These are some letters that Millicent and Henry wrote to one another at this time:
Metropolitan Hotel, Cladgate,
July 17, 1920.Darling Henry—We got down here last night and now it's ever so late—after twelve—and I'm writing in a bedroom all red and yellow, with a large picture of the Relief of Ladysmith over my bed, and it's the very first moment I've had for writing to you. What a day and what a place to spend six weeks in! However, Victoria seems happy and contented, which is the main thing.
It appears that she stayed in this very hotel years ago with her father when they were very poor, and they had two tiny rooms at the very top of the hotel. He wanted her to see gay life, and at great expense brought her here for a week. All the waiters were sniffy and the chambermaid laughed at her and it has rankled ever since. Isn't it pathetic? So she has come now for six solid weeks, bringing her car and Mr. Andrew the new chauffeur and me with her, and has taken the biggest suite in the hotel. Isn't that pathetic? Clarice and Ellen, thank God, are not here, and are to arrive when they do come one at a time.
We had so short a meeting before I came away that there was no time to tell one another anything, and I have such lots to tell. I didn't think you were looking very happy, Henry dear, or very well. Do look after yourself. I'm glad your Baronet is taking you into the country very shortly. I'm sure you need it. But do you get enough to eat with him? His sister sounds a mean old thing and I'm sure she scrimps over the housekeeping. (Scrimps is my own word—isn't it a good one?) Eat all you can when you're in the country. Make love to the cook. Plunder the pantry. Make a store in your attic as the burglar did in our beloved Jim.
One of the things I hadn't time to tell you is that I had an unholy row with every one before we came away. I told you that a storm was blowing up. It burst all right, and first the housekeeper told me what she thought and then I told the housekeeper and then Clarice had her turn and Victoria had hers and I had the last turn of all. I won a glorious victory and Victoria has eaten out of my hand ever since, but I'm not sure that I'm altogether glad. Since it happened Victoria's been half afraid of me, and is always looking at me as though she expected me to burst out again, and I don't like people being afraid of me—it makes me feel small.
However, there it is and I've got her alone here all to myself, and I'll see that she isn't frightened long. Then there's something else. Something—— No, I won't tell you yet. For one thing I promised not to tell any one, and although you aren't any one exactly still—— But I shan't be able to keep it from you very long. I'll just tell you this, that it makes me very, very happy. Happier than I dreamt any one could ever be.
I shouldn't think Cladgate was calculated to make any one very happy. However you never can tell. People like such odd things. All I've seen of it so far is a long, oily-grey sea like a stretch of linoleum, a pier with nobody on it, a bandstand with nobody in it, a desert of a promenade, and the inside of this hotel which is all lifts, palms, and messenger boys. But I've seen nothing yet, because I've been all day in Victoria's rooms arranging them for her. I really think I'm going to love her down here all by myself. There's something awfully touching about her. She feels all the time she isn't doing the right thing with her money. She buys all the newspapers and gets shocks in every line. One moment it's Ireland, another Poland, another the Germans, and then it's the awful winter we're going to have and all the Unemployed there are going to be. I try to read Tennis to her and all about the wonderful Tilden, and what the fashions are at this moment in Paris, and how cheerful Mr. Bottomley feels about everything, but she only listens to what she wants to hear. However, she really is cheerful and contented for the moment.
I had a letter from Katherine this morning. She says that mother is worse and isn't expected to live very long. Aunt Aggie's come up to see what she can do, and is fighting father and the nurse all the time. For the first time in my life I'm on Aunt Aggie's side. Any one who'll fight that nurse has me as a supporter. Katherine's going to have another baby about November and says she hopes it will be a girl. If it is it's to be called Millicent. Poor lamb! Philip's gone in more and more for politics and says it's everybody's duty to fight the Extremists. He's going to stand for somewhere in the next Election.
I must go to bed. I'll write more in a day or two. Write to me soon and tell me all about everything—and Cheer Up!—Your loving Millie.
Have you seen Peter?
Panton St., July 21, '20.
