Enchanted Autumn Read online

  “Who arrives - when?” he asked curtly.

  “She’s flying to Paris from London Airport this afternoon. She dislikes long journeys by car, and if she can’t fly to Chateauceaux, or somewhere near to it, she will probably complete her journey by rail tomorrow, or the day after.”

  “And you who have had no opportunity to get used to a strange car risk your neck haring across France! And that is quite in order?”

  Jane looked surprised, “Oh, but I’ve driven for years, and my driving licence is quite dean ... Or it was until today!” - colouring in sudden confusion. “I don’t know what happens over here when you hit the back of someone else’s car while trying to get out of a garage that seems several sizes too small for you. It all depends, I suppose, on whether or not you wish to make it an offence!” As Monsieur Etienne said nothing at all to help her, she went on: “It was only because the car was strange that I was so clumsy, and as a matter of fact Sandra bought it only a few weeks ago. I’ve been driving her in something much smaller until we accepted delivery of this new vehicle only a, couple of days before I left England.”

  “Go on,” he said.

  She smiled faintly, because he obviously expected her to make a clean breast of her affairs.

  “I am employed by Sandra - and in case you think I’m being familiar, she objects to my calling her Miss Van Doone! - to drive her about, and attend to her correspondence, and so forth, and naturally the Cadillac is a part of my daily duties. I could hardly expect someone else to take it over and be responsible for it at a time like this, when it had to be put into practical use, just because I’m not yet altogether at home with all the various gadgets - and in particular that left-hand drive!”

  “And how long will it take you to be altogether ‘at home’ with them?” - with the dryness of old leather in the enquiry.

  “Oh, by the time I get to Chateauceaux I should be reasonably familiar ... And by the time I reach my destination I won’t be able to do a thing wrong!” - with engaging confidence.

  He smiled sardonically.

  “I compliment you on your British phlegm, mademoiselle! Whoever suffers in the interval between your gaining the mastery of your employer’s expensive new acquisition, and your not being quite certain of yourself, I feel sure it will not be you!”

  “I hope not,” she murmured, and could not prevent a certain impishness altering the quality of her smile.

  He looked at her through narrowed eyes, and between the longest and thickest black eyelashes she had ever known a man to possess.

  “And how long have you known this indulgent Sandra of yours?” he asked. “I say ‘indulgent’, because not only does she admit you to terms of equality - which is unusual when a man or a woman has made a name for him or herself - but she appears to be singularly trusting where you are concerned. I believe I said that before, but the impression remains that you don’t normally chip the paint off other people’s cars. Your film-star must have a rather sublime confidence in you, which you probably merit. Do you like working for a film-star?”

  “Oh, yes,” she answered at once. “I like working for Sandra immensely. But then she isn’t one of these temperamental film-stars, the type whom it can be difficult to please; and although she always gets top billing nowadays, and is the loveliest person I’ve seen in my life, she’s completely natural. I’ve known her now for six months - been working for her for six months, that is - and I should say we’d established a sort of mutual approval of one another. I don’t think she’ll sack me even if she learns what I’ve done to your car!”

  “Good!” Monsieur Etienne observed. “And how do you like the atmosphere of film studios, and film people in general?”

  “I find that they’re mostly like other people. They work very hard.”

  “And you work very hard?”

  “Sometimes. It all depends ... This morning, for instance, I felt a little peeved because I had to get up so early, after driving very nearly all day yesterday. But once I arrive at this wonderful country house of Rene Delaroche’s I shall probably begin to think it was highly worth while.”

  “Do you know Rene Delaroche?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’ve never even seen a photograph of him, oddly enough! But there was a time when I collected his gramophone records, and he was the only crooner my father could bear to listen to. But that was because he’s only a near-crooner, really, and naturally he sings mostly in French, which was my father’s second language. In fact, everything French went down well with him.”

  “And with you?”

  “I hardly know.” She smiled with that wide-eyed candour of hers. “But it’s exciting being able to visit France again, and not having to pay my own expenses. The last time I came as far south as this we stayed in the meanest little pension in the world, I should think. This time it’s to be a sixteenth-century farmhouse, adapted to modern needs without any thought of cost, and equipped by the Dior amongst house-furnishers, if the photographs Sandra showed me before I left are anything at all to go by. And as Rene Delaroche is reputed to have amassed a fortune out of record sales and so forth, I’m not expecting to be disillusioned.”

  “I sincerely trust you will not be disillusioned, mademoiselle,” her lunch companion said, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray. “And now, if you are to arrive at your destination before dark, you should be on your way—”

  “There’s just one thing, Monsieur Etienne,” she said, detaining him as he would have summoned the waiter for the bill. “You said something before lunch that rather intrigued me. You asked me to give you a lift, and you intimated that you had a fairly shrewd idea where I was going. Or you seemed to have quite a definite idea where I was going! ... You didn’t by any chance recognize the car, did you? The Cadillac, I mean!”

  He sent her a smile that was full of sudden whimsical amusement.

