by Ann Bridge
‘My child, as you know the Church does not approve of mixed marriages. But Mother Church also takes particular circumstances into consideration; and in your case I should not oppose your marriage to this Englishman, provided that you love him, and are prepared to try to fit yourself to be his wife. Do you love him?’ the old man asked bluntly.
‘Oh yes—very, very much!’ Hetta said in ringing tones. There was no bashful hiding of the face; she threw up her head as she announced her love for Richard Atherley. ‘Only I think we might have fights! But not so many if I practise these things you have told me of. And—’ She stopped, her face clouding, as if the sun of her love had gone in.
‘Yes?’
Hetta, too, delayed her reply, frowning in thought.
‘Look, Father dear,’ she said at last, ‘I am young, and as you say without experience, unsophisticated’—there was a note of contempt on the word. ‘So it is hard for me to know if this, I mean to marry me, would be right for him. He is sophisticated, and the other day I met a person, a’—she faltered—‘well, to me a most disagreeable person, who claimed to know him very well; and she made it plain that in her opinion I should make him miserable. This I have so much wanted to ask you about, for me it is important—in quite a different way to how it is important to her!’ the girl said, with sudden anger. ‘She is an old woman who wants to keep a young lover; I am young, and I think of a husband, and having children, and a life together!’
He stroked her dark savage little head; he could not help smiling, though he was moved.
‘Monsieur Atherley has broken with Madame de Vermeil. That affair is finished,’ he said.
‘You know about this? How extraordinary!’
‘No, personally I could not know. But Monsignor Subercaseaux, owing to this worldliness which you so contemn, knows all about the lady in question. And only two days ago young Atherley told him that the thing is over, and that he will never willingly meet this person again.’
‘So,’ Hetta Páloczy said thoughtfully. ‘So,’ she repeated slowly. She was considering this information. It must mean that the two priests had discussed her and her relation to Atherley; almost certainly it must mean as well that the Monsignor and Richard had also spoken of her relation to him. Now, no young girl whose heart is engaged before her hand really relishes the idea of her relations with the man of her choice being discussed by other people, but in Hetta’s realistic Central European make-up there was no room for the quivering sensibility of the Nordic races over matters of romance. If they had all talked her and Richard over, well they had, and that was that; at least she had learned one really most precious fact—that this hitherto redoubtable enemy, the Frenchwoman, was no longer to be feared. She got up off the tabouret.
‘Father, I do thank you. You have helped me so much: cleared my mind and my conscience. Now I see my way, if it should turn out so.’ Her deep voice hung suspended on the last words. ‘And now I am sure the Monsignor wants you!’ She knelt on the Aubusson carpet. ‘Father, will you give me your blessing?’
His hands on her head, he did so, tears at last running down his face.
Chapter 18
On the Friday morning preceding the nuptials of the son of the Comte de Bretagne another procession of cars passed down the by-road from Gralheira to São Pedro do Sul. In the twenty-four hours before an event of this sort one might have expected a certain degree of fuss to prevail; in fact there was none. For such occasions Dona Maria Francisca invariably donned a slightly richer version of her usual out-of-date black, and unlike Countess Páloczy gave no thought whatever to her hair or her face, let alone her feet; as for Julia, she had left the green brocade dress, which had so épaté Atherley, in a cupboard in the Ericeira Palace in Lisbon, all ready to put on.
The Duke had apologised deeply to Mrs. Hathaway for his own absence, and for taking away Elidio.
‘This poor Antonio! I hope that he will wait on you well; but on the telephone he is hopeless, and there may be many calls in Lisbon. In any event we shall be back on Sunday evening, and you have only to ask Nanny for anything you want.’
‘Oh, Nanny and Luzia and I are going to enjoy ourselves thoroughly,’ Mrs. Hathaway said. ‘It is so good of you to keep me. Please don’t worry. Nanny is a host in herself.’
Nanny, for her part, expressed similar sentiments to Julia.
‘Well really, Miss Probyn, it’s quite a privilege to meet someone like your friend. It’s not often I come across anyone that I could have such an esteem for.’
