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Title: Late and Soon
Author: Delafield, E. M.
   [Dashwood, Edme Elizabeth Monica, ne de la Pasture]
   (1890-1943)
Date of first publication: 1943
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Macmillan, 1943
   [first edition]
Date first posted: 10 December 2012
Date last updated: 10 December 2012
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1020

This ebook was produced by:
David T. Jones, Mary Meehan, Al Haines
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net






                              LATE AND SOON

                            BY E. M. DELAFIELD


    LONDON
    MACMILLAN & CO. LTD
    1943

    COPYRIGHT

    PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

    BY R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, EDINBURGH


        FOR
    KATE O'BRIEN




I


The rain, slanting and silver, drove lightly across the terrace and down
the grassy hollows of the park where nettles and docks and bramble
bushes grew freely amongst the clumps of yellow gorse.

General Levallois stood leaning on his two sticks under the portico that
jutted out beyond the garden door of Coombe and spoke to his sister,
although gazing away from her as he did so.

"Better have the tennis-court dug over, I suppose."

"I thought we wouldn't, Reggie. We've dug up the paddock, and the top
field, and those other two and the old rose garden. Surely we can keep
the tennis-court."

"My dear girl, who do you think is ever going to play tennis here
again?"

"The children," said Valentine Arbell.

Her voice died away into silence, as though she foresaw the General's
reply before he spoke it.

"What children?" he demanded derisively.

What children indeed.

Primrose was three-and-twenty and even before the war had never, once
her school-days were over, wished to spend her time at home.

Jessica was seventeen and a half and was waiting to be called up for the
W.A.A.F.

She would be gone long before summer came again.

Valentine Arbell had never had a son.

"I suppose you're right," she acknowledged with the gentle Edwardian
courtesy of tone and manner that betrayed her years far more surely than
did her appearance. "It would hardly be worth while to keep up the poor
old tennis-court for one's possible grandchildren."

She smiled as she spoke and it would have taken someone more observant,
and far more interested in human reactions, than was the General to
notice the real gravity--a kind of permanent, incredulous sadness--of
her face.

"Grandchildren!" ejaculated the General. "You aren't counting on
anything of that sort from Primrose, I imagine, and as for young Jess, I
hope she's a long way from thinking of such nonsense as marriage with
any of those shockin' fellers she romps round with."

"I'm sure she is, Reggie. Anyhow, none of them are in earnest. They're
all much too young to marry."

"That doesn't stop 'em, nowadays. And they aren't necessarily thinking
of marrying either, but I suppose Jess knows what's what, like the rest
of the girls. What about coming in, old girl? It's turning wet."

It had turned wet long ago. Small puddles had formed on the gravel
beneath their feet, and the blue distant hills and the square tower of
St. Martin's church rising from the town in the valley below were all
obscured by mist.

"Come on in," repeated the General, shuffling slowly round on his
sticks.

"I must see to the hens. I'll come through the house and get my
gum-boots."

They went in at the garden door that was placed in direct line with the
big front double-doors of the house affording a view straight across the
outer and inner halls to the terrace.

Valentine adjusted her pace to that of her brother which might have
belonged to a very old man, although he was in reality only
fifty-six--twelve years her senior. He was the eldest, and she the
youngest, of a large family of Huguenot descent, long established in
England.

General Levallois had come to Coombe soon after the death of Valentine's
husband, twelve years earlier, and had remained there, without any
formal discussion on either side, ever since.

The house was large enough to accommodate many more people than were
likely to live there again--until it should be sold and turned into a
school or an institution.

They crossed the inner hall that was coconut-matted, and very dark, with
glass cases filled with stuffed fish and birds on every side, and passed
into the hall proper.

This was large, furnished with comfortable, ancient armchairs and sofas
covered in shabby, old-fashioned rose-patterned chintzes.

It lay under a glass cupola that had been painted a sinister dark blue
in an effort to conform to the black-out regulations.

In January, nineteen hundred and forty-two, the paint had already begun
to look thin and scratchy.

Out of the inner hall led half a dozen doors, each one badly in need of
a fresh coat of cream-coloured paint--except one that was inadequately
covered with shredded patches of red baize and obviously led to the
domestic offices.

The other doors led respectively into drawing-room, dining-room,
library, billiard-room and a small sitting-room that was still
traditionally called the breakfast-room. Of these, only the dining-room
and the library were now in use. The hall had a large open fireplace and
it was there that Valentine had long ago established her writing-desk
and there that she sat when she was not out of doors.

The General lowered himself into the largest armchair, nearest the fire,
with his habitual hissing sound as of indrawn breath, long since become
automatic.

He let both his sticks fall clattering to the floor as he always did,
although it would subsequently cause him considerable discomfort to
reach for them again, and he would be annoyed if anybody picked them up
unasked and would probably enquire whether he was supposed to be a
damned cripple.

Valentine went on, through the glass doors at the end of the room that
opened into a small lobby where coats and mackintoshes and hats hung,
walking-sticks and umbrellas stood in a huge and hideous blue china
receptacle, and an oak chest held old tennis racquets, old balls, still
older croquet mallets and cricket-bats.

She remembered them, as she pulled a tall pair of gum-boots out of a
corner and worked her slim legs and feet into them. Reggie was quite
right.

The children were no more.

For twenty years her life had been conditioned by the existence of
Primrose, and later on by that of Jess as well.

It had been so even in her husband's lifetime. She had loved Humphrey,
but had put the children first--the child really, since Primrose had
been the only one for six years.

When she and Humphrey had married, whilst he was on sick leave in
nineteen hundred and seventeen, they had both been in love--Valentine
imaginatively and Humphrey physically.

It had lasted longer with him than with her.

Wrestling with the slippery boots, Valentine thought back across the
years as she so often did.

She had been thirty-two when Humphrey was killed out hunting and,
whatever anybody might say, she knew that nothing in her had been
destroyed by that shock and sadness.

Destruction, if there were any, had been accomplished during the placid,
matter-of-fact years of her married life.

The romantic impulse that had once been the moving-spring of her nature
moved her no longer. At Humphrey's death the strong strain of realism
that is the concomitant of true romanticism had told her that she had
nothing to gain by changing her way of life.

Coombe was her own, it was home, changeless and unchangeable to Primrose
and Jess, and at Coombe she had remained, the months and the years
divided into school terms, Christmas holidays, Easter holidays, the long
summer holidays, the visits that she had paid to the children at their
school on the East Coast.

Suddenly, as it seemed, all that was over. But it wasn't really sudden.

Primrose had left school at eighteen and said that she wanted to go to
College and had been sent there--with difficulty, for there was hardly
any money. Had she been happy there?

Valentine felt that she would never know. When once she asked the
question Primrose had said: It's all right, thanks--with a slightly more
discontented expression than usual on her always discontented face.

No one had expected her to take more than a pass degree, nor did she.

Since then, Primrose had spent most of her time in London, sometimes
picking up a job, more often without one. She stayed with College
friends or, very occasionally, with one of the Levallois' relations.

When she came home it was to sleep until luncheon-time every morning,
strew soiled and torn underwear all over the bathroom and ask why one of
the maids couldn't attend to it, and engage in endless and unexplained
telephone calls that occupied her most of every evening.

With the outbreak of war Primrose had gone straight back to London. She
had done a variety of war jobs, had scarcely been home at all, and now
was driving a Mobile Canteen.

Primrose was gone--gone beyond recall, and it wasn't the war that had
taken her.

Jess had come home when her school had been evacuated into Wales,
begging and imploring to be allowed to volunteer for the W.A.A.F.

She was gay and eager and full of enthusiasm, and had declared candidly
that there wouldn't be anything whatever to do at home, now that there
was nothing to ride, and that she'd be wretched there--simply wretched.
Any day, now, Jess might be called up.

Meanwhile she worked nearly every afternoon and evening at the Canteen
in the village, and made friends with very young soldiers and asked
them to Coombe.

When they came, she introduced them as Bill or Michael or Tony, and they
had tea downstairs and then went up to the schoolroom with her or, more
occasionally, played romping games in the hall.

Jess was only waiting for the moment when she should join up.

Come back she might or might not, but the words "the children" held no
more meaning at Coombe, or for its mistress.

She stood up, fastened her tweed coat and went out, followed by
Jessica's puppy--a leggy mongrel--and General Levallois' fat spaniel.

The hens, who should have been in the orchard, were straggling, wet and
shabby-looking, on the oval grass plot before the house.

She made an encouraging sound and they lurched along behind her,
squawking and clucking, as she walked to the stable yard that stood a
little way off, built at right angles to the house.

Regardless of the rain, and with deliberation, Valentine fed them and
shut them up in their dilapidated coops.

Then she went slowly back to the house.

Coombe was an old house, that had been often added to--three-storied,
slate-roofed and stone-built. An open-sided lichen-spattered tower rose
above all the irregular and numerous chimney-stacks, and in it hung a
large bell, cast in the reign of Elizabeth.

Stone pillars, moss-grown and out of the true, supported, over the
double-doors of entrance, a lead roofing shaped like an inverted V.

Against one of the pillars now leant a dripping bicycle, and Valentine
saw a tall youthful-looking figure in battle dress reaching out to pull
at the rusty iron chain that hung beside the door.

She hastened her step although knowing that she could not get to him
soon enough to avert the minor disaster that experience warned her to
expect.

As she had foreseen, the chain immediately broke in the young officer's
hand and he was looking at the detached length of rusty links with some
dismay when she reached his side.

"It's quite all right--it's been done before. It doesn't matter at all."

"I'm terribly sorry," said the young man. "I can't imagine how it
happened. I didn't think I'd been so violent."

"I'm sure you weren't. The chain is very old, and every time it breaks
somebody hooks it on again without mending it properly. Is there
anything I can do for you? Won't you come in?"

"Thanks very much. I wondered if I could see Lady Arbell for a few
minutes?"

He looked at her questioningly.

"I am Lady Arbell. Do come in."

The officer, who was apparently shy, muttered something about being very
wet and scraped his boots with prolonged violence on the iron scraper at
the door.

Valentine stepped inside, giving him time, and pulled off her own
gum-boots. Then she turned round again.

"I'm afraid I don't know your name," she said apologetically.

At the same time she remembered, with a little inward flash of
amusement, her daughter Jessica's repeated assurances that _no one_, no
one in the world, ever asked anybody's name now. It just wasn't ever
done.

But Valentine knew that she would continue to do it.

"Cyril Banks," said the young man. "Lieutenant Banks--1st Battalion----"
And he added the name of his regiment.

As if fearing that he might have been guilty of a too great formality he
finished with a thoughtfully-spoken pronouncement:

"I'm usually--in fact always--called Buster."

"Do come in," said Valentine.

With a final scrape, and a final mutter that denoted apology but was
indistinguishable, Lieutenant Banks came in.

The General was still sitting by the fire and Valentine introduced the
young man to him. She knew that her brother would be very slightly
pleased and stimulated by the presence of any visitor, even one whom he
would neither see, nor wish to see, ever again.

Perhaps, however, they would see Lieutenant Banks again. He had come to
enquire, with diffidence and apologies, whether Lady Arbell would
consider the billeting of two officers. One of them was his own Colonel,
the other one he could not as yet indicate.

"It's just a case of morning and evening," he said, as though in
explanation. "I mean, they'd be out all day and they'd probably be away
quite a lot, too, on various exercises and things. I don't know whether
all your rooms are full up?"

"No, not now. We've got three evacuee children, but they're in a wing at
the back. There are three empty rooms in the front of the house, though
I do try to keep one in case any relation who's been bombed out of
London should want to come here."

"Oh, rather," said Banks. "Well, of course, two rooms would be perfectly
okay."

"This house hasn't got nearly as many bedrooms as you might suppose,
from the look of it," General Levallois observed. "And only one
bathroom."

"Really, sir," respectfully returned Lieutenant Banks.

He sounded sympathetically dismayed, but Valentine guessed that he had
not expected more than one bathroom. If he knew anything at all about
houses like Coombe, he knew that they never did have more than one
bathroom and that one a converted dressing-room, very cold and with an
inadequate supply of hot water.

"Would you like to see the rooms?" she asked.

Lieutenant Banks wouldn't dream of troubling her. He was certain the
rooms would be marvellous.

Looking shyer than ever--he was a very fair youth and blushed
conspicuously--he made a number of statements regarding the conditions
of the billeting of officers and their batmen.

Valentine listened with as much attention as though she had not heard
exactly the same thing before, from representatives of the three
different regiments that had previously been stationed in the
neighbourhood and then sent elsewhere.

In each case they had said that she would be notified within the week of
a decision, and in each case she had heard not another word on the
subject. To the earnest and innocent Lieutenant Banks, who looked
scarcely more than twenty years old, Valentine gave no hint of these
previous experiences.

General Levallois was asking the Colonel's name.

"Lonergan, sir."

"Irish," said the General, without inflection.

"Yes, sir."

The General said coldly that he should hope to have the pleasure of
meeting Colonel Lonergan one of these days.

There was a pause.

Valentine began to talk about the neighbourhood, to ask whether
Lieutenant Banks knew Devon already, to ascertain from him that his own
part of the world was Northampton, and that before the war he had worked
for one year in his father's insurance office.

She knew that he wished to go, but was finding it impossible to get up
and take his leave.

She offered him a cigarette from a box on the table.

Lieutenant Banks thanked her very much, said that he didn't smoke, and
talked for several minutes about the cigarette shortage, and also told a
story of an uncle who had visited the East Coast and found all the shops
full of cigarettes, matches, sweets and chocolates with nobody to buy
them.

Valentine made the rejoinders long grown familiar and the General
contributed an occasional observation.

Lieutenant Banks, looking disturbed and uneasy, still sat on.

Suddenly there sounded an outburst of barking from both the dogs. The
spaniel subsided at a ferocious-sounding order from General Levallois,
but the pup dashed forward excitedly, springing from side to side and
making a deafening clamour.

The glass doors were pushed open and left swinging as Jess came in.

Her first greeting was for her dog.

"Hullo, aunt Sophy! Down, like a good dog, down! Darling little dog! Get
down."

The puppy leapt upon her, trying to lick her face, and Jess picked it up
and carried it bodily across the hall.

"Hallo!"

"This is Lieutenant Banks--my daughter Jessica."

Banks stood up and Jess said "Hallo" again and shifted the wriggling dog
underneath one arm.

"Sorry about the awful row, uncle Reggie. Hallo, Sally!"

The spaniel's tail flumped upon the floor in acknowledgment.

"I say, _what_ do you call your dog?" the young soldier
demanded--speaking in a quite new, much more natural and animated voice.

"Aunt Sophy. Actually, she's the exact image of an aunt I have, called
Sophy. Even mummie admits that. It isn't her sister, or anything like
that. In fact she's a great-aunt."

"Does she know?"

"We don't think so. She's only once been here since I had the puppy and
of course I said I hadn't yet decided on a name. Actually, she kept on
making rather dim suggestions, like Rover and Tray and Faithful."

Lieutenant Banks began to laugh, and Jess laughed too.

Valentine felt relieved.

She leant back in her chair and looked at her younger daughter.

Primrose resented being looked at so intensely that her mother could
hardly ever bear to do so, although no single word had passed between
them on the subject.

Jess was not only quite unself-conscious, but she was scarcely
sufficiently interested in people to notice whether they looked at her
or whether they didn't. She was tall and slight, much fairer than
Valentine had ever been, and with exactly Humphrey's squarely-shaped,
open face, with a well-cut, firm, insensitive mouth, rather thick snub
nose and big, straight-gazing brown eyes.

She looked her best in the clothes that she most often wore,
riding-breeches and a high-necked wool jumper, under an open tweed
riding-coat.

Her head was bare and her hair, which was flaxen and very pretty, was
just shoulder-length and attractively curled at the ends.

Valentine wondered, as she wondered almost every day of her life, what
Humphrey would think if he could suddenly walk into Coombe now, after
twelve years.

Supposing he were able to come back?

The place was hardly altered at all. There was a painting of himself,
that his mother had insisted upon having done from a photograph after
his death and that now hung above Valentine's desk.

She had never liked it, and thought it a bad painting--shrill and crude
in colouring and with only a superficial resemblance to the original.
But she had never had it moved, even after the death of her
mother-in-law.

It was almost the only new thing in the room except for the
rose-patterned chintzes. The year before Humphrey died, and for several
years afterwards, the covers had been blue, with a violet stripe.

Valentine remembered them clearly.

Humphrey, if he could come back, would expect to see that familiar
colouring. And the Spanish leather screen that now stood opposite to
where she was sitting had been in one of the spare bedrooms in
Humphrey's day. It had been moved to its now permanent station in the
hall when the General complained of a draught behind his habitual
armchair.

The spaniel, Sally, had grown old and fat. She was nearly fourteen.

Humphrey had probably never seen her at all. But he had had two spaniels
himself--both of them dead, now.

It was the people over whom Humphrey might well hesitate longest.

Jess, when he saw her last, had been a baby of five years old, backward
of speech and not particularly pretty. He had not taken a great deal of
notice of her, perhaps because he was disappointed that she had not been
a boy.

Impossible that he should ever recognize that baby in the tall,
sprawling, graceful figure of the seventeen-year-old Jess, whose artless
use of a candidly vermilion lip-stick only served to emphasize her
appearance of young, open-air innocence.

Humphrey would wonder who the officer was and would dismiss him with a
phrase, "Not one of us, what."

Reggie? He'd know Reggie, of course, but the arthritis had only begun a
year or two before Humphrey's death. Reggie hadn't been a cripple on two
sticks before that. Seated, though, as he was now, he wouldn't have
changed so very much. Humphrey would think he was on a visit. It
wouldn't cross his mind that Reggie could be living at Coombe, paying a
very small contribution to the household expenses and bringing with him
his dog.

And then, thought Valentine as she had often thought before, there was
herself. Humphrey would look first of all at her. She was the person he
had cared for most in his life.

He had left her with brown hair--now it was heavily streaked with a
silvery grey. There were lines round her eyes and her mouth, and she had
lost her colour. She used a pale-rose lip-stick, whereas she had used
none at all in his lifetime. Her figure had not altered: she was as slim
as she had been at twenty. And yet there was a difference. It was a
soft, pliant slimness still but it was, indefinably, not that of youth.
One realized that, looking at Primrose or Jessica.

All the same, Humphrey would know her immediately. He would find her
altered only in the sense of having grown older. To this conclusion
Valentine always came, in her habitual fantasy of Humphrey's return to
the home from which he had been carried, in his coffin, twelve years
earlier.

Long ago she had been startled by, and had subsequently answered, the
question with which her own heart had confronted her.

If that impossible return could take place, if Humphrey could come back,
a living man, from the grave, would it awaken happiness in her?

Valentine knew without any doubt that the answer was No.

Humphrey had never given her either happiness or unhappiness. At best,
their relationship had achieved a little pleasure, at most, some
discontent.

Valentine, having known both happiness and unhappiness in her earliest
youth, could still, at moments, vividly recall either.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Oh, that'll be absolutely wizard!" cried Jess in her high, gay voice.
"I don't suppose I shall be here myself much longer, I'm expecting to
join up any minute practically--but it'll cheer up poor darling aunt
Sophy like anything. She adores soldiers. D'you suppose they'll ever
take her for a walk?"

"The Colonel's a terrific walker."

"Gosh!" said Jess thoughtfully. "Fancy a colonel."

She did not elucidate the exact grounds of the passing sensation of awe
that had evidently prompted the exclamation.

It might have been the thought of the Colonel's rank, or his probable
age, or his walking proclivities.

Lieutenant Banks said:

"The Colonel's the most marvellous man that ever lived," in quite
inexpressive tones. Then at last he got up.

"Well, thanks frightfully, Lady Arbell."

"Must you go? Why don't you stay to tea?" Jess asked.

"It's terribly kind of you but I can't. I'm supposed to be back at three
o'clock and it's ten minutes past four."

"Come on Sunday then. I expect I'll still be here. You could have a bath
if you liked, and then tea, and then supper."

The young man's eyes turned towards Valentine.

She ratified Jessica's invitation.

"Thanks frightfully, Lady Arbell."

"Bring one or two other chaps with you, and we might play games or
something," cried Jess.

"Yes, do," Valentine said.

Lieutenant Banks said that this was simply terrific, and absolutely
marvellously kind, and completely okay so far as he knew but might he
ring up?

Jess picked up aunt Sophy, holding her under her arm so that the puppy's
legs all dangled in the air, and conducted Banks to the glass doors and
through them.

There they remained, silhouetted against the light, and there they could
be heard from time to time in apparently animated discussion punctuated
by peals of laughter.

Valentine smiled involuntarily, exhilarated by the spontaneity of the
sounds.

She looked at the same time rather apologetically towards her brother
who was never in the least exhilarated by the behaviour of very young
people, but quite the contrary.

General Levallois, however, was apparently not thinking about Jess and
the officer.

He met his sister's eyes meditatively.

"Lonergan," he said. "Wasn't that the name of that feller in Rome?"

"Yes."

"Funny thing, if it should turn out to be the same one."

"It isn't an uncommon name, in Ireland."

"There aren't any uncommon names in Ireland," said the General.

"How did you remember, Reggie? You were in India at the time."

"Mother wrote reams, as she always did. Anyway, I never forget a name.
You've never seen or heard of him since, have you?"

"Never," said Valentine.

She smiled.

"It was only a week, you know."

"What was only a week?" demanded Jess from behind her.

"A very silly business," declared the General.

"That happened more than twenty-five years ago," added Valentine gently.

"Mummie! Were you mixed up in it?"

"Yes. I was younger than you are now."

Jess gave her mother an affectionate, amused, incredulous look, before
dropping on the floor beside her dog.

"Fancy you being mixed up in any very silly business!" she ejaculated.

       *       *       *       *       *

Leaving them in the hall Valentine went up the steep, curving staircase
with its worn carpet, almost threadbare, to her bedroom, shivering as
she moved out of the range of the fire.

The stairs, the large circular-railed landing above and the bedrooms
were all unheated, and their temperature seemed lower than that of the
wet, mild January afternoon out of doors.

Valentine's room was a large, high one with two big windows that looked
over the drive and the front of the park.

The furniture was shabby, of mixed periods, and there was not very much
of it in proportion to the size of the room.

The walnut double-bed had already been in place, facing the windows,
when Humphrey Arbell's mother had come to Coombe as a bride.

Valentine slowly changed her shoes, looked at her face and hair in the
looking-glass without much attention and automatically pushed the loose
silvery wave over her forehead into position.

She felt faintly disturbed.

It was not that she was afraid of meeting Rory Lonergan--if it should be
Rory Lonergan.

On the contrary, she'd be disappointed if it _wasn't_ Rory Lonergan. The
idea of seeing him again brought with it a curious emotional excitement,
partly amused and partly sentimental.

Her perturbation, Valentine found, arose from a faint sense of remorse
that she had, by implication, accepted her brother's trivial estimate of
the "very silly business" of twenty-five years earlier.

Reggie would necessarily see it like that--would have seen it like that
even if he'd known far more about it than he ever had known.

But Valentine was clearly aware that what had happened that week in Rome
in the spring of nineteen hundred and fourteen had held for her a
reality that she had never found since.




II


The evening meal at Coombe was still called dinner. It was announced, in
a breathless and inaudible manner, by a fifteen-year-old parlour-maid.

The General nightly struggled into a patched and faded smoking-jacket of
maroon velvet. Valentine Arbell--shuddering with cold--put on a
three-year-old black chiffon afternoon dress and a thick Chinese shawl
of embroidered silk of which the fringes caught in every available piece
of furniture whenever she moved.

Jess, under violent protest, still obeyed the rule that compelled her to
exchange warm and comfortable breeches or a tweed skirt and wool jumper
for an outgrown silk or cotton frock from the previous summer.

"But once I've gone into uniform, mummie, never again," she said.

Valentine believed her.

As it was, she was always rather surprised that Jess should still do as
she was told about changing for dinner when Primrose, at an earlier age,
had flatly refused to do so.

"Come on, aunt Sophy," cried Jess hilariously as the mongrel rushed,
falling over its own paws, at the young parlour-maid standing in the
doorway.

Jess dashed at aunt Sophy, picked her up and allowed her face to be
licked all over.

"Don't!" said Valentine involuntarily.

"Put the thing down, Jess," commanded the General. "Carting it about
like that!"

Jess ignored them both, without ill-will but from sheer absorption in
her dog and her own preoccupations.

Valentine sometimes wondered what those preoccupations were. Jess
appeared so artless, so outspoken--yet never did she give one the
slightest clue as to what her inmost thoughts might be.

She stood back now, politely, to let her mother precede her into the
dining-room. The General shuffled along at his own pace with Sally, the
spaniel, morosely crawling at his heels. She was old and fat, and hated
leaving the fire in the hall for the unwarmed dining-room.

It was another large room and although shutters protected the three
French windows behind their faded blue brocade curtains, a piercing
draught always came from beneath the service door at the far end of the
room.

It was impossible not to shudder, at the temperature of the dining-room.

The General made his nightly observation:

"This room is like an ice-house."

The oval walnut table, looking not unlike a desert island in the middle
of an arctic sea, was laid with wine-glasses that were scarcely ever
used, silver that required daily polishing, and a centrepiece of a Paul
Lamerie silver rose-bowl.

Valentine disentangled the fringe of her shawl from the arm of her chair
and sat down at the head of the table, and General Levallois placed
himself at the other end.

Jess shrieked directions to the dogs, knocked over a glass, laughed, and
took her place facing the windows.

The conversation, which consisted of isolated observations and
uninspired rejoinders, was spaced across long intervals of silence, and
the first word was uttered by the General after Ivy, the maid, had left
the room.

"These plates are stone-cold, as usual."

"I've told her, Reggie, but you know it's only Mrs. Ditchley. It's not
as though she was a proper cook."

"Shall we ever have a proper cook again, mummie?"

"I don't think so, darling. It seems extremely unlikely that anybody
will have one, at least until the war's over."

"And then we'll all be Communists, under Stalin, and there'll _be_ no
servants," said Jess. She glanced at her uncle out of the corners of her
eyes.

"I'm not going to rise, Jessica."

Jess and Valentine both laughed, and the General looked pleased with
himself.

When the few spoonfuls of thin potato soup were finished, Jess got up,
pretended to fall over aunt Sophy and played with her for a moment, and
then went and jerked the old-fashioned china bell-handle, painted with
roses and pansies, at the side of the empty fireplace.

The harsh, metallic clanging that ensued could be heard in the distance.

Jess sat down again.

She talked to the dogs in an undertone. The General put on his glasses
and read the little white menu-card, in its silver holder, that he
always expected to find on the table in front of him in the evenings,
and that Valentine always wrote out for him.

He inspected it without exhilaration, and pushed it away again.

Ivy came in again, changed the plates, and handed round first a silver
entre dish, and then two vegetable dishes.

"Do we _have_ to have baked cod every single day?" Jess asked
plaintively.

"It was all I could get."

Much later on, General Levallois addressed his sister.

"I thought we'd agreed not to have the potatoes boiled every time they
appear."

"I don't suppose Mrs. Ditchley has many ideas beyond boiling them. And
it's not easy to spare any fat for frying them or doing anything
amusing. I'll speak to her to-morrow."

Valentine made these rejoinders almost as she might have spoken them in
her sleep, so familiar were they.

She knew that the food was uninteresting, ill-prepared, and lacking in
variety, and she regretted it, mildly, on her brother's account, rather
more on Jessica's.

Both Primrose and Jess had taken a Domestic Science course at school: on
Primrose it had apparently made no impression whatever. Jess had
acquired some skill at laundry-work and sometimes washed and ironed her
own clothes. She said that she hated cooking, house-work and sewing, and
never intended to do any of them.

Valentine rather wonderingly remembered her own education, in the
various capitals of Europe into which her father's diplomatic career had
taken him.

She had learnt two languages besides her own, and knew the rules of
precedence at a dinner-party, and she had been a beautiful ballroom
dancer and had had a good seat on a horse.

She could think of nothing else that she had ever acquired.

Certainly not the art of housekeeping in England on an inadequate
income. She had never done it well, even in Humphrey's lifetime.

Contrary to what a good many people had repeatedly told her, Valentine
did not really believe that she could have learned. She disliked
everything that she did know about housekeeping and could not persuade
herself that it was of sufficiently intrinsic importance to justify the
expenditure of time, money and nervous energy that it seemed to require.

"Mummie, d'you think those officers will really be billeted here, this
time?"

"They might be, Jess. But we never heard any more of the other ones who
said they were coming."

"Still, a _Colonel_. They can't go chopping and changing about with
_him_. I hope he'll come and I hope Buster'll be the other one."

"Buster?"

"Lieutenant Banks is always called Buster. He told me so himself. I
thought he was divine. Mummie! d'you mean to say we're having a savoury
_again_, instead of a sweet?"

Jess picked up, and then threw down, the small knife and fork that had
led her to this deduction.

"My dear, it's almost impossible to get anything to make a sweet of,
nowadays. And you know, we did have a pudding at lunch."

"Well, God help this poor Colonel person, that's all, if he comes here
expecting to be fed."

Jessica's lamentations were seldom meant to be taken seriously.

When Ivy handed round the dish where sardines lay upon dark and brittle
fragments of toast, it was not Jess but General Levallois who
complained.

"I thought we'd just been eating fish, Val?"

"I know we have. Really and truly, Reggie, we've got to take what we can
get nowadays."

"Certainly we have. But I don't think this woman has much idea of what's
what. _Surely_ she can arrange things so that we don't have two fish
courses one on top of the other."

"She can't, but I suppose I could," said Valentine. "I must try and
manage better another time."

The gentle politeness of this phrase, in return for a stricture that she
thought both graceless and unreasonable, was quite automatic.

For more than twenty years now Valentine had been answering with gentle
and polite phrases that meant nothing at all, most of the remarks
addressed to her. She had been trained from babyhood to think politeness
of the utmost importance, and she had never outgrown, nor sought to
outgrow, the habit of it. But she was sometimes conscious that her own
good manners afforded her a sense of superiority and of that she was
slightly ashamed.

She knew that it had annoyed Humphrey, for the Arbell tradition was the
blunter, more outspoken one of the British squirearchy. He had once
accused her of never losing her temper.

Valentine could not remember what reply she had made to that.

The true answer, she thought, was that it had never been worth while.

"There's another sardine left, mummie. Do have it."

"No thank you, darling."

"Uncle Reggie? Aren't you going to have it?"

"It doesn't sound as though I were, Jess."

"No truly--_please_ do."

"Go on. Take it. I don't want it."

"It would be quite possible to have another tin of sardines opened,"
said Valentine. "We've really got plenty of those in the store
cupboard."

"I'm glad we're not reduced to splitting the last sardine," Jess
declared. "Well, if nobody wants it----"

She got up and helped herself from the dish left on the sideboard.

"Shall I ring, now I'm up? I'll have finished long before she gets
here."

Ivy's final appearance was for the purpose of clearing everything off
the table, sweeping up the crumbs onto a silver salver, and then putting
down three Wedgwood dessert plates each with its glass finger-bowl, a
decanter with a very little port in it before the General, and a dish of
small red apples.

Jess ate one of the apples and the General made his customary gesture of
passing round the decanter, from which no one--not even himself--ever
poured out a drink.

"You know," said Jess, "I often think this house is a bit like a
madhouse. The way we sit here, and let Ivy wait on us, and all that
business of clearing away for dessert when there isn't any
dessert--honestly, it's bats, isn't it?"

"Must behave like civilized beings," suggested General Levallois, rather
wearily and without much conviction.

"Nobody else does. Really and truly. I mean the people at school's
houses that I've stayed at, everybody waits on themselves, and it's
practically always supper, not dinner, and nobody _dreams_ of changing
their clothes. And at Rockingham, which is the only grand place I ever
go to, there's a butler and a proper dinner. I don't mean that we don't
get proper food here, mummie, but it isn't exactly dinner, is it? I
mean, not compared to aunt Venetia's."

"Your aunt Venetia's husband is a rich man--or at least he was once. He
won't be now," said the General, not without an underlying note of
satisfaction.

"I bet you, however poor they get, aunt Venetia and uncle Charlie will
go on having salmon and roast duck and pheasants and things. Isn't it
awful how one never thinks about anything except food nowadays? Come on,
dogs! It's time you thought about food, too."

Jess went out, preceded by the dogs, to feed them in the lobby.

Valentine and the General followed, Valentine disentangling the fringes
of her shawl from a chair-back.

In the hall she threw another log on the fire, shook up the cushions and
emptied an ash-tray. General Levallois remarked, as she had known that
he would:

"Can't the housemaid or one of 'em do that while we're in the
dining-room?"

"I could tell her about it."

The child of fourteen who, with Ivy and the cook, completed the indoor
staff at Coombe had plenty to do already, and did it sufficiently badly.
It would be useless to impose fresh duties on her.

Valentine, however, followed her usual appeasement methods almost
without knowing that she did so.

"I should, if I were you," the General assented, as he had done two
nights earlier and would do again on the morrow.

"Could you bear it, Reggie, if when Jess has been called up and we're
all by ourselves, we had something more like--well, more like high tea?
I don't mean at five o'clock, but perhaps at half-past six. It would
simplify things, and as Jess says, 'it's what everybody's doing'--except
apparently, Venetia and Charlie."

"I suppose we must give up whatever's necessary and I'm the last man on
earth to complain, but is that really going to make so much difference?
I should have thought we'd done plenty as it was. Where's my whiskey,
where's my tobacco, where's my after-dinner coffee?" enquired the
General rather piteously. "All given up."

"I know. Well, perhaps we can manage."

"If we're to have two soldiers billeted on us, we shall have to. I'm not
going to ask any Army man--even an Irishman--to sit down to high tea."

"I don't suppose they'll come."

The telephone bell rang from the inconvenient and draughty corner,
exactly outside the door of the downstairs lavatory, where Humphrey's
father had installed it.

"I'll go," shouted Jess from the lobby.

They heard her rushing to it, and the puppy barking.

"There's no such tearing hurry," muttered the General. "Come here,
Sally!" he shouted. The old dog ambled up and settled down at his feet.

He slowly put on his spectacles and started work on the crossword puzzle
in _The Times_.

Valentine took up her knitting.

She could hear, without distinguishing any words, one side of the
telephone conversation. It was evidently someone wanting to talk to
Jess. A contemporary, because she was screaming freely and every now and
then emitting a shriek of laughter.

Perhaps it was Primrose, speaking from London.

Primrose and Jess often quarrelled when they were together, but they
would sometimes hold long, expensive, seemingly friendly talks over the
telephone.

Primrose never wrote, unless she wanted something sent from home, and
then it was usually on a postcard.

Valentine evaded, as usual, dwelling on the thought of her elder
daughter. She reminded herself of the next monthly meeting of the
Women's Institute, of which she was President, and she tried to remember
what had been planned for the evening's programme.

General Levallois asked her help over an elusive clue in his puzzle: she
gave it tentatively and unsuccessfully.

"Isn't it about time to switch on for the news?" he asked suspiciously.

They never missed listening to the Nine O'Clock News, but General
Levallois seemed always afraid lest they might do so.

Valentine glanced at the clock, saw that it was only ten minutes to
nine, and obediently got up and turned on the wireless.

She shivered as she moved away from the small area of space warmed by
the fire. The fringe of her shawl caught in a piece of furniture and she
released it.

Jess came plunging back to them, the pup at her heels.

"That was Primrose, and she's got a week's leave from Saturday and we're
to expect her when we see her."

"Is she going to spend the whole week here?" cried Valentine, the blood
rushing into her face.

For a moment she felt as she had felt long ago when the children were
coming home for their holidays and plans for treats and pleasures for
them had thronged her mind.

"She says so. She must be frightfully tired," said Jess navely.

"Did she say how she was? Is she all right?"

"Everything seemed okay. And mummie--this is a frightfully funny
thing--what do you think?"

"What?" asked Valentine apprehensively.

She was nearly always afraid now, at the announcement of any news that
concerned Primrose.

"She says she knows this Colonel--the Irish one--and he's a friend of
hers. And she's pretty certain he _will_ come here."

"That explains her condescending to spend a week in her own home, then,"
remarked General Levallois.

"Fancy you thinking of that, uncle Reggie! I wouldn't know. I suppose
he's one of her boy friends, though I should have thought he was much
too old."

"Did she tell you his name?" asked Valentine. "I mean his Christian
name?"

Jess nodded.

"She calls him Rory. Fancy calling a Colonel Rory!"

Valentine was aware that her brother was looking at her, probably with
the raised eyebrows of an unspoken question.

It was quite true that he scarcely ever forgot a name, but all the same,
he'd want to make certain.

She gave him his answer, but without turning towards him and with her
eyes on the fire.

"If his name's Rory Lonergan, he's the man I knew years ago, when we
were in Rome. Only of course he wasn't a soldier, then."

"What was he?" asked Jess.

"A painter."

"Gosh! Fancy a painter. He must have done jolly well in the war to have
been made a Colonel. I shouldn't have thought a painter would be a scrap
of use in the Army, except to paint camouflage or something."

"He went through the last war, and I believe he did rather well."

"Is he nice?"

"I haven't seen him for--let me see--about twenty-eight years."

"Gosh! You won't recognize each other. I suppose he's married and with
masses of children."

"I don't know," said Valentine.

"So long as he doesn't bring any of his wives and children here,"
Jessica said. "Actually, Primrose didn't _sound_ as if he was married.
But he must be miles too old for her."

"Damned nonsense you sometimes talk, Jess," the General remarked. "Shut
up, now! The news is just coming on."

"It'll be Bruce," said Jess, and she threw herself down on the floor
beside the two dogs.

The strokes of Big Ben, followed by the voice of the announcer, filled
the room.

Valentine, not listening, continued to gaze into the fire.

It really was Rory Lonergan.

She was not surprised. She had felt certain, on first hearing the name
of Colonel Lonergan, that it was Rory and that she was going to see him
again.

In all the years that had gone by since the summer of nineteen hundred
and fourteen, Valentine had thought of Rory Lonergan often but not,
after those first few, long-ago months, with any wish or expectation of
seeing him.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was a most innocent story.

She had met him at a _petite soire_ in the most Catholic circle in
Roman society, ten days before her seventeenth birthday. He had fallen
in love with her and she with him, and they had met daily, in secret,
under the olive tree in a remote corner of the Pincio Gardens near a
broken fountain--and Valentine's mademoiselle had found them out within
a fortnight and had told her mother.

Valentine's mother had told her father and both of them had interviewed
the young Lonergan--that raffish-looking, beggarly art student of an
Irishman, as her father had described him--and Val had been sent
for--she had always been Val, in those days.

She saw again the high room with its painted ceiling and formal
decorative plaster mouldings, and her father, very stern and handsome,
sitting at a big table that had a lot of gilding about it.

Her mother, who was not stern or handsome but of a tense, nervous,
neurotic type far more difficult to resist, had been there too. And Rory
had gone.

Instantly, she had thought they had sent him away for ever and had felt
a rush of wild, uncontrollable horror and despair. And at once the
romantic, fairy-tale hope had followed that he would come back for her
and they would go away together and belong to one another for ever and
ever.

But none of it had followed the fairy-tale tradition.

Val's father and mother had scarcely even been angry with her: her
father had spoken with cold, rather amused, contempt of young Lonergan,
and her mother had said that silly, underhand schoolgirl ways naturally
led inexperienced boys to suppose that they might behave as they chose.

In future, had said Lady Levallois, Mademoiselle would exercise a much
closer supervision over a girl so little to be trusted.

Almost at once Val had understood that it was over and that there was no
hope--but she had made her stand.

"Where is he?"

"Never mind."

"But he can't have gone without saying goodbye to me!"

Looking back she could realize the appeal in that childlike wail of
despair and she could see why her mother, arbitrary woman that she was
of violent, incalculable moods that were a terror alike to herself and
others, had suddenly and for a moment softened.

"You may have five minutes to say goodbye. He's waiting outside."

No need to ask where.

Lady Levallois' eyes had turned to the window over-looking the Pincio
Gardens, and Valentine had fled.

Fled to the broken fountain, where Rory Lonergan was.

Oddly enough, she could remember very little of their last interview
except that he had kissed her in a way in which he had never kissed her
before and that she had been frightened and, at the bottom of her heart,
shocked.

Whether they had been five minutes together or half an hour, she had
never known. It was the kind Madeleine, her mother's French maid, who
had been sent out to fetch her back to the house.

Val had gone, obediently.

Rory Lonergan hadn't asked her to come away with him.

Indeed, thought Valentine Arbell, looking back at Valentine Levallois in
her seventeenth year, nothing could have been less possible than that
any penniless youth with his living to earn should make such a
suggestion.

In time, the certainty that he couldn't even have entertained a serious
wish to do so became part of her acceptance of the whole episode.

It had been, as Reggie had said, a very silly business, from every point
of view except one, and that one was known only to Valentine.

Those innocent and rapturous hours of love-making that she had shared
through that brief fortnight with Rory Lonergan, with the hot May
sunlight thrusting through the grey-green olive trees, had taught her
the meaning of happiness, pure and complete. Never since had she found
it.

In the years that had followed, and beneath which youth lay so deeply
buried, Valentine had forgotten a great deal: emotionally, she had long
forgotten almost everything about Rory Lonergan.

She had only not forgotten what happiness was, nor mistaken for it any
lesser experience.

       *       *       *       *       *

"The damned Japanese ..." said the General. "The damned Americans ...
the damned fools we've got in the Cabinet ..."

He was meditative, rather than annoyed. Jess said that President
Roosevelt was a divine man, and she adored him. She scrambled to her
feet and announced that she was going to say good-night to Madeleine,
who had a small sitting-room of her own on the second floor.

Valentine knew that Jess would turn on Madeleine's radio and that
together they would listen to the light-hearted and noisy programmes
they both enjoyed and that the General would never tolerate downstairs.

In the summer, they would open up the schoolroom again and Jess should
have friends to stay and have a little fun....

But before the summer came, Jess would be gone.

"Shall I come and say good-night to you presently?"

"Okay," said Jess.

She picked up the puppy.

"That dog will lose the use of its legs."

"Poor darling aunt Sophy! Shall I have to get you a little pair of
crutches?" crooned Jess to the puppy.

She sketched a salute in the direction of the General--her usual fashion
of evading any good-night formula--and went away.

General Levallois gave renewed attention to his puzzle and Valentine
took up a book. She was glad to read, but she scarcely ever did so
before Jess went upstairs from an obscure feeling that Jess might, one
evening, want to claim her mother's attention, and hesitate to interrupt
her.

This evening she was paying no heed to her book.

She was thinking, in a strange medley of thoughts, about Primrose's
arrival for her week's leave and whether there was any way in which it
would be possible to make her enjoy it, and about Rory Lonergan whom one
might be going to see again--and as Jess had said, they certainly
wouldn't recognize one another--and about Jessica's announcement, that
seemed to Valentine almost fantastically unreal, that Primrose--so
emphatically belonging to the present--should claim as a friend of her
own the man who had for so long belonged to Valentine's own far-away
past.

Perhaps she was in love with him.

But he was too old. Rory Lonergan must be forty-seven or forty-eight,
and Primrose was twenty-four.

Besides, he had probably married long ago. And although, one had to
admit, that wouldn't prevent Primrose from starting what Jess called
"quite a thing", it might well prevent Rory Lonergan from doing so.

The General threw down the newspaper and took off his spectacles,
exchanging them for another pair.

That meant that he had failed to finish his crossword puzzle
successfully.

"Anything happening to-morrow?"

"It's Sunday. On Monday I shall be going to the Red Cross work-party in
the afternoon, and up to the village in the evening."

"Another Committee?"

"No. It's the Monthly Meeting of the Women's Institute."

The General made his unfailing rejoinder.

"I suppose you and Mrs. Ditchley will settle the affairs of the nation."

Valentine gave the polite, unmeaning smile with which she, as
unfailingly, received the remark.

She was thinking how very much she wished that she could do more, and
more important, war work.

Yet, if Coombe was to remain her home and that of the children, it
seemed necessary that she should stay there. Her brother had told her
flatly, months ago, that it was the only place in which she could be of
the slightest real use.

Primrose had declared that women over thirty-five weren't wanted
anywhere.

"Especially untrained ones," she had added--and if the first observation
hadn't been specially meant for her, Valentine knew that the second one
had.

She sat silent, waiting for the hands of the clock to reach half-past
ten when she would go, shivering, up the stairs and along the passage to
Jessica's room, the fringes of her shawl catching here and there as she
moved.




III


The rain had turned to an icy sleet and the temperature dropped many
degrees, when Primrose Arbell, two days later, travelled down to
Devonshire in a crowded third-class railway carriage.

Everyone in the carriage had gazed at her with a varying degree of
attention and Primrose had looked at no one at all, according to her
wont.

She endeavoured and expected to attract notice, although not necessarily
admiration, for she was under no illusions as to her looks.

Yet she was arresting, aristocratic-looking and, to many men, alluring.

The opinion of women did not interest her.

Primrose was tall, slight and with long and very beautiful lines from
shoulder to ankle. She did not always choose her clothes well, but she
put them on and carried them, whatever they were, with an insolent,
triumphant success. Her face was long and narrow with a long, pointed
chin, a high-bridged, arrogant and finely-cut nose and rather large
mouth with a curious downward twist at one corner whenever she spoke
or--infrequently enough--laughed.

Her most arresting features were her eyes and eyebrows. The brows were
dark and thick, in astonishing contrast to her naturally blonde hair,
forming arches that suggested a perpetual expression of scornful
surprise. The eyes, deeply set, were not large but of a dense,
blue-green colour, set in thick black lashes.

She affected a heavy, carefully applied make-up of which the tawny
smoothness entirely concealed the natural texture of her skin. The deep,
reddish-orange colour of her mouth was painted on sharply and boldly.

The station nearest to Coombe was on a small branch line, and when the
train stopped at Exeter, Primrose pulled down her blue suitcase from the
rack, pushed her way along the carriage and got out.

She neither joined the jostling crowd of people slowly moving towards
the barrier nor did she make her way to the siding where the stopping
train was presumably waiting. She stood near the shelter of the
bookstall, not appearing to look for anyone, with her suitcase at her
feet.

She was wearing a dark-blue wool dress with a coat of which the
up-turned collar stood out round her long neck and threw up the pale
colour of her uncovered fair hair gummed into elaborate and deliberately
artificial-looking small curls, laid flat all round her narrow head like
a coronal.

She had pulled on a short camel-hair coat and thrust both hands into the
deep pockets.

Gazing downward, apparently at the suitcase, Primrose never raised her
eyes until Colonel Lonergan, coming to a standstill directly in front of
her, said:

"So there you are. Do you know it's the purest chance I was able to come
and get you?"

Primrose gave him her one-sided smile and he picked up the suitcase and
shouldered a way out through the crowd to where a very shabby and
mud-bespattered car stood waiting.

"God, it's cold," muttered Primrose.

They were the first words she had spoken.

"Are you frozen, poor child? There's a rug."

Lonergan threw the case into the back of the car and wrapped the rug
round Primrose as she settled down into the seat beside the driver's.

"Would you like to stop somewhere and have some hot coffee or some
brandy or something before we start?"

"The pubs aren't open yet. We'll stop on the way, and have a drink.
There's quite a decent pub about twelve miles out. Probably you've
discovered it: _The Two Throstles_."

