Enchanted Autumn

by Mary Whistler

  “I’ll see you again?” he said, when they parted at last. She had the feeling that he would have liked to linger out there in the neon-pricked dusk - particularly down by the river, where they had watched the restless ripples on the water, and couples had swung by hand in hand, and the night wind had whispered so softly, and autumn-gold leaves had fluttered past their ears - but he hadn’t done so. “I’ll see you again soon, Jane?” - more urgently. “Tomorrow?”

  “Yes - tomorrow,” she said at last, with a faint sigh in the words. And he did the very thing Etienne had not done. He carried her hand when she put it into his up to his lips, and kissed it very gently. “Good night, little Jane!” he said.

  Upstairs in her room, which she reached without running into anyone she knew, she discovered that the ivory telephone beside her bed was ringing. The soft, insistent burr of it filled the room, but just as she lifted the receiver it was about to die into silence.

  “Is that you, Jane?” The voice on the other end of the line was unmistakable. “Jane, I’ve been ringing and ringing! I’ve got to see you! Jane, I’ve got to see you! Where have you been all this time?”

  Jane glanced at the watch on her wrist. It was four a.m.

  “Oh, I don’t quite know ... Nowhere in particular. Just with Michael.”

  He didn’t seem to be in the least interested in this admission. “Jane, may I come round?” he asked.

  “But - but why?” She was astounded. “Etienne, what’s wrong?”

  His voice sounded choked as he answered. “It’s Adele! Oh, Jane, she’s had an accident! It was that swing she liked so much ... It snapped, or, at least, it let her down! Mon Dieu, what shall I do? She’s in hospital! ... Jane, I’m going to her now, and you’ve got to come with me! You will, won’t you? You won’t fail me! Please, Jane,” he begged.

  CHAPTER XV

  Jane had never known Sandra so uninhibitedly angry as she was when she returned to her hotel at five in the morning to find Jane hurriedly packing a suitcase.

  Etienne was waiting in the sitting-room of the suite, and Jane was half in and half out of a tailored suit, and there was a look on her face which clearly indicated that she couldn’t move fast enough. Her hands fumbled as she thrust down the lid of the suitcase, and she didn’t seem to know where to look for her handbag. When she found it at last she still had to check whether it held all the important items she might need.

  “Are you mad?” Sandra demanded, leaning up against the wardrobe, her face a pale mask of indignation. “Do you realize what you’re doing? Dashing off at the behest of a man who certainly wouldn’t do the same thing for you! ... If you had a daughter involved in an accident, would he leave everything and rush with you to her bedside? Not if I know anything at all about Rene!... And are you going to try and make me believe that a man who won a couple of decorations for valour - for valour! - can’t take the news that his precious Adele fell out of a swing without dragging you into it?”

  Jane looked at her almost pleadingly. “You don’t understand, Sandra, he thinks the world of the child.”

  “So what?” Sandra asked tersely. “Are you supposed to think the world of her, too? Or is it simply for moral support that he’s taking you along!”

  “He does need someone to support him just now,” Jane said quietly. “It has been a shock to him.”

  Sandra clicked her teeth. “And can’t he take a shock?...” She moved closer to Jane. “Jane, you might as well admit it! ... You’re in love with him, aren’t you? You’ve been in love with him from the very beginning! And just when I was beginning to hope that you might get over him and fall for Michael Pennington, this had to happen! How do you think Michael will take your haring off at a moment’s notice with Rene?”

  “It has nothing to do with Michael,” Jane said stiffly.

  “Oh, yes, it has! It has a great deal to do with him .... And you know it! Jane” - almost pleadingly - “I don’t want you to mess up your life. Not for a Frenchman who won’t adequately repay you for what you’re doing now! ... If I thought he’d marry you I wouldn’t mind so much, but how much notice did he take of you last night? Until he suddenly needed you!...” She sighed, as if she suddenly realized the futility of saying much more, because Jane was not to be dissuaded. “All right, Jane!... You provide the shoulder to weep on, but don’t let him do more than weep over you! And I’ll be expecting you back within a couple of days - or a week at the outside! I’ll wait here for you, and I’ll tell Monsieur Delaroche that I intend to wait here for you until you come back, even if it costs me a fortune! This hotel may be one of the most expensive in the whole of Paris, but I just don’t care. I’m going to be right behind you, Jane!”

  Jane didn’t know how to thank her, and in the sitting-room Etienne didn’t seem to know what to say when Sandra released some of her fire at him. He was looking quite grey, Jane thought, feeling’ nothing but sympathy for him herself, and he also looked slightly stunned.

  “Of course I will take care of Jane,” he said, when Sandra repeated that if Jane wasn’t taken the utmost care of she would hold him responsible. “I have every intention of taking care of Jane!”

  “Then you ought to leave her behind,” Sandra told him.

  He sent her a look which reminded Jane of the look of a wounded animal, and even Sandra relented as a result of it.

  “I hope you find your little girl much better,” she said, before they drove off into the dawn.

