An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (72 page)

Emilie’s voice was hard and once again Mistral felt a sensation of fear, but resolutely she put it from her.

‘Of course I will, Aunt Emilie. I have no wish to do anything else.’

‘That is good! Then I will tell you what we are about to do. Today we will order your clothes. I have sent for
Madame
Guibout, one of the best couturiers in Paris. She is expensive, but rightly so, for she was trained by
Monsieur
Worth who is patronised by the Empress Eugénie. She will make you all the clothes you need. Yes, your gowns will be expensive, but they will be flattering and, when you wear them, you will feel confident and assured of your power to attract attention.’

‘Oh, thank you, thank you, Aunt Emilie,’ Mistral breathed. ‘If you only knew how I have longed – ’

‘Let me continue,’ Emilie interrupted. ‘I have other things to tell you.’

‘Yes, Aunt Emilie.’

‘We have only seen each other, you and I, at short intervals since you went to the Convent twelve years ago. I do not know how much you know or remember about your childhood and your family history. Your grandfather was the Hon. John Wytham, youngest son of Lord Wytham, an English nobleman. I was his eldest child, but he never married my mother who was French. Your real grandmother was an Englishwoman belonging to a distinguished family. She died when your mother was five years old, leaving her to be brought up by her parents, Sir Hereward and Lady Burghfield. Your mother was neglected and treated harshly by her relatives, and your grandfather, when he discovered this, brought her to Brittany and left her in the charge of my mother – and myself. Your grandfather was not a rich man, and he was a very extravagant one. I have supported you – I alone! For those past twelve years during which you have been educated I have paid all your fees, I have bought your clothes, I arranged for you to have special instruction. I paid extra for your music and for your lessons in English, French and German. The classes you attended for elocution, dancing and deportment were all supplementary. I paid for them – I personally.’

‘I did not know of this,’ Mistral said. ‘Thank you, Aunt Emilie!’

‘I have no desire to be thanked,’ Emilie said quickly. ‘I am only telling you this so that you shall understand your own position. Your relatives in England made no attempt to find your mother when she left them, and as your grandfather had little communication with England during the last years of his life, I doubt if they were ever informed of your existence. I am therefore your only relative, your Aunt – your entire family.

‘Yes, Aunt Emilie.’

Mistral was perturbed. There was something truculent, almost aggressive, in her Aunt’s way of speaking.

‘Sufficient then that we understand one another,’ Emilie went on. ‘Now I have something else to tell you – I am married. I married a
Comte
. He is dead, and there is no need for us to speak of him, but I am in fact
Madame la Comtesse.
Where we are going I shall not use my title. I shall use another name and remain incognito for reasons of my own.’

‘We are going away!’ Mistral exclaimed. ‘Where to?’

‘I am coming to that in due course,’ Emilie replied. ‘We are going a long journey and one which I have planned for many years.’

‘You planned to go – with me?’ Mistral enquired.

‘Yes, I planned to go with you,’ Emilie replied, ‘we will talk no more of it until we are ready, but you will remember one thing. You will not discuss my affairs or your own with anyone. It does not matter how many people ask or enquire about us, you will tell them nothing.’

‘But if people ask who I am?’ Mistral asked. ‘What am I to reply? Am I, too, to have another name?’

‘Most certainly,’ Emilie replied. ‘You are to tell no one that your name is Wytham. Is that clear? The word Wytham must never pass your lips. I shall be –
Madame
– yes,
Madame
Secret! It is an appropriate nomination. People will be curious – I
want
them to be curious, people will ask questions – I
want
them to ask questions, people will talk – I
want
them to talk.’

‘But, Aunt Emilie, I do not understand.’

‘Does it matter if you do or not? I have already told you, Mistral, you must obey me. I must also add that you must trust me. I know what is best for you, as I know what is best for myself. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, Aunt Emilie.’

‘Then we are agreed. We will journey together, you and I, and my reason for the journey will for the moment remain my secret.’

