Late and Soon (22 page)

With terror, he heard in his own voice the note of hysteria that he knew she hated.

“You fool. I'm only pulling your leg. I'd die sooner than listen to that woman yattering all the way to London. Look, Hughie, I'll let you know. I'm in a bit of a jam, and I can't make up my mind.”

“Can you tell me?” he ventured.

Warm, excited visions rushed through his mind of himself listening with wide, generous understanding whilst Primrose confided in him and realized suddenly the extent of his devotion.

“Good God, no,” said Primrose.” There isn't anything to tell, and if there were, I'm not the type that goes in for outpourings of the soul, as you ought to know by this time, my pet.”

“As you say,” he acquiesced.

Primrose lit a cigarette.

“You'll find this place a bit of a madhouse, as Jess says. I expect you'll loathe it. Most people do.”

He dared not say that, so long as he could see her, he minded nothing. At any moment her mood of unusual loquacity and friendliness might alter.

“Who's here? Besides your family, I mean.”

“A soldier chap called Charles Sedgewick, whom you'll see at dinner, and Rory Lonergan.”

“What's Sedgewick like?”

“Like a fox.”

“It sounds a bit intriguing.”

“He isn't, particularly.”

“The Irish chap is, I suppose. He fell for you at that party in London, didn't he?”

Instinctive jealousy had prompted the question. Hughie had not really noticed Lonergan very specially at the Bloomsbury party.

He felt as though he had received a violent blow in the midriff when Primrose signed assent with an arrogant movement of the head.

“That's right, my poppet. He's quite a fast little worker, too. Witness his getting himself billeted here.”

“Primrose, you're not in love with him, are you? For God's sake”

“Cut it out,” advised Primrose. “I loathe melo-dramatics, as you know, and I don't discuss my private affairs with anyone.”

“Will he be here this evening?”

“After dinner.”

Jess and her mother came down at the same moment, and Captain Sedgewick made a hasty appearance in the hall, asked Lady Arbell not to wait for him and dashed up the stairs three steps at a time.

Hughie thought how much at ease he seemed, and how completely sure of himself. He thought, also, that the young officer must have wondered why he wasn't in uniform. No one really believed in all the talk of “reserved occupation” and “essential war work” — at least in the case of young men of Hughie's age and appearance.

They just thought one a damned coward and shirker, as one was.

General Levallois shuffled in just before the gong rang and then they had to wait for Lady Rockingham.

Sedgewick had come down again before she appeared. As they sat round the table in the chilly dining-room Hughie, shivering slightly as much from nervousness as from cold, listened to Lady Rockingham's anecdotes about well-known people, that were obviously amusing the General, and to the brisk interchange of personalities between Jess and Charles Sedgewick.

He noticed that Primrose scarcely spoke at all and that whenever her mother addressed her, which was seldom, she looked away and replied as briefly as possible.

He knew that Primrose disliked her mother intensely: she had always said so.

Hughie, without much interest, wondered why. Lady Arbell seemed to him gentle and uninteresting, and he felt rather grateful to her because she was taking the trouble to talk to him. He answered her, and joined from time to time in the laughter that Lady Rockingham always seemed to wait for after each one of her stories, and he looked continually at Primrose, remembering with agony the times that he most longed to forget: times when her graceful body had lain sprawled against him, when he had twisted his fingers in and out of the stiff flaxen rings of hair that stood out round her head, unrebuked. Was Lonergan her lover now? He felt certain that he would know once he saw them together and the age-old delusion, that from bitter experience he well knew to be delusion, possessed him once again: truth would hurt less than uncertainty.

Hughie tried to remember what the Irishman looked like, and could not. He must be a great deal older than Primrose and perhaps what she had implied was not true. She was capable of having said it on purpose to make him jealous.

The nine o'clock time-signal had just sounded and the General was imperatively holding up his hand to silence
Lady Rockingham when Jess, sitting on the floor by aunt Sophy, scrambled to her feet,

“Here's the Colonel,” she remarked confidently. “He's early — that's wizard. I'll go and let him in.”

