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  Marthe left behind her a note, a shining kitchen, and a well-stocked larder, but Caroline was not informed of these things until a small glass of neat spirit had gone a long way to putting fresh life into her. And even then she couldn’t take them in. She sat with the empty brandy glass in her hand, disliking the unaccustomed taste in her mouth, and thinking what a huge room it was in which the shadows seemed to be lengthening moment by moment. There were mirrors on the walls, and sparkling chandeliers descended from the ceiling—at least, they would sparkle, she felt sure, if someone depressed an electric light switch. Unless the place was too remote for electricity. But, even so, a house of this size and magnificence could surely generate its own supply?

  And she was proved right about this when the slim dark man, with a kind of feline elegance about him, who had driven her up to the house in his car, returned from conducting a conversation with an agitated old man in the kitchen. The agitated old man was the hewer of wood, and drawer of water, who had been present at the time of the accident. But as yet Caroline knew nothing about this, and she watched the room spring into radiance with a dull but definite feeling of appreciation.

  The chandeliers didn’t merely sparkle, they looked like large clusters of diamonds overhead. And the walls of the room were a kind of pale sea-green, very restful, very reposeful, particularly as the ceiling repeated the colour-scheme; and if the paint-work was a little chipped and stained here and there, and gilded cornices and vine-leaves wreathing graceful columns were a little tarnished, it didn’t seem to matter very much, because the general effect was so altogether pleasing. At least, Caroline found it infinitely pleasing. She was able to identify various examples of Empire furniture, in spite of the fact that a great deal of it was shrouded in dust-covers; and a little Louis Quinze writing-desk against the farther wall could hardly have looked more in its element. And the portraits looking down at her from their appropriate panels appeared to be benign and smiling, as if they had no objection at all to seeing her there.

  There was one old gentleman in a full-bottomed wig who sent her quite an encouraging look, and a lovely lady, who looked a bit as Madame Recamier must have looked in her heyday, parted her full red lips at her.

  Unless it was the effect of the brandy!

  “What a lovely room,” she heard herself murmuring, with growing appreciation. “What an absolutely perfect room!”

  The dark man was frowning a little.

  “I’m sorry I left you in the dark,” he apologised, “but affairs here are not so simple. In fact they are extremely complex.”

  “Complex?” She looked up at him with a dreamy expression in her eyes, and they were wood-violet eyes, heavy and languid with a desire for sleep. The fumes of the brandy were definitely mounting a little, and she wished Marthe would make her appearance, and that some suggestion about a big bed with downy pillows would be forthcoming. It didn’t matter about food, because she wasn’t hungry, but her whole body was stiff after her journey, and she yearned to relax her limbs between cool sheets. “What is it that is so complex?” she asked.

  “The fact that Marthe is not here,” he explained

  “Marthe not here!”

  She felt conscious of a shock. She had come all the way from England, and Marthe wasn’t here...!

  “There has been an accident.” He paced up and down in front of her, his cat-like strides fascinating her a little, the sinuous grace of his build fascinating her still more. He wasn’t tall, he wasn’t short...and he struck her as having a tremendous supply of vitality. Curious, restless vitality. His linen was immaculate and he looked as if he patronised the most expensive tailor; but there was something Continental about his tailoring—something very French. He was a Frenchman who hadn’t introduced himself, and she felt it would be a little less confusing if she knew who he was.

  “An—accident?” she repeated.

  “Yes.” He stopped and smiled down at her one-sidedly, as if to soften the bad news. “It is Marthe who has met with an accident.” And he explained exactly what had occurred.

  “But this is terrible!” she exclaimed, and stood up, holding a little unsteadily to the arms of her chair. “This is absolutely terrible! Poor Marthe!”

  “I agree.” He spread his hands and lifted his shoulders in an extremely French gesture. “But there it is, and the problem we have to decide is how we may overcome the awkwardness that it entails. You, for instance...! Perhaps you will be good enough to inform me, mademoiselle, who you are, and why precisely you are visiting here? Pierre understands that Marthe invited you as her guest.”

  “Pierre?” she echoed.

  “The gardener and odd-job man.”

  “Oh, yes.” She remembered Marthe had sometimes referred to Pierre in her letters. “And he is right. My name is Caroline Darcy—not spelt as you would spell it, but as if it was all one word—and I did come here to stay with Marthe. She invited me. She didn’t think the Comte de Marsac would mind, because he never comes here himself, and he is just letting the place go to rack and ruin.”

  She frowned because the brandy had fired her indignation, and having seen what a truly beautiful old place the chateauwas at close quarters she felt she could never forgive the Comte de Marsac. He must be a man of execrable taste if he could neglect this delightful property, and choose to live in Paris. The nearest she had come to seeing Paris for herself was when she passed through it in a train; but a spreading mass of bricks and mortar, however elegantly planned, was too reminiscent of London to appeal to her strongly. And Paris wasn’t even London. It wasn’t as respectable as London! It was associated in her mind with the Folies Bergere, the Moulin Rouge, Montmartre and the Left Bank. Whereas when one thought of London one thought of Hyde Park and Buckingham Palace, the Horse Guards and the Mansion House.

