Outbreak of Love (25 page)

“Assuming his parents agree, I suppose the wedding could be in about three months.”

“It isn't long.”

“D'you think it's too soon? People will say I'm trying to make certain of him. That's how they talk here.”

“They don't matter. I should think three months is about right.”

“When am I going to come up against something horrid in you?” asked Diana. “Every time I meet you you show some new goodness.”

“D'you want me to be horrid?”

“No, of course not. But I feel I must be imagining greater happiness than anyone can have—anyone of my age. One expects these illusions in Josie and John, though I hope they're not illusions.”

“You'll find my faults in time. I'm clever at concealing them. I don't think it shows unusual virtue to expect you to avoid wrecking your daughter's life. Imagine the effect on his people if you eloped before the wedding.”

“It would be grotesque—but after the wedding?”

“Then our lives are our own.”

John and Josie arrived at the house before them, and had crossed the road and were looking at the sea, across which a sparkling, pale golden path ran to the moon. They came over when Diana and Russell arrived. John had to go.

“I should have been back earlier,” he said, “but I think the occasion justifies a breach of discipline. In fact I think it justifies a jolly revolution.” Then he turned to Diana and asked seriously: “What will Mr von Flugel say?” Josie replied:

“Daddy will say: ‘It is good for a young girl to marry a young man. I am happy.”

They laughed, Diana a little uneasily.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

John cabled to his parents asking their approval of his engagement to Josie. He did not ask their permission as he was determined to marry her. He knew that they would be dubious about his marrying an Australian girl with a German name, and to reassure them he put in his cable: “No blemishes. Miss Rockingham approves.” They replied: “We trust your judgement. Love.” Though it was really Miss Rockingham's judgement that they trusted.

The announcement of the engagement caused surprise, and amongst the new-rich Toorak ladies, great indignation. Mrs Vane, whose husband had forked out two thousand pounds a year to enable his daughter to marry an aide-de-camp, though certainly he had been the son of a peer, was dumbfounded that a penniless girl from Brighton, who was not “in society” should get one for nothing. Baba was as angry as Mrs Vane. With her social ambition she might have been expected to be glad if members of the family made good marriages, but she so disliked her “in-laws” and especially Diana, that she could not bear any good fortune to come to them. Also, the only sentence in all Holy Writ of which she approved was: “From him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath.” She had been accustomed to say: “Josie's a pretty little thing, but no one will want to marry von Flugel's daughter. Couldn't she find some useful employment?” She now began to hint that not only Wolfie was disreputable, as Miss Bath had told her that she had found Diana and Russell having supper alone together “in arm-chairs”.

Cousin Sophie on the other hand, who might have been expected to be a little piqued as she regarded Government House as her own preserve, showed great pleasure. She might be unable to resist the satisfaction of an erudite
riposte
even if it flattened its victim, but she was never unkind in her intention. Although she knew many people of the kind of whom Baba and Mrs Vane were extreme examples, she never understood them. She thought that they were rather vulgar, but she did not take in that they had no basic reality. They spent their time trying to fit their lives to a pattern which existed on the other side of the world, the original of which most of them had never seen. Cousin Sophie on the other hand had grown up in that pattern, and modified it here and there to suit the country in which she found herself. It was the action of these two processes, the striving by one, and the modification by the other, which led, twenty years later, to the amazing incident of Baba's cutting Cousin Sophie.

Cousin Sophie may also have thought that she could afford to be complacent about Josie's engagement, as she expected very soon to be able to announce Anthea's to Captain Thorpe. He was not the type of young man whom in England she would have thought a desirable son-in-law, but she was sufficiently influenced by the atmosphere of Melbourne to feel the glamour surrounding anyone attached to the Governor-General's staff, and as it was through Government House that she had descended into Australian life, she had a vague feeling that it might also be the door through which her daughters might ascend again to the region she had inhabited in her youth.

