“O.K., mother.”
Lydia immediately followed him in and Madame Berger, in the same black dress of flowered silk as she had worn on Sunday, came forward and took her in her arms.
“My dear child,” she cried.
“I’m so happy.”
Lydia burst into tears.
Madame Berger kissed her tenderly.
“There, there, there!
You mustn’t cry.
I give you my son with all my heart.
I know you’ll make him a good wife.
Come, sit down.
Robert will open a bottle of champagne.”
Lydia composed herself and dried her eyes.
“You are too good to me, Madame.
I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve so much kindness.”
Madame Berger took her hand and gently patted it.
“You have fallen in love with my son and he has fallen in love with you.”
Robert had gone out of the room.
Lydia felt that she must at once state the facts as they were.
“But, Madame, I don’t feel sure that you realize the circumstances.
The little money that my father was able to get out of Russia went years ago.
I have nothing but what I earn.
Nothing, absolutely nothing.
And only two dresses besides the one I’m wearing.”
“But, my dear child, what does that matter?
Oh, I don’t deny it, I should have been pleased if you had been able to bring Robert a reasonable dot, but money isn’t everything.
Love is more important.
And nowadays what is money worth?
I flatter myself that I am a good judge of character and it didn’t take me long to discover that you have a sweet and honest nature.
I saw that you had been well brought up and I judged that you had good principles.
After all that is what one wants in a wife, and you know, I know my Robert, he would never have been happy with a little French bourgeoise.
He has a romantic disposition and it says something to him that you are Russian.
And it isn’t as if you were nobody; it is after all something one need not be ashamed of to be the daughter of a professor.”
Robert came in with glasses and a bottle of champagne.
They sat talking late into the night.
Madame Berger had her plan cut and dried and they could do nothing but accept it; Lydia and Robert should live in the house while she would make herself comfortable in the little pavilion at the back of the garden.
They would have their meals in common, but otherwise she would keep to her own quarters.
She was decided that the young couple must be left to themselves and not exposed to interference from her.
“I don’t want you to look upon me as a mother-in-law,” she told Lydia.
“I want to be the mother to you that you’ve lost, but I also want to be your friend.”
She was anxious that the marriage should take place without delay.
Lydia had a League of Nations passport and a Carte de Sejour; her papers were in order; so they had only to wait the time needed for notification to be made at the Mairie.
Since Robert was Catholic and Lydia Orthodox, they decided, notwithstanding Madame Berger’s reluctance, to waive a religious ceremony that neither of them cared about.
Lydia was too excited and too confused to sleep that night.
The marriage took place very quietly.
The only persons present were Madame Berger and an old friend of the family, Colonel Legrand, an army doctor who had been a brother officer of Robert’s father; Evgenia and Alexey and their children.
It took place on a Friday and since Robert had to go to work on the Monday morning their honeymoon was brief.
Robert drove Lydia to Dieppe in a car that he had been lent and drove her back on Sunday night.
Lydia did not know that the car, like the cars in which he had on other occasions driven her, was not lent, but stolen; that was why he had always parked them a street or two from that in which he lived; she did not know that Robert had a few months before been sentenced to two years’ imprisonment with sursis, that is, with a suspended sentence because it was his first conviction; she did not know that he had since been tried on a charge of smuggling drugs and had escaped conviction by the skin of his teeth; she did not know that Madame Berger had welcomed the marriage because she thought it would settle Robert and that it was indeed the only chance he had of leading an honest life.
v