LATE AND SOON. E. M. Delafield
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"But I wanted to," returned Valentine, and he thought how far removed was the quiet, considered way in which she said it from the quality, to him detestable, implied in the odious word "coquettish".
"I've talked to you a lot about myself, and you've listened so graciously—won't you tell me a little about what's happened to you, since the time in Rome?"
"In terms of actual happening, very little, and what there was, all came quite close together—between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one, really. When the war started my father sent my mother and me back to London and we took a flat in Sloane Street. It seems absurd now, but in spite of the war I came out in the way girls did then—one had to be presented at a Royal garden-party instead of at a drawing-room and so on—and I did some very casual war work that really only meant getting to know other girls."
Lonergan noticed her old-fashioned, oddly elegant pronunciation of the word and smiled at it.
She smiled back, in a shy, friendly way as though she understood what had amused and perhaps pleased him.
"I think my mother was afraid of my being at a disadvantage, because of having lived abroad so much. But all our relations were very kind and everyone was giving informal dances and parties, that were supposed to be for men home on leave, from the Front. I expect I had more fun, really, than I should have had before the war, doing the London season properly. Every girl I ever knew seems to have hated her first season."
"You know," said Lonergan, "that you're talking about a world of which I know absolutely nothing whatever? I don't mean—I've no need to tell you—that I'm not interested. But my own origin is so completely different—middle-class Irish. I know nothing whatever about the kind of background you're describing. Forgive me. I didn't want to interrupt you. Please go on. Were you happy, going to the dances and parties?"
"I was very young for my age. I think perhaps very young people aren't really happy but they always think that one day they're going to be. I used to feel quite certain that happiness of some marvellous kind must be waiting for me just round the corner."
"Was it?"
"Well, no. I can't say that. I don't mean at all that my life has been an unhappy one."
She paused.
Lonergan guessed that she was finding it difficult, for a moment, to go on.
He thought: "Give her time. She'll tell me," and he remained motionless.
"I suppose by happiness I really meant falling in love and getting married. And that's what happened."
Lonergan experienced the onslaught of a sharp, furious jealousy.
He had seen the portrait of Humphrey Arbell hanging in the hall, and he had—he now knew—assumed that Valentine had never been in love with him.
Keeping his voice carefully neutral, he said:
"You were very young, when you fell in love and married."
"Nineteen. I met Humphrey when I went to stay with his sister, Venetia Rockingham. Charlie—her husband—was in Palestine and she was using their house at Maidenhead as a convalescent home for officers. Humphrey was there. He was one of the wounded officers. There was a sort of glamour about them, you know——"
She broke off, and said with a kind of mirthful distress:
"What a thing to say! And yet it's perfectly true. That sort of glamour was responsible for a lot of love-affairs in the last war."
"Of course."
He would have liked to know whether it had been responsible for her marriage to Humphrey Arbell, but would assail her with no crude questions.
Presently she said:
"A week-end can be a very long while. Humphrey fell in love with me—and I thought about him a lot, and Venetia asked me to come back again the next week-end, and I did. It was really a very obvious and straightforward affair I suppose—only one never feels that about oneself. Humphrey and I were engaged three weeks after we first met, and then he was given sick leave and we got married. We thought he was going back to the Front, but he never did. The Medical Board wouldn't pass him."
Valentine stopped speaking, and again Lonergan refrained from breaking in on her train of thought.
When she turned towards him again it was, once more, to surprise him.
"Those are just facts, aren't they, and facts all by themselves convey so little. I could tell you that Humphrey and I came to live here when the war was over, and that I had two children—and you still wouldn't really know much about my life."
"Were you happy?" he asked.
Valentine smiled suddenly at that, as though he had pleased her unexpectedly.
"That's the question I always want to ask people myself. I don't think men do, as a rule—I mean, want to know about that. I wasn't unhappy but I didn't ever want to think about happiness. That's the nearest I can get to explaining."
"It's near enough," Lonergan told her.
"What I minded most, when I was younger, was that life seemed so very uninteresting. I thought it oughtn't to be like that. I liked living in the country, and we had just enough money, and there were the children, and Humphrey and I got on together quite well. Perhaps that was really what was wrong. I thought—and I still think—it isn't nearly enough, just to get on quite well."
"It isn't."
"Humphrey was killed in a hunting accident, twelve years ago. Quite a lot of people told me I was sure to marry again. I used to think so, too. But no one ever asked me to and I stayed on here, and Reggie—my eldest brother—had to retire on half-pay, and came to live with me. And I thought it was important for the children that Coombe and I should always be there—something they could depend on, that didn't change. When I was a child I used to long for a settled home that would always be the same. But I don't know, really, that it made much difference to them. It seems to me now that I didn't realize they'd stop being children after a few years, and of course that's what has happened. Naturally. It would have happened anyway, only the war seems to have made it come suddenly. And even that's not really true. Primrose has lived away from home ever since she was eighteen, practically."
The mention of Primrose's name stabbed Lonergan with an acute discomfort. He moved quickly, noisily pushing apart the logs on the hearth with his boot.
Immediately, he was aware of a complete change in the atmosphere that had enveloped them all through their long conversation.
The logs, in falling apart, sent up a little volley of sparks of which one landed on the shabby, discoloured hearth-rug and Lonergan stamped it out.
The spell of the evening was broken.
"Good-night," said Valentine. "I do hope you'll ask for whatever you want. Please tell me, if there's anything, won't you?"
"I will. Thank you."
"I must go to bed. Good-night," repeated Valentine.
Lonergan said good-night, and as she moved away he added:
"I'm so glad we've met again."
She looked back at him and smiled, saying "I am too" with a sound of shyness in her voice that made her, more than ever, seem strangely youthful. He was glad of the words and yet he felt as though a chill had fallen upon their evening so that her going-away left him with a sense of desolation.
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