TWO CONVERSATIONS
The reason for Grafton's going up to London that day was that another of
his sisters-in-law had taken a hand in the affair. Lady Handsworth,
under whose wing Beatrix had enjoyed her London gaieties, had written to
him to say that it was very important that she should see him. She
should be passing through on such and such a day, and would he please
come and lunch with her without fail. She had something very important,
underlined, to say, which she couldn't write. She didn't want merely to
expostulate with him, or to give him advice, which she knew he wouldn't
take. As he had allowed her to look after Beatrix, and take a mother's
place towards her, she felt that she had a right to a say in the matter
of her marriage; so she hoped he wouldn't disappoint her; she didn't
want to act in any way apart from him.
There was a veiled threat in this paragraph. There was always that
feeling in his mind that something might be done behind his back by some
kind sympathiser with Beatrix. Besides, he did owe something to Lady
Handsworth. She played in some sort a mother's part towards Beatrix. To
her, if to anybody, he had relegated the duty of watching any movement
in the marriage mart of Mayfair, and it was due to her that he should
justify himself in his objections to a match that she evidently thought
to be a suitable one. They all thought that. Unless he could justify
himself he would remain to them as a mere figure of prejudice and
unreason.
Lady Handsworth was a good deal older than Lady Grafton, and her manners
were not so unbending. But she had a kind heart beneath her stately
exterior, and had shown it to Beatrix. She had daughters of her own, and
it was to be supposed that she wished to marry them off. They were not
nearly so attractive as the Grafton girls whom she had successively
chaperoned. But she had made no differences between them, and both
Caroline and Beatrix were fond of her.
Part of the big house in Hill Street had been opened up for a few days.
Lord Handsworth was in London, and two of the girls were with their
mother, but Grafton lunched alone with his sister-in-law, and the
servants only came in at the necessary intervals.
She wanted, of course, to know the whys and wherefores of what she
evidently considered an unreasonable action on his part, and he resigned
himself to going over the ground again. "I can't think why you and Mary
don't see it as I do," he said when he had done so. "You're neither of
you women who think that money and position are the only things that
would matter, and you, at any rate, can't think that it's going to spoil
B's life not to marry a man she's fallen in love with at eighteen."
"I'm not sure that that isn't more important than you think, George,"
she said. "Of course she'll get over it, and, of course, she'll marry
somebody else, if she doesn't marry him. But there's nothing quite like
the first love, for a girl, especially when she's like B, who has never
thought about it, as most girls do, and it has come as a sort of
revelation to her."
Grafton felt some surprise at the expression of this view from her.
"Yes, if she had fallen in love with the right sort of fellow," he said.
"I wish she had, if she has to marry young. Margaret married like that,
and she and I were as happy together as two people could be. But a
fellow of Lassigny's age, with all that sort of life as his
background--taking a sudden fancy to her, and she to him--you're not
going to found the happiness Margaret and I had on that, my dear
Katherine."
"No two people are alike," said Lady Handsworth; "and you can't tell how
any marriage will turn out from that point of view. All that one can say
is that a girl ought to have a right to work it out for herself, unless
there's a very obvious objection to the man. There isn't here. And you
have three daughters, George. You won't be able to pick husbands for all
of them that exactly suit your views. You've given me some
responsibility in the matter, you know. I own I didn't see this coming
on, but if I had I should have thought it was just the right thing. It
is as good a match as you could want for any of the girls."
"Oh, a good match! You know I don't care much about that, if it's the
right sort of fellow."
"Well, you knew Lassigny. At one time I thought it was quite likely that
he would propose for Caroline. You had seen him with her yourself
constantly, and never made any objections to him. He had dined with you,
and you even asked him down to Abington with us. One would have said
that you would have welcomed it. I, at least, would never have supposed
that you would treat it as if it were a thing quite out of the
question."
