E. M. Delafield
Consequences
X
Noel
In the ensuing days, Alex met that look very often – a look of pleased, speculative approval, pregnant with unspoken meanings.
Noel sought her company incessantly, and every opportunity was given them of spending time in one another's society. For five glowing, heather-surrounded days and five breathless, moonlit evenings, they became the centre of their tiny world.
Then Lady Isabel said one night to her daughter:
"You've enjoyed this visit, haven't you, darlin'? I'm sorry we're movin' on."
"Oh," said Alex faintly, "are we really leaving tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow morning, by the early train," her mother assented cheerfully.
The true instinct of the feeble, to clutch at an unripe prize lest it be taken from them, made Alex wonder desperately if she could not postpone her departure.
But she dared not make any such suggestion, and Lady Isabel, looking at her dismayed face, laughed a little as though at the unreason of a child. Alex blushed with shame as she thought that her mother might have guessed what was in her mind. That evening, however, Lady Isabel came into her room as she was dressing for dinner.
"I thought you'd like to put this over your shoulders, Alex," she said negligently. "It will improve that cream-coloured frock of yours."
It was a painted scarf that she held out, and she stood gazing critically while the maid laid it across Alex' shoulders.
"You look so nice, darling child. Are you ready?"
"Yes, mother."
They went downstairs together.
Alex was acutely conscious of a certain maternal pride and tenderness, such as she had not experienced from Lady Isabel since the first days of her return from Liège, when she had finally left school. She did not let herself speculate to what such unusual emotion might portend.
But at the sight of Noel Cardew, better-looking than ever in evening clothes, a chaotic excitement surged up within her in anticipation of their last evening together.
Almost as she sat down beside him at the dinner-table, she said piteously, "I wish we weren't going away tomorrow."
"You're not?"
"Oh, yes. Didn't you know?"
"I hadn't realized it," said Noel, and although she avoided looking at him, she noted with a feeling of triumph the dismay in his voice.
"Oh, I say! What a shame. Must you really go?"
"We're going to pay two more visits and then leave Scotland altogether."
"I shan't stay much longer myself," observed Noel nonchalantly.
Alex was conscious of keeping the words as it were at the back of her mind, with the implication which she attached to them, while the conversation at the small table became general.
As she followed her hostess and Lady Isabel from the room, Noel, holding open the door, said to her in a rapid, anxious tone, very low:
"You'll come out into the garden afterwards, won't you?"
An enigmatic "perhaps" was not in Alex' vocabulary.
She gave him a quick, radiant smile, and nodded emphatically.
It never occurred to her eager prodigality that she ran any risk of cheapening the favours that so few had ever coveted.
In the garden she moved along the gravelled walk beside him, actually breathless from inward excitement.
"There was heaps more I wanted to say to you about the book," Noel remarked disconsolately. "I shan't have any one to exchange ideas with now. They're all so old – and besides, I don't think English people as a rule care much about psychology and that sort of thing. They're so keen on games. So am I, in a way, but I must say it seems to me that the study of human nature is a good deal more worth one's while."
"People are so interesting," said Alex. She was perfectly aware of the futility of her remark as she made it, but in some undercurrent of her consciousness there floated the conviction that one need not put forth any great powers of originality in order to obtain response from Noel Cardew.
"I can be perfectly natural with him – we think alike," She defended herself against her own unformulated accusation with inexplicable anger.
"I think they're frightfully interesting," said Noel with conviction. "Of course, men are far more interesting than women, if you don't mind my saying so, simply from the psychological point of view. I hope you don't think I'm being rude?"
"Oh, no."
"You see, women, as a general rule, are rather shallow, though, of course, there are a great many exceptions. But you know what I mean – as a rule they're rather shallow. That's what I feel about women, they're shallow."
"Perhaps you're right," said Alex, rather discouraged. She would not admit to herself that his sweeping assertion awoke no echo whatever within her.
To her immaturity, the essence of sympathy lay in complete agreement, and abstract questions meant nothing to her when weighed in the balance against her desire to establish, to her own satisfaction at least, the existence of such sympathy between herself and Noel Cardew.
"I've got another mad plan," said Noel slowly. "You'll think I'm always getting insane ideas, and this one rather depends on you."
"Oh, what?"
