Outbreak of Love (26 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

Anthea had not accepted Josie's engagement quite as complacently as Cousin Sophie. If she had already been engaged to Freddie Thorpe, it would have slightly tarnished the gilt on the gingerbread if one of the Enemy acquired an aide-de-camp a few weeks later; for to the twins we were also the Enemy, an uncouth tribe troubling the fringe of civilization, though they had not actually given us this label. Anthea was not conscious that Freddie's attractiveness for her was largely social, but it would be absurd to deny that girls, at any rate girls “in society”, or, to strain charity to its limits, their mothers, are indifferent to the position of the men they marry. She had been anxious to return early from Warrandyte as she was almost certain, from his manner at their last meeting, that he would propose at the dance where she was to see him on that evening, but he did not, and Josie's engagement was announced instead.

Anthea need not have been annoyed at this, as it was owing to the announcement that Freddie at last came up to scratch. He had hesitated, partly because he saw so little evidence that her father's income was as large as he had been told, and partly because of Anthea's conversation. Her manner was adequately brutal, and would pass amongst the fox-hunting young women in Yorkshire, to whom he was accustomed, but it was marred by flashes of wit which puzzled him, and by an awareness of the splendid tradition of Western culture from which, in spite of her declaration of independence in Miss Felpham's orchard, she could not free herself, and which he was sure his county friends would think ill-bred. In spite of these disabilities, she was more of a lady than the two other girls he had under review. She would be all right in the hunting field as long as she did not mention Montesquieu. He thought he could cure her of all that by starting her on breeding beagles. If that did not work he would simply tell her to shut up.

He still hesitated when John, on Sunday, beaming like the morning sun itself, announced that he was engaged to Josie. Freddie did not dislike John, but he despised him. He did not go with whores, and he had a delicacy of manner and varied interest which Freddie thought unbecoming in an officer and a gentleman. He was indignant that someone so insignificant and also his junior, should have “beat him to it”, and he then decided to “put his money on Anthea” though it was in fact her money that he decided to put on himself.

He went to Lord Francis and asked: “Is it really true that Edward Langton has ten thousand a year?”

Lord Francis, confirming the inexactitude of “has” for “earns”, said: “You can take it as gospel, my boy. I had it from the horse's mouth.”

Before Freddie went to a dance, almost a week later, he took a piece of writing-paper stamped with the crown of England, and wrote on it “£10,000”. He divided this by two, achieving the result of “£5,000” which coincided with the figure at which he had arrived by doing the sum in his head. When Cousin Edward died apparently Anthea would have £5,000 a year, not a bad income to get with a girl who was on the whole presentable. He wondered what allowance she would have until that happy time. The girl who married an A.D.C. last year was given £2,000 a year, and an extra £1,000 because her husband was a soldier, but her father was an exceptionally rich squatter. He was firmly convinced that Australians would pay almost anything to marry their daughters to English gentlemen like himself, and he thought that Cousin Edward would be sure to allow Anthea at least two thousand pounds a year. He folded up the piece of paper, put it in his pocket, and went off to the dance, where he proposed to Anthea and was accepted. They arranged that he should call on the following Wednesday evening to ask Cousin Edward's permission.

After Josie's engagement, Cousin Sophie frequently invited her to the house. Baba said that she only did this because Josie was now going to be “in society”. She always imagined that Cousin Sophie's motives were the same as her own would have been, if performing a similar action, which made their mutual misunderstanding complete. If Cousin Sophie was told that she invited Josie to improve her social position, she would have been as bewildered as if she heard that a fortune-hunter was after one of the twins. She invited her from genuine, if slightly patronising, kindness. She thought that as the Flugels were not rich, Josie could not have much knowledge of the kind of well-run English houses where she would soon live. She thought that in her own house she might see a reflection of this, so that when she arrived in England she would not be entirely at a loss. This may have been of use to Josie, although Diana had brought up her children to behave well in most circumstances.

