by Ursula Bloom
‘Perhaps they won’t. I’m not lucky. Anyway, nothing’s likely to happen for another year, so I’m in the soup.’
She made a little deprecating gesture with her hands. ‘Can’t you understand, Wally?’
‘I understand you always meant to marry George Carew.’
‘Oh, my dear, I didn’t.’
‘And’ ‒ he raised his face defiantly, and she was struck how haggard he had become ‒ ‘and I’d like you to know ‒ you’ll say it is because I’m jealous, but it isn’t anything of the sort; it is because I love you, and want to protect you and help you ‒ George has been in this Isabel business too. He has been preparing her for confirmation; of course these people under the guise of religion get such a damned good chance. He’s been down there at all times pretending he is teaching her the service. He ‒’
‘Wally,’ she pulled herself up with a jerk, ‘I won’t listen to this. It isn’t true. It isn’t like George.’
‘Oh, isn’t it? George has been engaged three times already. I knew his aunt, and she told me. It was Janet Blake, and that little Nelly Rowe, and a cousin of his; three blooming times.’
‘And he may have made three blooming mistakes,’ she retorted.
‘Now he has proposed to you.’
‘Yes, and I’m going to accept him.’
‘I wonder if it will be the same engagement ring,’ he sneered. It was a caddish thing to say, and she turned on him indignantly.
‘Wally, you’re being beastly. I don’t believe a word of this. It is because you are jealous; of course it is because you are jealous, but it isn’t fair taking away George’s character.’
‘He hasn’t one to take away,’ Wally retaliated, and there was a hint of hysteria in his voice.
‘It’s horrible of you.’ She went to the door. ‘There isn’t anything more to say. You’ve said everything you possibly could. There isn’t any more.’
She opened the door. Across the narrow hall was a delightful picture of Johnny sprawling in a round upholstered chair, his feet on the mantelshelf, one hand supporting a crumpled copy of the Pink’ Un, the other a glass of poor Papa’s best port. He heard the dining-room door open and looked round.
‘Oh, hello!’ he called cheerily; ‘come in, Wally. This is ’72. Poor Pa’s best. Help yourself.’
With the one insistent desire to drown his sorrows, Wally joined Johnny. Mary went back to the dining-room, her heart hammering fast. She drew a sheet of paper from the stand, and an envelope, and she addressed the envelope in her round, girlish hand:‘Revd. George Carew, M.A., 6, Clifton Street,’ and she blotted it carefully. She took the sheet and wrote across it quite calmly, despite the thudding of her heart:
Dear George,
Please, it’s yes. ‒ Mary.
She rang for Harriet to take the note across to George’s lodgings.
VIII
She felt suddenly very nervous. Would he come round? Would he write? What would happen?
The low chatter of Johnny and Wally from the morning-room sounded like the distant droning of bees. Every now and then they laughed in big guffawing outbursts. That meant that they were telling stories, dreadful stories, of which Johnny had a fund. Then the droning would begin again. She sat there, with her heart beating loudly all the time, and the delicious thrill in her waistline which was almost a pain. Yet it was very exquisite, very pleasurable. She wanted it to last for ever. What would happen next? What would happen next? She did not know how long she waited; it seemed in one way an eternity, yet in another only a moment. Then Harriet returned. Harriet was wearing a very sensible waterproof and her big galoshes, because it was raining. She handed Mary a note.
‘There won’t be an answer,’ Mary said.
She did not want Harriet to stand there watching her while she read it. She did not feel that she could bear that. Harriet huffily marched out again, galoshes and all. Mary opened it and read.
Dear Little Girl,
How darling of you. May you never regret it. I will come round to ‘ask Mamma’ after supper. God bless you, sweetest little wife-to-be.
Your own,
George.
She had not thought of it like that. Little wife-to-be. How marvellous it all was! But Mamma … what would Mamma say? And here was Harriet all ready to lay the supper, and the fatal hour approaching, and Heaven knew what nemesis with it.
She went upstairs and tidied her hair, and tried to make herself look a little festive, without looking so festive that she attracted undue attention. When she came down again she was trembling a little and her eyes were starry. Wally had gone and Mr. Jones had returned. Mamma coming downstairs had found out about Johnny getting at poor Papa’s best port, therefore she was frenzied with fury.
