“Mama, the telegram has come. Roland has ten days’ leave--he’ll be in
London to-morrow.”
Jennie’s voice held a kind of awe in it, as though the unbelievable had
come to pass.
“I’ll take you there,” said Lydia curtly.
The concession had been made on the evening in September, when Jennie,
coming in from an afternoon spent with her lover, had found Lydia
huddled in a chair by the window of the drawing-room, with fixed,
vacant gaze and chilly hands.
But although Lydia had in no sense nor smallest degree revoked that
half-spoken sanction of Jennie’s engagement, that had been inwardly
forced upon her in the midst of the hour of truest misery that her
life had ever known, she could derive no comfort from Jennie’s sudden,
unregulated outbursts of jubilant gratitude.
“Oh, mama! You’ll take me to London!”
“I told you I would, when he got his leave. He wants the wedding
immediately, of course?”
Jennie nodded.
“If he has ten days you can be married quietly in town by special
licence, and--and see him off when he has to go back.”
“I want to be married from here,” said Jennie quickly. “Just go up with
you to meet him, and do, perhaps, one day’s shopping or two--while he
gets the licence, and the ring and things, and we go and see the old
lawyers and people--and then come back here for my wedding, and go
somewhere in the country for a tiny honeymoon, till the last possible
minute.”
Lydia was surprised.
“It’ll be much more tiring for you--a lot of rushing about like that.”
Her instinct was always to shield Jennie from Jennie’s self.
“Roland wants it to be like that, too.” The defiant gleam of one who
expects opposition had come into Jennie’s eyes again.
“Don’t, Jennie, take that tone. I’m not saying you shan’t have it your
own way. Why do you want to be married here, and not in London, which
would be so much simpler?”
“It’s my home,” cried Jennie, “and, besides, I want to have all the
people I can; even if I _have_ got to be married in a travelling dress,
and without proper bridesmaids or anything, I may as well have _some_
fun. We don’t know any people in London.”
She spoke like a child, Lydia reflected.
And yet, when they met Roland Valentine in London twenty-four
hours later, Jennie no longer spoke like a child. She was quite
different--infinitely more reposeful, gentler, more womanly.
Was this the real Jennie? Lydia’s perceptions were far too acute for
her not to know that it was with Roland, not with herself, that Jennie
was at ease, and therefore was absolutely natural.
Roland Valentine himself pleased Lydia better than on any former
occasion. He, too, was graver and more quiet, and he thanked her very
earnestly for giving her consent to an immediate wedding.
They went to lawyers, to banks, to jewellers and innumerable other
shops, and Roland procured the special licence, and Jennie’s strong,
sunburnt finger was measured for the wedding-ring. The ring was to
follow them to Devonshire by post--something was to be engraved inside
the gold circlet, but Lydia was not told what it was to be.
Jennie had never been secretive or even reserved, but it never seemed
to occur to her to give her mother her confidence now, any more than
she had ever given it to her in the course of the last seven or eight
years.
Lydia, although she had been aware of this before, had never suffered
from it as she suffered now. Formerly, she might have told herself
that Jennie had no confidence to bestow--that nothing lay beneath
the surface. Now, she was slowly, and with infinite pain in the
recognition, forced to concede to Jennie the existence of a definite
and individual personality--Jennie, the potential woman, as distinct
from Jennie, Lydia Damerel’s child.
On the day before that of their proposed return to Devonshire, Jennie
unexpectedly demanded whether they could not “look up Aunt Evelyn and
Aunt Beryl.”
“I’ve seen Roland’s relations, the only ones in England, at least, and
I think he ought to see mine.”
“So he has. He’s been at Quintmere, and he knows your grandmother and
Billy.”
Lydia had not the slightest desire to “look up” the Senthovens, and,
once more, there was the instinctive conviction that what Jennie
suggested for herself could not be the best thing for her.
“That’s just it,” said Jennie. “He says they all make him feel like an
adventurer down there--it’s so old and--and sort of traditional. I know
just what he means. So I want him to see what awfully ordinary sorts
of relations I have, as well as people like Grannie and Aunt Joyce.”
