Free Adam Gould by Julia O'Faolain

attachment he feels, Adam marvelled, then surprised himself by thinking ‘it seems almost motherly’. Though he had lived in an all-male world in his seminary, this sort of closeness had not been possible.
    Tassart now walked in Adam’s direction. His lean lips were clamped in anger. He was, Adam noticed for the first time, younger than his master. As he drew level, he murmured, ‘I can’t think how those vampires got in! Who was in charge, Gould? You? If my master had come home with me, they would never have got near him. He would have been safe in our neighbourhood, where people are fond of him. Our tradesmen keep asking for him. They all agree that he should come home.’
    Stung, Adam tried mounting a defensive attack. ‘So,’ he teased, ‘you and your butcher and baker have been gossiping. Maybe you started the stories which reached the newspapers.’
    Tassart said quietly, ‘All any newsmonger could have learned from us was that my master was a straight, kind, decent man and that we are devoted to him.’ He turned away, leaving Adam feeling neither straight nor decent, and just a bit embarrassed.
    But already the valet was back. ‘
They
shouldn’t be here.’ Nodding towards the drawing room. ‘Mademoiselle Litzelmann’s name is on the list of people who shouldn’t be let in. It probably tops that list. You must get her out.’
    Adam did not want to expel the anxious young woman whose plight was not unlike the one in which
his
mother had found herself at the end. She too must have hoped – but he couldn’t bear to dwell on that. He said, ‘The other lady seems to have taken her under her wing. Madame d’Armaillé. And she
is
a guest here.’
    ‘Maybe, but la Litzelmann ...’
    ‘
Is
Monsieur de Maupassant the father of her children?’
    ‘Possibly.’ Tassart’s face was hard. ‘At all events he has provided for them. Think of it, Gould. She was just a girl in a spa, whose job was handing cups of water to the patients. What future had she? What security? She is better off now than when he met her.’
    ‘And she wants – what?’
    ‘Him to legitimize them. She wants respectability.’ Tassart shrugged. ‘His mother won’t have it. Madame Laure.’
    Again Adam thought of
his
mother. ‘It seems hard!’ he ventured.
    ‘Gould, it is not our place to decide.’
    ‘What has place to do with it?’
    ‘Everything, surely. This is a nursing home. His health could suffer! I cannot think
how
you ...’
    ‘Oh, very well! I shall ask her to leave. Come with me, will you? She might make difficulties if I went alone.’
    In the drawing room Mademoiselle Litzelmann’s eyelids were rosily swollen. She rubbed the back of a hand across them. Deftly, as though catching a moth, the other lady grasped and held the damp hand while hailing the two men.
    ‘Ah,’ she exclaimed, ‘here is François Tassart back with my uncle’s saviour! Monsieur Gould, yes?’
    As if to imply that the weeping was to be ignored, she hid her companion’s hand in a scarf. ‘My uncle and the monsignor are conspiring,’ she told Adam affably, ‘so we have been excluded. I was wondering if we could impose on your hospitality. Mademoiselle Litzelmann came here on foot and is thirsty.’
    ‘She didn’t come in your carriage then?’
    ‘Only through the gate.’ Madame d’Armaillé was unembarrassed. ‘
Is
it possible to find her some refreshment? Barley water would do.’
    Tassart, who seemed not to have heard, was staring at Adam’s coat collar. ‘May I,’ he stepped behind him, ‘see the garment in the light?’ As he murmured ‘It’s soiled,’ Mademoiselle Litzelmann retrieved her hand and blew her nose.
    Soiled? Sold? Adam’s body was behaving in an unaccountable way. He felt feverish.
    Fingers fumbled his neck. Was the valet trying to read the label? Adam prayed not to be embarrassed in front of the beautiful Madame d’Armaillé. He was unused to being touched.
    ‘We don’t want to inconvenience you,’ she