"I hope you won't mind my suggesting such a thing – " He paused so long that Alex' imagination had time for a hundred foolish, ecstatic promptings, such as her reason knew could not be forthcoming, but for which her whole undisciplined sense of romance was crying.
"Well, look here: what should you think of collaborating with me over the book? I'm sure you could write if you tried, and anyway, you could probably give me sidelights on the feminine part of it. It would be most awfully helpful to me if you would."
"Oh," said Alex uncertainly. She was invaded by unreasoning disappointment. "But how could we do it?"
"Oh, well, notes, you know – just keep notes of anything that struck us particularly, and then put it in together later. We should have to do a good deal of it by correspondence, of course… I say, are you a conventional person?"
"Not in the least," said Alex hastily.
"I'm glad of that. I'm afraid I'm rather desperately unconventional myself. Of course, in a way it might be rather unconventional, you and me corresponding – but would that matter?"
"Not to me," said Alex resolutely.
"That's splendid. We could do a lot that way, and then I hope, of course, that you'll let me come and see you in London."
"Of course," Alex cried eagerly. "I don't know the exact date when we shall be back, but I could let you know. Have you got the address?"
"Clevedon Square – "
She hastily supplied the number of the house.
"Oh, that's all right. I'm sure to forget it," said Noel easily; "but I shall find you in the books, I suppose."
"Yes," said Alex, feeling suddenly damped.
She herself would have been in no danger of forgetting the number of a house wherein dwelt any one whom she wished to see, but with disastrous and quite unconscious humility, she told herself that it was, of course, not to be expected that any one else should go to lengths equal to her own. In her one-sided experience, Alex had always found herself to be unique.
That Noel Cardew was not in despair at the idea of her departure was evident. But he repeated several times that he wished she were not going so soon, and even asked whether she would stay on if invited to do so.
"I'm sure they'd all love you to," he assured her. "Then Lady Isabel could pay the other visits and call for you on her way back."
"I'm sure I shouldn't be allowed to stay on by myself," said Alex dolefully.
"There you are! Conventionality again. My daughters," said Noel instructively, "if I ever have any, shall be brought up quite differently. I've made up my mind to that. I daresay you'll laugh at all these theories of mine, but I've always been keen on ideas, if you remember."
But for once Noel did not receive the habitual ready disclaimer called for by his speech.
His easy allusion to his hypothetical daughters had reduced Alex to utter silence.
Afterwards, alone in the darkness of her own room, she wondered why such a startling sense of protest had revolted within her at his words, but her mind shied away instinctively from the question, and she found herself unable to pursue it.
The next morning, in the unromantic atmosphere induced by an early breakfast, and Sir Francis' anxiety to make sure of catching the connection, politely concealed, but quite evident to the perceptions of his wife and daughter, Noel Cardew and Alex exchanged their brief and entirely public farewell.
"I'll write about the book," was his cheerful parting assurance.
"Don't forget," said Alex.
Lady Isabel was rather humorous on the subject of fin de siècle emancipation, amongst the house party in the midst of which she and her daughter found themselves that evening.
"What are boys and girls coming to? I hear young men gaily promisin' to write to Alex on all sorts of subjects, and making private assignations with her," she declared amusedly. "Aren't you and that nice-looking Cardew boy writin' a book in collaboration, or something, darling?"
The slight jest was made popular amongst her seniors, and Alex was kindly rallied about her modern freedom and assumption of privileges undreamed of by the older generation. The inference obviously placed upon her friendship with Noel Cardew was evident, and pleased her starved vanity even more than the agreeable amount of flattery and attention which at last was being bestowed upon her.
It was her first hint of success achieved amid standards which she had been taught to believe were all-prevalent. Brushed lightly by the passing wing of triumph, she became eager and self-confident, even rather over-clamorous in the assertion of her own individuality, as had been the child Alex in the nursery at Clevedon Square.
Lady Isabel did not check her. She made subtle exploitation of Alex' youth and sudden, rather boisterous gaiety, and occasionally laughed a little, and alluded to the collaboration scheme between her and Noel Cardew. "But all the same, darlin' child," she observed to Alex in private, "I can't have you correspondin' with young men all over the country unbeknown to me. Once in a way is all very well, perhaps, but you'll have to let me see the letters, I think."