  “I think it’s a crime to allow a building that has been left to one by one’s ancestors to fall into a state of decay,” she declared quite decidedly, although so far she hadn’t had much evidence of actual decay. “It’s a failure of trust, and the Comte de Marsac must be lacking all sense of responsibility to behave as he does. His forbears would hardly be proud of him, especially as he makes a lot of money writing plays. I don’t suppose they’re very worthwhile plays.”

  “You think not, Mademoiselle Darcy?” as if her opinion interested him.

  “Marthe has indicated in her letters that they’re rather doubtful plays—the sort of entertainment Parisians probably

  enjoy.”

  “Indeed?” and his dark eyebrows ascended a good deal. “You know Paris, Miss Darcy?”

  She had to admit that she didn’t know it at all, although she had passed through it that day, and his expression grew a little curious. She even thought there was a kind of cool humour about the set of the lips.

  “Then you are hardly in a position to state with any accuracy the type of entertainment Parisians enjoy,” he remarked drily. “But I can confirm that de Marsac does appeal to what you would probably describe as the least respectable element of our capital’s teeming life.”

  As she flushed a little, as if she was wondering why she had let her tongue run away with her about a man in whose house she was proposing to stay, he went on: “However, all this is hardly relevant at the moment. What is relevant is that you have arrived on a visit and there is no one to look after you!”

  “No one?” a little more falteringly. “Oh, of course, Marthe has always lived here alone. But I can look after myself—unless you think I’d be intruding at such a time...?” “There is no question of intrusion, but you are quite obviously not in a very robust state of health at the moment.”

  “I have been ill,” she admitted, “but I’m much better now. And I’m used to looking after myself... ”

  “Then, if you’ll forgive me, mademoiselle,” he said suavely, taking in through narrowed eyes the pallor of the small face, and the smudged mauve shadows beneath her eyes, and at the corners of the rather revealing mouth, “for saying so, the in
dications are that you do not do it with very much efficiency! Unless the illness was of a particularly devastating nature?”

  “It was pneumonia,” she said briefly.

  “That was bad,” he observed, and his brown eyes expressed so much sympathy all in a moment that it was a little disconcerting. “That was very bad!”

  “But not as bad as this thing that has happened to Marthe!” she exclaimed, clinging agitatedly to the arms of her chair. “Where is she? Have they taken her to hospital? What do they say about her? Will I be allowed to visit her soon... ?”

  “Not until you yourself have had a considerable amount of rest, I should say,” with an imperturbableness that made her feel angry. “And as to Marthe, she is at the moment quite comfortable, and everything is being done for her that can be done. I have already spoken over the telephone to the hospital authorities, and nothing will be lacking in her treatment. She left behind her a note for you, and instructions about your room, which is all ready for you. And judging by the contents of the larder the house is well provisioned.”

  “You seem to have found out quite a lot in a short time” Caroline remarked, regarding him for the first time a little suspiciously. “You—you know your way about the house! Are you”—a fresh suspicion entering her mind—”a friend of the Comte de Marsac... ?”

  “You have hit upon it right away,” he declared, making her a small, formal bow. “I am Robert de Bergerac—if not de Marsac’s closest friend, at least sufficiently close to win his permission to stay here occasionally—very much at your service! And one of the complications confronting us is that your and my plans seem to have coincided, for I, too, have arrived on a visit...”

  “You mean,” in a small, dismayed voice, “that you plan to stay here?”

  “Did plan to stay here,” he reassured her, “but, naturally, now there will have to be some amendment to my plans. There is a small cottage in the woods not far from here where I have put up before, and I have no doubt I shall find it fairly habitable.”

  “But that wouldn’t be fair to you!” she declared agitatedly. “You are a friend of the Comte, and you have stayed here before. Whereas I -- ”

  “‘Whereas you, Mademoiselle Darcy,” with a whimsical gleam in his eyes, “must be a friend very highly esteemed by our excellent Marthe, judging by the preparations she has made for you! There are at least two hot-water bottles in your bed— according to Pierre!—a couple of cooked ducklings in the larder, and enough tarts, cheeses and savouries to propitiate the appetite of a regiment! And what I suggest is that you go straight upstairs to your room, and although old Pierre has an invalid sister whom he cannot leave for long, I will persuade him to bring you a tray of something light—that is if you have no objections to a very withered, very gnarled old man whose age none of us can guess at visiting you in your apartment...?” “/have no objection at all,” she assured him, thinking that he really had got the situation in hand, but feeling horribly guilty because she was about to exclude him from his rightful quarters. “But if the cottage has not been looked after for some time, and is perhaps damp, and in any case not ready for you-------------------------------?”

  “Don’t give it a thought,” he said carelessly, as if a damp, unprepared cottage was something he could take in his stride, although from his appearance a far more luxurious background was his daily lot. “After driving all the way from Paris I could sleep like a log in a bivouac to-night! But if you will tell me if there is anything I can do to be of assistance to you ?”

