“Me?” exclaimed Jane.
He smiled, his calm, soothing smile. “Yes, you. Have you ever climbed the Cairngorm Mountains in Scotland?”
“No.”
“Your eyes remind me of Cairngorm, and the general insubstantial air you have reminds me of the Cairngorms when night is stealing down. An ineffably magic moment, because nothing is quite real, and the mountains cease all at once to have anything solid about them.”
“Mr. Pennington,” she told him, “you are a poet.”
“Maybe,” he agreed, lighting a fresh cigarette for her. “But we all have our poetical moments, and you” - smiling into her eyes - “inspire them.”
Jane sighed. “I could go on like this for a long time,” she said, “listening to such beautifully rare compliments. But it is Sandra you should be thinking of painting, Mr. Pennington, Sandra, as all the world knows, is quite spectacularly lovely.”
“I do not generally agree with the opinions of all the world,” he told her, “I prefer to form my own opinions, and therefore they are much rarer.”
Jane had never known anyone quite like him before. She had never known anyone like Rene, but Rene, when he listened to her talking, always had a faint smile, as if he found her amusing. Never yet had she known him to be completely in earnest, completely serious. Whereas this man, this Michael Pennington, listened to her with the utmost seriousness in his expression, and it was plain that his nature was predominantly serious. She could talk to him about her father, and tell him of all the little things he and she had done together, and how much she missed him now that she no longer had him, and his grey eyes warmed her with sympathy at once. She told him of her ambition to travel and see much more of the world, and he understood that ambition with ease.
“One of these days you must come to Rome,” he said, “And I will show you the Colosseum by moonlight. And not only the Colosseum ... There is so much to see in Rome that even the thought of it takes my breath away, although nowadays I’m very familiar with it all! One just never grows tired of Rome, the sunlight and the antiquity, the dignity of it all. Oh, yes, you’ll simply have to come to Rome!”
She recalled that Rene had said: “You must visit New York, Jane, and Vienna, and Rome ... But he hadn’t said: “You must come to Paris, and I will show it to you!” Apparently even Sandra had been disappointed, because he had promised to show her Paris, and hadn’t done so.
Yet when they rowed back across the lake, and emerged from the woods in a corner of the chateau grounds, she found herself looking eagerly for Rene, and was delighted when she caught sight of him at last, strolling at his hostess’s side along one of the paths. It was just possible she was extra delighted because he was no longer with Sandra, and after having had no opportunity at all to rest her eyes on him for the past couple of hours - and she was astounded when a glance at her watch had informed her how long she had been on the island - the sight of him carrying on an apparently earnest conversation with the Comtesse was extraordinarily good.
Like looking on a sun-baked land, and then being rewarded with the sight of green fields. Green fields? Was that what Rene was to her? Green, verdant fields, growing greener every time she gazed at them!
But the Comtesse looked at her with a quizzical gleam in her eyes, and said: “We’ve all been speculating about what had happened to you two! ... Did you by any chance take the boat out? It’s a bit leaky. You could have I been drowned.”
“Rubbish,” Pennington said. “If it leaks we didn’t j notice it, and we’ve been sitting ,on your island discussing all sorts of things.”
“Extremely interesting things, I should say,” the Comtesse murmured, and looked at Rene. His face was as inscrutable as a dark, graven image, and Jane had never seen him look like that before.
“One thing we discussed,” the Englishman admitted, “was the possibility of my being able to paint Miss Arden one day. She has an extremely paintable face.”
“I told him he must paint Sandra,” Jane said, feeling awkward because Rene was so unlike himself.
“But it is you, Miss Arden, whom I desire to consign to canvas,” Pennington told her, with his quiet, grey-eyed smile.
Rene glanced at his watch. “I’m afraid we’ll have to be going,” he said.
Mark put her into the car, but before they drove off the artist looked at her earnestly.
“I hope I’ll see you again, Miss Arden,” he said, holding her hand very firmly. “You’ll be in the neighbourhood for some little while?”
“Yes, I expect so.”
“Then, unless Elspeth insists on my leaving” - and he smiled at Elspeth as if he knew there was no danger at all of that - “I’ll be in the neighbourhood, too, for a week or so longer.”
“Come and see us at the farm,” Sandra invited, as if she had a right to issue invitations. But Rene sat very straight and detached behind the wheel of the car.
“Thank you, I will,” Pennington replied, and stood watching as the cars drove off.
CHAPTER X
The following morning Sandra presented Jane with a list of things she required to be bought for her in the near-by town.
It was a fairly long list, and it included such items as nail varnish - Sandra was always experimenting with nail varnish, and she explained that she had not had time when she was in Paris to look for the type she wanted, and it was just possible an obscure little French chemist might have it - taking a dress to the cleaners, and matching a belt with a piece of velvet.
“It must be absolutely the right match, and it must be good quality velvet,” Sandra said. “Clarri is quite handy with her needle, and she’s going to run me up a little jacket to go with that white dress of mine. Take the Cadillac, and for heaven’s sake don’t hit the back of anyone else’s car this time” - smiling to take the sting out of the words. “I’d come with you, only Rene and I are going to script-read together this morning.”
