Love in a Cold Climate (21 page)

“I suppose we must all have heard his name when he married Patricia,” Aunt Sadie said, looking at Davey. “But I can’t remember it, can you? Such a thousand, thousand years ago. Poor Patricia, what can she be thinking now?”

“Was she married in the chapel at Hampton, too?” I said.

“No, in London, and I’m trying to remember where. Lord Montdore and Sonia were married in the Abbey, of course. I well remember that because Emily was a bridesmaid and I was so furiously jealous, and my Nanny took me, but outside, because Mamma thought we would see more like that than if we were stuck away behind a tomb. It was like a royal wedding, almost. Of course I was out by the time Patricia married. St. Margaret’s, Westminster, I think—yes, I’m nearly sure it was. I know we all thought she was awfully old for a white wedding, thirty, or something terrible.”

“But she was beautiful,” said Davey.

“Very much like Polly, of course, but she never had that something extra, whatever it is, that makes Polly such a radiant beauty. I only wish I knew why these lovely women have both thrown themselves away on that old Lecturer—so unnatural.”

“Poor Boy,” said Davey, with a deeply sympathetic sigh.

Davey, who had been in Kent with Aunt Emily since finishing his cure, had come back to Alconleigh in order to be best man. He had accepted, so he said, for poor Patricia’s sake, but really I think because he longed to go to the wedding. He also very much enjoyed the excuse it gave him to bustle about between Silkin and Hampton and see for himself all that was going on in those two stricken homes.

Polly had gone back to Hampton. She had taken no steps whatever towards getting a trousseau and, as the engagement and wedding were to be announced simultaneously in the
Times
, “took place very quietly, owing to deep mourning, at Hampton Park” (all these little details arranged by Davey), she had no letters to write, no presents to unpack and none of the business that usually precedes a wedding. Lord Montdore had insisted that she should have an interview with his lawyer, who came all the way from London to explain to her formally that everything hitherto set aside in her father’s will, for her and her children, that is to say, Montdore House, Craigside Castle and their contents, the property in Northumberland, with its coal mines, the valuable and extensive house property in London, one or two docks and about two million pounds sterling would now all go to her father’s only male heir, Cedric Hampton. In the ordinary course of events he would merely have inherited Hampton itself and Lord Montdore’s titles, but as the result of this new will, Cedric Hampton was destined to be one of the five or six richest men in England.

“And how is Lord Montdore taking it?” Aunt Sadie asked Davey when he brought back this news from Hampton, via a visit to Boy at Silkin.

“Quite impossible to say. Sonia is wretched, Polly is nervous, but Montdore is just as usual, you couldn’t guess that anything out of the ordinary was happening to him.”

“I always knew he was an old stick. Had you realized he was so rich, Davey?”

“Oh, yes, one of the very richest.”

“Funny when you think how stingy Sonia is, in little ways. How long d’you imagine he’ll keep it up, cutting off Polly, I mean?”

“As long as Sonia is alive. I bet you she won’t forgive, and, as you know, he is entirely under her thumb.”

“Yes. So what does Boy say to living with a wife, on £800 a year?”

“Doesn’t like it. He talks of letting Silkin and going to live somewhere cheap, abroad. I told him he’ll have to write more books. He doesn’t do so badly with them, you know, but he is very low, poor old fellow, very.”

“I expect it will do him good to get away,” I said.

“Well, yes,” said Davey expressively. “But …”

“I do wonder what Cedric Hampton is like.”

“So do we all. Boy was talking about it just now. It seems they don’t really know where he is, even. The father was a bad lot. He went to Nova Scotia, fell ill there and married his nurse, an elderly Canadian woman, who had this one child, but he (the father) is dead and nothing more is known except the bare fact that there is this boy. Montdore gives him some small allowance, paid into a Canadian bank every year. Don’t you think it’s very odd he hasn’t taken more interest in him, considering he will have his name, and is the only hope of this ancient family being carried on?”

“Probably he hated the father.”

