“Suggest what I shall put on for the occasion—my best or my oldest coat! One has no precedent to go by—”
She interrupted him, eagerly: “Léon, let us go to Paris.”
“Thrust my head into the lion’s mouth?”
“Whatever—whatever happens, it will not be so terrible for you there as here—at Poissy. Telegraph to Monsieur Rodoin, and he will let them know that you are coming up by the morning express—if you are strong enough to travel.”
“Yes, yes!” he cried, with sudden energy, “you are right. Then my mother—Poissy—will be spared something of humiliation. Send off a messenger at once with the telegram, and order the carriage in an hour. And—and, Nathalie, let them know, keep them away; I cannot bear my mother’s reproaches.”
They fell on her; Claire’s with stinging sharpness, but the conflict in her own heart had this effect that words did not succeed in wounding. Mme. de Beaudrillart was more passive; it struck Nathalie that the blow had stunned her, and that physically her stately height had shrunk. She kept in her own room, sending only a message to her son that she could not wish him good-bye. Félicie wandered miserably about, suggesting impossible plans, though unable to realise that anything so terrible as Claire suggested could fall on Poissy. “If only Monsieur Georges were here, I am sure he would think of something, or if only I might go and ask the abbé! If Nathalie had attended more to his advice, and less to those dreadful books of hers, this would never have been permitted to come upon us. There they are in her room still, in spite of all that monseigneur said.”
Claire stared. “How do you know he said anything!”
“What else can he have had to say? He asked me whether it was not a great pleasure to have my sister-in-law with us, and I said I was afraid she held very strange opinions, so of course he spoke.”
“Oh, I wish you wouldn’t talk!” cried Claire, irritably. “Have they gone?”
“They would not go so unceremoniously,”—Félicie was strong in etiquette. “Besides,”—she broke again into sobs—“dear, dear Léon could not leave us without a single word!”