Lucas opened the door when she tapped on it with gloved knuckles. She fell into his arms. From that moment everything was a perfect and lovely dream, as he carried her into the bedroom. His hands tenderly undid the tiny buttons of her boots, his lips kissed her instep, his voice murmured in her ear as he slipped the embroidered lawn underwear from her shoulders.
Afterwards they lay in bed in each other’s arms. ‘One day I’ll tease you about all this,’ she told him lovingly. ‘When you’re an old married man and you look at a pretty girl, I’ll say I know you’re capable of enticing her into wickedness …’
‘How can it be wicked to be so in love?’
‘Oh, of course it’s not wicked ‒ nothing you could ever do would be wicked or wrong, my darling!’
But their time together was over for now. She had to dress and hurry to the Avenue d’Iena, where she was sure her Cousin Netta must see in her face that she had just spent two hours with her lover.
They were able to meet twice more in the little apartment. Then Lucas was summoned home to Lille for some business reason. Gaby pined, but each night as she fell asleep with his photograph in her arms she was sure he’d be back next day.
A week went by, oddly enough, without even a letter. Then her mother requested Gaby to come to her in her boudoir.
‘My darling,’ she said, after gesturing her to the chaise longue beside her, ‘are you very, very set on marrying Lucas Vourville?’
Gaby, who had been about to lie back and dream of him while her mother talked about something else, sat up. ‘What a strange question!’
‘But what’s the answer?’
‘Of course I’m “set” on marrying him. I love him!’
‘Yes, dearest. But … you see … there’s a problem …’
‘What problem? What problem can there possibly be? We love each other, our families want the marriage ‒’
‘Well, that’s just the point. Gaby. We do want the marriage, but the Vourvilles are asking for financial terms that we can’t possibly meet.’
‘What?’
‘You must understand, Gaby ‒ although the Tramonts are by no means poor, our money is tied up in our land, our warehouses, our stocks of wine such as they are. Our Monsieur Auduron ‒ of the law firm, you know he specialises in company finance and he says we can’t possibly produce the sum Monsieur Vourville’s lawyers are asking for as part of the bargain.’
Gaby gave a great laugh of relief. ‘Oh, if that’s all! It’s all nonsense. Lucas doesn’t care about the money. He’ll tell them not to be silly.’
Laura looked away. ‘Darling, Lucas was sent for to come home so that they could give him this news. As far as I can gather, he isn’t going to come back unless we can agree on the money matter.’
‘Nonsense!’
‘Don’t say that to me. Gaby. Don’t rush along like a torrent, heading straight for a waterfall … Has he written to you since he went away?’
‘Well, no …’ A chill touched Gaby’s heart at the question. It was odd. She had written every day to Lucas, but she had had no replies. ‘He’s busy, I suppose ‒ arguing with his silly parents and his silly lawyer!’
Laura took both her daughter’s hands. ‘I’m afraid the match is going to fall through, my darling. You must brace yourself ‒’
‘No!’ She sprang up, wrenching herself away from her mother’s gentle grasp. ‘You don’t understand! Of course we’re going to be married! We must, we must!’
Laura was shaking her head. She got up, to catch at Gaby before she ran out. ‘Gaby, I’m afraid you must face the disappointment ‒ Lucas either wants to back out or has let himself be persuaded ‒’
‘No, no! He never would! You don’t understand!’
In floods of tears, she ran to her room. She threw herself on the bed, sobbing and beating the silk counterpane. For a long time she wept, angry yet afraid.
But her courage reasserted itself. She sat up, wiped her eyes with the palms of her hands, and went to her bureau. There she wrote a hasty note.
‘Dearest, I’ve had the silliest discussion with Mama about our engagement. She says your family want to break it off. I know it’s all nonsense but you and I had better meet so as to decide how to put things right. I’ll be at the Rue de Rome on Wednesday at four o’clock. Yours who belongs to you, Gaby.’
She was at the apartment ten minutes ahead of time. The concierge, with a little moue of surprise, let her in. ‘M’sieu didn’t let me know he was coming today …’
‘He’ll be here soon.’
