“I wish you’d let me tell our people that you — that we — we’re engaged,” he said hoarsely.
His words struck on Alex’ ear almost meaninglessly.
Irrationally in love as she was, with Love, she knew only that he was asking something of her — that she had at last an outlet for that which no one had ever yet desired.
Unable to speak, and unconscious of bathos, she vehemently nodded her head.
Noel immediately took both her hands and shook them wildly up and down.
“Thank Heaven, it’s over,” he cried boyishly. “You can’t imagine how I’ve been funking asking you — I thought you’d say yes, but one feels such an awful fool — and I’ve never done it before. I say, Alex — I can call you Alex now, can’t I — you’re like me, aren’t you? You don’t want sentimentality. If there’s one thing I bar,” said the newly-accepted lover, “it’s sentimentality.”
XI
Engagement of Marriage
“I am engaged to be married,” Alex repeated to herself, in a vain endeavour to realize the height to which she must have now attained. But that realization, by which she meant tangible certainty, for which she craved, continually eluded her.
The preliminary formalities, indeed, duly took place, from her own avowal before a graciously-maternal Lady Isabel, to Noel’s formal interview with Sir Francis in the traditional setting of the library.
After that, however, a freakish fate seemed to take control of all the circumstances connected with Alex’ engagement.
Noel Cardew’s father became ill, and in the uncertainty consequent upon a state of health which his doctor declared might be almost indefinitely prolonged, there could be no question of immediately announcing the engagement.
“Just as well, perhaps. We’re all delighted about it, but they’re both young enough to wait a little while,” Lady Isabel smilingly made the best of it. “Next year will be quite time enough to settle anything.”
Her serenity was the obvious outcome of an extreme contentment.
Alex found herself better able to regard herself in the light of one betrothed in her mother’s company than in that of Noel. He treated her almost exactly as he had always done, with cheerful good-fellowship, and only at the very outset of the engagement with any tinge of shyness in his bearing.
“Of course, I ought to have got a ring,” he said very seriously, “but I don’t believe in taking any chances, and so, just in case there was any hitch, I waited. Besides, I don’t know what you like best — you’ll have to choose.”
Alex smiled at the words. There was a glamour about such a choice, even beyond that with which her own sense of the romantic perforce enveloped it.
She wondered whether she would be allowed to go with Noel to a jeweller’s, or whether he would, after all, choose his token alone, and bring it to her, and place it on her finger with one of those low, ardently-spoken sentences which she could hear so clearly in her own mind, and which seemed so strangely and utterly impossible in Noel’s real presence.
But the arrival of Noel’s ring, after all, took her by surprise.
He had been lunching with them in Clevedon Square, when the jeweller’s assistant was announced, just as Lady Isabel was rising from the luncheon-table.
She turned enquiringly.
“Noel?”
“I told him to come here. I thought you wouldn’t mind. You see, I want Alex to choose her ring.”
“Oh, my dear boy! how very exciting! But may we see too?”
Mrs. Cardew was also present.
“Oh, rather,” said Noel heartily. “We shall want your advice.”
They all trooped hastily into the library, where the man was waiting, with the very large assortment of gleaming rings ordered for inspection by Noel.
“What beauties!” said Lady Isabel. “But, really, I don’t know if I ought to let him.”
She glanced at Mrs. Cardew, who said in a very audible voice:
“Of course. He’s so happy. It’s quite delightful to watch them both.”
She was looking hard and appraisingly at the rings as she spoke.
Alex looked at them too, quite unseeing of their glittering magnificence, but acutely conscious that every one was waiting for her first word.
“Oh, how lovely!” she exclaimed faintly.
She chid herself violently for the sick disappointment that invaded her, not, indeed, at the matter, but at the manner of the gift.
And yet she realized dimly, that it was impossible that it should have happened in any other way — that any other way, indeed, would have been as utterly uncharacteristic of Noel Cardew as this was typical.
“Which do you like?” he asked her. “I chose all the most original ones I could see. I always like unconventional designs better than conventional ones, I’m afraid. Where’s that long one you showed me this morning?”
“The diamond marquise, sir?” The assistant deferentially produced it, glancing the while at Alex.
“That’s it,” said Noel eagerly. “Try it on, Alex, won’t you?”
He used her name quite freely and without any shyness.
Alex felt more of genuine excitement, and less of wistful bewilderment, than at any moment since Noel had first asked her to marry him, as she shyly held out her left hand and the jeweller slipped the heavy, beautiful ring onto her third finger.
She had long, slim hands, the fingers rather too thin and the knuckles, though small, too prominent for beauty. But, thanks to the tyranny of old Nurse, and to Lady Isabel’s insistence upon the use of nightly glycerine-and-honey, they were exquisitely soft and white.
The diamonds gleamed and flashed at her as she moved the ring up and down her finger.
“We can easily make it smaller, to fit your finger,” said the jeweller’s assistant.
“It really is beautiful. Look, Francis,” said Lady Isabel.
Alex’ father put up his glasses, and after inspection he also exclaimed:
“Beautiful.”
