Madame Claire

Madame Claire

By

Susan Ertz

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

NEW YORK

MCMXXIII

COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Contents

Madame Claire

[CHAPTER I]

If you wish to be relieved from the worries of housekeeping; if you wish to cultivate the society of retired army folk, or that of blameless spinsterhood, ask for a room (inclusive terms) at the Kensington Park Hotel, Kensington. It is unprogressive, it is Early Victorian—though of late that term has lost some of its reproach—but it is eminently safe and respectable.

Although neither of these qualities had ever particularly attracted Lady Gregory—or Madame Claire, as her grandchildren called her—she found herself at the age of seventy a candidate for admission. It was out of the question for her to keep up the big house in Prince’s Gardens after her only son Eric married. Live with him she would not, valuing his love for her and his own happiness too much to risk a ménage-à-trois with a daughter-in-law—even a daughter-in-law of whom at that time she approved. For Madame Claire not only faced facts squarely, but she had a way of seeing under and around them as well, which greatly endeared her to the more discriminating of her children and grandchildren.

It was eight years since Eric had married Louise Broughton, and eight years since Madame Claire had come to live at the Kensington Park Hotel. Her little suite was arranged with charming taste. Guests of the hotel were not encouraged to furnish their own rooms, but Madame Claire had succeeded little by little in ousting the hotel atrocities and had put in their place some favorite pieces left from the sale of the house in Prince’s Gardens. Her meals were served in her sitting-room by Dawson, her elderly maid, and there too she held her little court. She had a great pity for other old ladies less fortunately placed, who were obliged to be in, yet not of, the homes of their children or grandchildren—“Always there, like pieces of furniture. Whereas,” she would say, “if my family wish to see me they must come to me, and make an occasion of it.”

A wonderful woman she was then at seventy-eight, with all her senses very much on the alert. She read a great deal, but thought more, looking out of her windows at the world. She usually dressed in gray or dark blue, avoiding black which she said was only for the young. She was more nearly beautiful at seventy-eight than at any other period of her life, though she had always been a woman of great charm. She had been a loved and invaluable wife to the late Sir Robert Gregory, whom the world knew best as ambassador to Italy. She often said that for the connoisseur there were only two countries, England and Italy.

When Robert Gregory died, leaving her a widow of sixty, she was speedily—too speedily some said—sought in marriage by their lifelong friend, Stephen de Lisle. That was eighteen years ago. Refused by her, and perhaps made to feel just a little an old fool, he went abroad in one of his black tempers, and she had not heard one word from him since. It was a great sorrow to her, for both she and her husband had loved him devotedly. The grandchildren, especially Judy and Noel, thought it a delightful romance. They liked having a grandmother who had refused a famous man at sixty and broken his heart. But it was a subject on which she would permit no affectionate comment. It would have meant so much to her to have had him as a dear contemporary and friend.

One foggy morning in late December when the whole world seemed bounded by the thick yellow fog which pressed against her window panes, Dawson brought her a letter bearing a French stamp. She knew the handwriting at once, though it had been firmer in the old days. She read a few lines of it, then stopped and turned to her maid who was busy about the room.

“Dawson,” said Madame Claire in a voice that was far from steady, “here’s a letter from Mr. de Lisle.”

“Oh, m’lady!” cried Dawson who loved surprises, “it’s like a voice from the grave, isn’t it now?”

“He’s not well,” continued her mistress, reading on. “Gout he says, poor old thing. He writes from Cannes, where he’s gone for the sunshine. He has to have a nurse. How he must hate it!”

“And you as strong and well as ever,” exulted Dawson. It was a source of peculiar joy to her when any of Madame Claire’s contemporaries fell victims to the maladies of old age, or that severest malady of all, death. Her beloved mistress seemed to her then like the winner in a great race, and who was she, Dawson, but the groom who tended and groomed the racer? She thrilled with pride.

Madame Claire read the letter through to the end, and then went at once to her desk, with as free a step, Dawson thought, as she had ever had.

“I must write to him immediately,” she said, a flush on her old cheeks.

The letter took her several hours to write, because there was so much to tell him. He kept it, as he kept all her letters, and when he died they came into Eric’s possession, and finally into the writer’s.

“My dear old Stephen,” she wrote,

“Nothing that has happened to me in the last ten years has given me as much pleasure as your letter from Cannes. After a silence a fifth of a century long, you have come alive for me again. Stephen, Stephen! How am I to forgive you for that silence? But I do forgive you, as you knew I would, and I thank you for the happiness you have given me by breaking it.

“I don’t believe you have changed much, though you say you are an invalid—gout, phlebitis, rheumatism! Infirm, crotchety old Stephen! Infirm as to legs, but very active, I gather, as to brain, heart, and temper. How I wish we might see each other! But you cannot travel, and I—yes, I can, but I will not. I motor gently down to my little house in Sussex in the summer, and back again in the autumn, and that is enough. The rest of the time I dwell in peace and security in three rooms here at the Kensington Park Hotel, and it suits me very well.

“How good it is that we can pick up the threads of our friendship again! As far as I am concerned it has neither lapsed nor waned. You say I dealt you a great blow. But, Stephen, how could you expect Robert’s widow, already a grandmother, to have married again? That, my dearest friend, would have been an elderly folly for which I would never have forgiven myself. You sulked badly, Stephen, and I think now you owe it to your years and mine to laugh. Do laugh! There is nothing like the mirth of old age, for old age knows why it laughs.

“You say you want me to write you about everything that concerns myself. I know you are only trying to cover up your tracks here, for the one you really want to hear about is Judy. I am well aware of your elderly partiality for my granddaughter, with whom you fell in love when she was seven—twenty years ago. But I don’t intend to pander to it at the expense of the others. Judy must take her turn along with the rest.

“Stephen, would you be young again? You, thinking of your gout and your phlebitis, would cry ‘Yes!’ But don’t you see that you would merely be inviting gout and phlebitis again? For myself, the answer is no, no, no! And I have been happy, too, and with reason. Not for anything would I be blind again, uncertain, groping; feeling my way, wondering where my duty lay, dreading the blows of fate before they struck, valuing happiness too highly. That is life. Now the turmoil has died down, confusion is no more. It’s like sitting on a quiet hilltop in the light of the setting sun. Fate cannot harm me—I have lived. There is nothing to be feared, and there is nothing to be expected except the kindly hand of death, and the opening of another door. Perhaps one is a little tired, but the climb, after all, was worth it, and one can think here, and listen to the cries of birds, and the sound of the wind in the grass. The lie of the land over which one has come taken a different aspect and falls into a pattern. Those woods where one felt so lost—how little they were, and how many openings they had, if one had only gone forward, instead of rushing in blind circles.…

“Gordon, my tactless grandson, said the other day that no one would dream I was nearly eighty if it were not for the evidence of the family tree. That did not please me. I take as much pride in being nearly eighty as I once took in being sixteen. After all, being an old woman is my rôle at present, and naturally it is a rôle I wish to play well. Perhaps you’ll say that I would accept old age less philosophically if I were blind, or deaf, or bedridden. I wonder? Even without all one’s faculties, surely there are thoughts and memories enough to furnish the mind. (Why, why, Stephen, don’t we cultivate contemplation?) And that tantalizing veil that shuts us off from the beyond should be wearing thin at our age, so that by watching and waiting one should be able to catch glimpses of what it hides.

