William Maxwell - The Chateau

I do not take such a charitable view of Eugène’s behavior as you seem to. Many people have had to live with disappointment and still not —

He was also capable of acts of renunciation and of generosity that were saintlike. We all have these contradictions in our natures.… In the family they were accustomed to his moods and did not take them seriously. There was a time when Alix thought that their life might go differently (though not necessarily better)—that he had reached a turning point of some kind. His dark mood had lasted longer than usual, and one morning she sat up in bed and looked at him, and was frightened. What he looked like was a drowned man.

It was a Saturday, so he did not go to his office. And suddenly, in the middle of the morning, she missed him. She went through the apartment, glancing in the baby’s room, then in their bedroom, then in the dressing room. The bathroom door was open. She turned and went back down the hall. He must have gone out. But why did he go out without telling her where he was going? And how could he have done it so quietly, so that she didn’t hear either the study door open or the front door close. Unless he didn’t want her to know that he was going out. She had a sudden vision of him ill, having fainted in the toilet. She opened the door of that little room. It was empty.

“Eugène?” she said anxiously, and at that moment the front door closed. She turned around in surprise.

There was still time to stop him, to ask where he was going. When she opened the front door, she heard the sound of feet descending the stairs and, leaning far over the banister, caught a glimpse of his head and shoulders, which were hidden immediately afterward by a turn in the staircase.

“Eugène!” she called, and, loud and frightened though her voice sounded in her own ears, he still did not stop. The footsteps reiterated his firm intention never to stop until he had arrived at a place where she could not reach him. When they changed from the muffled sound made by the stair carpet to the harsh clatter of heels on a marble floor, she turned and hurried back into the apartment, through the hall, through the drawing room, and out onto the balcony, where she was just in time to see him emerge from the building and start up the sidewalk. She tried to pitch her voice so that only he would hear her calling him, and a man on the other side of the street looked up and Eugène did not. He went right on walking.

Step by step, with him, she hurried along the balcony to the corner of the building, where she could look down on the granite monument and the cobblestone square. Hidden by trees briefly, Eugène was now visible again, crossing a street. There was a taxi waiting, but he did not step into it. He kept on walking, past the café, past the entrance to the Métro, past the barbershop, past the trousered legs standing publicly in the midst of the odor that used to make her feel sick as a child. Again he was hidden by trees. Again she saw him, as he skirted a sidewalk meeting of two old friends. He crossed another ray of the star, and then changed his direction slightly, and she perceived that the church steps was his destination. There, in the gray morning light, one of the priests (Father Quinot, or Father Ferron?) stood with his hands behind his back, benevolently nodding and answering the parting remarks of a woman in black.

The image that Alix now saw before her eyes—of Eugène on his knees in the confessional—was only the beginning, she knew. More was required. Much more. The heart that was now ready to surrender itself was not simple. There would be intellectual doubts, arguments with Father Quinot, with Father Ferron, appointments with the bishop, a period of retreat from her and from the world, in some religious house, where no one could reach him, while he examined his faith for flaws. Proof would be submitted to him from the writings of St. Thomas, St. Gregory, St. Bonaventure. And when he returned to her, with the saints shielding him so that each time she put out her hand she touched the garment of a saint, his mind would be full of new knowledge of how men know , how the angels know , how God in his infinite being becomes all knowledge and all knowledge is a knowledge of Him.

This being true, clear, and obvious even to a slow mind like hers, a person given to looking apprehensively at mirrors and clocks, and there being also no way of joining him on his knees (though there were two stalls in the mahagony confessional, the most that was given to Father Quinot or Father Ferron to accomplish would be to listen to their alternating confession, not their joint one)—this being true, she would not go down and wait for him in the street, as she longed to do, even though it be hours from now, past midnight, or morning, before he reappeared. She would stay where she was, and when he came home she would try not to distract him, or to seem to lay the slightest claim upon his attention or his feelings, in order that …

Each of the woman’s parting remarks seemed to give rise to another, and as Eugène drew closer, Alix thought: What if she doesn’t stop talking in time? For Eugène would not wait. He was much too proud to stand publicly waiting, even to speak to the priest. “Oh, please,” she said, under her breath. The woman turned her head, as if this supplication had been heard. But then she remembered something else that she wanted to say, and Eugène kept on going, and disappeared down the steps of the Métro.

Shortly after this, he went to see M. Carrère, who was exceedingly kind. Eugène outlined his situation to him, and M. Carrère asked if Eugène had any objection to working for an American firm that he was connected with through his son. “The job would be over there?” Eugène asked, and M. Carrère said: “No, here. I assume that Mme de Boisgaillard would not want to live so far from her mother. Suppose I arrange for an interview?”

The interview went well, and after an hour’s talk, Eugène was asked to come back the next day, which he did. They made him an offer, and he accepted it.

A few nights later, when Mme Viénot went in to say good night to her mother, Mme Bonenfant said: “I wonder if Eugène will be happy working for an American firm. He doesn’t speak any English.”

“If it is like other foreign firms that have a branch in Paris, the personnel will be largely French,” Mme Viénot said. “I have heard of this one, as it happens. In America they make frigidaires. Sewing machines. Typewriters. That sort of thing.”

“It doesn’t sound very intellectual,” Mme Bonenfant said. “Are you sure that you understood correctly.”

“Quite sure, Maman.… In France, the firm manufactures only machine guns.”

M. and Mme Carrère never came back to the château. They found another quiet country house that was more comfortable and closer to Paris. But from time to time, when Mme Viénot went into the post office, she was handed a letter that was addressed to him. The letters no doubt contained a request of some sort; for money, for advice, for the use of his name. And how it was answered might change the lives of she did not like to think how many people. In any case, the letter had to be forwarded, and it gave her acute pleasure to think that he would recognize her handwriting on the envelope.

Hector Gagny never came back either, with his new wife. But Mme Straus came at least once a year. Her summer was a round of visits. For a woman past seventy, without a place of her own in which to entertain, with neither wealth nor much social distinction, she received a great many invitations—many more than she could accept. And if the friends who were so eager to have her come and stay with them did not always invite her back, there were always new acquaintances who responded to her gaiety, opened their hearts to her, and—for a while at least—adjusted the salutation of their letters to conform with the rapidly increasing tenderness of hers.