The Bohemian Girl (5 page)

Lord Blentham studied her beautiful face. His own was rather grim. ‘Don’t worry, Angelina. It’s nothing which could concern you, now he’s – repented, as you would say.’

‘You – guess what it is, and will not tell me?’

‘No, my dear. Some things – really are men’s business. I don’t mean politics, to be sure!’

Lady Blentham told her husband that no doubt he was right, and quickly left the room, holding up her skirt on one side as though the well-polished floor were dirty. She could no more think what Roderick’s sin might be than her daughters could guess how babies were made.

‘My darling,’ said Lady Blentham, tapping her daughter’s cheek, and Diana sucked in her lips with pleasure. She was seventeen now, and her mother’s delicate hints at her beauty, her affection and encouragement, were Diana’s only compensations for being still with her governess while Violet, at nineteen, was in her second Season.

Angelina continued, looking out into the rainy street: ‘I wonder, Diana, what Violet can want? What could
any
girl want more? Such a very nice young man, and so eligible in every way. Don’t you agree with me, my dear?’ She turned. ‘I’m sure
you
would be able to feel affection for him, if you were old enough, wouldn’t you?’

The two women were in Diana’s little pink bedroom at the Blenthams’ house in Queen Anne’s Gate, and Lady Blentham had just made her first worried confidence to her youngest daughter, in the form of a gentle lecture.

‘He does seem very kind, Mamma, but if Violet doesn’t love him – you’ve told us before that it’s very wrong and vulgar to marry for money, or position, or all that.’

‘Of course it is! Of course. But – oh, Diana.’

‘If only he weren’t a Viscount, and
we
weren’t rather poor.’

‘Diana!’

‘I’m sorry, Mamma, but I know it’s a great expense, bringing us all out, and if Violet doesn’t marry soon my – my own coming out next year will be a pretty heavy financial burden. I know we have this house now, since Grandmamma died, so there’s no rent to pay, but with two of us to dress, and hire horses for, and – it mounts up wickedly, I
know
.’

‘Don’t think that I shall put it off,’ said Lady Blentham, looking at her daughter’s golden-brown, red-flecked hair, which waved all over her face, back and shoulders.

‘I’m glad – I was afraid you might be thinking of it.’ Diana looked away to hide her hot relief.

‘Your feelings are very understandable,’ said Angelina, ‘but I hope that if it
were
necessary to put off your coming out another year, Diana, you would bear such a trial with Christian fortitude?’ She spoke kindly. ‘And Diana, please, in future, don’t talk quite so frankly about money – not in front of other people.’

‘It’s so dull, when I
know
I’m old enough!’ stammered Diana. ‘So dull always having to be silent when I
am
allowed downstairs, and having to dine alone with Mademoiselle, and go to museums and practise my Italian and my French and my wretched music! It was all right before Violet came out, but now it’s so different! Mamma, please – can’t I just put my hair up and wear proper dresses, down to the floor? Even that would be –’ She faltered at last.

Angelina was not angry, though she said: ‘Diana, Diana, control yourself.’

‘Mamma, I’m so afraid my looks will go before next year!’ Thoroughly emboldened, she went on: ‘You know Maud used to be a beauty, still is in a way, but …’

‘Don’t be vain,’ smiled Angelina. ‘Besides, I don’t think that’s at all likely.’ She too was very much afraid of Diana’s suddenly losing her looks before it was time for her to be shown, but she knew she must comfort her daughter and not betray this. She continued: ‘I’m afraid I can’t allow you to put your hair up, Diana, because I didn’t let either Maud or Violet do so before she turned eighteen. You must know that I can’t grant such a privilege to you – however much I would like to.’

Diana looked down at the bed and clasped her hands tightly. She had had no idea, when she was younger, that she could care so passionately about anything.

‘You will
soon
be grown-up, my darling,’ said Angelina.

‘Soon!’ When Diana considered that little more than a year
ago she had been glad to be an inky schoolgirl, trying to write poems and enjoying muddy walks, she felt not too young for adult society but that she was a spinster as aged as Maud.

‘You may find,’ said her mother, noting her disbelief, ‘that being grown-up is not quite such a pleasure as you think it will be now.’

Diana jumped off the bed and tried to laugh. ‘That’s what Violet says, more or less. Oh, of course, in her
first
season she did quite enjoy being a young lady, but now
she’s
forever saying what a bore it is, Society, and looking at me as if I don’t understand life at all, and
I’m
forever saying what a bore it is in the schoolroom, and hasn’t she forgotten, and
she
doesn’t understand. We smile cynically at each other,’ said Diana.

