LATE AND SOON: A NOVEL & 8 SHORT STORIES. E. M. Delafield

Primrose.

      Her voice sounded sullen as though she had dropped her words from one corner of her closed mouth, as she did when she was either out of temper or seeking to make an impression.

      He guessed that both states of mind might be hers just then.

      A young girl in a cap and apron opened the door, very gingerly so as to avoid showing any light, and Primrose—ignoring her—walked in.

      Lonergan followed.

      He said "Good evening" to the maid and she answered "Good evening, sir" in pert, cheerful tones. He wondered what she thought of Primrose.

      They went through glass-panelled swing-doors and were met by a renewed outburst of barking.

      "Hallo!" said a girl's voice, and he saw the speaker scramble up from the floor in front of the fire, gathering against her the barking puppy, its awkward legs and large paws dangling.

      "Hallo," said Primrose, and she swung round to face Lonergan immediately behind her.

      "Meet my sister Jess," she muttered. "Colonel Lonergan—Jess."

      Jess shook hands.

      He was surprised to see how young and school-girlish she looked.

      "Sorry about all the noise," she cried, slapping the head of the barking, wriggling pup. "Shut up, aunt Sophy. Look, Primrose, don't you agree that she's the exact image of aunt Sophy?"

      "She is, a bit."

      "Aunt Sophy," began Jess, turning to Lonergan, and then she broke off, and exclaimed: "Here's mummie."

      He watched her coming through some further door, crossing the hall towards them.

      Prepared as he was in advance for the meeting, it yet astonished him profoundly to see, in that first instant, that he could perfectly recognize in this woman of his own age the young nymph of the Pincio Gardens.

      She wasn't, of course, a young nymph now. Time had washed the colour from her brown hair—the wave in front was entirely silver—and from her face. Only the dense blue-green of her eyes remained. It flashed across his mind that he had never seen eyes of quite that colour since, and it did not occur to him until long afterwards that the eyes of Primrose were of exactly the same arresting, unusual shade.

      The very shape of her face—a short oval, with the beautifully-defined line of the jaw still unmarred—brought back to him the sheer sensation of pleasure that, as a draughtsman, he had before experienced at the sight of its sharply cut purity of outline.

      He moved towards her and she held out her hand, smiling.

      "Colonel Lonergan? How do you do?"

      Curiously taken aback, although for what reason he had no idea, Lonergan shook hands and repeated her conventional greeting.

      "Oh! I remember your voice," she most unexpectedly exclaimed—and he was not sure that the unexpectedness had not struck herself as well as him.

      "And I remember your face," he answered, and for an instant they seemed to stare at one another.

      "Hallo, mummie," said Primrose. She stood by the fire without moving, and her mother, after a tiny hesitation, went to her, and putting an arm round her shoulders, kissed her in greeting.

      IV

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      The house, the large front bedroom assigned to Lonergan, even the water in the chipped white enamel water-can standing in the flowered china basin on the old-fashioned washstand, were all as cold as Primrose had foretold. He was glad to hurry downstairs but he felt that the evening was likely to prove a strange one.

      That past and present should so overlap was disconcerting enough, but Rory Lonergan, who had regretfully and at the same time competently, deceived a great many people had never yet seriously deceived himself and he was already aware of a sense of tension, almost of foreboding, that came from within himself and threatened others as much as himself.

      He was oddly relieved to find no one downstairs except Jessica, still playing with her dog.

      It was easy to make friends with Jess, and for her, as for the elderly ladies in the cocktail-bar, he deliberately accentuated Irish tone and idiom, in order to amuse her.

      He took notice of the puppy, and listened to the explanation of why she had been so oddly named.

      "Ah, the little poor dog! Isn't that a shame, now!"

      "What a frightfully good point of view. Most people think it's awful for old aunt Sophy—or would be, if she knew about it. Nobody has ever said it's a shame for a poor darling little puppy to be called after a cross old lady."

      "Have they not?"

      "Not they," said Jess. "Actually, I shall probably change her name later on or perhaps just call her Sophy. Otherwise it's a bit like those dim parents who give their children idiotic pet-names and will keep on with them for ever. I knew a person whose life at school was practically ruined because her mother came to see her and called her Tiddles. I ask you—Tiddles."

      Lonergan expressed appropriate disapproval. He thought of asking her about her school but decided that she had too recently ceased to be a schoolgirl and said instead:

      "I hear you're waiting to be called up for the WAAF?"

      "That is correct. Did Primrose tell you?"

      "She did."

      "I wouldn't have thought she'd be enough interested. It's funny, you knowing her first, and then coming down here."

      "Well, I was down here first, you know, for a few days and then I had to go to London for a special job and met her again," said Lonergan, adding the last word as he remembered that Primrose had decided to credit them with an acquaintanceship of some months.

      "And it's much odder," said Jess, "that you should have met mummie all those thousands of years ago. She said she wondered if you were the same person when Buster—Lieutenant Banks—told us your name. And that reminds me, where's the other one?"

      In spite of his preoccupation with the earlier part of her speech, Lonergan found that he understood to what she was so elliptically referring.

      "Captain Sedgewick? He'll arrive after dinner, I expect. He had to go to Plymouth. Did he not let you know?"

      "Oh, I expect so. I just hadn't heard, that's all. What's he like?"

      "About twenty-three, with red hair, comes from somewhere outside London. He's said to be a very good dancer."

      "Gosh, that's wizard," thoughtfully returned Jess.

      She gazed up at him with ingenuous admiration.

      "You're frightfully good at describing people, aren't you?"

      Lonergan laughed and was aware that her childlike praise had pleased his vanity.

      Extraordinary, he reflected dispassionately, how he had never outgrown the desire to be liked. Sometimes he thought that this pressing need was so urgent within him that, on a final analysis, it provided the motive spring for his whole conduct of life.

      Jess chattered on, cheerful and at ease.

      The tap of the General's crutches and his shuffling step sounded from behind Lonergan and he rose, and Jess reared herself to her feet in what seemed to be one supple, unbroken movement.

      Valentine was with her brother.

      She was in black and Lonergan noticed that the long fringes of the embroidered Chinese shawl round her shoulders became continually entangled in pieces of furniture as she moved. He saw the unhurried gestures with which she patiently disentangled them, again and again.

      General Levallois, in whom Lonergan had immediately detected an emphatic but quite fundamental hostility