“And now you will say, ‘For Heaven’s sake stop moralizing and tell me about Judy.’

“I hate describing people—especially those I love, but I will try. She is lovely in her strange way, with moments of real beauty. I say strange, because she follows no accepted rules. She is somber, but lights up charmingly when she smiles. I suppose her mouth is too wide, but I like it. She, is dark—the sort of girl who wears tawny colors well. She has brains and humor and in responsiveness is not even second to Eric. Her mother, my daughter Millicent whom you will of course remember, is foolishly trying to goad her into marriage. How I pity youth! It’s so vulnerable! Judy tells me she sometimes wakes at night in a sort of fever, hagridden by the thought that she may have made a mess of her life by not marrying this man or that, fearful that she may never meet the right one at all, hating the thought of spinsterhood, and, she says, seeing nothing else for it.

“‘What,’ you may ask, ‘are all the young men about?’ Well, we lost many of our best in the war, as you and I know full well, and Judy expects—everything—And why not, as she has everything to give? She is not a girl to make concessions easily. Noel, her younger brother, is a great joy to her. Do you remember Noel, or can you only remember Judy? He was a dear little boy in those days, with his prickly, unusual notions, and his elfishness. He is not exactly good-looking, but his height, and his extremely attractive smile make him at least noticeable. He lost his left arm in France, and is now finding it very difficult to fit into a job. His health was so bad before the war that he had never settled down to anything, and the doctors had frightened him and all of us into the belief that a severe winter cold would kill him. Then the war came, and three winters in the trenches made a new man of him.

“Gordon, of course, went back to the Foreign Office, where he seems perfectly happy. He will never fit his grandfather’s shoes, however. Robert had more wit in his little finger than Gordon has in his handsome head—but it is a very handsome head.

“Do you know that I am practicing great self-restraint? I have hardly mentioned your godson Eric—for fear, perhaps, of saying too much. He was away at school when you were last here, so he must be a very shadowy figure to you. He might have been like a son to you all these years, if only you had not cut yourself adrift from us all. For five years, you say, you have been almost within a day’s journey of England without once crossing the Channel. And yet time was when London was like a ball at your feet. Your great fault, Stephen, is that you take defeat badly. I still believe that you could have turned your political reverse at least into victory if you had stayed.

“At forty-one Eric is very like what Robert was at that age, but more dynamic. Keep that word in mind if you would know him. He infuses life into me through his voice, through his smile, through his intensely blue eyes. He is impetuous and headlong—but headlong always on the side of fairness. He has his father’s quick grasp of things. He is tremendously interested in what you say—in what he says—and in you. When he smiles he makes you smile, when he laughs you must laugh too. He treats me as if I were an interesting old friend whom he likes, as well as his mother whom he loves.

“His wife—he married Louise Broughton, the daughter of old Admiral Broughton—doesn’t in the least understand him. If I have a regret in the world it is that. But I will tell you more about her another time.

“And now a few words about Millicent whom you knew as a sedate young matron. She is still sedate. She is in fact the very embodiment of all that is correct and conventional (I almost said and dull) in the English character. By that I mean that she is always well-poised and completely mistress of herself whether at Court or in her nightdress in an open boat. (Where indeed she was, poor thing, for she was torpedoed crossing from America during the war. She had gone there to raise funds for the Belgians. An eye-witness told me she presided all the time, especially when it came to handing round the rum and biscuits. She was always a good, if stiff, hostess. He said that her nightdress, barely covered by a waterproof and a lifebelt, became by some miracle of deportment a quite proper and suitable garment, and made the women who were wrapped in furs look overdressed. I can imagine it perfectly.)

“I have never outgrown a feeling of amazement at having achieved anything as correct as Millicent. She is always certain she is right, and she never sees obstacles. When Gordon, Eric, and Noel went to the war she never worried, but looked quite calmly to their safe return, completely ignoring the awful and uncertain ground between. I believe she thought that the Almighty had a special mission to look after Pendletons and Gregorys. It seems she had some grounds for her belief, only Judy says she forgot to concentrate on Noel’s arm.

“John, her husband, is as negligible as ever. I cannot think what you found in him to dislike, unless you, like Nature, abhor a vacuum.

“As for Connie—my poor Connie! Stephen, I don’t know where she is, nor whether she’s alive or dead.

“Get better of your gout and the other things, and come to England. After all, there is no place like it. Although we are in the midst of winter and coal is scarce and dear, and though the descendants of the daughters of the horseleech have multiplied exceedingly and cry louder than ever, ‘Give, give, give!’ And although even the children nowadays seem to lisp in grumbles, for the grumbles come, it is still the best country in the world and you must come back to it and take it to your heart again before—but you hate the thought of that, so I won’t say the words.

“I will write again next week; there is so much to tell you. So good-bye, for now.

“Claire.”

[CHAPTER II]

Dawson thought her mistress must have begun to write her “memoyers,” she wrote so long. She said as much to Judy and Noel when they came to pay Madame Claire a visit the next day. They were much interested in the news. Judy remembered “Old Stephen,” as she had called him years ago, and identified him by describing a mole that he had on one cheek. It was her first experience with moles, and for a long time after she confused that little mound on his face, with the bigger mounds the moles made in the lawn, and thought that a much smaller animal of the same species must have been to blame for it.

As a child she had an extraordinary memory—a memory that seemed to go beyond the things of this life. She came trailing clouds of glory in a way that used to alarm her mother and delight her grandmother. Millicent was quite shocked at a question of hers when she was four.

“Mummy, whose little girl was I before I was yours?”

Of course Millicent answered:

“Little silly, you’ve always been my little girl.”

But Judy wouldn’t hear of it, and shook her head till the curls flew.

When her grandmother questioned her about it, she would only repeat:

“It was another mummy under the big tree.”

Millicent was convinced that she only said it to annoy.

Noel too had little peculiarities as a child. Loud music always hurt his eyes, he said, and when he heard a noisy brass band he would shut them tightly and cry out:

“It’s hideous! It’s so red. I hate that color.”

He always saw color in music and heard music in color, and never knew that he was different from other people until he went to school, and there the boys teased him out of it. Think of the individual oddnesses that are strangled (for better or for worse) in school! Limbo must be full of childish conceits and strange gleams of knowledge.

On that particular afternoon the two of them amused their grandmother even more than usual. They had no secrets from Madame Claire, which of course is the greatest compliment the young can pay to the old.

The subject of Judy’s spinsterhood was introduced by her brother. She had refused a friend of his a week before, and he pretended that the situation seriously alarmed him.

“There’s not a man on the tapis at present,” he told Madame Claire. “She’s given poor old Pat Enderby his walking papers, and I’m hanged if I know what she’s going to do now. There isn’t even a nibble that I’m aware of.”

“My dear boy,” said Judy from the other end of the sofa, “I’ve got till I’m thirty-five. That’s nearly eight years. If I don’t find somebody by that time, I’ll know I’m not intended for matrimony.”

“Every woman is intended for matrimony,” said her brother judicially.

“That’s nonsense. And anyway,” Judy defended herself, “I’ve no intention of rushing about looking for a husband. I’m quite content to stay single as long as I have you.”

