The letter to Mr. Cunningham, what could she say? What would her mother have wanted her to say?
Gardenia gave a sigh. It was all too difficult.
Her mother was dead and Aunt Lily was very much alive.
Slowly she wrote,
“Dear Mr. Cunningham,
My aunt has told me that I may reply to your kind invitation to go driving in the Bois de Boulogne. She asked me to say that I may not go alone and that if we could be accompanied by another friend, she would be pleased to give her consent.
Yours sincerely,
Gardenia Weedon.”
Gardenia read it again and again. She wished it could be stiffer and even more formal, but she felt she could not improve on it.
Finally she put the letter in an envelope and addressed it. Carrying the letter, she walked towards the drawing room.
As she reached the connecting door that was only partially closed, she realised that her aunt was no longer alone. She heard the deep guttural tones of the Baron and knew that it must be after five o’clock.
“Oh, Heinrich,” she heard her aunt say. “I am so very glad to see you. I have had such a difficult afternoon.”
“Then if you are glad to see me, what are we waiting for?” the Baron enquired.
The Duchesse gave a little laugh. It sounded young, gay and almost excited.
Gardenia heard them cross the room and their footsteps going up the stairs.
For the moment she could only think of what her aunt had said.
“A difficult afternoon!”
Difficult because she had been with her. Perhaps because she had asked questions. Again there was that horrible feeling of knowing that something was wrong and yet not being able to put her finger on it.
‘Why, she now asked herself, should she be so introspective? Why on earth did she keep asking herself questions instead of accepting things as they were?’
Firmly and deliberately she walked into the hall. There were two footmen on duty.
She held out the letter to one of them.
“Have this taken immediately,” she ordered, “to the British Embassy.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Faster, faster!” Gardenia cried excitedly as Bertie drove his splendidly matched tandem along the dusty almost empty roads that criss-crossed the Bois de Boulogne.
“If you want to go so fast then you should have let Bertie drive you in his Peugeot,” Lord Hartcourt remarked drily.
“Horses are much more fun,” Gardenia asserted positively. “Besides one feels as if one is going much faster.”
Bertie laughed.
“It all comes down in the end to imagination. So I have been imagining myself flying an aeroplane.”
“An aeroplane!” Gardenia exclaimed.
“I was talking to a chap called Gustav Hammel only last night,” Bertie went on. “He is determined to beat Bleriot and get to England in half the time. There is something in the idea, you know, Vane. We may all be flying in a few years’ time.”
“How thrilling!” Gardenia enthused. “I remember Mama and I were very thrilled when we read about Monsieur Bleriot crossing the Channel. The French always seem to think of something ahead of every other country.”
“Not always,” Bertie objected. “There is life in the old lion yet. Don’t you agree, Vane?”
“I hope so,” Lord Hartcourt said surlily, “but we have to admit the French have beaten us so far when it comes to progress in the air.”
“I would love to meet Monsieur Bleriot,” Gardenia said. “Do either of you know him?”
“Well, I can introduce you to Gustav Hammel, who will introduce you to Bleriot,” Bertie said, “and there is an Englishman who has done a lot for flying, Claude Graham-White. You know him, Vane?”
“I have met him,” Lord Hartcourt replied. “But I imagine the days when ladies take to the skies is very far off.”
“Don’t be so terribly damping,” Gardenia pleaded. “If you talk like that, I shall join the Suffragette Movement and scream for women’s rights!”
“That is the most awful lot of nonsense I have ever listened to,” Bertie said. “Women are making a blasted nuisance of themselves, forgive my language, Gardenia, tying themselves to railings and screaming outside the Houses of Parliament. It makes one quite ashamed of the fair sex!”
“I personally don’t want a vote,” Gardenia said, “but I think women have a very raw deal all round. Look how they are ordered about, first by their parents and then by their husbands. A woman never has a chance to think for herself or do anything she wants to do.”
“I will let you do anything you want to do,” Bertie said in a low voice.