But when Jane reached the big garage where the Cadillac was housed, she found Rene inside the garage casually inspecting the car.
He walked round it, smoking a cigarette, and looking at Jane. “I’ve come to the conclusion that a Cadillac is not the make of car I will ever one day wish to possess,” he remarked. “Come, and I will drive you in to do your shopping. I see you have there a list as long as your arm.”
But Jane gazed at him in concern. “You can’t do that,” she said. “Sandra has only just told me that you two are going to script-read this morning.”
He walked to his black car, which shared the Cadillac’s garage, and held open the door beside the driving-seat. “My dear Mademoiselle Jane Arden, I do not receive my orders for the day from any woman who has yet been born into this world, and that, of course, goes for Sandra, who is admittedly very delectable. If she wishes to script-read she may do so, but I have not seen her so far this morning, so I have no knowledge of what she intends to do.” He stood aside from the door. “Get in, Jane, and don’t look as if the sky has fallen apart. I may be a poor substitute for that artistic fellow Pennington you met yesterday, but at least I am willing to act as your chauffeur throughout the morning.”
Jane got in, and wondered whether this was something that was really happening to her. That he should be willing to wait for her while she shopped - the sort of shopping that would drive a man mad if he had actively to participate in it - and bring her back again after absenting himself from Sandra for at least a couple of hours, was something she couldn’t quite take in. It was too good to be true, for one thing, and it made her feel guilty for another.
Sandra wouldn’t like it. Sandra might even be quite sharply annoyed, even if the velvet she managed to procure matched the belt to perfection.
“Well?” Rene said at last, when they were driving smoothly along the road which led to the village, and would ultimately lead them to the nearest town. “What is the matter, Jane?”
Jane relaxed with a sigh against the yielding back of the seat. Suddenly she decided that nothing was
the matter, and nothing could be the matter when she was alone like this with Rene, and it was a beautiful morning, without a cloud in the sky.
All Nature is gay!... she thought, and her heart lifted. “Nothing is the matter,” she told him, almost fervently. One of his hands left the wheel, and she felt it press hers gently.
“You are completely transparent, Jane,” he told her. “And you are completely adorable!”
And then they neither of them said a word until they reached the town.
He told her where he would leave the car, and where she could rejoin him when all her shopping was finished. Then he smiled at her, sketched her a salute, and left her. She hurried through her shopping as quickly as she could, hoping against hope that there would be just a few minutes to spare before they had to return home. He might even ask her to have a coffee under one of the gay awnings outside one of the pavement cafes. Or, since it was an extremely interesting old town, with the river actually flowing through it, and many unusual features, and they had not so far explored it, he might offer to show her a little of it. They couldn’t delay long, but he could show her just a little of it.
Her hands were trembling with eagerness when at last she reached the parking-place and found him already sitting in the car.
There was a huge casket of confectionery on the back seat, and beside it a bouquet of hot-house flowers nestling in layers of tissue paper. Beside the bouquet there was one solitary deep red rose that looked as if it had either fallen from the bouquet, or been placed there for some special purpose.
Jane discovered what that purpose was when Rene reached for it and dropped it in her lap.
“When I bought you a carnation you left it to wither in the car,” he said. “I hope you will treat this poor thing more kindly.”
Jane looked at it, making the whiteness of her fingers seem even more white by comparison, and she felt one exceedingly sharp prickle embed itself in her flesh. She hardly knew what to say, or how, even, to thank him; but he could tell by the way the colour rushed up under her skin, and by the way she kept her eyelashes lowered, that he had taken her completely by surprise. And it wasn’t only surprise ... Something inside her was trembling with unbelief, bewildered, conscious of a wild desire to start hoping.
And yet she knew very well that if she ever started to do that it would be the most foolish thing she had ever done in her life. Even though the rose was so richly and gloriously red.
He started the car, and they shot away from the centre of the town while she was still holding the rose. It was quite clear to her that he had no intention of delaying the outing, or asking her to have coffee, and once they were on the homeward road that became clearer than ever. He asked her in a pleasant conversational voice whether she had managed to do all her shopping, and whether the various commissions Sandra had entrusted her with had been satisfactorily executed. And when she said she had done her best, but there hadn’t been a great deal of time, he nodded and smiled and observed that Sandra didn’t take time into consideration when she thought up her errands. But being Sandra no one could object to a certain amount of unreasonableness on her part.
“She is so lovely that one would forgive her almost anything,” he said.
Jane said nothing, and decided that the impressive box of confectionery in the back of the car, and almost certainly the bouquet of exotic flowers, were because Sandra was so lovely, and it was just possible he had spoilt her morning for her. It was just possible he had promised to script-read with her, and these were the peace offerings.
They emerged from the village close to La Cause Perdue, but instead of following the usual straight line of main road, they branched off a secondary road, right into the forest itself. The car slid to a standstill outside a small grey house, rather like a forester’s house, only in far better trim than any normal forester would maintain, and with a shining brass knocker on the green-painted front door. Even as the car stopped Jane saw net curtains at one of the lower windows pushed aside, and a face looked out - a small, eager face, framed in a tangle of dark elf-locks.
