Voices in a Haunted Room

“After many vicissitudes which I shall recall later-if any of you should be desirous of hearing them-we tracked down the good Jeanne’s family. There was only a brother and sister left in the little farmhouse. They had taken in the wandering jewel-laden pair and tried to make a good little peasant out of Sophie-not with any great success, and there they were.

“The housekeeper had made her way back to her own family and Jeanne and Sophie were on their own. Well, they joined us in the cart ... Sophie as Chariot’s mother-a role which I think she rather enjoyed since she had to play a part-and Jeanne was the wife of Louis Charles. There was no one for me and I felt a little piqued at first-but of course it was due to necessity.”

“It must have been doubly alarming travelling as you were with Sophie and Jeanne carrying the jewels,” I said.

“Well, it was. But Jeanne is a clever woman. Sophie did as well as she could but Jeanne was wonderful. She went into the little towns to shop for us and of course she did not have to change her personality as we did ours.”

“Did she go into the town with the gems sewn into her petticoats?” I asked.

“She must have done so. She did not tell us about the jewels until we were on the boat crossing the Channel.”

“What would you have done had you known?”

Jonathan shrugged his shoulders. “What could we do? We shouldn’t have left them behind.

But I think our anxieties would have been increased. Jeanne knew that, so she decided not to place that extra burden on our shoulders. One of these days I’ll tell you about some of the adventures we passed through, all the alarms and escapes. It will take weeks. And in any case I can’t remember them all. When we finally got to Ostend Chariot decided he would go back to France and the army; and of course Louis Charles went with him. So they entrusted to me the task of bringing Sophie and Jeanne to England. I remember how we slipped away and they stood on the shore watching us.”

He turned to my mother. “Chariot hoped you would understand. He was very definite about that. He wanted you to know that he could not continue to live quietly in England while his country was in turmoil.”

“I do understand,” said my mother quietly.

She had been deeply moved when Jonathan was talking and Dickon watched her anxiously.

He rose and said: “Let us go up.”

He and my mother said good night and left us-myself sitting between David and Jonathan.

We were silent for a while. I stared into the fire and saw pictures there. Jonathan in the wine shop with Marie ... and I wondered what that had entailed. How strange that of all the adventures I should think of that. I pictured his trundling across France, playing his part. I was sure that he had enjoyed the danger of it ... just as his father had. David would have hated it. He would have seen only the squalor, the pity, and the futility of it all.

A log had collapsed, sending out a spray of little sparks. Jonathan rose and filled his glass with the port wine he had been drinking.

“David?” he said, the decanter poised.

David said: “No thanks.”

“Claudine?”

I too declined.

“Oh come, just a little toast to my safe return.”

He poured the wine into our glasses. I lifted mine. “Welcome home.”

His eyes met mine and I saw the blue flames which I remembered so well.

“You have been very lucky,” said David. “So ... welcome home.”

“My dear brother, I am always lucky.” He looked at me and frowned; then he added in a low voice: “Well, not always but almost always, and when I am not I know how to make the best of the situation.”

“There must have been moments when you really thought tie end had come,” said David.

“I never felt that. You know me. I would always find a way out, however impossible the situation seemed.”

“You certainly believe in yourself,” I said.

“With good cause, dear Claudine. With very good cause, I assure you.”

“No wonder Lottie was a little upset by all those revelations,” said David. “That wine shop you were in with the girl ... that muit have been the one opposite the mairie where she was held on that awful night.”

“Yes,” I said. “I remember her telling how the mob ransacked the place and the wine ran out into the street all over the cobbles.”

”Our father brought her home far more dramatically than I brought Sophie and Jeanne,”

said Jonathan.

“You brought them home. That was all that mattered,” I told him fervently.

“And came safely through myself. Surely that is a matter of some importance to you.”

“Of the utmost, of course.”

He leaned over me very closely and said: “Thank you, sister-in-law. That’s what you are now. You were step-sister before, weren’t you? Now you are sister-in-law and step-sister both. Mon Dieu, as they say in that benighted country which I am so thankful to have left, what a complicated family we are!”

We were silent, sipping our port and gazing into the fire. I was very much aware of Jonathan and it seemed symbolic in some way that I was sitting there between the two brothers.