cross, or injured, or tearful, or simply indifferent? In any case he would be what Laura’s little books spoke of as “difficult.”

  The door opened.

  Laura’s severe expression became more pronounced.

  “Good-morning. Am I interrupting you?” said Duke Ayland. “Of course, I can see I’m interrupting you—but what I really mean is, mayn’t I go on doing it?”

  His eyes, as well as his mouth, smiled at her.

  Laura smiled in return, and felt her preoccupations mysteriously drop from her. Johnnie came into the room, with his most casual air.

  “Did you want me, mummie?” his infantile tones guilelessly enquired.

  Laura, unable to summon back her expression of severity, could at least dismiss her smile, and did so.

  “Go and wait for me in my room upstairs,” she directed.

  It was against the principles of the little books to let a child feel itself disgraced by rebuke in the presence of a stranger—but it was not this consideration only that prompted Laura’s forbearance.

  She wished neither to drive Duke Ayland from the room, nor to appear before him in the light of a mere mother and housewife.

  “In your bedroom?” said Johnnie with interest.

  “Yes,” said Laura, disregarding the interest.

  Her son departed with alacrity.

  Ayland had seated himself upon the window-sill.

  “I hope you’re writing, although if you are there’s even less chance of my being allowed to stay and talk—but I’ve always wanted to see a real live author at work.”

  “I’m anything but a real live author,” Mrs. Temple declared, with the utmost sincerity. “I am writing to the butcher, if you want to know. Figuratively speaking, I always am writing to the butcher. My other sort of writing I have to do when I can—generally in the evenings after the children have gone to bed.”

  “Do you mind?”

  “I do, rather. When I meet people like A. B. Onslow, it makes me realise that there’s a world where books, and writing, and art, are things that matter. But, of course, you live in that world yourself.”

  “That’s why I like the other better. One gets bored with people who take themselves, and their work, so terribly seriously all the time. Your sense of humour seems almost too good to be true.”

  At this tribute Laura felt her sense of humour, which had certainly lain torpid most of the previous night and all the morning, reviving again.

  She smiled.

  “What was A. B. Onslow like?” enquired Ayland.

  “His hair was dyed,” returned Laura thoughtfully.

  “Was it?”

  “Yes.”

  Duke Ayland looked serious and even interested, but Laura suddenly woke to the inadequacy of her appraisement.

  “He was very nice really, and a delightful conversationalist, and took the trouble to talk to me.”

  “Do you know,” said Ayland abruptly, “that you have an inferiority complex?”

  It was such a very long while since anybody had talked to Laura about herself, that she would have admitted to any complex in the world in order to prolong the process.

  “Have I?” she said with great interest. “Tell me what makes you think so.”

  They discussed Laura’s inferiority complex at some length—thereby considerably diminishing it.

  “So that it’s perfectly absurd of you,” said Duke Ayland gently, in conclusion, “to speak of A. B. Onslow as though he was on some eminence right above your head. He ought to think himself extraordinarily lucky to have had the chance of meeting you.”

  At this extravagance, Laura looked in sheer amazement at its originator, but he went on calmly:

  “Where did you meet him? Does he often stay down here?”

  “At Lady Kingsley-Browne’s. I thought he admired Bébée, the daughter—the girl who was here yesterday.”

  “The six-foot high girl, who couldn’t take your service?” enquired Mr. Ayland.

  “Yes,” said Laura shamelessly.

  “And A. B. Onslow admired her?”

  Ayland’s tone was reflective merely, but Laura deduced that his own predilections were not likely to follow the direction taken by those of the novelist.

  She changed the conversation.

  “Where is Christine?”

  “She said she was going to the village.”

  “Oh, didn’t you want to go with her?” exclaimed Laura ingenuously.

  “I wanted to talk to you.”

  This time their eyes met, and Laura, her heart suddenly beating faster, saw that Ayland’s were ardent, earnest and compelling.

  She looked away again, after a long, strange moment, and said with great abruptness:

  “I liked what you played to us last night.”

