An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (71 page)

Emilie drew a deep breath and then she began,

‘I planned to tell you all this, Jeanne, in a few days’ time. I was expecting my niece to arrive at the end of this month. I was indeed astonished to see her when she came here last night. She tells me that the Reverend Mother of the Convent died and the Nuns decided to send the pupils home three weeks earlier than had been intended.
Mademoiselle
wrote to me, but, as I have already said, the letter has not arrived.’

Emilie paused for a moment, her fingers meshing together, then she looked at Jeanne and her voice sank to little more than a whisper.

‘Today, Jeanne,’ she said, ‘we start a new life, you and I. The past is finished.’

‘A new life,
Madame
!’ Jeanne echoed. ‘But what can you mean by that?’

‘What I say,’ Emilie snapped, and her voice was normal again. ‘This is no figure of speech, Jeanne, but a sober fact. The day before yesterday I sold the business.’

‘
Madame!’

There was no mistaking the astonishment in Jeanne’s voice now.

‘Yes, I sold it, and sold it well. No one, I venture to think, could have done better. But from today, Jeanne,
Numéro cinq
Rue de Roi
has ceased to exist as far as we are concerned, in fact it never has existed. And
Madame
Bleuet is dead too.’

Is that why you have changed your hair,
Madame
?’ Jeanne asked.

‘Exactly!’ Emilie said, looking again at her reflection in the mirror. ‘My hair is grey, as God intended it to be! It ages me, Jeanne, but there is no reason now for me to look young or attractive. Indeed, I have other plans, quite different plans. I am going to be a Countess, Jeanne –
Madame La
Comtesse.
It sounds well, doesn’t it? That is what I intend to be from today and you must not forget it.’

Mon Dieu!
But, I, how can you? I mean – ’

‘Listen, Jeanne, and do not interrupt. We have very little time. In a short while
Mademoiselle
will be awake and our story must be clear. I am
Madame la Comtesse.
I have married and been widowed. You must remember, Jeanne, that
Mademoiselle
did not know of
Monsieur
Bleuet. I never told her about him. When I visited the Convent, I went there as
Mademoiselle
Riguad. I communicated both with the Nuns and with
Mademoiselle
in the same manner. It was safer from every point of view and now I am thankful I was so cautious.

‘Now for your part – a few days ago as I was passing down the
Rue de Madeleine
I saw some baggage for sale in a shop window. It was a poor shop which sells shop soiled or second hand articles. There was quite a quantity of luggage, Jeanne, of good solid leather and stamped with a coronet. You will go this morning and buy it for me. It will lend support to my story.’

‘Luggage,
Madame
? Then you intend to go away?’

‘Yes, Jeanne, I am leaving here and you – are coming with us – with
Mademoiselle
and myself. I told you the past was dead, the future begins.’

‘But where are we going,
Madame
? And why this pretence?’

‘I shall not tell you all my secrets, Jeanne. I have never done that, have I? I prefer to work alone, for it is wiser that way. I have only myself to blame if things go wrong, but this time they will not go wrong, they will succeed! For eighteen years I have planned for this moment and worked for it. Yes, worked hard! All I have done has been for this.’

Emilie’s voice seemed almost to hiss the words. Her eyes were mere slits in her bloodless face. Then with a sudden change of expression she threw out her hands.

‘Do not look so bewildered, Jeanne. You have but to trust me. Hurry and buy the luggage, for we shall need it. Then there are my clothes to be seen to, most of the gowns are useless.’

‘Useless?’

Jeanne’s tone as she echoed the word was more bewildered than ever.

But of course! Quite useless! I am an aristocrat, Jeanne, a lady! Open the door of the wardrobe and tell me how many of the dresses hanging there will be suitable for me now.’

Obediently and half as if she were hypnotised Jeanne crossed the room to the huge mahogany wardrobe which occupied the whole of one wall of the bedroom. With a gesture she threw open the double doors. The wardrobe was tightly packed with gowns of all descriptions. They seemed, as they hung there, blended into all the colours of the rainbow, to come alive, for the frills, ribbons and laces with which they were trimmed fluttered in the draught caused by the opening of the doors.

