Now she was to meet her grandfather, the relative who she was certain had been more instrumental than anyone else in treating her mother as if she was a leper because she had married the man she loved.
With her chin held high and her back very straight, Canèda moved in front of him and, as he stared at her, she dropped him a small curtsey.
For a moment there was silence.
Then in a voice that sounded strangled, the Comte said,
“Clémentine! You are Clémentine!”
“No, dear,” the Comtesse said quickly, “this is Canèda, Clémentine’s daughter.”
The old man did not seem to hear her.
“You have come back, Clémentine,” he cried. “That is good! I knew you would see sense. Saumac was distraught because you disappeared. He loves you. I have never known a man so much in love. I had to tell him we could not find you, but now everything will be all right. Everything!”
He smiled and said to his wife,
“Send for Saumac. Tell him Clémentine is here. It will make him happy. Poor man, I was sorry for him. He has been so unhappy.”
Because for the moment it seemed as if the Comtesse had no words to correct her husband with, Canèda took the initiative.
She went a little nearer and said,
“Look at me, Grandpère. I am not Clémentine, but your granddaughter, Canèda.”
“You are not Clémentine?”
He spoke the words very slowly as if with an effort.
“No, Grandpère, my mother – Clémentine is – dead.”
It was difficult to say the words and yet her voice sounded quite clear.
For a moment her meaning did not percolate through to the old man’s mind.
Then suddenly, in such a loud voice that it made her jump, he said,
“What are you saying? Clémentine cannot be dead! She is to marry Saumac. It is all arranged. Where is she? Where has she gone to? What are you keeping from me?”
His voice grew louder and more agitated and Armand ran to the door.
The two servants, who had escorted the Comte into the salon and who were obviously waiting outside, came quickly across the room towards him.
“Clémentine! Where is Clémentine?” the old man was shouting as they lifted him from the chair.
“Come along, Monsieur le Comte,” one of the servants said. “There is a glass of wine waiting for you in your own room.”
“I don’t want any wine,” the old man replied angrily. “I want Clémentine! Where is she? The Wedding is tomorrow. The Duc will be here tonight and how can we tell him that we cannot find her? Find her, you fools! Find her! She cannot have gone far.”
They were moving him towards the door and, as they went through it, he was still shouting,
“Clémentine! Clémentine! Where are you, Clémentine?”
Canèda could hear his voice echoing back as they moved him down the passage.
She stood feeling curiously shaken by what had occurred.
Then, as she looked at her grandmother, she saw that she was holding a handkerchief to her eyes.
“I think you should pour some wine for your grandmother,” Madame de Goucourt said to Armand in a low voice.
As if glad that he could do something, Armand went towards the door as two servants came in carrying a silver tray with glasses on it and small pâtisseries.
Armand took a glass from the tray and carried it to his grandmother s side.
“Drink this, Grandmère,” he said, “and don’t be upset.”
“He has been better for the last two days,” the Comtesse said in a low voice, “and I did not want Canèda to know what he was like.”
“She would have learnt sooner or later,” Armand said soothingly, “and I feel that she will understand.”
He looked at Canèda as he spoke, as if he wished that she would support him, and she said quickly,
“Of course, I am sorry that Mama’s running away upset him so much.”
“He has never been the same since,” the Comtesse said in a low voice. “Sometimes he is his usual self, but with our worries lately he has grown much worse.”
“Don’t talk about it, Grandmère,” Hélène said. “You know it always upsets you and, as this is Cousin Canèda’s first visit here, we have so much to show her.”
“Yes, of course,” the Comtesse agreed, “and it is stupid of me to be upset.”
As she wiped her eyes, Madame de Goucourt moved closer to her, while Canèda rose to walk to the window to gaze out at the formal gardens.
They were laid out in the way that had been made fashionable by the gardens at Versailles.
But even at a quick glance Canèda could see that they were not well tended and needed attention. Hélène and Armand joined her at the window. Armand offered her a glass of wine.
Then he said in a low voice so that his grandmother could not hear,
“I am so sorry that you have been involved in a scene so soon after your arrival, but we never thought that Grandpère would take you for your mother.”
“Is it true,” Canèda asked, “that he has been like this since Mama ran away?”
“I have always heard,” Armand replied, “that at first he was furiously angry and then very bitter.”
“And now?”
“Now, with all the other troubles, his mind has gone back to the past,” Armand said. “He often talks as if he was living twenty years ago and that is why, if we had had any sense, we would have realised that he would think you were your mother.”
There was silence and then Canèda had to ask the questions that trembled on her lips.
“Did the Duc de Saumac really love Mama?”
“So my mother has always told me,” Armand replied.
“Papa said he adored her,” Hélène interposed. “He was much older than she was, but Papa said that he was like a young man who falls in love for the first time.”
