Grahame, Lucia

by The Painted Lady

  “Nina is a delightful young lady,” I replied.

  “I have come to Geneva on business as well as pleasure,” continued Mr. Lewingdon after we had spoken of Nina for a few minutes longer. “And, as a matter of fact, my business is with you.”

  His somber tone gave me a shiver of alarm. He was, after all, a London solicitor. Perhaps he was even employed by the firm of Smalley & Brown. But what could they want with me? Had my husband decided to divorce me after all? Could he? Was that why he’d tried to get news of me from Marguerite?

  And had I unwittingly given myself away? How desperately I wished that I had been less open with Nina on the subject of my origins!

  “One of my firm’s branches in the United States has requested our assistance in trying to locate a Miss Caroline Hastings, born in Brighton and raised in Holwich, Kent,” he continued. “It’s proven to be a most difficult assignment.”

  I could only stare with growing anxiety.

  “I hope you can forgive me for allowing my daughter to play the detective,” he continued. “She knows nothing of my reasons for wanting to learn a little more about you.” His expression was distressingly grave. “If you are who I believe you are,” he concluded gently, “I am afraid I have some very sad news for you.”

  My mind shot backward to the first time I had heard words like that, spoken in just that tone, one chilly morning in Paris not so very long ago—the words that had summoned me to Frederick’s lifeless body.

  “Oh no!” I whispered, forgetting everything except my dread. “Not Tony!”

  “What was your father’s full name?” the lawyer asked me once I had recovered enough self-possession to assure him that he need not call for smelling salts or burn a goose quill under my nose.

  “Harold Barclay Hastings,” I replied wonderingly.

  “I am very sorry to tell you this,” said Mr. Lewingdon, “but a gentleman of that name passed away last June in San Francisco, California.”

  “Please forgive my first reaction,” I managed to say after a long while. “I feared you brought other news.”

  Silent tears—but now of a much milder sorrow—were still sliding down my cheeks.

  “I never knew my father,” I explained. “I have not known for years whether he was dead or alive.”

  Dimly I heard Mr. Lewingdon telling me that once I had established my identity satisfactorily, I would inherit my father’s estate. It was not insignificant. My father had founded a chain of dry goods stores in the American West; in his later years, before he’d sold them, they had become very profitable. There were no other heirs. My father’s second wife had died, childless, only a few months before his own death. In short, Mr. Lewingdon concluded bluntly, my father had left me the means to live in comfort for the rest of my life.

  However, at the time of preparing his will, his health and memory already failing, he had been unable to recall my married name or any other details of my marriage. To the best of his recollection, I had eloped with a penniless musician or actor and gone to France. The difficulty of tracing me had been compounded by the fact that my very name had been a point of contention between him and my grandmother: To the end of his life, my father had always insisted upon referring to me by the name he had given me at birth.

  I had enormous difficulty focusing on Mr. Lewingdon’s words. I could think of nothing but the emotions which had flashed through me in the instant when I had imagined my husband dead. How could I have been so blind to my own feelings? How could I have repressed them by pretending that the world I had left behind would remain conveniently static until some distant moment when I could resolve my conflicts without sacrificing my pride and risking further pain?

  There would never be such a moment.

  My father, whose rejection of any relationship with me I had accepted without complaint, yet who had never forgotten me, was gone now, forever beyond my reach. Dead and beyond the reach of my love were my grandmother, Frederick, and my daughter.

  But my husband, who had loved me better than any of them and who might have been—would have been—equally dear to me had I only found the courage to open my heart to him, still lived.

  I knew then that I cared far more for him than I had ever dared to acknowledge.

  Now Mr. Lewingdon was assuring me that he did not expect the question of my identity to present insurmountable difficulties. That was when I mentioned that I still possessed one souvenir of my father—the letter he had written to me upon hearing of my first marriage.

  When I produced it, Nina’s father started visibly at the sight of the envelope, which was addressed to Mrs. Frederick Brooks. After a long silence, he remarked, still in that dispassionate tone, “I trust you are aware, Lady Cam—”

  I raised my hand quickly to silence him.

  “Mrs. Hastings,” he amended dryly.

  Now another melodramatic vision filled my mind. He knew my secret. It would ruin the school. He would take Nina away immediately. Inevitably, other parents would hear of the scandal. When it came time for the school to reopen after the Christmas holidays, the pleasant classrooms and pretty little bedrooms would be empty. Poor Madame Vignon!

  “Mr. Lewingdon,” I began, my voice raw with anxiety, but before I could frame my plea he interrupted me.

  “It is my business to keep confidences, Mrs. Hastings,” he said. “I hope you will forgive my slip of the tongue. It will not happen again. And let me add that I see no evidence of your having been anything but a most salutary influence upon my daughter and, I can only assume, upon the other young ladies. So let us say no more upon the subject.”

  That night I wrote a letter to my husband.

  I told him that I had been living in Switzerland but would be visiting Marguerite and Théo in Paris at Christmastime and that I hoped he would give me an opportunity to meet with him then. I added that I had given a great deal of thought to our marriage, since we had separated, and that I was ready to extend myself to him as unreservedly as he had long ago extended himself to me.