"I have."

He got in beside her and started the car.

"Are you glad to see me, darling?"

"Fearfully," said Primrose. "If you hadn't turned up I should have had
to take a slow train and then telephone from the station for a car."

Lonergan gave a short laugh that sounded as though it had been
unwillingly jerked out of him.

"You aren't going to turn my head with your flattery, are you, darling?
Still in love with me?"

Primrose made no reply.

Lonergan took one hand off the wheel and sought hers.

She pulled off her loose glove with her teeth, keeping her left hand
beneath the warmth of the rug, and gave him the right one. Its pressure
responded to his touch immediately and electrically.

"That's my girl," said Lonergan.

He sounded content.

Primrose, without moving her head, slewed her gaze round so as to see
his profile. Rory Lonergan carried his forty-eight years lightly. He was
unmistakably an Irishman--not much above medium height, large-boned and
heavily-built but without superfluous flesh. His dark, intelligent face
had the characteristics of his race: clearly-defined black eyebrows and
blue eyes, long, straight, clean-shaven upper lip and protruding under
jaw. His voice was an Irish voice, deep and with odd, melancholy
cadences, a naturally beautiful voice that betrayed the speaker's
nationality at once by its un-English inflections, as well as by his
choice of idiom.

"It's a sheer miracle that I was able to get away at all. And you didn't
give me much notice, did you?"

"Are you staying at Coombe?"

He nodded.

"Luck's with us, darling. At least, I suppose it's luck. I'm moving up
there to-night, with a lad called Sedgewick."

"You're moving up there now," remarked Primrose. "I suppose you're
taking me there. Have you seen my family yet?"

"No. Hadn't you better give me the dope? I know nothing whatever about
them. Young Banks made the arrangements."

Primrose, in an accentuated drawl, began to speak.

"I get pretty bloody-minded, I must say, on the subject of my family.
That's why I never talk about them if I can avoid it. However, if you're
going to be billeted there, all concealment is at an end, as they say.
To begin with, Coombe is about the most uncomfortable house on God's
earth--rather large, with big rooms for the family and dog-holes for the
servants, no heating and the absolute minimum of electric light, one
bathroom and never anything like enough hot water. It's idiotically
run--feeble, incompetent little village girls taught to do a lot of
useless, silly jobs that mean nothing, and cursed at when they want
their evenings to themselves like other human beings."

"Who curses them?"

"Mostly my uncle, who lives with us, but my mama does the actual
transmitting of the curses and doesn't even do that properly. She's
afraid of servants."

The corner of Primrose's mouth twisted downwards contemptuously and her
voice was coldly savage.

"Why do you hate your mother?" demanded Lonergan abruptly.

She took the question calmly.

"I'm not sure that I do hate her, though I despise her pretty
thoroughly. If I hate her at all, it's reaction from having adored her
as a small child. I was the only one for six years, and she used me as
an emotional outlet, I suppose. It makes me sick to think of it. I had
the guts to kick loose when I was, mercifully, sent to school."

"I thought girls of your class never did go to school."

"They do nowadays. I wish you wouldn't talk about class. It's a bloody
word, denoting a bloody state of affairs that we're out to abolish."

"No one'll ever do that. Privilege may be abolished. Class distinctions
won't, in England. They're ingrain."

"I couldn't disagree with you more than I do," said Primrose vehemently.

"Only the intensely class-conscious--like yourself, darling--would
become so frantic on the subject. Go on about your relations. What did
your mother do when you kicked loose?"

"What her kind always does. Looked more and more wistful and tried
having heart-to-hearts that never came off because I wouldn't, and then
got afraid of me. She's actually terrified of me."

"Of what you can do to hurt her," suggested Lonergan.

"I suppose so. Honestly, Rory, I don't set out to give her hell or
anything like that, but I just come over utterly unnatural whenever
we're within a mile of one another, and I hear myself saying the most
brutal things and just can't stop. She embarrasses me so frightfully
that I'm simply incapable of even looking at her, quite often."

"How is she embarrassing?"

"I don't know. She shows her feelings, for one thing. Or at least, she
makes one know they're there. And she's so utterly incompetent--even
more so than most of the women who were brought up the way she was. My
grandfather was in the Diplomatic Service and she lived abroad till she
married. I suppose that's helped to make her the dim kind of person she
is--that and having a certain amount of French blood. Her name was
Levallois. Mercifully both my sister and I take completely after the
Arbell side of the family."

Lonergan kept silence.

After a minute Primrose said sharply:

"What is it?"

He gave her a look of appraisement.

"You're quick, aren't you. I was only thinking that I'd heard that
name--your mother's name--Levallois--years and years ago, when I was an
art student in Rome."

"That's right. They were there. Did you ever know them?"

Her voice sounded incredulous.

"Embassies weren't precisely up my street--even less so then than they
are now. But one remembers the name."

"It was before the last war. You must have been frightfully young."

"Twenty--as a very simple calculation ought to show you, since you know
perfectly well that I'm twenty-four years older than you are."

"You're terribly age-conscious, aren't you? I think it's silly,
especially in a man," Primrose observed coldly.

"I agree. I wasn't thinking of my age, particularly, especially as I
seem much younger to myself than I doubtless do to you."

"What were you thinking of then?"

"Temporarily viewing the situation through your eyes: that a lover of
yours should have been a young man, already twenty years old, when your
mother was a girl. It's an odd, unflattering sort of link with the
past."

"The past doesn't mean a thing to me. Why should it? My mother, of
course, lives in it. That'd be enough, in itself, to put me off."

"How vicious you are, about her."

"I don't think so. I just happen to dislike everything she stands for.
Though I've got personal grievances against her, too. She made a
complete mess of me, with the best intentions. Apparently most mothers
do that."

"Did she do it to your sister, too?"

"I'm not sure about that. On the whole I think not. Jess is terribly
normal and rather stupid, and as she was only born six years after I
was, the first force of this awful maternal egotism had all been spent
on me."

"You're sure it was egotism?"

"Rory, don't be such a fool. Nine women out of ten compensate themselves
for the emotional disappointments of marriage by concentrating on their
wretched children."

"But there must be other forms of compensation. Taking a lover, for
instance."

"For some women, of course. I don't think mummie was that sort, even
when she was younger. Otherwise why didn't she marry again? She wasn't
much over thirty when my father died."

"Was she very young when she married him? She must have been."

"Nineteen. An idiotic age, but it was during the last war when people
seem to have lost their heads pretty badly. It made a hash of her life,
I imagine."

"Weren't they happy?"

"I shouldn't think so. I remember him perfectly, and he was very dull
and completely inarticulate. He couldn't have suited the sentimentalist
that mummie is. She's the kind of woman who'd always think of herself as
a _femme incomprise_."

She paused for a minute.

"Rory, I believe I'm shocking you."

"I think you are," he agreed dispassionately.

"My God, don't tell me you've got a mother-fixation. Did you like
yours?"

"Oh yes. But then the middle classes almost always do. It's part of
their tradition."

"Shut up about classes. It makes me sick."

"You'll feel better when you've had a drink," said Lonergan smoothly.

"That's another thing I'd better warn you about at Coombe. You'll never
get a drink, unless you can provide your own."

"I probably can. What about the uncle?"

"He's given up whiskey for the duration, and I don't think there's
anything in the cellar worth speaking of. A bottle of port or sherry is
brought up about once a year, and there's supposed to be some champagne
waiting to celebrate the peace. Uncle Reggie's called General Levallois.
He was invalided out of the Army and he's practically a cripple.
Arthritis. He hasn't got a bean, except for some semi-invisible pension,
and he's lived with us since I was twelve."

"Anybody else?"

"Only Jess. She's volunteered for the WAAF and is waiting to be called
up. There are some evacuee kids from London, but I need hardly tell you
that, in our democratic way, we make them use the top floor, and the
kitchen stairs, and the back entrance. One practically doesn't know
they're there at all."

"Then who looks after them?"

"The housemaid, I suppose," said Primrose indifferently. "_I_ shouldn't
know. I'm practically never at Coombe. I shouldn't be coming now if it
wasn't for you."

"Angel," said Lonergan, in a voice as uninflected and meaningless as her
own had been.

He had loosed her hand in order to replace his on the wheel but
presently he sought it again, and when he next spoke his voice was
warmer and more eager.

"You haven't yet told me if you're still in love with me."

"I haven't fallen for anybody else. Have you?"

"No."

They both laughed.

"Primrose--about this business of being at Coombe together. Is it going
to work?"

"Of course it is. Otherwise I shouldn't have suggested it. I needn't
have taken my leave now. I only decided to when I knew you'd been sent
here and it seemed obvious that you'd be billeted at Coombe. Personally,
I think it's an absolutely Heaven-sent chance."

"I know, darling. Of course it is. Only--in your own home--and with your
family there----"

"It's a largish house," Primrose observed coolly. "You won't have to
behave like the lover in a French farce, if that's what you're afraid
of."

"Thank God for that, anyway. Do they know already--of course they
do--that I'm a friend of yours?"

"Yes. I told Jess on the telephone. What I _did_ say," Primrose
elaborated, in a tone of careful candour, "was that we'd met in London
at a sherry-party--which is true--and that you quite frequently took me
out to dinner. What I, naturally, didn't say, was that I'd only known
you a fortnight."

"Then, officially, how long are we supposed to have known one another?"

"Better make it a few months. But as a matter of fact, they probably
won't ask. I've trained them not to ask me questions."

"It doesn't follow that they won't ask me any."

"You can cope with them, if they do. Don't pretend you haven't had
practice enough, Rory. And mummie's not at all a difficult person to
side-track."

Lonergan drove on in silence until he presently enquired:

"Are we stopping at _The Two Throstles_?"

"Aren't we?"

He laughed and turned the car into the gravelled sweep before the white
stucco building, low and long, with fumed oak doors and window frames.

Little plaques above the doors on either side of the entrance bore
respectively the words "Lounge" and "Drawing-room" but a painted board
leaning against the wall pointed the way: _To American Cocktail Bar_.

Primrose walked straight to it, her long, flexible fingers pinching and
pressing at the flat curls of her hair.

Rory Lonergan hung up his cap and overcoat and followed her.

The place was hot, crowded and thick with smoke. Every high stool at the
bar was occupied, but a man and a girl, both in Air Force uniform, were
just leaving a table and Primrose, pushing her way past two women who
also were evidently making for it, flung herself into one of the vacant
chairs and threw her bag on the other.

Lonergan said to the defeated ladies, neither of whom was either young
or smart:

"I'm so sorry. Won't you take the other chair?"

They looked confused and abashed, murmuring thanks and disclaimers, and
at that moment a party of young officers moved away from the bar.

"Ah, that's better. Will I get you two of the stools?" said Lonergan,
and he allowed an exaggeratedly Irish intonation to sound in the words,
knowing that this would somehow reassure them and cause them to think of
him, not as a strange man who had spoken to them without an
introduction, but merely as "an Irish officer".

As he had expected, they smiled and looked happier, and he pulled out
two of the vacated stools and saw them perched, one on each, like
elderly and rather battered birds on over-small gate-posts.

Then he joined Primrose.

"What the hell----?"

"You were damned rude, as you always are. We could have waited. The poor
old girls had spotted these chairs before you did."

"I hate waiting."

"And I hate bad manners."

"In that case, I don't really see why you ever took up with me."

Lonergan looked her up and down.

"As I've told you before, I liked your looks. You've got the most
marvellous line I've ever seen."

"Is that all?"

"Not quite all--though nearly," said Lonergan. "What are you going to
drink?"

"Gin and vermouth."

He ordered the drinks.

"Why have you got such an obsession about manners?" Primrose enquired
out of a long silence, after her second drink.

"It's just another middle-class characteristic."

"It isn't. My aristocratic parent is the same."

"Is she now. Diplomatic circles and all. Why didn't she succeed in
bringing you up better?"

"Because what makes sense in one generation doesn't in the next,
obviously."

"Well," said Lonergan, "of course she and I belong to one generation and
you to another. That's clear as crystal. Have another drink?"

"Okay. Same again."

The third round was consumed in silence, but Primrose, sprawling in her
chair, pushed out one long slim leg and pressed it hard against
Lonergan's thigh.

It was he who eventually moved, suggesting that they had better be going
on.

"Okay," said Primrose indifferently.

She got up and threaded her way past the tables and chairs, moving with
her characteristic effect of ruthless, effortless poise. But when they
were in the hall Lonergan saw that her eyes were glazed and she remarked
in her most indistinct drawl:

"You all right for driving? I'm slightly--very slightly--tight."

"Well, I'm not. Come on."

He took her by the elbow and steered her out into the darkness.

"God, I can't see a thing in this damned black-out."

"You'll be all right in a second. Stand still on the step and don't move
while I get the car round."

When they were on the road again Lonergan said:

"You can't possibly be tight on three small drinks. I suppose you
haven't had anything to eat all day."

"Not a thing, except one cup of utterly filthy coffee for breakfast.
I'll be all right, directly."

She slumped down in her seat, leaning her head against his shoulder.

Lonergan, driving slowly, partly because he was careful in the black-out
and partly because he wanted to give her time to recover herself before
they arrived, thought that, so long as she remained silent and rather
movingly helpless, he could almost make himself imagine that he loved
her a little.

       *       *       *       *       *

The car was turning into the lane that led to Coombe before Primrose
spoke.

"I wish we were staying at _The Two Throstles_ to-night."

"So do I," Lonergan answered automatically, and wishing nothing of the
kind since he was perfectly well-known at _The Two Throstles_ and so,
certainly, was she.

"When you get to the gate, which you'll have to get out and open, I'll
tidy up a bit."

"Right."

A moment later he stopped the car and, before getting out, pulled her
towards him and kissed her.

Primrose returned the kiss fiercely and he felt her hands clutching at
him.

She was both exciting and easily excited, but already he wished that he
had never embarked on the affair.

The idea of carrying it on in the girl's own home was idiotic,
tasteless, and repellent to him. He was angry and disgusted with himself
for having lacked the courage to tell her so when she had first
suggested the plan.

As usual, he had been afraid of hurting her. As though a girl like that,
whose affairs were as numerous as they were short-lived, was ever going
to be hurt by any man! Least of all, he unsparingly added, a man
twenty-four years older than herself at whom she had only made a pass on
a meaningless impulse, at a dull party.

Instinctively, he released his hold of her.

"What's the matter?" asked Primrose.

"Nothing. Hadn't we better go on?"

Primrose gave her short, unamused laugh.

"I suppose so."

She had taken his words in a sense far other than that in which he had
meant them.

Lonergan got out and opened the gate, drove through and then got out to
shut it again.

When he returned Primrose had switched on the light in the roof and was
making up her face. Her gummed-looking curls were perfectly in place.

"Ready, Primrose?"

"Not yet."

He sat without moving, his eyes fixed upon her, but neither seeing her
nor thinking of her.

In a few minutes now they would reach the house.

Had Primrose Arbell's mother, more than a quarter of a century ago,
been that touching child to whom he had made most innocent and idyllic
love for a few breathless afternoons in a Roman garden, before--like the
catastrophe in a Victorian novel--her parents had sent him to the
right-about?

If so, she might well have forgotten the whole episode, his name
included. Perhaps he'd have forgotten, too, if it hadn't been for that
startlingly unforeseen interview--again, like the Victorian novel--with
her parents, and for the odd, rather charming artificiality of such a
name as Valentine Levallois. Yet some romantic certainty in him
repudiated that idea, even as he formulated it. At all events, he
wouldn't now recognize her, any more than she him. And it would be for
her to decide whether or no she remembered his name. Whatever Primrose
might say of her mother's incompetence Lonergan felt quite convinced
that, socially, she was not likely to be anything less than wholly
competent.

"Okay now, darling."

"Right."

He drove on.

The house, like all houses now, stood in utter darkness.

He drew up in front of the stone pillars with the lead-roofed portico
above the door.

"Ring," directed Primrose. "There's a chain affair, to the left of the
door."

Lonergan, leaving her seated in the car, got out and after some trouble
found the chain, which seemed unduly high above his head. When he
grasped it, he could tell that it had been broken off and not repaired.
His vigorous pull resulted in a prolonged mournful, jangling sound, a
long way off, that reminded him of country houses in Ireland where there
lived, for years and years, elderly and impoverished people.

An outburst of barking followed from within the house, and he could hear
someone approaching.

"They're coming, Primrose."

Lonergan stepped back to the car and put out a hand to help her out. He
had no intention of walking into the house without her.

"Are you all right, now?"

"I'm okay," said Primrose.

Her voice sounded sullen as though she had dropped her words from one
corner of her closed mouth, as she did when she was either out of temper
or seeking to make an impression.

He guessed that both states of mind might be hers just then.

A young girl in a cap and apron opened the door, very gingerly so as to
avoid showing any light, and Primrose--ignoring her--walked in.

Lonergan followed.

He said "Good evening" to the maid and she answered "Good evening, sir"
in pert, cheerful tones. He wondered what she thought of Primrose.

They went through glass-panelled swing-doors and were met by a renewed
outburst of barking.

"Hallo!" said a girl's voice, and he saw the speaker scramble up from
the floor in front of the fire, gathering against her the barking puppy,
its awkward legs and large paws dangling.

"Hallo," said Primrose, and she swung round to face Lonergan immediately
behind her.

"Meet my sister Jess," she muttered. "Colonel Lonergan--Jess."

Jess shook hands.

He was surprised to see how young and school-girlish she looked.

"Sorry about all the noise," she cried, slapping the head of the
barking, wriggling pup. "Shut up, aunt Sophy. Look, Primrose, don't you
agree that she's the _exact_ image of aunt Sophy?"

"She is, a bit."

"Aunt Sophy," began Jess, turning to Lonergan, and then she broke off,
and exclaimed: "Here's mummie."

He watched her coming through some further door, crossing the hall
towards them.

Prepared as he was in advance for the meeting, it yet astonished him
profoundly to see, in that first instant, that he could perfectly
recognize in this woman of his own age the young nymph of the Pincio
Gardens.

She wasn't, of course, a young nymph now. Time had washed the colour
from her brown hair--the wave in front was entirely silver--and from her
face. Only the dense blue-green of her eyes remained. It flashed across
his mind that he had never seen eyes of quite that colour since, and it
did not occur to him until long afterwards that the eyes of Primrose
were of exactly the same arresting, unusual shade.

The very shape of her face--a short oval, with the beautifully-defined
line of the jaw still unmarred--brought back to him the sheer sensation
of pleasure that, as a draughtsman, he had before experienced at the
sight of its sharply cut purity of outline.

He moved towards her and she held out her hand, smiling.

"Colonel Lonergan? How do you do?"

Curiously taken aback, although for what reason he had no idea, Lonergan
shook hands and repeated her conventional greeting.

"Oh! I remember your voice," she most unexpectedly exclaimed--and he was
not sure that the unexpectedness had not struck herself as well as him.

"And I remember your face," he answered, and for an instant they seemed
to stare at one another.

"Hallo, mummie," said Primrose. She stood by the fire without moving,
and her mother, after a tiny hesitation, went to her, and putting an arm
round her shoulders, kissed her in greeting.




IV


The house, the large front bedroom assigned to Lonergan, even the water
in the chipped white enamel water-can standing in the flowered china
basin on the old-fashioned washstand, were all as cold as Primrose had
foretold. He was glad to hurry downstairs but he felt that the evening
was likely to prove a strange one.

That past and present should so overlap was disconcerting enough, but
Rory Lonergan, who had regretfully and at the same time competently,
deceived a great many people had never yet seriously deceived himself
and he was already aware of a sense of tension, almost of foreboding,
that came from within himself and threatened others as much as himself.

He was oddly relieved to find no one downstairs except Jessica, still
playing with her dog.

It was easy to make friends with Jess, and for her, as for the elderly
ladies in the cocktail-bar, he deliberately accentuated Irish tone and
idiom, in order to amuse her.

He took notice of the puppy, and listened to the explanation of why she
had been so oddly named.

"Ah, the little poor dog! Isn't that a shame, now!"

"What a frightfully good point of view. Most people think it's awful for
old aunt Sophy--or would be, if she knew about it. Nobody has ever said
it's a shame for a poor darling little puppy to be called after a cross
old lady."

"Have they not?"

"Not they," said Jess. "Actually, I shall probably change her name later
on or perhaps just call her Sophy. Otherwise it's a bit like those dim
parents who give their children idiotic pet-names and will keep on with
them for ever. I knew a person whose life at school was practically
ruined because her mother came to see her and called her Tiddles. I ask
you--Tiddles."

Lonergan expressed appropriate disapproval. He thought of asking her
about her school but decided that she had too recently ceased to be a
schoolgirl and said instead:

"I hear you're waiting to be called up for the WAAF?"

"That is correct. Did Primrose tell you?"

"She did."

"I wouldn't have thought she'd be enough interested. It's funny, you
knowing her first, and then coming down here."

"Well, I was down here first, you know, for a few days and then I had to
go to London for a special job and met her again," said Lonergan, adding
the last word as he remembered that Primrose had decided to credit them
with an acquaintanceship of some months.

"And it's _much_ odder," said Jess, "that you should have met mummie all
those thousands of years ago. She said she wondered if you were the same
person when Buster--Lieutenant Banks--told us your name. And that
reminds me, where's the other one?"

In spite of his preoccupation with the earlier part of her speech,
Lonergan found that he understood to what she was so elliptically
referring.

"Captain Sedgewick? He'll arrive after dinner, I expect. He had to go to
Plymouth. Did he not let you know?"

"Oh, I expect so. I just hadn't heard, that's all. What's he like?"

"About twenty-three, with red hair, comes from somewhere outside London.
He's said to be a very good dancer."

"Gosh, that's wizard," thoughtfully returned Jess.

She gazed up at him with ingenuous admiration.

"You're frightfully good at describing people, aren't you?"

Lonergan laughed and was aware that her childlike praise had pleased his
vanity.

Extraordinary, he reflected dispassionately, how he had never outgrown
the desire to be liked. Sometimes he thought that this pressing need was
so urgent within him that, on a final analysis, it provided the motive
spring for his whole conduct of life.

Jess chattered on, cheerful and at ease.

The tap of the General's crutches and his shuffling step sounded from
behind Lonergan and he rose, and Jess reared herself to her feet in what
seemed to be one supple, unbroken movement.

Valentine was with her brother.

She was in black and Lonergan noticed that the long fringes of the
embroidered Chinese shawl round her shoulders became continually
entangled in pieces of furniture as she moved. He saw the unhurried
gestures with which she patiently disentangled them, again and again.

General Levallois, in whom Lonergan had immediately detected an emphatic
but quite fundamental hostility directed against his nationality rather
than against himself, made stilted conversation.

Jess said:

"Gosh, I'd better wash. Fancy, that makes poetry. Fancy me being a
poet!"

As she dashed her way upstairs, the eyes of Rory Lonergan and Valentine
Arbell met, and they both laughed.

He told himself that he had never seen any woman's face alter so
completely as hers did when she was really amused. Already, he felt, he
knew that her pretty, not infrequent smile had nothing to do with
amusement and was one of her many unconscious concessions to the
traditions of her upbringing.

"I know that much about her," thought Lonergan, assenting aloud to a
proposition of the General's. And immediately another thought followed.

"I know that, and how much more!"

The watcher in him, that was never off guard and could never be
silenced, added the note that carried to him a familiar,
never-to-be-mistaken warning, terrifying in its very brevity.

"_I'm sunk._"

"... though mind you, I'm not denying that the feller had some reason on
his side, up to a point," said the General.

And Lonergan, unaware of having heard the beginning of the phrase, found
that he knew it was de Valera of whom the General was talking.

He had heard far too many Englishmen launch themselves, with an
ignorance almost sublime in its unconsciousness, upon the subject of
Irish politics to feel any dismay.

He was quite prepared to let General Levallois have his head.

But Valentine, it seemed, was not.

"Where is your home, in Ireland?" she enquired, shelving de Valera and
the General alike, by the directness of the enquiry and of the look that
she turned on her guest.

"My home, for a good many years past, has been in Paris. I came over
here two years before the war and lived in a flat in Fitzroy Square."

"With a studio," said Valentine, and he admired the deftness with which
she was making his exact standing in the London world clear to General
Levallois, to whom such classification would obviously be of relative,
although in this case not intrinsic, importance.

"How you must have hated leaving Paris. Though, two years before the
war, one didn't imagine what was going to happen to France."

"It's an extraordinary thing about the French----" said the General.

The French, so gently introduced by Valentine, slid into the place of
the Southern Irish.

Lonergan assented, dissented where it would obviously be easy for the
General to prove that his dissent was founded on inadequate knowledge,
and felt that he had known Coombe, and all that made up existence there,
for years.

It actually gave him a sense of shock when Primrose came into the hall,
at her most slouching pace, three minutes after dinner had been
announced.

What had she to do, he almost asked himself, with these surroundings?

She belonged to a background of Bloomsbury flats, always untidy and
generally dirty, hot and crowded bars--parties that reeked of smoke,
intellect, blasphemy, love-making--and the dark interiors of rattling
taxis and motor-cars.

Yet, except for her make-up, she did not really look out of place at
Coombe, he had to acknowledge it.

She still wore her dark-blue travelling-dress and, divorced from the
blue coat, it revealed itself as straight and simply-cut, with sleeves
that stopped short above the elbows and a collar of which she had pulled
down the zip fastener so as to show her long neck and small, delicate
collar-bones.

She looked once at Lonergan--it was a look that revealed nothing at all
beyond forcing him to observe that she never looked directly at anybody
else--and did not speak until they were seated, cold, and apprehensive
of further cold, in the dining-room.

"I thought there was a Captain Sedgewick," she said.

"Captain Sedgewick telephoned to say he wouldn't arrive much before nine
o'clock," Valentine said.

"He's gone to Plymouth," announced Jess. "Sorry I'm late." She slid into
her seat. "What were all those special exercises and things that all
your men were doing yesterday?" she asked Lonergan.

He replied, with a number of reservations, and was surprised by the
extent of her knowledge and understanding of the activities of some
portion at least of the British Army in war-time.

He liked Jess, and was pleased that she presently subsided and left the
conversation to her elders, with an absence of self-assertion that
Lonergan thought well suited to her youth. General Levallois looked at
the menu-card,--Good God, a menu-card, thought Lonergan whose views of
the catering at Coombe were already of the lowest description--muttered
something that was inaudible but clearly and deservedly uncomplimentary
about the cooking--and talked, to himself rather than to anybody else,
about the state of agriculture.

Lonergan was prepared to look as though he were listening and to make
all the necessary rejoinders, but he found that Valentine could give
what he recognized with some astonishment as being a genuine attention
to the General's monologue although from sheer lack of imagination he
made whatever he talked about seem uninteresting.

Once or twice Valentine appealed to Primrose, and once she brought the
conversation round to the London background with a direct question, but
she got no response.

Primrose let fall some sounds--they seemed hardly even to be
recognizable syllables--from the corner of her mouth and pushed her
plate away, the food on it left almost untouched.

"I can't hear a word you're saying, Primrose," remarked the General.
"Why don't you speak up?"

Primrose made no reply whatever and Valentine, speaking gaily, said:

"You're very difficult, Reggie dear. You tell Jess not to scream because
you can't hear a word she's saying, and now you tell poor Primrose to
speak up, for the same reason."

At that Primrose, for the first time, looked her mother full in the
face.

"For God's sake don't start standing up for me, there's nothing I loathe
more, or need less."

The sense of shock imposed by the tone in which she spoke, no less than
by the words themselves, kept them all silent for an ice-cold second.

Then Jess, in a high key, began an exclamatory "I must say----" checked
by her mother's low, distinct voice.

"Very well, Primrose darling," said Valentine--and there was even
something in her tone that hinted at a smile. "I won't stand up for you
if you'd rather I didn't." She turned her head towards Lonergan and went
on with exactly the same placidity.

"Why does one generation always accuse the next one of speaking
indistinctly? An ear-trumpet can't be the sole solution."

"I'd be sorry to think so," he agreed, with such lightness of tone as
her own had been. "Otherwise I'd be looking for an ear-trumpet myself.
Not that I believe people use them now, unless it's on the stage. My
poor sister Nellie, who's very deaf indeed, has a most peculiar little
invention."

He went on to describe it.

Valentine listened, commented, General Levallois asked in what part of
Ireland Lonergan's sister lived, and, on being told that it was in the
South, was immediately moved to put what he described as a question but
what was, in reality, an embittered series of condemnations.

The bad moment was over--averted. Lonergan could have told the precise
instant at which Valentine, gently unplaiting the fringes of her shawl
from the arm of her chair, let the tide of pain that Primrose had
loosed, rise within her. It was not a sharp, violent pain, he felt it
must be too familiar for that. Rather must it be the recurrence of some
deep-rooted misery that twisted in her heart and against which she had
long ceased to rebel because rebellion was so useless.

He wondered very much at the skill with which she had handled that
brief, intolerable minute of tension.

Was it just part of a social training that instinctively served her and
would always serve her, or was it one way of protecting herself from
facing a bitter truth? Did she always oppose the smooth, unreal
self-effacement of the super-civilized to the onslaught of real emotion?

"There's a great deal in what you say, sir," he assured the General. "At
the same time, Dev has done quite a lot for his own people according to
his lights. I could tell you of instances----"

He noticed, with a pleasure that he felt to be rather irrational,
that Valentine was not now seeking, as she had sought earlier in
the evening, to avert the General's foolish spate of assertions and
counter-assertions on the subject of Ireland.

She was leaving Lonergan to deal with them, taking for granted his
ability to do so without discomfiture to himself--for she would never,
he felt certain, run the risk of allowing a stranger to endure
discomfiture.

He and she, however, were most certainly not strangers.

On that conviction, Lonergan let his analysis of the situation rest
temporarily.

When dinner was over, and they had moved out of the cold dining-room to
the comparative warmth of the hall, Primrose said to him curtly:

"Have you seen the room that's supposed to be your office?"

"Yes. I saw it for a minute before dinner. It seems charming."

"The fire is laid there," said Valentine, "if you'd like to use it
to-night. Please do, if you want to."

"Thank you very much. Perhaps later on."

He found himself looking at her, gravely and with attention, and averted
his gaze with a conscious effort.

It met, for once squarely and fully, a look from Primrose who was
standing behind her mother.

She signalled to him, briefly and competently with a backward jerk of
the head, that he should seek the little breakfast-room now to be his
office, and that she would join him there.

Lonergan slightly shook his head. He gave her at the same time what he
himself had candidly described to more than one lady of his intimate
acquaintance as "a look that's as good as a declaration", with narrowed,
smiling eyes and an almost imperceptible movement of the lips.

He wished, at the moment, neither to humiliate her nor to let her think
that he had been antagonized by her behaviour at dinner.

It was not possible to tell how she reacted inwardly to his refusal. Her
face remained a mask, with its look of embittered discontent that gave
the impression of having been painted on.

But Primrose, he reflected, had the hard, genuine shrewdness of
disillusioned youth and showed sometimes an unexpected and disconcerting
degree of intuition.

"... late for the news," General Levallois was saying.

As Lonergan glanced at his watch, sure that it was a quarter of an hour
too early for the Nine O'Clock News, the old spaniel and the puppy both
broke into vehement barking, drowning the far-away jangle of the bell
just as it became audible.

The General shouted a command at the dogs and Jess, shouting also,
dominated all the clamour.

"I'll go!"

The spaniel flopped to the floor again, and the puppy pranced after
Jessica to the front door.

"It must be Captain Sedgewick," said Valentine, and she stood up.

Lonergan, rising also, saw rather than heard the words "My God!" forming
themselves on Primrose's lips.

She turned away and went through the door behind which, Lonergan knew
already, was the telephone.

He heard the faint tinkle indicating that she had lifted off the
receiver.

Valentine moved forward to meet the arrival. Jess could be heard talking
to him with friendly, effortless enthusiasm.

"What the devil makes people turn up just when one wants to be listening
to the news? Ought to have more sense," grumbled the General.

He looked across at Lonergan, who could almost see the thought, rising
slowly in his mind that, give the devil his due, this Irish fellow
hadn't done _that_.

With the nearest approach to cordiality that he had yet shown, General
Levallois remarked:

"I think I'll listen to it in my own den. I don't know whether you'd
care to come along--get out of this racket."

"Thanks very much indeed, sir, but I think perhaps, as Sedgewick knows
I'm here----"

"Ah," said the General, "there's something in that, I daresay."

He reached for his sticks and hobbled off, with a not unfriendly
"Good-night. Shan't be coming down again," and disappeared as the others
returned.

Captain Sedgewick, whose physical type so unfailingly suggested a fox to
Lonergan's imagination, was as cool, as unembarrassed and completely
self-assured as his superior officer had always seen him.

He was an excellent soldier, better liked by his men than by his brother
officers who knew him for a social climber.

A general conversation, polite and insignificant, followed.

Primrose made no return, until Valentine had offered to show Captain
Sedgewick his room.

"I had four hours' sleep last night, and none the night before," he
admitted, "so if I may, I'll say good-night. That is to say, unless you
wanted me for anything to-night, sir," he added, addressing Lonergan. "I
understand your office is here."

"I do not indeed. The office is still in the town; this is only an
unofficial office, so to say, that Lady Arbell has been kind enough to
put at my disposal up here."

The formality of his own speech rather amused Lonergan, inwardly. He
knew that had he been either alone with Sedgewick, or alone with
Valentine, he would have worded the phrase quite differently.

Unexpectedly, out of the blue, he felt himself seized by a sick
impatience, directed against himself and his eternal readiness to say
and to do the thing that was appropriate to the situation.

He wanted, suddenly and imperatively, simply to ask Valentine if she
wouldn't come downstairs again and talk to him.

"Jess, if you're going up to see Madeleine, darling, ask her if she'll
be kind and go through all Primrose's things to-morrow."

Valentine turned to Lonergan.

"I'll be down again presently, but you'll do just as you prefer about
going up to bed, or writing or anything, won't you?"

"Thank you."

Jess said okay, cried a general good-night to everyone and stooped to
pick up her dog.

It took her a long while to adjust aunt Sophy to any degree of
submissive tranquillity and Lonergan watched her with unreflective
amusement.

When at last she went up the curving stairway, he took out a cigarette
and stood looking round for a spill.

Primrose, with her thick coat drawn on over her blue frock, was suddenly
there, coming towards him--and Lonergan was actually startled as though
she were someone from another world.

So, indeed, she was, but on the heels of that thought there came, clear
and complete as the statement of a mathematical problem, his realization
of the inevitable, complicated and difficult adjustment towards which
they were moving.

The sound of her very first words told him that she was angry.

"It's been one hell of a lovely evening, hasn't it? What the devil's the
matter with you, Rory?"

"I'm not sure."

If she wants a show-down, let her have it, he thought, making himself
deliberately callous.

"Well, if you're not, I am. You're shocked, like the sentimentalist you
are, because I'm what I really feel with mummie instead of putting on an
act for your benefit."

"I don't want you to put on an act for my benefit, and you know it. The
best thing about you is that you're honest, as I've told you before."

"Then what's the matter? What did you come here for, if you don't want
to spend the time with me when we've got the chance?"

"I don't see how I'm to make love to you, under your mother's own roof,
when I'm here as her guest."

He felt ashamed of himself as he put forward his excuse, factually so
well grounded and in reality so false.

"My God, Rory, you didn't say that in London. Things haven't changed,
since then."

But they had--only he couldn't tell her so.

"Primrose," he said slowly, "obviously you think I'm the world's cad,
and I'm fairly sure you're right."

He stopped, for once uncertain how to continue. She looked at him
scornfully.

"I see. You've found somebody else. It would have been more decent to
say so before you brought me down here on a fool's errand. However, you
needn't worry, I can take it."

He noticed, with a horrid compunction, that two dark shadows had
suddenly sprung into life beneath her angry, contemptuous eyes and that
behind the contempt there was real pain.

"Oh, God--Primrose!"

Unable to bear it, he pulled her into his arms.

She pressed against him, her anger disappeared.

"Darling, don't be such a fool. Why, in God's name, will you always mix
up love with all this sentimental, romantic bloody nonsense of yours?"

He could have answered that--had, indeed, answered it before--but it
would be of no use.

Instead, he made the only answer she wanted or would understand and
kissed her hard and passionately, giving her love as she knew and
desired it and himself moved by the instantaneousness of her response.

"I don't give a damn, really, if you have got another girl," she
muttered. "This is all that matters."

Lonergan held her close and kissed her again, hating and despising
himself.

"Was that why you wouldn't come into the breakfast-room this evening?"

"What?"

"Because you've started a thing with somebody else?"

"I haven't."

She drew back, honestly bewildered.

"Then what the hell----"

"What I said. I don't see how I can make love to you here," he repeated
doggedly.

"But I've _told_ you it's all right! No one's going to worry. My room is
at the far end of the passage from yours--the last door on the left--and
there's no one anywhere near. Anyhow, nobody dreams of stirring out of
their rooms after eleven o'clock in this house."

He stared at her without finding a word to utter.

"Rory--my sweet----"

"In the name of God, child, don't go on like that! It's no good. I ought
never to have come here."

He found the sweat breaking out on his forehead as he loosed his hold of
her.

Primrose said incredulously:

"D'you mean you're not coming to me to-night?"

"I've told you I'm not."

Primrose was silent for a moment, looking at him, then she said, in the
curt, slashing tones that she affected under the stress of anger or
disconcertment:

"Thanks for the flowers, darling. And next time, when you've got over
your panic, don't bother to come and explain things to me, because you
won't find me."

There was the sound of footfalls coming down the stairs.

"Primrose--will you please let me talk to you to-morrow?"

"I shouldn't think so."

"Please, darling."

"I'm not like you. I think all this talking is idiotic and gets people
just nowhere."

Valentine reached the bottom step.

"Jess and Madeleine are listening-in to a dance band in Madeleine's
room. Madeleine was my mother's French maid, years ago," Valentine said,
addressing Lonergan.

"So what?" drawled Primrose, and without further word she, in her turn,
went up the stairs, leaving Valentine and Rory Lonergan alone by the
fire in the hall.

They were both silent, Valentine stirring a log on the hearth with her
foot, Lonergan motionless, seeking to fight down the sense of extreme
discomfiture left by his scene with Primrose, and to establish within
himself some kind of mental and emotional equilibrium.

He could not have told how long they had stood, speechless, when it
occurred to him that Valentine, too, had found readjustment necessary.
The atmosphere of hostility that Primrose's last words had created could
hardly have failed to move her mother painfully.

Lonergan felt very sorry. On an impulse to do something for her, he
pushed one of the armchairs nearer the fire.

"Will you not sit down and stay for a little while?" he asked gently.

She smiled and seated herself, and Lonergan took the chair opposite.

He was taken by surprise when she said with a simplicity that added
dignity to her directness:

"Did you know that we were going to meet again?"

"Not until this evening, just before I got here. I'd only heard your
married name and it didn't convey anything to me. Did you know?"

"When I heard that an Irish colonel called Lonergan might be coming, I
felt that it might probably be you. And then Jess heard your first name,
and I knew."

"It's curious."

"Very," she assented.

"Do you know that you've altered very little?" he said. "I don't mean
that I'd have known you anywhere, as the saying goes, but that,
essentially, you've kept so much of the girl I used to see in the Pincio
Gardens."

"Essentially, I suppose I have. I often feel that I'm still almost as
immature as I was then. It's a silly thing to say about a woman of
forty-four, but it's true, I think."

"Yes," said Lonergan. "It's what I meant. Is that impertinent of me?"

She shook her head.

"Tell me about yourself. You've not stayed immature, at all events,
although in appearance you've altered less than I have. That's
astonishing. Did you go on painting?"

"I did, after a fashion. But the war of 1914 was an interruption, and
then I went home to Ireland for a bit and did no good there, and after
my mother died I left my sister Nellie--who was predestined for an old
maid--to look after my father, and went to Paris. I'm just not good
enough, you know, though I've been able to make a living with
illustration work, and drawing for various papers, and an occasional
portrait."

"And now you're in the Army again."

"Believe you me, that's no hardship. The war came at the very moment
when I was sick of Paris, sick of France, sick of myself--only looking
for an excuse to turn my back on the whole thing."

"So it came when you needed it."

"It did."

Lonergan allowed no hesitation to interfere with the sound of finality
in his short answer, yet he felt himself to be on the verge of adding to
it with an admission as unnecessary as it might prove unwise.

He had decided on silence when Valentine's next words shattered his
determination.

"Have you ever married?"

"I have not. But it came to the same thing. We lived together for ten
years, till she died, in 1934. She was French."

Having said it, Lonergan felt apprehensive. What comment could she
conceivably make on so extraordinary, so premature a confidence? Almost
anything she said must be wrong, and it would be he who had forced
inadequacy upon her.

Valentine spoke.

"Were they terribly happy years?"

"Ah, you're wonderful! That was the one right thing you could have
said!" he exclaimed with a rush of spontaneous delight that gave him no
time to choose his words. "They were happy. She was very lovely. We used
to fight, and have terrible rows, but it was a good relationship, and
she was perfect in so many ways."

"I'd like you to tell me," said Valentine.

She sat leaning forward, her serious face, with its curiously childlike
look of innocence, supported on her hand.

Lonergan caught his breath.

"I'd like to tell you," he said.




V


Looking into the fire away from Valentine, he spoke, hesitatingly at
first.

"It's difficult to begin. You see, it's hard to make you understand what
she was like. (Her name was Laurence, by the way.) I should imagine that
you've never come very much across the kind of French people that she
belonged to, however much you've lived abroad. French provincial
_bourgeoisie_, keeping themselves to themselves, in a little close
circle of relations and old family friends.... The father had a job with
one of those big firms that used to import wines. He wasn't a partner,
nor anything like that, but he was important, in his own way. They'd a
house at Saumur--one of those tall, pink, narrow houses with a garden at
the back that ran down to the river and a _tonnelle_ where they always
had their meals in summer."

Lonergan paused; conscious of confusion, laughing a little.

"The way I'm going on--It's because I'm finding it difficult to describe
Laurence to you."

Valentine helped him.

"Where did you meet her?"

He threw her a look of gratitude.

"In her own home. It was when I was doing a whole lot of sketches of
provincial France for a newspaper, and they sent me down to the Loire
country. One of the introductions they gave me was to Monsieur Houlvain,
and I went to his office in Saumur. He was a nice old friendly chap. I
don't think he'd have asked me to the house, if I'd been an Englishman
and a Protestant instead of an Irish Catholic. But he invited me there
for a Sunday _djeuner_ and off I went, little knowing what awaited me."

He recaptured, for a fleeting, unexpected instant, the blinding
heat-haze of the long-ago July morning when he had walked the streets
of Saumur, looking for the house of Monsieur Houlvain--_le numro
dix-huit_.

"A holy show I made of myself, that day! For some reason I couldn't find
the house, and it was a scorching hot morning and I arrived late, and
then I was only wearing some old shabby clothes I'd been walking in, and
Madame Houlvain was all in black satin and a white collar, and monsieur
in a new alpaca coat. I don't suppose he'd put it on in my honour, but
it made me feel what kind of a mannerless lout was I, not to have taken
a bit more trouble to look decent. They were rather ceremonious, too, to
start with. You know how French people are."

Valentine assented.

"Laurence didn't come in till the _djeuner_ was ready. I imagine she'd
been cooking it, and a nice time of it she must have had with everything
getting spoilt because I'd not arrived. I didn't fall for her straight
away, though I thought her extraordinarily pretty--she'd dark hair and
eyes, and that sort of dead-white skin, and she was slim and rather
tall, with good bones. Her forehead was lovely--I honestly can only
think of one word that could ever describe the kind of breadth and
purity of it, with dark thin eyebrows and very deep dark eyes
underneath--and that's luminous. She had that quality, and it was all in
that beautiful wide brow."

"How old was she?"

"Twenty-one. Nine years younger than I was. Well, you know what it's
like in a French family. She never batted an eyelid all through lunch.
Monsieur laid down the law a bit about politics, and madame asked
questions about what I was doing, and told me which were the best
restaurants in practically every town in the Loire country. And they
asked about Ireland, and we agreed that the English were difficult for
the more civilized races to understand. Am I being very rude?"

"I don't think so. We are uncivilized, compared with the French. I'm
not quite so sure about the Irish, but then I've never been to Ireland."

"Well," said Lonergan, "I don't know that I'm quite so sure myself,
nowadays. But anyway, I agreed with monsieur. I daresay I'd have agreed
with whatever he said. It was my idea of the way to make myself
agreeable, I suppose."

He broke off abruptly.

"I'm making this story too long. It was all very simple, really. I did
the sketches, going down the river, and then I went back to Saumur to
finish them off because I'd liked the town; and I wanted to see the
_cadre noir_, and Monsieur Houlvain had said he could take me there.

"He and madame were very kind to me--I saw a lot of them, off and
on--and Laurence and I fell in love. We thought it wouldn't be any use,
I was a foreigner, and hadn't any money except what I earned, and
anyway, who wants their daughter to marry an artist?"

Lonergan fell silent.

Valentine asked:

"Was she their only child?"

"There was a son, doing his _service militaire_, and an older daughter,
married. And there was a _parti_ being arranged for Laurence. They still
do that, in provincial France--or they did then. No compulsion, exactly,
but the whole of the families talking it over--uncles and aunts, and a
couple of priests, and the married ones and their husbands and wives.
Laurence told me she liked the boy, and she'd been quite ready to say
she'd marry him until she met me. We were crazy about one another. I'd
decided long ago I wasn't ever going to marry--domesticity has never
appealed to me, nor fidelity either for that matter, and I knew I'd be
no sort of a husband for any woman, let alone a girl of twenty-one. But
I had to ask Laurence to marry me. I was mad about her, and I thought
I'd never get her any other way."

Again Lonergan was silent, and this time it was a little while before he
spoke again.

"It's hard to make the next bit clear. But what happened was that
Laurence told me she'd come and live with me in Paris, and not marry me.

"She knew I didn't want marriage. That was the thing about Laurence--she
understood and accepted things that were quite outside her own
tradition.

"I didn't know what to do. Or perhaps I did, and couldn't bring myself
to do it. There was a terrible, mad, muddled week when I told monsieur
I'd fallen in love with his daughter and he assured me that he was very
sorry but she was already promised, and madame gave me a lot of good
advice of which the whole point was that I must go back to Paris at once
and not see Laurence again, and Laurence and I said goodbye in the
_tonnelle_, and I told her it wasn't any good, she was too young and I
couldn't ruin her life for her. Even if we were to marry, it would mean
breaking with her family--her mother'd made that quite clear--and I
couldn't afford to keep a wife.

"I can see her now--the little, poor child--with the tears streaming
down her face, telling me that she wasn't too young--she knew what she
wanted. I don't know how I ever left her.

"I went back to Paris and I thought, God forgive me, I'd forget her in
time, the way I'd forgotten other girls before. But I found I didn't.
And one day, about two months after I got back, I had a telegram asking
me to meet her train that same afternoon--she was coming to Paris.

"From their point of view monsieur and madame had made the most idiotic
mistake they could have made. They'd tried to rush her into this
marriage, and she'd got angry and told them she wouldn't be persecuted
and there'd been some terrible rows and one day she couldn't bear it any
more and just packed a bag and walked out of the house without a word
to anyone. The trust she showed--the courage--coming to me like that,
never having had a word or a line from me since I'd left Saumur--I'll
never forget it."

