Claire Ambler (1928, Doubleday)/Part 2/Chapter 14
THE little salon was between the two bedrooms, and both mother and daughter slept with their doors open, because of a nervousness Mrs. Ambler felt about her heart. This was an organ without defect; but she was ill-persuaded of its soundness, and customarily spoke of various indigestions she had suffered as "heart attacks." She was apprehensive of such an attack coming upon her in the night, and wished to be able, even with a voice stricken possibly almost to a whisper, to summon her daughter.
Thus, that last night of theirs in Raona, Mrs. Ambler not only could have spoken to Claire in little more than a whisper, but she could also hear a sound as small as that from her daughter's room; and, waking suddenly, toward morning she did hear such a sound. She listened for a little while; then she spoke.
"Claire, are you awake?"
"Yes."
"Are you crying?"
"No."
"It sounds like it."
"Well, I'm not," the daughter insisted.
"I shouldn't think you would," Mrs. Ambler said. "I should think you'd be glad to leave a place where they do such awful things as those ruffians did to poor young Mr. Liana. And you needn't cry over him, either. He's perfectly certain to get well."
"I told you I wasn't crying."
"I think you're very foolish. You know you adore Paris."
"I'm not crying!"
"Very well," Mrs. Ambler said. "How long have you been awake like that?"
"Like what?"
"You know perfectly well what I mean. For heaven's sake, stop that crying and try to get some sleep!"
Claire's voice became petulant. "Please let me alone, Mother!"
Mrs. Ambler sighed and let her alone. No one else could have known in the morning how desolately her daughter had wept, most of the night. Above all, no one would have guessed such a thing of Claire at noon when Miss Orbison came for her and took her to the invalid's cell to say good-bye to him.
He sat by the open window listening absently to the talk of his friend Rennie; the air out over the garden beyond them was bright with the strong spring sunshine; but nothing anywhere was brighter than the eyes of the American girl as she came in and gave them greeting. She was charming, in her lively Parisian travelling dress of blue silk, as knowingly scant as any other of her dresses; her slim and rakish black slippers glittered below the fine long shapes of silk stockings that left some doubt of their being stockings at all; her silken blue helmet disclosed just two small curved glints of her fair hair before her hidden ears; and at her waist she wore a cluster of diminutive fresh pink roses.
She spoke first to Rennie: "So sweet of you to send me these!" She touched her bouquet as she sat down between the two men. "The nicest possible bits of Raona one could take away! I'll keep them, Mr. Rennie; and when you come to New York, some day, if you want a reminder of your lovely garden here, I'll show them to you."
"Dear me!" Orbison said. "That's another advantage owning a villa gives a chap over one who merely sojourns at a hotel—a villa can have a garden. There isn't a florist in Raona, unfortunately."
"Mr. Orbison!" Claire laughed. "I'll remember you without your sending me a going-away corsage!"
"I hope so."
"You know darn well I will!" she said gayly. "I've certainly been brazen enough in showing you the devastating impression you made on me from the first. I've really pursued you in the most unmaidenly way, and I'm afraid I'd keep right on doing it if we were going to stay any longer. Fortunately for you, my mother's been simply dying for weeks to get back to Paris, and yesterday evening she reached such a climax of rebellion she just broke my spirit and I gave in. Lucky for you, I did!"
"No," he said. "I don't think that's very lucky for me, Miss Ambler."
"What? Not even after the scene I made yesterday afternoon because you scolded me for something I darn well deserved to be scolded for? You don't think you're lucky, even after that?"
"No," he said slowly. "Not even after—anything!"
For an instant, as he said this, she looked startled; then she laughed. "Well, then I'm the lucky one to be going, Mr. Orbison."
"Why?"
"Well, you see," she answered merrily, in the manner of a little belle who coquettes with her grandfather, "if I stayed much longer I might be getting too serious about you! Just think how far it's gone with me already!"
"Has it?"