On the Wednesday when Freddie was to come to interview Cousin Edward, it happened that Josie and I were invited to dine with the twins. When Cousin Sophie came into the drawing-room she said to Josie:

“I asked Captain Wyckham, but he couldn't come.”

“No,” said Josie. “He had to go to the theatre with Lady Eileen and Miss Rockingham.”

“I hope they've taken a loose-box,” said Anthea, who was in high spirits. Miss Rockingham, with an appreciation very different from Anthea's of herself, had told Cousin Sophie at the Radcliffes' party that she was “an English rose”. She had never looked more so than this evening, with her eyes bright and lively, but not hard. Perhaps she was more a Teutonic rose, as she also did not understand the effect of her actions. She had no ill-will towards Miss Rockingham. On the contrary she admired her, and when they met, spoke to her with charming deference, and she had no idea of the cruelty of her repeated jokes about her resemblance to a horse, though they never reached her ears. Josie puckered her forehead and gave a faint polite smile.

After dinner I wanted to do charades, but Anthea objected. There was a fidgety atmosphere in the drawing-room, as everyone excepting myself knew that Freddie might arrive at any moment, and the reason for his visit. Anthea had confided to her mother that she was engaged to Freddie, or would be when they had her parents' permission, and that he was coming on Wednesday to ask it. There was a curious kind of secrecy in the house. Cousin Edward was told by his wife, but did not speak of it to Anthea. He was not very pleased, chiefly at first because he did not want Anthea, the most lively member of his household, to go to live on the other side of the world, however grand a marriage she might make. He vaguely accepted the prevailing idea that aides-de-camp were grand, but he did not like soldiers, having been brought up to regard them as “notoriously stupid” and of Freddie at least this was true. On the other hand he wanted Anthea to be happy. He kept an open mind, but made a few discreet inquiries about Freddie in the Melbourne Club and elsewhere.

He heard about his parentage, but he did not blame him for that. He also heard that he obviously intended to marry for money, which puzzled him, as although Lord Francis's estimate of his income was true, he did not think of himself as rich, as he had not yet accumulated large capital assets. He thought therefore that Freddie must be so attracted by Anthea that he had abandoned his ignoble aim, which made Cousin Edward feel rather kindly towards him, but he also was a little worried and preoccupied during dinner, and as soon as he had drunk his coffee he left the drawing-room and went off to work on some case. He had hardly gone when a parlour-maid opened the door and said:

“Captain Thorpe wants to see the Master private, ma'am.”

“Show him into the study, Ellen,” said Cousin Sophie.

There was now an atmosphere of constraint in the room, and to ease it, she suggested that the twins should play a duet on the two pianos.

“Oh, yes!” I exclaimed eagerly. “Do play the love music from the
Valkyrie
.”

Cousin Sophie smiled ironically.

“I don't want to,” said Anthea, and added with that engaging schoolboy vulgarity with which she interlarded her erudition: “Don't count your chickens before they're hatched.”

Cousin Sophie ignored this and said with the patience which middle-aged people so often display when their children are mulish: “Very well, I shall play.” She showed her perfect good taste by choosing a piece by Schumann, neither joyful nor depressing, and quite unrelated either to Anthea's feelings or to the scene being enacted in Cousin Edward's study.

Freddie, feeling perfectly confident that he had come to confer a benefit, was shown into that large secluded room at the back of the house, lined from floor to ceiling with legal books in pale brown calf, the quartz from which Cousin Edward extracted the gold of his income.

He was seated at his writing table when Freddie came in. He stood up, shook hands and asked him to sit down. He was irritated by the confidence of Freddie's manner and let him speak first.

“I've come to ask your permission of my engagement to Anthea, sir,” he said with what he believed to be manly directness. Cousin Edward gave no sign of the pleasure which Freddie expected his statement to evoke. He was unsmiling and replied:

“I understood that was the reason for your call.” He thought a moment, and then continued: “I am, of course, only concerned for Anthea's happiness. I will be quite frank with you and say from my own point of view I would rather she married one of her own country-men. Then her marriage would not entirely separate her from her family. But I shan't allow that to influence my decision.”

