Authors: Franklin Gregory
THE WHITE WOLF (10 page)
Trent examined it, frowning at first and then dropping his jaw with surprise. It was a tuft of coarse white hair.
“Snow white,” he breathed softly.
Pierre nodded soberly.
“Found it caught on a wild-rose bush.” “Why in thunder,” demanded Trent, “didn’t one of those two fools shoot?”
“Heinrich claims he did. Point-blank, at close range. And—they couldn't find any blood.”
Trent snorted.
“Baht He’s either lying or was too scared to aim straight.”
Pierre, never nervous as long as Trent had known him, tapped his fingers on the table cloth.
“I don't know,” he said. “I don’t know. I'm beginning to wonder if I’m crazy or if the rest of the countryside is. And, by the way, where was David last night?”
Trent glanced up, startled.
“Eh? What’s that got to do with it?” “Nothing,” Pierre said quickly. “But I’m talking about craziness, so I wondered if you knew he and Sara were seeing each other again?”
Trent smiled.
“I’m glad to hear it, Pierre.”
Pierre picked at his mole.
“I'm not so sure. Manning. Somehow, I’m afraid for Dave. They’re back together but she's as moody as ever. Moodier, maybe. She goes grousing around the house, quiet as a ghost. I’m afraid she’ll be a—oh, I was going to say bad, but it’s a dull word— devilish influence on Dave. She’s taking him on her nightly walks.”
Trent nodded slowly.
“See what you mean. Come to think of it, David was out last night—pretty late. And the night before, too.”
Keen observer of human nature, Trent could not but note the lines of worry on Pierre’s normally placid face. He leaned forward and his eyes met Pierre’s.
“By any chance,” he asked shrewdly, “you've something else on your mind?”
Pierre was a long time in answering, a long time in staring into Manning’s lace.
“I don’t know,” he said at length. And he repeated it. “I don't know.”
Justin Hardt described himself as consulting psychiatrist. Unless, as in Sara’s case, it was necessary to observe a patient with discretion, he seldom left his office. And so it was something of an occasion for him to visit Pierre during business hours.
Pierre found him, on his return from lunch, in the main room of the Salon de Camp- d’Avesnes. He was stalking importantly about, examining the collection of objects d’art, and adjusting his glasses as he bent stiffly over each item. Pierre led him into his private office at the rear.
Dr. Hardt came directly to the point.
“I am up against a blank wall,” he said.
It was enough that Hardt’s egotism should permit him to make such a bald admission.
But he went on:
“Nowhere, sir, can I find a case history to match hers.”
Pierre sat dumpily back in his chair and folded his hands.
“But don’t you always find everybody, everything, a little different? Take my business.” He nodded toward a row of little vials on his desk. “Each of those is geranium oil. You can smell each one and you won’t tell any difference. But one’s Turkish and one’s Algerian and one’s French.
I
can identify each one blindfolded.”
“Of course, of course!” thundered Hardt. “What I mean is that the gulf between Sara’s symptoms and any other known type of abnormality is so wide it can’t be bridged.” Pierre was thoughtful. At length he asked: “Did you know she is amnesic?”
Hardt frowned thoughtfully, considering. “Do you know that for a fact?”
Pierre shrugged.
“Those walks she takes. She told me the other night she doesn’t know where she goes.” Hardt nodded. His lower lip protruded. “She might be lying,” he said. “Some patients are pretty clever, you know. Or there might be a hallucinatory condition there. I am convinced her physical health is basically perfect. Certainly, she hasn’t lost weight.” “And she's even got more color now than ever before in her life,” Pierre added.
“But she doesn’t eat, sir.”
“Not at meals. I’ve a hunch, though, she sneaks something on the side. I couldn’t prove it.”
The two men fell silent. Hardt, combing previous ground, said finally:
“And you say there’s no family history of insanity on either side?”
Pierre bowed his head in reflection.
“I said that, yes,” he responded slowly. “But I didn’t check it. What I meant was, not to my personal knowledge. We’ve pretty complete family records, however. How about driving out tomorrow night? We’ll run through them.”
Pierre went home early that afternoon, heavier of heart than he had ever been. He warmed himself at the open fire in the library and then went into his study beyond the library. He stood awhile, pursing his thick Ups and staring absently at ceiling-high shelves of books. Finally, from one end, he recovered several thick and yellowed volumes.
He had not inspected them for years. He spread them out carefully on a long mahogany table. And he unfolded two expansive ink- smudged charts—the genealogical trees of his own family and of Angelica’s.
He spent an hour with the charts and books. At first he merely thumbed the pages of the books. . . .
Francois de Camp-d'Avesnes, Conte de
. . . .
The books were old. They were printed in French on old manual presses. Their paper was heavy and hand-made. Many of the pages were torn. Pierre translated automatically as he read.
“Hmm. Arnaud. There was a devil if ever there was one. Helped massacre the Huguenots on St. Bartholomew’s Day. Nice fellow.”
Not the most charitable reading in the world were these old accounts of the family de Camp- d’Avesnes. But then, it wasn’t one of the most charitable families. It was lusty and populous, warlike and adventurous, arrogant, headstrong, intolerant. But if most of its men were untamed, some of its members had possessed a gentler nature. There were scholars and artists:
Jacques
,
who had thrown away everything to go to Italy and study under Cellini.
Leandre
,
who had become a cardinal.
Discovery is not always a sudden flash of light upon truth. As often, like growth, it is simply the culmination of a long labor in the soil. So, already, the seed of discovery had germinated within Pierre; and had begun to grow, and had sent out tiny feelers. It would blossom with suddenness, and Pierre would see the blossom. But after a time, he would remember the feelers and the little shoots. He would remember how the unfolding of each tender leaf had left him with restless wondering. And he would ask:
“But why, why didn’t I understand this, then?”
