Kingdom Lost (20 page)

Timothy said, “Shame!”

Afterwards he was to wish that he had walked Valentine away from Helena and got to the bottom of that prim, anxious questioning. He went away, and, busy and preoccupied as he was, there were moments all through the week when he saw Valentine's blue eyes shadowed and earnest. They had no business to hold a shadow in their depths.

At the end of the week Eustace's engagement to Valentine was given out. They had been together continually, and so much in public, that the announcement took no one by surprise. Valentine found herself treated with an unvarying grave politeness which she supposed to be the proper thing.

Eustace never alluded to her visit to town. On the last day of his stay he asked her to marry him, and when she said “Yes,” he kissed her forehead somewhere near her left eyebrow. And then he went and told Aunt Helena, and Aunt Helena kissed Valentine's cheek.

It wasn't at all like a proposal in a book. Eustace didn't say, “I love you,” or, “I can't live without you,” or even, “Darling!” He said, “Valentine, will you marry me?” and she said, “Yes.” And then neither of them seemed to be able to think of anything else to say, so he kissed her forehead, and then went and told Aunt Helena. It was all very solemn and depressing. But she began to cheer up after he went away.

That night she dreamt about the island.

Timothy heard the news when he got back. It staggered him. He had not always admired Helena, but he had not thought her capable of this. It shocked him a good deal. He went to Holt with a smouldering anger under his usual cheery manner. As luck would have it, he found Valentine alone, and some of his anger changed into surprise when he looked at her. She wore a pink dress. Her eyes shone, and her cheeks blushed. He didn't quite know what he had expected, but not this.

“Timothy, I'm engaged! I've got a ring—it's just come—Eustace sent it. It's a lovely pearl. Look at it! Isn't it lovely? I'm so glad you've come—I did so want to show it to someone. Isn't it lovely?”

“Top-hole,” said Timothy.

Valentine gave a gurgle of laughter.

“Oh, what a lovely word! May I learn it?”

“I give it you for your very own,” said Timothy—“with my blessing. You can have it for a wedding present.” He smiled, but his eyes were intent; they saw nothing but a child's pleasure.

“Six people have written to me already to say how lucky I am. They all say things about Eustace. One of them said he was one in a thousand. Do you think that any of them will write to Eustace and tell him that I am one in a thousand?”

“You're one in ten million,” said Timothy, and he said it lightly; but his heart contracted.

“Am I? Am I really?”

“Yes,” said Timothy. His lips were stiff. One in ten million? She was the only one in the world. There was no other Valentine.

He heard Helena's voice in the hall. He said quickly, “Are you happy, Valentine? Are you happy?” And Valentine said, “Yes.”

Then the door opened.

Valentine was happy for a week. Everybody she met said nice things. Aunt Helena was pleased with her. She had a lovely ring. And the houses in Parkin Row were going to be pulled down.

At the end of the week Eustace came down again, and as soon as Eustace came down, she began to stop feeling happy. He kissed her when they met and when he went away, and when he said good-morning and when he said good-night. He nearly always kissed the left side of her forehead. He had to bend down a long way to do it because he was so tall.

Valentine began to wonder why people in books liked being kissed. She didn't like it at all. She asked Helena Ryven.

“Will Eustace go on kissing me after we're married?”

“My dear, I do wish you wouldn't say things like that.”

“But will he?”—with mournful persistence.

Mrs. Ryven's conscience gave her a sharp stab. She said, “My dear, what a lot of nonsense you talk!” and went out of the room.

Valentine began to dream about the island nearly every night. She was always alone there. During the long evenings when she sat in the drawing-room between Aunt Helena knitting, and Eustace immersed in a book, she found herself thinking with longing of bed-time; because when she went to bed she would sleep, and be alone on the island—hot sun overhead; a wide blue sky, and a wide blue sea; the shimmer of the sun on the sea, gold on blue; and no one—no one at all—to call her, or to kiss her, or to say “Valentine” in the voice that meant she had done something that “wasn't done.”

