by Susan Barrie
“I kissed you.” he interposed quietly.
“Yes ... because you thought it would be amusing to see how I would react. Men don’t do that sort of thing to girls they respect, or even girls they look upon as members of their own world.” Her eyes, without any reproach in them, but disillusioned and rather hopeless, were once more lifted to his face. “Perhaps you thought I needed punishing for upsetting the plans of Miss Constantia’s many relatives.”
He regarded her so gravely that after that her voice died into silence.
And then she wondered whether she was hearing things.
“Valentine,” he asked her, “will you marry me?”
“M-m-marry you?” She snatched away her hands and held them over her heart, and for a few concerned moments he thought she was going to faint, she turned so white. “Marry you!” She seemed to be endeavoring to force words to her lips. “Dr. Daudet. I regard that as a final insult! I ...” She tore at her lip so hard that it started to bleed. “How dare you!” she managed in a strangled voice.
His dark eyes now were filled with concern, and they were also a little bewildered.
“But I have never asked any woman to marry me before—it is something I swore I would never do—so why is it insulting when I ask you to be my wife?”
“Because,” she told him, trying to control herself and speaking only a little unsteadily, “it’s the very last thing you would wish for yourself—me as a wife—and but for the fact that I told you how I felt about ... about our early association, wild horses wouldn’t have got you to overlook a vow and saddle yourself with me and my affairs! Chaumont—” she waved to it “—what would you like to do with it, doctor? It will be yours if you marry me, and you can turn it into a nursing home or something of the sort! I remember you said on the day of Miss Constantia’s funeral that that was all it was fit for, and that as a country house it was too big and unwieldy. Well, if it was ever to be mine without marrying, I’d draw up a deed of gift and let you have it! You could do what you liked with it. Sell it, get rid of it ...! It wouldn’t matter to me! And besides, Chaumont will be yours if I don’t marry you, or anyone else.” She stood up and turned her face away from him. “Would you please drive me back to Paris now?”
“No,” he said, turning her around to face him. “not until you are more composed and we have got this thing sorted out! I am asking you to marry me. Valentine, because I—” he paused, and her heart knocked for a moment “—because it’s quite clear to me that you need looking after, and I think I can do that competently. As to Chaumont and your legacy, all that is entirely beside the point, and if we find the subject of interest we can discuss it later on. I don’t care what you do with Chaumont once it’s yours, but I do think that a young woman who goes around offering to marry a young man if he’ll take her without her legacy needs looking after.”
“I see,” she said very, very quietly. She looked at him. “And what of Madame Faubourg? She calls you darling and looks upon you as her property—although I’m not suggesting you take her for moonlight drives and kiss her merely for diversion—and I’m sure it would be a very great shock to her and to all your friends, if you committed such an indiscretion as to marry an unknown young woman like me. Even with Chaumont thrown in!” She could almost feel him stiffen, but she felt she had already burned her bridges, and it didn’t very much matter what she said now.
“I told you before not to concern yourself with me and my affairs, Dr. Daudet,” she said. “Please don’t insult me again.”
“I won’t,” he promised and very quietly he led the way to the car.
For the second time in their lives they drove back to Paris together in absolute silence, only this time it was he who looked rather pale and preoccupied. As he helped her out of the car she stumbled slightly, and his arm prevented her from falling. She looked up at him with slightly agonized eyes.
“I apologize,” she said. “I’ve been very rude. I should never have mentioned Madame Faubourg.”
His face didn’t relax as he looked down at her, but he said, as if he meant her to understand fully exactly what he was saying, “I have promised that I will not insult you again, Valentine, but if you change your mind about the quality of the insult, you know where to get in touch with me.”
And then he was gone, and she ascended in the elevator to a completely empty apartment.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
JANE TELEPHONED SHORTLY BEFORE EIGHT o’clock, and she sounded very apologetic.
“You’ll have to forgive us, Val, but we’re still a good many miles from Paris, and Philippe wants us to have dinner before returning to the apartment. Do you mind? Have you had a very long and lonely day?”
“No,” Valentine answered truthfully, “I haven’t had a lonely day.”
But her voice sounded so flat and strange that Jane asked with sudden anxiety, “You’re quite all right? You don’t mind us not hurrying back?”
“Of course I don’t mind!” Valentine attempted to sound more like her normal self. “And don’t worry about me. Martine’s left a cold chicken in the fridge, and there’s a cold dessert, too, and some special sort of pastry. I’ll make a pig of myself! And Fifi shall have what’s left over!”
“Good!” Jane sounded relieved at her lighter tone and laughed. “But if that spoiled animal is sick on my bed afterward I’ll never forgive it!”
Valentine put down the receiver after requesting that Philippe be informed that she wouldn’t worry if they weren’t home until midnight, and she could almost see Jane blushing in the telephone booth at the other end of the line. Jane and Philippe were getting on in a way that would not have seemed possible at the beginning of their acquaintance, and Valentine hoped very much that even such an improvement would go on improving. In the midst of a spreading sea of loneliness and a strange frightening feeling of desperation, she hoped that Jane, who was ten years older than she was, would have enough sense to grasp at whatever substance was offered to her. and not, out of a lofty belief in high principles and noble living—not always possible in certain sets of circumstances—reject the substance for the shadows that would be all that would comfort her for the rest of her life.
