“She shows none. But I think so. Yes.”
“And then”—he risked it again—”there will be no difficulty left?”
“Ah—you are thinking about my inexperience in taking houses, and that sort of thing.” This time her smile had its faint mockery. “Isn’t that so?”
“Perhaps.” He had to laugh it off. “I can’t say what I’m thinking of.”
“Of course, there’s what I’ve said already. It is formidable – marriage in middle age. But difficulties? I don’t think there will be any more – or not of a kind that we can’t . . . shake free of.”
“I need hardly say how much I hope so.” He rose. There was another question that he felt compelled to put. “If your sister withdraws her objections, then when—”
She, too, was on her feet, and interrupting him. “Need you ask?” Her voice was husky still, but transformed. “Need you ask me, who—” She broke off, and suddenly took both his hands in hers, so that he had a vivid memory of his own action on their first meeting. “On the very earliest day . . . the very earliest day we can.”
CHAPTER II
Quail lingered for some time in Oxford. He gave lunch to his Christ Church friend, an elderly English tutor of mild temper and no conversation. He took tea with Lady Elizabeth and engaged her in a serious confabulation. He left in the rooms of the absent Robin Warboys a card inscribed with the initials p.p.c., conjecturing that such antique observances are congenial to the young mind. He sent Miss Fontaney the flowers about which he had hesitated on an earlier occasion. Then, after a further interval of business in London, he hired a car and, quite in the manner of his peregrinating countrymen, drove down to Cornwall.
It could be read as an unreasonable compromise between staying put and really clearing out – and there were times when he felt he would have been better on the Queen Elizabeth or the Queen Mary. But at least he had friends in that corner of England upon whom it would be pleasant to call; and the climate was recommended for the time of year. As ventured into from the base of a comfortable hotel, it wasn’t, indeed, disagreeable. The chill ghost of a Mediterranean winter breathed occasionally in foliage that seemed, at the same time, a shade deliberately contrived to deny the obstinate septentrional fact. It didn’t strike Quail as a very effective part of the world. But then he rather doubted whether, in the relations in which he had latterly become involved, he had been proving very effective himself.
At least he was reduced to relying upon correspondents for further news, good or bad; and he found that he was quite as impatient as he had expected to be. Fortunately it wasn’t many days before a steady succession of communications began to arrive.
Dear Mr Quail,
I remember Lord Tennyson (not the present Lord Tennyson, whom I have not met, but his grandfather) once confessing that he had formed the habit of reading a great many novels in his later years. And when I mentioned this to Mr Thomas Hardy (a quiet and charming man, whom you no doubt knew) he said that he couldn’t understand how Tennyson came to take that retrograde step. My own sense of the matter, I confess, is with Mr Hardy, and most of my own reading in romances was done as a girl. Later, I used greatly to enjoy Mr Meredith’s books, and it has been a grief to me to hear that he is dead. My husband used to take walks with him, and they would discuss German philosophy.
I mention this as having strongly in mind a point at which the novelists commonly go wrong. It is one in which dear Mr Bridges used to maintain that Shakespeare stood in the same condemnation, at least so far as his Othello is concerned. Desdemona, he declared, would not, as my cousin Robin would say, “have stood for” Iago. She would immediately have divined that he was a very bad man, and seen to it that her husband left him at home. But the novelists are worse. In order (I suppose) to set a story going, they constantly endow sensitive women with husbands whom, in fact, they would never look at. Of course, even refined girls will marry what we used to call “bad hats”. But they will not (or at least not nearly so frequently as the writers suggest) marry or fall in love when there is, if you will understand me, something blankly missing.
Marianne Fontaney, then, surprises me very much. It is true that I have not yet seen her. I thought it best to ask Mr Tandon to tea “on his own”. It seemed quite possible to do this, since the engagement is as yet in no sense public or confirmed. It has not appeared in The Times.
