Sir Conrad was not enthusiastic about either of his possible sons-in-law as such. Hughie was a nice, good creature, of course, but so boring, with his political pretensions. Sir Conrad thought that politics should be transacted, lightly, by clever men, and not ponderously by stupid ones. The Captain, whose company he very much enjoyed, seemed to him altogether too bohemian for marriage.
‘Don’t you think,’ he said to Mrs O’Donovan, ‘that there may still be a chance of her marrying Charles-Edouard again? They both adore the boy, surely it’s only reasonable to think that they ought to make some sacrifices on his account. After all, so little is wanted – a little discretion from Charles-Edouard and a little toleration from Grace. Mind you, it all depends on Grace. I happen to know that Charles-Edouard would take her back tomorrow, he still wants her.’
‘It all depends,’ said Mrs O’Donovan rather severely, ‘on Grace taking a more Christian view of the duties of a wife. I have been able to forgive her behaviour up to now on account of the shock she must have received, but she has got over that. She is certainly planning to marry again, and is making up her mind whether it shall be Hughie or the Captain. This ceremony, if you can call it that, in a registry office naturally meant nothing to her and marriage as a sacrament is quite outside her experience.’
‘Yes, well, you’re a Papist, Meg, so that’s how you look at it. I think it all comes from a sort of silly pride. Anyhow it’s most exceedingly tiresome. That wretched Carolyn with her mania for sight-seeing. I never could stand her, even as a child. The sort of woman who always manages to put her foot in it. Well she managed that time to some tune, it’s enough to make you cry. Just when everything was going like a marriage bell. Grace was so happy with Charles-Edouard, and furthermore so happy, which is rare for an Englishwoman, living in Paris. She loved it.’
‘Is that rare?’ she said with a sigh. ‘I know I should love it.’
‘Most English people hate living in France. I always think it’s got a great deal to do with French silver. They don’t realize it’s another alloy, they think that dark look means that it hasn’t been properly cleaned, and that makes them hate the French. You know what the English are about silver, it’s a fetish with them. I’ve so often noticed it. In the other war the silver at Bombon used to put up the backs of all our generals; they never could talk about anything else after a meal there with old Foch.’
‘I like that rich, dark silver,’ said Mrs O’Donovan.
But then she liked everything French, indiscriminately and unreasonably, and her life in England, though it was all she had ever known, seemed to her a perpetual exile, so insistent was the beckoning from over the Channel.
9
Grace, called to the telephone in the middle of a rubber of bridge at Yeotown, came back and said to Hughie, ‘Most mysterious – Sigi and Nanny have arrived in London. I think I must go back.’
‘Don’t do that. I’ll send the motor for them. They’ll be here by dinner-time.’
Dinner had begun when the little boy burst into the room and threw himself into his mother’s arms, saying ‘D’you know what, Mum – I rode on a cheval de Marly.’
‘No!’
‘Yes I did – look!’ He fished some very tattered newspaper cuttings out of one pocket, but somehow forgot to fish a letter from Charles-Edouard out of another. Charles-Edouard had written coldly but clearly stating that, in his view, it was their absolute duty to their child to re-marry as soon as possible. He had done so without much hope of moving Grace, but he wanted her to know quite definitely, to read in black and white, his views on the subject, and to make it clear that their continued estrangement was her own responsibility.
‘My darling Sigi – however did you get up there? But first say how d’you do please to Mr and Mrs Fawcett and Hughie, and thank Hughie very very much for sending his motor. No – you don’t kiss people’s hands in England.’
‘Please always kiss mine,’ said Mrs Fawcett, ‘I love it, Sigismond.’
‘Don’t muddle him, Virginia, he must learn the difference.’
‘Well, Mummy, I got up a ladder the workmen had left. Papa allowed me to and then he went home and left me there, and I rode for ages, it was so lovely up in the sky, and there was an enormous crowd to see me and I recited to them. Well first I said the words, that was for Papa, then we had Waterloo, morne plaine, then we all sang Les voyez-vous, and then the pompiers came and we had the Marseillaise, all the verses, then they carried me down and took me home.’
‘I never heard such a thing,’ said Grace, with a look at Hughie which clearly said ‘Now what? We can never compete with this.’ ‘Ask Hughie if you may dine here with us as a great great treat.’
‘Wouldn’t be any treat at all in Paris, I always dine with Papa and have a glass of Bordeaux and 100 francs if I can tell the
