“Dear Claire,
“I didn’t answer your last as promptly as I wanted to because of the ills of the flesh. However, I feel freer of them to-day than I have for some time past. Your letters get better and better. I wish I could write like you. I’ve no gifts. I thought once I had a gift for politics. Well, perhaps I had, but I hadn’t the gift of pleasing—for long. I offended the Great Cham of my day, and after that it was like going down a greased slide. But better men than I have set their feet upon it. I had my say, and I paid for it, and I’d say it again if the chance came.
“You want me to tell you something of my life all these years. Well, here is an outline for you. After I left England I was in the United States for five years. A country gloriously endowed by nature, but somewhat spoilt by man. I like Americans individually; I number several of them among my few friends, but I’m not sure I like them as a race. They’re not a race—that’s the trouble—but they will be some day. There’s little racial breeding at present. As for characteristics, if you find them in the South, you lose them again in the East or West. You know more or less how an Englishman or a Frenchman’s going to act, because, exceptions excluded, they run pretty true to form. But you can’t guess how an American’s going to act until you know whether he’s Irish, German, British or Scandinavian American. Which complicates matters.
“Then I was five years in South America—three of them in Peru which I grew to love. After that—let me see—two in Burmah, one in Ceylon, and the last five in sunny spots in France and Italy—a sad spectator of war. I’ve enjoyed my travels. I have, I hope, learned much. But I can’t write about it. I’m no good at that. Can’t think how I used to write speeches once—and deliver them. I suppose living alone all these years has made me inarticulate. Miss McPherson’s afraid of me, I believe. Silly little thing. That annoys me.
“You ask me who else is in Cannes. I’m not sure I ought to tell you, but knowing you as I do, I think you’d want to be told. Connie’s here—with a man of course—and stopping at this hotel. Miss McPherson wheels me about in a chair on my goodish days, and I came upon them suddenly in the grounds this morning. Connie passed by without speaking, but I’m certain she knew me. She looks the unhappiest woman on God’s earth. Later I sent Miss McPherson to make inquiries, and it seems they call themselves Count and Countess Chiozzi. They may be for all I know. At any rate, he looks a dirty little cad. I’ll try to speak to her, for I think you would like me to. I will leave this letter open for a day or two, in case I do.
“Next day.
“I spoke to her to-day in the garden. She was alone. I said, ‘Connie, don’t you know me?’ She went a queer color, I thought, and said, ‘Yes, you’re Mr. de Lisle.’ I said, ‘You knew me yesterday,’ and she admitted it. I was in my bath-chair (beastly thing!) and I sent Miss McPherson away. Then I said, ‘Well, Connie, I see you’re the Countess Chiozzi now. Are you in Cannes for the winter?’ She said she supposed she was; that Cannes did as well as another place. She asked me if I’d been in England lately, and when I said, ‘Not in twenty years,’ she exclaimed, ‘Then you don’t know whether——’ and stopped. I knew what she wanted to ask, and said, ‘Yes, Connie, she’s alive and well, thank God. I heard from her only five days ago.’ She sat down on a bench, and we talked for some time. She was evidently wondering how much I knew, so I put her at her ease by saying I knew all about it, and I was afraid she was having a pretty rotten time. She started to flare up at that, but thought better of it, and said, ‘I am. Chiozzi is a devil. I must get away from him somehow. I’m at the end of my endurance.’ She went on to tell me about her life, and the gist of it is this. I’ll tell it in as few words as possible. She has always loved Petrovitch, she says, and no one else. He was in love with her for a time, then tired of her, as she interfered with his work. She wrote to her husband, asking him to take her back, but before he could reply a bullet took his life at Spion Kop. A year or two later she met a French officer who fell in love with her. They were to have been married, but he found out about Petrovitch and left her. Connie said bitterly that his life had been what many men’s lives are, but she wasn’t good enough. After that she went to Rome where she met an American named Freeman. She married him, and they sailed for New York on the ‘Titanic’. He was drowned, but she reached New York without so much as a wetting. She tired of New York, returned to Paris, and there met Chiozzi. They were married about four years ago. She says he is evil incarnate; but then women like Connie haven’t much choice. I asked her if I might tell you all this, and she said I might, and also sent you her love, but said she couldn’t possibly write to you herself at present. She still loves that poltroon Petrovitch, and would go around the world to see him, I believe. She ought to leave Chiozzi, that much is certain. I can see she fears him as much as she hates him.
“What a lot of people chuck away their lives in learning that passion’s a boglantern! The thing that stands chiefly in the way of human progress is the fact that we’ve each got to find things out for ourselves. Women found out what Connie’s finding out (I hope) two thousand years ago. Does that help Connie forward? Not a whit.
“I can’t write more now.
“God bless you!
“Stephen.”
The next day, Madame Claire read the letter to Judy, who was keenly interested.
“Aunt Connie has always seemed rather a fabulous creature—a sort of myth—to me,” she said. “I can’t quite realize her. Would you like me to go to Cannes and fetch both her and ‘Old Stephen’ home?”
Madame Claire thought not.
“It’s very odd you should have had three children so entirely different,” said Judy. “They all had exactly the same environment and the same care. How on earth do you account for these things?”
“I don’t,” replied her grandmother. “I can merely suppose that they all require different experiences; and they’re certainly getting them.” Her eyes rested on Judy in her brown dress and furs, and on her face with its challenging dark eyes and the too wide mouth that she loved. She wondered what experiences would be hers. Not Connie’s; and even more surely, not Millicent’s. So far her life had been even and tranquil—too tranquil for her own liking. She wanted to live. She had a great deal to give to life—and so far she had not lived at all.
“I suppose, like every one else,” went on Madame Claire, “they are working out something—I don’t know what. After all, my children are just people. So many mothers think of their own children as apart from the rest of the world. I don’t. Connie, Eric, Millicent—just people.”
“Eric isn’t,” protested Judy. “Eric is one of the gods come to earth again.”
Madame Claire laughed.
“Not Apollo!” she said. “I never liked his profile.”