Perhaps the suspicion, so dormant in his mind he did not know it as suspicion of anything specific, needed—like the plant for fruition—the touch of sun-flooded reality.
Still daylight out, the sky was heavy with clouds. And Pierre turned on a green-glass- shaded desk lamp. He thumbed the pages more slowly, pausing to read and reread entire passages.
Victor . .
.
“Now, what was there about Victor?”
He left the book open upon the table, and hung the Camp d’Avesnes family tree upon the wall.
“Yes, of course. Here it is. The one who married that ugly Bourbon. Put a touch of royalty in the strain.”
He studied the chart in more detail—the main stem of eldest sons and sons of eldest sons.
Victor
Eugene
Armand II
Paul ,
Jerome (l.g.)
Henri III
Gervase
Gaspard
Hilaire
Henri IV
Pierre
“And Sara,” Pierre murmured. “End of the line—a woman!”
He had blandly shrugged off that genealogical fact before. He was too cynical a man to feel much pride in family. It was the individual that counted. He could examine, dispassionately, these old tomes and this chart and see them but as the record of a drama in which he appeared in a minor role in the last brief scene.
BUT, he wondered, was he warranted in examining his ancestors with so much aloofness? Heredity counting at all, wasn't it possible he’d have been a far different man but for the traits each of so many generations poured into the common vessel?
Gervase there, who fled the Revolution and settled in Philadelphia. Pierre had his business.
And Jerome . . . hmm, what’s that “l.g” stand for?
He moved to the table and opened another volume, and thumbed the pages slowly. He asked himself impatiently:
“Why don’t these books have indices?”
“Getting there now. Here’s Armand II. All about whom he married and whom he begat. Armand II wasn’t much and there wasn’t much about his life. Nor his son, Paul. Here it is— Jerome Jacques, 1726-63.”
Pierre began to read. He read carefully.
“Oh, yes. Remember now.”
And then his jaw dropped and he stared off into space, and his eyelid drooped still more.
“Utter nonsense, of course!” he exclaimed. And he got up and walked to the chart and ran his finger up the family trunk.
“Jerome and before Jerome, Paul. Before Paul, Armand II. Before Armand II, Eugfene. And Victor. And Victor’s father, Henri II. And Guillaume. And then . . .Fernand, 1569-1625 (l.g.).”
Pierre counted them off.
“That’s seven, all right. Still. . .
And then he counted forward, beginning with Henri III.
“That’s seven too,” he said uncertainly. “But it’s ridiculous—”
Uneasy of mind, he walked restlessly about the room.
“There’s the disease, of course. But you wouldn’t think it would wait so long to break out.” He paused and he considered, in an effort to reassure himself: “Nobody denies there’s such a disease. Or was. A form of madness, certainly. A type that couldn’t possibly be hereditary. . . .”
He paused reflectively at the window. He looked out at the wide lawn and the creek skirting the far edge. Behind a line of stark leafless trees the clouds were breaking in the southwest and shafts of cold yellow from a sun now reaching near its southern terminus slanted through the trees. The light struck the trees and pressed long shadows on the lawn. And just then Sara walked around a comer of the house and paused in a patch of sunlight.
Pierre saw her. And then his mouth opened and his good eye grew large and round. He stared. And then he began to tremble so violently that he gripped the sill for support.
His thoughts in utter confusion, he sat in his study for half an hour; sat, his eyes open, seeing nothing.
“Have to take hold of yourself,” he kept repeating. “Have to take hold.”
The oftener he said it, the more shaken he was.
“Illusion,” he said. “Illusion.”
But he knew it wasn’t.
“Have to take hold,” he said.
His head was hot. His hands were ice. He arose and staggered slightly. Swaying, he walked into the library. Heinrich was there, bending over the fire to place a new log. He stood up and turned at the sound of Pierre’s footsteps.
“Himmel! So white!” he exclaimed. “Is sick the Master?”
Pierre took command of himself for a moment.
“Don’t be foolish, Heinrich,” he said gruf-
But even his gruffness was so unusual that Heinrich continued to stare. Pierre said:
“That's all, Heinrich.”
Heinrich left the room.
Pierre went to a cabinet and opened it. He selected a bottle of brandy. His hand shook as he poured. He gulped it, and poured another. And this time he added soda. Then he returned with the glass to the study.
He sat in a heavy leather chair and tried to relax. His jumbled thoughts and emotions seemed to take on some semblance to coherence.
He thought: curious how a little liquor will help straighten you out. He thought: ought to drink oftener. He thought. . . . Indeed, he tried to think of everything and anything but the one central overwhelming fact that kept hammering back at him. Finally he thought:
Have to face it.
It might have been time or decision or both, rather than the brandy, that in the end brought matters into focus. He could see now how his experience simply fitted into a pattern. It checked so nicely with so many happenings that previously had left him puzzled.
Sara, taking her nocturnal walks.
Sara, returning and entering the library and keeping in the corner. . . .
He talked to himself. He talked aloud. Finally, he could ask with almost a suggestion of his former urbanity:
“Well, then; what’s the next move? Something’s to be done. Must be some solution. Solution for everything else.”
He charged himself, “Have to keep quiet, of course.”
Then be questioned that. Of course? Suddenly he thought of David.
“Oh, my God!”
He couldn’t keep quiet. You can’t let a baby crawl into the path of a locomotive without at least making some attempt to save it. But. . . .
Take it up with Hardt? That idiot? Even with Manning? Pierre recoiled at the suggestion.