CHAPTER XXII

Eustace and Valentine were to be married in September. “Long engagements are such a mistake,” Helena wrote to Ida Cobb, who read the letter aloud at breakfast in the intervals of pouring out tea. She made the worst tea in England, as her son and daughter continually assured her. Henry Cobb did not complain, because in twenty-five years you can get used to anything—even dish-cloth tea.

Mrs. Cobb read Helena's letter aloud.

“Long engagements!” she said—fifty years ago she would have been said to have bridled—“Long engagements indeed! She knows that the only chance to get them married at all is to get them married quick.”

“Oh—scandal-monger!” said Reggie.

Henry Cobb looked mildly over the top of
The Times
.

“My dear, it's a most suitable marriage. Hullo! I see that ass Merrydew has been writing to the papers again—traffic noises this time—complains he can't sleep at his club in the afternoon because of the flappers' hoot—wants to have all women under thirty refused a driver's licence—”

“Read your paper, Henry!” said Mrs. Cobb. “Helena's absolutely unblushing about this matriage. I loathe suitable marriages.”

Reggie made a note on his cuff.

“That's to remind me to make an unsuitable one, darling. What shall it be? A dope-fiend? Or the dustman's daughter? I live to please! Meanwhile another dollop out of the garbage can!” He passed his cup.

Mrs. Cobb said “Reggie!” in a perfunctory way.

Marjory leaned forward, took a lump of sugar, and began to crunch it.

“Must have something to take the taste away,” she murmured. “That last cup was
foul
. You know,” she went on, with both elbows on the table, “you know, Eustace is all right if you get far enough away from him. His feelings are like the waves that that wireless man was talking about the other night—if you're too close there's nothing doing; but they come down hot and strong in Australia.”

“You've got it all wrong,” murmured Reggie. “Never mind—the female brain should never be overtaxed.”

Marjory took no notice.

“That's Eustace all over—I thought of him at once. He'll freeze that poor kid till she might as well be Canterbury lamb, because she'll be living with him. But if she was in a slum, he'd love her like anything. He
does
love his old slums, you know, and if Valentine was ragged and dirty, and hadn't got an ‘h' to her name, she'd come in for her share. As it is, I'm sorry for her.”

Henry Cobb turned a sheet.

“My dear, that's rather vehement. Everyone isn't alike, you know—fortunately.” He gave his cup a little push. “Has your mother any more tea?”

“If you call it tea,” said Reggie gloomily.

“I shall ask Valentine to come and stay,” said Mrs. Cobb with the air of one who burns her bridges. “Helena probably won't let her come,” she added.

Helena let Valentine come for three days. Eustace's last week-end had not been a great success. She told herself that she would be thankful when the wedding was over. Meanwhile it wouldn't do to have Valentine going about looking droopy, and Marjory could take her to have her riding habit fitted.

Valentine found the three days full of new impressions. Everybody was kind. They said the oddest things to each other, and they weren't a bit polite; but nobody minded. She called Mrs. Cobb Aunt Ida, and Mr. Cobb Uncle Henry. They weren't really her uncle and aunt, but they said it was all the same thing. And Aunt Ida came into her room after she was in bed and asked her whether she'd got everything she wanted, and tucked her up, and patted her shoulder. Mr. Cobb called her “My dear.” It was quite a different sort of “My dear” to the one that Aunt Helena said. When Aunt Helena said “My dear,” it nearly always meant that she wasn't pleased.

Reggie teased her. He pretended to be frightfully in love with her, and he brought her silly presents that made everyone laugh—a little black woolly dog which jumped when you pressed a spring; and an awful black spider with scarlet eyes, which he hid in her table-napkin; and once, inside a great sheet of tissue paper, what looked like a bouquet until she opened it and found an enormous purple cabbage.

“You're not to torment her,” said Mrs. Cobb with the fond smile which she kept for Reggie.

“Torment her?” Reggie was all outraged innocence. “I love her passionately. She's going to throw Eustace over and fly with me—aren't you, ducky?” Then he went down on his knees in the middle of the carpet. “Star of my existence—elope!”

Valentine giggled softly; Reggie looked so awfully like a monkey when he made that face.

“Why?” she said.

