‘Yes, you look happy I must say. Oh, this flat is such a joke.’
‘I was just thinking,’ said Lord Merlin, ‘that, however much taste may change, it always follows a stereotyped plan. Frenchmen used to keep their mistresses in
appartements
, each exactly like the other, in which the dominant note, you might say, was lace and velvet. The walls, the bed, the dressing-table, the very bath itself were hung with lace, and everything else was velvet. Nowadays for lace you substitute glass, and everything else is satin. I bet you’ve got a glass bed, Linda?
‘Yes – but –’
‘And a glass dressing-table, and bathroom, and I wouldn’t be surprised if your bath were made of glass, with goldfish swimming about in the sides of it. Goldfish are a prevailing motif all down the ages.’
‘You’ve looked,’ said Linda sulkily. ‘Very clever.’
‘Oh, what heaven,’ said Davey. ‘So it’s true! He hasn’t looked, I swear, but you see it’s not beyond the bounds of human ingenuity to guess.’
‘But there are some things here,’ said Lord Merlin, ‘which do raise the level, all the same. A Gauguin, those two Matisses (chintzy, but accomplished) and this Savonnerie carpet. Your protector must be very rich.’
‘He is,’ said Linda.
‘Then, Linda dear, could one ask for a cup of tea?’
She rang the bell, and soon Davey was falling upon
éclairs
and
mille feuilles
with all the abandon of a schoolboy.
I shall pay for this,’ he said, with a devil-may-care smile, ‘but never mind, one’s not in Paris every day.’
Lord Merlin ‘wandered round with his tea-cup. He picked up a book which Fabrice had given Linda the day before, of romantic nineteenth-century poetry.
‘Is this what you’re reading now?’ he said. ‘ “
Dieu, que le son du cor est triste au fond des bois.”
I had a friend, when I lived in Paris, who had a boa constrictor as a pet, and this boa constrictor got itself inside a French horn. My friend rang me up in a fearful state, saying:
“Dieu, que le son du boa est triste au fond du cor.”
I’ve never forgotten it.’
‘What time does your lover generally arrive?’ said Davey, taking out his watch.
‘Not till about seven. Do stay and see him, he’s such a terrific Hon.’
‘No, thank you, not for the world.’
‘Who is he?’ said Lord Merlin.
‘He’s called the Duke of Sauveterre.’
A look of great surprise, mingled with horrified amusement, passed between Davey and Lord Merlin.
‘Fabrice de Sauveterre?’
‘Yes. Do you know him?’
‘Darling Linda, one always forgets, under that look of great sophistication, what a little provincial you really are. Of course we know him, and all about him, and, what’s more, so does everyone except you.’
‘Well, don’t you think he’s a terrific Hon?’
‘Fabrice,’ said Lord Merlin with emphasis, ‘is undoubtedly one of the wickedest men in Europe, as far as women are concerned. But I must admit that he’s an extremely agreeable companion.’
‘Do you remember in Venice,’ said Davey, ‘one used to see him at work in that gondola, one after another, bowling them over like rabbits, poor dears?’
‘Please remember,’ said Linda, ‘that you are eating his tea at this moment’
‘Yes, indeed, and so delicious. Another
éclair
, please, Linda. That summer,’ he went on, ‘when he made off with Ciano’s girl friend, what a fuss there was, I never shall forget, and then, a week later,
he plaqué’
d her in Cannes and went to Salzburg
with Martha Birmingham, and poor old Claud shot at him four times, and always missed him.’
‘Fabrice has a charmed life,’ said Lord Merlin. ‘I suppose he has been shot at more than anybody, and, as far as I know, he’s never had a scratch.’
Linda was unmoved by these revelations, which had been forestalled by Fabrice himself. Anyhow, no woman really minds hearing of the past affairs of her lover, it is the future alone that has the power to terrify.