  “I wanted you to like it. I’m glad you did.”

  “Tell me something about your music, won’t you?”

  She really wanted to hear, and she also wanted time to recover her own composure, severely shaken by a recrudescence of emotions that she had supposed herself to have long outgrown.

  The clock struck twelve times, and Laura did not hear it.

  But she heard the opening of the drawing-room door, and saw the rather timid, apologetic entrance of her elder son.

  “Mummie,” said Edward—”How do you do, Mr. Ayland? I’m quite well, thank you—Mummie, Miss Lamb says, is Johnnie still being punished or can he come out with us?”

  Laura leapt to her feet.

  “Oh dear—I’ll be back in a minute—I’ve forgotten—” Dismayed and incoherent, she hurried upstairs.

  For the first time in several years, Laura had suffered a temporary amnesia, and had ceased to be aware of her own motherhood. She was forcibly reminded of it as she entered her bedroom, where Johnnie, decked in the slender contents of his parent’s jewel-case, disposed of at random on his fingers, on the front of his holland overall, and round his legs and arms, sat absorbed in a small volume of Dr. Marie Stopes, that had been bestowed by Laura beneath a pile of her more intimate underwear at the back of her chest of drawers.

  “Johnnie! Where did you find that book?”

  “In a drawer,” said Johnnie negligently.

  “You shouldn’t open my drawers, as you very well know,” said Laura, restraining her violent inclination to snatch Dr. Marie Stopes away and merely detaching Johnnie’s grasp very gently.

  “You were such a very long time coming. Need I be whipped now?” said Johnnie pathetically.

  Laura found herself trying in vain to recall what his offence had been. At last she said:

  “I never said I was going to whip you, Johnnie. I hope you’ve now had time to think over how badly you’ve behaved, and that you’ve made up your mind to be sensible and obedient for the rest of the day.”

  “Yes,” said Johnnie, looking a good deal surprised and relieved.

  “Then run along. Wait—take off those brooches and things.”

  Johnnie obeyed, his fumbling gestures a good deal accelerated by his mother, who felt a nervous desire to have her duty accomplished, so that she might return downstairs.

  When she did so, however, the spell was broken.

  The atmosphere had altered, and Christine was leaning in at the open window, hatless and sunburnt and smiling.

  “I’ve just told Duke that we’re going to pay calls this afternoon, and that he can do some work for a change. But couldn’t he stay to lunch, Laura ?”

  “I hope so,” said Laura, all gracious hospitality.

  “Thank you, I’d love to.”

  “It’s a cold lunch—if you don’t mind—”

  “I don’t mind—” Duke Ayland assured her—and’ he said it very convincingly indeed.

  J
ust before the gong was sounded—Laura had never had a parlourmaid of the kind that announces lunch at the drawing-room door—Alfred Temple came in, glanced unfavourably at Ayland as he greeted him with a sound rather than a word, and went, as usual, to wash his hands as the clock struck one.

  All through lunch, Laura had the unwonted feeling that she was being amusing, pretty, and thoroughly competent.

  Even after Ayland had gone away, it persisted, and was not impaired by Alfred’s sardonic enquiry, addressed to Christine:

  “Wouldn’t your young man like to come and live here, and save himself a daily walk?”

  “I daresay he would,” said Christine. “But he isn’t my young man, Alfred.”

  “Does he really make a living out of this piano business ?”

  “More or less.”

  “Poor chap!” said Alfred cryptically.

  Both sisters abstained from asking for elucidation.

  “I’ll get the car,” Christine said.

  She had a two-seater, and always professed that she enjoyed taking Laura out in it.

  Her complete mastery over it always aroused a rather unwilling awe in Mrs. Temple, who had that entire lack of a sense of machinery so often, and so justifiably, associated with the literary mind.

  “Have you looked at your tyres?” said Alfred, and performed the ceremony for them.

  “You’re all right. Don’t forget that you turn to the left after going over the new bridge on the Quinnerton road, Laura.”