Mistral would have said something, but at that moment there came a knock on the door and Jeanne came into the room. ‘
Madame
Guibout is here,
Madame
.’

‘Good,’ Emilie said. ‘Ask her to come in. Mistral, you go at once and put on your clothes with the exception of your gown.
Madame
will wish to fit you in your petticoats.’

‘But first
Mademoiselle
must have her breakfast,’ Jeanne exclaimed. ‘I put it in her room nearly twenty minutes ago, as I thought you desired me to do.’

‘How stupid you are, Jeanne! I wished
Mademoiselle
to have it here, but never mind! Eat it in your room while you dress, Mistral, but do not be too long.’

‘Very well, Aunt Emilie,’ Mistral said obediently and followed Jeanne from the room.

Emilie watched her go. As she reached the door, Mistral glanced back over her shoulder, giving her Aunt a shy smile. She made a little gesture of farewell, and for a moment Emilie thought it was Alice who smiled, Alice who made the little gesture with her head. Emilie almost cried out at the resemblance, then the door closed behind Mistral and she was alone.

‘Alice!’

She whispered the name to herself. It seemed only yesterday that she had seen her smile so sweetly. How lovely she had been and how lovable! How much those soft clinging arms had meant round her neck. She could see Alice now as she was when John Wytham brought her from England at the age of ten, a thin, frightened little girl, with eyes which seemed too big for her face – tear-drenched blue eyes, and lips which were ready to tremble at a harsh word.

Emilie had been feeding the chickens on the farm when her father arrived. She could see him now driving up the lane, the black horses rearing and prancing as if they were just fresh from the stable. He drew up with a flourish, threw the reins to a groom, jumped down and held out his arms to a small child who had been seated beside him on the driving seat.

He walked through the garden gate and up the cinder path, carrying Alice in his arms. She clung to him, hiding her face against his neck so that nothing could be seen of her except her long golden hair hanging down the back of her blue velvet jacket.

John Wytham’s greeting of Emilie, his eldest daughter, had been robust and characteristic.

‘Well, Emilie – got yourself a husband yet?’

Emilie might have replied to him in many different ways. She might have said that being the illegitimate result of a union between an English painter and the daughter of a French farmer was not exactly an asset when it came to marriage. She might have told him that the only men she met in this obscure if beautiful part of Brittany were peasants and farmers, none of whom interested her because her English blood made her unduly fastidious. She might have replied that, if he could only be unselfish enough to remember that a French girl needs a dowry, she might find a husband, but that with what money he had given her mother these past ten years they could not have kept an animal alive.

But Emilie, tongue-tied as she always was in her father’s presence, could only answer his question with a stammered,

‘N – no – F – Father !’

John Wytham pinched her cheek, and surrendering to his charm she smiled at him.

‘And you are over thirty! It’s time you hurried up and got a lover or you will be too late. Where’s your Mother?’

‘Inside.’

Without another word he passed her and went into the house. Emilie followed him into the big, oak-beamed kitchen.

Her mother had been cooking supper, and there was a savoury smell coming from the pots and pans on the hearth. Marie Riguad’s face was flushed from the fire and her hair, now beginning to turn grey, was untidy, but her figure was slim as a girl’s and when she saw who stood there her voice rang out joyously, eager and excited as a young child’s.

‘John!’

‘Yes,
John!
Are you surprised to see me after all these years’?’

‘It is only four years since you last visited us, and I knew you would come again.’

‘You did, did you? And you were right. I have brought someone with me.’

Very gently he set Alice down on the table. She gave an inarticulate murmur and continued to hide her face against him.

‘This is Alice,’ he said briefly to Marie.

‘I guessed that,’ she answered. ‘You spoke of her the last time you were here. You said your wife’s parents were looking after her.’

‘But I didn’t tell you how those damned in-laws of mine were treating her, did I? My stuck-up father-in-law, always too good for me, and his lady wife with her nose in the air and a patronising way of giving you two fingers, as if you might steal the rest of her hand if she parted with more. It’s not surprising that the child’s been unhappy with them, but I didn’t realise how unhappy until I went to see her a few days ago. It was not what she told me, for they had got her too cowed for her to say much, but I forced her nurse to tell me the truth. She told me Alice was bullied and punished, told continually that she was not wanted and that her father was a bad man.