‘Yes, Nanny, she’s grand, isn’t she?’ Julia said.
‘A great advantage for Luzia, too, the company of a person like that,’ Nanny observed, rather patronisingly; Julia went away laughing, realising how little of Mrs. Hathaway’s advantageous company Nanny was likely to allow her charge.
So down the sandy road between the pines the cars poured that morning: a station-wagon containing Elidio and other servants, then Atherley’s Bentley with Hetta and a rather gloomy Townsend Waller, who with Dom Pedro was to be dropped in São Pedro to pick up his car. Poor Townsend had not achieved a talk with Hetta—for which, rightly, he blamed Julia. Some time after the Bentley came two of the Daimlers with the rest of the party.
Atherley had made his own dispositions about this drive. He, too, had not yet succeeded in talking to Hetta; therefore he asked Elidio the day before to provide lanche for two— lanche being the Portuguese word for any form of meal carried in a basket to be eaten out of doors. After dropping the chaplain and Mr. Waller in São Pedro do Sul he shot on to Aveiro, the so-called Venice of Portugal. Here the flat coast-line is broken up into a maze of lagoons, and a net-work of canals brings the brine of the Atlantic into shallow salt-pans, divided by low earthen banks; these are filled through small sluices and then left to be evaporated by the strong sun; the good resulting salt is scraped off the floor and the pans re-flooded. This process goes on all through the summer, and by early autumn conical mounds of snow-white salt cover this peculiar landscape, like ranges of miniature Alps. Richard had seen this once, and he wanted Hetta to see it too, but in his urban ignorance he had ignored the seasons; this was Spring, and hardly any salt had accumulated; there were no snowy mounds.
‘Oh well, never mind, we’ll go and see the Convent of Jesus instead,’ he said. ‘That’s there all the year round.’ And he drove Hetta to that amazing place, where the interior of the chapel gives the visitor the impression of standing inside a golden box, covered all over with the richest possible gilded carving. Hetta was more surprised than pleased by this—‘Must one have so much gold about to worship God?’ she asked, causing the young man to laugh. But she stood long before the portrait of Santa Joanna, the King’s daughter who became a nun, with her plain melancholy face, her heavy jowl, and her exceedingly long nose.
‘Yes, that one could really have been a Saint,’ she said. ‘About some one wonders, but not her. It must be a true portrait. Who was the artist?’
‘Nuno Gonçalves, who painted the triptych with Prince Henry the Navigator in it. Have you seen that yet?’
‘Oh, that painter! Yes; no wonder,’ Hetta said, turning back to stare at the sainted Princess again.
‘Who took you to see the triptych?’ Richard asked, slightly annoyed; he would have liked to do that himself.
‘Waller. He is very gebildet; he comes from Boston, where it seems that all are extremely cultivated,’ Hetta said, again provoking Richard to laughter. The priest’s cook was coming on if she had already registered the Boston passion for culture!
The Bentley’s speed was so great, on the almost empty Portuguese roads, that in spite of their détour they overtook the stately convoy of the ducal Daimlers, proceeding at a majestic pace, several miles short of Leiria; Hetta waved gaily to Julia and Father Antal, in the second car.
‘Now we are ahead!’ she said.
‘Yes, but we’re not going to eat with them all at the Lis; you and I are going to have a picnic by ourselves,’ he pronounced; the
arrogant happiness in his voice sent a vibration through the girl. A mile or so farther on he swung the car sharply to the right down a small road which led through pinewoods to the village of Pinheiros, already on the edge of green open country with a river running through it, all brilliant as enamel in the spring sunshine, and the great church of Milagres standing up across the valley, a lonely wonder of baroque. Richard carried the lunch-baskets up a path to the fringe of the pinewoods, where he spread a rug on the clean mixture of silvery sand and fragrant needles; there, the dusky shadow of the trees behind, the shining river with its crumbling bridge in front, they had their lunch.
