The Bohemian Girl (12 page)

Julian flicked the horse and thought for a terrible moment that he had forgotten to say in his accompanying note that the poem was one of Shakespeare’s, not his own. ‘I’m glad you do – I’d give anything to be able to write like that!’ She might still think he had been trying to pass it off as his, and of course she would have seen through that at once. She was a brilliant, poetical girl.

‘Like Wolfe – wishing he had written Gray’s
Elegy.
But that sonnet’s so
sensible
,’ said Diana, smiling at the roadside. ‘Isn’t it? The Dark Lady must have been delighted with it.’

‘Just so. I say – I s-say, Miss Diana, I m-meant it, for you, even though I wrote that n-note to go with it! You
are
like a g-goddess, and snow-white skinned and all that – n-not like the lady in the poem! B-but I didn’t think you’d like to hear a lot of exaggerated n-nonsense, however pretty, I thought – you’re so d-different.’

‘No black wires grow on my head?’ said Diana quickly, without moving.

‘Damn it, what a f-fool I’m making of myself! The thing is – D-diana, I love you, I think you’re the most p-perfect girl, the
only
girl – I can’t l-live without you. Will you m-marry me – d-do me the honour?’

Diana thought she liked his little stammer, before she took in his words.

Julian stopped the pony-trap, and neither noticed the Montrose landau drawing closer.

‘Yes, I will, Julian,’ whispered Diana. Her heart was beating very fast, just as though she were in love.

‘My dear – my love – D-diana, I’ll do anything for you! D-do you love me, even a little bit?’

‘Yes, I love you,’ said Diana.

Julian advanced an arm and gazed at her, and she wished she could be clever with him.

Behind them, Sir Walter’s head-groom coughed.

‘My dear Captain, you’re blocking the road!’ said Mrs Lejeune from the back seat of the landau.

Julian swung round so hard that he disturbed the horse.

‘Frightfully s-sorry! But I’ve asked D-diana to marry me, and we’ve just got engaged – Lady Blentham!’ he said in a voice brave with happiness.

Diana turned in her seat, and though with Julian’s voice ringing out over the hills she could hardly see the occupants of the landau, she nodded at her mother and gave a little, wavering smile. Then Lady Blentham returned it.

‘Modern children!’ she said, blushing, before the laughing congratulations began. Diana wanted to say: ‘Oh, Mamma! Don’t you disapprove?’ She could only say insipid, suitable things.

Remarks about two marriages being settled at Auchingilloch in such a particularly extraordinary way continued until the group was disturbed by a bicyling farmer, angry at the blocking of a very narrow road. It was then agreed that Julian and Diana should follow the landau to Smallburn at a distance of a hundred yards or so, and be the last to arrive.

The inside of Dunstanton church was light and dark in patches, full of white and yellow daffodils caught by the moving sun. As Violet came down the aisle on Lord Blentham’s arm, followed by her bridesmaids, the guests turned to watch her, though not too obviously because that would be impolite. Some were smiling, and Diana believed that they were thinking of how innocent Violet must be, and what a shock she would have tonight.

She was feeling old. Julian Fitzclare, his parents and all five of his brothers and sisters were seated halfway down the aisle, watching her and not Violet. Over the past few months, Diana had frequently been told of people’s saying how Julian, or Fitzclare, adored that girl, or Miss Blentham, or Diana. People said that he was an excellent catch, and this pleased her, although she despised them for not considering his personal qualities, only his eligibility. The Fitzclares were an Anglo-Irish family, who had helped keep Ireland for the English since the Pale round Dublin was first made. They were considered very respectable. Julian was the eldest son, due to inherit twelve thousand a year and a third of County Westmeath, as several people Lady Blentham thought vulgar had told her daughter at different times.

The procession halted. Violet and Sir Walter moved towards each other, and Diana thought as she knelt down and watched them that both looked like happy, handsome, rather intelligent sheep. She adjusted her bouquet, smiled, and thanked God that in four months she would be married too. Diana never forgot to be thankful.