Freddie did not realize that he had come to interview the cleverest K.C. in the country, whose success was largely due to his ability to see what witnesses were thinking, and who now saw from the slightly surprised and offended look on Freddie's face that he had thought that he was performing an act of condescension. He was half-amused, half-angry, and he determined to readjust Freddie's estimate of his own desirability, which to Cousin Edward was almost non-existent. He was himself not only a K.G. but the son of a High Court judge; he had married into the English aristocracy, in which also lay his own origins, and he believed himself to be highly intelligent. That this brainless son of a bankrupt suicide should expect him to be gratified at the prospect of an alliance between their families, struck him as preposterous impertinence.

“All the same,” he went on, “I must be sure that you have the equipment to make her happy. Perhaps you will give me some idea of your ability in this direction.”

“We get on well together, sir,” said Freddie.

“That is important, certainly, but it is not the only requirement in marriage. You won't mind if I ask you to give me some idea of your financial position and your prospects?”

Freddie's financial position was simple. He had his army pay with extra allowances as an aide-de-camp. He also was allowed fifty pounds a year, which she could ill-afford, by his mother, who lived in a village house in Yorkshire in a perpetual state of anxiety lest Freddie, to secure the luxuries which he believed were his natural right, should do something dishonourable, much more so than marrying a rich girl.

Freddie explained his position but did not mention his debts or his mother's allowance, regarding the latter as in the class of a boy's pocket-money. It made little difference to his expenditure though it deprived his mother of her annual visit to her relatives in the south.

“Then how do you expect to be able to keep a wife?” asked Cousin Edward, looking puzzled, but as if Freddie would doubtless produce some explanation.

Freddie, for once a little ashamed, said that he would inherit money on his mother's death. This was not as bad as it sounded, as he did not at all count on his mother's death for financial relief. It might be expected that Cousin Edward, with his talent for reading people's thoughts, would not have been able fully to exercise it on Freddie's face, which was round and smooth with a low forehead, rather coarse mouth, opaque eyes, and a complete absence of any fineness or subtlety, though with a pleasant look of youth and health. But Freddie's thoughts were simple, and his face was adequate to their expression. It was as easy for Cousin Edward to read them as for a classical scholar to read dog Latin.

Helped by the gossip he had heard, he very soon discovered, though Freddie did not state it explicitly, that he expected to be supported by his wife. He even suspected that he had in mind the three thousand pounds a year obtained in marriage by the last A.D.C., and he gathered that somehow, he could not think how, Freddie must have discovered the extent of his own income. After an urbane but slightly cruel cross-examination under which the moon of Freddie's face had reflected all his expectations, Cousin Edward opened his heavy fire.

“You may have thought,” he said, “that perhaps I would make a settlement on Anthea.” Again a gleam in Freddie's eyes revealed that this was exactly what he had thought. “Now that I have asked you about your position, perhaps I should explain my own. I am not a rich man, not in the sense that Mr Vane is rich.” Freddie started at this further revelation of his thoughts. “My income is almost entirely earned. In ordinary prudence I have to put aside much of it to give security to my wife and daughters. If I were to settle on Anthea anything like the amount Mr Vane settled on the Brayfords, it would be roughly a third of my income. If it were unearned income, that would be, to say the least, disproportionate. But it is not, so it would mean that for a third of my working year I would be using my energies to support you and your wife. I am sure that you will agree that it is hardly reasonable to expect me to do that?” He smiled.

Freddie, equally with Wolfie, hated logic, but although he was far less cultivated and intelligent than Wolfie, he could understand it, while to Wolfie it was simply some sharp unnatural weapon that Diana stuck into him out of malice, to reduce him to despair and bewilderment, and Diana's logic had a family resemblance to Cousin Edward's. Freddie saw perfectly that there was no reason why old Langton should sweat to keep him. He began to sweat himself, and Cousin Edward, seeing his acute discomfort, and aware that he had made his point, began to ease the situation.