PART IX
The Glade October-November 1891
CHAPTER 69
FRIDAY 23RD OCTOBER 1891
When Léonie woke the following morning, the first thought that came to her mind was of Victor Constant, as it had been the last before she went to sleep.
Wishing to feel the fresh air on her face, she dressed quickly and let herself out into the early morning. Evidence of yesterday’s storm was all around. Broken branches, leaves sent flying into spirals by the agitating wind. Everything was quite still now and the pink dawn sky was clear. But in the distance, over the Pyrenees, a grey bank of storm clouds, which threatened more bad weather to come.
Léonie took a turn around the lake, pausing a while on the small promontory that overlooked the choppy waters, then walked slowly back towards the house across the lawns. The hem of her skirts glistened with the dew. Her feet left barely an imprint on the wet grass.
She walked around to the front door, which she had left unbolted when she had slipped out, then stepped into the hall. She stamped her boots on the rough-haired mat. Then she pushed the hood from her face, unhooked the clasp, and hung her cloak back on the metal hook from which she had taken it earlier.
As she walked across the red and black tiles towards the dining room, she realised that she hoped Anatole had not yet descended for breakfast. Although she worried for Isolde’s health, Léonie was still sulking about their headlong and premature departure from Carcassonne the previous evening, and did not wish to be obliged to be civil to her brother.
She opened the door and found the room deserted apart from the maid, who was setting the enamel red and blue patterned coffee pot on the metal trivet in the centre of the table.
Marieta gave a half-bob. ‘Madomaisèla.’
‘Good morning.’
Léonie walked round to take her customary seat on the far side of the long oval table, so that she was facing the door.
One thought preyed upon her mind. That if the ill weather was continuing in Carcassonne without respite, then the patron of the hotel might be unable to deliver her letter to Victor Constant in the Square Gambetta. Or indeed that, due to the torrential rain, the concert would have been cancelled. She felt helpless and thoroughly frustrated at the realisation that she had no way of being certain whether or not Monsieur Constant had received her communication.
Not unless he chooses to write to tell me so.
She sighed and shook out her napkin. ‘Has my brother come down, Marieta?’
‘No, Madomaisèla. You are the first.’
‘And my aunt? Is she recovered after last evening?’
Marieta paused, then dropped her voice, as if confiding a great secret. ‘Do you not know, Madomaisèla? Madama was taken that bad in the night that Sénher Anatole was obliged to send to town for the doctor.’
‘What?’ Léonie gasped. She rose from her seat. ‘I had no idea. I should go to her.’
‘Best to leave her,’ Marieta said quickly. ‘Madama was sleeping like a baby not thirty minutes past.’
Léonie sat down again. ‘Well, what did the doctor say?’ she questioned. ‘Dr Gabignaud, was it?”
Marieta nodded. ‘That Madama had caught a chill, which was threatening to develop into something worse. He gave her a powder to bring down the fever. He stayed with her, your brother too, all night.’
‘What is the diagnosis now?’
‘You will have to ask Sénher Anatole, Madomaisèla. The doctor spoke with him in private.’
Léonie felt dreadful. She was guilty about her previous uncharitable thoughts and that she had somehow slept through the night without having the first idea of the crisis taking place elsewhere in the house. Her stomach was full of knots, like a ball of thread tangled and twisted out of shape. She doubted that she would be able to let even the smallest morsel pass her lips.
However, when Marieta returned and placed in front of her a plate of salted mountain bacon, fresh eggs from the pullets, and warm white bread with a turned roll of churned butter, she felt she might manage a little.
She ate in silence, her thoughts flipping backwards and forwards like a fish thrown upon the riverbank, first worrying about her aunt’s health, then more pleasurable thoughts of Monsieur Constant, then back to Isolde.
She heard the sound of footsteps crossing the hall. Tossing her napkin to the table, she leapt to her feet and ran to the door, coming face to face with Anatole in the hall.
He was pale and had hollow circles under his eyes, like black fingermarks, betraying the fact that he had not slept.
‘Forgive me, Anatole, I have only just heard. Marieta suggested it would be better to leave Tante Isolde to sleep than disturb her. Is the doctor returning this morning? Is—’
Despite his wretched appearance, Anatole smiled. He held up his hand, as if to deflect the volley of questions.
‘Calme-toi,’ he said, placing his arm around her shoulder. ‘The worst is over.’