She thought very little about money. She had an instinctive regard for exalted rank, but most she valued a cultivated intelligence. She did not bother about the finances of presentable young men. She was not very clear as to how much her husband earned, and she would have been astonished at the idea of a fortune-hunter coming after one of her daughters. She thought that Freddie was attracted to Anthea because she had the manner of a young English gentlewoman. She knew that Freddie was Sir Roland's nephew. She did not know that when Sir Roland's sister married his father, the marriage was deplored, and only allowed because Mr Thorpe was enormously rich. In a few years he lost his entire fortune and committed suicide, and Sir Roland had to pay for Freddie's education, a rather unprofitable expenditure.

Wolfie did not receive the news of the engagement quite as Josie had expected, though there was no question of his withholding his approval. He had not intended to visit Mrs Montaubyn on the evening when he had believed that Diana had forgiven him, but the reconciliation had awakened sentimental feelings, and during the half-hour's journey to Melbourne, owing to the trance effected in his musical mind by the rhythm of the train, he sank into a reverie on the sweet sadness of life, and when he arrived at Flinders Street he felt the need of womanly comfort, and he called on Mrs Montaubyn after all. With the pound which Diana had allowed him to keep he took her to dine at the French restaurant, but by miraculous good fortune they left five minutes before Russell and his guests arrived.

When he returned home a little earlier than usual, he felt ashamed of himself, and wished that he had not been to see Mrs Montaubyn, especially as she had not been very comforting. Lady Eileen had said that Germans are incapable of understanding the effect of their actions on other people, and it was certainly true of Wolfie. He complained to Mrs Montaubyn about the rift in his home life. If he had said how tiresome and ill-natured Diana was, she might have given him all the sympathy he required. Instead of this he sang Diana's praises and said how sad he was that she would not show him affection, and he implied that the responsibility for this rested with Mrs Montaubyn.

When he found Diana and Josie still up, and when they told him of the engagement, he felt more ashamed. This would have been the perfect moment for a reconciliation. He would have liked to be the proud and honourable parent blessing his daughter. He disliked being ashamed, and when it happened, he immediately searched for some way of transferring the feeling to others. He complained that he had not been consulted.

“Captain Wyckham came to ask your consent, but you weren't at home,” said Diana.

“He will take her to England. Who will care for my old age?” asked Wolfie.

Josie looked hurt. Diana was so angry that Wolfie should at this moment cloud her happiness with his miserable selfishness that if Josie had not been present, she would have retorted: “Mrs Montaubyn, presumably.” Instead, she said: “You might think of Josie, rather than yourself, at this moment.”

Wolfie looked surprised and said: “Indeed, I wish her happiness,” and he kissed her. Diana could tell from his guilty manner, always insufficiently disguised under a pompous veneer, that he had been somewhere disreputable, and to see him, perhaps with the powder from another woman's cheeks on his face, kissing Josie in her shining happiness, blotted out any kindliness she might have felt for him when she herself kissed him at the door a few hours earlier. People might think Wolfie amusing, but these children of nature could produce at times situations of intolerable squalor. She was hardened in her intention to leave him as soon as Josie was married and had left for England.

She now met Russell with acknowledged secrecy. Before the ball they had accepted without actually mentioning it, that it would be indiscreet for them to be seen much together. But then, as she had regarded her behaviour and her intentions as blameless, she did not think it would have mattered much if their friendship had been noticed, and so she had not been disturbed by Miss Bath's intrusion on them at supper.

After some discussion, cables to England, and arrangements for a new aide-de-camp to take John's place, the wedding day was fixed for the middle of July. As Diana had foreseen, Baba said that this was because she did not want to give John a chance of backing out. She did not like this sort of malicious gossip touching Josie, but she thought that she had no right to delay Russell longer than she could help.

Once again she tried to lead Wolfie up to discussing the subject of a divorce, but at the first hint he was so full of righteous indignation, that she abandoned all idea of coming to a reasonable settlement with him in conversation. He said that it would be a monstrous wickedness for parents to arrange a divorce while their daughter was preparing for her marriage, and Diana herself felt that in more moderate language, there was something in his argument.