Alex was only mildly resentful of the injunction. She surmised shrewdly enough that her mother was more anxious to establish the authentic existence of a correspondence between Noel Cardew and herself than to supervise the details of it. She herself waited with frantic, furtive eagerness for his first letter.
It did not reach her until after her return to London. Secretly bitterly disappointed, she read the short, conventional phrases and the subscription:
"I never know how to end up a letter, but hope this will be all right – Yours very sincerely,
"NOEL E. CARDEW."
Across the top of the front page was a postscript.
"Next month I shall be in town. Don't forget that I am coming to call upon you. I hope you won't be 'out'!"
Alex, to whom nothing was trivial, saw the proposed call looming enormous upon the horizon of her days.
Every afternoon she either sat beside Lady Isabel in the carriage in an agony, with only one thought in her mind – the expectation of finding Noel's card upon the hall table on their return – or else took her part disjointedly and with obvious absent-mindedness in the entertainment of her mother's visitors.
When, during a crowded At Home afternoon, in the course of which she had necessarily ceased to listen for the sound of the front-door bell, "Mr. Cardew" was at length announced, Alex felt almost unable to turn round and face the entering visitor.
Her own imagination, untempered either by humour or by experience, had led her to picture the next encounter between herself and Noel so frequently, and with such a prodigal folly of romantic detail, that it seemed incredible to her that the reality should take place within a few instants, amidst brief, conventional words and gestures.
Noel did not talk about the book that they were to write together, although he remained beside Alex most of the afternoon. Only just as he was leaving, he asked cheerfully:
"You've not forgotten our collaboration, have you, partner? I've heaps of things to discuss with you, only you were so busy this afternoon, looking after all those people."
"We shall be in on Sunday," Alex told him eagerly, "and there won't be such a crowd."
"Oh, good," said Noel. "Perhaps we'll meet in the Park before that, though."
"I hope so," said Alex.
They met in the Park and elsewhere, and Noel, all through the ensuing weeks before Christmas, called often at the house in Clevedon Square.
Lady Isabel twice asked him to dinner, but although he was once placed next her, on neither occasion, to Alex' astonished resentment was he assigned to her as a partner.
Alex, for the first time conscious of being sought after, and receiving with avidity the fragments that fell to her share, forced herself to believe that they would eventually constitute that impossible whole of which she had dreamed wildly and extravagantly all her life.
Into the eager assents which she gave to all Noel's many theories, she read a similarity of outlook, into her almost trembling readiness to fall in with his every suggestion, a community of tastes, and into his interminable expositions of his own views an appeal to her deeper sympathies that surely denoted the consciousness of affinity between them.
She was happy, although principally in a nervous anticipation of happiness to come. She was able, when alone, to imagine that from absolutely impersonal good comradeship, Noel would suddenly plunge into the impassioned declarations of her own fancy, but when she was actually with him, his cool, pleasant, boyish voice dispelled the folly, and her fundamental shyness, that never deserted her save in the realm of her own thoughts, was relieved, with an intense and involuntary relief, that it should be so.
She saw Noel's father and mother again, and was greeted by the latter with a bright and conditional affectionateness that inspected even while it acclaimed.
It was after this that the trend of Noel's thoughts appeared suddenly to change, and he spoke to Alex of the place in Devonshire.
"One's first duty is to the place, of course," he said reflectively, "and I'm not at all sure that I oughtn't to look into the management of an estate, and all that sort of thing, very thoroughly. Some day – a long, long time hence, of course – I shall have to run our own place, and I'm rather keen about the duties of a landlord, and improving the condition of the people. I used to be a Socialist, as you know, but I must say one's ideas alter a bit as one goes on through life, and I've had some talks with the pater lately."
He broke off, and looked rather oddly at Alex for a moment.
"They want me to think of settling down, I believe," he said, almost shyly.
Alex spent that night in feverishly placing possible and impossible interpretations on the words, and on the look he had given her.
The sense of an approaching crisis terrified her so much that she felt she would have given worlds to avoid it.
The following evening it came.
Most conventionally, she met Noel Cardew at an evening reception, and he conducted her rather solemnly to a small conservatory where two chairs were placed, conspicuously enough, beneath a solitary palm.
An orchestra was just audible above the hum and buzz of conversation.