The announcer's voice came over the air, and no one made any comment. Hughie, with his eyes fixed on Primrose, saw no change in her face.

Jess and her prancing dog preceded Lonergan into the half-circle round the fire, and Lady Arbell murmured introductions, acknowledged by everyone, in deference to the General's warning frowns and hisses, with apologetic smiles only, and in silence.

Hughie glanced surreptitiously at Lonergan, who had taken his seat beside Lady Arbell.

He at once told himself that this was a man who would always be attractive to women. His dark face was sensitive and intelligent, his eyes of dark, deep blue showed lines at the corners springing fanwise out onto the broad temples, that would, one saw, easily and agreeably deepen with amusement.

Large-boned and rather heavily built, his movements were deliberate but never indecisive.

Mature, confident and intensely vital, the Irishman seemed to Hughie, eyeing him with a jealous, analytical attention, to be the very antithesis of himself. He felt sick with despair and rage — a rage that was directed against himself far more than against Lonergan.

He glanced at Primrose but she, with her mouth all drawn down on one side, was examining the points of her finger-nails.

Lonergan was not looking at Primrose.

He was looking at her mother, and Hughie saw him smile at her, and saw that there was great charm in his way of smiling and that it mingled humour with a possible hint of underlying, unhurtful irony that held kindliness.

Lady Rockingham's clear,
maniérés
tones cut across the room.

“But darling Reggie, isn't that enough? We've heard all that matters and I
can't,
see why we should all continue to sit in this death-like trance.”

Everybody laughed, even the General, and Jess turned off the wireless.

“Gosh, mummie! Do you know what day it is? D'you know what you've forgotten?”

“No?” said Lady Arbell enquiringly.

“The First-Aid class in the village!” crowed Jess.

Lady Rockingham uttered her tinkling, unmirthful laugh and Primrose made a sound that might equally have stood for amusement or derision.

“Really, Val,” said the General, looking at her reproachfully.

“If it's frightfully important, could I go down with a message or ring up anyone?” said Sedgewick.

“It's too late, thank you. I ought to have been there at half-past seven. I haven't any excuse at all. I simply forgot.”

“Darling, it isn't going to lose us the war,” Lady Rockingham pointed out. “And I suppose they can do whatever it is, bandaging and what-not, without you.”

“Yes,” said Lady Arbell rather helplessly. “But you see, they're very bad about attending the classes, really, and I've tried to urge it on them and always to be there myself, and now”

“Good God,” Primrose said, “as if it mattered whether this village meets to make tourniquets or doesn't. If they can't take the initiative for themselves, they aren't going to be of the slightest use anyway. We might as well be living in Victorian days when nobody did anything unless the gentry were gracious enough to allow it and come and show them how.”

“Don't talk such damned Bolshevik nonsense, Primrose,” said the General. “These people are slack enough already without our making things worse by leaving them to their own devices. If you couldn't go down to the
village, Val, why on earth didn't you warn them and tell someone to preside for you?”

“I'm afraid I forgot all about it.”

The General looked thunderstruck.

“Forgot all about it!” he echoed.

“In the name of Heaven, will you tell me what all this means?” Lonergan asked his hostess, half laughing.

He spoke low and only to her, but the deep, clear notes of his voice carried, and Hughie Spurway heard the question, and Lady Arbell's softly-spoken reply.

“I always do go to these classes and I think Reggie is right—it does perhaps encourage busier women than myself to attend. I just forgot, to-day.”

“Won't the doctor's daughters that we saw this afternoon be there, or that Lady Someone?”

“Lady Fields? She gets asthma, and never goes out in the evenings. The Dickinson girls may have gone, if they hadn't anything else arranged — but they both do A.R.P. work and a good many other things.”

“My God!” ejaculated Lonergan. “Wouldn't the villagers be able to carry on without worrying the life out of you to be there week in and week out?”

“They ought, I know.”

“Madeleine ought to have reminded you. Did she forget, too? What's the matter with you all?” enquired General Levallois.

