Then a voice from the bed, hoarse and rather weak, called out,
“Who is it? Can it possibly be you, Gardenia?”
Gardenia’s embarrassment and apprehensiveness fell away at the sound of the voice.
“Oh, Aunt Lily, dear Aunt Lily! It is I, Gardenia. I arrived last night. I do hope you are not angry. There was nothing else I could do, absolutely nothing, except come to you.”
There was a movement amongst the pillows, then a hand came out towards Gardenia, which she clasped thankfully.
“Gardenia, my dear child, I have never been so surprised in my life. I thought Yvonne must have got it wrong when she told me that my niece was here. I tried to think who else it could possibly be, but you are my only niece. Why did you not write to me?”
“I could not, Aunt Lily. I had to come at once. You see, Mama is dead.”
“Dead?”
The Duchesse sat up and, even in the dim dusk of the shrouded room, Gardenia could see the expression on her face.
“But it cannot be true! Your mother dead! Poor darling Emily. The last time she wrote to me, after your father’s accident, she sounded so brave, so full of fortitude, determined to look after you and to keep her home going.”
“She did try to do all those things,” Gardenia said. “But it was just too much for her.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute, child!” the Duchesse exclaimed. “I have to hear all this. Oh, my poor head! It feels as if it is going to crack open. Yvonne, bring me my cachet faivre, and pull back the curtains just a little, I want to see what my niece looks like. It is years, yes years, since I have seen her.”
“Seven years at least, Aunt Lily. But then I have not forgotten how beautiful you looked when you came down to see us and brought us all those wonderful hampers, boxes of little plums, and the pâté de foie gras for Papa and that lovely lace negligée for my mother. You seemed to me like a Fairy Godmother.”
“Dear child. Fancy remembering all that,” the Duchesse said. She put out her hand as if to pat Gardenia’s shoulder and groaned again. “My head, it is just agony to move. Be quick, Yvonne.”
She spoke to her maid in French and to Gardenia in English and could not help being impressed with the ease that her aunt switched from one language to another.
But when Yvonne raised the sunblind a little so that more light came flooding into the room, Gardenia could hardly restrain a start of astonishment as she saw her aunt’s face.
She remembered her being breathtakingly lovely, a blonde Junoesque figure of a woman with an exquisite pink and white complexion, golden fair hair and blue eyes, which had made everyone describe her as ‘a perfect English rose’.
“You were wrongly Christened,” Gardenia could remember her father saying gallantly. “Lily is a pale, reserved, rather cold flower. You are warm and glowing and as beautiful as my Gloire de Dijon on the porch outside.”
“Henri, you are a poet,” her aunt had answered, flashing her eyes at him and curling her lips in a way that, young as she was, Gardenia had recognised as being irresistibly attractive.
The woman she saw now against the pillows was a very pale shadow of the English rose that had burst on them unexpectedly one day in their tiny village, causing a sensation among the inhabitants by arriving in something that most of them had never seen before, a horseless carriage, the much discussed and much feared motor car.
“I have persuaded my husband to come to England to buy a Rolls-Royce,” Lily had told them. “French cars are not nearly as smart or as distinguished. I was determined to see you while I was here, so I drove all this way just to have a glimpse of you.”
“Darling Lily. It is like you not to let us know but to drop out of the skies unexpectedly?” Gardenia’s mother had laughed.
The two sisters had kissed again, clinging to each other for a moment as if they would somehow bridge the great gulf that lay between them. A gulf of money, position and, though Gardenia was too young to realise it at the time, an entirely different way of life.
She had often dreamt of Aunt Lily’s beauty, her exquisite face framed by a long chiffon motor-veil that fell from her motoring hat and flowed over the pale dustcoat that protected her elegant dress.
It was difficult to recognise that radiant loveliness in the tired-eyed, heavily lined face, with puffy eyes half-closed against the light that she saw now.
