Wildfire Quest

by Jane Arbor

  She went and came back by the marsh road as it was shorter than the main road from Bayonne by which Ninon’s car would come. On her return, however, Raoul’s car had gone, and Lois confirmed that he had called for it and left a few minutes earlier. ‘You must have met him,’ she pointed out.

  ‘No. I came up through the gardens from the marsh lane. You told him I had only gone into Peyrolle, but he didn’t want to see me?’

  ‘I asked him, and he said not. Why, did you expect he would?’

  ‘N-no. That is, I thought he would want to tell me how the man who was injured yesterday was.’

  ‘Yes, well—he is going on all right, Raoul asked me to tell you.’

  ‘Oh, I’m glad! ‘ Her dismay clutching at straws, Maryan added, ‘There was something else too. We left our picnic stuff—my cardigan and the satchel you lent me for the food—when we dashed to the accident, and I wanted to ask Raoul if I could walk over and collect them.’

  Lois said, ‘He had remembered, and asked me to say he would send them back by one of the men.’

  ‘I see. And that was—all?’

  ‘About all he stayed to say. He seemed in a hurry and in no good mood.’

  So that was that. Maryan had her answer—a dustier one even than she had feared. Nothing that her love could treasure had been interrupted yesterday; only an impulse of warmth which Raoul must have regretted at once and so thoroughly that he couldn’t even face her today. She had been prepared for some banter which would have passed it off, even for his ignoring it as something which hadn’t happened, and her pride—if it had to— could have dealt with that.

  But this! This was the male’s self-protection at work. Raoul knew their easy companionship of the morning had betrayed him too far. Momentarily perhaps he had meant tenderness. But only momentarily, and when later caution had warned him she might believe him serious, he had taken the diplomatic way out. He must have counted himself lucky to be able to avoid her. As, she supposed, he would take positive steps to do just that in future, and as she wouldn’t make it difficult for him to do so. For pride must do at least this for her—show him without a shadow of a doubt that, in the matter of lovelorn motions towards him, he had nothing to fear from her.

  The pity of it was that pride, as a weapon against a persistently absent enemy, wasn’t going to have any too sharp an impact...

  The arrival of Arnold’s promised letter a day or two later did something to jerk her back to the sanity of everyday. It was an apology for his having left without seeing her, but for the rest it was businesslike, technical; ‘shop’. Among other things, his suggestion that she could probably now put a date to when she would finish her work in the region, was a healthy reminder that she had a job to do; that it wouldn’t last for very much longer now—in this guise. She would be leaving Peyrolle and everything it stood for. And this time she would not be coming back.

  By the same post there was a letter for Lois from Arnold—his thanks for hospitality, Maryan supposed, though Lois did not share its contents with her. Meanwhile she had heard no details of the day at the felibree and Lois barely mentioned Arnold’s name, which, considering the time the three of them had spent together, Maryan found odd. Until, by a wild leap of her intuition, she believed she might have guessed why. Supposing Lois’s reserve was not indifference, but a closer interest in Arnold than she cared to show? And after all, was it so random an idea? Looking for clues that it might be so, Maryan found she was remembering this and that; little things she had noticed at the time, though without questioning their significance until now.

  That interest of Lois’s in her looks on the night of the felibree; that loving dandling of Maquereau—as if a new emotion had needed expression; her reluctance to discuss her day, as if it were a precious experience she wanted to keep to herself; even her unwonted complaisance over Raoul’s high-handed claim for Maryan’s company on the same day. They were all so ‘un-Lois’—to coin a phrase—that surely they had a cause, and if the cause weren’t the spur that Maryan hoped and believed it might be, then what was it?

  But Arnold? What about him? Certainly from their very first meeting, he had shown a true, shrewd instinct towards Lois, and professionally it had paid off. But did he know or guess at the feeling he had roused in her, if he had? Did he care for her in return? But there Maryan’s speculation had to check. Short of his confidence or any from Lois, she couldn’t know, and to deduce anything from one letter which might have been no more than his courteous leave-taking of his hostess, would be pushing hope too far. Meanwhile Lois offered no confidence and though she might have heard again from Arnold, Maryan saw no letters from him. But alert now to any small pointers, she allowed her wishful thinking full rein.

