This Merry Bond (8 page)

CHAPTER
SEVEN

N
icky said a little defiantly to Mouse:

“What would you say if I told you I was going to marry Simon Shand after all?”

Mouse pursed her lips with an expression well known in the nursery years ago.

“I’d say you didn’t deceive me, Nicky, with your talk of wine and good masculine food,” she said briskly. “I told you that you shouldn’t make eyes at the poor gentleman, and I tell you again.”

“But it’s true, Mouse. I really have got myself engaged to him,” Nicky said a little timidly. Mouse could be very uncompromising when she chose.

Mouse turned to look at her. “Are you speaking the truth, Nicky?
Well!
Whatever made you do such a daft thing I should like to know? It must have been that fall you had, I shouldn’t wonder. And what are you going to do about it now?”

“Marry him, I suppose. Don’t you approve?”

Mouse stood in silence for a moment looking down at Nicky crouched by the schoolroom fire on her first day out of bed. There was an unfamiliar softness in the girl’s face, a faint pleading that tugged at Mouse’s heart and upset all her downrightness.

“It’s time you got married and settled down—yes,” she said at last. “You need somebody to look after you—always did. But the Shands! They’re trade, as I always told you, Nicky—not but what I don’t like young Mr. Shand. He’s pleasant-spoken enough and knows his own mind. But you’re a Bredon, and the Bredons don’t marry with trade—even in these days.”

“I’d no idea you were such a snob, Mouse dear,” Nicky said lightly. “My happiness ought to be much more important to you than a few boots and shoes, you old hypocrite.”

“And do you think you’ll be happy with him?” Mouse asked bluntly.

Nicky stared into the fire and didn’t answer at once.

“I don’t know,” she said at last. “I don’t know.”

“Well, you’d better see what your father has to say,” said Mouse, closing the subject with her usual finality.

But Charles, when told, offered very little objection.

“Not perhaps quite what I would have chosen for you, my pretty,” he said with his ironic, twisted smile. “But good enough in these uncivilized days, I suppose. At least there’ll be plenty of money behind you.

Money, thought Nicky in an uncomfortable moment of honesty. Was that why she was marrying Simon? Neither she nor Charles had troubled much about ways and means in their rackety life together, but there was no denying things had been pinching a bit lately, and Charles was worried. There was his debt to Simon, never to be repaid now. There was Simon standing over her in the firelight saying in that quiet voice: “You aren’t forgetting, are you, that I have my security?”

But there had been no thought of money in her heart when she had agreed to marry him. That had been one of the odd unexpected things that had happened to her, some instinct outside her control giving herself into the keeping of this man who was still half an enemy, and whom she knew so little.

He was strange, too. He didn’t come to see her again after the day of her accident. She knew he had talked to Charles. Charles had stood by her bed afterward and grinned at her, saying:

“Made me feel very Edwardian, darling—asking my daughter’s hand in marriage. I didn’t know people troubled these days. I gave him a stiff drink and told him not to be a fool.”

But the first day Nicky was allowed out, Simon was downstairs in the library waiting to take her up to the Towers. He stood looking down at her in silence for a moment, an expression in his eyes that puzzled her, then he took her face gently between his hands and kissed her.

“Funny little Nicky,” he said. “I believe you weren’t quite sure it had all happened.”

“Were you?” she asked a little lamely. ’

“Why not? It was a bargain,” he replied, and she was aware of how little she knew him.

He didn’t ask if she was quite sure if she was happy, any of the expected things. He said instead:

“I hope you will try and like my people. They’ve been very good to me.”

“I’ll try,” she said.

His lips twitched a little.

“You may find my father a little difficult,” was all he said.

What use to tell her of John Shand’s reception of the news? He could see the old man now, his large head thrust forward in aggression, his stocky shoulders hunched to his ears.

“Marry that Bredon girl! You a fine honest young fellow with hard-working traditions behind you, marry into a family that’s rotten through and through! I’ll never countenance it,” he shouted, but Mary Shand said:

“I like the girl, John. She has quality.”

“Quality!” roared old Shand. “Don’t tell me that you’ve fallen for this old family stuff too! I gave you credit for more sense.”

“That’s not what I meant, dear. Simon knows.”

Simon smiled at his mother in understanding. And looking at Nicky now as he followed her down the steps of Nye to the waiting car, he thought again how well that word described her. Thoughtless, sometimes a little arrogant, often as absurd as a precocious child, yet there was something about her that was fine and likable, the quality that had made him love her.