Aunt Lily’s hair was still golden, but it had a tinny almost garish look instead of being the pale yellow of ripening corn. Her skin seemed grey and listless and, even while she was covered in the bedclothes, Gardenia could see that she had grown rather fat.
“Gardenia, you are grown up!” Aunt Lily exclaimed.
“I am afraid so,” Gardenia said. “You see, I am now twenty.”
“Twenty!” Aunt Lily seemed to gasp the words and, closing her eyes for a moment, she said, “Where is it, Yvonne? Where is my cachet faivre? The pain in my head is intolerable.”
“They are here, Your Grace.”
Yvonne was standing beside the bed with a small silver salver in her hand. On it rested a glass filled with water and a small black and white cardboard box on which reposed a row of white cachets.
“Give me two,” the Duchesse ordered, putting out her hand for the water.
“You well know, Your Grace, the doctor said – ” Yvonne began, but she was silenced sharply by the Duchesse.
“Never mind what the doctor said. When I have had a night such as I had last night and my only niece comes to tell me that my sister is dead, I need something. Bring me a brandy and soda. I don’t want any coffee. The mere idea of it makes me feel sick.”
“Very good, Your Grace,” Yvonne said in a resigned way that expressed her disapproval far better than words.
“And be quick about it. I don’t want to wait all day. I want a drink now.”
“Immediately, Your Grace,” Yvonne said seeming to flounce across the room.
“Twenty!” the Duchesse repeated, looking at Gardenia, “It cannot be true. It cannot be possible.”
“One grows older, Aunt Lily,” Gardenia pointed out.
Her aunt put her hand up to her forehead.
“Alas, that is indisputable. God! How old I feel,”
“I did not like to disturb you last night,” Gardenia said apologetically, “but I felt it was rather rude to creep up to bed without telling you that I was here.”
“You did entirely the right thing,” the Duchesse approved. “I should not have been able to attend to you. Besides I don’t suppose you had the right clothes for a party.”
Gardenia could almost see the cynical smile on Lord Hartcourt’s lips.
“No,” she said humbly. “I am afraid that my clothes would not have been right ‒ at the party.”
“You are in mourning now, of course, but the dress you are wearing, dear, is very old-fashioned if you will forgive my saying so.”
“It was Mama’s,” Gardenia explained, “and I am afraid it is all I have.”
“Well, I don’t suppose it matters,” the Duchesse said limply, “because you will not be staying, will you?”
There was a moment’s silence, a moment in which the two women stared at each other.
Then, with a little break in her voice, Gardenia said,
“But, Aunt Lily, I don’t know what to do. I have nowhere, nowhere else to go!”
CHAPTER THREE
The Duchesse propped herself up on her pillows. Obviously the cachet faivre had begun to work and she looked slightly less exhausted.
“I think you had better start at the beginning of the story, Gardenia,” she said. “What has happened?”
Gardenia, who was deathly pale, clasped her hands together, striving for self-control and trying to keep her voice steady.
“We have been desperately poor since my father died,” she began in a low voice. “I often suggested to my mother that she should write to you and tell you about the circumstances that we found ourselves in. But she did not want to trouble you.”
/> The Duchesse gave a little cry.
“I never thought of it. How terrible of me! And I am so rich that I have had everything!” She put her hands to her eyes and went on in a voice that trembled with emotion, “You must forgive me. I am bitterly ashamed.”
“I did not want to upset you, Aunt Lily, but when my father was alive it was different. He was proud, very proud.”
The Duchesse then interposed,
“He resented my giving your mother very expensive presents. She told me once that he minded because he wanted so much to give her everything himself.”
“That was true,” Gardenia said in a low voice. “Yet it was not presents we needed but food.”
“I had never thought of that,” the Duchesse confessed. “When your father died and your mother wrote and told me, but I imagined it was only decent to wait for a while and then – yes, Gardenia, I admit it went out of my head.”
