The Chateau by William Maxwell Page A

conceal from them (or possibly from herself) the fact that they were not as happy in their present surroundings as they had been in the Hôtel Ouest et Montgomery in Pontorson.
    He moved on to the big round table in the center of the room. Among the litter of postcards, postage stamps, and souvenirs, a book caught his eye. Mme Viénot had come upon him in the drawing room after breakfast, and had made a face at the book he was looking at—corrections, additions, and objections to the recently issued grammar of the French Academy—and had said, with a smile: “I don’t really think you are ready for that kind of hair-splitting.” Taking the book out of his hands, she had given him this one instead. It was a history of the château of Blois. He opened it in the middle, read a paragraph, and then retired to the chaise longue.
    Barbara finished her letter, folded it, and brought it to him to read. “Is it all right?”
    â€œMmmm,” he said.
    â€œShould I do it over?”
    â€œNo,” he said. “It’s a very nice letter. Why should you do it over? It will make them very happy.”
    â€œYou don’t like it.”
    â€œYes, I do. It’s a fine letter.” The insincerity in his voice was so marked that he even heard it himself.
    â€œThere isn’t a thing wrong with that letter,” he said, earnestly this time. “There’s no point in writing it over.” But she had already torn it in half, and she went on tearing it in smaller pieces, which she dropped in the wastebasket.
    â€œI didn’t mean for you to do that!” he exclaimed. “Really, I didn’t!” And a voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like the voice of Truth asked if that wasn’t exactly what he had wanted her to do.… But why, he wondered. What difference did it make to him what she wrote to her father and mother?… No difference. It was just that they were shut up together in a cold house, and it was raining.
    She sat down at the desk and took a blank sheet of paper and began over again. Ashamed of his petty interfering, he watched her a moment and then retrieved the pocket dictionary from the rug and placed it on the chaise longue beside his knees. While he was trying to untangle the personal and political differences of Henri III and the Duc de Guise, he raised his eyes from the print and observed Barbara’s face, bent over her letter. Her face, on every troubled occasion, was his compass, his Pole Star, the white pebbles shining in the moonlight by which Hop-O’-My-Thumb found his way home. When she was happy she was beautiful, but the beauty came and went; it was at the mercy of her feelings. When she was unhappy she could be so plain it was frightening.
    After a short while—hardly five minutes—she pushed the letter aside and said, quite cheerfully: “It’s stopped raining. Should we go for a walk?”
    They went downstairs and through the drawing room and outdoors without seeing anyone. Something kept them from quite liking the front of the house, which was asymmetrical and bare to the point of harshness. They looked into the courtyard at the carriage house, the stables, the high brick wall, and windows they had now looked out of. They followed the cinderdrive around the other end of the house. Climbing roses and English ivy struggled for possession of the back wing, which had a much less steeply sloping roof and low dormers instead of bull’s-eyes.
    The drive took them on up a slope, between two rain-stained statues, and past a pond that had been drained, and finally to another iron gate. Peering through the bars, they saw that there was no trace of a road on the other side. Nothing but the forest. They tried the gate; it was locked. They turned and looked back, and had an uncomfortable feeling that eyes were watching them from the house.
    On the way down again, they stopped and looked at the statues. They