  There was the day when, in the middle of the morning, she came upon Lois sitting at her dressing-table, her hair free of its knot, tumbled about her shoulders. As Maryan watched she experimented with it, drawing it forward, allowing its weight to swing, before, with a grimace into the mirror, she tossed it back again and tied it with tape, preparatory to twisting it into its ugly bun once more.

  Maryan, at the half-open door, made her spying known. ‘May I come in?’ she asked, and as Lois used the last of three outsize hairpins, ‘Why don’t you sometimes wear your hair like that—loose, as it was just now?’

  Lois pulled another face. ‘At my age? With my features? Give me a pointed hat and a broomstick as well and I could pass for a witch!’

  ‘Nonsense. You needn’t leave it to dangle—you could draw the front under a ribbon. May I try?’ Deftly Maryan unpinned and untied the knot, fetched an Alice-band from her own room and swept Lois’s hair back from her fine brow beneath it.

  But that wasn’t right either. It took years from her age, but somehow it took potential dignity too. She was partly right—her characterful face needed a style that was more mature—and presently, with her grudging co-operation, many more hairpins and a degree of trial and error, Maryan achieved a high-piled, loosely coiled swathe which Lois approved. The fact that she reverted later to the ungainly knot was a backward step, but at least she had had the impulse to experiment and to care.

  She took more trouble with her catering too and seemed to notice and do her best to repair the drab disorder of her house for the first time. And, as from the night of her return from Perigueux, little Maquereau became for her no longer a duty she had told Raoul she ‘needed’, but a living creature to be wanted and considered and loved for itself.

  And whether or not Arnold was Lois’s spur, it was all akin, Maryan reflected, to the emergence of someone from a very long illness; eyes beginning to look again and senses to feel; a healthy pattern taking shape.

  There came a day when Maryan, encouraged, ventured to put Raoul’s case. This much, perhaps, she could still do for him for love—try to show Lois that in some of the issues between them her judgment of him was too harsh. Maryan brought the conversation round to his name, then wondered aloud whether it was possible Lois could have misunderstood his motives, for instance, in his urging professional care for their mother and in his decision to give up the house.

  ‘It was quite clear to me why he did both,’ Lois snapped unhelpfully. ‘I have told you—’

  ‘Yes, I know. But so did he once—rather differently.’ Feeling her way on delicate ground, Maryan reported Raoul’s version of his generously-meant intentions which Lois’s obstructive will had foiled. Lois listened in silence. Then,

  ‘That is his story, and you believe it?’ she said.

  ‘I think so. Besides,’ Maryan parried boldly, ‘what right have you to suppose that he cared less for Madame Leduc than you did?’

  Lois bridled. ‘What right? Why, because it was I who took on the ceaseless care of her, of course!’

  ‘Yes—to the sacrifice, Raoul told me, of all your talent, all your other interests. And since he could afford to relieve you, can’t you give him credit for wanting to?’

  ‘But it was my duty. He knew as well as I
did that Maman could not live for ever, and that afterwards I could take up again all that I had dropped for her sake.’

  ‘Yet “afterwards”—did you?’ Maryan queried. ‘Afterwards, didn’t you make Raoul and the house your duty—and yourself their slave?’

  Lois shrugged. ‘What else could I do? They were both there.’

  ‘Yes—until Raoul was forced to what he called to me “desperate remedies for desperate ills—” ‘And what, may one ask, was he pleased to mean by that?’

  Maryan said gently, ‘If you’re not deliberately blind, I think you must know that he saw what he did as the only way to give you back your freedom to—to be yourself again, to pick up your threads. And after all this time, you could try giving him the benefit of the doubt—couldn’t you?’

  ‘Now? What does it matter now? It was already too late then.’

  ‘If you believe Raoul, and I think you can, he didn’t think so, did he? It wasn’t too late then, and it’s not too late now. Haven’t you proved that yourself since?’

  ‘But not at any driving from him!’