A log, burnt through, fell with a soft crash into the bed of white ash
on the hearth and Valentine stirred to replace it by another one.

Then she said:

"Go on."

"Will I? You've a lot of patience. We didn't ever marry--neither of us
wanted it. We didn't want children, either. Does that seem to you
extraordinary?"

He saw from her face that she was surprised, and wondered whether it was
because she found such an attitude of mind regrettable, or
incomprehensible, or because it surprised her that he should have put it
into words.

When she spoke, slowly and as though she had never before expressed what
she felt on this matter, he saw that he had been mistaken.

All that surprised her was they should think so much alike.

"It doesn't seem at all extraordinary. I don't know that I'd quite
realized before--but I feel like that about it, too. I mean--a really
perfect companionship would be interfered with, wouldn't it, if there
were children?"

"Of course."

"For anything less than the best," she said, with a timidity that
touched him deeply, "I think children would be a great help. They take
up such a lot of time and thought."

So that's been your life, thought Lonergan. Aloud he said:

"Laurence and I never meant to have Arlette. It was a mistake. She
wanted to stop it, but I was afraid of the risk for her. We fought over
that like blazes, and while we were still fighting, it was too late. It
would have been too impossibly dangerous, even if we'd had the money."

"But did you have a child, then?"

"We did. Laurence was nearly as upset about it as I was and she swore it
shouldn't ever make any difference."

"Did it?"

"It did, a little. That was inevitable, in a tiny _appartement_ that had
one and a half rooms and a studio. When I was making more money, and
Arlette was old enough, she went to the convent every day and she was
very good from the start, and didn't give us much trouble. She was eight
when Laurence died, and the nuns took her as a boarder. They kept her
through the holidays--it's quite often like that in France, as you
probably know."

"Yes. Then where is Arlette now?"

"Well, she's in Ireland, of all things. I had to get her out of France
somehow, when the war started. I don't need to tell you that my family
never knew of her existence, and I'd the work of the world deciding what
I'd tell my poor old sister Nellie. I wrote her a letter in the end, and
asked her to talk it over with Father Conroy, her confessor, who has
sense--and I said the child's mother was dead and that Arlette had been
brought up by the holy nuns and I wanted her in a Catholic atmosphere
where I knew she'd be taken care of. I put in a lot of old cod, too,
about her being the innocent result of something that had happened long
ago in my youth. I felt disloyal to Laurence when I said that, well
knowing that Nellie would think it was a terrible mortal sin I'd
committed and repented of, please God. She did, too. I'd pages from her
afterwards. But she sent me a telegram, almost directly after she got my
first letter, telling me I could send Arlette to her. She's there still,
the poor child, with Nellie and old Maggie Dolan, in the wilds of
Roscommon."

"Is she happy there?"

"I think so. And poor old Nellie, who's been all by herself since father
died, is devoted to her. I got over there once, in the beginning of
nineteen forty, and saw them. It seemed to be working all right. When
all this is over, if I'm still living, I'll have Arlette with me."

"Is she like Laurence?"

"Not a bit. She's like her grandmother--old Madame Houlvain. Tough and
small and dark--you'd never mistake her for anything but what she is--a
nice little girl of the French _bourgeoisie_. The only way she's
different is in having a good brain. She's extremely intelligent. The
funny thing is, I wasn't interested in her at all till the last year.
And now I am. And I was touched, when I went over to Ireland, and she
was so madly pleased to see me. Of course, she was in a nation of
strangers and I was part of the only life she'd known. But I got a much
deeper feeling of responsibility about her then. I'm afraid I'd never
really felt it before--except that I'd got to make the money to pay her
convent bills."

"I didn't think of you as having children, or a child. I thought you'd
have married, though."

"To all intents and purposes Laurence and I were married. I felt the
same obligations. I loved her--I wasn't always faithful to her, God
forgive me--I could never have left her."

"I understand," Valentine said. "Why did she die? She must have been
very young."

"She was thirty-one. It was in the autumn of nineteen thirty-four. She
got pneumonia, and died in ten days."

"Perhaps," said Valentine slowly, "she'd known only the best things. I
don't mean just happiness, but all the things--real pain, and hard work,
and----" She stopped, and then went on speaking very diffidently. "You
did say you and she had fought over things. I may be talking of what I
know nothing about, but I've sometimes thought that to care enough to
quarrel--not just bickering but a serious quarrel--and still want to
stay together, must mean a really vital relationship."

"How right you are!"

Lonergan looked at her, drawn back from his world of Laurence and the
Paris flat that was only one and a half rooms and a studio, and the pink
house at Saumur, and even the little dark French girl over in Ireland.
He was in the world to which Valentine belonged, and a strange survival
of a world it seemed to him--an islet upon which the tide of destruction
was swiftly and surely advancing, impelled now by the forces of war but
inevitably due to come, war or no war.

His thoughts veered rapidly to Valentine herself.

"How good you are, to have let me go on and on, telling you all this!
Have I tired you out?"

"No. I wanted to hear."

In the silence that followed Lonergan knew that, into her mind as into
his, had come the remembrance of the two children they had once been,
making love in the Pincio Gardens by a broken fountain.

"You didn't altogether forget, then. I mean that time in Rome?"

"I know what you mean. I did, and I didn't. There have been years during
which I never thought about it at all, if that's forgetting--and yet
every now and then I've got back the--the atmosphere of those afternoons
and----"

She left a blank to complete the sentence, not, he thought, as though
the word she wanted had eluded her but of deliberate intention. With all
her poise, all the finished social technique that belonged to her class
and her upbringing and was in her so highly developed, he found in
Valentine the delicate shyness of a young--a very gracefully
young--girl.

"It's been like that with me too," he told her. "I've forgotten for
years at a time, and I've turned into quite another person since then,
so that I can't even always remember what I was like, or what I thought
I was like, in those days--but it used to come back to life with me too,
sometimes. And when I saw you this afternoon, I remembered you
perfectly. I think that was a queer thing, too."

"Yes."

"How simply you say 'Yes' as though it didn't surprise you at all, and
you'd felt just the same."

"Oh, but I did," Valentine answered.

The gentle, candid manner in which she made the admission dumbfounded
him completely.

He thought: "It's no good. I'm in love with her. I adore her." And
following on the conviction came its graceless, inevitable concomitant:
"God, what a muddle! What a complicated, god-damned muddle!"

A clock chimed, startlingly audible in the silence, and Valentine said:

"It's late. Did you mean to do any work to-night?"

"No. I wanted to talk with you. When you went up to show Sedgewick his
room, I was afraid you mightn't come down again. I was terrified you
wouldn't."

"But I wanted to," returned Valentine, and he thought how far removed
was the quiet, considered way in which she said it from the quality, to
him detestable, implied in the odious word "coquettish".

"I've talked to you a lot about myself, and you've listened so
graciously--won't you tell me a little about what's happened to you,
since the time in Rome?"

"In terms of actual happening, very little, and what there was, all came
quite close together--between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one,
really. When the war started my father sent my mother and me back to
London and we took a flat in Sloane Street. It seems absurd now, but in
spite of the war I came out in the way girls did then--one had to be
presented at a Royal garden-party instead of at a drawing-room and so
on--and I did some very casual war work that really only meant getting
to know other girls."

Lonergan noticed her old-fashioned, oddly elegant pronunciation of the
word and smiled at it.

She smiled back, in a shy, friendly way as though she understood what
had amused and perhaps pleased him.

"I think my mother was afraid of my being at a disadvantage, because of
having lived abroad so much. But all our relations were very kind and
everyone was giving informal dances and parties, that were supposed to
be for men home on leave, from the Front. I expect I had more fun,
really, than I should have had before the war, doing the London season
properly. Every girl I ever knew seems to have hated her first season."

"You know," said Lonergan, "that you're talking about a world of which I
know absolutely nothing whatever? I don't mean--I've no need to tell
you--that I'm not interested. But my own origin is so completely
different--middle-class Irish. I know nothing whatever about the kind of
background you're describing. Forgive me. I didn't want to interrupt
you. Please go on. Were you happy, going to the dances and parties?"

"I was very young for my age. I think perhaps very young people aren't
really happy but they always think that one day they're going to be. I
used to feel quite certain that happiness of some marvellous kind must
be waiting for me just round the corner."

"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
straightforward 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 mild 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
ell."

"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.

Then, her thoughts coming round again in a circle, she let herself
remember the previous evening and her own happiness of the morning.

She knew that she had not been mistaken as to the atmosphere of mutual
understanding, and even tenderness, in which their long conversation had
taken place.

But one might easily be mistaken as to its ultimate significance. Rory
Lonergan could have been rendered happy, as she had been herself, by the
warmth of the sympathy between them and that faint, romantic, shared
memory of the Pincio Gardens, and it might all have meant no more to him
than that.

Valentine had never believed herself to be capable of inspiring passion,
but she believed Primrose to be so. And Primrose was young, and men had
thought her beautiful before--her arrogant self-assurance, so obviously
based upon experiences of a rock-like reality, had long ago convinced
her mother of that. She could not have said when nor even why she had
first felt certain that Primrose was no longer inexperienced in the ways
of passionate love--but the certainty was there.

       *       *       *       *       *

Valentine drew up the car in front of the portico. She left it there for
Jess to put away.

The General slowly climbed out backwards. In the hall, he rang the bell.
If the weather made it in any way possible he always walked up and down
the terrace, round the garden and into the walled kitchen garden every
Sunday morning on his return from church, leaning on Madeleine's arm.

The bell was his summons to Madeleine.

Madeleine never grumbled or protested whatever the demands made upon
her.

She loved them all, and she had lived with the Levallois family in the
old days.

She must have grown used to it all, Valentine felt, even to her curious,
recluse existence at Coombe where she would have nothing to do with the
other servants, always declaring herself unable to understand a word of
English, and carrying her own meals up to her sitting-room, to be eaten
in solitude.

She came into the hall now, muffled as though for an Arctic expedition
in black-and-white check coat, ancient feather boa, shiny kid gloves,
pointed black boots in goloshes and black felt hat with the brim pulled
down over her eyes.

The clumps of her thickly-henna'd hair were visible under the hat. For
some reason that Valentine had never analysed, the artificial colour was
not out of keeping with the shrewd kindliness of Madeleine's pale, round
face and of her large brown eyes, brilliant as diamonds.

"Bonjour, Madeleine."

"Bonjour, madame."

Valentine and the General, Jess and Primrose, always talked with
Madeleine in her own language.

She spoke eagerly now of _messieurs les officiers_ and said that she had
met Colonel Lonergan on the stairs and that he had spoken to her in
French that she characterized as perfect.

She had also seen the young Captain, and thought him _trs gentil_,
although he had said nothing. He probably knew no French and was less
_homme du monde_ than his superior officer, said Madeleine, but she was
glad of his presence, which would amuse Mademoiselle Jess.

"So long as she's here, but she may be called up any day."

"Alas, madame!"

The General enquired whether Primrose was downstairs yet, and Madeleine,
with a subtle change of tone to which Valentine was well accustomed,
replied that she was not.

"Well, we don't wait luncheon for anyone," declared the General. "Come
on, now, Madeleine--the best of the day'll be over."

Madeleine took one of his sticks--a privilege accorded to nobody
else--and substituted her own sturdy arm.

They disappeared slowly through the garden door.

Valentine, moving scarcely less slowly, went over to the fire which the
maids had as usual neglected to make up, so that it had sunk to red
embers on a small bed of wood-ash.

She put on more logs and, kneeling down, began to blow upon the sparks
with the bellows.

Her mind was dwelling once again on Lonergan's story of his life in
France with Laurence, and on what he had said about Arlette.

"... I wasn't interested in her at all till the last year. And now I
am.... When all this is over, if I'm still living, I'll have Arlette
with me."

All the things that had conditioned his life were things of which she
knew practically nothing--his work as an artist, his relationship to
Laurence, his belated affection and sense of responsibility towards
their child, even his Army career--at best, if he chose to talk to her
of them she could enter into his descriptions sympathetically but that
was all.

Other people, of whose very names she was ignorant, had shared his
experiences with him and had helped to build up the background of past
associations that made up so large a part of every life.

She turned her mind for a moment towards the future but, in the midst of
war, there could be no escape there. To live from day to day was the
only possibility, so far as personal problems were concerned. She
reminded herself, without much sense of reality, that Rory Lonergan was
as likely as any other man in the Forces to lose his life before the end
of the war.

At length her thoughts stopped, where she had known they must, at the
immediate present.

Was she to watch a love-affair develop between Primrose and Lonergan?

After all, Valentine told herself, it couldn't prove to be an
unendurable situation. Her own romantic illusion had been based on a
single evening and could have thrown out no indestructible roots.

Primrose was her child and she had always wanted, and still wanted,
happiness for her. She had even believed that happiness might make
Primrose normal and simple and kind, and it had seemed to her that no
price could be too high to pay for that.

I never thought it might come like this though, Valentine reflected, and
a dark shadow of misery and uncertainty seemed to settle down upon her
spirit.

She started violently at the sudden noise made by Jess returned from her
walk.

"Mummie, this is frightfully important. I want to ask you something."

"What, my precious?"

Jess, at least, never resented or sneered at terms of endearment even if
she never made use of them herself.

"Well, look, we've got all these officers coming for tea and they'll be
staying on for supper, and I don't suppose I'll be at home after about
another week or something, for the rest of the duration, so couldn't we
possibly, just for once, make a party of it and scrape up some drink for
them? Isn't there anything at all in the cellar?"

"I think there must be," said Valentine, touched. "Anyhow, there's a
bottle of sherry left in the wine cooler, and we'll open that, Jess, and
have it in before supper."

"Gosh, that'll be Heaven. And I could not take any, if that'd make it go
round better. Actually, I loathe the taste of it unless I mix it with
water."

"I don't think you'd better let uncle Reggie see you mixing it with
water."

"Would he go bats or something? It'd be rather fun to try, in a way.
Thanks terrifically, mummie."

"Just tell me how many there'll be."

"Buster and a friend who I don't know the name of, and Captain
Sedgewick--he definitely wants to be called Charles, by the way--and I
suppose Colonel Lonergan if he's not too grand?"

"I'm sure he's not. Jess--do you like him?"

"Oh, I think he's divine. He's just Irish enough, isn't he? I mean, I'd
have had a definite pain if he'd been after saying Begorrah all day
long, like Irish people on the films."

Valentine laughed.

"I don't believe anybody ever says it at all, off the films."

"Oh, the films wouldn't have it unless _somebody_ did. They're
frightfully realistic and careful about things like that," Jess
asserted. "Prob'ly it's said like anything in some part of Ireland that
Colonel Lonergan doesn't come from. I'm glad he'll be here this evening.
It'll suit Primrose fine."

"I suppose it will."

"Well, she's sure to despise all the others, isn't she? I think Primrose
is too terribly like a camel, when she pulls down the corner of her
mouth. I wish I could do it. I've often tried, but I never can."

"My dear, do you really want to look like a camel?"

"Well, mummie, you can't say it doesn't get one somewhere. Look at
Primrose! People ringing her up all the evening, and now a Colonel
falling for her!"

Valentine gazed at Jess in silence.

"Mummie, you look awfully as if you thought I was the Brains Trust or
something. Is there anything wrong with me?"

"No darling. Nothing at all."




VII


Captain Charles Sedgewick, returning from Headquarters four miles away
in the market town late that afternoon, deduced from the battered
motor-cycle standing before the door of Coombe that Banks and his friend
had arrived.

He went round the house and in at the garden door--that was, he had
discovered, always left open--and up to his room without entering the
hall.

He could hear the little girl, Jess, laughing.

He was a young man who tabulated his impressions of people carefully and
he had summed Jess up as a nice kid, unaffected and a good sort, not
likely to set the Thames on fire unless she made an unexpectedly
brilliant marriage. She might do so, at that, thought Charles Sedgewick,
slamming down the heavy window-sash in his unwarmed bedroom.

Where Jess fell in love, she would almost certainly marry, and where she
fell in love would depend entirely on where she happened to be. He knew
already that she was niece to Lady Rockingham, and "People of that
sort," he said to himself, "are a regular trades union. Wherever she's
stationed with the WAAF, she'll get invitations to her own kind of
house. I only hope, poor kid, they won't be as damned uncomfortable as
this one is."

There was no rancour in the thought.

Charles Sedgewick despised dependence on creature comforts. He never
smoked, seldom drank, and had won a mention in despatches on the beach
at Dunkirk.

His widowed mother's suburban house had exactly the kind of cosiness
that he most disliked and to which, before the war, he had so much
preferred a dingy bedroom in the Strand from which he could daily walk
to the Bank where he worked. His sentimental mother's plea that Charlie
was all she had in the world and that they ought to make a home for one
another until he should marry some nice girl, had not moved him the
least.

He was kind and often affectionate to her, wrote to her frequently, had
himself photographed in uniform to please her, and spent most of his
leaves at _Dunroamin_, coldly civil to her circle of Bridge-playing,
grievance-mongering and domestically-minded ladies of middle age.

As for the nice girl that his mother thought she wanted him to marry,
Sedgewick had no intention whatever of getting married, least of all to
the type of girl his mother called "nice".

It would be difficult enough to live at all after the war, should he
survive it, without being saddled with a wife.

With quiet regularity, when on leave he visited the more expensive of
the London brothels.

Capable, energetic and with a cast-iron self-confidence, Sedgewick
applied himself to his soldiering and made the most of every opportunity
that came in his way.

He was pleased to be at Coombe, in the same billet as his Colonel and
with a family that he had at once classified as "the real thing".

As he pulled off his boots, washed his hands and sleeked his smooth,
straight red hair close to his narrow head, he wondered what the elder
daughter was like.

He had guessed, from references made by Jess, that she was not of the
unsophisticated "county" type. She was three- or four-and-twenty, and
had been living an independent existence in London.

On Lady Arbell he wasted no thoughts at all. She was as completely
unreal to him as he probably was to her.

They would merely exchange the polite spoken symbols of civilization
current between two people belonging to different generations and,
indeed, different worlds.

He went downstairs and found the two subalterns--Banks and a stocky
North Country youth called Jack Olliver--playing spillikins at a round
table in the hall with Jess, her mother and Colonel Lonergan.

Lady Arbell looked up at him and smiled, enquiring whether he had had
any tea.

Jess and the subalterns, evidently on the friendliest terms already,
were loudly disputing over the heaped-up slivers of white bone.

"I had a cup of tea in the town, thank you."

Sedgewick's extremely observant eye had already discerned that the other
daughter, Primrose, was downstairs too. She was sitting in an armchair
with her back to the players, and Sedgewick could only see the top of a
pale blonde head and two long and well-shaped legs with sandalled feet
resting on the hearth.

"Primrose, I don't think you've met Captain Sedgewick," said her mother.

The blonde head turned and Primrose, scarcely moving, looked round the
chair-back.

Her mouth twisted to one side and she made a sound that scarcely
amounted to a spoken word.

Sedgewick thought: "She's like someone on the stage, playing a Society
girl."

He moved over and sat down opposite to her.

"Come in on the next game, Charles," amiably shouted Jessica.

"Okay. Thanks, I will."

"You don't have to," remarked Primrose--and this time he could hear what
she said.

"I like spillikins. Don't you?"

"Not particularly. Why should one?"

"To test the steadiness of one's hand, perhaps," Sedgewick suggested.

He was not interested in what she might be saying, even as an indication
of her personality. He was thinking of her looks, of her figure and her
long legs and flat, narrow hips, and of her air of arrogant discontent.

She wasn't at all like Jess or her mother. Her bad manners, he decided,
were just a pose, probably intended to show how different she was.

They neither pleased nor displeased him. So long as a girl had poise,
and was well-turned-out and confident of her own power to attract men,
Charles Sedgewick was perfectly ready to be attracted. He had hoped,
from the beginning, that one or other of the girls at Coombe might
interest him.

Cries and exclamations came from the players at the round table.

"Buster! The whole pile _rocked_! I saw it."

"Come on, then. See what you can do."

"Steady.... That little hooked one is your best chance.... The Colonel's
left it all ready for you.... Look out--don't move----"

"You _blew_ on it, you cad!"

"I swear I didn't."

Primrose said:

"How do you like being stationed down here?"

"It's okay. Devon's new to me."

"What's your own part of the world?"

"London."

"Me too."

"Now then, sir--you've a clear run."

"I have not, then. I'll need a hand like a rock."

"That one moved!"

"Two of them moved."

"Most of them did. Lady Arbell, I've done all the spade-work for you
now."

"You drive a van or something, don't you?" Sedgewick asked Primrose.

"That's right. What I don't know about London Bridge in the blitz is
nobody's business."

"One or two noisy moments, no doubt."

"I'll say so. Have you been mixed up in any of the bomb racket?"

"Not I. This is a civilians' war," Sedgewick answered carelessly.

He had no intention of telling her that he had been at the Dunkirk
evacuation. For one thing he disliked talking about it, and for another
he was perfectly well aware that she would neither be, nor pretend to
be, in the least interested.

"Go for that one at the corner and you ought to get the lot."

"Keep your head, now, Jess."

"You're putting me off...!"

There was a shriek from Jess, and laughter and scuffling from the
subalterns.

"I _swear_ I've won!" Jess cried earnestly. "Haven't I, Colonel
Lonergan? Don't listen to Buster and Jack, they're not speaking the
truth."

"The Children's Hour," said Primrose.

"Come on, Charles," Jess cried. "Or shall we try something else? I'll
tell you what--let's play Racing Demon!"

Banks and Olliver were loud in their acclamations at this suggestion.

"This table won't be large enough, though. Shall we go into the
dining-room?"

"No," said Lady Arbell, "it's too cold, and besides, I think Ivy laid
the table before she went out. Four of you can play at this table all
right."

She got up and moved towards the fire.

"Take my place, Captain Sedgewick. If you like Racing Demon?"

"It's my favourite sport."

"Play instead of me, Lady Arbell," urged Jack Olliver.

Jess interposed.

"It's all right. Mummie really isn't a Racing Demon fan. She almost
always loses, because she has a complex about manners."

"You can't afford manners for Racing Demon," agreed Colonel Lonergan. He
smiled at his hostess.

Jess went to a cupboard, pulled out a drawer and produced several
battered packs of cards.

Sedgewick looked at Primrose.

"Playing?" he asked.

She shook her head.

He went over to the table, and Lonergan at the same moment got up from
his chair.

Sedgewick sketched a polite protest.

"All right, Charles. You carry on."

The Colonel, like Lady Arbell, had moved over to the fire.

He was standing, looking down at his hostess.

Jess and the subalterns were flicking over the cards, counting the
number in each dog's-eared and discoloured pack, and explaining to one
another the rules by which the game should be played.

Charles Sedgewick, lightly stroking his small red moustache, looked from
Jess to her sister, from Primrose to the man and woman over the
fire,--so much older--of whom one was his superior officer and the other
a slender, faded creature with greying hair, into whose house the
fortune of war had taken him.

He heard her say to the Colonel:

"Do go and write in peace in the breakfast-room, the noise in here will
be ear-splitting in another minute."

"I've been writing most of the day. I was wondering if you'd care to
come and listen to the Six O'Clock News. I've a grand fire in there."

Lady Arbell looked across at her daughter.

"I've one or two things to see to before supper. I think I'll wait for
the news till nine. I daresay Primrose would find it warmer in there.
Your batman makes a much better fire than my house-parlour-maid does."

Primrose remained without stirring.

Lonergan, after waiting a moment, went by himself into his new office.

"Ready?" cried Jess. "Does everybody understand everything? Charles,
you'd better keep the score, and mind you don't cheat."

She thrust paper and pencil at him.

Primrose slouched out of the hall, up the stairs.

       *       *       *       *       *

These people knew how to make one feel perfectly at home and natural.
Sedgewick would hand them that, he told himself, grinning at the thought
of the two delighted boys who had raced one another to the bathroom and
whose loud, cheerful voices he had heard a moment ago on their way down
to supper.

He thought of the painfully polite hospitality to which he was best
accustomed--the obvious preparations, the apologies that deceived
nobody, and--usually--the laboured nature of the conversation, taking
the form of question and answer.

Charles Sedgewick was quite certain that houses like Coombe had long ago
had their day--not many of them were left, he imagined, and a good thing
too.

The privileged classes, amongst whom he unhesitatingly placed Lady
Arbell and her family, were in the last ditch. Some of them would go
down fighting, of course--but they were doomed, one and all.

Girls like Primrose and Jessica would either have to earn a living or,
if they married, would have to work hard in their own homes instead of
paying other people to do it all for them.

He hummed to himself "_I don't want to set the world on fire_" and went
downstairs.

A decanter and glasses stood on a small table; the old
gentleman--General Levallois--had come to life again and was sitting by
the fire, wearing a curious old velveteen coat, and Lady Arbell and Jess
were talking with Cyril Banks and Jack Olliver.

They were drinking sherry, and Sedgewick noticed with amusement the
controlled expression of disgust with which Jess was sipping at hers.

"Have some sherry?" said the General.

Sedgewick thanked him and refused.

He joined the group.

A clock struck eight.

"Why isn't dinner ready?" instantly enquired the General.

"It's Sunday, Reggie, and Ivy's out. Supper is cold, and it's quite
ready. We're just waiting till we're all here."

"You're not going to wait for Primrose surely."

"Colonel Lonergan isn't here either," Jess pointed out. "We must wait
for a Colonel."

"He won't mind if we don't," said Lady Arbell, smiling.

"Here is the Colonel," said Jack Olliver.

"I beg your pardon if I'm late. You shouldn't have waited."

"Primrose is later. Not that we ever wait for her," remarked Jess. "Take
aunt Sophy, Buster! She gets under one's feet so."

The ungainly puppy changed hands.

The General was already heaving himself to his feet and adjusting his
sticks.

"Can't wait for Primrose," he muttered. "Bring that decanter with you,
Jess. Come along."

As they moved towards the dining-room Primrose joined them.

She had changed into a long, tightly-fitting house-coat of some thick
material that looked like flannel. It was a hyacinth-blue colour, and
made her hair look very light and her eyes very dark.

"Hey, what about my drink?" she asked.

"Have it in the dining-room," said her uncle.

Colonel Lonergan held out a glass to Jess, and she filled it from the
decanter for her sister.

Sedgewick thought that Primrose seemed more natural, and certainly more
cheerful, than she had been earlier in the evening.

"Please sit anywhere you like," Lady Arbell said in the dining-room.
"And I think it'll be simplest if only two people change the plates and
so on, and everybody else sits still. Jess, darling----"

"I knew it'd be me. Here, take aunt Sophy, someone."

"Put the dam' dog _down_!" said the General.

"Who else, mummie?"

"I think Captain Sedgewick, if he will."

"Mummie, he's asked to be called Charles."

Lady Arbell looked an enquiry.

"That is correct," said Sedgewick, smiling.

"Certainly. Then, Charles, would you mind helping her?"

"Charles is quite a good name for a footman, isn't it?" Jess observed.
"Or James or William. Jack would have to be John, and Buster simply
wouldn't exist."

"Not even as Cyril?" suggested Banks.

They laughed and talked.

Primrose was an exception. She sat next to Colonel Lonergan, but
appeared to have little to say to him. When she did speak it was from
one corner of her mouth, and it struck Sedgewick that she made no effort
at all to join in the general conversation.

The Colonel did, though.

He kept on trying to include his hostess in whatever it was that
Primrose was muttering--Sedgewick couldn't always hear her--but Lady
Arbell, though she always answered, usually with simple, acquiescent
phrases, didn't seem to want to be included.

She left the Colonel to her daughter, and talked to Jack Olliver,
sitting beside her.

Sedgewick himself occupied the chair on her other side.

He tasted his soup--a thin, pale soup that was not even very hot. His
mother would have seen to the soup herself, if the maid had been out,
and it would have been hot, and strongly flavoured. On the other hand,
she certainly wouldn't have entertained visitors at all, on her
servant's evening out.

He glanced at the two subalterns, and saw how much at ease they were,
although Jack Olliver at least, Sedgewick guessed, had never before sat
at a table where the men waited on the women. His mother and sisters, if
he had any, would always do the waiting and expect Jack and his father
to sit still.

The General, at the other end of the table, was looking at a
menu-card--good lord!--and not talking.

"That menu is for my brother's express benefit," said Lady Arbell's soft
voice, sounding as though she were rather amused. "He knows, and we all
know, that Sunday supper is always the same--soup, and cold meat and
salad, and anything we can get, nowadays, for a cold sweet--but he likes
to see it written down beforehand. I can't think why."

Sedgewick laughed. He was amused, and rather impressed, that she should
have guessed the trend of his thoughts. She was certainly a good
hostess, in spite of having a bad cook and insufficient heating and an
out-of-date bathroom.

She noticed things, even while she seemed to be giving her full
attention to whoever was talking to her. And she talked very little
herself, and what she did say was on the subjects chosen by her guests:
seldom drawing attention to herself or her own opinions.

Sedgewick was dispassionately, consistently interested in every
manifestation of what he always firmly described to himself by the
out-moded expression: Class-distinctions.

He thought their importance overrated, nowadays, but he also thought it
foolish to deny or to ignore their existence. They were there, they did
create a barrier--of which the middle classes were more conscious than
anybody else--and it would take generations to eliminate them. Unless,
indeed, England caught the Russian infection and was swept into a bloody
revolution, with the firing-squad for those whose ancestors had enjoyed
privileges long since denied to their descendants.

Slightly to his own surprise, Captain Sedgewick found himself talking to
his hostess on the subject.

She was a good listener, and presently he noticed that she had somehow
caused young Banks to go and help Jess with the waiting instead of
himself.

"I'm afraid I'm neglecting all my duties."

"No, you're not. It's your turn to sit still. Please go on talking to
me. The English revolution is taking place now, all the time, isn't it?"

"I hope so. It's needed."

"I'm afraid it is. Though I still hope there's enough genuine democracy
established in the country by now to prevent a revolution of the
Bolshevik kind. But perhaps I'm wrong about that, and it's a kind of
dreadful, necessary short cut?"

Lonergan joined in.

"A short cut to where? Not, I think, to freedom for the individual, or
to the development of the creative spirit. I was in Russia for a month
or two in '37 and from the little that I was able to see, everything was
harnessed to the State--family, individual and art."

"That's one reason why the Russians are doing so magnificently now,
isn't it, sir?" Jack Olliver enquired. Only deference to his commanding
officer, Sedgewick knew, had given that interrogative twist to the
sentence.

Olliver was a convinced young Communist.

"No doubt it's one reason," Lonergan agreed. "It's also why their Moscow
and Leningrad art galleries have the most superb Dgas hanging next to
the most deplorable canvases on which ardent young propagandists ever
splashed rivers of scarlet blood onto white snow."

"Does every picture tell a story?" asked Sedgewick, amused.

"It does. And it's always the same story. Either the soldiers shooting
the peasantry, or the peasantry shooting the aristocracy. No, I'm wrong.
Sometimes it's Lenin addressing the workers on his way to or from
exile."

"Why not?" drawled Primrose. "I think that might make rather a good
picture."

Lonergan laughed.

"Ah well, I'm prejudiced, you see. I think freedom of expression is
essential to art, and that artists should have nothing to do with
propaganda."

"You're only thinking of painting. What about the Russian ballet?"
Primrose demanded.

"Quite right," said Lonergan. "I'll give you that. It's as good as ever
it was."

"I'm glad they've kept something," Lady Arbell said.

"Perhaps when their new order is more firmly established the Russians
won't feel it so necessary to sacrifice the individual to the State."

"Obvious," said Primrose, and her upper lip twisted contemptuously.

Lonergan turned.

"Obvious is exactly what it isn't," he said coolly. "The Soviet
Government, for the past twenty years or so, has been bringing up a
whole generation with a set of clearly defined ideals. They may be good
ideals or they may be bad ones--either way they'll stick. Freedom of
expression, or even of thought, will have ceased to be looked upon as a
right."

"How utterly tedious," said Primrose.

Her tone was insolent and the subalterns exchanged glances.

Colonel Lonergan raised his eyebrows.

"Is it the Soviet system you're referring to or my, no doubt uninformed,
views about it?"

"Both."

Sedgewick had no particular prejudice against rudeness--he thought it,
in fact, rather smart and modern--but he objected strongly to it when
directed against a senior officer in the presence of his juniors.

For a moment he felt horribly embarrassed.

"Do you know," said Lady Arbell, "that you've none of you got anything
to drink? Beer is all I can suggest, except water. On the sideboard,
Jess."

She had seemed not to raise her voice, but it carried clearly--and the
conversation about Russia was over. The General began to speak about
beer, Jess and young Banks were jumping up and fetching the beer
bottles, the Colonel returning attentive-sounding comments to General
Levallois' assertions.

So that was how one did it--and it worked.

It seemed to Sedgewick a characteristic evasion of a difficult
moment--but he admired it all the same.

And one had to be fair. In a better assorted company the discussion,
whether polite or impolite in its expression, might have been allowed to
go on. This evening it could only have been disastrous.

Doubtless, too, in the eyes of Lady Arbell, Sedgewick himself, Banks and
Olliver, Primrose and Jess, were all of them too young, and too
completely lacking in social diplomacy, to be allowed their heads in a
political debate amongst their seniors.

He glanced at the pale, defined profile of his hostess and noted her
serious, attentive and yet withdrawn expression. It occurred to him that
she must, years ago, have been pretty, although of a type that made no
appeal to modern taste.

Most interesting, thought Charles Sedgewick--rather pleased with his own
capabilities for dispassionate observation--to meet a woman like this
one--so evidently intelligent without being intellectual, whose
standards of behaviour were still ruled by the careful, useless, utterly
obsolete training of a vanished social system.




VIII


"Gosh! That heavenly green liqueur! I didn't even know we _had_ any,"
cried Jess navely.

"Uncle Reggie did. He thought it was a good occasion for producing a
liqueur, after what I'm afraid was rather a dull meal," said her mother.

She poured out the coffee, and the young soldiers made polite protests
in defence of the meal, just over.

"What's the other stuff?" asked Jess. "Is it brandy?"

"Yes."

The crme-de-menthe and the liqueur brandy came as an agreeable surprise
after the indifferent coffee, and Jess delightedly distributed glasses.

"I bet everyone except uncle Reggie and Colonel Lonergan will choose
crme-de-menthe."

Sedgewick nodded.

"As you say."

"Well, you're wrong. I hate that filthy, sticky, green poison. Me for
the brandy-bottle every time," Primrose declared.

"Gosh! It always makes me think of being sick. They gave me some once at
Rockingham, when I had a bilious attack," Jess remarked. "It was foul."

"This is probably not quite the same type of brandy, my dear," the
General informed her rather drily. "But as I doubt whether you'd notice
any difference, by all means leave it for those who do."

Lonergan, smiling, accepted his glass from Jess.

"It is not, indeed," he appreciatively remarked. "This is worth its
weight in gold, nowadays. One can't get the stuff in London, under a
small fortune."

"The last brandy I had in London was one you bought me, as it happens,
Rory my pet," said Primrose.

The casual term of endearment, to which she managed to give a
contemptuous twang, came with a rather shocking effect, and again Banks
and Olliver looked at one another, slightly aghast.

Jess and Sedgewick both stared openly at Lonergan.

His blue, angry eyes were gazing straight at Primrose.

"_Last_ is the word," he said.

For a split second the atmosphere in the hall was electric.

A tiny, clashing sound of tinkling glass broke into it sharply.

Valentine's liqueur-glass had slipped from her fingers and lay shattered
against the hearth.

A small stream of green was slowly oozing its way towards her shoes.

"How careless--and what a waste of crme-de-menthe!" she said
meditatively.

"Have mine, Lady Arbell," Sedgewick offered.

"Or mine, mummie. Only I've drunk half of it."

"Get your mother another glass from the pantry, Jess. Or ring for one of
the damned servants."

The two subalterns were hastening to the rescue, Olliver with his
handkerchief and Banks with a piece of blotting-paper snatched off the
desk. The old spaniel, Sally, sniffed at the mess.

"Come off it, Sally!" cried Jess. "We can't have you taking to drink at
your time of life."

The young men took up the joke enthusiastically, relieved from the
strain of a moment earlier.

"Perhaps Sally's a secret addict."

"Her real name's Sarah, I expect. Sarah Gamp."

"Gosh, I shan't send this handkerchief to be washed for a month. The
bouquet's marvellous!"

"Thank you so very much," Lady Arbell said. "I'm sorry to have given so
much trouble."

"I'll fetch you another glass, mummie. Here, Jack, take aunt Sophy."

"You can bring two glasses, Jess," said her uncle. "We'll send one up to
Madeleine."

"Okay. We'll _all_ take it up to her. Madeleine's a pet," Jess informed
the officers. "She's French, and she adores having visitors, especially
soldiers."

"Here, can't I fetch those glasses for you?"

"You don't know where they're kept."

Jess raced for the red baize door, and the young men followed her,
laughing and jostling one another.

The door was left swinging and banging as their voices echoed away down
the distant, stone-floored passage.

Lonergan got up to shut it.

Primrose looked at her mother and said, speaking more inaudibly than
ever:

"You needn't have wasted a glass, to say nothing of a drink. Rory and I
understand one another okay, and we're neither of us in the least afraid
of a scene, or of saying what we mean."

"Please say it somewhere else, then, Primrose, and not in front of
Colonel Lonergan's own subalterns," Valentine answered quietly.

She received unexpected support.

"Damned bad form, the way you spoke just now," the General curtly told
his niece.

Primrose stood up.

"I seem to be a bit unpopular."

She turned to Rory Lonergan, who had come back to the fire.

"My relations aren't liking me at all. They think I've insulted you or
something."

Lonergan looked, not at her but at her mother. The look was a profoundly
troubled one.

"We've been making a holy show of ourselves, no less, and vexed you. I'm
terribly sorry."

Valentine shook her head, smiling very faintly.

"It's all right. Let's leave it."

"Why?" coldly asked Primrose. "I'm damned sick of all this pretending
and keeping on the surface and _corps diplomatique_ rubbish. Why
shouldn't I be rude to Rory if I feel like it, and why shouldn't he
answer back? I feel like having one hell of a row this evening."

General Levallois pulled himself up onto his feet and reached for his
sticks.

"Well, I don't, and if your mother and Colonel Lonergan take my advice
they'll leave you to have your row by yourself. Good-night, Val. You can
send me up a glass of brandy with Madeleine's drink to the sitting-room.
'Night, Colonel."

"Good-night, sir."

The General stumped away upstairs.

Shrieks of laughter, subdued by distance, came from beyond the red baize
door, and the barking of dogs.

"Well, that's that," said Primrose. "Frightfully characteristic and
old-school-tie and everything, isn't he? Where do we go from here?"

Lonergan was still gazing at Valentine. Her eyes were quiet, and her
hand covered her mouth.

"For God's sake, Primrose," he said, "you've no need to go on like
this, girl. Why do you have to spoil the party for everyone?"

Primrose shrugged her shoulders.

"You're very social-minded all of a sudden. How about finishing the
fight in your office, if you're so anxious not to upset anybody?"

Valentine rose.

"Is the fire still burning in there?"

Lonergan accepted her dismissal gravely.

"It should be. We can go there, if that's what you wish."

"It's what _I_ wish," said Primrose.

She walked away into the breakfast-room and they heard the click of the
electric light switch as she turned it on.

Lonergan remained behind.

He could see Valentine's mouth now, and the expression of it told him,
as he had expected, more than her guarded eyes had done.

"What's the matter?" he asked bluntly.

"With Primrose? I don't know."

"Not Primrose. You."

She hesitated so long before speaking that he thought she was not going
to reply at all.

At last she said:

"I'm sorry she's being so difficult. It's partly because of me, I think.
I mean--Primrose doesn't like me, and that shows her at her worst. I
expect you know how very different the real Primrose can be."

"Damn Primrose," said Lonergan.

Her face, at that, showed nothing but pure astonishment.

The sound of loud, laughing young voices and rapidly approaching feet
reached them.

"I _must_ talk to you," Lonergan said wildly and urgently. "I don't know
what it is you're thinking--it may have been true once but it isn't any
longer--God, what a cad I sound!--but don't you see, it isn't Primrose
that matters, in the very least? It's you."

Valentine flushed deeply, like a young girl.

"I thought----" she said, and stopped.

"They think the pantry's _marvellous_!" hilariously announced Jess,
bursting in with her train. "Jack says his mother would _die_ if she had
such a frightful sink to wash up at!"

"It's enough to break any woman's back."

"Jack, where are your manners and who asked your opinion of the sink
anyway?" shouted young Banks.

They were indeed feeling at home and happy. Sedgewick put down glasses.

"Who's this mysterious French Madeleine of yours?" he asked Jess.

Valentine answered him.

"Madeleine's an old French maid of my mother's. She's been with us for
years. She's in her sitting-room upstairs. Jess, take the whole tray if
you're all going. Uncle Reggie wants a glass of brandy."

"Mummie, do you _always_ remember not to say 'another'? I never do.
Shall we all have _a_ drink upstairs?" asked Jess collectively of her
escort.

Sedgewick picked up the tray.

"Isn't Primrose coming?"

"Not at the minute," Valentine said. "I daresay she'll come up later."

"No I shan't," said the voice of Primrose from the doorway of the
office. "You can bring me a brandy in here, Rory."

Silently Lonergan poured out brandy into two glasses.

He carried them into the other room and Primrose shut the door.

Lonergan placed his glasses carefully on the desk and then turned round.

They stood facing one another.

"Well?" asked Primrose. "Say it, for God's sake. Don't just look at me
as if I were a cup of cold poison. If anyone's got a grievance, it's
me--not you."

"What grievance?"

"What grievance!" she mimicked scornfully. "Come on, Rory, let's have it
out. If we're going on like this, I may as well go back to London
to-morrow. Give me that drink, will you?"

He handed her the glass.

"Why didn't you bring the decanter? One glass isn't any good to anybody
in a crisis."

"We'll have to get through this crisis without drink, my girl. Drink
never settled anything yet."

"I couldn't disagree more. What on earth's the matter, Rory?"

"Let's sit down to it," suggested Lonergan. He moved towards the swivel
chair that stood in front of the desk.

"Here," said Primrose in a stifled voice. She pushed him into the big
armchair near the fire and threw herself onto his knee, curling herself
against him with a fluid, boneless ease that made her seem, for all her
length of limb, small and supple as a child.

Instinctively his arms closed round her.

"That's better," muttered Primrose, her voice stifled against his
shoulder.

"Darling, this isn't any use, you know. We aren't getting anywhere. And
truly, I'm in a terrible jam and I'm hating myself for having got into
it and, still more, for having got you into it."

"I'm in no jam whatever. You and I started a thing, and as far as I know
we were both getting quite a lot of fun out of it till you arrived here,
and came over all Sir Galahad or whatever his name was. Is it because
I'm not at my best and brightest in the old home atmosphere? If you
remember, I warned you I shouldn't be."

"You did."

"Do I turn your stomach all of a sudden or something?"

"No. I think you're damned attractive, sexually, just as I always have."

Primrose raised her mouth to his and kissed him long and hard.

Then she said, most unexpectedly:

"Look here--I'm sorry I was a pig to you at supper. I know I was, but
this place gets on my nerves."

He was touched, as he always was by her shattering honesty.

"God, Primrose, you make me feel like the hound of all the ages when you
say a generous thing like that. I don't care what dog's abuse you hand
out to me, as well you know, when we're by ourselves. But with those
lads there----"

"Oh, Lord, that's what mummie said. I could have screamed when she did
that fool trick of dropping her glass accidentally-on-purpose in the
hall. Like something in an Edwardian drawing-room comedy, being all
diplomatic and saving-the-situation-like."

"She did save it."

"If you ask me, I think she made a complete fool of herself."

Lonergan moved involuntarily.

"All right, you needn't kick me into the fire. I suppose your
mother-complex is too much for your common sense."

"I certainly don't admire the way you speak to, or of, your mother. In
fact, I think the way you behave to her altogether is quite disgusting."

"Well, need it matter? I mean, I daresay there are lots of ways in which
we don't admire one another--I don't mind telling you that you're far
from perfect yourself--but I can't see that it need interfere with
_us_."

"Darling, I'm afraid I can. You've always held it against me that I'm a
sentimentalist, and you've been perfectly right. I'm too much of a
sentimentalist not to want to love, as well as be _in_ love."

Primrose sat upright and gazed at him incredulously. Her dense,
blue-green eyes expressed wrath and contempt rather than pain.

"You aren't trying to tell me that it's all off, I suppose?"

Lonergan drew a long breath and spoke with the courage of desperation.

"I'm afraid that's exactly it, my dear. You can't hate me more than I
hate myself."

"You'll have to give me a lot better reason," said Primrose slowly.
"After all, I'm not a fool. We both knew perfectly well, when the whole
thing started, that we weren't out for a _grande passion_. It's what I
said in the car coming down, Rory. There's somebody else."

"Very well. There is. Only it's not the way you think."

"I don't know what I think. Look here, Rory, I'd a lot rather you came
into the open about this."

She was being at her best--straightforward, adopting no pose, and ready
to face anything. Lonergan recognized it instantly, and as instantly
realized that nothing could make his own dilemma harder. Well, it was
his own fault. He'd let himself be rushed into this affair with a girl
young enough to be his daughter simply because she had appealed to his
sensuality and he had lacked the moral courage to rebuff the blatant
advances with which she had assaulted him.

At least, this time it was not he who had made the assault, who had
pursued and persuaded and compelled into love a woman whom he had
temporarily found seductive and from whom he had sought the romantically
perfect relationship that he had only found with Laurence, and which, in
the inmost depths of his heart, he never really expected to find again.
It had always been he, unreasonably disappointed and nervously
exasperated, who had broken up the relationship, unable to endure its
falsity or to keep up its pretences.

With Primrose, he had felt secure because she openly derided romantic
love and they had admittedly embarked on their affair without
protestations of love or fidelity on either side. She had told him that
he was not her first lover, and would certainly not be her last, and she
had never wanted any but physical love-making with him.

Even now, he told himself with relief that it was her vanity she was
trying to protect, not her heart.

She deserved the truth and he--in a different sense--deserved the pain
and discomfiture of making her accept it.

"My dear, you've been wonderful to me and I'll never forget it. But I
warned you what I was, at the very beginning. Utterly fickle and
unreliable, always landing myself into caddish situations and--what you
loathe most--an incurable sentimentalist. It's _got_ to be more than
just the physical relationship, with me, if it's to last at all."

"You knew all that at the beginning, and so did I," Primrose remarked
coldly. "You can't pull that stuff now, Rory. Besides, you've just told
me there's somebody else. Who is she?"

"Does that matter?"

"Is she in love with you?"

"I don't know. I haven't asked her."

"But you're going to?"

"I am. Look, Primrose, you've told me you'd rather I came into the open.
I'll try. This--thing--encounter--call it anything you like--is
something that's almost impossible to explain. I can only say that I do
honestly believe it's real, and important, and may alter the whole of
life. I didn't know it was going to happen, and she didn't either. But
it _has_ happened, and if it's what I believe it to be--everything else
is out."

It was said.

Sick with self-disgust, Lonergan stopped speaking.

Primrose hadn't moved.

Then she began to laugh, disconcerting him utterly.