‘You can sell them for me,’ Emilie said from the bed. They will not fetch much, but Widow Wyatt in the Market – cheat though she is – will give you a better price than anyone else. Tell her what they cost and drive the best bargain you can. There is the green velveteen new but these three months, and the cyclamen
satin de laine
which was only delivered a week before Christmas.’

‘Oui, Madame
, you have only worn the cyclamen three times!’

As she spoke, Jeanne took the gown almost lovingly from its hanger. Of satin with wide crepeline frills, it was ornamented with bows of velvet ribbon, the corsage and narrow sleeves besprinkled with diamanté. It was obvious that the dress was expensive, but in the morning light it looked garish. There was something common and also suggestive about it as it hung from Jeanne’s hands, its boned bodice billowing out as if it still concealed some ghostly figure within it.

‘Take it away, Jeanne,’ Emilie commanded sharply. ‘I realise now what I must have looked like in it.’

Obediently Jeanne put the dress back on the hanger and shut the wardrobe door.

‘And if these are disposed of – what will
Madame
wear?’ she enquired.

‘New clothes – both day and evening gowns which must be made for me at once, and
Mademoiselle
’s need will be the same as mine. You will go immediately and ask
Madame
Guibout to call on us. Tell her it is of the utmost importance and an order of some magnitude.’

‘
Madame
Guibout! She will be expensive!’

‘I am well aware of that, Jeanne. This is a moment when we do not spare money. As I have told you, a new life begins.’

Even as Emilie spoke, the tone of her voice seeming almost a trumpet call which echoed round the room, there came a knock on the door. For a second the eyes of mistress and maid met and neither spoke. Then almost as if it were an effort Emilie said,

‘Entrez!’

The door opened and Mistral came in. She was still in her nightgown, a long white cambric robe which the Nuns made for their pupils, and round her shoulders for warmth she wore a white cashmere shawl. She came slowly into the room, her eyes alight, her lips smiling, and as she crossed to the foot of her Aunt’s bed the sunshine touched her head and turned it into a torch of living gold so that it seemed to illuminate the room with its very brilliance.

Her hair, parted in the centre to frame her small face, fell over her breasts in two thick heavy plaits which reached below her knees. It was the colour of corn which is just ripening, of the sun when it first rises from the horizon. It was also, she was to learn later, the colour and softness of budding mimosa. It was hair which is only found on Anglo Saxons, the fair flaxen hair which goes with the blue eyes and pale complexions of the English.

But astonishingly Mistral’s eyes were not blue. They were dark, almost purple in their depths, and fringed with dark eyelashes which gave her a strange and unexpected look of mystery.

Watching her, Emilie wondered for a fleeting moment why she had ever thought that Mistral resembled her mother, and then, even as she wondered, the resemblance was there again. A turn of the head, a spontaneous smile, and it was Alice, not Mistral, who stood at the foot of the bed, her eyes looking at her with an expression of unsuppressed joy and happiness. Yet Alice’s eyes had been blue and she could never have been mistaken for anything but what she was – an Englishwoman and an aristocrat.

But, Emilie acknowledged grudgingly, Mistral’s beauty was even more striking. That strange combination of golden hair and dark eyes was fascinatingly lovely, her lips, perfectly curved, were naturally red against the fairness of her skin. But there was just something faintly un-English about her, something which made one wonder what secrets those dark eyes held.

Nevertheless there was no possibility of being mistaken about one thing – Mistral was a lady, as her mother had been. From the crown of her head, held proudly with an indescribable grace, to the soles of her small feet with their high-arched insteps she was an aristocrat. There was something in the manner in which she moved, in the long thin fingers and her tiny straight nose which proclaimed her blue blood as clearly as if she carried her pedigree in her hand.

Emilie gave a little sigh and held out her hand. Mistral flew to her side.

‘
Bonjour
, Aunt Emilie. Do forgive me for having slept so late, but I was so tired last night that I remembered nothing until I awoke but a few moments ago and wondered where I was.’

Mistral’s French was pure and perfect.

‘I wanted you to sleep late, dear,’ Emilie replied. ‘And now Jeanne will bring you your breakfast. Do you remember Jeanne?’

As swift as a swallow’s flight Mistral had crossed the room and was holding out both her hands to Jeanne.