“I don’t believe he ever knew him. They are quite a different generation—second cousins, once removed—something like that. No, I put it down to Sonia. I expect she couldn’t bear the idea of Hampton going away from Polly, and so pretended to herself that this Cedric did not really exist. You know what a one she is for shutting her eyes to things she doesn’t like. I should imagine she’ll be obliged to face up to him now, Montdore is sure to want to see him, under these new circumstances.”

“Sad, isn’t it, the idea of some great lumping colonial at Hampton!”

“Simply tragic!” said Davey. “Poor Montdores, I do feel for them.”

Somehow, the material side of the business had never been fully born in upon me until Davey went into these facts and figures, but now I realized that “all this” was indeed something tremendous, to be so carelessly thrown into the lap of a total stranger.

When we arrived at Hampton, Aunt Sadie and I were shown straight into the chapel, where we sat alone. Davey went off to find Boy. The chapel was a Victorian building among the servants’ quarters. It had been constructed by the “old lord,” and contained his marble effigy, in Garter robes, with that of Alice, his wife. There was some bright stained glass, a family pew designed like a box at the opera, all red plush with curtains, and a very handsome organ. Davey had engaged a first-class organist from Oxford, who now regaled us with Bach preludes. None of the interested parties seemed to have bothered to take a hand in any of the arrangements, Davey had chosen all the music, and the gardener had evidently been left to himself with the flowers, which were quite overwhelming in their magnificence—the exaggerated hot-house flowers beloved of all gardeners and, it must be said, of Lady Montdore too, arranged with typical florist’s taste. I began to feel dreadfully sad. The Bach and the flowers induced melancholy; besides, look at it as you would, this marriage was a depressing business.

Boy and Davey came up the aisle, and Boy shook hands with us. He had evidently got rid of his cold, at last, and was looking quite well; his hair, I noticed, had received the attention of a damp comb to induce little waves and a curl or two, and his figure, not bad at all, especially from behind, was set off by his wedding clothes. He wore a white carnation, and Davey a red one. But though he was in the costume of a bridegroom, he had not the spirit to add this new part to his repertory and his whole attitude was more appropriate to a chief mourner. Davey even had to show him where to stand, by the altar steps. I never saw a man look so hopeless.

The clergyman took up his position, a very disapproving expression on his face. Presently a movement at our left indicated that
Lady Montdore had come into the family pew, which had its own entrance. It was impossible to stare, but I could not resist a glance and saw that she looked as if she were going to be sick. Boy also glanced, after which his back view became eloquent of a desire to slink in beside her and have a good, long gossip. It was the first time he had seen her since they had read the Infanta’s letter together.

The organist from Oxford stopped playing Bach, which he had been doing with less and less interest during the last few minutes, and paused. Looking around, I saw that Lord Montdore was standing at the entrance to the chapel. He was impassive, well preserved, a cardboard Earl, and might have been about to lead his daughter up the aisle of Westminster Abbey to marry the King of England for all that could be read into his look.

“Oh Perfect Love, all Human Thought Transcending” rang out, sung by an invisible choir in the gallery. And then, up the aisle, one large white hand on her father’s arm, dispelling the gloomy embarrassment which hung like a fog in the chapel, came Polly, calm, confident and noble, radiating happiness. Somehow she had got herself a wedding dress (Did I recognize a ball dress of last season? No matter.) and was in a cloud of white tulle, and lilies of the valley, and joy. Most brides have difficulty with their expression as they go to the altar, looking affected, or soulful, or, worst of all, too eager, but Polly simply floated along on waves of bliss, creating one of the most beautiful moments I have ever experienced.

There was a dry, choking sound on our left, the door of the family pew was slammed, Lady Montdore had gone.

The clergyman began to intone the wedding service. “For-as-much,” and so on, “Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?” Lord Montdore bowed, took Polly’s bouquet from her and went into the nearest pew.

“Please say after me, ‘I, Harvey, take thee, Leopoldina …’” A look from Aunt Sadie.

