She was wearing this dress when Tony proposed to her in the Berkeley Square summer-house at six o’clock on a fine July morning. He had been down from Oxford about a fortnight, and it was soon obvious that he had eyes for nobody but her. He went to all the same dances, and, after stumping round with a few other girls, would take Linda to supper, and thereafter spend the evening glued to her side. Aunt Sadie seemed to notice nothing, but to the whole rest of the débutante world the outcome was a foregone conclusion, the only question being when and where Tony would propose.
The ball from which they had emerged (it was in a lovely old house on the east side of Berkeley Square, since demolished) was only just alive, the band sleepily thump-thumped its tunes through the nearly empty rooms; poor Aunt Sadie sat on a little gold chair trying to keep her eyes open and passionately longing for bed, with me beside her, dead tired and very cold, my partners all gone home. It was broad daylight. Linda had been away for hours, nobody seemed to have set eyes on her since supper-time, and Aunt Sadie, though dominated by her fearful sleepiness, was apprehensive, and rather angry. She was beginning to wonder whether Linda had not committed the unforgivable sin, and gone off to a night club.
Suddenly the band perked up and began to play ‘John Peel’ as a prelude to ‘God Save the King’; Linda, in a grey cloud, was galloping up and down the room with Tony; one look at her face told all. We climbed into a taxi behind Aunt Sadie (she never would keep a chauffeur up at night), we splashed away past the great hoses that were washing the streets, we climbed the stairs to our rooms, without a word being spoken by any of us. A thin oblique sunlight was striking the chimney-pots as I opened my window. I was too tired to think, I fell into bed.
We were allowed to be late after dances, though Aunt Sadie was always up and seeing to the household arrangements by nine o’clock. As Linda came sleepily downstairs the next morning, Uncle Matthew shouted furiously at her from the hall:
‘That bloody Hun Kroesig has just telephoned, he wanted to speak to you. I told him to get the hell out of it. I don’t want you mixed up with any Germans, do you understand?’
‘Well, I am mixed up,’ said Linda, in an offhand, would-be casual voice, ‘as it happens I’m engaged to him.’
At this point Aunt Sadie dashed out of her little morning-room on the ground floor, took Uncle Matthew by the arm, and led him away. Linda locked herself into her bedroom and cried for an hour, while Jassy, Matt, Robin, and I speculated upon further developments in the nursery.
There was a great deal of opposition to the engagement, not only from Uncle Matthew, who was beside himself with disappointment and disgust at Linda’s choice, but also quite as much from Sir Leicester Kroesig. He did not want Tony to marry at all until he was well settled in his career in the City, and then he had hoped for an alliance with one of the other big banking families. He despised the landed gentry, whom he regarded as feckless, finished and done with in the modern world, he also knew that the vast, the enviable capital sums which such families undoubtedly still possessed, and of which they made so foolishly little use, were always entailed upon the eldest son, and that very small provision, if any, was made for the dowries of daughters. Sir Leicester and Uncle Matthew met, disliked each other on sight, and were at one in their determination to stop the marriage. Tony was sent off to America, to work in a bank house in New York, and poor Linda, the season now being at an end, was taken home to eat her heart out at Alconleigh.
‘Oh, Jassy, darling Jassy, lend me your running-away money to go to New York with.’
‘No, Linda. I’ve saved and scraped for five years, ever since I was seven, I simply can’t begin all over again now. Besides I shall want it for when I run away myself.’
‘But, darling, I’ll give it you back, Tony will, when we’re married.’
‘I know men,’ said Jassy, darkly.
She was adamant.
‘If only Lord Merlin were here,’ Linda wailed. ‘He would help me.’ But Lord Merlin was still in Rome.
She had 15s. 6d. in the world, and was obliged to content herself with writing immense screeds to Tony every day. She carried about in her pocket a quantity of short, dull letters in an immature handwriting and with a New York postmark.
After a few months Tony came back, and told his father that he could not settle down to business or banking or think about his future career at all, until the date for his marriage had been fixed. This was quite the proper line to take with Sir Leicester. Anything that interfered with making money must be regulated at once. If Tony, who was a sensible fellow, and had never given his father one moment’s anxiety in his life, assured him that he could be serious about banking only after marriage, then married he must be, the sooner the better. Sir Leicester explained at length what he considered the disadvantages of the union. Tony agreed in principle, but said that Linda was young, intelligent, energetic, that he had great influence with her, and did not doubt that she could be made into a tremendous asset. Sir Leicester finally gave his consent.
‘It might have been worse,’ he said, ‘after all, she is a lady.’
Lady
