The Walnut Tree (15 page)

I shut them out of my mind, wondering how I would manage to reach Paris once I was in France. But that turned out to be no problem. I found a convoy of lorries on their way to Rouen, and once in Rouen, I took the first train in any direction. It was heading south, but it didn't matter, for I was able to pick up another going on to Paris once I'd reached Lyon.

It was interesting to see that my uniform—Bess's—a few well-placed lies or sous, and the reputation of the Nursing Service got me through, where once orders had been paramount. I was grateful for the changes time had brought.

In Paris I found a taxi to take me to the Villard house, and finally, tired, travel stained, worried almost to the point of feeling ill, I was lifting the Villard's massive knocker and waiting for someone to answer my summons.

It was Marie, Madeleines's maid, who came to the door. She exclaimed when she recognized me and ushered me inside. At that moment, Madeleine herself came rushing down the stairs, her face alight with surprise and relief.

“Elspeth? Is that you? Of course it is! Come in, Marie will make tea for you while you warm yourself by the fire.” She enveloped me in a loving embrace, then linking her arm with mine, she led me into the little morning room where she wrote her letters and dealt with household accounts.

“We seldom light the fires in the drawing room,” she said, pulling up a chair for me. “Coal and wood are hard to come by, and we make do as best we can. Oh, this is the first time I've seen you in your uniform. Turn around and let me—yes, very nice, but it isn't you, is it, Elspeth, my dear?”

“It was this uniform that brought me across England and then over half of France, to you,” I told her. “A ball gown or an evening gown wouldn't have worked at all.”

And then I regretted my sharpness. How was Madeleine to know how much my nursing had meant to me? But she laughed, thinking I was teasing.

“Tell me—your letter just reached me a few days ago, and you said in it that Alain had been exchanged?”

“We had an officer they wanted rather badly. Henri managed to include Alain in the price for him. And just as well. He's been so terribly ill, Elspeth, so changed, in such despair.”

“What happened? You said he'd been wounded when he was captured, but no one seemed to know where or how seriously.”

“They had to take his arm, Elspeth. At the shoulder. It was that or let him die of gangrene.” She began to cry, the pent-up emotions of Alain's return and his condition too much to hold in any longer. “His
arm,
Elspeth. I can't bear it.”

I had seen more amputations than she could imagine in her wildest dreams. But this was Alain. Her brother, the man I'd thought I wanted to marry when he marched off to war.

And then I realized the full impact of his amputation. I could hardly tell him now that I'd fallen in love with someone else. Not now, not ever.

“I want to see him. Will you take me up to his room?”

“Have your tea first, Elspeth. You'll need all your strength to face what's ahead.”

I could have told her I needed nothing but to see Alain for myself. Still, I was a guest in her house, and she had ordered the tea especially on my account.

And so I sat there and drank my tea, ate the little cakes that the Villard cook had added to the tea tray, and listened to the rest of Madeleine's news.

Little Henri was growing, just learning to crawl. Henri was no longer with the British forces as liaison but back with his old regiment.

“I worry about him every day, pray for him every night. He came home with Alain, twenty-four hours, that's all he had. But he saw his son, I held him in my arms, and that was that. He was gone away again almost as soon as he'd come.”

I was glad for both their sakes that they'd had even that little time together.

“And he says—he says that the war that was to end by Christmas will go on and on and on. There's no way of knowing how or when it will end.” She was crying again. “What will I do if something happens to Henri? Bad enough that Alain is like he is. But my God, what if it had been Henri?”

I comforted her as best I could and finally persuaded her to take me upstairs to see Alain. At the door of his bedchamber, she stopped.

“Go and see him, Elspeth. Let me wait here for you.”

It was then I realized that she had been putting off seeing him because she herself dreaded going into his room.

I braced myself for a shock, knocked lightly, and when Alain's familiar voice called gruffly, “Come,” I opened the door and walked into his bedroom.

He was sitting by the fire. So thin that I hardly knew him, his fair hair cropped short as a result of his fever, and his face drawn with pain and despair.

He recognized me at once, and I saw from his expression that Madeleine hadn't told him that she'd written to me.