“I expect that was true,” Armand said. “After all Cousin Canèda knows that marriages are arranged in France and it is only the second time round that we have the chance of choosing our wives rather than the family doing it for us.”
“Mama thought that the Duc only wanted to marry her in order to have more children,” Canèda said.
“I am sure that was not true,” Hélène answered. “It was really all very romantic.”
“Tell me what you know,” Canèda asked.
“The Duc saw your mother at a party and fell in love with her and, of course, in those days, as now, it was Grandpère who accepted his proposal and I expect that your mother was just told that she was to be a Duchesse.”
“Yes, that is true,” Canèda agreed.
“We have always heard from our parents that the Duc was so deeply in love with her that when she disappeared, he nearly went mad, raged at Grandpère and then scoured the countryside and, when finally it was known that your father and mother had married, he talked of taking his own life.”
“I cannot believe it!” Canèda exclaimed.
“It is true,” Armand said. “I have been told the same story, not only by my father and mother but by dozens of other de Bantômes who were there at the time.”
“Grandpère had a terrible time with the Duc and he too was very unhappy,” Hélène said. “He loved your mother perhaps more than his other children and I think that was why he could not bear to talk about her or accept that she even existed because she had married an Englishman”
Canèda gave a sigh.
It was all so very different from what she had anticipated and she knew that the sight of her grandfather, a little mad and calling for her mother, had upset her more than she liked to admit.
When she was taken to her bedroom, she noticed again as she walked through the house, escorted by Hélène, that much of it was shabby and in need of repair.
In her bedroom, which was very impressive and was, as Hélène told her, one of the State rooms, the silk brocade was peeling off the walls in places.
The exquisitely painted ceiling was damaged by damp and the chairs needed recovering.
Hélène saw Canèda’s eyes glancing round her and said in a slightly embarrassed way,
“I am afraid there is a great deal that needs doing, but, as you will understand, there have had to be drastic economies these last years.”
“Are you saying that the de Bantômes are hard-up?” Canèda enquired.
Hélène looked at her in surprise.
“Of course we are! Did you not know?”
“Why should I, when we have had no communication with you all these years, except for the letter that arrived some weeks ago asking my brother and me to come and stay.”
“Grandmère wrote to you?” Hélène exclaimed.
“Yes, did you not know?”
“We never heard her mention you until your groom arrived to say that you were on your way from Bordeaux.”
Canèda looked astonished and then Hélène said,
“I quite understand what has happened. She wants your help.”
“That is what she asked for,” Canèda said coldly.
Hélène made a little gesture with her hand.
“I suppose we are in such a mess that Grandmère is clutching at any straw, although I am sure that Papa and Mama will be as surprised as I am that she actually asked you to come here.”
Canèda had already heard that her mother’s brother, René and his wife, the parents of Armand and Hélène, were in Paris.
Now Hélène went on,
“Papa is trying to raise a loan somehow from the Banks or from friends, otherwise I don’t know what will happen in the future.”
Canèda paused before she asked what she knew was a vital question.
“You grow wine. Are the vines in fact infected with phylloxera?”
Hélène nodded.
“It started five years ago in a small way, but now it is getting worse and worse. There seems to be nothing we can do to stop it”
There was a note in her voice that told Canèda how much it mattered to her personally.
“Surely there must be some cure?” she asked.
“Only to flood the vineyards, but naturally the hillside cannot be flooded.”
“Then what will happen?” Canèda asked.
For a moment Hélène did not answer and then she said,
“We will not be able to live here and the Château will have to be closed. I don’t know where we shall go or what Papa will do. All our money comes from the wine.”
Canèda could understand why her grandmother had felt desperate and had written to Harry.
There was no need for it to be put into words for her to know that without a dowry, no Frenchman would want to marry Hélène, and Armand, even though one day he would be the Comte de Bantôme, would not be acceptable as a suitor in any family that could provide their daughter with an income.
It was as if she was watching something that had always been strong and stable crumbling to the ground and she knew how distraught her mother would have been.
“It must not depress you,” Hélène said quickly. “It is delightful to have you here and you are so beautiful. We have always been told that your Mama was the beauty of the family and now I know it is true. Tomorrow I will show you a portrait of her.”
“There is one here in the Château?” Canèda asked eagerly.
“There are several. They are all hidden away because they upset Grandpère, but we will bring them out and I expect if you ask Grandmère she will let you have one to take back to England with you.”
“I would like that,” Canèda said simply.
“And I want you to tell me about your mother,” Hélène said. “To me, as I have already said, it is the most romantic story I have ever heard, to know that she was brave enough to run away when her Wedding gown was waiting for her, her trousseau was packed and the house was filled with guests and presents.”
Canèda smiled.
“She was in love.”
