The Comte de Valmy

A minute or so later I left the salon, to walk straight into as nasty a little scene as I had yet come across.
Philippe was standing, the picture of guilt and misery, beside a table which stood against the wall outside the salon door. It was a lovely little table, flanked on either side by a Louis Quinze chair seated with a straw-colored brocade. On one of the chair seats I now saw, horribly, a thick streak of ink, as if a pen had rolled from the table and then across the silk of the chair, smearing ink as it went.
I remembered, then, that Philippe had been writing to his uncle, Hippolyte, when I called him to come downstairs. He must have come hurriedly away, the pen still open in his hand, and have put it down there before going into the drawing room. He was clutching it now in an ink-stained fist, and staring white-faced at his uncle.
For this time of all times he hadn't managed to avoid Monsieur de Valmy. The wheel chair was slap in the middle of the corridor, barring escape. Philippe, in front of it, looked very small and guilty and defenseless.
Neither of them appeared to notice me. Leon de Valmy was speaking. That he was angry was obvious, and it looked as if he had every right to be, but the cold lash of his voice as he flayed the child for his small-boy carelessness was frightening; he was using--not a wheel, but an atomic blast, to break a butterfly.
Philippe, as white as ashes now, stammered something that might have been an apology, but merely sounded like a terrified mutter, and his uncle cut across it in a voice that bit like a loaded whip.
"It is, perhaps, just as well that your visits to this part of the house are restricted to this single one day, as apparently you don't yet know how to behave like a civilized human being. Perhaps in your Paris home you were allowed to run wild in this hooligan manner, but here we are accustomed to--"
"This is my home," said Philippe.
He said it still in that small shaken voice that held the suggestion of a sullen mutter. It stopped Leon de Valmy in full tirade. For a moment I thought the sentence in that still little voice unbearably pathetic, and in the same moment wondered at Philippe, who was not prone to either drama or pathos. But then he added, still low, but very clearly, "And that is my chair."
There was a moment of appalling silence. Something came and went in Leon de Valmy's face--the merest flick of an expression like a flash of a camera's shutter--but Philippe took a step backward, and I found myself catapulting out of the doorway like a wildcat defending a kitten.
Leon de Valmy looked up and saw me, but he spoke to Philippe quietly, as though his anger had never been.
"When you have recovered your temper and your manners, Philippe, you will apologize for that remark." The dark eyes lifted to me, and he said coolly but very courteously, in English, "Ah, Miss Martin. I'm afraid there has been a slight contretemps. Perhaps you will take Philippe back to his own rooms and persuade him that courtesy toward his elders is one of the qualities that is expected of a gentleman."
As his uncle spoke to me, Philippe had turned quickly, as if in relief. His face was paler than ever, and looked pinched and sullen. But the eyes were vulnerable: child's eyes.
I looked at him, then past him at his uncle.
"There's no need," I said. "He'll apologize now." I took the boy gently by the shoulders and turned him back to face his uncle. I held him for a moment. The shoulders felt very thin and tense. He was shaking.
I let him go. "Philippe?" I said.
He said, his voice thin with a gulp in it, "I beg your pardon if I was rude."
Leon de Valmy looked from him to me and back again.
"Very well. That is forgotten. And now Miss Martin had better take you upstairs."
The child turned quickly to go, but I hesitated. I said, "I gather there's been an accident to that chair, and that Philippe's been careless; but then, so have I. It was my job to see that nothing of the sort happened. It was my fault, and I must apologize too, Monsieur de Valmy."
He said in a voice quite different from the one with which he had dismissed Philippe, "Very well, Miss Martin. Thank you. And now we will forget the episode, shall we?"
As we went I was very conscious of that still, misshapen figure sitting there watching us.
I shut the schoolroom door behind me, and leaned against it. Philippe and I looked at one another. His face was shuttered still with that white resentment. His mouth looked sulky, but I saw the lower lip tremble a little.
He waited, saying nothing.
This was where I had to uphold authority. Curtain lecture by Miss Martin. Leon de Valmy had been perfectly right: Philippe had been stupid, careless, and rude...
I said, "My lamb, I'm with you all the way, but you are a little owl, aren't you?"
"You can't," said Philippe very stiffly, "be a lamb and an owl both at the same time."
Then he ran straight at me and burst into tears.
After that I did help to keep him out of his uncle's way.

FROM
Nine Coaches Waiting
by Mary Stewart