Mr Tandon came to tea this afternoon. I must say at once (for my husband always insisted on the cultivation of a very direct and succinct epistolary style) that it seems to me certain that all is as you fear. Mr Tandon’s present mood may only be described as one of dark exultation over the Warden. There seems to be nothing else in his head. He sees the proposed marriage simply and exclusively as a tour de force by which he has, in fact, resoundingly defeated a powerful adversary. I asked him, point blank, whether Miss Marianne Fontaney was aware of his own almost obsessive interest in her father’s literary remains. He replied that they had never discussed, or even mentioned, the matter. This is surely very strange. And I must confess that, before my talk with Mr Tandon was over, I was positively in a condition of some alarm. I may best express this by saying that, despite his exultation, he appeared to be confused. It is almost as if he has been carried away by a force the nature and strength of which he by no means understands.
There is one further circumstance to add. Eleanor Fontaney is now home, and likely to be up and about within a few days. I am exceedingly glad. She is, I think, scarcely past her sixties, and those middle years are a time of considerable delicacy, if not danger. I now much hope that she will weather them.
But I wander! What I have to tell you of further is the continued implacable opposition of the elder sister to the match. Mr Tandon professes himself puzzled by her attitude, and this in turn puzzles me. Because, to my mind, Mr Tandon, although acting in a most insensitive fashion, and unscrupulously to our thinking, is really an honest man. Do not you agree with me in this? Now, if Eleanor Fontaney is aware of his ulterior motive, and objects to the marriage on that score, he would surely be aware of this, and therefore not puzzled. But his attitude appears to be one of genuine irritation before some unexplained reason. Of course Mr Tandon’s social origins are clearly simple, so that the objection might be on the sort of grounds that my husband and I used to work so hard to combat when we had a little influence here. I notice myself that our upper middle class (who are such good sort of people, one must insist, in many ways) still have these odd ideas about persons a little below them! It is a great comfort to me that class consciousness has never been a foible of mine. But I do not, in fact, believe that Eleanor Fontaney (although, in a sense, it is her strong feeling for family connection that Mr Tandon is so improperly proposing to exploit) does think in this way. Do not you judge that I am right?
I now hope to have Marianne to tea, and perhaps send you more news soon. But I know you will not expect me to open the subject with her in anything that might be construed as a meddlesome way. No good would come of that.
You ought to call on old Professor Dumble, who now lives in a caravan near St Mawes. And also at Graydon Court. The dowager countess is a very good sort of woman whose husband you once met in the Lodge. I do not recall that anyone else lives in the part of the country to which you have withdrawn yourself.
Yours sincerely,
Elizabeth Warboys.
Dear Sir,
Thank you for leaving me a card. Lady Liz has given me your address, and instructions to pass on something terribly queer. I had it from Jones. You may remember my telling you that Jones is my tutor, and this happened at my first tute this term. When Jones can’t think of anything more to say about one’s essay at the tail-end of tutes he falls back on turning chummy and chap-to-chap. Everybody says he does this, but I think I get an extra ration on the discreet college gossip side just by being a Warboys. I don’t mean Jones isn’t very nice. But the awful gap between his brain and yours – I mean mine – embarrasses him, and this is what he
turns on.
Well, it’s just the latest about the terrible feud. Everybody knows about the feud but not about this bit and I don’t think Jones meant me to pass it on to the rest of our young friends (as the Lion calls us) so I haven’t.
Well, it seems that when there were just two or three other dons in the S.C.R. so that it wasn’t wildly indecent but there were witnesses all the same, Mr Tandon told the Lion that he, I mean Mr Tandon, would shortly be announcing his engagement to be married. He didn’t mention the lady’s name (but of course everybody knew) but he did say that she lived in Oxford and that they therefore proposed to claim the privilege of having the ceremony performed in the college chapel, and that it would give him very great satisfaction if the Warden would officiate. The Lion nearly had a fit at this – at least Jones says they didn’t like the look of him round the dog-collar. But decency was observed (which hasn’t always happened during the feud) and the Lion said coldly that he was sure the college would make the chapel available if any such event did happen and any such request was made. Then he said if he was asked to conduct the marriage service of any fellow of the college he would certainly regard it as a duty he should perform. And then he nodded and walked out. The feeling was that he is one up this time. And it seems that a queer old creature called Stringfellow, who was dining with the dons here the other night, claimed that he had known just this stroke of malice, as he called it, to be on the way.