“I know. That is what makes it so marvellous, that love made her brave enough to leave everything that she belonged to – and the Duc.”
Canèda smiled again.
“When one is in love, a title is not important.”
“That is what Aunt Clémentine made very clear,” Hélène said, “but I am sure if I was going to marry a Duc I would never be brave enough to run away with a plain Monsieur.”
“You would do so, like my mother, if you found a man you really loved,” Canèda said.
Hélène smiled at her, but Canèda knew that she was not convinced.
It was the ambition of every French girl to have a great Château of her own and a social position that was unassailable.
That was exactly what her mother had been offered by the Duc de Saumac, yet she had run away with a penniless Englishman without a title and without prospects of ever having one.
It suddenly struck her that if she herself had never met the Duc, then she would not have really understood why her mother had given up so much.
She had known how happy she was with her father. Equally she had been well aware of how poor they were and how difficult it was to make ends meet and how hard it was for her father never to have suitable horses to ride.
Some critical part of her mind had made her ask as soon as she was old enough,
“Has it really been worth giving up so much, Mama?”
She had thought not only of the Duc but of the powerful rich de Bantôme family with their endless acres of land in Périgord and their magnificent Château.
Sometimes, when she had seen her mother looking at a gown that was out of fashion and almost threadbare and wondering how she could make it last a little longer, she had longed to say,
‘How could you, Mama, give up so much for Papa, adorable though he is?’
Now she understood and was frightened to know that she understood only because the Duc had kissed her with a strange enchantment that made her forget everything except him.
It flashed through her mind that if the Duc had been an almost penniless younger son like her father and he had asked her to marry him, she would have said ‘yes’.
That was love and, although her mind tried to repudiate it, she knew hopelessly and irrevocably that she loved a man whom she could never marry because he already had a wife.
The Duc de Saumac!
Chapter 6
The Comtesse put out her hand to draw Canèda down beside her.
“I want you to tell me about your mother, my dear,” she began.
Canèda paused for a moment.
Before she had arrived at the Château, she had planned so many things that she would say, but now her whole attitude towards her relatives was changing, especially towards the Comtesse.
After a moment she responded,
“Mama was very very happy with my father, but at times she felt homesick for her family, especially you, Grandmère.”
She saw the tears come into her grandmother’s eyes before she replied,
“And I missed her! One day, when you have children of your own, you will know how much they mean and, whether one sees them or not, one never ceases to worry over them and – love them.”
There was a throb in her voice that told Canèda how sincere the words were and after a moment, a little hesitatingly because she did not wish to be unkind, she said,
“How could you have ignored Mama all the years and never communicated with her even when she wrote to you?”
She thought that what had hurt her mother more than anything else was that, when she had written to her own mother telling that she had a son, the letter had been returned unopened.
The Comtesse gave a little cry that was one of pain.
“You must believe me, Canèda,” she said, “when I tell you that I had no idea until a long time later that your mother had written to me or that the letter had been returned.”
“How is that possible?” Canèda asked.
“Your grandfather was dread
fully upset and angry when she ran away, but I think he might have forgiven her if the Duc de Saumac had not been with us so much, raging with anger one moment because he had been made to look a fool over the Wedding and then at the next in despair and desolate in a way that I cannot describe because he had lost your mother, whom he loved.”
The Comtesse drew in her breath, as if it was hard for her to remember how upsetting it had been.
Then she went on,
“I am convinced that the Duc was largely responsible for the fact that your grandfather became a little unbalanced and it was impossible for any of us to mention your mother’s name without there being a scene.”
Canèda was silent, thinking that her mother had imagined that they had just forgotten her and wiped her out of their lives.
“Your grandfather’s secretary, who had been with us for many years and who was devoted to him, was deeply upset at what was happening and, when your mothers letter came, he sent it back without telling either me or your grandfather that it had arrived.”
“How could he do such a thing?” Canèda asked indignantly.
“He thought that he was saving us more pain and misery,” the Comtesse replied. “I have often thought that well-wishers do more harm than good.”
“Mama wrote to tell you that she had a son,” Canèda said.
“How I wish I had known,” the Comtesse murmured.
Now the tears welled up in her old eyes and ran down her cheeks.
Impulsively Canèda put out her hand to hold hers.
“I don’t want you to be upset,” she said, “and I promise you that Mama was blissfully happy even though we were very poor. In fact I often thought my home radiated with sunshine all the year round.”
“She never regretted the social position she had thrown away?” the Comtesse asked.
Canèda shook her head.
“I do not think that Papa or Mama would have changed their lives in any way, even if they had been offered the position of King and Queen!”
As she spoke, Canèda thought that was exactly what love meant and she was understanding for the first time that nothing that the world could offer was more wonderful or more perfect than to be in the arms of the man one loved.
Love in the Moon Page 11