It was his right arm that was missing, the shoulder of his shirt sagging where it had been.

Trying to rise to his feet, he nearly fell, and swore with feeling under his breath.

“Elspeth,” he said. And that was all he could manage.

“Alain. My dear,” I said, crossing the room to the hearth and holding out my hands to the blaze. I wanted so much to take him into my arms and comfort him, but he would have seen that as pity. And pity he didn't want from me. “It was a cold journey. I'm glad to be here. How are you?”

“As you see,” he said bitterly.

“Yes, you've been through a terrible ordeal. How is the shoulder?”

Shocked that I should ask, he couldn't answer at first. Then he said, “I feel the arm. Every day. Every night I dream that I'm whole. And every morning I wake up to find that it's not there.”

“It's not uncommon,” I said slowly. “It could fade with time. There's no way of knowing.”

“I asked Madeleine not to tell you,” he burst out angrily. “I forbade her to write to you. But I see that she has. I shan't be able to forgive her.”

I turned to face him. “Did you think I wouldn't wish to know? I'd been told that you were missing, that you were taken prisoner, that you were wounded and very ill. Did you think I wouldn't care?”

He had the grace to look away. And then he turned back to me and said, “You aren't wearing my ring.”

I lifted my hand and pulled the chain free of my collar, letting the light play on the gold and the ruby stone. It looked like fresh blood.

“I was not allowed to wear such things as a nursing Sister.”

“Yes, I'd heard that you had trained. I admire your courage.”

It was the first kind thing he'd said to me. “Thank you. My cousin Kenneth didn't see it that way at all. He insisted that I resign.”

“And did you?”

“That's another story,” I said evasively. “Will you ask me to sit down? Or shall I remain standing, like you?”

He gestured to a chair across from his, and once I had seated myself, he took the other, but awkwardly, his body not yet accustomed to balancing without that right arm.

We sat in silence for several minutes.

Then Alain said, “In a way I'm glad you've come. I have been trying to think how to tell you that I will not be speaking to your cousin after all.”

I tried not to show my shock. “Your feelings toward me have changed?”

“Nothing has changed, Elspeth. Except for this.” He indicated his shoulder. “I can't very well expect you to marry a wreck of the man you knew before the war began.”

“Why should that make any difference? I've seen terrible things in the aid stations where I've served. Losing an arm is not the worst of them.”

“Don't make light of what I've been through,” he said angrily. “And don't tell me that I don't know what I'm saying.”

I was thinking that it could just as easily have been Peter who had lost his arm, not Alain. God had chosen. And I must make my choice. Clearly. Now.

“I'm not making light of anything. If you don't care for me any longer, I can understand that and I can learn to accept it. What you are doing instead is denying me the right to choose. And I won't allow you to take that from me, Alain. I told you before you left to join your regiment that I was pleased that you were intending to speak to Cousin Kenneth when the war was at an end. Well, it has ended for you. I can carry a letter to Scotland. It will be some time before you can travel, and Cousin Kenneth will take that into account.”

“I'm not marrying you or any woman. Not now, not ever.”

“There are other offers for my hand. Will you let him decide to accept one of them instead?”

“I have no choice.” There was anguish in his voice.

“Then you don't love me, do you? I'm sorry.” It was merciless—but it was the only way to break through his stubborn resistance. I didn't know if it would do more harm than good in the end, but I had come all this way to find him again, and I refused to be turned away.

I stood up, preparing to leave the room.

“For God's sake, Elspeth, think what you're doing to me.”

“No. It is what you are doing to me, Alain. Let's be clear about this.”

He stood up, anger in his eyes, his jaw taut. “All right. If you want to know, I love you still. As much as I did in August. More, because I've thought about you every day in that wretched prison. You were the brightness in my darkness, and I think the only reason I survived at all was because of you. But that's a two-edged sword, Elspeth. I have loved you too much. And I should have died. I should never have lived through that surgery.”

I wanted desperately to go to him, hold him. And I dared not.

“Do you think I only loved you when you were whole?” I asked. “Alain, do you think I'm so shallow?”

He stared at me. “My dear girl. I'm not what I was!”

“You are still Alain, aren't you? Write that letter, and I will take it to Scotland in your place.”

