The Devil on Horseback (39 page)

Yvette was telling me that I should go away. I should not be caught up in this drama into which, if I continued my association with the Comte, I should be drawn. I opened the second letter. My dear Yvette, I’ve had a further dose of the mistletoe cure. Nouny is going round grunting like a grampus with a kind of mingling disapproval and satisfaction-disapproval for the pain, satisfaction for the cure.

She has spoken to him about it and said she wants the doctors. It is fussing of her. I know what’s in her mind. She is thinking of my mother. I never really heard the truth of that. They hushed it up and kept a lot from me. She took her own life, I know, because she was afraid of the future. It was that painful illness which was going to be worse and kill her eventually. No matter what they try to keep from one, there is always gossip to be heard. I have often pretended to be asleep when I was lying there listening to the servants. I have a gift, as you know, for seeming to take in nothing when I am taking in everything. I think they were afraid for me to know too much in case I-who am also ill-might do the same. If Nouny knows me at all she knows that I would never take my own life. I feel very strongly about this. I have always felt it. Remember how we used to talk about it? I still believe that one must work out one’s re1e on earth, however uncomfortable. It’s part of a pattern. Nouny gets terribly worked up about what’s going to happen to me. She’s always saying: “What’s going to happen to you when I’m gone?”

“Gone where, Nouny?” I ask teasingly. To Heaven,” she says.

I laugh at her and she gets so upset I have to cos set her and tell her how important she is to me just to placate her. I agreed to see the doctors and she is talking to him about it. I am sure he says: “More malingering.” But what do I care?

I am certain that his feelings for the schoolmistress girl are different from usual. This one appears not to be just a woman but the woman. For how long, is another matter, but he is certainly obsessed at the time. Nouny is very angry. She hates the girl. Marguerite is very fond of her, though. They are together a good deal. They keep up the myth of cousin. It is a good way of keeping her at the chateau with:

out too much comment. Of course the girl’s presence here ;

is causing a lot of heart burning in some quarters, as you can guess.

When I think of Gabrielle LeG rand brooding in that’) house of hers like a great spider waiting to catch her fly, I laugh so much that Nouny gets out the Lady’s Bedstraw. That’s the cure for hysteria in case you’ve forgotten. I have learned quite a lot about these things.

Living with Nouny how could one help it? I wonder what Gabrielle thinks of our young lady. Well, while I’m here, what does it matter?

Gabrielle comforts herself that I am the invalid and must eventually succumb to my ailments. And she has the stalwart

Etienne to offer. A son . the hope of the house. Oh, Yvette, what an insult to our sex! We are the unwanted ones. If Marguerite had been a boy, who knows how different our lives might have been. How many women in the world have been cast out for the only reason that they cannot bear a son. What a commentary on our society. But I was fortunate.

Many have to endure years and years of childbearing . daughter, daughter all the time . and often miscarriages. I escaped that. I never want those early experiences to happen again. I was not meant for that. I knew it at once and so did he . that was why he hated me. You know the sort of man he is. Women are as necessary to him as air. He cannot live without them. It was so from the beginning of his manhood. It will be so to the end. That is why the affair of the schoolmistress is so strange. Of course that could not last. that obsession for one. But it is strange that it should exist at all.

Nouny won’t admit it, but she appears to be quite a pleasant creature.

She has a natural dignity and doesn’t give herself airs. She has been strictly brought up and is holding him off, I suspect, because her upbringing would not allow her to indulge in a light love affair with him. Well, we shall see.

The doctors came today. They prodded me and asked endless questions.

Then there was a long conference with Nouny. He was not there, which tfaey must have thought strange. He thought the whole thing was a farce. So it was. It was just to placate Nouny. She went about looking grave and making me rest and asking if I felt any pain. I pretended a bit because that was what she wanted and it gave her a chance to get out the mistletoe cure. Goodnight. I am going to sleep now.

Ursule.