“Rot,” said Noel unfeelingly. “I want a lot of nephews and nieces, and Gordon’s would be such awful prigs.”

“So might mine be,” she retorted. “There’s no telling, apparently. Who’d think that Mother was Madame Claire’s daughter?”

“Well, if they were prigs, their Uncle Noel would soon knock it out of them. Besides, provided you don’t marry a prig—which heaven forbid, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be regular young devils.”

“You seem to be well up in eugenics, Noel,” observed Madame Claire, her eyes twinkling. She was sitting near the fire in an old chair with a high, carved back. She loved their nonsense, and liked to spur them on to greater absurdities.

“He thinks he is,” Judy said. “But honestly, spinsterhood is fast losing its terrors for me. One ought to be proud of it, and put it after one’s name, like an order of merit. I shall begin signing myself, ‘Judy Pendleton, V.F.C.’ Virgin From Choice. Doesn’t it sound charming?”

“Horrible!” exclaimed Noel. “I certainly wouldn’t advertise the fact. I think spinsterhood is awful. I believe I’d rather see you a lady of easy virtue than a spinster, Judy.”

“Really, Noel!” cried Judy. “And before Madame Claire!”

“She doesn’t mind,” scoffed Noel. “Besides, she agrees with me. Don’t you, Madame Claire?”

She appeared to consider the question.

“I think spinsterhood would be less dull, in the long run,” she answered. “After all, no one is freer from ties—if that is a desirable thing—than the modern unmarried woman.”

“Of course,” Judy seconded her. “Noel’s point of view is ridiculously young. Personally I could be quite content if I had some money of my own, freedom, and a few friends.”

“Bosh,” spoke man through the mouth of Noel. “If you mean to include men friends, let me tell you that men are afraid of unmarried women over thirty-five or so. They can’t make them out. Neither fish, flesh, nor fowl.”

Judy did not pretend to dislike men.

“That’s rather a dreadful thought,” said she.

Tea arrived at this point, and Noel proceeded to make absurd conversation with Dawson, who had known the brother and sister from babyhood. Absurd, at least, on his part, but perfectly serious on hers. She always asked him how his arm was, meaning, presumably, the place where they took it off.

“Splendid, thanks, Dawes,” he replied. “They’re going to give me a new one soon, I’m glad to say. They make wonderful artificial limbs now, that can do most anything.”

“So they tell me, Mr. Noel,” said Dawson, arranging the tea things.

“For instance,” he went on, “the one I’m going to have knows all about raising chickens. It’s trained specially. I’m thinking of going in for chicken farming, you know.”

“Is that a fact, Mr. Noel?” breathed Dawson.

“Oh, yes,” went on the deceiver of women. “You see, I don’t know a thing about chickens, and all I’ll have to do will be just to follow my arm about, so to speak. It can tell the age of a pullet to a day, just by pulling its leg. That’s why they call a young hen a pullet, you know. As for eggs, it can find ’em anywhere. It doesn’t matter how cleverly the old hens hide them, this arm of mine can smell ’em out as quick as winking.”

Dawson gaped with astonishment.

“I never would have believed it, would you, m’lady?” exclaimed the dear old London-bred soul. ”They do invent wonderful things these days, don’t they now?”

“Oh, that’s nothing,” went on Noel mercilessly. “A chap I know lost both his legs in the war. He never was much of a sportsman, but he made up his mind he’d like to go in for golf. So they made him a specially trained pair of golf legs, and hang it all! the poor fellow has to play all day long now. The worst of it is he doesn’t care much about it, now that he’s had a taste of it. Bores him, he says. But those blessed legs of his, they take him off to the golf links rain or shine, every day of his life; and they won’t let him off at nine holes, either. Has to play the whole blooming eighteen.”

At this point, Dawson’s slow mind gave birth to a faint suspicion.

“Now, Mr. Noel,” she said, her plain old face red with one of her easy blushes, “I believe you’re just having me on.”

“Nothing of the sort,” said he, looking the picture of earnest candor, “you haven’t heard the half of it yet. Why, another chap I know had even worse luck than that. Nice fellow, too—has a wife and family. He lost his right arm. Well, they made a mistake with him and sent him an arm that was specially designed for another chap—a Colonel in the War Office—devil of a fellow and all that. Would you believe it, every time my friend went near a Wraf or a Waac, that arm of his nearly jumped out of its socket trying to get round the girl’s waist? Awkward, wasn’t it?”

Dawson’s expression was almost too much for him.

“Don’t look so cut up about it, Dawes,” he said, reaching for a cake. “It all came out right in the end. He and the Colonel swapped arms, and so he got his own, finally. It was specially designed for spanking the kids, and as the Colonel was a bachelor it was no good to him. So they both lived happy ever after.”

Dawson was on her way to the door. Before making her exit, she turned her crimson face toward Madame Claire.

“I do wish, m’lady,” she said, “that you’d tell Mr. Noel there’s some things that ought to be sacred. And I’ll say this, Mr. Noel. The arm you want is one that’ll pinch you when you tell fibs.”

“Good old Dawes,” commented Noel between mouthfuls. “She generally manages to get her own back.”

Judy and Noel were much interested at this time in Eric’s matrimonial affairs. Noel especially was convinced that he and Louise were on the verge of a smash-up.

“Something’s got to happen,” he said. “The tension in that house is too awful. Dining there is like sitting over a live bomb and counting the seconds.”

“I can’t think how Eric stands it,” said Judy.

Madame Claire shook her head.

“There won’t be an explosion. Nothing so dramatic. What I dread most isn’t a smash-up, but a freezing-up. Like the Nortons’, Judy. Do you remember how they avoided each other’s eyes, and never laughed, nor even smiled? Their very faces became frozen. It was terrible.”

“It would take a considerable frost to freeze Eric,” Judy remarked with a laugh.

“Fortunately,” assented her grandmother. “What I most admire about him is that he’s always ready to discuss peace. He’s always hoping for signs of friendliness from the enemy.”

“She treats him like a red-headed stepson,” Noel said indignantly. “If he’d only begun by beating her now and then——“

Madame Claire felt bound to make out a case for her daughter-in-law.

“She married the wrong man—for her—that’s all,” she said.

When Noel and Judy had gone, Madame Claire sat thinking about Eric and his unfortunate marriage. He was, as she had called him in her letter, dynamic. He was as impulsive and full of the love of life as his wife was joyless and cold. His chief charm lay in his perfectly sincere interest in everything and everybody. His mind was as elastic as his muscles, which were famous at Oxford, and while his wife found most things rather tedious, to him there was nothing old under the sun.

He thought he had married a charming girl, and indeed, for a while, she had charm. During his impetuous pursuit of her—for some instinct told her that the more she eluded him, the more eagerly he would pursue—she assumed a delicate sparkle that became her well. He could even remember a day when she threw out an alluring glow at which a hopeful lover might warm his hands, but it soon died, and the sparkle with it. Love may have told her how to spread the net, but of the cage in which to keep him she knew less than nothing.

Madame Claire understood better than any one else that he felt ties of the spirit far more than he felt ties of the flesh. That peculiarity he had inherited from her, for she had often been heard to say that she loved Eric because he was Eric and not because she had borne him. She declared that her affection for Judy and Noel was entirely due to their own charm and attraction for her, and had nothing to do with the fact that they were her grandchildren.