“We were in debt after my father died with doctors to pay, nurses and the chemist and all sorts of trades-people for the little delicacies that were all he could eat in the last months. We sold many items out of the house, silver and furniture. Of course, we did not get very much for them. Actually, we did not have very much to sell.”
“It is humiliating,” the Duchesse whispered. “How could I have been such a fool?”
“You could not have known. My mother would not let me write and tell you even though I did suggest it, not once but at least a dozen times.”
“If only I had known,” the Duchesse muttered.
“There was really no one we could turn to for help and you know that Papa’s family cut him off when he married Mama. He has never spoken to them nor seen any of them since.”
“That was not surprising,” the Duchesse said. “They were furious. I remember seeing some of the letters they wrote, but I suppose from their point of view it was beyond the pale to jilt your bride two days before your marriage simply because you had met someone who you had fallen in love with at first sight!”
“Mama used to tell me about it,” Gardenia replied. “She said that the moment she saw Papa she knew that he was the hero of all her dreams. Then he spoke to her and they both knew that this was something very different, something just so wonderful that they could only stand and stare at each other.”
“It is what every woman prays might happen to her,” the Duchesse said with a little sigh.
“I suppose there was nothing else they could do but run away. There was Papa engaged to Lord Melchester’s daughter and to be married in two days’ time – and Mama was just a nobody.”
“I would not say that,” the Duchesse reacted quickly. “Your grandfather was a country gentleman and a Captain in the Hussars when he was young. He did not have much money, but we were not poverty-stricken and so we considered ourselves as good as anyone else in the County of Herefordshire.”
“I am sorry,” Gardenia apologised with a smile. “I did not mean to be rude, Aunt Lily, but from the worldly point of view I would suppose it was a bad marriage, even though Papa was only a second son.”
“Your grandfather, Sir Gustus Weedon, was nothing but a stuck-up, pompous old snob,” the Duchesse said angrily. “He was determined to make your father suffer for having married
the woman he loved. He cut him off without a penny and blackguarded him, even insisting that many of his old friends cut him.”
“I don’t think Papa minded very much. He was so happy with Mama. At the very end of his life they used to hold hands and look into each other’s eyes and forget I even existed.”
“I suppose in a way I was almost jealous of Emily,” the Duchesse said reminiscently. “Many men have loved me and given me wealth, position and wonderful jewels, but I have never cared for one of them as your mother cared for your father.”
“That is why I know you will understand,” Gardenia said softly, “when I tell you that Mama really died of a broken heart. It sounds sentimental, but it is true. When Papa died, she just took no interest in anything anymore. She was quite convinced that when she died she would find him again. She wanted to die. When she was ill, because the house was so cold and we could not afford to buy coal, she did not try to recover. All the time I knew she was slipping away, eager to be with Papa and not really concerned about what happened to me.”
The Duchesse wiped the tears from her eyes.
“And what did happen to you, my poor Gardenia?”
“Mama died last Saturday. At the last moment, after being almost unconscious all day, she suddenly opened her eyes and smiled. She did not speak, she did not see me bending over her. It was just as though she was looking straight at Papa and was so glad to see him again.”
Gardenia’s voice broke and for a moment she could not go on.
Then with an effort she continued.
“The moment the news came out that Mama was dead, I received a letter from the firm which held the mortgage on the house, telling me that they wished to take possession as soon as possible. They were horrible people, always badgering and frightening us if we were a day late with the payments. I think they had had a prospective buyer for some time. Anyway they made it clear that I could not stay. I did not want to. As I had no money, it was humiliating to face the trades-people.”
“I shall pay them, of course,” the Duchesse promised, “every one of them.”
“I hoped you would say that,” Gardenia cried. “They have all been so kind, allowing us credit week after week and when Mama was so ill they sent her flowers and even left special invalid food in case it would help her.”
“I shall send them the money today,” the Duchesse asserted firmly. “My secretary will write out the cheques. Oh, child, if I had only known about all this. Why did you not write to me whatever your mother might say?”