  Did Lois realise that with that piece of hauteur she had tacitly admitted the sincerity of Raoul’s motives? Hoping so, Maryan allowed herself the ghost of a smile as she countered, ‘Though does it matter either who does the driving—as long as the end result is the same?’

  But if she had banked on drawing from Lois a tribute to Arnold’s part in the ‘driving’, she was to be disappointed. Lois had a final shot to fire—an unanswerable one where Maryan was concerned.

  ‘And when Raoul made you his confidante, did he also claim that he had my interests at heart when he installed Ninon Barbe in the house?’ Lois demanded.

  ‘No, he said nothing about that.’

  ‘No doubt because he knew he hadn’t a hope of convincing even you that he threw me a thought when he did it!’

  ‘Perhaps not, though he did tell you once in my hearing that he leased it to her because it had stood empty long enough,’ Maryan pointed out.

  ‘Expecting me to believe that she was the only tenant to come forward?’ Lois scoffed. ‘Oh no— Madame moves from Limoges, claiming to want a pied-a-terre in this district, and so—what more suitable than an establishment from which she will not need to move out when Raoul decides to move in?’

  Maryan looked away. ‘You mean—?’

  ‘What else? That she has a second marriage in view; probably also that he wanted to see how she graces La Domaine before he makes up his mind to propose. By the signs, only a question of time, I’d say, and meanwhile, what evidence is there that he is asking more than a peppercorn rent from her, or even any rent at all? Oh no’—Lois answered herself again—‘all this is clear enough to me. You won’t persuade me differently. Though as to the other—’

  As she paused and frowned, Maryan plunged hopefully. “You mean you are prepared to believe that Raoul did think he was acting for the best for you at the time?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps. I need to think back ... to remember. While you were out this morning, he rang to say he is going to the Conference of Timber-Growers in Bordeaux; after that, to Paris on other business. But when he returns, perhaps we must talk ... make allowances.’ Lois broke off, turning the full gaze of her dark velvet eyes on Maryan. “Though why, one wonders, should you care?’ she said, her musing tone making it another question to herself which, Maryan was thankful, seemed to expect no answer from her.

  At least Raoul’s absence freed Maryan from the nervous expectancy of, for instance, coming upon his car parked at Ninon’s house; of meeting him by chance when she was about her work; of answering the telephone—as had happened once—only for him to ask coolly for Lois; of wondering, whenever the windows of Ninon’s house were dark at night, whether she was out with Raoul, where they were and what they were doing.

  Since Ninon’s housewarming, she had invited neither Maryan nor Lois to any other parties at the house, and though Maryan had met her in the grounds or walking her dogs, they had only exchanged cool greetings and had gone on their way. For the sake of not getting involved again, Maryan had decided to forfeit the small triumph she had promised herself—that of letting Ninon know the prosaic facts of Arnold’s departure. And so, supposing Ninon also had little more to say to her, she was surprised that Ninon should come to the Pavilion one morning, making her first question a curt, ‘Are you alone?’

  ‘Yes.’ Maryan added naturally, ‘Why?’

  ‘Lois is out? For how long?’

  ‘She has gone to Bayonne by car. I’m going over on the bus later and we shall come back together.’

  ‘Good. Then we shan’t be interrupted. May I come in?’

  ‘Of course.’ As Maryan stood aside for her, Ninon swept in, jerked a chair towards her and sat down without waiting for invitation.

  Maryan remained standing, a reluctant hostess. ‘May I bring you anything? A glass of wine? Or coffee?’

  ‘No, thank you. This isn’t exactly a social visit. It has to do, I’m afraid, with some rather ugly business of yours which has come to my hearing, which I thought you should be given the chance to confirm or deny—you understand?’

  Maryan frowned. ‘Ugly business of mine? I don’t know what you mean!’

  ‘No? Then I should explain that by “ugly” I mean your real reason for coming to Peyrolle; the secret intrigue for which you had to have cover—cover which you’ve beguiled both Raoul and Lois Leduc to provide for you in perfect good faith. Well? I make myself clear now?’

