The Cardboard Crown (5 page)

‘I remember your grandmother then,’ he said. ‘She was like some shimmering fairy, a sylphide, so modest and so graceful and with such a charming dignity. No one would have dared to touch her as that young man over there is grabbing that young woman who appears to be clad in gold plate, which is doubtless necessary for her protection. I hope he hasn’t a tin-opener in his pocket. How different these young people are from those beautiful girls, with their billowing white skirts which swayed as they danced to real music, not to a negroid din.’

‘Did Cousin Hetty look like a sylphide too?’ I asked, as I knew that Arthur had disliked her.

‘She looked more like one than that young woman in armour,’ said Arthur gruffly.

Even if Hetty looked like a sylphide, she did not feel like one, for a sylphide which had received such a terrible blow
would surely want to fade and die, whereas although she was suffering a pain which was almost physical in its intensity, she by no means contemplated defeat. She was one of those who are quite oblivious of their own attractions or lack of them, and who rely more upon will-power than on love to secure the object of their affections. When this hideous evening, which my great-uncle saw in retrospect as full of graceful girls and roses, came to an end, and Hetty in her wreath and her muslin went out to her parents’ carriage, she was less like a sylphide than a nun who is dressed as a bride only to pass to a symbolic death. But, unlike a nun, she had no intention of renouncing anything.

She was tormented by her obsession. The young Langtons and Mayhews met less frequently than when they were school children. How Austin behaved to Hetty at one of these meetings regulated not only her own peace of mind until their next meeting, but that of all her family. If he showed her some cheerful chaffing attention, she was in heaven. If he went out riding as soon as she called with her mother at Bishopscourt, and just nodded a casual goodbye from the door, she was in hell, and when she was in hell she saw to it that the rest of the Mayhews shared her situation. She nursed the instrument of torture which she had created in herself.

This lasted for three months. Whether she was in a state of elation or of gloom from their last encounter, her heart began to beat when she knew that she was to see him again, and she always counted on the next meeting as one that would fix their relationship. Austin had no idea of the effect he was having on her, that his most casual words or
absent-minded glances were flinging her from heaven to hell and back again. He was much too occupied with his own affairs and he simply thought of her as a slightly comic moody character. So the situation remained always the same, and she might have spared herself her passionate broodings. She was the only actor in the drama which was played nowhere but in her own agonised heart.

Why Austin behaved in such a secretive fashion is hard to know. He may have been afraid of the disapproval of his elders, or he may simply have enjoyed the fun of hoodwinking everybody. It is just conceivable that his love for Alice was so tender that he could not bear it to be assessed by his relatives, or the subject of coarse chaff from his brothers. One day he heard his parents discussing the Versos.

‘I should think it would be difficult for Alice to find a good husband,’ said Sir William, ‘as no decent man would make her an offer unless he had a fortune approaching her own.’

After this Austin was more than ever careful to conceal the amount of time he spent with her. Nearly every day when she had no other engagement she went out riding, attended by a groom. Austin would meet her at an arranged point some way from her house, bribe the groom to go and amuse himself for an hour or so, and he and Alice would ride off alone into the country.

It is also hard to understand how Alice, normally so straightforward and so kind in all her ways, could have acquiesced in this concealment. Probably she felt uneasy, but could not bear to disagree with Austin, with whom she was in the throes of first love.

Then came that evening from which spring so many of our treasures and calamities, not all of them, not Dominic’s nor Julian’s which have their origin in the dying cries of the altarboys at Teba. They come later in this story. Our more external destinies were fixed on that evening at Bishopscourt, about which Arthur was extremely eloquent.

