“Now, my little plan is that you should come and stay with us for a week or two, and allow us to arrange for you this very suitable match. If you will agree to this, I will discharge all your obligations, and there will be no further need to refer to the Bank, nor,” added Romain with a faint smile, “to the—career! And, my dear boy, you will get the taste out of your mouth of this very bad furniture! Come! The little Pauline looks well, and really you need see very little of her! I can promise you from my own experience that with a little tact and the discrimination we were talking of just now, one’s wife is the woman of all others with whom we need have least to do. I myself will see that suitable settlements are drawn up.”
There were moments during Romain’s speech when Jean hesitated. His uncle had a way of making ideals seem very silly affairs. Jean hated marriage, he disliked Pauline, the life before him had in it nothing that could rivet his heart, and yet so great was his shame and his sense of moral exhaustion that he listened with a feeling of relief. Perhaps this was the best way out of his false start; perhaps work and courage and privation were not worth the sacrifices one made for them; the flesh that he had thought so little of as a temptation, when he was leading the higher life, seemed different now—it became, after all, the respectable thing, as, indeed, it very often is. He was young enough to despise good food, but Liane had taught him to think about his clothes, and he already shrank from small rooms and sordid surroundings; he had learned that poverty is not romantic when it is uncomfortable; and it is generally uncomfortable. Other men paid the same price that he would have to pay; it seemed a mean thing to do, but Pauline wanted his name; it would be an equivalent—she would expect no more of him; and he? Had he ceased already, then, to expect anything from himself? Romain watched him with speculative eyes. He hoped very much Jean would be sensible. He hardly acknowledged to himself that he would respect Jean less if he was.
It was at this moment that Margot began to sing. She thought Jean’s fine uncle must be gone by now, and she was longing to go to Jean, because she had some very good news for him, news which made her spirit dance and her eyes shine, and the voice that came from her glad little heart took wings and flew to meet her comrade. He would be sure to hear her and call out for her to come in.
But Jean did not call her in just yet. Instead he turned a little brusquely towards Romain. “I am immensely grateful to you, mon oncle,” he said, “but I could not think of accepting your plan for a moment. I shall get on somehow, you know.” Romain D’Ucelles shrugged his shoulders and held out his hand, smiling his thin, bored smile.
“Think it over, my dear boy, think it over,” he said. “There is no hurry, you are the only pretender yet in the field. And as for the little girl here, you know, why really there’s no particular reason why you should give that up!”
“There’s one thing I’ll never do!” said Jean to himself, as he watched his uncle’s head disappearing slowly down the precipitous drop of the stairs. “Never! Never! Never!”
He did not refer to his marriage with Pauline.
CHAPTER XIV
IT was some time before Jean called Margot into his room; and when he did there was something in his expression which made her forget her happy news. He looked unlike himself and as if something had shocked him.
He walked up and down for an interminable time without speaking, while Margot fingered nervously at one of the superfluous woollen mats.