Mme Bonenfant and Mme Cestre were waiting outside with the two children, whom the Americans had scarcely laid eyes on, and Alix’s baby in her stroller. The Americans shook hands with their hostess, with Mme Bonenfant, with Mme Cestre. They disposed of the dressing case and the two small suitcases among the three of them. Sabine kissed her mother and grandmother, and then, mounting their bicycles, waving and calling good-by, they rode out of the courtyard, past the Lebanon cedar that was two hundred years old, and down the cinder drive.
Harold did not dare look at the piece of paper until they had turned into the road and there was no possibility of his being seen from the house. He let Barbara and Sabine draw ahead and then, balancing a suitcase with one hand, he put his other into his pocket. By all the rules of narration it should have been a communication from M. Viénot, a prisoner somewhere in the attic, crying out for help through his only friend, the cook. It was, instead, a recipe for French-fried potatoes, and with it, on another piece of paper three inches square, a note:
Si, par hasard, M. et Mme Rhodes connaissaient quelqu’un desirant du personnel français mon fils et moi partirions très volontiers à l’Etranger. Voici mon addresse Mme Foëcy à St. Claude de Diray Indre-et-Loire.…
So he was not so far off, after all. It was the cook who wanted them to rescue her, from Mme Viénot and the unhappy country of France.
IN ALL THE FIELDS between the château and the village, the grain had been cut and stacked. The scythe and the blades of the reaper had spared only those poppies that grew along the road, among the weeds and the wildflowers. The bluets had just come into flower.
“My sister was married at Beaumesnil,” Sabine said, “and because of the Occupation we couldn’t have the kind of flowers that are usual at weddings, so, half an hour before the ceremony, the bridesmaids went out and picked their own bouquets, at the side of the road.”
“It sounds charming,” Barbara said.
“It was.” Sabine swerved to avoid a rut. “There were some people from the village present, and they thought that if my sister had field flowers for her wedding it must be the fashion. Since that time, whenever there is a wedding in Brenodville the bride carries such a bouquet.”
The note of condescension he heard in her voice was unconscious, Harold decided, and had nothing to do with the fact that she belonged to one social class and the village to another but was simply the smiling condescension of the adult for the child. He kept turning to look back at the château, so white against the dark woods. Since he couldn’t do what he would have liked to do, which was to fold it up and stuff it in the suitcase and take it away with him, he tried to commit it to memory.
Then they were at the outskirts of Brenodville, and it looked as if the whole village had come out to meet them and escort them to their train. Actually, as he instantly realized, it was simply that it was Sunday afternoon. The people they met spoke to Sabine and sometimes nodded to the Americans. They cannot not know who we are, he thought, and at that moment someone spoke to him—a middle-aged man in a dark-blue Sunday suit, with his two children walking in front of him and his wife at his side. Surprised and pleased, Harold answered: “Bonjour, monsieur!” and when they were past, he turned to Sabine and asked: “Who is that?”
“That was M. Fleury.”
He looked back over his shoulder to see if their old friend had stopped and was waiting for him to ride back, but M. Fleury had kept on walking.
“Have I got time to ride back and speak to him?” he said.
“You did speak to him,” Barbara said.
“But I didn’t recognize him. He looked so different.”
The girls were talking and didn’t hear him.
Riding past the cemetery, he took one last look at the monuments, which were surely made of papier-mâché, and at the graves decorated with a garish mixture of real and everlasting wreaths and flowers. As for the village itself, in two weeks’ time they had come to know every doorway, every courtyard, every purple clematis, climbing rose, and blue morning-glory vine between here and the little river.
In the cobblestone square in front of the mairie they turned left, into a street that led them downhill in the direction of the railway station, and soon overtook Eugène, striding along by himself, with his coat on one arm and in the other hand his light suitcase. Alix was not with him. Harold looked around for her and saw that she wasn’t anywhere. He slowed down, ready to ride beside Eugène. Receiving no encouragement, he rode on.
“What do we do with the bicycles?” he asked, when the two girls caught up with him.
“Someone will call for them,” Sabine said.
On the station platform, he saw their two big suitcases and the dufflebag, checked through to Paris. The smaller suitcases they could manage easily with Eugène’s help, even though they had to change trains at Blois. Traveling with French people, there would be no problems. He wouldn’t have to ask the same question four different times so that he would have four answers to compare.
Eugène arrived, and drew Sabine aside, and stood talking to her farther down the platform, where they were out of earshot. Harold turned to Barbara and said in a low voice: “Where is Alix?”
“I don’t know,” she answered.
“Something must have happened.”
“Sh-h-h.”
“It’s very queer,” he said. “She didn’t say good-by. There is only one direct way home—the way we came—and we didn’t meet her, so she must have wanted to avoid us.”
“Possibly.”
“Do you think they quarreled?”
“Something has happened.”
“Do you think it has anything to do with us?”
“What could it have to do with us?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
When Sabine came and joined them on the station platform, he thought: Now she will explain, and everything will be all right again.… But her explanation—“Alix has gone home. She said to say good-by to you”—only deepened his sense of something being held back.
The station was surrounded by vacant land, and the old station still existed, but in the form of a low mound covered with weeds. Harold kept looking off in the direction of the château, thinking that he might see Alix; that she might suddenly appear in the space between two buildings. She didn’t appear. Eugène remained standing where he was. The bell started to ring, though there was no train as far as the eye could see down the perfectly straight tracks in the direction of Blois, Orléans, and Paris or in the direction of Tours, Angers, and Nantes. The ringing filled the air with intimations of crisis. The four men seated on the terrace of the Café de la Gare paid no attention to it, which meant that they were either stone deaf or long accustomed to this frightful sound.