"Well, there _is_ something in all that, Katherine. But I suppose the
fact is that a woman--especially a woman in the position you've been
towards B--is always on the lookout for something to happen between a
man and a girl who make friends. I can only tell you that I wasn't. I
wouldn't have expected it to come on suddenly like that. I've known all
about Caroline and her friendships. I suppose you know that Francis
Parry wants to marry her. She told me all about it. She's told me about
other proposals she's had. That seems to me the normal course with girls
who can tell everything to their father, as mine can to me."
She laughed at him quietly. "Caroline has never been in love," she said,
"or anywhere near it. Of course she tells you everything, because she
wants an excuse for not doing what she thinks perhaps she ought to do.
She puts the responsibility on you. When she does fall in love you will
very likely know nothing about it until she tells you just as B did."
He laughed in his turn. "I know Caroline better than you do," he said.
"And I thought B was like her. I'm very distressed about the way she's
taking this, Katherine. She's a different child altogether. A day or two
ago I thought she was beginning to get over it; but she mopes about and
is getting thin. She doesn't want to go away either, though there are
plenty of people who want her. And between her and me, instead of being
what it always has been,--well, she's like a different person. I hardly
know her. There has been no time in my life when things have gone so
wrong--except when Margaret died. And until this happened we were
enjoying ourselves more than ever. You saw how we'd got ourselves into
the right sort of life when you came to Abington. It's all changed now."
"Poor George!" she said. "You couldn't expect it to last quite like that
at Abington, you know. You should have bought your country house ten
years ago, when the girls were only growing up. You can't keep them
there indefinitely. As for B, you can change all that trouble for
yourself easily enough. I think, in spite of what you say, you must see
that there was not a good enough reason for refusing Lassigny for her.
Let it come on again and she'll be happy enough; and she'll be to you
what she always has been."
"Oh, my dear Katherine, you, and Mary, and everybody else, quite ignore
the fact that it is Lassigny who has withdrawn himself. If I wanted him
for B, which I certainly don't, how could I get him? You don't propose,
I should think, that I should write to him and ask him to reconsider his
withdrawal."
"No, but there are other ways. If you were to withdraw your opposition,
and it were known to him that you had done so! I think you ought not to
make too much of his withdrawal. He had every right to suppose that you
would not object to him as a husband for one of the girls. No man could
think anything else after he had been treated as you treated him, and
his position is good enough for him to consider himself likely to be
welcomed as a suitor. He would be, by almost every parent in England.
You can't be surprised at his having taken offence. It would be just as
difficult for him to recede from the position you forced him into as for
you."
He was silent. "I really don't think it's fair on B to leave it like
this," she said. "She will get over it, of course; but she will always
think that you hastily decided something for her that she ought to have
decided for herself."
"Perhaps it was decided too hastily," he said unwillingly. "I should
have been satisfied, I think, to have had a delay. I should always have
hated the idea, but----"
"Would you consent now to a delay, if he were to come forward again?"
"Oh, my dear Katherine, what are you plotting? Why not let the child get
over it, as she will in a few months?"
"You don't yourself think that she'll get over it in a few months, so as
to bring her back to you what she was before. I've plotted nothing,
George. I should have left it altogether alone, but I have been asked
to talk to you. Mme. de Lassigny is in England. She wants to see you
about it. That was why I asked you to come up. She is at Claridge's. She
would like you to go and see her there this afternoon. Or she would come
here."
"Do you know her?"
"No. But Lady Ardrishaig does. They have met. She wrote to me. I think
you ought to see her, George. You have admitted that it was all done too
hastily, with him. If your objections to him are reasonable you ought to
be able to state them so that others can accept them."
"It will be a very disagreeable interview, Katherine."
"It need not be. And you ought not to shirk it on that account."
"I don't want to shirk anything. Very well, I will go and see this good
lady. Oh, what a nuisance it all is! I wish we'd never seen the fellow."