“Though I am very glad they were,” she would say, “for in that way intimacy has been made easy for us.”

With her daughter Millicent she had nothing in common but the blood tie, and though she rarely confessed it, there were times when it irked her.

And so her son found it impossible to be the conventional husband who takes his wife for granted. He never took Louise for granted for a single instant, and it shocked her. He treated her with the same courtesy and studied her moods as diligently as if she had been some one else’s wife. When he made her a present, which he liked to do, he expected her to show the same pleasure in the gift that she would have shown before their marriage. As for her, she would have asked for nothing better than to settle down into the take-everything-for-granted matrimonial jog-trot. When the clergyman pronounced them man and wife, he said, so far as Louise was concerned, the last word on the subject. Spiritual marriage was an undreamt of thing. She expected her husband to be faithful to her and to look up to her, because, after all, she came of one of the oldest families in England. So they were rapidly growing apart. Threads had become twisted and lines of communication broken. And there seemed no good reason for it all. There was still a spark among the cooling embers, but some wind that was needed to blow upon it had shifted and gone elsewhere.

There were no children—which was a greater sorrow to Eric than to the empty-handed Louise.

“A figurehead of a wife,” Judy called her, and it was true enough.

They lived in a charming house in Brook Street, which Louise complained wasn’t big enough to entertain in, and was too big to say you couldn’t entertain in. She had left the furnishing of it to Eric, admitting her own deficiency in the matter of taste. She bitterly resented his unerring instinct for the best thing and the right thing; a gift, she chose to maintain, it was unmanly to possess.

“I didn’t know I was marrying a decorator,” she was fond of saying.

[CHAPTER III]

Stephen de Lisle’s second letter, eagerly looked for by Madame Claire, came the following week.

“Dear Claire,

“Thank God for your letter. It’s put new life into me; and I assure you, I needed it. Of course it’s all tommyrot what you say about old age. Who wouldn’t want to run and jump about again, and be able to digest anything, and sit up late at night? I think this having to be coddled and looked after is an infernal nuisance.

“Yes, I was a fool to take your refusal as I did, but that can’t be helped now. You forgive me, and besides, I know well enough the loss was mine. But I couldn’t have endured London all these years. Too many people, too much noise, and too much dirt. Still, I may, gout and rheumatism permitting, come to see you and my godson and the grandchildren yet. I’m glad you remembered how fond I was of that child Judy. Most attractive child I ever saw. Twenty-seven, you say? It doesn’t seem possible. Don’t let her get married in a hurry. She is perfectly right to wait for the real thing. Instinct is the lead to follow, and hers is a right one.

“That was a wonderful letter of yours, Claire. I hope there will be many more. They give me something to look forward to. I haven’t a half dozen young people about me as you have. I’ve one niece, Monica de Lisle. Ugly, churchy, uninteresting female. You may remember her.

“Cannes is delightful, but alas! I am too old to enjoy more than the sun and the color of the sky. How do you manage to keep so young in your mind? Bob used to say you’d die young if you lived to be a hundred, and he was right.

“I’m reading Shakespeare mostly. I find the old ones the best, and he’s the best of the old ones. Omniscient, he was.

“Well, well, write again soon. Don’t tire yourself, but—write soon. Do you remember old Jock Wetherby? He’s here at this hotel. Tottering on the brink, and ten years my junior. Drink—women—all the cheapening vices. Looks it, too.

“Tell me about Judy and the others.

“Yours ever,

“Stephen.”

“P.S.—I’ve got the ugliest nurse in Christendom.”

Madame Claire read extracts from this letter to Judy, who was immensely pleased at the impression she must have made.

“Though what he saw in me, I can’t think,” she said. “My chief points, judging from photographs, were shoe-button eyes, a fringe, and a prominent stomach. But there’s no accounting for these infatuations.”

“I do wish he would come to London,” said Madame Claire as she folded the letter. “After all, London is the best place for old people. They get more consideration here than anywhere else in the world.”

The Kensington Park Hotel certainly harbored its share. On those rare occasions when Madame Claire took a meal in the dining-room she was always struck by the number of white, gray, or shining pink heads to be seen. And the faces that went with them were usually placid and content. In the lounge at tea-time they fought the war over again, they made or unmade political reputations, they discussed the food, the latest play, and most of all they discussed—the women at least—Royalty and the nobility. Not even in the drawing-rooms of the very great were exalted names so freely and intimately spoken of. One old dame with an ear trumpet, who later comes into the story, had once or twice, at Judy’s or Noel’s request, been invited into Madame Claire’s sitting room. Noel called her the Semaphore. From her they learned what it was the Royal family had for breakfast the morning war was declared, or what Princess Mary said to young Lord B—— when he trod on her toe at a dance. How these stray bits of gossip or surmise ever filtered their way down the old lady’s ear trumpet was a mystery to every one. She was an old woman of strange importance. She envied no one under Heaven. She possessed a small black instrument that seemed to be the focusing point of every fine wire of invention. She seemed to be the central office of the world’s “They Say” bureau. No one was ever rude to her, and no one, except perhaps Madame Claire and her grandchildren, ever really disbelieved her, because hardly any one does altogether disbelieve rumors, even when they come from such a source. Her greatness of course was at its height during the war, when she was generously supplied with the most astounding pieces of secret information by obliging young nephews. However, she bore the flatness of peace with serenity, contenting herself with the doings of the great. Of such, with variations, is the kingdom of Kensington!

A day or two later Eric and Louise came together to see Madame Claire. It was so long since they had done this that she felt a little flutter of hope, believing that it indicated a better state of things between them. But she found soon enough that she was wrong. Louise was possessed—in the sense that people one reads of in the Bible were possessed—by her own special demon of jealousy.

She was not jealous of any other woman—it was far less simple than that. She was jealous of the ease with which her husband made friends, of his popularity, of his charm. They had been guests at a rather political house party, where Eric was unmistakably the center of attraction. She was aware that she had been more tolerated than liked, and the knowledge did not contribute to her peace of mind. She was determined to make him feel (on any grounds whatsoever) inferior to her. She could understand and respect superiority of birth, but she distrusted and resented superiority of intellect.

“A most successful week-end,” Eric told his mother, drawing up a chair beside hers. “Their house is lovely, and I am very fond of them all. I should like to think that I am one-half as good a host as Charles Murray-Carstairs.”

“I am glad you both enjoyed it,” said Madame Claire.

“Both?” Her daughter-in-law gave a short laugh. “Candidly I was bored to tears.”

Louise was meant to be a pretty woman, but having a regular profile and an English wild rose complexion, she relied upon them to pull her through, and wore her clothes as if she despised them. Her hair was never quite tidy at the nape of her neck, and her hats of this season were undistinguishable from those of two seasons ago. She took a pride in her lack of smartness, and had a curious and mysterious belief that it was both unladylike and unpatriotic to dress in the fashion. Although she was only thirty-four, her girlishness had gone so completely that it might never have existed. The thin nostrils and small tight mouth suggested the woman of fifty. She met Eric’s eyes with a look of antagonism.

