The sun was shining on Albert, and I could hear the shrill laughter of children’s voices and the admonishing or encouraging answering ones of their nannies to walk sedately along the flower walk, frolic on the grass, or go to feed the ducks on the Round Pond.
Jeremy came immediately to the point.
“I’m in love with you, Caroline. It started at the masked ball and it’s gone on in leaps and bounds from there.”
I nodded blissfully.
“I’ve been thinking about you so much … in fact I have thought about nothing else since our first meeting. I can’t go on like this … just meeting you with someone else there all the time. I want you all to myself. There’s only one answer. Will you marry me, Caroline?”
“Of course,” I answered promptly.
Then we began to laugh.
“You should have said, ‘Oh dear, this is so sudden!’ I believe that is the conventional reply, even after a courtship that’s been going on for months.”
“You’ll have to get used to an unconventional wife.”
“Believe me, I would ask no other.”
He put his arms about me and kissed me. I was so happy. This was the perfect day. Here was the perfect lover. The melancholy rugged hero of my dreams had vanished completely. He was replaced by this handsome, charming, regular featured mystery-lacking flesh-and-blood husband-to-be.
I was ecstatically in love.
“I will love you forever,” I promised him.
“Dear Caroline, you are so delightfully … unencumbered.”
“Unencumbered by what?”
“By conventions, by tiresome etiquette and all that is most boring in society. Life will be wonderful for us. I tell you what I plan to do. I shall write to your father and ask him if he will see me. Then I shall beg for his permission to ask you to marry me.”
“He’ll never give it.”
“Then we shall have to elope.”
“I shall climb from my window by means of a rope ladder.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Oh, don’t spoil it. I love the thought of a rope ladder. You’ll be waiting below in a carriage to whisk me off. We shall be married immediately and live happily ever after. Where?”
“Ah,” he said. “So you have a practical streak after all. This is what we have to decide. We’ll have a small house near the Park so that we can come here often, sit on this seat and say, ‘Do you remember?’ “
I looked dreamily into the future.
“Do you remember the day Jeremy asked Caroline to marry him,” I said dreamily. “And she said, ‘Yes’ … immediately and immodestly.”
“And he loved her for it,” went on Jeremy.
Then we kissed each other solemnly.
He said: “I can’t wait. I’m going straight home to write that letter to your father.”
I shook my head gloomily. “He never liked people to be happy even when he was well. I believe he’s even worse now.”
“We’ll start with him in any case. I hope we can get his consent. It will save a lot of trouble.”
“Never mind. I’ll soothe away your troubles. Haven’t I told you that we are going to live happily ever after?”
To my amazement my father agreed to see Jeremy and then gave his consent to our engagement.
Life had changed completely. From being an insignificant member of the household I had become an important one. My hour of glory had begun. Moira Massingham called to see me. I was not present on sufferance this time. She regarded me with a kind of wonder. She thought it was so romantic—and me not even “out.” Who had ever heard of anyone’s securing a husband before she was launched into society? It was unprecedented. “And to think it all began at our masked ball!” she marvelled.
It was not only with Moira that my stock had risen.
I was invited to several houses. I took tea at the Massinghams’ and Lady Massingham regarded me with approval. There were other mothers present. I was something of a phenomenon—the girl who had acquired a fiance without the cost of an enormously expensive season.
How I revelled in my glory.
I was sorry for Olivia, who after two years had failed to achieve what I had before starting.
Even Aunt Imogen deigned to notice me now.
“It is the best thing that could have happened,” she said. “The money your maternal grandfather left you is to be released. It is not much. There is a lump sum of a few hundred pounds, which was to come to you when you were twenty-one or on your marriage; and then you will have an income of fifty pounds a year. It is not a great deal. Your mother’s family were not rich.” She sniffed with a certain degree of elegance to indicate her contempt for my mother’s family. “The money will be useful and we can start to plan your trousseau. June is a good month for weddings.”
“Oh, but we don’t want to wait as long as that.”
“I think you should. You are very young. You have never been launched into society. It is most fortunate that this young man has offered to marry you.”
“He thinks he is rather fortunate,” I said complacently.
She turned away.
I thought: We are not going to wait until June. But when I broached the matter with Jeremy he said: “If that is what your family want we should go along with it.”
We looked at houses. What a happy day that was when we found the little house in a narrow street—one of the byways of Knightsbridge. The rooms were not large but it had an air of elegance. There were three storeys with three rooms on each floor and a small garden in which a pear tree grew. I knew I could be happy in such a house.
The servants regarded me with a new respect. Jeremy was allowed to call at the house and he and I could go out together on certain occasions. I lived in a whirl. I was in love; I had never been so happy in my life—and I believed it would go on like that for the rest of it.
Jeremy of course was not exactly the catch of the season. He had just scraped into the magic circle set up by what he called the Order of the Questing Mamas. It was through family connections rather than wealth, and to make the perfect catch a man must have both. But one, in certain circumstances, could be regarded as enough.
How we laughed together! The days seemed full of sunshine, though I did not notice the weather. The wind could blow; the rain could teem down; and life was still full of sunshine. We were constantly together and so delighted because my father had given his consent—not that we could not have surmounted that difficulty, said Jeremy; but it was better not to have to. I was mildly surprised how much store he set by that. He said that he did not want any impediments. He was passionate and irritated by the restraints which were put upon us. He told me how he longed for the time when we could be together all through the days and nights.
I lived in an enchanted dream until one morning when our household was thrown into confusion.
When my father’s manservant had gone to his room he found him dead. He had had another stroke—a massive one this time—and it had killed him.
Death is sobering—even that of people one has never really known. I suppose I could say I had never known my father; certainly there had been no demonstrative love between us, but he had been there in the house, though a figure who represented virtue and godliness. I had always imagined God was rather like my father. And now he was not there.
The Careys came at once and took over control. All the servants were in a state of tension, speculating as to what changes would be made in the household. There would certainly be some and they might well be out of employment.
Gloom pervaded the house. To smile would have been considered showing a lack of respect to the dead. Outside the house a funeral hatchment—a diamond-shaped tablet with the Tressidor armorial bearings—was fixed to a wall; and there were notices in the papers, besides his obituary which extolled his virtues and set out in detail the good works he had accomplished during a lifetime “devoted to the service of his fellow men.” He had been a selfless man, we were told. He was one of the greatest philanthropists of our age. Many societies working for the good of the community were grateful to him and there would be mourning all over England for the passing of a great good man.