The Langtons were having a dinner party. By a piece of luck, perhaps hardly luck seeing that his presence was due to an integral part of the plot, Arthur was brought down to fill in the gap made by Austin’s unexpected absence. Otherwise he would have been having high-tea in the schoolroom, and I could never have met an eye-witness, not at least later than my childhood. Unfortunately, as I have said, Arthur was not a reliable witness. He embroidered all his tales beyond recognition, and frequently to a male audience decorated them further with startling improprieties. If Arthur had written a novel it could have been safely given to a girl of twelve for Christmas, but his
conversation was almost too much for me, who had just returned from four years in the trenches of Flanders. Often, after his listeners had enjoyed his wildly improbable account of what had happened, say, to Aunt Mildy in an omnibus, they would demand: ‘Now tell us what really happened, without the embroidery.’

If I give his account it will make this more a work of fiction and the reader may himself have the satisfaction of searching for the reality beneath the embroidery, whereas if I attempt to make the separation, I may remove some of the foundation material and so in the long run give a less true account than Arthur’s. All history is a little false. It is only fair to remember this when judging the characters in my book. You see them only as they exist in my imagination. To go back to the last chapter, I write of ‘the small black figure of Cousin Hetty.’ She was not black at all, neither her skin, nor at that age her clothes. I am not even sure that her hair was black, as when I knew her it was grey. It may originally have been bright red but I imagine her as somehow black against the bright landscape. If Dominic had described these characters you would not recognise them. They would all be shown as tormented by their separation from God. If Aunt Mildy had done so, they would be shown as having the sweetest thoughts about sex. I shall try while writing a history which is inevitably a little false, to point out the parts least worthy of belief. They will not, I am afraid, be the most incredible. It is also important to remember that my view of Hetty is through the eyes of Arthur who disliked her, and she may have been far more attractive than I show her.

According to Arthur, and this is most likely true, it was an exceptionally grand dinner party, that is in the choice of guests, and his mother was very annoyed at having to insert a scrubby schoolboy amongst them, instead of her eldest son, fresh from Cambridge. Arthur said that he was at the age when he kept growing out of his clothes, and that there was a gap between his waistcoat and his trousers which caused him miseries of humiliation. The chief guest was some important Englishman who was making a tour of the colonies, and Lady Langton had collected the most presentable people she could find in Melbourne to meet him. They included Captain Byngham, the Military Secretary, and his wife who radiated an air of untouchable nobility, being a great-granddaughter of the monstrous duque de Teba, also the dean, Mrs Mayhew and Hetty. It was the last occasion on which the Langtons would wish for any awkwardness.

I sometimes wonder whether Arthur in describing this dinner, did not mix it up with the dance a few months earlier. The effect must have been the same on Hetty, but more devastating. According to him she had also been looking forward to this dinner party for some time, and building up in her mind another romantic sequence. She was certain that, as the two youngest people present, she and Austin would be sent in together. When instead she found herself next to Arthur, she knew that one of those evenings had begun when clouds of misery enveloped her, though she always refused to admit their existence till she was seated in the carriage on the way home.

‘It was the most ghastly dinner party,’ said Arthur. ‘I was trying to hide the gap between my waistcoat and my trousers
with my table-napkin, but it kept slipping onto the floor. Hetty made a conspicuous fool of herself by loudly expressing her anxiety for Austin’s safety. “Oh Aunt Emma,” she said to Mama every three minutes, “do send a groom to look for Austin. He may have had an accident.” Mama had that thin smile which she wore when she was pretending that someone was behaving well, who was really an infernal nuisance. At last Papa said to the table at large: “Austin went out driving this morning. It is tiresome that he’s not back in time for dinner, but I know no one for whom there is less need to feel anxiety when he is dealing with horses.” I suppose that when one has ordered a number of people to be hanged, it gives a kind of authority to one’s voice, and Hetty shut up for the time being. But she was determined to make clear her proprietory interest in Austin. She said to the man on her right: “I’m so worried about him,” as if he were already her husband, so that when half an hour later Austin appeared in a very different role, not only did jealousy turn her blood to poison, but she looked a fool—not that this worried her. She never minded how she looked. If she could bring her prey to bed, she wouldn’t have cared if she had mutton fat in her hair and a smut on her nose. That’s why she always got what she wanted. She went straight for it, regardless of manners or appearances.