The interview could hardly be described as a success. There was
a warmth in Mary Shand’s embrace as she said a little shyly: “I’ve always wanted a daughter, my dear, and now I’m to have my wish,” which brought unexpected tears to Nicky’s eyes. But old Shand stubbornly resisted all the girl’s efforts to charm and said bluntly:

“I don’t approve, young woman, and it’s no manner of good saying I do. We may be comfortable now, but you’re marrying into a working family for all that. I doubt it’ll suit you. My boy’s had advantages I never had myself, but that doesn’t alter him. He’s a good lad, Simon, and we hoped he’d wed some sensible upstanding young lass.”

“Aren’t we good enough for you, Mr. Shand?” said Nicky with a flash of her old arrogance, but Shand made no attempt to soften his words.

“No, my girl, if you’ll excuse me saying so, you’re not,” he replied, and the hot color flamed into Nicky’s pale face. “The Bredon’s are played-out stock. I want my grandchildren to carry good blood on both sides.”

“You shouldn’t count your chickens, John,” Mary broke in with unexpected humor. “There may not be any grandchildren. Not but what,” she added quickly to Nicky, “it would be a great grief to us, my dear, if there were never any little ones. But this is no talk for a newly engaged girl. Come and sit here beside me and tell me how it all came about.”

Nicky went back with Simon, an angry spot of color on each high cheekbone.

“Your father is impossible,” she told Simon with repressed fury. “I’m itching to see Charles’s face when I tell him the Shands don’t think the Bredons good enough.”

“You’re not used to that, are you, Nicky?” Simon said quietly.

She looked at him in amazement.

“Well, naturally not,” she said a little coldly.

“And yet you know, there
is
the other point of view. A line does get played out. Just as good wine will become adulterated with age and replenishment.”

“Do
you
think we’re not good enough for you, Simon?” she asked him slowly.

He smiled. “That’s a silly question. I was only trying to make you understand that the Bredon standards aren’t the only ones. My father is very proud of his working-class strain, but I’m quite aware that all your family will think you’re making a
mésalliance
.”

“Then we’re quits,” she said, suddenly childishly rude. “But I hope my family will hide their feelings better than yours.”

He stopped the car in front of the great stone portico of Nye. “Nicky, Nicky!” he said softly. “Don’t be so intolerant. I know my father behaved boorishly, but that’s only because he’s blunt and honest and doesn’t know how to hide his feelings under a mask of insincerity. That only comes with the generations.”

She got out of the car feeling gently snubbed. He followed her slowly into the great hall, its lovely roof soaring into the shadows of a winter twilight, and for an instant he had the impression of being an alien. What, he thought, had the Shands to do with the Bredons of Nye? Then Nicky, warming herself beside the blazing logs, said in her high, clear voice:

“What a jolly engagement ours is going to be.”

“Thinking of changing your mind?” he asked quietly.

She looked up and her wide-set slanting eyes were brilliant.

“I’ll marry you if it’s the last thing I do, Simon Shand,” she said. “And I hope there’ll be rows and rows of bleating little grandchildren to annoy your father every time he sets eyes on them.”

Simon’s lips twitched.

“Two or three would be enough,” he said gravely. Then his face altered. He held out both hands to her. “Come here.”

She came slowly, almost against her will, and as his arms closed around her she suddenly felt very isolated.

“Why are you marrying me, Nicky?” he asked her gently.

She tried to avoid those disconcerting eyes, but he put one hand under her chin and kept it there.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly.

He gave a little sigh.

“Neither do I,” he said, and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

The Shand-Bredon engagement was a passing excitement in Hammertye. People gave parties for Simon and Nicky and if there was gossip that the Shand thousands had played a large part in the sudden romance, Nicky, at any rate, didn’t hear of it at once.

Only Liza
Coleman, her bright, mischievous little eyes darting over Nicky’s face said:

“I do
so
sympathize, darling. After all, everyone’s been after him for months, and the money
will
be a help, won’t it? But it’s rather hard on the little Lucy girl.”

“Stella?” said Nicky sharply. “There wasn’t anything in that.”

“Perhaps not for
Simon,
darling, but
she,
poor sweet, was terribly smitten, and always had such pathetic hopes, as we all
knew.
They were always asked out together before you came home, you know.”

“Were they?” said Nicky a little blankly. “But Stella always seems so kind of lost and vague.”

“Oh, that’s just her
line,
darling. Wasn’t there some affair with your cousin years ago?”

