Free A Young Man's Heart by Cornell Woolrich Page A

they were both in a very good mood. She jumped down with a little “Houp la!” from the carriage, unassisted and preceding her escort. And when Giraldy spoke to Blair a faint essence of sweet liquor could be detected about him, not yet rancid with the passage of hours.
      “Comment ça va?” remarked Mile. Reynaud blithely on her way in, chucking Blair under the chin, and she stalked past him and into the house as though it already belonged to her.
    He rejoined his allies in the rear of the flat. Without even a glance from her kitchen doorway the old woman seemed cognizant of any arrival or departure occurring within the house. “Does she stay?” she demanded truculently.
    “It looks like it,” he agreed.
    Scowling, she shuffled forth to set a new place at the table, and muttering under her breath, increased the quantities of the ingredients she was preparing at the stove.
    “One after the other. Why doesn’t your father get married?”
    “It doesn’t seem to appeal to him,” Blair answered coolly.
    Mariquita tittered and gave his shoulder one of her familiar pushes.
    Almost as soon as they sat down to dinner he discovered Mile. Reynaud proceeding to ruin the aroma of even the most succulent dishes by sheer strength of the perfumery she had drenched herself with. The rice that was the old woman’s forte, garnished with peppers, cinnamon and garlic, tasted as if flavored with cologne. Attar of roses seemed to destroy all the ordinary pungency of the black beans in their rich gravy of tomato and lime. Brackish violet-water lurked within the coffee-cups. She was anti-social, this girl.
    Still, much as he felt he ought to regret that this Farewell Supper of his was being poisoned by her, he found the presence of a third party at their meal to be a distinct relief. It alleviated the usual heaviness and silence of eating alone with Giraldy, and dissipated the last possible vestige of melancholy at thought of leaving, making him thankful to escape the new régime that he saw impending. For Mile. Reynaud had all Estelle’s early blatancy and aliveness without any of her finesse. There was a strong suggestion of the gamin about her, in the way she held herself and the way she spoke. It was as though, along with her legendary immersion in the Bay of Biscay, she had discarded her ladylike-ness as being irrelevant.
    When the old woman approached the table she glanced up at her and remarked, “What is your name, eh?” using the insolent second person singular. And being informed of it, she proceeded airily, “Well, I like this rice dish. You must make it for me while the señor is away,” a rather tactful way of informing her that she intended remaining in the house during Giraldy’s absence. The old woman, furiously silent, withdrew to the kitchen to loose a querulous tirade there with Mariquita and the baby for an audience. Mile. Reynaud smirked understanding, as though she counted it a victory on her part to anger someone, no matter whom.
    For one thing, she was never at a loss for something to say. She chatted throughout the course of the meal with a machine-gun-like rapidity, each word a tiny vivacious explosion of thought on the endless cartridge-belt that was her tongue. And Blair, ignored by both, ignored them in his turn, aware of only crackling fragments of her speech as she lapsed from Spanish to the French he was not meant to understand, and back again, at times too quickly to quite conceal the gist of some remark from him.
    “ . . . very sincere . .. ask anyone who knows me   . . . all my friends will tell you so   . . . when you come back   . . . I can’t promise   . . . you must find that out for yourself.”
    Blair turned his eyes to the window, to where the expiring sunbeams were slowly merging one by one into a paler, more diffused luminousness through which stars were beginning to bore their way like the points of gleaming needles, seen, then lost, then found again, at last becoming