She did not especially want to live in Ireland, but then old Mr Fitzclare was a healthy man, younger than Sir Walter Montrose; and Diana thought that probably she would not have to go to Ballynore until she herself was middle-aged and past wishing for anything else. She looked forward, in any case, to baiting her Liberal Unionist father-in-law with her strong support for Home Rule.

The congregation listened patiently to Roderick’s sing-song reading of the Solemnization of Matrimony. Violet wept and smiled, which unnerved Roderick a little, and made him falter in places and turn red. Diana, kneeling behind her sister, caught the words ‘honourable estate’, ‘Cana of Galilee’, ‘brute beasts’, ‘nurture of the Lord’, ‘just cause’, but could not follow the whole prologue. Her lips were parted. Julian, watching her, thought he was ready to cry like a woman: it was quite extraordinary, being so much in love. Diana was an ideal combination of the original and the suitable, and he must tell her that she was as rare as a rose without a thorn.

The vows began. Lady Blentham looked down at her lap and prayed, as Sir Walter repeated his after Roderick. Half the guests in church, some of whom were watching her, thought this marriage ridiculous. She restrained her tears, of every kind of emotion, when she heard the young bride’s sharp little voice saying: ‘I, Violet Angelina, take thee, Walter Augustus, for my wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward …’

He will be kind to her, thought Lady Blentham, glancing at her eldest daughter who was seated beside her, and remembering that she had once longed to hear some man say: ‘I, So-and-so, take thee, Maud Victoria.’ Perhaps it would still be nice for Maud to marry.

Lady Blentham was rehearsing Diana Mary’s wedding in her head when Walter and Violet were pronounced man and wife. The prayers following recalled her to the present, and she looked up suddenly, with a happy expression on her face. ‘Lady Montrose’ did sound very well.

Angelina twisted her handkerchief into a string, then stopped because of the guests. She would at least not have to
see the cold, determined Violet when she was living all year round in Argyllshire with her kind old husband, being happy.

*

Diana knew that the wedding breakfast would be a gloomy affair, even before it had begun. There was iced champagne, and food too cold for the bright but chilly spring day. There were not enough chairs in the hall, and under the influence of discomfort some of the guests discussed the marriage with remarkable freedom.

‘Of course Angelina Blentham would have liked to have a wedding at St George’s,
very
smart, with
everyone
invited, especially those who don’t invite her to their smaller parties, the Duchess you know, but I ask you, how
could
it have been possible? I believe it’s perfectly true that Violet simply set her heart on Sir Walter, set her cap at him in the most obvious way, poor old thing.’

‘He’d no business to ask her, in my opinion. Disgusting old goat. And I don’t agree that Angelina would have liked a fashionable squash in St George’s, or anywhere else. Thinks that sort of thing rather vulgar. But if she didn’t, I daresay little Diana would oblige her.’ At that moment, Cousin Oliver noticed Diana standing beside him in her bridesmaid’s dress, and grinned sadly, as though he were drunk.

‘I think we’re all glad that we didn’t need to invite more than a very few people who would be merely acquaintances,’ Diana said to him, ‘and only a few relations we dislike.’

Julian, who had been trailing her, whispered: ‘
Bravo,
d-darling!’

Diana did not want to be praised for rudeness. ‘It’s hot in here,’ she said, smiling at him, ‘and I do feel rather unwell.’

‘H-hot? Damned cold – are you hot?’

‘Yes.’

‘Too many people. D-darling, if you feel unwell, shall we go s-somewhere, somewhere else?’

‘There’s nowhere,’ said Diana, looking round the hall. Violet and Walter had not separated since they joined each other in church: now they were standing together under the most valuable portrait in the room.

‘H-here’s my mother,’ said Julian.

