Harold noticed that he had said “you,” not “you and your wife.”
“We’d like to very much,” he said.
“We could have some shooting. It’s very primitive, you understand. Not like this. But I think you will find it interesting. Actually,” Jean Allégret said, his voice changing to accommodate a note of insincerity, “I am young to have taken on so large a responsibility. I’m only twenty-seven, you know.” Behind the insincerity was the perfectly sincere image that he projected on the screen of his self-approval—of the man who lays aside his youth prematurely.
Like those people who, weeping at the grave of a friend, have no choice but to dramatize the occasion, Harold thought, and search around in their mind for a living friend to write to, describing how they stood at the grave, weeping, etc. The grief is no less real for requiring an audience. What the person doubts and seeks confirmation of is his own reality.
“There are six farms to manage,” the Frenchman went on, “and I am—in spite of my lack of experience—in the position of a father to the village. They wanted to make me mayor. They bring all their problems to me, even their marital problems. I am also working with the boys.… The whole life of the community was destroyed, and slowly, a little at a time, I am helping them rebuild it. But it means that I have very little time to myself, and no time for painting. If the Communists take over, I will be the first to be shot, in our village.”
“Are there many?”
“Five or six.”
“And you know who they are?”
“Certainly. They have nothing against me personally, but if I am successful I will defeat their plans, and so I will be the first person taken out and shot. But you must come and see my village.… I want to give you my address, before I forget it.”
Harold produced the financial diary again and while the Frenchman was writing, he sat looking at the dancers framed by the lighted windows. He still felt amazed and numb when he thought of what happened in the dining room, but most of the time he didn’t think about it. A curtain had come down over his embarrassment. After a startled glance at the wreckage of the children’s table, the guests had politely turned away and filed from the room as if nothing had happened. Jean Allégret went to the kitchen and came back with a damp cloth and scrubbed at the wine stain in the rug. Harold started to pick up the broken glass and found himself gently pushed out of the dining room. The sliding doors closed behind him. In a few minutes, Jean Allégret reappeared and brushed his apology aside—it was nothing, it was all the fault of the table pliante—and took him by the arm and led him outdoors and they went on talking.
Now, when the financial diary and the pencil had been returned to him, Harold said: “Would you take me inside and show me the house? I didn’t want to walk around by myself looking at things. Just the two rooms they’re dancing in.”
To his surprise, the Frenchman stood up and said stiffly: “I will speak to my uncle.”
“If it means that, never mind. I don’t want to bother anyone. I just thought you could take me around and tell me about the portraits, but it isn’t in the least important.”
“I will speak to my uncle. It is his house.”
Twice in one evening, Harold thought with despair. For it was perfectly clear from the gravity with which his request had been received that it was not the light thing he had thought it was.
Jean Allégret conducted him up the steps and into the hall and said: “Wait here.” Then he turned and went back down the steps. Watching through the open doorway, Harold saw him approach a tall elderly man who was standing with a group of people in the moonlight. He bent his head down attentively while Jean Allégret spoke to him. Then, instead of turning and coming toward the house, they left the group and walked up and down, talking earnestly. A minute passed, and then another, and another. Harold began to feel more and more conspicuous, standing in the lighted hall as on a stage, in plain sight of everyone on the terrace. He had already been in those two rooms. The others were dancing there now. And he could have looked at the pictures, the tapestries, the marble statuary, by himself, if he hadn’t been afraid that it would be bad-mannered. And in America people were always pleased when you asked to see their house.
Uncle and nephew made one more complete turn around the terrace, still talking, and apparently arrived at a decision, for they turned suddenly and came toward the house. Jean Allégret introduced Harold to his uncle and then left them together. M. Allégret spoke no English. He was about sixty, taller than Harold, dignified, and soft-spoken. For a minute or two he went on making polite conversation. Then he said abruptly, as if in reply to something Harold had just said: “Vous prenez un intérêt aux maisons?”
“Je prends un intérêt dans cette maison. Mais—”
“Alors.” Turning, M. Allégret led him over to a lithograph hanging on the wall beside the door into the salon. “Voici un tableau d’une chasse à courre qui a eu lieu ici en mille neuf cent sept,” he said. “La clef indique l’identité des personnes. Voici le Kaiser, et auprès de lui est le Prince Philippe zu Eulenberg … le Prince Frédéric-Guillaume … la Princesse Sophie de Württemberg, portant l’amazone noire, et le roi d’Angleterre … Mon père et ma mère … le Prince Charles de Saxe … avec leurs chasseurs et leurs laquais. Le tableau a été peint de mémoire, naturellement. Ces bois de cerf que vous voyez le long du mur.…”
AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK Alix came toward the circle in the library, where Harold and four or five young men were talking about French school life, and said: “Eugène thinks it is time we went home.”
Harold shook hands around the circle and then sought out Jean Allégret.
“We have to go,” he said, “and I wanted to be sure I said good night to all your cousins. Would you take me around to them? I am not sure which—”
This request presented no difficulties. Barbara and Harold said good night to Mme Allégret, to various rather plain young girls, and to M. Allégret, who came out of the house with them. The others were waiting with the bicycles, under the grape arbor. Jean Allégret and his uncle conducted the party from the château along the driveway as far as the place where it dropped steeply downhill, and there they said good night. Harold and Jean Allégret shook hands warmly, one last time. Calling good night, good night, they coasted down the hill, through the dark tunnel of branches, with the dim carbide bicycle lamps barely showing the curves in the road, and emerged suddenly into bright moonlight. Dismounting at a sandy patch before the bridge, Harold risked saying to Eugène: “Did you have a pleasant evening?”
“No. They were too young. There was no one there who was very interesting.” His voice in the moonlight was not unfriendly, but neither was it encouraging.
Out on the main road, Harold pedaled beside Barbara, whose lamp was brighter than his. “Wasn’t it awful about the folding table?” he said.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“I felt terrible about it, but they were so kind. They just closed the doors on it, and it was exactly as if it had never happened. But I keep thinking about the broken china and glasses that can never be replaced probably. And that stain on the carpet.”
“What were you talking about?”
“I don’t remember. Why?”
“I just wondered.”
“They attacked poor dead Woodrow Wilson. And then they started on the Jews and Negroes. I thought France was the one country where Negroes were accepted socially. They sounded just like Southerners. What was it like at dinner?”