Nine Coaches Waiting

Chapter 2

The little town of Thonon-les-Bains lies some twelve miles east of Geneva, on the southern shore of Lac Léman. Our plane had been met at Geneva by the big black Chevrolet from Valmy, which wafted us smoothly through the expensively-polished streets of Geneva, across the bridge at the end of the Lake, through gardens where magnolias already bloomed, and then turned east for the French border and Thonon.

Madame de Valmy had talked very little to me on the journey from Paris, for which I was grateful, not only because my eyes and mind were busy with new impressions, but because- although she had been kind and pleasant in the extreme-I could not yet feel quite at ease with her. There was that curious remoteness about her which made her difficult to approach, or even to assess. Conversation with her had an almost long-distance touch about it; far from feeling that she had come half-way to meet you, you found her suddenly abstracted, all contact withdrawn. I wondered at first whether she was deliberately keeping me at a distance, but when she had twice asked me a question, only to lose interest before I had answered, I decided that she had graver matters on her mind than Philippe's governess, and myself retired contentedly enough into silence.

The car was purring along through flat, densely-cultivated country. Everywhere were prosperous-looking farms, and tree-bordered fields where red-and-white cattle fed sleekly. To our left, through thickets of poplar and willow, the gleam of water showed and hid and showed again; on the right the country rolled green and gradual to wooded foothills, then swooped dramatically up to the great ranges of the Alps and the dazzle of the colossal snows. One of them, I supposed, was Mont Blanc itself, but this, I thought, stealing a glance at Héloïse de Valmy beside me, was not the time to ask.

She was sitting with shut eyes. I thought as I looked at her that I had been right. She looked both tired and preoccupied, though nothing, it seemed, could impair her rather chilly elegance. She was, I supposed, about fifty-five, and was still a beautiful woman, with the sort of beauty that age seems hardly to touch. Bone-deep, that was the phrase; it was in the shape of her head and temples and the thin-bridged, faintly aquiline nose with its fine nostrils; it was only at another glance that you saw the tiny wrinkles etching eyes and mouth. Her skin was pale and clear, and expertly tinted; her brows delicately drawn and arched with a faint arrogance above the closed lids. Her hair was sculptured silver. Only her mouth under the curve of its expensive rouge, and the hands which lay grey-gloved and still in her lap, were too thin for beauty. She looked expensive, a little fragile, and about as approachable as the moon.

I sat back in my corner. In front of me were the square shoulders of Madame's chauffeur. Beside him, equally square and correct, sat Madame's maid Albertine. If I-as the classic tales of governessing led me to expect-was to be insecurely poised between the salon and the servant's hall, at least I was now at what might be called the right end of the car. For which I was grateful, as I didn't much like what I had seen of Albertine.

She was a dark sallow-faced woman of perhaps forty-five, with a sullen, secretive expression and ugly hands. Although she had been most of the time about Madame de Valmy's rooms last night when I had been there, she had not once spoken to me and I had seen her watching me with a sort of stony resentment which had surprised me, but which I now realised was probably habitual and without meaning. She sat rigidly beside the chauffeur, gripping Madame's jewel-case tightly on her lap. Neither she nor the man spoke. Neither, as far as I could tell, was remotely aware of the other's presence. They seemed so admirably suited that I found myself wondering, quite without irony, if they were a married couple; (I found later that they were, in fact, brother and sister). Bernard, the chauffeur, had impeccable manners, but he, too, looked as if he never smiled, and he had the same dark-avised, almost resentful air as the woman. I hoped it wasn't a common Savoyard characteristic… I stole another look at Madame's still face. It didn't look as though, for gaiety, there was going to be much to choose between the drawing-room and the servants' hall…

Well, after all, the schoolroom was to be my domain. I looked out of the window again, to wonder a little about Philippe, and more than a little about Léon de Valmy, the cripple, whom his wife had hardly mentioned, and of whom Daddy had said, indifferently: "It's a pity he didn't break his neck."

I hadn't noticed the road-barrier until the car slowed to a sliding halt, and two men in uniform emerged from a green-painted hut and came towards us.

Héloïse de Valmy opened her eyes and said in her cool high voice: "This is the frontier, Miss Martin. Have your passport ready."

The frontier-guards quite obviously knew the car. They greeted Madame de Valmy, flicked a casual glance across my passport, and I heard them joking with the chauffeur as he opened the boot for what was the briefest and most formal of glances at the luggage there.

Then we were moving again, across the strip of no-man’s-land that divides the two countries, to pause once more for the same formalities at the French barrier.

Soon after this we reached Thonon, where our road turned south towards the mountains. The main part of the town lies fairly high above the Lake. As we climbed, the ground fell sharply away to the left, spilling a huddle of bright roofs and budding fruit-boughs down towards the belt of trees that bordered the water. Through the mist of still bare branches showed, here and there, the chimneys of some biggish houses. One of these-Madame de Valmy surprised me by rousing herself to point it out-was the Villa Mireille, where the third Valmy brother, Hippolyte, lived. I could just see its chimneys, smokeless among the enveloping trees. Beyond, mile upon glimmering mile, stretched Lac Léman, lazily rippling its silk under the afternoon sun. Here and there a slim sickle of white or scarlet sail cut the bright field of water, and clear on the distant shore I could see Montreux, etched in faint colours like a picture-book town against that eternally dramatic background of towering snows.

It was a warm afternoon, and the little town through which we drove was gay in the sun. Pollarded trees lined the streets, linking pleached branches where buds were already bursting into green. Shops had spilled their goods onto the pavements; racks of brightly printed dresses swung in the warm breeze; red and green peppers shone glossy among last season's withered apples; there was a pile of gaily-painted plant-pots and a small forest of garden tools in brilliant green. And at the edge of the pavement there were the flowers; tubs of tulips and freesias and the scarlet globes of ranunculus; box after box of polyanthus, vivid-eyed; daffodils, sharply yellow; the deep drowned-purple of pansies; irises with crown and fall of white and ivory and blue and deeper blue… oh, beautiful! And all packed and jammed together, French-fashion, billowing and blazing with scent as thick as smoke in the sunlight.

I must have made some exclamation of pleasure as we slid past them and into the square, because I remember Madame de Valmy smiling a little and saying: "Wait till you see Valmy in April." Then we had swung to the right and the road was climbing again through a sparse tree-crowded suburb towards the hills.

Very soon, it seemed, we were in a narrow gorge where road, river, and railway, crossing and re-crossing one another in a fine confusion, plaited their way up between high cliffs hung with trees. After a few miles of this the railway vanished, tunnelling away on the right, not to reappear, but the river stayed with us to the left of the road, a rush of green-white water that wrestled down its boulder-strewn gully, now close beside us, now dropping far below as our road wound its way along the cliff under the hanging trees. The gorge was deep; the road was most of the time in shadow, only the higher trees netted the westering sun in branches where the faintest green-and-gold hinted at the spring. The cliffs closed in. Ugly grey bulges of some pudding-like stone showed here and there between the clouds of shadowed, March-bare trees. The road began to climb. Away below us the water arrowed loud and white between its boulders.

A grim little valley, I thought, and a dangerous road… and then we rounded the bend called Belle Surprise, and away in front of us, like a sunlit rent in a dark curtain, lay the meadows of Valmy.

“That's Soubirous," said Madame de Valmy, "there in the distance. You'll lose sight of it again in a moment when the road runs down into the trees."

I craned forward to look. The village of Soubirous was set in a wide, green saucer of meadow and orchard serene among the cradling hills. I could see the needle-thin gleam of water, and the lines of willows where two streams threaded the grassland. Where they met stood the village, bright as a toy and sharply-focused in the clear air, with its three bridges and its little watch-making factory and its church of Sainte-Marie-des-Ponts with the sunlight glinting on the weathercock that tips the famous spire.

"And Valmy?" I said, as the car sailed downhill again and trees crowded thickly in on either side of the road. "We must be near it now?"

"Those are the Valmy woods on your left. They stretch most of the way back to Thonon. The Merlon-that's the name of the river-marks the boundary between Valmy and Dieudonné the estate to the right of the road. We cross the river soon and then"-she smiled faintly-"you'll see Valmy."

She spoke as usual in that cool flute-clear voice, with nothing ruffling the silvery surface. But I thought, suddenly, she's excited-no, perhaps nothing so strong as that, but there's anticipation there and something more… I had been wrong in my judgment of her a while back; in spite of the rather fragile urban charm, she loved this lonely valley, and came back with pleasure to it… I felt a little rush of warmth towards her, and said, impulsively: "It's lovely, Madame de Valmy! It's a beautiful place!"

She smiled. "Yes, isn't it? And you're lucky, Miss Martin, that spring has come early this year. It can be bleak and grim enough in winter, but it's always beautiful. At least, I think so. It has been my-our home for many years."

I said impetuously: "I shall love it here! I know I shall!"

The gloved hands moved in her lap. "I hope you will, Miss Martin." The words were kind, but formally spoken, and the smile had gone. She was withdrawn again, cool and remote. She looked away from me. I might be at the right end of the car, but it seemed I must keep to my own side.

I threw her a doubtful little look that she didn't see, and turned again to my own window. And at that moment I saw the château.

We had been running for a little time along the bottom of the valley, with the Dieudonné plantations-tall firs with the sun and wind in their crests-on our right, and beyond the river the steep woods of Valmy, a wild forest where holly gleamed among oak and birch, and great beeches rose elephant-grey from a tangle of hawthorn and wild clematis. Above these banked and ravelled boughs hung a high plateau; and there, backed by more forest and the steep rise of another hill, stood the Château Valmy, its windows catching the sunlight. I had only a glimpse of it, just enough to show me that here was no romantic castle of turrets and pinnacles; here was the four-square classic grace of the eighteenth century, looking, however, wonderfully remote, and floating insubstantially enough up there in the light above the dark sea of trees. It also looked inaccessible, but I had barely time to wonder how it was approached when the car slowed, turned gently off the main road onto a beautiful little stone bridge that spanned the Merlon, swung again into a steep tunnel of trees, and took the hill with a rush.

The Valmy road was a zigzag, a steep, rather terrifying approach which the big car took in a series of smooth upward rushes, rather like the movement of a lift, swooping up through woodland, then open hillside, and running at last under the high boundary wall that marked the end of the chateau's formal garden. At the top was a gravel sweep as big as a small field. We swung effortlessly off the zigzag onto this, and came round in a magnificent curve to stop in front of the great north door.

The chauffeur had Madame de Valmy's door open and was helping her to alight. Albertine, without a glance or a word for me, busied herself with wraps and hand-luggage. I got out of the car and stood waiting, while my employer paused for a moment talking to Bernard in a low rapid French that I couldn't catch.

I did wonder for a moment if her instructions could have anything to do with me, because the man's little dark eyes kept flickering towards me almost as if he weren't attending to what his employer said. But it must only have been a natural interest in a newcomer, because presently he bent his head impassively enough and turned without a further glance at me to attend to the luggage.

Madame de Valmy turned to me then. "Here we are," she said unnecessarily, but with such grace that the cliché took on almost the quality of a welcome. She gave me her sweet, fleeting smile, and turned towards the house.

As I followed her I got only the most confused impression of the size and graciousness of the place-the great square façade with the sweep of steps up to the door, the archway on our left leading to courtyard and outbuildings, the sunny slope beyond these where orderly kitchen gardens climbed towards another tree-bounded horizon… I saw these things only vaguely, without noticing. What met me with the rush almost of a wind was the sunlight and space and the music of the trees. Everywhere was the golden light of late afternoon. The air was cool and sweet and very pure, heady with the smell of pines and with the faint tang of the snows.

A far cry, certainly, from Camden Town.

I followed my employer up the wide flight of steps and past a bowing manservant into the hall of the château.

Chapter 3

At first I did not see the woman who waited for us a few paces inside the great door.

The hall seemed immense, but this was mainly because it was very high and full of shadows. The floor was a chilly chessboard of black and white marble, from which, opposite the door, a staircase rose to a wide landing lit by a window whose five tall lancets poured the sun downwards in dazzling shafts. At the landing the staircase divided, lifting in twin graceful curves towards a gallery. So much I saw, but the light, falling steeply through the speartips of the high windows, threw all but the centre of the hall into deep shadow.

I was still blinking against the glare when I heard a voice greeting Madame de Valmy, and then a woman came towards us in welcome. I supposed she was the housekeeper. She was a stout body of sixty-odd, with a fat comfortable face and grey hair worn neatly in an old-fashioned bun. She was dressed in severe black, her only ornament-if it could be called that- being a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez which stuck out of a pocket high on her bosom, and were secured by a chain to a plain gold pin. Her pleasant face, her plodding walk, her whole appearance were solid respectability personified. This was no secret dark Savoyard, at any rate.

She looked at me curiously as she greeted Madame de Valmy. She had a cheerful voice that sounded perpetually a little out of breath, and surprisingly, her French, though fluent, was atrociously bad.

Madame answered her greeting absently. In that merciless cascade of light the lines in her face showed up clearly. She said abruptly, her eyes sliding past the woman in black towards the dimmer background of the hall: "The Master: he's well?"

"Oh yes, madame. He's been-oh, quite his old self the last few days, madame, if you'll forgive my saying so… interested in what's going on, the way he hasn't been for long enough, and full of plans. Oh, quite like old times, madame."

She spoke with the ease of an old servant, and her face showed her very real pleasure in the good news she could give her employer. More pleasure, indeed, than Madame de Valmy's own face reflected. I thought I saw a shadow pass over it as she said: "Plans?"

"Yes, madame. I don't rightly know what they are, myself, but he and Armand Lestocq were talking it over for long enough, and I do know there's extra hands busy in the garden, and a man came today to look round the place and give his estimate for the jobs the Master was talking about last winter. He's here now, as it happens, madame. He went up to take a look at the stonework on the west balcony, and I think the Master went with him. The Master's lift wasn't at the ground floor when Seddon made up the library fire."

Madame de Valmy was pulling off her gloves with quick nervous movements. She said abruptly: "Do you know if he has heard from Monsieur Hippolyte?"

"I think so, madame. There was a letter a week ago, on Tuesday… no, it was Wednesday; it was your letter came from London on Tuesday about the young lady." She paused, puffing a little, and then nodded. "That's right. The one from Athens came on the Wednesday, because I remember Armand Lestocq was up here that very day, and-"

"Very well, Mrs. Seddon, thank you." Madame de Valmy might hardly have been listening. "You said the Master was upstairs? Please send someone to tell him I'm here with Miss Martin."

"I've already done that, madame. He most particularly asked to be told the minute you arrived."

