The Chateau

by William Maxwell

  After that, somebody always knew his lesson, and it wasn’t long before the boys caught on. One at a time they played hookey, knowing that whatever it was—a ghost, a fairy, an uneasy spirit—would come to school that day looking exactly like them, and recite and recite. The schoolmaster grew thin. He began to make mistakes in arithmetic and to misspell words. He would start to say: “One dies as one is—” and then be afraid to finish. Finally, unable to stand the strain any more, he went to the curé one morning before school and told him his troubles. The curé reached for his hat and coat, and filled a small bottle with holy water from the font. “There is only one way that a person can be born,” he said, “and that is in Jésus-Christ. When the possessed boy—because it can only be a case of possession—stands up to recite, I will baptize him.” And that’s what happened. The schoolmaster called on one boy who didn’t know his lesson after another, until he came to Joseph, who was a great doltish boy with arms as long as an ape’s. And when Joseph began to name the kings of France without a single mistake, the curé said: “In nomine patris et filii et spiritus sanctus,” and uncorked the vial of holy water and flung it all in his face. The boy looked surprised and went on reciting. When he had finished, he sat down. There was no change in his appearance. The schoolmaster and the curé rushed off to Joseph’s house and it was as they feared: Joseph was not there. “Isn’t he at school?” his mother asked, in alarm.

  “Yes, yes,” the curé said, “he’s at school,” and they left without explaining.

  As they were going through the wood, the curé said: “There is only one thing you can do. You must adopt this orphaned spirit, give him your name, and make him your legal heir.” When they came out of the wood they went to the mairie and began to fill out the necessary adoption papers, which took all the rest of the day. When they finished, the maire took them, looked at them blankly, and handed them back. There was no writing on the documents they had spent so much time filling out.

  So when the class opened the next day, the boys saw to their surprise that the schoolteacher was not at his desk in the front of the room but sitting on the bench that was always reserved for dunces. They were afraid to titter because of his birch rod, and when he saw their eyes go to it he got up and broke the rod over his knee. Then they sat there and waited. Finally one of the boys summoned enough courage to ask: “What are we waiting for?”

  “For the schoolmaster,” the man said. “I have tried very hard to teach you, but I had a harsh unloving father and I never learned how to be a father to anybody else, and so you boys learn nothing from me. But I have learned something from the spirit that takes your place on the days when you are absent, and I know that he should be teaching you, and I am waiting now in the hope that he will come and teach us all.”

  After a time, Joseph left his seat and went to the desk and in a voice of the utmost sweetness began to conduct the lesson.

  “Are you the spirit?” the boys asked.

  “No, I am Joseph,” he said.

  “Then how is it you know the lesson?”

  “I learned it last night. It took me a long time and it was very hard, but now I know it.”

  The next day, the same thing happened, only it was André who went to the front of the class. And right straight through the room, they took turns, each day a different boy, until it was the schoolmaster’s turn. Looking very pale, he stood in front of them once more, and they waited, expecting him to say: “One dies as one is born.” Instead, he began to hear the lesson, which they all knew. “But are you really the schoolmaster, or are you the spirit that takes our place?” they asked. “I am the schoolmaster,” the man said sadly. “One dies as one is born, and I was born a man. But through the grace of Heaven, one is—one can hope to be of the company of spirits.” That was the last time they ever heard him utter this familiar expression, though he stayed at his desk and taught them patiently, in a voice of the utmost gentleness and reasonableness, from that time on.

  IF THE RIDE TO THE PARTY SEEMED LONG, the ride home was too brief. Harold found himself pushing his bicycle into the darkness of the woods behind Beaumesnil long before he expected to. The courtyard, like everywhere else, was flooded with moonlight. There was a lighted kerosene lamp on the kitchen table. All the rest of the château was either white in the moonlight or in total shadow.

  They piled their bicycles in a heap in the kitchen entry. Alix lit the other lamps that had been left for them. In a procession, they went through the pantry and the dining room to the stairs and parted in the second-floor hallway. They were relaxed and sleepy and easy with each other; even Eugène. It was as if they had come home from any number of parties in just this way (“Good night”) and were all one family (“Good night, Barbara”) and knew each other’s secrets (“Good night, good night”) and took for granted the affection that could be heard in their voices. (“It was lovely, wasn’t it?… I hope you sleep well.… Good night.…”)

  Chapter 12

  ON SUNDAY MORNING, Harold sat tense and ready, his week-old, wine-stained, really horrible-looking napkin rolled and inserted in its ivory ring. He refused another cup of coffee and pretended to be following the history of the Allégret family that Mme Viénot was telling with so much pleasure. He was waiting for her to leave the table. When she pushed her chair back, he got up also and followed her out into the hall.