Portuguese servants have rather exalted ideas about picnic food. The lanche provided by Elidio included a bottle of sherry and another of red wine, with their appropriate glasses, thermoses of soup and coffee, and a jar of cream; these were merely adjuncts to a boned stuffed chicken already cut up and slices of paio, loin of pork spiced, salted, and rolled into a sausage; there were also buttered French rolls, a dish of dressed salad, and a box of chocolate éclairs. Richard ground the bottles and flasks into the shining sand to keep them upright, and poured out the sherry.
‘Well, darling Hetti, here’s to your future happiness!’ He raised his glass.
‘Prost,’ she said, and drank to him.
‘You don’t drink to my happiness, I notice,’ he said.
‘Prost means “to your well-being”. Isn’t that enough?’ she countered.
Her readiness pleased him. And she looked so right, there on the sandy edge of the forest, in her unobtrusive suit, open-necked blouse, low-heeled shoes and heavyweight nylons. That a woman should look right in the country is always very important to Englishmen; another thing to which they often attach considerable importance is legs. Richard Atherley now observed that Hetta’s legs, stuck out carelessly in front of her on the sand, though strong and shapely were rather thick, as Central European legs are apt to be; they were not in the least like Julia Probyn’s long lovely ones. And with a sort of pang of surprised emotion the young man realised that in this girl, at any rate, he could even love thick legs.
‘No—my well-being, like patriotism, is not enough,’ was all he said. ‘I would like you to drink to my happiness, Hetta. Do you know the one thing necessary for it?’
Again that vibration shook her, but she spoke deliberately.
‘Richard, I am not certain that I do, truthfully. If your happiness requires two women, and I am to be one, I am afraid that you will have to go without it.’
‘Meaning?’
‘That if I were to marry, I cannot share my husband with anyone—least of all you with this Frenchwoman! If I am married my husband must be mine!’ she exclaimed.
He put down his glass so quickly and carelessly that it fell over; the sherry seeped away into the white sand as he took her in his arms.
‘Darling, you won’t have to share me with anyone!’ he said, between kisses. ‘That nonsense is all over.’ He paused. ‘I learned the other night, when I thought I’d lost you, what I really want—you, and to spend my life with you. But in fact I had that idea before; do you remember what I told you at Obidos? Anyhow, will you marry me? This is a formal proposal, and requires an unequivocal answer,’ he said, giving her another kiss and then holding her away from him so that he could watch her face.
To his infinite delight she gave a tiny laugh; then she put up her hand and stroked his cheek. It was a very small gesture, but combined with the laugh to him it seemed to demonstrate comprehension, humour, and great love.
‘Yes, Richard, I will marry you,’ she said. ‘On these terms that you have just stated—I hope, unequivocally also!’
He shook her shoulders. ‘Oh, you are a proud piece! Yes, unequivocally! And now, my fiancée, please give me a kiss. This affair mustn’t be altogether one-sided, you know.’
The kiss Hetta gave him was so satisfactory that it demanded a rather protracted response; it was some time before they returned to the normal world and the business of drinking and eating.
‘See, you have upset my glass as well as your own— what waste!’ Hetta said. ‘How shall I live with a husband who is so careless? Hungarians are thrifty.’
‘Oh, go ahead with your thrift, my saucy darling! We shall need it; diplomacy is a ruinous career. I never knew an English Minister or Ambassador who didn’t end up several thousand pounds down out of his private pocket.’
‘But you are not an Ambassador.’
‘No, sweetheart, but it is quite inevitable that I shall become one—unless the demands of your love extinguish me before my time!’
She gave him a little slap.
‘Do not be id-yot! I am hungry. Do you allow your wife, or your wives, sometimes to eat?’
In such a mood Elidio’s lanche went down very well: the soup was drunk, the French rolls munched; between them the two young people demolished the whole of the boned chicken, the salad, and the spiced pork, to the accompaniment of the Duke’s good red wine. Seeing Richard take up a final slice of paio before he vulgarly wiped out the salad-dish with the last roll, Hetta asked rather anxiously, ‘Do you like l’ ail? I think the English call it something else.’
‘Garlic. Yes, I do.’
‘That is well. I should find it almost impossible to cook good food without it, though one should not always recognise quite so clearly that it is there as one does in this curious Schinken’ (Paio in fact reeks of garlic.)
