“I remember her standing in the path on that first day, while Papa Brooke punctiliously introduced her to everybody including the dog, and Mama Brooke asked her whether she wanted to go upstairs and wash. She was rather tall, and soft and slender, wearing some tailored costume that was unobtrusive too. Her neck was slender; she had heavy, smooth, dark-red hair; her eyes were long and blue and dreaming, with a smile in them, though they seldom seemed to look at you directly.
“Harry Brooke did not say anything. But he took another swing at an imaginary golf-ball, so that there was a swish and a whick as the club head flicked cropped grass.
“So I smoked my cigar―being always, always, always violently curious about human behaviour―and I said to myself, ‘Aha!’
“For this young woman grew on you. It was ode and perhaps a bit weird. Her spiritual good looks, her soft movements, above all her extraordinary aloofness. . .
“Fay Seton was, in every sense of your term, a lady: though she seemed rather to conceal this and be frightened of it. She came of a very good family, old impoverished stock in Scotland, and Mr. Brooke discovered this and it impressed him powerfully. She had not been trained as a secretary; no, she had been trained as something else.” Professor Rigaud chuckled and eyed his auditors keenly. “’But she was quick and efficient, and deft and cool-looking. If they wanted a fourth at bridge, or someone to sing and play at the piano when the lamps were lighted in the evening, Fay Seton would oblige. In her way she was friendly, though shy and somewhat prudish, and she would often sit looking into the distance, far away. And you thought to yourself, in exasperation: what is this girl thinking about?
“That blazing hot summer . . .!
“When the very water of the river seemed thick and turgid under the sun, and there was a wiry hum of crickets after nightfalclass="underline" I am never likely to forget it, now.
“Like a sensible person Fay Seton id not indulge much in athletics, but this was really because she had a weak heart. I told you of the stone bridge, and of the ruined tower they used as a bathing-hut when they went for a swim. Once or twice only she went for a swim―tall and slender, her red hair done up under a rubber cap; exquisite―with Harry Brooke encouraging her. He rowed her on the river, he took her to the cinema to hear MM. Laurel and Hardy speaking perfect French, he walked with her in those dangerous romantic groves of Eure-et-Loire
“It was obvious to me that Harry would fall in love with her. It was not, you understand, quite so quick as in the delicious description of Anatole France’s story: ‘I love you! What is your name?’ But it was quick enough.
“One night in June Harry came to me in my room at the Hotel of the Grand Monarch. He would never speak to his parents. But he poured out confessions to me: perhaps because, as I smoke my cigar and say little, I am sympathetic. I had been teaching him to read our great romantic writers, moulding his mind towards sophistication, and it may be in a sense playing the devil’s advocate. His parents would not have been pleased.
“On this night, at first, he would only stand by the window and fiddle with an ink-bottle until he had upset it. But at last he blurted out what he had com to say.
“’I’m mad about her,’ he said. ‘I’ve asked her to marry me.’
“’Well?’ said I.
“’She won’t have me,’ cries Harry―and for a second I thought, quite seriously, he was going to dive out of the open window.
“Now this astonished me: the statement, I mean, and not any suggestion of love-sick despair. For I could have sworn that Fay Seton was moved and drawn towards this young man. That is, I could have sworn it as far as one could read that enigmatic expression of hers: The long-lidded blue eyes that would not look directly at you, the elusive and spiritual quality of remoteness.
“’Your technique, perhaps it is clumsy.’
“’I don’t know anything about that,’ said Harry, hitting his fist on the table where he had upset the ink-bottle. ‘But last night I went walking with her, on the river bank. It was moonlight. . .”
“’I know.
“’And I told Fay I loved her. I kissed her mouth and her throat’―hah! That is significant―until I nearly went out of my mind. Then I asked her to marry me. She went as white as a ghost in the moonlight, and said, ‘No, no, no!’ as though I’d said something that horrified her. A second later she ran away from me, over into the shadow of that broken tower.
“’All the time I’d been kissing her, Professor Rigaud, Fay had stood there as rigid as a statue. It made me feel pretty sick, I can tell you. Even though I knew I wasn’t worthy of her. So I followed her over to the tower, through the weeds, and asked whether she was in love with anybody else. She gave a kind of gasp and said no, of course not. I asked her whether she didn’t like me, and she admitted she did. So I said I wouldn’t give up hoping. And I won't give up hoping.’
“Enfin!
“That was what Harry Brooke told me, standing by the window of my hotel room. It puzzled me still more, since this young woman Fay Seton was obviously a woman in every sense of the word. I spoke consolingly to Harry. I said to him that he must have courage; and that doubtless, if he used tact, he could get round her.
“He did get round her. It was not three weeks later when Harry triumphantly announced―to me, and to his parents―that he was engaged to be married to Fay Seton.
“Privately, I do not think Papa Brooke and Mama Brooke were too well pleased.
“Mark you, it was not that a word could be said against this girl. Or against her family, or her antecedents, or her reputation. ! To any eye she was suitable. She might be three or four years older than Harry; but what of that? Papa Brooke might feel, in a vague British way, that it was somehow undignified for his son to marry a girl who had first come there in their employ. And this marriage was sudden. It took them aback. But they would not really have been satisfied unless Harry had married a millionairess with a title, and even then only if he had waited until he was thirty-five or forty before leaving home.
“So what could they say except, ‘God bless you’?
“Mama Brooke kept a stiff upper lip, with the tears running down her face. Towards his son Papa Brook became very bluff and hearty and man-to-man, as though Harry had suddenly grown up overnight. At intervals papa and mama would murmur to each other in hushed tones, ‘I’m sure it’ll be all right!”―as one might speculate, at a funeral, about the destination of the deceased’s soul.
“But please to note: both parents were now enjoying themselves very much. Once used to the idea, they began to take pleasure in it. That is the way of families everywhere, and the Brookes were nothing if not conventional. Papa Brooke was looking forward to his son working harder in the leather business, building up an even sounder name for Pelletier et Cie. After all, the newly wedded pair would live at home or at least reasonably close to home. It was ideal. It was lyrical. It was Arcadian.
“And then . . . Tragedy.
“Black tragedy, I tell you as unforeseen and as unnerving as a bolt of magic.”
Professor Rigaud paused.
He had been sitting forward with his thick elbows on the table, arms upraised, the forefinger of his right hand tapping impressively against the forefinger of his left hand each time he made a point, his head a little on one side. He was like a lecturer. His shining eyes, his bald head, even his rather comical patch of moustache, had a fervour of intensity.
“Hah!” he said.
Exhaling his breath noisily through the nostrils, he sat upright. The thick cane, propped against his leg, fell to the floor with a clatter. He picked it up and set it carefully against the table. Reaching into his inside pocket, he produced a folded sheaf of manuscript and a photograph about half cabinet size.