‘If you mean would a man who should, owing to his upbringing, have a certain amount of taste, prefer a young woman with sense plus charm to a vacuous blonde with nothing very much besides, so far as I’ve been able to discover, to help while away his idle moments ... Well, if it were me, I wouldn’t have to hesitate over the answer to that one! But then I’m not a Frenchman, and I’m not a business tycoon ... nor a chap with a title...!’
There was a clatter of hooves on the path ahead of them, and Diana looked up quickly to see what struck her as a whole cavalcade of horsemen and horsewomen coming towards them. She recognized the Comte at the head of them, and instantly a most unreasoning desire to escape before he was right on top of them seized her.
She never afterwards quite understood that moment of blind panic—for she had no reason at all to fear coming face to face with the Comte—or the urgency with which she turned to Michael and said: ‘Don’t let’s stop and talk to them. I don’t want to!’ and then attempted to turn her horse in the narrow, confined space, with the result that it got out of hand. Some of her desperate urgency must have been communicated to it: for it reared, let out a whinny of sheer fright, and then bolted off down the track with her clinging to its neck.
The gradient was far too steep for her to escape disaster, and in a matter of seconds the mare was out of control. Diana closed her eyes as a great clump of rocks reared up ahead of her, and then opened them again to see the rocks slide past. There was the entrance to a deep gully ahead of her, and the ground was comparatively level ... If only her hands were strong enough to have some effect on the bit in the horse’s mouth, and she could get a good pull on the curb rein!
But her hands were as useless as if they had suddenly gone quite numb, and her senses seemed to be slipping away from her as well ... By the time they swept into the gully she and the grey were still one by nothing short of a miracle, and the thunder of hooves behind her, like the roar of approaching doom, snapped the last thread in her awareness of what was going on around her.
It was Philippe who snatched her from the back of the terrified horse, while at the same time checking its progress. Within the hollow, echoing walls of the gully it snorted and pranced, behaved like an incensed demon for a few seconds, and then stood still.
Philippe waited for the others to come up before dismounting with Diana. He handed her over to Michael, because it was the sensible thing to do, and his face was grey.
‘I think it would be better if we took her to the Duchesse,’ Michael said, with a quick glance at Diana’s insensible face. ‘It’s nearer than your chateau. Although I don’t think she’s hurt in the least.’
‘Merely fainted,’ the Comte agreed. Slowly, very slowly, the colour was returning to his face. ‘You’re right,’ he said curtly, ‘it will be better to take her to the Duchesse, and as quickly as possible. She has been badly shocked.’
Late that afternoon, while the westering sun was gilding the peaks of the Pyrenees, Diana sat up in a big bed in a colossal room that reminded her partly of a museum and partly of a Victorian stage set, for it was draped with frilly nonsense and had a blush-pink carpet, although the wardrobe was cavernous and the bed a priceless relic.
The Duchesse de Savenne, leaning heavily on an ebony stick, her ear-trumpet at the ready, came walking stiffly towards her over the carpet. Diana had a strong suspicion that the ear-trumpet wasn’t strictly necessary; but the old lady thrust it at her as she sat down in a chair beside the bed, and began a kind of inquisition which began, however, with a polite inquiry concerning her health.
‘You look to me as if you’re pretty well recovered,’ she remarked, ‘but one can never really tell with modern young women. Instead of lying back and luxuriating in an opportunity such as this—as I would have done at your age!—you’ve put on lipstick and powder and, no doubt, a touch of rouge, and you’re all keyed up and anxious to be off. Isn’t that it?’
Diana answered that she had no right to be occupying one of the Duchesse’s guest-rooms, and the old lady chuckled throatily and agreed with her.
‘No right at all! And you’ve no right to be wearing one of my nightdresses, either ... although I expect you find it a bit voluminous, don’t you?’ As Diana looked down at herself and the stiffened ruchings of lace under her chin automatically, the Duchesse chortled afresh. ‘Don’t worry, some of your own things have been sent over in a case, and you can make yourself as pretty as a picture in one of those indecent nylon nightdresses that I expect you wear, in common with most of your kind! I’ll have the case sent up—’
But Diana interrupted her swiftly.