‘My dear, you’re amusing, but you ought
not
to talk cynically,’ said Lady Blentham, who thought all her children except Diana a little unintelligent. ‘Do you know,
I
find Society a bore, just as Violet does? Though not because I’m lazy, I hope! Except, in – certain circles, there are so many different amusements, so very many people whom of course one dislikes – and yet such a lack of real variety! And then, Diana – listen to me, my love – Society is constantly becoming more
hollow
as they say – even immoral. Which I dislike very much.’ She paused, thinking of last year’s scandals, and of how she herself seemed to be the only woman in London who truly abhorred bad behaviour.

‘Immoral?’ said Diana.

‘For example, my dear, when I was a girl, there was no question of receiving callers, or giving dinner-parties, on a Sunday. Certainly no question of jaunts to Richmond!’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Diana, thinking of the O’Shea divorce case last year, which had precipitated a quarrel between her parents about whether or not the Irish leader’s being a corespondent proved that Home Rule was intrinsically wicked. Violet had overheard something of that quarrel, the first true violent argument of the Blenthams’ married life: and when reporting it to Diana she had cried horribly over the whole affair.

‘Now, my love, I’m sure your headache is better. Come
down to the morning-room and join us,’ said Angelina.

It was a Sunday afternoon, and there would be no callers, or entertainment of any kind: thus it was quite permissible for Diana to be downstairs. Lord Blentham would be present, for he refrained from going to one of his clubs on a Sunday. The girls would spend their time reading and sewing and playing illicit Patience; while Lady Blentham generally looked at
The
Christian
Year
or
Idylls
of
the
King,
and mused over the past and coming weeks of well-managed events.

Diana followed her mother downstairs and there, just as she had expected, she found Maud reading
Fabian
Essays,
which had already occupied her for two months, her father asleep, and Violet fidgeting over a new novel from Mudies’. Lady Blentham did not reach for
The
Christian
Year,
but took a hank of wool from the bottom drawer of her bureau and asked Diana to hold it while she wound it into a ball.

They sat in silence for a while, all looking more or less unhappy, listening to the ticking of the grandmother clock and the tiny click of driven rain upon the glass in the windows. Then they heard noise in the hall, a door banging, the butler’s murmur, and the loud voice of Edward. The Blenthams revived.

Edward Blentham was twenty-seven, and at the beginning of this London Season he had horrified his family by quitting the Army three weeks after gaining his captaincy in the Coldstream Guards. He now lived alone in very expensive rooms off St James’s Street, and his parents were worried both by his extravagance and by the inefficient taste he had always shown for literature and the arts. Like Maud, he had inherited Lady Blentham’s fine-boned beauty, but like her also, he could not make others see that he was a strikingly handsome person. He was fair and slender, with an aquiline nose, a brief moustache, a sharp expression, light-blue eyes and quickly-moving lips and eyebrows. His complexion was slightly ruddy, like his father’s, and in secret, he blamed this defect on army life.

‘Well, Mater! Father – hullo, girls,’ Edward said, walking into the room and pulling Diana’s hair-ribbon. He wore a
morning coat, and his very well-brushed hair had been faintly disturbed by the removal of his hat.

‘This is a surprise, Edward,’ said Lady Blentham, continuing to wind her wool. ‘Surely you have more amusing things to do than visit us on a Sunday afternoon?’

‘Nothin’ at all, Mater.’ When Edward was a child, Angelina had so adored him that she had feared herself guilty of idolatry.

‘It
is
nice to see you,’ said Violet.

Lord Blentham woke ostentatiously, got to his feet, and went to stand with his back to the fire. He eyed his son, who two days ago had broken an appointment to meet him at Brooks’s for a glass of madeira and a little chat, and said: ‘Very nice, I must say, Edward.’

‘As a matter of fact,’ said Edward, spreading his coat-tails and sitting down behind a miniature palm-tree, ‘I thought it best to come today, as I knew you’d all be at home, no Sunday callers. I’ve got some
rather
important news, don’t you know.’

‘Edward …’ Lady Blentham smiled, for she was suddenly hopeful, though she could not quite think why or for what. ‘What is it, good news? Perhaps you mean to travel?’

