My own forced greeting died on my lips, and like a criminal, hunted, snatching at any cover, I retreated to the back of the car for refuge. But the chauffeur - his name was Gaston, then - already had the two valises in his hand and barred the way. I went up the steps to the terrace, lifting my eyes to meet the first penetrating gaze, the man's use of the familiar 'tu' proving him, surely, to be a relative. I saw that he was shorter, thinner, probably younger than myself, yet with a haggard appearance as if he were tired or his health bad, and the lines around his mouth were pinched and dissatisfied. I stood beside him, waiting for his move.
'You might have telephoned,' he said. 'They waited lunch. Francoise and Renee declared you had had an accident. I said it was extremely unlikely, and you were probably spending the day in the bar of the Hotel de Paris. We tried to get you there, but they told us you hadn't been seen. After that, of course, there were the usual lamentations.'
Surprise that I had passed his near inspection kept me silent. I was not sure what it was that I had expected. Doubt, perhaps, a closer stare, an intuition on his part that I was not the man he knew. He looked me up and down, then laughed, the laugh of someone who is irritated, not amused.
'I tell you frankly, you look a wreck,' he said.
When Gaston had smiled at me so short a while since, the unaccustomed warmth had been a benison unearned. Now, for the first time in my life, I recognized dislike. The effect was strange. I was angry for the sake of Jean de Gue. Whatever he might have done to incur hostility, I was on his side.
'Thank you,' I said. 'Your opinion doesn't worry me. As a matter of fact, I feel extremely well.'
He turned on his heel, walking towards the door, and Gaston caught my eye and smiled. I realized with amazement that I had said what was expected of me, and the answering 'tu', which I had never used before, had come naturally, without effort.
I followed the man named Paul into the house. The hall was small and surprisingly narrow, leading to another, wider passage whence I could see a twisting stairway going to the floors above. There was the clean, cold smell of polish, bearing no relation to the faded deck-chairs stacked against the wall in odd juxtaposition to the Louis Seize chairs beside them. At the far end of the wider passage hall there was a great cabinet between two doors, the sort of graceful, fluted thing one sees roped off from the public in museums, and facing it, upon a stuccoed wall, a tortured, blackened picture of Christ crucified. The murmur of voices came from one of the half-open doors.
Paul crossed the passage and called through the first of them, 'Here is Jean arrived at last,' his voice betraying the exasperation he had already shown to me. 'I'm off, I'm late already,' he went on, and glancing at me once again, 'I can see you are in no fit state to tell me anything tonight. We can discuss things in the morning.' He turned, and went out again by the door leading to the terrace.
Gaston, the two valises in his hand, was mounting the stairs. I wondered if I should follow him, when a woman's voice called from the room beyond, 'Are you there, Jean?', the note in the voice high, complaining, and once again the chauffeur glanced down at me in sympathy. Slowly, with lagging steps, I passed through the open door into the room. I had one swift impression of vastness, heavy curtains, papered walls. Standard lamps, masked by ugly shades with beaded fringes, dimmed the light. An exquisite chandelier, glittering through a veil of dust, the candles broken, swung unlit from the high ceiling. One long window, still unshuttered, betrayed acres of tangled grassway disappearing into alleyways of trees, and cropping grass, almost beneath the window itself, were black-and-white cattle, their shapes ghostly in the falling light.
Three women were sitting in the room. As I entered they looked up, and one of them, tall as myself, with hard, clear-cut features and a narrow mouth, her hair strained back and twisted in a bun, immediately rose to her feet and left the room. A second, with dark hair and eyes, handsome, almost beautiful, yet marred by a sallow skin and a sullen mouth, watched me without expression from the sofa where she sat, some sewing or embroidery beside her, and when the first woman left the room she called over her shoulder without turning round, 'If you must go, Blanche, please shut the door. I mind draughts, if nobody else does.'
The third woman had faded, rather colourless blonde hair. She might have been pretty once, and perhaps was still, with small, delicate features and blue eyes, but her expression of defeat, of petulance, destroyed the first impression of charm. She did not smile. She gave a little laugh of exasperation, as the man Paul had done, and then, rising to her feet, came towards me across the polished floor.
