Rex and Brenda Champion were staying at the next villa on Cap Ferrat, taken that year by a newspaper magnate, and frequented by politicians. They would not normally have come within Lady Rosscommon's ambit, but, living so close, the parties mingled and at once, Rex began warily to pay his court.
All that summer he had been feeling restless. Mrs Champion had proved a dead end; it had all been intensely exciting at first, but now the bonds had begun to chafe. Mrs Champion lived as, he found, the English seemed apt to do, in a little world within a little world; Rex demanded a wider horizon. He wanted to consolidate his gains; to strike the black ensign, go ashore, hang the cutlass up over the chimney, and think about the crops. It was time he married; he, too, was in search of a 'Eustace', but, living as he did, he met few girls. He knew of Julia; she was by all accounts top debutante, a suitable prize.
With Mrs Champion's cold eyes watching behind her sunglasses, there was little Rex could do at Cap Ferrat except establish a friendliness which could be widened later. He was never entirely alone with Julia, but he saw to it that she was included in most things they did; he taught her chemin-de-fer, he arranged that it was always in his car that they drove to Monte Carlo or Nice; he did enough to make Lady Rosscommon. write to Lady Marchmain, and Mrs Champion move him, sooner than they had planned, to Antibes.
Julia went to Salzburg to join her mother.
'Aunt Fanny tells me you made great friends with Mr Mottram. I'm sure he can't be very nice.'
'I don't think he is,' said Julia. 'I don't know that I like nice people.'
There is proverbially a mystery among most men of new wealth, how they made their first ten thousand; it is the qualities they showed then, before they became bullies, when every man was someone to be placated, when only hope sustained them and they could count on nothing from the world but what could be charmed from it, that make them, if they survive their triumph, successful with women. Rex, in the comparative freedom of London, became abject to Julia; he planned his life about hers where he would meet her, ingratiating himself with those who could report well of him to her; he sat on a number of charitable committees in order to be near Lady Marchmain; he offered his services to Brideshead in getting him a seat in Parliament (but was there rebuffed); he expressed a keen interest in the Catholic Church until he found that this was no way to Julia's heart. He was always ready to drive her in his Hispano wherever she wanted to go; he took her and parties of her friends to ring-side seats at prize-fights and introduced them afterwards to the pugilists; and all the time he never once made love to her. From being agreeable, he became indispensable to her; from having been proud of him in public she became a little ashamed, but by that time, between Christmas and Easter, he had become indispensable. And then, without in the least expecting it, she suddenly found herself in love.
It came to her, this disturbing and unsought revelation, one evening in May, when Rex had told her he would be busy at the House, and, driving by chance down Charles Street, she saw him leaving what she knew to be Brenda Champion's house. She was so hurt and angry that she could barely keep up appearances through dinner; as soon as she could, she went home and cried bitterly for ten minutes; then she felt hungry, wished she had eaten more at dinner, ordered some bread-and-milk, and went to bed saying: 'When Mr Mottram telephones in the morning, whatever time it is, say I am not to be disturbed.'
Next day she breakfasted in bed as usual, read the papers, telephoned to her friends. Finally she asked: 'Did Mr Mottram ring up by any chance?'
'Oh yes my lady four times. Shall I put him through when he rings again?'
'Yes. No. Say I've gone out.'
When she came downstairs there was a message for her on the hall table. Mr Mottram expects Lady Julia at the Ritz at 1.30. 'I shall lunch at home today, ' she said.
That afternoon she went shopping with her mother; they had tea with an aunt and returned at six.
'Mr Mottram is waiting, my Lady. I've shown him into the library.'
'Oh, mummy, I can't be bothered with him. Do tell him to go home.'
'That's not at all kind, Julia. I've often said he's not my favourite among your friends, but I have grown quite used to him, almost to like him. You really mustn't take people up and drop them like this - particularly people like Mr Mottram.'
Oh, mummy, must I see him? There'll be a scene if I do.'
