Read Online Cousin Rosamund by Rebecca West - Free Book Online Page B

have ever seen you, have demanded of me. If Oswald should tell me we must obey you I would not marry him, though I do love him. I would think him weak and silly and not able to stand up for himself even about things that really matter. So we will be married in that church, and we will be very sad if you do not come.’
    ‘That’s our last word, Dad,’ said Oswald.
    Mr Bates made a vaguely apocalyptic gesture and looked up at the place where the rainbow had been as if he might have asked it for guidance had it still been there, down at the river as if he might yet be driven to walk on it. Magnificently he declaimed, ‘Well said, my daughter. Go on the way you have chosen for the Lord will bring you to salvation. In the end. And very gratefully will I attend your marriage.’
    ‘Thank you,’ said Nancy. She wavered for a minute and then made the bobbing curtsy which, years ago, in our dancing class at Lovegrove, we had been taught to make to our elders; and Mr Bates bowed to her over his staff and held out his hand. ‘Let us walk together in the garden for a moment,’ he said, and they moved away from us, and stood talking beside the sliding and leaf-strewn waters.
    Oswald said proudly, ‘She understood him at sight, saw that the only thing to do with him is to stand up to him.’ But his face clouded. ‘How on earth,’ he asked, ‘did she come to forget that I’m against any religious ceremony at all?’
    ‘She was excited,’ said Aunt Lily.
    ‘It would startle any girl, him coming in like that,’ said Uncle Len.
    ‘We were all startled,’ said Mr Morpurgo.
    ‘Does it matter?’ said Mary.
    ‘Well, a lot of people know my opinions,’ said Oswald doubtfully.
    ‘But your dad did promise to come to the wedding,’ said Aunt Milly, ‘and that was nice of him.’
    ‘I shouldn’t discourage him now that he’s climbed down,’ said Mr Morpurgo. ‘I take it that it doesn’t happen often.’
    ‘It was Nancy’s little victory,’ said Aunt Lily.
    ‘I don’t see how you can open up the whole thing again,’ said Uncle Len.
    ‘Put that way,’ said Oswald, ‘I suppose it’s better to leave things as they are. Give and take. It’s a good principle.’ His father called to him from the water’s edge. He had his arm round Nancy’s shoulder and her face was moved and bright, he could not be entirely a humbug, perhaps he was not a humbug at all. ‘They’re getting on well together,’ said Oswald cheerfully, and hurried off to them.
    ‘I wonder how she’ll manage to get the kids christened,’ said Uncle Len softly.
    ‘Hush, he’s no idea,’ said Aunt Lily.
    ‘Just think of Nancy going after what she wants,’ marvelled Aunt Lily. ‘There’s more of Queenie in her than you’d think.’
    The three at the water’s edge were close together. Nancy raised her lips to the old man’s cheek, and then drew herself away, and came to us. Her face wet with tears, she told us, ‘He is nice really. He understands how hard everything has been for Oswald. I am happy, so very happy.’ She lost her power to speak, and walked away from us towards the house, but turned back. ‘About the church,’ she said, ‘it wasn’t just for the portrait and the wedding-dress.’
    ‘We knew that,’ said Mary.
    She had to turn back a second time. ‘But it was partly that. That did come into it.’
    Both Mary and I were so constituted that we needed a life of this character to run parallel with our lives. It was not only that we loved these people and loved them more year by year. It was that they were candid, and we were their familiars, and we could see how they worked on their circumstances, and how their circumstances worked on them, and how they were imposing form on the chaos that had been given them. Their achievement had great relevance to all that we had unquestionably of our own, which was our musical life. Musicians, by their own talents and their acceptance of tradition, impose meaning on the meaningless