"I suppose this is Keltic romance or something. Well, it leaves me stone
cold, because I simply don't understand it. All it boils down to, so far
as I can see, is that you've fallen for another woman and you want to
persuade yourself that you've never really loved anybody else before,
and never will again. But I should like to know how often you've said
and thought that, in the last ten years? Or twenty, for all I know."

"All right. You're entitled to say all that. I'm not going to argue. I
can only tell you the thing as I see it."

"But Rory, it doesn't make sense! You've said yourself that nothing has
happened, yet. I don't know what this girl can give you that I can't,
but for the moment you're here, and I'm here, and--well, what's the odds
anyway?"

He understood that she was prepared to overlook altogether what she took
to be his imaginative interest in another woman, for the term of her
stay at Coombe.

He shook his head.

"It's no good, Primrose."

He hoped she might be angered by his gracelessness, but instead she put
her arms round his neck.

"You don't deserve it, but I've got fond of you," she said, low and
indistinctly, her face against his.

"Primrose!"

Pity, remorse, affection, all seemed to be tearing him to pieces.

She pressed herself against him and he kissed her yellow curls and
half-hidden face.

"Don't be a fool, Rory darling. We're in the middle of this god-awful
war that may land any of us anywhere at any moment, and there honestly
isn't time to throw fits about true love and all the rest of it. Let's
take what we can while we can."

He had never felt her nearer to him, for he had never felt her to be
more completely sincere. She was generous, too, for she might well have
reproached him--as indeed he wished that she would. But she had
accepted what he said, although without understanding it, and had not
even pressed home the inevitable questions.

And she had, most uncharacteristically, admitted that she had grown fond
of him.

Rory, in despair, could only groan "Primrose!" as he kissed her again
and again.

"Is it all right, pet?" she muttered.

"No, darling, it is not. I think you're wonderful, but I can't be your
lover any more."

Primrose disengaged herself and stood up.

"I think you're a dam' fool, that's all. I've told you once, in plain
English, that I'm ready to go on as we are for this week. After all,
it's what I came down here for, isn't it? But I certainly shan't say it
a second time. It's now or never, Rory."

"Then, my dear, it's never."

She turned rather white but answered coolly.

"Okay. Now we know where we are. I shall probably go back to London
to-morrow as I suppose you're stuck here now--thanks to my own efforts,
which seems a bit ironical--and I hope this marvellous new love of yours
gives you the hell you deserve."

She turned and went to the door.

As she opened it the shrill note of the telephone-bell rang through the
house.

They heard someone crossing the hall to go and answer it, and both
automatically moved forward and then stood waiting, not looking at each
other.

Valentine came towards them, from the door that concealed both the
telephone and the entrance to the downstairs lavatory.

"It's a London call for you, Primrose."

"Okay."

Valentine pushed the silvered lock of hair away from her forehead. She
looked tired and nervous and Lonergan felt a passionate desire to
reassure and comfort her.

"What's Jess done with the British Army?" he asked, instinctively
putting before her the recollection of so much youth and normality.

"They're still upstairs, I suppose, with Madeleine. Unless they've all
gone to the schoolroom--but I hope not, it's so cold in there."

There was an unusual note of nervousness in her voice, and he saw her
tired eyes and mouth.

"I'd like to talk to you, if I may," he said abruptly. "Are you too
tired, now?"

"No, but haven't you and Primrose--aren't you talking to her?"

"We've said all we have to say. She was just going."

"I thought she came out because she heard the telephone. It's nearly
always for her."

"Yes, I see."

The words fell from their lips, meaningless for both of them.

Other words were crowding Lonergan's mind and causing his heart to thud
heavily against his side.

He could hear Valentine's quickly-drawn breathing.

"I think I must go," she said at last. "I ought to see about----"

Her voice trailed away into silence.

Lonergan stepped forward quickly and took both her hands.

"Ah, don't go. Valentine, don't ever go away. I love you so much."

He saw, with shattering clarity, the look of pure, incredulous happiness
that illuminated her face on the instant as she gazed full at him.

"But do you?" she asked in a breathless, shaken voice. "Are you sure?"

Exultant joy and relief rushed over him.

"It's a pity I wouldn't be sure, when we fell in love all those years
ago in the Pincio Gardens! Darling, darling--do you love me too?"

"Yes."

They looked at one another as though not daring to move for fear of
breaking a spell.

Then she said his name, gently and lingeringly as if experimenting with
her right to say it.

"Rory."

"Valentine! Love."

He drew her towards him, forgetting everything except her nearness, and
said to her--reverting unaware to the long-disused idiom of his youth:

"Ah--c'mon while I tell you!"




IX


Sloping her length against the wall, a cigarette in one hand and the
telephone-receiver in the other, Primrose drawled rejoinders into the
mouthpiece, replying to the nervous, high-pitched tones that reached her
from a disembodied masculine voice in London.

"Primrose, are you all right? Are you having a decent rest?"

"I'm okay."

"Are you--are you liking it better than you expected? Anyone with you
besides family?"

Primrose knew what that too casual-seeming enquiry meant. Jealous fool,
she thought, made furious as she always was at a hint that anyone--and
in particular Hughie Spurway--had any claim upon her.

"We've got some Army chaps billeted here," she said coolly. "Colonels
and what-have-you. So that's cheering things up a bit."

"Is Lonergan one of them?"

"He is, my pet. I'd forgotten you knew him."

"I met him when you did. Look here, Primrose, I really rang up--well,
partly to hear your voice, and partly because I've got a man to see at
Plymouth and I wondered if I could meet you anywhere. I could drive you
back to London if you liked."

"When?"

"I can make my dates fit in with yours."

She could hear the hysterical eagerness in Hughie Spurway's voice. It
irritated her, just as it had always irritated her ever since she had
realized, nearly a year ago, that he had fallen frenziedly in love with
her and that the worse she treated him, the more deeply fixed his
infatuation became.

"Look here, Hughie, I'll have to let you know. 'S'matter of fact, I've
rather been debating getting back to London."

"I can come and get you any day you like."

"For the matter of that, I can take a train."

"As you say, of course, but travelling's pretty foul, this weather.
Primrose, have you had any letters from me?"

"Plenty."

"I know you loathe writing, my sweet, but you did say you would."

"Did I?"

"God, Primrose, why do you say you'll do a thing and then you never do?
You don't know what it does to me."

"Don't be a fool. Look, I'm going to ring off. You'll be ruined."

"I'm ruined already. But it's as you say. Only let me know which day to
come, because I must let the Plymouth people know."

"Okay. If you _don't_ hear, you'll know I can't make it."

"Primrose, for God's sake--I've _got_ to see you."

"You will, when I get back."

"When can you dine with me? Can't we fix an evening now? I want to talk
to you. I can't go on like this."

His voice held the desperate note that Primrose at once dreaded and
despised.

"Forget it, Hughie. I loathe hysterics, as you know--they make me sick.
I'm going to ring off."

"No--wait. Don't. I've _got_ to----"

"'Night, Hughie." She hesitated for a second and added: "Good-night,
pet."

Then she quickly replaced the receiver.

Hughie had rung up for nothing really. He just wanted to make the same
old scene, over and over again.

He couldn't understand, apparently, that when one was through with a
thing, one was through with it. Nothing could bring it to life again.

God, thought Primrose wearily, I suppose that's what Rory feels about
us--him and me. Funny, when you come to think of it, because I've always
been the one who got sick of it first, before.

Her cigarette finished, she threw it on the tiled floor and stamped it
out.

The telephone bell rang again.

That was Hughie. He always did that. If she answered, he'd say that he'd
simply got to hear her voice again--he couldn't leave it at that--he
_must_ speak to her.

But she wasn't going to answer.

Hughie was neurotic, and exacting and jealous, and hopelessly on her
nerves. She wished she'd told him to get himself released from his
B.B.C. job and go into one of the Services. If he did wangle a journey
to Plymouth and she let him drive her back to London, she'd say just
exactly that to him, thought Primrose savagely.

Weary, cold and exasperated she leaned against the wall, furious with
herself as well as with Hughie Spurway, and anxious to believe that she
was still more furious with Lonergan for letting her down.

And who the devil was this new girl of his?

Primrose recalled the names of girls whom they both knew, but her
acquaintance with Lonergan was so recent that she could only think of
one or two.

It's someone I don't know, she decided. Somebody either in Bloomsbury,
who goes in for being artistic, or some awful woman in the suburbs that
he's fallen for without any reason whatever. Just one of those _things_.
And he's such a fool, he's gone off the deep end and taken it as deadly
serious. God, he might even marry her--unless she's got a husband who
won't divorce her. Though for all I know, he's married already--why not?
He's exactly the kind of lunatic who'd marry at twenty and then walk out
and never pull himself together and get rid of his wife. Artists and
such.... I'm well out of it.

She knew she didn't believe that, even while she tried to think it. Rory
Lonergan had attracted her at sight, and she found his intelligence in
love-making agreeable and exciting. To her, it furnished quite a new
experience. It pleased her, also, that he was articulate and told her
things about herself that were never stereotyped and that made her, she
thought, sound nicer than she really was.

She reflected drearily: If Rory isn't married, perhaps that's why he's
dropped me. He wants to marry this bitch whoever she is. He said: If
it's what I believe it to be--everything else is out. I wish I'd made
him tell me. I still can. I needn't go back to London to-morrow. In
fact, I don't actually want to, if he's here. I suppose I'm bats, but
that's the way I feel.

Amazed, and angry with herself as well as with Lonergan, Primrose still
stood in the cold little cupboard of a room, contemplating without
seeing them the polished surfaces of her pointed nails.

She had never before felt so undecided, so profoundly at a loss.

She was unable even to decide whether she would or would not return to
London next day.

At last she walked away, still undetermined, and went back to the hall.

Jess and the soldiers were there, Banks and Olliver regretfully
protesting that the time had come for them to leave.

"They've thought up a lovely plan for keeping us all out of mischief
to-morrow," explained Banks gloomily, "and it begins at five in the
morning."

"We rely on you, Jess, to see that Charles leaves this house in good
time," Jack Olliver added.

"Oh, is he in it too?"

"He's in it too."

"_It_ being a sopping wet ditch on the moors, presumably," said
Sedgewick.

"The moors! You'll have to go miles!"

"How right you are."

Jess took her two young men to the hall door, whistling to the puppy.

"Come on, aunt Sophy!"

Primrose saw that only Charles Sedgewick was really aware of her
presence. He had looked once in her direction, quite expressionlessly,
out of sharp, bright, red-brown eyes.

"Is Rory in his office?" she asked, instinctively showing him that she
had another man in whom to be interested.

"Probably. He generally works late. But as a matter of fact I've not
seen him since we came down."

"Where's mummie, Primrose? They want to say goodbye and thank you for
having me, like they ought," Jess said.

"I haven't the slightest."

"I'll say it for you," Jess volunteered to the subalterns. "Or she may
come when she hears the motor-bike starting up."

"We shall be half-way down the drive by then. We go like the wind."

Jess threw open the door and a gust of cold air swept in.

"Gosh! It's suddenly got freezing again. How utterly dim!"

"Dim is the word all right," called out the voice of Olliver, as they
moved out into the darkness and Jess let the glass doors swing behind
them.

They did not shut out the abrupt, volcanic noises of the motor-bicycle,
as the engine started, stopped, started and stopped again.

"What a row," Primrose muttered.

Sedgewick said:

"Shall I go and give them a shove?" and looked again at Primrose.

The door of the little breakfast-room opened.

Primrose saw her mother come out as well as Lonergan.

"They wanted to say good-night, Lady Arbell," Sedgewick politely
explained.

"I didn't know they were going so soon."

"They're not gone yet, by the sound of it," Lonergan observed.

He moved, just behind his hostess, to the front door.

"Keep the glass doors shut, Primrose," said her mother, "or the light
will show when we open the hall door."

Primrose glanced at her quickly, catching a new note in her voice.

Mummie simply never _told_ her to do things, like that--she knew better.
One wasn't Jess, after all.

But she shut the glass doors, retiring into the hall, and found that
Sedgewick had remained with her.

"A very jolly evening," said the Captain, pensively rather than
enthusiastically.

"Oh yeah? Well, you've seen us all now. How do you think you'll be able
to stand your new billet?"

"I think I'm lucky."

"That's frightfully polite. So long as you don't mind no heating, and
bad cooking and uncle Reggie's grousing and grumbling, and mummie's
generally dim outlook, you'll do fine. Jess will be off any day now and
I'm probably going back to London to-morrow."

"For all I know we may all be off ourselves to-morrow," said Sedgewick
imperturbably. "We get shoved around quite a lot."

"I'll say you do."

She knelt down to warm her hands at the fire.

"Have you really got to go out on exercise at five o'clock to-morrow
morning?"

"Not quite as bad as that. I want to be in camp by seven, though."

"Is _he_ going too?"

She indicated Lonergan with a backward jerk of the head.

"No."

Sedgewick, after pausing a minute, asked her:

"D'you know him terribly well?"

"Fairly. Do you?"

"Not awfully. I haven't been seconded very long. I think he's an unusual
type, rather. One wouldn't expect an artist to make a good soldier,
normally."

"He probably wasn't a good artist."

Sedgewick laughed.

"He much more probably was. He's perfectly well known as an illustrator,
and I've seen some of his stuff. I'm no judge, but it looked okay to
me."

"Is he like most artists, struggling to support a wife and family?"
Primrose said, hoping that she wasn't overdoing the nonchalance.

"He's not married, is he?"

They were silent as the doors swung open again.

The roar of the motor-bicycle had become inaudible.

"What fun it was," cried Jess. "I think Buster and Jack are simply
divine. Madeleine did, too. They were angelic to her."

Primrose did not move.

So Rory wasn't married. It was odd, because she'd have taken any bet
that he was. And if not, how _had_ he escaped it? Anyway--who cared?

She felt chilled, angry and dejected.

She fingered the stiff, tautly-twisted curls that stood out round her
forehead and thought what a fool she'd been to put on that
periwinkle-blue house-coat. Rory hadn't so much as spoken of it although
he was usually good at noticing things like that.

Primrose furiously, and against her will, remembered things that he had
said to her and that she had coldly told him were just so much Irish
blarney, but that she had enjoyed, from their very dissimilarity to the
brief, slang exchanges that passed for conversation amongst her own
contemporaries.

Damn Rory. He had charm and he was frightfully articulate and
intelligent, and one was going to miss it all quite a lot.

Especially, thought Primrose, if there wasn't anybody else to take his
place. And there wasn't, unless she could get something going with
Charles Sedgewick.

At the thought she slewed her eyes round without moving her head and
looked at him.

He'd be all right, she supposed, and he'd already noticed her, quite
definitely.

Anything would be better, thought Primrose drearily, than going back to
London in the cold and with no one there whom she specially wanted to be
with any more.

       *       *       *       *       *

Valentine, overwhelmingly happy, stood in the shelter of the portico and
said goodbye to the subalterns, and laughed at their difficulties with
the motor-bicycle and, at Jessica's shouted request, held aunt Sophy out
of the way of harm.

All the while her heart was singing and she felt light-headed,
intoxicated with the suddenness of her joy, and hardly conscious of
anything that was happening.

She did not realize that it was a cold night until Lonergan, standing
behind her, put a cloak round her shoulders. Then, feeling his arm
encircling her, she leant back against it and bliss flooded her.

"I love you. Darling, I love you. I adore you," he whispered, close to
her ear.

"I love you, Rory."

The noise from the engine redoubled, aunt Sophy barked and struggled,
and the motor-cycle rushed away into the darkness showing only a
pin-prick of light.

"Gosh, what fun it was! Where's aunt Sophy?"

Without waiting for an answer Jess hauled the puppy towards her.

"I simply must take her for a run, black-out or no black-out. I'll just
go as far as the gate."

Valentine felt Lonergan's hand clasping her own closely, as though to
prevent her from moving, and she stood motionless.

They heard Jessica's footsteps on the gravel, and her voice talking to
her dog, then dying away.

"My own love. Will we wait here for a little while, or is it too cold?"

"I'm not cold," said Valentine, and she turned towards him in the dark.

The kisses that he gave her restored to her all her youth, and it was
with the untouched fervour and passion of youth that she returned them.

"Darling, you're crying!"

"I didn't know I was. It's because I'm so happy,--so terribly, terribly
happy."

"My darling, lovely child. So am I. Terribly happy."

"Rory, I never knew it could be like this."

"Nor I. Believe you me, in all the years, and all the adventures I've
deliberately sought out--God forgive me--it's never been like this.
There's only been one real thing in my life, until now when I've found
you."

"I know."

She felt his clasp upon her grow tighter.

"You mind. You're unhappy about that."

Valentine was amazed, as much by the quickness of his intuition as by
the ease with which he put it into words.

It was true that a pang, startling in the intensity of its pain, had
struck savagely at the very centre of her being, with the recollection
of Laurence.

She could only say, helplessly:

"It's all right. I understand."

"Ah, it isn't all right. I know you understand, dearest--but it isn't
all right. It makes you unhappy. We'll have to talk about it. Everything
has got to be clear between us--always."

He bent his head and his mouth found hers again and they clung to one
another.

"I want to hear everything about your life, and to tell you everything
about mine. When will we be able to talk to one another, love? Can't you
come and sit over the fire in the little office with me now?"

"I can do anything you like," said Valentine unhesitatingly.

She thought dazedly of the things that she wanted to hear from him and,
in her turn, to say to him.

Jess came back through the darkness, and Lonergan pushed open the doors
for her.

They all went in together.

Primrose was standing over the fire by herself.

"Where's Charles?" Jess demanded.

"Telephoning. Where on earth have you been? I shouldn't have thought it
was a night for strolling in the park."

"Aunt Sophy and I strolled. We had to. I don't know what mummie and
Colonel Lonergan did," returned Jess. "They just stayed in the porch."

Primrose, who as a rule never looked at her mother, suddenly turned and
looked at her now with a hard, fixed stare. Their eyes met and
Valentine, from old depths of pain thus reawakened, felt herself
flushing deeply and uncontrollably.

"I'm afraid that was my fault," said Lonergan easily. "I kept your
mother standing in the cold, when I should have had more sense."

As he spoke, he realized that neither Valentine nor Primrose had heard
even the sound of his words.

They were only aware, for the moment, of themselves and of an unspoken
revelation that hovered between them.

Lonergan ceased speaking abruptly and stood motionless, as though at
attention.

For an instant the tension in the atmosphere seemed as if it might
become unendurable. Jess opening her mouth to speak, left whatever she
had to say unuttered and her mouth still half open, and stared round at
them with puzzled eyes.

Once again, the code that, so many years ago, had once and for all
formed the standards of Valentine Levallois, held good.

"Colonel Lonergan and I have discovered that we really did meet, years
and years ago in Rome, when I was a girl," she said calmly.

She turned to him and offered him the charming smile that curved her
lips but did not reach her eyes.

"Of course I thought of it when I heard your name, but I wasn't
absolutely sure until we spoke."

"I'd have known you anywhere," said Rory Lonergan.

He was far less calm than she, because he was far less certain of the
importance of averting a scene.

Scenes were part of Rory Lonergan's national and personal tradition,
whereas they were not part of Valentine Arbell's at all.

She's afraid of a show-down, flashed through Lonergan's mind with an
extraordinary mingling of tenderness, amusement and pity for her, and of
shame for himself.

The fatuity of it, standing there with the reluctant, inescapable
conviction pressing upon him that, if there were to be a scene, it would
have been brought about by his own presence at Coombe, and his relation
with each of these two women!

Charles Sedgewick came back and, like everybody else who had been forced
to spend any time at the Coombe telephone, he looked extremely cold and
made straight for the fire.

"We're all fixed up for to-morrow morning, sir," he told his Colonel.
"I've just confirmed it."

Lonergan nodded.

"Are you going on this bind too?" Jess asked him.

"I am not. I shall be at the Camp all day and back here some time in the
evening."

He looked at Valentine and found in her eyes the look that he wanted to
see there, that recalled the young girl of the Pincio Gardens with such
astonishing clarity.

She said nothing, but their eyes held one another and he knew that in
her surged the same almost unbearable excitement and happiness as now
possessed him. He had so completely forgotten everything and everyone
else in the world that it was with a kind of astonished shock that
Primrose's indistinct drawl reached his hearing.

"I'm thinking of going back to London, myself, to-morrow. I don't seem
to be particularly wanted here."

"But you've only just come!" cried Jess, scandalized.

"It's cold and dull, I'm afraid," Valentine said. Her voice was level,
but the light had gone out of her face.

She looked her real age again.

"However, we can talk about it later, Primrose. I think it's bedtime
now."

"Gosh, what a pity," Jess remarked. "We've had marvellous fun, haven't
we?"

She gave her sketchy salute, that included them all, and picked up her
dog.

"You ought to make aunt Sophy walk up the stairs," Lonergan told her.
"The way you carry her about, you're just teaching her to make a show of
herself, the wretched creature. Go on up to the landing and then call
her."

"She won't come."

"She will."

All of them, except Primrose who never turned her head, fixed their
attention on the puppy.

While the fat, ungainly creature scrambled up the flight of stairs the
two men laughed and Jess screamed encouragement from above.

Valentine had moved to the foot of the stairs, and turned as though to
say good-night, but Captain Sedgewick said it first and she answered him
with automatic courtesy, as though she were speaking in a dream.

He went upstairs, two steps at a time, and they heard Jess laughing as
he joined her on the landing.

Then Primrose did look round.

"Was that general exodus just tact, or a happy coincidence, or did you
somehow organize it?" she asked Lonergan, unsmiling.

"Ah, you--cut it out!"

"I only wanted to know."

If Valentine looked her forty-odd years, Primrose, strangely, appeared
far younger than her actual age. She had become an angry, ill-behaved
schoolgirl, anxious to hurt because she was herself being hurt and
finding only the crudest means of retaliation.

"As it seems a bit late and cold to stand and talk in the porch, I
suggest your office once more, Rory. You and I had a very good fire
there a little while ago."

"As you say, Primrose. In fact, I've already asked your mother if she'll
be good enough to let me sit and talk to her there."

"Then I'll leave you to it. Good-night."

Valentine and Lonergan both stood, silent and motionless, as
Primrose--walking no faster than usual--moved away from them, picking up
the long, periwinkle-blue skirt of her house-coat and holding the
hampering folds away from her feet as she went up the stairs.

Lonergan turned towards Valentine, saw the stricken look on her face and
caught her hand in his, moved by the sheer impulse to comfort her if he
could.

"She knows," faltered Valentine.

Her fingers clung to his.

Lonergan signed his uncertainty, waiting to hear what she would say,
that might give him the measure of her insight.

"I thought at first," said Valentine very slowly, "that it was Primrose
who'd attracted you. And that seemed natural. She's young. But this
evening, you told me it was me."

"And you know that's true."

"Yes, I know that's true. Only I think that, besides being angry, she's
hurt. Were you in love with her, Rory?"

The simplicity and directness of the question moved him very deeply.

"Darling, I'll answer anything you want me to answer. There's going to
be nothing hidden between us. There's only this: would you rather talk
to Primrose first?"

Valentine shook her head, smiling painfully.

"She wouldn't let me. I think she hates me. I don't know when it all
began, or even where I went wrong. When she was a little girl----"

Her voice faltered and stopped.

Lonergan, in a passion of pity, took her into his arms.

"Darling--my poor little love! It's hard for you."

She clung to him, and he could feel her slight body tensed against the
threat of tears.

"Cry, if you want to," he whispered.

But he saw that she had already commanded herself and that this
self-command had grown to be one of the strongest impulses of her
nature. If she was to be hurt--and she had been hurt already--he would
have to contend with the lifelong habit that would always lead her to
conceal pain, perhaps even to deny it.

To Lonergan, an artist and an Irishman, himself emotional and supremely
articulate, the thought brought nothing but dismay.

He took her into his office, where the fire still burnt redly, and made
her sit in the armchair. Kneeling beside her, with his arm round her, he
said gently:

"I'll tell you anything you like, sweetheart. It's going to hurt us
both, but it had to come. Whatever it's going to mean, we've got to get
everything clear between us. Our relationship is far too important for
anything else to be possible."

"Yes," said Valentine without hesitation.

"You realize that I'll have to talk like the cad of all the ages, saying
all the things that no decent man is ever supposed to put into words?
Unless I do that, I'm simply not offering you the truth, as I see it, at
all."

"I do understand."

"Val, you're perfect!"

She looked up, suddenly smiling.

"You called me Val!"

"It came very naturally. I called you Val in the Rome days."

"I know."

"Darling Val. D'you like me to call you that?"

"I love it."

The atmosphere was easier, lightened between them. Lonergan drew a long
breath of relief.

He saw that Valentine, too, was more relaxed. It was she who spoke
first:

"I know Primrose has had love affairs. I know that several men have been
in love with her, though I don't know if they've asked her to marry
them. She's never told me anything, of course. But my sister-in-law,
Venetia Rockingham, has. She doesn't like the men that Primrose knows,
because they don't come from one particular set of people. And I think
she's jealous, too. Venetia used to be a great beauty in Edwardian
days."

Lonergan sat silent, holding her closely, knowing that she was gaining
time in which to steady herself for the inevitable question.

She came to it at last.

"Rory, were you one of the men who fell in love with Primrose?"

"Yes, darling. That is to say I found her stimulating and physically
desirable and my vanity was enormously flattered because she liked me,
who am quite old enough to be her father."

He forced himself to look at her, terrified at the thought of the pain
that he must see in her face.

She met his eyes and her own were quiet, but he saw the lines of her
mouth, and leaned towards her and kissed it passionately.

"It's all right," she whispered, and the childish phrase touched him.

"Primrose is in love with you, isn't she?"

"Val, it isn't like that. It isn't being in love as you mean the words.
Primrose isn't in the least romantic, and if she were--it wouldn't be
about someone like me. She was attracted to me--God knows why--and then
I think she liked it because I was more intelligent than most of the men
she knows, and I think too, she liked, without knowing it, the fact that
I'm of a different class and nationality and religion, and generation.
It gives her what she'd call a kick."

"Have you ever wanted to marry her?"

"Never. It never crossed my mind for one single instant, nor hers
either, I'll swear. I've never wanted to marry at all, and Primrose
doesn't believe in marriage. She may outgrow that, of course, but even
so I think she'd always view marriage realistically. More as the French
see it--an affair to be decided upon reasonably and not on an emotional
impulse."

"Will you tell me how it began, between you and Primrose? Has it been
going on for a long while?"

"No. I met her at a party in London just after the battalion had been
sent down here, and we found out at once that I was stationed here, of
course, almost next door to her home, and I said something about finding
billets, and then she suggested Coombe."

"Did you like her at once?"

"I admired her. I liked the contrast between her very aristocratic
appearance and her extreme toughness--and there's a sort of hard realism
about her that's unusual, and that appeals to me. And, as I've told you,
my vanity was flattered. But Val--none of all that is love. I didn't
love her, any more than she loved me."

"I know that. But you did--fall in love, I suppose?"

"I did, darling. I'm not going to deny it. I fell a little bit in love
with her, as I've fallen in love scores of times, and when I saw, as I
did, that she was attracted too, I tried to put more into the affair
than was really there. It's always been like that--except with Laurence.
Some of the times I've been far more in love than others, but even when
I've gone all out after a woman, I've known in my heart that I was
riding for a fall. That I wouldn't find the perfection I was mad enough
to believe in, and that I'd only land myself and someone else in a
relationship that was bound to end in disappointment and humiliation for
both of us. Actually, with Primrose, I felt less of a blackguard than
I've sometimes felt, because there was never any pretence between us of
being out for anything serious or permanent."

"I think I see," slowly said Valentine. "But since you've been here,
Rory?"

"Well, love, since we've been here, it's not been quite so
straightforward. I'd only to see you, my girl of the Pincio Gardens,
with your hair turned to silver, and I knew that _there_ was the only
reality for me. I'd like to say that I'd anyhow not have had the
gracelessness to make love to Primrose under her mother's own roof, but
it simply wouldn't be true. What stopped me was meeting you again."

"Have you told her that?"

"At first I told her a lot of old cod about behaving decently in the
house I was billeted in and so on, that she didn't believe. And then
this evening, no later, we came into the open, to the extent of my
telling her I was seriously in love--God, is it serious!--and that
everything else was out."

"Did she understand--no, she couldn't have understood--that you meant
me?"

"She did not--then."

"Rory, what are we going to do? Primrose is my own child. I can't hurt
her deliberately."

"Listen, Val. You saw her face to-night, when Jess said we'd been out
together in the porch, and you and she suddenly looked at each other.
You heard the way she spoke afterwards, about going back to London
to-morrow. After she'd gone upstairs you said to me: 'She knows.' I
think you may be right. She may have guessed."

Valentine hid her face in her hands.

Lonergan kept silence. He stroked her hair, drawing her head against his
shoulder.

When she looked up again the colour seemed to have been drained from her
face.

"I don't know what to do."

"God forgive me for breaking your sweet heart like this! But dearest,
isn't it true that there's nothing you can do? Things had gone wrong
between you and Primrose before any of this happened. I know she's
angry--perhaps she has a right to be angry, at least with me--but she's
not unhappy, in any way that matters."

"Why do you say that? She must care for you, at least a little, if
you've made love to her."

"I have--but that doesn't mean she cares for me, in any lasting way."

"I don't see how she could help it," returned Valentine, simply and
sadly.

"Val, darling--I love you so much. Can you forgive me for the muddle
I've made of everything, for the difficulties I've involved you in?"

Valentine, with her characteristic gesture, pushed the hair back from
her forehead.

She spoke slowly, but without any hesitation.

"Forgiveness doesn't come into it, Rory. I love you and nothing will
ever alter that now. You say that Primrose doesn't love you. I don't
know that even if she did I could give you up to her. That's what
frightens me."

Stricken into silence by the utter candour with which she had told him
the truth, Lonergan bent his black head over her two hands, kissing them
whilst he forced back the tears he could feel rising into his eyes.

"You'll marry me, my darling?" he whispered, after a little while.

"Is that what you want?"

"With all my heart and soul."

"But you said you never wanted to marry anyone." And she added, with an
effort that touched him deeply: "Except Laurence."

"It's different, now. This is war-time, darling, and there's no knowing
what may happen. We've got to belong to each other in every possible way
there is, for whatever time we have left."

"Yes. I think that too. Only there's Primrose."

"You've no need to feel that you're taking anything from Primrose,
darling. What you've got to face is your own knowledge of the fact that
I've been her lover."

He looked at her steadily and, for the second time that night, saw the
slow, deep colour staining her face.

When she answered it was in a half-whisper.

"I wasn't perfectly sure."

"It's true."

There was silence again, for what seemed to Lonergan a long time.

At last she said:

"You know, I love you so much that I don't think anything makes any
difference. I don't know whether that's right or wrong. I will marry
you, Rory."




X


It was after one o'clock in the morning when Valentine, leaving Lonergan
at the foot of the stairs, went quietly up to her own room.

She wanted nothing so much as to be alone with her joy and her sorrow,
and she hoped that Madeleine would not be, as she so often was, waiting
for her in her room. It was sometimes difficult to get rid of the
devoted, tyrannical, affectionate creature, and her native shrewdness,
backed by a relationship extending over almost the whole of Valentine's
adult life, made it nearly impossible to keep anything from her.

But Valentine had, most unexpectedly, an encounter to face other than
one with Madeleine.

As she moved across the landing, the General's door opened and the
General, in a very ancient Jaegar dressing-gown and without his teeth,
appeared.

"There you are," he mumbled.

"Did you want me, Reggie?"

"Wait a minute," he ordered, and Valentine waited obediently while he
turned back into the room again, put in his teeth and then called to her
to come in.

She went in, closing the door behind her.

Her brother stood, leaning on his stick, in the middle of the room.

"Look here, Val, do you know what time it is? Getting on for half-past
one. What do you suppose servants and children are going to make of this
sort of thing? In another five minutes, I may tell you, I was going to
come down myself and get rid of that fellow for you."

"Thank you very much, Reggie, but that wouldn't have been in the least
necessary."

"It's all very well to take that tone, but after all, you're not an old
woman and this house is full of idiots who'll be only too ready to
chatter. What does he _mean_ by it?"

"If you're talking about Rory Lonergan--and I suppose you are--he and I
have been sitting in the breakfast-room--I mean, his office. I wanted to
talk to him."

"I don't know why on earth you should want to talk to him at all, but if
you did, why should you have to choose the middle of the night? It looks
bad, old girl--really it does. What are Primrose and Jessica going to
make of it, I should like to know?"

The mixture of indignation and plaintiveness in the General's manner
very nearly caused Valentine to laugh.

"Truly, Reggie, I don't think there's anything to worry about," she
said. "And do remember how old I am--nearly forty-five."

"You don't look it," General Levallois rather grudgingly admitted. "I
suppose you might tell me that it's none of my business, but after all,
poor Humphrey's not here to look after you and, personally, I should
never trust an Irishman."

"But I should," said Valentine.

The General gazed at her in astonishment.

"Val, d'you like this chap?"

"Yes."

"I thought he was after Primrose. And pretty good cheek if he were, a
chap of his age, old enough to be her father. But I must say, I
shouldn't have thought that even an Irishman would have had the nerve to
come down here as a pal of Primrose's and then sit up half the night
with her mother. Well, it's nothing to do with me but I felt bound to
tell you what I thought about it. And unless I'm very much mistaken,
other people will think the same."

"I don't know that I very much mind what other people think, Reggie, and
I don't believe you do either."

"You don't want to upset Primrose."

Valentine shook her head, distress again waking within her.

"Then there's another thing," the General admonished her. "Now that I've
gone so far, I may as well do the thing thoroughly. You've got to
remember that once upon a time this fellow was, or thought he was, in
love with you. You don't want to have any trouble of that kind cropping
up now."

"Reggie, please don't go on."

"I don't want to upset you, old girl. It's the last thing I want. You'd
better go and get some sleep. Only for the Lord's sake do have some
sense, and realize that you're still an attractive woman and that a chap
like Lonergan, if you don't keep him in his place, will make a nuisance
of himself as soon as look at you. I know the type well."

Valentine gazed at her brother with a feeling that almost amounted to
despair.

She knew that his mind, rigid and tenacious, was practically incapable
of taking in a new point of view and that to try and force one upon him
would be wasted effort. In his own way he was fond of her and of her
children, and for that reason she could not wholly resent his
interference. She could find nothing better to say than: "I'm sorry,
dear, if you've felt worried. But truly you needn't."

It was not until they had exchanged good-nights and she was at the door
of her own room that it occurred to Valentine how far removed from the
truth her assurances really were, since there was, from the General's
point of view, every reason for him to feel worried.

If only we could be left alone, Rory and I, she thought. If only we need
consider nobody but ourselves. Is that ever possible, for any two
people, or are there always responsibilities to take into account and
other people to interfere? She felt suddenly very tired and her sense of
grief overpowered her sense of happiness. Primrose--the memory of
Laurence--the thought of Rory's daughter, Arlette--even the General's
assumption that there could be nothing between them beyond indiscretion
on her side and presumption on Lonergan's, filled her with fear for both
the present and the future.

As she went to her own door, a distant sound made her pause.

Another door, some way off, had closed sharply. There had been no
attempt at silence.

It could only be the door of Primrose's room.

So Primrose had been waiting to hear when her mother would come
upstairs, and was making no secret of it.

The revelation appalled Valentine, with all its implications.

Her hand was shaking as she turned the handle of her own door and went
into her room.

Madeleine, thank God, was not there.

Valentine pulled off her clothes, shivering as much from agitation as
from cold, and in a very few minutes lay in bed in the dark.

She did not sleep before morning, and then only lightly so that she
heard the careful creaking of Captain Sedgewick's boots as he came down
soon after six, and the distant, muffled barking of old Sally as he
unfastened the chain and bolt of the front door and let himself out.

There was no other movement for some time after that, and Valentine knew
that the servants, as usual, were allowing themselves to oversleep.

She lay very still, again experiencing the strange mingling of pain and
happiness that had assaulted her on the evening before.

Rory loved her, and wanted her to marry him, and she would see him
to-day.

Primrose was unhappy, and angry, and had said that she was going back to
London. What had she done to Primrose?

Her brother's interference came back to her mind, also. It was true that
she was a woman of forty-four, accountable to no one but herself, yet
how little that glib assertion really meant! How impossible it was, in
actual fact, to disregard the people with whom one lived, who took for
granted their right to question and to comment.

Perhaps if I were a braver woman--thought Valentine. It induced in her a
sudden new sense of security to remember that she had given Rory
Lonergan every right to protect and supplement her lack of courage, and
that he was entirely capable of doing so.

Sudden crashing noises from downstairs, diminished by distance but so
familiar that Valentine could identify them without difficulty, denoted
that Esther and Ivy now believed themselves to be making up for lost
time by rushing through such portions of their work as could not be
omitted altogether.

She was not surprised when Madeleine came in and drew up her blinds,
saying blandly that those miserable little girls were late again and
deserved to be severely beaten.

"You don't say that about Jess, when she's late," observed Valentine,
smiling.

"Mademoiselle Jess is not being paid good wages to come downstairs at a
proper hour," said Madeleine.

Her brown, shrewd eyes travelled over Valentine's face as she gently put
down the tea-tray by the bedside.

"Madame is very tired this morning."

"A little, Madeleine."

"To-day we have the Red Cross sewing here and this evening there is the
First-Aid class in the village. Perhaps monsieur le Colonel will run
madame down in his car."

"He's much too busy for that. Yesterday was Sunday, but to-day he'll be
out all the time and probably come back late."

Madeleine shook her head.

"He has no doubt many responsibilities and one sees that he takes them
seriously--naturally, in war-time--but one knows men. He is happy to
have met madame again."

So Madeleine knew, also. She was, Valentine saw, signifying her
approval.

Even as their eyes met, Madeleine nodded with an air of calm
reassurance, and Valentine felt herself helpless before that penetrating
kindliness.

She put out her hand to the portable wireless beside the bed.

"It's time for the Eight O'Clock News."

They listened to it together in silence.

       *       *       *       *       *

It amused, vexed, and yet rather touched Valentine that her brother, who
often had his breakfast upstairs and when he did come down was usually
late, should now exhibit a determined punctuality, designed, she well
knew, to obviate the possibility of a tte--tte between herself and
Lonergan.

The meal was over quickly, and passed almost in silence. But when
Valentine left the room, Lonergan followed her and they stood together
for a moment at the door of his office.

"Did you sleep, sweet?"

"Not very much."

"Neither did I. Listen, my darling, I shall be busy all day and probably
not back here before ten o'clock to-night. Can you meet me in the town
for lunch somewhere? I can take an hour or so off in the middle of the
day."

Valentine, unreasonably startled by the suggestion, hesitated.

He gave her his attractive smile.

"It's not really such a very daring suggestion, my sweet love. Is it?"

"It's only that I've not done anything like that for years--except with
the children."

"You've promised to be my wife, and I don't know that I mayn't be sent
away from here at a minute's notice, any day. We've a good deal to
settle, love. I want you to tell me how soon we can get married."

Valentine said "Whenever you like, Rory," and knew instantly that she
had given him, from the very depths of her heart, the only answer
possible to either of them.

"Ah, God bless you. My own darling!"

He caught her hand in his.

"I adore you, Val."

Clattering footsteps, that combined speed with lightness, announced the
descent of Jess, and the tapping of the General's sticks approached,
muted by the coconut matting.

"That hotel--what's it called--in the High Street. One o'clock?" said
Lonergan.

"I'll be there. The Victoria Hotel."

They exchanged a smiling, intimate look that made her heart race.

Then Lonergan went into his office and Valentine turned automatically to
her writing-desk.

The telephone bell rang, with its usual strident effect of urgency, and
she went to answer it.

"London wants you. Hold the line, please."

"Thank you."

It would be for Primrose, probably. Jess could go up and fetch her,
since no one who telephoned to Primrose ever seemed content to leave
a message. Valentine was perfectly certain that she herself had
no wish to go and confront her elder daughter. The encounter would
have to come, but not at once, her shrinking soul cried to her. She
wanted--temporizing, as cowards do--to put off that pain and humiliation
for as long as might be.

"Is that Coombe? Lady Rockingham speaking."

"Venetia? This is Valentine."

"Hallo, my dear," said the clipped, distinct voice of Valentine's
sister-in-law. "How are you, darling? Are your evacuees driving you
quite bats? How are the girls and Reggie? Darling, I suppose you
couldn't possibly give me a bed for two nights? To-night and to-morrow.
I'm speaking at a meeting in Bristol this afternoon, and Charlie won't
_hear_ of my sleeping there. Too foolish, as I told him--you know what a
complete fatalist one is--but of course it would be too lovely to see
you and one needn't get back till Wednesday."

"Do come, of course. We should love to have you," said Valentine, aware
that she was lying and that Venetia probably knew it, since beneath her
habitual transparent affectation of silliness she was a woman of shrewd
perceptions. "I suppose you're coming by car? We can easily find a bed
for Taylor at the lodge."

"I shan't have Taylor or the car. Hughie Spurway--you know who I
mean--has offered to drive one down--he's got to go to Plymouth, he
says. How he found out I was going to Bristol, I can't tell you. Anyway,
he'd adore to spend a night at Coombe, and so should I, if you can bear
the thought. Do say, if the whole thing is too inconvenient for words."

"Hughie Spurway?" Valentine repeated, knowing from Venetia's tone, and
from her own sense of familiarity with the name, that she was expected
to identify its owner.

"Dorothy Spurway's eldest son. He's crackers about Primrose, darling, as
you probably know already, and I'm sure the whole idea is a put-up job,
don't you know what I mean. Still, of course, one would far rather be
driven by him than by Taylor--but I simply couldn't bear to add to your
difficulties, knowing what staff and rationing and one thing and another
mean, nowadays, so if you can't bear the idea, just say so, don't you
know what I mean. I couldn't understand more."

"Oh no, Venetia. Do bring him, of course. It won't be very comfortable,
I'm afraid--I've got no proper cook--but we can manage perfectly, if you
don't mind."

"Angel! I'll bring some bits and pieces with me, so don't worry about
food. Had we better dine _en route_, as we can't arrive by daylight
anyway?"

"Whatever you like. No--do come in time for dinner. You'll find two
officers billeted here."

"Would I know them?"

"I don't think so. One is Colonel Lonergan, whom I knew years ago in
Rome, and the other is a Captain Sedgewick."

"Darling, all one can say is that officers are far better than expectant
mothers, or children, or school teachers. You know that Rockingham is
filled, from attic to cellar, with odds and ends from Whitehall?"

"Yes, I know. What are you and Charlie doing?"

"Still putting up at the Dorchester, till the bombs start falling again
and then we shall probably suggest your taking us in as P.G.s, don't you
know what I mean."

Valentine asked for news of her nephews, one of whom was in the Guards
and the other in the Air Force.

"All is well, for the moment. We heard from Michael yesterday and Nicky
last week. Of course, one lives on the edge of a volcano, day and
night. My dear, one's always pitied you, as you know, for having no
sons, and now one simply envies you. How are the girls? Is Primrose at
home?"

"Yes. I'm not sure how many days she'll be here. Jess is waiting to be
called up."

"I hear they've a waiting list and aren't calling up _anybody_ for six
months at least."

Venetia, thought her sister-in-law, was always hearing things of that
sort, and retailing them to those who were likely to find them
disconcerting. She would be certain to say something of the same kind to
Jess.

"Well, I'll expect you and Hughie Spurway--is he in the Army?--some time
before dinner," she said, with a feeling of helplessness.

"Darling, I thought you understood. He's something important with the
B.B.C. Well, it's too angelic of you to let us come. Bless you, and
'bysie-bye. _A ce soir._"

Valentine replaced the receiver.

Jess was in the hall, dressed in her riding clothes and eating a slice
of dry bread.

"Was that aunt Venetia?"

"Yes. Haven't you had breakfast?"

"This _is_ my breakfast. Is she really coming here to-night, and who's
Hughie Spurway? I could hear every word you said."

Valentine explained.

"Fancy aunt Venetia! Hughie Thing is one of Primrose's boy friends. He
rang up every night, last time she was down here. What a terrific crowd
we shall be. Almost a house-party. Were house-parties fun, mummie, in
the old days? They always sound wizard in books."

"Yes. No--I don't know. I didn't go to very many."

"Will they be here for dinner?"

"They've got a meeting at Bristol this afternoon."

"What a pity Charles and the Colonel won't be back till late. Though I
suppose you'd say, as usual, that it'd make too much work for the
maids, with so many. Did Primrose really mean it, about going back to
London at once?"

"I don't know, Jess."

"Well, she's not down yet, so she's missed the good train. Mummie, can I
have the car to go and fetch the rations and could I take the evacuees?
They do adore going out in the car."

"Yes, darling."

"That'll be marvellous," said Jess. "They start school again to-morrow.
I'll take the dogs. They love squashing up in the car with the
evacuees."

She went off, whistling cheerfully.

Valentine went to the kitchen.

She found the domestic problems there, that struck her as being so
tedious and so unnecessarily complicated, more endurable than they
usually seemed.

They don't really matter, she thought. Nothing matters now, except
ourselves.

She told Esther to get two bedrooms ready and went upstairs to help her
with her work.

Trailing along the passage towards the bathroom was Primrose. She wore
an incredibly thin silk dressing-gown and nothing underneath it, her
feet were bare and her yellow hair carefully set with little flat pins
and confined in a net.

Valentine's impulse to exclaim "Darling, you'll catch cold!" was checked
instantly. Instead, she said good-morning.

"Why?" said Primrose--not aggressively, but as one offering some dreary
pleasantry. Valentine, to whom every tone and overtone in her child's
voice was familiar, recognized the intention and smiled, in what she
felt was a crudely obvious attempt at conciliation.

"Why indeed. It's a nasty, raw morning. I suppose you don't want any tea
or coffee or anything?"

Primrose shook her head.

"What was that telephone call?" she asked suspiciously. "Was it for me?"

"No. It was Venetia. She's arriving this evening, for two nights, after
doing a meeting at Bristol. She's coming with someone called Hughie
Spurway who knows you."

"Is she coming by car? Because if so she can drive me back to London. I
suppose she's going back there."

"Yes, she is but Mr. Spurway is going on to Plymouth, and I think it's
his car. Who is he, Primrose?"

"Who is he?" echoed Primrose scornfully. "I suppose that means, who are
his people? Well, I don't know or care. I daresay they're in Debrett
okay."

"But that isn't what I asked you. I know that he's a son of Dorothy
Spurway's, because Venetia said so. I meant what does he do and what is
he like, and what kind of age is he?"

"Twenty-six-ish," said Primrose, "and as nearly bats as they come. One
of these neurotics. Terrified of getting mixed up in the war, and
terrified of being thought a shirker because he isn't in uniform."

"Is he a friend of yours?" ventured Valentine.

"He thinks he is," said Primrose, without emphasis. She pulled her
skimpy silk garment round her.

"I suppose the bloody bath-water will be cold, as usual."

She walked on.

She had been disagreeable, but not angry.

I'm glad, thought Valentine, without irony.

From the back-stairs at the end of the long passage in which she stood
came the sound of high, childish voices as the Coombe evacuees, with
cries of joyful excitement, hastened downstairs to their expedition with
Jess.

For an instant Valentine was back in the past, some eighteen years ago,
and heard the flying feet and the gay, excited voice of the child
Primrose running to meet her on her return from some brief absence of an
hour or two.