“Madeleine didn't forget!” cried Jess. “At least, she said something about me going down there when I saw her before dinner, and I said Not on your life, and she said
Ah, votre pauvre maman,
or something.”

“She ought to have reminded you,” the General repeated.

“I bet she thought mummie needed a rest and didn't remind her on purpose,” Jess remarked. “Anyway, it's all over now, we can't do a thing.”

“No telephoning?” suggested Sedgewick once more.

Hughie Spurway was watching Primrose now, and saw
the contemptuous twist of her mouth. She was bored with all this unnecessary fuss about an affair of the parish pump. Odd, in a way, because she'd been brought up in this atmosphere, that took such trivialities with a mortal and humourless seriousness. So indeed had everyone present, excepting the two soldiers.

Charles Sedgewick was showing a polite readiness to be of any assistance but Hughie guessed that his mind was not really on the question at all. He was probably thinking of something quite else, whilst uttering his obliging offers.

Lonergan's reaction was different. For some reason, he was really interested and concerned. He was puzzled, too. Hughie could see his eyes — eyes that were very un-English in their expressiveness — turning from one speaker to another.

I suppose, thought Hughie, that if he's in love with Primrose he wants to understand the sort of background she's been used to — though God knows it won't be there much longer, and anyway she loathes it all and only wants to get away. Perhaps she means to marry this man.

A shaft of pain and fury shot through him — pain that was not only mental but sharply physical, so that he moved quickly and involuntarily in his seat, seeking relief in a change of position.

They were still going on talking about the class in the village that Lady Arbell had forgotten, and whether or not she should telephone to someone or other.

“God!” said Primrose suddenly, “do we have to go on about this all night?”

She reared up her length from the low stool on which she had sat hunched together.

“Let's do something,” Jess cried zealously.” Charles, why not let's dance? Can you dance?”

“Certainly. Got a gramophone?”

“It's in the schoolroom. You wouldn't like to go and get it, would you?”

Hughie dared not look at Primrose. It would be Heaven to dance with her, and hold her in his arms — but if she saw his eagerness, she might refuse.

“Okay, come on,” she said. “It'll warm us, if it does nothing else. In the drawing-room, I suppose?”

“I must see if the black-out is all right,” said Lady Arbell.

“Will I roll up the carpet or something?” Lonergan asked, rising also.

“It's up already,” she answered, smiling.

He followed her out of the hall and into the shrouded drawing-room.

General Levallois made his inevitable comment, as the heavily-stressed, limping rhythm of the dance-music reached the hall through the open doorway of the big cold drawing-room.

“Personally, I adore swing-music,” said Venetia Rockingham, “but with quite a different compartment of my mind, don't you know what I mean, Reggie. There's nothing like music — of course I adore classical music — and yet I can absolutely see the fascination of this present-day stuff. I can dance to it quite as well as any
débutante,
though I say it as shouldn't. Nicky and Michael both tell me so.”

The General was not interested in Venetia's personal triumphs.

He made a small, polite sound and changed the conversation.

“What kind of Spurway is this chap? Lincolnshire?”

“Yes. His father was a younger son, killed in the last war. His mother was Dorothy Herbert-MacDowell of Acres, a sister of the present man. She's got two other boys. Hughie is the eldest.”

“I don't much care for the looks of him, to be frank with you,” said the General. “Why isn't he in uniform?”

“Too tragic, my dear. He's really terribly clever but
he's neurasthenic and too fearfully highly-strung and he'd certainly go completely bats if he was forced into the war. He went through some of the London blitzes last winter and had
the
most fearful breakdown and had to be sent right into the country for weeks, don't you know what I mean. The doctors all agreed that he was simply hopelessly unfit for service and mercifully he's got this marvellous job with the B.B.C.”

“What sort of job?”

“You must get him to tell you all about it. I know they think him
quite
indispensable,” Venetia asserted glibly. “Of course, poor Dorothy has always been one of these insanely over-anxious mothers. Such a pity she never married again.”