  And then she remembered her case, and told him all about it, and the pile of leaves beneath which it was concealed. She looked so concerned at this belated recollection of her few worldly possessions that he promised he would set off and recover them for her without delay; and not for the first time she thought that, although he was obviously a very debonair man of the world, and a little more humour occasionally dwelt in his eyes than the situation, and this disaster that had overtaken Marthe, seemed to call for, there was also something warmly practical about him— as, for instance, when he had prevented her from collapsing on the drive, and decided immediately that she was suffering from pure exhaustion and nothing else. That ought to have commended itself to her, even if she was a little loath for it to do so.

  He insisted on holding her arm as they walked out into the hall, and there old Pierre was waiting, as if he had been ordered to do so, and looking a little bewildered, as if the passage of events had stunned him a little. He had a goatee beard, and shoulders so bent that he was practically a hunchback, and his eyes were dim with rheumatism as they looked towards Caroline.

  “If you will follow me, mademoiselle, I will show you to your room,” he said.

  And then Robert de Bergerac took him aside and said something to him in such rapid French that the English girl couldn’t possibly follow it, and the old man nodded several times.

  “It shall be as you say, monsieur. If that is as you wish, monsieur, it shall be as you say!”

  But he sounded rather more than surprised, and his rheumy eyes blinked as if he had been taken aback.

  Then Caroline was following him up the magnificent staircase, that uncurled like a fan until it reached a gallery overhanging the well of the hall. Their footsteps echoed on the stone floor; faded tapestries fluttered a little on the walls as they passed—father like banners stirring in a sudden current of air—and giant coffers and chests encroached upon the uncarpeted space over which they trod in order to reach a distant wing of the house. But once they reached it, it was well worth it, for the entire dying light of day was concentrated there, like a golden, last-minute benison.

  Caroline’s room, with a decidedly old-fashioned bathroom adjoining, enchanted her the moment she entered it. It overlooked a pleasance at the back of the house, and although from the window it was a very overgrown pleasance, its unkemptness, she felt sure, would provide a compelling charm in the daytime. She felt sure she would love to wander there whenever the opportunity was hers.

  A smell of white, climbing roses reached her as she stood for a moment beside the open window, and she inhaled deeply. A bat flew past the window, and an owl hooted in some trees close to the house. And as there were so many trees crowding close to the house she had the feeling that there would be many owls hooting.

  But she was not one of those people who found the noise of them mournful, and they emphasised the fact that she was deep in the heart of the country at last. All at once, in spite of Marthe’s accident, the concern she felt for her lying in her narrow hospital bed, the depression that had overtaken her because there was to be no one after all to welcome her after her long journey from England,

  and the peculiarity of her position in this strange house, a little glow of warmth stole round her heart because she was actually here. She was happy because she had arrived.

  Pierre said something about Marthe keeping the boiler so well stoked during the early part of the day that the water would be hot enough for a bath if she wanted one, and she thanked him for the information. He hung about awkwardly, saying he would bring her a tray, as Monsieur de Bergerac had requested; but after that he would have to leave because his sister was nervous of being left alone for long, especially after dark, and her health permitting he would be along in the morning. He was not much of a cook, but he would attend to the breakfast.... An English breakfast if the English mademoiselle insisted upon it....

  Caroline tossed her hat on the bed, and slipped out of her jacket, and suddenly she made up her mind. She no longer felt as if the fumes of brandy were clouding her brain, and she no longer felt that overpowering desire to slide between some sheets. The sheets were there on the well-made bed, and they looked as if they would smell fragrantly of lavender or dried rosemary when at last she tested the comfort of the mattress. But in the meantime she could, and would, bestir herself, and Pierre needn’t bother about a tray for her, but could go home at once to his invalid sister. There was food in the larder, and she could mak
e some coffee, and that slim, dark friend of the Comte de Marsac—who, incidentally, might object to her making free with his house when his housekeeper was no longer there; and she would probably have to look for some hotel accommodation in the morning—would probably like some coffee also before seeking that benighted cottage he had mentioned in the woods.

  She wasn’t happy about the cottage, and she wondered whether she ought to be the one to offer to spend the night there. But somehow she couldn’t quite see the curiously feline gentleman who called himself Robert of Bergerac agreeing to that.

  But she was able to insist on Pierre going home to his sister, and he looked plainly very relieved as he allowed himself to be dismissed. She heard his footsteps echoing along the gallery as he scuttled away, and it wasn’t until she watched him making his shadowy way across the terrace immediately below her window, and taking advantage of a gap in some shrubbery to disappear altogether, that she knew a momentary feeling of nervousness because she was alone in the chateau. A very, very old chateau, with woods shutting it in on three sides.

  The primordial forest, as she had thought of it earlier. CHAPTER III

  BUT she was in the kitchen, competently getting down to the task of making the coffee when Robert de Bergerac returned with her suit-case.

  He stood in the doorway watching her as she stood beneath the cavernous roof, one of Marthe’s aprons tied round her slender middle, her bright hair making a kind of halo for her face as the naked electric-light bulb sent its rays down upon it. The stove was very black and very shiny, and Marthe’s saucepans and kettles were all very shiny also. The big scrubbed kitchen table looked white as milk in the centre of the room, and at the far end the dresser was crowded with china that looked like Willow Pattern.