An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (88 page)

Perhaps, too, he appreciated that her brain was exceptionally clear and active and perceived not only that she easily surpassed girls of her own age, but also that it was becoming quite a problem to find qualified teachers for her.

Father Vincent was an extremely well educated man. He was an aristocrat who had chosen to enter the Church rather than follow the family tradition and go into politics. He had acquired a vast library of books to which he added year after year. They were not perhaps the reading that the Mother Superior would have chosen for a young girl, but Father Vincent had assured her that he considered it essential to Mistral’s development and well being that she should have freedom of choice in this if in nothing else.

‘You can ride a young horse on the bridle for too long,’ he said, and the Mother Superior had understood.

‘Mistral is a sweet child,’ she said. ‘I half hoped that she would have a vocation, for I understand she has no home and I worry as to what will happen when she leaves here.’

‘Do not try to persuade her to take the veil,’ Father Vincent said authoritatively. ‘She is one of those who need the lessons which only life in the outer world can teach. We can but give her the right standards and ideals by which later she will be able to judge the gold from the dross.’

And so Mistral was given the freedom of Father Vincent’s library. She read a strange and varied assortment of books. There were books on religion, travel, philosophy, and books which, while being romances, were also some of the greatest achievements in French literature. As she grew more proficient at languages, Father Vincent gave her German books to read, and later Italian.

But perhaps among all the volumes gathered together in Father Vincent’s library and reaching from floor to ceiling she liked the English ones best. Samuel Johnson and Thackeray she found entrancing, Shakespeare was an acquired taste which grew on her after she had read and re-read
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The more modern authors like Sir Walter Scott, Jane Austen and Dickens were read over and over again, while the poets held her spellbound. The Mother Superior would have fainted if she had known that Mistral had read Lord Byron’s books and found them fascinating.

There were dozens of others which at first she liked because they were English, but which later became, as books should, real friends and often closer than the real people in her life.

But even books could not compensate Mistral for her lack of parents and a home life, and when she learnt that she was to leave the Convent and go to Aunt Emilie, it had been a moment of sheer exaltation. At last she would be like other girls, at last she would be able to love someone and be loved in return.

She knew now that nothing had happened in the way she had anticipated. The first night in Paris, when she had arrived at her Aunt’s house unannounced, she had gone to sleep confidently assured that this was to be her future home. But in the morning she had learned differently, and now it seemed she had only exchanged the confines of the Convent walls and the gentle affection of the Nuns for the impersonality of a hotel bedroom and the uncertain temper of Aunt Emilie.

Aunt Emilie did not love her, Mistral was sure of that. She was not even certain if she loved her.

At times it seemed as if there was a dark hostility in Emilie’s eyes, a hostility which seemed to take a delight in finding fault, in discovering some trivial misdemeanour for which she could utter a most stringent rebuke.

Mistral crossed her bedroom and opened a drawer in the dressing table. In the blue leather box lived with velvet lay the pearls which had belonged to her mother. She took them out and held them in her hands. She stroked them a little and felt that they were warm beneath her touch.

They had been her Mother’s!

Mistral pressed them against her cheek. If only they could talk, if only they could tell her what her Mother had been like and if she would have loved her had she lived. Aunt Emilie would say so little and what she did say was often terribly disconcerting. Why, for instance, had her Mother christened her ‘Mistral’, and why had she been here at Monte Carlo shortly before her own birth?

They were questions which continually presented themselves, but to which Mistral could find no answer, and Aunt Emilie would give none. She had always found that following in their train was the question – who was her father? Long, long ago, soon after she had first gone to the Convent, Mistral had realised that she used her mother’s name while other girls used their father’s. She had said nothing, but when Emilie next visited her she had asked her about it.

‘Is my father dead?’ she asked.

‘No!’

Emilie’s voice was abrupt and harsh.

‘Does he not want to see me – ever?’ Mistral enquired a little wistfully.

‘No!’

‘He does not like me then?’