‘No, no, madame, I really mustn’t stay here any longer. I can’t stay!’
The Duchesse waved her to silence with her ear-trumpet. ‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘You’ve got some mauve circles under your eyes that indicate you’re still suffering from shock, so you’d better keep still.’
‘But I assure you I’m perfectly all right...’
‘Tck!’ said the Duchesse de Savenne. Then, conversationally: ‘What did Philippe have to say to you when he saw you? And what did you have to say to him?’
‘I didn’t see him,’ Diana answered, and bit her lower lip hard.
The old eyebrows elevated themselves.
‘He saved your life, you know ... at the risk of his own.’
Diana cowered down in the bed, the memory of those moments when her life had been in danger returning to her and pouring over her like a flood. But for Philippe she would almost certainly have lost her seat and been dashed against the rocks, but owing to some strange numbness in her heart and mind she couldn’t feel any gratitude to him. She couldn’t feel anything about him ... not even a desire to see him!
Under cover of the bedclothes she clenched her hands, and she knew she couldn’t bear to see Philippe ... she didn’t want to see him ever again. He was Celeste’s property ... let Celeste have him, and marry him, and let a merciful future keep him right away from the path of a girl like Diana! He shattered her when he kissed her, and he tried to put her eternally in his debt by saving her life, but she wouldn’t thank him for it. Somehow she must avoid seeing him again!
She turned almost appealingly to the Duchesse.
‘Madame, I could get up ... I’d feel better up. And I don’t want to go back to the chateau...’
‘What?’ the old lady said softly. ‘You’d leave the field open...? Free, and wide open! That is something I myself would never do!’
Not fully comprehending the meaning that lay behind this confession, Diana reached out a hand to her.
‘Please, madame,’ she said feverishly. ‘I want to go back to Paris, and then to England. Perhaps you could—would— help me?’
The Comte s aunt lay back in her chair and closed her eyes. ‘Would you say that young woman, Celeste, will make my nephew happy?’
‘It doesn’t matter, madame.’
‘Oh, doesn’t it?’ One eye opened, and was cocked at her shrewdly. ‘You are quite sure?’
‘She is his own choice, madame.’
‘Ah—oui! That is so!’
‘And his concerns are ... nothing to do with me. Nothing at all.’
‘We will see.’ Her hostess rose. ‘I will send my maid to you with some aspirin. ... If you are wise you will settle down and have a quiet night, and I will talk to you again in the morning.’
She stalked from the room with great dignity, despite her diminutive size, and when the maid arrived with the suitcase and the aspirin Diana was still sitting up in bed, and she asked the maid eagerly what was inside the suitcase.
The contents were revealed—a lot of frothy underwear and a dressing-gown, a warm suit and a warmer top-coat.
Diana sighed with relief.
‘Can you tell me,’ she asked the maid, ‘how I can get in touch with Monsieur Michael Vaughan? If I wrote a note, would someone deliver it to him?’
The maid—to Diana’s intense relief she was young, and almost certainly scent
ed a romance, or perhaps an intrigue!—answered immediately that the note would be very promptly delivered to Monsieur Vaughan. She supplied Diana with writing materials, and she wrote a few lines hurriedly.
‘I must get away from here quickly. Could you arrange transport for me in the morning? Preferably before anyone else is up. Is it possible for me to see you tonight?’
Then she signed the note and sealed it in an envelope, the French girl tucked it into a pocket of her absurd frilly apron, and declared that it would be in Monsieur Vaughan’s possession within the hour. He was at that moment closeted in the library with Madame la Duchesse, but as soon as he emerged the note would be passed to him ... very unostentatiously!
The last bit was added in a meaning whisper, and with a conspiratorial glance.
