Destiny (120 page)

"Oh, Edouard. I knew. And then I persuaded myself I was wrong. ..."

"And when you were in Paris—did you ever go back, to the place where we met?"

"Yes, once. I could feel you there."

"I felt you there too. Many times."

They looked at each other. Edouard lifted his hand, and gently traced the lines of her face. With a sudden swift gesture, Helene caught his hand, and pressed her hps against it.

"All that time. Five whole years." She hesitated, and then looked up at him with a quick vehemence. "Edouard—I was such a child. Younger than I had told you. There was such a gap of experience between us then—not age, that doesn't matter—but experience. Think of all the things you had done, all the things you had been. And I—I hardly knew who I was. I hadn't the courage to be myself then. I told hes—I hed to you. It hurts me to think how I lied. ..."

"My darling, I understand the reasons for that."

"No, hsten. Look, Edouard, I'm different now. You can even see it in

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my face. See—I have lines. Here, and here, and here." She touched her face, her expression very serious, and Edouard, who remembered these moments of grave and impassioned earnestness, and who loved her for them, bent forward, and gently kissed the hues.

"I'm proud of those hues, Edouard. I'm glad they're there. Because now —I'm not a child anymore. I'm closer to you. I feel closer to you. . . ."

She broke off, and Edouard took her two hands between his. He began speaking very carefully.

"In two day's time—listen—the SS France sails from New York. I've made reservations for you, for me, for Cat and for Madeleine, and also for Cassie, if she would hke to come."

"Edouard ..."

"They were made as soon as I read your letter. Well, as soon as the shipping office opened the next day . . ." He smiled. "If you don't want to come back to France, we'll go somewhere else. I don't care where. Anywhere. But I will not live without you again. I cannot live without you again. And—" He paused.

"You cannot remain married to Lewis."

"I never was married to Lewis. I couldn't be." She looked away. "Edouard . . ."

"You are not going to argue. You are going to choose. Helene . . ." He broke oflF, his calm deserting him. "We have this one life. We've lost five years of it."

"I've already chosen." She spoke so quietly, her head bent, that for an instant Edouard did not catch her words. Then she looked up, and he saw the affirmation in her eyes.

"Yes?"

"Yes. I love you, Edouard. Oh, I love you so much. ..."

She put her arms around his neck, with that quick impulsiveness which he had always loved. Edouard bent his head and kissed her.

It was only later, when her mind was filled with a thousand things she wanted to say to him, that she suddenly remembered one that was less pleasant to recall. She stood up, opened a drawer, and took out from it a bundle of newspaper clippings.

"I had forgotten. You've been away. You won't have seen these. You have to see them. Oh, Edouard—I want you to know that I wrote to you before this happened, before any of it began. But I can't let you decide now, not without looking at these."

"Give them to me."

He stood up and held out his hand. Helene passed the newspapers to him. Edouard did not look at them.

"I've already seen them—some of them. I know precisely how Uttle is

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true. I know when you wrote, and I know when this began. Helene, stop this." He turned and threw the newspapers into the fireplace, then bent and set a match to them. He straightened up, and looked at her, a smile beginning on his lips.

"I'm perfectly used to scandal. And no doubt when we sail together from New York, we shall create a great deal more."

"Edouard . . ."

"Forget all that. None of it is important. Here."

She had moved toward him. Now he reached into his pocket and drew something out.

"You forgot this once."

He opened his hand; lying in his palm was a square-cut diamond ring, the ring he had once given her.

Helene looked at it silently.

Edouard took her hand.

"Put it on."

She hesitated only for a moment, then she picked up the ring and shd it on her finger.

Edouard took her hand in his. Their eyes met.

"I knew," she said just as she had said to him once before.

''We knew," he corrected her.

Helene lifted her hand, and the diamond struck the light. She began to say something, stopped because there was no need for words, stopped for the quick bright certainty in her mind, and stopped because Edouard, impatient with words, had caught her to him.

