Claire Ambler (1928, Doubleday)/Part 2/Chapter 13
SHE was naturally a pale woman, of a uniform whiteness of complexion that Rennie, who was an old friend of hers, had never seen varied; but he saw a variation now. Her whole face showed colour; it was flushed to a tint between rose and rust; and she held this emotional face high, too, with her chin lifted and her slim neck straight upon her slim straight body. She was speaking to Claire in a loud voice.
"My son send me," the princess said. "I would not have come myself. They wish' to give him an opiate for his suffering; but he say to me he will not take it if I will not promise to come to speak to you immediately. So I speak to you his message. He wish' me to tell you that what has happen' to him is from politics. He say you mus' not think there was any other cause. He say you might be afraid there was some other reason; he say you mus' not belief so. That is what he send me to tell you and I have told you, Miss Ambler; so now I will go back to him."
"Oh—please!" Claire cried. "Will you let me go with you? Would he let me see him?"
"No!" the princess answered sharply. "You could not see him. What do you think? A man all beaten and crush' wish' to be coquetted with? I would not let you see him, Miss Ambler. You have made him unhappy enough and you have done him harm enough; I hope from the deeps of my heart that he will never in his life see you again!"
She turned quickly, and as she walked toward the doorway of the hotel, she came near Rennie. He stepped forward, and she gave him her hand.
"We are not going to let him die," she said. "They have already promise' me that."
"I heard you say Arturo was beaten"
"He was. When they finish', they threw him down from the Salto. Everyone know' who is responsible. But there will be no court. Arturo has some friends who know very well what to do!"
Then, with a sombre flash of her dark eyes to his troubled blue ones, she went on; and he joined the group at the invalid's chair.
Claire was weeping. "You know it's true!" she said accusingly to Orbison. "Anybody with any intelligence at all knows he wouldn't have sent that message to me if he'd believed it himself! She didn't believe it! She made it plain enough, didn't she? She meant that her son sent me that message because he wanted me not to be so wretched as I would be if I thought I'd been the cause, and to make me understand that my name wouldn't be involved. Didn't she mean just that? She made it plain enough how she hates me, didn't she? Yes! And you're making something else pretty plain, Mr. Orbison!"
"I?" Orbison leaned more heavily upon the chair. "What am I making plain?"
Claire came close to him, facing him; she disregarded the others. "You know!" she said. "You've thought from the first I was getting him into trouble. You said so, and you as much as said I was a little fool. You did!"
"No—I"
"You did!" she said passionately. "You thought it! You've thought all along that I was nothing but a little fool and now you think it's proved! That's what you're making plain to me, Mr. Orbison, just as she made it plain how she hates me! Do you think I don't see it?"
Orbison answered her sharply. "There's a rather badly smashed young man down yonder in that hospital on the road to the sea," he said. "It seems to me you might be more concerned with him than with other people's opinion of you."
Claire stepped back from him so quickly and awkwardly that it was almost as if she staggered, while her right arm and shoulder oddly made a semblance of the gesture of one who strives to shield his head from harm. And with that she began to weep aloud. "Oh!" she said. "I see! You hate me for—for not wanting you to think I'm just a little fool! Well—all right!" She began to walk away; but she did not go all the distance to the hotel doorway. She stopped, came back toward Orbison; and, in a broken voice, pathetically sweet, like that of a quietly sobbing child, "I don't care!" she said. "You—you did like one thing about me. I never meant to tell you, but you did like one thing I did. I did it for you. You said—you said it gave you the—the loveliest moment in the—in the greatest hour of beauty you'd ever known. It was—it was I that sang at the Greek theatre for you. And anyway, you did say—you did say you liked that!"
Then, her slender shoulders heaving with the sobs that came faster and more convulsively as she went, she ran to the doorway and disappeared within that portal of the ancient house of refuge from the world.
Miss Orbison helped her brother to let himself down into his chair, where he reclined, sighing, with a hand over his eyes; but immediately she made a sign to Eugene Rennie, and walked to a little distance.
"I thought what you promised me might not be necessary," she said hurriedly, as the American joined her. "I thought the poor foolish little thing had done it herself and saved us the trouble, when Charles spoke to her like that. He did make it pretty plain that he saw how absurdly self-centred she was, I must say! I thought then there might be no need for you to speak to her; but since she told him she was the person who sang at the Greek theatre, I'm afraid you must do it. He's talked of it again and again; nothing in his life ever made such an impression on him as that voice, and now he knows it was hers—well, I'm afraid you must go ahead, Mr. Rennie. You'll try to make her understand?"
"Yes," he said dejectedly. "I suppose so."
He waited an hour; then he went to the door of the cell used as a salon by Mrs. Ambler and her daughter, and knocked.
Claire was there alone.
"My poor dear child," he said as he came in. "Do you think you could stand a lecture on invalids and what's good for them—from a fellow countryman?"
She looked at him gently. "My mother's been wanting us to go away," she said. "That's what you mean, isn't it?"