Authors: Rose Burghley
“Has anyone ever told you,” he said softly, “that you are quite enchanting?”
Taken by surprise, Caroline blushed vividly. And then she recovered herself.
“Did you sleep well, Monsieur de Bergerac?” she asked. “And were there many holes in your cottage roof?”
“The name is Robert,” he replied swiftly—and in such a low voice that Pierre, distributing his cutlery with rather a lot of noise, was scarcely likely to hear. “And there were probably half a dozen holes, but I didn’t notice them.”
“You didn’t? But, surely --------- ”
“I slept very deeply, but not dreamlessly. I had very pleasant dreams.”
His eyes were still on her, and she coloured afresh. She turned away, and he said briskly to the servant:
“Bring the coffee, Pierre! I have a great many things to do today, and I don’t want to waste any time.”
Then he strode to the parapet and looked down into the moat. From the moat his eyes wandered to the farther bank, and then to the great trees receding into the distance.
“And to think that in Paris at this hour I would still be incarcerated in my room,” he said, “and outside the windows there would be a great deal of noise caused by many millions of people all intent on getting through the day somehow or other, and rushing about to very little purpose!”
“And your bookshop?” she asked. “Who would be attending to your bookshop?”
He smiled down at her, a white-toothed, strangely attractive smile.
“Not me,” he said—’certainly not me!”
“But”—and she looked puzzled---------“can you afford to
employ someone to do a job that you could do so easily yourself? After all, if the bookshop is a means of livelihood...”
“Partially,” he reminded her. “Do not forget that it is only a partial means of livelihood. It is Armand who prevents me from joining the bread queues.”
“There are no bread queues in Paris,” she returned, a little impatiently, “and you know it. And if there were, your appearance suggests that it would be a very long time before you joined them. But I don’t understand how you can be so dependent on the generosity of a friend.”
“Ah, but then you do not know how thrustful is the generosity of Armand! It reaches out and grasps at one like an eager and determined tentacle—it is almost, if not quite, his only virtue! In fact, I do not know of any other single virtue that he possesses, but far be it from me to appear critical of a benefactor on such a morning as this.” Once more his eyes dropped to the moat, and he smiled one-sidedly at the moorhens returning under the bridge. “Look at them! Is it not peaceful? Does not the sight of that simple brood, the thought of their untroubled existence, make you want to renounce the dubious delights of town life for always?”
“So far as I am concerned,” she replied simply, “town life has few delights.”
“Is that so?” He glanced at her curiously sideways. “You are one of the earnest ones—the toilers?” he said, softly. “For you life means work?”
“I have to work to keep myself.”
“That is sad,” and he sounded as if he meant it.
“But when I come to a place like this I can appreciate it all the more,” she told him truthfully.
“Ah!” He followed her glance up to the front of the chateau. In the soft, clear light of morning it was gently stone-coloured, and the lovely line of windows something to inspire poetry. There was one window that was very impressive, and she decided that it was the window of the great hall. The blue of the sky was imprisoned between its lace-like framework, and the constant movement of the trees cast flickering shadows across it. “You like it here?” he asked, even more softly.
“If this house belonged to me,” she answered, as if compelled, “I would never, never leave it!”
“Never is a long time,” he reminded her thoughtfully. She looked round at him and met his eyes.
“To you it would seem a very long time in a place like this?”
“It depends,” he replied, and his eyes were on the slender column of her throat as she put back her head. At the moment it was a delicately cream-coloured throat, but in this atmosphere, and this sunshine, it would soon become lightly tanned. He was not at all sure that he wouldn’t prefer it to remain as it was, reminiscent of the pale stem of a flower. “It depends,” he repeated.
“On what?”
“On the conditions under which I was forced to remain here forever,” and he smiled at her brilliantly.
Pierre returned with the coffee, and a napkin-lined basket of crisp rolls. There was already butter on the table very yellow butter, which Marthe had shaped into tempting pats—and several dishes of preserve, and de Bergerac turned as if he had suddenly discovered that he was very hungry again. As she buttered her own first roll Caroline got on to the subject that was really troubling her.