‘I only keep that for special occasions, and you know it, you wicked, ungrateful boy,’ Mamma stormed. ‘You only wait until I am worn out with exhaustion over you and this wretched barmaid, and then down the cellar you sneak ‒’
‘Not at all,’ Johnny interrupted; ‘if you want the truth I fell down. Trod on a stair what wasn’t there. Your cellar is most infernally dark.’
‘You’d no business down the cellar at all,’ said Mamma. ‘And how dare you touch that port? You know perfectly well that it is not put there for you to drink. What do you suppose your poor Papa would have said?’
‘Not half as much as you,’ replied Johnny, with more truth than tact.
Mamma, who in her heart was afraid of Johnny, turned to Mr. Jones. ‘Why do you stand by and let that boy be rude to me?’ she demanded; ‘the whole lot of you are a pack of nincompoops and daren’t say “boo” to a goose. I never met such people. Why don’t you say something?’
‘What am I to say? I’m so surprised.’
‘You ought to defend me. It is disgraceful that I have no one to stand up for me, disgraceful. Now here’s Mary. What are you looking like that for, I should like to know?’
‘I?’ demanded Mary in bewilderment.
‘One would have thought she could have minded the house while her poor Mamma lay down,’ observed Mr. Jones kindly; ‘one would have thought ‒’
‘Wally has been here,’ said Mary, and she found her heart fluttering, and her hands trembling, while her colour came and went.
‘And he’s gone off to cut his throat,’ Johnny put in, reaching out for more of poor Papa’s port.
‘You put that decanter down,’ insisted Mamma, seeing red; ‘fine goings-on in my absence. How dare you touch that port, sir? Put it down, do you hear me?’
Johnny did not pay the slightest attention. He poured it out grandly with never a flicker. ‘Mary,’ he observed, ‘is marrying George Carew.’
She had wanted to tell them herself; often in bed at night she had planned it all out to herself. The splendid moment when she began: ‘George …’ (or of course it might have been Wally) ‘has something to say to you, Mamma;’ or perhaps: ‘I am about to be married, Mamma.’ It would be such a triumph! Now here was Johnny depriving her of her one little romantic thrill. He raised his glass: ‘Here’s health,’ said Johnny. She felt her eyes sting with tears, it was so horrid of him.
Mamma gave a scream. ‘What? What’s all this?’
‘It’s true,’ said Mary simply; ‘he’s coming to see you after supper.’
Mamma gave one piercing shriek, and subsided into the chair, vowing that she was killed and that her death rested upon Mary’s head. After a moment she spoke more distinctly. ‘I won’t allow it. Mary is not twenty-one yet. She won’t be twenty-one until Christmas. I shall refuse to sanction the marriage. Why, Mary is only a child; a chit like that couldn’t get married. It’s abominable. That dreadful Mrs. Carew, she’d hardly know me.’
‘I think it is a damned good thing,’ said Johnny, though whether he referred to the marriage or the fact of Mrs. Carew refusing to know Mamma, they could not tell.
‘It’s disgraceful, and scandalous.’
‘Why?’
‘He isn’t in our posit
ion.’
‘Oh Lord!’ Johnny sighed. ‘First you howl over Isabel because she isn’t in your position, now you howl over George because he isn’t in your position. What the devil do you want?’
‘You speak to me properly, sir,’ retorted Mamma, leaping to her feet in a temper; ‘you’re a wicked boy, and you’ll live to be sorry. How dare you use those common expressions before me? You’ve picked them up at your low resorts with these low women, and I won’t have it here. You shan’t speak to me like that.’
‘I’ll speak to you exactly as I choose,’ remarked Johnny with indifference; ‘pass the port round, please.’
Mamma was livid with anger. Mary had never seen her so beside herself. She sprang forward upon Johnny, but she did not see that he had put out a foot. It was Mary who saved Mamma from falling. She stood there with an arm round Mamma, who was mouthing inarticulate words at her son. Mamma beseeching Mr. Jones to see justice done, praying to Heaven to avenge her, invoking the dear Queen, who would be so shocked. Johnny did not turn a hair. It was amazing how Johnny managed to remain enragingly calm when Mamma was so wrought up. When she paused for breath he merely remarked: ‘You’d better have supper. If George is coming you don’t want him and the meal to collide. You know what a lot he eats.’
