Voices in a Haunted Room

They had disguised themselves as labourers, but they were well aware that one gesture, one lapse from the patois they had adopted, could betray them. My mother had found some clothes for them, which, if they did not fit very well, were better than the stained and tattered garments in which they had arrived. Madame Lebrun said: “There are so many people who are kind to us. To see the mob ... to hear those who have been one’s servants and whom one has treated well ... turn against one ... is so depressing. But it is such a comfort to learn that the whole world is not like that. There are many in France who help people like us. We shall never forget what we owe to them, for we could never have escaped but for them.”

Chariot leaned forward and said: “You mean ... our own people.”

“Most of our kind would help if it were possible,” replied Madame Lebrun. “But we all have to help ourselves. We are all in danger. Yet there are those who have given themselves up to the task of helping such as we are out of the country and remaining there themselves for this purpose when they could escape. There are houses of refuge.

You can imagine how dangerous it is. There has to be perpetual watch for the enemy.”

“Their unselfishness is very heartening,” said Chariot vehemently.

“I knew there would be such people,” echoed Louis Charles.

“I wonder what is happening in Aubigne,” said my mother.

“I saw Jeanne Fougere in Evreaux when we passed through.”

We were all alert now. Jeanne Fougere had been Aunt Sophie’s faithful maid and companion-an important person hi the household because she had been the only one who could manage Aunt Sophie.

“When was that?” asked my mother eagerly.

“Oh . . - several months back. We were a long time there. We stayed at one of the houses I spoke of managed by people who help others to escape.”

“Months ago!” echoed my mother. “What did Jeanne say? Did you ask about Sophie-and Armand?”

Madame Lebrun looked at my mother sadly. “She said that Armand had died in the chateau. At least the mob had left him alone. I think she said that the young man who was with him recovered and went off somewhere.”

“And what of Sophie?”

“She was still at the chateau with Jeanne.”

“At the chateau! They didn’t destroy it then?”

“No, apparently not. They took the valuables and furniture and such. Jeanne said it was a shambles. But she had some chickens and there was a cow and they managed to live in a corner of the place. That was how it was then. People did not seem to bother them. Mademoiselle Sophie was an aristocrat, daughter of the Comte d’Aubigne, but she was almost a recluse ... badly scarred. In any case they were living at the chateau unmolested. Jeanne was uneasy though. She kept lifting her eyes to the skies and murmuring: ‘How long!’ Perhaps even now the mood has changed. Now the King is dead, it will become worse, they say.”

“Poor Sophie,” said my mother.

The following day the Lebruns departed and, true to his word, Dickon went with them as their guide; naturally my mother went too.

After they had gone the whole mood of the house seemed to have changed. The Lebruns had brought into it a threat of what could happen to disrupt people’s comfortable lives. We had known, of course, what was going on over there, but this brought it home to us forcibly.

I soon discovered what was in Chariot’s mind.

It was naturally at the dinner table that we all gathered together and there the talk as usual turned to France and the plight of those refugees who were left behind.

The guillotine was claiming more and more of them every day. The Queen was in prison.

Her turn would soon come.

“And our aunt is there,” said Chariot. “Poor Aunt Sophie! She was always so pathetic.

Do you remember her, Claudine, in that hood she used to wear to cover one side of her face?”

I nodded.

“And Jeanne Fougere. She was a bit of a dragon. But what a treasure!

What a good woman! She would not let us in very often to see Aunt Sophie.”

“She always liked you to go and see her though, Chariot,” said Louis Charles.

“Well, I do think she had a special fondness for me.”

It was true. Chariot had been a favourite of hers, if she could have been said to have favourites. It was a fact though that she had actually asked Chariot to visit her on one or two occasions.

“Those people who are helping aristocrats escape the guillotine are doing a wonderful job,” went on Chariot.

He looked at Louis Charles, who smiled at him in such a way that I knew they had discussed this together.

Jonathan was attentive too. He said: “Yes, it is a great adventure. My father went over there and brought Claudine’s mother out. It was a marvellous thing to do.”

Chariot agreed, though he had no great love for Dickon. “But,” he went on, “he just brought out my mother. Just one person because she was the only one he was interested in.”

I defended him hotly. “He risked his life.”