Standing up. Roger walked over to the sideboard to replenish his plate. While he was helping himself he went on, 'As for Talleyrand, of course he is a lecher of the first order and, following the custom of Foreign Ministers for centuries on the Continent—ah, and here too until Mr. Pitt came to power—he extracts huge bribes from Ambassadors to expedite their business. But he docs not allow that to influence his foreign policy, and he is as well-intentioned toward Britain as you or I. To me, knowing I am an Englishman, he has never made any secret of his basic belief. It is that no lasting prosperity can come to either France or Britain unless they make an accommodation over their differences. I have heard him say that a score of times and for years past he has been doing all he can towards that end, How I shall break to him this bitter blow of my failure with Mr. Pitt, I cannot think.'
'When do you plan to return to France?' the Colonel asked.
'Not for a week or so. I'll bide here until Georgina is well on the way to full recovery. But after I have reported my failure I hardly know what to do. This affair has sickened me of doing dangerous work for fools. I've a mind to retire gracefully from. General Bonaparte's service, then return here and settle down to a life of leisure. Think you, after all these years, I could persuade Georgina to marry me?'
The Colonel was well aware of Roger's relationship with Georgina, and he replied at once, 'My dear boy, nothing could give me greater pleasure. I have oft wished it; and the bar to your regularizing your great love for one another has been that your work has prevented you from living in England except for a month or two at long intervals. I know she feels it her duty to marry again now that her little Earl has reached an age when he needs a man to bring him up, and as your Susan shares Charles' nursery, by marrying Georgina you could become a real father to them both. Go to it, and good luck to you.'
'Thank you, sir,' Roger smiled. ' 'Twould not be fair to approach her yet on such a serious matter; but I will as soon as she is well enough.'
After breakfast Roger went out into the garden, where the children were playing in the snow with their nurse. Charles St. Ermins was now a stalwart boy rising five, and Susan, Roger's daughter by his second wife, a pretty little thing just turned four. Her mother having died she was being brought up by Georgina and, owing to Roger's long absences abroad, the children knew him only as an occasional visitor of a rather special kind; but he was good with small people and was soon building a snowman for them.
Recently a new dance had found its way to Paris and London from Vienna. It was a great innovation as, in the formal dances of the past, the man had never touched his partner, except to link hands in certain movements, whereas in this audacious measure, called the waltz, the man put his arm round the woman's waist and whirled her away across the floor. Using the pyramid-shaped skirt of a woman as a solid base and sticks with snow packed tightly round them to support the legs of the man and the arms of both, Roger spent most of the day creating a waltzing couple out of snow. His efforts delighted the children and took his own mind off his frustration.
During the week that followed, between intervals of sitting with Georgina, he made the children a toboggan track that curved down a long gentle slope; then got out from the coach house Georgina's beautiful sleigh, which was fashioned like a swan. Having had the lake swept of snow, he tied the two children firmly into the sleigh, then put on skates and propelled them round the long oval of ice at a speed that made them squeal with excitement and delight.
These long days spent playing with the children gave him a pleasure that he had never previously experienced and dissipated the last doubts he had had about the wisdom of abandoning his adventurous life for good. Thankfully he realized that, the children still being so young, it was not too late to enjoy with them the best years of their lives. Soon his active mind began to make a hundred plans for their welfare and amusement and indulge in happy daydreams of a new carefree existence in which he would luck them up in bed every night and wake with his beloved Georgina beside him every morning.
By January 8th Georgina's doctor declared her past all danger of a relapse. It was also Roger's birthday, so he and her father celebrated the double occasion by dining with her in her room. When in full health she was a ravishing creature with the full, voluptuous figure that was regarded in that Georgian age as the height of feminine beauty. Her face was heart-shaped, her eyes nearly black—enormous and sparkling with vitality Her eyebrows were arched and her full, bright-red lips disclosed at a glance her passionate and tempestuous nature. Now, owing to her illness, she had lost several pounds in weight, her cheeks were a little hollow and her lips still pale from the over-bleeding which had been inflicted on her before, on Roger's return, he had put a stop to it. But her eyes looked larger than ever, her white, even teeth still flashed when she smiled and, in Roger's eyes, her pallor made her more than ever desirable.
When they had finished dinner the Colonel left them. Roger then told her of his abortive mission and his decision to retire for good from Mr. Pitt's service.
At that she shook her dark curls and laid a hand on his arm:
'Dear Roger, disgust and disappointment may make you feel that way now, but I know you too well to believe that you would ever settle down for any length of time. 'Tis not in your nature, and you've been a rolling stone for too long. After a year or two the craving for excitement would drive you abroad again, if not for Mr. Pitt then on some other venture.'
'Nay,' he assured her. 'I'd like nothing better than to be done for good with courts and camps. I'm sick unto death of living a lie and risking my life to no good purpose. I mean that. I vow it, and 'tis high time you married again. Let us be wed. Georgina, and live happily ever after.'
She sighed, 'I would we could, but we've been over this time and again before; and you know full well that 'tis not alone my belief that you would not be long content to live an idle life that prevents my saying "yes". 'Tis only because we have never lived together for any length of time that we have never staled of one another, and when, at long intervals we are again united, both of us feel an immediate upsurge of desire for the other. The joy we derive from such a tenuous but enduring love far exceeds that to be hoped for from any marriage, and I count it too precious to jeopardize by becoming your wife.'
Roger knew only too well the soundness of her argument; yet during the past week he had so persuaded himself that only marriage to her could bring him lasting happiness that he endeavoured desperately to allay her fears, arguing that, now they had both turned thirty and had had many love affairs, there was no longer the same risk that they would tire of one another physically and their marriage come to grief, through one of them developing a passion for someone else.
Finding Georgina adamant to his pleas, he played his last card and said. 'It is two years now since we talked of this, and you said then that you must marry again so that young Charles could be brought up properly by a man; yet you are a widow still. And why? Obviously because you have failed to meet a man who you would care to have as a husband for yourself and as a father to the boy. Who better than myself could fill both roles: and even should your fears materialize that in time our desire for one another would wane, the children would form a lasting bond between us.’
She remained silent for a moment, then she said gravely, 'Roger, my love, it grieves me greatly to have to tell you this; but at least I find some consolation in that after your two years' absence you must have thought it probable you would find me no longer a widow. I have found such a man. He courted nic all through the Fall, and although we are not yet married, we will be in the Spring.'