'Well,' she said, 'aren't you going to kiss either of us?'
4
I bent my head and kissed her on both cheeks, and, still saying nothing, crossed the floor and kissed the other woman in the same fashion. The first, the fair, blue-eyed one - it was she who had called when I was in the hall, for I recognized the voice - then came and took my arm, leading me to the open hearth on which one log smouldered.
'You may well look ashamed of yourself,' she said, using the familiar 'tu' just as Paul had done. 'We have been worried sick that you might have had an accident, but as usual you didn't give that a thought. What have you been doing all day, and why didn't you go to the Hotel de Paris? They told Paul on the telephone that they hadn't seen you at all. I begin to think you do this sort of thing on purpose, just to frighten us and make us imagine the worst.'
'And what would that be, the worst?' I asked her.
My retort, coming so quickly, gave me confidence. The dream, or rather nightmare, was something completely out of my experience. I felt that it did not matter what I said or did: however outrageous, these people would have to accept it.
'You knew perfectly well we must have been anxious,' the woman said, dropping my arm, giving me a little push. 'When you are away from home you are capable of anything, and you never think of anybody but yourself. You talk too much, you drink too much, you drive too fast ...'
'I do everything, in fact, to excess?' I interrupted.
'You do everything you can to make us miserable,' she said.
'Oh, leave him alone,' called the other woman. 'It is obvious from his manner that he isn't going to tell you anything. You are just wasting your time.'
'Thank you,' I said.
She looked up from her work, flashing me a look of understanding. We were allies, perhaps? I wondered who she was. She bore no resemblance to Paul, though both were dark. The other woman sat down again and sighed. I realized now, from her figure, that she must be expecting a child.
'You could at least tell us what happened in Paris,' she said. 'Or is that to remain a mystery too?'
'I have no idea what happened in Paris,' I said carelessly. 'I'm suffering from loss of memory.'
'You are suffering from too much to drink,' she answered. 'I can smell it on your breath. It would be a good idea if you went up to bed and slept it off. Don't go near Marie-Noel - she has some fever, and it might be catching. They had a case of measles in the village, and if I were to get that ...' she paused and looked at both of us significantly, 'you can imagine what might happen.'
I went on standing with my back to the hearth, wondering how I could escape and find the right room. I should recognize the valises, of course, unless they had been unpacked. Even so, in one of the rooms I should be able to find the hairbrushes with the initials J. de G. Bed was at least a refuge, a place to think and plan. Or did I no longer want to think or plan? Laughter, uncontrolled, rose in my throat.
'What is it now?' asked the fair woman, resentful, complaining.
'It's an extraordinary situation,' I said. 'You neither of you know how extraordinary.'
The freedom of saying this acted like a charm on my own lingering consciousness of self. It was like being invisible, or possessing a ventriloquist's voice.
'I see nothing funny in infection,' said the fair woman, 'and certainly not at the present moment. I have no desire to bring a blind or perhaps crippled child in
to the world, which can happen to someone in my condition who catches measles. Or do you mean the situation in Paris was extraordinary? I hope, for everyone's sake, that you came to some agreement, though I can hardly believe it.'
I turned from her questioning, reproachful eyes to those of the other woman, but her expression had changed. A wave of colour had come into her sallow complexion, adding to her beauty, but she looked wary, and before she dropped her eyes again to her work she shook her head, imperceptibly, as if in warning. She and de Gue were undoubtedly allies, but in what cause? And in what relationship were the three of them, one to the other? I decided suddenly to tell the truth as a test of my courage, and also because I was no longer sure of my own sanity.
'Actually,' I said, 'I am not Jean de Gue at all. I am someone else. We met in Le Mans last night, and changed clothes, and he has disappeared in my car, heaven knows where, and I am here in his place. You must admit it's an extraordinary situation.'
I expected an outburst from the fair woman, but instead she sighed again, gazing a moment at the single smouldering log on the hearth. Ignoring me she yawned, and turning towards the other woman said, 'Was Paul going to be late this evening? He did not tell me.'
