Enchanted Autumn

by Mary Whistler

  “Mademoiselle Arden - my aunt, Madame Maignan,” he said. “Tante Clothilde, Adele is bringing you some real flowers instead of the rubbish you keep here.” He looked with distaste at the paper flowers. “How many more times must I tell you that those monstrosities are dust-traps, and that they are an offence to the eye? If you wish for the genuine article, you have but to order them, as you order your groceries.”

  “I know, my son, I know,” the old lady murmured soothingly. “But to buy flowers is an expense, and you are already far too generous. And we are happy with the familiar things around us.”

  Rene crushed out his cigarette in a china bowl, and looking at him Jane saw that he was frowning. It was a frown that drew his dark brows together above the bridge of his nose.

  “I was thinking of Adele,” he said, “It is not good for a child to live with that which is a fake, and even in the garden you have blooms which could be brought in.”

  But Madame Maignan looked as if she only partly understood what he was saying. It was clear to Jane that even if her hearing was reasonably acute, her wits were no longer what they once had been. She had a vacant expression on her face when she wasn’t actively attempting to smile in a somewhat placating fashion, and her fingers drummed aimlessly on the arms of her chair. When Adele came running in with her outsize box of chocolates and the tissue-wrapped flowers she clucked a little, as if simulating pleasure - or, again, attempting to simulate pleasure - and warned her that she would almost certainly be sick if she ate too many at a time. But when Adele’s face clouded she said at once, as if it was not in her nature even to attempt discipline: “There, there, petite! Do not listen to the old aunt! Do as you will with your present, my chicken!”

  But Adele forgot about her present while she once more paid attention to her father, and climbed on his knee, and rested her head against his shoulder. She looked up at him with adoring eyes, and Jane who wasn’t missing anything at all during this unexpected visit realized that his arms were holding her a little hungrily, as if this was an opportunity that was all too seldom his. His beautiful, sensitive fingers strayed amongst the coarse black hair that - Jane couldn’t help thinking - was not as well cared for as it might have been, and when he put it back from her forehead, he said: “You should have a ribbon to tie this back! ... Why does not Tante Clothilde tell Germaine to get you a ribbon?”

  Adele shook her head, as if the matter was quite unimportant, and reached up to stroke his cheek. “I do not know, Papa.”

  “But it is not good to have hair falling into your eyes. You look like a gypsy!”

  She smiled and dimples came with the smile. “I would like to be a gypsy, Papa - it would be fun!” Then her smile became tinged with wistfulness, and she looked up at him pleadingly. “How long do you stay this time, Papa? Is it - is it just a - very short visit?”

  “I’m afraid it is, Adele.”

  She sighed, rather a shuddering sigh for one so young. “I thought that perhaps it would not be for long that you would stay when I saw” - she turned her head round until her eyes rested on Jane - “that you had this lady with you. This lady whose hair is not all golden.” Her eyes continued to dwell upon Jane, and in spite of the disappointment over the hair a slow smile came. “But it is pretty hair that you have, madame ... N’est-ce pas, Papa?”

  “Very pretty,” he agreed, “And Miss Arden is not madame, she is mademoiselle.”

  “Which means that she has not yet a husband?”

  “No, she hasn’t a husband.”

  Adele settled down comfortably in her father’s arms, and went on studying Jane. Her eyes dropped to the rose that the young Englishwoman still retained lightly between the finger and thumb of her left hand, and she held out her hand for it.

  “It must have dropped from the bunch Papa bought specially for Tante Clothilde,” she said. “You will give it to me, mademoiselle?”

  For just a fraction of time Jane hesitated, and while she did so she felt - or was certain she could feel - Rene’s eyes on her. But there was no ignoring the peremptoriness of that childish request, and the last thing she would have done just then was deny the child anything. She handed over the rose with a peculiarly gentle, soft, sweet smile.

  But Rene said sharply: “No! That is Mademoiselle Arden’s rose, you greedy one! You must give it back!”

