‘I don’t want to think it over,’ she said, ‘but I shall have to consult Sigismond.’
The Captain was very much taken aback. ‘Consult Sigi?’
‘Oh Captain, if Sigi didn’t like it I could never do it, you know. I’ve given him my word never to marry without asking him first.’
‘It’s mad. Little boys of that age change their ideas every few minutes – he might say yes one day and no the next, it would mean nothing at all. According to whether – well for instance according to whether one had last tipped him with a shilling or five pounds. Sigi is very fond of me, you must have noticed that for yourself. I shan’t turn out to be a Mr Murdstone, I can assure you – I am good-natured and I love children. I tell you this, so it must be true. What people say about themselves is always true. When they say “Don’t fall in love with me, I shall make you very unhappy” you must believe them, just as you must believe me when I tell you that both you and Sigi will have happy lives once you are married to me. Quiet, uneventful, but happy.’
‘Oh I do, Captain, I do believe it. I’ve known it really for a long time.’
As Grace said this she looked positively cuddlable, and the Captain was about to press her to his bosom when she saw the time, gave a tremendous jump, said she was half an hour late for luncheon already and fled – shouting from the staircase ‘Come back at tea-time.’
‘Tell me something, Sigi. You love the Captain, darling, don’t you?’
‘Shall I tell you what I think of the Captain?’
‘Yes, that’s what I’m asking you.’
‘I think he’s a bloody bastard, so there.’
‘Sigismond – go to bed this instant. Nanny – Nanny –’ Grace was running furiously upstairs, ‘Please put Sigismond to bed without any supper and without Dick Barton. I won’t have it, Sigi, you’re not to speak of grown-up people like that, do you understand? Oh no, it’s too much,’ and she burst into tears. She had quite made up her mind that she was going to marry the Captain and now this consolation was to be denied her.
Sigi, rather puzzled and very cross, received pains and penalties, but he had hit his target first. That night the Captain left London, alone, for France. The Royal George had gone down, without her crew complete. Her new owner, having repainted, furbished up, and rechristened her, more in the spirit of the age, The Broadway, opened triumphantly that autumn with a dramatization of Little Lord Fauntleroy.
11
Madame Rocher des Innouïs, as old ladies sometimes do, now got an idea into her head, and decided that she would not rest until she had seen it carried out. The idea was that Grace and Charles-Edouard must be brought together again, must be married properly this time, that Grace must be converted, that they must have more children, and do their duty by the one they had already. The present situation had become impossible. Charles-Edouard quite clearly had no intention of marrying any of the nice, suitable girls vetted and presented by his aunt, and was now in trouble with half the husbands of Paris. Grace, according to information received by Madame Rocher through the French Embassy in London, was contemplating remarriage with some very unsuitable sailor, and the child was being outrageously spoilt on both sides of the Channel. Bad enough that a Valhubert should be written about and photographed in Samedi Soir, it now seemed that his mother contemplated putting him on the London stage, while Sir Conrad, whom Madame Rocher loved but whom she did not trust a yard, was no doubt initiating him into the terrible rites of Freemasonry. Charles-Edouard’s heir was on the way to becoming a publicity-monger, an actor, and a Nihilist; what must poor Françoise be thinking?
Madame Rocher took action. She arrived in London to stay with the French Ambassador, sent for Grace, and weighed in at once with what she had to say.
‘Grace, my child, it is your duty to return to Paris and marry Charles-Edouard. Picture this unfortunate man, lonely, unhappy, reduced to pursuing the wives of all his friends, forced to go to bed at the most inconvenient times, and always with the risk of his motive being misunderstood. He may find himself trapped into some perfectly incongruous marriage before we know where we are. Then think of your little boy, brought up like this between the two of you, no continuity in his education. Nothing can be worse for a child than these six months of hysterical spoiling from each of you in turn. You are very reasonable, Grace dear, surely you must understand where it is that your duty lies.
‘I know the English are fond of duty, it is their great speciality. We all admire you so much for having no black market, but what is the good of no black market if you will not do your duty by your own family, Grace? Have you thought of that?’
Grace, sick to death of living alone, longing night and day for Charles-Edouard, was unable to conceal from Madame Rocher’s experienced eye the happiness these words gave her, and that in her case duty and inclination were the same.
‘But Charles-Edouard never asks me to go back,’ she said. ‘I’m always hearing from my father that he wants me, but I’ve never had a direct communication from him. It makes it rather difficult.’
Madame Rocher gave a sigh of relief. The day, she saw, was won.
‘It is perhaps not so very strange,’ she said. ‘Charles-Edouard has never been left before by a woman. He fully
