Authors: Rose Burghley
“I—see!” he said again, and then remained absolutely still and silent for several long, drawn-out seconds that seemed to her to be opening up an enormous gulf between them which neither of them would ever be able to cross. It was just as if his whole body was stilled, in those seconds, and something that had been alive and active when he left the house had died while he stood there within a bare foot of her. And venturing to lift her eyes at last and look at him under her eyelashes she recognised that for the second time since they had known one another his answering gaze was filled with dislike. “Come and sit down,” he invited, turning to a neglected garden seat behind them. “Come and sit down, Mademoiselle Caroline Darcy, and I will tell you something that you can laugh your head off about afterwards, because it will no doubt fill you with amusement!”
Caroline automatically sat down beside him, but she felt a little disturbed because his voice was so cold and smooth.
“I have been very unhappy since I left here, because it meant that I had to be away from you, and there was so much that I wanted to say to you—so much that I wanted you to know!” One corner of his mouth went down mockingly, and he looked at her with mockery in his eyes. “Being naturally rather stupid I had the feeling that you would listen this time, but I had promised Diane to drive her to some friends who live in some inaccessible spot which I did not know was inaccessible when she asked me to take her to them, and I thought that it would be well to get this visit over before I talked to you. I am, as I said, very stupid, and I thought that perhaps you would think it strange if I went off and left you after—well, we had perhaps made some plans for the future! So I insisted on starting off early in order to be back in good time for dinner that night, but as I have said I did not know that these friends of Diane’s could not be come upon with very much ease, and twice we lost the way, and a third time we found ourselves back on our original road. Then we ran out of petrol, and I had to walk to a garage, and by that time it was evening, and we had to have a meal—at least I could not starve Diane, however angry I might feel with her! And then, when I came to start up the car again, it would not start, and once more I had to walk to a garage to find a mechanic, and the mechanic diagnosed such serious trouble that there was nothing for it but to put up at the hotel for the night! And the car wasn’t ready until after breakfast this morning, and that is how it happened that we were not back sooner! But I do not, of course, expect you to believe me!”
Caroline sat very still on the seat, and something inside her wanted to weep over him. Oh, Armand, Armand...! she thought. So absurd, and so chivalrous, and so essentially kind... ! He couldn’t allow Diane to starve...! He wouldn’t allow anyone to starve!
“Well?” he asked coldly, as she sat struggling with her emotions. “Do you feel like having a really good laugh? Or is it that you don’t believe me?”
“No; of course not...! I—I do believe you, and there is nothing to laugh at....”
“You don’t think that, being addicted to writing plays, I have an inventive capacity which might do better than produce such a story as that? For, although you say you believe me, you almost certainly don’t, and for my part I no longer care whether or not you believe any single thing I tell you!” As she turned a startled face to him he ground out his cigarette beneath the heel of his shoe, and then lighted another with a ferocity that was completely unlike him. “Women...!” he exclaimed. “I had sense when I knew their value, and knew always how to deal with them! And then I met you, and it seemed that I had discovered something rare and perfect, that would make my life a joy to be lived, and I wanted only to place my heart at your feet for you to step on it, but you spurned me in less than a fortnight because I had been afraid to tell you the truth about myself!” He laughed harshly, not looking at her. “And even then I still went on hoping—and hoping...! I didn’t want to lose the perfect thing I’d found...!”
“Oh, Armand!” she exclaimed, in a choked voice.
He glanced at her for a moment, and then away. Then he stood
u
p.
“I have told you the truth,” he said, speaking so rapidly that it was just as if the words were bursting from him, “and it may be some satisfaction to you to know that Armand de Marsac fell for you like any callow youth without any experience whatsoever of life, and in this instance it is I who have been taken in! It is you who can laugh, because I made a mistake, and although you may be sweet, and lovely, and desirable, you would no more be capable of trusting a man like myself than— than you are capable of flying like that bird up there in the sky!” watching it as it winged its way across a clear patch of blue.
