The Bohemian Girl

by Frances Vernon

  ‘Lady Blentham, I’m glad you don’t object too much.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and suddenly beamed, making Charles grunt and look up at the house. ‘Charles and I still have our little Diana, after all – though I suppose not for very long.’ All of them thought of Captain Fitzclare.

  It was on his account that Lady Blentham had decided to accept Sir Walter’s invitation: if Charles had not told her that Fitzclare would be present, she would have declined for herself and the girls.

  She left the men, and they went on their way, walking rather faster than before. ‘Dear Angelina,’ said Lord Blentham, and added: ‘Violet’s the least like her mother of all the girls. Didie’s really rather like her – so’s Maud.’

  ‘All women are mysterious, don’t you think?’ said Sir Walter.

  Lady Blentham went back into the house, feeling a fool because she had just acted on impulse as she almost never did. She climbed the stairs, walked along the little passage reserved by Sir Walter for unmarried women, and stood for a moment coldly looking at the little brass-bound card on her daughter’s door which said: ‘The Honble. Violet Blentham.’ She went in and said: ‘Violet’ to the mound in the bed. ‘Violet.’

  ‘Mamma?’ Violet struggled a little, then raised herself, and blinked at her mother in the half-darkness. Angelina decided not to open the curtains. ‘It’s awfully early, isn’t it? You’re dressed …’

  ‘I want to talk to you, my dear.’

  ‘About my marriage?’ Violet said clearly, a moment later.

  ‘About your – marriage. Because I think that like most girls – you have very little idea of what marriage implies.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Some girls are told nothing by their mothers, Violet, and when it happens – when they marry – they get a considerable shock.’

  Violet guessed what was coming, and thought of Fanny Hill, but she only stretched her toes and said: ‘Yes, Mamma? What sort of considerable shock?’

  Lady Blentham walked over to the window and fingered the curtain. ‘Don’t you think this is a very ugly, bleak sort of house, Violet?’ She hated Scotland, and all unruly moors.

  ‘Oh, I rather like it,’ said Violet. ‘Do go on, Mamma!’

  ‘Well, my dear,’ Angelina sighed, ‘do you promise me not to repeat a word of what I’m going to say to you to Diana?’

  ‘Yes, I promise,’ said Violet, drawing up her knees under the bedclothes, and hugging them.

  Angelina sat down on a hard chair, and folded her hands in her lap like a good child. ‘You know, of course,’ she said, ‘that married people often share a bedroom? People who move in Society, even the middle classes, have separate bedrooms, of course, but usually connected?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They have to share a bed,’ she continued. ‘Even if they do have separate rooms. My dear, have you read the marriage service?’

  ‘Yes, Mamma.’

  ‘Perhaps certain passages – certain words – have made you wonder? “Fruitful”, for instance – the mention of children?’

  ‘Actually, no, Mamma.’

  ‘Then it’s time they did!’ said Angelina. There was a pause, and she looked down at her lap. ‘Violet, I must explain that married men and women – come together, in bed, to make babies. Men are made very differently from women and they – they enter us.’ She closed her eyes. Nearly all men repelled Angelina, but she thought Sir Walter remarkably attractive, and found it hard to imagine his taking a wife to bed. She wondered how in the world Violet had attached him, for she was so plain. Breathing deeply, she continued: ‘They have an instrument attached to their – stomachs – to enter between our lower limbs. Men suffer from desire, Violet, the lust of concupiscence as they say, they want to do it, gain pleasure from it, constantly, that is what I mean. But it’s painful for women – often very painful. Even with a man of whom she’s fond, a woman cannot – it’s only our duty, our absolute duty, to submit. That’s marriage, Violet. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Yes, Mamma,’ said Violet in a very muffled voice. Even in the dim light, she could see that her mother’s cheeks were bright red.

  ‘Now, do you see why I have told you? Can you still want to marry Sir Walter – such an old man, really so plain? Isn’t it vile? He must seem so to you!’ There was no answer. Angelina’s voice rose. ‘Girls nowadays, one can never … Perhaps you know something about all this. Perhaps you thought such an old man wouldn’t want it! But he will, Violet – I promise you.’ She did not really think it possible that Violet could know anything, and she knew she was becoming over-excited.

  ‘Oh,’ whispered Violet.

