‘I’ll never be able to wait till tomorrow!
Suppose I pretend Papa wants to use his library tomorrow and ask if you can give me my lesson this evening?’
‘No … All right, yes, ask her.
But go back to your place at once – the big ones are staring at us.’
I said ‘Thank you’ out loud to her and went and sat down again.
She was right. That gawk Anais was watching us closely, trying to guess what had been going on these last two or three days.
Mademoiselle Sergent returned at last, accompanied by two insignificant young things whose arrival caused a little stir on the benches.
She installed these newcomers in their places.
The minutes dragged slowly by.
When, at last, it struck four, I went straight off to find Mademoiselle Sergent and I asked her, in one breathless burst:
‘Mademoiselle, it would be awfully kind of you if you’d let Mademoiselle Lanthenay give me my lesson tonight instead of tomorrow night, Papa’s got someone coming to talk business in the library so we won’t be able to stay there.’
Ouf!
I had brought out my sentence without pausing for breath.
Mademoiselle frowned, studied my face for a moment, then made up her mind:
‘Very well. Go and tell Mademoiselle Lanthenay.’
I rushed off and did so. She put on her hat and coat and I bore her off, quivering with anxiety to know all.
‘Ah, how glad I am to have you to myself for a little.
Tell me quick, whatever’s gone wrong?’
She hesitated, beating about the bush.
‘Not here. Wait. It’s difficult to tell you all about it in the street.
We’ll be at your home in a minute.’
In the meantime, I squeezed her arm in mine but her smile was not the charming one of all the other times.
As soon as the door of the library shut behind us, I took her in my arms and kissed her. I felt as if she had been kept imprisoned far away from me for a month, that poor little Aimee with those shadows under her eyes and those pale cheeks!
Had she suffered very much, then?
Yet the looks she gave me struck me as embarrassed rather than anything else, and she seemed feverish rather than sad.
Moreover, she returned my kisses very hurriedly – and I don’t at all like being kissed in double quick time!
‘Come on, tell me … tell me everything right from the beginning.’
‘But it’s not a very long story … In fact, nothing much happened at all.
It was Mademoiselle Sergent … well, she wanted … I mean, she preferred … she thought these English lessons were preventing me from correcting the exercise-books and making me go to bed too late …’
‘Look here, for goodness’ sake, don’t waste time. And tell me the truth.
She doesn’t want you to come any more?’
I was trembling with anguish; I gripped my hands between my knees to make them keep still.
Aimee fidgeted with the cover of the Grammar and began to tear off a strip where it was gummed. As she did so, she raised her eyes towards me. They had grown scared again.
‘Yes, that’s it. But she didn’t say it the way you said it, Claudine.
Listen to me a moment …’
I did not listen to a word; I felt as if I were dissolving with misery.
I was sitting on a little stool on the floor, and, clasping my arms round her slim waist, I beseeched her:
‘Darling, don’t go away … If you only knew, I’d be too utterly wretched!
Oh, find some excuse, make up something, come back, don’t leave me!
It’s sheer bliss for me, just being with you!
Doesn’t it give you any pleasure at all?
Am I just like Anais or Marie Belhomme to you?
Darling, do, do come back and go on giving me English lessons!
I love you so much … I didn’t tell you … but now you can’t help seeing I do! … Come back, I implore you.
She can’t beat you for it, that red-haired beast!’
I was burning with fever and my nerves were becoming more and more frayed at feeling that Aimee’s were not vibrating in sympathy.
She stroked my head as it lay on her lap and only interrupted now and then with a quavering ‘my little Claudine!’
At last her eyes brimmed over and she began to cry as she said:
‘I’m going to tell you everything.
It’s too wretched – you make me too unhappy!