The Hotel le Roy became a place for consultations. Everybody interviewed
everybody else. The hall, the stuffy red salon, the tiny, damp garden,
even the lift became indispensable for hurried conversations, but of
course none of them had the least result. Léon, from the moment of his
engagement, had taken rooms at another hotel--this was at once more
_convenable_ and also much more convenient. His French relatives were
furious. He let them consume their fury among themselves, and told them
when he had to see them, that their interest in his affairs was
charming.
The Pinsents were all trying to be large-minded, uninsular and modern,
but they didn’t like it.
Mr. Pinsent made a false start. He told Mrs. Pinsent that the engagement
was out of the question. Mrs. Pinsent suggested his seeing Rose for
himself and talking it all out. Mr. Pinsent refused hastily, clinging to
the one plank of masculine security. “Aren’t you the child’s mother?” he
demanded. Mrs. Pinsent made no attempt to deny this salient fact. She
merely said, “I’m afraid Rose will say she wants to see you about it.”
Mr. Pinsent knew what that meant. If he saw Rose he was lost. But as a
matter of fact, he was lost already, without seeing Rose. Mrs. Pinsent
had lost him.
After Mr. Pinsent had finished saying that the engagement was all
nonsense and that he wouldn’t hear of it for a moment, she said he was
perfectly right, but it wasn’t as if Léon was an Italian, was it? Paris
was really not at all far from London when you came to think of it, and
Léon was most obliging, and dressed quite like an Englishman, “and after
all,” she finished, “we haven’t anything against him, have we? He told
me himself he wasn’t a good Roman Catholic.”
In the end Mr. Pinsent had to see Rose, and after this he agreed to a
further interview with Léon.
The interview was not, from Léon’s point of view, at all what it should
have been.
Mr. Pinsent had no sense of form. He hardly listened to Léon’s statement
of his affairs, and he made no statement at all of his own intentions.
He walked up and down the rather cold, deserted salon talking about Rose
having had pneumonia when she was twelve, and how sensitive she was, and
how much he would miss her. She was quite the best bridge player of the
three girls, and her golf was coming on splendidly.
He said he thought Paris hardly the kind of place for a real home life.
He hadn’t seen any there, some years ago, when he and Mrs. Pinsent
stayed in the Rue de Rivoli. He added that he couldn’t really feel as if
Rose would like continually hearing French spoken all round her. It was
quite different from being abroad for a time and coming home again
afterwards. Mr. Pinsent laid his hand on Léon’s shoulder and
sentimentalized the situation in a way that shocked Léon’s whole nature.
Emotion should take place (enough of it, for a mere betrothal) between
Léon and Rose; it shouldn’t take place between Rose’s father and Léon,
and as for talking about the feeling of a man for a good woman, nothing
could have been more out of place. You simply, of course, didn’t talk of
it. Mr. Pinsent, however, did.
“Of course we must go into everything very carefully later on,” Mr.
Pinsent finished, rubbing the back of his head. “Rose seems to have set
her heart on you--we must all hope you can make her happy.”
Then Mr. Pinsent shook hands with Léon and seemed to think there was
nothing more to be said.
They never did go into anything later on. In the first place, Madame de
Brenteuil refused point blank to meet Mrs. Pinsent. “If,” she said to
Léon, “your mother sanctions your engagement, we have decided to permit
ourselves to speak to the girl. Her family we will never accept. More
you must not demand of us.”
Madame Legier wrote two letters--one to Léon in which she said if he was
sure of getting £500 a year, and the girl was healthy--and agreed to
bring up the children as Catholics--she supposed it was better to close
with it, though Heaven knew how they would fit things in, the English
temperament being as stubborn as wood, and his father most
unaccommodating when he was there; and another letter to Rose in which
she welcomed her into the family and said what confidence she had in
Léon’s choice, and how she and her husband looked forward to the
brightening of their future lives by the sight of their children’s
happiness.
Monsieur Legier wrote a third letter which Mrs. Pinsent translated to
her husband. He said something about a lawyer in it, but Mr. Pinsent
said nothing would induce him to see a French lawyer, English ones were
bad enough.
Rose didn’t give anybody time to do much more. She announced that she
wanted to be married at once and spend her honeymoon at Capri.
She could buy what she needed in Rome and finish getting her trousseau
together in Paris.
She had set her heart on going to Capri for her honeymoon and there
wasn’t any use anybody saying anything.
She didn’t even pay much attention to Léon, who ventured on one occasion
to wonder if Capri was very gay?
“We sha’n’t want to be gay,” Rose said a little soberly. “We shall just
be perfectly happy.”
Léon said no more. Of course he expected to be happy, but he had never
in his life been happy when he wasn’t a little gay.
