CHAPTER XIII
THE honeymoon—a not uncommon experience—proved more or less of a disappointment to the wedded pair. The bride, dazed and confounded by her new status, and the change from a nobody to a personage, was shy and silent, and felt herself to be a mere lay figure in the hands of her maid—a sour-faced, phlegmatic person with an inflated idea of her own importance, and more or less incompetent.
Tucker had been engaged by Mrs. Fenchurch, to whom she was warmly recommended by an acquaintance; a deceitful lady who was only too delighted to be rid of her encumbrance.
The trousseau—also selected by Mrs. Fenchurch—was even less satisfactory than the maid; it was old-fashioned and dowdy; more suitable to a matron of fifty, than a girl of seventeen.
Unfortunately the weather on the Blue Lakes was wet, and it is pitiful to relate that after a fortnight his bride had begun to bore Blagdon; already he was tired of his experiment, Letty was so hopelessly young, timid, and ignorant; they had hardly any interests in common, and there was a difference of twenty long years yawning between their ages. Blagdon’s experience of life being wide and highly illustrated, whilst the girl had seen nothing of the world, beyond a school-room, and The Holt.
As for her beauty, here again was a grievance! The bride could not endure the admiration of her fellow guests; but shrank into corners, disappeared into lobbies, or slinked away to the seclusion of her private sitting-room. Her husband’s vast fortune made no appeal to Letty; lavish outlay of money, gorgeous suites of apartments, reserved railway carriages, and a retinue of servants, merely filled her with embarrassment and alarm, and she went in abject terror of her maid; Mrs. Blagdon was a tame, shrinking, remote sort of creature, who took nothing on herself, and yielded her husband a sort of childish and pathetic obedience. Hugo was naturally something of a bully, and the more the girl submitted to his orders and caprices, the more he encroached.
The happy pair stayed at Caddenabia on Como, and then moved on to Baveno on Maggiore; here they boated, went for drives, and enjoyed their tête-à-tête meals in solitary dignity, and here, alas! the sole company of his wife palled upon Blagdon. What topics had they in common? How could he talk to a girl who had never been to a play, or to a race meeting, had never read a naughty book, or heard even a whisper of notorious scandals? He soon found his way to the billiard and smoking-rooms, and during two hopelessly wet days, when there was a lack of English papers and appreciative society, his bad humour, undisguised and unashamed, was vented on his valet and Letty. To the hardened servant, a rating was as the proverbial water running off a duck’s back! but to the unaccustomed and trembling girl, it proved a terrible awakening. One evening, the condescending Miss Tucker was surprised to find her mistress crouched at her bedroom window the impersonation of misery and despair. “So they had had a falling out already! Well, it was early days.”
In spite of prolonged bathing of her eyes, and a justifiable amount of powder, there were still traces of recent trouble when the bride appeared at dinner. Fortunately the newspapers had arrived, and during the meal her husband—to the astonishment of polite Italian waiters—read them at intervals between the courses; whilst his companion sat opposite, with dry lips, and a deadly sickness at her heart.
The following morning Blagdon abruptly announced that “he had had enough of loafing, and it was time to set their faces towards home.” On their way thither, they stopped in Paris, and put up at the Hôtel Riche, and here, to Hugo’s joy, he encountered Sir Billy and Lady Slater, Mrs. Freddy Corbett, and Lord Robbie; a loud-voiced, cheery quartette, who were returning tardily from Monte Carlo. He presented them to his wife, and subsequently entertained them at a magnificent dinner, at which the bride presided.