Diana, who was sitting with her back to the horses, smiled too. ‘It’s God’s will, Vio.’
Violet pulled her lower lip down, and Lady Blentham said: ‘You’re two very naughty girls, and you’ve scarcely changed since you were in the schoolroom in many ways. Diana, do put up your parasol, your freckles will be made far worse by this dreadful sun.’
The Blenthams’ old landau slowed down, and the coachman eased it between two other, larger carriages while the girls and their mother exchanged compliments about their last meeting with those whom they passed. Lady Blentham, as they came out again into a narrow strip of free ground, thought suddenly that she would be happy if none of her girls ever married.
She had always preferred her daughters to her sons, and had more toleration of their faults and mistakes; for she did not pretend to understand men and made no allowances for them. They were expected to be better creatures, and she had contempt for women who pretended men were merely children. Even Maud, Angelina reflected, had now quite settled down, had only the mildest interest in socialism and slumming, and was a useful unmarried daughter of whom it was possible to be very fond. Once, she had thought Maud needed a husband, or that she herself needed a husband for her; now she could not imagine such a thing. For years, she thought, as Lady Hartington bowed to her and smiled at her but did not stop, she had imagined it would be a disaster if her girls did not find husbands: now, seeing Diana and Violet once more as close as they had been before Violet’s growing up separated them, she knew how mistaken she had been.
‘I think we should turn back soon, girls,’ Angelina said, ‘or we won’t be in time to dress. By the by, I should like both of you to wear your pink muslins tonight – if you have no particular objection.’
‘Very well, Mamma,’ said Violet. Diana had been planning to wear her pink muslin in any case, and she said nothing.
Only her sons were unsatisfactory, thought Lady Blentham, as the carriage came to a halt again and two young men, less handsome than either Edward or Roderick, rode up to it and were polite to her before turning their attention to the girls and threatening her plan for having three good spinster daughters. Roderick was now ordained, acting as a curate in Northumberland while waiting for the living at Melton Balbridge in Dorset to fall in. Edward still lived with his wife in Brompton Square, and rarely visited his parents; but Lady Blentham had been forced not to add to the rather mild scandal of his marriage by refusing entirely to recognise Kitty, who had now produced a son. Angelina had made herself realise that it was her own well-known old-fashioned ideas and stiff principles which had made people gossip as much as they had. Thus she spoke to her daughter-in-law in public, and invited her to her very largest and dullest parties; and her anger with her grew colder and more deep, even though she now believed the actress was not in fact a whore. She used the word in a secret, terrible way.
Just as she was thinking about Kitty, who often refused her invitations, Angelina heard Diana say: ‘Yes, it is enjoyable isn’t it? Le monde où l’on s’amuse! Sometimes I imagine what would happen if an anarchist appeared one evening and started throwing bombs among us. Do you think it would put a stop to the Season?’
‘My dear!’ said Angelina, as Violet laughed.
‘I wish it would,’ she said with an eye on her mother.
‘I’d rescue you, Miss Diana,’ said one of the young men, refusing to be impressed. ‘That’s all I can promise you would happen in that event.’
Diana closed her eyes and inclined her head.
‘I think we must be making our way home, Mr St John – I suppose you’ll be at Mrs Jameson-Fraser’s reception tonight?’ said Angelina.
‘Yes, indeed!’
The landaulet lurched round after a few more courtesies and turned back towards Grosvenor Gate. Lady Blentham spoke to Diana about her nonsensical way of talking and Violet relaxed in her seat, wiggled her toes, and watched her calm sister before she grew bored.
‘I say, Mamma,’ she said, interrupting. ‘Isn’t that – Edward’s wife, over there, with Cousin Theresa? Goodness, they’re talking nineteen to the dozen, or it looks like it.’ She nodded to the right, for she had never been allowed to point, and Angelina, after slight pause, said: ‘Yes, certainly it is.’
‘What an awfully smart phaeton she’s got, I must say!’ said Violet.
‘Don’t use that word, Violet, it’s very vulgar.’
‘Smart?’
‘Yes.’
