William Maxwell - The Chateau

“It’s just a song,” Eugène said, with his eyes on the road, and pure, glittering, personal dislike emanating from him like an aura.

The painful discovery that someone you like very much does not like you is one of the innumerable tricks the vaudeville magician has up his sleeve. Think of a card, any card: now you see it, now you don’t.…

Struggling with the downward drag of hurt feelings, as old and familiar to him as the knowledge of his name, Harold kept even with the other bicycle for a short distance, as if nothing had happened, and then, looking straight ahead of him, he pedaled faster and moved ahead slowly until he was riding beside the three girls.

THE BICYCLES WERE BROUGHT out of the kitchen entry at six o’clock, and just as they were starting off, Mme Viénot appeared with three roses from the garden. Alix pinned her rose to the shoulder of her dress, and so did Sabine, but Barbara fastened hers in her hair.

“How pretty you look!” Mme Viénot said, her satisfied glance taking in all three of them.

With Eugène leading and Harold bringing up the rear, and the girls being careful that their skirts did not brush against the greasy chain or the wire wheels, they filed out of the courtyard and then plunged directly into the woods behind it. There were a number of paths, and Eugène chose one. The others followed him, still pushing their bicycles because the path was too sandy to ride on. After a quarter of a mile they emerged from the premature twilight of the woods into the open country and full daylight. Eugène took off his sport coat, folded it, and put it in the handlebar basket. Then he got on his bicycle and rode off down a dirt road that was not directly accessible to the château. Harold disposed of his coat in the same way. At first they rode single file, because of the deep ruts in the road, but before long they came to a concrete highway, and the three girls fanned out so that they could ride together. The two men continued to ride apart. Sometimes they all had to get off and push their bicycles uphill as the road led them up over the top of a long arc. At the crest, the land fell away in a panorama—terraced vineyards, the river valley, more hills, and little roads winding off into he wondered where—and they mounted their bicycles and went sailing downhill with the wind rushing past their ears.

“Isn’t this a lovely way to go to a party?” Barbara said as Harold overtook her. “It’s so unlike anything we’re used to, I feel as if I’m dreaming it.”

“Are you getting tired?” Alix called to them, over her shoulder.

“Oh no!” Barbara said.

“How far is it?” Harold asked.

“About five miles,” Alix said.

“Such a beautiful evening,” he said.

“Coming home there will be a moon,” Alix said.

Just when the ride was beginning to seem rather long, they left the highway and took a narrow lane that was again loose sand and that forced them to dismount for a few yards. Pushing their bicycles, they crossed a small footbridge and started up a steep hill. When they got to the top, they had arrived. The Americans saw a big country house of gray stone with castellated trimming and lancet windows and a sweep of lawn in front of it. The guests—girls in long dresses, young men in dinner jackets—were standing about in clusters near a flight of stone steps that led up to the open front door.

The party from the château left their bicycles under a grape arbor at the side of the house. The two men put on their coats, and felt their ties. The girls straightened their short skirts, tucked in stray wisps of hair, looked at their faces in pocket mirrors and exclaimed, powdered their noses, put on white gloves. In front of the house, Alix and Eugène and Sabine were surrounded by people they knew, and Harold and Barbara were left stranded. It was a party of the very young, they perceived; most of the guests were not more than eighteen or nineteen. How could Mme Viénot have let them in for such an evening!

“I foresee one of the longest evenings of my entire life,” Harold said out of the corner of his mouth.

Just when he was sure that Alix had abandoned them permanently, she came back and led them from group to group. The boys, thin and coltlike, raised Barbara’s hand two thirds of the way to their lips, without enthusiasm or gallantry. The gesture was not at all like hand-kissing in the movies, but was, instead, abrupt, mechanical: they pretended to kiss her hand.

Alix was called away, and the Americans found themselves stranded again but inside the party this time, not outside. They struck up a conversation in French with a dark-haired girl who was studying music; then another conversation, in English, with a girl who said that she wanted to visit America. They talked about America, about New York. Alix returned, bringing a blond young man who was very tall and thin. An old and very dear friend of hers and Eugène’s, she said. He bowed, started to say something, and was called away to answer a question, and didn’t return. Then Alix too left them.

Barbara began to talk to another young man. Harold turned and gave his attention to the view—an immense sweep of marshland, the valley of the Cher, now autumn-colored with the setting sun. He looked back at the house, which was Victorian Gothic, and nothing like as handsome as Beaumesnil. It was, in fact, a perfectly awful house. And he was the oldest person he could see anywhere.

Once when he was a small child, he had had an experience like this. He must have been about six years old, and he was visiting his Aunt Mildred, who took him with her on a hay-ride party. But that time he was the youngest; he was the only child in a party of grownups; and so he opened his mouth and cried. But it didn’t change anything. The hay-ride party went on and on and on, and his aunt was provoked at him for crying in front of everybody.

There was a sudden movement into the house, and he looked around for Alix and Sabine, without being able to find them. And then he saw Barbara coming toward him, against the flow of people up the stone steps to the front door. With her was a young man whom he liked on sight.

“I am Jean Allégret,” the young man said as they shook hands. “Your wife tells me you are going to Salzburg for the Festival. I was stationed there at the end of the war. It is a beautiful city, but sad. It was a Nazi headquarters. Don’t be surprised if—You are to sit with me at dinner.” Taking Harold by the arm, he led him toward the stone steps.

As they passed into the house, Harold looked around for Barbara, who had already disappeared in the crowd. He caught a glimpse of rooms opening one out of another; of large and small paintings on the walls, in heavy gilt frames; of brocade armchairs, thick rugs, and little tables loaded with objets . The house had a rather stiff formality that he did not care for. In the dining room, the guests were reading the place cards at a huge oval table set for thirty places. Jean Allégret led him to a small table in an alcove, and then left him and returned a moment later, bringing a tall pretty blonde girl in a white tulle evening dress. She looks like a Persian kitten, Harold thought as he acknowledged the introduction. The girl also spoke English. Jean Allégret held her chair out for her and they sat down.

“In America,” Harold said as he unfolded his napkin, “this would be called ‘the children’s table.’ ”

“I saw a great deal of the Americans during the war,” Jean Allégret said. “Your humor is different from ours. It is three-quarters fantasy. Our fantasy is nearly always serious. I understand Americans very well.… ”

Harold was searching for Barbara at the big table. When he found her, he saw that she was listening attentively, with her head slightly bowed, to the very handsome young man on her right. He felt a twinge of jealousy.