Late and Soon (29 page)

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 oatmeal 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 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?”