Nine Coaches Waiting

"Sure. I'm half-way there already. Repeat the name of the place, please."

"The Villa Mireille. Anyone'll tell you. It's on the lakeside. Take the lower road. M.I.R.E.I.L.L.E. Got it?"

"Yes, thank you… sherry."

"What? Oh, I see. Is the barman listening?"

"Yes."

"Then you'll have to say goodbye nicely, I'm afraid."

"I don't know how."

"Say ’à bientȏt, chérie’"

"Ah biang toe sherry," said William grimly, and then laughed. "I'm glad you're in such good spirits, anyway," he added.

"Yes," I said drearily. "See you soon. And thank you, William. Thank you a lot. It's nice not to be… quite on one's own."

"Think nothing of it," said William, and rang off.

The handset was hardly back in its cradle when the car came down the road. We stood together, just back from the dark window, and watched the lights. It slowed and changed gear for the gate. Its lights swung round in the mist and slid across the study ceiling.

Philippe's hand slid into mine, and gripped. My own shaking.

He said inadequately: "Here he is."

"Yes. Oh, Philippe."

He said wonderingly: "You have been afraid too, all the time?"

"Yes. Terribly."

"I didn't know."

"I'm glad of that."

The car had stopped. Lights were cut, then the engine. Feet crunched on the gravel and the car door slammed. Steps, quick and assured, mounted to the front door. We heard the rattle of the handle. Then the sounds weren't outside the house any longer, but inside; the slight sound of the big door opening, a step on the tiled floor…

He had come. It was over.

I said shakily: "Dieu soit béni" and made for the study door. I hadn't even considered what I was going to say to Hippolyte, It was possible that in some fashion he had already been greeted with the news. It was also possible that he had never even heard of me. I didn't care. He was here. I could hand over.

I flew along the carpeted gallery and down the lovely curve of the stairs.

The hall lights were not on. The front door was ajar, and the lamp that hung outside it over the steps cast a long panel of gold across the tiles. Outside I saw the car gleaming in the mist. The newcomer stood just inside the door, one hand raised as if in the act of switching on the lights. He was silhouetted against the lamplit haze beyond, a tall, powerfully-built man, standing stockstill, as a man does when he is listening.

On the thick carpet my feet made little more noise than a ghost's. I reached the centre stair and hesitated, one hand on the balustrade. I started slowly down the last flight towards him.

Then he saw me, and raised his head.

"So you are here," he said.

That was all, but it stopped me as if he had shot me. I stood clutching the banister till I thought the wood would crack. For one crazy moment I wanted to turn and run, but I couldn't move.

I said, in an unrecognisable voice that broke on the word: “Raoul?"

“Lui-mȇme." There was a click as the lights came on-a great chandelier that poured and flashed light from a thousand glittering crystals. They struck at my eyes and I flinched and put up a hand, then dropped it and looked at him across the empty hall. I had forgotten all about Philippe, about Hippolyte, about William Blake even now tearing down from Soubirous; I could see nothing but the man who stood there with his hand on the light-switch, looking up at me. There was nothing except the thing that lay between us.

He dropped his hand, and shut the door behind him. He was quite white, and his eyes were hard as stones. There were lines in his face I hadn't seen before. He looked very like Léon de Valmy.

He said: "He's here? Philippe?" His voice was very even and quiet, but I thought I could hear the blaze of anger licking through it that he didn't trouble to suppress.

The question was answered by Philippe himself. He had followed me as far as the gallery, and there had stopped, prompted by a better instinct than my own. At his cousin's question he must have moved, for the stir in the shadows above him made Raoul lift his head sharply. I followed his look just in time to see Philippe, a small silent wraith, melt back into the darkness of the gallery.

Then Raoul moved, and fast. He took the hall in four strides and was coming upstairs two at a time. His leap out of immobility had been so sudden that I reacted without reason, a blind thing in a panic. I don't remember moving, but as I let go the banister I fled-was swept-up the stairway in front of him, only to check desperately on the landing and whirl to face him.

I shrieked: "Run, Philippe!" and put up frantic, futile hands to break the tempest.

They never touched him. He stopped dead. His arms dropped to his sides. I moved slowly back till I came up against the curve of the banister-rail and leaned there. I don't think I could have stood unsupported. He wasn't looking after Philippe. He was looking at me. I turned my head away.

Behind me, along the gallery, I heard the study door shut very softly.

Raoul heard it too. He lifted his head. Then he looked back at me.

"I see," he said.

So did I. I had seen even while shock reacting on weariness had driven me stupidly and headlong from him up the stairs. And now I saw the look that came down over his face, bleak bitter pride shutting down over anger, and I knew that I had turned my world back to cinders, sunk my lovely ship with my own stupid, wicked hands. I couldn't speak, but I began to cry-not desperately or tragically, but silently and without hope, the tears spilling anyhow down my cheeks, and my face ugly with crying.

He didn't move. He said, very evenly: "When I reached the Château Valmy this morning and my father told me that you had gone, he seemed to think you would have come to me for help. I told him no, you thought I was in Paris till Thursday, but I'd left my apartment there on Tuesday evening, and you couldn't know where I was. It was only later that I found you hadn't tried to get in touch with me there at all." His voice was quite expressionless. "There was only one reason I could think of why you hadn't telephoned me. When I… put this to my father he denied that any harm had come to you. I didn't believe him."

He paused. I couldn't look at him. I put up a hand to wipe away the tears that streaked my face. But they kept falling.

"I told him then that I intended to make you my wife, and that if anything happened to you, or to the boy and through him to you, I would kill him-my father-with my own hands."

I looked at him then. "Raoul…" But my voice died away. I couldn't speak.

He said slowly, answering my look: "Yes. I believe I did mean it," and added one word, one knell of a word, "then."

We had neither of us heard the other car. When the hall door swung open to admit two people-a man and a woman-we both jumped and turned. The man was a stranger to me; the woman was Héloïse de Valmy. They neither of them saw us above them on the landing, because at that moment Madame Vuathoux, who must this time have seen the lights of the car, came bustling into the hall from the back regions, vociferous with welcome.

"Monsieur-but you are welcome! I was so afraid that, with this mist-oh!" She stopped and her hands went up as if in horror. "Tiens, Madame-she is ill? What is the matter? Of course, of course! What horror! Has there still been no word?"

I hadn't noticed till she mentioned it, but Héloïse de Valmy was indeed clinging to Hippolyte's arm as if she needed its support. In the merciless light from the chandelier her face looked ghastly, grey and haggard like the face of an old woman. The concierge surged forward with cries of commiseration.

The little boy-nothing was heard yet, no? And of course Madame was distracted. La pauvre… Madame must come upstairs… there was a stove lit… a drink… some bouillon, perhaps?