She saw, for that flash of time, the small, eager figure with yellow
hair flying towards her, and all but held out her hand to steady the
little form that must surely be about to fling itself against her,
clasping her waist. The brief illusion fled. Primrose had long been
grown-up, she hated and distrusted her mother now.

And I shall never know, thought Valentine as so often before, how it
began--where it all went wrong. She went into the big, closed-up room
that was called the Red Room, and began to take the dust-sheet off the
bed.

Esther, singing shrilly, made her appearance, decorously hushing herself
as she reached the open door.

       *       *       *       *       *

Just before twelve o'clock Jess reappeared with the evacuees--hilarious
and sticky with lemonade and cake--and dismissed them cheerfully to the
society of Madeleine.

Val, sitting at her desk in the hall, nerved herself to carry out a
resolution to which she had come in the course of the morning.

"Jess, will you look after uncle Reggie at lunch? I'm going to be out."

"Where are you going?" Jess asked, friendly and inquisitive.

"To the Victoria Hotel. Colonel Lonergan asked me to have lunch there
with him."

"How perfectly wizard. I wish he'd ask me. Who else is going to be
there?"

"He didn't say that anybody was."

"Not Primrose?"

"No."

Jess looked at her mother long and thoughtfully. Her young face was
inexpressive of all but its smooth unsubtle innocence, yet Valentine
knew that her mind was working, probably very clearly and
dispassionately, on a new idea.

Jess was neither imaginative nor unduly sensitive, but she was not at
all lacking in perception, and she had confidence in her own judgments.

"Mummie, quite personally speaking, I think it's a perfectly sound idea,
you going to the Victoria Hotel for lunch with the Colonel. But you do
realize that Primrose will think it's a bit lousy?"

"I'm afraid she will. But you see, darling, I knew Colonel Lonergan
years and years ago in Rome, and when he came here we picked up that
relationship again where we'd left it off. He and I are friends."

"I see." Jess was still thoughtful though not, Valentine felt,
antagonistic.

"Well," she said at last, "it's okay by me, naturally, but do I have to
tell Primrose?"

"No, darling. I only wanted you to understand."

"Oh, there isn't anything to understand," Jess declared, and Valentine
felt that she was firmly, if kindly, repudiating any idea of a possible
alliance between them. She might concede to her mother every right to an
independent life, but she would never range herself beside her, least of
all in opposition to a contemporary of her own.

"There isn't anything to understand," she repeated. "Why shouldn't you
go out to lunch with the Colonel if he asks you? Besides, it isn't any
business of mine, is it? But it's a bit different for Primrose, because
she knew him in London and all that. She's sure to be ratty, but after
all there's nothing new in that."

"Oh, Jess! I wish Primrose was happier. I wish we could do anything."

"Honestly, mummie, aren't you being rather sentimental? I mean, here's
this war going on all over the place, and Poles and Jews being tortured,
and babies being bombed, and families all broken up--I can't feel it
matters a scrap whether Primrose is happy or not. Or anybody else, for
that matter."

Valentine gazed at her, appalled.

"It's odds on we shan't have any kind of _happiness_ in the world, even
after the war's over--if it ever is over--but probably happiness isn't
as frightfully important as one thinks," Jess said. "I mean, honestly
and truly, mummie, what do individual people matter?"

"Perhaps you're right," Valentine admitted sadly, "but I don't think one
ever feels quite like that about one's children."

"Gosh, how funny. I mean," Jess explained carefully, "funny-peculiar.
Shall you be back in time for the Red Cross meeting?"

"Yes, certainly."

"That'll be fine," Jess returned, rather absent-mindedly.

She never attended the Red Cross sewing-parties herself, even when they
were held in the drawing-room at Coombe.

"Would you see if you can find a few chrysanthemums for aunt Venetia's
room?"

"Okay. And for the boy friend too?" Jess enquired blithely, and
Valentine understood that their conversation was over.

After Jess had gone, she sat on at her desk, not moving, thinking over
what she had said: What _do_ individual people matter?

Valentine had always thought that they did matter. She thought so still,
and Jessica's point of view, so different, and so matter-of-factly
expressed, saddened her deeply.

It surprised her, too, and made her understand afresh how little she
knew about the real Jess. She almost felt now as though she knew more
about Primrose than about Jess--but each, in their different ways, kept
her at arm's length.

Her sense of having completely failed as a mother was more overwhelming
than it had ever been, although it was so often with her.

Suddenly and instinctively she raised her eyes to the portrait of
Humphrey. The painting, hard and shallow as she thought it, gave her
his blunt, rather arrogant features, his straight-gazing eyes that saw
things so much more clearly than they had ever seen people, and for an
instant--all her perceptions heightened and sharpened by her own new and
vivid emotional experience--she realized to the full the utter unreality
that their marriage had been.

"Val!" said her brother's voice, and he spoke irritably so that she
started with a sense of guilt. "What's all this about Venetia coming
here to-night?"

"She's got to be at Bristol this afternoon, and she's coming on here."

"What for?"

"To see us, I suppose," Valentine suggested, although she felt by no
means certain that this was altogether true.

The General appeared to share her doubt.

"Doesn't sound like her. She'll give a hell of a lot of trouble, as
usual, and she'll expect drink, and talk all through the News. And how's
she going to like the Irishman?"

"He isn't coming back to dinner to-night--it'll probably be about ten
o'clock when he gets back--so they won't see so very much of one
another."

Valentine, as usual, had spoken to placate. But in her own mind the
General's question woke echoes so that she, also, wondered how Venetia
would like the Irishman.




XI


The Victoria Hotel was as resolutely Victorian a period-piece as the
conservative West of England could produce. Plush _portires_, enormous
sea-scapes painted in oil and framed in gilt moulding, rose-patterned
wall-paper, fretwork screens and brackets bearing Toby jugs, were all
there. The furniture was dark and heavy, and there was a great deal of
it.

Valentine, who had walked in from Coombe, saw Lonergan's car standing in
the yard beside the hotel entrance when she arrived. She enjoyed
walking, and the lanes, even in January, showed colour and beauty, and
as she walked into the darkness of the hall, knowing that her lover was
waiting for her, happiness came back to her in a rush.

Lonergan was standing before the steel-barred grate in which was glowing
a coal fire. He came to meet her.

"Thank God you've come. I've been nearly out of my mind."

"Am I late?"

"Well, no. You're not. But every minute has seemed like an hour. I'd a
wild hope you might be here when I arrived. Take off your little hat,
darling--I want to see your pretty hair."

She pulled off her soft woollen cap and smiled at him.

"Ah, you're lovely, Val."

His voice, with its warm strength and tenderness, made her want to cry.
Looking at her as though he knew and understood this, Lonergan pushed
forward a deep chair, and then took one beside her.

"I've ordered sherry. It's coming now. I got through the morning's work
quicker than I expected and I wanted to come and fetch you, but I
thought perhaps you'd have started by some other way and we'd miss one
another."

"I did come by a short cut--it saves over a mile."

"I'll be able to take you home, so that you'll be in time for your Red
Cross meeting."

"How did you remember about that?"

"The way I'd remember anything that concerns you, my darling."

"Rory, you say all the things that no one has ever said to me, and that
I've always known I should love to hear."

The elderly head waiter brought their sherry, and they drank, looking
and smiling at one another.

There were other people in the hall, talking and smoking and drinking,
and Valentine and Lonergan spoke together in low voices.

The ardour and the directness of his love-making gave her a sense of
enchantment. She could scarcely believe that she was awake and not
somehow, strangely, reverting to romantic fantasies of her girlhood.

She had meant to speak of Primrose, to tell him that Venetia Rockingham,
her competent, hard, rather alarming sister-in-law, was arriving that
evening, that she felt afraid of Venetia's rapid, shallow judgments and
unsparing tongue--but all these things fled from her mind.

They talked only about themselves.

In the dining-room, after ordering lunch, Lonergan said to her:

"I'd a letter from Arlette this morning. I've brought it, to show you."

Very simply, as though she had been his wife already, he handed to her
across the table two thin sheets of ruled paper in a cheap blue
envelope.

Valentine was unreasonably surprised to find the letter written in
French, in a careful, sloping, characteristically French handwriting.

The Irish address at the head of the paper looked incongruous.

It was a lively, amusingly-written letter, showing originality and a
certain precocity in the young writer. At the end of the letter she
admitted candidly that she often felt lonely, and that her aunt Nellie
was very kind to her but "_peu sympathique du ct intellectuel_". She
asked whether there was any hope of seeing her father again soon, and
said that anything else, the war excepted, had for her "_peu
d'importance_".

"She's terribly fond of you, Rory."

"The poor child. I want to see her, too."

"Of course," said Valentine, the more gently because of the pain it
caused her to realize anew the strength of the link that still bound him
to Laurence and the long years that lay behind him--years in which she
had no part.

"Could you get over there?"

"I doubt it. Unless we suddenly got some embarkation leave. I could
manage it then."

Afraid that her face might betray her pain, Valentine laid her hand
across her mouth and kept her eyes steadily fixed on Lonergan as she
uttered her assent.

"Darling, what is it?" he asked instantly. "If I did go, I'd want you
with me--as my wife."

She said nothing, knowing that her eyes answered him.

"Dearest, I was mad to think we could discuss marriage in a public place
like this--but thank God I'm coming back to Coombe to-night. We'll talk
then."

She handed him back Arlette's letter.

"Thank you for letting me see it. Rory, couldn't we possibly get her
over here? She could come to Coombe, if you'd like it."

"Ah, you're sweet. But you don't understand. Arlette wouldn't know what
to make of a house like Coombe. She's just a little Parisian
_bourgeoise_."

"But she's with your sister now."

"Nellie's a nice old middle-class Irishwoman, darling. She doesn't
belong to your world, any more than I do. It wouldn't matter to her,
living out of her class--though I doubt if she'd enjoy it--because she's
elderly, and simple, and without very much imagination. But it wouldn't
do with a sensitive young girl like Arlette. You'd both be embarrassed."

"Oh, Rory, no."

"I don't mean that you'd ever be anything but an angel to her--tolerant,
and understanding."

"How could one be anything else, with a child--even if she wasn't your
child? And after all, I've lived abroad, I've met French people."

"I know, darling."

He paused for a moment.

"It's like this, Val. We'll have to face it sooner or later, just as
we'll have to face everything that's going to affect our future
together. We can't ignore the fact that your relations won't know what
to make of me--or rather, they'll think they know only too well--and
they certainly wouldn't know what to make of my child. I don't mean her
illegitimacy."

"I know you don't. I think you're exaggerating the importance of the old
traditions now, Rory. Primrose and Jess, and all their generation, just
ignore them."

"I'm not so sure. But anyway, love, it's not Primrose and Jess that
matter now. It's you. Shall you mind that my background has just been
Irish middle-class and French _bourgeoisie_, with a few years of
second-rate artistic Bloomsbury thrown in?"

"Why should I?"

"Darling, because it'll mean that your friends won't have any use for me
whatever, and that mine will probably seem to you a strange, rather
squalid collection, if you ever meet them."

"Don't you want me to?"

He hesitated.

"Well, no. In a way I don't. I think you'd find them impossible, and
that it would distress you. Arlette, of course, is different. She'll
always be a part of my life, and I want you to know each other."

"But you don't want her to come to Coombe?"

"I don't, sweetheart. If it was just you, it might be different. But you
have people coming and going--and servants----"

"Oh, Rory! Those two little village girls?"

"They're nice little girls, I know," he conceded, "but English servants
aren't like French ones, or Irish ones either. A real Irish servant is
like one of the family. Old Maggie Dolan, who does all the work except
what Nellie does herself, gives her opinion freely, I'd have you know,
on anything and everybody. Nellie and Arlette very often sit with her,
evenings, in the kitchen and she thinks nothing of bawling to Nellie up
the stairs if she wants her for anything. It's a different sort of
relation altogether."

"It's probably a much better one than ours, which is artificial. But
think of Madeleine--_she's_ not an English servant."

"Madeleine would be shocked, at your having Arlette as a step-daughter.
She's a kind, nice woman--I can see that--and she'd like Arlette and
understand her on her own merits--but not as one of your family."

Valentine reflected, grievedly and rather sadly, on what he was saying.

At last she asked:

"Does it matter much? Supposing that all you've just said is perfectly
true, need it make any difference to us?"

"Not so long as we talk it out, and don't just shirk discussion, and
ignore the whole problem. Does that frighten you, dearest?"

"I think it does, a little. You see, Rory, I've always lived amongst
people who do, deliberately, ignore a great many things. I've taken it
for granted that one should."

"You have," he agreed. "Just as you've taken it for granted, I think,
that if anything hurts you or makes you unhappy, you mustn't show it."

Valentine smiled faintly.

"It's the conventional English tradition, isn't it?"

"It is, and I'm not saying there isn't something fine and good about it.
But not between two people who love each other as you and I do, Val.
We've _got_ to be honest with one another. If I hurt you--God knows I
won't want to, but I probably will--you'll have to let me talk it out
with you."

"Do you mean, if you were ever unfaithful to me?"

"I don't, darling. I've no right to say it, but I believe I'll be
faithful to you always. And that's a thing I've never felt about anybody
else in the world."

She murmured her response in a word of endearment, and they were
interrupted by the service.

"Tell me why you said you'd probably hurt me," she asked, a little
later.

"Because we're human beings," Lonergan answered sadly. "Because it's
like that. Even the people who love each other most are bound to hurt
one another sometimes in little things. But it's all right--I mean, it
doesn't spoil anything really--if they're always able to talk it out
together."

Valentine thought of her own instinctive reaction to pain. Even in the
last forty-eight hours she had experienced it consciously--in the pangs
of acute jealousy that she suffered in thinking not only of Arlette, but
of Arlette's dead mother--and had hidden it.

Quite suddenly, she found that she was smiling.

"We ought never to have been separated, that time in Rome. We ought to
have been together ever since our youth, Rory."

"Ah, how right you are!"

It startled her when she found that they had almost finished their
luncheon and that Lonergan was telling the waiter to bring coffee to the
table.

"It's better than the hall, or lounge, or whatever they call it," he
explained. "Though it's absurd that I should be trying to tell you how I
adore you, here, in public, and in these surroundings. Tell me, love,
will we be able to be somewhere this evening, by ourselves?"

"Oh, Rory, I forgot to tell you. My sister-in-law--Humphrey's sister
Venetia--has telephoned and she wants to come to Coombe for to-night and
to-morrow. She's bringing a young man called Spurway with her. He knows
Primrose, I think."

"They'll be there when I get back, then?"

"I'm afraid so, yes."

Lonergan emitted a thoughtful, ejaculatory Damn! but that he was also
preoccupied with another idea was evident and he added immediately:

"Have you seen Primrose this morning?"

Valentine told him that she had, and that Primrose had spoken to her
without any unkindness.

"But I think she wants to go back to London. She doesn't want to stay on
at home."

"Will you and Primrose say anything to one another before she goes?"

"It will depend on her," said Valentine rather faintly. "I don't really
know how much she realizes what's happened to us. Last night I thought
she did."

"So did I."

"Rory, why don't I mind more that you've been in love with Primrose? I
ought to feel it a most terrible thing, that would put a barrier between
us for ever. But I can't feel that. I suppose it would be different if I
didn't know that she's had other affairs."

"I think it would. You see, dearest, Primrose hasn't either loved me, or
even _thought_ that she loved me. She's very realistic. It's one of the
things I admire about her."

Valentine meditated.

"Do you know, I believe that I do too? It's hurt me often, that realism
of hers, but I do admire it."

"You've got it too, in a different form. You're honest with yourself."

Valentine felt tears rising into her eyes, partly because she found his
words moving and reassuring, and partly at the remembrance of the
immense gulf between herself and her daughter that neither admiration
nor realism nor courage could ever bridge. She told Lonergan of her
conversation with Jess, and of how Jess had said: "What _do_ individual
people matter?"

"She said it in such complete sincerity, Rory. Jess doesn't ever pose.
She truly sees it like that."

"I know," he answered. "It's a point of view that's inherent in her
generation. It isn't in ours, and we shan't ever acquire it. At least,
people like you and me won't."

"I suppose not."

"The conflict of individual souls _does_ matter," he insisted. "It
matters immensely. I see it as you do, Val."

And, looking at her, he repeated her own words of a few minutes earlier:

"You and I ought always to have been together--ever since the days when
we were young and fell in love with one another, and had to let them
separate us."

       *       *       *       *       *

Lonergan drove Valentine back to Coombe just before the hour of her Red
Cross meeting. As the ancient car bucketed over the ruts and pot-holes
of the drive, they passed two girls riding bicycles, and a little way
further on, a straggling procession of elderly and middle-aged women
plodding along sedately and in silence.

Valentine waved to them, and they smiled and nodded at her in return.

"Is that your work-party?"

"Yes. They're mostly farmers' wives, and one or two of the tradespeople.
The two girls on bicycles are the doctor's daughters. They come very
regularly, although they're terribly busy, both of them."

"Any others?"

"A neighbour of ours, Lady Fields, who lives in rather a nice house on
the other side of the hill. She's got a P.G. with her, now--a Mrs.
Dalwood whose husband is abroad--and she generally brings her."

"It's good of you to have them."

It seemed to Valentine that Lonergan was purposely seeking to keep any
inflection out of his deep and musical voice, and the thought brought
with it the conviction that he felt bewildered, and out of sympathy with
the limited and parochial futilities that made up so much of her life.

"Do you think it's all very useless?" she suggested rather timidly.

"Darling, no. It's not that. It's just that I don't understand. I've
never seen that kind of life. It's one of the things that frightens
me--all these interests and responsibilities that you've built up for
yourself in the years. Will I ever be able to understand them?"

"Won't you, Rory?"

"Ah, I will. You'll make me understand everything. We've got to be
together, always, for whatever time may be left to us. We'll find a
way."

The warmth and colour had come back to his voice again, and his eyes
smiled at her.

Her love flamed within her, responding to his mercurial ardour. But the
parting words that they exchanged on the steps of Coombe, although they
chimed like bells in her consciousness all the afternoon, could only
partly drown the echo of his earlier words:

"It's just that I don't understand. I've never seen that kind of life.
It's one of the things that frightens me...."

       *       *       *       *       *

The cutting-out, the stitching and folding, had all taken place to the
customary accompaniment of disconnected conversation that always circled
round the same topics: the war, news of those who were on active
service, and domestic difficulties at home.

At four o'clock Madeleine brought in coffee and biscuits, and the
workers, as usual, protested and exclaimed, and then praised the coffee
that had, they knew, been made by Madeleine. They all exchanged
experiences over the difficulty of obtaining this or that commodity.

Presently they were all gone.

Valentine went round the house to see whether the black-out had been
properly done. In Lonergan's room she paused for an instant.

He had brought scarcely any personal possessions, and she felt sure that
he owned very few. There were no photographs and only two or three
books, all of them old and shabby-looking, neatly stacked on the bedside
table.

Shall we ever share an intimate, everyday life together? thought
Valentine.

She went away, to the other rooms, with the question still unanswered in
her mind.

He's an artist, she thought, and a man of forty-eight who's lived his
own sort of life always. He's afraid that I should want him to adapt
himself to mine. And yet he's afraid, too, that I could never fit into
his. Perhaps I never could. But I love him so. I'd give up anything in
the world for him. Only that isn't any good. A true companionship can't
be founded on a one-sided relinquishment. Not the kind of companionship
that Rory and I were meant to have. He said, "We'll find a way." How can
we?

The Red Room had been got ready. There was even a coal fire burning in
the grate, and Jess had placed chrysanthemums on the dressing-table.

With the two officers' rooms already filled, only a very small bedroom
that faced north had been available for Venetia's Hughie Spurway.

All the rooms in the house would be occupied, thought Valentine.

It was past six o'clock when the sound of a motor horn roused the two
dogs to frenzied barking, the General to shouted maledictions at them
both, and Jess to striding, slamming activity at the front door.

Valentine, already in her soft, shabby, ageless black dress, waited by
the fire. Her slim fingers automatically disentangled the long silken
fringes of the Chinese shawl caught in the back of her chair.

She already felt faintly nervous. Venetia's flawless armour of
self-confidence, her complete non-recognition of any standards other
than her own, had always frightened Valentine. Humphrey, neither liking
nor disliking his only sister, had never minded them in the least. He
had, indeed, had something of the same impenetrable complacency in his
own character but in him it had been tempered by more kindliness and
less astuteness.

But, as usual, when Venetia came into the hall and was greeted by her
sister-in-law, Valentine was primarily struck by her beauty.

Impossible to say of Venetia Rockingham at fifty-one: She is _still_ a
pretty woman. Hers was the timeless beauty ensured by small and
perfectly-formed bones, brilliant and deeply-set dark eyes beneath a
broad, white brow, and a shapely nose and mouth that recalled certain
portraits of the Umbrian school of painting in their mingling of
sensuality, warmth and an arrogance that yet contrived to be dignified.

The pale-gold of her hair showed no trace of artifice, and if the golden
gloss that Valentine had admired twenty-five years earlier had long
since faded, the soft, unlustrous waves now framing the clearly-moulded,
classically-spaced features only served to emphasize Venetia's ageless
loveliness.

The slim lines of her figure possessed all the fluidity and grace that
suggest youth, whilst actually far more often achieved by the poise of
maturity and the assurance derived from wealth, beautiful clothes and
the ability to wear them without self-consciousness.

She was followed into the hall by Hughie Spurway.

At a first glance, it was possible only to note that he undoubtedly
belonged to the group so often and so angrily defined before the war by
General Levallois as "Venetia's pansies". He was large-eyed, haggard,
good-looking, in spite of prematurely thinning dark hair, but with all
the nervous and agitating mannerisms of the neurotic.

"Darling, it's too angelic of you to have us like this," Lady
Rockingham cried. "How are you? Reggie--lovely to see you again. Where's
darling Primrose? Hughie, you know Primrose of course. This is her
mother, Lady Arbell, who was a friend of _your_ mother's somewhere in
the dark ages when they were infants and I was already an elderly
married woman. Reggie, this is Hughie Spurway--General Levallois."

Her manner and vocabulary were, strangely, still those of the Edwardian
hostess.

Valentine always felt that it was really that elaborate social
artificiality of Venetia's that, unknown to herself, and in spite of the
almost transatlantic modernity with which she conducted the machinery of
existence, divorced her irrevocably from youth.

Jess was looking at her aunt with candid and evident appraisement of her
dark, swinging furs, her double row of pearls, the R.A.F. diamond and
platinum badge pinned onto her slim-lined black coat, her sheer, palest
grey silk stockings, and squared, low-heeled sude shoes.

Hughie Spurway, his black brows knotted into a frown of distress,
stooped to pat the spaniel. Sally immediately bared her teeth and
growled.

"Shut up, Sally," said the General, pushing her with his foot.

"She's frightfully old," Jess explained, "but she isn't bad-tempered as
a rule. Do you like dogs?"

"Yes. Yes. Very much," said the young man unconvincingly. "At least, I
don't really know frightfully much about them. I know more about cats."

"Cats are all right," said Jess encouragingly, if without much
enthusiasm.

The General said that cats were selfish, sneaking, unfriendly
creatures--you never knew where to have them--and that the stupidest dog
on earth had more brains than any cat that ever walked the tiles.

At this, Hughie Spurway looked more distressed than ever, as though
convicted of having said the wrong thing.

Valentine smiled at him, asked him to sit down, and said that she, too,
was very fond of cats and didn't at all agree with her brother's
estimate of them.

Relaxing very slightly, the young man took his seat beside her and,
clinging to the topic as to a spar in a tempestuous sea, talked about
cats.

Valentine felt that any attempt to start a fresh theme would at once
throw him off his balance again and she continued the interchange long
after it seemed to her that the last possible word about cats had been
said.

Part of her attention was free to focus itself on Venetia, giving
General Levallois an account of the afternoon's meeting in Bristol, of
which all the implications served to prove that it would have been of a
wholly disastrous tepidity but for the galvanizing effect of Venetia's
own speech.

"What did you talk about?" Jess enquired.

Venetia said that she had talked about the progress of the war.

"Oh," said Jess. "When's it going to end?"

She seemed to be making the enquiry quite without irony.

"Rubbish," said the General.

"Darling, if one knew that, one would be the most popular speaker on any
platform in England, not excepting Winston," declared Lady Rockingham.
"Instead of having to address three old ladies and a couple of
centenarians in a draughty parish hall, as too, too often happens to
one. Charlie simply can't bear it, when I tell him about some of my
meetings, but I feel these provincial places simply _must_ have
speakers, and it's the _one_ thing I can do, don't you know what I
mean?"

"You sit on millions of committees," Jess pointed out--but with a
coldness in her voice that Valentine recognized. "How are Michael and
Nicky, aunt Venetia?"

At the mention of the two young Service men, Venetia's sons, the
tenuous thread of composure that the conversation about cats had spun
round Valentine and Hughie Spurway seemed to quiver and then break
altogether.

He looked round, faltered in the midst of his halting eulogy of Siamese
kittens, and the look of misery in his haunted dark eyes deepened.

Valentine had to remind herself, from sheer compassion, that he
probably, and fortunately, had no idea of the far too great
expressiveness of his own face.

"Michael is still at Windsor, one's thankful to say, and gets up to
London quite often, don't you know what I mean. Nicky can't tell us
exactly where he is but one's sure it's Palestine. He dropped some
terribly broad hint in a letter to Charlie about being able to see the
Mount of Olives from where he was writing. He and Charlie's cousin, the
Eric Camerons' boy, met the other day, and we all think it was in
Jerusalem."

"What's Eric Cameron doing nowadays?" enquired the General, interested.

This was the kind of conversation, Valentine remembered, that he liked
and understood, and to which he had once been accustomed. Conversation
into which entered names that he knew, and references that he could
identify without having to think about it. The slang, elliptical
interchange of assertion and counter-assertion between the young
irritated and puzzled him, and he only cared to speak of politics,
either national or international, with men whose views coincided with
his own. Nowadays, he seldom indeed met with such men.

Venetia, with Debrett at her fingers' ends and innumerable pieces of
inside information to impart about the conduct of the war, the state of
Germany and the opinions of President Roosevelt, was suiting him
exactly.

Valentine wondered, as she had wondered all day at intervals, what Rory
would feel about Venetia and Venetia's fluency, that took so much for
granted in her listeners.

She presently heard Jess announce, as though in extension of her
thought:

"You know we've got two officers billeted here? A Colonel and a Captain.
The Colonel is Irish, his name is Lonergan, and he's an absolute
smasher. Quite old, but terribly glamorous still. You'll simply adore
him. He says 'will' instead of 'shall' every single time. I've noticed
it particularly, and it's definitely rather wizard."

Valentine and Lady Rockingham both laughed, and the General said: "He's
not a bad chap, except for being Irish. I hope I'm not a man who's in
any way prejudiced, but I'm bound to say I've very little use for the
Irish. You never know where to have them."

"Is the other one Irish too?"

"Oh no," said Jess. "He's frightfully good value, too. We're really
awfully lucky. His name is Charles and he's got red hair, which I loathe
personally, but I must say he gets away with it."

Valentine waited for her sister-in-law to ask:

"Charles _who_?"

She did so.

"Sedgewick, but no link anywhere so far as I know," said the General
rather gloomily. "It's a North Country name, but this lad is a Londoner
pure and simple."

"When are we going to see them?" Lady Rockingham asked lightly. "And
where's darling Primrose?"

"Primrose has been in a most filthy temper all day, I don't know why,
and she's been soaking in the bath ever since tea because the water
happens to be boiling hot, and I suppose," Jess said, "there won't be a
drop left for anybody else."

"Good God," said General Levallois.

Valentine stood up.

"Wouldn't you like to see your room, Venetia? Mr. Spurway, I hope you
won't mind rather cramped quarters, but, with Colonel Lonergan and
Captain Sedgewick here and Primrose at home, we've only got two spare
rooms available."

"I'm afraid I'm a frightful nuisance," said Hughie Spurway resentfully.

"Indeed you're not."

She led the way upstairs.

They met Primrose coming down, wearing her long periwinkle-blue
house-coat.

Valentine was immediately conscious that a violent psychic disturbance
had assailed Hughie Spurway, and she hoped that Primrose would greet him
with some kindness.

Venetia exclaimed: "Darling, it's simply ages since I saw you! What an
amusing way of doing your hair! New, isn't it?"

Primrose averted her face as far as possible from the contact imposed
upon her by her aunt's embrace and said something indistinct.

She looked neither at Venetia nor at her mother, but her eyes rested for
an instant coldly and appraisingly on Hughie Spurway.

"Look who's here," she drawled.

He put out his hand, but she seemed not to see it.

He said, "Hallo, my dear, how are you?" very faintly.

Primrose had already turned aside and was walking downstairs.

Valentine opened the door of the Red Room and said:

"You know where you are, Venetia. I'll show Mr. Spurway his room, and
then come and see if you've got everything you need."




XII


In the spring of nineteen hundred and forty-one--nearly a year
earlier--Hughie Spurway had for a few weeks been Primrose's lover. Time
out of mind he had asked himself, as he was asking himself now, why he
could not forget her, or hate her for her cruelty, and fall in love with
someone who might be kind and gentle and might even love him in return.

Then he reminded himself, with a savage pleasure in self-torture, that
it was scarcely probable that any woman would ever love him. The thought
had been familiar to him ever since the terrifying day in his twelfth
year when he had seen his mother's white, sick face turned towards him
after reading a letter from his headmaster. She had told him, then, why
she had left his father.

She had two other boys, to make up to her for Hughie. He had sought
refuge in that thought even at twelve years old, and even in the blind
despair and self-disgust that had driven him into lying continuously to
her and to the grave, compassionate priests and doctors to whom she had
sent him. None of them had, it seemed to him, done much to help him.
None of them had given any real answer to his question: Why, _why_
should it be me? My brothers are not like this. Why am I different?

He had crawled, like something with a mortal wound, through the years of
adolescence, its normal pains intensified, deprived of its normal joys.
In the end, he had come to take a kind of pleasure in feeling himself an
outcast, in deliberately permitting his loss of self-respect to encroach
further and further into his life.

Later on, there had been brief unrelated periods of a feverish happiness
that he now qualified as illusory. They had ended, all of them, with
more or less of violence and, exaggerating his own inadequacies, he told
himself that it was only his perpetual fears and jealousies and
suspicions that had brought about these ruptures.

He had fallen in love with Primrose at a party when he had taken too
much to drink and found himself sufficiently released to talk with
freedom about himself and his miseries, and she had listened and had
seemed to him kind. He had found the courage to ask her if she would
come back to his flat with him that night and she had, without demur,
agreed.

The brief period that followed had seemed to Hughie like the opening of
a new life, but when he asked Primrose if she would marry him she had
unhesitatingly said no and he had passed almost at once into the old
familiar region of nightmare jealousies and scenes of frenzied appeals
and demands and reproaches.

It was always he who had forced them upon Primrose in the very teeth of
his own agonized knowledge that they served only to antagonize her and
cause her to despise him.

One day she told him, with a deliberate calm that carried instant
conviction, that she had only listened to him and allowed him to take
her home at their first meeting because she, too, had been drinking and
had not really known what she was doing. It had meant nothing at all to
her.

Hughie heard her with a sense of doom that found its only expression in
hysterical threats of suicide that she, as well as he, knew to be
theatrical and unreal.

Even his passion for Primrose was, he sometimes thought,
unreal--although it dominated his days and his nights and throve
insanely under the lash of her open contempt for his manifestations of
it.

Yet she continued to see him, to make use of him and occasionally to
throw him a word of mock tenderness.

He cursed himself now, because he had manoeuvred for this way of seeing
her again, knowing that Lady Rockingham was amused and would make a good
story out of it, and that Primrose would despise him more than ever.
Would she even give him a chance of talking to her alone? She had been
on her way downstairs when they met--perhaps he could find her by
herself now, if he made haste.

Hughie tore the things out of his suitcase, scattering them about the
room and cursing viciously below his breath, mechanically emitting
schoolboy blasphemies and indecencies whenever his own nervous, frenzied
fumblings impeded his movements.

It was characteristic of him that when he was ready and had dashed from
the room, he came to a dead stop at the head of the stairs and then
hesitated in an agony of indecision. Twice he turned back to his own
room, fumbling with the door-handle as if to open it, and then moving
away again.

At last, with the sweat shining on his forehead and upper lip, he went
down the stairs and into the hall.

Primrose was slumped in a chair over the fire.

He was, as always, utterly disconcerted by her trick of neither moving
nor looking round at him as he approached.

Striving to make his voice sound casual, Hughie said:

"You look terribly attractive in that colour, sweet. Have I seen it
before?"

"No. It's warm, thank God, and one needs that in this dog-hole. See if
you can do anything with the bellows, Hughie. My mama is the worst hand
at running a house of any woman I've ever seen or heard of."

He thankfully knelt down and began to work the bellows.

She didn't sound angry, and she'd called him by his name. Mostly,
nowadays, Primrose didn't call him anything.

"How did you and aunt Venetia get on coming down in the car?"

"Frightfully well," he lied. "She's quite amusing, isn't she?"

"D'you think so? I don't."

"I mean, in a period way," he amended hastily. "You don't mind my
turning up like this, do you?"

"It's okay by me," Primrose answered indifferently. "If you like to sit
through aunt Venetia's blatherings, on the platform and off it, why
should _I_ mind? By the way, what are the plans exactly? Are you driving
her back to London or what?"

"I'm going on to Plymouth to-morrow, and she's going back to London by
train on Wednesday. But I thought you and I could go back by car any day
you say, after Wednesday. I could come and get you from here or meet you
anywhere you like."

"Why not let's take aunt Venetia? She wouldn't mind staying on here an
extra day."

"My God, no. I _must_ talk to you, Primrose. I simply can't go on like
this."

With terror, he heard in his own voice the note of hysteria that he knew
she hated.

"You fool. I'm only pulling your leg. I'd die sooner than listen to that
woman yattering all the way to London. Look, Hughie, I'll let you know.
I'm in a bit of a jam, and I can't make up my mind."

"Can you tell me?" he ventured.

Warm, excited visions rushed through his mind of himself listening with
wide, generous understanding whilst Primrose confided in him and
realized suddenly the extent of his devotion.

"Good God, no," said Primrose. "There isn't anything to tell, and if
there were, I'm not the type that goes in for outpourings of the soul,
as you ought to know by this time, my pet."

"As you say," he acquiesced.

Primrose lit a cigarette.

"You'll find this place a bit of a madhouse, as Jess says. I expect
you'll loathe it. Most people do."

He dared not say that, so long as he could see her, he minded nothing.
At any moment her mood of unusual loquacity and friendliness might
alter.

"Who's here? Besides your family, I mean."

"A soldier chap called Charles Sedgewick, whom you'll see at dinner, and
Rory Lonergan."

"What's Sedgewick like?"

"Like a fox."

"It sounds a bit intriguing."

"He isn't, particularly."

"The Irish chap is, I suppose. He fell for you at that party in London,
didn't he?"

Instinctive jealousy had prompted the question. Hughie had not really
noticed Lonergan very specially at the Bloomsbury party.

He felt as though he had received a violent blow in the midriff when
Primrose signed assent with an arrogant movement of the head.

"That's right, my poppet. He's quite a fast little worker, too. Witness
his getting himself billeted here."

"Primrose, you're not in love with him, are you? For God's sake----"

"Cut it out," advised Primrose. "I loathe melodramatics, as you know,
and I don't discuss my private affairs with anyone."

"Will he be here this evening?"

"After dinner."

Jess and her mother came down at the same moment, and Captain Sedgewick
made a hasty appearance in the hall, asked Lady Arbell not to wait for
him and dashed up the stairs three steps at a time.

Hughie thought how much at ease he seemed, and how completely sure of
himself. He thought, also, that the young officer must have wondered why
he wasn't in uniform. No one really believed in all the talk of
"reserved occupation" and "essential war work"--at least in the case of
young men of Hughie's age and appearance.

They just thought one a damned coward and shirker, as one was.

General Levallois shuffled in just before the gong rang and then they
had to wait for Lady Rockingham.

Sedgewick had come down again before she appeared. As they sat round the
table in the chilly dining-room Hughie, shivering slightly as much from
nervousness as from cold, listened to Lady Rockingham's anecdotes about
well-known people, that were obviously amusing the General, and to the
brisk interchange of personalities between Jess and Charles Sedgewick.

He noticed that Primrose scarcely spoke at all and that whenever her
mother addressed her, which was seldom, she looked away and replied as
briefly as possible.

He knew that Primrose disliked her mother intensely: she had always said
so.

Hughie, without much interest, wondered why. Lady Arbell seemed to him
gentle and uninteresting, and he felt rather grateful to her because she
was taking the trouble to talk to him. He answered her, and joined from
time to time in the laughter that Lady Rockingham always seemed to wait
for after each one of her stories, and he looked continually at
Primrose, remembering with agony the times that he most longed to
forget: times when her graceful body had lain sprawled against him, when
he had twisted his fingers in and out of the stiff flaxen rings of hair
that stood out round her head, unrebuked. Was Lonergan her lover now? He
felt certain that he would know once he saw them together and the
age-old delusion, that from bitter experience he well knew to be
delusion, possessed him once again: truth would hurt less than
uncertainty.

Hughie tried to remember what the Irishman looked like, and could not.
He must be a great deal older than Primrose and perhaps what she had
implied was not true. She was capable of having said it on purpose to
make him jealous.

The nine o'clock time-signal had just sounded and the General was
imperatively holding up his hand to silence Lady Rockingham when Jess,
sitting on the floor by aunt Sophy, scrambled to her feet.

"Here's the Colonel," she remarked confidently. "He's early--that's
wizard. I'll go and let him in."

The announcer's voice came over the air, and no one made any comment.
Hughie, with his eyes fixed on Primrose, saw no change in her face.

Jess and her prancing dog preceded Lonergan into the half-circle round
the fire, and Lady Arbell murmured introductions, acknowledged by
everyone, in deference to the General's warning frowns and hisses, with
apologetic smiles only, and in silence.

Hughie glanced surreptitiously at Lonergan, who had taken his seat
beside Lady Arbell.

He at once told himself that this was a man who would always be
attractive to women. His dark face was sensitive and intelligent, his
eyes of dark, deep blue showed lines at the corners springing fanwise
out onto the broad temples, that would, one saw, easily and agreeably
deepen with amusement.

Large-boned and rather heavily built, his movements were deliberate but
never indecisive.

Mature, confident and intensely vital, the Irishman seemed to Hughie,
eyeing him with a jealous, analytical attention, to be the very
antithesis of himself. He felt sick with despair and rage--a rage that
was directed against himself far more than against Lonergan.

He glanced at Primrose but she, with her mouth all drawn down on one
side, was examining the points of her finger-nails.

Lonergan was not looking at Primrose.

He was looking at her mother, and Hughie saw him smile at her, and saw
that there was great charm in his way of smiling and that it mingled
humour with a possible hint of underlying, unhurtful irony that held
kindliness.

Lady Rockingham's clear, _manirs_ tones cut across the room.

"But darling Reggie, isn't that enough? We've heard all that matters and
I _can't_ see why we should all continue to sit in this death-like
trance."

Everybody laughed, even the General, and Jess turned off the wireless.

"Gosh, mummie! Do you know what day it is? D'you know what you've
forgotten?"

"No?" said Lady Arbell enquiringly.

"The First-Aid class in the village!" crowed Jess.

Lady Rockingham uttered her tinkling, unmirthful laugh and Primrose made
a sound that might equally have stood for amusement or derision.

"Really, Val," said the General, looking at her reproachfully.

"If it's frightfully important, could I go down with a message or ring
up anyone?" said Sedgewick.

"It's too late, thank you. I ought to have been there at half-past
seven. I haven't any excuse at all. I simply forgot."

"Darling, it isn't going to lose us the war," Lady Rockingham pointed
out. "And I suppose they can do whatever it is, bandaging and what-not,
without you."

"Yes," said Lady Arbell rather helplessly. "But you see, they're very
bad about attending the classes, really, and I've tried to urge it on
them and always to be there myself, and now----"

"Good God," Primrose said, "as if it mattered whether this village meets
to make tourniquets or doesn't. If they can't take the initiative for
themselves, they aren't going to be of the slightest use anyway. We
might as well be living in Victorian days when nobody did anything
unless the gentry were gracious enough to allow it and come and show
them how."

"Don't talk such damned Bolshevik nonsense, Primrose," said the General.
"These people are slack enough already without our making things worse
by leaving them to their own devices. If you couldn't go down to the
village, Val, why on earth didn't you warn them and tell someone to
preside for you?"

"I'm afraid I forgot all about it."

The General looked thunderstruck.

"Forgot all about it!" he echoed.

"In the name of Heaven, will you tell me what all this means?" Lonergan
asked his hostess, half laughing.

He spoke low and only to her, but the deep, clear notes of his voice
carried, and Hughie Spurway heard the question, and Lady Arbell's
softly-spoken reply.

"I always do go to these classes and I think Reggie is right--it does
perhaps encourage busier women than myself to attend. I just forgot,
to-day."

"Won't the doctor's daughters that we saw this afternoon be there, or
that Lady Someone?"

"Lady Fields? She gets asthma, and never goes out in the evenings. The
Dickinson girls may have gone, if they hadn't anything else
arranged--but they both do A.R.P. work and a good many other things."

"My God!" ejaculated Lonergan. "Wouldn't the villagers be able to carry
on without worrying the life out of you to be there week in and week
out?"

"They ought, I know."

"Madeleine ought to have reminded you. Did she forget, too? What's the
matter with you all?" enquired General Levallois.

"Madeleine didn't forget!" cried Jess. "At least, she said something
about me going down there when I saw her before dinner, and I said Not
on your life, and she said _Ah, votre pauvre maman_, or something."

"She ought to have reminded you," the General repeated.

"I bet she thought mummie needed a rest and didn't remind her on
purpose," Jess remarked. "Anyway, it's all over now, we can't do a
thing."

"No telephoning?" suggested Sedgewick once more.

Hughie Spurway was watching Primrose now, and saw the contemptuous
twist of her mouth. She was bored with all this unnecessary fuss about
an affair of the parish pump. Odd, in a way, because she'd been brought
up in this atmosphere, that took such trivialities with a mortal and
humourless seriousness. So indeed had everyone present, excepting the
two soldiers.

Charles Sedgewick was showing a polite readiness to be of any assistance
but Hughie guessed that his mind was not really on the question at all.
He was probably thinking of something quite else, whilst uttering his
obliging offers.

Lonergan's reaction was different. For some reason, he was really
interested and concerned. He was puzzled, too. Hughie could see his
eyes--eyes that were very un-English in their expressiveness--turning
from one speaker to another.

I suppose, thought Hughie, that if he's in love with Primrose he wants
to understand the sort of background she's been used to--though God
knows it won't be there much longer, and anyway she loathes it all and
only wants to get away. Perhaps she means to marry this man.

A shaft of pain and fury shot through him--pain that was not only mental
but sharply physical, so that he moved quickly and involuntarily in his
seat, seeking relief in a change of position.

They were still going on talking about the class in the village that
Lady Arbell had forgotten, and whether or not she should telephone to
someone or other.

"God!" said Primrose suddenly, "do we have to go on about this all
night?"

She reared up her length from the low stool on which she had sat hunched
together.

"Let's do something," Jess cried zealously. "Charles, why not let's
dance? Can you dance?"

"Certainly. Got a gramophone?"

"It's in the schoolroom. You wouldn't like to go and get it, would
you?"

Hughie dared not look at Primrose. It would be Heaven to dance with her,
and hold her in his arms--but if she saw his eagerness, she might
refuse.

"Okay, come on," she said. "It'll warm us, if it does nothing else. In
the drawing-room, I suppose?"

"I must see if the black-out is all right," said Lady Arbell.

"Will I roll up the carpet or something?" Lonergan asked, rising also.

"It's up already," she answered, smiling.

He followed her out of the hall and into the shrouded drawing-room.

       *       *       *       *       *

General Levallois made his inevitable comment, as the heavily-stressed,
limping rhythm of the dance-music reached the hall through the open
doorway of the big cold drawing-room.

"Personally, I adore swing-music," said Venetia Rockingham, "but with
quite a different compartment of my mind, don't you know what I mean,
Reggie. There's nothing like music--of course I adore classical
music--and yet I can absolutely see the fascination of this present-day
stuff. I can dance to it quite as well as any _dbutante_, though I say
it as shouldn't. Nicky and Michael both tell me so."

The General was not interested in Venetia's personal triumphs.

He made a small, polite sound and changed the conversation.

"What kind of Spurway is this chap? Lincolnshire?"

"Yes. His father was a younger son, killed in the last war. His mother
was Dorothy Herbert-MacDowell of Acres, a sister of the present man.
She's got two other boys. Hughie is the eldest."

"I don't much care for the looks of him, to be frank with you," said the
General. "Why isn't he in uniform?"

"Too tragic, my dear. He's really terribly clever but he's neurasthenic
and too fearfully highly-strung and he'd certainly go completely bats if
he was forced into the war. He went through some of the London blitzes
last winter and had _the_ most fearful breakdown and had to be sent
right into the country for weeks, don't you know what I mean. The
doctors all agreed that he was simply hopelessly unfit for service and
mercifully he's got this marvellous job with the B.B.C."

"What sort of job?"

"You must get him to tell you all about it. I know they think him
_quite_ indispensable," Venetia asserted glibly. "Of course, poor
Dorothy has always been one of these insanely over-anxious mothers. Such
a pity she never married again."

"Herbert-MacDowell," said the General thoughtfully. "Haven't they got
rather a lot of money?"

"My dear, yes. These boys will all be well-off, and the second one has
married marmalade and they're rolling in wealth, or would be if it
wasn't for taxation. You do realize that poor Hughie is completely crazy
about Primrose?"

"Lots of fellers are, I'm told. I can't see why. A dam' disagreeable
girl with bad manners, if you ask me. I grant you she's got good legs,
but so has young Jess--and a nice-tempered, well-behaved child into the
bargain."

"They're both of them too sweet," Venetia asserted unconvincingly. "I
wish darling Valentine understood them better, but I suppose daughters
_are_ impossible with their mother. The boys and I are _such_ friends,
don't you know what I mean. I'm sometimes afraid they'll never fall in
love and marry, they _both_ say they'd rather do things with me than
with any of their girls."

"Jess gets on perfectly with her mother. Val manages her very well."

"I couldn't agree more than I do, Reggie. And of course Primrose will
marry. Personally, I hope she'll have Hughie. I think she'd be good for
him, and really, I may be a snob, Reggie, but it is rather a relief
when these young things marry somebody one does know something about.
Look at the poor Camerons! Their girl has just insisted on marrying
somebody from the Australian backwoods, whom she met at an Army dance.
All glamour and good looks, I admit, and they say he's doing
brilliantly--but what I want to know is, _who is he_? Naturally, nobody
can tell one."

"I don't see what else anybody can expect, in war-time. It's always the
same thing. These girls go dashing about all over the place, and meet
every sort and kind, and think they're in love, and they're so damned
independent nobody can stop them doing anything they please."

"Too right," murmured Lady Rockingham. "It's propinquity, don't you know
what I mean. If you're going to have officers billeted here, Reggie,
it's quite a good thing that Jess is joining up."

"Ah," said the General.