Diana was blushing, but staring straight ahead at Kitty. Whenever she caught sight of her brother’s wife she coloured, remembering the afternoon nearly a year ago on which she had gone to visit her, alone. Although she had been frightened, she had enjoyed leaving Queen Anne’s Gate unobserved and, after some trouble, hailing a four-wheeler instead of the hansom cab of her imagination. But when she reached Brompton Square and was taken in to Kitty, Kitty had come near to scolding Diana for going out without either permission or a chaperone, and had told her that, though she was pleased by her kindness in coming to call, she must never do it again. Kitty had promised, unprompted, not to tell Lady Blentham about her adventure, and had had a servant fetch a cab to the door without offering Diana even a cup of tea. It had not been the conduct to be expected of an actress, and Diana had cried on the way home. It was the memory of her childishness which made her blush now, and refuse to look away.
Lady Blentham made up her mind. They could not, she decided, claim not to have seen Kitty’s phaeton, especially when Cousin Theresa was with her, and she coldly asked the coachman to stop. Kitty had been watching their slow progress with amusement for the past five minutes.
‘Why, Lady Blentham!’ she said. ‘How nice to see you. May I present – oh, how silly, I’m sure I don’t need to introduce you – ain’t you Lady Blentham’s cousin, Theresa?’
‘No, you don’t need to introduce us,’ said Angelina. ‘I hope I see you well? Theresa, this is a surprise! Shall you be in London for long?’ She saw the girls nod at Kitty and exchange satisfactory murmured greetings.
‘Just a few more weeks,’ said Cousin Theresa. ‘As a matter of fact, after that you won’t be seeing me for a long time. Jimmy’s regiment is being sent out to India. I rather look forward to it.’
‘Well, I hope you find it meets your expectation. For how long do you expect to be stationed there?’ said Lady Blentham, who had never really liked her young first cousin once removed. She was a younger, plainer version of Kitty.
‘Three or five years. How nice it is to see you grown-up, Diana,’ she said, making Diana start. ‘Last time I saw you you can’t have been more than thirteen. And I was at Girton. You told me you were going to be a poet – and didn’t need an education.’
‘Yes,’ said Diana, smiling, remembering that Cousin Theresa had laughed at her then.
‘A poet?’ said Kitty. ‘Gracious me! Does Arthur Cornwallis know – Edward’s friend, Mr Cornwallis? He’d be interested, I’m sure.’
‘I’ve outgrown that sort of folly,’ said Diana quietly, looking into her eyes.
‘Theresa,’ said Lady Blentham, ‘you must come to call on us soon. I’ll send you a card for my next dinner-party – not a very formal affair, you know! I think we must be going – so sorry. Goodbye, Mrs Blentham – give my love to my grandson, and Edward, of course.’
‘Goodbye, Lady Blentham!’ said Kitty, and laughed.
The landaulet rolled out of the big park gates and from her position at the horses’ back Diana could see Kitty’s head and Cousin Theresa’s dipping and turning in the phaeton for quite a long time. It seemed to her that Kitty often looked in her direction, but that was not possible; she would take no interest in Edward’s little debutante sister.
‘Mamma,’ she said suddenly as they entered Piccadilly. ‘If I told you that I should like to go to Cambridge, to Girton or Somerville, what would you say?’
‘Somerville College is at Oxford, my dear, not Cambridge.’
CHAPTER 5
SEVERA
L MEN, AND AN EDUCATION
No one doubted that Diana was clever enough to go to Girton or Newnham: those who wished to discourage her said she was too clever. No one said the women were less intelligent than men, or that women’s colleges were an abomination and a waste of time; or that a young lady must occupy herself with Society and frivolity, and nothing besides, in order to be attractive to men. The Blenthams firmly denied that truth, and laughed at Diana a little.
They considered that a severe and formal education was not necessary for a strikingly intelligent young woman who, when she was at Dunstanton, had plenty of time to make use of her grandfather’s excellent library. Although Lady Blentham forbade the girls to read some of the novels which Violet liked and did read, either because they were rubbish or because like Tess of the d’Urbervilles they said too much about men and women, she saw no harm in serious works, except the medical dictionary and the newspapers. Even the Authorised Version was allowed: much of it was incomprehensible.
