I drew breath sharply. Somewhere in my dreams I had thought of marrying Jonnie. Then I had thought of marrying Ben, it was true. But I went back to Jonnie after Ben had gone to Australia.
“I said I would,” she went on. “It’s easy there, Angelet. There is no formality. You have to pay them well and you can get a priest to marry you. It is probably some unfrocked priest from England … I don’t know. But he married us … and that was what we both wanted. We spent three days together … and then I went back to the hospital and he went to Sebastopol. That is my story, Angelet. You know the rest. He never came back.”
“So you … you are Jonnie’s wife?”
She nodded. “What do you think they will say, Angelet?” she asked anxiously. “They might not … accept me.”
“What do you mean? You are Jonnie’s wife. Therefore they must.”
“I am afraid they will say it is no true marriage.”
“How can they? Don’t they have certificates? Do you?”
“I have one, but, as I say, it was different from the way it is done here. We knew of this priest. He had married one or two other people. It might be that they won’t accept it. They could raise all sorts of objections … if they wanted to.”
“They wouldn’t do that. Why should they?”
“Angelet, you must see. Jonnie belongs to a different family from mine. I worked for your mother.”
“What has that to do with it?”
“They might say … everything.”
“I don’t see how they can if you are married with a certificate to prove it.”
“If they wanted to disprove it …”
“They are good kind people. Jonnie loved you and married you. We all knew that he liked you very much. That was obvious. So they wouldn’t be very surprised. You were both out there. It seems natural to me.”
“I wouldn’t want to embarrass them. I wouldn’t want to be there … if they didn’t want me.”
“But you are Jonnie’s wife!”
“Yes,” she agreed.
“I am going to tell them right away … and you are coming with me.”
She drew back. “No … no. Let me wait here. You go and tell them. But if they think it is no true marriage I will say goodbye to you … to you all …”
“My mother would never allow that. She is always saying how she misses you.”
“She made me so happy … you all have.”
“I shall go right away. Promise me you won’t leave this garden, Grace.”
“I promise. If you don’t come back in say half an hour, I shall know they do not believe me … they do not accept me, I shall understand.”
“You are being foolish, Grace, and I always thought you were so clever.”
I came out of the gardens and ran across the road.
Aunt Amaryllis was in the little room where she did the flowers, a vase of water before her and the flowers lying at the side of the sink.
“Aunt Amaryllis,” I cried. “Grace is in the gardens. She has married Jonnie.”
Aunt Amaryllis turned pale and then pink. She dropped the scissors and wiped her hands.
“Come,” I said. “I will take you to her.”
I was glad that they welcomed her so warmly. Jonnie’s widow would have a very special place in the household.
Aunt Amaryllis was almost happy. Helena came and listened sadly to Grace’s story.
“My dear,” she said, “you made him happy before he died.”
“Yes, we were very happy,” Grace told them.
“I’m glad,” said Helena.
I wondered what Uncle Peter thought. He seemed to like Grace but he was suspicious by nature. He asked a lot of questions and I fancied that in his mind he was making notes of details which he would later verify. But even he had been deeply affected by Jonnie’s death and was pleased to see that Grace’s coming and her announcement had lifted the spirits of Helena and Amaryllis. He may even have felt a twinge of conscience because he had been rather pleased with what Jonnie’s going to war had done for Matthew.
The rest of that visit was dominated by Grace’s return to the household.
Of course Jonnie had been rather a rich young man. He had left no will but his widow would not be penniless. She said that she would be happy to leave everything in Uncle Peter’s capable hands.
I don’t know what arrangements were made or how much money Lord John had left to Jonnie. There was no doubt that Uncle Peter had made inquiries as to the validity of the marriage and he must have been satisfied, for Grace now became an independent woman with her own income.
Helena wanted her to live with them until she made plans. She said: “I always wanted a daughter and that is what you will be to me now.”
Everyone seemed satisfied at the outcome; and there was a certain contentment about Grace. She was happy to be in Jonnie’s home.
The London Season
I HAD REACHED MY seventeenth birthday. Life had slipped back into its more or less uneventful groove now that the war was over and the loss of Jonnie was a sad memory rather than a bitter pain to the family.
Without those harrowing dispatches from the Crimea the press seemed full of trivialities for a while and then came the Indian Mutiny which was even more shocking than the war. There were terrible accounts of how our people had been treated, mutilated and brutally murdered … those who had been friendly servants suddenly turning against men and women and children. The fate of the women was stressed; they had been raped and submitted to horrible indignities. My imagination went beyond that moment when I had heard Ben’s voice calling my name. I kept thinking: Suppose he had not come in time.
I believed then that never, as long as I lived, should I be able to forget that nightmare.
Nobody was quite sure why there had been a mutiny. Some said it was because the Sepoys had believed that their cartridges were greased with the fat of beef and pork which rendered them unclean in their eyes; others said they were in revolt against the East India Company. The general belief was that the Indians feared that we were imposing our civilization upon them. We were in possession of the Punjab and Oude, and they may have thought that we intended to take over the whole of India. The Sepoys had learned the art of battle from us … and now they turned it against us.
The whole country was shocked. People argued fiercely about what should be done … blaming this side and that as they always do from the safe haven far from the scene of strife.
There was great excitement when Lucknow was relieved and the garrison there saved.