'Where are you going?' she said.
She had changed into a blue silk frock, white socks, and pointed shoes. She wore a little gold cross round her neck, and round her cropped fair hair was a blue velvet band. Her face was flushed with excitement. This was her fiesta evening; she was helping to entertain the guests. I remembered the promise made to her on my first evening.
'I don't know,' I said, 'I might not come back.' She knew at once what I meant, because the colour went from her face and she made a movement as though to rush at me and seize my hands. Then she remembered my bandaged hand and stood still.
'Is it because of what happened at the shoot?' she asked. I had forgotten the futility of the morning, the ridiculous spoiling of the sportsmen's fun, the cognac and the wine and the ill-timed bravado of my speech.
'No,' I said, 'it has nothing to do with the shoot.' She went on looking at me, her hands clasped, and then she said, 'Take me with you.'
'How can I?' I asked. 'I don't know where I'm going.'
It was raining hard, falling on to her thin shoulders in the blue silk party frock. 'Will you walk?' she said. 'You can't drive because of your hand.'
The simplicity of her remark brought me to the full realization that I was without thought or plan. How indeed did I intend to get away? I had walked blindly out of that upstairs room and down into the hall with only one idea in mind - that I must leave the chateau as soon as possible. Instead of which the idiocy of the burnt hand kept me a prisoner.
'You see,' said the child, 'it's not very easy, is it?'
Nothing was easy, neither being myself nor being Jean de Gue. I was not born to be the son of the woman upstairs, nor the father of the child before me. I had nothing to do with them. They were not my people: I had no people. Being the accomplice in an elaborate practical joke did not mean I must be its victim too. Surely it should be the other way round, and it was for them to pay the penalty, not me? I was not bound to them in any way.
The voices sounded loud again from within the salon. Marie-Noel looked over her shoulder. 'They are beginning to say goodbye,' she said. 'You will have to make up your mind what you're going to do.' She suddenly did not seem a child any more, but somebody old and wise whom I had known in a different age, a different time. I did not want it to be like that, because it hurt. I wanted her to be a stranger still. 'The time hasn't come for you to leave me yet,' she said. 'Wait till I'm older. It won't be long.'
A footstep sounded in the hall, and someone came and stood in the entrance. It was Blanche. The fanlight above the door shone on her hair, and I could see the mizzle of rain strike slantwise against the light, then fall to darkness on the step.
'You'll catch cold,' she said. 'Come in out of the rain.' She did not see me, standing there, she only saw the child, and I realized that, believing herself to be alone with Marie-Noel, she spoke in a voice I had never heard before. It was gentle and affectionate, the hard, abrupt quality gone. She might have been a different person. 'Everybody is going in a moment,' she said. 'You only have to be polite a few minutes longer. Then I'll come upstairs and read to you, if Papa is still sleeping.' She turned and went indoors.
The child looked at me. 'Go on in,' I said, 'do what she says. I won't leave you.' She smiled. Oddly, the smile reminded me of something. Then I remembered - it was release from pain. I had seen the same smile not ten minutes ago in the room upstairs. Marie-Noel ran back into the chateau after Blanche.
I heard the sound of a car coming down from the village and passing through the gateway. As it turned in to the archway the headlights must have picked me up, for it stopped and Gaston got out. It was the Renault, and he came across the drive towards me. He looked flushed, a little awkward.
'I had not realized Monsieur le Comte was below,' he said. 'Forgive me, but it was raining hard, and I took Madame Yves and one or two other older people who had been celebrating with us back to the verrerie. I did not ask permission. I did not want to disturb you.'
'That's all right,' I said. 'I'm glad you took them home.'
He came nearer, and peered up at my face. 'You look upset, Monsieur le Comte. Is anything wrong? Are you still feeling ill?'
'No,' I told him 'It's just ... a combination of circumstances.' I gestured with my hand towards the chateau. It did not matter to me what he thought. I was not sure what I thought myself.
'Excuse me,' he said, his manner diffident, yet somehow reassuring, gentle, 'I don't wish to be indiscreet, but would Monsieur le Comte perhaps like me to drive him to Villars?'
I kept silent, not understanding, hoping that his next words would make his meaning plain.
'You have had a hard day, Monsieur le Comte,' he went on. 'At the chateau here everyone believes you to be in bed. If I drove you now to Villars you could spend several hours there in comfort, without anxiety, and I could come back for you early in the morning. I only suggest it because at the present moment Monsieur le Comte cannot drive himself.'
He glanced away from me, apologetic, tactful, and I knew that what he suggested was so profoundly the answer to my turmoil of mind and body and spirit that he expected no comment even, no word of affirmation. He went to the car, reversed it, and brought it back to the driveway below the terrace. He opened the door for me and I got in, and as he drove along the pitch-dark lanes to Villars, the rain beating against the windscreen, neither of us speaking, it seemed to me that there was nothing left now of that former self who had changed identity in the hotel bedroom at Le Mans. Every one of my actions, instincts, weaknesses, all had merged with those of Jean de Gue.
18
I thought for a moment it was the rain pouring from the gargoyle mouth, bearing away the silt and debris of the years, and the gargoyle himself, with flattened, evil ears, was cracking at the base, the stone-work crumbling, so that he too would moulder and soften with the flood. Then the horror of the dream departed and it was day, and the sound was Bela's bath-water running. The darkness had gone and the rain with it, and the early morning sun was turning the rooftops gold.
I leant back, my hand behind my head. Through the open window I could see the shapes and angles of the roofs, the lichened tiles, the twisted chimneys, the dormer windows, and behind and above them all the fluted spire of the cathedral. From the street below came the first movements of the day: shutters thrown back, the sluicing of the pavement, footsteps passing, somebody whistling, the waking to another week of this small, unhurried market-town. The running bath-water merged pleasantly with the bright street sounds and I was filled with a lazy peace, aware of the presence near by, so close that I had only to raise my voice and she would turn off the water and come to me, someone who asked no questions, accepting me as part of a life shared at odd moments, depending upon mood and time - mine, not hers - just as the adult puts aside work and occupation to attend to the child she loves. My hand, untouched the day before, was now re-dressed, re-bandaged, cool in its oiled silk package; and the experience of being waited upon, ministered to, with nothing demanded of me and no show of possessiveness, was novel to both the old self and the new. It was something I was reluctant to surrender: I wished to savour its delicacy as long as possible.
I could hear her throwing open the shutter