Voices in a Haunted Room Read online

  “Friends from France!” said Jonathan. “They must be émigrés.”

  “How exciting!” That was from Millicent Pettigrew.

  “Those dreadful people,” said someone else. “What will they do next? They say they will kill the Queen.”

  They were all talking now. It was an excited buzz. I looked along the table to Sabrina. Her face had changed and she looked like an old woman now. She hated any sort of trouble and no doubt she was thinking of those terrible days when Dickon had been in France and she had suffered agonies of fear for her son. But that was over and Dickon had come back triumphant—as if Dickon could ever do anything else!—and he had brought Lottie home with him. We had reached the happy-ever-after stage, and Sabrina did not want to be reminded of what was happening on the other side of the Channel. We were in our cosy corner, apart from strife; she wanted to wrap her family in a cosy cocoon and keep it safe. Any whisper or suggestion of horror should be shut right away. It was no concern of ours.

  Dickon came back into the dining room. He was smiling and I noticed that Sabrina’s anxieties faded away as she looked at him fondly.

  He said: “We have visitors. Friends of Lottie’s… from France. They have arrived here on their way to friends in London. They have escaped from France and are in a state of exhaustion. Lottie is arranging beds for them. Come along, Claudine, say your piece.”

  I stood up and thanked them all for their good wishes and proposed the toast to our guests. When it was drunk we sat down and the conversation was all about the revolution and how terrible it must be for those aristocrats who went in fear of the mob and had to flee their country.

  “So many are getting out,” said Jonathan. “There are émigrés all over Europe.”

  “We shall insist that they put the King back on his throne,” said Lady Pettigrew, as though it were as simple a matter as finding the right husband for Millicent.

  “That might be rather difficult, considering he has lost his head,” Jonathan pointed out.

  “I mean the new one. Isn’t there a little Dauphin… King now, of course.”

  “Young, very young,” said Jonathan.

  “Young men grow up,” retorted Lady Pettigrew.

  “A statement of such undeniable truth that I cannot challenge it,” went on Jonathan.

  I felt laughter bubbling up within me in spite of the subject. Jonathan always amused me, and I imagined his being married to Millicent and having a lifetime of verbal fencing with his mother-in-law. Almost immediately I was appalled by the thought of his marrying Millicent. I could not imagine her in a gondola listening to Italian love songs. Nor did I want to think of her in such a situation.

  Charlot and Louis Charles did not immediately return. I guessed they were with the new arrivals. It was much later when we were dancing in the hall that they joined the company.

  I danced with Jonathan, which was exciting, and I danced with David, which was pleasant, though neither of them danced well. My brother Charlot danced far better. They paid more attention to such matters in France.

  I sought out Charlot and asked about the visitors.

  He said: “They are in such a sad state. They could not face all those people. So your mother took them into the solarium while fires were lighted in their bedrooms and the warming pans put in the beds. There they were given food and as soon as the rooms were ready they went to bed.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Monsieur and Madame Lebrun; their son and his wife and the son’s daughter.”

  “Quite a party.”

  “They have had some hair-raising adventures. They almost did not get away. Do you remember them?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “They had that big estate not far from Amiens. They had left their château some time ago and had been living quietly in the heart of the country with an old servant. But they were discovered and flight became necessary. They have been helped by some. There are a few worthy people left.”

  Poor Charlot! He was deeply moved.

  The party was over and the guests had left, except those who were staying the night. I lay in my bed, too tired to sleep. It had been an exhilarating evening and everything had worked out as smoothly as my mother had planned—except for the untimely arrival of the Lebruns. And even that had been handled with the utmost discretion.

  I had come to a turning point in my life. There would be pressure on me now to make up my mind. David… or Jonathan? What an extraordinary choice for a girl to have to make. I began to wonder how much they loved me. Was it because of who I was, or because it had been expected and was what the family hoped would happen? I had a notion that they had been cleverly manoeuvred towards this situation.

  Jonathan undoubtedly wanted to make love to me. But he might have had the same feelings for a milkmaid or any of the servants. It was because of who I was that he wanted marriage.

  And David? No, David’s affection was solid. It was for me only, and when he offered marriage it was for the sake of true love.

  David… Jonathan! If I were wise it would be David; and yet I had a feeling that I should always hanker for Jonathan. I should have to decide… but not tonight. I was too tired.

  I slept late next morning, for my mother had given instructions that I was not to be awakened. When I went downstairs most of the overnight guests had left, and those who had not were on the point of doing so.

  I said my farewells and when we stood waving to the departing guests I asked about the French people.

  “They are sleeping,” said my mother. “They are quite exhausted. Madeleine and Gaston Lebrun are too old for this sort of thing. How sad at their age to be driven out of their country.”

  “Worse still to be driven off the earth.”

  She shivered. I knew all this had brought back to her mind that terrifying experience when she herself had come close to death at the hands of the mob. She understood as none of us could—except perhaps Dickon, and he would always be certain that he was going to get the better of whoever attacked him—the horror of what they called the Terror in France.

