Evie in that French household would be out of place.
For Madame Falloux, Julia’s Aunt Carrie, married as a girl to a Frenchman, now as an old, old lady spoke French more easily than English.
She had been a widow for many years and her only son had been killed in the war.
She lived in a tall, narrow stone house on a hill, and when you crossed its threshold from the cobbled street you entered upon the peace of a bygone age.
Nothing had been changed for half a century.
The drawing-room was furnished with a Louis XV suite under covers, and the covers were only taken off once a month to give the silk underneath a delicate brushing.
The crystal chandelier was shrouded in muslin so that the flies should not spot it.
In front of the chimney-piece was a fire-screen of peacocks’ feathers artfully arranged and protected by glass.
Though the room was never used Aunt Carrie dusted it herself every day.
The dining-room was panelled and here too the chairs were under dust-covers.
On the sideboard was a silver epergne, a silver coffee-pot, a silver teapot and a silver tray.
Aunt Carrie and Julia’s mother, Mrs Lambert, lived in the morning-room, a long narrow room, with Empire furniture.
On the walls in oval frames were oil portraits of Aunt Carrie and her deceased husband, of his father and mother, and a pastel of the dead son as a child.
Here they had their work-boxes, here they read their papers, the Catholic La Croix, the Revue des Deux Mondes and the local daily, and here they played dominoes in the evening. Except on Thursday evenings when the Abbe and the Commandant La Garde, a retired naval officer, came to dinner, they had their meals there; but when Julia arrived they decided that it would be more convenient to eat in the dining-room.
Aunt Carrie still wore mourning for her husband and her son.
It was seldom warm enough for her to leave off the little black tricot that she crocheted herself.
Mrs Lambert wore black too, but when Monsieur L’Abbe and the Commandant came to dinner she put over her shoulders a white lace shawl that Julia had given her.
After dinner they played plafond for two sous a hundred.
Mrs Lambert, because she had lived for so many years in Jersey and still went to London, knew all about the great world, and she said that a game called contract was much played, but the Commandant said it was all very well for Americans, but he was content to stick to plafond, and the Abb? said that for his part he thought it a pity that whist had been abandoned.
But there, men were never satisfied with what they had; they wanted change, change, change, all the time.
Every Christmas Julia gave her mother and her aunt expensive presents, but they never used them.
They showed them to their friends with pride, these wonderful things that came from London, and then wrapped them up in tissue paper and put them away in cupboards.
Julia had offered her mother a car, but she refused it.
For the little they went out, they could go on foot; a chauffeur would steal their petrol, if he had his meals out it would be ruinous and if he had them in it would upset Annette.
Annette was cook, housekeeper and housemaid.
She had been with Aunt Carrie for five and thirty years.
Her niece was there to do the rough work, but Angele was young, she wasn’t forty yet, and it would hardly do to have a man constantly about the house.
They put Julia in the same room she had had as a girl when she was living with Aunt Carrie for her education.
It gave her a peculiar, heart-rending sensation, indeed for a little it made her quite emotional.
But she fell into the life very easily.
Aunt Carrie had become a Catholic on her marriage and Mrs Lambert, when on losing her husband she settled down in St Malo, having received instructions from the Abbe, in due course took the same step.
The two old ladies were very devout.
They went to Mass every morning and to High Mass on Sundays.
Otherwise they seldom went out.
When they did it was to pay a ceremonious call on some old lady who had had a bereavement in the family or one of whose grandchildren was become engaged.
They read their papers, and their magazine, did a great deal of sewing for charitable purposes, played dominoes and listened to the radio that Julia had given them.
Though the Abbe and the Commandant had dined with them every Thursday for many years they were always in a flutter when Thursday came.
The Commandant, with the sailor’s downrightness that they expected of him, did not hesitate to say so if something was not cooked to his liking, and even the Abbe, though a saint, had his likes and dislikes.
For instance, he was very fond of sole Normande, but he insisted on its being cooked with the best butter, and with butter at the price it was since the war that was very expensive.
Every Thursday morning Aunt Carrie took the cellar key from the place where she had hidden it and herself fetched a bottle of claret from the cellar.
She and her sister finished what was left of it by the end of the week.
They made a great fuss of Julia.
They dosed her with tisanes, and were anxious that she should not sit in anything that might be thought a draught.
Indeed a great part of their lives was devoted to avoiding draughts.
They made her lie on sofas and were solicitous that she should cover her feet.
They reasoned with her about the clothes she wore.
Those silk stockings that were so thin you could see through them; and what did she wear next to her skin?
Aunt Carrie would not have been surprised to learn that she wore nothing but a chemise.
‘She doesn’t even wear that,’ said Mrs Lambert.
‘What does she wear then?’