William Maxwell - The Chateau

In the dining room Harold found himself seated between Mme Carrère and old Mme Bonenfant. Mme Carrère was served before him, and he watched her out of the corner of his eye, and was relieved to see that there was no difference; table manners were the same here as at home. But his initial attempts to make conversation met with failure. Mme Carrère seemed to be a taciturn woman, and something told him that any attempt to be friendly with her might be regarded as being overfriendly. Mme Bonenfant either did not understand or was simply not interested in his description of the terraced gardens of Mont-Saint-Michel.

George Ireland, the American boy who had spent the previous summer at the château and was indirectly responsible for their being here now had said that it was one of his duties to keep Mme Bonenfant’s water glass filled. Harold saw that there was a carafe of water in front of him and that her glass was empty. Though she allowed him to fill it again and again during dinner, she addressed her remarks to M. Carrère.

As the soup gave way to the fish and the fish in turn to the entree, the talk ranged broadly over national and international politics, life in Paris before the war, travel in Spain and Italy, the volcanic formations of Ischia, the national characteristics of the Swiss. In his effort to follow what was being said around the table, Harold forgot to eat, and this slowed up the service. He left his knife and fork on his plate and, too late, saw them being carried out to the pantry. A clean knife and fork were brought to him with the next course. Mme Viénot interrupted the flow of wit and anecdote to inquire if he understood what was being said.

“I understand part of it,” he said eagerly.

A bleak expression crossed her face. Instead of smiling or saying something reassuring to him, she looked down at her plate. He glanced across the table at Barbara and saw, with surprise, that she was her natural self.

After the dessert course, Mme Viénot pushed her chair back and they all rose from the table at once. Mme Carrère, passing the sideboard, lifted the lid of a faïence soup tureen and took out a box of Belgian sugar. The Canadian kept his sugar in a red lacquer cabinet in the drawing room, and Mme Viénot hers and her mother’s in the writing desk in the petit salon. Harold excused himself and went upstairs to their room. Strewing the contents of the dufflebag over the bathroom floor, he finally came upon the boxes of cube sugar they had brought with them from America. When he walked into the drawing room, the servant girl had brought the silver coffee service and Mme Viénot was measuring powdered coffee into little white coffee cups.

The Canadian lit a High Life cigarette. Harold, conscious of the fact that their ten cartons had to last them through four months, thought it might be a good idea to wait until he and Barbara were alone to smoke, but she was looking at him expectantly, and so he took a pack from his coat pocket, ripped the cellophane off, and offered the cigarettes to her and then around the circle. They were refused politely until he came to Mme Viénot, who took one, as if she was not quite sure what it might be for but was always willing to try something new.

“I think the church is in Chartres,” Barbara said, and he knew that she had been talking about the little church at the end of the carline. There were two things that she remembered particularly from that earlier trip to France and that she wanted to see again. One was a church, a beautiful little church at the end of a streetcar line, and the other was a white château with a green lawn in front of it. She had no idea where either of them was.

“You don’t mean the cathedral?” Mme Viénot asked.

“Oh, no,” Barbara said.

Though there were matches on the table beside her, Mme Viénot waited for Harold to return and light her cigarette. Her hand touched his as she bent over the lighted match, and this contact—not accidental, he was sure—startled him. What was it? Was she curious? Was she trying to find out whether his marriage was really pink and happy or blue like most marriages?

“There is no tram line at Chartres,” she said, blowing a cloud of smoke through her nostrils. “I ought to know the château, but I’m afraid I don’t. There are so many.”

And what about M. Viénot, he wondered. Where was he? Was he dead? Why had his name not come up in the conversation before or during dinner?

“It was like a castle in a fairy tale,” Barbara said.

“Cheverny has a large lawn in front of it. Have you been there?” Mme Viénot asked. Barbara shook her head.

“I have a brochure with some pictures of châteaux. Perhaps you will recognize the one you are looking for.… You are going to be in France how long?”

“Until the beginning of August,” Barbara said. “And then we’re going to Switzerland and Austria. We’re going to Salzburg for the Festival.”

“And then to Venice,” Harold said, “and down through Italy as far as Florence—”

“You have a great deal in store for you,” Mme Viénot said. “Venice is enchanting. You will adore Venice.”

“—and back through the Italian and French Rivieras to Paris, and then home.”

“It is better not to try to see too much,” Mme Viénot said. “The place one stays in for a week or ten days is likely to be the place one remembers. And how long do you have?… Ah, I envy you. One of the most disagreeable things about the Occupation was that we were not permitted to travel.”

“The luggage is something of a problem,” he said.

“What you do not need you can leave here,” she said.

Tempting though this was, if they left their luggage at the château they would have to come back for it. “Thank you. I will remember if we …” He managed not to commit them to anything.

The Canadian was talking about the Count of Paris, and it occurred to Harold that for the first time in his life he was in the presence of royalists. His defense of democracy was extremely oblique; he said: “Is the Count of Paris an intelligent man?”—having read somewhere that he was not.

“Unfortunately, no,” Mme Viénot said, and smiled. “Such an amusing story is going the round. It seems his wife was quite ill, and the doctors said she must have a transfusion—you say ‘transfusion’ in English?—or she would die. But the Count wouldn’t give his consent. He kept them waiting for two whole days while he searched through the Almanach de Gotha.”

“It was a question of blue blood?”

She nodded. “He could not find anyone with a sufficient number of royal quarterings in his coat of arms. In the end he had to compromise, I believe, and take what he could get.” She took a sip of coffee and then said: “Something similar happened in our family recently. My niece has just had her first child, and two days after it was born, she commenced hemorrhaging. They couldn’t find her husband—he was playing golf—so the doctor went ahead and arranged for a transfusion, without his consent—and when Eugène walked in and saw this strange man—he was a very common person—sitting beside his wife’s bed, he was most upset.”

“The blood from a transfusion only lasts forty-eight hours,” Harold said, in his own peculiar way every bit as much of a snob as the Count of Paris.

“My niece’s husband did not know that,” Mme Viénot said. “And he did not want his children to have this person’s blood in their veins. My sister and the doctor had a very difficult time with him.”

On the other side of the circle of chairs, M. Carrère said that he didn’t like Germans, to Mme Bonenfant, who was not defending them.

Mme Viénot took his empty cup and put it on the tray. Turning back to Harold and Barbara, she said: “France was not ready for the war, and when the Germans came we could do nothing. It was like a nightmare.… Now, of course, we are living in another; we are deathly afraid of war between your country and the Union of Soviet Republics. You think it will happen soon?… I blame your President Roosevelt. He didn’t understand the Russian temperament and so he was taken in by promises that mean nothing. The Slav is not like other Europeans.… Some years ago I became acquainted with a Russian woman. She was delightful to be with. She was responsive and intelligent. She had all the qualities one looks for in a friend. And yet, as time went on, I realized that I did not really know her. I was always conscious of something held back.”