William Maxwell - The Chateau

It was just getting dark when they turned into the drive and saw the lights of the house. Leaving their suitcases in the hall, they walked past the screen and into the drawing room. Mme Viénot and her mother and M. and Mme Carrère and Mme Straus-Muguet were all sitting around the little table in front of the fireplace. Seeing their faces light up with pleasure and expectancy, Harold thought: Why, it’s almost as if we had come home.…

“We’ve been waiting dinner for you,” Mme Viénot said as she shook hands with them. “How did you like Paris? ”

“Did anyone ever not like Paris?” Harold said.

“And you were comfortable at the Vouillemont?”

He laughed. “Once we found it, we were comfortable,” he said.

“And the weather?”

“The weather was beautiful.”

“Sabine telephoned this evening,” Mme Viénot said, on the way into the dining room. “She tried to reach you, it seems, after you had gone. I’m afraid she does not have a very exact idea of time.”

“But she wasn’t on the train with us? We looked for her—”

“She is coming next week end instead,” Mme Viénot said as he drew her chair out for her. “I hope you didn’t give yourself any anxiety on her account?”

He shook his head.

“She enjoyed meeting you,” Mme Viénot said.

“We enjoyed meeting her,” he said, and then, since she seemed to be waiting for something more: “She’s charming.”

Mme Viénot smiled and unfolded her napkin.

He noticed that there were two people handing the soup plates around the table—Thérèse and a boy of seventeen or eighteen, in a white coat, with thick glasses and slicked-down hair. His large hands were very clean but looked like raw meat. He served unskillfully, in an agony of shyness, and Harold wondered if Mme Viénot had added a farm boy to her staff.

As always, he could speak better when he was sure he had an audience. “… There we were in the Métro,” he said, “with no idea of what station to get off at, or what arrondissement our hotel was in.”

“I should have told you,” Mme Viénot said. “I’m so sorry. And this time you didn’t have M. Fleury to take you there.”

“Barbara thought it was somewhere near the Louvre—”

“Oh dear no! You should have descended at Concorde.”

“So we discovered. But we got off at the Louvre, instead, and walked two or three blocks until we came to a sidewalk café, and the waiter showed me where the telephone books were, but there were so many and I couldn’t make head nor tail of them, so he and the proprietress and everybody there dropped what they were doing and thumbed through telephone directories and finally the waiter found it.”

“I should have thought anyone could have told you where it is,” M. Carrère said. “It is very well known.”

“ They didn’t know about it.… I tried to buy them all a drink before I left—they had been so kind—and they refused. Was that wrong? In America it would not have been wrong.”

“Not at all,” Mme Viénot said. “Another time just say: ‘I insist that you have a glass of wine with me,’ and the offer will be accepted. But it wasn’t at all necessary.”

“I wish I’d known that.”

“They were no doubt happy to have been of assistance to you. And you found your hotel?”

“We took a taxi,” he said. “And the fares have gone up. They have a chart they show you. I remembered that you had said not to pay more than the amount on the meter, and when the driver got angry I made him come into the hotel with me and the concierge straightened it out. After that, whenever we took a taxi I was careful to ask the driver if I had given him enough.”

“But they will cheat you!” Mme Viénot exclaimed.

“They didn’t. I knew from the chart what it should be, and added the tip, and they none of them asked for more.”

“Perhaps they found you sympathetic,” Mme Bonenfant said.

“It was pleasanter than arguing.”

He saw that Mme Straus-Muguet was looking at him and he said to her with his eyes: I w as afraid you wouldn’t be here when we got back .…

Mme Viénot lifted her spoon to her lips and then exclaimed. Turning to Barbara, she said: “My cook gave notice while you were gone. The new cook, poor dear, is very nervous. Last night there was too much salt in everything, so I spoke to her about it, and tonight there is no salt whatever in the soup. Do I dare speak to her again?” She turned to M. Carrère, who said, his clown’s eyes crinkling: “In your place I don’t think I should. It might bring on something worse.”

“I hope you will be patient with her,” Mme Viénot said. “She has a sister living in the village, whom she wanted to be near. The boy is her son. He has had no experience but she begged me to take him on so that he can learn the métier and they can hire themselves out as a couple.… Tell us what happened to you in Paris.”

“We spent all our time walking the streets,” Barbara said, “and looking in shop windows.”

“They are extraordinary, aren’t they?” Mme Carrère agreed. “Quite like the way they were before the war.”

“And we had lunch with M. Gagny,” Harold said.

“Yes? You saw M. Gagny?” Mme Viénot said, and Mme Carrère asked if they had followed her directions on the night of the illumination. Harold hesitated, and then, not wanting to spoil her pleasure, said that they had. He had a feeling that she knew he was not telling the truth. She did not attempt to catch him out, but the interest went out of her face.

As he and Barbara were undressing for bed, they remarked upon a curious fact. They had hoped before they came here that a stay at the château would make them better able to deal with what they found in Paris, and instead a stay of three days in Paris had made them able, really for the first time, to deal with life in the château. Neither of them mentioned their reluctance to leave Paris, that afternoon, or the fact that their room, after the comforts of the hotel, seemed cold and cheerless. Thérèse had again forgotten to bring them a can of hot water; the fan of experience was already beginning to close, and in Paris it had opened all the way.

THEY SPENT Saturday morning in their room. Barbara filled the washbasin with cold water and while she washed and rinsed and washed again, Harold sat on the edge of the tub and told her about the murder of the Duc de Guise, in the château of Blois, in the year 1588.

“He got in, and then he found he couldn’t get out.… He was warned on the Grand Staircase, but by that time it was too late; there were guards posted everywhere. He asked for the Queen, who could have saved him, and she didn’t come. He sent his servant for a handkerchief, as a test, and the servant didn’t come back.… Are you listening to me?” he demanded above the sound of the soapy water being sucked down the drain.

“Yes, but I’ve got to change the water in the sink.”

“You don’t have to make so much noise.… Everywhere he looked, people avoided meeting his eyes. He had just come from the bed of one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting.”

“Which queen was this?”

“Not Queen Victoria. Catherine de Médicis, I think. Anyway, it was two days before Christmas. And he was cold and hungry. He stood in front of the fireplace, warming himself and eating some dried prunes, I guess it was. It’s hard to make out, from that little dictionary. The council of state convened, and they told him the King had sent for him. So he left the room—”

At this point Barbara left the bathroom and went to the armoire. Harold followed her. “The eight hired assassins in the next room bowed to him,” he said, helping himself to a piece of candy from the box on the table. “I suppose it comes from living in the same house with her , but somebody’s been at the chocolates while we were away.”