CHAPTER X
TO-DAY, the last of August, Pepino had been allowed for the first time to go out and have a half-hour’s quiet strolling in the garden and sit in the sun. His illness which had caused Lucia to recall herself had been serious, and for a few days he had been dangerously ill with pneumonia. After turning a bad corner he had made satisfactory progress.
Lucia, who for these weeks had been wholly admirable, would have gone out with him now, but the doctor, after his visit, had said he wanted to have a talk with her, and for twenty minutes or so they had held colloquy in the music-room. Then, on his departure, she sat there a few minutes more, arranged her ideas, and went out to join Pepino.
“Such a good cheering talk, caro,” she said. “There never was such a perfect convalescer—my dear, what a word—as you. You’re a prize-patient. All you’ve got to do is to go on exactly as you’re going, doing a little more, and a little more every day, and in a month’s time you’ll be ever so strong again. Such a good constitution.”
“And no sea-voyage?” asked Pepino. The dread prospect had been dangled before him at one time.
“Not unless they think a month or two on the Riviera in the winter might be advisable. Then the sea voyage from Dover to Calais, but no more than that. Now I know what you’re thinking about. You told me that we couldn’t manage Aix this August because of expense, so how are we to manage two months of Cannes?”
Lucia paused a moment.
“That delicious story of dear Marcia’s,” she said, “about those cousins of hers who had to retrench. After talking everything over they decided that all the retrenchment they could possibly make was to have no coffee after lunch. But we can manage better than that....”
Lucia paused again. Pepino had had enough of movement under his own steam, and they had seated themselves in the sunny little arbour by the sundial, which had so many appropriate mottoes carved on it.
“The doctor told me too that it would be most unwise of you to attempt to live in London for any solid period,” she said. “Fogs, sunlessness, damp darkness: all bad. And I know again what’s in your kind head. You think I adore London, and can spend a month or two there in the autumn, and in the spring, coming down here for week-ends. But I haven’t the slightest intention of doing anything of the kind. I’m not going to be up there alone. Besides, where are the dibs, as that sweet little Alf said, where are the dibs to come from for our Riviera?”