"It's luck getting in here," said Noel. "I wanted to see you very particularly tonight. I must say I never thought I should find myself particularly wanting to see any girl – in fact, I'd practically made up my mind never to have anything to do with women – but I see now that two people who had very much the same sort of ideas about life in general could do a tremendous lot for a place, and for the country generally; don't you agree? – and, of course – " He became hopelessly incoherent, "… knowing one another's other's people it all makes such a difference … I could never understand fellows running after Gaiety girls and marrying them, myself!! After all, one's duty to the estate is … and then, later on, perhaps, if one thought of Parliament – "
Alex felt that the pounding of her heart was making her physically faint, and she raised her head desperately, in the hope of stopping him. Noel met her eyes courageously.
"I wish you'd let me tell our people that you – that we – we're engaged," he said hoarsely.
His words struck on Alex' ear almost meaninglessly.
Irrationally in love as she was, with Love, she knew only that he was asking something of her – that she had at last an outlet for that which no one had ever yet desired.
Unable to speak, and unconscious of bathos, she vehemently nodded her head.
Noel immediately took both her hands and shook them wildly up and down.
"Thank Heaven, it's over," he cried boyishly. "You can't imagine how I've been funking asking you – I thought you'd say yes, but one feels such an awful fool – and I've never done it before. I say, Alex – I can call you Alex now, can't I – you're like me, aren't you? You don't want sentimentality. If there's one thing I bar," said the newly-accepted lover, "it's sentimentality."
XI
Engagement of Marriage
"I am engaged to be married," Alex repeated to herself, in a vain endeavour to realize the height to which she must have now attained. But that realization, by which she meant tangible certainty, for which she craved, continually eluded her.
The preliminary formalities, indeed, duly took place, from her own avowal before a graciously-maternal Lady Isabel, to Noel's formal interview with Sir Francis in the traditional setting of the library.
After that, however, a freakish fate seemed to take control of all the circumstances connected with Alex' engagement.
Noel Cardew's father became ill, and in the uncertainty consequent upon a state of health which his doctor declared might be almost indefinitely prolonged, there could be no question of immediately announcing the engagement.
"Just as well, perhaps. We're all delighted about it, but they're both young enough to wait a little while," Lady Isabel smilingly made the best of it. "Next year will be quite time enough to settle anything."
Her serenity was the obvious outcome of an extreme contentment.
Alex found herself better able to regard herself in the light of one betrothed in her mother's company than in that of Noel. He treated her almost exactly as he had always done, with cheerful good-fellowship, and only at the very outset of the engagement with any tinge of shyness in his bearing.
"Of course, I ought to have got a ring," he said very seriously, "but I don't believe in taking any chances, and so, just in case there was any hitch, I waited. Besides, I don't know what you like best – you'll have to choose."
Alex smiled at the words. There was a glamour about such a choice, even beyond that with which her own sense of the romantic perforce enveloped it.
She wondered whether she would be allowed to go with Noel to a jeweller's, or whether he would, after all, choose his token alone, and bring it to her, and place it on her finger with one of those low, ardently-spoken sentences which she could hear so clearly in her own mind, and which seemed so strangely and utterly impossible in Noel's real presence.
But the arrival of Noel's ring, after all, took her by surprise.
He had been lunching with them in Clevedon Square, when the jeweller's assistant was announced, just as Lady Isabel was rising from the luncheon-table.
She turned enquiringly.
"Noel?"
"I told him to come here. I thought you wouldn't mind. You see, I want Alex to choose her ring."
"Oh, my dear boy! how very exciting! But may we see too?"
Mrs. Cardew was also present.
"Oh, rather," said Noel heartily. "We shall want your advice."
They all trooped hastily into the library, where the man was waiting, with the very large assortment of gleaming rings ordered for inspection by Noel.
"What beauties!" said Lady Isabel. "But, really, I don't know if I ought to let him."
She glanced at Mrs. Cardew, who said in a very audible voice:
"Of course. He's so happy. It's quite delightful to watch them both."
She was looking hard and appraisingly at the rings as she spoke.
Alex looked at them too, quite unseeing of their glittering magnificence, but acutely conscious that every one was waiting for her first word.
"Oh, how lovely!" she exclaimed faintly.
She chid herself violently for the sick disappointment that invaded her, not, indeed, at the matter, but at the manner of the gift.