“I can't—”

“You can.”

I turned away, hiding the tears in my eyes. “I'm very tired, it was a long journey and I wasn't able to sleep very much. I'd like to lie down. When I'm rested, I'll come back. Don't shut me out, Alain. Please.”

And with that I left the room.

Madeleine was still outside the door.

“I heard you shouting at each other,” she said uneasily.

“Yes. But in the end, I think I got my way.”

She embraced me then, holding me fiercely. “You'll still be my sister, won't you? And we'll be just like we were before, the four of us, happy together.”

“If only we could,” I said, against her fair hair.

And meant it.

Chapter Twelve

W
hen next I saw Alain, he was in a very different mood. I told myself that my bluntness had brought him to his senses. He began to talk about the weeks before the war, about his sister's schooling at the Académie, about his life growing up at Montigny.

But never about the fighting he had seen along the Marne.

Over the next week, we settled into a comfortable way of going on.

One afternoon Alain talked about seeing me for the first time. He had come to escort his sister home for the Christmas holidays, and I had been in the foyer of the school as he walked in.

“You were frowning,” he said. “An absolute thundercloud. I asked Madeleine later what it was that troubled you, and she told me that you hadn't wanted to leave England to finish your education. That you had lost your father and it had been very painful because it was so sudden, so unexpected.”

“That's true,” I said, remembering. “It seemed that I'd lost everything. My father, my home, my country. Cousin Kenneth is a very good man, he tries to carry out my father's wishes in every way. But sometimes he's dreadfully inflexible.”

“As in forcing you to leave the Nursing Service.”

I regarded him for a moment. “Would you refuse to consider marrying me because I had been a nursing Sister in the war?”

“I was a soldier,” he said very simply. “I knew your worth. To men in pain, men dying, you were sisters of mercy. I would not have felt that this changed you in any way.”

He had used the past tense. I was wearing his ring now. He had commented on it. And I had changed into the clothing I had worn here before the war began, left in the wardrobe of my room, cleaned and pressed with loving care by Madeleine's maid.

I had come here to find him again. To see if the man he had been was changed in any way. Save for that first night, he had become the Alain I knew, his anger gone.

But now the use of the past tense worried me. I didn't know how to probe for his feelings, for one could hardly ask a onetime suitor if he still wished to marry one.

Suddenly I was reminded of a story about Queen Victoria, that she had had to propose marriage to Prince Albert, for she as a reigning queen could not be offered marriage in the usual way.

Well, wasn't I an Earl's daughter? And for all his blue blood, Alain Montigny could be considered a commoner, without a title . . .

I said, “I have another question. You can't travel to Scotland—Cousin Kenneth can't come to Paris. At least, not very easily in the middle of a war. But the post still carries letters to and from Scotland. I don't think it would be very proper for me to write to Cousin Kenneth on your behalf. But perhaps there is someone you could ask. A priest, a solicitor. I don't want to lose you a second time.”

He looked away. “It's too early, Elspeth. I have hardly healed. I can't rise from a chair without risking a fall. I must see my doctor every week. I haven't yet learned to use my left hand properly. I'm not prepared to be a bridegroom.”

He hadn't talked to me about the war. And he hadn't touched my hand or even kissed me on the cheek—as he had done when I was no more than Madeleine's Scots friend.

“One doesn't have to marry straightaway. A long betrothal is not unexpected in wartime.”

Alain turned back to me. “You must understand, my dear.” He lifted his left hand to touch the sleeve of his missing arm. “I must learn how to live with it. Not to be morbid, but I wake at night, and I've dreamed the arm was still there. I was back in the Marne Valley, sending my men out of harm's way, taking over that German machine gun and turning it around on the soldiers coming toward me. Or I'm being forced to march back behind the German lines, my arm bleeding but still there. I won't bore you with the rest, but you will understand. And you as a Scot might understand this as well. Without an arm, I can't go back and fight them again and take my revenge for the care given me that cost me my arm.”

I was shocked. I
hadn't
understood. I'd been ready to go forward with our official engagement, it was one of the reasons I had hurried to France. I understood duty, I understood responsibility and honor and pride. But not what Alain had endured.

