“Ah… yes. Yes! I do indeed agree. Yes, indeed.”
Monsieur Treville’s eyes sparkled with interest. “That’s fascinating, Doctor. I need hardly tell you that very few modern scholars of medieval life share our view on this. Would you mind telling me what evidence brought you to this opinion?”
“What evidence? Ah… well, not so much any given single bit of evidence as… ah… as the general impression I… ah…”
Katya earned my undying gratitude when she placed her hand on my arm and interrupted, saying, “Now you two mustn’t spend the whole evening talking about things that Paul and I don’t understand.”
“I don’t mind,” Paul said. “In fact, I’d be delighted to hear Montjean’s response.” He smiled at me broadly. Then he made a sudden motion, and I realized that Katya had kicked him under the table.
“No,” she said, “I won’t have it. We shall take our coffee in the salon like well-bred people, and we shall talk of trivial and amusing things, as we were taught to do when we were young.” She stood and offered me her arm. “Dr. Montjean?”
For half an hour, as we four sat around the good fire in the hearth, Katya was as good as her word, guiding the conversation from one subject to another with such subtle skill that each of us—even Paul—had his moment to shine forth and appear witty and well-informed. Brandy was served with the coffee, and I noticed that Paul refilled his glass more often than was wise and ended with sitting deep in his chair with a leaden and dour attitude that bordered on the inhospitable, but my delight in and admiration of Katya over-weighed my feelings towards her brother and I was left with the impression that I had never passed a more pleasant and entertaining evening, though I could recall no single event of particular moment.
Paul broke the spell by rising suddenly and saying, “I’m afraid that Katya should be going to bed soon.”
“Really, Paul—” she protested.
“No, no Kiki.” Paul crossed to her and put his arm around her waist. “You’ve risked catching a cold, being out in the rain. Now you must go to bed, pull the covers up to your nose, and count crocodiles. You’ll be asleep in no time. Father and I will entertain Dr. Montjean.”
“Have you been out in the rain?” Monsieur Treville asked Katya with concern.
“Not really, Father,” Paul answered. “Just a figure of speech.”
Monsieur Treville blinked. “Figure of speech?”
“Yes, and a silly and ineffective one too. I promise I’ll never use it again. Now, up you go, Kiki.”
“Good-night, Papa,” Katya said, giving him a kiss on the cheek. “And good-night to you, Jean-Marc Montjean.” She held her hand out for me to press. I was pleased at the way she had devised of using my given name so soon in our acquaintance. “Will I have the pleasure of seeing you so soon?”
“Never fear,” Paul said. “The doctor has promised—or perhaps it was a threat—to come by tomorrow to bind up my wounds. No doubt we shall be able to persuade him to take a cup of tea with us.”
“I shall look forward to it, Mlle Treville,” I said, my eyes full of her.
“So shall I.”
After she left, Monsieur Treville settled back in his chair as though for a good long talk and asked me how long I had been devoted to the study of the Black Death….
….An hour later, when finally Paul was seeing me to the door, the rain had lightened to a frying hiss on the gravel outside. He had not been sparing of the brandy, and there was something beyond nonchalance in the way he leaned against the archway of the hall door.
“You’ve done well, Montjean. I am sure Father hasn’t the slightest hint that your interest in us is not solely medical. That bespeaks an admirable streak of duplicity in your nature. You really should cultivate this gift, not only as a means of surviving in a world of rogues and merchants, but as leavening in a personality that is altogether too serious and sincere to be interesting.”
“Are you always this uncivil, Treville?”
“Not always. You bring out the best in me.”
“I’m delighted to be of service. May I wish you a goodnight?”
“Please do.”
Before the trap had reached the end of the poplar lane, the rain stopped, and as the mare walked comfortably back to Salies through the night air rinsed clean of dust, I troubled over several events of the evening. There was that strange, tense conversation I had overheard between Katya and Paul. And there was Paul’s warning that his father must know nothing of my interest in Katya while, so far as I could judge, the old man was a gentle pedant with no harm in him. Perhaps most troubling of all was the fact that I rather liked Paul Treville, although I had every reason not to. Was it his physical resemblance to Katya that drew me to forgive his adolescent discourteousness? I didn’t think so. Not that alone, anyway. There was a kind of desperate melancholy in the man, not quite concealed by his waspish wit, that made me sympathize with a person of lucid if brittle intelligence who had no outlet for his energies and mind in our rural corner of the Basque country.
Why did he accept this self-imposed isolation from the world he was born to, the world in which his gifts and talents were valued? Why, indeed, were the Trevilles living in an ancient heap of stone so far from their Paris? Katya had made an allusion to their being here for their health, but I could see no evidence of ill-health, and I could see every evidence, in Monsieur Treville’s eagerness to share ideas and concepts with me, of a hunger for the civilized society they had left.
In a selfish way, of course, I was delighted that they were here in Salies. How else would I ever have met Katya?
Katya… And the rest of my ride into town was occupied with fabricating little scenes and swatches of dialogue between Katya and me.
Directly the clinic closed at three the next afternoon, I borrowed Doctor Gros’s trap again and rode out to Etcheverria, arriving in time for tea, which was taken on the terrace overlooking the derelict garden. Paul’s attitude had changed totally; he was full of light chat and jokes that had no trace of vitriol in them. And when Monsieur Treville joined us from his study, Paul asked him about his work with every evidence of genuine interest and concern, which was a far cry from the tone of impish baiting that had colored his conversation the night before.
At first, Monsieur Treville seemed confused to see me at their tea table, and there was an uncomfortable moment when I was afraid he didn’t recognize me and hadn’t the slightest idea who I was. But Katya used my title several times until, with a little start of comprehension, her father said, “Ah, yes! You’re the fellow who’s deeply involved in studies of the Black Death, aren’t you? Yes. Fascinating subject. Fascinating.”
Paul excused himself after only one cup of the thin tisane Katya served, claiming that there were a thousand things demanding his attention, so he had best take a little nap and give them a chance to solve themselves under the influence of his benign neglect. Monsieur Treville rose and pled the demands of scholarship, shaking my hand in farewell and cautioning me not to devote myself overly much to my study of medieval medicine, as I was a young man and must not allow life to pass me by.
Katya smiled after her departing father and shook her head affectionately. “He likes you, Jean-Marc Montjean.”
“I like him, too.”
She looked at me, her grey eyes soft and smiling. “Yes, I know. And that pleases me. But you may have to bone up a little on things medieval.”
“I shall make it my constant study.”
She laughed lightly and rose. “Shall we stroll down to my library?”
“You speak of the library that disguises itself so cleverly as a half-ruined summerhouse?”
“What other library have I? Come along.”
And for the better part of two hours we chatted, she sitting in the battered wicker chair that was the
