Time passed, and a morning came when Grace woke up at Yeotown feeling, if not quite happy, at least without a stifling blanket of unhappiness. This blanket had hitherto weighed upon her like something physical, so that there had been days when she had hardly been able to rise from under it and get out of bed. But on this particular morning it seemed to have gone. Through latticed windows the sun shone on a bank of beeches and on the few golden leaves which still clung to their branches. The sky was very blue, her room was warm, her bed intensely comfortable. When she rang the bell Hughie’s housekeeper herself came in with the breakfast tray, followed by a housemaid with all the Sunday papers. The servants there were very fond of Grace and spoilt her as much as they could, hoping that she would marry Hughie. The breakfast was a delight, as it always was in that house, pretty to look at, piping hot, and carefully presented. Grace thought, not for the first time, that it would be difficult for somebody who led such an intensely comfortable life as she did to be quite submerged in unhappiness. There were too many daily pleasures, of which breakfast in bed was by no means the least. Perhaps too, she thought, this English life, so much more suitable for her than a French one, would in the end bring her more happiness. Here she was within her depth, she could do the things which were expected of her, and was not always having to try to learn and understand and do new things. It would have taken her years, she knew, to be able to tell at a glance whether an object was Louis XV or Louis Philippe, First or Third Empire; years before she could bring out suitable quotations from Racine or Apollinaire, write phrases in the manner of Gide and Proust, or even make, in good French, the kind of joke, naïve and yet penetrating, that is expected from an English person. Accomplishments of this sort seemed to be a necessity in France, the small change of daily intercourse. It had all been, quite frankly, a most terrible effort. The English, on the other hand, take people as they are, they don’t expect that the last ounce of energy will be expended on them in the natural order of things, and are, indeed, pleased and flattered at the slightest attempt to entertain them.
She often had these moments of thinking that what had happened was really all for the best, but they never lasted very long. Today the reaction came as soon as she went downstairs. Thump thump thump went the radiogram, gobbling its waxen meal. Hughie was already shuffling the cards, the Dexters, who made up the party, already had glasses in their hands, and tedium loomed. The only hope was to get quickly to the game, but even that magic did not always work.
Hector Dexter had just made a tour of the Industrial North, and was telling, with his usual wealth of word and detail but with an unusual note of humanity, of life as it is lived in the factories. In these terrible, dark, Victorian buildings, he said, where daylight is never seen, the people sit at the same table going through the same motions hour after hour, day after day, with music while you work in the background. As Grace dealt the cards it occurred to her that week-ends at Yeotown were not unlike that. You sat by electric light at the same table hour after hour, going through the same motions, with music while you work, thump thump thumping in the background, life passed by, the things of the mind neglected, the beautiful weather out of doors unfelt, unseen. ‘One club, two no trumps. Three spades. Four spades. Game and rubber. I make that one a rubber of 16 – pass me the washing book, old boy.’
‘Luncheon is served,’ said the butler.
A break, while you go to the canteen. Her life in Paris may have been difficult and exacting, she may have been a flustered witness ever in the box, ever trying not to give the game away to a ruthless cross-examining counsel, but it may also have been a more satisfactory existence than this. At least she had felt alive, she had been made to use whatever mind she possessed, and there had seemed to be point and purpose to each day. It had never merely been a question of getting through such hours as remain before the grave finally closes.
During luncheon Hector Dexter went on talking about his tour. ‘I’m afraid I must be perfectly frank,’ he said, ‘and tell you that in my opinion this little old island of yours is just like some little old grandfather clock that is running down, and if you ask me why is it running down I must reply because the machinery is worn out, deteriorated, degenerated and decayed, while the men who work this machinery are demoralized, vitiated, and corrupt, and if you ask me why this should be so I will give you my viewpoint on the history of Britain during the past fifty years.’ His viewpoint on this subject was then exposed, in great detail. Hughie listened to him with rapturous interest, wondering how anybody could achieve so much knowledge and such a flow of words – oh would that he could pour out its like before the Selection Committees. He had another in front of him that week. Grace felt more than ever as if she were a factory hand, in the kind of factory where people come and chat to the workers