Edouard met his daughter for the first time, later that day. The little girl of the photographs, whose face was a tiny mirror-image of his own. She burst into the room in which they were sitting, full of excitement about her expedition that afternoon.

She came to a halt when she saw the stranger; Edouard got to his feet gravely and courteously. An introduction was performed. Cat shook hands; she retreated to a chair, sat down quietly, and for some while said nothing. She swung her legs back and forth, occasionally glancing across at her mother, then turning back to look at the man again with that still careful gaze.

Edouard was reminded of Gregoire; he felt that he was being judged, which made him tense, and Helene, who could sense this, watched him with admiration—no one else would have known. He talked to Cat seriously, as he might have to another grown-up, as he had to Gregoire. She

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listened; she answered him, hesitantly at first, then more spontaneously. Then, suddenly, as children do, she decided to accept him. She stood up and looked at him.

"Have you seen the garden? Would you hke to see the garden? I'll show you if you like. And then, I'll show you my room. I have a French book in my room. Madeleine gave it to me."

"I should hke that very much."

Edouard rose; he and Helene followed her. They toured the garden exhaustively; they followed Cat up the stairs to her room. There, Edouard sat down on the small bed. He was shown the French book, and all the English books. Helene stood a little way off, and watched them quietly, two dark heads, bent over the pages.

"I know some French words." Cat looked up. "Madeleine taught me them. And how to say a French r, like a growl. I can do that sometimes." She paused, looking at him. "Do you know Madeleine too, or just my mother?"

"Yes. I do. I knew Madeleine—oh, a long time ago. Before she was grown up. And I knew her family."

This seemed to please Cat. She smiled, as if quite sure now that Edouard's credentials were in order.

"And do you live in France all the time, when you're not traveling?"

"I have a house near Paris. And one in the country, near where Madeleine used to hve. And one by the sea." He paused. "If you hked, you could come and visit them."

"Could I?" Two round patches of pink appeared in her cheeks. "With my mother?"

"But of course. And Madeleine and Cassie if you liked."

On the rare occasions when Cat had joined Helene on location, or had gone away with Helene and Lewis for a vacation, she had conceived a passion for airplanes. Now her eyes widened.

"Could we fly?"

"We could. Or perhaps we could go on a ship. A very big ship. You'd have your own room on it. . . ." Edouard, who was eager to make this alternative tempting, felt his inspiration failing. "With—with round windows. They're called portholes."

"And bunks," Helene said quickly.

Cat's color became hectic. "Bunks? Like you have in trailers? Oh, yes!"

"That's decided then. We shall do it. We shall go in my airplane to New York, and then take a ship."

"When? When? Tomorrow?"

"The day after tomorrow." Seeing a trace of his own impatience in his daughter's face, he began to smile. He observed that she did not mention

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Lewis Sinclair, and that the possibihty of his joining this expedition did not seem to occur to her. This increased his sense of optimism. When Cat had disappeared to bed, and Helene cried, h'=' pressed her hand. It would be all right, he told her. It would all work out—gently, gradually. They had time, after all; so much time.

Edouard returned to the house the next morning; he was introduced to Cassie. Cassie, clearly, already knew something of the story, perhaps from Helene, perhaps from Madeleine. Edouard had the impression that, as she surveyed him, she was now filling in the rest of the details for herself. Edouard, amused by her stem and searching glance, attempted to explain about the France.

"Where Helene goes, I go. Where she stays, I stay." Cassie drew herself up to her full height, as if daring him to challenge this statement. "You got her, you got me, I reckon."

Edouard professed himself delighted. He looked forward to the confrontation between George and this plainspoken woman; Cassie, for her part, was impressed, and also charmed. She had no intention of letting Edouard see that yet, however. Early days, she said to herself; early days.

"And no French," she said, fixing him with a gimlet glance. "Can't twist my tongue 'round it, never could. Too old to start now. And what's more —you've hardly left us any time for proper packing."