  I told him that I loved him.

  How I wished that I might have spoken those three words, which I had once rendered so untrustworthy, in per-son, instead of having to inscribe them on a piece of paper. But I could not withhold them until the perfect moment. I had already waited too long.

  When I posted the letter, I again ignored my husband’s instructions to communicate with him only through his solicitors. I sent the letter to Charingworth. Then I waited in a frenzy of anticipation for his response.

  It never came.

  The night before the Christmas holidays began, I dreamed I was on the train from Paris to Fontainebleau, but this time I was not sitting demurely across from my suitor cutting prim, measured little wedges from a pear with a silver knife. I was lying across the seat with my head in my husband’s lap and lifting the ripe, intact fruit to his mouth, and he was laughing down at me as he bent his head to bite into it….

  If only there were a way to bring the dream to life.

  The next morning I began to pack my trunks for my departure. It was still early in the day, but the mood of giddy anticipation that always marks the advent of school holidays had begun to dissipate as, one by one, the young ladies took their leave. Nina had just gone, with hugs and promises.

  My husband’s refusal to respond to my written appeal had crushed my spirits momentarily, but I was determined to persist. I vowed I would not lose heart with each disappointment. I had decided that when I left Vignon I would go, not to Paris, but to England—and to him.

  Now, as in preparation for my journey, I folded the well-worn and mended gowns I suddenly realized I need never wear again, my thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Madame’s brisk footsteps on the attic stairway.

  They came to a stop outside the open door to the little room I had shared with Mademoiselle Hubert.

  “Mrs. Hastings, did you forget, in all the excitement, to write to Mr. Blake to cancel your interview?” she inquired with a very odd lo
ok.

  “No, of course not, madame,” I replied. “I wrote weeks ago to cancel all my interviews. Why do you ask? He is not here, is he?”

  “Yes, and he claims that he never received any such letter. He insists upon speaking with you personally. I have tried to make him understand that it can be to no avail, but, although he is extremely polite, he is quite intractable. You are fortunate to have escaped the necessity of working for your bread, for if his innumerable children are anything like him, you’d have had your hands full with them! I am at my wit’s end, Mrs. Hastings. I cannot persuade him to leave!”

  “I did send the letter,” I repeated. “I don’t know how he could have failed to receive it! But let me go and set him straight!”

  He must be an alarmingly stubborn man, I thought, for Madame, at her most forbidding, could have easily routed the whole Swiss Army. I followed her down the stairway, happier than ever that I was no longer in need of a position.

  We entered her study.

  He was seated on the sofa at the far end of the long room, and rose to greet me languidly, with a faint smile.

  “Mrs. Hastings, I presume—” he began calmly.

  “Anthony!” I whispered. I lifted my hem and broke into a run in his direction.

  For one splendid instant I thought I saw my husband’s self-possession shatter. He was staring at me with a shaken look.

  It was Madame who brought me up short. “Mrs. Hastings!” she exclaimed in a low but arresting voice. “Please be good enough to remember where you are!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  I sank into one of two armchairs that stood opposite the sofa. To my horror, Madame, her posture issuing a clear challenge, had taken the other chair.

  No one spoke.

  My husband continued to stare at me with a look of confusion, but slowly some color began to return to his face.

  I gazed back at him in a hopeless effort to communicate with my eyes what Madame’s chastening presence had prevented me from expressing more indecorously.

  Madame looked from one of us to the other with the severe expression she was accustomed to assume while waiting for an explanation from two students who had been found quarreling.

  Why did my husband look so taken aback? Had he expected to find someone else? A real Mrs. Hastings?

  I began to feel ever more uncertain and mystified. Perhaps he had not come here for me at all! And why was he using a false name?

  The silence continued.

  Madame Vignon did nothing to reduce my discomfort.

  Then, after a long time, my husband’s expression relaxed and the corners of his mouth began to twitch.

  “I have asked Madame Vignon whether I might have a word or two with you privately,” he began with perfect sangfroid, addressing himself to me, “but she has adamantly refused. On grounds of propriety. Naturally I respect her wishes, so I suppose we will have to conduct our interview accordingly.”

  His voice was light; his face, inscrutable.

  I turned to Madame.

  “Madame,” I said hardly above a whisper, “this gentleman’s name is not Henry Blake. This is Sir Anthony Camwell.”

  “Oh?” she said. “And what business has this Sir Anthony Camwell with you?”

  Uneasily I eyed the open door; beyond it lay the entrance hall—still a thoroughfare for departing young ladies. Even now someone’s trunks were being bumped down the carpeted stairway. My husband must have heard them, too. He went to the door, shut it softly, and returned to face Madame’s unsmiling face, which accused him as a masquerader.

  But I was an impostor as well.

  “Forgive me, madame,” I said. “Sir Anthony Camwell is my husband.”

  I waited for the explosion—a very controlled explosion, for Madame’s shot always went deep, but never wide.

  “Risen from the grave, with a new name and a title,” said she. “What an astonishing metamorphosis!”

  She gave us a moment to savor her witticism.

