‘What a pity,’ said Linda, as we struggled into our ball dresses (proper London ones this time, with no floating panels), ‘that we are dressing up like this, and looking so pretty, and all for those terrible productions of Louisa’s. Waste, I call it.’
‘You never know in the country,’ I said, ‘somebody may bring the Prince of Wales.’
Linda shot me a furious look under her eyelashes.
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I am pinning great hopes on Lord Merlin’s party. I’m sure he’ll bring some really interesting people.’
Lord Merlin’s party arrived, as before, very late, and in very high spirits. Linda immediately noticed a large, blond young man in a beautiful pink coat. He was dancing with a girl who often stayed at Merlinford called Baby Fairweather, and she introduced him to Linda. He asked her to dance the next, and she abandoned one of Louisa’s Scotch boys, to whom she had promised it, and strutted off with him in a quick one-step. Linda and I had both been having dancing lessons, and, if we did not exactly float round the room, our progress was by no means so embarrassing as it had been before.
Tony was in a happy mood, induced by Lord Merlin’s excellent brandy, and Linda was pleased to find how well and easily she was getting on with this member of the Merlinford set. Everything she said seemed to make him laugh; presently they went to sit out, she chattered away, and Tony roared with laughter. This was the royal road to Linda’s good books; she liked people who laughed easily more than anything; it naturally did not occur to her that Tony was a bit drunk. They sat out the next dance together. This was immediately noticed by Uncle Matthew, who began to walk up and down in front of them, giving them furious looks, until Davey, observing this danger signal, came up and hurried him away, saying that one of the oil-stoves in the hall was smoking.
‘Who is that sewer with Linda?’
‘Kroesig, Governor of the Bank of England, you know; his son.’
‘Good God, I never expected to harbour a full-blooded Hun in this house – who on earth asked him?’
‘Now, Matthew dear, don’t get excited. The Kroesigs aren’t Huns, they’ve been over here for generations, they are a very highly respected family of English bankers.’
‘Once a Hun always a Hun,’ said Uncle Matthew, ‘and I’m not too set on bankers myself. Besides, the fella must be a gate-crasher.’
‘No, he’s not. He came with Merlin.’
‘I knew that bloody Merlin would start bringing foreigners here sooner or later. I always said he would, but I didn’t think even he would land one with a German.’
‘Don’t you think it’s time somebody took some champagne to the band?’ said Davey.
But Uncle Matthew stumped down to the boiler-room, where he had a long soothing talk with Timb, the odd man, about coke.
Tony, meanwhile, thought Linda ravishingly pretty, and great fun, which indeed she was. He told her so, and danced with her again and again, until Lord Merlin, quite as much put out as Uncle Matthew by what was happening, firmly and very early took his party home.
‘See you at the meet tomorrow,’ said Tony, winding a white scarf round his neck.
Linda was silent and preoccupied for the rest of the evening.
‘You’re not to go hunting, Linda,’ said Aunt Sadie, the next day, when Linda came downstairs in her riding-habit, ‘it’s too rude, you must stay and look after your guests. You can’t leave them like that.’
‘Darling, darling Mummy,’ said Linda, ‘the meet’s at Cock’s Barn, and you know how one can’t resist. And Flora hasn’t been out for a week, she’ll go mad. Be a love and take them to see the Roman villa or something, and I swear to come back early. And they’ve got Fanny and Louisa after all.’
It was this unlucky hunt that clinched matters as far as Linda was concerned. The first person she saw at the meet was Tony, on a splendid chestnut horse. Linda herself was always beautifully mounted, Uncle Matthew was proud of her horsemanship, and had given her two pretty, lively little horses. They found at once, and there was a short sharp run, during which Linda and Tony, both in a somewhat showing-off mood, rode side by side over the stone walls. Presently, on a village green, they checked. One or two bounds put up a hare, which lost its head, jumped into a duckpond, and began to swim about in a hopeless sort of way. Linda’s eyes filled with tears.
‘Oh, the poor hare!’
Tony got off his horse, and plunged into the pond. He rescued the hare, waded out again, his fine white breeches covered with green muck, and put it, wet and gasping, into Linda’s lap. It was the one romantic gesture of his life.
At the end of the day Linda left the hounds to take a short cut home across country. Tony opened a gate for her, took off his hat, and said:
‘You are a most beautiful rider, you know. Good night, when I’m back in Oxford I’ll ring you up.’
When Linda got home she rushed me off to the Hons’ cupboard and told me all this. She was in love.
Given Linda’s frame of mind during the past two endless years, she was obviously destined to fall in love with the first young man who came along. It could hardly have been otherwise; she need not, however, have married him. This was made inevitable by the behaviour of Uncle Matthew. Most unfortunately Lord Merlin, the one person who might perhaps have been able to make Linda see that Tony was not all she thought him, went to Rome the week after the ball, and remained abroad for a year.
Tony went back to Oxford when he left