  “Shall we say I recognized the description of the car? And the fact that it was driven by a young English woman confirmed a certain suspicion ... The fact is, mademoiselle, that you and I are headed for the same destination, and it is for that reason that I begged the lift.”

  “I - I see,” she said, but she sounded amazed.

  “You are going to stay at La Cause Perdue - an unusual name for a house, unless you know the story connected with it - and I am going a little beyond it. All I ask is that you will drop me off at the farm, and the remainder of my journey can be accomplished on foot.”

  She watched him while he settled the bill, but she felt a little bewildered. He had listened to her talking about Sandra, and Rene Delaroche, and he hadn’t said a word about knowing either of them. And possibly he did know both of them. It was very much on the cards that he had at least a nodding acquaintance with Delaroche if he lived within walking distance of his house.

  His dark eyes glinted at her with that strange, rather secret amusement as he pocketed his change, after acknowledging the profuse thanks of the waiter for a truly generous tip with a careless inclination of the head. As they walked across the lawn in the direction of the garage he once more slipped his lean, firm fingers beneath Jane’s elbow, as if to make certain that she didn’t take the wrong path, and said, “You appear to me to be thinking that the long arm of coincidence is occasionally stretched a little too far. But, believe me, it can be stretched very far indeed ... I once met a man in the very middle of the Sahara Desert, and spent a fortnight in his company, and only at the end discovered that we were at the same school together. What you call a kindergarten.... Odd, isn’t it?”

  At first she felt a little resentful when he insisted on taking over the wheel, but she was glad when an overpowering drowsiness came upon her, and she fell asleep. She fell asleep with her head resting against the creamy beige upholstery of Sandra’s new, luxurious car - sky-blue like the gloriously clear September canopy beneath which they travelled - and the man beside her glanced at her occasionally, and a tiny, flickering smile touched the corners of his mouth, whic
h suggested mobility when it was in complete repose.

  She was sleeping very peacefully, he thought, and possibly dreamlessly. The excellent lunch she had consumed and for which she had thanked him several times already, had proved a little too much for her, on top of long hours at the wheel the strain of unfamiliar roads and road-signs, and an unfamiliar hot sun. She hadn’t attempted to put on her suit jacket, because of the warmth, and the transparent muslin blouse revealed the delicacy of the shape below it. It was a curiously exciting delicacy, for there was little of maturity about it, and the embroidered satin slip that clung to the schoolgirlish curves might have been created by her own neat fingers.

  When people fall asleep they have no longer any pretence, and to an observer they are exactly as Nature intended them to be. Monsieur Etienne decided that Miss Jane Arden was not a minute older than twenty-two, and even at that she was a very youthful twenty-two. Her bright chestnut hair formed soft tendrils behind her ears, and the ears themselves were as delicate as shells. Her long eyelashes lay childishly on her cheeks, and her mouth was full, and vivid, and generous. Even in sleep it had a tendency to curve upwards at the corners.

  Monsieur Etienne felt that it might be very rewarding to sit and study that mouth, but he had to attend to his driving. The car swept through towns and villages, and by the time Jane stirred they had even passed through Chateauceaux, and the slanting rays of the westering sun were becoming touched by a warm redness.

  Jane sat up and looked about her, and her expression was a trifle bemused. There were billowing green trees all about them, and the sunlight lay in molten splashes on the steep bank of a river. The river flowed strongly and surely, and in the silence that made the gentle purring note of the engine seem like an intrusion in a world where anything intrusive was utterly forbidden, she thought she heard the faint gurgling noise of the hurrying waters, and the fainter “plop” when something feathered and graceful clove a way upstream.

  Her eyes lost the bemused look, and took on one that suggested she was being touched by enchantment. She had missed the magnificent chateaux piled upon the heights, the fields of grain waiting to be harvested, the terrace-like vineyards. But here in this mediaeval fastness of tall trees and an infinite hush she suddenly felt that it was extraordinarily good to be alive. She felt as if, like Sleeping Beauty, she had slumbered heedlessly through a hundred years, and awakened to the touch of magic.

  Beside her Monsieur Etienne said softly: “We are nearly there.”

  Her big brown eyes turned to him almost disbelievingly. “And you’ve been driving all this while! ... You should have wakened me! Why didn’t you waken me?”

  “Because it would have been a crime to disturb such childlike slumber. You slept like one without conscience, and without a care.”

  She peeped at him rather more uncertainly. Without a conscience, and without a care? When she knew absolutely nothing about him, save that their destinations were nearly, if not quite, the same! It was Sandra’s car she had entrusted to him; and as for herself, she had probably snored throughout the long hot afternoon, and she might have even talked in her sleep, which she did do occasionally. And any man who had had to listen to a young woman snoring, and delivering herself of odd snatches of one-sided conversation, for hours on end, while the sun beat down on him mercilessly, must be feeling pretty near the end of his tether by this time.

