"I want—I mean, I'm requested!—to inform you of a way he proposes out of the woods for you—at least, the darkest part of the woods."
"I told Mr. Carstairs I'd see James Courtenaye d—d rather than——"
"This is a different affair entirely. You must listen, my dear, unless I'm to wash my hands of you! What I have to describe is the foundation for the Brightening."
I swallowed some more of Grandmother's expressions which occurred to me, and listened.
Sir James Courtenaye's second proposition was not an offer of charity. He suggested that I let Courtenaye Abbey to him for a term of years, for the sum of one thousand five hundred pounds per annum, the first three years to be paid in advance. (This clause, Mrs. Carstairs hinted, would enable me to dole out crumbs here and there for the quieting of Grandmother's creditors.) Sir James's intention was, not to use the Abbey as a residence, but to make of it a show place for the public during the term of his lease. In order to do this, the hall must be restored and the once-famous gardens beautified. This expense he would undertake, carrying the work quickly to completion, and would reimburse himself by means of the fees—a shilling a head—charged for viewing the house and its historic treasures.
When I had heard all this, I hesitated what to answer, thinking of Grandmother, and wondering what she would have said had she been in my shoes. But as this thought flitted into my mind, it was followed by another. One of Grandmother's few old-fashioned fads was her style of shoe: pattern 1875. The shoes I stood in, at this moment, were pattern 1918. In my shoes Grandmother would simply scream! And I wouldn't be at my best in hers. This was the parable which commonsense put to me, and Mrs. Carstairs cleverly offering no word of advice, I paused no longer than five minutes before I snapped out, "Yes! The horrid brute can have the darling place till I get rich."
"How sweet of you to consent so graciously, darling!" purred Mrs. Carstairs. Then we both laughed. After which I fell into her arms, and cried.
For fear I might change my mind, Mr. Carstairs got me to sign some dull-looking documents that very day, and the oddness of their being all ready to hand didn't strike me till the ink was dry.
"Henry had them prepared because he knew how sensible you are at heart—I mean at head," his wife explained. "Indeed, it is a compliment to your intelligence."
Anyhow, it gave me a wherewithal to throw sops to a whole Zooful of Cerberuses, and still keep enough to take that flat in the Carstairs' house in Berkeley Square. Of course to do all this meant leaving Italy for good and going back to England. But there was little to hold me in Rome. My inheritance from my husband-of-an-hour could be packed in a suitcase! Shelagh and her snobs travelled with us. And as soon as they were demobilized, Roger Fane and James Courtenaye followed, if not us, at least in our direction.