Highland Fling (20 page)

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.

blared forth on the front page of the
Daily Runner
in type only a shade smaller and less black than that used for:

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.

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 Lady Craigdalloch would pull down the Albert Memorial if she had the chance.’

Jane received, among others, the following letters of congratulations:

Poor Jane found that it took her the best part of that day to answer these – and some thirty-five other letters, and Albert felt himself rather neglected. When the next morning she received not thirty-five but sixty-five, he announced that he would go to Paris until this influx of congratulations was over.

‘But my dear,’ said Lady Dacre, ‘when the letters come to an end the presents will begin, and that is much worse, because it is such an effort pretending to be grateful for absolute horrors.

‘Hubert and I were discussing your plans this morning, and we think that if you want to be married in November we had better go back quite soon to Wilton Crescent. There is Jane’s trousseau to be ordered, for one thing.’

‘If you do that I can stay with Mr Buggins, but meanwhile I really think I had better go over to Paris for a bit. I ought to be getting rid of my present studio, and have several things that must be seen to sometime soon. I won’t bother to look for a new flat yet. We can stay in an hotel after our honeymoon, until we find a nice one, but I must wind up my affairs, and this seems to be a good moment. Jane is far too much occupied to need me about the place now.’

Albert went to Paris meaning to stay there for a fortnight, but in a week’s time he was standing outside the Dacres’ front door in Wilton Crescent. Frankly, he had not enjoyed himself and had spent his time counting the hours to when he should see Jane again. This worried him a great deal. Always before he had been perfectly happy in Paris and he had expected to be so still – had thought that he would hardly miss her at all and that he might even find it quite an effort to come back to her, instead of which he found himself restless and miserable and unable to stay away. He began to realize that nothing would ever again be as it had been for him, and the realization annoyed him.

He found Jane alone in the downstairs drawing-room; she was not expecting him and flew into his arms.

‘Darling sweetest,’ she said after a few minutes, ‘don’t go away again. It was dreadful, I had to be thinking about you the whole time.’

‘I got so bored with thinking about you that I had to come back.’

‘Angel, did you really? I am pleased. Come and see the presents, they’re simply unbelievable!’ And she dragged him upstairs to a large empty room which had been set aside for the wedding presents.

‘There are masses for you, too. I put them all over there. Shall we unpack them now?’

‘Let’s look at yours first. My dear, what a lot, though! You must know a quantity of people. But how absolutely horrible
they are! What on earth shall we do with all these atrocious things? And where do people go to buy wedding presents? Is there a special shop for them, because these things are all exactly alike? Have you noticed that? Oh, look at the Lalique, and all that dreadful glass with bubbles in it! I shall burst into tears in a moment.’

‘Oh, well,’ said Jane, ‘don’t take it to heart too much. It only needs a good kick.’

‘I know what we’ll do,’ said Albert, ‘we’ll have a wedding-present shoot, and get General Murgatroyd to arrange it for us. You see, the drivers can throw the things over our heads and we’ll shoot at them. Then, when it’s all over, we’ll be photographed with the bag. Haven’t you any nice presents, darling?’

‘Not one,’ said Jane, sadly. ‘Now let’s open yours.’

They set to work, and soon the floor was covered with brown paper, shavings and pieces of string. Whereas Jane’s presents were nearly all made of glass, Albert’s seemed to consist mainly of leatherwork. Leather blotters, wastepaper baskets and notecases were unpacked in quick succession, and lastly, a cigarette-box made out of an old book. This present, which was sent by someone he had known at Oxford, perfectly enraged Albert: it had originally contained the works of Mrs Hemans.

‘My favourite poetess. Why couldn’t he send me the book unmutilated? He must remember that I never smoke, in any case. Still, sweet of him to think of me.’

The maid came in with some more parcels for Jane, containing a Lalique clock from Lady Brenda. (‘How kind! considering we’ve only met her once. It will do for the shoot, too.’) A lampshade made out of somebody’s last will and testament, and a hideous little glass tree, growing in a china pot, from Lady Prague.

‘I’m beginning to understand about wedding presents,’ said Albert. ‘It seems to me that they can be divided into three
categories: the would-be useful, the so-called ornamental, and those that have been converted from their original purpose into something quite different, but which is seldom either useful or ornamental.’

‘I think,’ said Jane bitterly, ‘that they can be divided into two categories: those that have been bought in a shop, which are beastly, and those that have been snatched off the mantelpiece and given to the butler to pack up, which are beastlier. Look here, Albert darling, I’m getting really sick of this wedding. I do nothing all day but thank for these revolting presents, which I would pay anybody to take away, and try on clothes I don’t want. Couldn’t we chuck the whole thing and be married quietly somewhere? If I have to face another two months like this I shall be ill. Really, I mean it. Please, Albert.’

‘Well, darling, personally I think it would be heaven, but I must be in London for my exhibition, you know.’

‘When does that open?’

‘In three weeks tomorrow.’

‘That gives us heaps of time to have a honeymoon and everything. Please, let’s do that. Go and see about a special licence, now, this minute.’

‘But, darling, listen to me.…’

‘Oh, well, if you are going to be tiresome.…’

‘Very well, I’ll see what can be done, but first we must ask your parents. No, I absolutely insist on that, darling.’

Sir Hubert and Lady Dacre, as might have been expected, showed no enthusiasm at all when told of Jane’s little plan.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Lady Dacre scornfully, ‘of course you can’t do any such thing. People would say at once that Jane is going to have a baby. The presents will get better soon, I dare say: probably you won’t have a great many more, and anyhow, the nicest ones generally come at the end.’

‘Why not advance the date a little,’ suggested Sir Hubert, ‘to, say, the middle of October, about a month from now? That
would be much more sensible than rushing off in such a hurry, and after all, a month does go fairly quickly.’

Jane and Albert felt the justice of these remarks and decided that they would definitely settle on the sixteenth of October, by which time Albert’s exhibition would be well begun.

‘If only,’ said Jane, ‘when announcing a marriage, one could put, “No presents, by request,” how much more bearable the life of engaged couples would become. Look what I’ve got to thank for now. A pair of bellows made from the timbers of the
Victory
and sent by Admiral Wenceslaus. Oh, dear!’