“And is it so important that I should be settled and sobered?”
“If you are not to waste your life altogether, yes,” she answered, looking at him almost reproachfully along the length of the table. “It is one thing to write plays that bring you in a lot of money, but that is not living your life to the full. There are other things more important than writing plays.”
“Such as?” he enquired, with gentle mockery.
“I have just told you—getting married, for one thing!” “And yet you have never been married yourself, dear Lady Pen,” he mocked her even more softly. “Why is it that you are such an advocate for this
state that you know nothing about?” She tightened her lips and shook her head at him. “What I did with my life is not what you should do with yours, and I would be the last to advise that those for whom I have a fondness should copy my example. Young things should marry.” She shifted her glance and looked thoughtfully at Caroline. “In that way you avoid loneliness in later life,” and she sighed a little as if she had experienced a certain amount of loneliness herself in a long lifetime.
“Dear Lady Pen!” Armand said, with caressing gentleness that no longer held any mockery whatsoever. “You should certainly have married that curate you once told me about—the one who insisted that central African peoples, their diseases and their ignorance, had a far bigger claim on him than any woman could possibly have! And even in central Africa you would probably have enjoyed yourself! But I—I am a different kettle of fish altogether, and even if I felt like getting married and astonishing my friends, who is there who
would have me?”
He seemed to look deliberately round the table, ignoring Caroline—at least his glance passed right over her—giving a certain amount of reflective consideration to Helen Mansfield, who flushed quickly and almost painfully when his eyes rested on her, and then finally dwelling upon Diane Montauban. Her huge eyes hung upon his with a kind of flickering light in them as if surprise had leapt up, and behind it a whole world of response was waiting to be recognised.
“Would you consider that I would make a good husband, Diane?” he asked.
Her brilliant lips seemed to tremble for a moment, and her eyes positively glowed. Then she answered as if she was hoping to shock everyone else at the table.
“You would probably make a very bad husband, but would that matter? Would any woman mind? Since you are Armand!”
“Would you?”
Lady Pen caught her elbow against her wine-glass and it overturned, and the little wine that was left in it ran trickling across the polished surface of the table, staining a lace table mat. Lady Pen clicked her tongue in irritation.
“Such a pity!” she exclaimed. “Monique will probably find it difficult to remove that stain, and one hates to spoil a polished table.” Then, as if they were not all waiting for Diane’s reply—or, at any rate, the other two women were—she turned to Helen on her right hand and suggested: ‘There is a chess-board Armand unearthed for me last night. Will you spare me a solitary game of patience and play chess with me, Helen, once we have had our coffee?”
“Of course,” Helen answered, and her tone was very subdued, as if that eager challenge in Diane’s eyes had sobered her, and the fact that the Comte’s look had so deliberately passed her by had put him into a fresh perspective where she was concerned.
While Helen and Lady Pen played chess, the host wandered off—no one quite knew where—with Diane, and Christopher invited Caroline to take a stroll in the rose-garden.
It was the one corner of the grounds where the scents were bewildering when night closed down. A corner of perfumed peace, where the paths were littered with rose petals, and the steps leading down to it were in such a crumbling state of decay that Christopher thought it advisable to take her arm and hold it securely while they negotiated them, and she was hardly conscious of his touch because her thoughts were nowhere inside the rose- garden. She was vaguely aware of the graceful pieces of statuary they passed—the boy on the edge of the sunken pool, the girl with the delicate air of a shepherdess—and she knew that Christopher was talking to her softly, as was only fitting on such a calm and beautiful night, of the places he had visited, and the things he planned to do with his life, but she had no real interest in what she was listening to. She was half prepared to come upon the owner of the chateau and his obviously most favoured guest—even although she was self-invited!—at any moment, and her mind was already filled with something approaching panic because the moment when this happened might prove exceedingly embarrassing for all four.
Not that Christopher would be likely to be very embarrassed, but she ---------------------- !
She bit her lip, and then hurried forward along the shadowy path, so that inevitably her foot caught in a piece of loosened stonework, and but for Christopher’s supporting hand she would have stumbled and probably measured her length on the path. He looked at her a little
curiously under the velvety cover of the night, thinking that she looked a little pale suggested that she might like to return to the house.
