‘My dear Ralph,’ she said briefly, ‘why do you not go home?’
Geraldine drew his breath quickly, and stared at her.
‘Go home!’ he repeated stupidly.
‘Well, you have a home; you have several homes,’ she said, with her usual impatience at being questioned or misunderstood by wits slower than her own. ‘You are an Englishman; you must have a million and one duties. It is utterly wrong to live so much away from your properties. We do it, but I do not think it matters what we do. Whether we be here or there, it is always the stewards who rule everything, but in your country it is different. Your sister says you can do a great deal of good. I cannot imagine what good you should do, but no doubt she knows. I do not like England myself. Your châteaux are very fine, but the life in them is very tiresome. You all eat far too much and far too often, and you have lingering superstitions about Sunday; your women are always three months behind Paris, and never wear shoes like their gowns; your talk is always of games, and shooting, and flat-racing. You are not an amusing people; you never will be. You have too much of the Teuton, and the Hollander, and the Dane in you. Your stage makes one yawn, your books make one sleep, your country-houses make one do both. Your women clothe themselves in Newmarket coats, get red faces, and like to go over wet fields; your men are well built very often, but they move ill; they have no désinvolture, they have no charm. The whole thing is tiresome. I shall never willingly go to England; but you, as a great English noble, ought to go there, and stay there——’
‘And marry there!’ said Geraldine, bitterly. ‘Is that the medicine you prescribe for all your friends?’
‘Of course you will marry some time,’ she said indifferently. ‘Men of your position always do; they think they owe it to their country. But whether you marry or not, go home and be useful. You have idled quite too much time away in following our changes of residence.’
He turned pale, and his eyes grew dark with subdued anger.
‘You want to be rid of me!’
‘Ah, that is just the kind of rough, rude thing which an Englishman always says. It is the reason why Englishmen do not please women much. No Italian or Frenchman or Russian would make such a stupid, almost brutal, remark as that; he would respect his own dignity and the courtesy of words too greatly.’
‘We are unpolished, even at our best; you have told me so fifty times,’ he said sullenly. ‘Well, let me be a savage, then, and ask for a savage mercy; a plain answer. You want me away?’