Late and Soon (35 page)

“Seven o'clock, madame—six, in reality,” answered Madeleine. “It has been snowing hard since midnight.”

She indicated the window by a gesture, but it was not yet light enough to see anything.

“It was
monsieur le colonel
who told me,” Madeleine said, and she fixed her great brown eyes on Valentine's face with a compelling candour.

“Monsieur le colonel
came to find me, madame, at five o'clock this morning and he gave me a letter for madame.”

She laid it on the bed, and as Valentine took it and opened it Madeleine found a pale woollen wrap and placed it over her shoulders.

With astonishment Valentine realized that she had never seen Lonergan's handwriting before. It was heavy, as though he wrote with a thick-pointed nib, and it bore the appearance of being illegible. But she found that she could read easily the few lines that he had written.

“My Love, my own darling—I'd come to you now but that it's the middle of the night and I mustn't make a scandal for you at Coombe. Will you come down to me in the office as soon as you get this? I've been out of my mind, since leaving you last night. Nothing matters at all, except that we belong to one another. I love you utterly.”

He had signed it with his initial.

Madeleine stood at the foot of the bed.

“When madame is dressed, I will bring coffee to the little breakfast-room. It is better that everything should be arranged before anyone is downstairs.
Monsieur le colonel
will be there already, for I called him before coming in here. Madame will forgive me.”

“Ah, Madeleine!” said Valentine, and she smiled although tears were falling from her eyes.

“Madame perceives that I know. all.
Monsieur le colonel
did well, to come and find me so early this morning. He knew that I could help madame.”

She paused for a moment, and then, choosing her words with delicacy and discretion, she said:

“I think madame will find that
monsieur le colonel
has his car at the door. Madame will need her fur coat, if she
decides to go out with him. It is waiting in the hall.”

The fur-lined grey tweed, shabby and shapeless, lay across the back of a chair when Valentine, a very few minutes later, went downstairs to find Rory Lonergan.

He was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs, his dark upturned face full of the strain and fatigue of the night.

As he saw her, all look of fatigue fled, leaving nothing but the defenceless look of love.

“Rory.”

“Val. My darling. My Val.”

As he bent his black head over hers, he said:

“I was mad, yesterday. Forgive me. There's nothing and no one but you in the world. Marry me, Val, and let's make what we can of what's left to us.”

“I'll do anything that you want me to do,” she said, and joy rang in her voice.

“Ah, darling—darling!”

“Arlette—Did you find Arlette's message?” she asked.

“I did, the little poor child! I'll talk to her on the telephone and see what can be done.”

“Can you go to Ireland?”

“If I go to Ireland,” he answered gravely, “it'll be with my wife. That's all that matters to me.”

Madeleine passed through the red-baize door carrying a tray and took it into Lonergan's office.

“She's got some coffee for us.”

“Come and drink it, love. You need it. Val, will we get away before anyone else comes down? Will you marry me this morning, as soon as the Registrar's office opens?”

“You know I will.”

She poured out the hot coffee and handed him a cup.

The dream-like sensation that lay upon Valentine like a spell slowly lost its strength.

“Last night,” she said, “I thought that we couldn't do it. We couldn't marry. And the things that you said then are still true, you know.”

“They're true—but not the whole truth,” he answered. “God forgive me for talking the way I did, darling, but I was fit to be tied, the way that sister-in-law of yours had been going on, and I got into a panic. And all the time, I knew very well I was behaving like a lunatic and that whatever the difficulties, we could surmount them together. Forgive me, Val. Forgive me.”

“Anything in the world. Always. If there's anything to forgive, Rory.”

“Ah, you know there is. There will be again, if we're allowed any sort of life together.”

Their eyes met over the tragic implication of the words, and they were silent.

Presently Lonergan said:

“Love, you're quite right. The things I spoke of yesterday are still true—they'll always to a certain extent be true. I can't live your life, at Coombe. Can you live mine? Not the way it was before the war—that's over and done with—but perhaps in London, when I'll be doing my own job again, drawing.”

“I can,” she answered gently and steadily. “Coombe was for the children, and there are no children any more. Even Jess—she's going away and she won't ever live here again while the war lasts. And after that we none of us know what this country will be like, do we? All we know is that our daughters won't be able to live at home, idle, in houses like Coombe, ever again.”

She looked round the room, already made unfamiliar by the office equipment that had been installed for Lonergan.

She thought of the house and the garden, so closely associated with the whole of her married life and with the childhood of Primrose and Jess, so full of the memories of five and twenty years.

Then she looked again at Rory Lonergan.

No conscious recollection came to her of the young Irish boy with whom she had once shared a true and
ardent moment of emotion in youth. She saw in him simply her lover: the man who justified to herself her deepest beliefs for ever.

“You've made everything come true,” she said, hardly knowing that she was speaking the words aloud.

“And you for me,” he answered.

When they went out together through the double doors the pale light of the winter's day was dawning.

The slopes of the park were enveloped in snow, all traces of the winding road buried beneath its smooth and dazzling white.

The outline of every bush and tree was altered and rendered new and unfamiliar.

The strange hush that belongs to the fall of snow lay over everything.

For a moment they looked in silence.

Then Lonergan spoke, very softly:

“Ah, it's wonderful. What a day on which to find one another!”

“It was early summer, the first time,” she said. “Do you remember?”

“I remember, love. My girl of the Pincio Gardens!”

His hand touched gently the silvery wave of her hair.

THE END

This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

Copyright © E. M. Delafield 1943

First published in 1943 by Macmillan & Co. Ltd

The moral right of author has been asserted

All rights reserved
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ISBN: 9781448203055
eISBN: 9781448202720

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