But she would always act according to the conventions of her class, even perversely. And I knew it.
So, just before the war she married Lord Lathkill. She was twenty-one. I did not see her till war was declared; then she asked me to lunch with her and her husband, in town. He was an officer in a Guards regiment, and happened to be in uniform, looking very handsome and well-set-up, as if he expected to find the best of life served up to him for ever. He was very dark, with dark eyes and fine black hair, and a very beautiful, diffident voice, almost womanish in its slow, delicate inflections. He seemed pleased and flattered at having Carlotta for a wife.
To me he was beautifully attentive, almost deferential, because I was poor, and of the other world, those poor devils of outsiders. I laughed at him a little, and laughed at Carlotta, who was a bit irritated by the gentle delicacy with which he treated me.
She was elated too. I remember her saying, "We need war, don't you think? Don't you think men need the fight, to keep life chivalrous and put martial glamour into it?"
And I remember saying, "I think we need some sort of fight; but my sort isn't the war sort." It was August, we could take it lightly.
"What's your sort?" she asked quickly.
"I don't know: single-handed, anyhow," I said, with a grin. Lord Lathkill made me feel like a lonely sansculotte; he was so completely unostentatious, so very willing to pay all the attention to me, and yet so subtly complacent, so unquestioningly sure of his position. Whereas I was not a very sound earthenware pitcher which had already gone many times to the well.
He was not conceited, not half as conceited as I was. He was willing to leave me all the front of the stage, even with Carlotta. He felt so sure of some things, like a tortoise in a glittering, polished tortoiseshell that mirrors eternity. Yet he was not quite easy with me.
"You are Derbyshire?" I said to him, looking into his face. "So am I! I was born in Derbyshire."
He asked me with a gentle, uneasy sort of politeness, where? But he was a bit taken aback. And his dark eyes, brooding over me, had a sort of fear in them. At the centre they were hollow with a certain misgiving. He was so sure of circumstances, and not by any means sure of the man in the middle of the circumstances. Himself! Himself! That was already a ghost.