"Ah, thank you." Madame de Valmy turned then towards me, still with those abrupt, slightly nervous movements, and spoke in English. "Now, Mrs. Seddon, this is Miss Martin. I wrote to you about her when I informed the Master. Miss Martin, Mrs. Seddon is the housekeeper here. She is English so you need not feel too much alone. Her husband is our butler and he and Mrs. Seddon will do what they can to help you." '

"That we will," said Mrs. Seddon warmly. She beamed at me and nodded, so that the gold chain on her bosom bobbed and glittered. "You're very welcome, I'm sure."

"Miss Martin's rooms are ready?"

"Oh, yes, madame, of course. I'll take her up now, shall I, and then show her round myself, seeing that perhaps she's a little strange?"

"Thank you, yes, if you will, but not straight away. She will come upstairs presently. Perhaps you will wait for her?"

“Of course, madame." Mrs. Seddon nodded and beamed again, then retreated, puffing her way steadily up the stairs like a squat determined tug.

Madame de Valmy turned as if to speak to me, but I saw her eyes go past my shoulder, and her hands, which had been jerking her gloves between them, stilled themselves.

"Léon."

I heard nothing. I turned quickly. Even then it was a second or so before I saw the shadow detach itself from the other shadows and slide forward.

Though I had known what to expect, instinctively my eye went too high, and then fell-again by instinct, shrinkingly- to the squat shape that shot forward, uncannily without sound, to a smooth halt six feet away.

Pity, repulsion, curiosity, the determination to show none of these… whatever feelings struggled in me as I turned were swept aside like leaves before a blast of wind. The slightly dramatic quality of his entrance may have contributed to the effect; one moment a shadow, and the next moment silently there… But, once there, Léon de Valmy was an object for no-one's pity; one saw simply a big, handsome, powerful man who from his wheel-chair managed without speaking a word to obliterate everybody else in the hall-this literally, for almost before the wheel-chair stopped, the servants had melted unobtrusively away. Only Mrs. Seddon was still audible, steaming steadily up the right-hand branch of the staircase towards the gallery.

It was a tribute to Léon de Valmy's rather overwhelming personality that my own first impression had nothing to do with his crippled state; it was merely that this was the handsomest man I had ever seen. My experience, admittedly, had not been large, but in any company he would have been conspicuous. The years had only added to his extraordinary good looks, giving him the slightly haggard distinction of lined cheeks and grey hair that contrasted strikingly with dark eyes and black, strongly- marked brows. The beautifully-shaped mouth had that thin, almost cruel set to it that is sometimes placed there by pain. His hands looked soft, as if they were not used enough, and he was too pale. But for all that, this was no invalid; this was the master of the house, and the half of his body that was still alive was just twice as much so as anybody else's…

He was smiling now as he greeted his wife and turned to me, and the smile lit his face attractively. There was no earthly reason why I should feel suddenly nervous, or why I should imagine that Héloïse de Valmy's voice as she introduced us was too taut and high, like an over-tight string.

I thought, watching her, she's afraid of him… Then I told myself sharply not to be a fool. This was the result of Daddy's intriguing build-up and my own damned romantic imagination. Just because the man looked like Milton's ruined archangel and chose to appear in the hall like the Demon King through a trapdoor, it didn't necessarily mean that I had to smell sulphur.

It was disconcerting to reach downwards to shake hands, but I hoped I hadn't shown it. My self-command, as it happened, was a mistake. He said gently: "You were warned about me?" The dark eyes, with a question in them, slid to his wife standing beside me.

I felt rather than saw her small movement of dissent. A glance passed between them and his brows lifted. He was too quick by half. With a guilty memory of my own secret I said uncertainly: "Warned?"

"About Lucifer's fall from heaven, Miss Martin."

I felt my eyes widen in a stare. Was the man a thought-reader? And was he determined I should smell sulphur? Or…did he really see himself as the thunder-scarred angel he quoted? Oddly, the last thought made him more human, more vulnerable.

Before I could speak he smiled again, charmingly. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have tried to be so cryptic. I was referring to the accident that, as you see…”

I said hastily and a bit too ingenuously: "I know. I was only surprised because that's what I was thinking myself."

"Was it indeed?" His laugh held a tiny note of self-mockery, but I thought he looked pleased. Then the laugh died and his eyes were on me, intent, appraising. I remembered perhaps rather late that I was a servant and this was my employer. I felt myself colour, and said quickly, almost at random: "Someone told me about your accident-someone I met on the plane from London."

"Oh? An acquaintance of ours, perhaps?"

"I think so. We talked. When I told her I was coming here she remembered having met you."

"She?" said Héloïse de Valmy.

I said: "I never knew her name. She was elderly, and I think she came from Lyons or somewhere like that. I don't remember."

Léon de Valmy abandoned the catechism abruptly. "Whoever it was, it's just as well she told you." He hesitated a moment, looking down at his hands, then went on slowly: "You must think this very odd of us, Miss Martin, but I believe my wife does not care to speak of my-deformity. Consequently it is apt to meet people with a shock. And I myself-even after twelve years-am absurdly sensitive of meeting new people and seeing it in their eyes. Perhaps both my wife and I are foolish about this… Perhaps already you are condemning me as a neurotic… But it is a very human folly, Miss Martin. We all of us spend some of our time pretending that something that is , is not-and we are not grateful to those who break the dream."

He looked up and his eyes met mine. "One day, perhaps, it will cease to matter." He shrugged, and smiled a little wryly. "But until then…"

He had spoken quite without bitterness: only that small wryness touched his voice. But the speech was so little what I would have expected from him that I found myself, embarrassed and disarmed, shaken into some stupid and impulsive reply.

I said quickly: "No, please-you mustn't mind. Deformity's the wrong word, and it's the last thing anybody'd notice about you anyway… honestly it is."

I stopped, appalled. From Linda Martin to Monsieur de Valmy the words would have been bad enough. From the new governess to her employer they were impossible. I didn't pause then to reflect that it was the employer who had-deliberately, it seemed-called them up. I stood biting my lip and wishing myself a thousand miles away. Through my sharp discomfort I heard myself stammering: "I-I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that… I only meant-"

"Thank you, my dear." His voice was still grave, but I saw the unmistakable flash of amusement in his eyes. Then he was saying easily: "It seems, Héloïse, that your excessively silly friend Lady Benchley has justified her existence at last in recommending Miss Martin to us. We were indeed lucky to find you, Miss Martin, and we're delighted to welcome you to Valmy. I hope we'll manage to make you feel at home." He paused. That gleam again. "Not perhaps quite a felicitous expression. Shall I say rather that I hope Valmy will become a home for you?"

I said rather stiffly: "Thank you. You're very kind. I was happy to have the chance to come, and I'll try my best to-"

"Endeavour to give satisfaction? That's the usual bromide, isn't it? What are you staring at?"

"I'm sorry. It was impertinent of me. It was just-your English is so frightfully good," I said lamely. Damn the man; was I never to regain my lost poise? I finished the sentence coldly-"Sir."

He laughed outright then, a quite delightful laugh that at once conceded a point and abandoned the game, whatever it was. He began then to inquire quite naturally and very kindly about the journey and my impressions of the valley; Madame de Valmy joined in, smiling, and soon, under their renewed phrases of welcome, I found my embarrassment relaxing into naturalness once again. More, into liking. The man's charm was palpable, and he had taken the trouble to turn it on full blast… and I was all the more vulnerable for being tired, lonely, and a bit bewildered. By the time the three of us had talked for a few minutes longer I was back on top of the world again with my shattered poise restored and all the tensions and uneasinesses of the past half-hour dismissed as figments. Monsieur and Madame de Valmy were a handsome and delightful couple and I was going to like them and love living at Valmy and belonging even in this humble sort to a family again.

Sulphur? Poppycock.

But all the same, I reflected, it hadn't taken me long to see what had been implied in that remembered snatch of conversation. "You wouldn't,” Daddy had said, and I saw what he meant. The man was damnably attractive, no doubt of that…and I used the adverb deliberately; it was the mot juste. And charm or no, the faintest of resentments still pricked me. Léon de Valmy had played a game with me, and I hadn't liked it. I had been shaken into offering pity and comfort where none was needed… and he had been amused.

Nor did I attempt to explain, even to myself, why I had launched so unerringly on that sea of lies about the elderly lady from Lyons, or how I knew I would never, never have the courage to tell Léon de Valmy that I spoke French even better than he spoke English, and had understood perfectly well what he said to Héloïse when, at length dismissed, I had gone upstairs to meet Mrs. Seddon on the gallery landing.

He had said softly, and I knew he was staring after me: "All the same, Héloïse, it is possible that you've made a very great mistake…"

My rooms were lovelier than anything I had imagined, certainly than any I had ever been in. They had tall windows facing west, which gave onto a balcony and the view across the valley.

This drew me straight away. I stood leaning on the stone balustrading and looking out over that incredible view. So high-perched we were that I seemed to be looking level at the crest of the Dieudonné forest beyond the Merlon; below, along the zigzag, the bare tree-tops moved like clouds. The balcony was afloat in a golden airy space. Soubirous, to the south, glinted like a jewel.

I turned. Mrs. Seddon had followed me to the window, and waited, smiling, plump hands clasped under plump bosom.

"It's-wonderful,'" I said.

"It's a pretty place," she said comfortably. "Though some don't like the country, of course. Myself, I've always lived in the country. Now I'll show you the bedroom, if you'll come this way."

I followed her across the pretty sitting-room to a door in the corner opposite the fireplace.

"These rooms are built in a suite," she said. "All the main rooms open onto this corridor, or the south one. You saw how the balcony runs the whole length of the house. These rooms at the end have been made into the nursery suite, and they open out of one another as well. This is your bedroom."

It was, if possible, prettier than the sitting-room. I told her so, and she looked pleased. She moved to a door I had not noticed, half-concealed as it was in the ivory-and-gold panelling. "That door's to the bathroom and Master Philip's bedroom opens off it the other side. You share the bathroom with him. I hope you don't mind?"

At the Constance Butcher Home we had queued for baths. "No," I said, "I don't mind. It's beautifully up-to-date, isn't it? Baths behind the panelling. Did all the ghosts leave when the plumbing was put in, Mrs. Seddon?"

"I never heard tell of any," said Mrs. Seddon, sedately. "This was a powder-closet in the old days; it runs the whole way between the two rooms. They made half of it into a bathroom and the other half's a little pantry with an electric stove for making nursery tea and Master Philip's chocolate at night." I must have looked surprised, because she added: "This was always the schoolroom wing; the Master and his brothers were brought up here, you see, and then these alterations, with the electricity and all that, were done when Mr. Rowl was born."

"Mr…Raoul?" I queried.

"The Master's son. He lives at Bellyveen. That's the Master's place in the Midi."

"Yes, I knew about that. I didn't know there was a son, though. Madame de Valmy didn't-well, she didn't talk to me much. I know very little about the family."

She gave me a shrewd look, and I thought she was going to make some comment, but all she said was: "No? Ah well, you'll find everything out soon enough, I dare say. Mr. Rowl isn't Madame's son, you understand. The Master was married before. Mr. Rowl's mother died twenty-two years ago this spring, when he was eight. It's sixteen years ago now that the Master married again and you can't blame him at that. It's a big place to be alone in, as you may well imagine. Not that," said Mrs. Seddon cheerfully, chugging across the room to twitch a curtain into place, "the Master was ever one in those days for sitting alone in the house, if you take my meaning. Fair set Europe alight between them, him and his oldest brother, if all tales be true, but there, wild oats is wild oats, and the poor Master'll sow no more of them even if he wanted to, which I doubt he doesn't, and poor Mr. Étienne's dead, God rest him, and long past thinking of the world, the flesh and the devil, or so we'll hope……" She turned to me again, a little out of breath with these remarkable confidences; it appeared that Mrs. Seddon, at any rate, didn't share Madame de Valmy's habit of reticence. "And now would you like to see over the rest of the place, or will you wait till later? You'll be tired, I dare say."

“I’ll leave it till later, if I may."

"It's as you wish." Again the shrewd twinkling glance. "Shall I send Berthe to unpack for you?"

"No, thank you." That look meant that she knew quite well that I wouldn't want a maid exploring my meagre suitcase. Far from resenting the thought, I was grateful for it. "Where's the nursery?" I asked. "Beyond Master Philip's bedroom?"

"No. His bedroom's the end one, then yours, then your sitting- room, then the nursery. Beyond that come Madam's rooms, and the Master's are round the corner above the library."

"Oh, yes. He has a lift there, hasn't he?"

"That's so, miss. It was put in soon after the accident. That'd be, let's see, twelve years ago come June."

"I was told about that. Were you here then, Mrs. Seddon?"

"Oh, yes, indeed I was." She nodded at me with a certain complacency. "I came here thirty-two years ago, miss, when the Master was first married."

I sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at her with interest. "Thirty-two years? That's a long time, Mrs. Seddon. Did you come with the first Madame de Valmy, then?"

"That I did. She was from Northumberland, the same as me."

"Then she was English?" I said, surprised.

"Indeed, yes. She was a lovely girl, Miss Deborah. I’d been in service at her home ever since she was a little girl. She met the Master in Paris one spring, and they was engaged in a fortnight, just like that. Oh, very romantic it all was, very romantic. She said to me, she said: 'Mary'-that's my name, miss-'Mary,' she said, 'you'll come with me, won't you? I won't feel so far from home then,' she said." Mrs. Seddon nodded at me, with an easy sentimental moistening of the eye. "So, seeing as I was courting Arthur-that's Mr. Seddon- meself at the time, I married him and made him go along too. I couldn't let Miss Debbie adventure all by herself to foreign parts, like."

"Of course not," I said sympathetically, and Mrs. Seddon beamed, settling her arms together under the plump bosom, obviously ready to gossip for as long as I would listen. She gave the appearance of one indulging in a favourite pastime whose rules were almost forgotten. If I had been delighted to see her pleasant English face after the secret countenances of Albertine and Bernard, it was obvious that Mrs. Seddon had been equally pleased to see me. And the governess, of course, was not on the proscribed list: this could not be called Gossiping with the Servants. I supposed that, for me, Mrs. Seddon was hardly on the proscribed list either. At any rate I was going to gossip all I could.

I prompted her: "And then when your Miss Debbie… died, you didn't go back to England? What made you stay on, Mrs. Seddon?"

As to that, it seemed that she was not quite sure herself. Miss Debbie's father had died meanwhile and the house in England had been sold, while here at Valmy Mrs. Seddon and her husband had excellent jobs which "the Master" seemed quite disposed to let them keep… I also gathered that Miss Debbie's interest had lifted them into positions which in another house they might never have filled; Seddon himself had been on my one sight of him impeccably polished, neutral and correct; Mrs. Seddon too, had all the trappings of the competent and superior housekeeper; but her voice and some of her mannerisms had, gloriously defying gentility, remained the homely and genuine voice and ways of Mary Seddon, erstwhile second-gardener's daughter.