'After a rotary club dinner of course he'll be late,' the dark one replied. 'Have you ever known Paul back early on those occasions?'
'He was not in much of a mood to enjoy himself,' said the other, 'and seeing Jean come home in this sort of condition won't have improved his temper.'
Neither of them glanced in my direction. My remark, which they must have interpreted as some tasteless joke, had fallen so flat that they had not even thought it worthwhile to make a crushing retort. This surely proved that deception was complete. I could behave as I pleased, say anything, do anything: they would merely believe me to be drunk or mad. The sensation was indescribable. Driving the Renault had been the first moment of intoxication, but now that I had passed the test of speaking to de Gue's family, embracing them, even, and still they had sensed nothing unusual, the feeling of power was overwhelming. I could, if I chose, do incalculable harm to these people whom I did not know - injure them, upset their lives, put them at odds one with another - and it would not matter to me because they were dummies, strangers, they had nothing to do with my life. When Jean de Gue left me sleeping in the hotel in Le Mans, did he realize the danger? Was his action not the wild prank it appeared, but a deliberate desire that I might wreck the home which he said possessed him?
I was aware of the dark woman's eyes upon me, brooding, suspicious. 'Why don't you go upstairs as Francoise suggests?' she said. Her manner was peculiar. It was as though she wanted to get me out of the room, afraid that I might say something out of place.
'Very well, I will,' I said, and then I added, 'You were both right. I drank much too much in Le Mans. I spent the day there senseless in a hotel.'
The fact that it was true added flavour to deception. Both women stared. Neither said anything. I crossed the floor and went out of the half-open door into the hall beyond. I heard the one called Francoise break into a torrent of words as soon as I left the room.
The hall was empty. I listened at the other door, on the further side of the great cabinet, and could hear the distant sound of kitchen noises, running water, the clatter of plates. I decided to try the stairs. The first flight ended in a long corridor, leading left and right, and above me was a further flight to a second floor. I hesitated, then turned left along the corridor. It was dark, lighted by a single electric bulb without a shade. The boards creaked under my feet. I was seized with a furtive excitement as I put out my hand and turned the handle of the door at the far end of the corridor. The room was dark. I felt for a switch. The light revealed a bleak high room, dark red curtains drawn across the windows, a high single bed also draped with red, above which hung a large reproduction of Guido Reni's 'Ecce Homo'. I could see by its shape that this was a room in one of the towers, for the windows were circular, forming as it were an alcove, and this had been adapted as a place for prayer, with a prie-dieu, a crucifix, even a stoup for Holy Water. This little cell was bare but for its sparse religious trimmings, and the rest of the room was furnished with a bureau, chairs, and a table, besides the heavy chest-of-drawers and wardrobe, suggesting its uncomfortable use as sitting-room and bedroom combined. Another religious picture faced the bed, a tortured reproduction of the Scourging of Christ, and on the wall by the door near which I stood there was a third, of Christ falling with the Cross. The room struck chill, as though it were never heated. It even smelt forbidding, a mixture of polish and heavy hangings.
I switched off the light and went out. As I did so I saw that I had been observed. A woman had come down to the corridor from the floor above, and now stood watching me before descending further.
'Bonsoir, Monsieur le Comte,' she said. 'Are you looking for Mademoiselle Blanche?'
'Yes,' I lied quickly, 'she's not in her room.'
I felt myself obliged to go towards her. She was small, thin and elderly, and from her dress and the way she spoke I judged her to be a servant.
'Mademoiselle Blanche is with Madame la Comtesse,' she said, and I wondered if she knew instinctively that there was something wrong, because the expression in her eyes was curious, even amazed, and she glanced over my shoulder towards the room I had just left.
'It doesn't matter,' I said. 'I can see her later.'
'Is there anything wrong, Monsieur le Comte?' she asked, and behind her small eyes I could see still greater curiosity. Her voice was intimate, confiding, as though possibly I had a secret that we might share.
'No,' I said. 'Why should there be?'