  Appalled, Maryan blanched at the monstrous injustice being done her. But before she could reply, Ninon went on,

  ‘I see I do.’ She paused to study Maryan’s face with apparent solicitude. ‘You seem a little upset. Hadn’t you better sit down?’

  But Maryan preferred the support of a chairback. Her grasp upon it made her knuckles show white.

  ‘You seem to think you have cause to accuse me of deceiving the Leducs,’ she said at last. ‘But I assure you, you are quite, quite wrong.’

  Ninon’s brows lifted. ‘Wrong? Then you are able to deny that you had an ulterior motive for your coming here?’

  Maryan said, ‘I don’t deny that originally I had another reason for my coming. But it was secondary to my work, and it has lost importance since.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ Ninon nodded. ‘If, once you had met Raoul, had fallen to his charm, and had thought you could cherish—shall we say—warmer hopes, this other may have proved an embarrassment? One which you decided to drop while you reconnoitred the position?’

  Having gathered herself, Maryan thought it time to turn defence into attack. ‘And if you really think you have the right to discuss this with me, oughtn’t we to be more direct?’ she said. ‘You obviously know I came to the region with hopes of a claim on the Plantage Feu-Follet. I’ve been frank enough to tell you I’m not pursuing that claim. Now, don’t you owe it to me to tell me how you know anything about it, and why you are concerned?’

  ‘How I learned of your sleuthing? As to that, perhaps you should choose your enemies with more care, my dear!’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Well, you were rash enough to make an enemy of the boy, Georges Tissot, weren’t you?’

  Maryan gasped. ‘Maitre Druot’s clerk! He has dared to discuss Maitre Druot’s professional business ... and mine? He has talked to you?’

  ‘Not to me. Only idly to his friend, Guy Manet, my advocate’s son, as you know.’

  ‘That’s outrageous! I could sue him for it!’

  ‘But you won’t.’ Ninon’s tone was smoothly confident. ‘Going to law is lengthy and expensive and gets into the papers. You would be very fortunate if Raoul and Lois didn’t learn what you had been up to, even though, for your own good reasons, you may not be up to it still. And that, I think, you might find—inconvenient, putting you in a very false position indeed.’

  ‘Why should it?’

  Ninon smiled thinly. ‘Simply because, as you must know, you owed R
aoul the courtesy, if not the plain honesty, of telling him the truth yourself. And I don’t think you have yet—have you?’

  ‘As I said, it has very little significance now. But I shall tell him, the next opportunity I have.’

  ‘Oh, I shouldn’t do that if I were you,’ Ninon advised.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Surely it’s obvious? With nothing to hide, you would have told him of your claim as soon as you abandoned it, I think. You didn’t. So wouldn’t he be justified in asking why you didn’t?’

  Feeling cornered, Maryan said, ‘It was because it had become of so little importance then that I— forgot.’

  Ninon pounced at once on the weakness of that hesitation. ‘Oh, come!’ she urged. ‘You had accepted his help, his sponsorship. You allowed him to foist you on to Lois. You don’t seriously suggest you could take the story to him at this late hour; claiming casually that somehow you had “forgotten” to mention earlier either to him or to Lois that you came to Peyrolle as a spy in his camp?’

  ‘As a spy? I did nothing of the sort!’

  ‘But you did know, when you came, whom you would be dispossessing, supposing your claim were valid?’

  ‘The Leduc family, yes. I didn’t know whom it comprised.’

  ‘But having learned, and having been befriended by them, still without your being frank with them, don’t you agree you’d be wise to leave that particular stone unturned for good now?’

  ‘No. Not telling Raoul at all would be less than honest.’

  ‘When he needn’t hear anything about it, if not from you? Now I’d say that if you hope to keep anything of the Leducs’ friendship until you leave, holding your tongue at this late stage is a discretion you owe yourself. After all, you can hardly hope to get full marks from Raoul for your candour now!’

  ‘Perhaps not. But I can’t help that,’ said Maryan tautly.

  ‘Oh well, if you are determined on martyrdom—’ Ninon sighed and rose. ‘And if you are,’ she went on, ‘I suppose you won’t temper the wind by confiding in Lois first?’