Meanwhile poor Lady Montdore was being subjected to a tremendous interrogation by the duchess, who had relapsed, through a spirit of contradiction perhaps, into her native tongue. Lady Montdore’s French was adequate, but by no means so horribly wonderful as that of her husband and brother-in-law, and she was soon in difficulties over questions of weights and measures; how many hectares in the park at Hampton, how many metres high was the tower, what would it cost, in francs, to take a house boat for Henley, how many kilometres were they from Sheffield? She was obliged to appeal the whole time to Boy, who never failed her of course, but the duchess was not really very much interested in the answers, she was too busy cooking up the next question. They poured out in a relentless torrent, giving Lady Montdore no opportunity whatever to escape to the bridge table as she was longing to do. What sort of electric-light machine was there at Hampton, what was the average weight of a Scotch stag, how long had Lord and Lady Montdore been married (‘tiensl’), how was the bath water heated, how many hounds in a pack of fox hounds, where was the Royal Family now? Lady Montdore was undergoing the sensation, novel to her, of being a rabbit with a snake. At last she could bear it no more and broke up the party, taking the women off to bed very much earlier than was usual at Hampton.
CHAPTER FIVE
AS this was the first time I had ever stayed away in such a large, grand grown-up house party I was rather uncertain what would happen about breakfast, so before we said goodnight I asked Polly.
‘Oh,’ she said vaguely, ‘nine-ish, you know’, and I took that to mean, as it meant at home, between five and fifteen minutes past nine. In the morning, I was woken up at eight by a housemaid who brought me tea with slices of paper-thin bread and butter, asked me ‘Are these your gloves, miss, they were found in the car?’ and then, after running me a bath, whisked away every other garment within sight, to add them no doubt to the collection she had already made of yesterday’s tweed suit, jersey, shoes, stockings and underclothes. I foresaw that soon I should be appearing downstairs in my gloves and nothing else.
Aunt Emily never allowed me to take her maid on visits as she said it would spoil me in case later on I should marry a poor man and have to do without one; I was always left to the tender mercies of housemaids when I went away from home.
So by nine o’clock I was bathed and dressed and quite ready for some food. Curiously enough, the immense dinner of the night before, which ought to have lasted me a week, seemed to have made me hungrier than usual. I waited a few minutes after the stable clock struck nine, so as not to be the first, and then ventured downstairs, but was greatly disconcerted in the dining-room to find the table still in its green baize, the door into the pantry wide open and the men-servants, in striped waistcoats and shirt sleeves, engaged upon jobs which had nothing to do with an approaching meal, such as sorting out letters and folding up the morning papers. They looked at me, or so I imagined, with surprise and hostility. I found them even more frightening than my fellow guests, and was about to go back to my bedroom as quick as I could when a voice behind me said,
‘But it’s terrible, looking at this empty table.’
It was the Due de Sauveterre. My protective colouring was off, it seemed, by morning light, in fact he spoke as if we were old friends. I was very much surprised, more so when he shook my hand, and most of all when he said, ‘I also long for my porridge, but we can’t stay here, it’s too sad, shall we go for a walk while it comes?’
The next thing I knew I was walking beside him, very fast, running almost to keep up, in one of the great lime avenues of the park. He talked all the time, as fast as he walked.
‘Season of mists,’ he said, ‘and mellow fruitfulness. Am I not brilliant to know that? But this morning you can hardly see the mellow fruitfulness, for the mists.’
And indeed there was a thin fog all round us, out of which loomed great yellow trees. The grass was soaking wet, and my indoor shoes were already leaking.
‘I do love,’ he went on, ‘getting up with the lark and going for a walk before breakfast.’
‘Do you always?’ I said.
Some people did, I knew.
‘Never, never, never. But this morning I told my man to put a call through to Paris, thinking it would take quite an hour, but it came through at once, so now I am at a loose end with time on my hands. Do I not’know wonderful English?’