‘The question does not arise,’ Emilie said. ‘Your father has no part in your life. Forget him! You are your mother’s child. It is
her
name you bear.’

But why am I different?’ Mistral had insisted. ‘Other girls use their father’s name.’

‘Your mother wished you to use hers,’ Emilie said. ‘It is a good name, the name of a fine English family. Is that not sufficient for you?’

There was something so hostile in the question that frightened and intimidated, Mistral had agreed that it was, and probed no further. She was so anxious to do as Aunt Emilie wished that she tried not to think about her father, yet inevitably a consciousness of him remained. He existed and she was part of him, whatever Aunt Emilie might say, however much she might try to prevent every possible reference to him.

He was somewhere in the world, but did he know that she was grown up and that sometimes she longed for him with an overwhelming longing?

Home! That word had never meant anything to Mistral. The long hours, as she sat alone in her bedroom thinking of things which in the Convent had been forbidden subjects, depressed her and made her suddenly sad.

Things were not improved when Jeanne finally came into the room.

‘I have come to put out your dress for the evening,’ she announced. ‘Your Aunt wishes you to wear the grey satin.’

At the sound of Jeanne’s voice Mistral turned eagerly from the window where she had been watching the stars coming out in the sky one by one now that darkness had fallen. With difficulty she checked the exclamation which rose to her lips. Jeanne was looking ghastly, her face was as white as that of a corpse, and her lips were bloodless. Her hands were shaking too as she turned the gas jet a little higher and opened the door of the wardrobe.

‘Jeanne, what is the mutter?’ Mistral asked. ‘You look as if you might swoon. Sit down and rest. I will find my own dress.’

‘No, I will do it,’ Jeanne said gruffly, then, as she went to the wardrobe, Mistral heard her mutter,
‘From all sin, Jesus, deliver us!’

‘What did you say?’ she asked, half believing that her ears had deceived her.

‘Nothing, I said nothing,’ Jeanne replied, but Mistral heard her add beneath her breath,
‘From the snares of the devil, Jesus, deliver us.’

What was the matter? What had happened? Why was Jeanne repeating a Penitential Litany? What had upset her? What had made her seem to age twenty years since they had come in from their walk in the gardens?

Impulsively she crossed the room and put her arms round the old woman.

‘You are tired, Jeanne, or ill. Go and lie down on your bed I can dress myself and Aunt Emilie tonight’

‘No,
Mademoiselle
.’ Jeanne’s voice was shrill. ‘
Madame
does not wish to be disturbed, not until dinner time. You are not to go near her.’

‘Very well,’ Mistral said. But sit down, Jeanne, please sit down.’

To her surprise the maid shook herself free of the embracing arms.

‘Don’t touch me,’ she said, ‘and let me go about my business,
Mademoiselle
. I have things to do – O
Lamb of God who takest away the sins of the world spare
us
–’

She laid out the dress that Mistral was to wear that night and went from the room, still praying, a terrified look in her eyes.

Mistral had not understood it and it was a relief to find that Aunt Emilie seemed unperturbed when they met in the sitting room before dinner. Indeed, if anything, Emilie looked more regal and imperious than usual in a dress of sapphire blue brocade with an overskirt of draped net.

If Mistral had been afraid that her aunt would be affected in the same strange way as Jeanne, she was mistaken. Emilie’s head was held high and there was a faint smile on her lips. It even seemed to Mistral that her eyes were unusually bright and that her voice had a ring of triumph in it. Whatever had shattered Jeanne had apparently had the reverse effect on her aunt.

‘Tidy the sitting room, Jeanne,’ Emilie said, ‘and leave me some wine to drink when I return. Remember to mend the tear in the dress I wore this afternoon. It must have been caught by a bramble or a prickly bush. It is only a small mark near the hem, but it should be attended to at once.’

It appeared to Mistral that Jeanne almost crumpled up and she trembled all over. But she only muttered,

‘Yes,
Madame
– I will do it at once,
Madame
.’

