William Maxwell - The Chateau

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Barbara said, and closed the doors of the armoire and went back to the bathroom with a nightgown and a slip, which she added to the laundry in the washbasin.

“Want to bet?”

“It doesn’t matter if they did.”

“I know it doesn’t. But I don’t think it was Thérèse, even so.”

“Who else could have?”

“Somebody that likes chocolate.… He got as far as the door to the King’s dressing room, and saw that there were more of them, at the end of the narrow passageway, waiting for him with drawn swords in their hands.”

“Poor man!”

“Mmm. Poor man, indeed—he was responsible for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. It took forty men to do him in. He was huge and very powerful. And when it was all over, the King bent down cautiously and slapped his face.”

“After he was dead ?”

“Yes. Then he went and told his mother. What people!”

“If you knew what it is like to wash silk in cold water!” Barbara said indignantly.

“Why do you do it, then? I could go down and ask them for a can of hot water?”

There was no answer.

He wandered back into the bedroom, and stood looking around the room, seeing it with the eyes of the person who took the chocolates. Not Mme Bonenfant. The flowers hadn’t been changed. And anyway, she wouldn’t. Not the houseboy, in all probability. He was new, and he had no reason to be in this part of the house. Mme Viénot? Who else? If they were curious about her, why shouldn’t she be curious about them?

She had stood in the doorway waving to them until the taxi disappeared around the corner of the house. And then what happened? Was she relieved? Was she happy to see them go? He put himself in her shoes and decided that he would have been relieved for a minute or two, and then he would have begun to worry. He would have been afraid that they would find in Paris what they were looking for—they were tourists, after all—and not come back. He had offered to have the luggage packed so that it could be removed from their room, and if she remembered that, she would surely think they had planned not to come back, and that in a day or so she would get a letter saying they’d changed their plans again, and would she send their luggage, which was all packed and ready, to the Hôtel Vouillemont.… Only the luggage was not packed, of course. And what she must have seen when she threw open the door of the room was that they had left everything—clothes, books, all their possessions, scattered over the room. There was a half-finished letter on the desk, and the box of Swiss chocolates open on the table. The room must have looked as if they had left it to go for a walk.

He stood reading the letter, which had lain on the pad of the writing desk since last Tuesday. It was to Edith Ireland, of all people. Barbara was thanking her for the book and the bottle of champagne she had sent to the boat. Barbara’s handwriting was very dashing, and not very legible, because of a tendency to abbreviate and leave off parts of letters, but if you were patient you could get the hang of it, and no doubt Mme Viénot had.

On the table, beside a pile of guidebooks, were three pages—also in Barbara’s handwriting—of a diary she was keeping. The entries covered the period from July 11, when they came to the château from Tours, through July 13, the day before they went up to Paris. He turned away from the table, relieved and grinning.

She had a façade that she retired behind when she was with strangers—the image of an unworldly, well-bred, charming-looking, gentle young woman. The image was not even false to her character; it merely left out half of it. Who could possibly have any reason to say anything rude or unkind to anyone so shy and unsure of herself? Nobody ever did.

It was the façade that was keeping the diary.

WHEN THEY WENT down to lunch they learned that Mme Viénot’s relatives had arrived sometime during the morning. The dining-room table was larger by two leaves to accommodate them and there were three empty chairs. Two of them were soon filled, by a middle-aged woman and a young man. The cook’s son brought two more soup plates, and Mme Viénot said: “How do you find Maman? Doesn’t she look well?”

“She is more beautiful than ever,” the young man said, his face totally without expression, as if it had been carved out of a piece of wood and could not change.

“The weather has been most discouraging here,” Mme Viénot said.

“In Paris it is the same. Rain day after day,” the young man said. “One hears everywhere that it is the atomic bomb that is responsible. I myself think it is by analogy with the political climate, which is damp, cold, unhopeful.… Alix said to tell you that she is giving Annette her bottle. She will be down presently.”

“Perhaps she can manage some slight adjustment of the baby’s schedule which will permit her to come to meals at the usual time,” Mme Viénot said. “It is not merely the empty chair. It upsets the service.… Your father and mother are well?”

“My father is having trouble with his eyes. It is not cataracts, though it seems that the difficulty may be progressive. It is a question of the arteries not carrying enough food to the optic nerve. Maman is well—at least, well enough to go to weddings. There has been a succession of them. My cousin Suzanne, in Brittany. And Philippe Soulès. You remember that de Cléry girl everyone thought was a mental defective? She has turned out to be the clever one of the family. They are going to live with his parents, it seems. And my Uncle Eugène, for the third time. Or is it the fourth? And Simone Valéry. Maman has been thinking of taking a job. She has been approached by Jacques Fath. She has just about decided to say no. It is rather an amusing idea, and if she could come and go as she pleased—but it seems they would expect her to keep regular hours, and she is quite incapable of that. Besides, she has set her heart on a trip to Venice. In August.”

“The Biennale?”

“No, another wedding. I have not seen Jean-Claude. I read about him in Figaro . And Georges Dunois had lunch with him last Wednesday in London. Georges asked me to pay you his devoted respects. He said Jean-Claude has aged.”

“The responsibility is, of course, very great,” Mme Viénot said modestly, and then turning to Barbara: “We are discussing my son-in-law, who is in the government.”

“He now looks twenty-two or three, Georges said.”

“Suzanne writes that he is being sent to Oran, on an important mission, the details of which she is not free to disclose.”

“Naturally.”

“She is expecting another child in November.”

“She is my favorite of the entire family, and I am not sure I would recognize her if I saw her. I never see her, not even at those functions where one would have supposed her husband’s career might be affected by her absence. Proving that the Ministry is helpless without him.”

“She is absorbed in her family duties,” Mme Viénot said.

“So one is told. As for Jean-Claude, one hears everywhere that he is immensely valued, successful, happy, and— Ah, there you are.”

The young woman who sat down in the chair next to Barbara was very fair, and her blue eyes had a look of childlike sweetness and innocence. She acknowledged the introductions in the most charming French accent Harold had ever heard, and then said: “I did not expect to be down for another quarter of an hour, but she went right off to sleep. She was exhausted by the trip, and so many new sensations.”

Harold decided that he liked her, and that he didn’t like the man, who seemed to have a whole repertoire of manners—one (serious, intellectual) for M. Carrère; another (simpering, mock-gallant) for Mme Viénot; another (devoted, simple, respectful) for Mme Bonenfant; and still another for Barbara, whose hand he had raised to his lips. Harold was put off by the hand-kissing (though Barbara was not; she did not, in fact, turn a hair; where had she learned that?) and by the limp handshake when he and the young Frenchman were introduced and the look of complete indifference now when their eyes met across the table.