No One Now Will Know

by E M Delafield

  (3)

  The wedding of Lucy and Rosalie was to take place on the sixteenth of September, and it was now the middle of August.

  “It’s an impossible time to go to London and shop,” said Mrs. Meredith,” but what else can we do?”

  They could do nothing else, for the ordering and trying-on of those items of Rosalie’s trousseau that were beyond the skill of the Newport shops.

  Mrs. Troyle commanded, rather than invited, her sister and her niece to come and stay with her, even if it were only for a week.

  Rosalie protested that she didn’t want money that her parents could ill afford to be spent upon her wedding preparations.

  “Nonsense,” said Mrs. Troyle. “And in any case, your wedding dress must be made in London. You owe it to your husband.”

  Rosalie did not dispute the point. She felt she would be wiser to get away and go to London.

  Ever since their first meeting she had avoided being alone with Fred because she was afraid of what he might say or do, but she was always intensely conscious of his presence whenever he was anywhere near her, and she believed that he was equally conscious of hers. Sometimes Rosalie thought that she hated and despised Fred.

  The times when she felt most nearly natural with him were those when he was at the piano. He played skilfully, and even artistically, with a flawless feeling for rhythm although his choice of compositions was usually commonplace.

  He sang, too, in an unexpectedly light tenor voice.

  One music-hall refrain was his special favourite, and Rosalie often found herself humming the cheap, catch-penny air of which she never could remember any of the words excepting the last line or two:

  Boy and girl together, me and Maimie O’Rorke

  Tripped the light fantastic

  On the side-walks of New York.

  It always brought Fred vividly before her mind’s eye, sitting at his mother’s grand piano in the long, light drawing-room of The Grove, his black eyes fixed unwaveringly on her own face, a half-smile visible under his thick, dark moustache.

  Cecilia’s monopoly of her elder son made it easy for Rosalie to see comparatively little of him, and most of her own time was spent with Lucy.

  She was not staying at The Grove any more now, and when Kate returned from her visit to the Newtons and Lucy suggested that Rosalie should come back for a few days, she refused.

  “I’ve only got such a very little while left at home.”

  “What a conventional reason. I’m certain it isn’t the real one. Are you afraid of Kate’s behaving like a little goose? Because she won’t.”

  “No, I know she won’t. Is she happier?”

  “She’s much better behaved, which is a relief to everybody. Tell me why you won’t come, my sweet. We should get more time together.”

  “We shall soon be together all the time,” murmured Rosalie.

  It was so instinctive with her to say and do the thing that intuition told her was the thing desired, that as she spoke she raised her eyes, smiling into his, making the words carry conviction to herself as well as to him.

  Lucy took her face very gently between his hands and looked at her.

  “Darling, darling Rosalie. Do you know that you’ll never love me as much as I love you?”

  “Wait and see.”

  Lucy shook his head. He was smiling, but there was pain in his eyes.

  “I’ll put up with that. I shall have to. But swear to me that you’ll never love anyone else better.”

  “I shall swear it at our wedding.”

  “So you will. What a fool I am! As if all the swearing in the world could make one love or not love. You’ll be as faithful to me as you want to be—neither more, nor less.”

  Rosalie let the trouble that she felt within her at his words appear in her face.

  “You’re too intelligent to be shocked, my love. Besides, faithful and unfaithful are words that mean different things to different people. To cease to love is to be unfaithful, to my way of thinking. After that, to love somebody else is merely a logical development and makes the situation only a little bit worse.”

  “Are you jealous by nature, Lucy?”

  “Probably. I’ve not experienced jealousy yet, but then I’ve had no particular cause given me.”

  “Not even——”

  “Not even dear Mama’s unconcealed preference for her first-born? No, I never remember feeling in the least jealous of Fred. I like Fred. By the by, do you?”

  The question took her by surprise.

  “Never mind,” said Lucy, apparently aware of her hesitation with the rapidity of intuition peculiar to himself. “Never mind. He admires you, of course, but don’t tell me whether you’ve encouraged him or not. I’d so much rather not know it, if you have.”