  “If it would be convenient,” he began, “if there is time before church, that is, could we—”

  “Yes, of course,” Mme Viénot said, as if she were grateful to him for reminding her of something she should have thought of, herself. She led the way through the pink and white drawing room to a room beyond it, a study, which Harold had not been in before. Composed and businesslike, she indicated a chair for him and sat down at the flat-topped mahogany desk in the center of the room. To be embarrassed by a situation one has deliberately contrived to bring about in one’s own interests is not realistic; is not intelligent; in short, is not French. As Mme Viénot opened a drawer and drew out a blank sheet of paper, she saw that his eyes were focused on the wall directly behind her and said: “That is a picture of Beaumesnil as it was when my father inherited it. As you see, it was a small country house. I find it rather charming. Even though the artist was not very talented. As a painting it is rather sentimental.… I spoke to my cook about the pommes de terre frites.”

  He looked blank.

  “You remember that Mme Rhodes asked for the recipe—and it was as I suspected. She is unwilling to divulge her secret. They are so peculiar in this respect.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

  “I’m sorry. I would have liked to have got it for her. You came here on the eleventh—”

  He nodded.

  “—and today is Sunday the twenty-fifth. That makes two full weeks—”

  His eyes opened wide. So they were being charged, after all, for the three days they were in Paris.

  “—and one day,” Mme Viénot concluded.

  They had arrived at one o’clock; they would be leaving for the train at three thirty this afternoon. The extra day was two and a half hours long.

  A moment later, Mme Viénot interrupted her writing to say: “I did not think it proper to allow M. Carrère to pay for the ices and the pâtisseries that afternoon in Blois. Your share of the addition came to a hundred and eighty francs.” The amount was written down, while he tried to reconcile M. Carrère’s pleasant gesture toward America with the fact that he had afterward allowed the cost of the gesture to be deducted from his bill and added onto theirs. Only in dreams are such contradictions reconciled; in real life, fortunately, it isn’t necessary. Nothing was deducted for the ten or eleven meals they had not taken at the château, or for the taxi ride to Blois that Mme Viénot had shared with them. The taxi to and from the ferry, the day they went to Chaumont, was six hundred francs. He had not intended that Mme Viénot, Mme Straus-Muguet, and Alix should have to pay a share of this amount; he would not have allowed it. Apparently i
t was, as Alix said, a question of sincerity. But had M. Carrère allowed her to deduct their ices and pastry from his bill? It did not seem at all like him. And had Mme Straus-Muguet been charged for her share of the taxi to and from the ferry at Chaumont?

  The sense of outrage, clotted in his breast, moved him to fight back, and the form his attack took was characteristic. In one of her letters she had written them that the service was included. He offered her now a chance to go the whole hog.

  “What about the cook and Thérèse and Albert?”

  “I shall give them something,” Mme Viénot said.

  But will she, he wondered.

  The sheet of paper that she handed across the desk read:

  Note de Semaine de M. Harold Rhodes

  2 semaines

  + 1 jour 32,100 f

  5 téléphones 100 f

  Goûter à Blois 180 f

  Laundry 125 f

  payé le 24 Juillet 48

  Château Beaumesnil

  Brenodville s/Euphrone

  With the pen that she offered to him he wrote the date and his signature on four American Express traveler’s checks—a fifty, two twenty-fives, and a ten—and handed them to her as he wrote.

  “Will you also give me a statement that you have cashed these four checks?”

  “Is that necessary?” Mme Viénot asked.

  “For the customs,” he said. “The amount we brought in is declared in our passports, and the checks have to be accounted for when we leave.”

  “I have been advised not to put down the money I receive from my clients, when I make out my tax statement,” Mme Viénot said. “If they do not ask to see the statement when you go through customs, I would appreciate your not showing it.”

  He agreed to this arrangement.

  She opened a little metal box and produced four hundred-franc notes, a fifty, a twenty-five, and two tens, and gave them to him. He folded the huge paper currency and put it in his coat pocket. With the traveler’s checks neatly arranged in front of her, she said: “It has been a great pleasure having you.… I hope that when you come again it will be as friends.”

  He said nothing. He had paid the full amount, which was perhaps reasonable, since he had not asked outright if they would be charged for the three days they were in Paris. If she had really felt kindly toward them, or had the slightest impulse toward generosity or fairness, she could have made some slight adjustment. She hadn’t, and he was therefore not obliged to pretend now.

  His eyes met hers in a direct glance and she looked away. She picked up the checks and put them down again, and then said: “There is something I have wanted to tell you, something I would like to explain. But perhaps you guessed—We have not always lived like this.”

  “I understand that.”

  “There has been a drame in our family. Two years ago, my husband—”

  She stopped talking. Her eyes were filled with tears. He leaned forward in his chair, saw that it was too late for him to say anything, and then sat back and waited for the storm of weeping to pass. He could not any more help being moved, as he watched her, than if she had proved in a thousand ways that she was their friend. Whatever the trouble was, it had been real.

  FIVE MINUTES LATER he closed the door of their third-floor room and said: “I almost solved the mystery.”

  “What mystery?” Barbara asked.

  “I almost found out about M. Viénot. She started to tell me, when I finished paying her—”

  “Did she charge us for the full two weeks?”

  “How did you know that? And then she started to tell me about him.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t let her tell me.”

  “But why, if she wanted to tell you?”

  “She broke down. She cried.”

  “Mme Viénot?”