"'Has it!' Dear me! Didn't I confess to you yesterday I sang the Pastorale that night at the Greek theatre absolutely for you? I did! Absolutely! If you don't believe me, you can ask my mother. I told her when I came home that night; and this is the honest truth, Mr. Orbison. I said, 'That nice Mr. Orbison was there and he hasn't taken the trouble to meet us; I think maybe he would if he knew I sang the Pastorale just to make him!'" And with that her laughter tinkled out in childlike merriment. "But it didn't make you. After all my trouble! If I hadn't eavesdropped when you were talking to your sister I'd never even have known you liked it at all!"
"'Liked it,'" he repeated. "I'm glad you eavesdropped, because you know what I felt about it better than if I'd said the same things to you. It was the most beautiful thing that's ever been in my life; and it remains that, Miss Ambler, as long as I have any life. I hope you'll always remember my"—he faltered, then finished huskily—"my gratitude for it."
Then, though only during an instant, her eyes wavered from their careless-seeming gayety. There was a flickering in her expression as of some portended sharp change in it; but the instant passed. "Well, I'm glad," she said; and she flashed to him the side-long insouciant glance, merry and brilliant, of the confessed coquette admitting the worst of her coquetries and impudently claiming the worst of them to be pretty. "Of course Arturo Liana was with me there, and he felt a little gratitude, too, Mr. Orbison!"
Orbison's troubled expression altered into something like a wondering dismay; but he contrived to laugh. "Everybody was grateful. You mustn't think I took so beautiful a thing as that all to myself just because you said it was!"
Claire seemed to be as light-headed as she was light-hearted. "Murder! What I said? My mother tells me, I don't know how many times a day, that if I had to be held responsible for everything I say, I'd be guillotined! But don't you think I didn't mean a great big part of it, for you, Mr. Orbison; I did, honestly! Honestly, I thought of you while I was singing it and wondered if you liked it, and that's true anyhow, absolutely!"
She jumped up briskly and put forth her hand to Miss Orbison. "Good-bye. If you ever do come to New York, remember, you've promised on your word of honour to let us know. Mr. Rennie"
"I'm going to be at the station," he said. "We'll say good-bye there."
"How lovely of you!" She turned to Orbison, and he took her extended hand in his cold long fingers. "Good-bye," she said cheerfully. "You've been absolutely sweet to Mother and me; I'm going to read Plato and everything. I hope you won't forget us quite."
"No," he murmured. "I'll never"
"You're lovely to say so," she said. "We won't forget you either. I never will, Mr. Orbison. Good-bye—and thank all of you for everything!"
Her cheeriness continued till the door had closed upon her and the continuously accompanying sound of half-laughter with which she expressed her high cordiality. But Rennie thought her voice had shaken a little when she said, "I never will, Mr. Orbison"; and Orbison himself, as he sank down upon his chair, had a disturbing impression that her hand had trembled within his loose and feeble clasp.
He sat staring out of the window, while his friend, watching him, thought the look upon his face the most deeply puzzled, and yet the most melancholy, he had ever seen upon it. Eugene Rennie's own look, as Orbison did not observe, was one of growing doubt and sharp compunction—the look of a man who finds himself involved in what he fears may prove to be, in the end, a grave mistake.
Miss Orbison had no such expression. She was serious, but not doubtful; and she began briskly to talk casual commonplaces with the anxious caller.
He stayed with them half an hour longer; then got to his feet, saying that it was time for him to be on his way to the station.
Orbison, who had not spoken since Claire left the room, turned his head and stared vaguely at his departing friend.
"We didn't find out, Eugene," he said.
"Didn't find what out?"
"We didn't find out what was in that pretty little head. And now we'll never know; but I'm sure—I'm sure"
"Yes?"
"In spite of all her lightness and her self-centred youthfulness" Orbison paused again; then he said, "I'm sure it was something fine and sweet—in spite of anything!"