I must confess that, with all the bottomless crudity of youth, etc., I thought this ingenious gloat rather funny. But Lady Liz came down on me like a ton of bricks and of course I see that it’s offensive to our religion. The only other news about all this is that the Lion is known to have called on the other old lady, Miss Eleanor Fontaney I mean, and had a long talk with her. This was after what I have been telling you about. I hope you are coming back to Oxford before going home. If it isn’t frightful cheek, I’d like to have your advice about going into detergents which is what everybody seems to be doing.
Yours sincerely, Robin.
Dear Mr Quail,
Marianne Fontaney has now been to tea with me. She is a woman in love. I mean this very strictly. She is not in love simply with the idea of being a married woman after all. She is in love with Mr Tandon. I know this will only confirm you in your own impression; and that, like myself, you know too much of the world to find it surprising – however disconcerting it may be. I wish the circumstance made me feel it more possible to augur well of the match. No doubt there is a sort of bare sense in which Mr Tandon, although so improperly prompted to undertake the state, will make an unexceptionable husband. But Marianne must eventually come to a realisation of that in which her attractiveness to her husband has in fact consisted. And I then greatly fear for the happiness of one whose nature is clearly sensitive!
I ventured a word. It would be a satisfaction to Mr Tandon, I said, to be in a position to bring his specialised knowledge to a suitable disposing of her father’s literary remains. We were sitting by the fire as I spoke; and I wished that my eyes had been good enough to distinguish her features. For what seemed to me a very long time she made no reply at all. She then said (I believe simply to save me from any sense of having been intrusive) that both Gavin (as she now calls him) and other scholars believe the journals to be most important. A little later, and just before going away, she was quite frank with me about her sister’s continued absolute discountenance of the engagement. But she spoke of Eleanor with great tenderness; and I am convinced that the bond between the sisters is in fact very strong. My final impression of Marianne is of a woman of some courage. It is a quality upon which she may decidedly have to draw.
Yours sincerely,
Elizabeth Warboys.
Dear Mr Quail,
I am helping Eleanor to send out the wedding invitations; and along with yours I am venturing to enclose this letter. Although our acquaintance is not yet of long standing, I have come to think of you as a friend. It is my great hope that you may think the same of me, and may continue to do so. I also hope very much indeed that your friendship with Gavin will continue. I have told him to write to you.
It is to be so big an affair (and at such short notice) that we have to work very hard! But nothing is too much – and it is like a dream, and everything going so well! I always had faith that Eleanor would agree, because I know how much she has always been concerned for my happiness. But I hardly dared to hope that the withdrawal of her disapproval would come so quickly. I now know what was in her mind; it was something rather curious (at least I can’t find a better word) about which I may tell you one day. Perhaps this is just another way of saying that I hope we shall see you often.
You will see that the wedding is to be in the beautiful chapel of Gavin’s college, and that the Warden has very kindly agreed to marry us. I know that there has been some coolness between Gavin and him. But I believe that this will soon be brought into proportion and perspective, and that here too friendship will continue.
Yours very sincerely,
Marianne Fontaney.
P.S. The vicar’s daughter will take the Brownies, I am glad to say. M.F.
P.P.S. It is my particular hope that you can come. And Eleanor has just said that she, too, is going to enclose a note to the same effect. M.F.
Dear Mr Quail,
My sister, as you will see, is to be married to Mr Tandon. I have made certain arrangements and dispositions which I have judged right in the circumstances; and I now regard the connection as on a proper footing. One consequence of this I must mention: it is my feeling that a certain explanation is owing to you. Your presence at the wedding will, of course, be a pleasure in itself to both Marianne and me. But I hope that you may come, if only that we may have a convenient word when it is all over.