Valentine went out to the kitchen and inspected the contents of the refrigerator and all Martine’s careful preparations for their evening meal without consciously recognizing anything she saw. She gave Fifi some of her special dog food and drank a glass of iced lime herself, because she was feeling slightly feverish—or her thoughts were feverish—then wandered back to the living room and sat on the edge of the settee.
Leon Daudet had asked her to marry him, and she hadn’t merely refused, she had been insulting about his proposal! Although now that she was alone, the prospect of many more weeks drifting by before she even saw him again appalled her. She had behaved like the stupid little unknown she was, and always had been, where he was concerned. Although she hadn’t a single shred of evidence that his relationship with Madame Faubourg was anything but a purely platonic friendship—even if she did caress his cheek with her fingers and call him darling—she had said things about her that he could surely never forgive. She had seen his face turn pale with anger—anger and surprise. And he had driven her home in absolute silence, during which she felt sure the anger had not evaporated.
But he had left the door open. He had said. “If you change your mind about the quality of the insult, you know where to get in touch with me.”
She put her hands up to her hot face and tried to cool it. If she had been a raw schoolgirl she could not have been cruder over her choice of words when she told him what she thought of his proposal. And the remembrance that made her squirm was the way she had dragged in Chaumont. “If you marry me you’ll get Chaumont thrown in!”
As if a man in his position would bother about Chaumont, or the whole of her legacy! He would get that just by encouraging her not to marry anyone else.
How much more vulgar could she become?
And at this
very moment, if she had been able to say yes to his proposal, she would have been engaged to marry him!
The thought made her feel a little dizzy.
She stood up. She couldn’t marry him, because he apparently hadn’t thought about such a thing as loving her, only the need to take care of her. But she could make him understand how deeply she regretted her rudeness. She could apologize and not end their acquaintance on a note that would cause him to remember her with distaste as a young woman Miss Constantia had thought highly of, but whom he had proved to be no better than his original conception.
A young woman who had thrown a kiss in his face and caused him to feel guilt because apparently the kiss had hurt her. Or the fact that there were no more kisses had hurt her! Hence his offer of marriage, like something conjured up right out of the blue!
She felt sick as she went to the telephone and with shaking hands searched for his number. She found the number of his consulting rooms, but she didn’t want that at this hour of the day. Then she found the number of his apartment and dialed it. But no sooner did she hear the ringing tone than she set down the receiver as if it was something that could turn and bite her, and she knew that she simply couldn’t speak to him over the telephone.
To hear that detached suave French voice saying. “Who is it?”
No, she would far rather face him personally, and, suddenly she knew that that was what she must do. She glanced at the clock and saw that it was still not much past eight, and if he was not going out for the evening she might find him in his apartment. He hadn’t seemed to be in any great hurry to leave Chaumont, until she had requested to be taken home, and presumably he did sometimes spend quiet evenings, without the need to change into evening clothes.
If she left now, at once ... If she could screw up her courage to do what she knew she must!
She shut Fifi up in the little den where she had once typed Miss Constantia’s letters and then flew to tidy herself, but not to change her dress. It was the same pale blue linen she had worn all day, and as the night was so warm she didn’t bother about a coat. She took a white cardigan from a drawer and carried it over her arm, and downstairs in the entrance she got the concierge to call her a taxi.
She tried not to think of anything as the taxi sped along the broad avenues of Paris. Cars passed her—the long glistening cars of the rich—and others proceeded in the same direction as herself, and the occupants, she felt certain, all had much lighter hearts than she had. They were going out for the evening, to dinner, dancing, the theater: anywhere where they could be gay and forget their cares, if they had any. But her cares at the moment were like a weight pressing down on her spirits, and in addition, she was so nervous that the palms of her hands were wet.
The taxi stopped outside the block of apartments—one of Paris’s most recent erections—towering whitely above the dimly seen green of the trees. Lights seemed to stream from every window, and white balconies cascaded flowering shrubs. The entrance was magnificent. A uniformed attendant took her up in the elevator. She read the number of the doctor’s apartment beside his name plate, and for a moment her courage nearly failed. Then, with a kind of desperate determination, she pressed the bell.
She had expected the door to be opened to her by a servant—perhaps a manservant—but it wasn’t. It was Leon Daudet himself who stood there against a background of glowing red carpet and white paneled walls. A light shone directly down on him. and she could see that he was wearing a thin paisley silk dressing gown over what looked like dress trousers; and in place of a collar and tie he had a wine-colored silk scarf knotted around his neck. .
He said nothing for a minute, and then. “Come in Valentine. I didn’t expect you at this hour.”
But she stood hesitant.
“I won’t be taking up your time? You’re not ... going out?”
“Not just yet. anyway. Do please come in.” and he stood aside for her to enter.
The severe masculine luxury of the apartment seemed to rush at her. There was the odor of well-polished silver and after-shave; and there was also a scent that was much more feminine.