Jane looked at Rene in a questioning way, but all in a moment he seemed to have forgotten her very existence, and was out of the car and moving up the garden path to the green door with the zest of one who was impelled to do so by some driving and compulsory force. As he reached the door it was flung open, and small whirlwind emerged to greet him, and a thin pair of arms went round his neck and threatened to strangle him as he caught her up and held her with a kind of passionate fierceness.
“Oh, Papa, Papa!” a childish voice cried in delighted tones. “You have come again soon, and Tante Clothilde said it might be days before you were here again!”
“Tante Clothilde should not fill your ears with such improbable stories,” the man returned. “Of course I have come, as I promised I would, the moment I could make it convenient!”
The child sighed rapturously, clinging to his neck.
“And you always keep your promises Papa!”
“I endeavour to do so, my little one,” he replied, and became aware of Jane alighting from the car and coming slowly up the garden path.
Jane said, staring as if she was completely fascinated by the sight of the child: “This is your daughter?”
“Yes, it is my daughter Adele.” He set her on the path and smiled at her. “Say bonjour to the lady, Adele! She is a very pretty lady, is she not, and comes all the way from England!”
Adele looked Jane over consideringly. Her enormous eyes - dark like her father’s - were fringed with lashes like silken Chinese brooms. She could not have been more than eight or nine, and was an undersized eight or nine at that.
“But she is not the one with the golden hair ... The one Clarri says is a femme fatale, because she is too beautiful! I do not know what a femme fatale is, Papa, but I would like very much to see the lady with the golden hair, the one who is staying with you to make the picture!”
Rene laughed, and pulled her own lank locks. “What an infant to babble about femmes fatales! ... You see too much of Clarri. Run out to the car and see what you can find on the back seat. Unless my eyes deceive me there was a very large box of bonbons there, and a handsome corsage for Tante Clothilde. While you make certain that they have not been spirited away, we will go inside and prepare Tante Clothilde for the wearing of such a splendid corsage.”
With a little delighted shriek the child flew out to the car, and Rene stood aside for Jane to precede him into the house.
“Apres vous, mademoiselle!” he said, with light gravity.
But Jane put one foot into the tiny hall, and then hesitated. “Perhaps you would prefer it if I sat in the car,” she said. “I don’t wish to intrude, and I shall understand perfectly. And there’s no need to feel that I’m in a hurry...”
But he looked at her rather oddly, and smiled, “I said ‘after you’, Jane! I didn’t bring you here to keep you sitting in the car.”
The hall, although small, had a gleaming floor, and the space was enclosed with some fine wood panelling. Rene pushed open a door on the right, and there in front of her eyes was the strangest room Jane had ever seen in her life. It was a long, low room with plenty of light flooding into it from the big window at the opposite end, and it seemed to be filled with enormous furniture. There was a dresser that reached the ceiling, and shone as if it was made of ebony, and a great sideboard that bore a dish of fruit in keeping with its size, and a round table with a chenille cloth with bobbles on its fringes. There was a cage of love-birds hanging in the window, and an ornamental tank of goldfish under the window, and a huge cat sitting on the hearth, although there were only paper flowers in the grate.
There were quantities of paper flowers everywhere, and they were so obviously artificial that Jane found it difficult to wrench her eyes away from them. She might have found it even more difficult but for the fact that a voice emerged from the depths of a capacious armchair and distracted her attention.
It was a thread
like voice, and the owner of it was the most diminutive person she had ever seen in her life. A little old lady with bunches of white curls and great black eyes, with a Flemish lace shawl about her shoulders, and mittens on her hands. In addition to the mittens there were rings, and they blazed away like fire in the shadows of the straight-backed chair.
“Ah, Etienne,” she said softly, complacently, “it is good to see you, mon enfant! The little one has been watching for you from the window, although we were not sure you would come today. And I see you have someone with you.” The magnificent black eyes peered at Jane, in a fashion which proved that in spite of their brilliance the vision was very much impaired. “How do you do, my dear?” the thin voice went on in French. “Do please sit down. My great-nephew must introduce us.”
Her great-nephew performed the necessary introduction, and Jane had the feeling that this was another rather curious phase in her acquaintance with Rene Delaroche. For one thing, he had ceased to be Rene again, and it was quite plain that the old lady had the same Basque blood that was coursing strongly through his veins, running thinly through hers. She was no more like the ordinary, everyday Frenchwomen Jane had met since her arrival in France, than the love-birds in the cage resembled the cat on the hearth, and Jane had a mental picture of her in some village overhung by high peaks, with the sunlight falling strongly across quite a different floor to this. A hard, baked floor, with, perhaps a bare scrubbed table in the middle of it, a stove with a black pot bubbling on it, and strings of herbs hanging from the ceiling beams.
There might be a crucifix hanging on the wall, and a prie-dieu in a corner ... A prie-dieu!
Suddenly she recalled that one and only glimpse she had had of Rene’s own room in La Cause Perdue, and remembered the graceful little prie-dieu with the rose- velvet kneeling pad. It was the only thing of beauty his room contained.
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