Angelina encouraged Diana’s longing for knowledge, and told her to read Gibbon and Macaulay, Addison and Steele, Carlyle and Ruskin and even Walter Pater, and von Ranke’s History of the Popes. She liked to discuss all these with her daughter; and when she was fully satisfied that Diana was in earnest about wishing to read seriously, she told her as she never had before that some novels were positively good.
Diana was bored by her sister’s favourite Ouida and Marie Corelli, but she enjoyed the works of Jane Austen, some of Dickens, and the Barsetshire and Palliser novels to which her mother introduced her. She learnt a good deal about life and men from her reading, and she was very grateful to Lady Blentham for allowing her to acquire some kind of education now that she had left the schoolroom, but she was not content. Throughout that winter, spent at Dunstanton but for a few house-parties in hunting country, she campaigned to be allowed to try for a place at Cambridge.
‘I’m proud of your brains, Diana,’ her father told her one day when they were hacking down a wide flat road, where rotten leaves lay cold in the ditches at the side. ‘Pity you’re not a boy, or I daresay you think so at the moment, but I believe there are all kinds of lectures and so forth that a girl can go to in London. At that place in Harley Street, and some other college, Bedford is it – all kinds of places. We’ll see in the spring, shall we? Rather fewer visits to the milliner, and a few more lectures – a considerable economy,’ he said. ‘I don’t mind your cutting a few At Homes and morning calls, and neither I suppose will your mother.’
‘Papa, I do so want to go to Girton. It’s not unknown! Cousin Theresa went.’
‘Your cousin Theresa’s mamma was a queer sort of woman, Didie, as your mother must have told you, and as for her father – well, you’re old enough to know that all those girls’ lives were made damned difficult by the scandal. What’s more, I don’t believe Theresa enjoyed herself at Girton. Lucky she found Jimmy,’ he said.
‘She must have learned a great deal,’ muttered Diana. ‘And been able to talk about it, properly!’
‘Nonsense, my dear, you know nothing about it. Don’t shuffle about like that, d’you want to give the poor brute a sore back? No, Diana – er – the ordinary sort of chap doesn’t learn anything at Cambridge, unless he’s a parson, I suppose.’ He smiled a little. ‘It can’t be so very different from Oxford. And all I learnt when I was at the House was how to drink three bottles of claret in an evening and – well, I made a few speeches at the Union, true enough, and that was good practice for the Commons.’ Charles had been Member for Maidstone West before his father died. ‘One learns, you know, after one’s finished one’s so-called education.’
Tears began to slop down Diana’s face, making her angry and hot. When she took off her hat, they were partly washed away by the icy drips which fell from the black twigs above them. She was crying a little because she had heard the same things so many times, and was beginning to believe them to be true.
‘Now, where are Violet and Roderick? Put your hat on, Diana, why did you take it off?’
‘They went on ahead, Papa, they wanted to gallop.’ She lifted her eyes, and made out the faint shape of Dunstanton through the full white January fog. Her father was relieved to see the house, where this conversation would end.
‘Roderick’s got a damned bad seat. Violet’s the best of you, so far as that’s concerned – though you too are very good.’
‘Yes, Papa. Thank you.’
‘Didie, you aren’t unhappy, I trust?’ he said with difficulty, as she replaced her tight little hat.
‘No Papa. Just so very bored.’ She thought: why am I really so keen to go to Cambridge?
‘I’m afraid all intelligent women are bored. Your mother for instance. One marries a woman with a good mind, but one can’t discuss intellectual matters with her after one’s been married to her for a few months. Somehow marriage and conversation don’t quite go together.’ He paused. ‘You’ll have to get used to it, my dear.’ Charles spoke with absolute seriousness for the first time.
Lord Blentham could see no real harm in female suffrage, and sometimes thought that women’s brains were wasted, though nothing could be done about this. When drunk enough, he would say that his wife would have made a good Prime Minister, but that on the whole he was thankful she could not be. He had often been unfaithful to Angelina since their marriage, and he was proud of how for thirty years he had evaded her skilful plans for his advancement in politics and for his conversion to Toryism. She had sincerely and silently desired that for a long time, because if Charles deserted the Liberal Party, she could then abandon her pretence of Gladstonian convictions, and obey her husband by making herself useful to the Primrose League. He knew all this, though she had said nothing.