“Who is it, darling?” a feminine voice called softly in French. “Am I going to be in the way?”
Leon Daudet didn’t answer, but conducted Valentine along the corridor to the door that stood partly open, and beyond which was the voice. She didn’t need to be told whose voice it was, and she didn’t need even to pretend surprise when Elise Faubourg’s languid smile greeted her as soon as she stepped into the room. She wasn’t even conscious of shock when she saw how completely Elise had made herself at home, her lithe elegant body curled up on a divan, a cushion stuffed behind her head, a little table with a drink on it within reach of her hand.
Her smile grew quite sparkling as she took in the pale numb-looking face of the younger girl, the unostentatious blue linen dress, the simple white cardigan draped over her arm.
“Why, Miss Brooke!” she exclaimed. “How nice! But I didn’t know you were in the habit of paying calls on Leon.”
“I’m not,” Valentine answered, and the doctor went to a side table and poured her a drink.
“I know you like sherry,” he said as he put it into her hand. He then drew forward a chair for her. “Do sit down.”
“Thank you, I ... but I won’t stay,” she said and realized that she was speaking with a queer kind of jerkiness. She also realized it was an absurd thing to say when she hadn’t yet explained what she had come for. The doctor’s face was strangely inscrutable, and his eyes were as dark and unfathomable as pools, but Madame Faubourg’s eyes were bright with curiosity.
She was wearing a slim black cocktail suit, and her ears and her neck were ablaze with diamonds. She suddenly laughed as if she were amused.
“But. my dear sweet child, you can’t invade a man’s apartment at this hour and then just say that you’re not staying! I’ll confess I thought you were rather diffident, and if that is really the case, you must have some special reason for coming here tonight. Somehow I don’t think your nice Peter Fairfield would approve, you know.”
“Elise!” Leon said, and his voice was sharp. “Will you please let Valentine explain why she has come?”
“Of course, darling, of course!” She lay back snugly on the divan and tucked her slim ankles beneath her. “I’m as filled with curiosity as you are!”
Valentine would have said that the whole room was filled with her perfume, and out of the corner of her eyes she had noticed her gold-mesh handbag on another of the occasional tables, a white ermine stole over the back of a chair and a pair of gloves flung down carelessly on another chair. She had even kicked off her shoes, and they were standing beside the divan on which she lay, and from which she hadn’t attempted to rise to greet Valentine.
“It’s not important,” Valentine managed in the same stilted tones as before. “It was just something I wanted to ... say to Dr. Daudet.”
“And it isn’t easy to say it in front of me?” probed Elise.
Valentine shook her head rather helplessly, her golden hair glittered beneath the lights.
“It isn’t important,” she repeated. She hadn’t tasted her sherry and she set it back down with the other glasses on the tray of drinks. She backed toward the door. “You’re probably going out. I mustn’t keep you.”
Leon Daudet, to her surprise, made no attempt to delay her. And because he didn’t delay her she was conscious of overwhelming relief. All she wanted to do now was to get away, to leave them alone together.
Outside in the hall the man closed the door firmly on his other woman visitor. He looked down into Valentine’s face.
“Why did you come?” he asked.
“To apologize,” she managed, staring at the carpet. “To apologize for being rude.”
“And for no other reason?”
She looked up at him helplessly and shook her head.
“Even if there had been another reason, I imagine you would now prefer to forget it?” he remark
ed dryly.
She nodded. She felt like something that was controlled by a machine.
“I’m sorry I intruded,” she said.
“Forget it,” he returned with the same, almost harsh, dryness in his voice. “And now let me get you a taxi.”
But she had got the apartment door open herself and she shook her head much more vigorously than before. The elevator had just ascended at the end of the corridor, and it was standing open. She signaled to the attendant to wait for her and then turned to the doctor.
“Good night, Dr. Daudet,” she said, and the quality of finality in her voice could not have passed him by.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Marquise de Rullecourt returned to Paris about the middle of September, but before she returned Valentine was invited to spend a weekend with her.
The invitation included Jane; but Jane at that period seemed particularly loath to leave Paris even for a weekend, and Valentine had little doubt that the reason lay with Philippe. He was in the process of making fresh plans, and that those plans would shortly necessitate another trip abroad seemed fairly certain. Jane, after altering her opinion of him sufficiently to spend one whole day in the country with him, was undoubtedly on tenterhooks about those plans; and Valentine sympathized with her, sympathized with her and knew that there was nothing she could do to help her.
Her own life had the extraordinary feeling of being over at about that time. And if there was nothing she could do to help herself, how could she help Jane? Philippe had improved tremendously on acquaintance, and it was perfectly easy to understand his popularity with members of her own sex; but charm, gaiety, kindliness—even a feeling at times that one could depend on Philippe in a crisis, and that he was by no means all on the surface—were no guarantee that a slim dark-haired Englishwoman who hadn’t wanted to fall in love again wouldn’t very soon now be bitterly regretting the impetuosity with which she had joined a friend in Paris.
If Paris was a city of romance, Valentine sometimes thought, it was also definitely a city of disillusionment.