This ringing-up of Paris seemed to me a most dashing extravagance. Aunt Sadie and Aunt Emily only made trunk calls in times of crisis, and even then they generally rang off in the middle of a sentence when the three-minute signal went; Davey, it is true, spoke to his doctor in London most days, but that was only from Kent, and in any case Davey’s health could really be said to constitute a perpetual crisis. But Paris, abroad!
‘Is somebody ill?’ I ventured.
‘Not exactly ill, but she bores herself, poor thing. I quite understand it, Paris must be terrible without me, I don’t know how she can bear it. I do pity her, really.’
‘Who?’ I said, curiosity overcoming my shyness, and indeed it would be difficult to feel shy for long with this extraordinary man.
‘My fiancée,’ he said, carelessly.
Alas I Something had told me this would be the reply; my heart sank and I said dimly,
‘Oh I How exciting I You are engaged?’
He gave me a sidelong whimsical look.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘engaged!’
‘And are you going to be married soon?’
But why, I wondered, had he come away alone, without her? If I had such a fascinating fiancé I would follow him everywhere, I knew, like a faithful spaniel.
‘I don’t imagine it will be very soon,’ he said gaily. ‘You know what it is with the Vatican, time is nothing to them, a thousand ages in their sight are like an evening gone. Do I not know a lot of English poetry?’
‘If you call it poetry. It’s a hymn, really. But what has your marriage got to do with the Vatican, isn’t that in Rome?’
‘It is. There is such a thing as the Church of Rome, my dear young lady, which I belong to, and this Church must annul the marriage of my affianced – do you say affianced?’
‘You could. It’s rather affected.’
‘My inamorata, my Dulcinea (brilliant?) must annul her marriage before she is at liberty to marry me.’
‘Goodness I Is she married already?’
‘Yes, yes, of course. There are very few unmarried ladies going about, you know. It’s not a state that lasts very long with pretty women.’
‘My Aunt Emily doesn’t approve of people getting engaged when they are married. My mother is always doing it and it makes Aunt Emily very cross.’
‘You must tell your dear Aunt Emily that in many ways it is rather convenient. But all the same, she is quite right, I have been a fiancé too often and far too long and now it is time I was married.’
‘Do you want to be?’
I am not so sure. Going out to dinner every night with the same person, this must be terrible.’
‘You might stay in?’
‘To break the habit of a lifetime is rather terrible too. The fact is, I am so accustomed now to the engaged state that it’s hard to imagine anything different.’
‘But have you been engaged to other people before this one?’
‘Many many times,’ he admitted.
‘So what happened to them all?’
‘Various unmentionable fates.’
‘For instance, what happened to the last one before this?’
‘Let me see. Ah, yes – the last one before this did something I couldn’t approve of, so I stopped loving her.’
‘But can you stop loving people because they do things you don’t approve of?’
‘Yes, I can.’
‘What a lucky talent,’ I said, ‘I’m sure I couldn’t.’
We had come to the end of the avenue and before us lay a field of stubble. The sun’s rays were now beginning to pour down and dissolve the blue m
ist, turning the trees, the stubble, and a group of ricks into objects of gold. I thought how lucky I was to be enjoying such a beautiful moment with so exactly the right person and that this was something I should remember all my life. The duke interrupted these sentimental reflections, saying,
‘Behold how brightly breaks the morning,
Though bleak our lot our hearts are warm.
Am I not a perfect mine of quotations? Tell me, who is Veronica’s lover now?’
I was once more obliged to confess that I had never seen Veronica before, and knew nothing of her life. He seemed less astounded by this news than Roly had been, but looked at me reflectively, saying,
‘You are very young. You have something of your mother. At first I thought not, but now I see there is something.’
‘And who do you think Mrs Chaddesley Corbett’s lover is?’ I said. I was more interested in her than in my mother at the moment, and besides all this talk about lovers intoxicated me. One knew, of course, that they existed, because of the Duke of Monmouth and so on, but so near, under the very same roof as oneself, that was indeed exciting.
