Carlisle wondered what her impression would have been if she were a complete stranger. Would she, like Lady Pastern, have decided that her uncle was eccentric to the point of derangement? “No,” she thought, “probably not. There’s really a kind of terrifying sanity about him. He’s overloaded with energy, he says exactly what he thinks and he does exactly what he wants to do. But he’s an oversimplification of type, and he’s got no perspective. He’s never mildly interested in anything. But which of us,” Carlisle reflected, “has not, at some time, longed to play the big drum?”
Félicité, with an abandon that Carlisle found unconvincing, flung herself into the sofa beside her mother. “Angel,” she said richly, “don’t be so grande dame! George and I are having fun!”
Lady Pastern disengaged herself and rose. “I must see Dupont.”
“Ring for Spence,” said her husband. “Why d’you want to go burrowin’ about in the servants’ quarters?”
Lady Pastern pointed out, with great coldness, that in the present food shortage one did not, if one wished to retain the services of one’s cook, send a message at seven in the evening to the effect that there would be two extra for dinner. In any case, she added, however great her tact, Dupont would almost certainly give notice.
“He’ll give us the same dinner as usual,” her husband rejoined. “The Three Courses of Monsieur Dupont!”
“Extremely witty,” said Lady Pastern coldly. She then withdrew.
“George!” said Félicité. “Have you won?”
“I should damn’ well think so. Never heard anything so preposterous in me life. Ask a couple of people to dine and your mother behaves like Lady Macbeth. I’m going to have a bath.”
When he had gone, Félicité turned to Carlisle, and made a wide helpless gesture. “Darling, what a life! Honestly! One prances about from moment to moment on the edge of a volcano, never knowing when there’ll be a major eruption. I suppose you’ve heard all about ME.”
“A certain amount.”
“He’s madly attractive.”
“In what sort of way?”
Félicité smiled and shook her head. “My dear Lisle, he just does things for me.”
“He’s not by any chance a bounder?”
“He can bound like a ping-pong ball and I won’t bat an eyelid. To me he’s heaven; but just plain heaven.”
“Come off it, Fée,” said Carlisle. “I’ve heard all this before. What’s the catch in it?”
Félicité looked sideways at her. “How do you mean, the catch?”
“There’s always a catch in your young men, darling, when you rave like this about them.”
Félicité began to walk showily about the room. She had lit a cigarette and wafted it to and fro between two fingers, nursing her right elbow in the palm of the left hand. Her manner became remote. “When English people talk about a bounder,” she said, “they invariably refer to someone who has more charm and less gaucherie than the average Englishman.”
“I couldn’t disagree more; but go on.”
Félicité said loftily: “Of course I knew from the first Mama would kick like the devil. C’la va sans dire. And I don’t deny Carlos is a bit tricky. In fact, ‘It’s hell but it’s worth it’ is a fairly accurate summing-up of the situation at the moment. I’m adoring it, really— I think.”
“I don’t think.”
“Yes, I am,” said Félicité violently. “I adore a situation. I’ve been brought up on situations. Think of George. You know, I honestly believe I’ve got more in common with George than I would have had with my own father. From all accounts, Papa was excessively rangé.”
“You’d do with a bit more orderliness yourself, old girl. In what way is Carlos tricky?”
“Well, he’s just so jealous he’s like a Spanish novel.”
“I’ve never read a Spanish novel unless you count Don Quixote and I’m certain you haven’t. What’s he do?”
“My dear, everything. Rages and despairs and sends frightful letters by special messenger. I got a stinker this morning, à cause de — well, à cause de something that really is a bit daffy.”
She halted and inhaled deeply. Carlisle remembered the confidences that Félicité had poured out in her convent days, concerning what she called her “raves.” There had been the music master who had fortunately snubbed Félicité and the medical student who hadn’t. There had been the brothers of the other girls and an actor whom she attempted to waylay at a charity matinée. There had been a male medium, engaged by Lord Pastern during his spiritualistic period, and a dietician — Carlisle pulled herself together and listened to the present recital. It appeared that there was a crisis: a crise as Félicité called it. She used far more occasional French than her mother and was fond of laying her major calamities at the door of Gallic temperament.
“ — and as a matter of fact,” Félicité was saying, “I hadn’t so much as smirked at another soul, and there he was seizing me by the wrists and giving me that shattering sort of look that begins at your boots and travels up to your face and then makes the return trip. And breathing loudly, don’t you know, through the nose. I don’t deny that the first time was rather fun. But after he got wind of old Edward it really was, and I may say still is, beyond a joke. And now to crown everything, there’s the crise.”
“But what crisis? You haven’t said — ”
For the first time Félicité looked faintly embarrassed.
“He found a letter,” she said. “In my bag. Yesterday.”
“You aren’t going to tell me he goes fossicking in your bag? And what letter, for pity’s sake? Honestly, Fée!”
“I don’t expect you to understand,” Félicité said grandly. “We were lunching and he hadn’t got a cigarette. I was doing my face at the time and I told him to help himself to my case. The letter came out of the bag with the case.”
“And he — well, never mind. What letter?”
“I know you’re going to say I’m mad. It was a sort of rough draft of a letter I sent to somebody. It had a bit in it about Carlos. When I saw it in his hand I was pretty violently rocked. I said something like ‘Hi-hi you can’t read that,’ and of course with Carlos that tore everything wide open. He said ‘So.’ ”
“So what?”
“So, all by itself. He does that. He’s Latin-American.”
“I thought that sort of ‘so’ was German.”
“Whatever it is I find it terrifying. I began to fluff and puff and tried to pass it off with a jolly laugh but he said that either he could trust me or he couldn’t and if he could, how come I wouldn’t let him read a letter? I completely lost my head and grabbed it and he began to hiss. We were in a restaurant.”
“Good Lord!”
“Well, I know. Obviously he was going to react in a really big way. So in the end the only thing seemed to be to let him have the letter. So I gave it to him on condition he wouldn’t read it till we got back to the car. The drive home was hideous. But hideous.”
“But what was in the letter, if one may ask, and who was it written to? You are confusing, Fée.”
There followed a long uneasy silence. Félicité lit another cigarette. “Come on,” said Carlisle at last.
“It happened,” said Félicité haughtily, “to be written to a man whom I don’t actually know, asking for advice about Carlos and me. Professional advice.”
“What can you mean! A clergyman? Or a lawyer?”
“I don’t think so. He’d written me rather a marvellous letter and this was thanking him. Carlos, of course, thought it was for Edward. The worst bit, from Carlos’s point of view, was where I said: ‘I suppose he’d be madly jealous if he knew I’d written to you like this.’ Carlos really got weaving after he read that. He — ”