“You are very kind,” Gardenia added lightly, “but I could not have come out today if Aunt Lily had said ‘no’.”
“What made her change her mind?” Bertie asked, guiding his tandem with exquisite skill past two stationary motor cars.
“I just cannot think,” Gardenia said quickly, not anxious to pursue the subject. “It must be because women are unpredictable.”
“That is for us to say,” Bertie laughed. “I have always found them so. What about you, Vane?”
Lord Hartcourt seemed uninterested in the subject. Instead he asked,
“What do you think of Bertie’s horses, Miss Weedon? Don’t you agree with him that they are perfectly matched?”
“Of course I do,” Gardenia answered, “and I think it is marvellous of Mr. Cunningham to keep to horseflesh rather than go in for all those noisy smelly motor cars. All the men in Paris seem to have them.”
“Except the nuts,” Lord Hartcourt said teasingly. “The really slap-up toffs are all tooling the reins, You will see several tandems rivalling Bertie’s and some very fine pairs too.”
“I am quite content to be behind these,” Gardenia smiled.
“Are you really?” Bertie said eagerly. I don’t get many compliments these days and I value the ones I have.”
“Don’t encourage him,” Lord Hartcourt urged with mock seriousness. “If you do, he will want to drive a coach-and-six and Heaven knows in that case we shall never squeeze through the Arc de Triomphe.”
Gardenia laughed. She was enjoying herself more than she had thought possible.
There was something exhilarating in driving in this fashionable yet quite idiotic vehicle, perched up high above the passers-by and with what she thought secretly to herself to be two of the handsomest men in the world on either side of her.
She had put on her most attractive gown for the occasion and she knew that the rose-pink crêpe with its touches of azure-blue ribbon on the neck, the wrists and on the wide waistband, was exquisitely becoming. Her almost childish hat, trimmed with a wreath of roses, framed her excited face and sparkling eyes.
She would not have been a woman if she had not realised that everyone they met turned to look at the picture they all made.
“I am just so happy!” she exclaimed and Lord Hartcourt, who was not immune to the tremulous emotion in her voice, looked down at her and smiled.
“I am beginning to think it takes quite small things to make you happy,” he said.
“It is often the small things that can make one unhappy,” Gardenia answered. “One can somehow stand up to the really big disasters and catastrophes in life, but small things reduce one so easily to tears.”
There was a little throb in her voice that made him feel guilty. He had been annoyed at being cajoled by Bertie into playing the part of a ‘gooseberry’, but now he banished his ill-humour and settled down to be as pleasant as only he knew how.
“You must come,” Bertie had insisted. “You know damn well the Duchesse will not let Gardenia out of her sight unless she thinks there is a chance of her being with you. We will fix something else later on, but just this first time be a sport, Vane, and let me write and tell the old girl that we will both pick Gardenia up tomorrow morning.”
“Why should I be a nursemaid to this budding romance?” Lord Hartc
ourt asked bitterly.
“Only because there will not be a romance or anything at all unless you help me,” Bertie said plaintively.
It was impossible to be ill-humoured in the face of such frankness and in the end Lord Hartcourt had laughed and consented to make what he called ‘the unwelcome third’.
He was, however, annoyed when the time came at not being able to play polo but, when Gardenia had come running down the steps of Mabillon House looking like a rosebud about to burst into bloom, he found it hard to resist not so much her loveliness as the fact that she was so genuinely excited and thrilled at just being taken for a drive.
“We had such a horrid party last night,” she chattered. “I cannot think why you both did not come.”
“To a horrid party?” Bertie enquired. “Surely you would not wish that on us?”
“It would not have been horrid if you had been there,” Gardenia replied.
She had forgotten Lord Hartcourt’s unkindness and that on Saturday night she had gone to bed in tears. She could only remember that these two Englishmen were her friends and they were the only people in Paris she could talk with naturally.
“Why was it so horrid?” Lord Hartcourt asked in his deep voice.
She turned her tiny pointed face up to his.
