ALL THIS, and HEAVEN TOO

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 81, 10 January 1941, Page 44

ALL THIS, and HEAVEN TOO

Warner Brothers-First National Film Version, starring BETTE: DAVIS and CHARLES BOYER Based on the novel |

by

RACHEL

FIELD

Serialised by

HARRY

LEE

THE STORY THUS FAR: Mademoiselle Henriette, a governess, is tried for the murder of her employer’s wife and acquitted, and later teaches in a New York girls’ school. Her pupils taunt her with her past, and she tells them her story. While living in the home of the Duke and Duchess de Praslin, and caring for their four children, the insane jealousy of the Duchess makes her life unendurable. Paris newspapers publish stories of differences between the Duke and Duchess and the latter tries to get rid of the governess. The Duke urges her to stay for the sake of the children-and his own, and she consents.

CHAPTER III.

(HE Marechal Sebastiani, father of the mad Duchess de Praslin, begged Mile. Henriette not to leave his daughter’s household, and she consented. He planned that the Duke and Duchess should be seen more often in public, and he arranged for a grand ball to be attended by all the big-wigs of the French capital, including King LouisPhilippe himself. It was during the party that Mlle. Henriette found the three daughters of her employers, in nighties and robes, peeping through the banisters of the grand stairway, at the brilliant scene below. She whisked them gaily off to bed, heard their prayers, kissed them goodnight, and went to the classroom. Leaving for a holiday the next day Henriette and the children waited in the carriage at the door, luggage piled high behind them. The Duke, trying to conceal his annoyance at his wife’s delay, finally went to her room. He found her frenzied over the fact that he had paid no heed to the letter she had slipped under his door the night before. "I’d planned that we might begin this journey to-day," she cried, "united as we once were by the holiest of ties! But no! You delight in torturing me-as one day, please Heaven, I shall torture you! I’ll not set outside this house with the woman you’ve chosen to replace me!" Her voice had fisen to a scream, but when he begged her to speak mone; calmly that the children might not hear, shé- only. shrieked the louder: and ran from. the room. The Duke followed .her, and when he came out alone, later, his hand had been wounded. He urged HenTiefte to..go,on with the children as neither he nor their mother would be able to'go'to Melun.. Several days later, to Seancsatety: dismay, the: Duke arrived in his old. home town. It was All Hallow’s Eve and the children, excited about witches and gob-

lins, were overjoyed to have him to share their fun. He stayed over All Saints’ Day-as gay as the youngsters, and grateful to have the chance for a talk with Henriette. Then he went back to Paris. HEN Henriette came later with the children it. was to confront the wrathful Duchess. " This time you have gone too far, Mile. Deluzy!" she panted. "This time you are to leave this house into which you’ve brought evil and sin!" When the Duke, having overheard his wife’s insane words, came to Henriette’s room, he was desperate. "The filth of their high-mindedness!" he exclaimed. "To believe that you and I are the sort of people the gossip columns paint! It’s a popular picture-the wife and mother left deserted, ill and suffering, while the husband openly consorts with-Oh, it’s too shameful!" Mile. Henriette found it a heart-break-ing task to say good-bye to the children and to their father. "But where will you go?" he asked brokenly. " What will you do?" "T’ll have my work,’ she answered

bravely. "There'll be other positions, other children!" She took a cheap room and waited for the letter of recommendation the Duchess had promised her. The landlady at last began to dun her for the rent. Then one day the Duke called with the children. The children-Louise, Isabelle, Berthe and Raynald-brought their beloved Mile. Henriette gifts of fruits and flowers and were overjoyed at seeing her again-but when the Duke found out that his wife had made no reply to her repeated requests for the promised letter of recommendation, he drove home in a rage. The Duchess informed him with uncanny glee that she not only would never send the letter, but that she would see to it that her victim should never get employment. Her tirade ended suddenly however, for she saw with horror the light of insanity in the eyes of the Duke. "Theo!" she shrieked as he drew nearer her, " Theo, you wouldn’t!" When at last she lay still he stole from the bedroom. ENRIETTE was sleeping fitfully in her attic, when the landlady burst into the room, " The Duchess de Praslin has been murdered!" she cried. " This is what you’ve brought on me!" Two gendarmes led Henriette away and locked her in a cell of the Conciergerie. Newsboys hawked extras in the streets,

Louis-Philippe, "The Citizen King," looking from the window of the council chamber at the angry, milling mob in the courtyard, must have quailed at thought of the future. "To shield the Duke de Praslin, may cost you your throne, Your Majesty!" said Pasquier, President of the House of Peers. "I’ve prepared an order for his arrest! It only needs your signature!" Reluctantly the King signed the paper. The Duke was arrested and questioned, but he would in no way itnplicate his children’s governess, Mile. Henriette. Young Henry Field, the American preacher, called on her in her prison cell. He had gone to her lodgings, brought the few belongings which the police had left, visited the Praslin home, found that the children were with their grandfather in Corsica, and offered to get her a lawyer. When. she refused he said that he would be waiting to help her, Mile. Henriette was being questioned in court when word came that the Duke de Praslin had taken poison and was at the point of death. She was taken to him by Pasquier, but though in extreme agony, he refused to say whether er nct he had been in love with the governess, But to old Pierre, the faithful family servant, he whispered that he had. taken his life rather than send her to her death. The Duke, dying without the last tites of the %Church, was buried in unconsecrated ground. LLE. HENRIETTE-free at last from every prison but her memories -was taken by Henry Field to friends of his in Paris. Some months later he brought her word that she had been employed as teacher of French in the giris’ school in New York, where she now was, At the conclusion of the story of her life, the pupils who had taunted her were in tears. By every means in their power they tried to show her that she had won their respect and their love, Henry Field was waiting for her when the day’s work was over, and as they walked across Gramercy Park through the first snow of the year, he said: "There are many kinds of love between man and woman, Henriette! I promised you once that you would find a heaven on earth, and I’m going to keep that promise, if it takes a lifetime of devotion!" (Concluded)