Late and Soon (28 page)

“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.

“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 général,
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.