The telephone was put into operation, and Grafton went immediately to
Claridge's. The Marquise received him in a room full of the flowers and
toys with which rich travelling Americans transform their temporary
habitations into a semblance of permanence. She was of that American
type which coalesces so well with the French aristocracy. Tall and
upright, wonderfully preserved as to face and figure; grey hair
beautifully dressed; gowned in a way that even a man could recognise as
exceptional; rather more jewelled than an Englishwoman would be in the
day-time, but not excessively so for essential suitability; vivacious
in speech and manner, but with a good deal of the _grande dame_ about
her too. The interview was not likely to be a disagreeable one, if she
were allowed to conduct it in her own fashion.
She thanked Grafton pleasantly for coming to see her, and then plunged
immediately into the middle of things. "You and my son hardly finished
your conversation," she said. "I think you slightly annoyed one another,
and it was broken off. I hope you will allow me to carry it on a little
further on his behalf. And I must tell you, to begin with, Mr. Grafton,
that he has not asked me to do so. But we mothers in France love our
sons--I am quite French in that respect--and I know he is very unhappy.
You must forgive an old woman if she intervenes."
She could not long since have passed sixty, and but for her nearly white
hair would not have looked older than Grafton himself. He made some
deprecatory murmur, and she proceeded.
"I have long wanted Rene to range himself," she said. "He will make a
good husband to a girl whom he loves--I can assure you of that, for I
know him very well. He loves your little daughter devotedly, Mr.
Grafton. Fortunately, I have seen her for myself, once or twice here in
London, though I have never spoken to her. I think she is the sweetest
thing. I should adore him to marry her. Won't you think better of it,
Mr. Grafton? I wouldn't dare to ask you-- I have really come to London
on purpose to do it--if I weren't sure that you were mistaken about
him."
"How am I mistaken about him?" asked Grafton. "I am very English, you
know. We have our own ideas about married life. I needn't defend them,
but I think they're the best there are. They're different from the
French ideas. They're different from your son's ideas. He made that
plain, or we shouldn't have parted as we did."
"Well, I am glad you have put it in that direct way," she said. "I have
a great deal of sympathy with your ideas; they're not so different from
those in which I was brought up. I wasn't brought to Europe to marry a
title, as some of our girls are. It was a chance I did so. I was in love
with my husband, and my married life was all I could wish for, as long
as it lasted. It would be the same, I feel sure, with your daughter."
Grafton smiled at her. "If we are to talk quite directly," he said
"--and it's no good talking at all if we don't--I must say that, as far
as I can judge, American women are more adaptable than English. They
adapt themselves here to our ideas, when they marry Englishmen, and they
adapt themselves to Frenchmen, whose ways are different from ours. I
don't think an English girl could adapt herself to certain things that
are taken for granted in France. I don't think that a girl like mine
should be asked to. She wouldn't be prepared for it. It would be a great
shock to her if it happened. She would certainly have a right to blame
her father if she were made unhappy by it. I don't want my daughters to
blame me for anything."
She had kept her eyes steadily fixed on him. "Well, Mr. Grafton," she
said, "we won't run away from anything. Can you say of any man, French
or English or American, who is rich and lives a life chiefly to amuse
himself, that he is always going to remain faithful to his wife? How
many young Englishmen of the type that you would be pleased to marry
your daughter to could you say it of, for certain?"
"Of a good many. And I should say there wasn't one who wouldn't intend
to keep absolutely straight when he fell in love with a girl and wanted
to marry her. If he wasn't like that, I think one would know, and feel
exactly the same objection as I must admit I feel towards your son."
"Oh, but you do mistake him. It was because you doubted him that he took
such offence. As he said to me, it was like saying that your own
daughter was not worthy to be loved for all her life."
Grafton felt a sudden spurt of resentment. His voice was not so level as
usual as he said: "It's easy enough to put it in that way. He said much
the same to me. Of course she's worthy to be loved all her life. Would
you guarantee that she always would be?"
There was the merest flicker of her eyelids before she replied: "How
could one guarantee any such thing for any man, even for one's own son?