“I wish I could answer that question,” she said, “because I have asked myself what was wrong and could not find the answer. The guests were so strange and Aunt Lily sent me to bed very early, in fact very soon after dinner.”
“Now don’t tell me you did not find all those glamorous dark-eyed, compliment-paying Frenchmen delightful,” Bertie said teasingly. “All women love Latins because they pay such fulsome and extravagant compliments.”
“One just cannot believe them,” she said scornfully. “They don’t even sound sincere.”
“Do I sound sincere when I pay you a compliment?” Bertie asked.
“I think all compliments are rather embarrassing,” Gardenia replied, “and all Frenchmen are not young and exciting-looking. There was a horrid man who came to dinner last night. I could not bear him.”
“Who was that?” Bertie asked.
“I think his name was ‘Gozlin’,” Gardenia answered. “He was very ugly and growing bald, fat and rather oily and, would you believe it, the Baron said that Aunt Lily and I were to be very nice to him.”
“Gozlin, did you say?” Lord Hartcourt asked.
His voice was surprisingly sharp.
As if she knew that she had been indiscreet, Gardenia did not answer.
“Was that the name?” Lord Hartcourt persisted.
“Yes,” Gardenia replied a little hesitantly. “Pierre Gozlin, I think it was, but I should not have spoken so disparagingly about him. I am sure he is all right really.”
“You don’t have to pretend with us,” Bertie said, flicking his whip in an expert manner. “We are countrymen and friends, at least I hope we are and it would be a poor thing if we cannot be frank with one another in this land of frogs. Tell us all about this Monsieur Pierre Gozlin. Whatever you say will go no further. Vane and I are not chatterboxes.”
“No, I am sure you are not,” Gardenia said, “but it seemed rather ungracious and ill-bred of me to abuse one of Aunt Lily’s guests, especially when he was such an important one.”
“Why was he important?” Lord Hartcourt enquired.
“I really don’t know,” Gardenia replied evasively.
She was not going to tell them how just before dinner the Baron had come into the little drawing room and said,
“I have invited Pierre Gozlin tonight. Make a fuss of him, Lily. You know he adores you.”
“Oh, not that terrible man again!” the Duchesse had exclaimed. “It is too bad of you, Baron! You know how I dislike him, he gets so terribly drunk. After his last visit I made up my mind to tell the Major Domo that in future I was not at home to Monsieur Gozlin.”
“You will do nothing of the sort!”
It was an autocratic command.
“Pierre Gozlin is hugely important,” the Baron continued, “Very important to me and he is penitent, extremely penitent, if his behaviour last week upset you. He explained to me that he had been over-working and had had very little to eat and the wine, your extra good and expensive wine, my dear Duchesse, went to his head.”
“I am not interested in his apologies,” the Duchesse said petulantly. “He is a revolting little man. I always feel he says one thing and means another. Besides he has wet and flabby hands.”
“I still tell you to be nice to him,” the Baron countered tersely.
To Gardenia, sitting quietly in the corner of the room, it seemed an impertinence.
“And if I refuse?” she heard her aunt ask.
The Duchesse then threw up her chin as she spoke and stood looking at the Baron almost defiantly. She was looking particularly beautiful that night and in the softly shaded light in the drawing room the lines on her face, and the sallowness of her skin, were not noticeable.
The great diamonds in her necklace glittered round her throat. Her dress was cut to show her figure to its very best advantage disguising where she had thickened and fattened with age.
As Gardenia had discovered, a huge amount of lacing must go on before the Duchesse could be literally squeezed into her gowns by Yvonne and the other maids.
The Baron did not answer the Duchesse’s question. Now impatiently she tapped one of her slim satin-clad feet so that the diamond buckle sparkled.
“Well? Suppose I refuse?”
The Baron drew a step nearer to her.
“Then, my dear Lily,” he said very slowly, forgetting for once to address her formally, “then I would have to take him elsewhere.”
There was no disguising the threat in his tones and Gardenia to her consternation saw her aunt crumple as if he had hit her.
