The Chateau by William Maxwell Page B

beautiful pink and white room was deserted, and the rugs were rolled up, the chairs pushed together. In the dining room, the table was set for five instead of seven, and their new places were pointed out to them by their napkin rings. Talking in subdued tones, they discovered the china pitcher of coffee under a quilted cozy, and, under a large quilted pad, slices of bread that were hard as a rock and burned black around the edges from being toasted over a gas burner. The dining-room windows offered a prospect of wet gravel, long grass bent over by the weight of the rain, and dripping pine branches. The coffee was tepid.
    â€œI think it would have been better if we hadn’t got her to lower the price,” he said suddenly.
    â€œDid she say anything about it?”
    He shook his head. “The amount she asked was not exorbitant.”
    â€œIt was high. Muriel said it was high. She lived in France for twenty years. She ought to know.”
    â€œThat was before the war. In the total expenses of the summer, it wouldn’t have made any difference, one way or the other.”
    â€œShe said it was not right, and that it was a matter of principle.”
    â€œMuriel, you mean? I know, but the first two or three days after we got off the boat, I consistently undertipped people, because I didn’t know what the right amount was, and I didn’t want us to look like rich Americans throwing our money around, and in every case they were so nice about it.”
    â€œHow do you know you undertipped them?”
    â€œBy the way they acted when I gave them more.”
    â€œMme Viénot has a romantic idea of herself,” Barbara said. “The way she flirts with you, for instance …”
    He took the green Michelin guide to the château country from his coat pocket and put it beside his plate. After a week of sight-seeing, any other way of passing the time seemed unnatural.
    â€œYou’re sure she was flirting with me?”
    â€œCertainly. But it’s a game. She’s attempting to produce, with your help, the person she sees herself as—the worldly, fascinating adventuress, the heroine of
Gone with the Wind.
”
    He filled their cups again and offered her the burned bread, which she refused. Then he opened the guidebook and began to turn the pages as he ate. Programmes de voyage … Un peu d’histoire … wars and maps … medieval cooking utensils … The fat round towers of Chaumont, and Amboise as it was in the sixteenth century.
    â€œHow old do you think Gagny is?” Barbara said.
    â€œI don’t know. He varies so. Somewhere between twenty-three and thirty-five.”
    More maps. Visit rapide … Visite du Château …
    â€œWhy isn’t he married?”
    â€œPeople don’t have to get married,” he said. “Sometimes they just—”
    Rain blew against the windowpanes, so hard that they both turned and looked.
    â€œBesides, he’s in the diplomatic service,” Harold said. “He can’t just marry any pretty girl he feels like marrying. He needs a countess or somebody like that, and I suppose they won’t have him because he isn’t rich.”
    â€œHow do you know he isn’t rich?”
    â€œIf he were rich he wouldn’t
be
here. He’d be somewhere where the sun is shining.”
    Behind his back a voice said: “Good morning!” and Mme Viénot swept into the dining room, wearing a dark-red housecoat, with her head tied up in a red and green Liberty scarf. She sat down at the head of the table. “You slept well?… I’m so glad. You must have been very tired after your journey.” She placed her box of sugar directly in front of her, so there could be no possible misunderstanding, and then said: “What a pity it is raining again! M. Gagny is very discouraged about the weather, which I must say is not what we are accustomed to