'I can't tell you the extent of the injuries. The doctor is examining her now,' she said to me as she led us from the waiting-room to a smaller private one.
Blanche did not sit down, although the sister drew forward a chair. She went and stood by the window, with her back to me. I think she was praying. Her head was bent, her hands clasped in front of her. I stared at a map of the region that was framed on the wall, and I saw that Villars was twenty kilometres from Mortagne, and from Mortagne a by-road led direct to the Abbey of la Grande-Trappe. On the desk was a calendar. A week ago tomorrow I had been driving to Le Mans ... A week ago.... Everything I had said, everything I had done, had brought this family closer to disaster and to pain. Mine was the responsibility, mine the guilt. Jean de Gue, laughing before the mirror in that hotel bedroom, had left me to solve his problems as I chose. Each step I had taken during the past few days seemed now, in retrospect, to have caused suffering and harm. Folly, ignorance, bluff and blind conceit had brought about the moment that was passing now.
'Monsieur le Comte?' The man who entered, big, burly, would surely have given confidence to a waiting relative, but I had seen too many doctors' expressions in the war not to recognize finality. 'I am Dr Moutier. I want to tell you that everything we can possibly do is being done. The injuries are extensive, and it would be wrong of me to express any great hope. The comtesse is, of course, unconscious. I understand neither of you was present when the accident occurred.'
Once again Blanche was the spokesman and the useless story repeated.
'The windows are large,' said Blanche. 'She had been unwell. She must have gone to the window feeling faint and opened it too wide, and leaning out ...' She did not finish the sentence.
The doctor's brief, 'Naturally, naturally,' was mechanical, and he added, 'The comtesse was dressed. She was not in nightclothes. Presumably she was going to join you in the search for the child.'
I glanced at Blanche, but her eyes were fixed on the doctor. 'She was not dressed when the rest of us left the chateau. She was in bed. None of us dreamt for a moment that she would get up.'
'Mademoiselle, it is always the unforeseen that produces accidents. Excuse me.' He turned from us to speak to the sister outside the door. The low, rapid conversation was inaudible to us inside the room, but I thought I caught the words 'transfusion' and 'Le Mans', and I could see from Blanche's face that she had heard them too.
'They are going to give a transfusion,' she said. 'I heard him say they were sending the blood from Le Mans.'
She was watching the door, and I wondered if she realized that these were the first words she had spoken to her brother for fifteen years. They came too late. They were no use. He was not there to hear them.
The doctor turned to us again. 'You will excuse me, Monsieur, and you, Mademoiselle. Please wait here - it is more private than the other room. I will let you know as soon as there is anything definite to tell you.'
Blanche caught at his sleeve. 'Forgive me, doctor. I could not help overhearing something of what you were saying to the sister. You have sent to Le Mans for blood?'
'Yes, Mademoiselle.'
'Are you sure it wouldn't save time if my brother gave his blood? Both he and my brother Paul belong to blood group O, which I understand can be given to anyone without danger?'
For a moment the doctor hesitated, glancing at me. Appalled at what might happen, at the inevitable worsening of disaster, I said swiftly, 'I'm not group O. I only wish to God I were.'
Blanche looked at me, dumbfounded. 'That's not true. You are both universal donors, you and Paul. I remember Paul telling me only a few months ago.'
I shook my head. 'No,' I said, 'you're mistaken. Paul, perhaps, not me. I belong to group A. It wouldn't be any use.'
The doctor gestured. 'Please don't distress yourselves,' he said. 'It is preferable to use the blood straight from the laboratory. There will be very little delay. Everything necessary is on its way now to Villars from Le Mans.'
He paused, looking curiously from me to Blanche, and went out of the room.
For a few moments Blanche said nothing. Then oddly, terribly it seemed to me, her expression of concern and anguish changed. 'She knows,' I thought, 'she knows at last. I've given myself away.' But I was wrong. Slowly, as though she could not believe her own words, she said, 'You don't want to save her. You're hoping she will die.'
I stared at her, aghast. Then she turned her back on me. She went and stood by the window once again. There was nothing I could say, nothing I could do.
We went on waiting. Sometimes there were voices in the passage and sometimes footsteps passed. No one came in. The midday Angelus sounded from the cathedral church. I looked at the map once more and saw that it was forty-four kilometres from Le Mans to Villars. The distance could be covered in forty minutes. Could forty minutes make all the difference between life and death? I did not know; I hadn't the medical knowledge. All I knew was that Jean de Gue and I had different blood, that we were dissimilar in the only thing that mattered now. He might have saved his wife, but I could not. Height, breadth, colouring, features, voice, we had everything in common but that. The discovery seemed to me symbolic of all that had gone wrong. He was the human reality, I the shadow. I could not replace the living man.
As I stood there, eyes on the map, following the course of the route nationale, it appeared so small a stretch between two points; yet each curve meant a slackening of speed. There might be a diversion, men working on the road, a traffic block, a sudden smash. I would not even know when the car or ambulance arrived. It would go very probably to another entrance. I went out into the passage, hoping that if I stood there somebody might come. But it was empty, save for a woman with a mop cleaning the floor.