I listened to a long description of Miss Debbie, and others of Miss Debbie's home, father, pony, clothes, jewellery, wedding, wedding-presents and wedding-guests. When we appeared to be about to launch (via how much Miss Debbie's mother would have liked to be at the wedding if only she had been alive) on a description of Miss Debbie's mother's clothes, jewellery, wedding, and so on, as observed by Mrs. Seddon's mother-then I thought it was time to prod her gently back to foreign parts.

"And there was Miss Debbie's son, wasn't there? Of course you wanted to stay and look after him?"

"Mr. Rowl?" She primmed her lips a little. "French nurses they had for him. Such a quiet little boy as he was, too-a bit like Master Philip here, very quiet and never a mite of bother. You'd never have thought-" But here she stopped, sighing a little wheezily, and shook her head. "Eh, well, miss, he's half foreign, say what you will."

There was all rural England in the condemnation. I waited, gravely expectant, but she merely added, maddeningly: "But there, I never was one to gossip. And now, if you'll excuse me, I’ll have to be getting about my work and leaving you to unpack. Now, miss, if there's anything you want you've only to ask me or Seddon and we'll do our best to help you."

"Thank you very much. I'm awfully glad you're here, Mrs. Seddon," I added naively.

She looked pleased. "Well, now, that's very nice of you, miss, I'm sure. But you'll soon feel at home and pick things up. I couldn't speak a word of French when I came here first, and now I can talk it as fast as they can."

"I heard you. It sounded wonderful." I stood up and clicked back the lodes of my suitcase. "As you say, thirty years is a long time, especially when one's away from home. You didn't feel tempted to go back to England, say, when Monsieur de Valmy married again?"

"Oh, we talked of it, Seddon and I," she said comfortably, "but Seddon's that easy-going, and we liked the new Madam, and she was satisfied, so we stayed. Besides, I've had the asthma terrible bad since a girl, and, say what you like, none of these new-fangled things they give you, anti-hysterics and such-like, seem to do me any good. I used to get it terrible bad at home, but up here it cleared up something wonderful. It still comes now and again, but it soon goes off. It's the air. Wonderful healthy it is up here, and very dry."

"It's certainly lovely."

"And then," said Mrs. Seddon, "after the Master had his accident, she wouldn't hear of us going. He couldn't stand changes, you see."

"I did gather that from what he said to me in the hall. Does he-does he have much pain, Mrs. Seddon?"

"Pain? No. But he has his days," said Mrs. Seddon cryptically. "And you can't blame him, the way things are."

"No, of course not. He's bound to get depressed at times."

"Depressed?" She looked at me blankly. "The Master?"

I was still trying to equate the self-confessed "neurotic" with the impression of easy and competent power that Leon de Valmy gave. "Yes. Does he get sort of sorry for himself at times?"

She gave a sound suspiciously like a snort. "Sorry for himself? Not him! Mind you, this last few years he's not been just as sweet-tempered as he might be, but he's all there, miss, you may be sure. He'd never be the one to give up because of a little thing like being crippled for life!"

"I think I can see that. In fact you never think of that when you talk to him." (I didn't add 'unless he reminds you', but the thought persisted.)

"That's so." She nodded at me again. "And he forgets it himself* most times. What with that electric chair of his, and the lift, and the telephone to every corner of the place, and that there Bernard to be the legs of him, there's nothing he can't do. But now and then, just like that, something'll bring it home to him, and then…

I said, still thinking of the scene in the hall: "What sort of thing?"

"Dear only knows. It might be a bad night, or a report coming in that something's gone wrong or been neglected in some place he can't get to himself to see to it, or something that needs doing and no money to do it with, or Mr. Rowl-" before, she stopped abruptly.

I waited. She pulled unnecessarily at a chair-cover to straighten it. She said vaguely: "Mr. Rowl runs the other estate for him Bellyveen, in the Midi, and there's always trouble over money, and it upsets the Master, and besides… ah, well, he's not often here, which is as it should be, seeing he's the one that reminds the Master most often that he's a helpless cripple for all the powerful ways he has with him."

I stirred. "Reminds him? That's rather beastly."

She looked shocked. "Oh, not on purpose, you understand. I didn't mean that! It's only that he-well, Mr. Rowl might be the Master like he was twenty years ago, you see."

"Oh, I see what you mean. He does all the things his father used to like doing. Polo, for instance?"

She shot me a surprised look. "Did they tell you about that?"

"No. I heard it from someone who knew them-someone I met on the plane."

"Oh, I see. Yes, that sort of thing. He could put his hand to anything, the Master." She smiled reminiscently and a little sadly. "Miss Debbie always did say he'd break his neck one day. He was such a one for sport-all sorts, motor-cars, horses, speed-boats… fighting with swords, even. He's got a shelf of silver cups for that alone."

“Fencing?”

“That's it. But cars and horses were the chief thing. I've often thought he'd break his own neck and everyone else's, the way he'd come up that zigzag from the Valmy bridge. Sometimes," added Mrs. Seddon surprisingly, "you'd think a devil was driving him… like as if he had to be able to do everything- and do it better than anybody else."

Yes, I thought, I can believe that. And even crippled he has to be a crippled archangel…

I said: "And now he has to sit and watch his son riding and driving and fencing-?”

"As to that," said Mrs. Seddon, "Mr. Rowl hasn't got the money… which is just as well, or maybe he'd go the same way as his father. And like I said, he's not here very often anyway. He lives at Bellyveen. I've never been to Bellyveen myself, but I've heard tell it's very pretty."

I said "Oh?" with an expression of polite interest as she began to tell me about Bellevigne, but I wasn't really listening. I was reflecting that if Raoul de Valmy was really a younger copy of his father it was probably just as well he visited Valmy only rarely. I couldn't imagine two of Léon de Valmy settling at all comfortably under the same roof… I stirred again. There was that same damned romantic imagination at work still… And what had I to go on, after all? A vague snatch of memory twelve years old, and the impression of an overwhelming personality in some odd way playing with me for its own amusement, for some reason concerned to give me a picture of itself that was not the truth…

It struck me then, for the first time, that there had been a notable omission from my welcome to the Chateau Valmy.

And that was the owner of all this magnificence, the most important of the Valmys, Monsieur le Comte, Philippe.

And now Mrs. Seddon was preparing to go about her own affairs.

She plodded firmly away to the door, only to hesitate there and turn. I bent over my case and began to lift things out onto the coverlet. I could feel her eyeing me.

She said: "You… the Master… he seemed all right with you, did he? I thought I heard him laugh when I was waiting upstairs for you."

I straightened up, my hands full of folded handkerchiefs. "Perfectly all right, Mrs. Seddon. He was very pleasant."

"Oh. That's good. I'd like to have been able to have a word with you first and warn you what he sometimes was like with strangers."

I could well understand her slightly anxious probing. It was obvious that the emotional temperature, so to speak, of the Chateau Valmy, must depend very largely on Léon de Valmy and "his days".

I said cheerfully: "Thanks very much, but don't worry, Mrs. Seddon. He was awfully nice to me and made me feel very welcome."

"Did he now?" Her eyes were anxious and a little puzzled. "Oh, well, that's all right, then. I know he was very pleased when Madam's letter came about you, but as a rule he hates changes in the house. That's why we were so surprised when Master Philip's Nanny was dismissed after being with the family all those years, and they said a new girl was coming from England."

"Oh, yes, Madame de Valmy told me about her." I put the handkerchiefs down and lifted some underwear out of the suitcase. "But she wasn't dismissed, surely? I understood from Madame that she didn't want to live in the wilds of Valmy and, as Madame was in London at the time, Monsieur de Valmy wrote urgently and asked her to find an English governess while she was there."

"Oh, no." Mrs. Seddon was downright. "You must have misunderstood what Madam said. Nanny was devoted to Master Philip, and I'm sure she broke her heart when she had to go."

"Oh? I was sure that Madame said she'd left because the place was so lonely. I must have been mistaken." I found myself shrugging my shoulders, and hastily abandoned that very Gallic gesture. "Maybe she was just warning me what it would be like. But she did seem very anxious to engage someone to teach him English."

"Master Philip's English is excellent," said Mrs. Seddon, rather primly.

I laughed and said: “I’m glad to hear it. Well, whatever the case, I suppose if Philippe's nine he's old enough to graduate from a Nanny to a governess of sorts. I gathered from Monsieur de Valmy that that was the idea. And for a start I'm going to try and remember to call the nursery the 'schoolroom'. I'm sure one's too old for a nursery when one's nine."

"Master Philip's very young for his age," she said, "though there's times when he's too solemn for my liking. But there, you can't expect much after what's happened, poor mite. He'll get over it in the end, but it takes time."

"I know," I said.

She eyed me for a moment and then said, tentatively: "If I might ask-do you remember your own folks,

now?”

”Oh, yes." I looked across the room and met the kindly inquisitive gaze. Fair was fair, after all. She must be every bit as curious about me as I was about the Valmys. I said: "I was fourteen when they were killed. In an air accident, like Philippe's. I suppose Madame de Valmy told you I'd been at an orphanage in England?"

"Indeed, yes. She wrote that she'd heard of you through a friend of hers, a Lady Benchley, who comes up every year to Évian, and Lady Benchley thought very highly of you, very highly."

"That was very nice of her. Lady Benchley was one of the Governors at the orphanage for the last three years I was there. Then when I left to be assistant at a boys' school it turned out she had a son there. She came up to me on Visitors' Day and talked to me, and when I told her I hated the place she asked me if I'd ever considered a private job abroad, because this friend of hers-Madame de Valmy-was looking for a governess for her nephew and had asked her if she knew of anyone from the Home. When I heard the job was in France I jumped at it. I- I'd always fancied living in France, somehow. I went straight up to London next day and saw her. Lady Benchley had promised to telephone about me, and-well, I got the job." I didn't add that Madame must have taken Lady Benchley's recommendation to be worth a good deal more than it actually was. Lady Benchley was a kindly scatterbrain who spent a good deal of her time acting as a sort of private labour-exchange between her friends and the Constance Butcher Home, and I doubt if she had ever known very much about me. And I had certainly got the impression that Madame de Valmy had been so anxious to find a suitable young woman for the post during her short stay in London that she hadn't perhaps probed as far back into my history as she might have done. Not, of course, that it mattered.

I smiled at Mrs. Seddon, who was still eyeing me with that faintly puzzled look. Then all at once she smiled back, and nodded, so that the gold chain on her bosom glittered and swung. "Well," she said, "well," and though she didn't actually add "You'll do," the implication was there. She opened the door. "And now I really will have to be going. Berthe'll be up soon with some tea for you; she's the girl that looks after these rooms and you'll find she's a good girl, though a bit what you might call flighty. I expect you'll make yourself understood to her all right, and Master Philip'll help."

"I expect I shall," I said. "Where is Master Philip, Mrs. Seddon?"

"He's probably in the nursery," said Mrs. Seddon, her hand on the door. "But Madam particularly said you weren't to bother with him tonight. You were to have a cup of tea-which I may say is tea, though it took near thirty years to teach them how to make it-and settle yourself in before dinner and you'll be seeing Master Philip tomorrow. But not to bother yourself tonight."

"Very well," I said. "Thank you, Mrs. Seddon. I shall look forward to that tea."

The door shut behind her. I could hear the soft plod of her steps along the corridor.

I stood where I was, looking at the door, and absently smoothing the folds of a petticoat between my hands.

I was thinking two things. First that I was not supposed to have heard Mrs. Seddon mentioning the lift in her conversation with Madame de Valmy, and that if I was going to make mistakes as easily as that I had better confess quickly before any real damage was done.

The second thing was Mrs. Seddon's parting admonition: "not to bother with him tonight" Had that really been Héloïse de Valmy's phrase? "Not to bother with him." And he was "probably" in the nursery… I laid the petticoat gently in a drawer, then turned and walked out of my pretty bedroom, across the roses-and-ivory sitting-room, towards the schoolroom door. There I hesitated a moment, listening. I could hear nothing.

I tapped gently on the door and then turned the gilded handle. It opened smoothly.

I pushed it wide and walked in.

CHAPTER 4

My first thought was that he was not an attractive little boy.

He was small for his age, with a thin little neck supporting a round dark head. His hair was black, and cut very short, and his skin was sallow, almost waxen. His eyes were black, and very large, his wrists and knees bony and somehow pathetic. He was dressed in navy shorts and a striped jersey, and was lying on his stomach, reading a large book. He looked small and a little drab on the big luxurious rug.

He looked round in inquiry and then got slowly to his feet.

I said, in English: "I'm Mademoiselle Martin. You must be Philippe."

He nodded, looking shy. Then his breeding asserted itself, and he took a short step forward, holding out his hand. "You are very welcome, Mademoiselle Martin." His voice was small and thin like himself, and without much expression. "I hope you will be happy at Valmy."

It came to me again, sharply, as I shook the hand, that this was the owner of Valmy. The thought made him, oddly enough, seem even smaller, less significant.

"I was told that you might be busy," I said, "but I thought I'd better come straight along and see you."

He considered this for a moment, taking me in with the frankly interested stare of a child. "Are you really going to teach me English?"

"Yes."

He said: "You do not look like a governess."

"Then I must try and look more like one, I suppose."

"No, I like it as you are. Do not change."

The de Valmys, it seemed, started young. I laughed. "Merci du compliment, Monsieur le Comte.”

He gave me a swift look upwards. There was glimmer in the black eyes. But all he said was: "Do we have a lesson tomorrow?"

"I expect so. I don't know. I shall probably see your aunt tonight, and no doubt she'll tell me just what the programme is."

"Have you seen-my uncle?" Was there, or was there not, the faintest of changes in that monotonous little voice?

"Yes."

He was standing quite still, small hands dangling from their bony wrists in front of him. It came to me that he was in his own way as un-get-at-able as Héloïse de Valmy. My task here might not be a very easy one. His manners were beautiful; he was not, it was patent, going to be a "difficult" child in the sense of the word as usually used by governesses; but would I ever get to know him, ever get past that touch-me-not electric fence of reserve? That, and his unchildlike habit of stillness, I had already met in Madame de Valmy, but there the resemblance ended. Her stillness and remoteness was beautiful and poised; this child's was ungraceful and somehow disturbing.

I said: "I must go and unpack now, or I'll be late for dinner. Would you like to help?”

He looked up quickly. "Me?"

"Well, not help, exactly, but come and keep me company, and see what I've brought you from London."

"You mean a present?"

"Of course."

He flushed a slow and unbecoming scarlet. Without speaking, he walked sedately past me through my sitting-room towards my bedroom door, opened it for me, then followed me into the room. He stood at the foot of the bed, still in silence, staring at my case.

I stooped over it, lifted a few more things out onto the bed, then rummaged to find what I had brought.

"They're nothing very much," I said, "because I haven't much spare cash. But-well, here they are.”

I had brought him, from Woolworth's, a cardboard model of Windsor Castle-the kind that you cut out and assemble, together with a box, as big as I could afford, containing a collection of men in the uniform of the Grenadier Guards.

