‘Really, darling! To hear you talk one would think you wanted them to be upset. I believe you’ve got a totally wrong idea of your parents, you know. I’ve only had a glimpse of them so far, it’s true, but they seem very nice and kind – quite different from what you led me to expect.’
‘Oh, well, I suppose now you’re going to take their side,’ said Jane pettishly. ‘Anyway, there’s the bell for lunch, so come along. Perhaps you’ll see my point when you know them better.’
During luncheon Albert realized that, as he had always been inclined to suspect, Jane’s pretended hatred of her parents was the purest affectation. She was evidently very fond of them as they were of her. He thought it a curious anomaly that a person with such a straight-forward nature as Jane seemed to him to possess should be capable of deceiving herself to this extent upon any subject, but consoled himself by thinking that marriage would bring home the real truth to her.
The Dacres did not in any way show that they knew of Jane’s engagement, but behaved to Albert quite as they would have to any other visitor. They were anxious to hear every little detail of the Dalloch house party and laughed heartily at Albert’s description of Lady Prague.
Encouraged by this he broached the subject of General Murgatroyd, delicately, as he imagined from what Jane had said that no officer in the British Army would be considered a fit subject for jest. Great, therefore, was his amazement when Sir Hubert Dacre cried out:
‘Not really! Was Mildew Murgatroyd there? Jane, you never told me that! Well, I’m sure you got plenty of fun out of him, didn’t you?’
‘What did you call him, sir?’ asked Albert, hardly able to believe his ears.
‘Mildew Murgatroyd. They called him that in the South African War because he was so untidy and slovenly. People used to say that even his revolver was coated with mildew. Why, he’s a perfect joke in the army, you know. During the last War they wouldn’t have him in France at all. He was given some job in connexion with the Inland Water Transport, I believe.’
‘Oh good!’ said Albert; ‘only I wish I’d known it before. I pictured him leading his men like anything, from the way he talked. He told us a most blood-curdling story about how he and twenty privates held a kopje in South Africa, alone and unaided for a fortnight.’
‘Yes, and did he tell you that when the relieving force came up in answer to his urgent messages they found there wasn’t a Boer for thirty miles, hadn’t been the whole time, you know, except in his own imagination.’
‘Oh, why didn’t we know all this before!’ sighed Albert.
‘I hear Buggins was up there,’ went on Sir Hubert. ‘Such a very nice, cultivated man, and a great authority on Scottish history.’
There was a silence. Albert began to feel very much embarrassed; the end of the meal approached rapidly and he dreaded the moment when he would be left alone with Jane’s father. He looked helplessly round the room for something to talk about, and presently said:
‘What a lovely Richmond that is, Sir Hubert!’
‘Yes, quite a pleasant picture in its way, I think. Those two children are boys, though with their long hair and frilly skirts one would rather suppose them to be girls. The one on the left is my father.’
‘I see that it is painted in his earlier manner. I am inclined myself to prefer his middle period. Did Jane tell you that I was fortunate enough to be able to save two very beautiful pictures from the fire at Dalloch? Winterhalters. Is he a favourite of yours?’
‘How funny,’ said Lady Dacre, ‘that it should be the fashion to admire these Victorian artists again after so many years.’
Albert, who rather particularly prided himself on being quite uninfluenced by such things as fashions, looked down his nose at this remark.
Lady Dacre now rose to her feet and Albert, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, was left alone with his future father-in-law.
He thought, ‘Better get it over quickly,’ and was beginning a beautiful and well-constructed sentence which he had made up in the train, when Sir Hubert interrupted him with:
‘Have some more port?’
‘Thank you, sir. The thing is,’ Albert said hurriedly, forgetting all the rolling periods which he had been about to pour forth, ‘Jane and I think … that is, we know … that we would like to get married.’
‘Be married,’ said Sir Hubert severely. ‘I very much dislike the expression “to get married”.’
‘So do I,’ replied Albert earnestly.
‘Then why use it? Well, so you and Jane wish to be married, do you? And isn’t this a little sudden?’
‘Sudden, sir?’
‘How long have you known each other?’
‘Oh, for a very long time – quite six weeks altogether, and we’ve been engaged for nearly a fortnight.’
‘Yes, I see – a perfect lifetime! And have you the means to support her?’
‘I have a thousand a year, beside what I can make.’
‘And what is your profession?’
Albert felt his nerve vanishing.
‘If I say “artist” he will kick me out of the house. I can’t face it. I shall have to tell a lie.’
‘I am in business, sir.’
‘What business?’
‘In the city.’
‘Yes; but what is your business in the city?’
‘Oh, I see! Yes, I’m a pawnbroker – did I say pawnbroker? I mean, stockbroker, of course.’
Sir Hubert looked deeply disgusted.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said, ‘although in these days people must take what work they can get. I have always felt myself – no doubt wrongly – that stockbroking is a very unproductive sort of profession. If I had a son I should have wished him to choose almost any other, and I always imagined that Jane would end by marrying a man of talent, say, a writer or an artist. However, that’s neither here nor there, and I don’t see that there can be much objection to your