  He heard the sound of wheels and went to the window. The dog cart had come to a stop in front of the château, and the gardener was helping Mme Bonenfant up into the seat beside him. She sat, dressed for church, with her prayerbook in her hand.

  Harold turned away from the window and said: “I could feel something. She changed, suddenly. She started searching for her handkerchief. And from the way she looked at me, I had a feeling she was asking me to deliver her from the situation she had got herself into. So I told her she didn’t need to tell me about it. I said I was interested in people, that I observed them, but that I never asked questions.”

  “But are you sure she changed her mind about telling you?”

  “Not at all sure. She may have been play-acting. I may have given her the wrong cue, for all I know. But she didn’t cry on purpose. That much I’m sure of.”

  Leaning on his elbows, he looked out at the park. The hay stacks were gone, and the place had taken on a certain formality. He saw how noble the old trees were that lined the drive all the way out to the road. The horse restlessly moved forward a few paces and had to be checked by the gardener, who sat holding the reins. Mme Bonenfant arranged her skirt and then, looking up at the house, she called impatiently.

  From somewhere a voice—light, unhurried, affectionate, silvery—answered: “Oui, Grand’maman. A l’instant. Je viens, je viens …”

  “What an idiotic thing to do,” Barbara said. “Now we’ll never know what happened to him.”

  “Yes we will,” he said. “Somebody will tell us. Sooner or later somebody always does.”

  ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON, an hour before it was time to start for the train, Mme Viénot said to her American guests: “Would you like to see the house?”

  Alix and Mme Bonenfant went with them. The tour began on the second floor at the head of the stairs, with Mme Bonenfant’s bedroom, which was directly under theirs. The counterpane on the huge bed was of Persian embroidery on a white background. The chair covers were of the same rich material. They were reminded of the bedchamber of Henri IV at Cheverny. The bedroom at Beaumesnil smelled of camphor and old age, and the walls were covered with family photographs. As they were leaving the room, Harold glanced over at the bedside table and saw that the schoolboy whose photograph was on the piano in the petit salon had not been finished off at the age of twelve; here he was, in the uniform of the French army.

  They saw the two rooms that had been occupied by M. and Mme Carrère and that would have been theirs, Mme Viénot said, if they had come when they originally planned. And at the end of the hall, they were shown into Mme Cestre’s room, on which her contradictory character had failed to leave any impression whatever. The curtains, the bedspread were green and white chintz that had some distant connection with water lilies.

  Mme Viénot’s room, directly across the hall from her mother’s but around a corner, where they had never thought to search for her, was much smaller, and furnished simply and apparently without much thought. It was dominated not by the bed but by the writing desk.

  Mme Viénot opened a desk drawer and took out some postcards. “I think you have no picture of Beaumesnil,” she said.

  “We took some pictures with our camera,” Barbara said, “but they may not turn out. We’re not very good at taking pictures.”

  “You may choose the one you like best,” Mme Viénot said.

  They looked through the cards and took one and handed the others to Mme Viénot, who gave them to her mother as they were going along the second-floor passageway that connected the two parts of the house. Mme Bonenfant gave the cards back to Barbara, saying: “Keep them. Keep all of them.”

  Alix did not speak of the fact that they had already seen her room. It almost seemed that the room itself, as they stood in the doorway looking in, was denying that that illicit evening had ever taken place. They passed on to the bare, badly furnished room that had been Mme Straus-Muguet’s. It was so much less comfortable than their own third-floor room or than any of the rooms they had just seen that Harold wondered if a deliberate slight had been involved. As Mme Viénot closed the door she said dryly: “I
t seems Mme Straus saw your room and she has asked for it when she comes back in August. I do not think I can see my way clear to letting her have it.”

  But why did Mme Viénot not want her to have their room, he wondered. Unless Mme Straus was unwilling to pay what they had paid, or perhaps was unable to pay that much. And if that was so, should they allow her to entertain them in Paris?

  In this back wing of the house there was a box-stair leading up to a loft that had once been used as a granary. It still smelled of the dust of grain that had been stored there, though it was empty now, except for a few old-fashioned dolls (whose dolls, he wondered; how long ago had their place been usurped by children?) and, in the center of the high dim room, the wooden works of the outdoor clock.

  They were quite beyond repair, Mme Viénot said, but the wooden cogwheels had turned, the clock had kept time, as recently as her girlhood. The pineapple-shaped weights were huge, and a hole had had to be cut in the floor for them to rise and descend through. Standing in this loft, Harold had the feeling that they had penetrated into the secret center of the house, and that there were no more mysteries to uncover.

  AS ALWAYS at the end of a visit, there was first too much time and then suddenly there was not enough and they were obliged to hurry. Alix and Eugène had already started out for the village on foot. The gardener’s bicycles having been returned to him, again there weren’t enough to go round. The Americans took one last survey of the red room, free of litter now, the armoire and the closet empty, the postcards, guidebooks, and souvenirs all packed, the history of the château of Blois and the illustrated pamphlet returned to their place downstairs. The dying sweet peas in their square vase on the table in the center of the room said: It is time to go.…