  “No, all right.”

  “Have you got your cards?”

  “Yes, all right, they—Oh Alfred! Would you mind, darling, they’re in the top left-hand drawer of the hall stand——”

  “Now are you all right?” said Alfred after he had brought the cards.

  “Quite.”

  “Petrol?”

  “Not a drop,” said Christine. “Goodbye.” And she dashed out at the white gate and into the lane without sounding her horn.

  “You ought to check Alfred’s fussiness, really and truly.”

  “I don’t think he means to be fussy.”

  “That’s all the worse. I don’t mean that he isn’t very nice, you know—”

  “Oh, I know,” said Laura.

  “He’s such a typical Real Grown-up Person,” said Christine, employing an idiom of their childhood.

  “Do you think I am, too?” asked Laura rather timidly.

  “Not really. You try to be, poor darling, but I shouldn’t think anyone was taken in—not even the children.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if it’s a mistake to try so hard, and if I hadn’t better make up my mind to be my natural self.”

  “Oh, far better I should think,” declared Christine. “Duke is frightfully smitten with you, by the way.”

  Laura’s heart performed a strange acrobatic feat in her diaphragm.

  “Nonsense. He belongs to you, doesn’t he?”

  “I was getting rather sick of him, to be quite honest. We never went to any lengths at all, of course—I’m not really his sort, and he certainly isn’t mine. I really mostly had him down here to see if I did like him very much, and, fortunately for me, I find that I don’t.”

  “Oh,” said Laura.

  “If you could bear to encourage him a tiny bit, truly I think it would be the very best for you, Laura. You said yourself that you thought you were getting into a rut, down here.”

  “I certainly shouldn’t embark on a cheap flirtation by way of getting out of it,” said Laura priggishly.

  But an extraordinary feeling of exhilaration had taken possession of her.

  She found herself laughing as she had not laughed for years, at jests and allusions of which the only merit was their extreme antiquity, and the number of times which they had already passed between Christine and herself.

  They forgot Alfred’s directions, and lost their way, and Christine stopped the car whilst Laura earnestly interrogated an old man, but omitted to listen to his information. They pursued a narrow lane, in which it was impossible to turn the car round, for what appeared to be hundreds of miles, and when they at last turned in at the lodge-gates of Marchland, Laura knew that she had gone back to being eighteen years old again.

  “The house is pure Georgian,” said Christine delightedly. “What a heavenly place! Be sure and find out if they have an eldest son, won’t you?”

  On this last delicate aspiration, Mrs. Temple and Miss Fairfield were shown into the Crossthwaite drawing-room.

  The butler departed in search of his mistress, and Christine and Laura instantly looked at themselves in the mirror that hung on the wall.

  “Plenty of books,” said Christine encouragingly. “And no water-colours in gilt frames. So far so good. Do any of these photographs look like an eldest son? A woman in a presentation frock taken about fifteen years ago, I should say—I wonder if that’s Mrs. Crossthwaite. If so——”

  Christine’s voice died away, as she became obviously absorbed in calculation as to the probable age of her hostess.

  “Some of the books are French,” said Laura.

  “Anything that’s been banned over here?”

  “Not that I can see.”

  “What ages she is!”

  “I wonder if she has any children.”

  “Not children as young as yours,” said Christine firmly. “This isn’t a young person’s drawing-room, to begin with, and besides, young people are never rich, nowadays, and never live in a large house. They’re perfectly penniless, and live in a two-seater.”

  “La voilà!” hissed Laura, assuming—as one does, without grounds—that Mrs. Crossthwaite would fail to understand French.

  Chapter VII

  Mrs. Crossthwaite was tall, good-looking when she remembered to breathe through her nose and not through her open mouth, and with the figure of a slim, flat-chested girl. Her hair was fair and her complexion pale pink-and-white. She might have been some fifteen years older than Laura. She was wearing a tweed skirt and woollen jumper of a strictly neutral tint.