‘I’ll have no supper,’ Mamma declared.
‘Well, if you won’t, I will,’ said Johnny, and he rose to take his place at the table. ‘Is this all you’ve got? It’s a poor enough spread.’
If Johnny was trying to aggravate Mamma, he was entirely successful in his efforts. She turned on him.
‘Very well,’ said she, ‘go elsewhere for it.’
‘I will. I’ll go to the Welcome and see Isabel.’ And out he marched.
And then Mamma wept. She said that it was all that wretched girl’s fault, and she had turned Johnny against his mother. She said that she was very hardly tried: here was Johnny behaving as no gentleman behaved, and Mary wanting to get married. And she’d see George. Oh yes, she’d see George! She’d tell him exactly what she thought of him, and a little bit more. When Mary heard the door-bell ring she actually quailed for George.
Mamma had had the fire lit in the drawing-room, because she fancied that setting for the complete defeat of George. She had gone upstairs and put on a better frock with the new full sleeves and a jet belt. Mamma was out to do justice to the whole affair. ‘Marriage, indeed!’ said Mamma. ‘We’ll see about that,’ and down she swept in her awful majesty.
In the dining-room Mary sat nervously with Mr. Jones, listening for the sound of blows. They heard voices every little while. Once or twice they heard short, sharp screams indicating that Mamma was nearing hysterics. Then Mr. Jones would look across plaintively at Mary from over his big steel-rimmed spectacles.
‘Your Mamma ‒’
‘I know.’
‘She’ll be dreadfully unnerved after this.’
‘So shall I,’ thought Mary.
‘Your poor Papa,’ Mr. Jones went on, staring thoughtfully into the fire. ‘Perhaps the better part.’
‘Certainly the easier part,’ said Mary to herself. She wondered if poor Papa had suffered as Mr. Jones suffered, for she had been too young to notice much. Johnny had once told her that poor Papa had had no nonsense with Mamma, that he had treated her as a naughty child, had once shaken her severely, and put her properly in her place. Johnny had thought it a very good joke, and had suggested that Mr. Jones should be instructed to spank Mamma in the good old-fashioned manner the next time she became obstreperous. He thought that it would be an intensely humorous spectacle, Mamma being soundly spanked by Mr. Jones. Whilst they were anxiously awaiting the defeat of George, Johnny returned home. He came in boldly, and most evidently aided by that attribute known in certain circles as ‘Dutch courage.’
‘What ‒ is she still giving George a dressing-down?’ he demanded. ‘Time she gave it up. I’ll go in.’
‘You can’t, Johnny.’ Mary clutched at him, but he eluded her grasp.
‘Can’t, be jiggered. Nonsense!’ Across the hall he marched and in he burst without ceremony. An amazing sight met his eyes. George Carew was standing against the mantelpiece, and Mamma, sitting in an easy-chair, was weeping profusely. George had conquered Mamma. He had actually talked her down. It was astounding.
‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself,’ George was saying when Johnny walked in.
Mamma dried her eyes and tried to pretend that it was the loss of Mary. ‘So affecting, losing a daughter,’ she sobbed.
‘Good Lord,’ gasped Johnny, ‘what’s all this? A funeral or a wedding?’ And being a man of swift action he rang for the port. ‘Healths must be drunk,’ said he, ‘healths and happiness … Come on in, Mary.’
Mary came in. What had happened? She glanced from Mamma to George, and from George to Mamma. It was a moving spectacle. She felt flurried, as though she were standing on the edge of a height, a strange sense of something about to happen, and a vague uncertainty clawing within her. Afterwards, at the instigation of Johnny, who was not a bad sort after all, she and George were left alone.
‘How ‒ how did you do it?’ she demanded.
‘My dear, that woman only needs standing up to, and I stood up. We are to be married as soon as we wish. It’s rather wonderful, isn’t it?’
She felt a shy longing to seek refuge in his arms; she felt a desperate desire to cry and to say weakly: ‘Be good to me, George, because I have been so very unhappy.’ She wanted to cling to him and let him support her, and as she leant against him her eyes became misty.