“Because I am beautiful,” said Reggie, first rolling his eyes, and then bringing them to rest in a squint. “Beautiful,” he continued, “not only as regards my classic features, but with the inner, hidden beauty of a noble soul—and if you don't believe me, ask my mo-o-other. Who should know better than a mo-o-other? Haven't I got a beautiful nature, Mum—from a mere babe? You ask her to show you the photograph of me in my vest at one-year-two-months-five-days-four-hours-six-minutes-and-thirty-seconds looking soulful!”

“
Reggie!
” said Mrs. Cobb helplessly.

Valentine would have loved her visit if it could have gone on for ever; but three days of it gave her a dreadfully lonely feeling. They were all so kind. It was like being cold and coming into a warm room just for a minute—you didn't know how cold you were until you came into the warm room, and just as you began to get a little warmer, you had to go out into the cold again. It made it worse. It made it much worse.

The night before she went back, Marjory came into her room and sat on the end of her bed in the dark. It wasn't really dark, because the light from the lamp-post over the way shone in on the ceiling and made a pattern there. It was a pattern of leaves crossed by the window-bars, and the rest of the room was in a sort of dark dusk. All she could see of Marjory was a shadow that was a little denser than the other shadows.

Marjory sat cross-legged on the end of the bed and said in her cool little voice,

“Why are you going to marry Eustace? You don't really want to.”

Valentine did not say that she wanted to; she said, “I must.”

“Who's been stuffing you up with that? Aunt Helena?”

“Oh, no.”

“I think it's ‘oh, yes.' You little fool, she wants Holt for Eustace—quite natural, of course, and I'm not blaming her—but why in the name of the Parade of Wooden Soldiers are you playing her game?”

“I must.”

“Why must you?”

Valentine sat bolt upright in bed. She told Marjy all about Parkin Row and the baby who hadn't enough to eat.

“And you see, Marjy, it doesn't really matter about Eustace and me—we're only two people; but there are such a lot of people in Parkin Row.”

“Does Eustace kiss you?” said Marjy abruptly.

“Yes.”

“Often?”

“When he says good-morning—and when he says good-night.”

“Do you mind?”

“Yes,” said Valentine in the dark.

“Then, my dear kid, how on earth are you going to marry him?”

“Perhaps”—rather falteringly—“perhaps he won't kiss me when we're married.”

“Perhaps he will,” said Marjory grimly.

“I asked Aunt Helena, and she said I oughtn't to talk about it, and she went away—she does, you know.”

Marjory had a vivid picture of Helena Ryven passing by on the other side. She took a long breath.

“Look here, baby—” she began.

CHAPTER XXIII

The evening after Valentine got back from her visit to the Cobbs she startled Helena Ryven by asking suddenly,

“Couldn't I go back to the island?

They had finished dinner. The curtains were still undrawn. The daylight was all gone away into a grey mist, and it was much too dark to read or sew. Helena Ryven sat near the window winding wool, whilst Valentine crouched all in a heap on the window-seat and watched the mist swallow up the woods tree by tree.

Then, suddenly,

“Couldn't I go back to the island?”

Helena was startled out of her routine.

“My dear, how foolish! I think you had better ring for lights.”

“No—I mean it, Aunt Helena—I really do mean it. You're so clever. Isn't there any way that I can go back to the island and let Eustace have everything? I didn't want to take anything away—and if I could go back—”

Mrs. Ryven put down her wool and got up.

“No one can ever go back,” she said. She crossed the room, switched on the lights, and rang the bell. “You know, Valentine, you really ought not to talk like that—I've told you so before. It's not fair to Eustace.”

When the lights sprang on, the misty woods seemed to have been suddenly overwhelmed by the dark; they were there one moment, and the next a black curtain had fallen and blotted them out.

Valentine went on looking into the dark until Bolton came in to shut up the room. When he had gone again, she tried to say in the bright, coldly lighted room what she had not been able to say in the kind half-light. But she only got as far as,

“Isn't there any way?”

Helena Ryven looked up, and down again. Valentine had come back paler than she went; she had been crying. Helena's conscience pricked her, and she silenced it angrily. An attack of stage fright—lots of girls had it, and were happy enough afterwards. She spoke rather sharply.