A Difficult Young Man (24 page)

CHAPTER XII

THERE
is no doubt that our arrival in Melbourne put the whole clan in a panic. They could not openly show it, at least not to us, and they met us with all the outward signs of delighted welcome. But the wolf was back in the sheepfold, where their prize ewe lamb was just about to fetch an enormous price. Helena was to be married to Wentworth McLeish in three weeks. It was now the very early spring when the streets of Melbourne are delicious with boronia and violets. Firenze deserves its name for its beauty, but actually Melbourne is more pervaded with the scent of flowers, and when we returned, especially with Dominic in our company, Swinburne might have written of this rectangular, business-man's haunt:

‘Back to the Flower-town, side by side,

The bright months bring

Newborn, the bridegroom and the bride,

Freedom and Spring.'

We landed at ten o'clock in the morning and went to the Grand Hotel, now the Windsor, in Spring Street. Westhill was not yet available, and until it was, Steven and Laura intended to take a furnished house in South Yarra. In the afternoon Baba gave a party to meet us, and also gave offence by inviting only those relatives who were ‘in society.' When we arrived the Craigs were already there. Helena was on the far side of the room talking to Aunt Diana. She turned as we came in and her eyes met Dominic's. For a moment she stood perfectly still, and she looked as if she had forgotten something terribly important. Standing behind her was Wentworth McLeish. He was not joining in the conversation, only smiling with possessive satisfaction at his lovely fiancée, and with a detached tolerance of her liveliness and charm. His smile had the strange quality that it was not directed outwards, ready to sparkle into amusement and friendliness at a new and attractive face, but seemed to be directed inwards with complete approval. His hair was reddish, he was tall and largely built, and would soon be fat. I looked at him with envy and admiration of his wealth, but at the same time with a kind of repelled wonder and the conviction that he
was of a different species, far more than I had ever felt about the Tunstalls, or Mr Woodhall, or even Colonel Rodgers, after I had tried to assuage the sorrows of his heart. I felt that he would have only contempt for those things for which I still had the most tender veneration, things which might be symbolized by a Franciscan washing the feet of a beggar, an exiled Bourbon princess selling her last jewels, or a great poet whose work did not pay. I saw also that he would be incapable of dissolving a quarrel in laughter, and I knew the intruder on my ancient home.

Dominic, with whom, as I have pointed out, I had a degree of affinity, part of our souls being filled from the same pot, evidently felt as I did, but he must also, when he had assimilated what his eyes now showed him, have been filled with desperate indignation at the thought of Helena being handed over to this hunk of complacent flesh. His eyes passed on from Helena to Wentworth, and at once he looked as if his mental processes had stopped, and it was difficult to start them moving again. He did not speak immediately to Helena. There was an inhibition between them, and it was not until half-an-hour later, at the buffet which Baba had arranged in the dining-room, that I saw them talking together over their tea.

In two days we moved from the hotel to stay with various relatives. Steven and Laura went to stay with Uncle Bob Byngham, who had a house in South Yarra. Brian, who was now very ‘English' looking,
was asked to stay with George and Baba, and I went to Aunt Mildy's new house in a quiet side street in Toorak. I was obviously the one to stay with a maiden aunt as I would show a proper regard for her china and chintzes. She was delighted to have me, and lavished on me attentions which, at first, I did not find suffocating. Because of this, during these critical three weeks, the action again was out of my sight, but I was aware that behind the strains of the motet something was happening, and this motet will, I fear, be less noble than the echoing music, the silver trumpets of the Bynghams.

Aunt Mildy, deprived all her life of an object of affection which was exclusively her own, tried to grapple me to her soul with every luxury, roast chickens, meringues, and a new blue silk eiderdown, saying as she showed me to my room, ‘Blue for a boy,' though I was then nearly eighteen. To have all the comfort of a house directed towards myself was agreeable, but when I wanted to go across to the Craigs, or down to the Flugels at Brighton to be with the rest of the young people, she either brought out some luscious bait to detain me, or else said: ‘I will come with you,' even if I was going to see my mother.