“I don’t suppose you’re very strong just yet” he said, “and you’d rather a hectic time last night helping Monique. I’m afraid it was a bit of an imposition our arriving unexpectedly as we did.”
“I’m sure the Comte didn’t think so,” she heard herself murmuring. “He seems to be very fond of your aunt.” “And my aunt, for some reason, is very fond of him!” He shrugged, as if there was no accounting for tastes, and then piloted her carefully back to the house.
Just before they reached the foot of the nearest flight of terrace steps her eyes wandered upwards to the top of the tower they had climbed that day, and considerably to her surprise she saw that a light burned in the small round room that was the sitting-room of what had once been the Comtes mother’s suite. Caroline stared hard at it, wondering whether the Comte was alone up there—for surely no stranger would venture to find their way to the suite without his permission?—and Monique would scarcely be likely to do so at this hour.
Therefore it must be the Comte and he was hardly likely to be alone....
But as they crossed the threshold into the big salon where Lady Pen and Helen Mansfield were still playing chess, the voice of Diane Montauban came clearly to their ears. It was thin, and peevish, and bored.
“Well, if no one’s going to talk to me, or amuse me in any way, and Armand persists in absenting himself— which is terribly inconsiderate of a host!—I’m going to bed! I can do with an early night, anyway... ”
CHAPTER XI
THE next two days passed in rather an unreal fashion for Caroline, who had the feeling that she had no right to be where she was, but being where she was she couldn’t drag herself away. More than once she took down her suit-case from the top of her huge, old-fashioned wardrobe, and started to pack the few clothes she had brought with her from England. But it was just as if by merely arriving at the Chateau de Marsac she had sent out roots that had gone delving into the rich French soil without her knowledge, and it was going to be the most painful operation of her life to pull them up ruthlessly, as she would very soon have to do in any case.
It would have been different if she had had any excuse for remaining, but with Monique receiving assistance from the two village girls who arrived each morning on the stroke of nine, and remained for as long as they were required, there was really little point in her offering to help Monique. She took the two children
for walks, and kept them out of the way of the other members of the house party, and she delighted in putting them both to bed, and sharing an hour of fun with them before their bedtime arrived; but these were things Monique could have found time to do herself, and neither of the two small Benoits had been greatly fussed over since birth, and they were a remarkably self-sufficient pair, who could very easily put themselves to bed, and keep themselves entertained.
Nevertheless, Monique was grateful, and Caroline found herself
&
nbsp; more and more drawn to the resourceful young woman whose husband was still serving a term of imprisonment. Monique had apparently accepted the fact that the man she had married was a “bad lot”, and that the support of the children would be her affair in future—at any rate until Marcel Benoit was released from prison—-but she plainly wasn’t the type to rebel against adverse circumstances. She accepted them naturally, as if they were a part of the vicissitudes of life, and was seldom anything but cheerful in a quiet, composed and un-shakeable fashion. In fact, Caroline became certain that the sky would have to be very near to actually falling, and disaster imminent, before Monique allowed her curiously complacent facade to drop from her.
She had allowed tears to roll down her cheeks that afternoon when the Comte and Caroline had called upon her at her cottage, and the Comte had indicated to the children that there was a present hidden away in one of the pockets of his car. But those had been tears of gratitude, and because she had been strongly moved—as Caroline had realised at the time. And the reason why she had been strongly moved was because the man Caroline had believed to be Robert de Bergerac had been very good to her and her family—perhaps rather more than “Very good” to them!
Caroline thought so often of that afternoon, and she thought of every afternoon she had passed in the company of the chateau’s owner. There had been a dreamlike quality of perfection about them that she felt certain would never touch her life again. Discovering how a man’s exceptionally beautiful dark brown eyes
could both gleam with amusement and glow a little with tenderness at the same time. How that tenderness could invade his voice until his extremely attractive accent when he spoke English became much more than a mere accent, because emotion of any sort or kind interfered with his knowledge of the language. They had laughed together when he had drifted into such rapid French that her schoolgirl variety, that he had accused her of acquiring at a select seminary on the south coast of England, simply wouldn’t rise to following what he said, or was attempting to convey. And as a result of these moments when a slight impasse seemed to have been arrived at he schooled himself into an Anglo-Saxon calm and undertook to improve her knowledge of his own tongue, with the result that she was becoming really fluent when the four other people descended upon them.