‘Come on, Mer,’ said Davey. ‘Time
petite femme
got herself into a
négligée
. Goodness, what a scene there’ll be when he smells Mer’s cigar, there’ll be a
crime passionel
, I shouldn’t wonder. Good-bye, Linda darling, we’re off to dine with our intellectual friends, you know, will you be lunching with us at the Ritz to-morrow? About one, then. Good-bye – give our love to Fabrice.’
When Fabrice came in he sniffed about, and asked whose cigar. Linda explained.
‘They say they know you?’
‘Mais bien sûr – Merlin, teliement gentil, et l’autre Warbeck, toujours si malade, le pauvre. Je les connaissais à Venise
. What did they think of all this?’
‘Well, they roared at the flat’
‘Yes, I can imagine. It is quite unsuitable for you, this flat, but it’s convenient, and with the war coming –’
‘Oh, but I love it, I wouldn’t like anything else half so much. Wasn’t it clever of them, though, to find me?’
‘Do you mean to say you never told anybody where you were?’
‘I really didn’t think of it – the days go by, you know – one simply doesn’t remember these things.’
‘And it was six weeks before they thought of looking for you? As a family you seem to me strangely
décousu.’
Linda suddenly threw herself into his arms, and said, with great passion:
‘Never, never let me go back to them.’
‘My darling – but you love them. Mummy and Fa, Matt and Robin and Victoria and Fanny. What is all this?’
‘I never want to leave you again as long as I live.’
‘Aha! But you know you will probably have to, soon. The war is going to begin, you know.’
‘Why can’t I stay here? I could work – I could become a nurse – well, perhaps not a nurse, actually, but something.’
‘If you promise to do what I tell you, you may stay here for a time. At the beginning we shall sit and look at the Germans across the Maginot Line, then I shall be a great deal in Paris, between Paris and the front, but mostly here. At that time I shall want you here. Then somebody, we or the Germans, but I am very much afraid the Germans, will pour across the line, and a war of movement will begin. I shall have notice of that
étape
, and what you must promise me is that the very minute I tell you to leave for London you will leave, even if you see no reason for doing so. I should be hampered beyond words in my duties if you were still here. So you will solemnly promise, now?’
‘All right,’ said Linda. ‘Solemnly. I don’t believe anything so dreadful could happen to me, but I promise to do as you say. Now will you promise that you will come to London as soon as it’s all over and find me again. Promise?’
‘Yes,’ said Fabrice. ‘I will do that’
*
Luncheon with Davey and Lord Merlin was a gloomy meal Preoccupation reigned. The two men had stayed up late and merrily with their literary friends, and showed every sign of having done so. Davey was beginning to be aware of the cruel pangs of dyspepsia, Lord Merlin was suffering badly from an ordinary straightforward hangover, and, when he removed his spectacles, his eyes were seen to be not kind at all. But Linda was far the most wretched of the three, she was, in fact, perfectly distracted by having overheard two French ladies in the foyer talking about Fabrice. She had arrived, as, from old habits of punctuality drummed into her by Uncle Matthew she always did, rather early. Fabrice had never taken her to the Ritz, she thought it delightful, she knew she was looking quite as pretty, and nearly as well dressed, as anybody there, and settled herself
happily to await the others. Suddenly she heard, with that pang which the heart receives when the loved one’s name is mentioned by strangers:
‘And have you seen Fabrice at all?’
‘Well, I have, because I quite often see him at Mme de Sauveterre’s, but he never goes out anywhere, as you know.’
‘Then what about Jacqueline?’
‘Still in England. He is utterly lost without her, poor Fabrice, he is like a dog looking for its master. He sits sadly at home, never goes to parties, never goes to the club, sees nobody. His mother is really worried about him.’
‘Who would ever have expected Fabrice to be so faithful? How long is it?’
‘Five years, I believe. A wonderfully happy
ménage
.’
‘Surely Jacqueline will come back soon.’
‘Not until the old aunt has died. It seems she changes her will incessantly, and Jacqueline feels she must be there all the time – after all, she has her husband and children to consider.’
‘Rather hard on Fabrice?’
‘Qu’est-ce que vous voulez?