  But Adele shook her head quite firmly. “No, I will keep it,” she said. She smiled at Jane. “I will keep it and press it in a book, and when I look at it I will think of you, mademoiselle, and what nice brown eyes you have. Is that as you would wish?” - with the queer formality that distinguished most of her speech.

  “It is exactly as I would wish,” Jane assured her.

  “You see, Papa!” Adele peeped up at him impishly. “I am to keep the rose, and Mademoiselle Arden is not even angry with me!”

  Suddenly she wriggled off her father’s knee, and went across to Jane. She looked at her earnestly. “You will come and see me again?” she pleaded, softly. ‘I will show you my swing in the garden, and the shed where Tiger - that is our cat here - catches all the mice. And if you could stay long enough we might get Germaine to put up a basket for us, and have the picnic meal beside the river. Germaine makes cheese tarts melt in the mouth, and her macaroons are better than the ones you get in town. Much better!”

  “Then I will certainly find an opportunity to sample them,” Jane said. She leaned forward and kissed her impulsively. ‘That is if your papa has no objections to raise!”

  “Oh, Papa will not raise any objections ... Will you, Papa?” turning to him confidently.

  “No, I will not raise any objections,” Rene returned, and Jane thought his voice sounded a little odd.

  But outside in the car all she could think about was the child they had left - the small face glued to the window as they drove away. What was Rene thinking about to leave her in the care of an old lady long past caring about anything as young and vital as a child of Adele’s age? Surely, with all the money he possessed, the facilities that were undoubtedly his, he could do something better for her than that? It was plain that he adored her, just as she adored him ... But where was his real love for the child when he could drive off and leave her in that shut-in forest glade with the great trees meeting overhead, and enclosing her like a leafy trap?

  And she didn’t even look particularly well cared for. Whoever the excellent Germaine was who made macaroons that were better than the ones to be bought in the town, at least she might take time off from her baking to procure the ribbon that would keep Adele’s hair out of her eyes, and even devote a little time to improving the condition of the hair itself.

  In any well-conducted boarding-school Adele’s hair would be shining.

  “Well?” Rene said, as Jane remained silent, and they seemed to be taking rather a roundabout route to La Cause Perdue. “What do you think of my daughter? Or don’t you think very much of her?”

  Jane looked at him as if for the first time she hardly saw him. “I think - I think that she is very like you, and if she were my daughter I couldn’t bear to leave her where she is!”

  His mouth tightened. “She is safe with Tante Clothilde. I would not wish her to be elsewhere.”

  “But your aunt is old ... She - she hardly seems fitted to have the charge of a child! And all those paper flowers and - and the overcrowded room! And it is such a very lonely spot! Couldn’t you have her at the house? At La Cause Perdue?”

  “No.” He shook his head very firmly. “That would never do. And I wish you to understand, Jane, that Adele is very dear to me, and for her I plan only that which is for her good. Her mother - my wife! - was the one person in the world I loved better than myself, better than anything in the whole wide world, and - and she died when Adele was only three! She came from a little island off the Italian coast, and she was never very strong. In Northern France, where we lived - or where I had her installed, for it was impossible for me to be with her very much - the climate did not suit her
, and it was too late when I took her back to her island. Too late!” She wondered whether his eyes actually blurred as he stared at the road ahead, although the car never swerved from its even course.

  “I’m sorry,” Jane said. It was inadequate, and she knew it, but that was all she could say.

  “I vowed that I would never marry again! That no other woman should ever take her place!” The car seemed to leap over the rough forest track. “And when I make a vow I keep it!”

  Jane said nothing. There was no longer anything she could say.

  CHAPTER XI

  Sandra examined the purchases with an expression on her face that said plainly enough that she was trying to get the better of a state of vexation. She declared that the velvet didn’t match the belt exactly, but it would do, she supposed. The nail-varnish was no better than the one she was using, but there was not much point in entrusting other people to carry out commissions of that sort for one, and she would have to make do until she got back to Paris. Everything else was reasonably satisfactory, but that wasn’t saying much when Jane had been absent a whole morning.