Caroline placed a hand on his arm. She was trembling with the urgent need to make him understand.
“But, Armand, I do—I will trust you! It was just that, at first there was the shock of finding you were someone else, and then Diane—Diane Montauban seemed such a close friend!”
He shook his sleek dark head at her, his brown eyes positively glinting with mockery.
“Men of my type do not have women friends—you should know that, Cherie. The platonic in life would be the last thing to interest me, as you must be aware!”
I’m aware of nothing of the kind,” and her voice sounded almost angry, because he was hurting her so much. “I don’t even know very much about the life you lived until I—until I met you! And it doesn’t matter about the life you lived,” her eyes hanging upon his with open appeal, “before I met you, because— because.... ”
“Yes?” he insisted, with a smoothness and waiting quality that chilled her.
“Because I love you,” she almost whispered. “Because I want to be with you always!”
“Even under the circumstances you suggested might suit me very nicely on the night Diane arrived?” he enquired quietly. “I think, if you’ll remember, there was some idea on your part that I could set you up in a separate establishment, and when the day came along that I found someone who could safely be asked to share my name the association could continue without any interruption, because that is the way we do things over here in
France! Do you remember that you put all those ideas into my head, even if they were not there already?” He could almost feel her shrink.
“Is your love strong enough to live with me under those conditions?” he asked. “Is it, ma petite?” And then as she looked at him with agonised eyes, as if the struggle was actually taking place in her mind and heart, he burst out with a kind of flamelike anger: “There you are, you see...! You think so little of me that you imagine I am capable of putting forward such a suggestion to you—of all women in the world!” He ran the fingers of both hands almost despairingly through his thick dark hair, and then sank down dejectedly on the blistered and peeling garden
seat. “No; for us there would be no happiness------------In my
life there is so much that you would never approve, and certainly that you would never understand! My work— the time I have to devote to it—the people connected with it! Very soon now we shall be putting my new play into rehearsal, and I should be away at all sorts of odd hours.... You would feel mistrustful if I took my leading lady out to lunch, and if I took her out to dinner that would be the end! You would see mistresses at every turning, and past loves at every corner.... There would be no harmony, and no peace, and in the end nothing but the ruin of our own dead love between us! Therefore it is best that there shall be no dead love, and that we shall part now while it is still only a thing newly born!” His face twisted, and still he avoided looking directly at her. “That is sensible, is it not, cherief”
Caroline felt as if she had turned cold right down to the very roots of her being, and on the only important occasion in her life when she wanted to defend herself she could say nothing. On the only occasion in her life when she was prepared to plead for something she couldn’t find the words.
“You agree with me that it is sensible?” he insisted.
“From your point of view, or—my own?” she asked, when she could find a voice.
“From the point of view of us both...! I have my work to think of. Without my work I should soon be reduced to the unfortunate condition of Robert de Bergerac,” with a dryness that brought the colour stealing up over her throat and face, although her face she kept averted from him. “And although it is true I have the
bookshop in the Rue de Rivoli, that, too, has to be kept an eye on occasionally, and with awkwardness in one’s home life none of these things would be simple. In fact, nothing would be simple!” He spoke with sudden decisiveness, as she stood straight and slim in front of him, and stared deliberately away across the herb garden. “You would probably find life quite unbearable, and therefore it is better that you should go home to a life you know—although not to the room in which you were taken ill!” as if he was suddenly brought up short by that recollection.
She swallowed twice before she reassured him on this point, almost incapable of believing that because of a few misunderstandings which might occur at first—until they knew one another better than they did at the present
time!------he was prepared to wipe her right out of his
existence, like someone cleaning a slate before starting to use it again. Because of his career, and his bookshop, and.... ?
She bit her lip hard to steady it, and then told him:
“Lady Penelope has asked me to stay with her for a time! She wanted me to return with her to Paris, and then go home with her to England. I think it is because she— she knew my grandmother.”