  “Do you think I would?” Rosalie asked, relieved because she was able to laugh.

  “If you wanted to, I’m sure you would. Not that Fred ever requires a great deal of encouraging. He is, I believe, more or less irresistible to your sex.”

  “Why hasn’t he married?”

  “Mama has always discouraged the idea very strongly, for one thing, and for another, I regret to say that Fred’s intentions are never serious. At least, so he says—and he ought to know. Mine were never serious either—until I met you, my beautiful.”

  Rosalie was glad to return to the familiar language of love-making.

  Yet she found recurring, again and again, in her own mind, the words: He admires you, of course. They awoke in her a longing, fundamental to her nature, to find out whether or not they were true.

  (4)

  Mrs. Troyle obtained her way. She received Mrs. Meredith and Rosalie in her small, dark Kensington house, where black-beetles scurried about on the ground floor after nightfall and the stairs smelt perpetually of gas and cabbage-water.

  They shopped intensively.

  Rosalie, who was not very much interested in clothes, had scarcely arrived before she was thinking how glad she would be to get back to the country again.

  Lucy wrote to her every day, and once came up to London and took her and her mother and aunt to the play.

  Then, on the last afternoon but one of their stay, when the three ladies were exhaustedly drinking tea in the drawing-room after a long afternoon at the dressmaker’s, Mrs. Troyle’s little scared-looking maid, in cap and apron that always seemed too large for her, appeared in the doorway and breathlessly announced:

  “Mr. Lemprière, please’m.”

  Rosalie, with a sense of pleased surprise, looked up. When she saw Fred instead of Lucy, so violent an emotional revulsion overtook her that she very nearly fainted.

  The room, already dark, grew black and swam before her eyes and she felt a cold sweat break out upon her face and neck and a sense of deathly sickness invade her.

  Her mother’s voice, saying something inaudible, sounded strangely far away.

  The next moment her aunt, always alert, had thrust into her face an enormous cut-glass bottle filled with pale-pink globules of aromatic salts that had long since lost all pungency.

  “It’s nothing, it’s the heat, it’s standing all the afternoon at that dressmaker’s,” said Mrs. Troyle rapidly. “Sit down, Mr. Lemprière, please, she’ll be all right in a moment.”

  “I’m all right now,” said Rosalie. She struggled to give her mother, who was looking terrified, a reassuring smile.

  “Keep still,” ordered her aunt.

  Rosalie was only too glad to obey. She closed her eyes.

  She heard Fred asking whether he should go for a doctor and shook her head, but Mrs. Troyle, as usual, took the reply upon herself.

  “She’ll be all right in a moment. It’s nothing. I used to faint continually as a girl. Don’t you remember, Bertha? Sit down, my dear, you look as pale as the child! Dear me, Mr. Lemprière, I’m very sorry to receive you in such an unconventional manner.”

  Aunt Maude chattered on, Mrs. Meredith hung over Rosalie asking in a low voice if she felt
better, and Rosalie mastered her feeling of inertia and forced herself to sit upright again and to open her eyes.

  “I’m truly all right. I’m so sorry. I just turned giddy.”

  “Fatigue. The heat. I’ll get you some sal volatile; I always keep it handy,” declared Aunt Maude, her tone expressing great enjoyment of her own capability.

  She sped from the room, and as she closed the door, Rosalie compelled herself to look at Fred.

  His dark, heavy gaze was fixed upon her, as she had known it would be.

  “Is there anything I can do?” he asked.

  “Oh no, thank you, nothing. It was very silly of me. But it’s been so hot all day.”

  “We’re not used to London,” added Mrs. Meredith simply. “My sister is very kind, but she doesn’t understand how much one misses the fresh air. And all this shopping in the heat—it’s most exhausting. Even this room seems quite airless.”

  She need not have said “even” for the small room, crowded with furniture and knick-knacks, was oven-like.