“I’ll tell you what the visit was like, Madame Claire. We couldn’t go out because of the rain, so Eric and Charles had time to ride all their hobbies. We had old plate for luncheon, cricket for tea, and politics for dinner. I don’t know what we had for breakfast. I was spared that by not coming down.”

“You see, mother,” said Eric with a gesture of the hands, “the sufferings of a woman who is married to a bore. I know of no case more deserving of pity.”

“It’s always the same,” went on his wife, “whenever we go away together. But there are always plenty of pretty women to hang upon his words, Madame Claire, so it really doesn’t matter.”

“Now there,” interrupted Eric with a smile, “there you are wrong. Never in my life have enough pretty women hung upon my words to satisfy me. I should like to see hundreds of them so hanging, and the prettier the better. Inaccuracy,” he added, turning to his mother, “is one of Louise’s greatest faults.”

“Well, Louise,” said Madame Claire, putting a hand in one of Eric’s, “time was when you led and others followed. You never used to be shy. If you were bored with politics and old silver——”

“I’m not shy,” her daughter-in-law answered. “I think subjugated would be nearer the mark.”

Eric took this up humorously.

“I have subjugated Louise,” he said with mock pride. “I’m willing to wager that no other man could have done it under fifteen years, and it has taken me only eight. And I’ve never once used the whip. Simply and solely the power of the eye. I subjugate all my wives,” he added. “I am a terrible fellow.”

He picked up and examined an old spoon that lay on Madame Claire’s table, and was about to change the subject, when his wife’s cold voice interrupted him.

“Oh, I don’t claim that you’re any worse than the general run of husbands.”

“Thank you, my dear. I can only suppose that you took one to yourself in a moment of weakness.” Then, throwing off his annoyance:

“What a charming spoon! It’s Charles the Second. You’ve never shown me this.”

“Judy gave it to me the other day,” said Madame Claire, her face brightening. “She’s very clever at picking up these things. But then—who taught her?”

“Ah, well, you can’t teach everybody,” he answered, turning it over in his fingers.

“You can’t, for instance, teach your wife,” threw in Louise. “But there’s one thing I have learnt since my marriage, Madame Claire, and that is my limitations.”

“You underrate yourself, Louise,” said Madame Claire calmly. “Do tell me about Gordon. Noel and Judy believe he’s really interested in Helen Dane. Do you think he is?”

“He’s there a great deal,” answered Eric, “but then that may mean nothing. Ottway, her father, is a good sort, but pompous.”

“Lord Ottway has dignity, if that’s what you mean,” said Louise. “I hope Gordon does marry Helen. It would be very suitable.”

“As for suitable—I don’t know,” said Madame Claire, musingly. “The girl seems a little hard—self-sufficient. Still, I don’t dislike her.”

“I only wish Judy would do as well,” Louise went on. “She’s almost certain to throw herself away on some nobody.”

“If he were a nice nobody I shouldn’t mind,” said Madame Claire.

When Louise got up to go, Madame Claire followed her into the bedroom where her fur coat was. She longed to say something to her. She felt that the words existed that might soften that bitter mood, but she could not find the right ones. She was sick at heart with anxiety. She knew that Eric’s patience was at breaking point, and that he found his wife’s sarcasm hard to bear. Louise had only lately resorted to sarcasm—that passing bell of love—and yet, underneath it all, Madame Claire felt that she loved him, and longed to be different, but that something—some strange twist in her nature—would not let her. She seemed to her like a woman pushing her frail boat farther and farther out into a dangerous current, and all the time crying weakly and piteously for help. She doubted if that cry reached any ears but hers.

“I am the only one who can help her,” she thought, and at the same time sent up a prayer to the god who understands women—if such there be.

A few days later she sent Louise a note, asking her to come and see her.

“If I can only avoid being mother-in-lawish,” she thought, “I may be able to accomplish something.”

Louise found her sitting in her high-backed chair beside a wood fire. The room was full of the scent of freesias, and she wore a few of them in the front of her gray dress.

When Louise had put aside her wraps, Madame Claire began to say what she had to say without any unnecessary preliminaries.

“Louise, I particularly wanted a talk with you to-day. I hope you’ll be very frank with me, as I mean to be very frank with you.”

“I think you’ll always find me quite willing to be frank,” replied the younger woman.

“Very well then. Perhaps you’ll tell me this. Is Eric doing everything he possibly can to make you happy?”

Louise raised her eyebrows.

“What an odd question! Yes, I suppose he is—as well as he knows how. Why?”

“Because it isn’t hard to see that you’re not happy, and it makes me very sad.”

“I suppose people do notice it,” said Louise. “I can’t help that. I’m not happy.”

“Just what I thought. Well, can you tell me the cause of it? Eric has succeeded in a good many things, and I don’t like to see him make a failure of his marriage.”

“I suppose not.”

“You two ought to be happy. You have everything; you married for love, presumably. I’m sure you’ve done your part. It must be Eric’s fault in some way.”

Louise began pulling off her gloves, her chin suddenly trembling like that of a child who is about to cry.

“It’s nobody’s fault, I suppose. We’re simply not suited to each other. Eric should have had a wife who’d be willing to sit at his feet all day long, and tell him how wonderful he is. A sort of echo.”

“Are you sure that would please him? And suppose it did—after all——”

“No!” she said with determination. “There are plenty of other people to tell him what fine speeches he makes, and how clever he is. I’m not going to be one of them. He’ll hear the truth from his wife, whether he likes it or not.”

“So you don’t think he makes good speeches?” persisted Madame Claire gently.

“I dare say he does, but——”

“I thought you said he would hear the truth from you. If he does make a good speech, I should think he’d love to hear you say so. If you do believe in him and in his ability, Louise, I wish you would let him know it. I don’t believe you have any idea how much it would mean to him.”

Louise got up and walked to the window.

“I have his ability and his cleverness thrown at me by his admirers year in and year out,” she said. “I’m sick to death of it.”

“And are you the only one who never encourages or praises him?” asked Madame Claire. “A man must find that rather bitter.”

Louise turned from the window with an abrupt movement.

“I wish him to know that he can’t have admiration and flattery from every one. It will be the ruination of him.”

“Ah! I thought so. So it’s really for his good?”

”Well, as I promised to be frank, no; I don’t suppose it is. But I can’t help it. Things have always been made too easy for him. Why should he be such a darling of the gods? Life isn’t easy and pleasant for me. Why should it be for him?”

“I see.” Madame Claire laughed suddenly. “Forgive me, Louise, but there’s something rather funny in it.”

“In what?”

“In your wanting to be a sort of hair shirt. Oh, dear me, I don’t know why I laughed. Only, my dear, there’s so very little happiness in the world. I’d forgotten there were good people going about trampling on it.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“I think I’d better go away for a while,” said Louise finally.

“Do!” urged Madame Claire. “It would be an excellent thing for both of you. Stay away from Eric long enough to be glad to see him when you get back.”

“If I were,” said Louise, “I’d never give him the satisfaction of knowing it.”

Madame Claire called once more on the deity who understands women.