There was one more letter. I was beginning to see Ursule as quite a different person from the one I had imagined. She was not the peevish invalid. What she had hated was her marriage. I believed she would have hated marriage with ^anyone. She was without passion, without maternal instincts. But she could have affection. She clearly had that for NouNou and Yvette. She did not want to take part in life. She wanted to spend her days in her room, observing the conduct of those about her. Instead of being aloof, though, she was enormously interested in what was going on. She was like the audience at a play;

she wanted to see how they acted while she herself took no part. I picked up the last letter. My dear Yvette, I have suddenly become aware of the drama all about me. It is as though they have all sprung to life. We are on the verge of a revolution, I believe. I have been reading the papers. I know things are very much more grave than we have allowed ourselves to believe. I wonder what will happen to us. I chatted to one of the maids who came in to clean. Nouny was having a nap so she could talk freely to me, which she wouldn’t dare do if Nouny was around. Anything unpleasant, as you know, has to be kept from me. I learned from the girl that there have been riots in various places all over the country and that the people are going to rise and demand their rights. Spoken, I must say, with a certain satisfaction. She looked at my negligee as she talked as though at the given moment she would have that as her share.

It is very distressing and I started to wonder what would happen to me if there was this turn-about. I cannot imagine anyone’s trying to take his chateau from him, can you? He would subdue them with a look.

All this going on and our not being aware of it, makes me see that there are things happening under my very nose, as it were, which I have not been looking at squarely.

He is still longing for the school lady and she remains aloof. Perhaps she knows it is the way to increase his ardour. But I am not sure. I think she is rather wise. From the little I have gathered from Marguerite she is the fount of all wisdom. It is always Minelle this . and Minelle that. Minelle is our school lady. I think that is Marguerite’s version of her name. It sounds French but the lady is as English as it is possible for anyone to be. Our tongue sounds a little incongruous on her lips though she speaks it perfectly.

He wants me out of the way. Of course he has been wanting that for a long time but never as fervently as now. When I say out of the way, I do not mean just out of sight, but off the earth. I suddenly realized this with a shock,

because as you know he is a man who, when he wants, wants fiercely and does not rest until he has it.

I, who have lived thus all these years-which is scarcely living at all suddenly find myself in the midst of intrigue. You see, Yvette, there are several people who wish me out of the way . not mildly but desperately. First there is my dear husband. How he would love to be rid of me! Then he could go to his schoolmistress and offer her honourable marriage. I believe that is what he wants to do.

And what of Gabrielle . all those years patiently waiting for me to die . and yet at the same time wanting me to live. If I died he might marry again, but would it be Gabrielle? Gabrielle has proved that she can bear a son. There is that six foot of Fontaine Delibes manhood to prove it. Etienne! And who could doubt that the Comte is his father? Poor Gabrielle, what a quandary for her! The Comte could marry her if he were free, but would he? I know she has been a faithful mistress to him for many years, but it is a tradition that when a man is free to marry it is not his ageing mistress whom he chooses as his wife. He turns and finds a young girl. So there sits our patient Gabrielle. What does she feel to see this young schoolmistress enslaving her lover? And Etienne, what of him?

Then there is Leon. I discovered something about Leon. It was on the night of the ball. I know so much more than people think. I have always bad food, clothes and even money sent to Leon’s family. I felt a certain responsibility, as it was because I did not produce a son that my husband drove so wildly that there was this terrible accident.

I send Edouard, one of my grooms, to Leon’s family once a month. He brings me back news of them. He talks to them and comes back and tells me little things about them. Then on the night of the ball . this happened. And Leon is aware of it. I am too tired to tell you about it now. It’s a long story . so next time. But Leon is afraid of what I might do.

There is so much drama in this household, Yvette. I often wonder where it will all end. But it does make life exciting and it could easily be so dull for me. I can’t wait to know what will happen next.