  The customary tepid interchange of disconnected observations then ensued.

  Laura touched upon the garden, Christine upon the architectural beauty of Marchland. Mrs. Crossthwaite smiled very amiably, and said successively to each:

  “It is ravver jolly, isn’t it?”

  Perhaps Mrs. Temple was a gardener?

  No, Laura’s husband did more in the garden than she did herself. The children took up time.

  Oh, had she children?

  “Two boys, seven and five.”

  “Ravver fascinating ages,” said Mrs. Crossthwaite. “One’s always so sorry when they stop being babies.”

  “Yes, isn’t one?” Laura rejoined eagerly, without for a moment considering that she was not speaking the truth.

  Then Mrs. Crossthwaite politely included Christine in the conversation by asking if she was a Girl Guide enthusiast.

  “I live in London,” Christine explained.

  “Oh, really. Oh, I see. My girls are so very keen. The eldest does Guides, and the other one does Wolf-Cubs.”

  Laura and Christine both declared that this was splendid.

  “It’s ravver jolly for them,” said Mrs. Crossthwaite.

  “Are they at home now?”

  “I’m so sorry, they’re bofe out. Playing tennis at Lady Kingsley-Browne’s. I expect you know her?”

  “Quite well—they’re neighbours of ours.”

  “What a charming girl the daughter is. We all took such a fancy to her. Quite delightful, isn’t she, and so amusing.”

  Mrs. Temple’s mendacious murmur of acquiescence would have been even more mendacious than it was, but for her sister’s presence.

  “It was so nice of you to come,” said Mrs. Crossthwaite, after tea had been refused, and she was escorting her callers through the hall.

  “So glad we found you at home,” Laura rejoined, and she and Christine got into the car again and drove away.

  “Why does one do it?
” Christine asked, after a silence that lasted the length of a whole mile of avenue, bordered by spruce firs and hydrangeas.

  “I don’t know,” said Laura thoughtfully. “I don’t know at all. Why does one do it?”

  “Living in the country, I suppose—doing in Rome as the Romans do. How can you stand it, Laura?”

  “I like it very much,” said Laura, with her usual veracity.

  “And I suppose you liked Mrs. Crossthwaite very much. My heavens! what a woman! I wonder if anyone has ever squeezed a sponge full of cold water over her as she lay in bed?”

  “I should think it extremely unlikely.”

  “Oh, so should I—but it would have been very good for her.”

  “She might only have said that it was ravver jolly.”

  They both laughed.

  “Seriously, Laura, you ought to go to London much oftener. Or Timbuctoo, if you prefer it. Anywhere that isn’t Quinnerton. Duke said to me this morning that it was perfectly frightful to see anyone like you running to seed down here—”

  “Running to seed!” ejaculated Laura, hurt.

  “Well, he may not have used that expression—I don’t think he did, it sounds much more like one of my own—but that’s what he meant. Aren’t you ever again going to meet people whose interests are the same as your own, or people on your own level of intelligence and receptiveness? It seems to me that all the time down here you’re moving heaven and earth to conform to standards that are considerably below your own. It’s absurd.”

  “It’s not a thing that I can argue about,” said Laura, preparing to do so. “Alfred would be perfectly miserable, anywhere but here, and the country is good for the children—and besides, I like it myself. Of course, if you think my outlook is getting provincial, you’d much better say so.”

  “I do say so,” Miss Fairfield affirmed, with an emphasis for which Laura had not been altogether prepared. “And it’s worse than provincial, Laura. It’s so completely domestic. You’ve got the house, and the children and the servants completely on your nerves.”

  “Everyone has servants on their nerves nowadays, and naturally one thinks about the children.”

  “I don’t think your whole life ought to revolve round them—or, rather, round Johnnie, since poor wretched little Edward hasn’t a look in. It’s bad for you, and it’s bad for them, and it’s even bad for poor wret—for Alfred,” said Christine, controlling in time the repetition of her former obnoxious phrase.