She swept off, arms full of swathes of tissue paper. Edouard, unused to a household in which women were packing in earnest, retreated, a Httle bemused. He entertained Cat, with stories and books. She showed him her paintings. Then, that afternoon, when she was whisked away, full of protests, by Madeleine, he spent two idyllic hours with Helene, who was—at one and the same time—exhibiting the symptoms of a woman in love, and a woman who was frantically and distractedly trying to organize her departure. Edouard enjoyed all this. He lounged in a chair, surrounded by boxes and suitcases, and marveled whenever she blushed. He found it charming when she could not decide between one dress and another, when she leaned back on her heels and sighed, as if all decisions were beyond her.

"My darling," he said, his eyes resting lazily upon her, "take them all. Or leave them all behind and I'll buy you new ones. It doesn't matter. ..."

Their eyes met. They were in her bedroom, and a certain tense awareness of that became apparent to them both.

"Not here. Not now ..." Edouard said reluctantly, his hps against her

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hair. Moments later the tension was forgotten, and it was simply delightful to be a man, surrounded by femininity—by lace and petticoats and gloves and hats—by seriousness one moment, and by the most charming frivohty the next.

Helene found herself in a state of ecstasy and terror. Everything was happening too fast, and not fast enough. On the one hand, she felt a perplexing desire to do nothing at all; simply to look at Edouard, or to hear his voice, or to touch his hand, seemed fulfillment enough. It had been a very long time since she had experienced that particular havoc of the senses, and that particular state of dazed bliss. She was inclined to indulge it; she was not entirely capable of controlling it; when she recognized that something similarly irrational was happening to Edouard, apparently the most controlled and rational of men, and that she could provoke it with a word or a glance, she found she wanted to provoke it, wanted it very much. The swiftness of his reaction, and the reassurance that it gave her—this was tempting. She did not give packing her undivided attention; she was inclined to flirt.

On the other hand, breaking through the delightful daze of mind and senses, there were other, less seductive imperatives. She could not, she said, simply depart. . . . There were people who must be informed. Here Edouard was no help at all. He saw no reason why not. He was by then in a state of such exaltation and impatience that he was finding it difficult to believe that such a person as Lewis Sinclair existed—and as for agents, lawyers, secretaries, accountants, they had vanished from the face of the earth, and they had, he noted with particular pleasure, taken Thaddeus Angelini with them.

Helene, fighting the pleasurable daze, was adamant.

"Inform them then ..." Edouard said with an amused and magisterial wave of the hand. He frowned. "Perhaps I should go?" This possibility appalled him. Luckily, it seemed to appall Helene too. No, she said; he must stay. She would do it quickly, quickly.

And so she made a chain of telephone calls, sitting at the desk in her office, and Edouard dutifully sat opposite her, in an upright chair, and piled paper clips into a mountain, knocked it over, and then piled it up again. He looked at the ledgers and the files and the evidence of Helene's business life; he listened to her voice as it managed to give the minimum information necessary with the maximum calm; he looked at the way the light shone on her hair, and the way her fingers twisted and untwisted the cord of the telephone.

The call to Thad Angelini was particularly brief—Angelini showed no interest in Helene's plans. This surprised Edouard somewhat, but he was in no frame of mind to consider it further. Only the call to Lewis took any

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length of time, and that was because he was obviously having difficulty understanding what Helene was saying. She had to repeat the simplest phrases, and when she eventually replaced the receiver, Edouard could see her distress.

"He'd taken something. Some pills, perhaps. I don't know." She gave a little helpless gesture of the hand. "He wasn't really listening."

Edouard at once sobered; his mind sharpened. At that moment, when he admitted to himself for the first time exactly how jealous he had been of this man, the jealousy suddenly departed. Lewis Sinclair had loved Helene, after all; and for an instant Edouard felt a kinship with him, and an understanding of him, which he had never had before.

He felt a httle ashamed, then, of his earlier and carefree happiness. It reminded him that he must be careful: the past could not simply be undone, without regard for its complexities. A marriage was involved, and though it hurt him to realize that that marriage had secrets and convolutions and loyalties to which he was not party, he knew he must accept that.