“What about Marthe?” she asked. “You have had news of her this morning Pierre tells me?”
“I telephoned the hospital, yes. I shall be going to see her later in the day.”
“And you’ll take me with you?” she asked eagerly. “Oh, please do!” as one of his dark eyebrows cocked. “I am so anxious to see her, and I have no other means of transport unless you’ll take me with you. And naturally Marthe will expect me to visit her.”
“Will she?” But he sounded distinctly doubtful. “Marthe was expecting to look after you, and she won’t think a hospital the right kind of background for you just now—not as a convalescent patient. She’d prefer to think of you as being taken care of here, and resting after your journey. At least, knowing Marthe, that’s what I’m certain she’d prefer!” looking across the table at her as if the matter was settled.
“But that’s another thing!” she protested. “How can I
possibly remain here when--------”
He lifted a hand into the air.
“All that is settled. You remain here, and arrangements will be made. I will attend to them myself...!” He smiled at her. “And in the meantime you will be a good little Mademoiselle Carol, and I will tell Marthe that that is what you are, and she will be happy to know how good and unobstructive you can be when the occasion demands. And perhaps another time when I am visiting at the hospital.”
“You will take me with you?”
“We will see.” His smile teased her gently. “And to-day, I will take you as far as Le Fontaine, and you can amuse yourself in the flower-market, or in a study of the local architecture, while I convey your good wishes to Marthe. And believe me Marthe will applaud, for she is very sensible—that one! And we do not wish her to be overanxious while she is so unfortunately laid low.”
But whether Marthe was capable of applauding or not, Caroline had a very guilty conscience as she wandered in the flower-market in Le Fontaine, and waited for the reappearance of Robert de Bergerac’s long cream car.
In spite of his easy, amiable, smiling manner, he was capable of taking a very firm stand, she had decided, but she thought that she ought to have taken a firmer stand, and insisted on seeing Marthe, if it was only for a few minutes.
The flower-market at Le Fontaine was very much like the flower-market in many small French country towns. The flower sellers were elderly women protected by large, gay umbrellas from the concentrated warmth of the midmorning sun, and the scent of the blooms they offered filled every corner of the space wherein they traded them. There was the rich, spicy odour of clove pinks and carnations, the ever-present perfume of roses— gorgeous, mauvish-red roses that seemed to abound in that area— the penetrating perfume of lilies, and the quieter scent of a few bunches of very late violets. Caroline began to feel as if all this weight of perfume was getting up into her head and making her senses swim a little, and she moved away to examine some of the buildings that de Bergerac had pointed out to her from the car.
There were some splendid old houses, with graceful facades, dating back into a past that would never really become the past in Le Fontaine, because modernity was but a cloak it wore carelessly, and therefore capable of slipping constantly. There was a fine town hall, and a restful church, a covered fruit-market where the shadows were welcoming and the strawberries tempting, and a vegetable-market adjoining where Caroline watched French housewives haggling over the prices of lettuces, and every conceivable vegetable from onions to artichokes. She could not help but admire the business-like efficiency of these women, who were not to be put off either by extortionate prices or inferior produce, and knew that she herself could never develop such a bold front. Which meant that it was fortunate she was not likely to become the wife of a middle-class Frenchman— for middle-class Frenchmen, she understood, expected their wives to be that way, and to conduct the affairs of their home life without flinching from unpleasing contacts, and to put both feet down firmly whenever it was necessary—to save money, that is.
She wandered up and down the shopping streets, and looked into inviting shop windows, and was standing in the middle of the big central square, with some pigeons parading about her feet, when Robert de Bergerac’s car slid alongside her once more.
“Get in,” he said, holding open the door. His dark eyes seemed to be surveying her with interest. “Even the pigeons like you!” he told her. “If Id had a camera I might have taken a snapshot of you, and called it a gentle feminine St. Francis!”
But she was anxious to hear about Marthe.