“You must remember. Aunt Lily, I have not seen you for seven years and I think I have only seen you twice in my life. The first time was when I was born and I know it was due to you that I was christened ‘Gardenia’.”
“Yes, yes, of course, I had forgotten. I came to see your mother a few days after you were born, bringing with me a huge basket of gardenias from a London florist and when your mother saw them she laughed. ‘How like you, Lily,’ she said, ‘and I hope the baby is going to be as beautiful as you. We shall call her ‘Gardenia’.”
“My mother often told me of your gift,” Gardenia said, “and she laughed because it was absurdly extravagant and luxurious when she and my father were wondering how they were going to pay the doctor or the nurses, or for my layette, which was not a very elaborate one.”
“So that was the reason!” the Duchesse said in a stricken voice. “I did not understand. I had been rich for so long. Everything I wanted was always poured at my feet so that I had forgotten what it was to be poor. I was older than your mother and by the time she grew up I was already married and living in Paris. I suppose the contrast of our lives never struck me. Oh, Gardenia, how thoughtless I have been! But I loved Emily, I did really.”
“You must not distress yourself,” Gardenia urged her soothingly. “Mama never expected anything and she was so fond of you. She used to tell me how beautiful you were and how, when you went to Church when you were girls, everyone’s face turned towards you and that the male members of the choir could hardly sing for peeping at you over their hymn books.”
“And the Curate fell in love with me,” the Duchesse laughed. “He used to come round to tea and go crimson in the face every time I spoke to him. I used to try deliberately to make him blush because I was just finding out how much power I had over men. Oh dear, what a long time ago those days were.”
She looked across the bed at Gardenia and went on,
“At your age I was married. I had so wanted to get away from home. I also found Hugo Reinbard exceedingly attractive. I was not in love with him, but he fascinated me. My father warned me about him but I was not prepared to listen. What girl would have, when he offered me London and Paris and all I had at home
was the village life and the Curate?”
“Mama used to say that you looked like an angel in your Wedding dress,” Gardenia said. “She often talked about you. I longed to see you and, when you came to visit us in June 1902, I thought she had not in any way exaggerated your loveliness. You were the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”
The Duchesse smiled appreciatively at this compliment and then she put her hands to her face.
“Seven years ago and just look at me now. I have grown old, my face is lined. Oh, don’t bother to argue, my mirror tells me the truth. My beauty, Gardenia, is a thing of the past. But I will try and I shall go on trying, to recapture it. I have heard of a new discovery, something quite extraordinary the Hungarians have invented. It is a special treatment to – ”
The Duchesse stopped suddenly, the eagerness fading from her face.
“But I don’t want to talk about that for the moment. I want to discuss your position. You were right to come to me, absolutely right, dear child. There was no one else you could turn to and I think it was very brave of you to make the journey to Paris alone.”
“There was nothing else I could do. I suppose I ought to have waited and written to you, but since the men were waiting to take over the house, I sold what was left of the furniture to our friends in the village. There was not very much and I could not charge them a great deal as I owed most of them so much money. But I raised enough for my fare to Paris. Only just enough. I did not dare spend any of it even on sending you a telegram.”
“And you arrived last night. I could hardly believe it when Yvonne said that my niece was in the house.”
“It must have been a shock, but somehow I did not expect you to be giving a party. It was silly of me. I just thought I would arrive and I would explain what had happened and you would hopefully understand.”
“I do – I do understand, but now we have to make some plans. As I have said already, I don’t think you can stay here.”
“Not even for a little while?” Gardenia asked piteously. “I realise that I shall have to get a job. I have been thinking about it all the time I was travelling, but what can I do? I am not clever enough to be a Governess. My education was sketchy. I speak French, Mama insisted on that. I play the piano and I can paint a little. My arithmetic was always terrible and I never could spell.”
An Innocent in Paris Page 4