All I can tell you is that he will make her a devoted husband, and her
chances of happiness are as great with him as if he were an Englishman.
I won't say that he has never loved another woman. That would be absurd.
What I can say is that he does love no one else, and that he loves her
in such a way as to put the thought of other women out of his mind. That
is exactly what love that leads to marriage should be, in my opinion.
Don't you agree with me, Mr. Grafton?"
"Yes," he said. "It ought to do that."
"And if it does, what more have you a right to ask? Our men are
chivalrous. The very fact of his marrying an innocent English girl, who
would be hurt by what she had had no experience of would act with my
son--or I should think with any gentleman."
"Frenchmen generally marry innocent girls, don't they, Madame?"
"You mean that it doesn't prevent them leaving them afterwards. Well,
perhaps not always. But surely, Mr. Grafton, you do ask too much, don't
you? If he loves her and she loves him, it isn't reasonable to keep them
apart, is it?"
He paused for a moment before asking: "How am I keeping them apart?"
"Would you allow them to come together again?" she asked in her turn.
He stirred uneasily in his chair. The thought of his little B once more
living with him moved him. "I think it would be better if they didn't,"
he said. "But if--after a time----"
"Oh, I don't mean now at once," she said. "Indeed that would be
impossible, for I have persuaded him to go to America. He is to start
very shortly, and won't be in England again before he goes."
Grafton felt a considerable sense of relief at this statement. "How long
is he to be away?" he asked.
"Oh, I hope for the winter, if he amuses himself. But he may want to
hunt in England."
"If you told him that he might see her again wouldn't he want to come
back? Perhaps he wouldn't want to go. I think I should stipulate,
anyhow, that he did go--or at least that he shouldn't see her again, or
write to her, say for six months. I think, perhaps, I haven't the right
to reject him altogether, on the ground of my objections. But I do feel
them strongly. It will be a grief to me if my daughter makes this
marriage. I have a right, I think, to make sure that her feeling for him
is at least strong enough to stand six months of being parted. If she is
the same at the end of it, then perhaps I couldn't hold out. I think the
same test might apply to him. It would relieve my fears somewhat for the
future, if he still wants to marry her at the end of that time."
"Perhaps he won't, Mr. Grafton," she said, with a slight change of
manner. "You may have asked yourself why I should have pleaded with you,
as I have done, for permission for my son to pay addresses to your
daughter. Though I should be proud of her, and should love her too, it
would not be a brilliant match for my son. I might prefer another sort
of match for him. As you have said, Americans make good wives for
French husbands--perhaps better than English girls. They do not demand
so much."
He gathered that she was feeling uneasy at being in the position of
asking for what she would have preferred to concede as a favour, and was
rather amused at it. "I should have thought it would have suited you
much better," he said, with a smile. "Why is it that you should not be
satisfied with the unreasonable objections of an Englishman who ought to
be pleased at the idea of his daughter marrying your son?"
"Because I don't hold rank to be the chief thing in marriage, any more
than you do, Mr. Grafton," she answered him directly. "And money isn't
wanted in this case, though more money is always useful in our world. It
is just because I want for my son in marriage what you want for your
daughter that I should like to see him marry her. It is that and because
he loves her in the way that should make a happy marriage, and is very
unhappy about her. I did think at first that it would be best that he
should get over it, because to tell you the truth I was offended by the
way in which you had received him, and didn't see how that could be got
over. But I have put my pride in my pocket. Let him go to America, as it
has been arranged, and stipulate, if you like, that nothing further
shall be done or said, until he comes back again--or for six months.
Then, if they are both of the same mind, let us make the best of it, Mr.
Grafton, and acknowledge that they are two people who are meant to
marry. Won't you have it that way?"
"I won't say no," said Grafton. "But, you know, Madame, you have brought
another consideration into the situation. He is to be free, I take it,
to pay his addresses to somebody else, if he feels inclined, and that, I
suppose, was what you had in your mind when you persuaded him to go to
America. It's only because I hate seeing my little daughter unhappy that
I am giving way. If he changes his mind, during the next six months, and
she doesn't----"
"She will be more unhappy than ever, I suppose. Yes, there is that risk.