At one o'clock Paul and Renee appeared at the hospital entrance. I pointed to the room where Blanche was waiting. I did not want to talk to them; she could tell them everything we knew. Renee went straight in, but Paul, after a second's hesitation, came to me.
'Ernest is still outside with the lorry. Shall I tell him to go?' he asked.
'I will,' I replied.
He paused. 'How is she?' he asked.
I shook my head, and went out of the hospital into the street, and told Ernest that he had better return to the verrerie. When he had climbed into the lorry and driven away, it was as though my contact with solidity and safety had gone. As with Gaston, with Julie, I sensed compassion in his eyes and in his voice, and I remembered what Julie had said about him, that he had young daughters. I wished I had not sent him away, but had climbed into the lorry and asked him about his wife, about his children. He might perhaps have given me strength and courage, but in the silent hospital room I should find misunderstanding, silence, even accusation.
I went out across the Place and began walking without thought, without intention; yet half consciously, I suppose, I knew where I must go. I found myself before the closed door of 'L'Antiquaire du Pont'. The glass was shuttered and there was a notice in the window saying 'Ferme le lundi'. I turned and went through the Porte de Ville, and stood by the footbridge looking up at the balcony and the windows of the house. They were closed too, the cage with the budgerigars was not on the balcony, and suddenly the house had no connexion with anything that had happened. The self who had crossed the bridge and stayed there through the night was someone else. The room within, with the grey wallpaper, the blue cushions, and the dahlias, was a figment of my imagination, as was the other room beyond, looking over the roof-tops. I had never passed the threshold, I had never seen the owner. Bela, with her warmth and her understanding, did not exist.
I retraced my steps through the Porte de Ville, glanced once more at the closed door, and went back to the hospital.
Paul was standing by the entrance. He said, 'We've been looking for you.'
I knew then it had happened. He took my arm, an odd, half-protective gesture, and we walked together along the passage to the small room. Dr Moutier was there, with Blanche and Renee
and the sister who had received us. He came to me at once and his voice was already changed. It was no longer brisk and professional, with the authority of one who must be about his business, but that of someone who was perhaps a husband and a father.
He said, 'It's all over. I'm so very sorry.'
They were all looking at me except Blanche, who turned away, and when I did not answer immediately Dr Moutier added, 'She never recovered consciousness. She was in no pain. I can assure you of that.'
I said, 'The blood transfusion - it was no good, then?'
'No,' he said. 'There was just a faint chance but ... she had sustained too great a shock ...' He gestured with his hands.
'It came too late?' I asked.
'Too late?' He repeated the words after me, puzzled.
'The blood,' I said, 'the blood from Le Mans.'
'Ah no,' he said, 'it was here in half an hour. We gave the transfusion at once. Everything that it was possible to do was done. Your wife did not die from any sort of neglect, Monsieur, please believe me. We did what was necessary to the very last moment. But alas, our efforts were in vain. We could not save her.'
The sister said, 'You would like to see her,' her words a plain statement of fact, not an interrogation, and she led me down the passage and into a small room. We stood together beside the bed, looking down on Francoise de Gue. There was no sign of injury. She might have been sleeping. She did not look like a person dead.
The sister said, 'I always think the real personality appears on the face during the first hour after death. Sometimes it is a consolation to believe this.'
I was not sure. The Francoise lying dead looked peaceful, younger, happier, than the Francoise who had hammered on the dressing-room door that morning. The Francoise of the morning had been haggard, anxious, querulous. If this, the dead one, was true and the other false, then living had accomplished nothing: it had been a waste of time.
'It is very hard for you to have lost them both,' said the sister.
Both? I thought for one moment that she meant Marie-Noel, that she had heard the story of the missing child. Then I remembered.
'There's a daughter,' I said, 'eleven years old.'
'Dr Moutier told me you would have had a son,' she went on.
She withdrew to the door and stood there, her eyes lowered, believing, I supposed, that I wanted to be alone, to pray. I did not pray, but I tried to think if I had said anything to Francoise in the week that had been deliberately unkind. I could not remember. So much seemed to have happened. I was glad I had given her the miniature my first evening. She had been happy then, and pleased. There was nothing else, unless it was waiting on her on Friday night. The record was unimpressive. I wished I had done more. I turned, and went back to the others.
Paul said to me, 'You had better get home to St Gilles. I've telephoned to Gaston to bring the Citroen. Blanche and I will stay here to make arrangements, and Gaston can drive you and Renee in the Renault.'
I could tell, by their faces, that they had been discussing what must be done. There was a certain quiet formality of tone and gesture that went with the aftermath of death. Nothing was referred to me direct. Mistakenly, the bereaved are left alone to indulge grief. It would have been better to give me something to discuss, to sign, to arrange. Instead I watched them, silent, ineffectual.
When Gaston came I sensed relief. They wanted me out of the way. Renee silently pushed me into the front seat, herself got into the back, and we drove away.
Gaston's face was shocked and drawn. He had not said anything to me when I had climbed into the car, but silently, gently, he had put a rug over my knees, a strange, touching gesture of sympathy for sorrow. I wondered, as he took the familiar road again, whether he thought, as I did, of the morning's drive and that of the preceding night, hours so remote that they seemed never to have been.
