Never Call It Love (14 page)

"Have
you heard from Christopher?"

"Not
yet."

"Then
no wonder you are so distressed! But try not to worry, my darling. Wherever he
is, he is all right"

"Yes,"
Elizabeth said.

Misty
Paris sunlight, filtering through the lace curtains at the long windows of the
Left Bank house, struck highlights from Madame Yvette Cordot's auburn hair. She
sat at the dressing table in her boudoir, wearing a yellow silk peignoir, and
smoothing powder on a face that had the relaxed, dreamy look of a woman newly
risen from a bed shared with a lover.

Half-reclining
on a gold brocade chaise longue, Christopher watched her from narrowed eyes. He
would have to come to some new arrangement with her, and right away. His money
was running low.

With
a favoring wind, the ship he had boarded at Southampton more than a month ago
had crossed the channel in about twelve hours. In Calais the next morning he
had taken the post chaise to Paris, and found cheap lodgings on one of the
narrow streets east of the Grand-Ch
âtelet prison.

He
had met Yvette his second day in Paris. After crossing the Seine to a theater
on the city's Left Bank, he had bought a ticket for an afternoon performance of
Moli
ére's
Tartuffe.
He already knew the play, and he had thought that his
knowledge of French, acquired from a tutor even before he went to Oxford, would
be adequate. But all the actors delivered their lines rapidly, and some of them
spoke in a patois unintelligible to him. He was about to leave in disgust when
he noticed the woman seated across the aisle, with a vacant seat beside her.

She
was richly dressed in a dark blue velvet gown and plumed, matching hat. She was
not too young—thirty or a bit past. And she looked lonely. Christopher settled
back in his seat.

At
the end of the performance, watching her from the corner of his eye, he managed
to move out in the aisle just in time to collide with her. He caught her arm as
if to steady her.

"Oh,
madame! Are you hurt? Forgive my clumsiness."

She
looked up into a face so handsome it was almost beautiful. "It is all
right, monsieur."

"But
I am sure I trod on your foot."

"A
little. It does not hurt."

He
looked earnestly down into her face. Although her nose was a trifle too long,
it was a reasonably attractive face, set with large and vulnerable-looking
brown eyes. He said, "But you must allow me to make amends. Allow me to at
least see you to your carriage."

She
allowed him. In the bronze-colored light of late afternoon they waited until
her carriage, one of a dozen or so moving along the edges of a cobblestoned
square, stopped in front of them. A footman as well as a coachman, both in
scarlet livery, sat on the box. Before the footman could descend, Christopher
opened the carriage door for her.

She
said from the carriage window, "Thank you, monsieur."

He
smiled. "The pleasure and the privilege were mine—all too briefly enjoyed,
I might add."

She
looked at the melancholy ardor in the deep blue eyes. "Can I take you to
your destination, monsieur?"

"Oh,
madame! My lodgings are on the other side of the river. I could not dream of
imposing, of taking up your time...."

"Nonsense.
Get in. For a widow, having one's time taken up is never an imposition."

As
they crossed a bridge over the Seine, where Notre-Dame on its isle rode the
sunset-streaked water like a giant ship, they exchanged names, and she began to
tell him a little about herself. Her late husband, a man many years her senior,
had left his business to her. "It is a store, Monsieur Montlow, near
St.-Germain-des-Pr
és.
I do not think you have stores like that in London. It is not just one shop,
but many shops, all under one ownership, and under one roof. Some departments
sell hats, others dress materials, others household articles, and so on."

A
store. He had already guessed that she belonged to the French middle class
rather than the aristocracy. Well, so much the better.

"And
you, Monsieur Montlow? How is it that you, an Englishman and so young, are
alone in Paris?"

"Madame
Cordot, I do not want to weary you with my troubles."

"Please!
Tell me."

"Very
well. My mother is dead. My father recently remarried. My stepmother does not
like me, and in some way I cannot understand, has poisoned my father's mind
against me. He told me that he could no longer pay my expenses at Oxford. He
gave me a small sum of money and told me that before it was gone I would have
to find some means of supporting myself until I am twenty-one. An inheritance
from my grandmother will be turned over to me then.

"I
suppose I should have gone to London, rather than spending money on passage to
France. But I was so desperately unhappy that I wanted to get out of England
for a while."

"Of
course you did!" She was silent for a few moments as the carriage rolled
along a narrow, winding street. "Tell me, is your stepmother younger than
your father?"

"Yes,
about half his age."

So!
Her guess had been right. Surely it was not the
stepmother, but the father
himself who had decided that the poor boy must be turned out. What man, newly
married to a woman half his age, would want his superlatively handsome son
around?

As
the carriage moved through the warren of streets near the Grand-Châtelet
prison, Christopher said, "Please tell the coachman to stop just beyond
that lamp."

The
carriage halted at the foot of an alley, scarcely five feet wide, which sloped
upward between two rows of moldering houses. Lines of laundry fluttered between
the houses, and ragged children played on doorsteps.

She
said, shocked, "You live here?"

"In
a room on the top story of the third house." He smiled. "I am poor,
madame, but not so poor that I cannot buy you coffee tomorrow, if you will
permit me to."

The
next afternoon he bought her coffee at a small Left Bank Cafe and then
accompanied her to her store, Cordot's Emporium. Impressed, he looked at the
customers crowding the aisle between counters laden with silks from the Orient,
fine porcelain from Limoges, English silver, and laces from Brussels. Later she
took him to her three-story house near the Sorbonne for what she called tea
"
á
l'anglaise."