  “I came,” said Fred slowly, “to suggest a drive. I have a carriage outside, and I hoped to persuade you and Rosalie to come down to Richmond and dine. I think we may find my sister and her husband there.”

  Mrs. Troyle, returning with almost incredible speed, darted into the room in time to hear the proposal.

  “The very best thing,” she declared briskly. “How kind of you! Fresh air will do her all the good in the world.”

  “But do you feel well enough, Rosalie? “her mother asked. “I’m sure Mr. Lemprière will quite understand if you’d rather keep quiet.”

  Rosalie hesitated helplessly.

  “Better come,” said Fred.

  “Of course,” Aunt Maude supported him briskly. “But not you, Bertha. You’re tired out, I can see it. I’m sure Mr. Lemprière will take good care of Rosalie and bring her back early.”

  “But—” said Mrs. Meredith.

  “Yes, really, my dear. Mrs. Ballantyne will look after her, if you’re thinking of chaperonage, but really nowadays everybody does anything. Have you finished the sal volatile, dear? That’s right. Now, if you feel quite yourself again, Jane shall bring your hat and shoes into my room and then you needn’t go up to the top floor.”

  It was decided, Rosalie thought dreamily. Decided for her.

  She rose slowly and went up to her aunt’s room on the second floor.

  (5)

  Leaning back in the carriage with the air blowing gently against her face, Rosalie tried to believe herself calm, although the heavy thudding of her heart against her side was actually making her feel sick.

  “Are you all right again now?” asked Fred.

  “Quite, thank you.”

  Seated side by side, each was looking straight ahead and not at the other.

  “Where would you like to go?”

  “I thought you said Richmond——”

  “I had to say somewhere. But it doesn’t matter. There are places nearer than Richmond where one can dine out-of-doors.”

  “What about your sister Fanny?”

  “Fanny, so far as I know, is in Devonshire.”

  Rosalie was conscious of feeling very little surprise. She asked: “How did you know Mother wouldn’t come too? You asked her.”

  “Naturally I asked her. I’d have asked your aunt too, if she hadn’t been in such a hurry to settle everything herself. But it would have come to the same thing in the long run. I came up to London to see you—and to see you alone, what’s more—and I should have done it.”

  She made no reply.

  Fred, still without turning his head, put out his hand and felt for hers and Rosalie let him take it.

  “How beautiful your hands are.”

  He was saying, almost in Lucy’s voice, words that Lucy had often said to her.

  The remembrance caused her to make a movement of withdrawal as she said: “This isn’t fair to Lucy.”

  “All’s fair in love and war. He’ll have you altogether in a week or two’s time. I’ve only got this one evening. Can’t we forget about Lucy?”

  “No, I don’t think we can.”

  But there was no conviction in her voice.

  Fred said nothing further, but he found her hand again and this time Rosalie let him measure its slim length against his own, and the pressure of her palm responded to that of his.

  They did not look at one another.

  What on earth am I doing, thought Rosalie, her thoughts still hazy. I’m in love with Lucy, and I’m going to marry him. Nobody can feel like this about two people at the same time.

  But although it was true that she was in love with Lucy, he had never roused in her the surge of emotion that Fred was rousing in her now.

  Because her feeling for Lucy was as real as anything that she had hitherto known, because she genuinely wished to be loyal to him, and most of all because she could not bear the thought of hurting him, Rosalie made an effort.

  “Please, will you take me back?” she asked in a low voice.

  “No,” said Fred. “I’d never take you back, if I had my way. You’re the loveliest thing on earth, and if I’d come home six months ago, you’d belong to me now.”

  He lifted her hand and held it against his face.

  “It’s not too late, my lovely darling. Is it any good asking you to chuck Lucy?”

  “I’ve promised to marry Lucy. Besides, I care for him.”

  “I know that, and he’s insane about you. Who could help it? But you’re not married yet. Break it off, Rosalie.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it would hurt Lucy most terribly Don’t you mind about that at all?”

