He could have educated her so as to be able to say—oh, but tactfully:
“Look here, you. … Examine my … my cache-corsets. … Wouldn’t some new ones be better than a new pedigree sow?” … The fellow never had looked at her … cache-corsets. Marie Léonie had!
Marie Léonie was of opinion that she would lose Christopher if she did not deluge herself with a perfume called Houbigant and wear pink silk next the skin. Elle ne demandait pas mieux—but she could not borrow twenty pounds from Marie Léonie. Nor yet forty. … Because, although Christopher might never notice the condition of her all-wools, he jolly well would be struck by the ocean of Houbigant and the surf of pink. … She would give the world for them. … But he would notice—and then she might lose his love. Because she had borrowed the forty pounds. On the other hand, she might lose it because of the all-wools. And heaven knew in what condition the other pair would be when they came back from Mrs. Cramp’s newest laundry attentions. … You could never teach Mrs. Cramp that wool must not be put into boiling water!
Oh God, she ought to lie between lavendered linen sheets with little Chrissie on soft, pink silk, air-cushionish bosoms! … Little Chrissie, descended from surgeon-butler—surgeon-barber, to be correct!—and burgomaster. Not to mention the world-famous Professor Wannop. … Who was to become … who was to become, if it was as she wished it. … But she did not know what she wished, because she did not know what was to become of England or the world. … But if he became what Christopher wished he would be a contemplative parson farming his own tithe-fields and with a Greek Testament in folio under his arm. … A sort of White of Selborne. … Selborne was only thirty miles away, but they had had never the time to go there. … As who should say: Je n’ai jamais vu Carcassonne. … For, if they had never found time, because of pigs, hens, pea-sticking, sales, sellings, mending all-wool undergarments, sitting with dear Mark—before little Chrissie came with the floss silk on his palpitating soft poll and his spinning pebble-blue eyes: if they had never found time now, before, how in the world would there be time with, added on to all the other, the bottles, and the bandagings and the bathing before the fire with the warm, warm water, and feeling and the slubbing of the soap-saturated flannel on the adorable, adorable limbs? And Christopher looking on. … He would never find time to go to Selborne, nor Arundel, nor Carcassonne, nor after the Strange Woman. … Never. Never!
He had been away now for a day and a half. But it was known between them—without speaking!—that he would never be away for a day and a half again. Now, before her pains began he could … seize the opportunity! Well, he had seized it with a vengeance. … A day and a half! To go to Wilbraham sale! With nothing much that they wanted. … She believed … she believed that he had gone to Groby in an aeroplane. … He had once mentioned that. Or she knew that he had thought of it. Because the day before yesterday when he had been almost out of his mind about the letting of Groby, he had suddenly looked up at an aeroplane and had remained looking at it for long, silent. … Another woman it could not be. …
He had forgotten about those prints. That was dreadful. She knew that he had forgotten about them. How could he, when they wanted to get a good, English client, for the sake of little Chrissie? How could he? How could he? It is true that he was almost out of his mind about Groby and Groby Great Tree. He had begun to talk about that in his sleep, as for years, at times, he had talked, dreadfully, about the war.
“Bringt dem Hauptmann eine Kerze. … Bring the Major a candle,” he would shout dreadfully beside her in the blackness. And she would know that he was remembering the sound of picks in the earth beneath the trenches. And he would groan and sweat dreadfully, and she would not dare to wake him. … And there had been the matter of the boy, Aranjuez’, eye. It appeared that he had run away over a shifting landscape, screaming and holding his hand to his eye. After Christopher had carried him out of a hole. … Mrs. Aranjuez had been rude to her at the Armistice night dinner. … The first time in her life that anyone—except of course Edith Ethel—had been ever rude to her. Of course you did not count Edith Ethel Duchemin, Lady Macmaster! … But it’s queer: your man saves the life of a boy at the desperate risk of his own. Without that there would not have been any Mrs. Aranjuez: then Mrs. Aranjuez is the first person that ever in your life is rude to you. Leaving permanent traces that made you shudder in the night! Hideous eyes!
Yet, but for a miracle there might have been no Christopher. Little Aranjuez—it had been because he had talked to her for so long, praising Christopher, that Mrs. Aranjuez had been rude to her!—little Aranjuez had said