  “If you’d taken the car yourself you could have got there and back in an hour and a half. Forty minutes for the journey, fifty minutes for the shopping.”

  So she really was annoyed, Jane thought, her heart sinking a little. She looked at Sandra closely, attempting to penetrate an assumed mask. “You know that Monsieur Delaroche” - she always referred to him as Monsieur Delaroche to Sandra - “drove me there and back, and that I didn’t take the Cadillac?”

  Sandra turned away, She snapped open the lid of a cigarette-box, and helped herself to a cigarette. “Yes, I know.” Her tone was short. “I’m not blaming you. He has the oddest way of behaving sometimes ... An infuriating habit of keeping out of reach, if you know what I mean. It’s just as if he occasionally thinks it necessary to warn one to Keep off the Grass! ... I once said he should wear a placard, as a warning to impressionable females, and that mightn’t be such a bad idea. Not that I find him anything more than an entertaining host, and I can truthfully say I’ve never had to chase after men ... It’s always been the other way round! But Rene Delaroche - unless it’s just a policy he pursues - has frequently struck me as not altogether human!”

  Jane watched her, waiting for her to go on - and Sandra went on. “Take the fact that he invited me here to stay! ... A romantic farmhouse, in a setting equally romantic ... In fact, so romantic that it’s going to figure in our film! But does he ever appear to feel the effects of all this concentrated romance? This lushness if you know what I mean! An encompassing forest, a garden full of all sorts of attractive little arbours and shady nooks - Not too many people about! But get him out into the moonlight - ask him to show you the pool with the water-lilies floating on it! And what happens?”

  “I don’t know,” Jane answered, her heart beating heavily.

  “You wouldn’t,” Sandra said, a little curtly. “Oh, at least, it’s hardly likely that you would. You haven’t built up a name like me ... You’re not billed all over the world as Sandra Van Doone, blonde dynamite! And it’s the first time I’ve had to work with a man - or had to face the possibility of working with a man - who shrugs me off when he feels like it, like a - well, as if I was a caterpillar that had dropped upon him from some branches overhead!”

  “Perhaps it’s because he’s a Frenchman,” Jane said, because she didn’t know what else to say.

  Sandra laughed hollowly. “A Frenchman!...” she exclaimed. “And have you never heard that to most Frenchmen and Frenchwomen - l’amour is everything! In America when we think of Paris we think of couples walking arm-in-arm on the banks of the Seine, and France is the only country where you can murder your lover and get away with it because a crime passionelle is the only crime that is easily understood.” She laughed more gratingly. “So don’t hand me that, honey!”

  Jane decided to tell her what had happened that morning and whom she had met, and Sandra looked at first astonished, and then interested. The only thing Jane omitted was Rene’s own admission about his marriage, and his wife, but Sandra had listened to gossip on the subject, and she knew that for some reason his one and only marriage had had a definite effect on the course of Rene’s life. But her conclusions were that it had been an unhappy marriage.

  “Why, otherwise, does he keep the child hidden away?” she wanted to know. “It’s not natural, is it?”

  “It’s possible he keeps her hidden away because he feels she is in some way - safe,” Jane offered it as her opinion.

  “Rubbish!” Sandra exclaimed. “Safe in the heart of a lonely forest, with only an old woman and a servant to keep an eye on her? And how much does he see of her, anyway? You say he’s obviously devoted to her! ... If that were the case surely he would want to see her more often?”

  Then she regarded Jane with curiosity. “And why did he take you to see her? ... Why, when there are several of us here, has he never mentioned such a thing as a daughter to any of us? But he takes you to see her! ... And the elderly aunt!” Her lovely eyes narrowed. “Jane, you had him to yourself for a couple of days before we arrived, and it’s noticeable that he doesn’t like you to be left out of anything ... He fixed you up with a comfortable office when you could have worked very well in your own room, and he drives you into town when he could have been spending his time with me. I’m not jealous,” she said slowly, and suddenly Jane was quite certain that she was jealous – “but I am curious!”

