Late and Soon (16 page)

“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 lightheaded, 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.”