The recollection flashed across Lydia’s mind incontinently of the care
with which she, engaged to be married to Jennie’s father, had avoided
any such display of relatives and their “ordinariness.”
However, Roland Valentine, the Canadian mechanic, would scarcely prove
critical.
Lydia sent a prepaid telegram to Regency Terrace, and received Aunt
Beryl’s laconic reply:
“Delighted.”
The short, familiar journey was thronged for Lydia, in her new mood of
painful introspection, with such memories as it seemed never to have
held before.
Jennie and Roland Valentine sat opposite to her in the train. They
talked to one another in low tones, and every now and then looked into
one another’s eyes. It seemed to Lydia that, even in the gaze of the
young man who had already been at the front for more than three months,
there was no apprehension of parting--only the ecstatic recognition of
an immense bliss.
She felt herself overwhelmingly lonely.
Regency Terrace, as usual, looked astonishingly unchanged. One almost
expected to see Grandpapa’s head at the bow window of the dining-room
behind the lace curtains, to hear Shamrock’s shrill, eager barking on
the steps.
Aunt Beryl wore a dark-blue skirt and a flannel blouse with a high
collar, just as she had worn every winter ever since Lydia could
remember her.
“Come in, dear--I’m ever so pleased to see you. How do you do, Mr.
Valentine? I’m quite well, thank you. Well, Jennie, I declare!”
Aunt Beryl looked at Jennie with an open adoration that she had not
conceded even to Lydia in Lydia’s younger days.
“Aunt Evelyn is in the drawing-room, and Olive. It’s a great piece of
luck having Olive here. She’s doing V.A.D. work at our Belgian Hospital
in King’s Road, and she’s got the afternoon off. Tell Aunt Evelyn that
you think Olive’s looking better, Lydia, if you get the chance. She’s
awfully down on the poor girl for wanting to do this work--says she
isn’t strong enough, and will knock herself up. It’s only because we
know the matron that Evelyn let her go there at all.”
Aunt Beryl shook her head, and conducted them into the drawing-room.
If Jennie wanted Roland Valentine to appreciate the fact that she
possessed relations who might be described as “ordinary,” Lydia
reflected that she must surely be satisfied now.
Never had the Regency Terrace household exhibited such a perfect
apotheosis of the commonplace.
Olive, in a dark-blue uniform that made her look extraordinarily
flat-chested, sat on a stool crouched over the fire, her face
unbecomingly heated. Aunt Evelyn was in the arm-chair that had been
Grandpapa’s, but it, too, had been drawn close to the narrow grate,
behind which burned a piled-up mound of coal, constantly replenished by
Olive from the scuttle.
Mrs. Senthoven had visibly aged, although her sister had not.
Her increasing deafness compelled her to carry an ear-trumpet, that
gave her an air of infirmity, and she wore a cap over her thin, parted,
white hair, and a little knitted shawl across her shoulders.
With a sort of shock, Lydia realized that Aunt Evelyn must be past
sixty.
They had to shout at her, for she would not always make use of her
ear-trumpet.
“Mother does hate that old trumpet of hers,” said Olive in explanation.
“I tell her she ought to see some of the things our men in hospital
have to put up with--artificial legs, and glass eyes, and goodness
knows what-all.”
Olive could talk of nothing but the hospital.
She had only been working there a month.
“This Sister, I can tell you--Sister McGregor, as she calls
herself--she’s a terror. A great, big woman, she is, and wears the
scarlet and grey uniform--you know. Well, what d’you think the men call
her? She’s a thumping great piece, I must tell you--as broad as she’s
long, and _that’s_ saying something. Well, the men call her ‘The Thin
Red Line!’ Isn’t that great, now?”
Roland Valentine shouted with laughter, and Jennie laughed too. Even
Aunt Beryl, to whom Lydia felt sure that the story could not be new,
displayed a sympathetic mirth, and Olive’s mother inquired querulously
what the joke was?
“It’s an old one, mother,” screamed Olive. “You’ve heard it already.”