Charles was sufficiently fond of Angelina to be sorry that he was a disappointment to her but he reminded himself that, when they married, he too had had high ambitions and could not have been expected to know that in fact one junior ministry would be enough to satisfy him by the time he reached early middle age. He also liked to remind himself that, as a young man, he had married Angelina for love of both her mind and her beauty, rather than for her ten thousand pounds or her connection with Mr Gladstone. Because of this she ought, he believed, to be grateful for the physical attentions he still paid her, and had paid her with vigour in the past. He supposed she was grateful in spite of her delicacy: Angelina was nearly as good as she meant to be.
Like his wife, Lord Blentham preferred his daughters to his sons though he knew them far less well. He had been fiercely strict with the boys when they were young, because it was so important that they should not turn out unsatisfactory in any way. Though Edward and Roderick had not turned out very well, the girls were good enough, and could be fully enjoyed now they were grown-up: even their little follies could be a minor source of pleasure, for he was a tolerant man. Charles supposed that his sons were good enough too, in their separate ways, but both of them had irritated him ever since they were born. They were his responsibility, as the girls were not.
Charles and Angelina had come an unspoken agreement some time age that Diana, their youngest, was their favourite child. They voiced their agreement that all the other children more or less lacked brains, though Maud and Edward tried to be clever; and they talked a good deal about Diana’s innocent wish to go to Girton, which they need never gratify.
It was an easy and rather wrongful pleasure to have a young favourite, Charles thought; and he promised himself as they rode up to the house that, even if Diana’s brains led her to some grave lapse in good behaviour, he would not be too hard upon her. She never had been truly naughty, even as a tiny girl: only alert and rather self-assured.
In the stable yard, he helped her to dismount; and told her that she was a lucky girl, because apart from anything else she had a figure which other girls must envy. Roderick came out of one of the loose-boxes at that moment, with his greatcoat buttoned up to hide his clerical collar. He heard Charles’s remark and saw Dian
a flush.
‘Yes, you’re what one used to call a strapping wench, Didie!’ he said, hitting his boot with his riding crop.
‘Not a very suitable expression to use in front of your little sister, eh, Roderick,’ said his father, quite idly. ‘And hardly very suitable for a man of the cloth, either.’
Roderick gave him a slightly pouting frown. ‘I daresay,’ he admitted. ‘Have I offended you, Diana?’
‘Yes, bo – yes, you have. Strapping wench!’ She smiled, and swallowed. Her cheeks were still very red. ‘You know Roddy, you oughtn’t to have gone into the Church. Why did you? I know you’d have made a splendid sort of Parson Woodforde, a hundred years ago, but now we’re so strict about religion, surely you must hate it? You know how Mamma disapproves of clergymen hunting – so does everybody!’
‘Mamma’s a regular Lady Lufton – as you were saying just the other day,’ said Roderick, still pouting slightly, and watching his father. Diana had persuaded him to try Framley Parsonage, but he was not fond of novels and found it easy to write sermons against them. ‘Besides, people nowadays are hardly strict enough about religion. There’s far too much Rationalism and other rubbish about.’ He saw that Diana was smiling at him and, unwillingly, he laughed.
‘Anything that keeps you off the back of a good hunter is an excellent thing, Roderick. I trust you don’t hunt, in Northumberland?’ said Lord Blentham, who was an agnostic.
‘I go to the meet, Father, and that’s all!’
‘Good.’ Just then, the coachman came up to Charles, muttered something and drew him aside. ‘Tell your mother I’ll be in shortly!’ said their father. The two men walked away together towards the opposite stable-block.
Roderick and Diana stood still and listened to the fading talk.
‘I’m sure he’s very sorry, my lord!’ said the coachman. ‘I’ve made sure of that.’
‘It can’t be helped, it can’t be helped,’ said Lord Blentham. ‘It must be very largely Mr Roderick’s fault.’
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