“And why are you sure?” Lady Mary asked, Mrs. Bradley remaining helplessly silent.
“She confided in me,” said Giles, and it was more difficult to face Lady Mary’s kindness than his mother’s dismay. “She was absolutely straight with me. It was when we talked about Alix that she told me everything. It was then I came to like her so much.”
“But, Giles”—poor Mrs. Bradley now almost wept—“how can you say you like these dreadful people? You made friends with monsieur de Valenbois, too—how can you like them?”
“But, dear Mrs. Bradley,” said Lady Mary with just the brush of a smile across her lips, “one does like them. Why not?”
“Dissolute people? People with no sense of conduct or duty? I’ve never met them. Giles has never, I am sure, met them before. I don’t understand,” said Mrs. Bradley, and her drawing-room seemed to be saying that it did not understand either;—the Watts’s “Love and Life” and “Love and Death,” the bowls of primroses picked by Jack and Francis, the crétonne covers, and the crayon drawing of Mrs. Bradley’s grandmother, a dove-eyed lady with lace tied over her head and a cameo brooch.
“I’ve met them,” said Lady Mary with sad equanimity. “I’ve cared very much for several women who were, alas, in that sense, dissolute. Only they were more fortunate than madame Vervier; or more discreet. They’ve not been dissolute openly. So one hasn’t had to lose them.”
“And one’s sons can marry their daughters,” said Giles. His mind was occupied by no anger against Lady Mary; only by that grief on madame Vervier’s account; and on Alix’s. Lady Mary he felt that he liked; much as he liked—it was the strangest feeling—madame Vervier. Lady Mary, too, was straight; she, too, was magnanimous; and, her eyes on his, she was liking him, liking him even while, not yielding an inch, she answered: “Exactly. One’s sons can marry their daughters. The difference couldn’t be put more clearly.” And she went on, reminding him more and more of madame Vervier, “Some things fit in and some things don’t. Women who have kept their place, fit; women who have lost it, don’t. It’s very harsh; it’s very hypocritical, you will say, Giles; but it is the only way in which a civilized society can protect itself. It’s impossible to judge each case on its own merits; so rules are made and the people who transgress them pay the penalty. It isn’t really that they are put out; they put themselves out. One pretends about them as long as they allow one to go on pretending. And when it comes to the sons and daughters;—young people don’t realize how horrid, how crippling, simple awkwardness can be. How awkward, for instance, to have a mother-in-law you couldn’t possibly, ever, invite to the house; how awkward to have babies to whom you’ve given a demi-mondaine for a grandmother. It becomes too difficult. One wants to spare one’s children such difficulty.”
“And what does one want to spare Alix?” Giles asked. With all his liking, with all her grace, her frankness, her resolve not to hurt, he was feeling for Lady Mary the same repudiation that he had felt for the ladies of the chalet—the people who connived and had no right to reject.
Lady Mary thought for a moment before saying: “Alix can marry someone who doesn’t mind.”
“But anyone good enough to marry Alix would have to mind,” said Giles. “Wouldn’t you be the first to say that where she belongs is with the people who do mind? What you really mean”—and Giles heard that his voice became rather bitter as he went on—“is that the daughter of the demi-mondaine must stay in the demi-monde. I wouldn’t blame you if you weren’t so fond of Alix for herself. I wouldn’t blame you if it were a moral objection; but it isn’t. Those friends of yours are only in because they’ve escaped being divorced. Your objection to Alix is really, when you come to look at it, that her mother is unfortunate.—Isn’t that so?”