But he was not. She waited and waited. The sky began to darken with the coming of the late September evening. The concierge came into the room, noisily letting herself in with her key.
‘I must ask you to leave, mademoiselle. This is a private apartment and you have no right here.’
‘No, please!’
‘I must ask you to leave, mademoiselle. The rooms are needed.’
Gaby stared at her in the dusk, then went red with shame. Of course. Some other loving couple were due to come here this evening. This wasn’t the apartment of a friend ‒ it was a house of assignation.
She sprang to her feet, almost knocking the woman over as she ran out.
How could she ever have been such a fool …?
Outside she hurried along the street, blinded by something not yet tears. She found herself outside the Tramonts’ Paris house. Yes, of course … Cousin Netta …
She went in and in a voice almost unrecognisable told the maid she must see Madame de la Sebiq-Tramont. After a moment she was shown up to Netta’s bedroom, where her cousin was changing for an evening engagement.
‘Gaby! My God, little cousin! What’s the matter?’
‘Netta! Oh, Netta!’ She threw herself into her cousin’s arms. The floodgates opened. She let hysteria claim her. ‘Netta, he doesn’t want me! He’s let me down!’
‘What? Who? Gaby, Gaby, quiet now ‒ Gaby, sit down!’ With one hand Netta was ringing for the maid. When she came in she called over the sobbing girl’s head, ‘Smelling salts and brandy! And Jeanette, telephone the Malvasons and say the master and I shan’t be able to make it to their dinner party.’
About ten minutes later Frederic put his head round the door. ‘What’s going on?’ he said. He was in white tie and tails, ready for the evening. ‘Jeanette tells me you’ve cancelled.’
‘I’ll explain later. Telephone Calmady, will you, darling, and say that Gaby is with me, quite safe and sound. I can’t quite understand whether they know she’s come to Paris or not.’
‘But what’s it all about?’
‘Not now, Frederic.’ She was chafing Gaby’s cold hands, kneeling at the side of the boudoir armchair in which she’d placed her.
Presently she had some strong hot coffee brought in. Gaby sat up and with trembling hands held the big cup to her lips.
‘Now, my dearest girl, tell me so I can understand. What has happened?’
‘Lucas has cried off.’
‘Oh, no …’
‘Mama told me on Monday but I didn’t believe her. I thought it was some silly mix-up over the money.’
‘Ah, Frederic mentioned that Auduron was shaking his head over that.’ Frederic, who of course took part in the discussions about the financial side of the match, had confided that the Vourvilles were asking for a very large investment in their engineering works. It seemed they wanted to expand into some new technique and regarded the dowry of their son’s bride as a sensible way to finance it.
‘I wrote to him … I told him I was sure it was a mistake … I expected to meet him today …’
‘To meet him? In Paris? Where, Gaby?’ Netta asked, shocked.
‘Never mind, it doesn’t matter. We had a place. But he never came. I waited hours. Hours and hours. But he never came, he never even sent a message.’
‘But you should not have been meeting Lucas in such circumstances in any case!’
‘Oh, Netta, how could he do this? We have to get
married! We belong to each other! He can’t just turn his back on me after what we’ve been to each other!’
‘Gaby,’ Netta said, drawing her young cousin’s head against her shoulder. ‘Tell me … You and he are lovers?’
She was almost ashamed of even asking the question. It couldn’t possibly be. Young innocent, trusting Gaby ‒ surely no man who had been asked to the Tramonts’ house would ever do such a thing.
But she felt Gaby’s head nod.
‘Oh, darling …’
‘I love him so much! It seemed right that we should give ourselves to each other … We were to be married, it was good and right …’
Netta sat with her arm about her little cousin. Only two things were clear to her now. One was that Lucas Vourville had treated Gaby very badly, and the other was that Aunt Laura must never know what had happened.
Things were bad enough without making them worse.
Chapter 10
Netta had no trouble persuading Gaby’s parents to let her stay a day or two more. As for her unchaperoned escapade to Paris, it was put down to a little crisis of nerves over the uncertainty of her engagement.
