Gaston hovered about me still, a rug for my legs, another cushion, and I thought how his devotion and concern would turn to bewilderment and then to disbelief and finally to contempt if he should know the truth - that I was a shadow mimicking his master and then deliberately maiming myself for fear of discovery. It would be beyond his comprehension, and that of all of them at St Gilles. People did not behave like that. What was the point of the deception if it brought so much trouble to the deceiver? What did he gain by it? Here was the point indeed. What did I gain? I lay back on the sofa, looking at my bandaged hand, and suddenly I laughed.
'You are feeling better, then?' said Gaston, his kind face broadening in sympathy, laughter a release for both of us.
'Better from what?'
'Why, better from your burn, Monsieur le Comte,' he said. 'It's no longer hurting you as it did?'
'It hurts in a different way,' I told him, 'as if it wasn't I who had burnt my hand, but somebody else.'
'Pain can be like that,' he said, 'or else you feel the hurt in another spot. You remember my brother who lost his leg in the war? He always said he felt the pain in his arm. My grandmother was Breton. In the old days they wished pain or illness on to animals. If someone had smallpox they took a fowl and hung it up in the room alive. And at once the sickness left its human victim and went to the fowl, and in twenty-four hours it was rotted, dead, and the sick person had recovered. It might be a good idea if I sent for a fowl and hung it up beside Monsieur le Comte.'
'I'm not so sure,' I said, 'it might work the other way round. The fowl could be diseased and pass its sickness on to me - if not smallpox, something equally disagreeable.'
The question was, which of us had escaped, Jean de Gue or myself?
When the family had finished lunch they came flocking back into the room to inquire after me, and I put the second part of my plan into action. 'Paul,' I said, 'you can arrange everything for tomorrow with Robert. Now I'm out of it I prefer to be quit altogether. You can organize the whole thing between you.'
'Oh, nonsense,' exclaimed Paul. 'You'll be feeling more like it in an hour or so. You know you've always done it. If Robert and I run it you'll only criticize us and say we've wrecked it.'
'I won't,' I said, 'you go ahead. If I can't shoot I'm not interested.'
I got up from the sofa, telling them that I wanted to rest alone in the library, and I could tell by their faces that they believed my decision came from bitter disappointment, and also because I was still in pain. I saw Renee draw the doctor aside and question him, and he shook his head. 'No, no, I assure you, he's quite all right. It's just a question of shock. A burn like that is a very painful thing ...'You're right, I thought, especially when it's self-inflicted and totally unnecessary. For, my first panic at the prospect of the shoot over, I knew that all I need have done was to say that I did not want to take part. They would have swallowed it, they would swallow anything, because it never entered their heads for a moment that I was not the man they thought.
As I went into the library the heavy sloth of afternoon descended upon the chateau, and I realized then that my penance worked both ways. I was spared the preparations for the shoot, only to doom myself to inactivity, and after 'resting' I should be at the mercy of the inquiries I wanted to avoid. To make the hours pass I pushed a chair over by the desk, and, struggling one-handed with the drawer, pulled out the photograph album once again. This time I had no interruption. I could take my time, and after looking again through the earlier snapshots I passed on in leisurely fashion to the adult pictures. I noticed things that had escaped me in my previous hurried glimpse. Maurice Duval appeared quite early in the groups at the verrerie. He was standing in a back row, a youngish man, in a group that had the date 1925 beside it; and then, rather like house groups at school, he advanced year by year to a more prominent position, until, towards the end of the album, he was promoted to a chair beside the Comte de Gue himself, looking confident, at ease, the captain of the house beside the housemaster. I liked his face. It was strong, wise, trustworthy, a face that surely would command affection and respect.
I closed the album and pushed it back into the drawer. Perhaps there were others, but with one hand useless I could not rummage for them. I still had the new contract in my pocket - I wondered what Maurice Duval would have thought of it ... I must have slept in the chair, because suddenly it was six o'clock, and it was not Paul or Renee or the child who had come to disturb me, but the cure. He had switched on the light beside the desk and was peering down at me, his old head nodding in concern.
'There now, I've woken you. I didn't intend to do that,' he said. 'I just wanted to make sure you were not in pain.'
I told him all was well and the sleep had done me good.
'Madame Jean has also slept,' he said, 'and your mother too. All the invalids at the chateau have been resting quietly. You have nothing to worry about. I took it upon myself to explain about your little accident, making light of it, as I thought best. You don't mind my having done that?'
'On the contrary,' I said, 'I'm very grateful to you.'
'Good. They are neither of them anxious, only sorry that you won't be able to shoot tomorrow.'
'That's nothing. I'm perfectly resigned to it.'
'Now you are being brave. I know what it must mean to you.'
'I'm not brave, Monsieur le cure. Quite the opposite. A physical and moral coward, to be perfectly frank.'
He smiled at me, still nodding. 'Come now,' he said, 'it's not as bad as that. Sometimes it's a sort of indulgence to think the worst of ourselves. We say, "Now I have reached the bottom of the pit, now I can fall no further," and it is almost a pleasure to wallow in the darkness. The trouble is, it's not true. There is no end to the evil in ourselves, just as there is no end to the good. It's a matter of choice. We struggle to climb, or we struggle to fall. The thing is to discover which way we're going.'
'It's easier to fall,' I said. 'The laws of gravitation prove it.'
'Perhaps,' he said. 'I don't know. The love of God doesn't always concern itself with the laws of gravitation, though both are miracles. Now I think we might both give thanks that you were not more seriously burnt by the fire.'
He knelt down. He was a big, heavy man, and it was not easy for him. He folded his hands, bent his head, and began to pray, his head nodding all the while, and thanked God for preserving me from harm, for sparing me pain, and added finally that because I liked the shoot so much and to miss it was such a deprivation, would God in His goodness send His grace to me as consolation, so that I would not consider the accident as a bitter disappointment but as a blessing?
As he struggled from his knees I thought about his analogy of the pit, and I wondered how much further I had to fall, and if the sense of shame that overwhelmed me was merely wallowing in darkness, as he had suggested. I got up from my chair and accompanied him to the hall, and watched him disappear across the terrace and down the steps to the drive. It was beginning to spit with rain, and he went off under an immense umbrella, like a bent gnome under a mushroom.
I had played the coward long enough: I could at least show the others that I was not in pain. I found Francoise sitting up in bed, reading The Little Flower to Marie-Noel. The cure had done his mission well. She was sympathetic but not concerned. She seemed to think I had singed my fingers and no more, and kept lamenting over and over again how disappointed I must be that I could not shoot, and how glad she was that it was not her fault, that it was not her delicate health that had caused the trouble.
Marie-Noel was oddly quiet and subdued. She did not join in the conversation, but when her mother began to talk she took the book and went and sat in a corner, reading it to herself. My mishap must have worried her, and she had not yet got over it. I went downstairs for dinner, Charlotte having sent word that Madame la Comtesse had gone to bed early and was not to be disturbed - for which I was thankful, since it would not have been easy to answer her questions.
Paul and Re
nee were both full of the arrangements for the shoot, the time the guests were to arrive, the names of some of them, the plans for lunch at a farmhouse if it was wet. It was as though, in some fortunate way, my ridiculous action had given them purpose and authority. Paul obviously enjoyed his part of organizer, and Renee, with Francoise out of the way, saw herself, through Paul's promotion, suddenly acting hostess. She said something about receiving the guests on the terrace, wet or fine; she kept asking Paul if he had remembered this or forgotten that, reminding him that last year such-and-such a thing had not been done, referring to me for approval; and there was something touching about their enthusiasm and their keenness, like understudies cast at a moment's notice into leading roles.
Blanche, after her swift ministration at midday, had relapsed once more into silence. She showed little interest in the arrangements for the following day, merely reminding us, as she rose from the table, that whether or not the guests met on the terrace at half past ten Mass was at nine, as usual. I wondered whether she had forgotten that Dr Lebrun had asked her to dress my hand, and the same thought must have struck Renee, for as we passed into the salon she said, 'If you want to go up early, Blanche, I can do Jean's hand. Where are the dressings?'
'I'm going to do it now,' Blanche replied briefly, and in a moment she was back again with the dressings that the doctor had given her, and she put out her hand to take mine, still without a word to me.
When she had finished, she said good night to the others but not to me, and Renee, settling herself on the sofa, remarked, 'Isn't Marie-Noel coming down for her game of dominoes?'
'Not tonight,' said Blanche. 'I'm going to read to her upstairs.'
She left the room, and after a moment Renee said, 'How unusual for the child to miss her dominoes.'
'She was upset about Jean,' said Paul, picking up one newspaper and throwing me the other. 'I noticed it at the time. You'd better watch out, or she'll start seeing visions again. I'm not sure that giving her a life of St Therese de Lisieux was a very sensible thing to do.'
The evening wore on, the newspapers our distraction, and now and again Renee glanced at me and smiled, the smile of sympathy, of collusion, framing her lips in the silent question, 'Does it hurt? Is it any easier?' - to show me, I suppose, that because of my injury I was now pardoned for my neglect of yesterday. I was worried about the child. She might have taken upon herself some new trick of martyrdom, strangling herself with an iron collar or lying upon nails, and at half past nine I said good night to Paul and Renee and went upstairs. I made straight for the little room in the turret and opened the door. The room was in darkness, so I fumbled for the switch and turned it on. The child was kneeling at her prie-dieu, clutching a rosary, and I realized I had stumbled upon some meditation.
'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I'll come back when you've finished.'
She turned blank eyes towards me, holding up her hand for silence, and I stood there waiting, uncertain what I was meant to do, whether to switch off the light or leave it on. But in a moment or two she crossed herself and laid her rosary at the feet of the Madonna, then stood up and climbed into bed.
'I was doing my Stations of the Cross,' she said. 'It puts me in the right state for Mass tomorrow. Aunt Blanche always says it helps to do the Stations if one is thinking about something else.'
'What were you thinking about?' I asked.
'This morning I was thinking about the shoot and what fun it would be,' she said, 'which I'm sure was a sin in itself. The rest of the day I've been thinking about you.'
Her eyes were more puzzled than concerned. I was relieved. I did not want her to have been frightened. 'You needn't worry about me,' I said, tucking her up with one hand. 'My hand is much better tonight, and Dr Lebrun told me it would be quite all right in a few days. It was a silly thing to happen, the watch falling off - I ought to have remembered that the strap was loose.'
'But it didn't fall off,' she said.
'What do you mean?'
She stared up at me, turning red, and began picking at the bedclothes in embarrassment. 'I was in the dovecot,' she said. 'I had climbed up to the top, and was looking through that little gap beside the hole where the pigeons go in and out. I saw you come down from the ride swinging the watch in your hand. I was going to call out to you, but you looked so serious I didn't like to. Then you stood a few minutes by the bonfire, and suddenly you threw the watch right in the middle of it. There was no smoke getting in your eyes or anything. You did it on purpose. Why?'
16
I sat down on the chair beside the bed. It was easier than standing up. The gap between us lessened, and I was someone on her level, not just an adult talking to a child. I realized she must have interpreted my action as a deliberate deed to rid myself of the watch, and then, regretting it, had burnt myself retrieving it. Self-inflicted pain had not occurred to her, yet it was something she would readily understand.
'The watch was really an excuse,' I said. 'I didn't want to shoot tomorrow. I didn't know how to get out of it, and then, standing by the bonfire, the idea came to me to burn my hand. It was simple, but stupid. I did it rather too effectively, and it hurt more than I intended.'
She listened calmly. She took up my bandaged hand and examined it.
'Why didn't you pretend to be ill?' she asked.
'It wouldn't have worked. People would have realized nothing was the matter. A burnt hand is genuine.'
'Yes,' she said, 'it's never pleasant to be found out. Now you have mortification and have learnt your lesson. May I see the watch again?' I felt in my pocket and gave it to her. 'Poor thing,' she said, 'he's black, and he has no glass. He's had his day. Everyone was wondering at lunch why you should take so much trouble to rescue him. I kept my secret to myself. I did not tell them that before you tried to rescue him you had thrown him into the fire. It was rather a shame to make the watch suffer. Didn't you think about that?'