He appeared to ponder for a moment.

Venetia Rockingham's large and lovely eyes rested upon him thoughtfully.

"What's Colonel Lonergan like?" she asked presently. "The other one--the
young one--is quite a bore, isn't he, but I thought Lonergan was an
interesting type, don't you know what I mean. Very Irish of course."

The General's reply was indirect.

"Has Val told you that she knew him years ago, when my father was at the
Embassy in Rome?"

"She did say something--Reggie _darling_! Don't tell me he's the one
there was the fuss about!"

The General nodded.

"But that one was a music teacher, or an art student, or something."

"Well, it's the same chap. He draws pictures and gets paid for them in
peace-time--but I'm bound to say he strikes me as being a good
soldier."

"Is he married?"

"Not that I know of. In fact, my dear, between you and me and the
gate-post, I'm not perfectly certain that he isn't after Val now. He was
by way of being a pal of Primrose's, which might have meant anything or
nothing with a girl like her--but if you ask me, he's much more inclined
to play the ass about Val."

Venetia's eyes glittered with interest and amusement.

"How too intriguing. Of course I won't say a word to a soul--anything to
do with the family is always _sacred_ to me, as you know. And I've
always been so terribly fond of darling Val. But just tell me one thing,
Reggie--how long has he been here?"

"Since Saturday."

"But this is only Monday night, and he's been out all to-day."

"She met him at the Victoria Hotel for luncheon. Not," said the General,
"that there's the slightest reason why she shouldn't, but it isn't like
Val. Not at all like her. And there's been a most extraordinary amount
of sitting over the fire and talking. What she can have to say to a chap
like that, whom she's only known for two days, beats me."

"Of course, if they knew each other before----"

"Twenty-five years ago!" broke in the General.

"Valentine's at the sort of age when women want to take a last fling,
don't you know what I mean. The girls are grown-up, and it's her last
chance of having any fun, especially living down here, poor pet."

"Fun! What on earth does she want with fun? She isn't a girl of twenty."

"If she was, it wouldn't be half so dangerous. I must say, I've always
rather wondered why she never married again."

They both glanced up at Humphrey's portrait as though seeking an
explanation there.

"She'd never marry a chap of Lonergan's sort," said General Levallois.
"What on earth have they got in common?"

"Women like Val are so terribly romantic," sighed her sister-in-law.
"The kind that always remembers her first love, and I suppose he _was_
her first love."

"Dam' nonsense," said the General angrily.

The music in the drawing-room had stopped and they could hear Jessica's
voice directing the changing of a record.

"Where the devil is Val now?" suddenly demanded the General. "Don't tell
me she and Lonergan are fox-trotting, or whatever they call it, with the
rest of them in there."

Venetia stood up.

"I'll see what's going on," she said, "and come back and tell you."

She moved over to the open doorway and, herself in shadow, stood gazing
into the lighted drawing-room.

The gramophone--a very old one--was stridently giving forth the opening
bars of a waltz.

"Hallo, aunt Venetia! Come and dance," shouted Jess. "I'll work the
gramophone, and you can have Hughie."

"No thanks, Jess darling."

Venetia's gaze, unhurried, swept the room. It looked strange and
ghostly, with its bare boards and isolated clumps of white-sheeted
furniture under the glittering chandelier hanging from the centre of the
ceiling.

Primrose was dancing with Charles Sedgewick and Venetia had leisure for
a passing reflection: Good Heavens, he dances exactly like a
professional.

Hughie Spurway stood with Jess beside the gramophone.

Her dog lay curled up on the shrouded seat of an armchair.

At the far end of the long room, the door that opened into the little
breakfast-room was closed. From beneath it, a bar of warm red light was
plainly visible.

"Come on, Hughie," said Jess.

As they began to dance Lady Rockingham turned away and went back to
where General Levallois sat over the fire.




XIII


"Sweetheart, when are you going to marry me?" asked Lonergan.

He had drawn Valentine into his arms and her head was resting against
his shoulder.

The shuffling feet of the dancers and the raucous blare of the
gramophone next door went on, unheeded by either of them.

She did not answer immediately and he asked quickly:

"Do you still want to marry me?"

"More than anything on earth, Rory."

"Dearest love. I get frightened, you know, from time to time."

She looked up at him and smiled, but he saw that her eyes were wet.

"So do I."

"I know, love." He stooped and kissed her eyelids.

"Not about anything fundamental, Rory. Not about us. But about
Primrose--partly--and other things. Silly things. Unimportant, really."

"I know," he repeated. "It's the same with me. The thought of the
adjustments we'll both have to make--and your family--they're not going
to take this lying down, I'd have you know."

"There's your family, too. I mean Arlette."

"True for you, as we say in Ireland. But all those problems we'll face
together, darling. There's really only one thing that matters now."

"I know."

The music stopped, and they heard Jessica and the two young men arguing
and laughing, and Jess's flying feet rushing across the room.

"Val, my beloved, there's only one thing for it. We haven't a lot of
time anyway and I may be sent off anywhere at any minute. Will you marry
me as soon as I can get a special licence?"

"You know I will."

"It's Primrose that's distressing you."

"Yes. It would be difficult to tell her anyhow but now----"

"Would it be any better if I did it?"

Valentine shook her head.

"You can talk to her, of course. I don't know about that--you must
judge. But I must tell her--and Jess and Reggie too."

"Will you do that to-morrow, love?"

"Yes."

"God bless you!"

He kissed her, holding her closely against him.

"I'm happy," said Valentine below her breath, her shining eyes looking
into his. "I'm madly happy. You've made the whole of life quite
different."

They were together until a sudden startling and violent crash against
the communicating door caused them to move quickly apart.

"In the name of Heaven!" ejaculated Lonergan.

He opened the door.

Jess, on the floor, was screaming with laughter.

"Aunt Sophy got under my feet and I simply skidded," she shrieked
happily. "My legs just shot away from under me. It was too funny for
anything!"

Lonergan pulled her to her feet.

"Have you hurt yourself?" Valentine asked.

"Gosh, yes. I shall be black and blue to-morrow, I should think. I bet I
shan't be able to sit down for a week."

"What's happened?" called Venetia Rockingham's voice from the hall.

"Only Jess making a forced landing," said Charles Sedgewick. "No harm
done."

"That's all you know about it," Jess protested. "I'm not sure I can
walk, even."

"I'll carry you."

She screamed and laughed as Sedgewick picked her up, her long legs
kicking, and carried her into the hall.

"Take aunt Sophy, Hughie!" shrieked Jess.

Hughie Spurway made a grab at the dog, which eluded him with ungainly
caperings.

Primrose gave her scoffing laugh.

"What for would a great old dog like that one need carrying at all?"
demanded Lonergan. "Get on with you, aunt Sophy!"

He gently shoved the dog with his foot.

Aunt Sophy, delighted, plunged along beside him.

Hughie's face was drawn and his eyes looked miserable.

All of them went back to the fire in the hall.

"Well, a nice row you've been kicking up in there," said the General
leniently. "Good God, Jessica, what do you think you're doing?"

Sedgewick, laughing and out of breath, deposited his struggling burden
on a broad sofa.

She gave voluble vent to her mock-indignation.

The fringes of Valentine's shawl were caught in a chair-back and she
mechanically began to disentangle them.

Primrose took out a cigarette.

Hughie went up to her and offered her his lighter.

They moved away from the circle, Primrose saying something inaudible
between her teeth.

"Colonel Lonergan, do tell me if you're any relation to a most
entertaining creature called Willie Lonergan who used to hunt with the
Quorn, years and years ago."

"I am not, so far as I know."

By an almost imperceptible gesture Venetia invited him to come and sit
beside her, and Lonergan, smiling, went.

"He knew everything there was to know about a horse--like most
Irishmen--but I can't remember what part of Ireland he came from. He
married a girl called Patsy Berresford and they went to live in the
Shires somewhere and then one somehow lost sight of them, don't you know
what I mean. But I'm sure he was Irish."

"Probably, if he was called Lonergan. There are quite a few of them, but
whether I'm related to all or any of them, I couldn't tell you."

"Which Berresford was that?" asked General Levallois.

Venetia told him. She gave genealogical details and the General,
interested, supplemented them.

They talked about people--people who were nearly all related to one
another, and bore names well known within very narrow limits.

Lonergan, falling silent, idly pencilled outlines on the back of an
envelope. His eyes were narrowed and his long upper lip pressing firmly
down upon the full lower one.

Presently Lady Rockingham engaged him in conversation once more, this
time talking about pictures.

It was impossible to say that she knew nothing about art: on the
contrary, she had a good deal of information, both about art and about
artists, that went considerably beyond the usual range of the amateur's
stock phrases. Her judgments, glibly uttered as they were, were founded
on premises that commanded respect, even from a listener as critical,
and as nearly hostile, as Lonergan just then was--for her personality
antagonized him and he resented her evident determination to draw him
out.

Their conversation continued.

The General withdrew behind a newspaper, and Valentine, the fringes of
the shawl released once more, leant back in an armchair and from time to
time spoke, when appealed to by her sister-in-law.

Sedgewick, Primrose, Jess and Hughie had retreated from the hall
altogether.

Jess and her dog reappeared just when Lady Rockingham had declared that
she really must go to bed.

"What are you all doing?" she asked her niece.

"Nothing. Just sitting about. I was wishing I had some sweets," candidly
remarked Jess.

"Too bad, you poor pet. But at least it's good for one's figure to go
without."

"One thing about being in the WAAF, I suppose there'll be a NAAFI or
something where one can get chocolate. 'Smatter of fact, Charles thinks
he can get me some to-morrow. He's going to try."

Lady Rockingham laughed indulgently as she turned to go upstairs.

"I'll come and see if you've got all you want," said Valentine. "I'm
afraid Esther is a very inexperienced housemaid, Venetia."

"Darling, too marvellous of you to have anyone. I can't imagine how
we're all going to live when every single domestic in the country has
left us, don't you know what I mean. Good-night, Reggie. Good-night,
Colonel Lonergan."

"Good-night, Lady Rockingham."

Lonergan looked straight at his hostess.

"Are you coming down again?"

"Yes, in a few minutes."

The General heaved himself to his feet.

"I'll turn out the lights, Val. No need for you to bother."

"It's all right, thank you, dear," she said gently. "I want to come down
for a little while."

The General gazed at her, then, seeming to realize that there was
nothing more to be said, dropped slowly back into his chair again.

"I've some writing to do," Lonergan announced. "So I'll be off to the
office. Jess, where can I get hold of Charles?"

"I'll send him. We were all in the schoolroom. You aren't going to make
him do any work _to-night_, are you?"

"I am. Not for long, though."

"Gosh! Fancy you being so strict. You're like my old headmistress was."

"I am not like any headmistress that ever lived, you bold brat."

Jess laughed as she went off.

Valentine and her sister-in-law laughed also, as they went upstairs
together and, in Venetia's bedroom, she began at once to speak of the
Irishman.

"What an attractive creature he is, my dear. Such a pity he's from
_South_ Ireland, Reggie tells me."

"I don't think it makes a lot of difference. He doesn't agree that Eire
should be neutral. He's lived too much abroad to have any very
nationalistic, hard-and-fast point of view, I think."

"Oh, one quite feels that. Darling, do tell me, _is_ he the artist you
flirted with years and years ago in Rome and there was such a ridiculous
fuss about?"

"We were both very young, then," said Valentine, smiling.

"Good Heavens, how too extraordinary his turning up again. Well, I think
he's a charmer and must have been too devastating as a penniless art
student. Just like something in one of Mrs. Humphry Ward's novels. Of
course, girls of our date--though I'm _years_ older than you are--were
never allowed to marry their first love, were they? One lives to be
thankful, I suppose."

"Do you think that many girls marry their first love nowadays?"

"Darling, I trust not. It's nearly always disastrous. Do just imagine
yourself, wedded to an artist, and an Irishman--and I suppose he's an
R.C.?"

"Yes."

"And as Bohemian as possible. Artistic temperament, and all that."

"No, I don't think so. And Bohemianism is rather out of date, Venetia,
isn't it? Anyway, I'm sure Bohemians don't make good soldiers."

"I suppose he's married?"

"No."

"Don't let him start anything with Primrose, darling," Lady Rockingham
suavely advised. "I should think he quite easily might--I saw him look
at her once or twice, don't you know what I mean--and I want her for
poor darling Hughie."

"Oh no, Venetia."

"My dear, it would be the very best thing in the world for both of them.
He's absolutely crackers about her, and he'd be in Heaven if she
accepted him and that would get him and his wretched nerves all calmed
down, don't you know what I mean. That's absolutely all that's wrong
with him--simply nerves. And, being frankly a thoroughly worldly woman,
as you know, I'm all for a good match. One knows who he is, and there's
quite a lot of money. A girl like Primrose is much more likely to make a
success of marriage if there's money, so that they can get away from one
another when they want to."

"I quite agree. But I don't think she'd marry a man so much weaker than
she is. I hope she wouldn't."

"Well, my dear, whatever she does you may be sure she won't consult you
or me about it. Boys may confide in their mothers, but girls certainly
never do. I hear the most amazing stories about darling Primrose and the
second-rate people she _will_ go about with in London, and I think it
would be the greatest relief to know she was safely married."

Valentine moved a small chair nearer to the fire.

"I do hope you've got everything you want and won't be cold. I suppose
she's filled your hot-water bottle?"

"Darling, don't try to snub me. I simply won't be snubbed."

"It's only that Primrose is capable of managing her own life, Venetia,
and she'd very much resent my discussing it with anybody."

"You're just the same little adorable prig that you always were,
darling. Well, all I've got to say is, let Hughie have a fair chance,
and keep your Irish friend where he belongs. I shouldn't be in the least
surprised to hear that he'd made one pass at you and another one at
Primrose. He looks to me _capable de tout_, don't you know what I mean."

Lady Rockingham sat down before the dressing-table and began to strip
her slim fingers of their glittering sapphire and diamond rings.

She had raised her hands to unfasten the clasp of her pearl necklace
when Valentine, still standing by the fire, began to speak. Venetia
could see her reflected in the mirror, but Valentine's face was turned
away and her eyes fixed upon the fire.

"Rory Lonergan is in love with me, Venetia, and he's told me so. I
shouldn't have said this at all, if I wasn't rather afraid of you. I've
always been rather afraid of you, because you can hurt people and I
don't think you mind hurting them. Humphrey could be like that too,
sometimes, and Primrose.

"Please don't talk to me about Rory any more. You know nothing about him
and I know a great deal."

"My dear!" The silken, mannered voice suddenly assumed the character of
a squeal. Derision, vexation and a vulgar curiosity were all discernible
in the unpleasing sound.

"Is this the Soul's Awakening or Love's Young Dream or _what_? Are you
trying to tell me that you're just starting a _grande passion_, or that
he is? My dear, do forgive me if there's really something in it. I
simply hadn't the slightest idea, or naturally I shouldn't have said a
word. You know I adore you."

Valentine turned round then, so as to face her sister-in-law. She looked
tired and pale, her eyes, distressed but no longer bewildered, fixed
upon Lady Rockingham's vivid, beautiful face, all alight with a kind of
shallow, mischievous enjoyment of the situation.

"It's difficult to tell you anything," said Valentine, "because we've
never understood one another, have we, all these years. It's been partly
my fault, I've never--never since I married Humphrey--been my real self.
I think I've been more nearly my real self in the last two days than I
ever have, since I was nineteen. That's why I'm talking to you like this
now, I suppose. I've somehow got to make you realize, Venetia, that I
know what I want at last and that I'm going to have it."

There was a second of silence, while Lady Rockingham's eyebrows slowly
lifted, giving to her face an expression of disapproving and rather
contemptuous astonishment.

"Darling, you _don't_ mean you're thinking of marrying this man?"

"Yes."

"Well, you're old enough to know your own mind. I suppose you realize
that you've only known him two days, and another thing--too hateful of
me to say it, I know, but if I don't who will--that you're at _exactly_
the age when women do these insane things and simply live to regret them
ever afterwards?"

"I know all that. I know that a great many people will say that."

"My pet, all of them, I should imagine. I can only implore you to give
yourself time, and think of the girls. Do they know, by the way?"

"No, not yet. Nor Reggie. I was going to tell them to-morrow."

"Take my advice, and don't tell a soul. I don't suppose you mean to do
anything utterly drastic this very minute, do you?"

"I don't know. We're at war, and Rory may be sent off at a moment's
notice. Anyhow," said Valentine, smiling faintly, "we haven't, either of
us, a very great deal of time left, have we?"

"Well, darling, I assure you it's utter madness to dash into marriage
with a man you haven't known three days and with whom you can't possibly
have a thing in common--and one simply can't imagine how it could ever
work out, don't you know what I mean--but of course you're your own
mistress."

Venetia rose from her seat and came over to where Valentine stood.

"You mustn't think me too odious and unsympathetic, darling," she said
lightly. "I know your life has been a perfect hell of dullness, poked
away down here, and God knows I don't grudge you a last fling--only I do
feel it's _too_ fatal if you're going to do anything as final as
marrying this man. Reggie, of course, will simply have an apoplectic
fit, don't you know what I mean."

She put her arm round Valentine's shoulders and deposited a butterfly
kiss on her cheek.

"You poor darling! You look like a tragedy queen, standing there, and to
think the whole thing is simply the damned old C. of L.!"

Valentine disengaged herself. She had coloured deeply.

Venetia laughed.

"I wish you'd tell me the whole story from beginning to end. You know
that I'm a well of discretion, and I swear not to give you any more
advice now that I've said my say. Sit down and talk to me."

Valentine shook her head.

"No thank you, Venetia. I'm going now. Good-night."

Lady Rockingham shrugged her shoulders.

"As you like, my dear, of course."

She turned back to the mirror as Valentine went out of the room.

In the passage Valentine met Charles Sedgewick.

"Good-night, Lady Arbell," he said politely.

"Are you going down to work?"

"The Colonel wants to see me. I don't think it'll take long."

"I hope not. Good-night."

She went on to the schoolroom, hoping to find Jess there. It would be
easier to tell Jess first, and she knew that because she had, on an
impulse, spoken to Venetia Rockingham of her engagement to marry Rory
Lonergan, she must not delay at all in speaking of it to the two girls
and to her brother.

Venetia was not what she called herself: a well of discretion. She was a
mischievous and relentless talker--a _mauvaise langue_.

Giving herself no time to think, Valentine went into the schoolroom.

Primrose was sitting on the old and shabby fender-seat, the folds of her
long gown swathed round her and a tweed coat flung over her shoulders.
She was smoking a cigarette and looking at the carpet.

Hughie Spurway stood in front of her and Valentine saw, with horror but
with little sense of surprise, that he was crying. His face was twisted,
like that of a weeping child, and the tears were pouring down it.

Primrose lifted her eyes as the door opened and she, too, raised her
eyebrows as Venetia had done.

"Hughie, for God's sake, clear out," said Primrose. "It's the middle of
the night or something--I may as well say it first--and children ought
to be asleep. I quite agree, for once."

A terrible sound of sobbing broke from Hughie as he made some effort to
say good-night and then pushed blindly to the door.

"Good-night," said Valentine in very gentle tones, and she turned her
eyes away from the wretched young man.

The door-handle slipped from his indeterminate grasp and the door
banged-to behind him.

Valentine faced her daughter.

"I didn't come to disturb you, Primrose."

"As a matter of fact, I'm damn glad to get rid of him. He was throwing
an act, as you perceived, and going all hysterical on me."

"I feel so sorry for him."

"Why?" drawled Primrose.

She got up.

"I don't know why aunt Venetia either turned up herself, or brought the
pansy-boy. If she thinks I can cope, she was never more utterly mistaken
in her life, and that's saying plenty."

She went to the door.

"Primrose, I came to find you. It's about Rory Lonergan, and it's about
me too."

Valentine heard her own voice wavering and she took a long breath and
steadied it.

"He wants me to marry him."

She could not look at Primrose.

The ticking of the old cuckoo-clock on the wall above the schoolroom
piano sounded like the giant, irregular blows of a hammer jerkily
wielded in the silence.

"The hell he does," said Primrose, and her voice held no hint of any
kind of emotion. "The hell he does. You've only known him about two
days."

"I know. But he and I were in love, all those years ago, in Rome."

"Are you going to marry him?"

"Yes."

"Well," said Primrose slowly, "it's okay by me. I mean, it doesn't
matter to me one way or the other, does it? I'm not living at home,
anyway."

Valentine raised her eyes now and met those of Primrose.

"Doesn't it matter to you?" she said. "I'd better tell you, Primrose. I
know he's been in love with you."

Primrose stared at her. The hostility in her eyes seemed slowly to
lessen.

"That's about the first realistic thing you've ever said to me, isn't
it?" she remarked detachedly. "No, as a matter of fact, I don't mind
particularly. Of course I think it's utter nonsense, in two people of
your age, and I don't suppose you've the least idea what Rory's really
like--but that's your funeral, isn't it? I'm quite glad you told me."

In her overwhelming relief, Valentine drove her teeth into her trembling
lower lip to keep from the tears that would infuriate Primrose.

"Thank you," was all that she found to say.

"What for? Rory's a free agent, and he and I weren't all out for a
special licence or anything. He told me he'd fallen for somebody else,
and I thought it might be you when Jess told me about your going off to
lunch with him like that. Is Jess to be told about this, incidentally?"

"Yes, Jess is to be told, and uncle Reggie and everyone, I suppose.
Because I had to tell Venetia."

"Good God, all this talking and discussing," said Primrose, her tone
wearily contemptuous. "I should have thought it was your own show and
not anybody else's."

Valentine, in her mingled confusion and relief, felt unable to reply.

She thought that it was not possible for her, at her age and with the
involved responsibilities of a lifetime behind her, to break all her
chains and take her own way.

Primrose would have denied that scornfully.

Perhaps, even, Primrose was right.

Rory will know, thought Valentine, and the feeling that she could trust
him as she had never been able to trust anybody yet, gave her courage.

"I'd like to tell Jess to-night," she said.

"She's only fooling about in Madeleine's sitting-room," Primrose said.

She went to the door and Valentine heard her calling up the short flight
of stairs that led to Madeleine's little room.

"Hallo!" shouted Jess in return.

I ought to tell them not to make so much noise, thought Valentine, but
she said nothing, and presently Jess clattered down the stairs and came
into the schoolroom.

"D'you want me, mummie?"

There was something that hinted, so faintly as to be scarcely
perceptible, at suspicion in her tone. Valentine wondered what she
expected to hear.

Primrose opened her cigarette-case, found it empty and swore--coldly and
unemphatically.

She glanced obliquely at Jess, standing by the door in her short printed
silk frock that was both too short and too tight, her light flaxen hair
tousled as though she had been romping, her hands on her hips in an
attitude that vaguely suggested defiance.

"What's up?" she demanded in abrupt, childlike phraseology.

"God, let's not make a thing out of it," Primrose said. "It'll be all
the same a hundred years hence, anyway."

"What?"

Primrose shrugged her shoulders and looked at Valentine.

With that inescapable, unerring intuition that brings only pain where
love is completely one-sided, Valentine knew that Primrose would have
told Jess the truth then and there if she could have brought herself to
refer to her mother directly. She was inhibited from doing so because
there was no name by which she could endure to call her.

"Jess, Colonel Lonergan has asked me to marry him. I've said I will."

"Oh," said Jess.

It was no exclamation of surprise. It held reflectiveness, and a certain
hard young disapproval. After a moment's pause she added:

"How frightfully funny. I mean funny-peculiar."

"Shall you--You won't mind, will you?" Valentine asked.

The vitality that had moved her in Venetia's room was ebbing from her so
rapidly that she could scarcely choose her own words. They seemed to
fall from her, weak and unmeaning, of their own accord.

Jess replied almost as Primrose had done.

"Why should I? It isn't anything to do with me, anyway. I'll be gone any
day now and after the war I'm going to get a job. It's entirely your own
show, mummie. Uncle Reggie will be in a rage, though, won't he?"

"Perhaps. I don't know."

"Gosh, I bet he will. He loathes Irish people, doesn't he? When will you
get married?"

"I think very soon," Valentine answered, but the words as she spoke them
carried no conviction to her at all.

"Gosh!" Jess repeated.

"Let's not go on," Primrose suggested. "All this talking things over."

"I'm just going," Valentine said.

She stood up and found that her knees were shaking and that she was very
cold. She felt suddenly afraid of fainting.

Jess was looking at her, without unkindness and without kindness. Her
fresh, open face wore merely a rather thoughtful expression, as though
she were impersonally pondering a new idea of no great essential
significance.

Primrose was examining the tips of her fingers and there was an air of
faint distaste about the arrogant lines of her mouth, and her narrowed
eyes.

They had nothing more to say to her, and there was nothing more that
Valentine could say to them.

She moved slowly to the door, resisting the impulse to steady herself
against the shabby pieces of furniture. "Good-night," she said, and her
voice sounded forlorn and unreal through the strange buzzing noises in
her ears.

"'Night," said Jess, with relief in her tone.

Primrose said nothing.

Valentine went out of the room, and shut the door, then stood quite
still in the passage, unwilling for the moment to move further.

When her senses cleared again, she slowly went along the passage,
uncertain where she wanted to go.

       *       *       *       *       *

"It's all right," said Lonergan's voice. "It's all right, it's all
_right_."

He was, miraculously, beside her--his hand grasping her cold ones and
his arm steadying her.

"What is it, dearest? What have they been doing to you, to make you look
like that?"

Valentine's breast lifted in a short sob of pure relief. "It's nothing,
now I'm with you again. I had to tell Primrose and Jess, Rory, about
us."

"Why did you have to, darling?"

"Because Venetia knows and she'd have done it if I hadn't."

"The bitch," said Lonergan coolly. "What has it to do with her, I'd like
to know. Were the girls not kind to you, love?"

Valentine smiled.

"Primrose said it was the first time I'd ever said anything realistic to
her--when I told her that I knew you and she had been lovers. It somehow
made her kinder than I'd expected her to be."

"I understand that. There's a sort of nobility about Primrose, the way
she'll accept anything provided it's a really true thing. It's what one
likes best in her. Was Jess all right?"

"I think she felt embarrassed."

Lonergan laughed indulgently.

"She'll get over it, the nice, poor child! I suppose she feels we've
each got one foot in the grave, the pair of us, and should be thinking
about making a holy death and nothing else besides. She'll get over it."

"They both said that it had nothing to do with them, because they
wouldn't be living here any more."

"Neither will we."

He spoke the words casually and matter-of-factly, but Valentine was
startled by them and a profound feeling of dismay invaded her.

She instinctively and at once checked her first impulse to speak of this
and stood quite still, leaning against him.

"What is it?" he asked.

"It's nothing. Nothing that I can tell you about now."

"Then you'll tell me another time. We're not going to have anything that
can't be said between us, darling. Will you be coming downstairs again
later, or are you too tired? I came to get some papers I want Sedgewick
to look at--we'll be through with them in about twenty minutes. Would
you be able to come to the little office then?"

"Yes."

"Thank God," said Lonergan with a grave simplicity that gave to the
words a quality of reverence.

"Rory, is Reggie still downstairs?"

"He is."

"I think I'll speak to him at once. Now that Venetia knows, and the
children."

"If you think so, sweetheart. You know best. I suppose they've all got
to be told, the way you'd think it was any of their dam' business
instead of being simply yours and mine. Tell me, will there be a lot of
old talk about this--everyone telling you what to do, or not to do, and
giving you all sorts of advice?"

"Perhaps. It won't make any difference."

"It's a pity you wouldn't be allowed to live your own life your own
way," he said. "I'll never understand all this kind of nonsense.
Interference and all that."

"That's one of the reasons why you haven't ever married, isn't it?
Because it almost always means interference."

"It does," he agreed. "But all the interference in the world isn't going
to stop me now. Darling, I've to leave you while I get this done. I
won't be long. You'll come to me downstairs?"

"I'll come," repeated Valentine.

She saw him dash into his room and out again with his handful of papers.

As he passed her, Lonergan, pausing for an instant, looked straight at
her, unsmiling, and then he went on down the stairs.

Valentine, thinking of all that her lover's eyes had said to her and
unaware of anything else, slowly drew the fringes of her Chinese silk
shawl away from the banister rails.

On her way down she passed Venetia's closed door. There was a thin line
of light beneath it.

The grandfather clock on the landing showed it to be a quarter to
twelve.

But that isn't really very late, Valentine thought, although she felt as
though many hours must have gone by since she had come upstairs with her
sister-in-law.

For how many years had she assumed that all evenings came to an end
before midnight!

In the wider world, outside Coombe and houses like it--in the world to
which Rory Lonergan belonged--no such routine existed.

His world would be less unfamiliar to her than hers to him. And not only
would Rory find her tiny world unfamiliar: Valentine knew that its
conventions would always, to the artist and the Irishman, seem
unendurable. He would never see in them anything worthy of respect or of
toleration so far as his own conduct was concerned and he would never
conform to standards that he saw as meaningless and unreal. What he had
said of Primrose was equally true of himself: She'll accept anything
provided it's a really true thing.

Rory wouldn't feel the pattern of life at Coombe to be a really true
thing. He would, for all his intelligence and his insight and his
sympathy, find himself for ever unable to view seriously the traditional
and long-since out-moded forms of existence that to Valentine still
seemed natural.

It's I who'll change, she thought. Not Rory.

She felt a swift lightening of her spirit within her and knew a
long-forgotten sense of exhilaration.

She would be glad to change, to abandon at last the personality that
marriage, and the years, and the children, had gradually manufactured
for Valentine Arbell, for the protection of the true self of Valentine
Levallois.




XIV


When Hughie Spurway, gulping and grimacing, had left the schoolroom and
regained his own room the always-tenuous thread that bound him to sanity
snapped temporarily.

He lost all control, throwing himself on the bed, gnashing his teeth and
weeping, swearing and sobbing under his breath.

"She needn't have been like that--she _needn't_ have been," he repeated
over and over again, saying the words aloud.

       *       *       *       *       *

Primrose had danced with Charles Sedgewick in the drawing-room until
Jess had clamoured for a change of partners and Sedgewick himself had
said:

"Okay. Let's change over."

Jess had giggled and said apologetically: "Of course, you're
terrifically good, Charles, and I'm not. But I don't mind if you don't."

They'd laughed about it.

Hughie wasn't as good a dancer as Charles Sedgewick either, and, unlike
Jess, he did mind. He had been afraid lest Primrose should comment on
his inadequacy.

But she had said nothing at all--only pressed herself against him as
they moved and given herself up completely to his guidance. And a
measure of self-confidence had come back to him on that account.

"Darling, this is marvellous for me," he'd ventured to say.

Primrose had replied with her favourite monosyllable.

"Why?"

"You know I'm crazy about you."

Hughie had tried to make the words, in themselves so banal, sound
casual.

"Idiotic."

"Sweet, it isn't. I swear it's not. Oh, Primrose, can't things go back
to what they used to be? We were so terribly happy a year ago."

"Were we? I don't know what you were--you often looked to me pretty
miserable--but I can assure you that I was bored stiff more than half
the time."

"For God's sake, don't take everything away from me. At least let me be
able to remember that it _was_ heaven once, even if it's been hell ever
since."

"Aren't you the complete neurotic hero of a pre-war novel! Going all
tense and embittered and tragic."

He'd tried to laugh, then, in the middle of the torture, thinking that
perhaps if he followed her mood she might be placated and stop being
cruel to him.

"It did sound a bit that way, I admit. But honestly, Primrose, I do
simply adore you. There's no other woman in the world, and never has
been."

"Good reason why."

He'd driven straight on, crashing through his own agonies of pain and
humiliation.

"That's all over. You know as well as I do that there's nothing and no
one in my life now except you. Why can't you be kind to me again?"

"Don't be such a fool, Hughie. Can't you see that when a thing's over,
it's over?"

"Then don't you care for me at all any more?"

It was the question that had burned in his heart and on his lips for
months past and that he had sworn to himself never to ask, lest he
should have to hear the answer.

Even as he did ask it, Hughie had known an additional twist of
self-contempt at his lack of resolution.

Failed--once more.

The punishment had come very swiftly and surely.

"I'm afraid I don't, Hughie. Since you ask me. Anyway, it wasn't ever
very much of a thing. I'm not much of a one for what the poets call
Lhve--as I've always told you."

"You've had lovers?"

"Naturally. But I've never pretended to them, or to myself or anybody,
that there was going to be any question of fidelity. For God's sake,
don't grip my arm like that. You're hurting like hell."

"I'm frightfully sorry. I didn't mean to. Look, Primrose, I accept all
that. I do know how you feel, about fidelity. I don't care. Will you
marry me just the same?"

"No, of course I won't."

"Are you going to marry somebody else? That Irishman--who's old enough
to be your father?"

"He isn't--and I'm not."

"I believe you're in love with him."

"Believe anything you damn well please. If I didn't think you
practically barking mad, Hughie, I'd quite definitely hit you in the
face for that."

"Why? Why are you so angry? It's because you're in love with him. I've
known it all along. You're having an affair with him. That's why you're
treating me like this."

"I'll say it is! I'm treating you like this, as you call it, because I
loathe scenes and you do nothing but make them, and because you're just
as neurotic as they come and you make me sick."

The gramophone had run down and Primrose had stopped dead, and detached
herself from his arms.

The evening hadn't been over, even after that. There had been more
dancing, and Jessica had put on records of popular songs, and Venetia
Rockingham had come in. But all that Hughie clearly remembered was that
fragment of dialogue.

It had gone on and on, repeating itself in his ears.

It had driven him, after they had all gone upstairs, to follow
Primrose--like a whining cur, he said to himself savagely--to the
schoolroom and plead with her to unsay what he knew that she never would
unsay.

He had pleaded, had debased himself, had even made a wild attempt that
to himself seemed theatrical and false to act the virile lover and force
her into his arms, and the thing had finished when Primrose, her mouth
all pulled down on one side and her eyes dark with furious contempt, had
said:

"Get this. _You've had it._ I couldn't be more through with you than I
am, Hughie. I ought to have known better than ever to take up with a
hysterical degenerate. Not my cup of tea at all."

It was then that the final humiliation had descended upon him and,
sputtering threats of suicide, he had felt tears and sobs contorting his
face down which the sweat was already streaming and shaking
uncontrollably all over, had stumbled from the room as Lady Arbell came
into it.

I'll kill myself, I'll kill myself, I'll kill myself. She needn't have
been like that.

He raved and moaned and suffered until the fit had past and left him
sick with exhaustion and self-pity.

He wanted to drink himself blind, so that he could attain oblivion, for
although Hughie disliked the taste of spirits as a child dislikes it, he
had recourse to them whenever his nerves had passed entirely beyond his
control.

He emptied his brandy-flask, but there was very little in it and he knew
that it would have no real effect.

There must surely be some drink downstairs, though they'd had precious
little at dinner. Perhaps he could find someone and say that he was ill.
He felt ill and he crawled to the mirror and gazed at himself to see
whether he looked it.

His appearance was ghastly.

It gave him a sort of self-loathing satisfaction to see the stained
pallor of his face, his black-ringed, starting eyes and pinched
nostrils. At the same time Primrose's description came back to him: A
hysterical degenerate--and he writhed again.

Either he must obliterate misery by getting drunk, or he'd kill himself.

Hughie, for whom self-discipline held no meaning, knew of no other
alternatives, and the second one, he was aware in the depths of his
heart, would never be his.

He went to the door and opened it. He had no idea of the time, but it
could not be very late. Lights were still burning in the passage and at
the head of the stairs. He moved with no particular attempt at silence.
The subconscious craving of the introvert to be observed, and
questioned, so that he could talk about himself and his wretchedness,
was strong in him and he started eagerly, and then stopped dead, when he
thought he heard a sound behind Lady Rockingham's closed door.

But no one came out and Hughie went on, down into the hall.

The General was in his armchair, his head back and his mouth slightly
open--asleep. The sheets of _The Times_ lay scattered on the floor
beside him, and his spectacles were still precariously grasped between
his knotted fingers as though sleep had overtaken him recently and held
him lightly.

Hughie had no wish to awaken General Levallois. He saw that the door of
Colonel Lonergan's office was open and that the room was lit and he went
towards it.

The damned Irishman--But he'd have some drink there, for a certainty,
and Hughie thought he'd only to show himself and he'd be offered one.

Sedgewick was alone in the room, writing rapidly at a small marquetry
table that was loaded with files and papers.

He looked up sharply at Hughie standing in the doorway.

"Yes?"

"Are you frightfully busy?" stuttered Hughie. "The fact is, I--I've had
a queer sort of turn. Got a chill or something. And it's so damned cold
upstairs, and the old gentleman's asleep by the fire in the hall--it's
nearly out, anyway."

He looked at the blazing fire on which logs had been heaped prodigally.

"I'll say it's cold upstairs, all right," Sedgewick assented. "The
Colonel's going to give me a spot of work to do--he's gone to fetch it.
Come and sit down till he's back, and get warm."

His bright, alert eyes travelled curiously over Hughie, who crouched,
shivering, before the fire.

"You look like hell," Sedgewick commented dispassionately. "Are you
feeling rotten?"

Hughie nodded.

"I'd sell my soul for a stiff drink. It's the only thing to pull one
together."

Sedgewick raised his eyebrows.

"I couldn't disagree more. I'm no faddist, but in my opinion it's
absolutely fatal to let yourself depend on drink. It simply means that
when you can't get one you go to pieces."

"Don't you ever drink?"

"Only at weddings," said Sedgewick firmly.

"Do you despise everyone who does?"

"Don't be an ass. Why should I care what anybody else does? I'm not
interested."

Hughie gazed at the soldier--younger than himself by several years but
so much harder and more poised, and with a calm self-assurance that
Hughie envied more than anything else.

"As a matter of fact," Sedgewick conceded, "if the Colonel comes down
and sees you looking like a sick cat, he'll probably hand you a stiff
brandy straight away. He's about the most generous chap, and the kindest
one, I've ever met in my life."

"Is he?"

"I'll say he is," Sedgewick answered briefly. "You ask any of the men
what they think of the Colonel."

"Why isn't he with an Irish regiment?"

"Better ask him."

Hughie knew that Sedgewick intended to snub him, and he winced again.

"God, I'm cold," he muttered in order to break the silence.

"Well, it's warm enough in here. D'you mind if I go on with what I'm
doing? I want to get it finished."

"Of course."

Sedgewick, who had availed himself of the permission some seconds
before it was granted, wrote on without looking round.

Presently they heard Lonergan's rapid tread and he came in carrying his
papers.

Both the young men stood up.

Lonergan looked first at Hughie Spurway, giving him the friendly,
intelligent smile that made faint lines spread out fanwise at the
corners of his eyes.

"Were you wanting a decent fire? I thought you'd all got warm dancing in
the drawing-room, the way you were after dinner. But you look frozen."

"I've caught a chill, or something," Hughie muttered again in the
schoolboy formula that he had used before.

"That's bad luck."

The Colonel was looking at him not at all as Sedgewick had
looked--coldly, and with a faint hint of dislike--but as though he
really felt rather interested in him.

"Could you do with a drink?"

"Thanks frightfully, sir."

"Get out that whiskey, Charles. Sorry we've no soda-water, Spurway, but
I daresay you can manage it neat."

Sedgewick went to a corner cupboard, opened it and took out a decanter
and glasses. Imperturbably he placed them on the corner of Colonel
Lonergan's desk.

Lonergan poured out two stiff drinks.

"Nothing doing with you, Charles, I suppose?"

"No, thanks, sir."

"Ah, you're a good boy--but mistaken."

He handed the longer of the two drinks to Hughie.

"Knock that one back."

Hughie obeyed eagerly.

"It's a cold night, and this isn't the warmest house in the world,"
observed Colonel Lonergan.

He disposed of his own drink slowly.

"Thanks very much, sir," Hughie said.

Already he could feel the edges of his misery becoming slightly blurred.
He had a weak head, and drink acting on the state of nervous exhaustion
in which he found himself now would, he well knew, rapidly produce in
him that blunting of feeling and perception that was the nearest he
could ever attain to peace of mind.

"That's done you good," said Lonergan kindly. "You look done in. What
about bed?"

"It's so cold, upstairs."

"Ask for a hot-water bottle and a pair of bed socks," suggested
Sedgewick.

His tone was not agreeable and, to Hughie's ears, contained unspoken
reference to young men who were not, in war-time, serving in the Forces
but complained of being cold in their beds.

Hughie wanted to explain, immediately, that he had been through the
worst of the London air raids, had been bombed and shell-shocked, and
was doing work of great national importance.

Lonergan laughed.

"Ah, you!" he said to Sedgewick. "No Englishman has any real
understanding of what it's like to feel cold. They're brought up to it,
God help them!"

"That's right, sir," Sedgewick agreed, unmoved.

He placed a file in front of his Colonel.

"Are you ready for these now, sir?"

"I suppose I am."

Hughie saw that he must go.

He moved reluctantly away from the fire.

"Good-night," said Lonergan. "I hope you'll be feeling better by
to-morrow."

"Good-night, sir. Thank you very much."

As he closed the door behind him, some curious intuition told him of
Lonergan's probable comment on his appearance: What on earth's the
matter with that chap?

He wondered what Sedgewick's reply would be, and was glad that he would
never know.

He felt better, thanks to the whiskey, and wished that he had been
offered a second drink. He wasn't nearly drunk enough, and the slight
haze that was now mercifully enveloping his senses wouldn't last.

"Hallo!" said the General, from his armchair.

He gazed at Hughie as though not quite certain whom he might be. Then he
said:

"I say, d'you mind ringing the bell, like a good chap. Ring twice.
Madeleine knows what that means. She'll bring the whiskey. I don't often
touch it, nowadays, but I feel like a drink to-night. I hope you'll have
one with me. Sorry we couldn't offer you anything at dinner, but there
it is. Times aren't what they were."

Hughie rang the bell twice. In a slightly maudlin way, he felt touched
by this old man who was apologizing to him for what he viewed as a lack
of hospitality.

"I never miss the stuff, sir, and nobody's got much of it nowadays. But
I'd be delighted to have a drink with you now."

"Sit down," directed the General. "I suppose the other chap--young
What's-his-name--isn't anywhere about?

"Sedgewick? He's in the office with the Colonel, sir, doing a job of
work. But he tells me he practically never touches wine or spirits at
all."

"Ah," said the General. And he added thoughtfully: "I believe a lot of
these young chaps who go into the Services nowadays are like that. Quite
right, of course. It's the way they're brought up, no doubt."

"Sedgewick has a widowed mother, I fancy."

"So have you," said General Levallois sharply. "But she hasn't made you
into a chap who can't tell good port from bad claret, I'll be bound.
Tell me something about your mother--I remember her before she came out,
and her elder sister, too. Edith. What's happened to Edith?"

Hughie obediently embarked upon a recital of marriages, deaths and
divorces amongst the older generation of his relations.

Madeleine brought in a tray with a whiskey decanter, glasses and a jug
of water.

The General's knotted and twisted hands dealt with these things whilst
he listened and interposed questions. It gave him evident pleasure to
recall memories of that long-since broken circle in which he himself,
young and uncrippled, had once held a place.

He prided himself on remembering names and family connections.

It was easy enough to listen to him and make such answers as were
required. Hughie drank whiskey and felt thankful.

As usual, alcohol was giving him false courage and false optimism. He
even began to wonder whether he couldn't make another appeal to
Primrose. Surely she'd be kinder to him this time--more like what she
used to be.

Perhaps he'd go to her room later on--or she might still be sitting in
the schoolroom.

His heart began to beat faster at the thought. He had forgotten that he
had seen Primrose's mother in the schoolroom with her. He imagined her
alone, sitting on the fender-seat with a half-smoked cigarette between
her lips, and he tried hard to believe that she might be glad to see
him.

The General, pleased with the conversation, went on with his questions
and reminiscences and poured out more whiskey.

Charles Sedgewick came out of the office, was offered and refused a
drink, said good-night and went upstairs.

Soon afterwards Lady Arbell came down.

"Not gone to bed yet, Val?" said her brother, frowning.

"Not yet, Reggie. Please don't move, Mr. Spurway--unless you're going
upstairs?"

Hughie, aware that he was pleasantly drunk, told himself that he must be
careful and at the same time inwardly applauded himself for what he
felt certain was his masterly self-command.

"I think perhaps I will go up, now. Good-night, sir. Good-night, Lady
Arbell."

He hadn't any difficulty with his speech, and his mind, he felt
convinced, must be absolutely clear since he had so quickly realized
that last time he'd seen Lady Arbell she'd been in the schoolroom with
Primrose. Now, she was down here--so Primrose must be alone.

As usual, the drink would make it a little bit difficult for him to
control his motor reactions. Drink always did that to him, whilst
leaving his mind as clear as possible. If it wasn't as clear as
possible, Hughie told himself, he couldn't possibly be thinking all this
now, so logically and lucidly.

He heard their good-nights as from a distance, and concentrated his
faculties on crossing the hall, avoiding the large chairs and small
tables, and reaching the staircase.

Then he grasped the banister rail.

Now he'd be all right.

The wild misery of an hour before had receded. He knew, dimly, that it
was still there waiting to attack him again--but for the moment he was
freed from it. His present condition of semi-intoxication was really
sharpening all his senses, he felt. He had distinctly heard what Lady
Arbell had said, down in the hall, when he was already half-way up the
stairs.

I want to tell you something, Reggie, she'd said. What on earth could
she want to tell the General in the middle of the night? Perhaps it was
something about Primrose.

Actually, thought Hughie, pausing on the stairs and wiping his forehead
which was suddenly wet--although he was not hot--_actually_, that was
the way in which people announced an engagement. Perhaps Primrose was
engaged all the time and had told her mother about it in the schoolroom.

At the thought, he felt sick.

It appeared to him imperative that he should find Primrose at once and
ask her whether this was true. He'd make her understand that he couldn't
go on like this. The words, that he had so often used to her before,
seemed to speak themselves aloud: I can't go on like this.

As though in ironic commentary on his own phrase, Hughie stumbled on the
top step. He lunged forward, trying to regain his balance, caught at the
air and then found himself clutching at some piece of furniture on the
landing. The next instant he had pulled it over, an avalanche of books
was falling about his ears and he had crashed onto his knees.

Terrified of being seen and found ludicrous Hughie scrambled up from the
floor, trembling.

He was surrounded by the disordered books--there seemed to be enormous
numbers of old-fashioned yellow-backed novels--and some half-dozen of
them were still bouncing off the top step, down the stairs. The little
circular bookcase lay on its side.

Someone came along the passage and at the same moment Lady Rockingham's
door flew open and the light from her bedroom illuminated the disordered
landing plainly.

"Good Heavens, I thought a bomb had dropped on the house!" she said in
mock-dramatic tones, standing framed in the doorway, a pale silk
dressing-gown wrapped round her and her lovely hair loose and wavy on
her shoulders.

"I'm frightfully sorry," he stammered weakly.

To his horror he saw that it was Primrose who had come along the
passage, from the schoolroom.

She stood a few feet away from him, one hand on her hip and the other
one holding a cigarette, saying nothing.

"Of course, Hughie darling, there's all the difference in the world
between being drunk and being happy," said Lady Rockingham suavely, "but
one would rather like to know what you think you're doing, don't you
know what I mean."

"I'm frightfully sorry----"

"But you said that before. Do pick up those frightful books. Primrose
will help you."