His mother says he rings her up every morning and talks for an hour –’
It was at this point that Davey and Lord Merlin, looking tired and cross, arrived, and took Linda off to luncheon with them. She was longing to stay and hear more of this torturing conversation, but, eschewing cocktails with a shudder, they hurried her off to the dining-room, where they were only fairly nice to her, and frankly disagreeable to each other.
She thought the meal would never come to an end, and, when at last it did, she threw herself into a taxi and drove to Fabrice’s house. She must find out about Jacqueline, she must know his intentions. When Jacqueline returned would that be the moment for her, Linda, to leave as she had promised? War of movement indeed!
The servant said that M. le Duc had just gone out with Madame la Duchesse, but that he would be back in about an hour. Linda said she would wait, and he showed her into Fabrice’s sitting-room. She took off her hat, and wandered restlessly about. She had been here several times before, with
Fabrice, and it had seemed, after her brilliantly sunny flat, a little dismal. Now that she was alone in it she began to be aware of the extreme beauty of the room, a grave and solemn beauty which penetrated her. It was very high, rectangular in shape, with grey boiseries and cherry-coloured brocade curtains. It looked into a courtyard and never could get a ray of sunshine, that was not the plan. This was a civilized interior, it had nothing to do with out-of-doors. Every object in it was perfect. The furniture had the severe lines and excellent proportions of 1780, there was a portrait by Lancret of a lady with a parrot on her wrist, a bust of the same lady by Bouchardon, a carpet like the one in Linda’s flat, but larger and grander, with a huge coat of arms in the middle. A high carved bookcase contained nothing but French classics bound in contemporary morocco, with the Sauveterre crest, and open on a map table lay a copy of Redouté’s roses.
Linda began to feel much more calm, but, at the same time, very sad. She saw that this room indicated a side of Fabrice’s character which she had hardly been allowed to apprehend, and which had its roots in old civilized French grandeur. It was the essential Fabrice, something in which she could never have a share – she would always be outside in her sunny modern flat, kept away from all this, kept rigidly away even if their liason were to goon for ever. The origins of the Radlett family were lost in the mists of antiquity, but the origins of Fabrice’s family were not lost at all, there they were, each generation clutching at the next. The English, she thought, throw off their ancestors. It is the great strength of our aristocracy, but Fabrice has his round his neck, and he will never get away from them.
She began to realize that here were her competitors, her enemies, and that Jacqueline was nothing in comparison. Here, and in the grave of Louise. To come here and make a scene about a rival mistress would be utterly meaningless, she would be one unreality complaining about another. Fabrice would be annoyed, as men always are annoyed on these occasions, and she would get no satisfaction. She could hear his voice, dry and sarcastic:
‘Ab! Vous me grondez madame?’
Better go, better ignore the whole affair. Her only hope was to keep things on their present footing, to keep the happiness which she was enjoying day by day, hour by hour, and not to think about the future at all. It held nothing for her, leave it alone. Besides, everybody’s future was in jeopardy now the war was coming, this war which she always forgot about.
She was reminded of it, however, when, that evening, Fabrice appeared in uniform.
‘Another month I should think,’ he said. ‘As soon as they have got the harvest in.’
‘If it depended on the English,’ said Linda, ‘they would wait until after the Christmas shopping. Oh, Fabrice, it won’t last very long, will it?’
‘It will be very disagreeable while it does last,’ said Fabrice. ‘Did you come to my flat to-day?’
‘Yes, after lunching with those two old cross-patches I suddenly felt I wanted to see you very much.’
‘Comme c’est gentil,’
he looked at her quizzically, as though something had occurred to him, ‘but why didn’t you wait?’
‘Your ancestors frightened me off.’
‘Oh, they did? But you have ancestors yourself I believe,
madame?
’
‘Yes, but they don’t hang about in the same way as yours do.’
‘You should have waited,’ said Fabrice, ‘it is always a very great pleasure to see you, both for me and for my ancestors. It cheers us all up.’
Germaine now came into the room with huge armfuls of flowers and a note from Lord Merlin, saying: