The journey to St Gilles was as silent as the outward one, except for his brief word of assurance that all in the chateau believed me to be in my room. 'I let it be known,' he said, his eyes straight on the road ahead of him, 'that Monsieur le Comte did not wish to be disturbed. I even took the liberty of locking both doors into the dressing-room.' He handed me the keys.
'Thank you, Gaston,' I said.
We were coming out of the line of trees and approaching the valley. Below us was the village, the river and the bridge, and the domain, silver-wet from last night's heavy rain, glistened in the early morning sun.
'How many times, Gaston,' I asked, 'have you pulled me out of a scrape of my own making?'
He swerved left to the lime avenue, disclosing at the further end of it the still shuttered facade of St Gilles.
'I have never counted, Monsieur,' he said. 'It is just something I look upon as part of my duty to Monsieur le Comte, and to his family also.'
He did not take the car through the gateway and on to the drive, but circled the enclosing walls of the moat and so through to the garage outbuildings by a side approach. As I walked under the arch and past Cesar's run without disturbing him, and stood for a moment under the cedar-tree, it seemed to me the chateau had never looked more peaceful or more still. The quality it had now, in fresh untempered sunlight, was neither faerie nor austere; the changing shadows of dusk and midnight had vanished with the darkness and the rain, and walls and roof and towers were bathed in the radiance that comes only in the first hours of the day, soft, new-washed, the delicate aftermath of dawn. The people who slept within must surely bear some imprint of this radiance in themselves, must turn instinctively to the light seeping through the shutters, while the ghostly dreams and sorrows of the night slipped away, finding sanctuary in the unawakened forest trees the sun had not yet touched. I wished that this spirit of early morning did not have to turn to day, to the restless clash of will, of movement, of divided heart and mood, but that all of them, inside the chateau, might stay suspended, as it were, in time, like the courtiers in La Belle au bois dormant, shielded from the future by a cobweb barricade.
I crossed the terrace under the shuttered windows and went into the dark, cold hall. In some way my very act of intrusion into the still sleeping chateau seemed to break the spell of peace and silence brooding there. I was aware of a sense of disquiet, of foreboding, as if when the house woke it would not be to the clear bright day without, but to some inner trouble that already hovered, malign and watchful, in the shadow of the stairs. I crept up to the first floor and along the corridor to the dressing-room, and turned the key in the lock. As I opened the door I stepped on to a piece of paper that had been thrust underneath it. It was pink, with a sprig of flowers in one corner, the kind of paper, I remembered dimly, that was packed in boxes with envelopes to match and given to children on birthdays or at Christmas. It said, in round, unformed letters, 'My Papa, you told me you would not go away, and I believed you. But you never came to say good-night, and your door is locked. The Sainte Vierge tells me you are unhappy, and are suffering now for wrong done in the past, so I am going to pray that all your sins may be visited upon me, who, being young and strong, can bear them better. Sleep well, and have faith in Marie-Noel, who loves you dearly.'
I put the paper in my pocket and sat down in a chair by the open window. The sense of oppression deepened. Some force had been put in motion which was no longer within my control. I wished now that I had never left the chateau, never had those hours of release in Villars. There, the community astir soon after five, the casual sounds of morning had rung cheerfully on the ear; but here, as the village church struck seven, the hush continued, and the only living things were the black-and-white cattle moving like wraiths from the enclosing walls of the farm-buildings into the park.
I went on sitting by the window, waiting for the customary time when Gaston would bring my tray. It must have been a little before eight when I first heard the hurrying footsteps along the corridor, the knocking on the bedroom door - Francoise's, not mine - and the confused babble of voices, exclamations, cries. Then, on the bathroom door, which I had not yet unlocked, there came a sudden further knocking, a rattling at the handle, and the voice of Francoise herself, urgent, shrill, 'Jean, Jean, are you awake?'
I leapt from my chair by the window, took the key out of my pocket and opened the door. She was standing there in her nightgown, wan and pale, and behind her Germaine, and beyond, in the bedroom, the gaunt, accusing figure of Blanche, watching me without a word.
I put out my hand to steady Francoise. 'It's all right,' I said. 'You don't have to tell me. It's Maman, isn't it?'
Her eyes swept me, incredulous, and so over my shoulder to the dressing-room. 'Maman?' she said. 'Of course not. Why should there be anything wrong with Maman? It's the child. She's disappeared. Germaine has just been to call her, and the bed hasn't been slept in. She never even undressed. If she hasn't been with you then she's nowhere in the chateau - she's vanished, gone.'
19
Their faces were turned to mine. I could see Paul half-dressed, standing at the bedroom door with Renee beside him, both roused by the same summons. As head of the house I was responsible: decisions, plans, must come from me. Francoise, shivering without a wrapper, was my first concern.
'Get back into bed,' I said, 'we'll soon find her. You can't do anything about it.'
Blanche led her, crying, protesting, back to bed.
'She's probably in the park, or in the woods,' I said. 'It's not so unusual for a child to get up early. Do we all have to become hysterical?'
'But her bed has not been slept in, I tell you!' cried Francoise. 'Germaine went in to call her, and the nightdress was lying folded, the sheets turned down, and nothing had been touched.'
Germaine also was in tears, her plump red face suffused, her eyes swollen. 'The bed was as I left it yesterday evening, Monsieur le Comte,' she whimpered. 'The child has not undressed. She has gone off wearing her best frock and her thin shoes. She will catch her death of cold.'
'Who was the last to see her?' I asked. 'What time did she go to bed?'
'She was with Blanche,' said Francoise. 'Blanche was reading to her, weren't you, Blanche? She sent her to bed about half past nine. She was restless and excitable.'
I glanced at Blanche. Her face was set and strained. She did not look at me. 'It's always the same,' she said to Francoise. 'Her father upsets her, works on her feelings, and she is capable of any foolishness after that.'
'But Marie-Noel didn't see Jean all evening!' interrupted Renee. 'Jean was asleep in his room. The mistake everyone makes is allowing the child to appear on every occasion and mix with adults. Yesterday she tried to be the centre of the picture throughout the day. I noticed it in particular. Of course she became over-excited.'
'I had the impression she was quieter than usual,' said Paul, 'more subdued, at any rate in the evening. It's not surprising, when you think what happened during the day. I should imagine we're the laughing-stock of the country, from Villars to Le Mans. You missed nothing,' he added to Francoise, 'you were well out of it.'
Francoise, with swimming eyes turned from him to me. 'Did you drink so much?' she said. 'What in the world will people think?'
Germaine, goggle-eyed, watched us from her corner.
'Go and tell Gaston to start searching the grounds,' I said to her. 'Tell him to get hold of Joseph, too, and anyone else who's about. Monsieur Paul and I will be down directly.'
'If you want to know what I think,' said Paul, 'it's this. The child has run away because Jean made an exhibition of himself in public. She was ashamed. So were we all.'
'Marie-Noel was not ashamed,' said Renee. 'I heard her telling everyone that Jean was the most courageous man in the world and nobody but herself knew why. Heaven knows what they thought of her precocity. It made me most uncomfortable.'
'Courageous? What did she mean by courageous?' asked Francoise.
'It did t
ake courage of a sort,' said Paul, 'deliberately to wreck the day for those who had taken infinite trouble to try and make it a success. It was a curious thing that, out of about fifty people invited here after the shoot was over, only twenty or so turned up. It's not the personal slight I mind, but the slight on the family.'
'It was the weather,' said Renee. 'Everyone was wet through.'
The bickering was interrupted by a knock on the door, and we all turned, in hope and expectation, but it was only Charlotte, self-importance upon her thin mean face.
'Excuse me Monsieur le Comte, and you too, Madame la Comtesse Jean,' she said. 'I have just heard about the child. I think I was the last to see her. When I went upstairs last night I happened to look along the corridor and she was kneeling outside the dressing-room door. She wanted to say good night to her Papa. She could not make you hear, Monsieur le Comte.'
'That's not surprising,' said Paul.
'Why didn't she try my door, then?' asked Francoise. 'I was not asleep. She must have known perfectly well that she had only to knock and I would have answered.'
'That was my fault, Madame la Comtesse Jean,' said Charlotte. 'I told the child on no account to disturb her Papa, who must have so much on his mind at the present time, or to disturb you, Madame, who need sleep so badly with the little son soon to be born. A little playmate, I told her, sent from paradise, whom she must learn to love and cherish.'
The small button eyes flickered towards me and fell, and she looked from one to the other of us with a half-smile, servile, obsequious, upon her pinched mauve lips. I thought of the dressing-room adjoining that other bedroom in the tower, and I knew that because of the re-arranging of the boxes in the cupboard above the wash-basin she must be aware of my visit there last night. She would not betray me, any more than she would betray herself. I was an accomplice, and I hated the fact, but there was nothing I could do to alter it.
'Well,' I asked, 'what happened next?'
'She seemed a little upset, Monsieur le Comte. I was quite shocked. She said, "My Papa needs me, and nobody else. He only wants a boy to bring money into the family." Those were her words. I told her it was not the way to speak, and that Monsieur le cure would not approve, or anyone in St Gilles. When the baby comes we shall all love him I said, from her Papa down to Cesar, we had all waited for him so long. Then she came with me as far as the service door, and on to her own staircase, and I went above to Madame la Comtesse, who was sleeping peacefully, like an angel.'
Who was, in fact, lying unconscious, because of what I had done to her. Perhaps it was the same thing. It did not greatly matter now. The only thing that mattered was that Marie-Noel was missing, and she was missing because I had gone to Villars instead of staying at the chateau.
'Is it possible, Mademoiselle,' suggested Charlotte, turning to Blanche, 'that the little one has run down to the church? After all' - she hesitated, watching me an instant, the expression of servility on her face deepening - 'if she has anything on her mind of which she is ashamed, she would surely go to Monsieur le cure and ask to make her confession?'
'No,' said Blanche, 'she would come first to me.'
Paul shrugged his shoulders. 'It would be more to the point if we all got dressed, wouldn't it?' he asked. 'Blanche can go down to the cure, while Jean and I search the grounds with Gaston. That is,' he added, throwing me a glance, 'if you're sufficiently recovered from yesterday.'
Without answering, I turned and went back into the dressing-room, and crossing to the window looked down into the moat. There was nothing in it but the tangled grass, the ivy, and the weeds. It was only in imagination that I saw the small body in the blue dress lying in the ditch, broken and useless.
It was Gaston who came to tell me that the dog was missing. Joseph had gone to feed him, and had found the kennel empty. This news brought an odd sense of relief. If Marie-Noel had taken Cesar with her he would act as protector, at least from this world's dangers. Nor would a child bent on self-destruction take a dog with her.
Once outside the chateau, Paul and the men and I divided between us the ground to be searched, and my territory took me towards the scene of yesterday's shoot. The woods were soggy with the rain of the day and the night, the fallen leaves like paper under my feet, the brushwood soft and rotten. But the bright day, penetrating the cover, gave sharpness to the outline of the trees, which yesterday had been blurred and obscure. This morning there was no mist, no patter in listless branches sweeping dull and humid to the ground, only a clear intensity of sunlight turning the undergrowth silver where the raindrops, glistening like pools, shimmered a moment in the hollow of a leaf before the leaf melted and became one with the soil.
I knew, tramping the long rides, climbing the ditches in the black woods, that she would not be there, in front of me, a small Artemis with her hound at the end of the ride, or a babe in the woods asleep at the foot of a tree. It was only an exercise I set myself because there was nowhere else to search, and the shouts and the halloos of the rest of them, closer to the chateau grounds, could not reach me here, with their irritating, useless frequency. It was as idle to call as to prod a haystack with a fork, which I had seen Joseph do in all seriousness. If the child wanted to be found she would be found, not there, not here, but waiting, hidden, before her own symbolic shrine.
When I broke finally from the forest and emerged into fields once more, I saw that my walk had brought me in a half-circle, this morning's brightness showing what yesterday's mist had hidden; and there, a couple of fields away, were the foundry sheds, half obscured by a fence enclosing their plot of ground, and the chimney itself, a pencil against the sky. I climbed under the wire surrounding the wood, crossed the fields past the white horse browsing beside the hedge, and, opening a small gate embedded in briar and nettles, came once more to the apple orchard behind the master's house. The windows, facing west, were blank and dim, but the tangled garden glistened like the raindrops in the wood, a cobweb veil of dew encompassing the crops, a cover for tumbled, crimson apples, while the earth was steamy with the warmth drawn from it by the sun. The house slept, yet was not desolate. The creeping vine protected the windows and the walls, and the teeming garden and orchard, spilling vegetables and fruit that were never gathered, seemed an echo and a promise from a past still unfulfilled - a past that became suddenly blended with the present because of a half-open window beside the blistered door, a window that on my visit only three days before had been fast shut and crusted with the years.
As I watched, I saw someone come to the window and stand there, looking out at me, and I walked over the wet earth and the fallen apples. When I stood beside the window I saw the figure was Julie, and she had her finger to her lips for silence.
'You came quickly,' she whispered. 'I only sent word to the chateau ten minutes ago. I could get no reply by telephone.'
Her words had no meaning for me. Yet I was afraid. The brown eyes, usually so warm and full of life, were troubled. The intuition that I had learnt never to mistrust turned to apprehension.
'I had no message,' I said. 'I came by chance.'
I climbed through the window into the room. It was the same that I had entered before, where the furniture was stored, the one-time salon of the master's house. The windows faced two ways: the one where Julie stood looked out upon the orchard and the garden, the other to the well. A shaft of sunlight fell upon the child, white and still under a heap of blankets, and upon the dog, his muzzle between his paws, stretched at her feet. It was what my fancy had conjured, yet, strangely, more poignant still. Not dripping from a pool, not torn or mangled, merely alone, a speck in isolation.
'One of the workmen found her because of Cesar,' said Julie. 'The dog was standing guard beside the well. She must have climbed down the ladder to the bottom and lain there, amongst the glass and rubble, all the night. She was asleep when he brought her up, and she was sleeping still when he carried her into the house and called to me.'
Asleep. I had thought her dead. I turne
d to Julie, but the wrinkled face was puzzled and awed, not stricken. Still whispering, taking me by the arm, she said, 'It was Madame la Comtesse who walked in her sleep in the old days. It is perhaps part of the little one's inheritance, Monsieur Jean. No doubt she had something on her mind.'
I felt in my pocket for the scrap of paper. It belonged to Jean de Gue, yet it was also mine. Mine too the image of the drugged woman on her pillow. Jean de Gue's mother had smiled when I took away her pain, but I had not carried it far: I had left it with his child instead.
The small face against the dark blanket looked like something carved from stone, an angel's head, remote, intangible, lost in a cold cloister.
'Poor little one,' said Julie, 'it is always at this age they take fancies into their heads. For myself, it was a boy in the village. I followed him everywhere. My sister had a passion for her teacher. This one is religious, like Mademoiselle Blanche. It will pass.'
She patted the blanket, her hand brown and strong and wrinkled like her face, her thumbnail black with soil. The letter in my pocket, which had seemed precious, a key to unlock a door, became suddenly a scrap without meaning. I had a vision of it found in a forgotten drawer, years later, by a woman looking like Blanche, who, before throwing it into the waste-paper basket, with a frown, wondered when she had written it, and why, remembering nothing of the suffering and pain she had taken with her to the well.
'You know what it is,' said Julie. 'In a house full of women, like yours, it is time someone prepared her for what is to come. She is growing fast. They are like young plants at this stage, they shoot quickly. Ernest, who lives next door to me and who found her and carried her up, is father of three daughters. The first thing he asked me was her age. Not eleven yet, I told him. That's nothing, he said. His youngest was ten when she matured. It can be frightening, you understand, Monsieur Jean, when a child becomes a young girl and still knows nothing. It would not surprise me if it happened soon.'