I looked a little uncertainly at the silent owner of the Chateau Valmy, and handed him the boxes.

He regarded the optimistic pictures on the lids.

"An English castle?" he said. "And English soldiers?"

"Yes: The kind they have at Buckingham Palace."

"With the fur hats, to guard the Queen. I know." He was still looking raptly at a picture of a full regiment of Guards, drilling in an improbable fashion.

"They're-they're not much," I said, "You see-"

But I saw he was not listening. He had opened the lids and was fingering the cheap toys inside. "A present from London," he said, touching one crudely-painted toy soldier. It came to me, suddenly, that it would not have mattered if they had been home-made paper dolls.

I said: "I brought you a game, too, called Peggitty. You play it with these pegs. Later, I'll show you how. It's a good game."

From the schoolroom a girl's voice called: "Philippe? Où es-tu, Philippe?"

He started. "It's Berthe. I have to go." He shut the boxes and stood up, holding them tightly to him. He said, very formally: "Thank you. Thank you, mademoiselle." Then he turned and ran to the door. "Me voici, Berthe. Je viens." On the threshold he stopped and swung round. His face was still flushed, and he clutched the presents hard.

"Mademoiselle."

"Yes, Philippe?"

"What is the name of the game with the pegs?"

"Peggitty."

"Peg-it-ee. You will show me how to play it?"

"Yes."

"You will play this Peg-it-ee when I have had my supper before I go to bed?"

"Yes."

"Tonight?"

"Yes."

He hesitated as if he were going to say something else. Then instead he went quickly out, and shut the door gently behind him.

However strange and luxurious my new surroundings, life at Valmy soon settled itself into a simple and orderly routine. Every morning Monsieur Bétemps, Philippe's tutor, arrived, and the two were closeted together till lunch-time. Once my various morning jobs about the schoolroom suite were finished I could count myself free, and for the first few days I occupied myself happily in exploring the gardens and the nearer woods, or in reading-hours and hours of reading, a luxury so long denied me at the Home that I still felt guilty whenever I indulged in it.

The library at the château almost certainly contained English books, but since it was Léon de Valmy's private study-cum-office, I could not-or would not-ask permission to use it. But I had brought as many of my own books as I could carry, and in the schoolroom there were shelves to the ceiling full of an excellent miscellany-children's books thrust cheek by jowl with English and French classics and a good deal of lighter reading, I wondered a little at the odd collection until I saw in some of the volumes the name Deborah Bohun or the message, "To Debbie", and once I took down a battered old copy of Treasure Island to find it inscribed in a flamboyant young hand Raoul Philippe St. Aubin de Valmy… of course, Léon's son was half English and had used these very rooms. I found Buchan, too, and Conan Doyle, and a host of forgotten or never-known books that, gratefully, I devoured-forcing myself to ignore the irrational feeling drilled into me in the seven years at the Home that Reading was a Waste of Time.

On one occasion my guilty feeling was justified. When I read French, I read it in secrecy, and once I was nearly caught out over Tristan et Iseut. I was devouring it, rapt and oblivious in my bedroom, when Berthe knocked and, receiving no reply, came in to dust the room. She noticed nothing, but I cursed myself and vowed yet again to be careful and wished for the hundredth time that I had never embarked on the silly deception that had seemed at the time to matter so much, and became daily more difficult to confess.

I no longer imagined seriously that anyone would mind; Philippe and I got on well together, and Madame de Valmy, in her aloof way, seemed to like me; I was certainly very completely trusted with Philippe's well-being. But I didn't particularly want her to know that I had deceived her-systematically, as it were, schemed to deceive her. And, as with all deceptions, the thing grew bigger daily. I had to make myself understood to Berthe, the schoolroom maid, and did this in elementary schoolgirl French which amused her and even made Philippe smile. Luckily, I never had to do this with my employers; invariably in my presence they spoke in their flawless and seemingly effortless English. And so the days went by and I said nothing. I dared not risk their displeasure; I loved the place, I could easily cope with the job, and I liked Philippe.

He was a very quiet, self-controlled child, who never chattered. Every afternoon, unless it rained too hard, we went for a walk, and our "English conversation" mainly consisted of my comments on the country or the gardens where we took our walks. That electric fence of his was still up: it was not a consciously- erected barrier-the gift of the toys had won his alliance if not his heart-but it was there, the obstruction of a deep natural reserve. I imagined that his naturally undemonstrative nature had been made even more so by the sudden loss of his parents, to whom he had never referred. This was not a child one could readily "get to know". I soon stopped trying, and kept both his and my own attention on things outside ourselves. If I was ever to win his confidence, it would only be done by very gradual and natural degrees: by custom, as it were. And there was, indeed, no reason why I should push my way into his fenced and private world; I had suffered so much from lack of privacy in the Home that I deeply respected anybody's right to it, and would have looked on any attempt at intimacy with Philippe as a kind of mental violation.

His reserve showed itself not only towards me. Each evening, at half-past-five, I took him down for half an hour to the small salon where his aunt sat. She would politely put aside her book or writing-paper, pick up instead her exquisite and interminable petit-point and hold conversation with Philippe for the half-hour. I say "hold conversation" advisedly, because that phrase does perfectly imply the difficult and stilted communication that took place. Philippe was his usual quiet and withdrawn self, answering questions readily and with impeccable politeness, but asking none and volunteering nothing. Madame de Valmy was the one, it seemed to me, who had to violate her personality here: she, also naturally withdrawn, had to unbend, almost to chatter, I suppose, though, that it was I who loathed those half-hours most, and who suffered the most. Madame de Valmy and Philippe talked, naturally, in French, and this exchange I was supposed not to understand. But occasionally she would revert to English, either for my benefit or to test my pupil's knowledge of that tongue, and then I was drawn into the conversation, and had the awkward task of betraying no knowledge of the exchange in French to which I had just been listening. I don't remember if I made any mistakes; she certainly appeared to notice none, but then, she never gave the appearance of more than the most superficial attention to the whole routine; it was, for her, the discharge of a duty to a charge she hardly knew. Madame de Valmy, certainly, could not be accused of trying to violate anybody's confidence.

Her husband was never there. His only meetings with Philippe seemed to be the purely chance ones of encounters in corridors, on the terrace, or in the gardens. At first I found myself blaming Philippe's uncle for his lack of interest in a lonely and recently bereaved little boy, but soon I realised that it wasn't entirely Léon de Valmy's fault Philippe systematically avoided him. He would only go down the library corridor with me when we had seen the wheel-chair safely out beyond the ornamental ponds or at the far side of the rosery; he seemed to have the faculty for hearing the whisper of its wheels two corridors away, when he would invariably drag at my hand, persuading me with him to vanish out of his uncle's sight.

There seemed to be no good reason for this steady aversion; on the two or three occasions during my first week when we did, unavoidably, meet Monsieur de Valmy, he was very nice to Philippe. But Philippe was, if possible, more withdrawn than ever; in front of his uncle the child's reserve appeared to be little more than the sulks. This was natural enough in a way; in Léon de Valmy's overwhelming presence anyone as awkward and unattractive as Philippe was bound to be made to feel doubly so, and, consciously or not, to resent it. Moreover his uncle's tone towards him was kind with the semi-indifferent indulgence he might have accorded to a not-very-favourite puppy. I could never make out whether Philippe noticed or resented this; I know that on one or two occasions I found myself resenting it on his behalf. But I still liked Léon de Valmy; Philippe, on the other hand-and this I came only gradually to realise-disliked his uncle very much indeed.

That this was irrational I tried on one occasion to tell him.

"Philippe, why do you avoid your Uncle Léon?"

The stone-wall expression shut down on his face. " ‘Ne comprends pas”

"English, please. And you do understand quite well. He's very good to you. You have everything you want, don't you?"

"Yes. Everything I want I have."

"Well, then-"

He gave me one of his quick, unreadable looks. "But he does not give it to me."

"Who then? Your Aunt Héloïse?"

He shook his head. "It is not theirs to give to me. It was my father's and it is mine."

I looked at him. This, then, was it. Valmy. I remembered the little gleam in the black eyes when I had laughingly addressed him as Comte de Valmy. This was another thing at which it seemed the de Valmys started young, "Your land?" I said. "Of course it's yours. He's keeping it for you. He's your trustee, isn't he?"

He looked puzzled. "Trustee? I do not know trustee."

"He takes care of Valmy till you are older. Then you have it."

"Yes, until I am fifteen. Is that trustee? Then my Uncle Hippolyte is also trustee."

"Is he? I didn't know that."

He nodded, with that solemn look that sat almost sullenly on his pale little face. "Yes. Tous les deux-both. My Uncle Léon for the property and my Uncle Hippolyte for me."

"What do you mean?" I asked involuntarily.

The gleam in the look he shot me might have been malice or only mischief. "I heard papa say that. He said-"

"Philippe," I began, but he wasn't listening. He was wrestling with a translation of what Papa had said, only to abandon it and quote in French in a rush that spoke of a literal and all-too-vivid memory:

"He said 'Léon'll keep the place going, trust him for that. God help Valmy if it was left to Hippolyte.' And Maman said 'But Hippolyte must have the child if anything happens to us. Hippolyte must look after the child. He is not to be left to Léon.' That's what Maman-" He stopped, shutting his lips tightly over the word.

I said nothing.

He slanted that look at me again and said in English: "That is what they said. It means-"

"No, Philippe, don't try and translate," I said gently, "I don't suppose you were meant to hear it."

"N-no. But I wish I had not had to leave my Uncle Hippolyte."

"You're fond of him?"

“Of course. He has gone to la Grèce . I wanted to go with him but he could not take me."

"He'll come back soon."

"Yes, but it is a long time."

"It'll pass," I said, "and meanwhile I'll look after you for him, and your Uncle Léon’ll look after Valmy."

I paused and looked at the uncommunicative little face. I didn't want to sound pompous or to alienate Philippe, but I was after all in charge of his manners. I said, tentatively: "He does it very well, Philippe. Valmy is beautiful, and he cares for it, ça se voit. You mustn't be ungrateful."

It was true that Philippe had no cause to complain of his uncle's stewardship. Léon seemed to me to spend his whole time, indeed, his whole self, on the place. It was as if the immense virility that was physically denied its outlet was redirected onto Valmy. Day after day the wheel-chair patrolled the terraces and the gravel of the formal gardens, the conservatories, the kitchen gardens, the garages… everywhere the chair could possibly go it went. And in the château itself the hand of a careful master was everywhere apparent. No plan was too large, no detail too small, for Léon de Valmy's absorbed attention.

It was also true that, as Comte de Valmy, Philippe might legitimately claim that he was a cypher in his own house, but he was only nine, and moreover a Paris-bred stranger. His uncle and aunt did ignore him to a large extent, but his daily routine with its small disciplines and lack of what one might call cosy family life was very much the usual one for a boy in his position.

I added, rather lamely: "You couldn't have a better trustee."

Philippe shot me one of his looks. The shutters were up in his face again. He said politely and distantly: "No, mademoiselle," and looked away.

I said no more, feeling myself unable to deal with what still seemed an unreasonable dislike.

But one day towards the end of my second week at Valmy the situation was, so to speak, thrust on me.

Philippe and I had, as usual, been down for our five-thirty visit to Madame de Valmy in the small salon. Punctually at six she dismissed us, but as we went she called me back for some reason that I now forget. Philippe didn't wait, but escaped without ceremony into the corridor.

A minute or so later I left the salon, to walk straight into as nasty a little scene as I had yet come across.

Philippe was standing, the picture of guilt and misery, beside a table which stood against the wall outside the salon door. It was a lovely little table, flanked on either side by a Louis Quinze chair seated with straw-coloured brocade. On one of the chair- seats I now saw, horribly, a thick streak of ink, as if a pen had rolled from the table and then across the silk of the chair, smearing ink as it went.

I remembered, then, that Philippe had been writing to his uncle Hippolyte when I called him to come downstairs. He must have come hurriedly away, the pen still open in his hand, and have put it down there before going into the drawing-room. He was clutching it now in an ink-stained fist, and staring white- faced at his uncle.

For this time of all times he hadn't managed to avoid Monsieur de Valmy. The wheel-chair was slap in the middle of the corridor, barring escape. Philippe, in front of it, looked very small and guilty and defenceless.

Neither of them appeared to notice me. Léon de Valmy was speaking. That he was angry was obvious, and it looked as if he had every right to be, but the cold lash of his voice as he flayed the child for his small-boy carelessness was frightening; he was using -not a wheel, but an atomic blast, to break a butterfly.

Philippe, as white as ashes now, stammered something that might have been an apology, but merely sounded like a terrified mutter, and his uncle cut across it in that voice that bit like a loaded whip.

"It is, perhaps, just as well that your visits to this part of the house are restricted to this single one a day, as apparently you don't yet know how to behave like a civilised human being. Perhaps in your Paris home you were allowed to run wild in this hooligan manner, but here we are accustomed to-"

“This is my home," said Philippe.

He said it still in that small shaken voice that held the suggestion of a sullen mutter. It stopped Léon de Valmy in full tirade. For a moment I thought the sentence in that still little voice unbearably pathetic, and in the same moment wondered at Philippe, who was not prone to either drama or pathos. But then he added, still low, but very clearly: "And that is my chair."

There was a moment of appalling silence. Something came and went in Léon de Valmy's face-the merest flick of an expression like a flash of a camera's shutter-but Philippe took a step backwards, and I found myself catapulting out of the doorway like a wildcat defending a kitten.

Léon de Valmy looked up and saw me, but he spoke to Philippe quietly, as though his anger had never been.

"When you have recovered your temper and your manners, Philippe, you will apologise for that remark." The dark eyes lifted to me, and he said coolly but very courteously, in English: "Ah, Miss Martin. I'm afraid there has been a slight contretemps. Perhaps you will take Philippe back to his own rooms and persuade him that courtesy towards his elders is one of the qualities that is expected of a gentleman."

As his uncle spoke to me, Philippe had turned quickly, as if in relief. His face was paler than ever, and looked pinched and sullen. But the eyes were vulnerable: child's eyes.

I looked at him, then past him at his uncle.

"There's no need," I said. "He'll apologise now." I took the boy gently by the shoulders and turned him back to face his uncle. I held him for a moment. The shoulders felt very thin and tense. He was shaking.

I let him go. "Philippe?" I said.

He said, his voice thin with a gulp in it: "I beg your pardon if I was rude."

Léon de Valmy looked from him to me and back again.

"Very well. That is forgotten. And now Miss Martin had better take you upstairs."

The child turned quickly to go, but I hesitated. I said: "I gather there's been an accident to that chair, and that Philippe's been careless; but then, so have I. It was my job to see that nothing of the sort happened. It was my fault, and I must apologise too, Monsieur de Valmy."

