Roderick gave a good impression of what he would be like at forty-five. He read, like one communicating a knotty minute to a Civil Service superior, some telegrams of congratulation, most of which were from Canada and one or two from Oxford friends which had to be read with restraint. The Bride was toasted by Uncle Arthur Cornish, who described her in terms that made Ismay giggle unsuitably and chilled Francis, who detected in it allusions to his money, and satisfaction that it was not going out of the family. Francis replied, briefly, and made insincere protestations of humility and gratitude toward the Bride’s parents, who liked that part of his speech very much, but thought it could have been even more forcibly put. As he spoke, Francis had to overcome whispering among the guests who had not met him, and hissed, “An American? Nobody told me he was an American.” “Not American—Canadian.” “Well, what’s the difference?” “They’re touchier, that’s what.” “They say he’s very wealthy.” “Oh, so that’s it,” Then the Best Man toasted the bridesmaids, and was arch about the fact that, as they were his little sisters, he could not say too much in their favour, but he had hopes that they would improve. The bridesmaids took this with scarlet faces and occasional murmurs of Oh, I say, Roddy, pack it in, can’t you? Roderick told about the time he and his sisters had put a dead adder in the groom’s bed, and an indecency had to be frowned down when Old George Trethewey, a cousin but not a favourite, shouted drunkenly that they’d put something a damned sight better in his bed now. And finally the tenant who farmed the biggest of St. Columb’s farms toasted The Happy Couple, and was somewhat indiscreet in hinting that the coming of new blood (he did not say new money) into the family promised well for the future of agriculture at St. Columb’s. But at last it was over, the wedding cake had been deflowered and distributed, every hand had been shaken; the Bride had flung her bouquet from the front door with such force that it took her sister Amabel full in the face, and the couple sped away in a hired car toward Truro, where they were to catch a train.

In Lausanne there was no difficulty about having Ismay entered as a student, with credit for the year she had already completed at Oxford. In Montreux it was not hard to find a pension with a living room and a bedroom, the latter containing a couch on which she or Aunt Prudence could sleep when they occupied the place together. But it all meant laying out money in sums small and large, and Francis, who had never had experience of this sort of slow bleeding, undertaken in a cause which was not nearest his heart, suffered an early bout of the outraged parsimony which was to visit him so often in later life. Stinginess does nothing to improve the looks, and Ismay commented that he was becoming hatchet-faced.

His life with Ismay was agreeable, but it had none of the old lustre. She was more beautiful than ever, and the carelessness with which she had always dressed now seemed a fine disdain for trivialities. Only a very sharp eye would have discerned that she was pregnant, but when she was naked she had a new opulence, and Francis drew her as often as was possible. A really beautiful woman should have a figure like a ‘cello, he said, running his hand appreciatively over her swelling belly. But though he loved her, he had ceased to worship her, and sometimes they snapped at one another, because Ismay’s broad speech, which he had once thought so delightful, grated on his nerves now.

“Well, if you didn’t like the way I talk, you shouldn’t have knocked me up.”

“I wish you wouldn’t use vulgar expressions like that, as if we were that sort of person. If you want to talk dirty, talk dirty, but for God’s sake don’t talk common.”

Irritatingly, Ismay would respond to this sort of thing by singing Ophelia’s song, quietly and reflectively, in a Cockney accent:

“That should be all right,” she murmured, apparently to the walls. “Shakespeare. Good old Shakers, the darling of the OUDS. Nothing common about him. You can’t get classier than Shakers.”

Francis could not linger in Montreux. He had to return to Oxford, and he did so with no time to spare before the beginning of the Michaelmas Term. He had made a mess of things with Ismay, he told himself. Not that he was sorry to have married her, but that should have come later. Now he had to leave her when surely she needed him with her—though she had been calm enough when he went. After all, Aunt Prudence was going to her in a few weeks. He knew nothing about the matter, but he had a vague impression that a pregnant woman needed her husband close by, to run out and get her pickles and ice cream if she should have a sick fancy for them in the middle of the night, and to gloat romantically over the new life that was gathering within her. The doctor in Montreux had taken it philosophically when he explained that he must return to England, and assured him that everything would be quite all right. Well—it had to be all right. He was determined to get his degree, and get the best class he could manage. This sudden bump in the road should not rob him of that. So he settled to work, and worked very hard, almost entirely giving up drawing and painting, and refusing a tempting offer to assist a distinguished designer in preparing a garden performance of The Tempest for the OUDS.

He was able to spend Christmas with Ismay, and found her, now obviously pregnant, and even more obviously a European student, accustomed to speak French more often than English, and deep in Spanish studies. She had enjoyed herself, once she had persuaded her mother to return to England and stop fussing over her. This sort of student life suited her as the formality of Oxford had never done. They spent, on the whole, a very amicable Christmas holiday, much of it in Ismay’s living-room, smoking countless stinking French cigarettes and pursuing their university work. They conversed entirely in French and Ismay liked his lingering French-Canadian accent. It was “of the people” she said and she approved of anything that was of the people.

He was with her in February, when the child was born. Pensions are not accommodated to childbirth, and Ismay was in a small private hospital, which cost a lot of money. Aunt Prudence was there, too, and she and Francis had an uneasy time of it in the pension rooms. Francis hauled the couch out of the bedroom into the sitting-room for himself, and Aunt Prudence, though well aware that the bed was due to her sex and seniority, nevertheless accused herself daily of being a nuisance.

The child was born without incident, but surrounded by the usual grandmotherly and fatherly anxiety. Indeed, Francis was nervously wretched until he had seen the little girl and been assured by the doctor that she was perfect in every way. Had he expected anything else? Francis did not say what he had feared.

“She’s the absolute image of her father,” said Aunt Prudence, smiling at Francis.

“Yes, she’s the image of her father,” Ismay agreed, smiling at no one.

To Francis the child looked like every baby he had ever seen, but he did not say so.

The question of a name for the child arose almost at once. Francis had no ideas, but Ismay was perhaps more maternal than she liked to admit. The child was sucking at her breast when she made a suggestion.