'Nonsense, Julia, you twist that poor man round your finger.'
So Julia went into the library and came out an hour later engaged to be married.
'Oh, mummy, I warned you this would happen if I went in there.'
'You did nothing of the kind. You merely said there would be a scene. I never conceived of a scene of this kind.'
'Anyway, you do like him, mummy. You said so.'
'He has been very kind in a number of ways. I regard him as entirely unsuitable as your husband. So will everyone.'
'Damn everybody.'
'We know nothing about him. He may have black blood - in fact he is suspiciously dark. Darling, the whole thing's impossible. I can't see how you can have been so foolish.'
'Well, what right have I got otherwise to be angry with him if he goes with that horrible old woman? You make a great thing about rescuing fallen women. Well, I'm rescuing, a fallen man for a change. I'm saving Rex from mortal sin.'
'Don't be irreverent, Julia.'
'Well, isn't it mortal sin to sleep with Brenda Champion?'
'Or indecent.'
'He's promised never to see her again. I couldn't ask him to do that unless I admitted I was in love with him could I?'
'Mrs Champion's morals, thank God, are not my business. Your happiness is. If you must know, I think Mr Mottram a kind and useful friend, but I wouldn't trust him an inch, and I'm sure he'll have very unpleasant children. They always revert. I've no doubt you'll regret the whole thing in a few days. Meanwhile nothing is to be done. No one must be told anything or allowed to suspect. You must stop lunching with him. You may see him here, of course, but nowhere in public. You had better send him to me and I will have a little talk to him about it.' Thus began a year's secret engagement for Julia; a time of great stress, for Rex made love to her that afternoon for the first time; not, as had happened to her once or twice before with sentimental and uncertain boys, but with a passion that disclosed the corner of something like it in her. Their passion frightened her, and she came back from the confessional one day determined to put an end to it.
'Otherwise I must stop seeing you,' she said.
Rex was humble at once, just as he had been in the winter, day after day, when he used to wait for her in the cold in his big car.
'If only we could be married immediately,' she said.
For six weeks they remained at arm's length, kissing when they met and parted, sitting meantime at a distance, talking of what they would do and where they would live and of Rex's chances of an under-secretaryship. Julia was content, deep in love, living in the future. Then, just before the end of the session, she learned that Rex had been staying the week-end with a stockbroker at Sunningdale, when he said he was at his constituency, and that Mrs Champion had been there, too.
On the evening she heard of this, when Rex came as usual to Marchmain House, they re-enacted the scene of two months before.
'What do you expect?' he said. 'What right have you to ask so much, when you give so little?'
She took her problem to Farm Street and propounded it in general terms, not in the confessional, but in a dark little parlour kept for such interviews.
'Surely, Father, it can't be wrong to commit a small sin myself in order to keep him from a much worse one?'
But the gentle old Jesuit was unyielding. She barely listened to him; he was refusing her what she wanted, that was all she needed to know.
When he had finished he said, 'Now you had better make your confession.'
'No, thank you,' she said, as though refusing the offer of something in a shop. 'I don't think I want to today,' and walked angrily home.
From that moment she shut her mind against her religion.
And Lady Marchmain saw this and added it to her new grief for Sebastian and her old grief for her husband and to the deadly sickness in her body, and took all these sorrows with her daily to church; it seemed her heart was transfixed with the swords of her dolours, a living heart to match the plaster and paint; what comfort she took home with her, God knows.