He said in a voice quite different from the one with which he had dismissed Philippe: "Very well, Miss Martin. Thank you. And now we will forget the episode, shall we?"

As we went I was very conscious of that still, misshapen figure sitting there watching us.

I shut the schoolroom door behind me, and leaned against it. Philippe and I looked at one another. His face was shuttered still with that white resentment. His mouth looked sulky, but I saw the lower lip tremble a little.

He waited, saying nothing.

This was where I had to uphold authority. Curtain lecture by Miss Martin. Léon de Valmy had been perfectly right: Philippe had been stupid, careless, and rude…

I said: "My lamb, I'm with you all the way, but you are a little owl, aren't you?"

"You can't," said Philippe, very stiffly, "be a lamb and an owl both at the same time."

Then he ran straight at me and burst into tears.

After that I did help to keep him out of his uncle's way.

Chapter 5

The spring weather continued marvellous. There was still snow on the nearer hills, and the far high peaks that unrolled below the clouds were great dazzling beds of white as yet untouched by the spring. But the valley was green, and yet greener; the violets were out along the ditches, and all the urns and stone tubs that lined the château terraces held their constellations of narcissus and jonquil that danced with the wind.

Philippe and I went out every afternoon, coated and scarved against the breeze that blew off the snow. The mountain air seemed to be doing him good; colour came into the sallow cheeks: he even, occasionally, laughed and ran a little, though for the most part he walked stolidly at my side, and answered in his slow but excellent English my dutiful attempts at conversation.

One of our walks was a steep but easy track down through the meadows towards the village. At the foot of the slope a narrow wooden bridge crossed the Merlon, deep here and placid in its wandering from one wide and gleaming pool to the next. From the bridge the track led straight through water-meadows and budding orchards to the village.

On the occasions when it was known that our walk would take us to Soubirous, we were given small commissions to execute there, usually for Mrs. Seddon or Berthe, and sometimes for Albertine, but occasionally for Madame de Valmy herself.

One morning-it was the first of April-Philippe and I set out for the village soon after breakfast. It was Monday, and as a rule on Monday morning Monsieur St. Aubray, the curé of Soubirous, came up to the chateau to instruct the young Comte in Latin, Greek and the Roman Catholic religion. But M. le Curé had twisted an ankle, and, since it did not seem desirable for Philippe to miss his instruction, I took him down to the presbytery beside the church and left him there.

It was the first time I had been on my own in the village, with time to spare. I stood in the little square outside the church and looked about me.

The day was warm, the sunlight as it beat up from flags and cobbles was bright and almost hot. There was a white cat sunning itself on top of a low wall below which someone had planted primulas. The single bistro had put out its red-and-black striped awning, and in spite of faded paint and peeling walls the houses looked gay with their open doors and the coloured shutters fastened back from the windows. A canary, in a small cage hanging outside a shop, sang lustily. Some small children, black-haired and brown-limbed, were intent on something in a gutter. Outside a food-shop cabbage and cheeses and tired-looking oranges made a splash of colour. A boy on a bicycle shot past me, with a yard or so of bread under one arm.

It was a pleasant, peaceful, light-hearted little scene, and my own heart was light as I surveyed it. It was a lovely morning; I was free to do as I wished with it for two hours; I had some money in my pocket; the shadow of the Constance Butcher Home for Girls dwindled and shrank to nothing in the warm Savoyard light. It was also-as a stray warm breeze stirred fragrance from the primulas and brought a shower of early cherry-blossom floating out over the presbytery wall-it was also spring.

I walked slowly across the square, made sure that it was only marbles, and not a frog or a kitten, that was occupying the children in the gutter, then turned into the pharmacy beside the bistro to carry out what commissions I had for the day.

"Mademoiselle Martin?" The apothecary came out of his dark cave at the back. He knew me well by this time. Mrs. Seddon, in the intervals of anti-histamine, seemed to live exclusively on aspirin and something she called Oh Dick Alone, while I (after half a lifetime of White Windsor) had developed a passion, which had to be satisfied frequently, for the more exotic soaps.

I said gaily, in my most English French: "Oh, good morning, Monsieur Garcin. It is a fine day, is it not? It was a fine day yesterday. It will be a fine day tomorrow. Not? I am looking at the soaps, as usual."

I said par usuel, and the chemist's thin lips pursed. It was his weekly pleasure to correct my French, always with that pained, crab-apple face, and I didn't see why I should deny him anything.

"Comme d'habitude," he said sourly.

"Plaȋt-il?" I said, very fluently. He had taught me that one last week.

"Comme d'habitude," said Monsieur Garcin, raising his voice as to the slightly deaf.

"Comme quoi? I do not understand," I said carefully. I was behaving badly and I knew it, but it was a heavenly day and it was spring, and Monsieur Garcin was prim and dry and a bit musty, like herbs that have been kept too long, and besides, he always tried to put me in what he thought was my place. I raised my voice, too, and repeated loudly: "I said I was looking at the soaps, par usuel."

The chemist's thin nose twitched, but he restrained himself with an effort. He looked at me dourly across a pile of laxatives. "So I see. And which do you want?" He heaved up a box of Roger and Gallet from behind the counter. "There is a new box this week. Rose, violet, cologne, sandalwood, clove pink-"

"Oh, yes, please. The clove pink. I love that."

A slight gleam of surprise showed in the oyster-like eyes. "You know what flower that is? Oeillet mignardise?"

I said composedly: "The name is on the soap. With a picture. Voilà." I reached across to pick the tablet out, sniffed it, smiled at him, and said kindly: ”C’est le plus bon, ça."

He rose to that one. "Le meilleur."

“Le meilleur,” I said meekly. "Thank you, monsieur."

"You are doing quite well," said Monsieur Garcin, magnanimously. "And have you any little commissions for your employers today?"

"Yes, if you please. Madame de Valmy asked me to get her medicine and the tablets-her pills for sleeping."

"Very well. Have you the paper?"

"Paper?"

"You must give me the paper, you understand."

I puckered my brows, trying to remember if Albertine had given me a prescription along with the shopping-list. The chemist made a movement of ill-concealed impatience, and his mouth drew up and thinned till it disappeared. He repeated very slowly, as to an imbecile: "You-must-have-a paper-from -the-doctor."

"Oh," I said evilly. "A prescription? Why didn't you say so? Well, she didn't give me one, monsieur. May I bring it along next year?"

"Next year?"

"I mean next week."

"No," he said curtly. "I cannot give you the drugs without the prescription."

I was already regretting having teased him. I said distressfully: "Oh, but Madame asked specially for the medicine. I'll bring the paper as soon as I can, or send it or something, honestly I will! Please, Monsieur Garcin, can't you trust me for a day or two?"

"Impossible. No." His bony fingers were rearranging the tablets of soap. "And what else do you want?"

I glanced down at the list in my hand. There were various things on it, listed-luckily for Monsieur Garcin's patience and my own ingenuity-in French. I read them out to him carefully: someone wanted tooth-powder and Dop shampoo: someone else (I hoped it was the sour-faced Albertine) demanded corn-plasters and iodine, and so on to the end, where came the inevitable aspirin, eau-de-cologne, and what Mrs. Seddon simply listed as "my bottle".

"And Mrs. Seddon's pills," I said finally.

The chemist picked up the packet of aspirin.

"No," I said, "the others." (I wouldn't know the word for asthma, would I? And I genuinely didn't know the word for anti-histamine.) "The pills for her chest."

"You got them last week," said Monsieur Garcin.

"I don't think so."

"I know you did."

His voice was curt to rudeness, but I ignored it. "Perhaps," I said politely, "she has need of more?"

"She cannot have, if she got them last week."

"Are you so sure she did, monsieur? She put them herself on the list today."

"Did she give you the paper-the prescription?"

"No," I said.

He said impatiently: "I told you she got them last week. You took them yourself. You were in a hurry and you handed me a list with a prescription for Madame Sed-don. I sent the tablets. Perhaps you forgot to give them to her. I have an excellent memory, me; and I remember handing them to you. Moreover, I have a record."

"I am sorry, monsieur. I just don't remember. No doubt you're right. I thought-oh, just a minute, here's a paper in my bag! Here it is, monsieur, the prescription! Voyez-vous. Is this it?"

I handed him the paper, carefully keeping anything of I-told- you-so out of my voice. Which was just as well, because he said tartly: "This is not for Madame Sed-don. It is the paper for Madame de Valmy's heart-medicine."

"Oh? I hadn't realised I had it. It must have been with the list. I came out in a hurry and didn't notice. I'm so sorry." I smiled winningly at him. "Then you can give me the medicine after all, monsieur. I'll get the tablets in Thonon on Friday."

He shot me a queer look out of those oyster eyes, and then, by way of teaching me (I suppose) that servants shouldn't argue with their betters, he proceeded to put on his spectacles and read the prescription through with exaggerated care. I watched the sunlight beyond the doorway and waited, suppressing my irritation. He read it again. You'd have thought I was Madeleine Smith asking casually for half a pound of arsenic. Suddenly I saw the joke and laughed at him.

"It's all right, monsieur. It's quite safe to let me have it. I'll see I deliver it promptly where it belongs! I don't often eat digitalis, or whatever it is, myself!"

He said sourly: "I don't suppose you do." He folded the paper carefully and pushed my purchases towards me. "There you are then. I'll give you the drops, and perhaps you will also see that Madame Seddon gets the tablets I sent up on Wednesday?" As I gathered the things up without replying I saw him throw me that queer, quick look yet again. "And I must congratulate you on the way your French has improved, mademoiselle," he added, very dryly.

"Why, thank you, monsieur," I said coolly. "I try very hard and study every day. In another three weeks you won't even guess that I'm English."

"Anglaise?" The word was echoed, in a man's voice, just behind me. I looked round, startled. I had heard nobody come in, but now realised that a newcomer's large body was blocking the door of the pharmacy, while his enormous shadow, thrown before him by the morning sun, seemed to fill the shop. He came forward. "Excuse me, but I heard you say 'Je suis anglaise ‘. Are you really English?"

"Yes."

"Oh, I-that is a relief I" He looked down at me half-shyly. Seen properly now, and not just as a colossal silhouette framed in the shop door, he still appeared a very large young man. He was dressed in khaki shorts and a wind-cheater. His head was bare, and covered with an untidy thatch of fair hair, very fine and thick. His eyes were blue in a tanned face. His hands and legs were tanned, too, and on them in the sunlight the far hair glinted, pale as barley in September.

He groped in an inner pocket and produced a tattered old envelope. "I wonder-could you possibly help me, d'you think? I've got a whole list of stuff to get, and I was wondering how on earth to ask for it. My French is non-existent, and yours seems terribly good-"

I said firmly: "My French may sound wonderful to you, but it sounds like nothing on earth to Monsieur Garcin."

I sent a bright smile to the chemist, who still watched me, sourly, from behind the stack of laxatives. No response. I gave it up and turned back to the Englishman, who was saying, unconvinced: "It seems to get results anyway." He gestured towards my purchases.

I grinned. "You'd be surprised what a fight it is sometimes. But of course I'll help-if I can. May I see your

list?"

He surrendered it relievedly. "This is awfully good of you to let me bother you." He gave his disarmingly shy grin. "Usually I just have to beat my breast like Tarzan and point."

"You must be very brave to come holidaying here without a word of French."

"Holidaying? I'm here on a job."

"Paid assassin?" I asked, "or only M.I.5?"

"I-I beg your pardon?"

I indicated the list. "This. It sounds a bit pointed." I read it aloud. "Bandages; three, one-and-a-half, and one-inch. Sticking-plaster. Elastoplast Burn-dressing. Boracic powder…" I looked at him in some awe. "You've forgotten the probe."

"Probe?"

"To get the bullets out."

He laughed. "I'm only a forester. I'm camping off and on in a hut at four thousand feet, so I thought I'd set up a first-aid kit."

"Do you intend to live quite so dangerously?"

"You never know. Anyway I'm a confirmed hypochondriac. I'm never happy till I’m surrounded by pills and boluses and thermometers marked in degrees Centigrade."

I looked at his six-feet-odd of solid bone and muscle. "Yes. One can see that you should take every care. Do you really want me to struggle with sticking-plaster and burn-dressings for you?"

"Yes, please, if you'd be so good, though the only item I'm really sure I shall need is the last one, and I could ask for that myself at a pinch."

"Cognac? Yes, I see what you mean." Then I turned to Monsieur Garcin and embarked on the slightly exhausting procedure of describing by simple word and gesture articles whose names I knew as well as he did himself. Monsieur Garcin served me reservedly, and as with Philippe, his reserve sometimes bore a strong resemblance to the sulks. I had twice tried the amende honorable of a smile, and I was dashed if I would try again, so we persevered in chilly politeness to the last-but-one item on the Englishman's list.

At last we had finished. The Englishman, weighed down with enough pills and boluses to satisfy the most highly-strung malade imaginaire, stood back from the doorway and waited for me to precede him into the sunlight.

As I picked up my own parcels and turned to go the chemist's voice said, as dry as the rustle of dead leaves: "You are forgetting the drops for Madame de Valmy." He was holding out the package across the counter.

When I reached the sunny street the young man said curiously: "What's biting him? Was he being rude? You're-forgive my saying so-but you're as pink as anything."

"Am I? Well, it's my own fault. No, he wasn't rude. It was just me being silly and getting what I deserved."

"I'm sure you weren't. And thank you most awfully for being such a help. I'd never have managed on my own." He gave me his shy grin. "I still have to get the cognac. I wonder if you'd help me to buy that too?"

"I thought you said you could ask for that yourself."

"I-well, I rather hoped you'd come with me and let me buy you a drink to thank you for taking all that trouble."

"That's very nice of you. But really, there's no need-"

He looked down at me rather imploringly over his armful of packages. "Please," he said. "Apart from everything else, it really is wonderful to talk English to someone."

I had a sudden vision of him up in his lonely hut at four thousand feet, surrounded by pills and boluses and thermometers in degrees Centigrade.

"I'd like to very much," I said.

He beamed. "That's fine. In here? It's Hobson's choice anyway-I think this is the only place apart from the Coq Hardi half-a-mile away."

The bistro with its gay awning was next door to the pharmacy. Inside it looked dim and not very inviting, but on the cobbles outside there were two or three little metal tables, and some old cane chairs painted bright red. Two small clipped trees stood sentinel in blue tubs.

We sat down in the sun. "What will you have?" He was carefully disposing his life-saving parcels on an empty chair.

"Do you suppose they serve coffee?"

“Surely." And it seemed, indeed, that they did. It arrived in large yellow cups, with three wrapped oblongs of sugar in each saucer.

Now that we were facing one another more or less formally across a café table, my companion seemed to have retreated once more behind a rather English shyness. He said, stirring his coffee hard: 'My name's Blake. William Blake." On this last he looked up with a trace of defiance.

