They met shortly afterwards at déjeuner, the brightest of meals, whereat Etta talked her girlish nonsense, which Tommy took for peculiarly sparkling discourse. Clementina, wearing the mask of the indulgent chaperon, let the babble flow unchecked.
“Do you think Etta will spoil everything?” she asked him, as soon as they were alone for a moment.
“Oh no,” cried the ingenuous Tommy. “She’s going to be great fun.”
“H’m!” said Clementina, feeling as though she might make the historic reply of the frog at whom the boys threw stones. But she had deliberately brought about the lapidation. She winced; but she could not complain.
It must not be imagined, however, that Tommy transferred his allegiance in youth’s debonair, thoughtless way to the newer and prettier princess. On the contrary, in all the little outward shows of devotion he demonstrated himself more zealously than ever to be Clementina’s vassal. In the excursions that they made during the next few days keeping Vienne as a base—to La Tour du Pin, Grenoble, Saint-Marcellin, Mont-Pilat—it was to Clementina that he turned and pointed out the beauties of the road, and her unsteady footsteps that he guided over rough and declivitous paths. To her he also turned for serious conversation. The flowers and the New York Herald came to her room as unfailingly as the morning coffee. He manifested the same tender solicitude as to her possible sufferings from hunger, drought, dust or fatigue. He paid her regal honour. In this he was aided and abetted by Etta Concannon, who had her own pretty ways of performing homage. In fact, the care of Clementina soon became at once a rivalry and a bond between them, and Clementina, so far from being neglected, found herself the victim of emulous and sometimes embarrassing ministrations. As she herself phrased it in a moment of bitter irony, they were making love over her live body.
They left Vienne, Tommy having made sufficient studies for immortal studio paintings, and took up their quarters at Valence. There is a spaciousness about Valence rare in provincial towns of France. You stand in the middle of wide boulevards, the long vista closed at one end by the far blue tops of the mountains of the Vivarais, and at the other by the distant Alps, and you think you are dwelling in some sweet city in the air. In the clear sunshine it is as bright and as crisp as a cameo.
“I love Vienne, but I adore Valence,” said Etta Concannon. “Here I can breathe.”
They were sitting on the terrace of a café in the Place de la République in front of the great monument to Emile Augier. It was the cool of the evening and a fresh breeze came from the mountains.
“I, too, am glad to get out of Vienne,” said Clementina.
Tommy protested. “That’s treason, Clementina. We had such ripping times there. Do you remember the evening I fetched you out to see the Temple of Augustus and Livia?”