‘Was it worth waiting for?’
‘Like Helen, you make me immortal with a kiss.’
It was wonderful to be able to give so much happiness to a human being.
‘I’ll write to him just before I leave St Malo,’ she decided.
The spring passed into summer, and at the end of July it was time for Julia to go to Paris and see about her clothes. Michael wanted to open with the new play early in September, and rehearsals were to start in August. She had brought the play with her to St Malo, intending to study her part, but the circumstances in which she lived had made it impossible. She had all the leisure she needed, but in that grey, austere and yet snug little town, in the constant company of those two old ladies whose interests were confined to the parish church and their household affairs, though it was a good play, she could take but little interest in it.
‘It’s high time I was getting back,’ she said. ‘It would be hell if I really came to the conclusion that the theatre wasn’t worth the fuss and bother they make about it.’
She said good-bye to her mother and to Aunt Carrie. They had been very kind to her, but she had an inkling that they would not be sorry when her departure allowed them to return to the life she had interrupted. They were a little relieved besides to know that now there was no more danger of some eccentricity, such as you must always run the risk of with an actress, which might arouse the unfavourable comment of the ladies of St Malo.
She arrived in Paris in the afternoon, and when she was shown into her suite at the Ritz, she gave a sigh of satisfaction. It was a treat to get back to luxury. Three or four people had sent her flowers. She had a bath and changed. Charley Deverill, who always made her clothes for her, an old friend, called to take her to dinner in the Bois.
‘I had a wonderful time,’ she told him, ‘and of course it was a grand treat for those old girls to have me there, but I have a feeling that if I’d stayed a day longer I should have been bored.’
To drive up the Champs Elysees on that lovely evening filled her with exhilaration. It was good to smell once more the smell of petrol. The cars, the taxis, the hooting of horns, the chestnut trees, the street lights, the crowd on the pavement and the crowd sitting outside the cafés; it was an enchantment. And when they got to the Château de Madrid, so gay, so civilized and so expensive, it was grand to see once more well-dressed women, decently made-up, and tanned men in dinner-jackets.
‘I feel like a queen returning from exile.’
Julia spent several happy days choosing her clothes and having the first fittings. She enjoyed every moment of them. But she was a woman of character, and when she had come to a decision she adhered to it; before leaving for London she wrote a note to Charles. He had been to Goodwood and Cowes and was spending twenty-four hours in London on his way to Salzburg.
CHARLES DEAR,
How wonderful that I shall see you so soon. Of course I am free on Wednesday. Shall we dine together and do you love me still?
Your JULIA.As she stuck down the envelope she murmured: Bis dat qui cito dat. It was a Latin tag that Michael always quoted when, asked to subscribe to a charity, he sent by return of post exactly half what was expected of him.
24
ON Wednesday morning Julia had her face massaged and her hair waved. She could not make up her mind whether to wear for dinner a dress of flowered organdie, very pretty and springlike with its suggestion of Botticelli’s Primavera, or one of white satin beautifully cut to show off her slim young figure, and virginal; but while she was having her bath she decided on the white satin: it indicated rather delicately that the sacrifice she intended was in the nature of an expiation for her long ingratitude to Michael. She wore no jewels but a string of pearls and a diamond bracelet; besides her wedding-ring only one square-cut diamond. She would have liked to put on a slight brown tan, it looked open-air-girl and suited her, but reflecting on what lay before her she refrained. She could not very well, like the actor who painted himself black all over to play Othello, tan her whole body. Always a punctual woman, she came downstairs as the front door was being opened for Charles. She greeted him with a look into which she put tenderness, a roguish charm and intimacy. Charles now wore his thinning grey hair rather long, and with advancing years his intellectual, distinguished features had sagged a little; he was slightly bowed and his clothes looked as though they needed pressing.
‘Strange world we live in,’ thought Julia. ‘Actors do their damnedest to look like gentlemen and gentlemen do all they can to look like actors.’
There was no doubt that she was making a proper effect on him. He gave her the perfect opening.
‘Why are you looking so lovely tonight?’ he asked.
‘Because I’m looking forward to dining with you.’
With her beautiful, expressive eyes she looked deep into his. She parted her lips in the manner that she found so seductive in Romney’s portraits of Lady Hamilton.
They dined at the Savoy. The head waiter gave them a table on the gangway so that they were admirably in view. Though everyone was supposed to be out of town the grill-room was well filled. Julia bowed and smiled to various friends of whom she caught sight. Charles had much to tell her; she listened to him with flattering interest.
‘You are the best company in the world, Charles,’ she told him.
They had come late, they dined well, and by the time Charles had finished his brandy people were already beginning to come in for supper.
‘Good gracious, are the theatres out already?’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘How quickly the time flies when I’m with you. D’you imagine they want to get rid of us?’
‘I don’t feel a bit like going to bed.’
‘I suppose Michael will be getting home presently?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Why don’t you come back to my house and have a talk?’