‘It doesn’t make a pin of difference,’ he said, ‘who it is. She lives, as all those sort of women do, in one little tiny group or set, and sooner or later everybody in that set becomes the lover of everybody else, so that when they change their lovers it is more like a cabinet reshuffle than a new government. Always chosen out of the same old lot, you see.’
‘Is it like that in France?’ I said.
‘With society people? Just the same all over the world, though in France I should say there is less reshuffling on the whole than in England, the ministers stay longer in their posts.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? Frenchwomen generally keep their lovers if they want to because they know that there is one infallible method of doing so.’
‘Nol’ I said, ‘Oh, do tell.’
I was more fascinated by this conversation every minute.
It’s very simple. You must give way to them in every respect.’
‘Goodness!’ I said, thinking hard.
‘Now, you see, these English femmes du monde, these Veronicas and Sheilas and Brendas, and your mother too though nobody could say she stays in one little set, if she had done that she would not be so déclassée, they follow quite a different plan. They are proud and distant, out when the telephone bell rings, not free to dine unless you ask them a week before – in short, elles chercbent à se fairs valoir, and it never never succeeds. Even Englishmen, who are used to it, don’t like it after a bit. Of course, no Frenchman would put up with it for a day. So they go on reshuffling.’
‘They’re very nasty ladies, aren’t they?’ I said, having formed that opinion the night before.
‘Not at all, poor things. They are les femmes du monde, voilà tout, I love them, so easy to get on with. Not nasty at all. And I love la mère Montdore, how amusing she is, with her snobbishness. I am very very much for snobs, they are always so charming to me. I stayed with them in India, you know. She was charming and Lord Montdore pretended to be.’
‘Pretended?’
‘That man is made up of pretence, like so many of these stiff old Englishmen. Of course, he is a great great enemy of my country – dedicated to the undoing of the French empire.’
‘Why?’ I said, ‘I thought we were all friends now.’
‘Friends! like rabbits and snakes. I have no love for Lord Montdore but he is rather clever. Last night after dinner he asked me a hundred questions on partridge shooting in France. Why? You can be very sure he had some reason for doing so.’
‘Don’t you think Polly is very beautiful?’ I said.
‘Yes, but she also is rather a riddle to me,’ he replied. Terhaps she is not having a properly organized sex life. Yes, no doubt it is that which makes her so dreamy. I must see what I can do for her – only there’s not much time.’ He looked at his watch.
I said primly that very few well brought up English girls of nineteen have a properly organized sex life. Mine was not organized at all, I knew, but I did not seem to be so specially dreamy.
‘But what a beauty, even in that terrible dress. When she has had a little love she may become one of the beauties of our age. It’s not certain, it never is with Englishwomen. She may cram a felt hat on her head and become a Lady Patricia Dougdale, everything depends on the lover. So this Boy Dougdale, what about him?’
‘Stupid,’ I said, meaning, really, ‘stchoopid’.
‘But you are impossible, my dear. Nasty ladies, stupid men – you really must try and like people more or you’ll never get on in this world.’
‘How d’you mean, get on?’
‘Well, get all those things like husbands and fiancés, and get on with them. They are what really matter in a woman’s life, you know.’
‘And children?’ I said.
He roared with laughter.
‘Yes, yes, of course, children. Husbands first, then children, then fiancés, then more children – then you have to live near the Pare Monceau because of the nannies – it’s a whole programme having children, I can tell you, especially if you happen to prefer the Left Bank, as I do.’
I did not understand one word of all this.
‘Are you going to be a Bolter,’ he said, ‘like your mother?’
‘No, no,’ I said. ‘A tremendous sticker.’
‘Really? I’m not quite sure.’
Soon, too soon for my liking, we found ourselves back at the house.
‘Porridge,’ said the duke, again looking at his watch.