However
love-starved, Yvette was basically a conventional woman. He was a guest in her
house two more times before he managed to maneuver her past her scruples and
into her bedroom. Since then they had spent hours together each day. She had
paid for their restaurant meals and their visits to the theater. But she had
not offered to pay for his room in that slum, let alone for better lodgings.
And his money was disappearing rapidly. Soon he would have scarcely enough for
his return passage to England.

And
he did not want to return to England, not just yet, not even if he learned he
could return in safety. The chances were excellent that Oxford, after the
notoriety of
his trial, would refuse to readmit him. Geoffrey and his other friends who had
been with him in the Kingman Street house that night would avoid him. Aware
that they themselves might have stood in the dock at Old Bailey, they would
shrink from the companionship of someone who actually had.

And
besides, even if that Irishman with murder in his eyes had gone back to his
miserable island by now, there was no reason why he could not return to
England. Better to keep well out of his way for at least a year. By then even
an Irish lust for vengeance might subside.

No,
Yvette must be more generous. Otherwise he could not go on wasting his time
with her.

He
rose and crossed to the dressing table. He put his arms around her, cupped her
breasts beneath the thin yellow silk in his hands, and rested his chin on the
crown of her auburn hair. They smiled at each other in the mirror.

Then
he said, his smile dying, "Yvette, when I think of having to get along
without you..."

"Without
me!" Breaking his embrace, she turned around on the brocaded stool.
"What are you talking about?"

"A
letter from my father came today. He has relented. I can go home. I did not
want to tell you... earlier. I wanted us to have this one last time
together...."

"But,
Christopher! You do not want to leave me. Tell me you do not!"

"Of
course I want to stay here in Paris with you. But how can I? My money is almost
gone. And where in France can an Englishman find employment? What can I do but
go home?"

She
was silent for a long moment. Infatuated as she was, she still realized that
she would become a laughingstock if she married him. But perhaps something
short of that...

She
said, "You can live here." Never mind that her
friends would
still laugh. In the case of some of them, there would be envy behind the
laughter.

"Live
here? With you, in this house? Oh, Yvette, my darling Yvette!" He caught
her hand and held it to his cheek.

"And
you need not worry about employment, my darling boy. I will speak to Monsieur
Durand." Marcel Durand managed Cordot's Emporium for her. "He will
give you employment."

That
was the middle class for you, Christopher thought coldly. She would not allow
him just to live here. She wanted to put him to work.

"What
sort of employment?"

She
laughed. "Don't look like that, my dear one. Did you think I planned to
have you stand behind a counter? Monsieur Durand will make you his assistant.
Didn't you say that you did excellently in mathematics at Oxford? Well, I will
tell him that you are to handle the accounts."

The
accounts. With his two hands he tilted her face upward and kissed her on the
lips.

At
the Hedges, the maple tree unfurled its first tender green leaves. The
daffodils planted at its base gave way to scarlet tulips and deep blue dwarf
iris. Swallows returned, soaring and diving through the bright sunlight, and
began to build a nest under the carriage-house eaves.

Elizabeth
moved, busy and silent, through the glorious spring, now dreading Donald's
almost daily visits. At first
he made anxious inquiries about the circles under
her eyes, and her abstracted air. She was all right, she would protest. It was
just that she was not sleeping too well. Perhaps she was still feeling the aftereffects
of the trial. Finally he stopped questioning her. But often she was aware of a
look in his hazel eyes—puzzled, worried, a little hurt—that sent an almost
physical pain through her heart.

One
morning in early April she descended the stairs, feather duster in hand, and
started back along the hall to the kitchen. Her mother hailed her joyfully from
the side parlor. "Elizabeth! We have a letter from Christopher!"

When
Elizabeth came into the room and stretched out her hand, Mrs. Montlow said,
"No, no! Sit down. I'll read it to you.

"It
is from Paris," she went on. He starts out, 'Dearest Mama and Liza,' and
then he says, 'Forgive me for my silence. I did not want to write until I had
good news for you.'"

Mrs.
Montlow looked up from the page, beaming. "You see? The poor foolish boy
didn't realize that we would be less worried by bad news than by no news at
all." She resumed her reading:

I
have employment, Mama, really excellent employment. It happened like this. I
was wandering along the Seine one day, missing you and Liza dreadfully, and yet
afraid to come home, and so wondering what I should do next. As I was looking
at a river barge, a middle-aged couple, a Mr. and Mrs. Yves Cordot, stopped
beside me, and we fell into conversation. They asked me to have an ice with
them at a café near Luxembourg Palace. There Mr. Cordot told me that he owned
Cordot's Emporium, of which you maybe have heard.

He
seemed to like me, Mama. Anyway, I called
upon him the next day at the emporium,
as he had asked me to do, and he offered me employment. I help with the
accounts, and soon may be in full charge of them.

Now,
I can just hear you, Mama. What a disgrace, you are saying. A Montlow, in
trade! But perhaps, dearest Mama, people of our class take a false view of life.
There is nothing wrong with honest employment. I think Liza will agree with me.
Think of how hard she works in the garden and in the house. And think of how
proud we are of her, and how grateful to her!

As
for my education, I can continue it myself, in the evening hours. True, books
are expensive, but not so expensive as attending Oxford!

For
a few months I must repay Mr. Cordot's kindness with as much diligence as
possible. But after that, if you and Liza think it is safe, I would like to pay
you a visit.

I
remain,

Your
affectionate son and brother,