Voices in a Haunted Room

“So we were there. Chariot was quite ingenious. He is a good actor. He transformed himself into a small trader with a cart-which we managed to acquire, with a horse, not very handsome in appearance but a strong creature of whom we all became very fond. Louis Charles and I were the servants. I was of a lower grade posing as dumb, as I was unable to speak the language proficiently. They were afraid for me to open my mouth, which they said would have given the whole show away.

“We made a slow journey to Aubigne, encountering difficulty after difficulty. I could not keep up the dumb act, so they thought my French might be mistaken for a patois.

I was to be a native of the country in the south, right on the Spanish border, which was to be the reason why I spoke so badly. You’d be shocked if you could see the place, Stepmama. There are chickens running all over the lawns, the flowerbeds are overgrown and the pools full of stagnant water. I never saw it in its grandeur, but there was just enough of an outline left to show me how splendid it must have been.”

“It was splendid,” put in Dickon. “All that good land ... gone to waste. The stupid vandals! They will ruin their country.”

“Well,” went on Jonathan, “our big disappointment came when we reached the chateau, for neither Sophie nor Jeanne was in residence. We dared not ask for them and we were in a quandary then. Chariot did not want to go too far away-and in any case we did not know where to go. But he was afraid he might be known and recognized if he went to an inn in the town, despite his disguise. Louis Charles also felt that.

So I went to the wine shops there. I would sit about drinking and listening to the talk ... not saying much and pretending to be a little foolish and not understanding what they were talking about. They were quite tolerant of me.”

“It is always a good thing to act the fool,” said David. “It makes others feel superior, and that is what they enjoy.”

“Well, I did quite well really. There was a girl who served the wine. What was her name? Marie ... that’s it. She took pity on me and used to talk to me. I marked her down. I could discover a good deal from her, I believed. I could ask her what I dared not ask the others. I did rather well with Marie. I would creep out of the wine shop and join the others, who were sleeping in the cart. In time I got Marie to talk to me about the old days and the family at the chateau. What scandals I heard, dear Step-mama!”

“There are always scandals about people like my father.”

“It seems he was quite good at making it. I heard about his romantic marriage with your mother and how she died. That was shocking. I plied Marie with the grape and finally I discovered that Armand had died and they had buried him at the chateau.

His companion had left, so there were only three women at the chateau then.

“They were suspicious of them. How did they live? Mademoiselle Sophie was a kind of invalid but she was an aristocrat ... and Jeanne and the old housekeeper were a smart pair. They must have held something back ... and what were they doing anyway living with an aristocrat!

“Someone must have warned Jeanne that feelings were rising against them and she decided to move on, and one day it was discovered that there was no one at the chateau. How long they had been gone, no one was sure. Where had they gone? I wondered. Marie was a well-informed girl. She could guess there were two places to which they might have gone. The old housekeeper who was known as Tante Berthe had a family somewhere m the country. And Jeanne Fougere came from the Dordogne district. She was a secretive person but Marie remembered that one day someone had come from Perigord, and had seen Jeanne when she was shopping and had asked her name. When this person had been told that she was Jeanne Fougere who looked after a sick woman at the chateau, he said he thought he had recognized her for he knew the Fougere family who lived in Perigord.

“That was the best clue we could get, so we left for the south at once, driving the poor old horse over those rough roads, for we had to keep well away from the towns.

Few showed any interest in us, so I suppose we looked like good old compatriots.

Chariot sung the ‘Marseillaise’ with fervour and I learned to sing it with ‘Ca Ira.’ These are the great songs of the revolution and a knowledge of them is considered by the peasants necessary to a good patriot.

“I won’t dwell on the details now, but I can tell you we had many a narrow escape.

There were many occasions when we almost betrayed ourselves-and how near we came to disaster! It is very hard for an aristocrat-and Chariot is one if ever there was one-not to assume an air of superiority at times. I do believe I played my part with distinction -the half-witted loony from some vague spot in the south where they spoke a patois almost unrecognizable to good citizens of the Republique. It was easier for me than for Chariot.