No, she would have faced Mrs. de Bray Pape. But she would hardly, given Christopher’s half-crazed condition, have kept herself from threatening Mrs. Pape with dreadful legal consequences if she touched Groby Great Tree. That would have been to interfere in the silent Northern struggle between the brothers. That she would never do, even to save Christopher’s reason—unless she were jumped into it! … That Mark did not intend to interfere between Mrs. Pape and the tree she knew—for when she had read Mrs. Pape’s letter to him he had signified as much to her by means of his eyes. … Mark she loved and respected because he was a dear—and because he had backed her through thick and thin. Without him … There had been a moment on that dreadful night … She prayed God that she would not have to think again of that dreadful night. … If she had to see Sylvia again she would go mad, and the child within her. … Deep, deep within her the blight would fall on the little thread of brain!
Mrs. de Bray Pape, God be thanked, provided a diversion for her mind. She was speaking French with an eccentricity that could not be ignored.
Valentine could see, without looking out of the window, Marie Léonie’s blank face and the equal blankness with which she must have indicated that she did not intend to understand. She imagined her standing, motionless, pinafored and unmerciful before the other lady, who beneath the three-cornered hat was stuttering out:
“Lady Tietjens, mwaw, Madam de Bray Pape, desire coo-pay la arbre. …”
Valentine could hear Marie Léonie’s steely tones saying:
“On dit ’l’arbre,’ Madame!”
And then the high voice of the little maid:
“Called us ‘the pore,’ she did, your ladyship. … Ast us why we could not take example!”
Then a voice, soft for these people, and with modulations:
“Sir Mark seems to be perspiring a great deal. I was so free as to wipe …”
As, above, Valentine said: “Oh, Heaven!” Marie Léonie cried out: “Mon Dieu!” and there was a rush of skirts and pinafore.
Marie Léonie was rushing past a white, breeched figure, saying:
“Vous, une étrangère, avez osé. …”
A shining, red-cheeked boy was stumbling slightly from before her. He said, after her back:
“Mrs. Lowther’s handkerchief is the smallest, softest …” He added to the young woman in white: “We’d better go away. … Please let’s go away. … It’s not sporting. …” A singularly familiar face; a singularly moving voice. “For God’s sake let us go away. …” Who said “For God’s sake!” like that—with staring blue eyes?
She was at the door frantically twisting at the great iron key; the lock was of very old hammered iron work. The doctor ought to be telephoned to. He had said that if Mark had fever or profuse sweats, he should be telephoned to at once. Marie Léonie would be with him; it was her, Valentine’s, duty to telephone. The key would not turn; she hurt her hand in the effort. But part of her emotion was due to that bright-cheeked boy. Why should he have said that it was not sporting of them to be there? Why had he exclaimed for God’s sake to go away? The key would not turn. It stayed solid, like a piece of the old lock. … Who was the boy like? She rammed her shoulder against the unyielding door. She must not do that. She cried out.
From the window—she had gone to the window intending to tell the girl to set up a ladder for her, but it would be more sensible to tell her to telephone!—she could see Mrs. de Bray Pape. She was still haranguing the girl. And then on the path, beyond the lettuces and the newly sticked peas, arose a very tall figure. A very tall figure. Portentous. By some trick of the slope figures there always appeared very tall. … This appeared leisurely: almost hesitant. Like the apparition of the statue of the Commander in Don Juan, somehow. It appeared to be preoccupied with its glove: undoing its glove. … Very tall, but with too much slightness of the legs. … A woman in hunting-breeches! Grey against the tall ash-stems of the spinney. You could not see her face because you were above her, in the window, and her head was bent down! In the name of God! …
There wafted over her a sense of the dreadful darkness in the old house at Gray’s Inn on that dreadful night. … She must not think of that dreadful night because of little Chrissie deep within her. She felt as if she held the child covered in her arms, as if she were looking upwards, bending down over the child. Actually she was looking downwards. … Then she had been looking upwards—up the dark stairs. At a marble statue: the white figure of a woman: the Nike … the Winged Victory. It is like that on the stairs of the Louvre. She must think of the Louvre: not Gray’s Inn. There were, in a Pompeian anteroom, Etruscan tombs, with guardians in uniform, their hands behind their backs. Strolling about as if they expected you to steal a tomb! …
She had—they had—been staring up the stairs. The house had seemed unnaturally silent when they had entered. Unnaturally. … How can you seem more silent than silent. But you can! They had seemed to tiptoe. She had, at least. Then light had shone above—coming from an opened door above. In the light the white figure that said it had cancer!
She