And yet she realized dimly, that it was impossible that it should have happened in any other way – that any other way, indeed, would have been as utterly uncharacteristic of Noel Cardew as this was typical.
"Which do you like?" he asked her. "I chose all the most original ones I could see. I always like unconventional designs better than conventional ones, I'm afraid. Where's that long one you showed me this morning?"
"The diamond marquise, sir?" The assistant deferentially produced it, glancing the while at Alex.
"That's it," said Noel eagerly. "Try it on, Alex, won't you?"
He used her name quite freely and without any shyness.
Alex felt more of genuine excitement, and less of wistful bewilderment, than at any moment since Noel had first asked her to marry him, as she shyly held out her left hand and the jeweller slipped the heavy, beautiful ring onto her third finger.
She had long, slim hands, the fingers rather too thin and the knuckles, though small, too prominent for beauty. But, thanks to the tyranny of old Nurse, and to Lady Isabel's insistence upon the use of nightly glycerine-and-honey, they were exquisitely soft and white.
The diamonds gleamed and flashed at her as she moved the ring up and down her finger.
"We can easily make it smaller, to fit your finger," said the jeweller's assistant.
"It really is beautiful. Look, Francis," said Lady Isabel.
Alex' father put up his glasses, and after inspection he also exclaimed:
"Beautiful."
"You've such little fingers, dear, it'll have to be made smaller," said Mrs. Cardew graciously.
"Is it to be that one, then?" Lady Isabel asked.
Alex saw that her mother's pretty, youthful-looking flush of pleasurable excitement had mounted to her face. She herself, conscious of an inexplicable oppression, felt tongue-tied, and unable to do more than repeat foolishly and lifelessly:
"Oh, it's lovely, it's perfectly lovely. It's too beautiful."
Noel, however, looked gratified at the words of admiration.
"That's the one I like," he said with emphasis. "I knew when I saw them this morning that I liked that one much the best. We'll settle on that one, then, shall we?"
"You silly boy," laughed his mother, "that's for Alex to decide. Perhaps she likes something else better. Try the emerald, Alex?"
"Oh, this is lovely," repeated Alex again, shrinking back a little. Furious with herself, she was yet only desirous that the scene should not be prolonged any longer.
"Come and look at it in the light?" The urgent pressure of Lady Isabel's hand on her arm drew her into the embrasure of the window.
"Alex," said her mother low and swiftly, all the time holding up her hand against the light as though studying the ring. "Alex, you must be more gracious. What is the matter with you?"
"Nothing," said Alex childishly, feeling inclined to burst into tears.
"Then for Heaven's sake do try and smile and show a little enthusiasm," said her mother with unwonted sharpness.
Alex, scarlet, and most visibly discomposed, returned to the group round the library table.
Forcing herself to make some attempt at obeying her mother's behest, she picked up the nearest jewel, two pearls in a prettily-twisted setting, and began to examine it.
"I like that design, too. It's original," said Mrs. Cardew.
"Oh, but pearls are unlucky – she couldn't have pearls," protested Lady Isabel.
"They mean tears, don't they?" Alex contributed to the discussion, for the sake of making her mother see that she was willing to do her best.
"Are you superstitious?" Noel asked rather reproachfully. "I can't say I believe in all that sort of thing myself, you know. In fact I make rather a principle of doing things on a 13th, or walking under ladders, and all the rest of it, just to prove there's nothing in it."
Sir Francis fixed the young man benevolently through his monocle.
"I presume, however, that in this instance you prefer not to tempt the gods," he remarked affably, and Noel, always obviously in awe of his betrothed's father, hastily agreed with him.
"Then it's diamonds, is it? – unless Alex prefers the emerald."
"I like the diamond one best," Noel reiterated. "I really pitched on that one the minute I saw it. I like originality."
"Well, it couldn't be lovelier," said Lady Isabel contentedly.
The jeweller was shown out, leaving the diamond marquise ring, in its little white-velvet case, on the table in front of Alex.
Sir Francis opened the door for his wife and Mrs. Cardew.
"Oh," said Noel urgently. "You must stay and see her put it on."
Both ladies laughed at the boyish exclamation, and Alex flushed scarlet once more.
Noel opened the case and looked proudly at his gift.
"You must put it on for her," said his mother, "when it's been made smaller."
The hint was unmistakable.
Noel held out the ring.
"Let's see it on now at once, Alex. It can go back to the shop later."