‘We didn’t stay long in the dining-room as Papa’s complaint didn’t let him drink much. The babble of reunion had just begun when it was silenced by Sparrow, the butler, throwing open the door, not to bring in the tea tray, but to announce, very loud and clear:

‘ “Mr and Mrs Austin Langton.”

‘There stood Austin, looking unspeakably smug, with Alice on his arm. Although she was in an unusual situation,’ said Arthur emphatically, ‘you must understand that your grandmother had great dignity. She was perhaps a little shy, but it was the shyness of a spring flower, which does not detract from its perfect poise. Anyhow there we were, all gaping at them, when Papa said quietly: “Is this a joke, Austin?”

‘Austin said, no, it wasn’t a joke, and that Alice was his wife. Poor Mama was dividing her swift mind how to carry this off with as little immediate discomfort as possible, to save the wreckage of her elegant dinner party, as in those days the most disastrous family event could not be allowed to embarrass a guest.’

Arthur was as usual, torn between the desire to tell a racy story with the conflicting one to impress upon me the immense superiority of his own generation.

It is thirty years since Arthur told me about this party, and that was sixty years after it had happened. Even so he left a very vivid, if embroidered picture of the evening in my mind, so if I tell it in my own words they will not be very different from his, as we both used the same idiom. According to him, Hetty bellowed in a furious contralto voice, like a cow in pain:

‘It
is
a joke!’

The eyes of the guests, almost with one movement, turned from the door to stare with even greater astonishment at Hetty. Her eyes were glowing black. The bones of her face and her square jaw seemed more prominent and masculine than usual, and the wreath of pink roses round her head
simply an arbitrary, irrelevant and unconvincing statement of her femininity.

‘I should think Austin knows best, Hetty,’ said Lady Langton, who had not much sense of humour, though oddly enough her husband, who had a very keen one, might have made exactly the same remark. She turned to Austin and added:

‘Perhaps you would explain, dear.’

‘We were married this morning,’ said Austin, ‘and we drove out into the country this afternoon.’

‘What a fine way to be married,’ cried Hetty, ‘with a honeymoon in a ditch!’

Lady Langton ignored her and said: ‘This is a considerable surprise to us. I hope you will tell us later why you could not take us into your confidence.’

‘He knew you wouldn’t let him marry beneath him,’ shouted Hetty. ‘Everyone knows that her stepfather’s a drunkard.’

‘She has £4000 a year,’ Austin shouted back, while the carefully selected guests gaped, unable to keep up their pretence that this was a normal interlude. This is the part that I do not believe, but I must record it, as it is the only available evidence of an eye-witness. I used to think that Arthur disliked Austin because he was jealous about Alice, with whom he had a close life-long friendship. I found later that his attitude was very different. He concealed an intense loyalty beneath an affectation of malice. He used to say outrageous things which no one would believe about his brother, so that he might be counted as an enemy. Then, when he denied those true facts which were to Austin’s discredit,
people would say: ‘It can’t be true, because Arthur denies it, and he would never deny anything against Austin if he could help it.’ Anyhow, I do not believe that Austin mentioned Alice’s money on this evening. But according to Arthur Sir William said:

‘I hope you did not let that influence you.’

‘I didn’t know of it until an hour ago,’ Austin replied.

‘He did know. I told him long ago,’ cried Hetty.

‘Liar!’ shouted Austin.

Dean Mayhew flushed at hearing his daughter called a liar, but said: ‘It would be wiser, Hetty, if you didn’t intervene.’

‘To go off and be married like an animal! I could never bring myself to do such a thing!’ Hetty spoke with such passion that it was evident there was nothing she would like more. Lady Langton gave her sister a vicious glance as much as to say: ‘If you can’t control your daughter, for Heaven’s sake take her home.’

Mrs Mayhew put her hand on Hetty’s arm, at which she burst into tears, not of gentle grief, but the same loud, raging, roaring sobs which she used to bellow forth in the schoolroom. Fortunately she allowed her mother to lead her away. Alice stood aside from the door to let her pass. She was a good deal shaken by the scene.

