The interview was not, from Léon’s point of view, at all what it should have been.
Mr. Pinsent had no sense of form. He hardly listened to Léon’s statement of his affairs, and he made no statement at all of his own intentions. He walked up and down the rather cold, deserted salon talking about Rose having had pneumonia when she was twelve, and how sensitive she was, and how much he would miss her. She was quite the best bridge player of the three girls, and her golf was coming on splendidly.
He said he thought Paris hardly the kind of place for a real home life. He hadn’t seen any there, some years ago, when he and Mrs. Pinsent stayed in the Rue de Rivoli. He added that he couldn’t really feel as if Rose would like continually hearing French spoken all round her. It was quite different from being abroad for a time and coming home again afterwards. Mr. Pinsent laid his hand on Léon’s shoulder and sentimentalized the situation in a way that shocked Léon’s whole nature.
Emotion should take place (enough of it, for a mere betrothal) between Léon and Rose; it shouldn’t take place between Rose’s father and Léon, and as for talking about the feeling of a man for a good woman, nothing could have been more out of place. You simply, of course, didn’t talk of it. Mr. Pinsent, however, did.
“Of course we must go into everything very carefully later on,” Mr. Pinsent finished, rubbing the back of his head. “Rose seems to have set her heart on you--we must all hope you can make her happy.”
Then Mr. Pinsent shook hands with Léon and seemed to think there was nothing more to be said.
They never did go into anything later on. In the first place, Madame de Brenteuil refused point blank to meet Mrs. Pinsent. “If,” she said to Léon, “your mother sanctions your engagement, we have decided to permit ourselves to speak to the girl. Her family we will never accept. More you must not demand of us.”
Madame Legier wrote two letters--one to Léon in which she said if he was sure of getting £500 a year, and the girl was healthy--and agreed to bring up the children as Catholics--she supposed it was better to close with it, though Heaven knew how they would fit things in, the English temperament being as stubborn as wood, and his father most unaccommodating when he was there; and another letter to Rose in which she welcomed her into the family and said what confidence she had in Léon’s choice, and how she and her husband looked forward to the brightening of their future lives by the sight of their children’s happiness.
Monsieur Legier wrote a third letter which Mrs. Pinsent translated to her husband. He said something about a lawyer in it, but Mr. Pinsent said nothing would induce him to see a French lawyer, English ones were bad enough.
Rose didn’t give anybody time to do much more. She announced that she wanted to be married at once and spend her honeymoon at Capri.