The Chateau by William Maxwell Read Free Book Online Page A

through his coat pockets for a pencil and the little notebook, wherein the crises were all recorded: “Rennes départ 7 h 50 Le Mans 10 h 20, départ 11 h 02,” etc. Also the money paid out for laundry, hotel rooms, meals in restaurants, and conducted tours. This was a mistake, he thought. We shouldn’t have come here.… He wrote: “100 fr transportation Brenodville-sur-Euphrone to chateau” and put the pencil and notebook back in his breast pocket.
    Mme Viénot was looking at him with her head cocked to one side, frankly amused. “I wonder what it was that made me decide you were middle-aged,” she said. “Why, you’re
babies!”
    He started to shoulder the dufflebag and she said: “Don’t bother with the luggage. Thérèse will see to it.” Linking her arm cozily through Barbara’s, she led them into the house by the back door and along a passageway to the stairs.
    When they reached the second-floor landing, the Americans glanced expectantly down a long hallway that went right through the center of the house, and then saw that Mme Viénot had continued on up the stairs. She threw open the door on the left in the square hall at the head of the stairs and said: “My daughter’s room. I think you’ll find it comfortable.”
    Harold waited for Barbara to exclaim “How lovely!” and instead she drew off her black suede gloves. He went to the window and looked out. Their room was on the front of the château and overlooked the park. The ceiling sloped down on that side, because of the roof. The wallpaper was black and white on a particularly beautiful shade of dark red, and not like any wallpaper he had ever seen.
    â€œSabine is in Paris now,” Mme Viénot said. “She’s an artist. She does fashion drawings for the magazine
La Femme Elégante
. You are familiar with it? … It’s like your
Vogue
and
Harper’s Bazaar
, I believe.… We dine at one thirty on Sunday. That won’t hurry you?”
    Barbara shook her head.
    â€œIf you want anything, call me,” Mme Viénot said, and closed the door behind her.
    There was a light knock almost immediately, and thinking that Mme Viénot had come back to tell them something, Barbara called “Come in,” but it was not Mme Viénot, it was the blond servant girl with the two heaviest suitcases. As she set them down in the middle of the room, Barbara said “Merci,” and the girl smiled at her. She came back three more times, with the rest of the luggage, and the last time, just before she turned away, she allowed her gaze to linger on the two Americans for a second. She seemed to be expecting them to understand something, and to be slightly at a loss when they didn’t.
    â€œShould we have tipped her?” Barbara asked, when they were alone again.
    â€œI don’t think so. The
service
is probably
compris,
” Harold said, partly because he was never willing to believe that the simplest explanation is the right one, and partly because he was confused in his mind about the ethics of tipping and felt that, fundamentally, it was impolite. If he were a servant, he would resent it; and refuse the tip to show that he was not a servant. So he alternated: he didn’t tip when he should have and then, worried by this, he overtipped the next time.
    â€œI should have told her that we have some nylon stockings for her,” Barbara said.
    â€œOr if it isn’t, I’ll do something about it when we leave,” he said. “It’s too bad, though, about M. Fleury. After those robbers in Cherbourg it would have been a pleasure to overtip him—if four hundred francs was overtipping, which I doubt. She was probably worrying about herself, not us.” Trying one key after another from Barbara’s key ring with the rabbit’s foot attached to it, he found the one that opened the big brown suitcase.