Alex, in a sort of utter desperation, thrust out her hand, and Noel, politely and carefully avoiding touching it with his own, slipped the heavy hoop over her finger.
"Thank you," she stammered.
There was another laugh.
"Poor dears! Let's leave them in peace," cried Mrs. Cardew mockingly, and rustled to the door again.
"Did you ever see anything so young as they both are?" she murmured sweetly to Lady Isabel, audibly enough for Alex to guess at the words, if she did not actually hear them.
She was thankful that they should no longer be watching her, and turned with something like relief to Noel's gratified, uncritical looks.
It became suddenly much easier to speak unconstrainedly.
Perhaps she was subconsciously aware that of all of them, it was Noel himself who would expect the least of her, because his demands upon her were so infinitesimal.
"It's a beautiful ring; thank you very, very much. I – " She stopped and gulped, then said bravely, "I love it."
She emphasized the word almost without knowing it, as though to force from him some response.
Although she had never actually realized it, it was a word which, in point of fact, had never yet passed between them. Noel's fair face coloured at last, as his light eyes met her unconsciously tragical gaze.
"Alex a son air bête aujourd'hui."
With horrid inappropriateness, the hated gibe of her schooldays flashed into Alex' thoughts, stiffening her face into the old lines of morbid, self-conscious misery.
Part of her mind, in unwilling detachment, contemplated ruefully the oddly inadequate spectacle which they must present, staring shamefacedly at one another across the glittering token of their troth.
Frenziedly desirous of breaking the silence, heavy with awkwardness, that hung between them, she began to speak hastily and almost at random.
"Thank you so very much – I've never had such a lovely present – it's lovely; thank you so much."
"I thought you'd like it," muttered Noel, more overcome with confusion, if possible, than was Alex.
"Oh, yes, yes. It's lovely."
"I thought you'd like something rather original, you know, not a conventional one."
"Oh, yes!"
"You're sure you wouldn't rather have one of the others – that emerald one that mother liked?"
"Oh, no."
"I dare say they'd let me change it, the man knows us very well."
"Oh, no, no."
"Well, I, I – I'm awfully glad you like it."
"Yes, I do like it. I – I think it's lovely."
"I – I thought you'd like it."
Alex began to feel as though she was in a nightmare, but she was mysteriously unable to put an end to their sorry dialogue.
"It's perfectly lovely, I think. I don't know how to thank you."
Noel swallowed two or three times, visibly and audibly, and then took a couple of determined steps towards her.
"I think you – you'd better let me kiss you," he said hoarsely. "You haven't yet, you know."
Something deep down within Alex was surging up in angry bewilderment, and she was sufficiently aware of a sense of protest to rebut it indignantly and with lightning-swift determination.
It was the humility of love that had prompted her lover to crave that permission which should never have been asked.
So she told herself in the flash of a moment, while she waited for Noel's kiss to lift her once and for all into some far realm of romance where trivial details of manifestation should no longer obscure the true values of life.
Unconsciously, she had shut her eyes, but at an unaccountable pause in the proceedings, she opened them again.
Noel was carefully removing his pince-nez.
"I say," he stammered, "you're – you're sure you don't mind?"
If Alex had followed the impulse of her own feelings, she must have cried out at this juncture:
"Not if you're quick and get it over!"
But instead, she heard herself murmuring feebly:
"Oh, no, not at all."
She hastily raised her face, turning it sideways to Noel, and felt his lips gingerly touching the middle of her cheek. Then she opened her eyes again, and, scrupulously avoiding Noel's embarrassed gaze, saw him diligently polishing his pince-nez before replacing them.
It was the apotheosis of their anti-climax.
Alex possessed neither the light-heartedness which is – mistakenly – generally ascribed to youth, nor the philosophy, to face facts with any determination.
She continued to cram her unwilling mind with illusions which her innermost self perfectly recognized as such.
It was, on the whole, easier to place her own interpretation upon Noel's every act of commission or omission when the shyness subsequent to their first ill-conducted embrace had left him, which it speedily did. Easier still, when intercourse between them was renewed upon much the same terms of impersonal enthusiasm in discussion as in Scotland, and easiest of all when Alex herself, in retrospect, wrenched a sentimental significance out of words or looks that had been meaningless at the time of their occurrence.
