“I went to the Louvre.
I was rather taken with the Chardins.”
“Were you?” said Leslie Mason.
“I can’t say he’s ever appealed to me very much.
I always thought him on the dull side.”
His eyes twinkled with the jest that had occurred to him. “Between you and me and the gatepost I prefer Charvet to Chardin.
At least he is modern.”
“Your father’s impossible,” Mrs. Mason smiled indulgently.
“Chardin was a very conscientious artist, one of the minor masters of the eighteenth century, but of course he wasn’t Great.”
In point of fact, however, they were much more anxious to tell him about their doings than to listen to his.
The party at Cousin Wilfred’s had been a riot, and they had come back so exhausted that they’d all gone to bed immediately after dinner on the night of their return.
That showed you how they’d enjoyed themselves.
“Patsy had a proposal of marriage,” said Leslie Mason.
“Thrilling, wasn’t it?” cried Patsy.
“Unfortunately the poor boy was only sixteen, so I told him that, bad woman as I was, I hadn’t sunk so low as to snatch a baby from his cradle, and I gave him a chaste kiss on the brow and told him I would be a sister to him.”
Patsy rattled on. Charley, smiling, listened to her, and Mrs. Mason took the opportunity to look at him closely.
He was really very good-looking and his pallor suited him.
It gave her an odd little feeling in her heart to think how much those women in Paris must have liked him; she supposed he’d gone to one of those horrible houses; what a success he must have had, so young and fresh and charming, after the fat, bald, beastly old men they were used to!
She wondered what sort of girl he had been attracted by, she so hoped she was young and pretty, they said men were attracted by the same type as their mother belonged to.
She was sure he’d be an enchanting lover; she couldn’t help feeling proud of him; after all, he was her son and she’d carried him in her womb.
The dear; and he looked so white and tired.
Mrs. Mason had strange thoughts, thoughts that she wouldn’t have had anybody know for anything in the world; she was sad, and a little envious, yes, envious of the girls he had slept with, but at the same time proud, oh, so proud, because he was strong and handsome and virile.
Leslie interrupted Patsy’s nonsense and her own thoughts.
“Shall we tell him the great secret, Venetia?”
“Of course.”
“But mind, Charley, keep it under your hat.
Cousin Wilfred’s worked it.
There’s an ex-Indian governor that the party want to find a safe seat for, so Wilfred’s giving up his and in recognition he’s to get a peerage.
What d’you think of that?”
“It’s grand.”
“Of course he pretends it means nothing to him, but he’s as pleased as Punch really.
And you know, it’s nice for all of us.
I mean, having a peer in the family adds to one’s prestige.
Well, it gives one a sort of position.
And when you think how we started …”
“That’ll do, Leslie,” said Mrs. Mason, with a glance at the servants. “We needn’t go into that.”
And when they left the room immediately afterwards, she added: “Your father’s got a mania for telling everyone about his origins.
I really think the time has now arrived when we can let bygones be bygones.
It’s not so bad when we’re with people of our own class, they think it’s rather chic to have a grandfather who was a gardener and a grandmother who was a cook, but there’s no need to tell the servants.
It only makes them think you’re no better than they are.”
“I’m not ashamed of it.
After all the greatest families in England started just as humbly as we did.
And we’ve worked the oracle in less than a century.”
Mrs. Mason and Patsy got up from the table and Charley was left with his father to drink a glass of port.
Leslie Mason told him of the discussions they had had about the title Cousin Wilfred should assume.
It wasn’t so easy as you might think to find a name which didn’t belong to somebody else, which had some kind of connection with you, and which sounded well.
“I suppose we’d better join the ladies,” he said, when he had exhausted the subject.
“I expect your mother will want a rubber before we go to bed.”
But as they were at the door and about to go out, he put his hand on his son’s shoulder.
“You look a bit washed out, old boy.