Yes, I thought, I can believe that. And even crippled he has to be a crippled archangel…
I said: "And now he has to sit and watch his son riding and driving and fencing-?”
"As to that," said Mrs. Seddon, "Mr. Rowl hasn't got the money… which is just as well, or maybe he'd go the same way as his father. And like I said, he's not here very often anyway. He lives at Bellyveen. I've never been to Bellyveen myself, but I've heard tell it's very pretty."
I said "Oh?" with an expression of polite interest as she began to tell me about Bellevigne, but I wasn't really listening. I was reflecting that if Raoul de Valmy was really a younger copy of his father it was probably just as well he visited Valmy only rarely. I couldn't imagine two of Léon de Valmy settling at all comfortably under the same roof… I stirred again. There was that same damned romantic imagination at work still… And what had I to go on, after all? A vague snatch of memory twelve years old, and the impression of an overwhelming personality in some odd way playing with me for its own amusement, for some reason concerned to give me a picture of itself that was not the truth…
It struck me then, for the first time, that there had been a notable omission from my welcome to the Chateau Valmy.
And that was the owner of all this magnificence, the most important of the Valmys, Monsieur le Comte, Philippe.
And now Mrs. Seddon was preparing to go about her own affairs.
She plodded firmly away to the door, only to hesitate there and turn. I bent over my case and began to lift things out onto the coverlet. I could feel her eyeing me.
She said: "You… the Master… he seemed all right with you, did he? I thought I heard him laugh when I was waiting upstairs for you."
I straightened up, my hands full of folded handkerchiefs. "Perfectly all right, Mrs. Seddon. He was very pleasant."
"Oh. That's good. I'd like to have been able to have a word with you first and warn you what he sometimes was like with strangers."
I could well understand her slightly anxious probing. It was obvious that the emotional temperature, so to speak, of the Chateau Valmy, must depend very largely on Léon de Valmy and "his days".
I said cheerfully: "Thanks very much, but don't worry, Mrs. Seddon. He was awfully nice to me and made me feel very welcome."
"Did he now?" Her eyes were anxious and a little puzzled. "Oh, well, that's all right, then. I know he was very pleased when Madam's letter came about you, but as a rule he hates changes in the house. That's why we were so surprised when Master Philip's Nanny was dismissed after being with the family all those years, and they said a new girl was coming from England."
"Oh, yes, Madame de Valmy told me about her." I put the handkerchiefs down and lifted some underwear out of the suitcase. "But she wasn't dismissed, surely? I understood from Madame that she didn't want to live in the wilds of Valmy and, as Madame was in London at the time, Monsieur de Valmy wrote urgently and asked her to find an English governess while she was there."
"Oh, no." Mrs. Seddon was downright. "You must have misunderstood what Madam said. Nanny was devoted to Master Philip, and I'm sure she broke her heart when she had to go."
"Oh? I was sure that Madame said she'd left because the place was so lonely. I must have been mistaken." I found myself shrugging my shoulders, and hastily abandoned that very Gallic gesture. "Maybe she was just warning me what it would be like. But she did seem very anxious to engage someone to teach him English."
"Master Philip's English is excellent," said Mrs. Seddon, rather primly.
I laughed and said: “I’m glad to hear it. Well, whatever the case, I suppose if Philippe's nine he's old enough to graduate from a Nanny to a governess of sorts. I gathered from Monsieur de Valmy that that was the idea. And for a start I'm going to try and remember to call the nursery the 'schoolroom'. I'm sure one's too old for a nursery when one's nine."
"Master Philip's very young for his age," she said, "though there's times when he's too solemn for my liking. But there, you can't expect much after what's happened, poor mite. He'll get over it in the end, but it takes time."
"I know," I said.
She eyed me for a moment and then said, tentatively: "If I might ask-do you remember your own folks,
now?”
”Oh, yes." I looked across the room and met the kindly inquisitive gaze. Fair was fair, after all. She must be every bit as curious about me as I was about the Valmys. I said: "I was fourteen when they were killed. In an air accident, like Philippe's. I suppose Madame de Valmy told you I'd been at an orphanage in England?"
"Indeed, yes. She wrote that she'd heard of you through a friend of hers, a Lady Benchley, who comes up every year to Évian, and Lady Benchley thought very highly of you, very highly."
"That was very nice of her. Lady Benchley was one of the Governors at the orphanage for the last three years I was there. Then when I left to be assistant at a boys' school it turned out she had a son there. She came up to me on Visitors' Day and talked to me, and when I told her I hated the place she asked me if I'd ever considered a private job abroad, because this friend of hers-Madame de Valmy-was looking for a governess for her nephew and had asked her if she knew of anyone from the Home. When I heard the job was in France I jumped at it. I- I'd always fancied living in France, somehow. I went straight up to London next day and saw her. Lady Benchley had promised to telephone about me, and-well, I got the job." I didn't add that Madame must have taken Lady Benchley's recommendation to be worth a good deal more than it actually was. Lady Benchley was a kindly scatterbrain who spent a good deal of her time acting as a sort of private labour-exchange between her friends and the Constance Butcher Home, and I doubt if she had ever known very much about me. And I had certainly got the impression that Madame de Valmy had been so anxious to find a suitable young woman for the post during her short stay in London that she hadn't perhaps probed as far back into my history as she might have done. Not, of course, that it mattered.
I smiled at Mrs. Seddon, who was still eyeing me with that faintly puzzled look. Then all at once she smiled back, and nodded, so that the gold chain on her bosom glittered and swung. "Well," she said, "well," and though she didn't actually add "You'll do," the implication was there. She opened the door. "And now I really will have to be going. Berthe'll be up soon with some tea for you; she's the girl that looks after these rooms and you'll find she's a good girl, though a bit what you might call flighty. I expect you'll make yourself understood to her all right, and Master Philip'll help."
"I expect I shall," I said. "Where is Master Philip, Mrs. Seddon?"
"He's probably in the nursery," said Mrs. Seddon, her hand on the door. "But Madam particularly said you weren't to bother with him tonight. You were to have a cup of tea-which I may say is tea, though it took near thirty years to teach them how to make it-and settle yourself in before dinner and you'll be seeing Master Philip tomorrow. But not to bother yourself tonight."
"Very well," I said. "Thank you, Mrs. Seddon. I shall look forward to that tea."
The door shut behind her. I could hear the soft plod of her steps along the corridor.
I stood where I was, looking at the door, and absently smoothing the folds of a petticoat between my hands.
I was thinking two things. First that I was not supposed to have heard Mrs. Seddon mentioning the lift in her conversation with Madame de Valmy, and that if I was going to make mistakes as easily as that I had better confess quickly before any real damage was done.