Dear Millie—Thank you very much for your letter. Cladgate sounds awful, but I daresay it will be better later on when more people come. I'll make you an awful confession, which is that there's nothing in the world I like so much as sitting in a corner in the hall of one of those big seaside hotels and watching the people. So long as I can sit there and don't have to do anything and can just notice how silly we all look and how little we mean any of the things we say, and how over-dressed we all are and how conscious of ourselves and how bent on food, money and love, I can stay entranced for hours. . . . However, this is off the subject. What is your secret? You knowing how inquisitive I am, are treating me badly. However, I see that you are going to tell me all about it in another letter or two, so I can afford to wait. How strangely do our young careers seem to go arm in arm together at present. What I wanted to tell you the other day, only I hadn't time, is that I also have been having a row in the house of my employer—an actual fist-to-fist combat or rather in this case a chest-to-chest, because we were too close to one another to use our fists. "We" was not Sir Charles and myself, but his great bullock of a brother. It was a degrading scene, and I won't go into details. The bullock tried to poke his nose into what I was told he wasn't to poke his nose into, and I tried to stop him, and we fell to the ground with a crash just as Sir Charles came in. It's ended all right for me, apparently—although I haven't seen the bullock again since.
Sir Charles is a brick, Millie; he really is. I'd do anything for him. He's awfully unhappy and worried. It's hateful sitting there and not being able to help him. He's had in a typist fellow to arrange the letters, Herbert Spencer by name. I asked him whether he were related to the great H. S. and he said no, that his parents wanted him to be and that's why they called him Herbert, but that wasn't enough. He has large spectacles and long sticky fingers and is very thin, but he's a nice fellow with a splendid Cockney accent. I can now concentrate on the "tiddley-bits" which are very jolly, and what I shan't know soon about the Edinburgh of 1800-1840 won't be worth anybody's knowing. Next week I go down with Duncombe to Duncombe Hall. Unfortunately Lady Bell-Hall goes down too. I'm sorry, because when I'm with some one who thinks poorly of me I always make a fool of myself, which I hate doing. I've been over to the house every day and enquired, but I haven't seen mother yet. Aunt Aggie is having a great time. She has ordered the nurse to leave, and the nurse has ordered her to leave; of course they'll both be there to the end. Poor mother. . . . But why don't you and I feel it more? We're not naturally hard or unfeeling. I suppose it's because we know that mother doesn't care a damn whether we feel for her or no. She put all her affection into Katherine years ago, and then when Katherine disappointed her she just refused to give it to anybody. I would like to see her for ten minutes and tell her I'm sorry I've been a pig so often, but I don't think she knows any more what's going on.
The worst of it is that I know that when she's dead I shall hate myself for the unkind and selfish things I've done and only remember her as she used to be years ago, when she took me to the Army and Navy Stores to buy underclothes and gave me half-a-crown after the dentist.
I'm all right. Don't you worry about me. The girl I told you about is in a terrible position, but I can't do anything at present. I can only wait until there's a crisis—and I detest waiting as you know. Peter's all right. He's always asking about you.
Norman and Forrest are going to reissue two of his early books, Reuben Hallard and The Stone House, and at last he's begun his novel. He says he'll probably tear it up when he's done a little, but I don't suppose he will. Do write to him. He thinks a most awful lot of you. It's important with him when he likes anybody, because he's shut up his feelings for so long that they mean a lot when they do come out. Write soon.—Your loving brother, Henry.
Metropolitan Hotel, Cladgate,
July 26, '21.Dearest Henry—Thank you very much for your letters. I always like your letters because they tell me just what I want to know, which letters so seldom do do. Mary Cass, for instance, tells me about her chemistry and sheep's hearts, and how her second year is going to be even harder than her first, but never anything serious.
The first thing about all this since I wrote last is that it has rained incessantly. I don't believe that there has ever been such a wet month as this July since the Flood, and rain is especially awful here because so many of the ceilings seem to have glassy bits in them, and the rain makes a noise exactly like five hundred thunderstorms, and you have to shriek to make yourself heard, and I hate shrieking. Then it's very depressing, because all the palms shiver in sympathy, and it's so dark that you have to turn on the electric light which makes every one look hideous. But I don't care, I don't care about anything! I'm so happy, Henry, that I—There! I nearly let the secret out. I know that I shan't be able to keep it for many more letters and I told him yesterday—— No, I won't. I must keep my promise.