‘Where ... where are all the others? Diana asked, realizing that she knew nothing very much about what had happened after she became unconscious. ‘Did they go back to the chateau?’
‘They remained here for lunch, mademoiselle,’ the maid told her, ‘and then returned to the chateau.’
‘Including—including Monsieur le Comte?’
‘Including, I believe, Monsieur le Comte.’
Diana sighed with relief, and then found it well-nigh unendurable waiting for Michael’s reply to her note. While she waited for it she got out of bed and dressed herself shakily, and when the maid returned she was wearing a lime-green suit that took most of the colour out of her face, although normally it was a colour that became her tremendously. But Michael’s reply brought a brightness to her eyes.
‘Of course I’ll do all I can for you. When the coast is clear we’ll have a talk. Get the maid to bring you down to the library about ten o’clock.
Yours, Michael.’
She waited in an agony for ten o’clock to strike, and when the maid came for her, her hands were wet with nervousness, and even her forehead was moist.
When they reached the library door the maid tapped, and then withdrew. She looked meaningly at Diana. ‘Go in, mademoiselle!’
But when Diana went in she thought confusedly that there had been a mistake. For although the great room looked like a library, and there were certainly quantities of books lining the walls, the man who sat at a desk with an angle-poise lamp shedding its light across him was not Michael.
As he turned his head, and she recognized Philippe, Diana took a sudden grasp at the back of a chair.
He rose with one sinuous movement, like the uncoiling of a spring, and in the same movement had a chair placed for her, and his hand stretched out to support her in case she felt incapable of walking towards it.
But Diana merely stood, holding on to the back of the chair and looked at him.
‘Philippe!’ His name was a husky whisper. ‘What—what are you doing here?’
He smiled with pronounced wryness.
‘I’m sorry I’m not Michael, but he agreed that it would be better for me to take his place. I’ve been here all day—or ever since you were taken upstairs—waiting to see you, to have a few minutes alone with you. Oh, Diana!’ She was shocked by the change in him, the general haggardness of his appearance, the odd hollow look of his eyes. ‘I didn’t know how you were, whether you were really better ...And I couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t see me. My godmother said I’d have to be patient, but I’ve been patient for so many hours...’ His voice trailed off huskily. He put a hand up over his eyes.
Diana felt as if she was suddenly torn in two by anxiety on his account. She had never seen him look like this before, never known him behave as if he was right at the end of his tether, unable to control even his voice. She moved round her chair at lightning speed, and placed an entreating hand on his arm.
‘Philippe, you’re not ... Philippe! You weren’t—hurt...?’
He uncovered his eyes and looked at her vaguely.
‘Hurt? No! Except that I don’t think I’ll ever feel quite the same again! ... That moment when I was sure you were going to be hurled into the valley!’ She could actually see him shudder. ‘Oh, Diana, I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. I shall probably re-live it in nightmares.’
Her fingers tightened on his arm.
‘But I didn’t go down into the valley, and you saved me!’
For a long moment they simply looked at one another, and then he put her into a chair ... or rather the corner of a deep couch. He sat beside her and held her hands, and she was astonished to find her fingers clinging to his.
‘You are very pale,’ he said quietly, ‘but more beautiful than ever. I’ve always thought you the most beautiful thing in the world, Diana, and I always will. But you’ve something far more important than mere beauty to hold and enslave a man ... And if I’d lost you I don’t think I could have gone on living the life I’ve been living for years. I don’t think I could have gone on at all!’
Their eyes held each other’s, fascinated, and she said falteringly: ‘But, Philippe ... You know very well that I— that you—’
‘I know only one thing,’ he said, carrying her hand up to his cheek and cherishing it there, as if it was very precious indeed. ‘That without you nothing matters, nothing counts. Other human beings sink into complete insignificance beside you, and I’ll never, never hurt you again! ... You would never have been hurt at all, only I had a confused idea of what I ought to do! Now I know what I’m going to do ... if you’ll let me!’ he added humbly.
‘What is that, Philippe?’ she whispered.