It was soon over. One more hymn, and I was left alone while they
all went behind a screen to sign the register. Then the burst of Mendelssohn and Polly in her cloud of joy floated out again as she had come in, only on the arm of a different well-preserved old man.

While Polly and Boy changed into their going-away things, we waited in the Long Gallery to say good-bye and see them off. They were motoring to the Lord Warden at Dover for the night, and going abroad the following day. I half-expected that Polly would send for me to go upstairs and chat, but she did not, so I stayed with the others. I think she was so happy that she hardly noticed if people were with her or she was alone. Perhaps she really preferred the latter. Lady Montdore put in no further appearance. Lord Montdore talked to Davey, congratulating him upon an anthology he had recently published, called
In Sickness and in Health
. I heard him say that, to his mind, there was not quite enough Browning, but that apart from that it would all have been his own choice.

“But Browning was so healthy,” objected Davey. The stress throughout the book was upon sickness.

A footman handed round glasses of champagne. Aunt Sadie and I settled down, as one always did, somehow, at Hampton, to a prolonged scrutiny of
Tatler, Sketch
and
Bystander
, and Polly took so long that I even got on to
Country Life
before she appeared. Aunt Sadie also loved these papers dearly, though it never would have occurred to her to buy them for herself.

Through my happy haze of Baronets’ wives, their children, their dogs, their tweeds and their homes, or just their huge faces, wave of hair on the forehead held by a diamond clip, I was conscious that the atmosphere in the Long Gallery, like that in the chapel, was one of embarrassment and gloom.

When Boy reappeared, I saw him give a puzzled glance at the mutilated fire screen, and then, realizing what had happened to it, he turned his back on the room and stood gazing out of the window. Nobody spoke to him. Lord Montdore and Davey sipped champagne, having exhausted the topic of the anthology, in silence.

At last Polly came in, wearing her last year’s mink coat and a tiny brown hat. Though the cloud of tulle had gone, the cloud of joy still enveloped her. She was perfectly unselfconscious, hugged her father, kissed us all, including Davey, took Boy by the arm and led him to the front door. We followed. The servants, looking sad, and the elder ones sniffing were gathered in the hall. She said good-bye to them, had some rice thrown over her, rather half-heartedly, by the youngest housemaid, got into the big Daimler, followed, very half-heartedly, by Boy, and was driven away.

We said good-bye politely to Lord Montdore and followed suit. As we went up the drive I looked back. The footmen had already shut the front door, and it seemed to me that beautiful Hampton, between the pale spring green of its lawns and the pale spring blue of the sky, lay deserted, empty and sad. Youth had gone from it and henceforward it was to be the home of two lonely old people.

ABOUT A MILE
from Alconleigh the children met us and crammed into the motor car.

“So come on, tell what it was?”

“What was what?”

“The Lecturer’s real name, of course. We’ve come all this way to hear.”

“Harvey.”

“Like Hervey the Handsome,” said Jassy, “who married the beautiful Molly Lepel.”

“If you call a dog Hervey I shall love him,” said Victoria.

“No,” said Davey, “AR. I specially looked on the register.”

“Yes, I see,” said Jassy. “More like Boy Nichols?”

M
Y REAL LIFE
as a married woman, that is to say, life with my husband in our own house, now began. One day I went to Oxford and a miracle seemed to have taken place. There was paper on all the walls of my house, the very paper I had chosen, too, and looking even prettier than I had hoped it would, the smell of cheap cigarettes, cement, stewed tea and dry rot had gone, and in its place there was a heavenly smell of new paint and cleanliness, the floor boards were all smooth and solid, and the windows so clean that they seemed to be glassless. The day was perfect. Spring had come and my home was ready; I felt too happy for words. To set the seal upon this happiness, the wife of a Professor had called, her card and her husband’s two cards had carefully been put by the workmen on a chimney piece: Professor and Mrs. Cozens, 209 Banbury Road. Now, at last I was a proper, grown-up married lady, on whom people called. It was very thrilling.