Rose saw very little of Léon during their brief engagement. They were
both immersed in preparations for the wedding, but the little she saw
was like the vision of a Fairy Prince.
He was gallant, delicate and intent. Nothing about Rose escaped him. He
knew with a marvelous tact from moment to moment what would please her
best.
It was (but of course Rose didn’t know this) the correct attitude for a
Frenchman engaged to be married.
As the marriage approached, Mrs. Pinsent had moments of secret doubt.
She knew it was very silly of her, but Rose was her youngest child, and
marriage by two consuls and a Cardinal wasn’t at all like being married
properly in your own church at home.
She went so far one evening as to go into Rose’s bedroom under the
pretext of borrowing her hairbrush, just to see if her child was quite
happy. Mrs. Pinsent’s hair was long and thick like Rose’s, it had been
the same color when she was Rose’s age. She sat in an armchair by the
bed and thought that Rose, whose hair was done in two long plaits,
looked terribly like she used to look when she was ten years old.
“My dear,” she said, “I like Léon so much.” Rose smiled and blushed and
snuggled further into the rather hard second pillow reluctantly conceded
to her by the Hotel le Roy.
“Yes, Mamma, I know,” she said, “and he loves you--isn’t it nice?”
Mrs. Pinsent reflected. “All the same,” she said, “men are very strange.
I mean even our own men. You’d think you could tell what they’re like
before you are married to them, but you can’t--you don’t even know for
quite a long time afterwards.”
Rose looked unconcerned. “It’s so funny,” she said, “but I feel as if I
knew Léon better than if he was an Englishman. You see, he tells me
more. I can’t quite put it to you, so that you can understand, but I
think it’s his being so much more expressive.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Pinsent. “Only that isn’t what I mean, you know. I
wasn’t thinking of what they said, any of them. I don’t think you can go
by that; when they’re in love, they’ll say anything.”
Rose hesitated. “But, Mamma,” she said, “don’t men--don’t they _ever_
stay in love?”
Mrs. Pinsent resorted hastily to the hairbrush. Almost all married women
dislike this question.
“Of course, in a sense,” she admitted. “But when they get used to you
they aren’t always very easy to hold.”
Rose sat up very straight and slim. “How do you mean--_hold_?” she asked
quickly. Mrs. Pinsent brushed her hair well over her face. She hoped
Rose wasn’t thinking about her father. It was an unnecessary fear, Rose
wasn’t thinking about any one but Léon.
“Well,” Mrs. Pinsent explained, “I think there comes a time in almost
all happy marriages when a man has almost too much of what he wants. He
gets, if one isn’t very careful, and perhaps even if one is--a little--a
little restive and bored. You see, men never have as much to amuse
themselves with as women have--and that makes them take more interest in
what they _do_ like even if it isn’t good for them--and other women
(whom they wouldn’t really care for a bit--if they saw enough of them)
may make an appeal to them just because they’re _not_ their wives. Of
course, it mayn’t be at all like this with Léon, dear, only you’re going
so far away from us--and he’s a Frenchman, and perhaps they don’t think
of marriage quite as we do. I have never read Zola, of course, but I
believe there is rather a difference in the point of view.” Mrs. Pinsent
faltered--she felt through the cascade of her hair--Rose’s inflexible
eyes.
“What would you do, Mamma,” Rose asked quietly, “if anything--happened
like that?”
Mrs. Pinsent drew a long breath. For a moment she was almost sorry that
Bernard Shaw hadn’t had a sharper effect upon her daughter’s
imagination. Mrs. Pinsent wasn’t anxious to explain what she would do.
She only wanted to be vague, and at the same time helpful; her own case
had been quite different, there had been the children, and, besides, Mr.
Pinsent wasn’t French.
“We rather thought,” she said, “of staying on for some time in Rome, and
then going to Paris for the first part of the summer. We should be quite
near you then--and Agatha could go back to England for her tennis.”
“I couldn’t ever leave Léon,” Rose said strangely, “whatever happened.”
“No, dear, of course not,” said Mrs. Pinsent soothingly, then she
started quite afresh and began plaiting her hair.
“Your father wanted me to tell you,” she said, “that he’s going to have
your allowance settled upon you--and upon your children--that’s £500 a
year, and later on you’ll have even more, of course, like your sisters,
but the money is in an English bank, and it is quite your own, but
you’re to have trustees as well, your father has seen to all that. Léon
was so nice about it. I knew he would be. He’s been so generous and
charming and most thoughtful.” Mrs. Pinsent got up and bent over her
daughter. “You are happy, Rose?” she whispered. “You do feel safe?”
Rose lifted her undeterred, terribly triumphant eyes to her mother’s. “I
feel as safe,” she said, “as if an angel loved me.”