  “We must do all we can to help,” she said. “They have family connections over here north of London and when they are sufficiently rested they will go to them. Dickon is sending a message to them today to tell them that the Lebruns have safely arrived in England and are staying with us for a few days. He will help them make the journey. Perhaps he and I will accompany them to their friends. Poor things, they must feel lost in a strange country. They haven’t much English either. Oh Claudine, I am so sorry for them.”

  “So are we all,” I said.

  “I know. Charlot is incensed.” She sighed. “He feels so deeply. I don’t think he will ever adjust himself to living here. He is not like you, Claudine.”

  “I feel this is… my home.”

  She kissed me. “And so do I. I have never been so happy. It is such a pity all this has to happen…”

  I slipped my arm through hers and we went into the house.

  We were at supper the following night and with us were the younger Monsieur and Madame Lebrun with their daughter Françoise, who was about my age,

  They were very grateful for the hospitality they were receiving, and when Dickon said that he and my mother would accompany them to their destination and that they would spend a night in London on the way, they were overwhelmed with relief.

  Conversation, rather naturally, was all about their escape and the state of affairs in France; and it was conducted in French, which shut out Sabrina, Jonathan and David somewhat. David could read French quite well but he did get lost in conversation. As for Jonathan I doubted whether he had ever bothered to learn much of the language. Dickon’s French was a good deal better than he allowed it to be thought and he always spoke it with an exaggerated English accent which suggested that he was determined no one should mistake him for a Frenchman. The rest of us, of course, were fluent.

  We learned a little of what it was like to exist under the Terror. Pe
ople such as the Lebruns lived in perpetual fear of it. They could never be sure of their safety from one moment to another. They had lived with a faithful servant who had married a man who had a small farm; and they had pretended to be relations of hers. But they could so easily betray themselves and it was when Monsieur Lebrun had tried to sell a jewelled ornament he had managed to salvage from his possessions that he was suspected and flight became imperative.

  They had disguised themselves as labourers, but they were well aware that one gesture, one lapse from the patois they had adopted, could betray them.

  My mother had found some clothes for them, which, if they did not fit very well, were better than the stained and tattered garments in which they had arrived.

  Madame Lebrun said: “There are so many people who are kind to us. To see the mob… to hear those who have been one’s servants and whom one has treated well… turn against one… is so depressing. But it is such a comfort to learn that the whole world is not like that. There are many in France who help people like us. We shall never forget what we owe to them, for we could never have escaped but for them.”

  Charlot leaned forward and said: “You mean… our own people.”

  “Most of our kind would help if it were possible,” replied Madame Lebrun. “But we all have to help ourselves. We are all in danger. Yet there are those who have given themselves up to the task of helping such as we are out of the country and remaining there themselves for this purpose when they could escape. There are houses of refuge. You can imagine how dangerous it is. There has to be perpetual watch for the enemy.”

  “Their unselfishness is very heartening,” said Charlot vehemently.

  “I knew there would be such people,” echoed Louis Charles.

  “I wonder what is happening in Aubigné,” said my mother.

  “I saw Jeanne Fougère in Evreaux when we passed through.”

  We were all alert now. Jeanne Fougère had been Aunt Sophie’s faithful maid and companion—an important person in the household because she had been the only one who could manage Aunt Sophie.

  “When was that?” asked my mother eagerly.

  “Oh… several months back. We were a long time there. We stayed at one of the houses I spoke of managed by people who help others to escape.”

  “Months ago!” echoed my mother. “What did Jeanne say? Did you ask about Sophie—and Armand?”

  Madame Lebrun looked at my mother sadly. “She said that Armand had died in the château. At least the mob had left him alone. I think she said that the young man who was with him recovered and went off somewhere.”

  “And what of Sophie?”

  “She was still at the château with Jeanne.”

  “At the château! They didn’t destroy it then?”

  “No, apparently not. They took the valuables and furniture and such. Jeanne said it was a shambles. But she had some chickens and there was a cow and they managed to live in a corner of the place. That was how it was then. People did not seem to bother them. Mademoiselle Sophie was an aristocrat, daughter of the Comte d’Aubigné, but she was almost a recluse… badly scarred. In any case they were living at the château unmolested. Jeanne was uneasy though. She kept lifting her eyes to the skies and murmuring: ‘How long!’ Perhaps even now the mood has changed. Now the King is dead, it will become worse, they say.”

  “Poor Sophie,” said my mother.

  The following day the Lebruns departed and, true to his word, Dickon went with them as their guide; naturally my mother went too.

  After they had gone the whole mood of the house seemed to have changed. The Lebruns had brought into it a threat of what could happen to disrupt people’s comfortable lives. We had known, of course, what was going on over there, but this brought it home to us forcibly.

  I soon discovered what was in Charlot’s mind.

  It was naturally at the dinner table that we all gathered together and there the talk as usual turned to France and the plight of those refugees who were left behind.