The closed shutters of the chateau were the first sign of mourning, and I supposed that Gaston, after Paul had telephoned from the hospital, had given orders for this to be done. Yet life would not be denied. Long rays of daylight stole through the chinks and patterned the floor in the salon, and the tribute of mourning to Francoise, lying still and peaceful in the small hospital room, seemed somehow useless and false. The sun and the warmth of day had never harmed her; it was we who had lacked forethought and care and had thrust perception out of doors.
Gaston had also given orders for a meal to be laid in the dining-room, for none of us had touched any food. More to satisfy him, I think, than ourselves, we sat down and ate mechanically. Renee, subdued and gentle, revealing another facet of herself, told me how she and Paul had driven to every farm during the morning within a radius of ten kilometres, inquiring for the child, and had only returned to St Gilles at half past twelve. It was strange, I thought, how sudden death, like war, brings instant sympathy. The challenging, sensual Renee of the past week was now natural, kindly, anxious to help us all, suggesting that she should make up a bed for Marie-Noel in Blanche's room so that the child would not be alone, or that Paul should move from their room and the child go to her, offering to fetch her from the verrerie - ready to do anything to make the sudden loss less frightening, less appalling for Marie-Noel.
'I don't think she will be frightened,' I said. 'I think - I can't explain why - she was prepared.'
Renee, who a few hours before would have said immediately that everything Marie-Noel had done was outrageous, exhibitionist, and she should be severely punished, answered nothing, except that children who walked in their sleep should never sleep alone.
Presently she went upstairs and I continued sitting in the dining-room, thinking. After a while I called Gaston and asked him to go to the verrerie with a message for Julie. Would he, I said, tell her that Francoise was dead, and that I wanted Julie to break the news to Marie-Noel?
'Monsieur le cure is upstairs with Madame la Comtesse,' he said to me, after a moment's hesitation. 'Does Monsieur le Comte wish to see him now, or presently?'
'How long has he been here?' I asked.
'Madame la Comtesse sent for him as soon as Charlotte told her of the accident.'
'When was that?'
'I don't know, Monsieur le Comte. Monsieur Paul and I could get no sense out of any of the women here when we returned and heard what had happened. They were too upset to explain anything clearly.'
'I'll see Monsieur le cure directly,' I said. 'Meanwhile ask Germaine to come to me.'
'Very good, Monsieur le Comte.'
Germaine was already in tears as she entered the room, and at sight of me her face crumpled afresh. It was a moment or two before she could control herself.
'That's enough,' I said. 'You only make it harder for all of us if you give way. There is something I want to ask you. Did you know Madame Jean had got up and dressed this morning before the accident?'
'No, Monsieur le Comte. I took her breakfast at nine, and she was still in bed. She said nothing to me about getting up. Mademoiselle Blanche sent me to make inquiries in the village about the child, and when I came back I went straight to the kitchen. I never saw Madame Jean again.'
The tears were welling into her eyes once more, and I had nothing else to ask her. I told her to send Charlotte to me.
It was a moment or two before Charlotte appeared, and when she did I saw at once that the hysteria of the morning was now over. She was watchful, self-possessed, and the small, beady eyes looked up at me almost with defiance. I did not waste any time. I said to her immediately, 'When we all went out this morning to look for the child, did you go back again to talk to Madame Jean?'
There was a momentary hesitation in her eye, and then she said, 'Yes, Monsieur le Comte. I just slipped in to say a word or two of comfort while she was having breakfast.'
'What did you say to her?'
'There was nothing much I could say, Monsieur le Comte. I begged her not to worry. The child would soon be found.'
'Did she seem very anxious?'
'She was more concerned
about the little one's state of mind, Monsieur le Comte, than about her actual disappearance. She was worried that the child might have turned against her. She is too fond of her Papa, she said, and of Mademoiselle Blanche; she does not come to her mother as she should. Those were her exact words.'
'How did you answer that?'
'I told her the truth, Monsieur le Comte. I said that when a father idolizes his daughter as Monsieur le Comte idolizes Marie-Noel, it is always difficult for the mother. I had an aunt who experienced the same trouble. It was even worse when the daughter grew older; she and the father were inseparable, and my aunt had a nervous breakdown in consequence.'
'Did you tell her that by way of comfort?'
'I told her because I was sympathetic, Monsieur le Comte. I knew that Madame Jean was often lonely here.'
I wondered just how much damage Charlotte had done, now and in the past, in the chateau of St Gilles. 'Did you know Madame Jean meant to get up?' I asked.
Again the flicker of hesitation. 'She said nothing definite,' Charlotte answered. 'She told me she did not like staying there all alone not knowing what was happening. She asked me if Madame la Comtesse was awake upstairs. I said not yet, that she was sleeping late. She said she might have some ideas about the child. Then I took her tray and went downstairs to do my washing and ironing. That was the last time I saw Madame Jean.'
She shook her head slowly as she said this, and sighed, and clasped her hands, but there was nothing genuine about the gesture, like the flowing tears of Germaine.
'At what time did Madame la Comtesse wake?' I said.