The Chateau by William Maxwell Read Free Book Online

suitcases, so I stayed with them, at the station, and my husband walked into the village and found a store that was open, a fruit and vegetable store. And a very nice woman—”
    â€œMme Michot. She’s a great gossip and takes a keen interest in my guests. I cannot imagine why.”
    â€œâ€”told us that M. Fleury had a truck,” Barbara finished.
    Mme Viénot turned and called out to a servant girl who was watching them from a first-floor window to come and take the suitcases that the two men were lifting from the back of the truck. “So you found M. Fleury and he brought you here.… M. Fleury is an old friend of our family. You couldn’t have come under better auspices.”
    Harold tried to prevent the servant girl from carrying the two heaviest suitcases, but she resisted so stubbornly that he let go of the handles and stepped back and with a troubled expression on his face watched her stagger off to the house. They were much too heavy for her, but probably in an old country like France, with its own ideas of chivalry and of the physical strength and usefulness of women, that didn’t matter as much as who should and who shouldn’t be carrying suitcases.
    â€œYou are tired from your journey?” Mme Viénot asked.
    â€œOh, no,” Barbara said. “It was beautiful all the way.”
    She looked around at the courtyard and then through the open gateway at the patchwork of small green and yellow fields in the distance. Taking her courage in both hands, she murmured: “Si jolie!”
    â€œYou think so?” Mme Viénot murmured politely, but in English. A man might perhaps not have noticed it. Barbara’s next remark was in English. When Harold started to pay M. Fleury, Mme Viénot exclaimed: “Oh dear, I’m afraid you don’t understand our currency, M. Rhodes. That’s much too much. You will embarrass M. Fleury. Here, let me do it.” She took the bank notes out of his hands and settled with M. Fleury herself.
    M. Fleury shook hands all around, and smiled at the Americans with his gentian-blue eyes as they tried to convey their gratitude. They were reluctant to let him go. In a country where, contrary to what they had been told, no one seemed to speak English, he had understood their French. He had been their friend, for nearly an hour. Instinct told them they were not going to manage half so well without him.
    The engine had to be cranked five or six times before it caught, and M. Fleury ran around to the driver’s seat and adjusted the spark.
    â€œI never hear the sound of a motor in the courtyard without feeling afraid,” Mme Viénot said.
    They looked at her inquiringly.
    â€œI think the Germans have come back.”
    â€œThey were here in this house?” Barbara asked.
    â€œWe had them all through the war.”
    The Americans turned and looked up at the blank windows. The war had left no trace that a stranger could see. The courtyard and the white château were at that moment as peaceful and still as a landscape in a mirror.
    â€œIt looks as if it had never been any other way than the way it is now,” Harold said.
    â€œThe officers were quartered in the house, and the soldiers in the outbuildings. I cannot say that we enjoyed them, but they were correct. ‘Kein Barbar,’ they kept telling us—‘We are not barbarians.’ And fancy, they expected my girls to dance with them!”
    Mme Viénot waited rather longer than necessary for the irony to be appreciated, and then with a hissing intake of breath she said: “It’s exciting to be in the clutches of the tiger … and to know that you are quite helpless.”
    The truck started up with a roar, and shot through the gateway. They stood watching until it disappeared from sight. The silence flooded back into the courtyard.
    â€œSo delicious, your arriving with M. Fleury,” Mme Viénot said.
    He searched