It happens always when two people are kept apart in the hope of one of
them changing their mind."
He laughed, and rose to take his farewell. "What I shall tell my
daughter is that she must consider it over for the present," he said.
"But if he makes an offer for her again next year, I shall reconsider
it."
"I don't think you need do more, Mr. Grafton," she said.
* * * * *
Caroline, only, met her father at the station. He was disappointed that
Beatrix hadn't come. His mind had been lighter about her than for some
time, as he had travelled down. It had been greatly disturbing him to be
at issue with this much-loved child of his, and to lose from her all the
pretty ways of affection that had so sweetened his life. He knew that
he had given way chiefly because the results of his holding out against
her were hardly supportable to himself. She had the 'pull' over him, as
the one who loves least always has in such a contest. His weapons were
weak in his hands. But he did not mind much; for there was the prospect
of getting back again to happy relations, and that counted for more than
anything. She would be grateful to him, and give him her love again.
He could not have felt quite like this about it if he had given in
entirely because he wanted to please Beatrix. It was necessary that he
should find some other justification for himself; and it was not
difficult to find. If Lassigny still wanted to marry her after six
months' parting and she wanted it too, it would be unreasonable to
object on the grounds that he had taken. His dislike of Lassigny, which
had not existed at all before, had died down. Seen in the light of his
mother's faith in him, he was a figure more allied to the suitor that
Grafton would have accepted without such questionings as his foreign
nationality had evoked. For the time being he could think of an eventual
marriage without shrinking. But this state of mind was probably helped
by the consideration that anything might happen in six months. It was at
least a respite. There was no need to worry now about what should come
after.
He told Caroline what had happened as they drove home together. He had
said nothing beforehand of his going up to see Lady Handsworth. He had
not wanted again to have Beatrix's hopes raised, and to suffer the chill
of her disappointment.
"Everybody seems to think that I'm most unreasonable," he said. "I'm
half-beginning to think so myself. I suppose B will forget all about
what's been happening lately when I tell her, won't she?"
"Oh, yes, darling," said Caroline. "She loves you awfully. She'll be
just what she always has been to you."
"Oh well, that's all right then. I shall be precious glad to go back to
the old state of things. I may have been unfair to her in one or two
points, but I'm sure I've been right in the main. If there's to be
nothing settled for six months that's all I can ask. I think I should
have been satisfied with that at first. At least I should have accepted
it."
"So would B. She said so."
"Yes, I know. You told me. How jolly it is to get down here after
London! We're all going to enjoy ourselves at Abington again now. Let's
get up early to-morrow, shall we?"
The early risings had been given up of late. The edge of pleasure in the
new life and the new place had become blunted. But it all seemed bright
again now, and the country was enchanting in the yellow evening light.
So was the house when they reached it. September was half-way through,
and though the days were warm and sunny, there was a chill when the sun
had gone down. A wood fire was lit in the long gallery, which with
curtains closed, lamps and candles lit, and masses of autumn flowers
everywhere about it, was even more welcoming than in its summer state.
Grafton sat there with Beatrix on a sofa before the fire. Her head was
on his shoulder and his arm was round her. She cried a little when he
told her, but she was very happy. She was also very merry throughout the
evening, but alternated her bursts of merriment with the clinging
tenderness towards him which he had so missed of late. It was only when
he was alone in his room that a cold waft came over his new-found
contentment. He had forgotten all about Lassigny for the time being.
Could he ever accept Lassigny as part of all this happy intimate family
life? He would have to, if Beatrix were to get what she wanted, and were
still to remain allied to it. But Lassigny hardly seemed to fit in, even
at his best. He was all very well as a guest; but when they were alone
together, as they had been this evening---- Oh, if only B could see her
mistake!