“But what _was_ it?” persisted Aunt Evelyn suspiciously.
It was Roland Valentine who picked up the trumpet and loudly repeated
into it Olive’s successful anecdote.
Soon it became evident that the introduction of Roland to Jennie’s
family was to be crowned with success.
The young man talked about Canada to Bob’s mother, and was shown the
photograph of Bob, and Bob’s wife, and a fat boy in a kilt, who was
explained as “my daughter-in-law’s only child by her first. She was a
widow when Bob met her, but the boy is a nice little fellow, I believe.
No second family, I’m sorry to say.”
“But mother has plenty of grandchildren,” Olive announced, half proudly
and half aggressively. “Have you seen this one of pore ole Bee’s young
hopefuls, Lydia?”
It was a large group. Six--seven, Swaines, ranging from the ages of
fifteen to eight and a half. The girls had frizzed-out hair, and wore
cheap lace collars over their stuff dresses, and the two youngest, both
boys, were in velveteen suits, and one grasped a spade and the other a
bucket. The photographer had indicated a sea-scape behind the group.
“Regular Swaines, aren’t they?” said Olive discontentedly. “Not a
Senthoven amongst the lot of them, at least, not in appearance.”
“Why, hasn’t this fine little fellow here got a look of his auntie?”
inquired Roland Valentine, indicating the least unattractive of Mrs.
Swaine’s progeny.
Olive looked gratified.
“Funny you should say that. He’s my godson--Horace--and he _is_ a good
bit more like our side of the family than any of the others. Not that
the others take after their father in anything but looks, I will say.”
“Don’t you like him, then?” inquired Jennie innocently.
Lydia had not thought fit to enter into any details before Jennie as to
the little she knew of Beatrice Senthoven’s disastrous alliance with
Mr. Stanley Swaine. She had indeed systematically evaded all Jennie’s
inquiries about her contemporary cousins.
“Like him?” said Olive explosively. “Hark at her, Lydia! Why, he’s a
bad lot, Jennie--that’s what he is--a regular scallywag. He--you know.”
An expressive pantomime of tilted-up arm and hand and a motion as of
swallowing completed Olive’s terse description of her brother-in-law’s
failing.
“Ah, a lot of good fellows get their lives spoilt that way,” said
Valentine sympathetically--but quite matter-of-factly, thought Lydia.
“Him and Beatrice ought never to have been allowed to go about together
the way they did,” said Aunt Evelyn suddenly. “I blame myself.”
“Now, now, now--tell us all about this wedding of yours, Jennie,” said
Aunt Beryl, violently tactful.
“A regular war-wedding, isn’t it?” said Olive. “One of our nurses at
the hospital the other day got a telegram just like that to say that
her _fiasco_ was coming on leave, and they were to get married straight
away. So this girl I’m telling you about, this nurse--she went straight
off with twenty-four hours’ leave--that was all they’d give her, if you
please--and simply came back married.”
“Only twenty-four hours!” exclaimed Jennie. “What did the husband do?”
“Oh, came down with her, of course, and stayed at the hotel.”
“Well, I think it was too bad,” Aunt Beryl remarked with finality.
“Only giving her twenty-four hours like that, poor thing.”
“One’s got to think of the work,” said Olive, shaking her head. “We’re
fearfully full up just now. I wonder you don’t take up nursing,
Jennie--but perhaps you mean to after you’re married?”
“I don’t know,” said Jennie calmly.
Then she had had some such idea, although Lydia had definitely stated
that she was not fitted for such work, and had taken it for granted
that Jennie would come home to her after Roland’s return to the front.
Lydia had far too much self-command to risk a betrayal of her
thought by looking at her daughter, but she knew by intuition that
Jennie had shot a half-frightened, half-mischievous glance at her in
schoolgirl-fashion.
“I’d like to have Jennie doing work in London somewhere,” declared
Roland Valentine. “It’ll be handy for my leave, or if I get sent into
hospital.”
“We might find a flat in town,” said Lydia quietly.
“There are all sorts of hostels for women-workers being opened
everywhere,” said Jennie.
The implication was obvious enough.
At four o’clock Olive rose importantly. She had been glancing
surreptitiously at the clock for the last ten minutes.
“Well, I suppose I must be toddling. What a bore!” she said with an
affectation of reluctance. “It’s as much as my place is worth to be
five minutes late in going on duty.”
“I told the girl to put a cup of tea for you in the dining-room, dear.
You’ve plenty of time. (The girl I’ve got now,” said Aunt Beryl in
parenthesis to Lydia, “is the best I’ve had since Gertrude left. You
remember Gertrude, who got married?) How are you going, Olive?”
“By tram, I s’pose.”
“Perhaps you and Jennie would like to walk her as far as the tramway
centre?” suggested Aunt Beryl, with a kindly gleam of rather pallid
mirth directed at the Canadian.
“Sure! Will you, Jennie?”
“Come on, then. Goo’-bye, auntie; goo’-bye, Lydia, ole gurl. Awfully
glad to have seen you--’specially in these busy days. Ta-ta!”
Olive clattered from the room, quite in the old, breezy Senthoven
manner.
“She won’t be back till ten o’clock to-night, as likely as not,” moaned
her mother.
“She’s looking very well on it,” declared Aunt Beryl stoutly. “Lydia,
don’t you think Olive looks ever so much better for the interest?”
Lydia agreed with complete sincerity.
Aunt Beryl sat down by the fire, and there was a certain relaxation, as
from a long strain, in her bearing.
“Those are the lucky ones, those that have a job. There’s poor George
eating his heart out because he’s past the age for even the volunteers.
It does seem hard, too. All he can do is to stay overtime at the
office, doing the work of young fellows who’ve gone to the war. Lydia,
that’s a fine young chap that Jennie’s got there.”
“I’m glad you like him, Aunt Beryl,” said Lydia gently.
Her tone held no hint of disagreement. To disparage her accepted
son-in-law would have offended her taste, besides mitigating her claim
to self-sacrificed motherhood.
“Dear little Jennie! She’s full young--but you weren’t much older when
you were married yourself, Lydia.”
“Nearly three years--and Jennie is such a baby for her age!”
Lydia held tenaciously to the theory of Jennie’s tardy development
because it seemed to exonerate her from some of the charges, that she
could not forget, brought against her successively by Roland Valentine
and by Joyce Damerel.
“She’ll mend of that fast enough in these days, poor dear! Besides,”
said Aunt Beryl thoughtfully, “I don’t know that she’s so much of a
baby, Lydia. This engagement will have steadied her, too. I could see
a great difference. Evelyn, didn’t you think Jennie much less of a
child--more grown-up, like?”
“What, dear?”
“Tell Lydia whether you don’t think Jennie much more of a woman since
she’s been engaged,” screamed Aunt Beryl.
“Oh! Yes, poor little Jennie! The world’s all being made over in this
awful war--it’s only the young things who count for anything now.”
“She hasn’t heard,” said Aunt Beryl to Lydia, shaking her head.
But the observation of the deaf woman had not been so irrelevant, at
least to the thoughts that surged into Lydia’s sub-consciousness.
Only the young people counted now. It was they who, in every sense,
stood in the forefront of the battle now.
“Oh,” said Lydia, in sudden, overwhelming need of a vent for the
intolerable misery that was surging within her, “I can’t bear to think
of my little, sheltered Jennie suddenly rushed into the realities of
life like this. If only I could bear it all for her!”
“Ah, yes--I expect you feel that,” said Aunt Beryl with strange
matter-of-factness.
“I would so gladly take it all for her.”
Even as she spoke Lydia realized the full truth of the words. How much
easier it would be, how far less costly to herself, to know Jennie
ignorant and happy, while she herself, a recognized victim, faced a
suffering that would be rendered entirely bearable by that very fact.
“I’m sure it’s very hard to sit by and see others suffer,” said Aunt
Beryl tritely, and added in the same rather monotonous voice, “I was
very fond of your mother, Lydia, and I remember quite well thinking how
much easier it would have been when your poor father died if I could
have had the pain of it all to myself, instead of having to feel for
her, and Aunt Evelyn there, as well. There was a sort of selfishness in
it, like, I daresay.”
“Aunt Beryl,” said Lydia suddenly, “should you say that I was selfish
with Jennie?”
“How do you mean, dear, exactly?”
There was nothing in Aunt Beryl’s voice that showed her protesting, as
Lydia inwardly craved that she should protest, at the mere suggestion.
“Then you do think so?”
“No--oh, no, Lydia. I shouldn’t say that, dear.”
They both glanced at Mrs. Senthoven.
She had fallen into a doze, and was nodding over the red fire.
Lydia’s misery drove her to a form of self-revelation utterly foreign
to her.
“I--I’ve been worried lately. Joyce--my sister-in-law--who has never
liked me--began to talk about Jennie the other day. And she sounded as
though--as if--she thought that my very love for Jennie was something
selfish--had always been selfish. It upset me very much. And she
wasn’t even logical, Aunt Beryl. She said I’d never cared for anyone
but myself, and in the same breath accused me of caring for Jennie
selfishly--as though I hadn’t lived my whole life for Jennie since her
father died. After all, I was quite a young woman when I was left a
widow. I--I might have married again.”
“I _have_ sometimes wondered, dear.”
“Of course, living quietly in the depths of the country, I practically
never saw anyone. But all the same--I could have married.”
“I daresay that would be so, dear.”
“But don’t you see, that would have meant that Jennie could no longer
be my first consideration. And I’ve always put her first, Aunt
Beryl--always.”
“She’s grown up a very dear girl, I’m sure,” said Aunt Beryl
expressionlessly.
“If she were marrying someone we’d all known and liked--and there
wasn’t this horrible war hanging over it all; if I could only feel that
she was going to happiness, naturally and normally--then I could bear
losing her. It’s the lot of parents, and I’d face all my loneliness
gladly--if only I didn’t feel that some awful loss or grief may be
coming to her that I shan’t be able to take in her stead.”
“Well, of course you know, dear, Jennie has to live her own life.”
Aunt Beryl had spoken. Colloquially, without emphasis, she had repeated
the verdict already voiced crudely by young Valentine, and vehemently
by Joyce.
They thought that Lydia grudged Jennie--had always grudged her--the
right of experience.
Lydia had never held Aunt Beryl’s opinions in high esteem. Indeed,
there were very few opinions so to hold. One talked with Aunt Beryl
of the people one knew, of household difficulties, and of clothes.
Never of abstract questions, nor of inner perplexities. One knew
instinctively that for such she would have no solution to offer.
And yet Aunt Beryl’s simple statement that Jennie had to live her own
life carried with it to Lydia an altogether disproportionate dismay.
“To see one’s own child suffer--it’s far worse than suffering oneself,”
she reiterated helplessly.
“I’m not saying it isn’t hard on you, dear.”
Aunt Beryl softly picked up the little knitted shawl that had slipped
from Mrs. Senthoven’s shoulders and replaced it without waking her.
“I’m sure it isn’t good for Aunt Evelyn to sleep in the day-time the
way she does, Lydia. It isn’t what I call wholesome sleep either--hark
at the way she’s breathing!”
Aunt Beryl reseated herself.
“About what we were saying, dear. No doubt, you’ll say, me being an old
maid, I can hardly enter into a mother’s feelings, and probably it’s
the case. But I always remember that time, years and years ago, Lydia,
when you went off to London to that Madame Elena’s, that shop--I always
remember what a way I was in about it. Feeling you were too young, you
know, and that someone ought to stand between you and the world, and so
on and so forth. You know the way one goes on, dear. And then something
or other set me thinking--and Mr. Monteagle Almond and Uncle George and
I got talking one evening, I remember, and it seemed as though it would
be more myself I was thinking about than you, really, if I insisted
upon you being kept under my wing, as they say, instead of letting you
learn for yourself. Of course,” said Aunt Beryl apologetically, “I’m
not saying it’s the same thing as being a mother, you understand--but
it does seem as though one ought to be ready to let the young people
suffer for themselves, so to speak, if that’s the way they’re going to
learn.”
