Bride by Arrangement (12 page)

Chloe was too distracted by her first glimpse of the house to put any more questions, but as soon as she saw the house, and as soon as she realised that it was small and compact, homely and attractive, the more her sense of bewilderment grew. Somewhere at the back of her mind she had been vaguely expecting a small
chateau
that had been connected for generations with the family of Ramballe, and if it had been dignified and derelict she wouldn’t have felt so much surprise. But this solidly built dwelling with a creeper-covered porch, minus pepperpot towers and anything in the nature of an encompassing moat, had a
bourgeois
unpretentiousness that was a trifle stark, although from behind the house came a cheerful clucking of hens, and even a grunting of pigs, and there was the sweet scent of climbing roses floating on the wind.

Pierre stopped the car with a suddenness that took a great deal of wear off his tyres, and he was out of the car and calling for someone who was out of sight long before the engine had died into silence.

“Where are you, Yvette? Yvette, where are you?”

A young woman appeared at the head of the flight of steps, short and sturdy, plain and neat, but with a pair of eyes that shone with pleasure as Pierre grasped her hand. He teased her about being on the look-out for them, and she admitted that she had been listening for the sound of a car most of the afternoon, but at the precise moment that he turned between the gates she was in the kitchen basting the duck that was roasting in the oven.

“For dinner tonight?” he asked, and she nodded, smiling. “And such a dinner, m’sieur! I have not forgotten any of your preferences, and I hope that Madame will be pleased, also.” Madame stepped hesitantly from the car, and Yvette’s face reflected the very maximum of interest as she looked eagerly towards her. Chloe knew that not a detail of her appearance escaped the other woman’s eyes, and at the same time she was aware that a kind of instantaneous relief spread over the homely brown features.

“Ah, but your wife is but a
jeune fille
!”
she exclaimed. “She is so young that at first I was deceived into thinking you had left her behind!” She held out her hand shyly.
“
Bonjour,
madame,” she welcomed Chloe. “I have always wanted to say this to Madame Albertin! And now I will fetch you some tea at once.”

“With milk and sugar, Yvette,” Pierre called after her. “Madame does not favour lemon.”

“
Eh bien
!”
Yvette called back. “It is all arranged. But
cream,
not milk!”

They were inside a pleasant, cool hall, and there was a smell of polish and starry white jasmine flowers that were
interspersed with larkspur in a copper bowl. The bowl stood on a sid
e
table of solid oak, and the steep stairs confronting them were of solid oak also. To the left was an open door, and through the door Chloe could see a garden bright with flowers, and a garden seat beneath a spreading canopy of green. A cat was stalking a bird across a little square of emerald turf, and some nondescript kittens played in the sunshine. Chloe eyed them with swift pleasure, and then looked round at her husband.

“Where is this?” she asked.

“It is my home,” he answered, with unconscious pride. “The house is called
La Maison,
and there are dozens of
La Ma
i
sons
scattered over every area in France, but this has the distinction of belonging to me. I bought it because I fancied the land on which it stands, and then one of my noble uncles died and left me a small sum of money I used it to stock the land. I planted it with everything that thrives in this corner of the world, and we have pigs and goats and hens besides. We have even a cow that will shortly become two cows—or a cow and a bullock! And in time we may have quite a herd. Fascinating, isn’t it?”

Chloe gazed at him, not finding it fascinating, but utterly astounding. The last thing she would have associated the elegant Pierre with was farming.

“Then you are a farmer?” she got out at last.

“Yes; I am a farmer,” Pierre replied softly—with a curious sort of softness. “Wasn’t it what you expected, my little one? But then you don’t know quite what to expect of me, do you?” She looked at him, and away. “And now that you are here, do you think you will find it hard to stay?”

She looked down at her hands, while in the kitchen, not far away, Yvette rattled the tea-things.

“Will you?” Pierre repeated.

Chloe lifted her eyes and fixed them full upon her face.

“Why did you want money?” she asked. “Your aunt’s money? Why did you want Trelas?”

“I didn’t,” he answered. “I visited Trelas a good deal when I was young, and later I visited it because my aunt wished it. She was, as you know, somewhat excessively attached to me, and she was my only living relative—or the only one who meant anything to me. But I never wanted her money, because I knew it would mean that she would tie me down in some way, and when my uncle left me sufficient to get this place going I was thoroughly happy. I could still visit my aunt, but she had to be told that I wanted nothing she possessed—she could leave it all to a home for stray cats, or dogs, or children, or whatever she fancied! And when I visited her that last time that was what I intended to make plain.”

“Then why did you marry me?”

He looked hard at her, and then he, too, looked away. Yvette came in with the tea-things, and Chloe poured out, her fingers shaking, her heart hammering.
Why had Pierre married he
r
?

“I did not marry you for the money, Chloe,” Pierre told her at last. “I didn’t marry you for Trelas. I married you because you did something to me that no other woman had ever done, and I was foolish enough to believe that I could make you, as well as myself, happy.” Chloe’s eyes were shining like green stars as sh
e
lifted them to him, but there was no light in Pierre’s—nothing but darkness. “Since we are married, and since you have a right to know these things, I must make it clear to you that I do not intend to keep Trelas—neither do I intend to keep my share of the money! You can do what you wish with yours, but I shall not touch a penny of my aunt’s. It can all go to some form of charity, and you—if you stay here—will live as the wife of a French market-gardener, or whatever you like to call me. There will be few frills, no real luxuries, and a lot of monotony. But I won’t have it otherwise.”