It seemed to Diana that it was not only his mother, but half the Fitzclares, who were pressing forwards in their direction. None of them had had a chance to speak to her all day, and they meant to speak to her now.

Mr Fitzclare was large and pasty, with Julian’s thick pale eyebrows, and he looked like an old and ugly version of his son. Mrs Fitzclare was tiny, with a mole on her nose, and a perpetual worried smile on her pink face. She was quite an intelligent woman, but she was afraid of her husband.

‘Diana, my dear, you looked perfectly lovely,’ she said. ‘So often the bridesmaids are prettier than the bride. One can’t be –’

‘Not so lovely as she
will
look, Frances! Don’t imply that she won’t be at her best on July 31st.’ As he said this and laughed, he did not look at Diana: he was not paying her a compliment.

‘It’s July 29th, Mr Fitzclare,’ said Diana.

‘Yes, that’s right!’ said Julian’s youngest sister, a pretty girl who was still in the schoolroom.

‘Speak when you’re spoken to, please, Adelaide,’ smiled her father.

I won’t be afraid of you, thought Diana, looking at Mr Fitzclare. Perhaps I’ll make you hate me: she wondered what had come over her.

Mrs Fitzclare said something, and Julian replied, but Diana did not listen to what they said. She seemed to be noticing everything about her at once, Fitzclares and others and her own heat, the surrounding cold and the smell of wedding-food, Violet and Walter, her parents and the servants and the wooden-panelled walls; and yet she was thinking very intently: ‘Do I love you? Do I?
Do
I
love you? Julian.’ But it did not matter whether she loved him deeply, romantically, improperly, or not. He would be a first-rate husband, and she had to be married. There were sexual relations to be had if she married him. Half an hour ago, she had been passionately wishing that this were her own wedding, she had not been thinking like this.

‘My dear, is anything the matter?’ said Frances Fitzclare.

Diana jumped. ‘I have a headache – just a slight one.’

‘Go and take a breath of air on the terrace!’ said Mr Fitzclare. Diana resented his telling her to do just what she wanted to do; it was presumptuous. ‘Julian, I think you might help Diana through this crowd.’ He glanced round and saw that Lady Blentham was far too busy to notice their leaving the room unaccompanied. Mr Fitzclare was in favour of his son’s engagement because, though she was unusual and not very rich, Diana was better than any of the other girls Julian had seemed to like before.

Outside, Julian took Diana’s hand and kissed it, then touched the chaplet of silk roses on her bright hair. They could hear the dim roar of the party, coming through closed windows, when they were standing in the drive.

‘Diana, s-sit down, you’ll feel better,’ he said, anxiously looking at her, and pointing to a wrought-iron seat in the middle of the spring border which ran all round the house. It was not a very private place. ‘D-do you know, I’ve been meaning to t-tell you for a long t-time, that you’re as rare, as unusual, as a r-rose without a thorn? That happens to be
t-true
of you, Diana.’

‘No, I’d prefer to walk.’ Diana looked towards the grey portico, and said: ‘Julian, I can’t marry you. I don’t love you enough – I’m sorry, very sorry. But I –’

‘What? D-diana?’

‘I can’t. I can’t.’ She began to cry, quite quietly.

‘Diana!’

The cold wind cut at her and she clutched at her dress. ‘I don’t love you. I don’t want to marry you. I know that now.’ There was quiet for a while, and Diana’s tears fell.

Julian placed a fist in one palm, and said: ‘You’re n-not yourself, I shan’t t-take this s-seriously. G-go and lie down, darling, you’ll f-feel quite d-differently s-soon. It’s the s-strain of all this, V-violet’s wedding, I know you d-don’t like …’ His stammer disappeared for three sentences. ‘You do love me. You’ve said so often. I shan’t believe you.’ He did not put his arms round her, though he wanted to, and she
wanted him to, in spite of the fact that she really thought him a kindly threat, nuisance and burden.