She looked away from me again, down the corridor to the closed door.
'I beg pardon, Monsieur le Comte,' she said. 'I only thought there must be something wrong for you to go to Mademoiselle Blanche's room.'
Her eyes flickered away from me. I sensed no affection there, no warmth, none of the trust that I had seen in Gaston; yet there was at the same time a suggestion of long familiarity, bringing some understanding between us of an unpleasant kind.
'I hope Monsieur le Comte's visit to Paris was successful?' she said, an inflection in her voice other than courtesy, as though she hinted that something might have gone amiss which would earn criticism.
'Perfectly,' I replied, and was about to pass her when she said, 'Madame la Comtesse knows you are home. I was just going down to the salon to tell you. It would be best to come up and see her now, or I shall have no peace.'
Madame la Comtesse ... The words were ominous. If I were Monsieur le Comte, then who was she? Doubt began to return to me, the first faint brush of panic.
'I can go later,' I said, 'there's no great hurry.'
'You know very well she won't wait, Monsieur le Comte,' said the woman, her inquisitive black eyes fixed upon me. There was no escape.
'Very well,' I said.
The servant turned towards the stairs and I went after her up the long, twisting flight. We came to another corridor like the one we had left below, which branched to a third, running parallel, and I caught a glimpse of a service staircase through an open baize door, whence the smell of food came floating from the depths. We passed through yet another door, and then stood before the last one in the corridor. The servant opened it, giving me first a little nod, like a signal, and as she went through she said to someone within, 'I met Monsieur le Comte coming up the stairs. He was on his way to see you.'
There were three persons in the room, which was large but so filled with furniture that there was hardly space to move between the tables and the chairs. Dominating the whole was a great double bed with curtained hangings. A stove, burning brightly with open doors, gave out an intense heat, so that walking into the atmosphere was enough to stifle anyone coming from the cold rooms below. Two small fox-terriers, with bows and bells jangling from their collars, ran towards me barking shrilly.
I swung my eyes round the room to take in what I could, the do
gs leaping at my legs, and I saw the tall, thin woman who had left the salon when I entered it, and close to her an ancient cure, white-haired, his small black cap on the back of his head, his pleasant round face pink and unlined. Beyond him, almost on top of the stove itself, seated in the depths of a great arm-chair, was a massive elderly woman, her flesh sagging in a hundred lines, but her eyes, her nose, her mouth so astonishingly and horribly like my own that for one wild moment I believed after all Jean de Gue had come up here before me and was masquerading as a final jest.
She held out her arms, and drawn to her like a magnet I went instinctively to kneel beside her chair, and was at once caught and smothered, lost in the mountain of flesh and woollen wraps, feeling momentarily like a fly trapped in a great spider's web, yet at the same time fascinated because of the likeness, another facet of the self, but elderly, female, and grotesque. I thought of my own mother, dead long ago when I was a boy of ten, and she seemed dim and faded, lost to memory, bearing no resemblance to this swollen replica of all that might have been.
Her hands clung about me, reluctant to let me go yet pushing me at the same time, murmuring in my ear, 'There, there, be off with you, great baby, great brute. You've been amusing yourself, I know.' I drew away from her and looked into her eyes, half-hidden by the heavy lids and the pouched skin beneath, and they were my own eyes, mocking, my own eyes buried and transformed.
'Everyone is upset as usual with your goings on,' she said. 'Francoise in hysterics, Marie-Noel with a fever, Renee sulking, Paul ill-tempered. Ouf! They make me sick, the whole collection. I was the only one not to worry. I knew you would turn up when you were ready to come home, and not before.' She dragged me down again, chuckling in her throat, and then patted me on the shoulder and thrust me away. 'I am the only one with faith in this house, isn't it true?' she said, looking up at the cure, who smiled at her, nodding his head, and as the nod continued intermittently I realized it was a nervous trick, a sort of spasm, that he could not help, having nothing to do with assent. The effect was disconcerting and I withdrew my eyes from him, glancing instead at the thin woman, who had not once looked at me since I entered the room, but now closed the book she was holding.