"Help him my elbow," Primrose said. "What a fool you look, Hughie!"

Humiliated, furious with himself, and now very drunk indeed, Hughie
suddenly turned on her.

"I came up to find you. I'm not going on like this any longer," he cried
shrilly. "I shall leave here to-night."

"I hope you'll enjoy walking four miles to the station in the black-out
carrying your luggage," scoffed Primrose.

"Hughie, are you quite mad?" said Lady Rockingham.

There was nothing dramatic about the tone of the enquiry. She sounded
merely impatient, and a little bit amused.

None of them, _none_ of them understood what he was suffering, Hughie
told himself on a fresh wave of agonized self-pity.

"You're bats," Primrose remarked. "Or else plastered, though I don't
know what there is to get plastered on in this house. Unless Rory's been
fool enough to give you some drink, not knowing that you've got a head
that can't take it."

Lady Rockingham bent down and picked up two of the nearest books.

"'_Folle Farine_'," she read aloud, in a voice of mildly incredulous
amusement. "Why on earth doesn't darling Valentine send all this rubbish
for salvage? I really must talk to her. Salvage _is_ so important."

Hughie stared and stared at Primrose.

Somehow, he must force her to see him as significant--a real person
whom, if she would not love, she must hate or fear.

"Lonergan is a great deal too good for you," he enunciated with careful
and conscious distinctness. "I know you think you're going to marry him.
I heard your mother telling the Gel--General about it. And I can only
say I'm damned sorry for him, marrying a bitch like you. Lonergan's a
decent fellow. A frightfully decent fellow. He's kind. He's
_frightfully_ kind."

He suddenly wanted to weep, moved by the thought of Lonergan's kindness.

The two women were quite silent.

Then Lady Rockingham, in a small, queer voice, read out mechanically:

"'_Verbena Camellia Stephanotis_', by Walter Besant--I _ask_ you!"

She raised her eyes and looked at Primrose.

"He's quite, quite drunk, darling. He must be. Hadn't we better get him
to his room?"

"He can go to hell, for all of me. He's nothing in my young life,"
Primrose remarked.

Hughie, shaking all over and afraid of bursting into tears, leant
against the wall.

"That isn't true," he said loudly, addressing Primrose. "You know
perfectly well it isn't true. I meant a very great deal in your
life--not so very long ago either. You let me make love to you, and then
all of a sudden you changed, but you wouldn't let me go. Not you! You
played with me like a cat with a mouse. You're cruel and heartless and
you're pro-promiscuous, too. Everybody knows you are. Now you're playing
the same game with Lonergan, aren't you? But he isn't such a fool as
I've been. He'll----"

Lady Rockingham put her hands on his shoulders and gave him a foolish,
half-hearted, woman-like little shake.

"For Heaven's sake, shut up. You don't know what you're saying. You're
drunk. Go to bed and sleep it off, Hughie, like a good boy, and we'll
forget it."

"No," said Hughie finding release and even pleasure in the scene. "You
ought to know what she's really like, all of you. If no one else has
the guts to tell you, I have."

He could hear his own voice, shouting.

"Be quiet! Do you want to have the whole house up here? Primrose--we
shall have to get a man to deal with him. Can't you fetch someone?"

Hughie emitted a sound that he characterized to himself as a reckless
laugh.

He saw Primrose move swiftly through the open door of the bedroom and
remained with his mouth only half closed, wondering what she was doing
and whether he'd frightened her.

But he wouldn't hurt her. He wouldn't hurt _Primrose_. Only he'd felt
obliged to let her know that he saw through her.

He decided that he must explain--reassure her.

He wanted to go after her, but all those damned books were in the way.
He kicked at them unsteadily and then, as he seemed to have missed his
aim, kicked again more viciously.

He heard Lady Rockingham shriek faintly and saw her rush to the other
side of the landing.

Primrose stood in the doorway, holding in both hands a large,
old-fashioned ewer patterned with red roses.

"You've got it coming to you," she said, and dashed the ice-cold water
full into his face and over his head and shoulders.

It was minutes before Hughie, choked, blinded and drenched, could see or
hear anything at all.

When he could, he was conscious of nothing but extreme bodily discomfort
and of the fact that he had been insanely drunk and was now sobered.

He saw Primrose's face, her mouth pulled down on one side, her
blue-green eyes contemptuous and unwavering, water splashed all down the
front of her periwinkle-coloured dress, the empty jug rolling gently on
its side at her feet, wiping her hands on a handkerchief.

Stumbling over the soaked and scattered books that strewed the floor in
wild disorder, Hughie, his teeth chattering with cold, found his way to
his own room.




XV


Venetia Rockingham was laughing rather unconvincingly.

"Darling, _too_ uncivilized altogether. Of course the little horror was
completely blotto--but really--! He'll probably get pneumonia now, and
die on you."

"It'll be okay by me if he does. But he won't."

"And, my dear, look at the mess!"

The thin, shabby carpet was wet through and so were most of the
yellow-backed books. The circular pedestal bookcase that had contained
them lay on its side, slowly spilling more volumes into the wet pools on
the floor, and the rose-patterned water-jug had rolled against the jamb
of the door.

"_Too_ like the morning after an air raid, don't you know what I mean. I
wish I'd never brought him here, but I hadn't the slightest idea he was
that way inclined. It's really too bad. Darling, was he quite mad, about
Colonel Lonergan, or is there something in it? I needn't tell you I'm
the most broad-minded woman that God ever created--it's being so
tremendously one with my boys, I think, so that I simply, absolutely,
_see_ youth's point of view--but I just couldn't bear you to make any
sort of mistake. And I do feel there's something you ought to know."

"I know it already, thanks frightfully. If you mean that Rory's thinking
of becoming my step-papa."

Lady Rockingham glanced sharply at the smooth young face, expressionless
beneath its heavy mask of make-up.

"Darling, let's hope it doesn't come to that. And now what _are_ we
going to do with this deluge that you've created?"

"Leave it. The sluts can see to it in the morning."

"Nonsense. All this wet--it'll drip through the ceiling into the hall."

"Will it?" said Primrose indifferently. "Oh, God! It has already--or
something. They're coming up."

She leant back against the wall as her mother reached the top of the
stairs.

They could hear the sound of the General's two sticks further down on
the lower steps.

Valentine held two or three of the yellow-backs in her hand.

She looked at the confusion on the landing and then at Primrose and
Venetia.

"We haven't been throwing the books at one another's heads, darling,
though I do admit it looks too like it for words. But the whole
bookcase, as you perceive, has been turned over. What a frightful
collection of rubbish, darling!"

Primrose laughed shortly.

"You'd better explain the tidal wave, aunt Venetia, hadn't you? He's
_your_ boy friend, you know, not mine."

"It's too late for explanations, my sweet. Your mother ought to be in
bed, she looks tired to death. In one word, Val, poor Hughie has been a
very naughty boy and having no head whatsoever has obviously been
drinking and managed to crash into the furniture on his way to bed.
Hence all this."

"But where is he?" Valentine asked.

She bent and picked up one of the books and then let it fall again.

"Why is it all wet?" Her eyes fell on the water-jug.

"Have you been emptying the water-jug over him?" she enquired in a tone
that held enquiry rather than surprise.

"That's right," Primrose acquiesced. "Blast, here's uncle Reggie. I've
had enough fun and games for to-night. I'm going to bed."

"Darling, you can't do that to us," Venetia cried, a little shrilly.
"It's really your row, don't you know what I mean, and you simply must
stay and face it."

The General reached the landing.

"What the devil's been happening? Books don't fly downstairs all by
themselves, I suppose. And what on earth----"

A trickle of water, taking some freakish course over the uneven
flooring, had reached his slippers.

"I'll get a cloth," Valentine said. "The bookcase got overturned,
Reggie, and some water has been spilt. There's no harm done."

She turned towards the housemaid's cupboard further along the passage.

Primrose said icily:

"Let's not be so frightfully suave and polite and mysterious, shall we?
Hughie Spurway somehow got hold of some drink--for which he has no head
whatever and never has had ever since I've known him--and he's roaring
drunk. At least he was, until I sobered him up a bit by chucking some
cold water at him."

"Good God!" said the General. "Has everybody in this house gone mad? Mop
up that disgraceful mess, for Heaven's sake."

Valentine returned with two worn and discoloured floor-cloths and knelt
down.

"Here," said the General, and he indicated the overturned and now empty
water-jug with one stick.

Primrose, holding her long skirts up with one hand, set it erect.

"Where's that damned young fool?"

"In his room, Reggie--so _much_ the best place for him, don't you feel?
One is simply covered in blushes for ever having brought him down here,
and of course I shall tell him exactly what I think of him in the
morning. I heard him crashing up the stairs--but literally _crashing_,
my dears--and naturally came out, and there were all these dreadful
railway novels--Heavens! how it dates one to call them that--clattering
down in every direction, and Hughie sputtering and stumbling in the
midst, so that one knew only too well what was the matter, don't you
know what I mean."

"He had a couple of whiskeys downstairs with me," said General
Levallois--("Primrose, why in God's name are you standing there without
lifting a finger to help your mother?")--"but not enough to fuddle a
child, I shouldn't have thought. Unless he'd been drinking earlier in
the evening."

"Probably had," Primrose said.

She had taken no other notice of the General's admonition.

The General turned on her.

"And may I ask where you come into it? Chucking water about like some
damned washerwoman. You don't condescend to come home more than once in
a blue moon, and then it's only because of some man or other, and you
behave about as badly as any young woman can do. I suppose you've made a
fool of this unfortunate young idiot, and he lost his head."

General Levallois had raised his voice until it had become a shout. His
habitual manner of carping discontent had given place to one of
indignant wrath.

"Reggie, please don't," said his sister.

She wrung out the cloth into the empty jug and straightened herself.

"Let's leave it all, for to-night. He's leaving the house to-morrow,
anyway."

"I'm not thinking about him," said the General loudly. "I don't give a
twopenny damn for him, one way or the other, except that I think he's
practically off his rocker--and it's your daughter who's to blame.
Carrying on with first one and then another chap, and then half a dozen
of them at once. Three days ago it was the Irishman----"

He stopped abruptly, recollection seizing him, and glared at Valentine.

Venetia Rockingham sank onto a hard, uncomfortable blackwood chair in a
corner of the landing.

"Darlings," she wailed, in the thinnest and most affected of voices,
"one simply feels _too_ like something in the middle act of some
terribly Edwardian triangle play. _Who_ is in love with the Lonergan
person, and _why_, and _how_ many people in this house has he been
making love to?"

There was a dead silence when she stopped speaking.

Primrose turned on her a look of such concentrated, venomous hatred that
her eyes seemed to recede into her head above the discoloured patches
that suddenly stained her face.

Valentine, also, changed colour.

She had become white.

It was she who first found words with which to reply to Venetia and they
were spoken with firmness and clarity.

"You're unpardonable. There are things that can't be said--and you say
them. It was you who forced me to tell you that Rory Lonergan and I are
going to be married. Primrose knows it already and so does Reggie."

"You can't marry the fellow," said the General, in a sort of sullen
aside. "Idiotic thing to do."

Not one of the three women paid the slightest attention to him.

Valentine was facing her daughter.

"You've got a great deal to forgive me, Primrose," she said. "I don't
know where I went wrong with you, but I know that I did--somewhere. I've
destroyed the relationship between us. But about this, when you might
so easily have hated me--I think we've understood one another."

"That's right," said Primrose, and for the first time in many months her
eyes--dense blue-green--met those of her mother, so identical in colour
with her own.

There was no softness in the gaze of Primrose, but it held a kind of
thoughtful appraisement, as though mentally she was readjusting some
earlier, harsher judgment.

"Then everything in the garden is lovely," Venetia Rockingham said with
deliberate flippancy. "Quite, quite beyond me, darlings, all these
givings and takings, don't you know what I mean. I suppose poor Hughie
was really too far gone to know what he was talking about--but I do feel
we ought all to realize that Primrose, poor darling, has got the
reputation of being a terribly bad little girl with her dreadful little
Communist friends, and that if Hughie says nasty things in a naughty
temper, there's a very good chance of their being believed. I know you
don't mind what anyone thinks of you, Primrose darling, but if this
Lonergan of yours is _too_ mixed up in it all, isn't it going to make it
all very difficult for everybody?"

"No," said Valentine, still with the new note of cold decision in her
voice. "No, Venetia. Not for me. I know what there is to know, and
anything that Primrose has to say can be said to me. It concerns nobody
else."

"I couldn't agree more than I do," Primrose drawled, addressing her
words to Lady Rockingham--who made a fluttering, rather absurd, little
movement with her hands.

"What the devil are you all talking about?" the General asked. He looked
angrily and suspiciously at each of them, and underneath the anger in
his voice there was also a dull fear.

"What _is_ all this?" he muttered. "What's Val talking about, eh,
Venetia? Do you understand her? She says she's going to marry this
fellow and at the same time she talks as though he and Primrose----" He
stopped, his clouded, puzzled eyes fixed on Venetia Rockingham.

He had always admired her, as a beautiful woman and a successful one,
and a woman of the world, and it was to her that he turned now,
instinctively feeling that only from her would he get an explanation in
terms that he could reconcile to his own deeply-rooted sense of social
and ethical values.

"What is it they mean, eh, Venetia?" he repeated.

Lady Rockingham laughed softly--a gentle little spiteful sound, with no
mirth in it but with unmistakable enjoyment.

"My poor old Reggie! You're like me--quite, quite at a loss in these
_too_ extraordinary mix-ups, that I suppose means we're all becoming
exactly like the Russians, and going to live as promiscuously as we
please. Though I must say, I'm quite as shattered as you can be, to see
darling Val, of all people, turning Bolshevik."

"Bolshie? Val?" was all that General Levallois found in reply.

"Bloody nonsense," Primrose ejaculated, with cold detachment.

She turned her eyes on the General.

"She's about as likely to turn Bolshevik as you are, or old Sallie.
That's just a label and a dam' silly one at that, the way aunt Venetia
uses it. She doesn't so much as know what the word means."

"Need you be rude, darling?" murmured Lady Rockingham. "And I think I
_must_ have a cigarette, if we're really going on sitting in this quite
icy spot indefinitely."

It was the General who fumbled in the pocket of his old velveteen coat
and extracted a crumpled packet of cheap cigarettes and handed it to
her.

Primrose continued to look at him and address herself to him.

"Get this, uncle Reggie, and don't have a fit if you can help it
because the thing's finished and over anyway, and ac'chally it's
nobody's bloody business, now. I'm only telling you so as to spike that
dam' woman's guns. Rory Lonergan and I have had an affair together, and
we did go the whole hog, and it's through and over, and no bones broken.
He's welcome to turn his attention elsewhere, for all of me, and the
fact that it should be my mama just doesn't mean a thing. And now for
God's sake let's all go and get some sleep."

General Levallois made an indistinct sound, his tired face became
suffused with a deep crimson and he swung round on his sticks to face
Valentine.

"If that's true, she's utterly corrupt. But I don't believe it."

"Reggie, you do believe it--but you don't understand it. Primrose is not
corrupt," said Valentine. "She has standards that our generation doesn't
know about, and she's faced all the facts and she's made me face them.
It's quite true that she and Rory have been lovers and that I'm not
going to let it make any difference to what I feel about him. I don't
expect you, or anybody else, to understand. There's no reason why you
should."

"That's right," said Primrose detachedly.

A rapid step came up the stairs, and before they knew it Charles
Sedgewick was in their midst.

Lady Rockingham broke into edgy laughter. She rose and went into her
room.

"Let me pick up some of these books," said Captain Sedgewick with calm
politeness.

He had given them all one quick look and then stooped down to gather up
the books.

"Wizard idea," muttered Primrose.

The General slowly turned away.

One of the sticks slipped and Valentine picked it up and then gave him
her arm.

Primrose watched Sedgewick neatly piling up the wet and disordered
yellow-backs.

"Tidy, aren't you?" she said in a tone of not unfriendly mockery.

"Quite," replied Sedgewick imperturbably. "Why don't you give me a
hand?"

His red-brown eyes looked up at her.

Primrose sat down on the floor beside him, pulled a book or two towards
her, and then suddenly began to laugh.

"It's all so bloody silly and dramatic. And your marvellous discretion
is the last straw."

"Fancy a book being called _Ready-Money Mortiboy_!" said Sedgewick.

Side by side in the midst of the chaos they looked at one another,
laughing.




XVI


"In Heaven's name," said General Levallois. He was muttering and
gasping, stamping on the floor with one of his sticks.

Valentine, with quite unwonted decision, turned when they had reached
the door of his bedroom.

"I'm going to send Madeleine to you," she said. "Go in, Reggie, and sit
down. Madeleine will look after you."

"What the devil has Madeleine to do with any of all this? I tell you,
I've never been so upset in all my life."

"I know. I'm sorry. Madeleine can make you one of her _tisanes_ and
it'll help you to sleep."

"If you think I can sleep, after the things I've been hearing
to-night--! Do you realize, Valentine, that you, and that precious
daughter of yours, and the whole world, has gone simply raving mad?"

The General looked distraught, and exhausted and suddenly like an old
man. It was evident that he scarcely knew what he was saying.

Valentine opened the door of his bedroom and turned on the light.

"I'll send Madeleine," she repeated and, her heart wrung with
compassion, pushed his favourite old shabby armchair forward. He lowered
himself into it, groaning.

"It's knocked me out," he muttered. "Completely knocked me out. But if
you think we're going to leave it at that, old girl, you were never more
mistaken in your life. You and I are going to have this out to-morrow
morning."

"You can say anything you like to me to-morrow, Reggie. It won't make
any difference, but I'll hear anything you want to say," Valentine
answered.

She went to Madeleine's little room.

The Frenchwoman's light was, as usual, burning late, and she sat at her
needlework.

She stood up when Valentine came in. Her brown eyes, shrewd and kindly,
showed no surprise.

"Will you go down to _monsieur le gnral_, Madeleine, please? He is in
his room, very tired, and I think you could give him something hot to
drink that might help to make him sleep."

"Naturally, madame. And shall I bring some to madame's room also? It is
she who has need of sleep, it seems to me."

"I'm all right, Madeleine, but we've all been upset. I daresay you
heard----"

Madeleine nodded and threw up her hands.

"Yes, indeed. These family scenes. Terrible, but inevitable.
Mademoiselle Jess, fortunately, had gone to bed and heard nothing,
through the snores of her miserable dog. Mademoiselle Primrose can take
care of herself, and it is only on your account, madame, that I feel
distressed."

"You needn't, Madeleine. I'll talk to you to-morrow. But try and calm
the General."

"Leave him to me, madame."

Madeleine folded up her work and went to the corner cupboard on the wall
in which she kept a number of private commodities. She fiddled amongst
small bottles, little packets of herbs, a saucepan and battered silver
spoons.

With her back turned to Valentine, she spoke.

"Madame will allow me to speak, out of my great affection for her? It is
more than time--I permit myself to say this--that madame should consider
her own happiness. If one is given a second chance in life, it is
ingratitude to God to refuse it."

A rush of emotion so moved Valentine that tears came into her eyes.

She could say nothing.

Madeleine turned round and placed her little saucepan and a cup and
saucer on the table.

"Ah, madame!" she said, with great gentleness and affection in her
voice. "Madame will forgive me, but I have so long been in her service,
and seen and thought so much. And this brave officer--this kind and
distinguished Colonel Lonergan--one looks at him, and one knows that he
understands what a woman means by love. Believe me, madame, he is a
heart of gold. And there are not so many of those."

"Madeleine!" Valentine smiled, but there were tears in her eyes. "You
know everything."

"But naturally, madame. All good servants know everything and repeat
nothing," Madeleine remarked simply. "I am in the old tradition, as
madame well knows. And when I saw _monsieur le colonel_, and heard him
speak, and listened to all that Miss Jess told me of his charm and his
kindness, I thought: Here is a gentleman--an Irish Catholic--a man of
the world--and he knew madame long years ago in the old days, and he
loved her then. He has been sent in answer to my prayers for madame."

"Madeleine, you are very kind and very good," Valentine said, and
bidding Madeleine good-night, she kissed her.

Then she went downstairs again, to find Lonergan.

There was no one now on the landing and the books had been stacked
anyhow in the bookcase.

Venetia's door was shut and no light showed beneath it.

What an evening, thought Valentine, and felt strangely inclined to laugh
at the recollection of such unaccustomed drama at Coombe.

When she went into Lonergan's office he was sitting by the fire, staring
into the embers and doing nothing.

"Did you think I was never coming?"

He stood up and drew her into his arms.

"I knew you'd come when you could. What's been happening? I'd a feeling
young Spurway was up to no good, out there colloguing with the
General--and then I heard your voice, and then the two of you going up
together. I knew you'd send for me if there was anything I could do. Sit
down, love--you're tired."

He put her gently into the armchair by the fire.

"I've told Reggie about us and tried to make him understand that I know
what I'm doing. He didn't take it terribly well, I'm afraid. And then
there was a disturbance upstairs, and the bookcase on the landing was
upset and some of the books fell half-way down and so I went up, and
Reggie came too."

She told him what had followed.

"God Almighty!" Lonergan ejaculated. "What a frightful scene for you to
have to go through by yourself, my Val. I ought to have been there with
you."

He paused, thinking over what she had just told him.

"Well, it's come to a crisis, and all the cards are on the table. That's
so much to the good, in my opinion. And from now on, love, I've the
right to take care of you and you'll not be facing these things alone."

She looked at him, her eyes wet, her hands held in his.

"I love you, Rory."

"I love you, my darling."

Presently Lonergan uttered aloud a further comment.

"I'm sorry for that unfortunate Hugo, making a holy show of himself like
that. Primrose has something to answer for, the way she's played cat and
mouse with him. But isn't it true, the way I told you, that she's
capable of certain nobilities? She _did_ play up when it came to a
show-down between you and her."

"Yes. I think," Valentine said, with a sudden colour flooding her face,
"that Primrose has more generosity than I have."

"Why do you say that?"

Valentine hesitated for a long while and then spoke with some
difficulty.

"I took something away from her. She's young and I'm not--and in spite
of that, a man who'd made love to her, in the end wanted me. I know it
hasn't broken her heart, but it's hurt her, and it's been a humiliation.
She could have made capital out of that situation, Rory--there's almost
no one who wouldn't feel that she had a right to. But it's as you
said--Primrose is completely realistic and, whatever her standards may
be, she has courage enough to abide by them openly. To-night, I thought
we came nearer together than we'd been for years. Just for a minute. It
won't last, but it was ... something."

Her voice faltered--failed altogether.

After a minute she lifted her head and smiled.

"One always remembers the times when they were children, and it was all
different. The summer holidays, and reading aloud to them in the
evenings, and their little excited faces looking up at one before a
Christmas tree, or a morning's cubbing.... There must be so many
mothers, all over the world, who can't bear to look back on all that
now, Rory."

"Ah, God help them!"

They were both silent for a little while.

Then she said:

"I'll have to go. It must be very late."

"It's only just after one."

She laughed.

"Just after one is very late for me to be sitting here talking to you,
at Coombe."

"There's a very great deal to be said, my darling, and perhaps only a
very little while in which to say it."

Valentine leant back in her great chair again.

She remembered thoughts that had come to her earlier in the evening.

"I shall have to readjust in so many ways, Rory--alter so many habits
that I've formed and lived with ever since I married Humphrey and came
here."

His dark-blue eyes looked keenly at her.

"You're afraid, aren't you?"

"A little bit, sometimes."

"Well, so am I."

"Are you, Rory?"

"Yes. I'm afraid of being clumsy,--of hurting you--of not being able to
understand, always. I don't mean of not understanding you. I know we'll
understand one another in the end. But any two people, finding one
another so late in life and coming from such entirely different
backgrounds, with such different traditions behind them, are bound to
fail in understanding certain things, sometimes."

"Like when you asked what it all meant, because I was upset at having
forgotten the First-Aid class in the village?"

"I was thinking of that," he admitted. "And of your feeling of
responsibility towards all those local meetings, and people. I don't
even understand why you go to Church when it's clear that religion--in
the Church-going sense of the word--doesn't mean anything to you."

"Do you want me to become a Catholic, Rory?"

He shook his head, laughing.

"I do not. I'm not so set on converts, anyway--God forgive me for saying
such a thing. I'm not a good Catholic, Val, at all. But I was born in
the Faith and brought up by priests--it's in my blood. I couldn't ever
be anything else. If you and I had a child I'd want it to be a Catholic,
the same as Arlette."

"Arlette--When shall I see her? I'd like to have her here, Rory."

"I know you would, love. You've the most generous, loving heart in the
world."

Valentine could not have put into words, even to herself, any reason for
the pain that assailed her: a fear, not amounting to conviction--a sense
of some subtle and infinitesimal withdrawal of his spirit from hers.

Arlette was the child of Laurence.

Jealousy flared, instantly and insanely, within her.

Characteristically, she said very gently:

"You mustn't ever let me come between you and Arlette. I want never to."

"Dearest."

His eyes fixed on the fire, Lonergan spoke with sudden impetus.

"I can't see how I can ever make you understand about Arlette."

Valentine gave no sign that the words hurt her profoundly.

"Try. Please try," was all she said.

"Arlette stands for everything that's been real, and true, in my life.
It doesn't matter that she's not in the least like Laurence--never was
and never will be. It's not any question of a sentimental recalling of
Laurence. It's something that's complete in itself. Hard. Fundamental.
A sort of crystallization of my whole life with Laurence. I can't
explain any better than that. Arlette is the only responsibility I've
ever willingly accepted and it's something I can't ever fail in, even
though I fail in everything else. It's something I owe to Laurence."

Valentine thought that she could have endured it better if he had said
that it was something he owed to Arlette, herself.

"Tell me what you're thinking," he urged, his voice anxious.

"I can't."

"Ah--you can. I've hurt you?"

"It's all right. Only there's so much--so much in your past that I can
never really know, and that I can never share in. The things that, as
you've said, Arlette stands for."

"You have children, too," he reminded her gently.

"I didn't love their father as you love Laurence," Valentine said. "It's
Laurence, and your life with her, that you see in Arlette. It's still a
living thing to you."

Lonergan bent his black head in silent assent.

After a moment he said:

"Val, you're right. It's a great thing I'm asking of you, in asking you
to accept it. I've had many loves, God forgive me, and some of them have
been lively and happy, and good relationships--and most of them have
been false and ephemeral--ending in pain and disappointment and
humiliation for others besides myself. But my relationship with Laurence
was--cast-iron. It had integrity. If ever I denied that, or forgot it, I
believe I'd damn my own soul for all eternity."

The words, and the force with which Lonergan spoke them, carried
inescapable conviction to Valentine.

She knew that she could never reply to them, and never forget them. They
must be part of her acceptance of the new life for evermore. She must
bear the pain of them always, but she might hope that one day, if they
both lived, she would be enabled to accept it less blindly, with a
braver, because more realistic, understanding through her love of Rory
Lonergan.

As though in reply to her thought he said softly:

"We've found one another late, Val. It makes it hard, for both of us."

"The first time," she said, "was too soon."

Lonergan's smile--so expressive of all his kindness, intelligence and
profound penetration--answered her.

"Too soon, perhaps. Not, thank God, too late."

       *       *       *       *       *

Valentine, last to seek her own room at Coombe, was also the first to
come down into the pervasive chill of the dining-room the following
morning.

Lonergan's servant informed her that the Colonel, accompanied by Captain
Sedgewick, had gone out and that neither would be back before evening.

Venetia Rockingham always breakfasted upstairs, and Madeleine had
already told Valentine that the General--_d'une humeur de chien, madame,
je me permets de vous le dire_--had said that he would not be coming
down until later in the morning.

The temperature had fallen and through the long windows Valentine could
see a grey, leaden sky and the intricate pattern of the bare, bleak
branches of the elms and the chestnut trees interlaced against it. Over
the fields, from which thin spirals of mist were still curling upwards,
sea-gulls were circling and swooping wildly.

Valentine made the coffee.

She tried to brace herself against the nervous, devitalizing shivering
that always assailed her in very cold weather, but her hands were almost
numb and she fumbled and clattered with the cups and saucers. It was a
trick that had always exasperated Humphrey.

Jess, very pink and fresh, came in and said at once: "It's as cold as
hell, isn't it? Morning, mummie. What was all the row last night?"

"Hughie Spurway knocked over a lot of books out of the bookcase on the
landing. Some of them fell half-way downstairs."

"But who spilt what?" demanded Jess. "There are damp patches all over
the carpet. Aunt Sophy tried to lick some of them up."

"It was unlucky, and very silly. He--Hughie Spurway--took too much to
drink and didn't quite know what he was doing. He made all this noise on
the landing, and disturbed everybody and then he had a scene with
Primrose."

"Gosh! I do think some people are lucky. I wish I'd been there. But I'd
just got into bed and begun to get warm, and I hadn't the courage to get
out. I would of, though, if I'd known there was all that excitement
going on. Were you there, mummie?"

"I came up soon afterwards."

"What happened to Hughie?"

"He went to his own room."

"I bet he feels a fool this morning. D'you think he'll turn up for
breakfast?"

"I've been wondering myself," Valentine admitted.

"Shall I go and see?" Jess volunteered, ladling oat-meal porridge into
her old and battered silver christening-bowl.

"I don't think so, thank you, darling. He'll probably turn up presently.
You can stay and pour out some coffee for him, if you will. I think he'd
much rather see you than see me, probably."

"Or Primrose," Jess suggested shrewdly. "I think she was pretty foul to
him, yesterday. I must say Primrose has a terrific nerve, really. She
treats all her men as if she didn't care whether they walked out on her
on not. I suppose really she doesn't, because she can always get others.
I bet I'm never like that. If anyone ever does fall for me, I shall hold
on to him like grim death and absolutely _make_ him marry me."

Valentine laughed.

"I don't suppose it'll be as difficult as all that, Jess. And you've
still got plenty of time ahead of you."

"Seventeen and a half," said Jess gloomily. "About eight years, at the
very outside, I should think."

Her expression altered.

"Good Gosh, you've got engaged yourself, haven't you? I forgot all about
that. You know, mummie, I definitely think it's a good thing. I didn't
really take it in yesterday, but the more I think of it, the more okay I
think it is."

"I'm glad."

"You won't have to go and live in Ireland or anything, will you?"

"Certainly not as long as the war lasts."

"Oh, the war. I can't imagine that's _ever_ coming to an end. I think
it'll go on for ever and ever. Sit, aunt Sophy. _Sit!_"

Jess tried to balance pieces of bread on her dog's nose, held her up by
the fore-paws, and laughed at her own want of success.

Then she took Valentine aback by suddenly returning to a former topic.

"You never told me what was spilt on the landing. Hughie wasn't sick or
anything awful, was he?"

"No, no, he wasn't."

Hughie Spurway came in.

He looked neither sallower nor more unhappy than he had looked on the
previous day, and his morning greetings were no more nervously uttered.

Valentine reflected that he had probably failed to realize that she knew
anything about what had happened.

She expected him to say that he couldn't stay on but must leave Coombe
that day, and purposely left the room when she saw the postman bicycling
up the drive, so that he could make a decent pretence of having received
a summons by post.

She had opened her own letters and was answering them at her desk in the
hall when Venetia Rockingham appeared, wearing her smartly-tailored
thick tweeds and a pale-blue angora-wool jumper against which gleamed
her pearl necklace.

"Well, my sweet," she said to Valentine. "Isn't this cold too filthy?
What about another log or two? _So_ lovely to be able to burn wood,
don't you know what I mean. They say next winter we shall have no coal,
no electricity, no gas, no nothing, if the war goes on. Are you most
terribly busy?"

"Not specially."

Valentine laid down her pen.

"Don't look so alarmed, darling," Venetia's soft, artificial-sounding
laugh bridged the pause between her words and her installation of
herself in the armchair nearest to the fire.

She began quickly and competently to knit, the khaki-coloured wool
slipping swiftly between her slim white fingers.

Valentine noticed, as often before, that whatever the temperature
Venetia's lovely hands never turned red or mottled from the cold.

"I want, if I may, to talk to you quite, quite frankly, darling Val."

To her own surprise Valentine replied:

"But I'd so much rather that you didn't, Venetia."

Lady Rockingham, seeming also surprised, for an instant stopped the
rapid wielding of her knitting-needles.

Then she said lightly:

"Val, don't be unkind to me or I shall burst into floods of tears. I do
so want you to feel I'm a _real_ friend, darling, and able to enter into
it all, don't you know what I mean. After all, nobody realises better
than I do that Humphrey, poor pet, wasn't one of the great romantic
lovers of the world, whatever else he may have been. I've often said
why on _earth_ didn't you marry again, and when dear old Reggie came and
planted himself down here I remember telling Charlie at the time, you
might marry any day and Reggie couldn't possibly count on staying at
Coombe for ever."

"We can none of us count on staying at Coombe for ever now, Venetia."

"Darling, Primrose wouldn't live down here in the wilds if you paid her
to do it. I doubt whether even Jess would. They'll make their own lives,
like all these young things. And poor old Reggie won't really mind where
he is, will he, so long as Madeleine is there too, to give him his
little hot drinks and darn his socks. I'm much more interested in you
than in all of them put together and I do really think I can help,
perhaps, if you'll tell me your plans, and trust me."

Her lovely eyes were turned pleadingly on Valentine. Her smile was of
the quality that is sometimes called disarming.

But Valentine was not disarmed.

"She's false," she thought. "Unreal and unkind."

Aloud, she said:

"You know all that I have to tell, Venetia. I don't think that you can
possibly help me, in any way."

"But my sweet, you do realize that all the family is going to be
startled out of its senses if you suddenly announce that you mean to
marry this Irishman, Lonergan?"

"There's no one to be startled, really, Venetia. Reggie and I are the
only two left of our own generation, since the last war, and the aunts
and uncle are much too old to care."

"That's the Levallois side of it, isn't it? But the Arbells _do_ exist,
my dear, and we've all been so fond of you always, and so interested
about the girls, wanting them to marry decently and so on, don't you
know what I mean. This is going to shatter Charlie, as well as me."

"Why?"

Lady Rockingham looked down at her knitting and murmured with
deliberation:

"Seventeen--eighteen--nineteen--do forgive me, darling--just one minute.
And twenty. For one thing, he's not at all one of us, is he? Not that I
suppose it matters--I'm the most democratic woman in the world, as you
know--but Charlie's terribly old-fashioned. Then there's his religion.
One hates even the shadow of narrow-mindedness, and naturally, there are
good people in every sect, and personally, I always say what does it
matter whether we go to Church or not, so long as we all do our best?
Still, the family's always rather steered clear of Roman Catholics,
don't you know what I mean."

"I'm not a young girl," Valentine said. "Nothing that you've said can
have any possible application to a woman of my age, even if those things
were important in themselves."

"Slip one ... Yes, darling, you've learnt it all off too beautifully--I
can _hear_ your Lonergan saying it, in that rather endearing brogue of
his that always sounds _too_ like something on the stage, don't you know
what I mean. Dear me, how I do dislike knitting! But I suppose one has
to. Shall we come down to brass tacks, Val? Did I dream it last night,
or did that little neurotic horror of a Hughie really start something,
talking about Primrose, and did she own up to it without turning a
hair?"

"I don't know what he may have said to Primrose, or about her, before I
came up. You and I both know what Primrose said afterwards. I don't mean
to discuss it."

"That's what's so _really_ silly of you, darling, if I may be quite
frank. You're like a dear little ostrich, just pushing your head in the
sand and pretending the thing never happened. Now Val, you know I'm not
in the least censorious or narrow--the boys always say there's
absolutely nothing they can't talk over with me quite, quite freely--and
I'm going to be absolutely straight with you. Primrose, whom I'm devoted
to, has adopted this idiotic pose of having neither manners nor morals
and saying every single thing that comes into her head. Is she going to
stop at saying that she and her mother both fell for the same man, and
that, after amusing himself with her, he decided to propose to you, and
you, my poor lamb, immediately accepted him? I ask you, my dear...."

The low, clipped tones went on.

Valentine realized suddenly that, although she heard the words, she was
not listening to them. Venetia's words had become wholly unimportant.

They had less significance even than the staccato utterances of Hughie
Spurway.

He had come into the hall, with Jessica and the dogs. "Good-morning,
Hughie," said Lady Rockingham, just glancing up from her murmured
calculations over the knitting, and then immediately resuming them
again.

"Ten--eleven--knit two together ... Jess, darling, are you a knitter?"

"No," said Jess baldly. "Not if I can help it. I say, mummie, Hughie's
in a bit of a flat spin because he thinks he made a fool of himself last
night and he wants to go away at once, but I said I thought that was
rather a dim idea. You don't mind, do you?"

Valentine smiled at her and at Hughie.

"We'll forget about last night," she suggested. "But you must do just
what suits you best, about going or staying."

"I can't possibly stay," said Hughie, his white face working. "It's very
kind of you, but I--I can't possibly."

"Why not?" Jess enquired amiably. "Because you had a row with Primrose?"

Hughie made an inarticulate sound.

"Really, Jess, aren't you rather overdoing the _enfant terrible_ pose?"
Lady Rockingham enquired. "I know you weren't there last night, but it
was all very rude and unpleasant and uncle Reggie, I may add, was
furious."

She turned to Hughie.

"Personally, I agree that the best thing you can do is to disappear.
It'd be so much comfier for you, wouldn't it?"

"Aunt Venetia," Jess remarked clearly and coldly. "I think you're
perfectly beastly. I do really. And anyway, it's mummie's house, isn't
it?"

Valentine stood up.

"I think we've all said enough. Jess is quite right--it _is_ my house,
and I'm going to ask Reggie, and everybody else, to forget what happened
last night. It was quite silly and unimportant. Jess, will you go and
let out the hens for me?"

Jess gave her mother a long, surprised stare. Then she said: "Come on,
aunt Sophy. Come on, Sally. Come on, Hughie," and sloped out to the
double doors.

The dogs trotted off beside her, and after a moment's hesitation, Hughie
Spurway, with an odd, nervous gesture of waving his hands about
uncertainly, followed them.

Venetia Rockingham looked at her sister-in-law with almost as much
surprise as Jessica had shown.

"I must say, my dear, your Irish admirer has given your inferiority
complex its death-blow, don't you know what I mean. Too wonderful. But I
don't think it's really going to help, to be so high-handed, when it
comes to poor darling old Reggie and the relations."

She gathered up her knitting and stood up, and Valentine, as always,
noted her grace and the fluid competence of every movement.

"It's _too_ obvious that you don't want any help from me, darling, at
the moment. But when you do, I'll be there, and really you might do
worse. I've always been devoted to you, Val, and after all, one _does_
know one's world and can make allowances."

Venetia bestowed her famous and lovely smile upon her sister-in-law as
she went away, unhurried and self-assured.

Valentine thought: I shan't ever be afraid of her again. Rory's done
that for me, too. He's given me courage.

The sense of courage, still mingled with surprise, remained with her
even while she told herself that it would, as Venetia had hinted, be
more difficult to confront her brother than almost anybody else.

Reggie might be unreasonable, obtuse, violently prejudiced.

But his affection and solicitude for her were real in their degree and
she knew that she must outrage them both.




XVII


It was nearly midday when General Levallois came downstairs. He was
wearing a heavy shapeless old Burberry over his tweed suit, and carried,
wedged under one arm, the battered green felt hat that he always used on
week-days.

"Morning, Val."

His friendly greeting seemed conciliatory, as she remembered the anger
with which he had left her on the night before.

"Good-morning, Reggie. Are you going out?"

"Thought I'd take a stroll. You wouldn't care to come with me, would
you, old girl? I daresay it's not as cold outside as it is indoors."

He glanced doubtfully out of the window at the iron-grey, lowering sky
and the bare branches swaying to the north-east wind.

"Of course I will," Valentine said. "We'll take the dogs."

She pulled on her heavy coat, hanging in the lobby amongst all the other
ancient and shabby coats and mackintoshes and disused school blazers,
and was thankful to find a pair of woollen gloves in a pocket and to put
them on.

They moved slowly out into the wintry cold, obliged to accommodate their
rate of progress to the General's infirmity.

"The news wasn't any too good this morning, Val."

"I didn't listen. I'll hear it at one o'clock."

"I wish we had a man like Kitchener, in these days. Or old Redvers
Buller."

He had often expressed the same wish before, but now he uttered it
mechanically, his voice depressed and uneasy-sounding.

"The state the whole world's in," he muttered. "I hope I'm as
progressive as anybody, but I must say, things are getting a bit beyond
me. Look at the books people write nowadays!"

"The books?" echoed Valentine, surprised.

"Yes. I suppose a great many people take their ideas out of books, don't
they? All these modern books that crack up immorality and bad behaviour,
and tell you that religion doesn't matter a hoot and to hell with the
Ten Commandments. And what's it all led to, tell me that. The complete
turning upside-down of--of every law of decency. I tell you, Val, I was
awake half the night thinking about that girl of yours, and the utter
shamelessness of the things she said. If poor Humphrey had been alive,
he'd have sent her packing then and there, it's my belief. But that's
been the trouble--no father to keep her in order. Mind you, I'm not
blaming you, Val. You did the best you could, I've no doubt."

"Let's not talk about Primrose, Reggie. I've made mistakes with her--I
don't think I've helped her at all, or really understood her. And it's
too late now."

"I refuse to believe it," asserted the General, and dogmatic as the
phrase was, Valentine knew that it was spoken perfunctorily and without
conviction. He went on immediately:

"The less Jess sees of Primrose in future the better, in my opinion. I
thought it was a bit of a mistake, letting her join up so young, but
upon my word I'm glad of it now."

He stopped dead, leaning on his two sticks, and faced his sister.

"Better have the tennis-court dug up and planted, you know. No one's
going to use it again in our time, eh?"

"Perhaps not."

"Still," said the General, "it's your place, not mine. I don't want to
go cramming my ideas down your throat."

"You've often helped me very much, Reggie. I'm not practical, and I
don't think I could have managed this place at all by myself."

"Perhaps not," conceded the General. "It's a man's job, not a woman's.
Pity you and Humphrey never had a son. Though if you had, come to think
of it, I suppose he'd have been caught up in this damned war, like the
rest of 'em."

He paused, and then came to his real point at last.

"Look here, old girl, it's none of my business if you like, but I wish
you'd tell me what's in your mind about plans, and so on."

"I'm going to marry him, Reggie."

"Lonergan," said the General, as if marking time. "Lonergan. Well, I
don't want to go off the deep end about this, in any possible way."

His hands clenched themselves upon his two sticks and he swallowed
violently.

"I know you said so last night, before young Spurway made such an ass of
himself and we went upstairs, but I didn't know if you--you might have
thought better of it, since then."

"No, Reggie."

"Venetia's dead against it, and mind you, Venetia's not only devoted to
you but she's a very clever woman. Very clever. She's got brains, and
she knows the world, and she's a good judge of men. I wish you'd talk to
Venetia before you make up your mind."

"It is made up."

"You realize you've only known this chap a few days? Upon my soul, Val,
it's Tuesday now and the fellow only got here on Saturday night, and you
say you've decided to marry him--it's unbelievable!"

His self-control was slipping from him and he was growing loud and
angry.

"I'm not saying anything against him, except that he probably knows
which side his bread is buttered as well as the next man, but it's
utterly unsuitable. There's no _sense_ in it. And if it's true that he's
been carrying on with Primrose, it's perfectly outrageous. Not that I
believe it is true."

He fixed anxious, furious eyes upon her face.

"What do you propose to do, may I ask? Keep this chap at Coombe, or go
off and live in some Irish bog in that damned disloyal country of his?"

"Rory is in the Army now, and will be until the war's over. I don't know
what will happen afterwards. Who does?"

"Very well then. Don't do anything until the war's over," triumphantly
barked the General. "Call yourself engaged to him privately, and leave
it at that. That gives you a chance to think things over. There's a
devil of a lot to take into account, Val, mind you. Marriage is a
serious business. Have you the slightest idea what this man's family is
like, where he comes from, what sort of chance he has of making a living
after the war?"

"He has a profession."

"Drawing and painting," said the General doubtfully. "I suppose he's a
Catholic?"

"Yes, he is."

"Venetia hates the idea. Personally, I don't know that it matters very
much one way or the other. I'd rather a man had any religion than none.
But frankly, Val, you've pitched on a man who isn't--isn't exactly in
your own walk of life so to speak, and I think that's a mistake. I may
be old-fashioned but all this levelling-up never has appealed to me.
You'll find there are a lot of things you take for granted that he won't
understand."

"He'll find that about me, too," Valentine said. "We've taken it all
into account, Reggie. I know it seems to have happened very quickly--and
indeed it has--but I know it's all right. I don't expect you to believe
me."

The General groaned.

He began to move down the avenue again and Valentine walked slowly
beside him, her head bent in a vain endeavour to find some protection
from the piercing cold.

"How soon--When do you intend to announce this?"

"I think we shall marry immediately, Reggie. There'll be nothing else to
announce."

"Well," said the General violently, "I've always been told that the
later in life these infatuations take hold of people, the stronger they
are. But I must say, I've always thought you were a sensible woman, Val.
Not the kind to lose her head. Venetia says that's the sort that gets it
worst--and upon my soul, it looks as though she was right. One's always
hearing of middle-aged women running off with the chauffeur, or the
leader of a dance-band or something, and sooner or later coming to
smash--usually sooner. Infatuation, that's what it is."

Valentine made no reply.

As she had expected, the General in another moment offered a kind of
grumbling apology.

"Not that I mean to say Lonergan's all one with somebody's chauffeur.
He's a Colonel in the British Army, and a decent enough fellow, no
doubt. I don't dislike him, in fact. What about turning back? Get the
wind behind us."

Valentine turned obediently.

"I suppose you were in love with him when you were a girl?"

"Yes."

"Still, you haven't been keeping it up ever since."

"Oh no, Reggie. But I suppose that was one reason why it happened so
quickly."

The General made a sound that might pass for a grudging assent.

They were nearing the house when he spoke again and his voice then had
become mild and meditative.

"Extraordinary, the way things come round. I can remember mother writing
to me from Rome about you and an affair with some Irish fellow that
nobody knew anything about, and saying how pretty you'd grown."

"Did she?"

Valentine was surprised and touched. Her mother had loved her,
possessively and emotionally, but she had never praised her. Valentine
had grown up believing herself to be uninteresting and unattractive.

The General nodded.

"Yes, I remember her writing that. I was at Simla when I got the letter.
I remember feeling a bit surprised at your being old enough for that
kind of thing. I suppose I was still thinking of you as the kid in short
frocks I'd seen on my last furlough. It's a funny thing, that chap's
name coming back to me directly I heard it, Lonergan. Well--I always say
I never forget a name."

They reached the double-doors of the house and General Levallois
performed the difficult feat of balancing himself and his supporting
sticks whilst carefully wiping his boots against the ancient iron
scraper.

They went into the lobby and the General pushed open the glass
swing-doors and they passed through them.

"I'm glad we've had this talk about it, old girl."

"So am I, Reggie."

"Think over it, before you go and do anything silly," the General
advised her. "Have a talk with Venetia. She's a good sort, and she knows
what's what."

He moved slowly towards the staircase.