‘Of course I remember you,’ she cried. ‘I remember the
bonbons
you used to give me when you brushed my hair. When I first went to the Convent, I missed both your
bonbons
and you more than I can say. I had to brush my own hair then and how I hated it for being long and getting into tangles! I used to long to cut it off.’

‘
Hélas, Mademoiselle
, it would have been a crime!’ Jeanne exclaimed, beaming all over her face. ‘And to think you should remember me after twelve years!
Tiens
, but you were always the sweetest little girl in all Brittany.’

‘I missed Brittany too,’ Mistral said softly, then turning towards her Aunt, she added, ‘But oh, Aunt Emilie, it is so exciting to be here, and this house is charming. Why have you never let me visit you before?’

‘It is a long story, Mistral,’ Emilie replied. ‘And there are several other and more important things I want to talk to you about at this moment. Jeanne will fetch your breakfast here and we can talk as you eat.’

‘Oh, that will be lovely!’ Mistral exclaimed as Jeanne hurried from the room. ‘I am glad we can talk. There are such a lot of things I want to know. I am not complaining, you must not think that, I was happy at the Convent, but sometimes I felt lonely. All the other girls seemed to have families and lots of relations. I only had you. You have always been kind to me, but I saw so little of you and not having a home to come to in the holidays made me feel different.’

‘I can understand that,’ Emilie replied, ‘but there were reasons why I could not have you. There is no need to go into them, for things have changed and now we can be together.’

“That is wonderful, Aunt Emilie. If you only knew how happy that makes me. I was sometimes afraid, terribly afraid, that you would never take me away and that I should have to stay at the Convent forever and become a Nun.’

‘You would not have liked that?’ Emilie asked curiously. Mistral shook her head.

‘I knew in my heart of hearts that I had no vocation. I loved the Nuns. No one could help but love and admire them. They were saints most of them and always I used to pray that I would become as good as they were, but all the time something inside me seemed to say that I was not to stay. I wanted to know more about the world outside, I wanted to live a different life. Oh, perhaps I am being silly and you will laugh at me, but I sometimes felt as if voices were calling to me to live more fully, to enjoy the world before I dedicated myself unreservedly to the Service of Heaven.’

Mistral’s voice was soft and almost mystical as she spoke. Emilie, watching her, taking in the sense of what she said, was yet acutely aware of many other things – the almost magnetic quality of the girl’s voice, the soft seduction of her parted lips, the pure unawakened loveliness of her widened eyes, and the emotions which seemed to radiate from her as she spoke.

‘You were right in what you thought,’ Emilie said after a moment. ‘You are young, Mistral, and it would be a pity to shut up anyone who is both young and pretty behind the high walls of a Convent.’

‘Pretty? Do you mean me?’ Mistral asked. ‘Oh, Aunt Emilie, do you really think so? I hoped I was, but I was never sure. I looked so different from the other girls.’

‘Didn’t they tell you you were pretty?’ Emilie enquired.

Two dimples appeared in Mistral’s cheeks.

‘Sometimes! But at other times they teased me because my hair was so fair. I was the only English girl in the Convent and the only one who was not a brunette.’

‘The only English girl!’ Emilie repeated. ‘Yes, Mistral, you are English, for your mother was English.’

‘And my father?’

Mistral asked the question quickly, and even as the words left her lips, she saw a shadow cross Emilie’s face and her expression change. The benevolent smiling Aunt who had been talking to her seemed to vanish, and instead there was a woman whose whole face seemed to be contorted.

Mistral had never seen hatred before, but she recognised it now, recognised it in the clenched lips, the narrowed eyes, the lines which seemed to accentuate everywhere until Emilie’s face was as hideous as a gargoyle. But even as Mistral gasped, even as she felt fear like a dark cloud rise within her, Emilie’s expression changed again.

‘We will not speak of your father,’ she said. ‘Not now. One day I will tell you about him, but for the moment there are other and more important things for us to do. You have come to live with me, Mistral, and I am glad to have you, but there is one thing that I must make clear – very clear – from the beginning. I expect obedience. You will obey me whether you understand the reason for my commands or whether you do not. You will obey me implicitly and without question from now onwards. Is that understood?’