‘But—’
‘Isolde will be fine. Gabignaud was excellent. Gave her something to help her sleep. She is weak, but the fever has gone. It’s nothing that a few days’ bed rest will not cure.’
Léonie shocked herself by bursting into tears. She had not realised how much affection she had come to feel for her quiet, gentle aunt.
‘Come, petite,’ he said affectionately. ‘No need to cry. Everything will be fine. Nothing to get worked up about.’
‘Let’s not ever argue again,’ Léonie wailed. ‘I cannot bear it when we are not friends.’
‘Nor I,’ he said, pulling his handkerchief from his pocket and handing it to her. Léonie wiped her tear-stained face, then blew her nose.
‘How very unladylike!’ he laughed. ‘M’man would be most displeased with you.’ He grinned down at her. ‘Now, have you breakfasted?’
Léonie nodded.
‘Well, I have not. Will you keep me company?’
For the rest of the day, Léonie stayed close to her brother, all thoughts of Victor Constant pushed to the side for the time being. For now, the Domaine de la Cade and the love and affection of those sheltering within it was the sole focus of her heart and mind.
Over the course of the weekend, Isolde kept to her bed. She was weak and tired easily, but Léonie read to her in the afternoons, and, little by little, the colour came back to her cheeks. Anatole busied himself with matters concerning the estate on her behalf and even sat with her in her chamber in the evenings. If the servants found such familiarity surprising, they did not remark upon it in Léonie’s hearing.
Several times, Léonie caught Anatole looking at her as if he was on the point of confiding something. But whenever she questioned him, he smiled and said it was nothing, then dropped his eyes and carried on with what he was doing.
By Sunday evening, Isolde’s appetite had returned sufficiently for a supper tray to be taken to her room. Léonie was pleased to see that the hollow, drawn expression had gone and she no longer looked so thin. Indeed, in some respects, she looked in better health than before. There was a glow to her skin, a brightness to her eyes. Léonie knew that Anatole had noticed it too. He walked around the house whistling and looking much relieved.
The main topic of conversation in the servants’ quarters was the severe flooding in Carcassonne. From Friday morning to Sunday evening, town and countryside alike had been racked by the sequence of storms. Communications were disrupted and in some areas suspended altogether. The situation around Rennes-les-Bains and Quillan was bad, certainly, but no more than one might expect during the autumn season of storms.
But by Monday evening, news of the catastrophe that had struck Carcassonne reached the Domaine de la Cade. After three days of relentless rain, worse on the plains than in the villages higher up in the mountains, in the early hours of Sunday morning, the River Aude had finally burst its banks, flooding the Bastide and the low-lying river areas. Early reports had it that much of the quartier Trivalle and the quartier Barbacane were completely under water. The Pont Vieux, linking the medieval Cité to the Bastide, was submerged although passable. The gardens of the Hôpital des Malades were knee-deep in black floodwaters. Several other buildings on the left bank had fallen into the torrent.
Further up the swollen river, towards the weir at Païchérou, whole trees had been uprooted, twisted and clinging desperately to the mud.
Léonie listened to the news with increasing anxiety. She feared for the well-being of Monsieur Constant. There was no reason to believe any ill had befallen him, but her worries played remorselessly upon her. Her anguish was all the worse for being unable to admit to Anatole that she knew the flooded neighbourhoods or that she had some specific interest in the matter.
Léonie reprimanded herself. She knew it was perfectly absurd to feel so strongly for a person in whose company she had spent little more than an hour. Yet Monsieur Constant had taken residence in her romantic mind and she could not shake her thoughts free of him. So whereas in the early weeks of October she had sat in the window and waited for a letter from her mother from Paris, now, at the tail-end of the month, she instead wondered if there was a letter from Carcassonne lying unclaimed in the boxes at the poste restante in Rennes-les-Bains.
The question was how she could make the trip to town in person? She could hardly entrust so delicate a matter to one of the servants, not even the amiable Pascal or sweet Marieta. And there was another concern: that if the patron of the hotel had not delivered her note to the Square Gambetta at the appointed time, in the event the concert had not been postponed, then Monsieur Constant – who was clearly a principled man – would be honour bound to let the matter drop.
The thought that he would not know where to find her – or, equally, that he might be thinking ill of her for her discourtesy in not keeping to their discreet arrangement – played endlessly on her mind.