Or that it would become more important in his life than anything—or anyone—else.

“I'm glad you confided in me,” I told him with bald honesty.

He smiled. “That's one of the reasons I love you, Elspeth. One of many.”

And he changed the subject.

As we talked about young Henri, I realized I hadn't yet touched Alain, just as he had not touched me.

Was I afraid to? Afraid of his reaction to it? Or was it Peter, and my feelings for him?

Truth was, I didn't know.

A second week passed. I persuaded Alain to walk with me as I pushed little Henri's pram down the street, trailed by his anxious nurse. Alain was clearly unhappy to be in such a public place, where his pinned sleeve drew attention. He wasn't the only veteran on the street. I saw men with crutches and empty sleeves, disfigured faces and bound eyes, missing ears, hands, feet. But Alain was still a very attractive man, and that drew attention too. We must have seemed like a very happy pair, taking our child for a stroll.

But it didn't last long. He said tightly, “I must go back. I'm . . . tired.”

I didn't argue. I turned the pram, and we walked quickly back to the Villard house. And Alain didn't come down to dinner.

I
tried to talk to Madeleine about Alain, but she was blind to what I saw. I wished Henri were here, or one of my cousins, someone I could confide in. I even considered going to see his doctor, but I knew I wouldn't be told anything of importance—I wasn't a wife, not even officially betrothed. And I was a woman, after all, to be spared “unpleasantness.”

Worried, I wrote to Bess Crawford in England, praying that she was there and not in France. I asked her to speak to her father. He had been a regimental Colonel, he had had experience in handling men who were in battle and had been wounded. I hoped he could guide me in what I could do to help Alain.

And at the same time I took hope from one thing. While Alain had done nothing to resume the closeness between us of that night before he left to join his regiment, he had not sent me away. Or asked me to return his mother's ring.

It was a beginning.

I had to be satisfied with that. And Peter? That door must remain closed. Forever. It was cowardly of me not to tell Peter about Alain. I think he guessed when I never wore his Christmas ring that there was a reason. But he too had tried to pretend we had a future together. Two blind lovers under the spell of a walnut tree . . .

There was to be no happy ending for us.

The next week went surprisingly well, after the debacle of the walk with the pram. Alain was even affectionate. And the week after that, one night he kissed me on the cheek before I went up to my room to bed. It was a brotherly kiss, the sort he would give his sister, yet I thought it lingered a little longer than a brother's kiss might have done.

On Thursday, he kissed me on the lips. But there was no passion in that kiss either. More longing, I thought, and sadness.

Friday morning Alain left in the motorcar, the Villard chauffeur driving—an elderly man who had been sent for from the family estates in the Loire Valley. I wished him well, for he was reporting to the surgeon who had seen to his care since his return to Paris. I willed the doctor to tell Alain that he was recovering remarkably well.

“There will be good news, I hope. I've seen such improvement, myself.” I smiled. “We'll have something to celebrate.”

He held my hand for a moment, then said, “My love.”

Madeleine and I took young Henri for his daily walk, although it was very cold that morning and we were wearing our warmest coats. A small fur coverlet kept the baby warm. He was waving mittened fists in the air, and Madeleine was watching him with adoration in her eyes.

“He's growing more like his father every day, don't you think?” she asked.

“Absolutely,” I answered, smiling.

“Wait until you have your own,” she told me happily. “You can't imagine what it's like. A part of you, a part of Alain, together in one little child.”

She had just received a brief letter from Henri, and her joy was contagious.

And I very much wanted to believe in her rosy prediction. It would surely be Alain's salvation. And perhaps mine as well.

We returned to the house, and by the time we had changed out of our walking dresses, I had quite an appetite. Food was not plentiful, but the Villard cook was a genius at making whatever he could find into a tasty dish.

Walking into the chilly dining room, I found Madeleine already there. She nodded to the maid to begin serving. “Marie has just told me that Alain hasn't returned from his appointment with Dr. Lorville. He's the surgeon. I hope this doesn't mean more surgery. I don't think I could bear it.”

“The wound is healing. I can't believe there is any need for more surgery. I expect it's the growing number of patients. More wounded appear to be coming into Paris every day, many of them in dire need of further care.”

