“Oh, Minelle, you are coming with me, then! It does not seem half as bad if you are going to be there. Papa told me. He said: ” Mademoiselle Maddox will take care of you. She is thinking about it but I have no doubt that she will come. ” I felt happier than I have for a long time.”
It’s by no means settled,” I told her. I have not yet made up my mind.”
“But you will come, won’t you? Oh, Minelle, if you say No, what shall I do?”
“I am not really necessary to the plan. You will go away quietly into the country where your child will be born and put out to foster parents. From there you will go to your father’s household and carry on from there. It is not an uncommon story in families like yours, I believe.”
“Oh, so coo’ll So precise! You are just what I need. But Minelle, dear, dear Minelle, I shall have to go through life with this dark, dark secret. I shall need support. I shall need you. Papa says you are to be my cousin. Cousine Minelle! Does that not sound just right? And after this horrible business is over we shall be together. You are the only reason I like it here.”
“What about James Wedder?”
“Oh, that was fun for a while, but look what it brought me to. It is not as bad as I feared it might be. I mean Papa … he was thunderous at first… despising me … and it was not for having an affaire, you know. It was because I had been so foolish as to become pregnant. He said he might have known I had a touch of the wanton in me. But if you will only come with me, Minelle, it will be all right.
I know it will. You will come . you must. “
She had got to her knees and folded her hands together as in prayer.
“Please, please. God, make Minelle come with me.”
“Get up and don’t be so silly,” I said.
“This is not the time for histrionics.”
She went into peals of laughter which was, I commented, scarcely becoming to a fallen woman.
“I need you, Minelle,” she cried.
“You make me laugh. So serious .. and yet not really so. I know you, Minelle. You try to play the schoolmistress, but you could never be a real one. That’s what I always believed. Joel was a fool. My father said he is stuffed with sawdust… not good red blood.”
Why should he say that about Joel? “
“Because he went away when Papa Derringham said he must. Papa sneers at that.”
“Does he sneer at you for going where he sends you?”
That is different. Joel was not pregnant. ” The laughter bubbled up again. I could not make up my mind whether this was hysteria or sheer fecklessness. But I felt my spirits lifted by her inconsequential conversation. Moreover, when she implored me to go with her, there was real panic in her eyes.
“I can bear it all if you are there,” she said more seriously.
“It will be fun . , . almost. I’ll be the young married lady whose husband has died suddenly. My staid cousin-English, but still a cousin due to a mesalliance years ago is with me to look after me.
She is just the right one to do it because she is so calm and cool and a little severe. Oh Minelle, you will come. You must. “
“Margot, I still have to think. It is a big undertaking and I have not yet made up my mind.”
“Papa will be furious if you refuse.”
“His feelings are no concern of mine.”
But they are of mine. At the moment he is making light of the matter.
That is because he has a solution and you are part of it. You will come, Minelle. I know you will. If you don’t I shall die of despair.”
She chattered on, her eyes sparkling. She was not a bit afraid, she said, if I would come with her. She talked as though we were about to embark on some wonderful holiday together. It was foolish, but I began to catch her excitement.
I knew perhaps I had known all along that I was going to accept this challenge. I must escape from this house, become so gloomy with the light of my mother’s presence removed from it; I must get away from the vaguely menacing shadow of poverty which was beginning to encroach. But it was like taking a step into the unknown.
I dreamed again that night that I was standing outside the schoolhouse, but it was not the familiar scene I saw there. Ahead of me lay a wood the trees thick together. I believed it was an enchanted wood and I was going to walk through it. Then I saw the Comte. He was beckoning to me.
I awoke. Certainly I had made up my mind.
The Sojourn at Petit Montlys
I
Petit Montlys was a charming small town some hundred miles south of Paris, sheltering in the shadow of its bigger sister town known as Grand Montlys. It was the end of April when we arrived. I had sold my furniture with the help of Sir John and had taken Jenny over to the Mansers, asking them to look after her. Sir John himself paid me a good price for Dower and promised that if I returned to England he would sell her back to me for the price my mother had paid for her. I was to receive a salary from the Comte which was handsome by any standards and only when the burden was lifted from my shoulders did I realize how anxious I had been about my financial situation.
Mrs. Manser shook her head over my decision. Clearly she disapproved.
She did not know, of course, that Margot was pregnant, but thought I was taking a post as her companion in the Comte’s household, which was the story the Derringhams put about.
“You’ll be back,” she prophesied. I give you no more than a couple of months. There’ll be a room for you here. Then I reckon you’ll know which side your bread is buttered. “
I kissed her and thanked her.
“You were always such a good friend to me and my mother,” I told her.
“I don’t like to see a sensible woman take the wrong, turning,” she said.
“I know what it is, though. It’s all that upset over Joel Derringham. It’s clear what that was worth and I do see that you want to get away for a while.”
I left it at that, letting her think she was right. I did not want to show her how exhilarated I felt.
We travelled by post-chaise to the coast and there took ship for France. We were lucky to have a fair crossing and when we reached the other side were met by a middle-aged couple-evidently loyal servants of the Comte’s-who were to be our chaperons throughout the journey.
We did not go through Paris but stayed in small inns and after several days finally arrived at Petit Montlys and there were taken to the home of Madame Gremond, who was to be our landlady for the next few months.
She received us warmly and commiserated with Margot, who had become Madame Ie Brun, on the exigencies of such a journey for a woman in her condition. I was glad to be able to retain my own name.
I cannot but say how Margot seemed to be enjoying her role. She had always liked play-acting and this must surely , be the most important part she had ever played. The story ] was that her husband, Pierre Ie Brun, who had managed a large estate for a very important nobleman, had been drowned while trying to save his master’s wolfhound during a flood in northern France. His wife had found that she was to have a child and because her husband’s death had so distressed her, her cousin had, on the advice of her doctor, brought her right away from the scene of the tragedy, that she might remain tranquil until after the birth of her baby.
Margot threw herself so whole-heartedly into her re1e and talked fondly of Pierre, shedding tears over his death and even endowing the wolfhound with life.
“Dear faithful Chon Chon He was devoted to my dear Pierre,” she said.
“Who would have thought that one day Chon-Chon would be the cause of my darling’s death.”
Then she would talk of how tragic it was that Pierre would never see his child. I wondered whether she was thinking of James Wedder then.