“It’s something that means going away,” thought Judy, as she arranged herself and her belongings. “That’s why he wouldn’t tell me sooner.”
The thought of it sent her spirits down considerably, but she made up her mind not to borrow trouble. If he hadn’t spoken of it before, it was because he wasn’t sure. Life without Noel would be … no, it didn’t bear thinking of. Time enough to worry when she heard from him. Wasn’t she on her way to the Riviera, for the first time? The word had always been a magical one, to her. It meant color, warmth, life. She would see the Mediterranean. And it was her first adventure. Mr. Pendleton had most unexpectedly presented her with fifty pounds, telling her to buy herself some dresses in Cannes. It was very nearly a fortune. Madame Claire herself was paying for the trip, and had given her a little money to gamble with.
“For of course you must play,” she had said. “You’re sure to find friends there; and even if Stephen dies—which Heaven forbid!—I don’t see why you shouldn’t stay on for a little and enjoy yourself.”
The next day the sight of Marseilles, golden in the sunshine, made her forget every trouble, past and to come. She had an impression of old houses with greeny-blue shutters, and bare plane trees, the twisted limbs of which looked white and strange in the sunlight. And beyond, the incredibly blue water. She could hardly keep her delight to herself as the train wound its leisurely way along the lovely, broken coast. She gloried in the greeny-gray of the olive trees, in the rich, red earth, in the burning blue of sea and sky.
“I should like to live here,” she thought, as they passed some blue-shuttered house behind its vines and its fig trees. Or, “no, here!” as another even more alluring showed itself among its terraced olive groves. She thought, with commiseration, of her parents who might have been there too had they cared to make the effort, stuffily going their rounds—“It isn’t as though they couldn’t afford it,” she said to herself. “I believe it’s because they want to save for Gordon.”
Miss McPherson, a little, calm, thin-lipped Scotch woman, met her at the station in Cannes. She seemed glad, in her quiet, professional way, to see Judy, and as they drove to the hotel in the omnibus, she told her about Stephen.
“It was a slight stroke,” she explained, “but we won’t be calling it that because Mr. de Lisle doesn’t know, or doesn’t want to know. He will have it that it was an attack of some sort. But he’s much better to-day, and in a fortnight or so, he’ll be as well as he was before. Of course that isn’t saying that he’ll be enjoying robust health.”
“Does that mean that he can never come to London?” Judy asked.
“Oh, dear me, no, I wouldn’t say that. You’ll do him good. And I think he’s been here long enough.” Then she added with a twinkle in her little gray eyes:
“He was just determined to see you or Colonel Gregory. Between you and me, Miss Pendleton, my poor old patient’s very bored here.”