‘You must,’ said Diana, and she ran into the house, forgetting to hand back her engagement ring. Lady Blentham caught her, saw that she was looking unwell, and sent her upstairs before Diana could say that she had jilted Captain Fitzclare.

*

Before the start of that first London Season which she was to spend alone, Diana concluded that she was very passionate by nature; but that the kindly and absolute discipline imposed on her since she was a baby had prevented her from ever showing it. Her general mood, she knew, had always been one of calm and good-natured superiority, but it was interrupted by bouts of thin depression like that from which she was suffering now. In these periods she did not rage, and rarely wept, and her campaigns for her own way were too decently conducted ever to be effective. It was horrible that there was so little in the world to be passionate about: she could not claim to have one justified and real resentment, or one overpowering, positive desire.

Julian Fitzclare would not release her from her engagement. He thought Diana did not know her own mind, and sometimes she agreed with him. Thus she could not be too angry with him, and she knew she ought to be grateful for his patience and fidelity. His soft, brave stammer quite prevented her from thinking he was arrogant: no one who spoke in that way could be other than well-intentioned. She was telling the truth when she said that she was not in love with anyone else, for there was no other man in London whom she could like half as much. This made Julian very happy.

Diana did not raise the subject of not wanting to marry him every time they met, and several times she agreed that they would be happy together. She began to hate herself, and Lady Blentham, who had become oddly unobservant since Violet’s marriage, called in Dr Sacheverell and advised him to prescribe a tonic for her.

Dr Sacheverell, who had attended the Blenthams in London
for years, prescribed nothing. He told Diana that she reminded him of his wife who, when she was a girl, had been quite a
malade
imaginaire.
She had been bored and unsuccessfully in love, and had only needed the right man to look after her.

‘I’ve told Captain Fitzclare he is not the right man,’ muttered Diana, suddenly, looking at her hair stretched out on the pillow.

The doctor snapped his bag shut. ‘You have? And you’re still engaged to be married?’

‘He won’t let me go,’ said Diana, and thought this too romantic an expression.

‘Well. That’s hardly the way to keep you! Goodbye, Miss Diana. I think,’ he added, ‘that I won’t tell Lady Blentham there’s nothing the matter with you. I shall advise a glass of port after dinner every evening.’

Diana stared after him as he closed the door.

Julian came to call at Queen Anne’s Gate at half-past five that afternoon, as he often did. On these occasions, Lady Blentham would go upstairs for a little while and leave them in the drawing-room. Diana was not supposed to be alone in a room with Julian at any other time.

‘What did the d-doctor s-say this morning, D-diana?’ said Julian.

‘Nothing very much,’ said Diana. She hesitated. ‘No. In fact, he told me a good deal – about myself – by implication. You know I’ve been – worried about our marriage, Julian, well, now I know I can’t marry you. And I want you to believe me this time.’

She was not looking at him, and her tone was disinterested and firm. Julian, horrified by the thought that Dr Sacheverell might have fully explained the physical side of marriage to her, put down his tea-cup with a shaking hand. Then he pulled himself together.

‘Darling,’ he said, ‘I w-want you to know one thing. When we’re m-married I shall b-be
gentle
with you, k-kind to you, in every way. Every s-single way. I’ll n-never hurt you, and you m-mustn’t be afraid!’

‘Oh, don’t talk like that!’ She got up from her chair. ‘I’m not afraid! I’m angry. Extremely angry!’ That sounded false, she thought, but she did not start crying.

‘W-with me?’ He was not upset or cross, only surprised. ‘Darling what have I d-done?’

‘Why didn’t you, don’t you,
believe
me
when I say I don’t want to marry you? How dare you not believe me and say I don’t know my own mind. It’s insulting, Julian! Look – look –’ Diana, white-faced, tugged at the ruby ring on her finger and pushed it at him. ‘There, I’ve given it back, and I’ll never take it back from you. Why didn’t I do it before? I will not marry you, Julian. Do you understand now?’