I have always been interested in people. It’s odd that I

should wish to be merely a looker-on. But it’s true. I don’t want to go down there in the arena. Marriage and all it entails is particularly distasteful to me. I suppose there are people like that.

They turn up occasionally.

There are moments of enjoyment in my life . writing to you . discovering what people are doing. And now suddenly it has all become tremendously exciting.

I can’t wait for what will happen next. I shall write to you tomorrow more fully. I’m just a little tired now and I like to be fresh for my letters.

Goodnight.

Ursule.

The letter fell from my hand. I looked at the date. It was written the night before she died.

I now knew why Yvette had decided to show me the letters. She was telling me that Ursule could not possibly have taken her own life.

There was little sleep for me that night. I lay awake brooding on what I had read.

I took the first opportunity of returning the letters to Yvette.

“You’ve read them?” she asked. I nodded.

“Did you realize when the last one was written?”

Yes, the night before she died. She must have written it just before she took the fatal dose. “

“Do you think that is the letter of a woman contemplating suicide?”

No. “

There is only one solution. He killed her. ” I was silent and she went on: ” He wanted her out of the way. She knew that. She actually said it in the letter. “

I don’t believe it. At the autopsy. “

“My dear Minelle, you do not know the Comte’s power. It has always been so. The doctors would say what he commanded them to.”

“Surely they would have more integrity.”

“You do not know how things can happen. Someone offends a person in a high place. A little later he receives a lettre de cachet. Nothing more is heard of him.”

I was silent and she came to me and laid a hand on my arm.

“If you are wise,” she said, ‘you will return to England with’ out delay and forget you ever met baa. “

“Where should I go?”

“Where would you go now if there were trouble?”

I suppose I should stay with Margot . here . with you all. “

“And if the Comte comes for you, what then?” I was silent and she went on: “He might offer to marry you. Would you marry a murderer?”

There is no proof. “

“Didn’t you find that in the letter? You read what she had written before she died. The doctors had been. He had sent for them that they might diagnose some imaginary disease.”

“It was Nou-Nou who sent for them.”

“Nou-Nou constantly wanted to send for them. It would only have been a matter of waiting until she asked for them again,” “If he wanted to be rid of her, why did he not do so long ago?”

“Because you were not there.”

“But he always wanted to remarry. He wanted a son.”

“There was no particular woman before. He was ready to leave it to fate and if necessary settle for Etienne.”

“You are conjecturing too much.”

“Oh, isn’t it clear to you, or are you wilfully blind?”

I was wilfully blind, I knew. The evidence was clear enough in the letters. She had declared her wish to live only the night before she died.

I had never been so wretched in the whole of my life.

One hot day followed another. When I awoke each morning my first thoughts were of the Comte. I could not shut from my mind the picture of his going into her bedroom and opening Nou-Nou’s cupboard. All the remedies were neatly labelled in Nou-Nou’s handwriting. He would tip the fluid into the glass . the double . or treble dose . that meant death.

What could I do? I asked him for the truth, he would not give it. He was adept at lying. Or would he tell me the truth and try to make me believe that whatever he had done would make no difference to us? Was he right? Could I stand the test? Wasn’t it cowardly to run away from it?

But that was what I should do. In the first heat of my passion for him I might forget but later how should I feel, living with a murderer?

In my dreams my mother returned to me. She pleaded with me. Then in the dream she changed to Yvette and said:

“Go home. Don’t delay any more.”

A strange thing happened a week after I had read those letters. I could almost believe that my mother had arranged it with divine assistance.

I was in my room turning over the question of what I should do when Margot rushed in.

“A visitor,” she cried.

“Come down at once. You will be surprised.”

I immediately thought of the Comte.

“Who?” I demanded.

“I’m not telling. Come and see. It’s a surprise.”

I doubted whether the arrival of the Comte would be such a great surprise and surely he would not have aroused this reaction in Margot.

I looked at myself in the mirror.

“You look all right,” Margot assured me.