Late and Soon (30 page)

“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: Ishan'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.

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 shameless-ness 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!”