‘But, darling, listen to me …’
‘Oh, well, if you are going to be tiresome …’
‘Very well, I’ll see what can be done, but first we must ask your parents. No, I absolutely insist on that, darling.’
Sir Hubert and Lady Dacre, as might have been expected, showed no enthusiasm at all when told of Jane’s little plan.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Lady Dacre scornfully, ‘of course you can’t do any such thing. People would say at once that Jane is going to have a baby. The presents will get better soon, I dare say: probably you won’t have a great many more, and anyhow, the nicest ones generally come at the end.’
‘Why not advance the date a little,’ suggested Sir Hubert, ‘to, say, the middle of October, about a month from now? That would be much more sensible than rushing off in such a hurry, and after all, a month does go fairly quickly.’
Jane and Albert felt the justice of these remarks and decided that they would definitely settle on the sixteenth of October, by which time Albert’s exhibition would be well begun.
‘If only,’ said Jane, ‘when announcing a marriage, one could put, “No presents, by request,” how much more bearable the life of engaged couples would become. Look what I’ve got to thank for now. A pair of bellows made from the timbers of the Victory and sent by Admiral Wenceslaus. Oh, dear!’
‘Very kind of him, I think,’ said her father reprovingly.
‘Oh, well; yes, so it is. Very kind of all the people who send these inferior things. I only wish they wouldn’t, that’s all.’
‘How much better it would be,’ sighed Lady Dacre, ‘if everybody would send cheques.’
‘Or postal orders,’ said Jane.
‘Or stamps,’ said Albert.
For the next week or two, Jane and Albert had to make up their minds that they would only see each other once a day. They generally dined together and sometimes went to a play, but were often too tired even for that. Presents poured in for both of them, over and above which Albert was now very busy arranging about his exhibition.
He found that he had not brought over quite enough pictures for it, and embarked on a series of woolwork designs for six chairs, based on the theme of sport in the Highlands. He also completed his ‘Catalogue of Recent Finds at Dalloch’ (having wired for and obtained the consent of the Craigdallochs), intending that a specimen copy should be on view at the exhibition.
With Albert thus kept so busy that anyhow he would have had no time to play with her, Jane found her own jobs far less disagreeable. As Lady Dacre had predicted, the presents she received greatly improved in quality as time went on and she found it much less boring to write letters thanking for things that she really liked. Her trousseau now became a source of great interest, especially the wedding dress, which she could not try on often enough and which was extremely lovely. As for the other things, tiring as it undoubtedly was to stand for hours every day being fitted, there was a certain excitement about the idea that by the time she began to wear them she would be a married woman, and this sustained her.
19
Walter and Sally Monteath, on their return to London, found themselves financially in a very bad way indeed. They had lost almost all their personal effects in the fire. Although they replaced these as economically as they could, it took most of their available money to do so. At this inconvenient moment the accumulated bills of months began to rain upon them, more numerous and insistent than ever before. The bank refused to allow them a further overdraft, all Sally’s jewellery had long since been sold, and she began to have difficulty even in paying the household books.
Sally felt desperately ill and worried, and even Walter was obliged to give up taking taxis everywhere; but, apart from that, the situation did not appear to weigh on him at all until, one evening, he came in with some books that he was going to review and found her crying bitterly.
‘Sally, darling angel! What is the matter?’ he said, kneeling down beside her and stroking her hair. When, through her tears, she explained to him that she could bear it no longer, that she literally didn’t know how to raise money for the week’s books, and that she had been adding up what they owed and found it amounted to nearly a thousand pounds, Walter was enormously relieved.
‘I thought something frightful must have happened,’ he said. ‘But if that’s all you’re worrying about, I can easily get some money. Why, anybody would lend us a hundred pounds or so to carry on with till our next quarter comes in. As for the bills, they can wait for years, if necessary.’
‘Walter, they can’t. Why, some of them have lawyer’s letters with them already. And it’s no use borrowing a hundred pounds – that won’t really help us at all, permanently, I mean. Then think of Morris-Minerva. How expensive all that business will be, and how are we going to educate him, or anything?’ She burst into fresh floods of tears and said wildly that she must have been mad to marry him on so little money but that she had thought they would be able to manage, and that so they would have, except for his idiotic extravagance.
Walter, who had never before in his life known Sally to utter a cross word, was amazed by this outburst and began to feel really worried. His was the sort of mentality which never apprehends an unpleasant situation until it is presented so forcibly that it can no longer be ignored. Now, for the first time, he began to see that their position was, in fact, very parlous, and he was plunged into extreme despair.
‘Anyhow, darling,’ he said, ‘I can’t have you worrying like this. Leave