Here's Victoria,—I must write to you again to-morrow.
Telegram:
July 27.
Who's Him? Let me know by return.
Henry.
Cladgate, July 28.
Dearest Henry—You're very imperative, aren't you? Fancy wasting money on a telegram and your finances in the state they're in. Well, I won't tantalize you any longer; indeed, I can't keep it from you, but remember that it's a secret to the whole world for some time to come.
Well. I am engaged to a man called Baxter, and I love him terribly. He doesn't know how much I love him, nor is he going to know—ever. That's the way to keep men in their places. Who is he you say? Well, he's a young man who came to help Clarice with her theatricals in London. I think I loved him the very first moment I saw him—he was so young and simple and jolly and honest, and such a relief after all the tantrums going on elsewhere. He says he loved me from the first moment, too, and I believe he did. His people are all right. His father's dead, but his mother lives in a lovely old house in Wiltshire, and wears a lace white cap. He's the only child, and his mother (whom I haven't yet seen) adores him. It's because of her that we're keeping things quiet for the moment, because she's staying up in Scotland with some relatives, and he wants to tell her all about it by word of mouth instead of writing to her. I hate mysteries. I always did—but it seems a small thing to grant him. He's working at the Bar, but as there appears to be no chance of making a large income out of that for some time, he thinks he'll help a man in some motor works—there's nothing about motors that he doesn't know. Meanwhile, he's staying here in rooms near the hotel. Of course, Victoria has been told nothing, but I think she guesses a good deal. She'd be stupid if she didn't.
I've never been in love before. I had no conception of what it means. I'm not going to rhapsodize—you needn't be afraid, but in my secret self I've longed for some one to love and look after. Of course, I love you, Henry dear, and always will, and certainly you need looking after, but that's different. I want to do everything for Ralph (that's the name his mother gave him, but most people call him Bunny), mend his socks, cook his food, comfort him in trouble, laugh with him when he's happy, be poor with him, be rich with him, anything, everything. Of course I mustn't show him I want to do all that, it wouldn't be good for him, and we must both keep our independence, but I never knew that love took you so entirely outside yourself, and threw you so completely inside some one else.
Now you're quite different; I don't mean that your way of being in love isn't just as good as mine, but it's different. With you it's all in the romantic idea. I believe you like it better when she slips away from you, always just is beyond you, so that you can keep your idea without tarnishing it by contact. You want yours to be beautiful—I want mine to be real. And Bunny is real. There's no doubt about it at all.
Oh! I do hope you'll like him. You're so funny about people. One never knows what you're going to think. He's quite different from Peter, of course—he's much younger for one thing, and he isn't intellectually clever. Not that he's stupid, but he doesn't care for your kind of books and music. I'm rather glad of that. I don't want my husband to be cleverer than I am. I want him to respect me.
I'm terribly anxious for you both to meet. Bunny says he'll be afraid of you. You sound so clever. It's still raining, but of course I don't care. Victoria is a sweet pet and will go to Heaven.—Your loving sister, Millicent.
P.S.—Don't tell Peter.
Panton St., July 30.
My dear Mill—I don't quite know what to say. Of course, I want you to be happy, and I'd do anything to make you so, but somehow he doesn't sound quite the man I expected you to marry. Are you sure, Millie dear, that he didn't seem nice just because everybody at the Platts seemed horrid? However, whatever will make you happy will please me. As soon as I come up from Duncombe I must meet him, and give you both my grand-paternal blessing. We go down to Duncombe to-morrow, and if it goes on raining like this, it will be pretty damp, I expect. I won't pretend that I'm feeling very cheerful. My affair is in a horrid state. I can't bear to leave her, and yet there's nothing else for me to do. However, I shall be able to run up about once a week and see her. Her mother is still friendly, but I expect a row at any moment. This news of yours seems to have removed you suddenly miles away. It's selfish of me to feel that, but it was all so grizzly at home yesterday that for the moment I'm depressed. Oh, Millie, I do hope you'll be happy. . . . You must be, you must!—Your loving brother,
Henry.