William Maxwell - The Chateau

As they came back up the cinder drive, they saw the Canadian pacing the terrace in front of the château and staring up at the sky. The clouds had coalesced for the first time in several days, and the sun was trying to break through.

Away from the French, he seemed perfectly friendly, and willing to acknowledge the fact that Canada is right next to the United States.

“I congratulate you,” he said, smiling.

“On what?” Harold asked.

“On the way you made your escape last night, after dinner. The evenings are very long.”

“Then we ought to have stayed?” Barbara said.

“You have established a precedent. From now on, they expect you to be independent.”

“But we didn’t mean to,” Harold said, “and if it was really impolite—”

“Oh, yes,” Gagny said, smiling. “I quite understood, and the others did too. There was no comment.”

“Are you expected to remain with them after dinner?” Harold persisted.

“As Americans you are in an enviable position,” Gagny said, ignoring the question. Still smiling, he held the door open for them to pass into the drawing room, where Mme Carrère, with tortoise-shell glasses on, sat reading a letter. In her lap were half a dozen more. Mme Viénot was also reading a letter. Mme Bonenfant was reading Le Figaro , without glasses.

“Sabine has seen the King of Persia,” Mme Viénot announced. And then, turning the page: “There is to be an illumination on Bastille Day.… I inquired about ration stamps for you in the village, M. Rhodes, and it seems you must go to Blois and apply for the stamps in person, I’m going there tomorrow afternoon. I could take you to the ration bureau.”

“Oh, fine,” he said.

“I’m sorry to put you to this trouble, but I do need the stamps.”

On the way upstairs, Barbara said: “Do you think we ought to write to the Guaranty Trust Company and have our mail forwarded here?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t decide.”

The first thing they saw when they walked into their room was the big bouquet of pink and white sweet peas on their table. “Aren’t they lovely!” Barbara exclaimed, and as she put her face down to smell the flowers, he said: “Let’s wait. We’ve only been gone ten days, and that way there’ll be more when we do get it.”

“Think of her climbing all the way up here to bring them to us,” Barbara said, and then, as she began to brush her hair: “I’m glad we decided to stay.”

M. CARRÈRE had breakfast in his room and came downstairs for the first time shortly before lunch. He walked with a cane, and Mme Carrère had to help him into his chair, but once seated he ignored his physical infirmity and so compelled the others to ignore it also. Mme Viénot explained privately to the Americans that he was recovering from a very serious operation. His convalescence was fulfilling the doctors’ best hopes. He had gained weight, his appetite was improved, each day he seemed a little stronger. In her voice there was a note of wonder. So many quiet country places he could have gone to, she seemed to be saying, and he had come to her, instead.

He was not like anybody they had ever seen before. Though he seemed a kind man, there was an authority in his manner that kind men do not usually have. His face was long and equine. His eyes were set deep in his head. His hands were extraordinary. You could imagine him playing the cello or praying in the desert. When he smiled he looked like an expert old circus clown. He did not appear to want the attention of everybody when he spoke, and yet he invariably had it, Harold noticed. If he was aware of the dreary fact that there are few people who are not ready to take advantage of natural kindness in the eminent and the well-to-do, it did not bother him. The overlapping folds of his eyelids made his expression permanently humorous, and his judicious statements issued from a wide, sensual, shocking red mouth.

M. Carrère’s great-grandfather, Mme Viénot said, had financed the building of the first French railway. M. Carrère himself was of an order of men that was becoming extremely rare in France today. His influence was felt, his taste and opinions were deferred to everywhere, and yet he was so simple, so sincere. To know him informally like this, to have the benefit of his conversation, was a great privilege.

She did not say—she did not have to say—that it was a privilege they were ill-equipped to enjoy.

Mme Carrère, quiet in her dress and in her manner, with black eyes and a Spanish complexion and neat gray hair parted in the middle, looked as if she were now ready for the hard, sharp pencil of Ingres—to whom, it turned out, her great-grandparents had sat for their portrait. She sat in a small armchair, erect but not stiff or uneasy, and for the most part she listened, but occasionally she added a remark when she was amused or interested by something. To Harold Rhodes’ eyes, she had the look of a woman who did not need to like or be liked by other people. She was neither friendly nor unfriendly, and when her eyes came to rest on him for a second, what he read in them was that chance had brought them all together at the château, and if she ever met up with him elsewhere or even heard his name mentioned, it would again be the work of chance.

Unable to say the things he wanted to say, because he did not know how to say them in French, able to understand only a minute part of what the others said, deprived of the view from the train window and the conducted tour of the remnants of history, he sat and watched how the humorous expression around M. Carrère’s eyes deepened and became genuine amusement when Mme Bonenfant brought forth a mot , or observed Mme Carrère’s cordiality to Mme Viénot and her mother, not with the loving eye of a tourist but the glazed eye of a fish out of water.

He thought of poor George Ireland, stranded in this very room and only fifteen years old. If I could lie down on the floor I’d probably understand every word they’re saying, he thought. Or if I could take off my shoes.

M. Carrère made a point of conversing with the Americans at the lunch table. They were delighted with his explanation of the phrase “entre la poire et le fromage” and so was Mme Viénot, who said: “I hope you will remember what M. Carrère has just said, because it is the very perfection of French prose style. It should be written down and preserved for posterity.”

M. Carrère had recently paid a visit to his son, who was living in New York. He had seen the skyscrapers, and also Chicago and the Grand Canyon, on his way to the West Coast. “I could converse with people vis-à-vis but not when the conversation became general, and so I missed a great deal that would have been of interest to me. I found America fascinating,” he added, looking at Harold and Barbara as if it had all been the work of their hands. “I particularly liked the ’ut doaks that are served everywhere in your country.” They looked blank and he repeated the word, and then repeated it again impatiently: “ ’ut doaks, ’ut doaks—le saucisson entre les deux pièces de pain.”

“Oh, you mean hot dogs!” Barbara said, and laughed.

M. Carrère was not accustomed to being laughed at. The resemblance to a clown was accidental. “ ’ut doaks,” he said defensively, and subsided. The others sat silent, the luncheon table under a momentary pall. Then the conversation was resumed in M. Carrère’s native tongue.

THE BENTLEY was waiting in front of the house when they got up from the table and went across the hall for their coffee. As the last empty cup was returned to the silver tray, Mme Carrère rose. Ignoring the state of the weather, which they could all see through the drawing-room windows, she helped M. Carrère on with his coat, placed a lilac-colored shawl about his shoulders, and handed him his hat, his pigskin gloves. Outside, the Alsatian chauffeur held the car door open for them, and then arranged a fur robe about M. Carrère’s long, thin legs. With a wistful look on their faces, the Americans watched the car go down the drive.