Dominic had been sent to stay with the Flugels and Aunt Mildy told me that this was to keep him as far away as possible from Helena in Toorak.

‘It might be dangerous if they met often,' she said. ‘We mustn't run any risks, as it's a brilliant marriage
for Helena.'

This statement created an obstruction in my brain, and I demanded angrily: ‘Why?'

Aunt Mildy spoke with awe, not only of Wentworth's money, but of the importance of his family in the Western District. I was furious to think that my aunt should be so ignorant of social, equally with human values, as to imagine that Helena, her own niece, was making a brilliant match with a young man whose sole recommendation seemed to be a coating of both physical and financial fat. I could not explain her mistake to her without appearing ridiculously pompous, so I only went red and spluttered incoherently, and she said:

‘Now you are not being my own nice boy.'

It seems useless to deny that there is an element of snobbery in this book, but it would be misleading to write about that period and to leave it out, or to pretend that the different snobberies of today, which give less offence because they are more universal, and even more vicious, were practised then. Our parents were unusually careless of differences of class, and I have seen Laura, dressed in silk and feathers, with diamonds and white gloves and a lace parasol, returning from a Government House garden party, stop a man driving a herd of Ayrshire cows along a Toorak road, and discuss their points with him. But the different environments of our youth made us aware of social
degrees. In spite of my interest in snobbery, like the interest of Colonel Rodgers in guns and scimitars, I did not like to see it practised, any more than Colonel Rodgers would really have liked to see Dominic, for example, cut off Brian's head if he was annoyed with him, though he might admire the superb swing of the broadsword.

So now, to explain better the nature of Helena's engagement, I must give a brief sketch of ‘Melbourne Society,' an active and virulent growth which many people, even in Australia, do not realize exists. Not long ago one of the surviving and witty ladies of the Toorak ‘Faubourg' was complaining of the inadequate status of a new governor. I said that I had heard that the King wanted him to be appointed. She replied: ‘I don't think the King understands Melbourne Society,' and then she shrieked with laughter. At the time we returned to Melbourne, this society which provoked her amusement, appeared to have had a fairly recent access of ladies of large build. They were much richer than our friends and relatives, and were mostly the wives of squatters, as the sheep-farmers are called. We met them at parties but so far there had not been much intermarriage between our group and theirs. When they appeared at these parties they were described in the
Sydney Bulletin
as being ‘upholstered' rather than dressed. Several of them were related to Wentworth McLeish, so Helena's engagement had a certain social complexity. We were rather amused at Wentworth's stolidity but pleased at being associated with such
wealth. The upholstered ladies were annoyed that it had not been annexed by one of their own daughters, but still slightly gratified at being associated with those whom they had envied in their childhood.

Aunt Mildy took me with her one afternoon to the Craigs' house to see Helena's trousseau. Baba was there for the same purpose. There were a great many clothes laid out on the bed and hanging over chairs in Helena's room. Baba questioned whether I should be allowed into a young woman's bedroom, which made me blush at being a male, but Mildy said:

‘Oh, Guy is not like other boys. I'd trust any girl with him, anywhere.'

Helena laughed, and said: ‘I think he has a wicked look in his eye. I should be terrified of him in a dark lane.'

‘Why, he's like a gazelle!' declared Aunt Mildy.

‘Gazelles can be very frisky,' said Helena.

Baba looked cross during this conversation. She may have conceived a dislike for the male sex, and most of her social activities were concerned with women. Once I saw in a fashionable Melbourne hotel, the astonishing sight of a number of women seated at a long table eating chocolate cakes and drinking champagne at five o'clock in the afternoon. Their hostess was Aunt Baba. Hoping to be invited to join the guzzle, I said cheerfully: ‘Hullo, Aunt Baba!' but she greeted me as coldly as if I had intruded into a convent during the hours of silence.

I was allowed to see the dresses, at which Mildy
exclaimed with little ecstatic cries of admiration. Baba went briskly round the room like a sergeant inspecting kit, and her highest word of praise was ‘smart,' which also would have been the sergeant's. Helena answered her questions about the dresses as if she had little to do with them, and she called them ‘the' not ‘my.'