Afternoons spent sitting beside him at the wheel of his car,
afternoons in the woods, beside the stream.... In particular one
afternoon that she would never forget.. Evenings on the terrace, watching the sun go down, and the shadows start stealing across the shining surface of the moat, waiting for the first owl to start hooting, the first nightingale to lift up its voice.... Watching the Charlemagne towers outlined against a starry night sky when they took a brief stroll in the rose-garden before she retired at a respectable and necessary hour when she was still not much more than convalescent....
No one could have been kinder to her, more considerate, more correct about their curious isolation. It was almost as if he went out of his way to observe a punctiliousness that was entirely designed to put her at her ease in a situation that could get a little out of hand, and her gratitude for his understanding behaviour had caused her to fall more and more in love with him....
For she had started to fall on that first evening...
Sometimes she asked herself what it was she wanted, what she expected—and why she expected it, when something at least had been offered her. Whatever her secret thoughts of Diane Montauban she was ready to pick up every crumb of notice Armand flung her, and even Helen
Mansfield, with her background that meant security, and possibly a wide enough experience of the male sex in spite of the fact that she wasn’t very old, since she appeared to have travelled far and wide, had been ready to fight for him, until it looked as if the fight might go against her. And, even so, she was still hoping....
Armand and women were like a magnet and the things the steel points attracted. Apparently he would go on attracting them all his life, until perhaps one caught him and tamed him....
But Caroline told herself fiercely that although he had asked her to marry him he hadn’t meant it to be a serious proposal of marriage, otherwise he would have admitted to her who he was. And feeling certain that what he had expected of her she would never be prepared to give she told herself that it was a sign of weakness that she should remain at the chateau, and that the sooner she overcame that weakness the better. But it was something that Monique said to her—or, rather, revealed to her—that made it even more curiously difficult to do what she would have expected any other young woman in her position, circumstanced exactly as she was, to do without any hesitation whatsoever, if only for the sake of her pride.
Monique had formed the habit of giving her tea—or sometimes coffee and cakes, hot out of the oven—in her kitchen in the midmornings, while the others were either out, or occupied in some way that left the English girl with no excuse to take part in their preoccupations. Not that she had any desire to take part, although Christopher Markham pressed her constantly to let him drive her here, there and everywhere, and Lady Pen seemed to have formed a sufficiently strong attachment for her to be glad to have her to sit with her when she appeared outside her room. And even Helen Mansfield liked to talk to her occasionally, and discuss—very much to her detriment— the strange lack of dignity displayed by Diane Montauban in her open pursuit of the Comte.
It hadn’t apparently occurred to the American girl that her own pursuit of the Comte was—or had been— scarcely less open, and that the faint snub she had received at the dinner table was the only reason why she wasn’t pursuing him madly
at the moment. And Caroline had the feeling that before long she would recover from that snub, and the chase would be on again.
Only Diane Montauban persistently avoided her—and looked at her on occasions with a kind of marked dislike— and Armand was so consistently in the company of Diane that he had little time to devote to anyone else.
All four, however, were out—Lady Pen being the only one who still occupied her room—-on the third morning after the unlooked-for arrivals, and Caroline wandered into the kitchen more for company than anything else, feeling strangely alone in that great, echoing chateau.
Monique was indulging in an orgy of baking, and the kitchen smelled warm and spicy. Thibault was sitting in a rather cleverly contrived high chair at the table, drinking - milk out of a wooden bowl, and banging with a spoon on the table. Marie-Josette was talking with great seriousness to a doll attired in faded garments, and pushing crumbs of cake into her mouth, and Jacqueline the cat was curled up as if the weather was very cold indeed, almost on top of the shiny range.
