‘Oh, the beastly hole! don’t mention it to me or I shall burst into tears. About two-and-a-half hours, I suppose. And you needn’t think they’ll approve of you, darling, because they’re quite certain to kick you straight out of the house.’
‘Anyhow, I can but try: if I’m kicked out we’ll elope. It’s perfectly simple. Then I think you’d better go straight home tomorrow and more or less prepare them, and I’ll come down for lunch on Thursday. If they like me I’ll stay the night, and if not we’ll both go back to London together. Good plan?’
‘Yes, very good, I think. Sweetest!’
The rest of that day was spent in wandering about rather gloomily in the grounds of Castle Fea, and they were all quite pleased when the time came for them to say goodbye to kind Sir Ronald and his wife. The Monteaths, terribly depressed at the prospect of many more such days, waved to them from under the Gothic portico until the car was out of sight.
Jane, Albert and Mr Buggins dined together in the train that evening. At the opposite table Lord and Lady Prague, Admiral Wenceslaus and General Murgatroyd made a congenial foursome.
Albert was tired and in a very bad temper. Jane, who had never seen him like that before, felt miserable and rather resentful, but Mr Buggins was in excellent spirits, and when they confirmed his suspicion that they were engaged he ordered a bottle of champagne to celebrate the occasion. Albert insisted on reading a book between the courses which were very slow in coming.
‘Albert, darling, please don’t read. After all, I shan’t be seeing you after tomorrow, I do think you might talk to me; besides, it’s so rude.’
Albert took no notice but went on with his book, a very boring history of the Angevin kings. Mr Buggins, seeing that he was really not himself, tactfully tried to draw Jane into conversation, but she could not leave Albert alone.
‘Albert, do stop reading. Mr Buggins, isn’t it rude and disgusting of him?’
Mr Buggins felt like shaking them both, but went on quite calmly with his dinner.
‘Albert, really I do think even if you must read between the courses, honestly you needn’t read while you’re eating. Oh, well, of course, if you prefer those beastly old Angevin kings to conversation that’s one thing.…’
At last she quite lost her temper, and snatching the book from him she threw it out of the window. Albert behaved extremely well about this, but none the less he was furious with Jane, who, in her turn, was completely miserable. They each felt that they had been stupid and childish, but rather less so than the other, and were both longing secretly to make it up.
‘Isn’t it a pity,’ said Mr Buggins, ‘for two people with as much sense of humour as you have to behave like this?’
‘Well, I may have a sense of humour, I hope I have,’ said Albert, ‘but I see nothing funny in throwing an expensive book away like that; and, as we’ve paid the bill, we might as well go to our sleepers.’
‘Here’s my share for dinner,’ said Jane, offering it to Albert, who had paid for the two of them.
‘I don’t want it.’
Mr Buggins got up and left them alone at their table.
‘Don’t be so silly, Jane.’
‘Well, I’m not going to be your kept woman, thank you.’
‘Oh! really! I thought that was just what you did want to be.’
‘Certainly not; I happened to be in love with you and offered to be your mistress. That’s quite different.’
‘Exactly the same.’
‘Quite different. Of course, I should have earned my own living.’
‘Oh! I see. May I ask how?’
‘Well, I’m not sure.’
‘Nor am I; not at all sure.’
‘I suppose I could be a model.’
Albert had a sudden vision of the fastidious Jane posing to a lot of half-washed French art students and burst out laughing.
‘Darling, how absurd you are.’
‘Well, it was horrid of you to be so cross and horrid of you to read, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, beastly. And horrid of you to throw my book out of the window, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, quite.’
‘Yes, very.’
‘Yes, very, then. Look, we’re the last people left, we’d better go.’
‘Well, give me a kiss.’
‘Not in front of that waiter.’
‘He’s not looking.’
‘He’s coming to turn us out. We really must go.’
