“What a set,” she commented. “Maybe he hardly had a chance to turn out differently.”
He turned his own long nose up to the face of his grandfather and the man in robes stared down at the man in the green baize apron. He looked away from the supercilious accusing eyes.
“What a set,” the girl commented again. “And yet they married and had children. Can you imagine them in love?”
“That happens to anyone.”
She laughed. It was the first time he had heard her laugh. He watched her avidly, just as a murderer might wait with desperate hope for a sign of life to return and prove him not after all guilty.
She asked, “How do you think they’d show a thing like that? Would they blow those long noses? Do you think they could weep out of those lawyers’ eyes?”
He put out a hand and touched her arm. He said, “I expect they’d show it in this way…” and at that moment the front doorbell began to clatter and clang on its long metal stalk.
“Roche?” he wondered.
“What would he want?”
“It’s too late for beggars, surely?”
“Perhaps,” she said breathlessly, “it’s him at last.”
Again they could hear the long steel tendril quiver before the bell shook “Open it,” she said, “or my mother will come.” He was gripped by the apprehension anyone feels at anytime hearing a bell ring at night. He moved uneasily down the stairs with his eyes on the door. So much experience and so much history had contributed to that ancestral fear: murders a hundred years old, stories of revolution and war… Again the bell rang as if the man outside were desperately anxious to enter, or else had a right to demand admittance. The fugitive and the pursuer give the same ring.
Charlot put up the chain and opened the door a few inches only. He could see nothing in the dark outside except the faint glimmer of a collar band. A foot stirred on the gravel and he felt the door strain under a steady pressure against the chain. He asked, “Who’s that?” and the stranger replied in accents inexplicably familiar, “Jean-Louis Chavel.”
13
“WHO?”
“Chavel.” The voice gained confidence and command. “Would you mind opening the door, my good fellow, and letting me in?”
“Who is it?” the girl said: she had paused halfway down the stairs.
A wild hope beat in Charlot’s breast, and he called to her in fearful hilarity and relief, “Chavel. He says he’s Chavel.” Now, he thought, at last I am really Charlot. Somebody else can bear all the hate…
“Let him in,” she said, and he unchained the door.
The man who came in was as familiar as the voice, but Charlot couldn’t place him. He was tall and well made with an odd effect of vulgarity that came from a certain flashiness, something almost jaunty in his walk… His skin was very white and looked powdered, and when he spoke his voice was like that of a singer: he seemed too aware of its intonations. You felt he could play any tune on it he pleased.
“My dear lady,” he said, “you must excuse my breaking in like this.” His gaze passed to Charlot and he suddenly paused: it was as though he too recognized… or thought he recognized…
“What do you want?” Therese said.
He dragged his eyes reluctantly from Charlot and said, “Shelter-and a bit of food.”
Therese said, “And you are really Chavel?”
He said uncertainly, “Yes, yes, I am Chavel.”
She came down the stairs and across the hall to him. She said, “I thought you’d come… one day.”
He put his hand out as though his mind couldn’t grasp the possibility of anything beyond the conventional. “Dear lady,” he said, and she spat full in his face. This was what she had looked forward to all these months, and now it was over, like a child at the end of a party, she began to cry.
“Why don’t you go?” Charlot said.
The man who called himself Chavel was wiping his face with his sleeve. He said, “I can’t. They are looking for me.”
“Why?”
He said, “Anybody who has an enemy anywhere is a collaborationist.”
“But you were in a German prison.”
“They say I was put there as an informer,” the man said quietly. The promptitude of the retort seemed to give him back his self-respect and confidence. He said to the girl slowly, “Of course. You are Mademoiselle Mangeot. It was wrong of me to come here, I know, but any hunted animal mak~ for the earth it knows. You must forgive my want of tact, mademoiselle. I’ll go at once.”
She sat on the bottom step of the stairs with her face covered by her hands.
“Yes, you’d better go quickly,” Charlot said.
The man swiveled his white powdery face around on Charlot. His lips were dry and he moistened them with a tiny bit of tongue; the only genuine thing about him was his fear. But the fear was under controclass="underline" like a vicious horse beneath a good rider it showed only in the mouth and the eyeball. He said, “My only excuse is that I had a message for mademoiselle from her brother,” Charlot’s unremitting, curious gaze seemed to disconcert him. He said, “I seem to know you.”
The girl looked quickly up. “You ought to know him. He was in the same prison.”
Again Charlot had to admire the man’s control.
“Ah, I think it comes back,” the man said, “there were a great many of us.”
“Is he really Chavel?” the girl asked.
The fear was still there, but it was hidden firmly and Charlot was amazed at the man’s effrontery. The white face turned like a naked globe toward him prepared to outglance him, and it was Charlot who looked away. “Yes,” he said, “it’s Chavel. But he’s changed.” An expression of glee crinkled the man’s face and then all was smooth again.
“Well,” the girl asked, “what’s your message?”
“It was just that he loved you and this was the best thing he could do for you.”
It was bitterly cold in the big hall, and the man suddenly shivered. He said, “Goodnight, mademoiselle. Forgive my intrusion. I should have known that the earth is closed.” He bowed with stagy grace, but the gesture was lost on her. She had turned her back on him and was already passing out of sight round a turn of the stairs.
“The door, Monsieur Chavel,” Charlot mocked him.
But the man had one shot left. “You are an imposter,” he said. “You were not in the prison, you did not recognize me. Do you think I would have forgotten any face there? I think I ought to expose you to your mistress. You are obviously preying on her good nature.”
Charlot let him ramble on, plunging deeper. Then he said, “I was in the prison and I did recognize you, Monsieur Carosse.”
“Good God,” he said, taking the longest look he had yet. “Not Pidot? It can’t be Pidot with that voice.”
“No, you mistook me for Pidot once before. My name is Charlot. This is the second time you’ve done me a service, Monsieur Carosse.”
“You give me a poor return then, don’t you, pushing me out into the night like this? The wind’s east, and I’m damned if it hasn’t begun to rain.” The more afraid he was, the more jaunty he became: jauntiness was like a medicine he took for the nerves. He turned up the collar of his overcoat. “To be given the bird in the provinces,” he said, “a poor end to a distinguished career. Good night, my ungrateful Charlot. How did I ever mistake you for poor Pidot?”
“You’ll freeze.”
“Only too probable. So did Edgar Allan Poe.”
“Listen,” Charlot said, “I’m not as ungrateful as that. You can stay one night. Take off your shoes while I slam the door.” He closed the door loudly. “Follow me.”