  Etienne had decided to drive all the way because he believed in the long run it would be quicker. And from the way in which the speedometer swung eccentrically right from the moment they started Jane realized that it wouldn’t be his fault if they didn’t break all records for speed on this journey. If she had been nervous she might have envisaged herself ending up in a hospital bed long before nightfall, but the only feeling that possessed her then was an agonizing sympathy for Etienne, and an anxiety almost as great as his own to arrive at their destination.

  They drove through a splendid red dawn, and a lovely sunrise, in the sleek black car she had once put temporarily out of action, and Etienne at the wheel hardly spoke at all. Hour after hour, while a France that was now clothed in autumn glory unfolded like a strip of film before their weary eyes - for neither of them had been to bed - and a hazily fine autumnal day got into its stride.

  Not far from Paris some of the trees were already showing a little bare, but as they plunged southwards the march of winter was put backwards like putting back the hands of a clock. To Jane it seemed difficult to believe that she had made this same journey not many weeks before, and at that time she had not even known Etienne.

  Now his joys and his sorrows appeared to be her joys and sorrows, also!

  He did suddenly realize that she hadn’t had any breakfast, and they stopped for coffee and crisp croissants at a small cafe in a village. Jane was ashamed of herself for being hungry, but Etienne didn’t seem to be able to swallow even a morsel of croissant, although he drank three cups of black coffee, and lighted one cigarette from another as he waited for Jane to be ready to carry on. As she accompanied him back to the car she wished she could do or say something to lessen his tension, but it was one of those situations when words were so hopelessly inadequate that she hesitated to use them, particularly as he seemed to prefer to remain absolutely silent himself.

  She knew what he was thinking ... First his wife, and now Adele! And if he lost Adele!...

  She felt as if something inside her took an uneasy plunge as she tried not to believe it was even possible he would lose Adele.

  And then suddenly one of his hands deserted the wheel, and she left it covering both of hers where they clutched one another in her lap.

  “Don’t worry, Jane,” he said quietly. “Just having you with me is the greatest source of comfort ... What I would do without you I can’t think!”

  They stopped for lunch, but again it was merely a pretence - or a concession - on his part, and midway through the afternoon the
y burst a tyre. Etienne worked feverishly to replace it with the spare wheel, and when at last he was back behind the wheel she could see the perspiration trickling down from his brow. He wiped it away with one of his gay silk handkerchiefs, and then started up the car. They had just left Chateauceaux behind them, and nothing but a straight stretch lay ahead of them, and he pressed his foot down hard on the accelerator.

  They bypassed La Cause Perdue, making for the little town where Adele lay in hospital, and just as it was growing dusk they swept up to the hospital gates. Jane felt as if a positive wave of nervousness rushed over her, and she couldn’t be in the least certain that her legs would support her when she stepped out of the car.

  But Etienne seemed to be experiencing the enormous relief of arriving at last, and he took Jane’s arm and held it firmly when she stumbled a little.

  “Hang on to me if it’s going to help you, Jane,” he said. And then under his breath he breathed: “Le bon Dieu be praised for letting us get here without mishap!”

  Inside the hospital there seemed to Jane to be nothing but an echoing silence, and a vast number of confusing corridors. But at last they were being informed by a senior nurse that Adele was still very much as she had been when she was admitted, which meant that she was unconscious, and that an operation would have to be performed if there was no change before midnight.

  Jane could feel Etienne flinch when he received this verdict. She knew he had been hoping against hope that Adele would have already improved.

  “Can we see her?” he asked, and even his voice sounded unlike the voice of Etienne to Jane.

  “You can see her for just a few minutes,” the Sister replied. She looked rather curiously at Jane. “This lady is—?”

  “A close friend,” he answered.

  Jane followed in the footsteps of the uniformed figure, and Etienne came behind, Adele lay in a little room with a screen round her, and she looked like a little doll to the English girl, lying there with a tiny, shut-in, waxen face, and a bandaged head. One or two of the elf-locks straggled under the bandage, but most of them seemed to have been cut away.

  Jane forgot Etienne in those few minutes of standing beside her, and thought only of the small, wistful scrap of a child. She remembered that she had had no opportunity to say good-bye to Adele. The child must have thought that she had failed her. And she remembered the afternoon when she had inspected the swing, and been impressed by its insecure appearance. Adele had told her that she liked to swing high up into the branches of the tree, so if she had fallen from that height no wonder she was so still now.

  Etienne seemed to move like one in a trance when they left the little room behind them. He hadn’t touched his child, but he had stood looking down at her with an expression on his face that Jane knew she would never forget. When, in response to a light tap on her shoulder which warned her that they must go, she gently touched his sleeve and met the full gaze of his dark eyes, she knew that he was looking right through her like a blind man.

  “There would be little point in your remaining,” the Sister said smoothly, as she reconducted them along the corridor, and away from that silent little room, “You are on the telephone, monsieur! If there is any change we will notify you at once, and if the decision is taken to operate then we will also notify you.”

  La Cause Perdue seemed a very different house to Jane when she returned to it after an absence of less than a week. When she said good-bye to it she had never expected to see it again, and yet here she was once more standing beneath the great swinging lantern in the hall, feeling her high heels catching in the uneven flags that Etienne preferred to preserve as they were because of their antiquity.