I said: "That's a good name to have, isn't it? Mine's only Belinda Martin. Linda for short-or for pretty, my mother used to say."

He smiled. "Thank you."

"For what? Making you free of my name?"

"Oh-yes, of course. But I meant for not making a crack about the Songs of Innocence."

" 'Little lamb, who made thee?'"

"That one exactly. You'd be surprised how many people can't resist it."

I laughed. "How awfully trying! But me, I prefer tigers. No thank you, Mr. Blake"-this to a proffered cigarette-"I don't smoke."

"Mind if I do?"

"Of course not."

Across the spluttering flare of a French match he was looking a question. "If one may ask-what are you doing in Soubirous? Not a holiday, I take it?"

"No. I'm here on a job, too. I'm a governess."

"Of course. You must be the English girl from the Château Valmy."

"Yes. You know about me?"

"Everybody knows everybody else hereabouts. Anyway I'm a near neighbour, as things go round here. I'm working on the next estate, in the plantations west of the Merlon."

"Oh," I said, interested. "Dieudonné?"

"That's it. The château-it's only a country-house really, a quarter the size of Valmy-lies in the valley a bit beyond the village. The owner's hardly ever there. His name's St. Vire. He seems to spend most of his time in Paris or down near Bordeaux. Like your boss, he gets a lot of his money from his timber and his vineyards."

"Vineyards? Valmy?"

"Oh, yes. They own chunks of Provence, I believe."

"Of course," I said. "Bellevigne. But that's Monsieur de Valmy's own property, and Valmy isn't. Even he wouldn't spend its income on Valmy."

"Even he?"

To my surprise my voice sounded defensive. "I believe he's an awfully good landlord."

"Oh, that. Yes, second to none, I imagine. He's pretty highly thought of hereabouts, I can tell you. And the gossip goes that most of the Bellevigne income did get diverted up here until a few years back; there used to be plenty of money, anyway."

"There still is," I said, "or so it seems."

"Yes. Things are waking up again, I gather. Two good vintages, and you get the roof repaired…He laughed.

“Funny how everyone in these places minds everyone else’s business, isn’t it?” He looked at me. "Governessing. Now that's a heck of a life, isn't it?"

"In story-books, yes; and I suppose it could be in real life. But I like it. I like Philippe-my pupil-and I love the place."

"You're not lonely-so far from home, I mean, and England?"

I laughed. "If you only knew! My 'home in England' was seven years in an orphanage. Governessing or not, Valmy's a wild adventure to me!"

"I suppose so. Is that what you want, adventure?"

"Of course! Who doesn't?"

"Me, for one," said Mr. Blake firmly.

"Oh? But I thought all men saw themselves hacking their way with machetes through the mangrove swamps and shooting rapids and things. You know, all hairy knees and camp-fires and the wide wide world."

He grinned. "I got over that pretty young. And just exactly what is a machete?"

"Goodness knows. They always have them. But seriously-"

"Seriously," he said, ‘I don't know. I'd like to get around, yes, and I like travel and change and seeing new things, but- well, roots are a good thing to have." He stopped himself there and flushed a little. "I'm sorry. That was tactless."

"It's all right. And I do see what you mean. Everybody needs a-a centre. Somewhere to go out from and come back to. And I suppose as you get older you enjoy the coming back more than the going out."

He gave me his shy, rather charming smile. "Yes, I think so. But don't listen to me, Miss Martin. I have a stick-in-the-mud disposition. You go ahead and chase your tigers. After all, you've done pretty well up to now. You've found one already, haven't you?"

"Monsieur de Valmy?"

His eyebrows lifted. "You were quick onto that. He is a tiger, then?"

"You did mean him? Why?"

"Only that he seems a little fierce and incalculable by reputation. How do you get on with him? What's he

like?"

"I-he's very polite and kind-I'd even say charming. Yes, certainly he's charming. He and Madame seem terribly anxious that I should really feel at home here. I don't see an awful lot of them, of course, but when I do they're awfully nice…”

I looked away from him across the square. Two women came out of the boulangerie, and paused to glance at us curiously before they moved off, their sabots noisy on the stones. Someone called, shrilly, and the group of children broke up, chattering and screaming like jays. Two of them raced past us, bare feet slapping the warm cobbles. The clock in the church, tower clanged the half-hour.

I said: "And what made you come here? Tell me about your job."

"There's nothing much to tell." He was drawing little patterns on the table-top with the handle of his spoon. And indeed, the way he told it, his life had taken a very ordered course. A pleasant, reasonably well-to-do suburban home; a small public school; two years in the Army, doing nothing more eventful than manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain; then the University-four years' hard work, with holidays (more or less of the busman variety) in Scandinavia and Germany; finally a good degree and the decision to go on to a further two years' research on some Conifer diseases, which he proceeded to explain to me very carefully and with much enthusiasm… Far from lacking adventure, it appeared that (what with butt rot, drought crack, larch canker, spruce bark beetle, and things with names like Phomopsis and Megastismus and even lps) life in a conifer forest could positively teem with excitement. I gathered that Mr. Blake himself was seriously involved with the Pine Weevil… there was a magnificent infestation of these creatures (Hylobius, mark you, not Pissodes), in a plantation west of the

Merlon…

But here he recollected himself and flushed slightly, grinning at me. "Well, anyway," he finished, "that's why I'm here. I'm busy getting the best of both worlds-thanks to Monsieur de St. Vire, who's a remarkably decent chap for a Frenchman." He added, seeming to think this phenomenon worth explaining: "My father knew him in the War. He's given me a job here' of a sort-at any rate I'm paid a bit for doing what's really my own research programme anyway. I'm getting some valuable material as well as experience, and I like working in this country. It's small-scale stuff hereabouts, but these people-at any rate the Valmys and St. Vires, really do care about their land. But there's a lot to learn." He looked wistful. "Including the language. It seems to escape me, somehow. Perhaps I've no ear. But it would be a help."

"If you're living alone, with thermometers," I said, "I can't see why."

"Oh, I'm not up at the hut all the time. I work up there mostly, because it's near the plantation I'm 'on' at present, and it's quiet; I keep all my stuff up there, and I sleep there when I'm short of cash." He grinned. "That's quite often, of course. But I do come down to the Coq Hardi pretty frequently. It's noisy, but the boss speaks English and the food's good… ah, is that your little boy?"

From where we were sitting we could see the high wall of the presbytery garden, and now the gate in it opened, and Philippe appeared in the archway, with the broad figure of the curé's housekeeper behind him.

"Yes, that's Philippe," I said. "I'll have to go."

I got to my feet, and the child saw me, said something over his shoulder to the woman, and then ran across the square in our direction.

"I'm glad you waited. I told Madame Rocher you would go- would have gone for a walk. But here you are."

"Here I am. You're early, aren't you, Philippe? Did Monsieur le Curé get tired of you?"

"I do not know tired of”

"Ennuyé."

He was solemn. "No. But he is not very well. He is tired, but not at-of-me. Madame Rocher says I must come away."

“I’m sorry to hear that," I said. "Philippe, this is Monsieur Blake, who works for Monsieur de St. Vire. Mr. Blake, the Comte de Valmy."

They shook hands, Philippe with the large gravity that sat on him rather attractively.

"What do you work at, monsieur?"

"I'm a forester."

"Forest-oh, yes, I understand. There are foresters at Valmy also."

"I know. I've met one or two of them. Pierre Detruche, Jean-Louis Michaud, and Armand Lestocq-he lives next door to the Coq Hardi."

"As to that," said Philippe, "I do not know them myself yet. I have not been here very long, vous comprenez.”

"Of course not. I-er, I suppose your uncle manages these things."

"Yes," said Philippe politely. "He is my trustee."

The look he shot me was merely one of minor triumph that he should have remembered the word, but it tinged the reply with a sort of smug stateliness that brought the beginnings of amusement to Mr. Blake's face. I said hastily: "We'd better go, I think. Mr. Blake, thank you so much for the coffee. I'm awfully glad we met." I held out my hand.

As he took it, he said quickly: "I say, please-don't just vanish. When can we meet again?"

"I'm not a very free agent. Sometimes I've a morning, but I don't often get as far as this."

"Are you free in the evenings?"

"No, not really. Only Fridays, and a Sunday here and there."

"Then that's no good," he said, sounding disappointed. "I've arranged to meet some pals of mine this week-end. Perhaps later on?"

Philippe had given a little tug to my hand. "I really must go," I said. "Let's leave it, shall we? We're sure to meet-the valley isn't all that big. And thank you again…"

As we crossed the square I glanced back, to see him laboriously gathering up the bandages and the sticking-plaster and all the homely remedies which were to reassure life at four thousand feet.

I hoped he would remember to get the cognac.

CHAPTER 6

That evening the quiet run of our existence was broken. Nursery tea was over; the early April dusk had drawn in against the uncurtained windows where lamp and firelight were cheerfully reflected. Philippe was on the hearthrug playing in a desultory fashion with some soldiers and I was sitting, as I often did at that time, reading aloud to him, when I heard a car climbing the zigzag. It was a mild evening, and one of the long balcony windows was open. The mounting engine roared, changed, roared again nearer. As I paused in my reading and glanced towards the window, Philippe looked up.

"Une auto! Quelqu'un vient!"

"English," I said automatically. "Philippe, what are you doing?"

But he took no notice. He jumped up from the rug, while his toys scattered unheeded. Then he flew out of the window like a rocket and vanished to the right along the balcony.

I dropped the book and hurried after him. He had run to the end of the balcony where it overlooked the gravel forecourt, and was leaning over eagerly and somewhat precariously. I stifled an impulse to grab him by the seat of his pants and said instead, as mildly as I could: "You'll fall if you hang over like that… Look, the dashed thing's loose anyway-this coping moved, I'm sure it did. This must be one of the bits they were talking about repairing. Philippe-"

But he didn't seem to be listening. He still craned forward over the stone coping. I said firmly: "Now come back, Philippe and be sensible. What's the excitement for, anyway? Who is it?"

The car roared up the last incline, and swung with a scrunch of tyres across the gravel. She had her lights on. They scythed round, through the thin dark thorns of the rose-garden, the flickering spear-points of the iron railings below us, the carefully, planted pots on the loggia, came to rest on the stableyard archway, and were switched off.

A door slammed. I heard a man's voice, low-pitched and pleasant. Another voice-I supposed the driver's-answered him. Then the car moved off softly towards the stableyard, and the newcomer crossed the gravel and mounted the steps to the great door.

I waited with mild curiosity for the door to open and the light from the hall to give body, as it were, to the voice. But before this happened Philippe ducked back behind me and retreated along the balcony towards the schoolroom windows. I turned, to see in the set of the thin back and shoulders the suggestion of some disappointment so sharp that I followed him in without a word, sat down again in my chair by the fire, and picked up my book. But Philippe didn't settle again to his toys. He stood still on the hearthrug, staring at the fire. I think he had forgotten I was there.

I leafed through a few pages of the book and then said very casually: "Who was it, did you know?" The thin shoulders lifted. "Monsieur Florimond, I think."

"Monsieur Florimond? Do you mean the dress-designer?"

"Yes. He used to visit us a lot in Paris and he is a friend of my aunt Héloïse. Do you know of him in England?"

"Of course." Even in the Constance Butcher Home we had heard of the great Florimond, whose 'Aladdin’ silhouette had been the rage of Paris and New York years before and had, it was rumoured, caused Dior to mutter something under his breath and tear up a set of designs. I said, impressed: "Is he coming to stay?"

"I do not know." His voice sufficiently also expressed that he did not care. But the general impression of poignant disappointment prevailed so strongly that I said: "Did you expect someone else, Philippe?*'

He glanced up momentarily, then the long lashes dropped. He said nothing.

I hesitated. But Philippe was my job: moreover, he was a very lonely little boy. Who was it who could expect that headlong welcome from him?

I said: "Your cousin Raoul, perhaps?^"

No answer.

"Is anyone else supposed to be coming? He shook his head.

I tried again. "Don't you like Monsieur Florimond?"

"But yes. I like him very much."

"Then why-?" I began, but something in his face warned me to stop. I said gently: "It's time we went down to the salon, petit. I haven't been told not to, so I suppose, guests or not, that we'll have to go. Run and wash your hands while I tidy my hair.”

He obeyed me without a word or look.

I went slowly across to shut the balcony window.

In a small salon a log-fire had been lit, and in front of it sat Madame de Valmy and Monsieur Florimond on a rose-brocaded sofa, talking.

I looked with interest at the newcomer. I don't know what I expected one of fashion's Big Five to look like; I only know that the great Florimond didn't look like it. He was vast, baldish, and untidy. His face in repose had a suggestion of tranquil melancholy about it that was vaguely reminiscent of the White Knight, but no-one could ever doubt Monsieur Florimond's large sanity. Those blue eyes were shrewd and very kind: they also looked as if they missed very little. He wore his conventional, superbly cut clothes with all the delicate care one might accord to an old beach-towel. His pockets bulged comfortably in every direction, and there was cigar-ash on his lapel. He was clutching what looked like a folio-society reprint in one large hand, and gestured with it lavishly to underscore some story he was telling Madame de Valmy.

She was laughing, looking happier and more animated than I had seen her since I came to Valmy. I realised sharply how lovely she had been before time and tragedy had drained the life from her face.

On the thought, she turned and saw myself and Philippe by the door, and the gaiety vanished. The boredom and annoyance that shut down over it were humiliatingly plain to see. I could have slapped her for it, but then realised that Philippe had probably not noticed. He was advancing solemnly and politely on Florimond, who surged to his feet with noises indicating quite sufficient delighted pleasure to counter Héloïse's obvious irritation.

"Philippe! This is delightful! How are you?"

"I am very well, thank you, m'sieur."

"H'm, yes." He tapped the boy's cheek. "A little more colour there, perhaps, and then you'll do. Country air, that's the thing, and the Valmy air suits you, by the look of it!" He didn't actually say "better than Paris", but the words were there, implicit, and Philippe didn't reply. It wasn't easy to avoid mistakes just then with him. Florimond registered this one, I could see, but he merely added amiably: "Mind you, I don't wonder that Valmy's good for you! When one is lucky enough to have a beautiful young lady as one's constant companion, one must expect to flourish!"

The perfect politeness of Philippe's smile indicated how completely this gallant sally went over his head. It had perforce, since they were speaking French, to go over mine too. I looked as non-committal as I could and avoided Florimond's eye.

Héloïse de Valmy said from the sofa: "Don't waste your gallantries, Carlo. Miss Martin's French improves hourly, so I'm told, but I don't think she's reached the compliment stage yet." Then, in English: "Miss Martin, let me introduce Monsieur Florimond. You will have heard of him, I don't doubt."

I said composedly as I shook hands: "Even in my English orphanage we had heard of Monsieur Florimond. You reached us perhaps some six years late, monsieur, but you did reach us." I smiled, remembering my own cheap ready-made. "Believe it or not."

