Late and Soon (24 page)

“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. Goodnight.”

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?”