“But I want to see my Jennie happy,” said Lydia piteously.
“I suppose there’s no real happiness without there’s been sorrow too,”
said Aunt Beryl simply.
Her speech had never been free from provincialisms such as Lydia had
instinctively known all her life how to avoid.
“If you can reach the bell without getting up, Lydia, I wish you’d
ring, dear. I’m trying to train the girl to be a bit more punctual with
tea of an afternoon--she’s very bad that way. She could start laying,
and then wait the teapot for Jennie and Mr. Valentine. I said tea up
here this afternoon so as to save a fire in the dining-room. I thought
you’d understand, dear.”
“Of course,” said Lydia, hardly hearing. “I suppose they’ll be back in
a minute. Oh, Aunt Beryl--if _only_ I knew what was best for Jennie.”
“I should let her judge for herself, dear--truly I should,” said Aunt
Beryl placidly. “It may hurt you more just to stand by and watch, but
it’ll be better for her in the long run to have been let learn her own
lessons.”
There was a curious stability about Aunt Beryl’s point of view. Lydia
did not feel that she could hope to modify it, however mildly it might
be reiterated in homely and uneloquent phrases.
“You mean that I’ve got to sacrifice Jennie for Jennie’s own good?”
The door of the drawing-room opened.
“You can start bringing up the tea-things, Gladys,” said Aunt Beryl.
“Don’t make the tea until the young lady and gentleman are in--they’ve
left the door on the jar, but in case you don’t hear them I’ll ring.”
“Yes, Miss Raymond.”
Gladys went away again.
“She’s quite a smart-looking girl, isn’t she, Lydia?” said her
mistress complacently. “And one doesn’t have to keep nagging all the
time--she’s thoroughly willing. You were saying, dear, that you ought
to sacrifice Jennie for her own good, but I don’t know that that’s
exactly how I’d put it, myself. It’s more sacrificing yourself that I
meant--sacrificing your own feelings, like.”
Another echo.
Roland Valentine had said: “It’s only another kind of sacrifice
that’s wanted ... the way you can do it best is just the way that’ll
hurt you most.... Let her take her own risks and shoulder her own
responsibilities.”
Yes--it was just the way that hurt Lydia most. No doubt of that.
“That’s the hall-door! If the water’s boiling--_really_ boiling, mind,
Gladys--you can make the tea, and bring up the hot toast.”
Aunt Evelyn woke suddenly.
“Tea already?” she said eagerly. “I must have closed my eyes. It’s a
shame Olive couldn’t stop for a nice cosy tea by the fire before going
out.”
“She had a cup in the dining-room, dear--Gladys had it all ready--and a
piece of cake.”
“I don’t like this mad way of scamping her meals,” said Aunt Evelyn
dejectedly. “Fancy that now, Lydia! A bitter wind like to-day and
there’s Olive will come home, on the top of a tram as like as not, with
her chest and all, at nine or ten o’clock to-night.”
Aunt Beryl firmly picked up the ear-trumpet, adjusted it, and spoke
through it with vigour.
“Olive’s all right, Evelyn! You know the doctor said she could try it
for a bit, and she was wild to do something for the war. She’d have
fretted herself to fiddlestrings if she hadn’t got this job.”
They both of them spoke, Lydia thought with a little amusement, as
though Olive were quite a young girl, instead of a middle-aged woman.
As Aunt Beryl’s shrill voice ceased, her sister nodded her head
reluctantly.
“Well, well, it’s a terrible war, and I wish I were good for anything
besides knitting. Though they say the boys out there can’t have enough
woollies. But it would be easier to go out and do the hard work
oneself, if only one could, and leave the children safe at home, like
when they were little. I expect you’re beginning to feel that, Lydia.
It’s the way of the world, and we must just make the best of our shelf,
now we’re on it.”
Aunt Evelyn even laughed a little.
But Lydia felt as though the whole world were in league against her.