Two days later Robert and Laura Fournier-Tramont came to the house in the Avenue d’Iena. They brought with them the formal letter of regret from Lucas to Gaby, enclosed unsealed papers from the Vourville lawyers ceremoniously withdrawing from negotiations.
Gaby read it, dry-eyed. As she handed it back to her father she said, ‘Must it be kept?’
‘No, the legal papers are enough.’
‘I should like you to burn it.’
‘Certainly.’ He stepped to the fireplace, threw the paper on the flames, then with a poker knocked the flinders to pieces. His dark face was grim.
‘Don’t blame yourself, Papa,’ Gaby said. ‘He just didn’t love me enough.’
‘Adrien Rollin feels he is to blame,’ her mother said in a shaky voice. ‘Since he shares our views on the Dreyfus Affair, he didn’t make too much of an issue of it to the young Monsieur Vourville. But his people dislike that. And then Adrien thinks he put too much emphasis on our money and local prestige. And you know … our house does look as if we still have plenty of money.’
Especially for the ball, thought Netta. She herself had been unable to attend, but she had seen the preparations. She could imagine the sparkle of the chandeliers, the profusion of flowers, the excellence of the food.
She suspected that her aunt had used her personal allowance, from her father Arnold Simeon in New York, to finance it. Since she became interested in the Dreyfus Affair the money had gone into paying for necessary expenses on that score but, for her daughter’s coming-out, Laura would have deflected it to this one great event.
‘You aren’t to blame, my love,’ Robert said, anxious as always to shield his wife from distress. ‘I was too informal over the opening of negotiations. You remember, I sent Lucas back to Lille to speak to his people. He probably went under all sorts of delusions. I should have got Marc Auduron to draw up a paper to take with him.’
‘It’s no one’s fault. Please stop trying to account for it. Let’s stop even thinking about it!’ Gaby ran out of the room.
Laura brushed away tears from her eyelashes with her knuckles. ‘What’s to happen now? No matter how discreet we’ve tried to be, this must harm her future prospects.’
‘Let her stay on in Paris a while,’ Netta suggested. ‘The season is over, there are few to gossip and giggle about it ‒ fewer than at Calmady, where I do recall they looked terribly in love whenever you saw them.’
‘If I ever meet that young man again, I’ll kill him,’ Robert said through gritted teeth.
‘Now, dear,’ Laura said, putting out a hand to calm him. He took it. They sat side by side, looking sad and weary.
By and by they left. Robert had business at the Paris office, Laura had to see colleagues at the campaign HQ.
When Frederic came home he’d heard the latest news from his uncle-in-law. ‘It’s a rotten business,’ he remarked as he sat in their room, watching Netta do her hair in a new fashionable style of side coils.
She shrugged.
‘And yet, you know, they may come together after all, in time.’
‘Never!’ Netta cried, with so much vehemence that her hand jerked and she tangled a comb in her hair.
Frederic came to stare at her reflection. ‘How can you be so sure?’
‘It’s something I can’t explain ‒ a man wouldn’t understand.’
‘Oh, feminine intuition and all that,’ he said, taking hold of a strand of tangled hair and giving it a tweak. ‘Well, stranger things have happened, my angel. I could tell you of a case where a very cantankerous young lady put all sorts of difficulties in the way of a match with a very excellent young man, but in the end they got married. Though whether that was a good idea,’ he concluded, ‘I really can’t say, for she leads him a dog’s life.’
‘That was different,’ Netta said, repairing the damage to the hairstyle. ‘There was far less emotion involved between us two.’
‘Ye-es.’ Frederic didn’t sound entirely convinced.
‘And you were far less avaricious than this young man, and us Tramonts had more money at the time.’
Frederic pulled her head back, using the strand of hair as a tether, and kissed her on the lips. She struggled free, gasping.
‘I can’t breathe, all upside down like that!’
‘All right then, let’s try again.’ He drew her to her feet and kissed her with an urgency she recognised.