“How is she?” she demanded. “Did she think it very odd that I didn’t go with you?”
“Of course not. She thought it very wise that you should avoid any undue strain at the moment.”
But the tiny smile on his lips was a little curious, she thought, as if he was conscious of having done something he particularly wished to do without her being there to observe what it was. He had taken a huge armful of flowers to the old lady from the flower-market, as well as eggs and butter and other things from the chateau, and apparently Marthe had been pleased.
“She was sitting up and looking very well, except that her ankle is in a kind of cage,” he explained. “She was even knitting furiously. She gave me instructions to look after you, and to see that you do not do anything rash.” He sent her a whimsical glance. “I told her that I took you for a ghost last night.”
“Oh!”
“And that decided her that you must be very well taken care of! No harrowing experiences just yet, such as visiting the sick. You are to get quite well yourself before you do anything of the kind.” “I am well.”
His eyebrows elevated themselves, but he said nothing, concentrating on driving the car and avoiding the bumps in the cobbled streets and presently he brought the car to rest outside a rather modern and expensive-looking hotel.
“This is where we will lunch,” he said. “I am sure that by this time you are very hungry.”
She cast a swift glance up at the front of the hotel. She remembered his bookshop in the Rue de Rivoli, and the essential cheques from the Comte de Marsac—without which, apparently, he couldn’t carry on—and suggested diffidently:
“Don’t you think it looks as if it might be a little costly? Couldn’t we go somewhere cheaper... ? I mean------------”
“Certainly not,” he replied, his whimsical look growing even more whimsical, and he removed his ignition key and slipped it into a pocket of his admirably tailored jacket. “This is where we will lunch, and this is where you shall sample a wine such as you have never tasted on the other side of that grey strip of Channel that divides our two countries. Now!” and he slid sinuously out on to the pavement and turned to help her alight.
The hotel was even more lush and luxurious inside than it looked on the outside, but they went through into a kind of enclosed courtyard where tables were set out beneath a canopy of vines. There was a huge tank in the centre in which goldfish disported themselves amidst gardens of coral and weed, and a string orchestra in a corner, behind a barrier of impressive pot plants, dispensed light airs that went well with the tinkling of wine in glasses, and the pleasing rattle of cutlery.
De Bergerac deliberated over the menu with Caroline but when he discovered that she knew little or nothing about French dishes decided to order for her. He ordered hors d oeuvre such as she had never tasted before, composed of dozens of little dishes in which were included such savoury items as garlic sausages, black as well as green olives, stuffed eggs, etc. Then came some little hard-shelled, very pink fish swimming in a highly delectable sauce, and on top of that some wonderful escalopes of veal Caroline refused anything further after that apart from an icecream, thinking of the bill and the size of it when it was presented, particularly when she saw with what reverence the wine-waiter served the wine, as if he could hardly accord it enough honour. And when she tasted it, inexperienced palate though she had, she knew that it was certainty not the least expensive on the wine-list.
De Bergerac looked at her quizzically over the top of his wineglass.
“What is wrong?” he asked. “You look as if you are working out arithmetical problems in your head.”
“I was,” she admitted. And then she added: “There is no real reason why you should bring me out to lunch to-day.”
“No real reason at all,” he agreed, “except that I am finding it very pleasant!”
His dark eyes were bland, velvety, amused and smiling. They made her feel a little odd every time she gazed right into them, as if the breath caught for an instant in her throat, or something interfered with one of her heartbeats. It was a sensation entirely new to her, but she hadn’t time to wonder about it, for there were other things to wonder about.
The attention her escort received in this extremely select restaurant, and the smiles and bows that had been accorded to herself as soon as she entered it,’ were two of the most puzzling. For it wasn’t merely attentiveness, it was a kind of delighted subservience, and she felt certain that the smiles and bows were only accorded to her because she was with de Bergerac. Any other man—any other escort—might have earned her polite and meticulous attention to her needs, but not this overwhelming desire to please at all costs—even to grovel, if so she commanded—-which made her feel a little uncomfortable at times.