“You’ve such little fingers, dear, it’ll have to be made smaller,” said Mrs. Cardew graciously.
“Is it to be that one, then?” Lady Isabel asked.
Alex saw that her mother’s pretty, youthful-looking flush of pleasurable excitement had mounted to her face. She herself, conscious of an inexplicable oppression, felt tongue-tied, and unable to do more than repeat foolishly and lifelessly:
“Oh, it’s lovely, it’s perfectly lovely. It’s too beautiful.”
Noel, however, looked gratified at the words of admiration.
“That’s the one I like,” he said with emphasis. “I knew when I saw them this morning that I liked that one much the best. We’ll settle on that one, then, shall we?”
“You silly boy,” laughed his mother, “that’s for Alex to decide. Perhaps she likes something else better. Try the emerald, Alex?”
“Oh, this is lovely,” repeated Alex again, shrinking back a little. Furious with herself, she was yet only desirous that the scene should not be prolonged any longer.
“Come and look at it in the light?” The urgent pressure of Lady Isabel’s hand on her arm drew her into the embrasure of the window.
“Alex,” said her mother low and swiftly, all the time holding up her hand against the light as though studying the ring. “Alex, you must be more gracious. What is the matter with you?”
“Nothing,” said Alex childishly, feeling inclined to burst into tears.
“Then for Heaven’s sake do try and smile and show a little enthusiasm,” said her mother with unwonted sharpness.
Alex, scarlet, and most visibly discomposed, returned to the group round the library table.
Forcing herself to make some attempt at obeying her mother’s behest, she picked up the nearest jewel, two pearls in a prettily-twisted setting, and began to examine it.
“I like that design, too. It’s original,” said Mrs. Cardew.
“Oh, but pearls are unlucky — she couldn’t have pearls,” protested
Lady Isabel.
“They mean tears, don’t they?” Alex contributed to the discussion, for the sake of making her mother see that she was willing to do her best.
“Are you superstitious?” Noel asked rather reproachfully. “I can’t say I believe in all that sort of thing myself, you know. In fact I make rather a principle of doing things on a 13th, or walking under ladders, and all the rest of it, just to prove there’s nothing in it.”
Sir Francis fixed the young man benevolently through his monocle.
“I presume, however, that in this instance you prefer not to tempt the gods,” he remarked affably, and Noel, always obviously in awe of his betrothed’s father, hastily agreed with him.
“Then it’s diamonds, is it? — unless Alex prefers the emerald.”
“I like the diamond one best,” Noel reiterated. “I really pitched on that one the minute I saw it. I like originality.”
“Well, it couldn’t be lovelier,” said Lady Isabel contentedly.
The jeweller was shown out, leaving the diamond marquise ring, in its little white-velvet case, on the table in front of Alex.
Sir Francis opened the door for his wife and Mrs. Cardew.
“Oh,” said Noel urgently. “You must stay and see her put it on.”
Both ladies laughed at the boyish exclamation, and Alex flushed scarlet once more.
Noel opened the case and looked proudly at his gift.
“You must put it on for her,” said his mother, “when it’s been made smaller.”
The hint was unmistakable.
Noel held out the ring.
“Let’s see it on now at once, Alex. It can go back to the shop later.”
Alex, in a sort of utter desperation, thrust out her hand, and Noel, politely and carefully avoiding touching it with his own, slipped the heavy hoop over her finger.
“Thank you,” she stammered.
There was another laugh.
“Poor dears! Let’s leave them in peace,” cried Mrs. Cardew mockingly, and rustled to the door again.
“Did you ever see anything so young as they both are?” she murmured sweetly to Lady Isabel, audibly enough for Alex to guess at the words, if she did not actually hear them.
She was thankful that they should no longer be watching her, and turned with something like relief to Noel’s gratified, uncritical looks.
It became suddenly much easier to speak unconstrainedly.
Perhaps she was subconsciously aware that of all of them, it was Noel himself who would expect the least of her, because his demands upon her were so infinitesimal.
“It’s a beautiful ring; thank you very, very much. I—” She stopped and gulped, then said bravely, “I love it.”
She emphasized the word almost without knowing it, as though to force from him some response.
Although she had never actually realized it, it was a word which, in point of fact, had never yet passed between them. Noel’s fair face coloured at last, as his light eyes met her unconsciously tragical gaze.
“Alex a son air bête aujourd’hui.”
With horrid inappropriateness, the hated gibe of her schooldays flashed into Alex’ thoughts, stiffening her face into the old lines of morbid, self-conscious misery.
Part of her mind, in unwilling detachment, contemplated ruefully the oddly inadequate spectacle which they must present, staring shamefacedly at one another across the glittering token of their troth.
Frenziedly desirous of breaking the silence, heavy with awkwardness, that hung between them, she began to speak hastily and almost at random.
“Thank you so very much — I’ve never had such a lovely present — it’s lovely; thank you so much.”
“I thought you’d like it,” muttered Noel, more overcome with confusion, if possible, than was Alex.
“Oh, yes, yes. It’s lovely.”
“I thought you’d like something rather original, you know, not a conventional one.”
“Oh, yes!”