Monique turned from her oven and smiled at Caroline. She would never forget that the girl had come to her assistance when assistance was badly needed.
“It is for the elevenses that you come?” she asked. She had made up her mind that all English people indulged in “elevenses”, and that it was a kind of national institution. She carried the coffee-pot over from the stove, and poured some into an attractive blue cup, and then added enough cream to make a delectable beverage. After which she placed a flat cake filled with currants and mixed with spice, rather like an Eccles cake, on a plate in front of the girl, and then sat down herself to enjoy a rest, and a little light gossip. “It is not so pleasant here now as it was a few days ago,” she remarked, pushing a wisp of hair out of her eyes, “with so many people all liking the different kinds of dishes. It is not so easy to please.”
“Oh, but I’m sure you do please everyone,” Caroline assured her
warmly. “You are such a splendid cook.”
But Monique shook her head.
“That American lady, she does not like the fatty foods foods cooked in butter, you understand, which is as we French people prefer that they shall be cooked—and Mademoiselle Montauban is thinking only of her figure, and would live only on the juice of the fruit, and the endless cups of coffee! The old one—Lady Penel
ope—she is easy to please, but she wishes always for the English breakfast, and Monsieur Markham he wishes always for the roast beef! And the horseradish sauce, which goes with roast beef!”
She shook her head, as if it was all getting her down a little, and Caroline commiserated with her, and remarked for some reason that the Comte at least was easy to please. He had a healthy appetite, and enjoyed most things.
“Ah, Monsieur le Comte...! ” Monique’s eyes grew almost fond, as if whatever the Comte, her employer and landlord, did, it would meet with favour in her eyes. “Monsieur le Comte is always considerate, and if one had him only to look after life would be very simple.” Then she looked at Caroline a little curiously. “When he first comes here this time he pretend to be Monsieur de Bergerac, and he tells me Mademoiselle thinks he is Monsieur de Bergerac, and so I say nothing! It is perhaps another of his names he uses for his plays and I think that perhaps Mademoiselle is interested particularly in his plays...?”
Caroline felt herself colouring.
“I—I haven’t seen any of his plays, but I understand that they are very—very clever,” she said.
Monique looked as proud as if she herself had just laid a golden egg.
“He is famous, mademoiselle,” she exclaimed. “He is very famous! And his plays they run in Paris for weeks, and months, and years!”
“Really?” Caroline thought it best to feign a certain amount of ignorance, and Monique went on enthusing and extolling the brilliance of Armand de Marsac, and the excessive popularity of everything he had ever written. And—glad that she had got off the
subject of Robert de Bergerac—Caroline sipped her coffee and listened, and was only brought up short when Monique introduced her own purely personal affairs. “It is because I would do anything—anything!—for the Comte that I wish to make his guests happy, and to feed them in the way he would wish. If their stay here is not all that he would desire for them, then I—and I alone!— will be to blame, and that is something that must not happen! For, mademoiselle.,” lowering her voice confidentially, although Thibault was banging so loudly with his spoon that it was difficult to hear, “Monsieur le Comte has been to me and mine so good that I find it difficult to speak of it.” She certainly seemed to be struggling with a sudden uprush of emotion. “It is not only my husband—he did all that he could to provide for him the right kind of defence, although,” sadly, “no real defence was possible! But there was my eldest girl, Madeleine, who was so sick that she had to be sent away for care and treatment, and Monsieur paid for her to become well again at a very special sanatorium in the mountains. She is so much better now that soon she will be coming home to me, and it is all— all— due to Monsieur le Comte.When I had not a franc to buy bread for Thibault and Marie-Josette he not only filled my purse, but put money into the bank—the bank!—for me, Monique Benoit. And there is money there still, although I do not need to touch it while I am working like this. So you see, mademoiselle” the tears rolling blindly down her face as they had rolled once before, “it is because of these things that it would grieve me very much if his guests were not fed as they should be fed, their rooms looked to, and their comfort assured...” Caroline sat as if she. had been turned all at once to stone, and deep down inside her a kind of dismay was spreading—dismay that she didn’t know how to combat.
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