He didn't pretend to misunderstand me. He made a largely gallant gesture with the book which was, I saw, The Tale of Genji and said: "You, mademoiselle, would adorn anything you wore."

I laughed. "Even this?"

"Even that," he said, unperturbed, a twinkle in the blue eyes.

"The size of that compliment," I said, "strikes me dumb, monsieur,"

Madame de Valmy said, sounding amused now, and more naturally friendly than I had yet heard her: "It's Monsieur Florimond's constant sorrow that only the old and faded can afford to be dressed by him, while the young and lovely buy dresses prȇtes à porter-there's a phrase… (my English is slipping in the excitement of talking to you, Carlo)-what's the phrase you have for 'ready-made'?"

"'Off the peg?'" I suggested.

“Yes, that's it. You buy your dresses off the peg, and still show us up."

"Your English is slipping, Madame," I said. "You're getting your pronouns all wrong."

As she lifted her eyebrows Florimond said delightedly: "There, chère madame, a real compliment! A compliment of the right kind! So neat you did not see it coming, and so subtil that you still do not see it when it has come."

She laughed. "My dear Carlo, compliments even now aren't quite so rare that I don't recognise them, believe me. Thank you, Miss Martin, that was sweet of you." Her eyes as she smiled at me were friendly, almost warm, and for the first time since I had met her I saw charm in her-not the easy charm of the vivid personality, but the real and irresistible charm that reaches out half-way to meet you, assuring you that you are wanted and liked. And heaven knew I needed that assurance… I was very ready to meet any gesture, however slight, with the response of affection. Perhaps at last…

But even as I smiled back at her it happened again. The warmth drained away as if wine had seeped from a crack and left the glass empty, a cool and misted shell, reflecting nothing.

She turned away to pick up her embroidery.

I stood with the smile stiffening on my lips, feeling, even more sharply than before, the sense of having been rebuffed for some reason that I couldn't understand. A moment ago I could have sworn the woman liked me, but now… in the last fleeting glance before the cool eyes dropped to her embroidery I thought I saw the same queerly apprehensive quality that I had noticed on my first day at Valmy.

I dismissed the idea straight away. I no longer imagined that Madame de Valmy feared her husband; on the contrary. Without any overt demonstration it was obvious that the two were very close: their personalities shared a boundary as light and shadow do: they marched. It was probable (I thought pityingly and only half-comprehendingly) that Héloïse de Valmy's keep-your-distance chilliness was only a by-product of the sort of Samurai self-control that she must have learned to practise elsewhere. With the inability of youth to imagine any temperament other than my own, I felt that life must be a good deal easier for Léon de Valmy himself than for his wife…

And her attitude to me-to Philippe as well-must only be part of the general shut-down… It would take time for the reserve to melt, the door to open. That look of hers wasn't apprehension: it was a kind of waiting, an appraisal, no more. It would take time. Perhaps she was still only wondering, as I was, why Léon de Valmy thought she'd made "a very great mistake…”

She was setting a stitch with delicate care. There was a lamp at her elbow. The light shone softly on the thin white hand. The needle threaded the canvas with moving sparks. She didn't look up. "Come and sit by me, Philippe, on this footstool. You may stay ten minutes… no, Miss Martin, don't slip away. Sit down and entertain Monsieur Florimond for me."

The mask was on again. She sat, composed and elegant as ever over her needlework. She even managed to appear faintly interested as she put Philippe through the usual catechism about his day's activities, and listened to his polite, painstaking replies.

Beside me Florimond said: "Won't you sit here?"

I turned gratefully towards him, to find him watching me with those mild eyes that nevertheless seemed to miss nothing. He may have noticed the ebb-and-flow of invitation and rebuff that had left me silent and stranded; at any rate he now appeared to lay himself out to amuse me. His repertoire of gently scandalous stories was extremely entertaining and probably at least half true, and-as I knew his Paris better than he realised-I was soon enjoying myself immensely. He flirted a very little, too-oh, so expertly!-and looked slightly disconcerted and then delighted when he found that his gallantries amused instead of confusing me. He would have been even more disconcerted if he'd known that, in a queer sort of way, he was reminding me of Daddy: I hadn't heard this sort of clever, over-sophisticated chatter since I'd last been allowed in to one of Daddy's drink- and-verses jamborees nine years before. I may be forgiven if I enjoyed every moment of the oddly nostalgic rubbish that we talked.

Or would have done, if every now and again I hadn't seen Héloïse de Valmy's cool eyes watching me with that indefinable expression which might have been appraisal, or wariness, or-if it weren't fantastic-fear.

And if I hadn't been wondering who had reported on the "hourly" improvement of my French.

The entry of Seddon with the cocktail tray interrupted us. I looked inquiringly at Madame de Valmy, and Philippe made as if to get to his feet.

But before she could dismiss us Florimond said comfortably: "Don't drive the child away, Héloïse. Now he's said his catechism perhaps you'll deliver him over to me."

She smiled, raising her delicate brows. "What do you want with him, Carlo?"

He had finally put down The Tale of Genji on the extreme edge of a fragile-looking coffee-table, and was fishing in one untidy pocket with a large hand. He grinned at Philippe, who was watching him with that guarded look I hated to see, and I saw the child's face relax a little in reply. "Last time I saw you, my lad," said Florimond, "I was trying to initiate you into the only civilised pastime for men of sense. Ah, here we are…" As he spoke he fished a small folded board out of one pocket. It was a traveller's chess-set, complete with tiny men in red and white.

Madame de Valmy laughed. "The ruling passion," she said, her cool voice almost indulgent. "Very well, Carlo, but he must go upstairs at a quarter past, no later. Berthe will be waiting for him."

That this was not true she knew quite well, and so did I. Though the conversation was now in French, I saw her give me a quick glance, and kept my face non-committal. It was interesting that I wasn't the only one who schemed to keep Philippe out of his uncle's way.

Philippe had dragged his stool eagerly enough across to Florimond's chair and the two of them were already poring over the board.

"Now," said Florimond cheerfully, "let's see if you can remember any of the rules, mon gars. I seem to recollect some erratic movements last time you and I were engaged, but there's a sort of wild freshness about your conception of the game which has its own surprising results. Your move."

"I moved," said Philippe demurely, "while you were talking."

"Did you, pardieu? Ah, the king's pawn. A classic gambit, monsieur… and I, this pawn. So."

Philippe bent over the board, his brows fiercely knitted, his whole small being concentrated on the game, while above him Florimond, leaning back vast in his chair, with cigar-ash spilling down his beautifully-cut jacket, watched him indulgently, never ceasing for a moment the gentle, aimless flow of words, of which it was very obvious that Philippe, if indeed he was listening at all, would understand only one in three.

I sat quietly and watched them, feeling a warm, almost affectionate glow towards this large and distinguished Parisian who, among all his other preoccupations, could bother to make a lonely small boy feel he was wanted. From the couturier's talk you would suppose that he had had nothing to do for the past year but look forward to another game with Philippe.

I noticed then that Madame de Valmy wasn't sewing. Her hands lay idle in the tumble of embroidery in her lap. I thought that she was interested in the game until I saw that she wasn't watching the board. Her eyes were fixed on the back of Philippe's down-bent head. She must have been deep in some faraway thoughts, because when Philippe made a sudden exclamation she jumped visibly.

He gave a little whoop of glee and pounced on the board. "Your queen! Your queen! Monsieur, I've got your queen!"

"So I see," said Florimond, unperturbed. "But will you kindly tell me, Capablanca, by what new law you were able to move your piece straight down the board to do so?"

"There was nothing in the way," explained Philippe kindly.

"No. But the piece you moved, mon vieux, was a bishop. I'm sorry to be petty about it, but there is a rule which restricts the bishop to a diagonal line. Nugatory, you will say; trifling… but there it is. Medes and Persians, Philippe."

"A bishop?" said Philippe, seizing on the one word that made sense.

"The ones with the pointed hats," said Florimond tranquilly, "are the bishops."

"Oh," said Philippe. He looked up at his opponent and grinned, not in the least abashed. "I forgot. You can have your queen back then."

"I am grateful. Thank you. Now, it's still your move and I should suggest that you observe again the relative positions of your bishop and my queen."

Philippe concentrated. "There is nothing between them," he said, uncertainly.

"Exactly."

"Well-oh!” The small hand hastily scooped the lawless bishop out of the queen's path. "There. I move him there."

Florimond chuckled. "Very wise," he said. "Very wise." From the way he leaned forward to scan the board through a thoughtful cloud of tobacco-smoke you would have thought he was matched with a master instead of a small boy who didn't even know the rules.

I glanced at the clock. Sixteen minutes past six. I looked in surprise at Madame de Valmy, whom I had suspected of a clock-watching nervousness almost equal to my own. She had dropped her hands in her lap again and was staring at the fire. She was a hundred miles away. I wondered where… no pleasant place, I thought.

I said: "Madame."

She started, and picked up her embroidery so quickly that she pricked her finger. I said: "I'm sorry, madame, I startled you. I think it's time I took Philippe upstairs, isn't it?"

I had my back to the door so I neither saw nor heard it open. It was the quick turn of Philippe's head and the widening of the black eyes that told me. Léon de Valmy's beautiful voice said:

"Ah, Philippe. No, don't move. Carlo, how delightful! Why don't we see you more often?”

The wheel-chair glided silently forward as he spoke. For such a quiet entrance the effect was remarkable enough. Philippe jumped off his footstool and stood staring at his uncle like a mesmerised bird, Monsieur Florimond hoisted himself again to his feet, Héloïse de Valmy dropped her embroidery and turned quickly towards her husband, while I slid out of my place as his chair passed me and retired towards my usual distant window- seat.

I didn't think Léon de Valmy had noticed me, but Philippe had. He, too, made a movement as if to escape, but was netted, so to speak, with a word.

"No, indeed, Philippe. It's all too rarely that I get a chance to see you. We must thank Monsieur Florimond for bringing me in early. Sit down."

The child obeyed. The wheel-chair slid up beside the sofa and stopped. Léon de Valmy touched his wife's hand. "Your devotion to duty touches me, Héloïse. It does really."

Only an ear that was tuned to it could have detected the taunt in the smooth voice. I saw their eyes meet, and Héloïse de Valmy smiled, and for the second time that evening I felt the scald of a little spurt of anger. Did they find even half-an-hour out of the day intolerably much to give to Philippe? And did they have to make it plain? This time Philippe didn't miss it. I saw the swift upward slant of his lashes at his uncle, and the too-familiar sullenness settle on the pale little face, and thought: why don't you pick someone your own weight, damn

you…?

The next second the incident might have been illusion. Léon de Valmy, obviously in the best of spirits, was welcoming Monsieur Florimond almost gaily. "It's very nice of you to look us up, Carlo. What brought you to Geneva?”

Florimond lowered himself once more into his chair. "I came on the track of a material." He made another of his large gestures, this time towards The Tale of Genji, which promptly fell onto the floor. "Take a look at those pictures some timer Héloïse, and tell me if you ever saw anything to touch that elegance, that courteous silverpoint grace just on the hither side of decadence…Ah, thank you, mon lapin.” This to Philippe, who had quietly picked up the book and was handing it to him. "Give it to your aunt, p'tit. C'est formidable, hein?"

She glanced at it, "What's this, Carlo?"

"A threat to your peace of mind and my pocket," said Léon de Valmy, smiling. "The 'mandarin' line, or some such thing, I don't doubt, and just on the hither side of decadence at that. I confess I can't see you in it, my dear. I doubt if I shall permit it."

Florimond laughed. "Only the material, I do assure you, only the material! And that's as much as I shall tell you. Rose Gautier and I have concocted something between us that ought to flutter the dovecotes next November, and I came up to keep a father's eye on it in the making." He grinned amiably at his host. "At least, that's the excuse. I always try to desert Paris at this juncture if I possibly can."

"How's the collection going?" asked Madame.

Florimond dropped a gout of ash down his shirt-front, and wiped it placidly aside across his lapel. "At the moment it's hardly even conceived. Not a twitch, not a pang. I shall not be in labour for many months to come, and then we shall have the usual lightning and half-aborted litter to be licked into shape in a frenzy of blood and tears." Here his eye fell on Philippe, silent on his stool, and he added, with no perceptible change of tone: "There was thick mist lying on the road between here and Thonon."

Léon de Valmy was busy at the cocktail tray. He handed his wife a glass. "Really? Bad?"

"In places. But I fancy it's only local. It was clear at Geneva, though of course it may cloud up later along the Lake. Ah, thank you."

Léon de Valmy poured his own drink, then as his chair turned again into the circle round the hearth he caught sight of the chessboard on the low table.

The black brows rose. "Chess? Do you never move without that thing, Carlo?"

"Never. May I hope you'll give me a game tonight?"

"With pleasure. But not with that collection of dressmakers' pins, I beg of you. I don't play my best when I've to use a telescope."

"It's always pure joy to play with that set of yours," said Florimond, "quite apart from the fact that you're a foeman worthy of my steel-which is one way of saying that you beat me four times out of five."

"H'm." Léon de Valmy was surveying the board. "It would certainly appear that Red was playing a pretty short-sighted game in every sense of the word. I knew you were not chess- minded, Héloïse, my dear, but I didn't know you were quite as bad as that."

She merely smiled, not even bothering to deny it. There was no need anyway. He knew who'd been playing, and Philippe knew he knew.

"Ah, yes," said Florimond calmly. He peered at the miniature men. "Dear me, I have got myself into an odd tangle, haven't I? Perhaps I need spectacles. You're quite right, my dear Léon, it's a mistake to underrate one's opponent. Never do that." The big hand shifted a couple of men with quick movements, The mild clever face expressed nothing whatever except interest in the Lilliputian manoeuvres on the board.

I saw Léon de Valmy glance up at him swiftly, and the look of amusement that came and went like the gleam on the underside of a blown cloud. "I don't." Then he smiled at Philippe, silent on his stool. "Come and finish the game, Philippe. I'm sure your aunt won't drive you upstairs just yet."

Philippe went, if possible, smaller and more rigid than before. "I-I‘d rather not, thank you."

Léon de Valmy said pleasantly: "You mustn't allow the fact that you were losing to weigh with you, you know."

The child went scarlet. Florimond said, quite without inflection: "In any case we can't continue. I disarranged the pieces just now. The situation wasn't quite as peculiar as your uncle supposed, Philippe, but I can't remember just what it was. I'm sorry. I hope very much that you'll give me the pleasure of a game another time. You do very well."

He pushed the board aside and smiled down at the child, who responded with one quick upward look. Then he leaned back in his chair, and, smiling amiably at his host, launched without pausing straight into one of his improbable stories, thus effectively forcing the general attention back to himself. Philippe remained without moving, small on his stool, the picture of sulky isolation. I watched him, still feeling in my damn-them mood. He must have felt my glance, because eventually he looked up. I winked at him and grinned. There was no answering gleam. The black lashes merely dropped again.