She told Russell of Wolfie's reaction, and taking it into account, they made their final plans. John and Josie were to go for their honeymoon to Tasmania. They would only be there for ten days, after which they would return to Melbourne for three days and then sail for England. Diana would leave for England alone a fortnight later. It was quite usual for wives to go to Europe without their husbands, who often could not get away. It would be assumed that she wanted to see Josie settled in her new home, but of course she could not travel on the same ship as an unwanted chaperone with the young married couple. Russell was to leave Melbourne in a ship a week before Diana, disembark at Fremantle and spend a week in Perth, ostensibly to visit friends there, and then join her ship when it arrived. In London or the Continent, they could live how they chose. No one would be interested in what they did. It might be a year before it leaked out that they were together, and by then the divorce and re-arrangement of Diana's affairs might be completed. Josie would be well settled in her new life, and it was almost solely on her account that this elaborate secrecy was planned.

Wolfie might object to her going to Europe or want to come with her, but if it came to the point, she would simply have to refuse to pay his fare. As it happened, when at last she told him that she was going, he took it with surprising docility, partly due to her suggestion that Daisy and her family should come to look after him.

Harry, in Queensland, was the only one who, in his letters, gave an impression of dissatisfaction. Why did Josie want to marry an Englishman, especially an aide-de-camp, who would be sure to think that he had conferred a favour on the family by marrying her? Then he was indignant when he heard that Elsie had again come forward and lent her house for the reception.

“Do we have to live on the Radcliffes?” he asked. “Isn't our own house good enough for him? Or at any rate why can't it be at Aunt Maysie's if you have to be so grand? If we have to live on charity, it's better to take it from relations.”

Diana was thankful for Elsie's offer. Her own house was not only far out, but was now very shabby. She had a great deal of expense ahead of her, and she had to sell some shares to pay for Josie's trousseau and the wedding expenses. She had thought of selling some more to have the house done up, but then she thought that would be foolish as it would immediately be wrecked by the occupation of Daisy and her family, who had a new and strange attitude to furniture, almost the same as their attitude to food, that it was not a stable possession but something one used up. Then a year later the house would probably be sold in its ruined condition at a heavy loss.

The obvious person to lend her house for the reception was Diana's sister Maysie. She had a rich husband and a large house in Toorak. But Maysie had been slightly infected both by her husband's and by Baba's attitude to the Flugels, that it was outrageous that they should have anything good. The reason for this was an unconscious loyalty to their own kind, the acquisitive “go-getter” who alone they believed to be entitled to material prosperity. But the real reason why Maysie did not offer her house may have been that not long ago she had prepared an enormous wedding reception for her own daughter, who had run off with her first cousin, leaving the immensely rich bridegroom waiting at the altar, and so causing the greatest social fiasco Melbourne had ever known.

John and Josie did not mind how soon the wedding took place, and Diana was thankful that she had no qualms about it. They were so happy together, so naturally gentle with each other, that she was sure the marriage must be a good one. She knew Josie's character, and from what she saw of John and from what Lady Wendale told her about him, she was sure that he would always be considerate. She believed that their attraction was of the heart and mind, and that they recognized some spiritual quality in each other which drew them immediately together, something far more enduring than physical attraction. When they met, Diana was amused at the way they at once began to talk as if they had never been separated.

The sight of them together could not fail to make her compare their love with her own attachment to Russell, and she saw that the latter was of a much more sober quality. She was glad that it was. She could not have borne her emotions to be as heightened as Josie's. It would have made an absurd situation in the house. Hers would be, as she had already told herself, largely an elopement of convenience, though she did not see how it could be convenient for Russell. She suggested to him that she had the best of the bargain, but he reassured her, repeating that it was amazing good fortune for him to have found her, and he again said that she must have been the reason for his coming to Australia. He said how wonderfully different his European life would be when she was with him. He talked of the things they would do, the places they would go to, and there formed in Diana's mind a picture of the halcyon existence she would lead when her present preoccupations were over.