‘Not now, Freddi ‒ dinner will soon be ready …’
‘Who cares? Not even Gaby ‒ she doesn’t care if she eats or not. And I’m not hungry. For food,’ he ended, as he guided her to the big double-bed.
‘Oh, Freddi, you’re so …’
‘What?’
‘Loveable,’ she said, as she wound her arms about him.
Downstairs in the drawing room, dressed for dinner and waiting to be summoned to the dining room, Gaby Fournier-Tramont scarcely noticed the long delay. She was deep in her thoughts.
Her reflection in the mirror as she changed had told her she looked as pretty as ever. Prettier, perhaps, since her dark eyes seemed larger and had a haunting, plaintive look that was somehow attractive.
She could still catch any man she wanted, she told herself. The trouble was, she didn’t want anyone but Lucas. Well, so much the better. She’d take her time about finding a husband. And she wouldn’t let her emotions get the upper hand again.
She knew now that there was a side of her nature that craved to be satisfied. But she also knew ‒ didn’t she? ‒ that you didn’t have to be married for that. When it came to choosing a husband or a lover, she’d take care always to be in control.
Netta found her difficult to entertain for the next week or two. She was quiet, introspective, unwilling to undertake activity. But Netta had many activities she must attend to.
In the first place there was her own career. She had her lessons as usual, and there were two concerts looming up.
Then there was renewed energy in the Campaign for a re-trial. After the suicide of Henry and the flight of Esterhazy, the friends of Captain Dreyfus were renewing their efforts. It was clear that the evidence in the first trial had been corrupt. Surely the government would grant a new one?
In February of the following year the old President died. At his funeral an idiot called Deroulede, a member of the Chamber of Deputies, tried to stage a coup d’etat. His plan was to introduce a quasi-dictatorship.
Even the conservative members were shocked at that. A groundswell arose. In the upper ranks of the government of France, it was clear, there were many self-seeking, wrong-headed men.
At the end of February the Senate passed a law sending the Dreyfus Case to the Appeal Courts. In June the Court ruled that there should be a re-trial. A week later the news came that Alfred Dreyfus had left Devil’s Island, the most hideous of prisons, to face the courts and establish his i
nnocence at last.
The surge of events caught up even Gaby Fournier-Tramont. Her mother’s joy at their success was so pure that it would have been selfish, almost obscene, to tarnish it with her own petty unhappiness. She began to take part in the organisation of support meetings, to help draft letters to the press and then to copy them out on the machine that few as yet had mastered, the typewriter.
Yet the verdict of the Appeal Court judges had brought penalties with it. A feverish anti-semitism seized some of the population. It was even believed by some that the Appeal Court judges ‒ all forty-six of them ‒ had been bribed with Jewish money.
The Tramonts suffered public execration as did all Dreyfus’s supporters. Theirs was a greater suffering because Gaby’s mother was of Jewish blood. Gaby felt the sting of the charge, but made herself ignore it. It was true ‒ Jewish blood ran in her veins. But she was a Frenchwoman first, foremost, and always.
The re-trial was held in Rennes, that old prefecture of Brittany, with its beautiful old parliament building used as the law courts. It had survived a fire, lasting seven days, which had destroyed most of the city in the early eighteenth century. ‘If it survives the intensity of the Dreyfus Trial, it will be a monument indeed,’ said Emile Zola.
Everyone in the pro-Dreyfus camp was confident. So many of the original witnesses against him had been discredited ‒ it was impossible that, in a new trial, he could fail to be given back his freedom.
Little Elvi Hermilot, who had worked so hard in the cause both before and after the death of Philip Hopetown-Tramont, came to the Avenue d’Iena on the great day to await the verdict. ‘He will be acquitted, I know he will,’ she said in a tremulous voice, ‘and Philip won’t have died in vain.’ The women of the Tramont household smiled at her. She was a strange little creature, very earnest, desperately anxious for justice and for the betterment of mankind. She gave lessons in the slums of Paris in her spare time, trying to teach the wild neglected children to read and write so they could get decent jobs.
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