The front door opened upon a scene of great confusion, most of the house party, some in tweeds and some in dressing-gowns, were assembled in the hall, as were various outdoor and indoor servants, while a village policeman, who in the excitement of the moment had brought his bicycle in with him, was conferring with Lord Montdore. High above our heads, leaning over the balustrade in front of Niobe, Lady Montdore, in a mauve satin wrap, was shouting at her husband:
‘Tell him we must have Scotland Yard down at once, Montdore. If he won’t send for them I shall ring up the Home Secretary myself. Most fortunately, I have the number of his private line. In fact, I think I’d better go and do it now.’
‘No, no, my dear, please not. An Inspector is on his way, I tell you.’
‘Yes, I daresay, but how do we know it’s the very best Inspector? I think I’d better get on to my friend, I think he’d be hurt with me if I didn’t, the dear thing. Always so anxious to do what he can.’
I was rather surprised to hear Lady Montdore speak so affectionately of a member of the Labour Government, this not being the attitude of other grown-ups, in my experience, but when I came to know her better I realized that power was a positive virtue in her eyes and that she automatically liked those who were invested with it.
My companion, with that look of concentration which comes over French faces when a meal is in the offing, did not wait to hear any of this. He made a bee-line for the dining-room, but although I was also very hungry indeed after my walk, curiosity got the better of me and I stayed to find out what it all meant. It seemed that there had been a burglary during the night and that nearly everybody in the house, except Lord and Lady Montdore, had been roundly robbed of jewels, loose cash, furs and anything portable of the kind that happened to be lying about. What made it particularly annoying for the victims was that they had all been woken up by somebody prowling in their rooms, but had all immediately concluded that it must be Sauveterre, pursuing his well-known hobby, so that the husbands had merely turned over with a grunt, saying, ‘Sorry, old chap, it’s only me, I should try next door,’ while the wives had lain quite still in a happy trance of desire, murmuring such words of encouragement as they knew in French. Or so, at least, they were saying about each other, and when I passed the telephone box on my way upstairs to change my wet shoes I could hear Mrs Chaddesley Corbett’s bird-like twitters piping her version of the story to the outside world. Perh
aps the Cabinet changes were becoming a little bit of a bore after all and these ladies did rather long, at heart, for a new policy.
The general feeling was now very much against Sauveterre, whose fault the whole thing clearly was. It became positively inflamed when he was known to have had a good night’s rest, to have got up at eight to telephone to his mistress in Paris and then to have gone for a walk with that little girl. (‘Not the Bolter’s child for nothing,’ I heard somebody say bitterly.) The climax was reached when he was seen to be putting away a huge breakfast of porridge and cream, kedgeree, eggs, cold ham, and slice upon slice of toast covered with Cooper’s Oxford. Very un-French, not at all in keeping with his reputation, unsuitable behaviour too, in view of the well-known frailty of his fellow guests. Brittannia felt herself slighted by this foreigner, away with himl And away he went, immediately after breakfast, driving hell-for-leather to Newhaven to catch the boat for Dieppe.
‘Castle life,’ explained his mother, who placidly stayed until quite late on Monday, ‘always annoys Fabrice and makes him nervous, poor boy.’
CHAPTER SIX
THE rest of that day was rather disorganized. The men finally went off shooting, very late, while the women stayed at home to be interviewed by various Inspectors on the subject of their lost possessions. Of course, the burglary made a wonderful topic of conversation, and indeed, nobody spoke of anything else.
‘I couldn’t care less about the diamond brooch, after all, it’s well insured and now I shall be able to have cups instead, which will be far and away smarter. Veronica’s clips always make me miserable, every time I see her, and besides, that brooch used to remind me of my bogus old mother-in-law too much. But I couldn’t think it more hateful of them to have taken my fur tippet. Burglars never seem to realize one might feel the cold. How would they like it if I took away their wife’s shawl?’
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