“And yet, Louise,” she said, with all her courage, “you love him. You love Eric. I know you do. Some day you may find out how much, and it may be too late. That will be the tragedy. You’ll know that you had only to reach out your hand—you’re like a child, you know. Have you ever seen a child while playing with other children, receive some fancied slight, and withdraw, hurt? I have. The other children don’t even know what the trouble is, and they go on with their game. The hurt child stands apart, lonely and miserable. They call her presently to come and join them, and she longs to go, but can’t—can’t! Something won’t let her. Oh, I know, I know! I must have been that child once. I know what she feels. She stands there kicking at a stone, longing, yes, longing to go out into the sunshine again and play. She knows that game better than they do. They even call to her to come and lead them. But she can’t. She sulks. She doesn’t want to sulk. She suffers. And then the nurse comes, and the play is over, and she is taken off to bed. It is too late. It is finished.… Louise! You stupid child! Isn’t it something like that? Tell me, isn’t it?”

Madame Claire’s finger had found the spot, evidently. Louise’s hardness, her bravado, suddenly left her. Madame Claire had never seen her cry before, and the sight seemed to her very pitiful. Her tears made her seem younger.

“It is like that.” Her voice came muffled from the handkerchief she was pressing to her face. ”But I’m helpless. I can’t be different. I tell you I can’t. The more Eric tries to be nice to me, the more I harden toward him. The more I want to meet him half way, the less I’m able to. I’m not hard, really; I long to be different. But it’s too late. It’s grown on me now. I can’t stop it. I suppose I must go on like this forever. My life is a misery to me.”

* * * * * *

It was a prayer of thanksgiving that went up to the god who understands women that night. Madame Claire felt that now all things were possible. Where there had been a blank wall, there was now an open gate—for her, at least. How long it would be before the gate would be open to Eric, she dared not think.

[CHAPTER IV]

“My Dear Stephen,

“I was delighted with your letter, I believe you are feeling better, for you sounded far more like your old self. Especially the postscript, which I thought a most hopeful indication.

“Yes, I remember old Jock Wetherby. Poor old thing! How perfectly ghastly to approach the end of one’s life as a mere elderly libertine. For I feel there is very little else one could truthfully carve on his tombstone. And what a commentary on free will! He once had gifts and opportunities such as are given to few.

“Last night I went with Judy and Noel to see that enchanting sprite Karsavina. I shall never forget it. As a rule one watches people dance, but last night I danced too. I swear that my spirit left its rheumatic old body and sprang and whirled and darted in the midst of all that color and movement with the music splashing and rippling about it. For a few hours I bathed in the Fountain of Youth—that fountain whose waters, I believe, are made up of music, color, and some other ingredients that man with his slow mind has not yet discovered. Certainly I was never less conscious of flesh and bones.

“And why is it, I ask myself, that only certain combinations of sound and color can produce this effect, or give this measure of delight? Suppose, one day, some one were to hit upon the utmost perfection in arrangement of sound, color and form, would it open up a straight path like a shaft of light for our spirits to glide upon into some other world than this? For I feel we are very near that other world when our senses are so stirred and lifted up by beauty. I wonder! But perhaps there is already perfect beauty in the world, and it is only that our spirits lack the necessary freedom from earthly things—or why should we not drift into Paradise itself upon the perfume of a rose?

“At the moment my mind is very full not of Paradise but of Eric and Louise. She has decided to go and stay with her people in Norfolk for a while, where, I fear, she will continue to be unhappy. Things had come to a dangerous pass with them, and Eric is as sore and puzzled as a man can be. Hers is a strange nature. I have tried hard to find a chink in the armor of her bitterness. Poor Louise! And yet I believe she would go to the stake vowing she had been a good wife to him. There are a great many women, I find, who think that if they neither leave nor deceive their husbands they are being good wives to them. I pray that something—God knows what!—will happen, to make a change of attitude easy for her. She would have been happy, poor girl, with a dull fellow to whom she could have condescended.

“I often say to myself, Stephen, that to realize the imperfection of our relation to God, it is only necessary to realize the imperfection of our relation to one another.

“I have made a discovery of late. At least I think it is a discovery. This is it. I believe that while the majority of men are content to be merely themselves, the majority of women are busy playing some rôle or other that takes their fancy or that circumstances suggest. I think that most women are forever conscious of an audience. I shall never forget a girl I once knew—she would be a very old woman now—who pretended to have lost her lover in the Crimean War. I knew—for she made me her confidante—that it was a quite imaginary lover, and that she had invented him to make people think her inconsolable, instead of unsought, as was actually the case. So for years she played the rôle of a bereaved woman, and if she is alive she is playing it yet. Every word, every action was suited to the part, and eventually she must of course have come to believe it herself. When she talked to a girl about to be married or in love, there was always a trembling smile upon her lips, and the brightness in her eye (as the novelists say) of unshed tears.

“‘Ah, my dear, treasure your happiness. I pray you may be more fortunate than I was.’

“And youth knew her for a woman with a sad, romantic story.

“‘A liar, pure and simple,’ you may say. Not at all. Merely an actress playing her part.

“Take the case of Louise—a weak nature overshadowed by a stronger one. What does she do? Creates a rôle for herself—the rôle of a patient, slighted woman, married to a selfish and exacting man. Why? Seen under the microscope we might discover it to be an attempt to attract notice.

“Take the case of my dear Judy. Most of her friends are married. She, being very fastidious, and finding that falling in love is at present quite beyond her, creates a little rôle for herself—the rôle of a very modern, independent girl who finds that sort of love unnecessary to her happiness.

“Then there is Millicent. She too is playing a part, though she would be horrified if I told her so. Hers is to be as much as possible like her surroundings, and to imitate as closely as she can the other women of her set. She has become as conventional and as harmlessly snobbish as they. At heart she is a kindly creature, but since marrying her John she has disguised herself so well as a Pendleton that if I had not a good memory for faces I would find it hard to distinguish her from all the other Pendletons.

“And then there was Connie—poor Connie! Her rôle was that of a woman of great emotions, of devastating loves—a sort of Camille. But underneath it I imagine and hope is still the simple, credulous woman who looked for happiness where happiness was not.

“‘And,’ perhaps you’ll ask, ‘don’t men make rôles for themselves?’ Rarely; and when they do they are insufferable.

“I am very tired and must stop. Tell me who else is at Cannes.

“Accept my affectionate greetings,

“Claire.”

“P.S.—You tell me nothing of your life all these years.”

* * * * * *

Time never seemed to Madame Claire to pass slowly, but it had never passed less slowly than now. Stephen de Lisle’s letters undoubtedly added a spice of excitement and anticipation to her days. She seldom went out (for she disliked fog, and London seemed just then to have gone to bed with a thick yellow blanket pulled over it) and she only asked those people to come to see her who, she said, touched her at the most points. She hated polite boredoms, and unless her visitors pleased or amused her, she preferred to be left to her own thoughts.

Of late her mind had run much upon her youngest daughter Connie, the beauty of the family—Connie who had “thrown her bonnet over the mill,” as the saying was in those days, and run off with Petrovitch, who was at that time first capturing London and Paris with his marvelous playing.