“Oh, Pierre!” Chloe exclaimed, and suddenly her heart was bursting with her love for him. She had
forgotten
Fern de Lisle, she had forgotten everything but that he was not what she had expected, and she admired him enormously. She didn’t want money, either. He could do what he liked with her share. “I never dreamed you had a home like this! It—it seems to me like a real home! There’s nothing I’d want more than this!”

Pierre regarded her very cynically.

“You may yet discover that you can be very bored here.”

“No, no, I would never be bored!” She stood up, and took a half step towards him. “Oh, Pierre, don’t you see, I—I never properly understood!..
.”

“You certainly didn’t,” he agreed. “And, what’s more, I don’t think you even wanted to understand! You prefer to judge people on little evidence, and because you have the sort of mind that tends to judge people in any case. I’m sorry, for your sake, that you are married to me, because I can’t release you. You’ll remember I once warned you I would never do that?”

His eyes were cold and hard and hostile now—there was no pretence
ab
out the hostility—and she felt as if she was standing on a shifting deck, and there was no one to save her if she went overboard. And inevitably—now!—she would go overboard. But, in a sense, it was what she deserved.

“I'll ring for Yvette,” Pierre said, with a change of expression and a casual tone. “She’ll show you to your room, and you can unpack. I warned her by telephone that you liked your own room, and so far as I am concerned it will be exclusively yours,
and you can turn the key in the lock every night! But if you forget to turn the key you will be quite safe.”

For a week Chloe and her husband lived in the same house and were very polite and distant to one another, and yet managed to share an interest in the immediate locality, and in particular Pierre’s market-garden as he called it.

It was not a farm, for there were not a sufficient number of acres, but such as it was it was highly productive, and as an agricultural experiment it was one of which he could be justly proud. Chloe was amazed to discover how proud he was, and she was amazed because his interest was so genuine, and his plans for the future absorbed him to such an extent. He could even forget the strained relationship between them when he talked to her of gradually enlarging the property by buying in land when it became available, and when she suggested that he should use some of his aunt’s money to develop it he admitted that money—or the lack of it—had been somewhat of a handicap up till the present. But he added complacently that he would manage as he had always managed—without his aunt’s money!

He insisted on sending a cheque to Eunice to pay for the outfit Chloe had acquired in London, and he told Chloe that he would make her an allowance for her personal expenditure that should be quite adequate for her needs. He didn’t repeat that he would prefer not to make any inroads on Madame Albertin’s money, but she knew that having stated his wishes he expected her to abide by them.

Somehow he was no
longer the Pierre she had thought she knew, but an entirely different Pierre, capable, decisive, with a type of mind that grappled with problems quietly but inflexibly, and with an unyielding strength and a calm temperament. She couldn’t imagine him going all Latin and becoming excited if things went wrong. The English half of him was the predominating half, and only his eyes were the dark eyes of a Frenchman.

Watching him in his open-necked shirt and well-worn slacks, or faded jeans, going the rounds of his property, Chloe’s own eyes frequently grew rounder with wonder. She was fascinated by the way he lingered among the livestock, and by his manner when he was in the company of his solitary cow. If she had been a woman who was expected to give birth he could not have displayed more concern for her welfare, and if she had been the founder of his fortunes—or his family!—more interested in everything about her.

When he held a day-old chick in his hand his thin dark face grew soft with pleasure, and when he held it out to Chloe for
her to hold also, there might have been no wall of constraint between them, only a warm bond of sympathy.

“Take it, Chloe!” he said, his eyes bright and laughing a little. “Have you ever held a day-old chick before?”

“No, never,” she admitted, shaking her head.

He gazed at her quizzically.

“It’s one of those things that fills you with an extraordinary sensation, isn’t it? Like possessing the world! Only there are worlds within worlds,” he added more soberly, and turned away.

Chloe wanted to catch at his arm and tell him that her world revolved round him, but she hadn
’
t the courage. And the time for that seemed past.

Sometimes in the evenings he took her for a drive, and they stopped for drinks at a little cafe where they sat beneath an awning, and the golden day died gently around them. There were other couples, and a gentle chatter of voices, and a radio playing dance music. Chloe’s feet itched, for she had never danced with Pierre, and she had the feeling that it would be wonderful if she could dance with him. In fact, she knew it would be wonderful.

On their way home they stopped beside the sea, and Chloe looked across it and thought of Trelas on the far side of that restless expanse, and wondered if she would ever see it again. Already it seemed a long, long time since she had been married in the village church of Trelas. And it was a long, long time since that night when she had rebuffed Pierre so badly that he would never approach her room again.

She knew that with a heavy feeling at her heart, like an intolerable burden pressing on it, and in the gathering evening shadows the burden struck her as one that would grow increasingly hard to bear.

Pierre had many friends in the district, but he did not leave Chloe alone to go and visit them. He told Chloe that when she was more settled they would ask people to the house and accept invitations to houses near them, but for the time being it was enough for her to accustom herself to a new way of life and a new country. Her French was very schoolgirl and he said he would help her with it, and the one friend who came to the house, an old Dr. Duval who had retired from local practice, said he would help her with it too.

Chloe had the feeling that if anyone had any hope for her marriage it was Dr. Duva
l.
And she realised that in his lifetime he must have seen many marriages that had either started badly, or concluded badly. He had grown wise with the years.

One morning Chloe returned from the village which was
quite
nearby
, and where she had been doing some shopping for Yvette. She had some freshly ground coffee in her basket, and the smell of it made her feel good, and the scents of the morning made her feel good also. The smother of white roses over the porch, the penetrating odour of pigs, the underlying sharp tang of the sea. And although there were clouds racing overhead, and the wind made a disorder of her short fair hair, the sun fell so warmly that its tonic brought a brighter gleam to her eyes than was usually there.