  She remembered the night when Jeanne Bethune had warned her about them. And now Jeanne Bethune emerged once more through the baize-covered door that cut off the domestic premises, and for the first time since Jane had known her face was alive with anxiety. And, more than that, it was full of sympathy, not only for her master, but for Jane.

  “I will bring you a pot of tea, mademoiselle,” she said at once. “You look grey with fatigue. And your room is just as you left it, and Clarri will unpack for you.”

  “Thank you, Jeanne,” Jane heard herself whispering as if her voice had failed her.

  Etienne poured himself a stiff drink in the salon, and he suggested to Jane that she should have one, too. But she insisted that she would much prefer the tea.

  She watched as Etienne walked to the window, and stood looking out into the now infinitely black night. She couldn’t feel she was being much of a source of comfort to him, but on an impulse she moved until she stood at his elbow, and in a voice just a little stronger than her whispered reply to Jeanne, she assured him with throbbing earnestness: “Oh, Etienne, I do understand how you feel! ... And I want you to know that I - I would give anything to - to be able to help you a little more at this time!”

  Her fingers rested imploringly on his sleeve, as if she couldn’t bear it if he didn’t believe her; and he turned, and his own hand covered them.

  “Jane, I know ... And you are helping much more than you realize. To have come back here without you would have been intolerable!” He grasped her hand so tightly that he hurt her fingers. “If anything happens to her, Jane” - he moistened his lips - “what will I do?”

  She tried to assure him as if she really believed it: “Nothing is going to happen to her! She is going to get well again.”

  “I don’t think you believe that, Jane, any more than I do.” He was staring over her head, at the opposite wall. “She looked so small, didn’t she? ... Such a little thing to leave alone with no one to really take care of her! And that swing was only fit to be condemned! ... I knew that - or I realize I knew it, now - and yet I did nothing about it! I wasted my time here making a film about nothing in the least important, and she risked her poor little thin neck all summer! If anything happens to her, Jane, I’ll feel like her murderer!”

  Before the agonized look in his eyes, and the agonized note in his voice, Jane knew she could do or say nothing. Jeanne brought in the tea, and she poured herself a cup mechanically, and Etienne started to pace up and down the room like a restless tiger. Although he had had hours of concentration at the wheel of a car - he had resolutely refused to permit her to do any of the driving - and no sleep at all the night before, she knew he found it quite impossible to relax in a chair. He found it impossible to relax at all.

  “You’d better go to bed, Jane,” he said, after a full ten minutes of silence. ‘There is no need for both of us to wait up, and I shall of course stay here in this room until the telephone rings.”

  “But it might not ring for hours yet...” She bit hard at her lower lip. “And I am the one who should wait up, because I am comparatively fresh - I’ve done nothing but just sit in the car. You try and snatch a few hours’ sleep,” she suggested.

  “As if I could!” He looked at her almost resentfully, and she experienced a curious pang. He wanted her, and yet he didn’t want her - that was what that look said. He had to have someone with him, and she was more mentally in tune with him perhaps than anyone else he knew, and that was why he had picked on her. Why, in the midst of despair, he had turned to her, like a drowning man catching at a straw.

  But what use was a straw when he needed a raft?... Someone of his own, who was a part of him, and a vital part of his whole existence... That was what he really wanted! Someone who was so close that they could share in his personal agony!

  His wife would have shared that agony with him.

  She turned away. “I only thought ... I mean, you must be very tired, and I would call you the instant you were needed,” she told him, swallowing something in her throat, something that felt like a husk that wanted to rise up and choke her.

  Etienne sank down in a chair, and covered his eyes with his hands. At last he looked up vaguely, as if surprised that she was still there. “Why don’t you go to bed, Jane?” he said, and then as he saw how she looked a
t him from the other side of the room, how white and small her own face looked, and how curiously wide were her eyes, as if something had risen behind them that might spill over at any instant if she didn’t force them to remain unnaturally huge and round like that, he suddenly held out his arms to her. “Come over here,” he said huskily, “and we will neither of us go to bed. We will sit here together, Jane, and wait for the telephone to ring!”

  Jane needed no second invitation. She rose like one compelled by a force so many times stronger than herself that she couldn’t even begin to resist it, and she knelt down in front of his chair and felt his arms go round her, and he kissed her weary brow very gently, and lightly stroked her hair.

  “Poor little one,” he said, softly, “poor little one!”

  Later he drew her up from the floor and led her over to a settee, and they sat there side by side, while a log fire smouldered on the wide hearth, and the house was very silent, waiting for the sudden burring note of the telephone.

  Their fingers were tightly laced, but they didn’t talk, and gradually Etienne drew Jane’s head to rest against his shoulder, and she realized that she must have dozed intermittently. But when at last the telephone did ring, shortly before midnight, it was Etienne who was asleep, and it was Jane who went on leaden feet to answer it.

  Jane felt as if her whole inner being was about to dissolve inside her as she lifted the telephone receiver from its rest. At first she couldn’t find a voice to answer the remote enquiry at the other end of the line, and then she said almost feverishly that she was speaking for Monsieur Delaroche. Monsieur Delaroche couldn’t come to the telephone himself because...