‘I let them see how bad I was. I told them to go to the devil, and I took the child away with me. She is sick, and miserable, so I brought her to you, Marie. I’m finished with responsibility, I’m finished with England. I’m going off to paint, but I can’t lug an ailing brat around with me. Will you take her?’

Emilie had hardly listened to her mother’s reply, for she knew what it would be even before it came swiftly from her parted lips.

‘You know I will, John.’

Like Marie Riguad she had eyes and ears only for John Wytham. The great strength of him seemed to fill the room.

He was tall and handsome, and inexperienced though she was about men, Emilie knew that he was wild. There was something untamed, uncivilised about his very gaiety, about his sensual mouth, about the way his eyes seemed magnetically to hold the attention of anyone who watched him.

‘That is settled then,’ he said. ‘Here is some money. I will send you some more when I have it.’

He threw a bundle of banknotes on the table and it seemed to Emilie that there was an enormous amount of them. She was to learn that there were not to be many more.

‘You will stay, John? At least you will stay to supper?’ Marie Riguad gasped piteously as he turned towards the door.

‘No, my dear, I have other commitments. Thank you for taking Alice.’

He disengaged the clinging fingers of the child and gave her a kiss on the top of her head, then turned towards the woman he had loved when he was twenty, and who had loved him for over thirty years. He put his fingers under her chin and tilted hack her head. She looked up into his eyes, her face soft and transfigured.

‘So you still love me!’ he said after a moment. ‘Well, well, I was always a lucky man.’

He kissed her on the lips, then walked from the kitchen, and Marie made no further attempt to stop him. She only stood staring after him, her hand to her breasts which were pounding tumultuously beneath the cheap flannel of her blouse.

It was Emilie who watched him go, Emilie who saw him turn the black horses in the narrow lane with competent skill, who heard the last murmur of his voice, who saw him raise his hat and wave it to her with a flamboyant gesture as the horses set off at a tremendous speed, the
chaise
rocking behind them in the cart tracks.

Then another sound attracted her attention. It was the cry of a child.

‘
Papa! Papa!
Do not leave me!’

It was a piteous cry, a cry of utter desolation as a small figure came running from the kitchen into the garden. It was then that Emilie caught Alice up in her arms, holding her tight, feeling her body trembling, quivering in her arms, the warm salt of her tears falling on her cheeks.

‘Pauvre petite!’
she murmured. ‘It is all right, it is all right! I will look after you.’

She did not know then how prophetic her words were. Now she could see the rising spiral of the tasks which then lay ahead of her – Alice being coaxed to eat, Alice afraid of the dark, Alice fleeing from the cows, Alice wanting to be taken for a walk, Alice crying because the village children had teased her, Alice requiring teachers, doctors, medicines, books, dresses, shoes, amusements. Alice waiting for her long hair to be brushed while it covered her white shoulders like a golden veil.

Emilie sighed.

There was a sound outside the door and she realised that her memories had taken but a few seconds, although it seemed to her that they passed in a pageant as slow as the years in which they had taken place.

‘
Madame
Guibout,
Madame.
’

Jeanne ushered in the
couturière
. She was a small vivacious woman, her complexion sallow from the long hours in stifling rooms, her eyes strained and bloodshot from too close a concentration on the garments she created so skilfully.

‘
Bonjour, Madame
.’

It took but a few seconds to exchange greetings and then as one business woman to another Emilie and
Madame
Guibout dispensed with civility.

‘Travelling gowns, morning costumes, Ball dresses, robes de style, manteaux, dolmans, paletots and casaques!
Mademoiselle
will want everything,’ Emilie said.

‘And for yourself,
Madame
?’

‘An entire trousseau.’

‘And how soon?’

‘I desire the impossible! Three days – a week at the outside!’

‘It will be expensive.’