Edward twirled his knobbly cane, and put his head on one side to gaze at it, so that his collar cracked. He had always been a man of fashion, ever since he left school. ‘Fact is, I came to tell you that I got married quite recently. I thought you ought to know.’

There was silence for several moments, until one of the terriers began to yap and had to be shushed by Maud. Violet was the first to speak.

‘Teddy dear, who
to
? To whom, I mean? You can’t really be married! Goodness, why didn’t you have us as bridesmaids? I
do
think it’s unkind!’

‘Be quiet, Violet!’ said Angelina. She looked at her husband, then said: ‘Girls, I think you had better leave us. You’ll learn about – this marriage of your brother’s in due course, I don’t doubt, but he ought not to have made such an announcement in front of you. Your father and I must decide
what is to be done.’ She stopped, and fixed her eyes on them.

Maud, Violet and Diana slowly prepared to leave, and they all looked equally resentful. Diana thought that if she were Maud’s age, she would not submit to Mamma’s pieces of arbitrary tyranny no matter how much she loved her.

Suddenly, their father said: ‘I don’t see why they should. If Edward’s married, it’s a great pity they can’t be bridesmaids at the wedding, but his marriage does concern them, after all, and we’ve no reason yet to believe it’s a scandalous affair, Angelina!’

Angelina sat back in her chair, glanced at Diana, and shook her head at her daughters with a sad, angry smile.

‘Just so, Pater,’ said Edward, adjusting his monocle.

‘Well, Edward, who is this fortunate young woman?’ said Charles, with his hands behind his back, swaying gently back and forth in front of the fire in a way he usually considered to be rather pompous, a habit suitable for a certain type of judge, a comfortable tradesman, or an ambitious politician from the middle class.

‘Well, her name
used
to be Kitty Dupree,’ said Edward.

‘Oh… Miss Kitty Dupree? An actress, ain’t she? At the Gaiety at one time, I believe?’ He spoke very quietly. Though his son did not know it, Charles enjoyed the Gaiety burlesques, and had even met the theatre’s manager, John Hollingshead, and liked him.

Edward jumped. ‘She did start off at the Gaiety, perfectly correct, Pater, but latterly, don’t you know, she’s been with D’Oyly Carte, at the Savoy – sang in nearly every one of theirs since
Iolanthe.
And she was dashed good as one of the three little maids in
The
Mikado.
You took Maud to see that, I think, Mater,’ he finished with perfect blandness.

Lady Blentham was sitting absolutely still.

‘She’s been on the stage since she was quite a child, of course.’ Edward paused. ‘She’s only been retired a matter of a few months, in fact. Always supported herself jolly well!’

‘And since her retirement?’ said his father. ‘How old is Miss Dupree, by the by?’

‘Mrs Edward, don’t you know. We’ve been married since then. Awful long time, I know.’ Edward lit a cigarette with a slightly awkward hand. Kitty Blentham was four years older than himself. ‘But as she says, we can’t keep the thing a secret forever, and this seemed as good a time as any to break the news, what? She’s a charmin’ girl, absolutely sound – full of old-fashioned ideas, Mater, simply refused to come here without your invitation –’

‘Edward,’ said Angelina, ‘put out that cigarette! How dare you try to smoke in here? How often have I said that in my house men will use the dining-room –
after
dinner?’ Everyone stared at her and murmured.

‘I
say,
Mater!’ said Edward.

Lady Blentham rose from her chair and said something: then suddenly and peacefully fainted, as she had not done since she was a girl at boarding-school with her waist laced down day and night to eighteen inches. Lord Blentham grabbed her, Violet cried: ‘Mam
ma
!’, and both she and Maud slapped her wrists and unbuttoned her collar. Maud’s face ran with slow, unstoppable tears.

Edward turned his face from the scene and, with his eyes closed, murmured to himself one of Kitty’s favourite songs from
Princess
Ida:

He beat time and bit his lip, longing for his mother to come to her senses, and wondering whether her swoon was put on.

Diana, who had run out to call for Lady Blentham’s maid and smelling salts, came back into the morning-room. ‘I suppose you think you’re very brave, Teddy,’ she said quietly to her brother. She looked a little over-excited, and ashamed.

‘Actually, I s’pose I do.’ They looked at each other with dislike; then Diana smiled.

‘I don’t think it’s awfully brave to tell Mamma in front of us. I expect Papa will want to see you alone?’

‘Didie, you’re a very impertinent, tiresome little girl,’ said Edward, removing his monocle and replacing it.