The blow had nearly broken her father, but Madame Claire was made of sterner stuff, and had long observed tendencies in her lovely daughter which promised to lead to this very dénouement. Connie Gregory had one of those entirely beautiful faces which seem so at variance with the tragedies they evoke. She had the prettiest and weakest mouth, and the most irresistible blue eyes that ever gave delight to a painter of pretty women. And she was “done” by all the fashionable artists of the day in every imaginable style of dress and posture. She had a very small share of wit, but with women like Connie, a little wit goes a long way. Her lovely head was forever turning to look down dark paths, and no one but her mother ever observed those sidelong glances. When she was twenty-two, she married a perfectly suitable young man, and Madame Claire hoped that the then serious duties of wifehood and motherhood would fill her shallow little head to the exclusion of dark romancing. But they had been married less than a year when Petrovitch with his leonine head and his matchless playing became the rage of London, and Connie, in company with a good many other women of her type, threw her youth and beauty, like a bouquet of flowers, at his feet. He was able to resist much, but the sheer loveliness of Connie made such an onslaught upon his bored indifference—wherein was mingled the most astonishing conceit—that when his contracts in London expired, he returned to Paris with the emotional and hysterical young wife clinging to his arm.

It was just at the outbreak of the Boer War, and Leonard Humphries, her husband, very naturally seized the opportunity of getting himself honorably shot. When that event took place, as it did some months later, people thought that Connie would at least legalize her irregular attachment by marriage, but Petrovitch produced a sturdy German wife, and scotched all such hopes. So London saw the lovely Connie no more.

Madame Claire bore her trouble with all the philosophy at her disposal. She never tried to avoid the subject, and was quite as willing to talk about Connie as about Eric or Millicent, in the wise belief that wounds exposed to the air now and then have the best chance of healing. For years after she sent letters and often money to Connie through her banker, for she knew well enough where a lack of funds might lead those uncertain steps. For a while her letters were answered, but it was not long before the answers ceased to come. She had heard nothing from Connie for many years now, and she no longer expected to hear. She thought of her as a foolish and unhappy woman, whose punishment would be, here or hereafter, self-inflicted, and understanding human nature as she did, she refrained from bitterness.

As for Eric, he was of the opinion that the world suffers less on the whole from women who love not wisely but too well, than from women who love too little. Weighed in the perhaps faulty scales of a man’s judgment, therefore, Connie was a better woman than Louise. Connie gave all and got nothing, while Louise took all without a thank you, and gave nothing. But men are always more inclined to forgive the generous sins than the ungenerous.

[CHAPTER V]

“Old Stephen’s” letter in answer to Madame Claire’s second one, contained a great deal that was of interest to her.

“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.”

“No, not Apollo. A youngish sort of Jove, but without his skittishness, or his thunders.”

“I know what you mean. There is something simple and Greek about Eric. It’s nice of you to see it.”

“It’s a great pity he’s my uncle,” remarked Judy. “Do you know, your daughter Millicent has been extremely troublesome lately? I wish you’d speak to her about it. It isn’t only the marriage topic. She wants me to pattern myself after the tiresome daughters of her most tiresome friends. You know the sort of girls I mean. They come out in droves each year, and play tennis in droves, and get married in droves, and have offspring in droves, and get buried beside their forefathers in droves. It’s so dull. I hate doing things in droves.”

This amused Madame Claire.

“Individualists have rather a bad time of it in your mother’s particular set,” she said. “Of course even I want you to marry, because I think you’d be happier in the long run; but not until you find some one you can’t do without.”

“I have a sort of presentiment,” Judy told her, flushing, “that if I ever do marry it will be some one undesirable. That is,” she hastened to explain, “undesirable from mother’s point of view.”

“But not necessarily from mine?” inquired Madame Claire.

“Not necessarily,” returned Judy.

She walked from the hotel to the house in Eaton Square where the Pendletons had lived ever since Noel was born, feeling that the world was a very blank sort of place at the moment. Having done vigorous war work for nearly five years, she was missing it more than she knew. Millicent could and did respond to the call of patriotism, and had seen her sons go forth to war like a Spartan mother; but why her only daughter should continue to do work long after the coming of peace, and when she had a comfortable home, social duties and flowers to arrange, was more than she could understand. So Judy, weary of argument, stayed at home, paid calls and arranged flowers. She felt something of an impostor, too, telling herself that she had cost her parents a great deal, and they were not getting their money’s worth. She had been educated and given an attractive polish for one purpose—to attract and wed a suitable man of a like education and polish. Being honest to the backbone she was distressed about it. She had not fulfilled her side of the contract, and her parents had, to the best of their belief, more than fulfilled theirs.

She avoided the drawing-room where there was tea and chatter, and hurried to her room, which Noel called “The Nunnery,” because of its austere simplicity. The white walls, quaint bits of furniture, and stiff little bed suggested the sixteenth century. The rest of the house was Millicent’s affair, and was “done” every few years in the prevailing mode by a well-known firm of decorators.

Noel wandered into her room soon after she reached it, and while she took off her hat and coat, he sat on the foot of the bed, which, if any one else had done it, would have seriously annoyed her.

“How’s Claire?” he asked.

“Wonderful as ever. She’s got more common sense, Noel, than the rest of the family put together. What do you think? She’s heard about Aunt Connie, through ‘Old Stephen.’ He saw her in Cannes.”

“Connie?” He whistled his astonishment. “The erring aunt! What’s she doing in Cannes?”

“She seems to have married some awful bounder, fairly recently. A Count Somebody. And she’s fearfully unhappy.”

“Why doesn’t she come home? Afraid of public opinion, and mother?”

“Well—can you wonder? She has no friends left, I suppose. It must be pretty awful for her. Of course you’ll say she’s made her own bed——”

“On the contrary, I wasn’t going to say anything so trite. What do you take me for? I’d trot her round like anything if she came here. It isn’t everybody who’s got a beautiful, notorious aunt.”

“I’m rather curious to see her,” admitted Judy. “Though I don’t suppose we’d like her particularly. She must be rather a fool to do what she did.”

“She couldn’t help it,” Noel defended her. “If you’re a certain type—well, you just are that type, and you act accordingly. That’s what she did.”

“Nonsense, Noel,” protested Judy. “That’s a useless, easy sort of philosophy. According to that, no one can help anything they do.”

“No more they can, if they’re the sort of people who do that sort of thing. When they get over being that sort of people they’ll act differently, but not before.”

“That’s a hair-splitting sort of argument,” said Judy.

“Any more than you can help being a spinster,” he explained, developing his theory. “Being the spinster type, you act accordingly. When you pull yourself together and make up your mind to be another type, you’ll cease to be a spinster. But not before.”

Judy sat down, facing him. It always amused her to discuss herself with Noel.

“Am I the spinster type?” she asked.

“Well, aren’t you? It’s fairly obvious. Look at this room!…”

“My dear boy,” she retorted, “I’d have a room like this if I had ten husbands—or even lovers, for that matter. You’ll have to do better than that. How else am I the spinster type, apart from my room?”

“You’re a spinster in your mind,” he asserted. “You think celibately.”

“Oh, now you’re being too ridiculous!” she scoffed.

He crossed his long legs and lit a cigarette.

“My dear girl, you don’t understand thought. What you think, you are.”

“You think you’re a second Solomon,” said his sister, “but you’re not.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I disagree. I am entirely modern in my thoughts. I don’t wish to be anything else. I’m not like Eric. Eric thinks we have had the best. I think we are always having the best. But to return to you.”

“Yes, do return to me. I didn’t mean to cause a digression. How can I stop being the spinster type?”

“By not hemming yourself in so much. You surround your femininity with barbed-wire entanglements.”