  “But it does not come entirely as a surprise to me,” she went on. “I suppose you both ought to know that Monsieur Valory and I have very few secrets from each other. We both have too much respect for the truth.”

  I flushed under the implied rebuke. My husband had dropped his gaze; his cheeks too had darkened with what I could only suppose was chagrin. I ached for him; to think that he should find himself in this wretched situation because of me.

  He brought his gaze back to my employer.

  “I apologize, madame, for the deception,” he said quietly.

  “I too,” I whispered, but my words were meant for him.

  “Apologies accepted,” said Madame brusquely. “I cannot pretend that I did not know what I was getting into, although I never dreamed”—here she stopped and subjected my husband to a long, appraising look—“that you would actually storm the gates.” -

  “I came more as a Trojan horse, I fear,” said my husband.

  “So you did,” said Madame with a little smile. “And you,” she went on, turning to me. “To my pupils and to the other teachers here, you are still Mrs. Hastings, whose husband is deceased. I cannot permit anything which might call the decorum of our otherwise irreproachable English mistress into question. If you wish to have a brief private conversation, I will allow you to have it here, but that door must remain open. Certainly I have no intention of eavesdropping, but I shall be outside to make sure that no one else yields to the temptation. If you keep your voices low, I think you will have as much privacy as you require. However, there are still a few young ladies here, so if you two have some quarrel, be good enough to take it elsewhere. And if you have any peacemaking to do,” she concluded, “you may arrange the preliminaries here. But do not go far in your negotiations until you are well away from these premises.”

  She stood up. My courteous husband sprang to his feet as well.

  “Thank you, madame,” he said.

  “Have we a quarrel, Mrs. Hastings?” he asked softly as soon as she had left us.

  I couldn’t speak. I closed my eyes and shook my head.

  “Then why did you make it so difficult for me to find you? I scoured Paris for weeks. Marguerite and Théo were no help at all. If I hadn’t come across your friend Hazelton I don’t know what I would have done. I am grateful that you have such a friend, for I was in so wretched a state that he finally took pity on me and scouted La Sorrel’s orders to keep your whereabouts a secret. Thank God for his kindness!”

  “But I told you where I was. Why have you never answered my letter?”

  “What letter?” he inquired with a blank, rather startled look. “You sent me a letter? Where did you send it? When?”

  “To Charingworth! Weeks ago!”

  The look of bewilderment fled from my husband’s face.

  “Of course it never reached me! Do you suppose that Charingworth is any kind of home to me now! Why do you think I told you to send everything to Smalley & Brown! No doubt your message has been playing hare and hounds with me all across Europe! Well, never mind that—what did it say?”

  Beyond the open door a tiny cluster of young ladies were making noisy farewells.

  I looked at the door and back at my husband in agony. If I breathed even a word of what I had written, I was sure I would lose the last shreds of my self-control.

  “Please, Anthony,” I appealed to him at last. “Not here.”

  My husband, too, had glanced toward the doorway, but his expression was one of pure irritation. Yet, within seconds his look reverted to that earlier one of bemused wonderment.

  “Well, I suppose I shall have to wait then,” was all he said. “I seem to have become better at that than I once thought.”

  “You don’t have to wait—for anything,” I told him, praying that he would understand me.

  But instead of giving any sign of comprehension, he got up and walked away from me. He stationed himself at one of the long windows and stood there silently looking out. I could see only his back
and, beyond it, the fine little snow-flakes making their eddying descent to earth. Some of them struck the window, melted slowly, and slid down the glass like tears.

  After a long time, he turned around and with a little smile, said, “Well, I think I will at least have to wait until you are released from your obligations here. When will that be, Mrs. Hastings?”

  “Oh!” I replied, coming back to reality as I recalled that I had committed myself to assisting Madame Vignon with a number of last-minute tasks. “Not until this evening! This is my last day here,” I added.

  “In that case, I suppose I ought to leave you to your work,” he remarked without much enthusiasm.

  “Oh, not quite yet!” I protested. “We have a little time. And there is one thing I must know. Why have you come here, if it was not because of my letter?”

  “Did you really imagine I could accept your obstinate insistence upon living in poverty! I came here to find out for myself why you have so stubbornly and foolishly refused everything that was due you from me!”

  “You owe me nothing.”

  “I am your husband. Didn’t I vow to endow you with all my worldly goods?”

  “Yes, but we have both made—and broken—a number of vows,” I pointed out.

  “Ah. But mine were in earnest, even if I have strayed from them occasionally.”

  At this, I bit my lip; it was still a sore point with me.

  “But not lately,” remarked my husband casually, as if he had read my thoughts. “Not, in fact, since the first night you slept at Grosvenor Square. If it matters to you.”

  He was watching me closely. My heart beat faster, but I could not open my mouth to tell him how much it mattered.

  “One reason I came to Geneva was to restore this to you,” he went on.

  He picked up a small, plainly wrapped parcel from the table beside the sofa and handed it to me. I took it dumbly.

  “You really can’t refuse it,” he was saying. “If you do, I shall be forced to keep it for you and to send you exorbitant bills demanding compensation for the inconvenience of having to safeguard it. That would be a pity. From the look of you, I do not think you can manage many unnecessary expenses.”