As Jane rolled into her sleeper she just stayed awake for long enough to think luxuriously of the contrast between her journey to Scotland three weeks ago and her present one.
‘I know now for certain,’ she thought, ‘that I’ve never been really happy before.’
Seventeen
To Jane’s amazement, real or pretended, her parents remained perfectly calm when she told them that she was engaged. The fact was that it had long been their greatest wish to see her married, and almost any respectable young man of reasonable fortune would have been received by them with open arms. When, the following day, Albert made his appearance, they took an immediate liking to him.
He, on his side, was very agreeably surprised. Even allowing for a good deal of exaggeration, Jane’s account of her father and mother had been far from encouraging, and all the way down in the train he had been bracing himself up to meet a pair of cruel old lunatics who would probably attempt to murder him at sight. Instead of this he was greeted by two charming and good-looking people who were not, as far as he could judge, particularly put off by his appearance.
Jane took him for a little walk in the garden before lunch. ‘I told them all about it,’ she said, ‘and they weren’t nearly so horrified as I thought they would be, but I dare say they think it’s a cleverer plan to pretend not to mind at first. Apparently mamma used to know your mother quite well when they were girls. She says she was a great beauty.’
‘Yes, she was very beautiful.’
‘But they don’t know yet that you’re an artist. I expect that will upset them, all right.’
‘Really, darling! To hear you talk one would think you wanted them to be upset. I believe you’ve got a totally wrong idea of your parents, you know. I’ve only had a glimpse of them so far, it’s true, but they seem very nice and kind – quite different from what you led me to expect.’
‘Oh, well, I suppose now you’re going to take their side,’ said Jane pettishly. ‘Anyway, there’s the bell for lunch, so come along. Perhaps you’ll see my point when you know them better.’
During luncheon Albert realized that, as he had always been inclined to suspect, Jane’s pretended hatred of her parents was the purest affectation. She was evidently very fond of them as they were of her. He thought it a curious anomaly that a person with such a straightforward nature as Jane seemed to him to possess should be capable of deceiving herself to this extent upon any subject, but consoled himself by thinking that marriage would bring home the real truth to her.
The Dacres did not in any way show that they knew of Jane’s engagement, but behaved to Albert quite as they would have to any other visitor. They were anxious to hear every little detail of the Dalloch house-party and laughed heartily at Albert’s description of Lady Prague.
Encouraged by this he broached the subject of General Murgatroyd, delicately, as he imagined from what Jane had said that no officer in the British Army would be considered a fit subject for jest. Great, therefore, was his amazement when Sir Hubert Dacre cried out:
‘Not really! Was Mildew Murgatroyd there? Jane, you never told me that! Well, I’m sure you got plenty of fun out of him, didn’t you?’
‘What did you call him, sir?’ asked Albert, hardly able to believe his ears.
‘Mildew Murgatroyd. They called him that in the South African War because he was so untidy and slovenly. People used to say that even his revolver was coated with mildew. Why, he’s a perfect joke in the army, you know. During the last War they wouldn’t have him in France at all. He was given some
job in connection with the Inland Water Transport, I believe.’
‘Oh good!’ said Albert; ‘only I wish I’d known it before. I pictured him leading his men like anything, from the way he talked. He told us a most blood-curdling story about how he and twenty privates held a kopje in South Africa, alone and unaided for a fortnight.’
‘Yes, and did he tell you that when the relieving force came up in answer to his urgent messages they found there wasn’t a Boer for thirty miles, hadn’t been the whole time, you know, except in his own imagination.’
‘Oh, why didn’t we know all this before!’ sighed Albert.
‘I hear Buggins was up there,’ went on Sir Hubert. ‘Such a very nice, cultivated man, and a great authority on Scottish history.’
There was a silence. Albert began to feel very much embarrassed; the end of the meal approached rapidly and he dreaded the moment when he would be left alone with Jane’s father. He looked helplessly round the room for something to talk about, and presently said:
‘What a lovely Richmond that is, Sir Hubert!’