“Then that is excellent!” he declared, as if he was immeasurably relieved. “Lady Penelope is a woman for whom I have a great admiration, and she will be good to you. She may even ask you to live with her as a kind of companion.”
She was silent, and he stood up and they started to leave the herb garden. She walked a little ahead of him, and she hardly saw the flagged path, and the sudden twists and turns it made.
“You would find it pleasant to live with Lady Penelope as a companion?” he asked conversationally.
“I—I don’t know. I—yes; I’m sure I should!”
“She is very easy to get on with, and would give you a lot of advice when you required it.” There was silence for perhaps half a minute as they turned into the shrubberies, and then he went on in the same conversational tone: “While you are in Paris we must all get together and have dinner one evening! And you must permit Markham to show you the sights of our capital— the reasonably respectable ones that is!”
She said nothing, and once they reached the house she flew up
to her room and locked the door as soon as she entered it. Then, as she had done once before, she sat down on the foot of her bed and clutched at one of the bedposts. But this time no tears would come, and her hands were cold as ice as they gripped the garland-wreathed post—cold as something inside her that felt as if it was suffering from shock.
CHAPTER XIV
Ten days later Caroline emerged with Lady Pen from a smart little shop on the Rue de la Paix, and Caroline was the possessor of yet another example of Lady Pens generosity. This time it was a chiffon stole in a delightful shade of flamingo pink which Lady Pen said would brighten up the chic little black dinner dress she had bought her only the day before, and Caroline hardly knew how to thank her. She was almost wordless as they stood on the pavement in the morning sunshine, while Paris shop-gazers pressed close to the windows behind them.
“You are too good,” Caroline managed, at last. “Honestly, I don’t know what to say!”
Lady Pen’s eyes twinkled at her from under the brim of a highly unsuitable hat which had certainly not started life in the French capital.
“My dear, don’t you know I’m enjoying myself?” she demanded. “It gives me pleasure to give you things! And don’t worry about currency, because Christopher derives some sort of an income from a French export business— a relative of his mother’s side, who left him a share in the profits—and he can provide us with all we need. And now, where are you meeting him for lunch?”
“I ------ ” Caroline was beginning, when Christopher
himself alighted from one of the gleaming French taxis, and stood bowing and smiling in front of them. He looked very much like the Englishman abroad, in a suit of Savile Row cut, and such immaculate linen that it could hardly have been more immaculate; and in spite of his absurd little bow he made Caroline think of such far-away places as Piccadilly and the Green Park.
“Your pardon, ladies—or should I say mesdemoiselles, since neither of you has yet acquired a husband?—isn’t this where I
pick up my cargo?”
“If you mean, isn’t this where I surrender Caroline to you, it is,” Lady Pen answered. And when they both tried to persuade her to have lunch with them she dug in her heels and declined. “I get tired after a lot of shopping and sight-seeing, and I much prefer to have lunch peacefully at the hotel, and enjoy a nap immediately afterwards,” she explained. But Caroline was certain that it was because she wanted them to be alone, and because she had already started seriously to hope... And only Caroline knew how forlorn was her hope!
But that didn’t prevent her from enjoying her lunch with Christopher, and from thoroughly enjoying seeing Paris in his company. It was going to take her a long time to get used to the beauties of Paris, and all that Paris had to offer to anyone as completely inexperienced as herself, and Christopher was frequently amused by the states of ecstatic admiration into which she worked herself. He didn’t know that she was remembering all that Armand had told her about the great triumphal arch of Paris— the Arc de Triomphe—that was the largest triumphal arch in existence, and deciding that he hadn’t exaggerated at all when he had described its impressiveness. And that the Place de la Concorde was rightly a place in which to begin one’s peregrination of the city, not only because it was associated with one of the most tragic periods of French history, but because of its dignity, with the aristocratic Hotel de Crillon, and the Automobile Club of France, on the opposite side of the Ministry of Marine, and the new American Embassy.