“No, Heinrich, no! You would not do that. But, of course, I was only joking. I will be nice to Monsieur Gozlin – I will be charming to him, I promise you.”
“That is goot!” the Baron’s voice rang out triumphantly and, before any more could be said, the butler’s stentorian tones announced from the door,
“Monsieur Pierre Gozlin.”
Gardenia could see at once why her aunt disliked him. He was very unlike a Frenchman, bloated, oily and somehow resembling one of the frog footmen in Alice in Wonderland.
He came sliding over the polished floor, took Aunt Lily’s white-gloved hand in his and covered it with kisses.
“Forgive me,” he said in French. “I do apologise, I grovel at your feet, madame. I was a fool, an ingrate. My good friend, the Herr Baron, tells me you have forgiven me.”
“We will not speak of it again,” Aunt Lily said.
“You are enchanting, an angel from Heaven itself,” Pierre Gozlin enthused in enraptured tones.
‘He is ridiculous,’ Gardenia thought.
Then she saw the expression in his eyes and felt as though a sudden cold wind had made the gooseflesh rise on her bare skin.
‘No, he is evil,’ she decided and was most thankful when she found at dinner that Pierre Gozlin was placed on Aunt Lily’s right and a long way from where she was sitting.
He had drunk a great deal at dinner, but not enough for anyone to say he had too much. Gardenia had felt that in some sinister way he overshadowed the whole party. It was not so much what he said, but it was the way he looked.
‘He is evil,’ she had repeated to herself, not once but many times during the evening.
*
“I have met Monsieur Gozlin,” Lord Hartcourt now said in his quiet voice. “I advise you to steer well clear of him. He is not, as you say, a pleasant character.”
“I was not wrong then,” Gardenia said. “I just felt that there was something – bad about him.”
“Keep away from him,” Lord Hartcourt warned.
“I cannot understand why the Baron likes him so much,” Gardenia said, speaking more to herself than to her companions, “
but apparently he always seems to like strange people.”
“Do they appear to be very close friends?” Lord Hartcourt asked. “I mean the Baron and Monsieur Gozlin?”
“Oh, very close,” Gardenia answered. “The Baron seemed to be watching all the evening to see if Monsieur Gozlin was amused, if Aunt Lily was making enough fuss of him and just as I went up to bed I saw him stop dancing with Aunt Lily and hand her over to Monsieur Gozlin. I thought that she could not be very pleased.”
She stopped speaking, feeling once more that she was being indiscreet. She wondered why Lord Hartcourt was so interested in the horrible froglike Frenchman.
“But I should not be speaking like this,” she said quickly. “Forget it, please forget it.”
“It is of no consequence, of course,” Lord Hartcourt replied soothingly, but she had the feeling that to him it was important.
There was something new and alert about him that there had not been earlier in the drive and she thought she had interpreted a warning expression in his eyes as he looked over her head at his cousin Bertie. Still, she might have been mistaken.
Why should they be interested in Aunt Lily’s guests? She wished that she had not said so much about the Baron. Perhaps they did not realise that the Baron was there so often or on such familiar terms. She had much rather they did not know.
They drove round the Bois and finally stopped at the restaurant in the centre where there were coloured umbrellas over small tables in the garden and where a number of people were sitting sipping aperitifs.
“How pretty it is!” Gardenia exclaimed.
Lord Hartcourt helped her dismount. Then, as she walked through the white gateway, he saw the old flowerseller who he had bought the gardenias for Henriette from that he had then finally left floating in the marble basin of the fountain in the Place de la Concorde.
“Bonjour, monsieur,” the old man quavered as they passed him.
Gardenia stopped.
“How lovely lilies-of-the-valley smell!”
Lord Hartcourt’s lips twisted in a cynical smile. The little British sparrow might appear innocent, but she certainly knew the tricks of the trade, although he doubted whether, like all the other ladybirds, she knew enough to come back for her commission later on.
An Innocent in Paris Page 13