‘Sweet, you won’t have to be my cook, as well as the old priest’s,’ Richard said. ‘We shall have a cook, please God.’
‘I shall be much in the kitchen, nevertheless,’ Hetta averred firmly. ‘A good maîtresse de maison is constantly there, taking counsel with the cook, as my Grandmother did at Detvan. And so I shall do with our cook.’
Those two very ordinary words, ‘our cook’, were astonishingly sweet in her mouth, to Richard’s ears. His fears, the inevitable hesitations of a lively handsome young man finally and definitely confronted with matrimony, began to fall away as another picture opened on his imagination: of a home with a wife in it, who would ‘take counsel’ with his cook about his food, and never allow dead or dying flowers, one of his particular phobias; of a hundred homely domestic intimacies—perhaps even children. Richard Atherley had never hitherto contemplated any picture of the sort; now he did, in a wondering silence, and found it strangely delightful. He was silent for so long that at last Hetta touched his hand. ‘I have said something stupid?’ she asked.
‘No, you’ve said something very nice indeed. Look’—he held her hand— ‘how do you feel about having children?’
‘Feel about it? What should I feel? I hope we have many; one child is not a good thing.’ She paused and looked at him, uncertainty coming into her face. ‘Do you not want children? Richard, I cannot marry without.’
‘No, I do. Darling, this is all so new—don’t be impatient with me.’ It was he who was anxious now. ‘We’ll have lots of children! Well, say four; they cost the earth to educate! Will four do you? But I do want some; I’d like to have a son, I must say.’
Hetta laughed at him.
‘And what shall you do if you only have a daughter, like the Duque? And my poor Pappi,’ she added, no longer laughing.
He caught her to him. ‘Try, try, try again!’
They arrived in Lisbon rather late, because Richard had insisted on giving her at least a glimpse of Batálha and Alcobaça; and then they felt that they must drive out to Obidos and have another glass of wine in the tiny room that Richard so idiotically called ‘The Ritz’, and look again at the house in which he had first suggested living with her. During those hours of driving through the sundrenched countryside, laughing and touching hands, there grew in them both, strongly, the extraordinary sense of security that becoming engaged brings, and the quite irrational self-satisfaction at having achieved this security, this feeling of being anchored. Richard told the man in the flowered shirt-sleeves who poured out their wine in the Ritz that the
y were going to be married, whereupon a surprising number of relations crammed into the minute space to laugh and drink their healths.
As they drove on again Hetta asked a question.
‘So do we tell everyone, now, that we shall marry?’
Richard reflected, but only for a moment. Thinking of Fanny—
‘Yes, immediately,’ he replied. If everyone in the Ericeira Palace knew of their engagement tonight it would ring all round the wedding reception tomorrow, and could not fail to reach Fanny’s ears, and Fanny would always accept a, fait accompli that was publicly proclaimed, however unpalatable; she was much too clever to make a fuss which might jeopardise her position in the eyes of the world. But even as he reached this reassuring conclusion another quite fresh idea struck him: how low and calculating such considerations were—his, and Fanny’s—compared with Hetta’s spontaneous and unself-seeking honesty. Even loving and desiring her, he had thought patronisingly of her lack of sophistication; now, startled, he saw that there was such a thing as moral sophistication, that fierce delicate rectitude in relationships, regardless of one’s own position. And Hetti had it, and he and Mme de Vermeil had not. Oh, once she had mastered a little of the technique of tact and discretion she would be able to make rings round all the Fannys in the world!—as Maggie Verver had made rings round Charlotte Stant in The Golden Bowl, in the end of all.
Hetta was silent for some time.
‘If we tell others, I should tell Mama,’ she said at length.
‘Yes, you must of course. But may I give you a piece of advice?’ She nodded.
‘I shouldn’t do it tonight. She’s not worrying about you; you know I took the Monsignor down to see her, and he straightened all that out, and if you telephone to her this evening she’ll only get in a fuss, just when she ought to be resting, to be at her best for the wedding tomorrow.’ Feeling slightly like Judas, he added, ‘You should know how much that means to her.’