  “There is nothing to be in the least curious about,” Jane assured her, gathering up the one or two packages that were her own purchases that morning, and preparing to leave the room.

  “I wish I could be absolutely certain of that,” Sandra followed her to the door. “Jane, honey, you’re a nice kid, and the reason I brought you to France was because I honestly believe you’re a sensible kid. But I know now you haven’t had very much experience of men ... Now, I’m a different proposition altogether!... With me, men come, and men go, and there’s always Mark, like the Rock of Gibraltar, eager and anxious to console me if I do get my fingers burned! But you’re in rather a lonely position ... I know you’ve got no one now you’ve lost your father, and, honestly, honey, I feel responsible for you!”

  Jane sent her a smile from her brown eyes, for this was the Sandra who made her happy just because she had been chosen to work for her. The Sandra who was honest, and humane, and generous - not only at giving - and not really in the least covetous.

  “That’s sweet of you, Sandra,” she acknowledged, gratefully. “But you don’t have to worry about me - I give you my word!”

  “Well, I hope it isn’t a word you’ll go back on one of these days!”

  Jane shook her head. “I’m one hundred per cent sensible - as you said.”

  But Sandra looked at her doubtfully. “There are occasions when sense doesn’t enter into things... And I doubt whether anyone is one hundred per cent sensible!”

  Jane seized the opportunity to put in a word for Mark. “His devotion may be rock-like, but you do test it a bit at times. It doesn’t seem altogether fair ... Couldn’t you decide that there are qualities about a rock it would be a pity to lose?”

  “Don’t worry,” Sandra reassured her, grinning a little. “I’ve always been able to recognize sterling merit! ... And one of these days I’ll make it up to Mark. I’ll make it all up to him!”

  And Jane was glad to be able to make her escape on such a harmonious note.

  But the rest of the day there was very little harmony inside herself. She felt not so much as if her eyes had been opened wide for her, but having been opened they would have to stay open, and she would have to accustom herself to seeing Rene Delaroche in an entirely different light. Not as the popular entertainer, not even as Etienne who hadn’t hesitated to deceive her, although he had protested there had been no real deception about it.

  In future he would be Etienne - and now she knew that he would always be Etienne to her, as apparently
he was to his family - who had a small daughter he adored, and whose wife had died, and left him a bitterly unhappy man. A man who had taken a vow never to marry again, never to put any woman in her place, and therefore never to overcome the bitterness. For with time the grief would fade, but with encouragement the bitterness would send out roots and become more and more deeply embedded in the part of his being he kept hidden from the world, until it was a sort of cancer that affected his whole attitude to life.

  It had already done so. That was why she had once thought him hard, and why she had been certain he was cynical. Why he had assured her that nothing was permanent, and nothing was worth while. He hadn’t said nothing was worth while, but she knew that was what he thought. His success he accepted because he had worked for it - and because, no doubt, he thought he deserved it - and people and places were his means of providing himself with necessary distractions. People like Sandra, and the gallery of beautiful women in ornamental frames who cluttered up the shelves in his library... The blondes and the brunettes and the red-heads who signed themselves “With love,” and “Always in my thoughts”. Even a girl like herself, who was slightly different from those other women, and who intrigued him a little.

  But Jane didn’t mind very much whether she intrigued him, or what he thought about her, as she struggled through the remainder of that day. She only wished that it was within her power to do something to help his bitterness, and to do something to make his daughter look a little more happy and cared for.

  It was pathetic, she thought, the way those two had rushed at one another. Two pairs of dark eyes lighting up, and yet remaining heavily wistful at the same time, because those were moments snatched from the demands of a civilized life. Civilized on the father’s side, uncivilized on the child’s.