“Really? They don’t seem to have kept Pat Enderby out, and some others I could mention.”

“They never got in. That’s what I complain of.”

“Oh, but my dear Noel—you surely don’t think I’m going to turn myself into a sort of vampire just to please you? Not that I couldn’t—I’m almost certain I could.…”

“I never meant that. You willfully misunderstand me. Vampires are all very well on the screen, or on some paving stone in Leicester Square, but they don’t go in our sort of life. No man would willingly marry one.”

“They don’t on the screen,” she said. “They always marry the little thing with curls and the baby smile. Is that what you’d like me to be? Because I honestly don’t think that’s my type either.”

“I find arguing with women very trying,” observed Noel. “They always drag in unessentials, and dangle them before your eyes as if they were main issues. Even you do it. As for mother——”

“Never mind. Let’s get back to the main issues. I am the main issue—or my spinsterhood. What do you want me to do, exactly?”

“Simply this. I want you to cut the barbed-wire entanglements and come out into the open now and then. Men aren’t wild animals, after all. They’re only human beings.”

Judy suddenly decided to drop nonsense.

“Do you know why I keep inside the barbed wire?”

“No. Why?”

“Because any man that I meet in this house has been asked here in the hope that I’ll find him marriageable. And so the fairest—the only decent thing I can do is to let him know as soon as possible that I’m not in the market, so to speak. If he’s a fairly good sort and seems to find me at all interesting, I—well, I put up more barbed wire. Of course I oughtn’t to mind, but it’s all so obvious. I hate it. It was different with Pat. I liked him, and besides, he was your friend … but even then …”

“I think girls do have a rotten time of it,” agreed Noel.

“It’s made me self-conscious,” she went on. “This business of matrimony always in the air. As it is, I wouldn’t raise a finger to attract any man.”

“Not even the right one?”

“Least of all the right one.”

Noel got up and stretched himself.

“Well, old dear,” he said, “I’ll make a prophecy. When you meet the right man—hateful phrase—you’ll cut the entanglements, climb the barricades, and give yourself up to the enemy. That is, if I know anything of my sister Judy.”

“You don’t. But you’re an old darling just the same. Are you in or out?”

“Out. Dining at the club with Gordon. His show! But I’m coming home early. Why?”

“Oh, nothing. Only I’m dining with the Bennetts, and they usually send me home in the Heavenly Chariot, so I think I may as well pick you up at the club.”

“Do. I’ll amuse myself somehow till you come.”

“About ten-thirty or eleven,” she told him. “And be on the look-out.”

“Right-o.” He walked to the door and then turned. “And think over what I’ve said, old girl.”

[CHAPTER VI]

The “Heavenly Chariot” was Judy’s name for the Bennetts’ shining gray car. The Pendletons had one of their own, an elderly and dignified Daimler, but for some reason unfathomable by the younger members of the family, it was never allowed out at night, when it was most wanted. Millicent thought that Forbes, the old chauffeur and ex-coachman, required his evenings to himself, and as Forbes had never been known to object to this arrangement, it stood, and the family relied on taxis, or the underground.

So that Judy was feeling uncommonly luxurious close on eleven that night, when the beautiful gray nose of the Heavenly Chariot thrust its way through the fog that had shut London from the sky for three days past. She loved the movement, the mystery of the dark streets, the soft menace of the fog.

“This is the very essence of London,” she thought.

They turned into Pall Mall, and she was sorry to think that the perfect motion would cease in a moment. What happened next, happened with such amazing suddenness that in three seconds it became a problem already to be reckoned with, a situation to be met as best one could.

They had knocked some one down in the fog. An instant before she had been reveling in that smooth slipping along—almost the annihilation of friction—and now, between the ticks of a clock, some one, because of this inconsequential little journey of theirs, was robbed of health perhaps, or life. While her mind was struggling to accept a fact so hateful, her feet had taken her to the front of the car almost before the chauffeur had brought it to a standstill. Their victim had clung to that long gray nose—clung for an instant and then gone down. Another man was bending over him, drawing him gently into the pool of radiance their lights made.

“Chip!” the other man was saying. “Chip, old man, are you badly hurt?”

There was no answer. Judy put her arm under the limp man’s shoulder, and they raised him up. He stood swaying between them.

“Take him to the car,” she said.

A constable (who seemed nebulous all but his buttons, which the light caught) loomed up out of the blackness, and demanded names and addresses. Mills, the chauffeur, seemed unable to cope with the disaster, which he considered had come upon them ready-made, out of the night.

“It was my friend’s fault entirely,” said the other man. “He started to cross without looking.”

“Can’t be too careful a night like this,” remarked the constable, making entries in his notebook.

The victim suddenly straightened himself and said in a thick voice, “I’m perfectly all right.” Then he became limp again.

It was at this moment that Noel arrived, having been keeping a look-out, as instructed by Judy. The wail of metal-studded tires being brought to a sudden stop had attracted his notice, and he came out to see what was up. The constable, observing his empty sleeve, addressed him as Captain, and things began to progress. Like many another policeman who has to do with street crossings, this one considered women biological absurdities. Mills and the victim’s friend got “Chip” into the car and made him as comfortable as possible. Noel sat outside with Mills, and Judy sat beside the injured man, overcoming an almost uncontrollable impulse to draw that bending head down to her shoulder.

For the belief had come to her, at the moment when she saw Chip’s white face in the glare from their lamps, that they had chosen the nicest man in all London to knock down.

His friend, who sat sideways in one of the small seats, introduced himself as Major Stroud, and the victim, on whom he kept an anxious eye, as Major Crosby.

“He’ll be all right as soon as we get him home and to bed,” he assured Judy. “It’s too bad, but you’re not in any way to blame. Saw the whole thing, so I know. Crosby’s always walking into things. He’s everlastingly thinking about that book of his. I tried to grab his arm, but it was too late.”

“How badly do you think he’s hurt?” She could hear the injured man’s laborious breathing, and was heartsick.

“Oh, just a knock on the head, I expect, against that curb. Thank Heaven it was no worse. Your chauffeur did splendidly. Can’t think how he avoided running over him.”

“But a knock on the head may mean——”

“Now don’t you worry about it, Miss——”

“Pendleton,” Judy said.

“Miss Pendleton. I’ll ring up the doctor as soon as we get to his rooms. He’s pretty tough—aren’t you, Chip old man?”

He put an affectionate hand on his friend’s knee. At that moment Chip swayed suddenly toward Judy’s fur-wrapped shoulder.

“Better let me sit there, Miss Pendleton,” suggested Major Stroud. “He’s no light weight.”

“It’s all right,” said Judy. “I was a V.A.D. for years.” She slipped her hand down to his wrist and felt his pulse. “Why do you say he’s always thinking about his book? What book?”

“Oh, Chip’s a writer, you see. He’s always writing something. Just now it’s a book on religions. Queer hobby for a fighting chap, isn’t it?”

The car sang its way up Campden Hill while Judy listened to what Major Stroud had to say about his friend. He was evidently devoted to him. When they stopped at last, purring softly before a narrow house in a narrow turning off Church Street, she felt she knew more about the two of them than she did about many people she had known far longer.

“Make short work of things now,” said the Major in his brisk way as he got out. “Come along, Chip old man.”