Lady Langton came forward and took her by the hand. ‘I must now welcome you as a daughter,’ she said and kissed her on both cheeks, and then kissed Austin. Sir William shook hands with Alice and put his hand on Austin’s shoulder and murmured a wry congratulation. One of his maxims was: ‘Never make a fuss unless there is something to
be gained by it.’ Austin was unlikely to be able to make a habit of eloping with heiresses, so there was little use in showing a deterrent displeasure. Hetty providentially had acted as a scapegoat, drawing the disapproval of the company onto her own head. Now that she was gone, all was gentle and pleasant gaiety, and it seemed quite an agreeable thing for the son of the house to bring home an unexpected bride in the middle of a dinner party. Lady Langton said with a deprecating smile:

‘I’m afraid my drawing-room has turned into a vestry.’ She led Alice round introducing her to those guests whom she had not already met. Sparrow brought in the tea tray and Lady Langton was just going to tell him to bring two extra cups, when she realised that as Mrs Mayhew and Hetty had left, it would be unnecessary. What the distinguished English visitor thought of it all is not recorded. Incidentally, this butler, Sparrow, cleared out suddenly and went prospecting for gold.

That is the story according to Arthur. If it is not true as to what Hetty said, it is very likely true as to what she felt. Seeing what she did later, it is even possible that she did behave as Arthur said. And so, to change the metaphor back from embroidery to quartz, it seems best to bring up the whole load, from which the gold of truth may be picked to suit individual taste.

It is only fair to give as well Aunt Mildy’s account of that party. She was not of course present, but she must have heard about it from people who were.

‘It was so sweet, such a touching evening,’ she said. ‘Papa looked so strong and loving, and Mama so maidenly in
a turquoise blue mantle. She was dreadfully shy, but Grandmama was so sweet to her. It wasn’t really a surprise, as everyone knew they were very attached. And it was such a delightful coincidence that there was a dinner party that night, as it made a little impromptu wedding reception. They say that Cousin Hetty was a tiny bit sad, as she had once had loving thoughts of Papa, though of course she was much too well-bred to show it, but she went home as early as she could without its being noticeable. That was the only tiny cloud on an evening which must have reminded everyone of the troubadours. There was such a wonderfully sweet and loving atmosphere. Whenever I go to the Bishopscourt Annual Garden Party, I go into the drawing-room and think of what a very sweet thing happened there on that evening long ago, and I say a tiny prayer.’

Whichever account is true, it is still difficult to understand how Alice could have lent herself to this escapade, and whatever Arthur and Mildred may say, she must have hated this dramatic appearance in the middle of Lady Langton’s party, and the exposure of herself as someone who had offended against the conventions. She always had a strong sense of decorum, though she was also very romantic. She had been taught French and some Italian by her aunt, and she was steeped in poetry and picturesque legend. It is possible that she found in stories like
Isabella and the pot of basil
, and in
Romeo and Juliet
, precedents which put her adventure not below but above the conventions of early Colonial society.

Another consideration is that I myself only saw Alice with the eyes of a child, and that was when she was old and stood for all that was impeccably dignified. I have only heard
of her early days from people like Arthur, who idealised her. It is possible that when she was young she enjoyed the follies of youth, and enjoyed giving society a slap in the face. After all, under those crinolines, the bodies were the same as under a pair of flannel trousers and a polo sweater. We know little of her father except that he must have had an adventurous spirit and plenty of courage, but Alice also had in her veins the blood of her mother, who at that time was kicking over the traces in Sydney.

Shortly after his marriage Austin was prosecuted for abducting a ward in chancery, or something of that kind. The court was filled with the people who had been at the dinner at Bishopscourt and their intimate friends. Sir William was on the bench, so that it was more like a family party than a legal proceeding. When Austin stood up to make some statement his father said impatiently: ‘Sit down, Austin.’ Everybody laughed. It was impossible that in this atmosphere anything unpleasant should happen, and Austin, in the carriage of the judge who had tried him, drove home to enjoy his wife and her wealth.