"Nearly time for the One O'Clock News. I shall go up and listen to it in
Madeleine's room. One can't hear oneself think when young Jess and that
dog of hers are anywhere about. Besides, if Spurway gets in my light I
shall want to give him a kick in the pants. Can't understand his mother
having a boy like that. She was a Herbert-MacDowell of Acres. I remember
her, and her sister Edith too. Pretty girl, Edith."

He shifted his sticks, grasped the banister rail and began to climb
upwards.

Valentine, gazing after him, thought that she had little more to fear
from Reggie. His anger had spent itself, and his inelastic mind would
for ever refuse to admit the full implications of all that Primrose had
tried to force upon his understanding.

Watching his slow, creeping progress up the stairs Valentine remembered,
for a moment, her eldest brother as the ambitious and successful soldier
that he once had been before illness had turned him prematurely into an
old man.

Now there was nothing left for him, except the oddly trivial
remembrances on which his mind for the most part dwelt, the creature
comforts of which he could still avail himself, and the devotion and
kindness of Madeleine.

Madeleine will always look after him, she thought gratefully and with
confidence.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hughie Spurway, following Jess about like a dog, stood at her heels as
though seeking protection in her sturdy normality while she announced
for him:

"Mummie, Hughie says he absolutely must and will go to Plymouth
directly after lunch. I suppose that means aunt Venetia'll go back to
London by train. I hope she's really leaving here to-morrow, like she
said. She makes me sick. Fancy if I had to travel up to London with her!
I might, you know. I could be called up any day now. They never give you
more than about five minutes' notice."

Primrose came in.

Hughie turned a sallower, more evil colour than before at the sight of
her and he picked up a book from the table beside him and looked fixedly
into it without stirring whilst Jessica glibly repeated her announcement
of his departure.

"So what?" said Primrose.

"I was thinking how awful it'd be if it just happened that I had to
report to Victory House to-morrow and had to travel to London with aunt
V. Except that I suppose she'd pay for me to get in first class with
her, but even then it wouldn't be worth it."

Jess chattered on and Valentine wondered exactly how far she realized
that she was helping them all through an embarrassing and even painful
hour. Jessica might be nave, but she was also shrewd, and the inherited
sense of social responsibility that Primrose so violently and
consciously repudiated had not passed her by. Knowingly or not, she
recognized it as a part of human intercourse and conformed to it, on her
own terms and in her own way.

Throughout luncheon Hughie hardly spoke at all, Primrose addressed her
few, discontented comments on the cooking and serving of the food into
space and the conversation lay between Lady Rockingham, the General and
Valentine, Jess keeping up a running under-current of talk that seemed
mostly to be concerned with the dogs.

As they left the table she suddenly enquired of Hughie Spurway:

"Could aunt Sophy and I come as far as the post-office with you in your
car, and then be dropped? We'll walk back."

"Certainly," he answered, looking startled.

"I can call for the second post," Jess explained. "I've got a terrific
feeling there may be a letter telling me to join up."

"I'll get the car round," Hughie muttered.

He looked, for the first time, at Primrose but she made no movement at
all and he went upstairs.

"Are you going to forgive him before he goes?" Lady Rockingham asked
lightly of her niece. "It's really all your own fault, darling, for
upsetting the poor wretch so that he lost his head. He looks half dead
with shame, this morning."

Primrose made no reply.

"When you do _that_ with your mouth," Jess observed to her sister
dispassionately, "you look exactly like a camel. I wish I could."

Primrose was still wearing the same expression when Hughie Spurway took
his leave.

He stammered something inarticulate to Lady Rockingham, who laughed and
waved her hand at him without touching his.

"Ring me up at the Dorchester one of these days, my dear. I can't
promise I'll be there because one's so run off one's feet these days,
don't you know what I mean, but we can but hope for the best. Don't
forget."

Her little nod dismissed him as coldly and deliberately as had her
unmeaning phrases.

Valentine moved forward in time to prevent Hughie from attempting
whatever difficult speech he had prepared for her.

"I'll come with you to the door," she said. "I hope your bag has been
taken down."

"It's in the car."

Valentine looked at Primrose.

She was lying back in an armchair in the furthest corner of the hall, a
cigarette between her lips, her head bent over the crossword puzzle in
the daily paper.

Jess spoke the words that Valentine had lacked the courage to utter.

"Hughie's just going."

Primrose lifted her yellow-curled head. Her long, narrow face was
expressionless except for the curve of the ironically-arched thick
eyebrows that so expressively suggested her arrogant contempt for her
surroundings.

Hughie advanced, stood stock-still in front of her, and said in the
unnaturally loud voice of one who has been afraid that he will not be
able to speak at all:

"Well, goodbye. It's been grand, seeing you."

"'Bye," said Primrose. The monosyllable seemed to drop from one corner
of her mouth and she did not raise her eyes.

"Goodbye," repeated Hughie. "I'll be writing to you from Plymouth, I
expect."

"I shouldn't bother," said Primrose.

Her pencil hovered over the paper, then filled in one of the little
blank squares.

For the third time Hughie said goodbye and this time she made no answer.

He turned away and followed Valentine and Jess to where the car stood
waiting beside the moss-grown stone pillars at the entrance.

"Fancy, someone's mended the chain," said Jess, and she put up her hand
and pulled at the rusty iron links.

The chain immediately broke again.

"I bet it was Charles who did that and thought himself awfully clever,"
Jess remarked, unperturbed, as she pushed the broken length of chain
into her coat-pocket. "I'll just show him that when he comes back
to-night. Come on, aunt Sophy. You can sit on my knee."

She climbed into the car.

"Goodbye," said Valentine, and she held out her hand to Hughie, smiling.
"Don't worry, please."

She felt that the words were very inadequate but his chilly fingers
grasped hers in a painful effusion of gratitude.

"Thanks frightfully, Lady Arbell. I'm afraid it's--I've--oh, God, I
can't say what I mean."

"Aren't you _coming_?" Jess called.

Valentine drew back and the young man turned his haggard stare away from
her, took his place at the wheel and drove off down the winding avenue,
away from Coombe.

A fleeting arrow of compassion shot through Valentine's mind, and the
next instant she was giving herself up joyously and with profound
excitement to the thought that her lover would be with her again that
evening.

In a very little while--in a day or two--they would marry.

Rory and I will belong to one another in every way there is, she
thought, and for a little while she, whom the years had taught to be
neither optimistic nor enterprising, gave herself up to the day-dreaming
that had coloured all life for the girl, Valentine Levallois.

The ringing of the telephone bell sounded through the hall.

Certain that it was Lonergan, Valentine went to answer it and found her
certainty justified.

"Yes?"

"Ah, thank God it's you, dearest. Listen, could you meet me the way you
did before, at the Victoria Hotel? I've to talk to you."

"I'll come, Rory. What time?"

"As soon as you can, love."

She thought that she could detect hesitation in his voice.

"What is it? Has something happened?"

"You're terribly quick. Listen, love. I've got forty-eight hours' leave,
from to-morrow. We all have."

Her heart seemed to stop, and then to race.

"Is it embarkation leave?"

"It is, my darling."

There was an instant of silence and then his deep, musical voice came
over the air again with a note of great urgency.

"Val, my sweet, are you all right?"

"Yes. Tell me what you want me to do."

"I want you to come to the Victoria Hotel, now. We'll talk, then. I can
take an hour, with any luck. We've everything to settle."

"You can't tell me anything...?"

"Nothing, love. Indeed, I know very little myself. By the way, Sedgewick
is off to-night. He'll come back to fetch his things and catch the night
train up to London. He asked me to let you know. He'll be up about six
o'clock."

"I'll get his things ready for packing," Valentine answered
mechanically. "Am I to say anything about this?"

"Ah, there's nothing private about it. The whole town knows already, and
of course the boys themselves are leaping mad with excitement."

"I suppose so."

She felt as though she had been stunned and was incapable of thought or
speech.

"I must go," said Lonergan's voice. "I've to book a call to Kilronan
post-office, in County Roscommon, God help me, for Arlette. It'll be the
work of the world to get hold of her, at that, for my sister Nellie's
house isn't on the telephone."

The now familiar pang struck at her heart.

"Couldn't you telegraph beforehand and tell Arlette what time to be at
the post-office and ring up then?"

"I have telegraphed, but I don't suppose there's a hope of it's getting
delivered in time. I'll have to book the call now for some time this
evening and take a chance on their getting hold of her. One thing, she's
certain to be in after eight o'clock, the poor child. Nellie would see
to that. Will it be all right for me to take the call at Coombe?"

"Of course."

"I knew it would be, God bless you. Listen, Val, will you be coming by
the road?"

"I can. I think I'd better."

"I'll try and meet you, with the car. If I can't, will you wait for me
at the Victoria? I'll anyway drive you back, though you may have to wait
for me in the hotel a little while."

She assented.

"Then I'll be seeing you in less than an hour's time, my darling.
Goodbye and take care of your sweet self."

"Goodbye, Rory. I'll start at once."

She replaced the receiver.

Embarkation leave, thought Valentine. That means foreign service. We
must marry before he goes. He didn't say that. He said he must put a
call through to Arlette. He's telegraphed to her already. That was the
first thing he thought of. With the careful reasonableness that she
brought always, instinctively and from long custom, to bear upon her own
problems she reminded herself that Rory had known he would see her
within the hour.

The habit of organization would impel him to deal first with the
complexities and uncertainties of telephone communication in war-time
between Devonshire and a remote village in South Ireland.

She found that, without being aware of having done so, she had returned
to the hall where Venetia Rockingham still sat beside the fire,
directing her bright, delicately-enunciated spate of faintly malicious
conversation towards the General, and Primrose still sprawled,
motionless, in her distant corner.

Still motionless and still looking down at the crossword puzzle, she
enquired:

"Anything or nothing? The telephone, I mean."

"It was a message to say that Charles Sedgewick is coming back this
evening to collect his things, and then going off by the late train.
They're being moved."

"My God," remarked Primrose without expression. She filled in another
clue.

"Being moved?" echoed the General. "Scandalous waste of the country's
money, the way the Army is being pushed about from pillar to post, in my
opinion. Are these chaps going abroad?"

"I think they are, Reggie. Charles Sedgewick is off to London on
embarkation leave."

"My dear," exclaimed Venetia. "He hasn't got embarkation leave all to
himself, I imagine. What about the Colonel?"

"Rory's got his embarkation leave too, Venetia."

"And what are you going to do?" Lady Rockingham asked, looking curiously
at her sister-in-law. "Nothing desperate, darling, I do hope and trust.
If you ask me, this gives everybody time to turn round--such a mercy,
don't you know what I mean."

Valentine rang the bell without answering.

When Ivy appeared she said:

"Would you or Esther take Captain Sedgewick's suitcases to his room, if
you please. He's going on leave to-night. Ask Mrs. Ditchley to send in
dinner early. Seven o'clock."

"Yes, my lady."

The girl's face showed no surprise. Valentine surmised that she had
heard the news already.

After Ivy had left the room Lady Rockingham remarked:

"I suppose Colonel Lonergan's batman looks after his packing--or isn't
he going away?"

"I'm walking into the town now to meet him and talk over what we're
going to do," Valentine replied.

It was only as she went out of the house by the garden door five
minutes later that she realized, with surprise, that her announcement
had met with no comment from anybody.

She walked as quickly as possible down the avenue and thought that it
was growing colder every minute, although the wind had fallen. It had
given place to a sullen, snow-laden stillness that enveloped the dark
and leafless trees and the sodden-looking earth in a chilled immobility.

Valentine's exultation of an hour earlier had all left her. She felt
despairing, apprehensive and forlorn.

It will be all right when I see him, she told herself without
conviction. Her mind dwelt upon the immediate present, unable to
envisage the idea that Lonergan was going away, leaving England for a
destination unknown, from which he might well never return again.

She had walked rapidly for a mile and a half or more when she saw a tall
young figure swinging along the lane, coming towards her. It was Jess,
with her dogs.

Aunt Sophy, recognizing Valentine, rushed wildly to meet her, capering
extravagantly and making short rushes backwards and forwards between her
and Jess.

"Hallo!" Jess shouted, lengthening her stride. She was waving a paper
above her head. "It's come! I was absolutely dead right, as usual.
Wasn't it extraordinary, mummie, I just _knew_ that letter would be at
the post-office. And it was. I'm to report at Victory House at twelve
noon on Thursday. Gosh! that's the day after to-morrow. I'll have to
take the early train. Gosh! It's pretty marvellous, having to dash off
all in a minute like that, like the Secret Service or something. Mummie,
it is okay by you, isn't it? I mean, you don't mind, do you?"

"No, darling. Not if you're glad."

Valentine forced back the emotion that threatened to bring tears into
her eyes.

"I'm dying to tell Madeleine. Gosh! won't she be thrilled! It'll make up
for the battalion going. Mummie, they're being sent abroad and they
don't know where, only they're being issued with tropical kit. They're
getting embarkation leave, straight away now this minute. They'll all be
gone by to-morrow. So'll I, by Thursday. I wonder what uncle Reggie will
say. Mummie, you'll take care of aunt Sophy, won't you?"

"Indeed I will."

"And look, are you on your way to meet the Colonel? Because if you are,
I saw him in the Square and he told me to tell you it was no good. He
looked as sick as mud. He's got to see some old General or other and he
told some chap to ring up Coombe in case he could catch you before you
started, to say not to come."

Valentine's heart sank lower. She felt no surprise, only an overwhelming
disappointment.

"He came dashing across the Square just as I came out of the
post-office, and asked if I was going home and told me I'd prob'bly meet
you on the road. Gosh, it's parky, isn't it? We hadn't better go on
standing here freezing, had we?"

Valentine turned and walked beside her daughter in the direction of
Coombe.

"It's a pity about Charles and the Colonel going," Jess observed. "And
Buster and Jack and all the others. They were wizard. I suppose I won't
be able to say goodbye to them now. I'll only see Charles. He's coming
in at about six, and the Colonel as soon as he can make it. Earlier than
six if he can, he said."

Jess whistled piercingly to her dog.

"Did you tell Colonel Lonergan that you were going to Victory House on
Thursday?" asked Valentine, in order to break the silence that she felt
unable to endure. "What did he say?"

"As a matter of fac', I didn't say anything about it. I thought," said
Jess, elaborately off-hand, "that you might as well be the absolutely
first person to be told about it."




XVIII


With his customary efficiency and detachment Charles Sedgewick looked
round his bedroom at Coombe and ascertained that his belongings were
packed, and his room left in order.

He took a last appraising look at the old-fashioned wall-paper, the
dark, massive furniture, the steel engravings framed in narrow black and
gold. It was pretty certainly the last time he'd ever stay in a house
like Coombe, he reflected without any sentimental regret--indeed with a
momentary relief in the recollection that his mother's little villa
would be comfortably warmed throughout.

Well, thought Sedgewick, it had been interesting enough to see how these
people, so unmistakably in the last ditch, conducted such life as they
might be said to have left. Something to be said for the individual,
perhaps--he grinned at the remembrance of Jessica, who was a nice kid,
young enough and tough enough to find and keep a place in the new order.

He gave a fleeting thought to Lady Arbell, not because he considered her
in any way significant but because his Colonel apparently did. One can't
ever tell, with people of that generation, was Sedgewick's mental
summing-up of his passing surmise. And he added in his own mind: Any
more than they can with ours.

The people who might be liquidated with positive advantage to the
community were, in Sedgewick's dispassionate view, the Rockingham woman,
who was a bitch, Hughie Spurway, a degenerate and a pestilential bore,
and the old Blimp, General Levallois.

Thus briefly, methodically, and without qualifying clauses did Charles
Sedgewick classify his impressions of these people whom he had tabulated
as "the real thing" on his first arrival at Coombe. There remained his
awareness of Primrose, and hers of him.

Sedgewick glanced at his wrist-watch, noted that it was only twenty
minutes past six, and with characteristic promptitude decided that he
had plenty of time in which to discover whether or not Primrose was
interested.

The non-committal phrase exactly expressed his own attitude of mind.

With no further backward look at his temporary lodging, Sedgewick
tramped out of the room and down the dark, draughty passage to the
schoolroom.

She was, as he had expected, sitting over the fire, smoking and with a
copy of _The New Yorker_ lying face-downwards on her lap.

"Hallo, Primrose."

"Hallo to you. So you're off."

"That is correct."

"Jess has got to go, too. Quite a break-up."

"Isn't it? What about you?"

"It's me for the first train to London to-morrow--so long as my
poisonous aunt isn't in it."

"Travel up with me to-night. We'll be making Waterloo at twenty-four
hours, if the train's punctual."

"Too much of a rush."

"As you say."

Primrose turned her head slightly towards him for the first time and
gave him her queer, crooked smile.

"I might turn up to-morrow lunch-time at the bar of the Caf Royal."

"I'll buy you a drink there."

"Okay."

His eyes held hers for a moment and then they both laughed,--brief,
excited, mirthless laughter.

Sedgewick walked over to the armchair and pulled Primrose onto her feet.

"Mind my cigarette," she said.

"Chuck it away."

"'Save to defend'," she mocked.

Then she threw the half-smoked cigarette, stained with her lip-stick,
into the fire.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was nearly nine o'clock before Lonergan returned to Coombe. A
succession of telephone messages had announced one delay after another,
and the last one had said that no dinner was to be kept for him.

Dinner at Coombe had been early, and immediately afterwards Primrose,
offering no explanation to anyone, had gone in Sedgewick's taxi to the
station and seen his train pull out from the darkened little country
platform.

The taxi brought her back as far as the gates of the avenue and there
she got out and prepared to walk to the house, swearing between her
teeth at the cold that slashed through her belted leather jacket and
thick skirt.

A car hooted behind her and she saw and recognized it preparing to take
the entrance, travelling slowly.

Primrose flashed her torch onto the path ahead, swinging it backwards
and forwards, and the car came to a noisy standstill.

Lonergan leant out and opened the door.

"It's me," Primrose said, and she climbed into the seat next the
driver's.

"What in God's name are you doing, girl, catching pneumonia out here?"

"Pneumonia is right," said Primrose, and she leant back and dragged at
the rug on the back seat.

"Here, wait a minute."

Lonergan switched off the engine and put the rug over her knees, tucking
it round her.

"History repeating itself," Primrose remarked. "Remember driving me out
from Exeter last Saturday?"

"I do," he answered gently.

"Go on. Start her up. You're driving me to the house, aren't you?"

"I am, of course."

He started the engine again and the car bumped away over the uneven
surface between the dark clumps of the gorse bushes and the groups of
leafless trees.

"You're late," Primrose said.

"Indeed I am. It's been one thing after another, all day. Has Sedgewick
gone?"

"Yes. 'Smatter of fact, I've just been seeing him off."

"You have?"

After a pause, as though Lonergan had been silently taking in the
implication of that statement, he said:

"So that's the way of it. Well, Sedgewick's a good lad, tough as they
come, and he deserves a slice of luck. He'll be on the high seas a week
from now."

"So'll you."

"I shall."

"I shan't be seeing you again. I'm going back to London to-morrow."

"So Sedgewick gets his slice of luck."

"If that's what you call it," she agreed.

"It is," said Lonergan, and in his voice was a smile that she could not
see.

They were nearing the house.

"Primrose, you'll call this a lot of nonsense--but I want to tell you
that there's a good deal that I'm terribly sorry about. Forgive me."

"Forget it," Primrose said, in her indifferent drawl.

The car jolted its way round the oval grass plot before the stone
pillars. Primrose swayed deliberately to the movement and, as her whole
slim length fell against him, she put her hand over Lonergan's on the
gear-lever.

He slipped the clutch into neutral, and the car stopped.

For a moment they both remained motionless. Then Primrose pulled herself
upright and opened the door of the car.

She swung her long legs over the step.

"Good-night, Rory. Thanks for the lift."

"Good-night, my dear."

"Damn this black-out, I can't see a thing."

He saw the flash of her torch as she stumbled forward, under the
lead-roofed portico.

"Are you all right, Primrose?"

"I'm okay."

The tiny light of the torch went out.

"In case I don't see you again, good luck and all that."

Her voice reached him through the darkness and the echo of it was
immediately lost as the doors banged-to behind her.

       *       *       *       *       *

As he walked into the hall Lonergan's eyes sought anxiously for
Valentine.

He saw her at once, and that she looked pale and very tired. The others
were there too--Lady Rockingham and the General and Jess--sitting in
silence, whilst the voice of a B.B.C. announcer passionlessly enunciated
the cheerless items of the Nine O'Clock News.

Lonergan began an apology for his lateness, but was immediately checked
by an impatient gesture and portentous glare from the General.

He looked at Valentine with a despair born of fatigue, urgency and
exasperation, and she got up and came towards him.

The telephone bell cut shrilly into the careful silence, the General
ejaculated angrily and Jess scrambled up from her seat on the floor.

"It'll be for me," said Lonergan. "I've a call to Roscommon."

He strode to the telephone, and Valentine sank back into her chair
again.

Lonergan, pushing into the dark corner where the telephone so
inconveniently stood on a bracket in an angle of the wall, fumbled for
the electric-light switch, failed to find it, and cursed.

He was in a mood of acute nervous impatience that he knew well and had
reason to dread.

The stereotyped phrases and unexplained delays to which the telephone
operator subjected him did nothing to allay it.

He had three times repeated his own number and explained his
requirements before, through a variety of buzzing noises and fragmentary
directions, the connection was made.

"Kilronan post-_office_," said the far-away voice, putting the authentic
Irish stress on the last word.

Lonergan explained that his call was for the young French girl living at
Miss Lonergan's house opposite. Could she be fetched at once, please?

"I'll ask me brother will he step over. Is it Miss Nellie you're
wanting?"

"It is _not_. It's her niece, that's staying with her."

"The young foreign girl would that be?"

"It would. If you could have her fetched to the telephone, I'd be
grateful. It's urgent. I'll hold on."

The disembodied voice ejaculated sympathetically and Lonergan was left
to the strange, intermittent sounds that penetrated through the receiver
into his right ear.

The time seemed endless.

He made another effort to find the light-switch with his disengaged hand
and failed again.

"Have you finished?" enquired the thin English accents of the local
operator.

"I have not. Don't cut me off, please. They've gone to fetch someone."

"Okay."

The three-minute signal sounded.

He was afraid the operator would cut him off, and his urgent request to
her not to do so seemed to fall into space and met with no reply.

Lonergan began to rehearse what he would say to Arlette, as he had been
doing at snatched intervals throughout the day.

She'd be distressed, the poor little thing, and she'd written that she
so much wanted to see him. Nellie was the kindest creature in the world,
but she was narrow-minded, provincial and inclined to domineer, and it
was plain that Arlette wasn't happy with her.

And now this--She'd think it was her last hope gone.

Lonergan wished to God she'd come to the telephone quickly and reminded
himself with dismay that Nellie, as likely as not, would come with her.
But they'd talk in French, anyway, and Nellie could make what she liked
of it.

The time signal sounded again and Lonergan groaned.

A noise like that of an exploding cracker assaulted his hearing.

A voice spoke, but the words were indistinguishable.

"Arlette?"

Suddenly the voice became clearly audible.

It was the Irish operator in Kilronan post-office again.

"You're out of luck entirely, sir. Believe you me or believe you me not,
that house is empty only for old Maggie Dolan."

"What?" said Lonergan blankly.

"They've gone into town for the St. Vincent de Paul Grand Concert and
they'll not be home till all hours, says Maggie Dolan."

Lonergan thanked her mechanically.

It must be the only night in the whole year, he thought, that Nellie
would be setting foot out of doors after dark and taking Arlette with
her.

He slowly replaced the receiver, and found that his hand was shaking and
his forehead damp.

I'll try again to-morrow morning early, he told himself--but without any
conviction.

His nerves were on edge and he was in the grip of that panic desolation
of spirit that, in its degree, periodically assails all artists.

Oh, God, I mustn't let myself go, he thought. If only all these people
would get to hell out of here and leave me alone with Val----

Resolved to see her at once and alone, he went back into the hall.

Only Lady Rockingham still sat there, her hands idle in her lap, the
wireless on the table now silenced.

She bestowed upon Lonergan a smile that held all the conscious grace in
the world.

"I'm really rather waiting to ring up a London number but one hasn't got
the courage to retire to that arctic spot, don't you know what I mean.
Did you get through to Ireland?"

"I did, thank you."

He looked round.

"I suppose they haven't all gone to bed?"

"No, no. Val is in the little breakfast-room, where I'm sure she's
waiting for you. Poor darling Val. She's looking quite shattered
to-night and I hate leaving her in the midst of all this agitation, but
alas, duty calls."

Lonergan hated her.

"I'll go in to her," he said curtly.

"Do, my dear. Too wretched for you both. She poured out the whole thing
to me, of course--we've always been rather specially devoted to one
another in spite of being in-laws, which I always think is such an
odious expression. I just wanted to tell you that I'll do everything I
can to calm down Reggie, poor old pet, and make the family behave
itself. I hear you're off at once?"

"I've forty-eight hours' leave before I go," he answered with cold,
deliberate significance.

Lady Rockingham seemed wholly unperturbed.

"Too nerve-racking, all these comings and goings," she murmured. "Still,
things settle themselves, one always feels, and I did so want you to
know that Valentine will have me behind her, poor lamb, whatever
happens. I always say I'm the most broad-minded woman of my
acquaintance."

Lonergan turned on her a furious look.

"I'd like to know, if I may, in what way it's become necessary for you
to be broad-minded where Valentine is concerned. Would it be because
she's promised to marry me?"

"My dear, she can promise to marry the crossing-sweeper if she likes.
She's quite old enough to know her own mind, as I've told her. But,
since we're talking so frankly, we do--all of _us_ I mean--feel that it
will be a thousand pities if she rushes just now into any rather
irrevocable affair like marriage, don't you know what I mean. One saw so
much of that in the last war."

"Just what is the insuperable objection to Valentine's marrying me if
she does me that honour? My nationality, or my religion, or my
profession, or the class to which--I'm proud to say--I belong?"

Lady Rockingham got up from her seat, still smiling.

"I always think this sort of discussion is so embarrassing, don't you?
Personally, I detest the word class but then I'm democratic. Practically
a socialist. One only feels that poor darling Val, out of her setting,
Devon and Coombe, and the family and all that--would be too utterly lost
and wretched, don't you know what I mean. I mean, she's not really
adaptable, is she--even if she was a younger woman. One's only thinking
of her happiness, which I'm quite sure is all you're thinking of
either."

She smiled at him again.

"Do forgive me. I must now wrestle with a trunk call. So impossible,
nowadays. They always tell one the junctions are engaged, whatever that
may mean, don't they?"

Lonergan gave her a long, level look of anger and dislike.

"You're right about one thing--which is as well, since you're wrong
about everything else on earth. I want nothing but Valentine's happiness
and I've the arrogance to be perfectly convinced that she'll find it
with me, and that she's completely and entirely missed it with you and
all the rest of her relations, God help her! It's well she's the courage
to break away from the whole lot of you, and I'm going to see to it that
she does so, the very first minute it can be done."

He walked into the breakfast-room and shut the door.

"Val! I've been almost out of my mind--not able to get next or near you
all day. Forgive me, love. Did Jess meet you this afternoon?"

"Yes. I got all your messages."

She looked exhausted and distraught.

"I knew you'd understand how it was. There was everything in the world
to do, and I'm not through yet. I've to go out again in an hour. Oh,
God, Valentine, I'm not a free agent any more. I'm caught up in this
machinery of war and now that I've found you, I can't stay with you."

He saw the wild look of pain in her eyes and it increased his sense of
frenzied helplessness.

"When must you go, Rory?"

"My leave is up at nine o'clock on Friday morning."

"I mayn't even know where they're sending you, may I?"

"I don't actually know myself. But it doesn't follow we shall sail
immediately, sweetheart. We may be kept hanging about for weeks at the
port of embarkation. Or, of course, we may sail directly."

"I can't bear it," said Valentine, and she hid her face in her hands.

"What'll we do?" he asked desperately. "I've a special licence, Val,
that'll be available to-morrow. We could be married before the Registrar
immediately and have the next two days together. You might even join me
for a while after that, if we're not to be sent off at once. God knows I
never meant to rush you like this, though."

He knew, from her immobility, that he was hurting her, but the bitter
anger and dismay that Venetia Rockingham's insinuations had roused in
him drove him on.

"It's a mad thing, to have to take the decision of a lifetime in five
minutes. It's asking you to go against all your family, and your
tradition and theirs. It's asking you to take on something more or less
blind, as things are now. How can I ask you to do that?"

"Rory----" she said entreatingly.

He went on recklessly, disregarding alike her suffering and his own.

"Dearest, dearest love--God knows I adore you, but the risk of it is so
immense. I've been here, in your house, I've seen something of your
life, of the people it's linked up with--and I've nothing, _nothing_ in
common with any of it. Supposing I get through the war and come back to
you--what'll happen to us? What would we do? I could never live this
kind of life, and what do you know of my kind? You'd be bewildered by my
friends--riff-raff of the artist world, most of them--and my good,
simple, middle-class Irish relations. And there's Arlette. I'm out of my
mind about Arlette, now this minute. I couldn't get her on the telephone
just now and when I do, what can I say? That I'm leaving her in a place
where she obviously isn't happy, and that even if I come back after the
war, I won't be having her to live with me in Paris the way she thinks I
will."

"Arlette could come here," Valentine said in a very low voice.

"Ah, you don't understand. That isn't what would ever make her happy.
She's used to an artist's life--the kind that Laurence and I led.
Freedom, and every sort of mad contact--a whole lot of drinking
even--and conversation that really means something. Not the
chitter-chatter about who So-and-so was before she married somebody's
first cousin from the next county. Forgive me, Val!"

"Go on," she said.

"Why do you say 'Go on' when it's clear that every word I say is nearly
killing you?"

The anger in his own voice horrified Lonergan as he heard it, even
though it was not directed against her, and he strove to control it.

"You see, darling, I'm terrified--plain terrified--at the thought that
we'd do this thing in a desperate hurry--as we must, if we're to do it
at all--and then not know how to make a success of it afterwards--if
there's to be any afterwards. I'm afraid of myself. Life is too complex
for people of our age--there are too many adjustments to make. If we'd
come together as we ought to have done, when we loved one another in
youth, we'd have made a go of it. But we've had to make our lives
separately. You belong to Coombe, and to these people--who all think
you'd be ruining yourself by marrying an Irishman like me--someone who
just draws pictures. You've got your own responsibilities, that you take
so seriously."

"Jess is the only responsibility that really counts. I could leave
Coombe."

She looked at him with the extreme gravity of a gentle and sensitive
child, seeking a formula in which to express her goodwill.

"I'd thought--but I see that it isn't any use--that perhaps, if it was
only ourselves--and Jess and Arlette sometimes--you'd live at Coombe,
Rory. You wouldn't, would you?"

"Ah, how can I answer that? You break my heart--you're so gentle, so
generous. But this place--it's the background of almost all your
life--it holds all your memories. But what about mine? What about Rory
Lonergan? If I lived here I'd be betraying myself, as a person. You
don't understand"--he used the phrase that he had used before--"I'd
continually need to get away from this way of living. It's all right for
you and Coombe, I know, but it all means nothing, and less than nothing,
to me. I couldn't stand these people. I'd miss my own raffish
friends--all the goings-on that I've taken for granted--getting
drunk--I'd lose my own soul. Oh, God, I'll never be able to make you see
what I mean."

"I do see. You say that I don't understand, but I do."

She pushed back the silvery wave of hair from her forehead, still
looking at him earnestly.

"Val--I'm out of my mind, going on like this. Dear God, what will we do?
I love you so, and we're not free--we're being forced apart like
this--we can't even take time to make a decision as important as this
one."

Valentine drew his head to rest against her breast.

"Do you want not to marry me, Rory? For me to become your mistress?"

"Ah, no, not that, with you. I'd never want that."

"I'm glad."

Presently he said:

"Forgive me for what I've put you through, Val--you must forgive me.
Sometimes I get these panics and I can't manage them. Laurence was the
only person who could help me--she had great instinctive wisdom. But I
hurt her many times, God forgive me, and now I've hurt you."

"It's all right, Rory."

"It is not," he answered sadly.

"You told me once that everything had to be made clear between us. You
said that our relationship was far too important for anything else to be
possible. It was quite true. The things that you've said to-night had to
be faced by us both, hadn't they?"

"They had, but not in the wild, crack-pot state I'm in now. It's been a
shattering day, and finding that I couldn't get the child on the
telephone to-night just about finished it. To-morrow I'll have sense,
Val."

He rose to his feet and looked down at her, appalled by the shadowed
pallor of her face and the dark stains beneath her eyes.

"If we had time--if only we had time!" he repeated helplessly.

As though in ironic comment, the clock outside chimed the hour.

"I'll have to go. It'll be to-morrow when I get back."

He took her in his arms and kissed the sorrowful line of her mouth.

"Will it be our wedding day, darling--darling?"

Valentine clung to him without speaking a word for a long moment.

Then she said:

"I don't know, Rory. I love you."

"And I love you," he echoed passionately.




XIX


She heard the heavy inner doors swing open and come together again, and
then a more distant vibration that was the front door shutting behind
Lonergan.

Valentine lay back in her chair, motionless. She was too much tired to
move.

The frustrations and disappointments of the day, the news that Lonergan
was to be sent overseas and, above all, his exposition of such
deeply-rooted complexities of mind and temperament--so deeply rooted
that they could temporarily take possession of his judgment and impinge
upon his love--had left her desolate and exhausted.

She felt herself to be at last defeated, wholly and finally, in the
long, inner conflict between her own romantic spirit and the reality of
human relations.

Valentine had no falsely cynical comments to make upon this sense of
disillusionment.

She knew still that life might have been otherwise. But defeat was
natural to her. She felt it to be inevitable and she had no impulse of
blame either towards herself or Lonergan, nor even towards those who had
interfered in their affairs.

It was nothing outside himself that had caused her lover to speak the
words that kept on repeating themselves over and over again in her mind.

"I've seen something of your life ... I've nothing, nothing in common
with any of it.... And there's Arlette ... she's used to an artist's
life--the kind that Laurence and I led...."

It came back to Laurence in the end, always. He had even said:

"I get these panics ... Laurence was the only person who could help
me...."

His mad solicitude for Arlette, for whom he had had so little feeling
throughout her childhood, was in reality an extension of his love for
Arlette's mother.

Not seeking it, but unable to escape it, Valentine was obsessed by the
remembrance of Lonergan's profound emotion when he had first told her
about Laurence.

"Her forehead was lovely--I honestly can only think of one word that
could ever describe the breadth and purity of it--and that's luminous.
She had that quality, and it was all in that beautiful, wide brow."

And he'd said:

"We were crazy about one another. I'd decided long ago I wasn't ever
going to marry. But I had to ask Laurence to marry me."

Laurence hadn't married him. She'd stood in the little _tonnelle_ in the
garden of the tall, pink house at Saumur, with the tears running down
her face, and she'd offered to come and live with him in Paris.

"That was the thing about Laurence--she understood and accepted things
that were quite outside her own tradition."

Lonergan's words, the deep, musical intonations that his voice had given
to them, were as living to her as though she were listening as she had
listened on the night of his arrival at Coombe. Indeed, they had
returned to her many times since then, always with that strange,
agonizing pang made of jealousy, and of a deliberate acceptance of the
inalienable truth.

He and she had found one another too soon, and too late.

In the years between their two encounters lay their separate lives.

Lonergan had met Laurence. He had loved her as he had not loved before
or since, any of the women who had roused his easy susceptibilities.
There would always remain in him the profound desire to keep something
of this one true and passionate union alive, in his preoccupation with
Laurence's child.

Perhaps I could have borne that--I once thought that I could--Valentine
told herself--but he won't share it with me. I can't make him feel that
I accept it. He said: I'll never be able to make you see what I mean....
You don't understand....

He'd said that more than once.

We ought to have spent our lives together, he and I, thought Valentine.
I'd have been the person I was meant to be, then, and we should have
felt safe with one another.

She heard a door slam and there was the indefinable sound that warned
her of someone approaching.

Valentine put out her hand and turned off the light.

"Val, my dear! Where are you?"

It was Venetia Rockingham's voice.

Valentine made no movement and no reply, and she heard her
sister-in-law, after pausing for a moment, go upstairs.

Next day Venetia would have left Coombe. Soon they would all have
gone--the girls as well.

Valentine rose wearily. She had felt herself too tired to move, but the
physical effort automatically became possible at the remembrance of
Primrose and Jessica.

She would go upstairs and say good-night to Jess, even though she might
not intrude upon her other and most-loved child.

       *       *       *       *       *

When she came downstairs again, to extinguish the lights and make
certain that the door was unbolted for Lonergan's return in the early
morning, it was nearly midnight and Valentine was startled by the sound
of the telephone bell.

There leapt instantly to her mind the wild hope that she might hear Rory
Lonergan's voice, but it was a busy-sounding, impersonal tone that came
through the receiver.

"I have a telegram for Colonel Lonergan. Will you take it?"

"I'll take it," said Valentine.

She drew towards her the little pad that swung against the wall and
balanced it against the bracket on which stood the telephone. Her cold
fingers found the blunt, small pencil that lay there in readiness. Her
mind automatically registered, as it had done for years, a protest
against the inconvenience of all these arrangements.

"Handed in at Kilronan at twenty-five minutes past four."

Valentine's pencil obediently wrote down: Kilronan 4.25. She waited
while the male voice at the other end gave Lonergan's name and address.

The message followed:

     "_Please come or send for me flying quite possible want terribly to
     see you please telephone first I implore you come to Babette qui
     rit please._

"That's all. No signature. Shall I send a confirmation copy?"

"Yes, please."

"What is the postal address?"

Valentine gave it, and hung up the receiver.

She stood in the cold, mechanically smoothing out the paper on which she
had taken down Arlette's message.

Babette qui rit.

Rory hadn't told her about that pet-name, the familiar household joke
that must have survived from Arlette's baby days.

Poor, touching, frantic child, making use of it now to strengthen her
appeal.

Valentine had no idea whether or not it would be possible for Lonergan
to get to Ireland and back within the forty-eight hours of his leave.
She supposed that probably it would.

Or he could send for Arlette if there was the least chance that the
battalion might not be sailing at once.

She returned to the hall, moving slowly and stiffly as if the intense
cold that gripped her was slowly freezing her body into rigidity. Her
thoughts worked, with careful impersonality, over the mechanics of the
situation.

Lonergan had missed Arlette at the telephone but he said that he had
telegraphed to her in the morning.

That message must have reached her quickly enough, or she couldn't have
despatched her own telegram at twenty-five minutes past four.

Perhaps he hadn't told her what time he would ring up.

Perhaps the old aunt, whom it was so impossible to think of as Rory's
sister, had decided that Arlette must attend the concert, and that
another telephone call could be put through next day. But no--that
wouldn't do. There'd have been a message left at Kilronan post-office in
that case, surely.

Valentine decided that Lonergan, in his telegram, had announced the
fact of his embarkation leave and had said that he would telephone,
without specifying the day or the hour. How, indeed, could he have been
certain of the hour at all?

Her meaningless speculations and calculations brought Valentine into her
own room, the full onslaught of the pain that awaited her still held at
bay.

       *       *       *       *       *

The clock on the landing struck five. Valentine had heard the chiming of
all the hours since one o'clock.

As the last reverberation died away, another sound, remote and carefully
controlled, reached her. It was that of the hall door being cautiously
opened and shut again.

She knew that Lonergan had returned.

Lying open-eyed in the dark, her senses acutely sharpened, she seemed to
herself able to follow all his movements accurately.

Now he had passed through the swing-doors and stopped in the hall.
Conspicuous on a table at the foot of the stairs lay her transcription
of Arlette's telegram, where she had placed it, clearing everything off
the little table so that he could not miss it.

He was reading it now.

There was no further sound.

She lay, expecting to hear him go down the hall again, to where the
telephone was. But no movement of any kind reached her.

Valentine remained tense and motionless for what appeared to her a long
while.

Presently she glanced at the illuminated face of the travelling clock,
old and shabby and reliable--one of her wedding presents, she
remembered--that stood in its faded blue-and-gilt folding frame next to
her bedside.

Twenty minutes had gone by since she had heard the clock strike, and
Rory Lonergan letting himself in at the door. The stillness was
absolute.

At last it was broken.

She heard Lonergan's step on the stairs.

He was walking slowly and with care, as though anxious to make no noise.

At the door of his room he did not stop, nor did the faint, familiar
click of the turning handle reach her. He was going straight on, past
his own room, to the end of the schoolroom passage where the short
flight of stairs led to the top storey.

Valentine waited, sad and bewildered, but she heard nothing more.

No explanation occurred to her. She was too weary to search for one, and
presently she fell asleep.

Madeleine's knock at the door woke her.

Madeleine put down the small tea-tray by the bed and drew back the
curtains. It was not quite dark, a chill dawn was breaking and a pearly
grey light filtered into the room.

Valentine shivered and lay still.

Madeleine came and stood beside the bed.

"Madame," she said softly, "the world is all white. It has been
snowing."

Old associations rushed into Valentine's mind instantly. Her own
astonished pleasure, in childhood, at the still purity of the English
countryside under snow ... the excited delight of Primrose as a little
girl building a snowman on the lawn with Humphrey ... the branches of
the trees in the orchard sending up an occasional light flurry of white
from snow-laden branches. All came and went in a flash and then she was
fully awakened, caught into the realities of the present.

"Is it half-past seven?" she asked doubtfully.

There was a strange stillness over everything, as though Coombe had not
yet emerged from the enveloping quiet of the night.

"Seven o'clock, madame--six, in reality," answered Madeleine. "It has
been snowing hard since midnight."

She indicated the window by a gesture, but it was not yet light enough
to see anything.

"It was _monsieur le colonel_ who told me," Madeleine said, and she
fixed her great brown eyes on Valentine's face with a compelling
candour.

"_Monsieur le colonel_ came to find me, madame, at five o'clock this
morning and he gave me a letter for madame."

She laid it on the bed, and as Valentine took it and opened it Madeleine
found a pale woollen wrap and placed it over her shoulders.

With astonishment Valentine realized that she had never seen Lonergan's
handwriting before. It was heavy, as though he wrote with a
thick-pointed nib, and it bore the appearance of being illegible. But
she found that she could read easily the few lines that he had written.

     "_My Love, my own darling--I'd come to you now but that it's the
     middle of the night and I mustn't make a scandal for you at Coombe.
     Will you come down to me in the office as soon as you get this?
     I've been out of my mind, since leaving you last night. Nothing
     matters at all, except that we belong to one another. I love you
     utterly._"

He had signed it with his initial.

Madeleine stood at the foot of the bed.

"When madame is dressed, I will bring coffee to the little
breakfast-room. It is better that everything should be arranged before
anyone is downstairs. _Monsieur le colonel_ will be there already, for I
called him before coming in here. Madame will forgive me."

"Ah, Madeleine!" said Valentine, and she smiled although tears were
falling from her eyes.

"Madame perceives that I know all. _Monsieur le colonel_ did well, to
come and find me so early this morning. He knew that I could help
madame."

She paused for a moment, and then, choosing her words with delicacy and
discretion, she said:

"I think madame will find that _monsieur le colonel_ has his car at the
door. Madame will need her fur coat, if she decides to go out with him.
It is waiting in the hall."

The fur-lined grey tweed, shabby and shapeless, lay across the back of a
chair when Valentine, a very few minutes later, went downstairs to find
Rory Lonergan.

He was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs, his dark up-turned
face full of the strain and fatigue of the night.

As he saw her, all look of fatigue fled, leaving nothing but the
defenceless look of love.

"Rory."

"Val. My darling. My Val."

As he bent his black head over hers, he said:

"I was mad, yesterday. Forgive me. There's nothing and no one but you in
the world. Marry me, Val, and let's make what we can of what's left to
us."

"I'll do anything that you want me to do," she said, and joy rang in her
voice.

"Ah, darling--darling!"

"Arlette--Did you find Arlette's message?" she asked.

"I did, the little poor child! I'll talk to her on the telephone and see
what can be done."

"Can you go to Ireland?"

"If I go to Ireland," he answered gravely, "it'll be with my wife.
That's all that matters to me."

Madeleine passed through the red-baize door carrying a tray and took it
into Lonergan's office.

"She's got some coffee for us."

"Come and drink it, love. You need it. Val, will we get away before
anyone else comes down? Will you marry me this morning, as soon as the
Registrar's office opens?"

"You know I will."

She poured out the hot coffee and handed him a cup.

The dream-like sensation that lay upon Valentine like a spell slowly
lost its strength.

"Last night," she said, "I thought that we couldn't do it. We couldn't
marry. And the things that you said then are still true, you know."

"They're true--but not the whole truth," he answered. "God forgive me
for talking the way I did, darling, but I was fit to be tied, the way
that sister-in-law of yours had been going on, and I got into a panic.
And all the time, I knew very well I was behaving like a lunatic and
that whatever the difficulties, we could surmount them together. Forgive
me, Val. Forgive me."

"Anything in the world. Always. If there's anything to forgive, Rory."

"Ah, you know there is. There will be again, if we're allowed any sort
of life together."

Their eyes met over the tragic implication of the words, and they were
silent.

Presently Lonergan said:

"Love, you're quite right. The things I spoke of yesterday are still
true--they'll always to a certain extent be true. I can't live your
life, at Coombe. Can you live mine? Not the way it was before the
war--that's over and done with--but perhaps in London, when I'll be
doing my own job again, drawing."

"I can," she answered gently and steadily. "Coombe was for the children,
and there are no children any more. Even Jess--she's going away and she
won't ever live here again while the war lasts. And after that we none
of us know what this country will be like, do we? All we know is that
our daughters won't be able to live at home, idle, in houses like
Coombe, ever again."

She looked round the room, already made unfamiliar by the office
equipment that had been installed for Lonergan.

She thought of the house and the garden, so closely associated with the
whole of her married life and with the childhood of Primrose and Jess,
so full of the memories of five and twenty years.

Then she looked again at Rory Lonergan.

No conscious recollection came to her of the young Irish boy with whom
she had once shared a true and ardent moment of emotion in youth. She
saw in him simply her lover: the man who justified to herself her
deepest beliefs for ever.

"You've made everything come true," she said, hardly knowing that she
was speaking the words aloud.

"And you for me," he answered.

When they went out together through the double doors the pale light of
the winter's day was dawning.

The slopes of the park were enveloped in snow, all traces of the winding
road buried beneath its smooth and dazzling white.

The outline of every bush and tree was altered and rendered new and
unfamiliar.

The strange hush that belongs to the fall of snow lay over everything.

For a moment they looked in silence.

Then Lonergan spoke, very softly:

"Ah, it's wonderful. What a day on which to find one another!"

"It was early summer, the first time," she said. "Do you remember?"

"I remember, love. My girl of the Pincio Gardens!"

His hand touched gently the silvery wave of her hair.


THE END

_Jan. 20th, 1942--Sept. 27th, 1942_



_Printed in Great Britain by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.

       *       *       *       *       *

BOOKS BY E. M. DELAFIELD


Diary of a Provincial Lady

The Provincial Lady Goes Further

The Provincial Lady in America

The Provincial Lady in War-Time

Faster! Faster!

Gay Life

Nothing is Safe

The Optimist

Thank Heaven Fasting

Three Marriages

Turn Back the Leaves

What is Love?

Women are Like That: Short Stories

No One Now Will Know






[End of Late and Soon, by E. M. Delafield]
