“Don’t interrupt me. I don’t care, and nobody cares what goes on
between you and Philibert in your private apartments. Whether you’re
nasty or affectionate is nobody’s business but your own, but as regards
society, society expects people in it to behave in a certain way, and
to make things easy and agreeable and smooth. That’s its main object,
its only _raison d’être_. We people who think ourselves something are
nothing if we’re not well bred, that is, if we don’t know how to help
other people to keep up the pretence that every one is happy, that life
is harmonious and that there’s nothing dreadful under the sun. Society,
French society, is very intolerant of bad manners, not as you know of
anything else. It is exclusive with this object and adamant on this
point. It let you in, now it expects you to behave. You’ve enjoyed its
favour, you owe it something in return. What a bore to lecture you like
a school-mistress, but there you are. I’m going to give a dinner and
you and Philibert are both to come, and that will be the end of this
nonsense.”
And of course I did as she said.
And again your mother’s manner to me conveyed a sense of my action
having made a difference, but this time an enormously happy difference.
She beamed, she was more affectionate than she had ever been. She
called me “_Ma chère petite_” “_Ma fille aimée_.” Drawing me down to
her with her delicate blue-veined hand, she would press her lips to one
of my cheeks then the other, lingeringly, and with a pathetic trembling
pressure, and look from me to Philibert with happy watery eyes in which
was no scrutiny or questioning. She was growing old. Something of her
fine discernment was gone. She was no longer curious to know what lay
behind appearances. It was enough for her to have recovered her son and
been spared the sight of his ruin. Like a child she clung to Philibert.
I admit that his manner to her was very charming. He went to see her, I
believe, every day.
Claire did not seem so pleased with our renewed family life that
resembled so curiously the life we had lived round your mother five
years before. Her smile was bitter, her tongue caustic, but she looked
so ill, that I put her temper down to bad health. It was, strangely
enough, Philibert who explained to me, driving home from his mother’s
one Sunday afternoon.
“You mustn’t mind Claire,” he began. “She is in trouble.”
“I don’t. I can see she is in wretched health.”
“Her health is the result, not the cause, of her unhappiness.”
“Oh?”
“Her husband has fallen into the hands of a scheming woman who wants to
marry him. He has threatened Claire with a divorce.”
I was taken aback. I stammered. For an instant I wanted to laugh, but
Claire’s haggard face was after all nothing to laugh at. I remarked
mildly; “But I thought that in your world one didn’t divorce?”
“He’s not of our world, never was, never will be. Besides, it bores
him, he’s had enough of us.”
“I see.”
“He’s had too many snubs. We’ve been stupid. That affair of the Jockey
Club rankles.”
“You mean that if you had taken him into the Jockey Club ten years ago
he wouldn’t want to divorce your sister now.”
“Quite possibly. It would have involved him in other things, given him
something to live up to. As it is, he has, as you know, gone in for
politics.”
“No, I didn’t know. I never hear him mentioned. I’m very sorry if
Claire is unhappy about it.”
“She is, terribly.”
“But she hates him.”
“Not quite that. In any case the disgrace would kill her. She has
always been a retiring protected creature. The publicity would be
peculiarly awful for her.”
I knew that what he said was true, but he had more to say, and he
stammered over it.
“We thought that you, Jane, might do something.”