  ‘And childbirth – producing a baby – through a tiny hole, is quite agonisingly painful, Violet. Even chloroform helps only a little!’

  ‘Mamma, don’t you think someone might possibly hear you?’ said Violet anxiously. ‘The maids, I mean …’

  Angelina swallowed. ‘Do you wish to marry him? Do you? The thought of your being married to him makes me very, very angry. How dare he, at his age, even think of – oh, in the old days a mother would have been quite glad for her daughter to marry him, for mere social reasons, even though he can’t have much more than five thousand a year! And would she have told you what I’ve just told you? But my affection for you – my caring for your happiness – matters very little, perhaps you’d rather …’

  ‘Oh, don’t be upset, darling Mamma, please.’

  ‘Have you listened to what I’ve been saying to you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Violet sat up in bed, and pulled the pillows into shape behind her, looking at her mother meanwhile.

  ‘Do you insist on marrying him – now that you understand?’

  ‘Yes. I love him, you see. I shan’t mind his – doing all those things to me.’ At last, Violet began weakly to laugh.

  Lady Blentham got up from her chair and said very clearly: ‘Violet.’

  ‘Y-yes, M-mamma?’

  ‘Did you know before. Did you allow me to tell you, quite unnecessarily?’

  Violet realised then that, for the first time in her life, she had been consciously unkind, and to her mother; but she could not stop giggling. ‘I did know a – a little, Mamma. Other girls talk, you know – people do find out!’

  Angelina’s teeth chattered. ‘Then I see that I shall have no need to say anything at all to Diana, ever. Very well, Violet. Marry Sir Walter, though I can’t think you’ll be happy. How you can know and think you love him? Young girls’ natural feelings, towards handsome young men – when they think that marriage will be a few kisses, that they’ll be treated with respect – that one can understand, but you are quite, quite different, I see! No, I won’t say it. Marry him. I shall send the notice of your engagement to The Times tomorrow. Well, how little one knows one’s own children. Stop it, child! Violet!’ The girl was still laughing. Lady Blentham strode over to the bed, and slapped her daughter’s face: but she could not bring herself to do it as hard as she wished, and she sobbed.

  *

  Diana walked up and down the little yew-tree avenue which was the central feature of the garden at Auchingilloch. She was smiling, occasionally laughing, over one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, which Julian Fitzclare had copied out and put under her door in an envelope. He had included a note, which asked her whether she did not think it original and moving. He said he would like to have her opinion as a poet, and she meant to give it:

  I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,

  But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

  And in some perfumes there is more delight

  Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks …

  I grant I never saw a goddess go –

  My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.

  And yet, by Heaven, I think my love as rare

  As any she belied with false compare.

  It was immensely kind of him to make such an effort to court her with poetry, and to be original too. He could not have enjoyed being s
o intellectual, thought Diana, even though he worshipped her.

  She sat down on a wet wooden seat, concealed from the main path in an alcove, and thought of Violet’s engagement, which was now the main topic of conversation at Auchingilloch Lodge. Lady Blentham let it be known that she had contrived a wise match for an unusual daughter; and the other ladies staying with Sir Walter were busy spreading the news round the neighbourhood and communicating it by letter. Julian Fitzclare very much approved of Violet’s choice, and quite believed that Lady Blentham was right to have encouraged it. This pleased Diana, though she did not tell him of her mother’s original reaction, or of her own outburst when Violet told her; which had surprised her at the time as much as it had her sister.

  Diana and Violet had made up their brief quarrel, as soon as Violet had enjoyed a cuddle with Sir Walter and told him about it, but Diana still felt guilty. As she had told Violet, she was unhappy too, because she knew how badly she would miss her sister; how she would hate living alone with her parents and Maud. There would be no more smoking cigarettes in the old schoolroom at Dunstanton, or long hair-brushing talks about sex and other people’s stupidity, about their parents and about themselves. Her sister congratulated her on these feelings.

  Diana disliked knowing that she was jealous of Violet, when she had never had the least cause to be so before. She did not like discovering that Violet had a hard streak in her character, and would never in her life forgive Angelina, or be brought to think Sir Walter a rather silly man. It had been very unpleasant, Diana thought, to discover that Mamma was capable of handing out slaps.