But when her voice had died away, her lips continued to move and Mistral knew that she was still praying.

Aunt Emilie led the way downstairs to dinner and they made their usual late and impressive entrance into the dining room.

People stopped eating and talking to look up at them. Mistral wished, as she did every night, that the earth would open and swallow her up rather than that she should encounter the scrutiny of hundreds of curious eyes and be humiliated by the knowledge that her every movement was being criticised and commented upon.

At school the Mistress who taught deportment had always impressed on her pupils that self-consciousness was both vulgar and conceited.

‘Do not think of yourself at all on such occasions,’ she commanded.

Every evening at dinner time Mistral tried to obey her. She forced herself to think of other things, to repeat some lines of poetry as she threaded her way in Aunt Emilie’s wake between the tables of the crowded dining room.

Tonight some lines of Lord Byron’s came to her mind,

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies,

And all that’s best of dark and light

Meet in her aspect and her eyes.

‘How lovely to be like that,’ Mistral thought, and had no idea that the lines might have been written of her.

They reached the sanctuary of their table. Mistral, seating herself, thankful that the nightly ordeal she dreaded was over, was aware that she was hungry and agreed almost eagerly to the dishes that the waiter suggested for their delectation.

Unfortunately it seemed that Emilie could eat little. She took only a spoonful of soup, a mere mouthful of fish, and then she sent away the other dishes untouched. But she talked vivaciously, commenting on the people around them so unfavourably and in such a loud voice that Mistral was afraid her venom would be overheard.

She was thankful when the meal was finished and they could go to the Casino. Tonight it seemed that Emilie was in an extravagant mood. She changed four large bank notes for gold pieces, then had difficulty in carrying so much money. Mistral helped her.

‘You are going to play higher than usual, Aunt Emilie?’ she asked.

Having spoken, she was half afraid her Aunt would resent her remark, but Emilie only smiled and replied,

‘I can afford it! Yes, I can afford it tonight.’

As usual Mistral stood behind her Aunt’s chair and watched her play. At first she had found both the game and the playing interesting and often amusing, but lately she had grown weary of her role of spectator. The piles of money placed on the numbers, the croupiers’ level, expressionless voices, the claw-like hands of those who had won going out to grasp the gold, were now all too familiar and monotonous to hold Mistral’s attention for long and tonight her eyes wandered round the room not once but continually – watching the newcomers as they entered and the crowds moving from table to table.

She pretended to herself for a time that she was not looking for anyone special, but she knew in her heart that she was waiting for the moment when she would see Sir Robert again. He had not dined at the
Hôtel de Paris
tonight, and she had a sudden terrible fear that he might have gone away, that his holiday had come to an end.

Suppose that was the truth? Suppose she never saw him again? As she asked herself the questions Mistral felt a loneliness and a sense of desolation such as she had never experienced before. The glittering sense vanished from before her eyes and she thought she was alone in a vast and dreadful darkness without a friend or companion.

She did not understand her own fear, she only knew she was afraid.

Then with a feeling of relief so violent, so overwhelming that she felt as if her very knees were too weak to hold her, she saw Sir Robert enter the room.

He was with Lady Violet, and it seemed to Mistral that they both looked cross as if they had been quarrelling.

Sir Robert went straight to the nearest table and started to play. Mistral watched him. She half hoped he would look up and see her and then, as often happened, there would be a flicker of recognition in his eyes and a faint smile on his lips. But tonight he was concentrating too intensely on his gaming, she thought, to think of anything else. Yet she minded nothing save that he was there, that she could watch him from under her eyelashes.

‘Mistral, what are you thinking about?’ Emilie’s voice recalled her wandering thoughts. ‘I have spoken to you twice and you have not answered.’

‘I am sorry, Aunt Emilie,’ Mistral said quietly.

Take my cloak and put it in the Cloakroom. It is too hot in here.’

‘Yes, Aunt Emilie.’

‘Numéro Quinze. Rouge et impair,’
the croupier called.