‘That's the going away dress,' she said, ‘the blue one on the chair. That's the best evening dress.'

‘Is that the only dress you have for important parties?' asked Baba.

‘No, the wedding dress will do for them too. The train comes off. And I still have my presentation dress which isn't out of date. The other evening dresses are in the wardrobe. They are simpler, but I'll show them to you if you like.'

‘Oh, we want to see everything,' cried Mildy. ‘Don't we, Barbara?' It was one of the offences of the family that some of them continued to call Aunt Baba by her full name, which she thought less smart, and done to keep her at a distance.

When they had seen everything, Baba said rather grimly: ‘It's a very smart trousseau. I wish I'd had one like it. I had to make most of mine myself.'

‘Oh, Aunt Baba!' cried Helena, distressed by this admission. ‘But I'm sure you looked lovely. You always look very smart now. Anyhow,' she added, half laughing, ‘you can have this if you like.' She probably did not know what she meant.

‘Mind I don't accept the offer,' said Baba. ‘You could easily buy another, and after you're married a dozen more, and Wentworth wouldn't notice it.' She went on, exceeding even the vulgarity she had shown at Waterpark when Lady Dilton called, to describe the riches of Wentworth McLeish, implying that they were the reason for Helena's marrying him. It was true that Aunt Maysie, determined that her daughter should be well beyond the reach of the tides of poverty encroaching on the family, which had nearly engulfed Diana, had manoeuvred Helena into this engagement. Helena had no idea of this, and imagined that she was in love with Wentworth, who might have been thought quite a nice young man by those of simple requirements. Baba spoke as if Helena knew quite well what she was doing, and as if her motives were the same as Aunt Maysie's.

At first, Helena, leaning against the dressing-table, listened to her with the faint detached smile with which she had shown her trousseau, but when she took in the implication of what Baba said, her blue eyes widened with astonishment. Then she suddenly looked, not so much angry as enlightened. But Baba went on:

‘The McLeishes are good sound stock. They've no rotten Spanish blood to make them kill horses and carry on with servant girls.'

I was outraged at this reference to my brother and indirectly to myself. Baba saw this and said carelessly: ‘You're all right. It doesn't show in you.'

My anger was nothing to Helena's. Baba had roused her heroic loyalty to her own kind, that quality she shared with Dominic. Baba, ignoring the look in Helena's eyes, went on with heated stupidity, imagining that she was hammering the last nails into the coffin which held the love between the two cousins, whereas she was splitting the fragile wood and allowing it to break free and spread its wings in new life.

Helena suddenly turned and left the room.

Mildy also was vexed. When a situation shocked her or others of the family out of their external silliness, they could show dignity and sense. On the night when Dominic was out on Tamburlaine, Diana shed her affectations to behave with prompt responsibility. Perhaps to retain their sanity the Langtons should always live in a crisis. Mildy was just as pleased as Baba at Helena's engagement, but she clothed it all in the wild and brilliant tissues of romance which floated in her brain. She now said:

‘I do not think that Helena liked your imputing sordid motives to her marriage, Barbara.'

Baba snorted, but she was taken aback that Mildy should have the strength of mind to administer a rebuke. In an uncomfortable silence we went down to the drawing-room where Helena was standing by a bureau, licking and closing an envelope. She had an air of suppressed excitement, but she said calmly:

‘The tea's coming in. Mummy said not to wait for
her.'

A
parlourmaid brought in a tray and put it on a table in a bay window, but Mildy said it was cold, and we took our cups down to the other end of the room, where there was a fire. We sat on sofas covered with a black-and-white striped chintz over which sprawled huge pink cabbage roses, a fashionable pattern in that year, the time of the Gibson girls. Mildy, with that tact and good sense she could call up when necessary, kept the conversation away from the wedding, and asked me questions about Waterpark, and the changes since she was there in the 'nineties. Then, once more overlaying her good sense with her silliness, she said:

‘I would have liked to come over to see you, but I couldn't leave my darling Willy.' She referred only to her new house, which she had called Willara, perhaps so that she could give it this masculine nickname.