Time for Silence

I was always made welcome at the château. Jean Pascal used to talk to us as though we were grown up. Annabelinda loved that. He and the Princesse were the only people of whom she stood in awe.

One day when we had been sitting by the lake, Jean Pascal had come along; he sat beside me and talked. He told me how much he admired my mother. She had come to stay at the château with Aunt Belinda.

“It was her only visit,” he said. “She was always a little suspicious of me. Quite wrongly, of course. I was devoted to her. I was so delighted that she married your father. He was just the man for her. That first marriage…” He shook his head.

“She never talks about it,” I said.

“No. It’s best forgotten. That’s always a good idea. When something becomes unpleasant, that is the time to forget it. That’s what we should all do.”

“It’s not always easy to forget.”

“It takes practice,” he admitted.

“Have you practiced it throughout your life?”

“So much that I have become an adept at the art, little Lucinda. That is why you see me so content with life.”

He made me laugh, as he always did. He gave the impression that he was rather wicked and that, because of this, he understood other people’s foibles and did not judge them as harshly as some people might.

“Beware the saint,” he said once. “Beware the man—or woman—who flaunts his or her high standards. He…or she…often does not live up to them and will be very hard on others who fall short. Live your life as best you can, and by that I mean enjoy it and leave other people to do the same.”

Then he told me of how he had come out one morning to find poor old Diable on the lake with his head down in the water. It was most unusual. He did not realize at once what had happened. He shouted. He took a stick and stirred the water. The swan did not move. Poor Diable. He was dead. It was the end of his dominance. “It was rather sad,” he added.

“And poor little Ange?”

“She missed the old tyrant. She sailed the lake alone for a while and in less than a year she was dead. Now you see we have these white swans. Are they not beautiful and peaceful, too? Now you do not have to take a stick as you approach the lake in readiness for a surprise attack. But something has gone. Strange, is it not? How we grow to love the villains of this world! Unfair, it is true. But vice can sometimes be more attractive than virtue.”

“Can bad things really be more attractive than good ones?” I asked.

“Alas, the perversity of the world!” he sighed.

He was always interesting to listen to and I fancied he liked to talk to me. In fact, I was sure of this when Annabelinda showed signs of jealousy.

I should have been disappointed if I did not pay my yearly visit to the château.

Aunt Belinda came there sometimes. I could see that she amused her father. The Princesse found her agreeable, too. There was a great deal of entertaining since Jean Pascal’s marriage, and people with high-sounding titles were often present.

“They are waiting for another revolution,” Annabelinda said. “This time in their favor so that they can all come back to past glory.”

I agreed with Annabelinda that one of the year’s most anticipated events was our visit to France.

When we were at the château we were expected to speak French. It was supposed to be good for us. Jean Pascal laughed at our accents.

“You should be able to speak as fluently in French as I do in English,” he said. “It is considered to be essential for the education of all but peasants and the English.”

It was in the year 1912, when I was thirteen years old, when the question of education arose.

Aunt Belinda had prevailed on Sir Robert to agree with her that Annabelinda should go to a school in Belgium. The school she had chosen belonged to a French woman, a friend of Jean Pascal, an aristocrat naturally. From this school a girl would emerge speaking perfect French, fully equipped to converse with the highest in the land, perhaps not academically brilliant but blessed with all the social graces.

Annabelinda was enthusiastic, but there was one thing she needed to make the project wholly acceptable to her. I was faintly surprised to learn that it was my presence. Perhaps I should not have been. Annabelinda had always needed an audience, and for so many years I had been the perfect one. Nothing would satisfy her other than my going to Belgium with her.

My mother was against the idea at first.

“All that way!” she cried. “And for so long!”

“It’s no farther than Scotland,” said Aunt Belinda.

“We are not talking of going to Scotland.”

“You should think of your child. Children must always come first,” she added hypocritically, which exasperated my mother, because there had never been anyone who came first with Belinda other than herself.

Aunt Celeste gave her opinion. “I know Lucinda would get a first-class education,” she said. “My brother assures me of this. The school has a high reputation. Girls of good family from all over Europe go there.”

“There are good schools in England,” said my mother.