‘Yes, quite a pleasant picture in its way, I think. Those two children are boys, though with their long hair and frilly skirts one would rather suppose them to be girls. The one on the left is my father.’
‘I see that it is painted in his earlier manner. I am inclined myself to prefer his middle period. Did Jane tell you that I was fortunate enough to be able to save two very beautiful pictures from the fire at Dalloch? Winterhalters. Is he a favourite of yours?’
‘How funny,’ said Lady Dacre, ‘that it should be the fashion to admire these Victorian artists again after so many years.’
Albert, who rather particularly prided himself on being quite uninfluenced by such things as fashions, looked down his nose at this remark.
Lady Dacre now rose to her feet and Albert, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, was left alone with his future father-in-law.
He thought, ‘Better get it over quickly,’ and was beginning a beautiful and well-constructed sentence which he had made up in the train, when Sir Hubert interrupted him with:
‘Have some more port?’
‘Thank you, sir. The thing is,’ Albert said hurriedly, forgetting all the rolling periods which he had been about to pour forth, ‘Jane and I think … that is, we know … that we would like to get married.’
‘Be married,’ said Sir Hubert severely. ‘I very much dislike the expression “to get married”.’
‘So do I,’ replied Albert earnestly.
‘Then why use it? Well, so you and Jane wish to be married, do you? And isn’t this a little sudden?’
‘Sudden, sir?’
‘How long have you known each other?’
‘Oh, for a very long time – quite six weeks altogether, and we’ve been engaged for nearly a fortnight.’
‘Yes, I see – a perfect lifetime! And have you the means to support her?’
‘I have a thousand a year, beside what I can make.’
‘And what is your profession?’
Albert felt his nerve vanishing.
‘If I say “artist” he will kick me out of the house. I can’t face it. I shall have to tell a lie.’
‘I am in business, sir.’
‘What business?’
‘In the city.’
‘Yes; but what is your business in the city?’
‘Oh, I see! Yes, I’m a pawnbroker – did I say pawnbroker? I mean, stockbroker, of course.’
Sir Hubert looked deeply disgusted.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said, ‘although in these days people must take what work they can get. I have always felt myself – no doubt wrongly – that stockbroking is a very unproductive sort of profession. If I had a son I should have wished him to choose almost any other, and I always imagined that Jane would end by marrying a man of talent, say, a writer or an artist. However, that’s neither here nor there, and I don’t see that there can be much objection to your engagement. Jane is of an age to know her own mind. Personally, I should advise you to wait for a few weeks before announcing it. Let’s go to the drawing-room, if you’ve quite finished your port.’
Albert now wished that the earth would open up and swallow him. He also felt quite furious with Jane; and as soon as they were left alone together he fell upon her, tooth and nail.
‘You little idiot! We can never be married now, and it’s all your fault. I can’t face your father again. I must go away this instant.’
‘Albert darling, what d’you mean? Was he awful to you?’
‘No, he was charming; but why did you say he hated artists?’
‘Because I’m sure he does. It’s the sort of thing he always hates.’
Albert told her what had happened.
‘You see,’ he cried miserably, ‘it’s impossible for me to stay here after that!’
Jane burst into fits of laughter. She laughed and laughed. Then, she kissed Albert on the tip of his nose and ran out of the room. Presently she returned with both her parents, who were laughing so much that the tears ran down their cheeks.
The Dacres were frankly delighted at Jane’s engagement. It would hardly be fair to say that they were anxious to get her off their hands, but, fond as they were of her, there was no doubt that she had lately caused them an unending amount of worry. Her constant and violent flirtations with the most curiously unsuitable people, her doubtful friends, wild behaviour and increasingly bad reputation, all these things were driving them demented, and they both felt that the only hope of steadying her lay in a happy marriage.