But she wasn't convinced. Her concern for her brother was second only to her worry about Henri, and it was a constant anxiety, never far from her thoughts.

I finished my soup and the plate was taken away. Madeleine lingered over hers, listening for the sound of Alain's uneven footsteps coming down the passage.

We were eating our cheese when Madeleine was called away. Alain's driver had just pulled into the courtyard in front of the house. And Alain was not in the carriage.

“He's been taken directly to hospital,” she exclaimed as she rose and flew down the passage, leaving Marie standing there. “It's infection. They warned me of infection. How dangerous it could be.”

“What is it, Marie? Do you know?” I asked as I hurried after Madeleine.

“No, my lady—”

They were in the foyer, Madeleine and Arnaud, the driver.

She was bombarding him with questions, and he stood there, his eyes frightened, his mouth open, not knowing which to answer first.

When she burst into tears, I managed to ask, “Arnaud. Where is Monsieur? Is he in hospital?”

“No, my lady.” He bobbed his head in what passed for a bow, and then went on in rapid French, “We left the doctor's after one hour, my lady, and Monsieur asked if I would drive him to the Bois, that he felt like a little fresh air after the stuffy surgery. It was a fine day,
vous
comprenez,
even though a little cold. I thought nothing of it. We drove for a time, and then he asked me to stop and wait awhile for him. He said that you, my lady, and the doctor had encouraged him to walk, and he thought he would practice a little now. I did as I was told, my lady. But he did not return. I came here, not knowing what I must do. I fear he has met with—”

Madeleine interrupted, her voice shrill with anger now. “He could have fallen, did you not think of that? If he fell, he couldn't get up again.”

“If he fell, Madame, he would have called out to me. I listened, but I heard nothing.”

“Then you're deaf,” she cried. Turning to me, she begged, “We must go back with him and look for Alain. If he's hurt, I shall send this man back to Villard and find myself a driver who is capable of doing his duty. It's so cold—Alain will have taken a chill, lying on the ground, and it will make him ill. We must take blankets, a hot water bottle—”

“That will take too long. Wait here, Madeleine, someone could have found him and is already bringing him to the house. Or if they carry him to hospital, someone will send word. I'll go with Arnaud. If Alain has injured his shoulder, I'll take him directly to the surgeon and send Arnaud back to tell you.” I turned and lifting my skirts, I flew up the stairs, ignoring her protests.

Collecting a hat, my coat and my gloves, I came down again to find Madeleine had followed the old man out to the carriage and was still berating him. He seemed to shrink into himself as she accused him of selfishness, of thinking only of his midday meal, of leaving her brother to die.

I said hastily, “You must go inside, Madeleine, or you will take a chill yourself. Marie—” Pushing Arnaud toward the box, I managed to open the door of the carriage and let down the step, wishing the old man could manage a motorcar. I thought for a moment that Madeleine was going to insist on coming with us, but then she turned away, letting Marie shut the door at last.

Arnaud said over his shoulder as he lifted the reins and signaled the horses to walk on, “I have done nothing wrong, my lady. I waited as he asked. But he was gone so long. I walked a little way myself, and I called his name, but there was no answer.”

I wondered if Arnaud was, in fact, a little deaf. Usually it was the higher ranges that older people lost first, but it was possible that Arnaud had reached a point where he could hear what was said to him directly but not at any distance.

Threading our way through the midday traffic, we finally reached the Bois on the outskirts of Paris. My own anxiety was growing with every mile as I considered all the possibilities. Finally Arnaud pulled up into a small clearing and said, “It was here I waited. You will see just there the cigarettes I smoked while waiting.”

Those strong, smelly French cigarettes. I could pick out half a dozen stubs.

He helped me down. Looking around, I said, “Which direction, Arnaud? There, through the trees, or over there, along the bridle path.”

“Toward the trees, my lady. He had forgot his cane, it was in the doctor's surgery. He thought he might find a stick there.”

I began walking in that direction.

Twenty yards away, well within hearing distance, I called Arnaud's name. He was checking the harness on the horses. I called again, and he didn't turn.