‘I said I couldn’t quite see in what circumstances you would be coming back. Suppose I had told you it would be complete with an English wife and a son, that would indeed have been a coup for me. Unfortunately I didn’t foresee anything so improbable. Please cut the cards. However, I see her now, clear as daylight, surrounded by old maids, not another man in her orbit. She must be very faithful. Nice for you to have this faithful wife. Good. Cut the cards. Yes. Now here we have a surprise, not that it surprises me very much. Not English, and not your wife, but a sparkling beauty, a brilliant. There is an enormous amount of interesting incident round you and your relationship with this brilliant. Cut the cards. This is for you. Yes, here you are and with all your talents, your charm, your wit, your good nature, watching yourself as you live your life, and fascinated by the spectacle.’
‘Ah!’ said Charles-Edouard, ‘this is very nice. How I love being rubbed the right way.’
‘Cut three times. I am bound to tell you that there will be a few little tiresomenesses, to do with the brilliant. You won’t be careful enough, or you’ll be unlucky – there’ll be a torrent of tears, but they won’t be your tears, so never mind. Cut the cards. Nothing different – you again, between the brilliant and the wife. I can’t tell any more today.’
She leant her head on her hand and looked at him with blue, lollipop eyes, which seemed out of place among her pointed Gothic features. Everything about her was long and thin, except for these round, blue eyes; she was an exceedingly odd-looking woman.
‘So! How do you find marriage?’
‘Rather dull,’ said Charles-Edouard, ‘but I rather like it, and I love my wife. She is original, she amuses me.’
‘And lovely?’ said Madame Marel.
‘She will be, when she is arranged. No doubt you will see her at the Fertés on the tenth.’
‘Yes indeed. We shall all be there, all agog. You haven’t changed much, Charles-Edouard, except that you are better looking than ever.’
‘Ah!’ said Charles-Edouard. He got up and locked the door.
‘No need to do that,’ she said, smiling. ‘Pierre would never let anybody else in when he knows you are here.’
Presently Charles-Edouard, lying relaxed among the cushions of an enormous sofa, said, ‘So tell me, since all these years what have you become?’
‘Oh it’s a long story – or rather a long book of short stories.’
‘Yes, I expect it is. And now –?’
‘Nothing very much. I have an Englishman who is madly in love with me – I don’t believe I’ve ever been loved so violently with such really suicidal mania, as by this Englishman.’
‘Ah, these English, they are terrible.’
‘You may laugh, but it is no joke at all. The evidences of his love simply pour into the house – I don’t know what the concierge can think, it is full-time work carrying them across the courtyard. Flowers, telegrams, letters, parcels, all the day.’
‘Does he live here?’
‘Better than that, in London. But he flies over to see me at least once a week, and then the tears, the scenes, the jealousy, the temperament. It is wearing me out, and I ought really to get rid of him.’
‘Why don’t you?’
‘Because of the bourgeois thrift I learnt from my dear husband. Never throw anything away, it might come in useful. Besides, I do love to be loved.’
‘And what is his name?’
‘It’s not an interesting name – Palgrave, Hughie Palgrave.’
‘It is interesting to me, however,’ said Charles-Edouard, ‘since Hughie Palgrave was once engaged to my wife.’
8
As soon as she had some presentable clothes Charles-Edouard began taking Grace to see his relations. ‘Very dull,’ he said, ‘but what must be, must be.’ So at 6.30 every day they would put themselves into a little lift which shook and wavered up to the drawing-room of some old aunt or cousin of the family. These lifts, these drawing-rooms and these old ladies differed very little from each other. The rooms were huge, cold and magnificent, with splendid pieces of furniture arranged to their worst advantage and mixed up with a curious assortment of objects which had been collected during the course of long married lives. The old ladies were also arranged to their worst advantage, and covered with a curious assortment of jewellery. Prominent upon a black cardigan they generally wore the rosette of the Legion of Honour.
‘We might be going in for a literary prize,’ said Charles-Edouard, as for the fifth time they tottered up in the fifth little lift.
‘Why might we?’
‘This is how you win a literary prize in France. First you write a book – that is of no importance, however. Then you go and see my aunts, treat them with enormous deference, and laugh loudly at the jokes my uncles make over the porto.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘No wonder. All the literary prizes here are given by my aunts.’
‘And won by other aunts?’
‘Not usually. Their works, of an unreadable erudition, are crowned by the Academy. That is different, though my aunts have great power there also, and have managed to insert my uncles under the cupola all right.’
‘Does Tante Régine give prizes?’
‘Heavens no! She is in quite a different world. You will find her (she’s coming back next week, by the way) at all the parties, the dress collections, the private views, the first nights. It’s another product altogether. The Novembre de la Fertés, my grandmother’s and Tante Régine’s family, have never gone in for intellect – nor have the Rocher des Innouïs. All these clever old girls are Valhubert relations – their cradles were rocked by Alphonse Daudet and the Abbé Liszt. Ah! Ma tante! Bonjour mon oncle. So, this is Grace.’
‘Grace! Sit here where we can see you, dear child, and tell us – so cut off from England for so long – all about Mr Charles