So the year-wore on and the secret of the engagement spread from Julia's confidantes to their confidantes, until, like ripples at last breaking on the mud-verge, there were hints of it in the Press, and Lady Rosscommon as Lady-in-Waiting was closely questioned about it, and something had to be done. Then, after Julia had refused to make her Christmas communion and Lady Marchmain had found herself betrayed first by me, then by Mr Samgrass, then by Cordelia, in the first grey days of 1925, she decided to act. She forbade all talk of an engagement; she forbade Julia and Rex ever to meet; she made plans for shutting Marchmain House for six months and taking Julia on a tour of visits to their foreign kinsmen. It was characteristic of an old, atavistic callousness that went with her delicacy that, even at this crisis, she did not think it unreasonable to put Sebastian in Rex's charge on the journey to Dr Borethus, and Rex, having failed her in that matter, went on to Monte Carlo, where he completed her rout. Lord Marchmain did not concern himself with the finer points of Rex's character; those, he believed, were his daughter's business. Rex seemed a rough, healthy, prosperous fellow whose name was already familiar to him from reading the political reports; he gambled in an open-handed but sensible manner; he seemed to keep reasonably good company; he had a future; Lady Marchmain disliked him. Lord Marchmain was, on the whole, relieved that Julia should have chosen so well, and gave his consent to an immediate marriage.
Rex gave himself to the preparations with gusto. He bought her a ring, not, as she expected, from a tray at Cartier's, but in a back room in Hatton Garden from a man who brought stones out of a safe in little bags and displayed them for her on a writing-desk; then another man in another back room made designs for the setting, with a stub of pencil on a sheet, of note-paper, and the result excited the admiration of all her friends.
'How d you know about these things, Rex?' she asked.
She was daily surprised by the things he knew and the things he did not know; both, at the time, added to his attraction.
His present house in Hertford Street was large enough for them both, and had lately been furnished and decorated by the most expensive firm. Julia said she did not want a house in the country yet; they could always take places furnished when they wanted to go away.
There was trouble about the marriage settlement with which Julia refused to interest herself. The lawyers were in despair. Rex absolutely refused to settle any capital. 'What do I want with trustee stock?' he asked.
'I don't know, darling.'
'I make money work for me,' he said. 'I expect fifteen, twenty per cent and I get it. It's pure waste tying up capital at three and a half'
'I'm sure it is, darling.'
'These fellows talk as though I were trying to rob you. It's they who are doing the robbing. They want to rob you of two thirds of the income I can make you.'
'Does it matter, Rex? We've got heaps, haven't we?'
Rex hoped to have the whole of Julia's dowry in his hands, to make it work for him. The lawyers insisted on tying it up, but they could not get, as they asked, a like sum from him. Finally, grudgingly, he agreed to insure his life, after explaining at length to the lawyers that this was merely a device for putting part of his legitimate profits into other people's pockets; but he had some connection with an insurance office which made the arrangement slightly less painful to him, by which he took for himself the agent's commission which the lawyers were themselves expecting.
Last and least came the question of Rex's religion. He had once attended a royal wedding in Madrid, and he wanted something of the kind for himself.
'That's one thing your Church can do,' he said, 'put on a good show. You never saw anything to equal the cardinals. How many do you have in England?'
'Only one, darling.'
'Only one? Can we hire some others from abroad?'
It was then explained to him that a mixed marriage was a very unostentatious affair.
'How d'you mean "mixed";' I'm not a nigger or anything.'
'No, darling, between a Catholic and a Protestant.'
'Oh, that? Well, if that's all, it's soon unmixed. I'll become a Catholic. What does one have to do?'
Lady Marchmain was dismayed and perplexed by this new development; it was no good her telling herself that in charity she must assume his good faith; it brought back memories of another courtship and another conversion.
'Rex,' she said. 'I sometimes wonder if you realize how big a thing you are taking on in the Faith. It would be very wicked to take a step like this without believing sincerely.'
He was masterly in his treatment of her.
'I don't pretend to be a very devout man,' he said, 'nor much of a theologian, but I know it's a bad plan to have two religions in one house. A man needs a religion. If your Church is good enough for Julia, it's good enough for me.'
'Very well,' she said, 'I will see about having you instructed.'
'Look, Lady Marchmain, I have the time. Instruction will be wasted on me. Just you give me the form and I'll sign on the dotted line.'