‘I think we are very lucky,’ said Sir Hubert, talking it over with his wife that night in bed. ‘When you think what some of Jane’s friends are like! Suppose, for instance, it had been Ralph Callendar, not very probable, I admit, but one never knows. Now this boy is of good family, has nice manners, was at Eton and all that, and at the same time he is intelligent. Jane could never have been happy with a fool. If he is a trifle affected – well, I don’t know that that’s such a terrible fault in a young man. Tiresome, of course, but pardonable. Altogether it seems to me quite satisfactory, far more so than I should ever have expected.’
The engagement was announced in the papers a few days later and as at that particular moment there happened to be a scarcity of news, Albert and Jane for one day vied with the Sudbury Murder Trial in holding the attention of the public.
‘ROMANCE OF YOUNG ARTIST AND BARONET’S DAUGHTER
SEQUEL TO FIRE AT DALLOCH CASTLE’
blared forth on the front page of the Daily Runner in type only a shade smaller and less black than that used for:
‘Tragic Widow’s Eight-Hour Ordeal in Dock’
The gossip-writers, who have little or no use for tragic widows unless they are titled as well, gave the couple their undivided attention.
Jane was described as tall and beautiful with artistic tastes, and was credited with having designed her own bedroom at her father’s house in Wilton Crescent. (In point of fact, the bedroom had not been redecorated since they bought the house.)
Much capital was made out of the fact that they had both been staying at Dalloch Castle, the beautiful and historic seat of the Earl of Craigdalloch, when it was so tragically and mysteriously burnt to the ground.
‘I hear, by the way,’ said one paragraph, ‘that Lord and Lady Craigdalloch (she, of course, was a daughter of the late Sir Robert Barns) are shortly returning to Scotland to superintend the rebuilding of the castle. As Lady Craigdalloch is renowned for her exquisite taste, the new castle will probably be an immense improvement on the old, which was built in 1860, a bad year – as some wit is said to have remarked – for wine, women and houses.’
Albert shuddered when he read this.
‘My dear Jane, I can absolutely see the house that she will build. It is too horrible to think of that heavenly place gone for ever, but even more horrible to imagine, rising out of its ashes, a building in the best cenotaph style. I really believe that La
dy Craigdalloch would pull down the Albert Memorial if she had the chance.’
Jane received, among others, the following letters of congratulations:
‘DEAR JANE,
Many congratulations on your engagement. I admit that it was a great surprise to me when I read it in The Times this morning.
My husband has been far from well since the fire. He sends good wishes.
Yrs. sincerely,
FLORENCE PRAGUE.’
‘She doesn’t seem wildly enthusiastic,’ said Albert, who read this over Jane’s shoulder, ‘but I rather think she was in love with me herself,’ he added complacently.
‘Marlborough Club.
DEAR Miss DACRE,
Congratulations.
I caught a nasty chill after the fire so please excuse this short note.
Yrs.,
MOWBRAY MURGATROYD.’
‘Bachelors’ Club.
DEAR Miss DACRE,
Hearty congratulations. After all we went through together I shall always remember you with great affection.
What a gallant deed of yr. fiancé, saving those Winterhalters. I did not know of it until afterwards.
Yrs. sincerely,
STANISLAS WENCESLAUS.’
‘Castle Fea.
DARLING JANE,
I’m so glad everything has passed off all right. I was certain your parents would like Albert myself, but I know that it was an anxiety to you, feeling that they might not approve. The McFeas have been angelic to us. We leave here tomorrow as everything seems to be fixed up now. What d’you think we found yesterday among the ruins of Dalloch? The admiral’s spare eye. It was hollow inside and veiny, and I can’t tell you what a really nasty look it gave us! Walter insists on wearing it hanging from his watch-chain, which is so disgusting of him.
It’s too awful all our things being burnt; as Walter says, it would have been cheaper in the end to go to the Lido. Still, if we had you’d never have met Albert, so it’s all to the good, really.