15
‘What’s all this about?’ said Sir Conrad when Sigi, Nanny, and their baggage had been deposited in the nursery and he had Grace to himself. ‘I’m delighted to see you, it goes without saying, but why such short notice? Is it not rather hysterical?’
‘Yes, well, you may call it so. I’ve left Charles-Edouard.’
‘You’ve left your husband?’
‘Yes.’
Sir Conrad was not surprised, since this sudden run for home could hardly, he knew, mean anything else.
‘And are you going to tell me why?’
He did not doubt what the reason would be, broadly speaking, but was curious as to the details.
Grace told him at some length about her life in Paris.
‘I could bear it when he went to tea every day with Madame Marel, though I didn’t like it; I could even bear his terribly open flirtation at every party we went to, with Juliette Novembre, but what happened yesterday afternoon at the Hôtel de Hauteserre is more than I can endure or forgive.’
‘What did happen?’
But when she told him Sir Conrad annoyed her very much indeed by bursting into a hearty laugh.
‘I say, what bad luck! Now don’t look so cross and prim, darling, I quite see it was horrible for you, and I’m very sorry, but I can’t help thinking of Charles-Edouard too. You must admit it was bad luck on him, poor chap.’
‘Perhaps it was. But lives can’t be built entirely on luck.’
‘No good saying that, as they always are. Luck, my darling, makes the world we live in. After all, it was by luck you met Charles-Edouard in the first place (bad luck for Hughie); by luck that he came back from the war safe and sound; by luck that you had that clever little Sigi – by luck, indeed, that you got your mother’s large blue eyes and lovely legs and not my small green eyes and bow legs. Luck is a thing you can never discount. It may be unfair, it generally is, but you can’t discount it. And if Charles-Edouard is having, as he seems to be, a run of bad luck you ought to be there, sympathizing with the poor chap. It doesn’t seem right to go off and leave him all alone. I hoped I’d brought you up better than that.’
‘You’re talking as if he had lost all his money at the races.’
‘Oh well, not quite so bad, thank goodness.’
‘And as if you’re on his side.’
‘We must try and see his side of the question, I suppose.’
‘I don’t think you need, you’re my father.’
‘Now listen, my darling child. I love you, as you know, and only desire your happiness. This is your home, available for you whenever you need it. You can always come here, and even bring Nanny if you must, so please don’t think I want to send you away. Quite the contrary, I like to have you here, it’s a great pleasure. But it’s my plain duty, as your father, to try to make you see things as they are, and, above all, to try and make you see Charles-Edouard as he is. I’m very fond of Charles-Edouard, and I presume that you are too, as you married him.
‘Now he is a man who likes women in the French way of liking them, that is he likes everything about them, including hours of their company and going to bed with them. I suppose you would admit that this is part of his charm for you. But you hardly ever find a man, or anyhow a young man, with his liking for women who can be faithful to one woman. It’s most exceedingly rare.’
‘Yes, Papa, all this may be true about Charles-Edouard. But with me it’s a question of how much I can stand, and I can’t stand a life of constant suspicion and jealousy. Juliette, Albertine, the women he looks at in the street, the way he flirts with everybody, everybody, even Tante Régine, the way he kisses their hands, the way he answers the telephone when they ring up – oh no, it’s too much for me, I can’t.’
‘My dear child, I always thought you had a healthy outlook on life, but this is positively morbid. You really must pull yourself together or I foresee great unhappiness for you in the future.’
‘I shan’t be unhappy a bit if I can marry an ordinary, faithful, English husband.’
Grace had been sustained during her journey by the mental picture of an idealized anglicized Charles-Edouard, whom she was to meet and marry in an incredibly short space of time. This vision had come to her when the light airiness of Northern France, with its young wheat, pink roads and large, white, rolling clouds, had been exchanged for the little, dark, enclosed Kentish landscape, safe and reassuring – home, in fact. She had looked out of the window at the iron grey sky pressing upon wasteful agriculture, coppices untouched by hand of woodman, tangles of blackberry and gorse, all so familiar to her eyes, and she was comforted by the thought that she could be an English countrywoman once more, gardening, going for walks, playing bridge with neighbours, a faithful English Charles-Edouard, tweeded and hearty, by her side. She would be quite happy, she thought, living in an oast-house, or a cottage with a twist of smoke on the edge of Mousehold Heath, or a little red villa with glass veranda in the Isle of Wight – anything, anywhere, so long as it was safe in England and she safely married to this tower of strength and reliability, this English Charles-Edouard.
‘I’m afraid an ordinary faithful English husband will seem very plain pudding after the extraordinarily fascinating French one you are throwing away so carelessly,’ said her father. ‘People like Charles-Edouard don’t grow on every tree, you know. The fact is women must choose in life what sort of a man it is that they do want – whether what is called a good husband, faithful to his wife but seldom seeing