Yours sincerely,
Eleanor Fontaney
Dear Quail,
Miss Marianne Fontaney, to whom as you no doubt now know I am shortly to be married, has suggested that I write to you. I am very glad to fall in with this, as I think it would be advantageous if we kept in touch. Your knowledge of A. F.’s early life and writings is unrivalled; and I don’t think the later things, and now the journals, can be dealt with except fully in the light of the earlier phase and the more tentative achievement. So I hope your help will be available, some time.
Kind regards.
Yours v. sincerely,
Gavin Tandon.
P.S. And I am grateful to you for drawing my attention to the importance of the furniture, paintings, objects, etc., in the Bradmore Road house. One worry at the moment is that Miss Fontaney insists on a large wedding reception there. All the cursed idle women in Oxford present and jostling round. I hope she may be persuaded to send some of the things to the bank. G.T.
CHAPTER III
Quail had himself no fancy for large bodies of people, whether female or male, jostling around. Nevertheless, he went. He could hardly do otherwise, upon Marianne’s pronounced appeal. But he booked himself across the Atlantic for the following day. If he wasn’t proposing blankly to retire from business, it was high time to get back to his desk at home. He even felt that there were matters upon which he was losing his grip. He had to cable New York for information before he could tell just where, in the small world of British detergents, he could most readily advance an amiable – and it was to be hoped deserving – young man’s career. He then bought a new silk hat, and was driven up to Oxford on the eve of the wedding. The car remained, perhaps, unnecessarily commodious. But the hat, at least, travelled in a modest cardboard box.
The ceremony was decorous. Some remote Fontaney of mild legal eminence – although too ancient, it must be conjectured, to be a valid candidate for the guardianship of the remains – had been dug up and entrusted with the task of giving away the bride. The bridegroom was supported by a former pupil who had attained precociously to the vice-chancellorship of a provincial university. And the occasion – as Dr Stringfellow, encountered in the ante- chapel,
remarked – was numerously and respectably attended. In fact, the gathering represented a larger circle than Quail would have guessed that the Fontaneys and Tandon between them would be likely to command. Quail spent part of the service wondering what proportion of them was presently going to seek champagne in the Bradmore Road. He found himself even a little sharing in Tandon’s apprehensiveness about the loosing of a crowd of people among Arthur Fontaney’s fragile possessions.
But in the main his mind was more responsibly employed. The wedding exuded superficial reassurance. The bride and bridegroom, although thus approaching the altar together in the afternoon – if not positively the evening – of life, might well be judged to share a reasonable community of tastes. And they certainly shared a common social world. Here it was, in the stalls and pews: a highly integrated society, an eminently endogamous tribe, its territories stretching from Headington to Cumnor, from North Oxford to Boars Hill. The bridegroom enjoyed secure, if modest, means. The bride’s sister – even if to Quail’s eyes lurkingly more unaccountable than before – was a haggard but approving and presiding presence. The bride was happy. Quail knew this, despite a bad attack of his indisposition to scrutinise. The bridegroom passed the acid test of being regarded by the most perceptive part of Oxford’s population as, although dreary, all right as a chap. Unless and until he went off his head he would surely behave with decency. And—thank heaven!—he was to have the sole lordship of Fontaney’s journals, and of Fontaney’s pictures and prints, and of Fontaney’s glass and tiles and wonderful old plates, after all. That, decidedly, was where comfort lay.
Collective editions under the general editorship of G. S. Tandon, exhibitions of manuscripts arranged by G. S. Tandon, catalogues of the Fontaney collection authorised by G. S. Tandon: Quail rejoiced at the thought of them all. The man had certainly not miscalculated in estimating what Eleanor Fontaney would consider owing to a brother-in-law; and his freedom of the stuff – thus Quail put it to himself – might reasonably be relied on to keep him sane, and even sweet. At least it would keep him occupied; and Marianne, after all, was accustomed to being a little passed over in the interest of learned pursuits. Moreover, there was further comfort in one distinct memory. Tandon had been as stiff as ever Lady Elizabeth could be when required to vindicate his pupils against the banter of Charles Jopling. There was a genuine principle of loyalty in him which might lend a further quite real, if rather bleak, decency to the marriage.
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