“Michael? Yes. But I think she was rather silly about him.”

“Oh, she’s a most
neurotic
girl, of course. But then poor sweet, what
has
the village to offer a girl, and poor old Dick’s much too busy making up pills to take her about. But you have all the luck, Nicky.”

Curiously enough, Stella Lucy echoed the words when she met Nicky in the village a few days later.

“Congratulations, Nicky. You have all the luck, haven’t you?” Nicky glanced at her sharply, but her little face wore its usual gentle other-world expression. Only her enormous eyes seemed larger and more elfinlike than ever.

“You never know these days if marriage is going to be a piece of luck or not, do you?” Nicky said carelessly, but Stella gave her wan, fleeting smile and said: “Don’t you? I should know at once,” and vanished into the post office.

Faintly disturbed, Nicky asked Simon how great the friendship had been.

“Someone been talking to you?” he said shrewdly. “I’m very fond of Stella, as it happens, and I was sorry for the child stuck in this village all the year around. I used to take her about a bit. Old Lucy’s a good sort, but he’s too busy to give the girl much of a time.”

“I see,” Nicky said a little thoughtfully, then she dismissed the matter entirely from her mind, and was only momentarily interested when she heard a week later that Stella had gone on an indefinite visit to relations in Scotland.

With the formal announcement of her engagement, the Bredon relations descended in a swarm. With a sardonic twinkle Charles announced they must give a dinner party to introduce the new in-laws to be.

“A meeting of the clans!” exclaimed Nicky in horror. “You can’t do it, Charles. Imagine Aunt Alice getting together with old man Shand and discussing the dear young people!”

“It’s your Aunt Alice who insists on viewing the body,” Charles said with a shrug. “Very correct is your Aunt Alice. It’s the thing to have a family dinner and drink the dear young people’s health and pick them both to pieces. I seem to remember some such happenings when I got engaged to your mother. There’s no way out, Nick. You’ll have to go through with it.”

They all came for the weekend. The Hilary Bredons, old Lady Edderton, and Mrs. Bredon-Thomas, seldom seen at other times, but always in at deaths and weddings.

“Our nearest and dearest,” Charles muttered as, on Saturday night they all filed up to their rooms to dress for dinner. “We don’t seem very rich in relations, do we, Nick? Unfortunately, the more distant and happier connections stay away.”

Dinner was an uncomfortable affair for most of them. Among them all, only Charles appreciated the effect of the elder Shands on the company. Mary, though she didn’t enjoy herself, was, in her simple dignity quite equal to the occasion, but old John, barely hiding his antagonism, glowered across the table and came out with some of his bluntest remarks. It was the first time he had ever set foot in Nye, and while he was alive to the atmosphere of the long gracious room with its mellow panelling, its portraits, and the heavily loaded table, he silently criticized the indifferent food, the badly polished silver and long waits between courses. He was aware of Charles surveying the guests with his puckish glance, Hilary Bredon, silent and inscrutable on his side of the table, and the women, nonplussed and slightly patronizing, making the best of an unfortunate position for the sake of the backing the Shand money would bring them.

Afterwards, when toasts had been drunk and replied to and the men had been left to their port and cigars, the women sat about in the cold, little-used drawingroom and made desultory conversation.

Alice Bredon, eyeing Nicky’s slender body, remarked critically, “You’re too thin, Nicky. It’s not becoming.”

Old Lady Edderton said with a chuckle, “Marriage will soon alter that. I remember when I was your age, Nicky...”

The conversation relapsed into personalities, and presently Mrs. Bredon-Thomas said:

“And of course, Nicky, you are going to keep your own name, just as I did.”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” Nicky replied, glancing a little awkwardly at Mary Shand, whom they all seemed to have forgotten.

“I never kept
my
name when I married Hilary,” said Aunt Alice coldly, who was always torn between a belief that the Bredons were the salt of the earth and a secret irritation at their calm acceptance of the fact.

“That was different, dear,” said Mrs. Bredon-Thomas blandly. “But Nicky is the last of her line and the name should be carried on.”

“Well, we’ll talk about it later on,” said Nicky, and went and sat by Mary Shand, who was thinking with longing of her own overcrowded and overheated drawing room at home.

But Mrs. Bredon-Thomas was not to be so easily put off. When the men joined them again, she said firmly during a lull in the conversation:

“I was telling Nicky, my dear Charles, that she must insist on keeping her own name as well as her new one when she’s married.”

“Why?” asked Hilary Bredon a little wearily.