William Maxwell - The Chateau

She was looking directly at Harold’s face but he was not sure she even saw him. He studied her, while she took a sip of coffee, trying to see her as her friend the Russian woman saw her—the pale-blue eyes, the too-black hair, the rouged cheeks. She must be somewhere in Proust, he thought.

“Never trust a Slav,” she said solemnly.

And what about the variations, he wondered. There must be variations, such as never trust an Englishman; never trust a Swede. And maybe even never trust an American?

“Are French people always kind and helpful to foreigners?” he asked. “Because that has been our experience so far.”

“I can’t say that they are, always,” Mme Viénot said. She put her cup and saucer on the tray. “You have perhaps been fortunate.”

She got up and moved away, leaving him with the feeling that he had said something untactful. His own cup was empty, but he continued to hold it, though the table was within reach.

M. Gagny was talking about the British royal family. He knew the Duke of Connaught, he said, and he had danced with the Princess Elizabeth, but he was partial to the Princess Margaret Rose.

Mme Viénot sat down beside her mother, patted her dry mottled hand, and smiled at her and then around at the company, lightly and publicly admitting her fondness.

M. Carrère explained to Barbara that he could speak English, but that it tired him, and he preferred his native tongue. Mme Carrère’s English was better than his, but on the other hand he talked and she didn’t. Mme Bonenfant did not know English at all, though she spoke German. And the Canadian was so conspicuously bilingual that his presence in the circle of chairs was a reproach rather than a help to the Americans. Harold told himself that it was foolish—that it was senseless, in fact—to make the effort, but nevertheless he couldn’t help feeling that he must live up to his success before dinner or he would surrender too much ground. A remark, a question addressed directly to him, he understood sufficiently to answer, but then the conversation became general again and he was lost. He sat balancing the empty cup and saucer in his two hands, looked at whoever was speaking, and tried to catch from the others’ faces whether the remark was serious or amusing, so that he could smile at the right time. This tightrope performance and fatigue (they had got up early to catch the train, and it had already been a long day) combined to deprive him of the last hope of understanding what was said.

Watching him, Barbara saw the glazed look she knew so well—the film that came over his eyes whenever he was bored or ill-at-ease. As she got ready to deliver him from his misery, it occurred to her suddenly how odd it was that neither of them had ever stopped to think what it might be like staying with a French family, or that there might be more to it than an opportunity to improve their French.

“COULD YOU UNDERSTAND THEM?” he asked, as soon as they were behind the closed door of their room.

She nodded.

“I couldn’t.”

“But you talked. I was afraid to open my mouth.”

This made him feel better.

“There’s a toilet on this floor, at the far end of the attic corridor. I asked Mme Bonenfant.”

“Behind one of the doors I was afraid to open,” he said, nodding.

“But it’s out of order. It’s going to be fixed in a day or two. Meanwhile, we’re to use the toilet on the second floor.

They undressed and got into their damp beds and talked drowsily for a few minutes—about the house, about the other guests, about the food, which was the best they had had in France—and then fell into a deep sleep. When they woke, the afternoon was gone and it was raining softly. He got into her bed, and she put her head in the hollow of his shoulder.

“I wish this room was all there was,” he said, “and we lived in it. I wish it was ours.”

“You wouldn’t get tired of the red wallpaper?”

“No.”

“Neither would I. Or of anything else,” she said.

“It’s not like any room that I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s very French.”

“What is?” he asked.

“Everything.… Why isn’t she here?”

“Who?”

“The French girl. If this was my room, I’d be living in it.”

“She’s probably having a much better time in Paris,” he said, and looked at his wrist watch. “Come on,” he said, tossing the cover back. “We’re late.”

After dinner, Mme Viénot led her guests into the family parlor across the hall. The coffee that Harold was waiting for did not appear. He and Barbara smoked one cigarette, to be sociable, and then wandered outside. It had stopped raining. They walked up and down the gravel terrace, admiring the house and the old trees and the view, which was gilded with the evening light. They were happy to be by themselves, and pleased with the way they had managed things—for they might, at this very moment, have been walking the streets of Le Mans, or freezing to death at the seashore, and instead they were here. They would be able to include this interesting place among the places they had seen and could tell people about when they got home.

From the terrace they went directly to their room, their beautiful red room, whose history they had no way of knowing.

The village of Brenodville was very old and had interesting historical associations. The château did not, if by history you mean kings and queens and their awful favorites, battles and treaties, ruinous entertainments, genius harbored, the rise and fall of ambitious men. Its history was merely the history of the family that had lived in it tenaciously, generation after generation. The old wing, the carriage house, the stables, and the brick courtyard dated from the seventeenth century. Around the year 1900, the property figured in still another last will and testament, duly signed and sealed. Beaumesnil passed from the dead hands of a rich, elderly, unmarried sportsman, who seldom used it, into the living, eager hands of a nephew who had been sufficiently attentive and who, just to make things doubly sure, had been named after him. Almost the first thing M. Jules Bonenfant did with the fortune he had inherited was to build against the old house a new wing, larger and more formal in design. From this time on, instead of facing the carp pond and the forest, the château faced the patchwork of small fields and the River Loire, which was too far away to figure in the view. For a number of years, the third-floor room on the left at the head of the stairs remained empty and unused. Moonlight came and went. Occasionally a freakish draft blew down the chimney, redistributing the dust. A gray squirrel got in, also by way of the chimney, and died here, while mud wasps beat against the windowpanes. The newspapers of 1906 did not penetrate this far and so the wasps never learned that a Captain Alfred Dreyfus had been decorated with the Légion d’Honneur, in public, in the courtyard of the artillery pavilion at St. Cyr. In September of that same year, Mme. Bonenfant stood on the second-floor landing and directed the village paperhanger, with his scissors, paste, steel measuring tape, and trestle, up the final flight of stairs and through the door on the left. When the room was finished, Mlle Toinette was parted from a tearful governess and found herself in possession of a large bedroom that was directly over her mother’s and the same size and shape. The only difference was that the ceiling sloped down on one side and there was one window instead of two. With different wallpaper and different furniture, the room was now her younger daughter’s. So much for its history. Now what about the two people who are asleep in it? Who are they? What is their history?