The Blessing by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing
Published: 2010-02-04T23:00:00+00:00

When Charles-Edouard got back, not very late, she was in bed, crying dreadfully.

‘Why do you weep?’ he said, with great solicitude.

‘Because you’re in love.’

‘I am in love?’

‘With Juliette.’

‘Why do you say this?’

‘I was at the Russian place. I saw you.’

Charles-Edouard looked very much taken aback. ‘But you never go to night places.’

‘I know. I hate them, but Hughie wanted to –’

‘Ha! You’ve been out with Hughie?’

‘I told you we were all going to dine here, me and Hughie and the Dexters. Well the Dexters went on to a party after dinner so Hughie and I – Oh Charles Edouard, you’re in love with her?’

He raised his hand, shook his head, and replied, ‘Not at all.’

‘Then why were you looking so happy?’

‘Would I look happy if I were in love with Juliette? It would be very inconvenient, after all she is my cousin’s wife. No, I look happy because I am happy – happy in my life and with you, and then I do love to go out with a pretty woman.’

‘Why did you pretend you were going to dine with Tante Edmonde?’

‘But my dear Grace, it was no pretence at all. I did dine there. It so happens that Juliette also was dining with her mother-in-law. Jean has gone to Picardy; she was alone in her flat so she dined downstairs. When I had finished talking with my aunt I took her out for half an hour before bed-time. I didn’t want to come back here and find your dinner still going on.’

‘Oh!’ This sounded so reasonable. ‘Oh dear, I’m sorry to make a scene and I do apologize.’

‘For what? The rights of passion have been proclaimed once and for all in the French Revolution.’

‘The worst part of the whole thing,’ said Grace, tears beginning to well into her eyes again, ‘is that what I minded so terribly was your look of happiness. I am supposed to love you and yet I mind you looking happy. When you were sad, when your grandmother died, I was sorry, of course, but I could easily bear it – now I find that what I can’t bear is for you to look happy. What can it mean, it doesn’t make sense.’

‘That, I’m afraid,’ said Charles-Edouard, ‘is love.’

‘But what can I do! I can’t live with somebody whom I would rather see sad than happy. Perhaps I’d better go back to England?’

‘No. Do stay.’

Grace laughed. ‘You say that as if you were asking me for a week-end.’

‘Do stay, for good.’

‘I can’t bear to make scenes, I’m ashamed of myself, it is dreadful.’

‘You won’t have to very often.’

‘I shall begin to imagine all sorts of things whenever you go out.’

‘That would be the greatest pity – imaginative women are terrible. Now let’s calmly consider what did happen this evening. What did you actually see? Juliette and me, sitting quite properly at a table in a perfectly proper establishment. I was not looking unhappy, but then I have no reason to, I’m not a White Russian violinist.

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