'Not exactly,' I said. 'I was a bit muddled in my mind. I was thinking about someone who had been shot, murdered, a long time ago, and in a flash I'd thrown the watch in the fire and burnt my hand pulling it out again. It was as quick as that.'
She nodded. 'I suppose you were thinking about Monsieur Duval,' she said.
I stared at her, surprised. 'As a matter of fact I was.'
'Very natural,' she said, 'since he gave you the watch and he was shot. The two things go together.'
'What do you know about Monsieur Duval?' I asked.
'He was master at the verrerie,' she said, 'and according to Germaine some say he was a patriot and some say he was a traitor. But he had a horrid death and I'm forbidden to talk about it. Especially to you and to aunt Blanche, so I never do.' She handed me back the watch.
'Who told you not to talk about it?' I asked.
'Gran'mie,' she said.
'When?'
'Oh, I don't know. Ages ago, when I first heard the story from Germaine. I was telling it to Gran'mie and she said "Shut up. Never repeat servants' gossip. It's a string of lies." She was very angry, and she's never talked about it since. Tell me, Papa, why don't you want to shoot tomorrow?'
Here was the question, and I did not know how to answer it. 'I just don't,' I said. 'I have no reason.'
'You must have a reason,' she insisted. 'It's the thing you like doing best.'
'No,' I said, 'not any more. I don't want to shoot.'
She considered me gravely, her large eyes suddenly and rather terribly like the child Blanche in the family album.
'Is it because you don't want to kill?' she asked. 'Is it suddenly a sin to you to take any life, even a bird's?'
I should have told her instantly no, that my reason for not wanting to shoot was because I was afraid of shooting badly, but instead I hesitated, seeking a loophole for escape, and my hesitation was taken as assent. I could see, by the glowing excitement in her eyes, that she was weaving some fantasy in her mind about her father being sickened suddenly of all blood, all slaughter, and that he had burnt his hand
so that he should not be tempted to kill again.
'Perhaps,' I said.
As soon as I had spoken I realized my mistake. I had not deliberately lied to her before. Now I was doing so. I was building for her a false image of Jean de Gue, giving her what she asked for so that I might be spared the truth myself.
She knelt up in bed, and, careful not to touch my bandaged hand, put her arms round my neck. 'I think you've shown great courage,' she said. 'It's just like the verse in St Matthew: "Wherefore, if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee; it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than, having two hands, or two feet, to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out ...' I'm glad it wasn't your eye; that would have been much more difficult. As it is, your hand will heal, but still, it was the intention that matters, or so aunt Blanche always says. It's a pity we can't tell her, though I'd rather we kept it as a secret between us both.'
'Listen,' I told her, 'there's no need to make a great mystery of this business. I burnt my hand, I can't shoot, I don't want to shoot, and there's an end to it. Now forget it.'
She smiled, and bent down and kissed my bandaged hand. 'I promise I won't mention it,' she said, 'but you can't prevent me from thinking about it. If you see me looking at you tomorrow in a very particular way, it will mean I am thinking of your great act of humiliation.'
'It wasn't a great act. It was a foolish one.'
'Fools are wise in the eyes of God. Have you ever read about St Rosa of Lima?'
'Did she put her hand in a bonfire too?'
'No, she wore a great iron belt and never took it off, and it bit so deeply into her that all the flesh went bad. She wore it for years, and gloried in it. Papa, aunt Blanche would like me to be a nun. She says I shall never find happiness in this world, and I believe she is right. I think so more especially now I am reading about the Little Flower. What do you think?'
I looked at her. She was standing up now, small and serious in her white nightgown, her hands crossed.
'I don't know,' I said. 'I think you're a bit young to decide. Just because aunt Blanche hasn't found happiness in the world, it doesn't mean you won't. It all depends what you mean by happiness. It's not a crock of gold at the foot of a tree. Ask Monsieur le cure, don't ask me.'