  “Damn it, I mind—but not as much as all that,” Fred said hardily.

  Rosalie wrenched her hand from his.

  “We can’t do this,” she said wildly. “I—I do love Lucy, and I know how much he cares about me, and I can’t hurt him.”

  This time Fred turned round and his movement seemed to compel her to look at him in return.

  “You love me too, don’t you?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Better than you do Lucy, Rosalie?”

  “Don’t say my name! “she cried, breaking into tears. “I can’t bear it if you do that.”

  Fred drew her towards him and kissed her, over and over again.

  “Why won’t you come to me?”

  Rosalie responded with kisses as ardent as his own, but she made no reply in words.

  She was not analytical, either by temperament or by training. She knew that she was violently drawn towards Fred, that he moved her as Lucy could never do, and also that she could never trust or rely upon him.

  Fred, whatever their relationship, would make her suffer: Lucy would never, so long as he lived, have power to hurt her as Fred could hurt her. Even now, she felt as though her heart must break. It was incredible and outrageous: she loved them both and it was still Lucy to whom her thoughts clung, while she sobbed at the sound of her name in Fred’s voice, and the clasp of his arms round her.

  (6)

  They went to Ken Wood. Fred knew an outdoor restaurant there, and he had brought wine in the carriage. When the coachman had taken out the bottles with their gleaming gilt-foil, he sent him away.

  He ordered dinner under the trees and during the meal they scarcely spoke.

  Fred’s dark eyes never left Rosalie’s face, and every now and then he touched her hand.

  Lucy’s emeralds shone on her slim finger.

  The simple meal, and the single glass of champagne that she drank, steadied her.

  “What will happen?” she asked at last.

  “Whatever you choose. If you’ll break with Lucy, I’ll take you out to the West Indies, or anywhere else you like.”

  “How can you?”

  “My mother won’t mind what I do,” said Fred, surprised.

  “But Lucy?”

  “Poor old Lucy. It’ll be pretty d
amnable for him for a bit, but I can’t help it. You may as well know what I’m like, sweetheart. I don’t often want anything very badly—I’ve generally had everything without having to bother—but when I do want something, I don’t mind what I have to smash to get it. As a matter of fact, I’m very fond of old Lucy—I always have been.”

  “Then how can you think of doing anything that will hurt him so?”

  Fred shrugged his shoulders.

  “At least I’m honest about it.”

  “You’re cruel,” said Rosalie. “Cruel and selfish and mean.”

  “I daresay,” said Fred. “I’ll take the responsibility for that, if anyone’s got to.”

  He poured more champagne into her glass.

  “I don’t want any more.”

  Fred smiled.

  “I’m not trying to make you tight, if that’s what you’re afraid of. It’s all right, my loveliest. I only want to talk this out with you. I want to make you see that you and I belong to one another and that I can’t let anybody else have you. You love me, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then nothing else matters.”

  “I love Lucy too,” said Rosalie desperately. “It sounds impossible and mad and against all the rules, but I do love you both. And Lucy’s been an angel to me, and I’ve promised him I’ll marry him.”

  Fred’s dark face turned patchy and his eyes sombre.

  “Then before you marry him, will you——?”

  “No,” said Rosalie, “I won’t cheat, either.”

  “Do you want me to go away, and not see you again?”

  “It’s what we ought to do,” said Rosalie, “—and I can’t bear it.”

  She was colourless, and trembling.

  “Darling, darling—would you have married me if Lucy hadn’t asked you first?”

  “I don’t know. I hadn’t ever meant to marry anyone. I’d rather be free.”

  “You’re the only woman I’ve ever known who’d say that,” Fred exclaimed. “And you’re quite right—that’s what you ought to be. Free. Then you and I might have loved one another and Lucy need never have lost anything. You’d have given him what you chose—but you wouldn’t have been tied by impossible promises. A woman like you isn’t meant to be faithful. It just isn’t in her.”