  But Monsieur Etienne appeared quite calm and complacent behind the wheel. He must have stopped at some time during the afternoon, for he had removed his coat, and he was driving in his shirt-sleeves, and they were rolled up above his elbows. The shirt itself was Cambridge blue silk - extremely heavy silk - and his tie was flowing carelessly, and he appeared to have caught the sun. He looked younger than he did in the morning, and carefree, and if it wasn’t for the slight irregularity of his features, and his swarthy darkness, she would have said that he was quite arrestingly good-looking.

  Suddenly she felt she had to know something that all at once was important. ‘Tell me,” she said, “did I snore?”

  “Not even the tiniest little pig-like grunt.”

  She heard herself laughing softly, but knew she was vastly relieved.

  No man would ever wish to remember a woman who made pig-like grunts; and although she didn’t get as far as consciously wanting him to remember her, the relief spread just the same.

  CHAPTER III

  They stole through a village that was full of the same tranquil calm as the forest, where the evening light was fading a little in the shadows of the encroaching trees. There was a pond with ducks on it that were too languid at that hour to raise a quack, and an old woman was guiding a couple of goats past the inn. The houses were mellow and lichened, and most of the doors stood open to the cool of the evening, and a smell of charcoal floated on the wind - or such light breath of air as there was.

  Rural France, Jane thought ... and realized that Sandra would rave about it. She raved about Berkshire villages and Stratford-on-Avon, and compared them with the great American cities where most of her life had been lived, to the detriment of the latter; but she would have been horrified if anyone suggested that she pass the remainder of her life away from American cities. All this would be the perfect setting for the next film, something to be violently enthused over. But only temporarily...

  Jane tried to picture all the odd assortment of vehicles and equipment that made up a film unit on location - the trucks and caravans and mobile projection-rooms - making their way through this primitive, lost village, and winding along the white road that led, apparently, to nowhere. But somehow her imagination failed her. She hadn’t her employer’s capacity for enthusing loudly, but there were certain things that affected her in such a way that she could only look, and want to go on looking.

  And on this present occasion she wanted to go on looking at the slim hands that gripped the wheel of the Cadillac as if he had been driving it for centuries, and swung it on to the left fork that led out of the village. He seemed to know the way so well, and not once had they stopped to consult a signpost, or seek any sort of direction.

  At last they flashed between a pair of wrought-iron gates that were standing open, and proceeded up a short drive to what must be the house. The sixteenth-century farmhouse belonging to Rene Delaroche. The oddly named La Cause Perdue.

  The light must have taken it into its head to fade all at once, for Jane could not see clearly what manner of house it was. There appeared to be a backcloth of giant trees, and against it pale stone glimmered as if it had a peculiar luminosity. An enormous door reminded her of a church door, and above it and on both sides of it some dark growth spread and was obviously clinging to the stonework. There was a torrent of white roses - the scent identified them as roses - overhanging the porch.

  Monsieur Etienne slipped from behind the wheel and went round to remove her cases from the boot. Or she imagined he was removing her cases, for he called: “Wait! and I will open the door for you!”

  But although she waited for fully five minutes no one came to release her, and at last she struggled with the catch of the door herself, and stepped out stiffly on to the drive. In spite of her long sleep she felt as if it were actually days since she had stretched herself out in a comfortable bed, and her limbs seemed to creak in protest as she stood there in the bat’s wing gloom and watched the front door swing open.

  A flood of mellow golden light streamed out to dissipate the gloom, and she heard Monsieur Etienne’s voice saying with a great deal of cheerfulness, and as if he was as fresh as a daisy after his long spell of driving the car for which she was responsible: “Nonsense, Jeanne, you will never grow any older, and you will never develop any real ills! You are one of those people who are immune from the things which attack us lesser mortals, because you are Jeanne!”

  “Tiens!... But it is plain that you do not change, monsieur!” a rather gruff feminine voice answered. “Always the right words for the right occasions, and you forget that Jeanne Bethun
e is past her sixtieth birthday! “

  “Why did you not remain in the car as I told you to do?” Etienne asked, when he reached Jane’s side. “What is the hurry now that we have at last arrived?”

  She could see his pale shirt gleaming, and his tie flowing carelessly, and his eyes smiling through the deepening shadows. She had the feeling that for him this was a moment of relief and satisfaction.

  “I feel so terribly stiff! I shall be glad to get to bed!”

  “And to have a meal! You mustn’t forget that a meal is important!” He turned to the woman he had addressed as Jeanne. “This is Mademoiselle Arden, and she is craving for her bed. I know I can trust you to see that she is made thoroughly comfortable, Jeanne.”

  “Mais oui, monsieur.”

  But the gruff voice was gruffer, and there seemed to be a certain dryness in it as well.

  “I’ll put this car into the garage for you, and then I’ll be on my way,” Etienne said, and dumped his own suitcase on the drive, and his coat on top of it.

  “Oh, but won’t you - won’t you stay and have some refreshment?” Jane suggested. Her brain felt numb, and she was amazed to find that she was almost reeling with sheer, physical weariness; but it struck her as an odd way to repay the service he had rendered her, by driving her all those miles, to permit him to go off into the darkness alone with barely a thank-you. “And wouldn’t you like to take the car? Or I could drive you and bring it back?”