  The guillotine was claiming more and more of them every day. The Queen was in prison. Her turn would soon come.

  “And our aunt is there,” said Charlot. “Poor Aunt Sophie! She was always so pathetic. Do you remember her, Claudine, in that hood she used to wear to cover one side of her face?”

  I nodded.

  “And Jeanne Fougère. She was a bit of a dragon. But what a treasure! What a good woman! She would not let us in very often to see Aunt Sophie.”

  “She always liked you to go and see her though, Charlot,” said Louis Charles.

  “Well, I do think she had a special fondness for me.”

  It was true. Charlot had been a favourite of hers, if she could have been said to have favourites. It was a fact though that she had actually asked Charlot to visit her on one or two occasions.

  “Those people who are helping aristocrats escape the guillotine are doing a wonderful job,” went on Charlot.

  He looked at Louis Charles, who smiled at him in such a way that I knew they had discussed this together.

  Jonathan was attentive too. He said: “Yes, it is a great adventure. My father went over there and brought Claudine’s mother out. It was a marvellous thing to do.”

  Charlot agreed, though he had no great love for Dickon. “But,” he went on, “he just brought out my mother. Just one person because she was the only one he was interested in.”

  I defended him hotly. “He risked his life.”

  It was a good thing that Sabrina was not present; she would have grown hot in her defence of Dickon; she often did not come down to the evening meal when Dickon was away, but had something in her room. Yet if he was there she usually made the effort to join us.

  “Oh yes, he did that,” said Charlot lightly. “But I think he enjoyed doing it.”

  “We usually do well what we enjoy doing,” said David, “but that does not detract from the virtue of the act.”

  The others ignored him.

  Jonathan’s eyes were shining. They blazed with that intense blue light which I had thought I aroused in him. Obviously other matters than the pursuit of women could make it shine forth.

  “It must be exciting,” he said, “rescuing people, snatching them from prison at the last moment, depriving that hideous guillotine of another victim.”

  Charlot leaned across the table nodding and they started to talk about the escapes which the Lebruns had mentioned. They talked with great animation; they seemed to have created a bond between them from which David and I were excluded.

  “What I would have done in those circumstances,” Jonathan was saying; and he went on to outline some adventurous stratagem. They looked boyish in their enthusiasm.

  Jonathan explained in detail how my mother had been taken by the mob to the mairie, where she was kept while the people screamed outside for her to be brought out that they might hang her on the lanterne.

  “And my father, disguised as a coachman, was in a carriage at the back of the mairie. He bribed the mayor to let her out and he drove the carriage right through the mob in the square. At any moment something could have gone wrong.”

  “He never believed anything could go wrong,” I said.

  There was silence at the table. They were all lost in admiration for Dickon. Even Charlot seemed to think he was rather splendid in that moment.

  Then he said: “But he might have brought others out at the same time.”

  “How could he?” I demanded. “It was difficult and dangerous enough to get my mother out.”

  “People are being brought out. There are brave men and women who are giving their lives to this. Mon Dieu, how I wish I were there!”

  “I too,” echoed Louis Charles.

  And so they talked.

  I continued to be concerned with my own problem. Jonathan or David? This time next year, I thought, I shall be eighteen. I shall have decided by then.

  If only I did not like them both so much. Perhaps it was after all because they were twins
—in a way like utterly opposite sides of one person.

  I thought frivolously that when one was attracted by twins one should be allowed to marry them both.

  When I was with David I thought a good deal about Jonathan. But when I was with Jonathan I must remember David.

  The day after that conversation I went riding and I expected that Jonathan would come after me as he usually did. He knew what time I left.

  I rode rather slowly to give him time to catch up, but he did not appear. I made my way to the top of a small incline where I could get a good view. There was no sign of him.

  I finished my ride and went back considerably piqued. As I entered the house I heard voices in one of the small rooms which led from the hall and I peeped in.

  Jonathan was there with Charlot and Louis Charles. They were deep in conversation.

  I said: “Hello. I’ve been riding.”

  They hardly seemed aware of me… even Jonathan.

  I came away distinctly annoyed and went to my room.

  That night at dinner the conversation took the usual trend: the events in France.

  “There are other places in the world,” David reminded them.

  “There are ancient Rome and ancient Greece,” said Jonathan rather contemptuously. “You’re so steeped in past history, brother, that you are losing sight of the history which is being made all around you.”

  “I assure you,” retorted David, “that I am fully aware of the significance of what is happening in France at this time.”

  “Well, isn’t that more important than Julius Caesar or Marco Polo?”

  “You cannot see history clearly while it is happening,” said David slowly. “It is like looking at an oil painting. You have to stand back… some years. That particular painting isn’t finished yet.”

  “You and your metaphors and similes! You’re only half alive. Let’s tell him, shall we, eh, Charlot, Louis Charles? Shall we tell him what we propose to do?”

  Charlot nodded gravely.

  “We are going to France,” said Jonathan. “We are going to bring out Aunt Sophie… among others…”