‘Poor ‒ poor little girl,’ said George huskily, and she felt the soft touch of his moustache against her cheek. ‘Never mind, it is over now. Mamma is propitiated, and you’ve only got to meet my mother.’
‘She is frightening enough.’
‘Oh no, not a bit of it. I won’t let her be frightening. She can’t stand Mamma, and she is about right. You mustn’t look for trouble, dear little sweetheart … Why, look here …’ He drew from his inner pocket a note-book, and, pressed close between its thin white paper, mottled by his spidery writing, was a deep green ivy-leaf. ‘I gathered it the other night from near your window; it is the symbol of truth, of steadfastness, of eternity …’
‘Of us,’ she whispered ecstatically.
‘Of us. In a few weeks nothing will divide us, not all the Mammas in the world. It is the great romance, and oh, my dear, I am sure I shall make you radiantly happy.’
‘I shall be happy, I’m sure I shall be happy. I can feel it inside me.’
And in bed that night she dreamt blissful dreams of the future.
IX
There was a lot to arrange. Mamma had hoped that the Carews would invite Mary to stay with them, but they did nothing of the sort. Mrs. Carew wrote a nice but rather carefully worded letter, and it was quite plain to Mary that she did not intend to encourage Mamma. George had inferred as much. One day he took his fiancée up to London, and she met his mother at a hotel for tea. It was a strained tea, and neither of them seemed to know the other the better for the meeting. Afterwards Mary discovered that Mrs. Carew had written to George and had besought him to break off the engagement, as she was sure that the marriage would not be a success.
‘As if I should break it off,’ said George, who, man-like, had not been able to keep quiet about this; ‘no, I’ll break with her. It’s far better.’
‘You mustn’t let me come between you and your mother, dear,’ Mary whispered.
‘Oh, mothers aren’t much good to you. It is little sweethearts who matter … darling little sweethearts …’ And then of course George went off babbling delicious loveliness, all of which she ached to hear, and neither of them troubled much more about Mrs. Carew.
Wally expressed the deepest grief, and alluded to the whole affair as ‘that lamentable mistake’. Also, his cup was indeed very bitter, for the Congo Imperials had dropped again. The unstable condition of these shares, however, satisfied him in the resp
ect that they formed a very definite barrier between himself and Mary. Marriage would be out of the question. He was in a very wretched state of mind.
Mary had already started on her trousseau, in which Mamma intended to take no interest, and was very sparing in advice. Mamma was secretly and savagely jealous over the whole affair; she would have liked to have reached the position which Mary had so easily attained, and she had herself failed miserably, although she had done everything in her power and had married Mr. Jones. It was enraging in the extreme.
While the arrangements for the wedding were hastening forward a rather alarming problem presented itself: Mr. Nason, who had, it must be admitted, already stipulated his distaste for a married curate, and on that account had rid himself of Mr. Philpott, announced that he was afraid that he could not keep George on after he had married. This announcement came as a bombshell.
‘Of course,’ said Johnny pleasantly, ‘he’s heard about George. I knew he would. These curates are so careless.’
‘There was nothing in that! I’ve asked George,’ Mary retorted.
‘You don’t suppose George would tell you? My hat, we are innocent, aren’t we? You may be sure that is what old Nason’s got up his sleeve. I might have guessed the tale would fly round.’
Indignantly, Mary turned on Johnny. ‘I won’t listen to such wicked stories. Why should I? Just because you are disgusting and run after barmaids, you suppose everybody else must do the same. It’s horrible of you.’
‘I know humanity. She’s a damned good-looking girl.’
Mary resented it bitterly. George said he was not sure that it would not be a good plan to get away from the place, and rid themselves of Mamma and Johnny. He hinted that there was going to be trouble with Johnny, and they would be far better out of it. He had managed to get hold of a new curacy at a naval port on the East Coast, where there was a small but cheap house to live in, and he thought that it would be a good spot. Mary thought so too. She would be going into a new world with George, and she wanted to start absolutely fresh. She was standing on the threshold of a new dynasty; anywhere would be enchanting, any place desirable, for love would cast a spell upon them.