Then the door opened, and Seddon, the butler, came in. He crossed the floor to Madame de Valmy's side.

"Madame, a telephone message has just come through from Monsieur Raoul."

I saw her flash a glance at her husband. "From Monsieur Raoul? Yes, Seddon?"

"He asked me to tell you he was on his way up, madame."

The base of Léon de Valmy's glass clinked down on the arm of his chair. "On his way? Here? When? Where was he speaking from?"

"That I couldn't say, sir. But he wasn't at Bellevigne. He said he would be here some time tonight."

A pause. I noticed the soft uneven ticking of the lovely little clock on the mantel.

Then Florimond said comfortably: "How very pleasant! I don't know when I last set eyes on Raoul. I hope he'll be here for dinner?"

Seddon said: "No, monsieur. He said he might be late, and not to wait for him, but that he would get here tonight."

Léon de Valmy said: "And that was all the message?"

"Yes, sir."

Madame de Valmy stirred. "He didn't sound as if there was anything wrong… at Bellevigne?"

"No, madame. Not at all."

Florimond chuckled. ''Don't look so worried, my dear. They've probably had a week of the mistral and he's decided to cut and run for it. The original ill wind."

"He doesn't usually run in this direction," said his father, very dryly. "Very well, Seddon, thank you."

Madame de Valmy said: "Perhaps you'll be good enough to see Mrs. Seddon straight away about a room?"

"Of course, madame." Seddon, expressionless as ever, bent his head. I saw Héloïse de Valmy glance again at her husband. I couldn't see his face from where I sat, but she was biting her bottom lip and to my surprise she looked strained and pale.

A nice gay welcome for the son of the house was, it appeared, laid on. Him and Philippe both… As a cosy family home the Château Valmy certainly took some beating. The Constance Butcher also ran.

Then the central chandelier leaped into a lovely cascade of light. Seddon moved forward to draw curtains and replenish drinks. Glasses clinked, and someone laughed. Philippe moved cheerfully to help Florimond pack away the tiny chessmen… and in a moment, it seemed, under the bright light, the imagined tensions dissolved and vanished. Firelight, laughter, the smell of pine-logs and Schiaparelli, the rattle of curtain-rings and the swish as the heavy brocades swung together… it was absurd to people the lovely Chateau Valmy with the secret ghosts of Thornfield.

The Demon King turned his handsome grey head and said in English: "Come out, Jane Eyre."

I must have jumped about a foot. He looked surprised, then laughed and said: "Did I startle you? I'm sorry. Were you very far away?"

"Pretty far. At a place in Yorkshire called Thornfield Hall."

The black brows lifted. "So we're en rapport? No wonder you jumped." He smiled. "I shall have to be careful… And now will you take your charge away before Monsieur Florimond corrupts him with vermouth? No, Philippe, I do assure you, you won't like it Now make your adieux-in English, please, and go."

Philippe was on his feet in a flash, making those adieux correctly, if rather too eagerly. I think I was almost as thankful as he was when at length, his hand clutching mine, I said my own quiet goodnights and withdrew.

Léon de Valmy's "Goodnight, Miss Eyre," with its wholly charming overtone of mockery, followed me to the door.

Philippe was a little subdued for the rest of the evening, but on the whole survived the ordeal by uncle pretty well. After he was in bed I dined alone in my room. It was Albertine, Madame de Valmy's sour-faced maid, who brought my supper in. She did it in tight-lipped silence, making it very clear that she was demeaning herself unwillingly.

"Thanks, Albertine," I said cheerfully, as she set the last plate down just a shade too smartly. "Oh, and by the way -"

The woman turned in the doorway, her sallow face not even inquiring. She radiated all the charm and grace of a bad-tempered skunk. "Well?"

I said: "I wonder if you can remember whether I got Mrs. Seddon's tablets for her last week, or not?"

"Non," said Albertine, and turned to go. "Do you mean I didn't or do you mean you don't remember?" She spoke sourly over her shoulder without turning. "I mean I do not know. Why?"

"Only because Mrs. Seddon asked me to get the tablets today and Monsieur Garcin said he gave them to me last week. If that's the case you'd think I must have handed them to her with her other packages. I've no recollection of them at all. D'you know if there was a prescription with the list you gave me?"

The square shoulders lifted. "Perhaps. I do not know." The shallow black eyes surveyed me with dislike. "Why do you not ask her yourself?"

"Very well, I will," I said coldly. "That will do, Albertine."

But the door was already shut. I looked at it for a moment with compressed lips and then began my meal. When, some little time later, there came a tap on the door and Mrs. Seddon surged affably in, I said, almost without preamble:

"That Albertine woman. What's biting her? She's about as amiable as a snake."

Mrs. Seddon snorted. "Oh, her. She's going about like a wet month of Sundays because I told her to bring your supper up. Berthe's helping Mariette get a room ready for Mr. Rowl seeing as how Mariette won't work along with Albertine anyhow and she's as sour as a lemon if you ask her to do anything outside Madam's own rooms. Her and that Bernard, they're a pair. It's my belief he'd rob a bank for the Master if asked, but he'd see your nose cheese and the rats eating it before he'd raise a little finger for anybody else."

"I believe you. What I can't understand is why Madame puts up with her."

"You don't think she has that sour-milk face for Madam, do you? Oh no, it's all niminy-piminy butter-won't-melt there, you mark my words." Conversation with Mrs. Seddon was nothing if not picturesque. "But she's like that with everyone else in the place bar Bernard, and it's my belief she's as jealous as sin if Madam so much as smiles at anybody besides herself. She knows Madam likes you, and that's the top and bottom of it, dear, believe you me."

I said, surprised: "Madame likes me? How d'you know?'*

"Many's the nice thing she's said about you," said Mrs. Seddon comfortably, "so you don't have to fret yourself over a bit of lip from that Albertine."

I laughed. "I don't. How's the asthma? You sound better."

"I am that. It comes and goes. This time of year it's a nuisance, but never near so bad as it used to be. I remember as a girl Miss Debbie's mother saying to me-"

I stopped that one with the smoothness of much practice. "I'm afraid Monsieur Garcin wouldn't give me the anti-histamine today. He said I got it last week. Did I give it to you, Mrs. Seddon? I'm terribly ashamed of myself, but I can't remember. D'you know if it was with the other things I got for you? There was some Nestlés chocolate, wasn't there, and some buttons, and some cotton-wool-and was it last week you got your watch back from the repairers?"

"Was it now? Maybe it was. I can't mind just now about the pills, but I know there were a lot of things and the pills may have been with them." She laughed a little wheezily. "I can't say I took much notice, not wanting them till now, but Mr. Garsang's probably right. He's as finicky as the five-times-table, and about as lively. I'll have a look in my cupboard tonight. I'm sorry to give you the bother, dear."

"Oh, that doesn't matter. I did get you the aspirins and the eau-de-cologne. They're here, with your change."

"Oh, thanks, dear-miss, I mean.'*

I said: "Is Monsieur Florimond staying, or is he only here for dinner?"

"He only came for dinner, but I dare say he'll stay on late to see Mr. Rowl. It might yet be they'll ask him to stay the night if the fog gets any thicker."

I got up and went over to the balcony windows.

"I don't see any fog. It seems a fine enough night."

"Eh? Oh yes. I think it's only down by the water. We're high up here. But the road runs mostly along the river, and there's been accidents in the valley before now in the mist. It's a nasty road, that, in the dark."

"I can imagine it might be." I came back to my chair, adding, with a memory of the recent uncomfortable session in the drawing-room: "Perhaps Monsieur Raoul won't get up here after all tonight."

She shook her head. "He'll come. If he said he was coming he'll come." She eyed me for a moment and said: "Did they- was there anything said downstairs, like?"

"Nothing. They wondered what brought him, that was all."

"They've not much call to wonder," she said darkly. "There's only one thing'll make him set foot in the place and that's money."

"Oh?" I said, rather uncomfortably. There were limits to gossip, after all. "I thought-I got the impression it might be some business to do with Bellevigne."

"Well," said Mrs. Seddon, "that's what I mean. It's always Bellyveen and money." She sighed. "I told you, Mr. Rowl manages it for him and now and again he comes up and talks to him about it and then"-she sighed again-"there's words. It's trouble every time, what with Mr. Rowl wanting money for Bellyveen and the master wanting it for Valmy and before you know where you are it's cat and dog, or maybe I should say dog and dog because nobody could say Mr. Rowl's like a cat, the horrible sneaking beasts, but a dogfight it's always been, ever since Mr. Rowl was big enough to speak up for himself and-"

"He-he must be a careful landlord," I said hastily.

"Oh, I don't deny he makes a good job of Bellyveen-he's too like his father not to, if you see what I mean-but they do say he rackets about the place plenty between times. There's stories-"

"You can't believe everything you hear," I said.

"No, indeed, that's true," said Mrs. Seddon, a shade regretfully, "and especially when it's about Mr. Rowl, if you follow me, miss, because he's the sort that'd get himself talked about if he lived in a convent, as the saying is." I’m sure you're right," I said.

"And where does he get the money, I ask you that?" Mrs. Seddon was now fully and enjoyably launched. “Where did he get the car he was driving last time he was here? As long as the Queen Mary and a horn like

the Last Trump, and you can't tell me he got anything out of the Master so I ask you, where?"

"Well," I said mildly, "where?"

"Ah," said Mrs. Seddon darkly, "you may well ask. I heard the Master ask him that very question, sharp-like, the last time he was here. And Mr. Rowl wouldn't tell him; just passed it off in that way he has with something about a lucky night and a lucky number."

I laughed. "It sounds to me as if he won it at roulette. Good luck to him."

She looked a little shocked. "Well, miss! I don't say as how I think a little flutter does any harm and I'm as partial to a nice game of whist as anyone, but-well, many's the time I wonder what Miss Debbie would have said. Many's the time she said to me 'Mary,' she said-"

"Forgive me," I said quickly, "but it's time for Philippe's chocolate. I left him reading in bed and I must put his light out."

"Eh? Oh, yes, to be sure, how time goes on, doesn't it? And it's long past time I ought to be seeing if Berthe and Mariette have put that room properly to rights…" She heaved herself onto her feet and plodded to the door, which I opened for her. "Have they remembered the milk?" "It was on the tray."

"Ah, yes. That Berthe, now, do you find she does her work all right, miss? If there's anything to complain of, you must be sure to let me know."

“I’ve no complaints," I said. "I like Berthe very much, and she keeps the rooms beautifully. You've only to look in the pantry here."

She followed me into the tiny pantry, where the light gleamed on the spotless enamel of the little stove, and saucepan, beaker and spoon stood ready. I poured milk into the pan, set it on the stove and switched on. Mrs. Seddon ran a practised eye over the tiny room, and an equally practised finger over the shelf where the tins of chocolate, coffee and tea stood, and nodded her head in a satisfied manner.

"Yes, Berthe's a good girl, I must say, if she'll keep her mind on her work instead of running after that there Bernard… The sugar's here, miss."

"No, not that. I use the glucose for Philippe, you remember -that's his special tin, the blue one. Oh, thank you. D'you mean to tell me there's something between Berthe and Bernard? I hope it's not serious. It would be an awful pity. He's too old for her, and besides-"

I stopped, but she took me up.

"Well, miss, you never said a truer word. A pity it is. If that Albertine wasn't his sister born, I’d have said why not them, they wouldn't spoil two houses, and them as alike as two hogs in the same litter. A sour-faced, black-avised sort of chap he is and all, for a bonny young girl like Berthe to be losing her head over. But there, human nature's human nature, believe it or not, and there's nothing we can do about it. What are you looking for now?"

"The biscuits. They've been moved. Ah, here they are." I put three into Philippe's saucer, looking sidelong at Mrs. Seddon. "Extra rations tonight. It was a slightly sticky session in the drawing-room."

"That's right. He could do with a bit of spoiling, if you ask me. And now I’ll have to go, really. I've enjoyed our little chat, miss. And I may say that Seddon and me, we think that Philip's a whole lot better for having you here. He likes you, that's plain to see, and it's my belief that what he needs is somebody to be fond of."

I said softly, half to myself: "Don't we all?"

"Well, there you are," said Mrs. Seddon comfortably. "Not but what his other Nanny wasn't a very nice woman, very nice indeed, but she did baby him a bit, say what you will, which was only natural, seeing as how she'd brought him up from a bairn in arms. Maybe the Master was right enough like you said in thinking he ought to have a change, especially after losing his Mam and Dad like that, poor bairn. And you're making a grand job of him, miss, if you'll excuse the liberty of me saying so."

I said with real gratitude: "It's very nice of you. Thank you." I lifted Philippe's tray and grinned at her over it. "And I do hope all goes well downstairs. At least there's one person who'll be pleased when Monsieur Raoul arrives."

She stopped in the doorway and turned, a little ponderously. "Who? Mr. Florimond? Well, I couldn't say-"

"I didn't mean him. I meant Philippe."

She stared at me, then shook her head. "Mr. Rowl hardly knows him, miss. Don't forget Philip only came from Paris just before you did, and Mr. Rowl's not been over since he was here."

"Then Monsieur Raoul must have seen something of him in Paris, or else when he was with Monsieur Hippolyte."

"He didn't. That I do know. And I'd go bail him and Mr. Rowl hardly saw each other in Paree. Paree!" said Mrs Seddon, reverting to form. "Paree! He'd not be the one to bother with Philip there, He had other kettles of fish to fry in Paree, you mark my words!"

"But when we heard the car coming up the zigzag tonight with Monsieur Florimond, Philippe flew out onto the balcony like a rocket-and he certainly wasn't hoping to see him. He looked desperately disappointed… more than that, really; 'blighted' would almost describe it… Who else could he be looking for if it wasn't his cousin Raoul?"

Then I looked at her, startled, for her eyes, in the harsh light, were brimming with sudden, easy tears. She shook her head at me and wiped her cheeks with the back of a plump hand. "Poor bairn, poor bairn," was all she would say, but presently after a sniff or two and some action with a handkerchief, she explained. The explanation was simple, obvious, and dreadful.

"He never saw them dead, of course. Nor he wasn't allowed to go to the funeral. And it's my belief and Seddon's that he won't have it they're really gone. They were to have driven back from the airport, you see, and he was waiting for them, and they never came. He never saw no more of them. It's my belief he's still waiting."

"That's dreadful." I swallowed. "That's-dreadful, Mrs. Seddon."

"Yes. Every car that comes up, he'll fly out yonder. I've seen him do it. It's lucky there's not more coming and going than there is, or he'd do it once too often, and end up on the gravel on his head, or else stuck on those spikes like a beetle on a pin." I shivered. "I'll watch him," I said. "You do," said Mrs. Seddon.