  She looked down again at the poem in her hand; and the sight of it made her feel panic. It made her think she would never really have a chance to marry and be like Violet, even though Julian’s copying it out for her seemed to point to the opposite. She was not normal, and never could be.

  Julian Fitzclare had been the first to make Diana see that a part of her wish to go to university had been the desire to leave Dunstanton: even though she loved her parents. Violet’s engagement, and all the troubles surrounding it, simply confirmed this. So, two months ago, had Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure – she could hardly think of education now.

  She wanted to be a fully dignified grown-up, a clever woman with a house of her own, able to treat Angelina as an equal. Since yesterday, when Fitzclare had taken the opportunity to kiss her behind a rock on the moors, she had also felt an increased need for a man. Diana thought he had made her see that Fanny Hill was not just a most intriguing fantasy; that real men who danced and shot could be like the courtesan’s better lovers. They did kiss with sexual passion, only slightly mixed with fear; and she would learn to enjoy the reality, not only the thought, in time.

  ‘You know he won’t propose, he’s merely a little infatuated,’ she said aloud, in a sensibly teasing voice, as though speaking to Violet. Reeking breath, she thought. Diana brushed her teeth once a day, and always gargled with eau-de-cologne after smoking a cigarette. She smiled again, and wondered whether he could be made to smile too. Diana did like Julian, but she did not think he would ever make her a serious proposal. She wished more than anything else that he would, and swore she would accept him.

  *

  Julian Fitzclare felt that he had deeply wronged Diana behind the stone on the moor. She had been shyly unresponsive as any girl ought to be, but her hot colour and the look in her eyes, and her perfect silence then and after, confirmed his view that she was unique. Only the other picknickers, wandering towards them, chattering and looking, had prevented him from proposing then. Since that day, he had not found her unchaperoned even for a moment, and he wondered how on earth he was ever to marry. He did not believe she would even consider accepting him. He was sure that she liked him, but he quite accepted that she could not love him as he loved her. He would have been rather shocked if she had, for he only wanted to serve and adore her.

  On Sunday, the first of September, there was no shooting; Sir Walter’s household planned to drive over to Smallburn Castle, where its owner, Mr Maclean, would give them both luncheon and tea. Several carriages were needed to transport the whole party, but it turned out on Sunday morning that the second landau had a broken shaft and was unusable. There was consternation when Sir Walter and his devouter guests returned from the local kirk.

  ‘Well,’ said Sir Walter’s widowed sister, Mrs Lejeune, quickly planning excellent arrangements in her head, ‘I can’t think what’s to be done. I simply can’t imagine – it’s a disaster.’

  ‘Very unfortunate,’ said Lady Blentham.

  ‘I told Walter, of course, that hiring job-carriages for a party like this is always a risky business. They’re never sound. A pity, I must say, he doesn’t keep a proper number of his own, but I’m sure Violet will manage him better than I do. Do you think, Lady Blentham, that it would look very odd if he drove her in the governess-cart?’ she said quickly.

  ‘No, not odd in the least. They’re engaged.’

  ‘Violet is such a dear.’ Mrs Lejeune, who had no children, looked forward to staying at Auchingilloch, making friends with her brother’s little wife, and supervising her nursery. ‘Mr Fitzclare – Captain Fitzclare, I always forget – might perhaps drive your younger daughter? We do have a pony-trap, and … so difficult!’

  ‘I see no reason why he should not.’

  ‘You and I can follow them, of course, in the landau.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lady Blentham. She had been so horrified by her own folly, her emotion, and the violence she had shown to her daughter, that she was now sincerely in favour of the marriage. Her old feelings were so perfectly buried that she did not remember them, and she was being meek.

  When Mrs Lejeune told him that he was to drive Diana over to Smallburn, Julian blushed.

  ‘Shan’t you be pleased?’ said Mrs Lejeune.

  ‘I’ll be d-delighted,’ he gulped. ‘Delighted, I promise you.’

  It was a warm day, and there were midges in the air. Diana and Julian drove in virtual silence for a while, commenting only on the weather and the state of yesterday’s bag. About twenty minutes after leaving Auchingilloch, Diana said: ‘Thank you for sending me that sonnet. I think it’s one of Shakespeare’s best, don’t you?’

  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.

  CHAPTER 7

  ONE QUIET WEDDING

  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.