Pat and the dog, who had been christened Socrates because he was such a fool, came tumbling in together.
“He’s chewed up half a mat downstairs while I was using your telephone, Claudia. How do you do, Mrs. Milton. Allow me, Mrs. Milton—Socrates. Socky, go and lie down and take a short snooze. He’s the terror of Mayfair. He upset two children and a mail-cart this morning, and he’s been in the Round Pond and splashed me from head to foot. How’s poor little Fay getting on?”
“No change,” said Claudia, with a sigh. “I’m going down there after lunch.”
Pat drew in her breath. “Heavens! if anything like that should happen to me, I’d go mad! I should yell the house down. She must know something. It’s a fortnight now. She must suspect something.”
“Sometimes I wonder,” said Claudia. “Sometimes I think I see panic in her eyes, then the next moment she’s asking me a conundrum she’s found in some penny journal and roaring with laughter at my wild guesses. She talks about getting up soon—she’s had the piano taken in, and yesterday she was singing ‘to keep her voice from getting mildewy,’ but—I don’t know. If she knows—if she’s got any suspicion, she’s the pluckiest little soul I’ve ever known.”
After that first awful night, it had become a practice for her to go down to the flat almost daily, each time devising some fresh forms of amusement—Fay was like a child—and directing the domestic machinery, which was now much smoother. The clinging helpless hands of Fay gave her a strange feeling, and a curious bond had sprung up between them. To Fay, Claudia, with her education and culture, was something wonderfully clever, something she had never known, something that made her long, in her generous, undisciplined heart, to emulate, to grow into. She considered Claudia’s knowledge of books and pictures amazing. She told all her fellow-professionals who flocked to see her—and they were a strange, bizarre crowd—that her sister-in-law was the most wonderful and splendid lady in the world, and when Jack occasionally talked carelessly of his sister, she was roused to such volleys of wrathful words that the nurse had to ask him not to excite her. In all her moods—sometimes babyish, when she would play with dolls and mechanical toys; sometimes fretful, when nothing pleased her and she wailed to get well; sometimes optimistic and full of ideas for new turns and songs—Claudia was always wanted and loudly welcomed. Fay did not always want Jack—perhaps she divined something of his repugnance to sickness—she did not always want her “pals,” but she always listened eagerly for Claudia’s step in the hall, and if she did not come, sent the nurse to the telephone.
Soon after, Mrs. Milton took her departure.
Pat sat in a low chair, her long legs sprawling half across the room. For a long time neither of them spoke. Claudia stood gazing out of the window across the Park. The trees were gloriously green now, and like fluttering heralds of summer, brilliant in the sunlight. The sun touched the gilt of the Albert Memorial so that it mingled with the tender greens and almost reconciled her to it. She was thinking of Mrs. Milton’s story of Hamilton’s mother and sister. She knew her statement was correct. She knew several large cheques had been despatched to him by people with whom she had brought him in touch. Was he—she shrank from the word like a loathsome disease—was he mean? He had evidently not wished to renew his acquaintance with Mrs. Milton that night at the Rivingtons. Why? Did he desire to forget his small beginnings—the obligations of which she must have reminded him? It was a corroding idea, and Claudia was glad when Pat commenced to speak in a—for her—thoughtful tone.
“I must be a throw-back. That’s the explanation always trotted out nowadays, isn’t it?”
“A throw-back, Pat? What on earth are you talking about?” She turned and looked at the fresh, boyish face, the slim, long limbs, the sophisticated and yet innocent eyes of her sister.