He started to say something, then bit it back, saying instead, calmly enough: "It's no use discussing it any more here. This is getting us nowhere. Héloïse-"
“Only promise me you won't take it to the police!"
"I can't promise anything. All I can say is that we'll try and compromise between what's right and what's best."
She seemed not to be listening. Something had broken in her, and now she couldn't stop. She was out of control; her hands and lips were shaking. The pleading voice poured on, admitting with every desperate syllable what must never-even in her mind -have been in words before.
"It'll kill him to go to Bellevigne! And all our money's in Valmy! We looked after Valmy, you can't say that we didn't! Every penny went into the estate! You can't say he was a bad trustee!"
"No," said Hippolyte.
She didn't even notice the irony. The dreadful single-mindedness she showed was ample explanation of how Léon had persuaded her to help him against what better instincts she must have possessed. She swept on: "It was for Léon's sake! Why shouldn't he get something-just this thing-out of life? Valmy was his! You know it was! Étienne had no right to do this to him, no right at all! That child should never have been born!"
Raoul said suddenly, as if the words were shaken out of him: "God pity you, Héloïse, you've begun to think like him."
This stopped her. She turned her head quickly towards him. I couldn't see her eyes, but her hands clenched themselves on the arms of the chair. Her voice went low and breathless: "You," she said, "you. You always hated him, didn't you?"
He didn't answer. He had taken out another cigarette and was making rather a business of lighting it.
"He's your father," she said. "Doesn't that make any difference? Can you stand by and see him ruined? Doesn't it mean anything to you that he's your father?"
Raoul didn't speak. For all the expression on his face he mightn't even have been listening. But I saw his brows twitch together as the match burned him.
Suddenly her hands hammered the chair-arms. She shouted at him: "Damn you, are you condemning your own father?" Even the vestiges of common self-control had gone; her voice rose to the edge of hysteria. "You to stand there and call him a murderer! You who have everything, everything, and he a cripple with nothing to call his own but that ruined relic of a place in the south! You condemn him, you talk fine and large of right and wrong and murder and police, and who's to say what you'd have done if you'd been in his place? How do you know what you'd have been if you'd smashed your car up one fine day on the zigzag and cracked your spine and two lives along with it? Yes, two! Would she have looked at you then? Ah yes, it only takes one look from you now, doesn't it, but would she? Would she have stayed with you and loved you the way I've loved him all these years and done for you what I've done for him-and glad to, mind that, glad to? Oh, no, not you!" She stopped and drew a long, shivering breath. "Oh, God, he's a better man with half a body than you'll ever be, Raoul de
Valmy! You don't know… oh dear God, how can you know…?”
Then she put her hands to her face and began to weep.
Quite suddenly, the scene was unbearable. And I didn't belong in this anywhere any more. I stood up abruptly.
It was at this moment that the door went back with a slam against the silk-panelled wall, and William Blake came in with a rush like an angry bear.
EIGHTH COACH
Chapter 20
Death has done all death can.
Browning: After.
"Who the devil are you?" said Raoul.
Since he said it in French, William Blake took not the slightest notice. He stopped just inside the door, breathing hard. He looked, as ever, enormous; very English, with the untidy blond hair, and very safe. He looked down the room at me, ignoring everyone else.
"Linda? What's going on here? Are you all right?"
I said between a laugh and a sob: "Oh, William!" and ran to him down the length of the room, bouillon and all.
He didn't exactly fold me in his arms, but he did catch me, and, with some presence of mind, hold me away from him, so that the bouillon didn't spill all over his ancient jacket, but only on the priceless Savonnerie carpet.
"Here, steady on," he said. "Are you sure you're all right?"
"Yes, quite all right."
Hippolyte had turned and risen in surprise at the interruption, but Héloïse was past caring for the presence of a stranger. She was weeping freely now, the sobs tearing at the atmosphere of the beautiful over-civilised room. Hippolyte paused, looking helplessly from the newcomer back to her. Raoul said, without moving: "It's the Englishman. I told you about him."
I saw William wince from the sound of sobbing, but he stood his ground, his jaw jutting dangerously. "Did they hurt you?"
"No, oh no. It's not them, William, it's all finished, honestly."
"Anything I can do?"
"Not a thing, except… take me out of here."
Behind me I heard Hippolyte say with a kind of controlled desperation: "Héloïse, please. My dear, you must try and pull yourself together. This is doing no good, no good at all. You'll make yourself ill. Héloïse!"
William said: "Okay. We'll get you out of this. And fast." He put an arm round my shoulders, and turned me towards the door. "Let's go."
I saw Hippolyte take half a step towards us. "Miss Martin-"
But here Héloïse sobbed something incoherently and caught at his sleeve, a desperate little gesture that broke something inside me.
I said: "I can't stand this, William. Wait."
I thrust the half-empty pot of bouillon into his hands, and went back to Madame de Valmy. Hippolyte stood aside and I went down on my knees in front of the little gold chair. I was kneeling at Raoul's feet I didn't look up at him, and he never moved. Her hands were still over her face. The sobs were less violent now. I took her wrists gently and pulled them down and held her hands.
I said: "Madame, don't. Don't cry any more. We can talk this thing over quietly when you're feeling better. It won't do any good to make yourself ill." Then to Hippolyte: "Can't you see she's beside herself? There's no point in letting this go on. She doesn't know what she's saying. She must be got to bed… Madame, there'll be some way to arrange everything, you'll see. Don't cry any more. Please."
The sobbing caught in her throat. She looked at me with those pale, drowned eyes. The beauty had all gone. The delicately rouged cheeks sagged slack and grey, and her mouth was loose and blurred with crying. I said: "There've been enough tears over this, madame. Don't distress yourself any more. Nothing's going to happen to you. It's all over now. Here, take my handkerchief… Why, you're cold! I don't know why you're sitting here when there's a stove in the study; and you haven't been well lately, have you? Shall we go in there, and perhaps we can get Gaston to bring some coffee? Can you get up? Let me help you… "
She got to her feet slowly, stiffly, and I led her across to the study door. She came obediently, as if she were sleep-walking. The others followed. Nobody spoke. She was weeping still, but quietly, into my handkerchief. I put her into a chair near the stove, and knelt again beside her on the rug.
I don't know quite what else I said to her, but the sobbing stopped, and presently she lay back in the chair quietly, and looked at me. She looked exhausted, dazed almost. She said abruptly, in a flat, sleep-walker's tone: "I liked you, Miss Martin. I liked you from the first."