“You’re sure you wouldn’t rather have one of the others — that emerald one that mother liked?”
“Oh, no.”
“I dare say they’d let me change it, the man knows us very well.”
“Oh, no, no.”
“Well, I, I — I’m awfully glad you like it.”
“Yes, I do like it. I — I think it’s lovely.”
“I — I thought you’d like it.”
Alex began to feel as though she was in a nightmare, but she was mysteriously unable to put an end to their sorry dialogue.
“It’s perfectly lovely, I think. I don’t know how to thank you.”
Noel swallowed two or three times, visibly and audibly, and then took a couple of determined steps towards her.
“I think you — you’d better let me kiss you,” he said hoarsely. “You haven’t yet, you know.”
Something deep down within Alex was surging up in angry bewilderment, and she was sufficiently aware of a sense of protest to rebut it indignantly and with lightning-swift determination.
It was the humility of love that had prompted her lover to crave that permission which should never have been asked.
So she told herself in the flash of a moment, while she waited for Noel’s kiss to lift her once and for all into some far realm of romance where trivial details of manifestation should no longer obscure the true values of life.
Unconsciously, she had shut her eyes, but at an unaccountable pause in the proceedings, she opened them again.
Noel was carefully removing his pince-nez.
“I say,” he stammered, “you’re — you’re sure you don’t mind?”
If Alex had followed the impulse of her own feelings, she must have cried out at this juncture:
“Not if you’re quick and get it over!”
But instead, she heard herself murmuring feebly:
“Oh, no, not at all.”
She hastily raised her face, turning it sideways to Noel, and felt his lips gingerly touching the middle of her cheek. Then she opened her eyes again, and, scrupulously avoiding Noel’s embarrassed gaze, saw him diligently polishing his pince-nez before replacing them.
It was the apotheosis of their anti-climax.
Alex possessed neither the light-heartedness which is — mistakenly — generally ascribed to youth, nor the philosophy, to face facts with any determination.
She continued to cram her unwilling mind with illusions which her innermost self perfectly recognized as such.
It was, on the whole, easier to place her own interpretation upon Noel’s every act of commission or omission when the shyness subsequent to their first ill-conducted embrace had left him, which it speedily did. Easier still, when intercourse between them was renewed upon much the same terms of impersonal enthusiasm in discussion as in Scotland, and easiest of all when Alex herself, in retrospect, wrenched a sentimental significance out of words or looks that had been meaningless at the time of their occurrence.
When Noel went to Devonshire, whither his father by slow, invalid degrees had at last been allowed to move, he said to Alex in farewell:
“I shall expect to hear from you very often, mind. I always like getting letters, though I’m afraid I’m not much good at writing them. You know what I mean: I can write simply pages if I’m in the mood — just as though I were talking to some one — and other days I can’t put pen to paper.”
“I don’t think I write very good letters myself,” said Alex wistfully, in the hope of eliciting reassurance.
“Oh, never mind,” said Noel consolingly. “Just write when you feel like it.”
Alex, who had composed a score of imaginary love-letters, both on his behalf and her own, tried to compensate herself the following evening for the vague misery that was encompassing her spirit, by writing.
She was alone in her own room, the fire had fallen into red embers, and her surroundings were sufficiently appropriate to render attainable the state of mind which she desired to achieve.
As
she involuntarily rehearsed to herself the elements of her own situation, she lulled herself into a species of happiness.
His ring on her finger, his letter on its way to her — she was going to write to the man who had asked her to become his wife.
There was really some one at last, Alex told herself, to whom she had become the centre of the universe, to whom her letters would matter, to whom everything that she might think or feel would be of importance.
She remembered Maurice Goldstein, his knowledge of Queenie’s every movement, his triumphant rapture at being allowed to take her out to luncheon or tea. Even now, Alex had seen him follow his wife with his ardent, glowing gaze, as she moved, serene and graceful, round a crowded room on the arm of some other man — and the look had made her heart throb sympathetically, and perhaps not altogether unenviously.
Almost fiercely she told herself that she had Noel’s love. She was to him what Queenie was to young Goldstein.
To every rebellious doubt that rose within her, she opposed the soundless, vehement assertions, that the indelible proof of Noel’s love lay in the fact that he had asked her to marry him.
Gradually she persuaded herself that only her own self-consciousness, of which she was never more aware than when with Noel, was responsible for that strange lack, which she dared not attempt to define, lest in so doing she should shatter the feeble structure built out of sentimentality and resolute self-blinding.
Partly because she instinctively craved a relief to her own feelings, and partly because she had really almost made herself believe in the truth of her own imaginings, Alex wrote her first love-letter, the shy, yet passionately-worded self-expression of a young and intensely romantic girl, in love with the thought of Love, too ignorant for reserve, and yet too conscious of the novelty of her own experience for absolute spontaneity.
Alex did not sleep after she had written her letter, but she lay in bed in the warm, soft glow of the firelight, and saw the square, white envelope within which she had sealed her letter, leaning against the silver inkstand on her writing-table.
When the maid came to her in the morning, she brought a letter addressed in Noel’s unformed hand.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 103