‘First,’ drawing her quite unresisting into his arms, ‘I’m going to hold you; then I’m going to kiss you.’ He kissed her long and deeply, and for the length of time the kiss lasted all shadows fled away, and a sense of utter peace enfolded them. ‘And then,’ he concluded a trifle less steadily, ‘I’m going to marry you. Just as soon as it can be arranged!’
‘But ... Celeste?’ she breathed. ‘Haven’t you forgotten her?’
He shook his head. He caressed the warm whiteness of her cheek with his long and flexible fingers.
‘Could anyone entirely forget Celeste?’ he inquired, a little dryly. ‘She is what one might call a pertinacious young woman! She thrusts herself upon one’s notice, and then ... something has to be done about her! At first, as I told you, she was a kind of diversion—’
She put a hand up and touched his dark chin, turning his face towards her.
‘But will you tell me something about her, Philippe?’ she found the courage to insist. ‘Weren’t you ever the—least little bit—in love with her? At least, you made love to her!’
He shook his head quite firmly.
‘Never!’ he said. ‘I treated her as if she was an engaging child, or a younger sister.’
‘But I saw you...’
His eyes grew dark at the memory.
‘That was something I find it hard to forgive myself. You were so determined to have nothing to do with me, to hold me in contempt—and yes, you did do that,’ reproachfully, ‘because you imagined I was weak enough to want both you and Celeste—and possibly Denys as well! What sort of a man you think I am I do not quite know, but you certainly wouldn’t give me credit for anything in the nature of high-mindedness or simple unadulterated conscience. So, when I heard you in the corridor that night—and I couldn’t fail to recognize your footsteps!—and Celeste happened to be standing close beside me, I just reached out and surprised her considerably by making sudden violent love to her! But afterwards—when I saw your face—I loathed myself?’
She looked up at him, still a little incredulous.
‘Perhaps there are some things even I can’t do! And pretending to want Celeste was one of them. She is enchanting to look at, but that is all.’
‘Yet you were going to marry her,’ Diana reminded him.
‘There is now no danger of my marrying her,’ he assured her. ‘I have come to my senses. I will do all sorts of things for her ... present her with the fattest cheque she has ever seen in her life, set her up in any sort of business ...
tell that fellow Sherman to see what he can make of her in films, and give her all the backing that is necessary. And, believe me, she will be far happier living a life she understands and knows. Sometimes, I think, she was half petrified by the thought of becoming my wife ...’
There was a slight but definite tap on the door, and then the Duchesse entered, with Michael Vaughan behind her. The Duchesse looked as if she had recently been containing herself with difficulty, and unless someone listened to the news she was full of she would explode. She waved a sheet of notepaper like a small flag in her hand, and behind her Michael grinned uncomfortably.
‘If you two have got all your differences sorted out, and are prepared to listen to me, I will tell you something,’ she said. She glanced with approval at Diana’s flushed face and her radiant eyes, noted that her nephew declined to remove his arm from about her, and was gratified by that too. ‘Madame Armand has just had this note sent up here by hand. It informs me that your little American girl, Celeste, has packed her things and departed in the company of your American friend, Robert Sherman. They were both distressed because you, Philippe, will probably be distressed—’ directing at him a dancing glance—‘but Celeste has left you a note in which she no doubt apologizes in full. Presumably she intends to marry the man Sherman, and she has left her engagement ring behind as a final proof that you are free.’
She tossed the letter into the air. ‘There! Is not that good news for you both?’ And she beamed upon them.
Diana looked up into her lover’s dark, thoughtful face. His eyes were very quiet, very grave.
‘Do you want me to admit that I thought that Madame Armand...?’ she began.
But he shook his head.
‘I have known exactly what you thought about my relationship with Denys. But she was on your side, Diana ... she wanted me to marry you. She argued endlessly that I should marry you! Denys, you understand, is like a sister to me ... That kind of love—the kind that leads to marriage—is unthinkable between us.’
A Moment in Paris Page 10