Claire Ambler (1928, Doubleday)/Part 2/Chapter 8

by Newton Booth Tarkington

VIII.

HE MADE a movement to rid himself of his rug and rise; but she stepped forward quickly. "No—please! May I sit here a little while?"

"Yes—you may," he said, with his short laugh. "On the whole, I think you may!" Then he added, as she took the chair his sister had left beside him, "What were you glad I liked?"

"Don't you know?"

"You were humming the Pastorale. Did you mean that?"

"Yes, Mr. Orbison."

"You were at the Greek theatre last night, I suppose?"

"Why—yes. I was there."

"How did you know I liked it?"

She made a gesture toward the open window above them. "That's my room. I heard you telling your sister."

"I see," he said. "But what did you mean by saying the Pastorale was meant for me? That's what you said, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"Perhaps you meant your humming it just now was meant for me?"

"Yes—but I meant last night."

"Why, how could that be?" he asked, and he stared at her, seeming puzzled. "I don't know a dozen people in Raona; and certainly not anyone who could sing the Pastorale like that. Most assuredly, I don't know any woman who would be thinking of me when she did it. What do you mean, Miss Ambler?"

Claire stared at him incredulously; then she realized that a free, full voice in the moonlight over a Greek ruin might seem so much a part of the transfiguring night that it would not be recognized when it sang just audibly in the daytime and in another place, even though it sang the same song. The piquant little drama she had just played for him was a failure.

"You American ladies do like to mystify us slower mortals, I've observed," Orbison said. "How could that unknown singer have meant her song for me, Miss Ambler?"

"I——" She hesitated. She had an impulse to burst out at him: "I was your unknown singer! I guess I ought to know who I sang for, oughtn't I?" The words were almost upon her lips; but she withheld them. "All right, then!" she thought. "You wouldn't see it when I took the trouble to show you, I'm not going to be banal enough to tell you; so you can just find it out for yourself! It gives me a secret that I know and you don't; and that's an advantage over you, anyhow." This was her feeling, and it appeared to imply that she engaged in some form of contest. All her affairs with gentlemen, in fact, seemed to involve this sense of contest, which was so persistent that it could be present even now, when the gentleman was an invalid.

"You don't answer me," he said.

She smiled vaguely. "Well—didn't everyone there last night have the feeling that the song and all the rest of it had a special meaning for himself alone? I'm sure I did. That's what I tried to convey by saying it was meant for you. Every one of us could think so, couldn't we?"

"Dear me!" he said. "I suppose we could if we had the necessary amount of egoism. But when that wonderful lady sang last night I got entirely away from my own egoism for a while. You see it's rather necessary for me to think of myself as little as possible. I fix my attention upon other things when I can; and that reminds me—I'm in great fear that I owe you an apology."

"Do you? What for?"

"I think you know."

"No; I don't."

"Yes," he said. "I think you do. You see, it happens that I've become merely some broken machinery about ready to be tossed out on the junk pile——"

"Mr. Orbison!" she cried, protesting; and she leaned toward him, her eyes shining. "You haven't any right to speak of yourself like that."

"Haven't I? It's what I am, my dear young lady."

"No! I know how you got your hurt. Heroes aren't broken machinery, Mr. Orbison!"

"Oh, dear me!" he laughed. "You're very old-fashioned. But what I was trying to say is that even when one can't take part in life any longer, one can't help watching it. Life for an invalid becomes a looking on at the lives of others—at least it does for the kind of invalid I've found myself to be. Well, I've been looking on at you, Miss Ambler, and I think I should ask your pardon for it."

"Do you?" She looked at him gravely. "Why?"

"You're very kind," he said. "Nevertheless, I think I should. Ever since I first saw you one morning here in the garden, I'm afraid you've been the central figure in all my looking-on in Raona. What's more, I've had the feeling that you knew it; that you were entirely conscious of it; and so——"

"Yes, it's true," she interrupted. "Yes, I knew you were watching me—and thinking of me, a little, too, perhaps. Were you?"

"Yes," he said, as a faint colour came into his pale cheeks. "Not thinking of you a little, though. You see as an invalid——"

"As an invalid?" she repeated; and she laughed. "If you did it only as an invalid, perhaps you might owe me an apology, Mr. Orbison! But anyhow, your watching me—so much—and my knowing it—so well—does seem to bring us together as already comfortably intimate, doesn't it?"

"Yes, I hope so."

"Well, then, when you watched me—and thought a little about me—what did you see and what did you think?"

"You'd really like me to tell you?"

"If you think I can stand it—yes."

"Well——" He paused, frowning. "Last night Mr. Rennie and I talked about you all the way to the Greek theatre—and you know I walk slowly! You see, you mystify me and——"

"No!" she exclaimed. "Isn't that lovely! Do I? How?"

"In every way; but in particular about a detail of your conduct that Mr. Rennie and I were discussing, Miss Ambler."

"Indeed? So you weren't just talking of me; you were discussing me! What was the detail of my conduct you had the debate about?"

He shook his head dubiously. "I'm afraid you won't like it. Mr. Rennie had been dining with the Principessa Liana. The apple of her eye, it appears, is her youngest son, who's spent the last two winters with her here at their villa. I'm afraid the princess doesn't think you've been making Don Arturo very happy, Miss Ambler."

"Doesn't she?" Claire said quickly. "Does she consider that my special privilege?"

"No more than you consider it a special privilege for me to be talking to you about it," he returned. "But you remember you asked me to tell you?"

"Yes. I invited it. Please go on. What else did Mr. Rennie say?"

"He said he feared young Liana was taking things rather hard. He's a serious youngster, and once or twice I've been a little sorry for him, Miss Ambler."

"You have?" Claire said; and she looked at him darkly. "I suppose you mean when you've seen him with me?"

"No." Orbison shook his head. "When I've seen him not with you. When he's with you he looks anxious; but when he's away from you he looks like Hamlet!"

"Of course you mean you consider me responsible for how he looks. Is the way Arturo looks the reason I mystify you?"

"It's part of it, yes," the invalid answered. "In the first place, one can't easily imagine so splendid-looking a young man as that being allowed to look like Hamlet. One would think——"

"That I'd fairly jump at such a chance!" Claire finished for him, as he hesitated. "I mystify you because I don't jump, I suppose?"

"A little, yes; but there's something more. You meant for me to speak out, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"Well, one always wonders whether or not American girls are as democratic at home as they are abroad. It's the most curious thing—you seem to think all 'foreigners' equally desirable as acquaintances and escorts if they're able to make what seems to you a presentable appearance. What I could never puzzle out——"

But she interrupted him again, and this time she laughed. "Oh, now I see what you're talking about and I know what you and Mr. Rennie were discussing—and probably what's worrying the Principessa. You mean the baron and his brother, Giuseppe. You're talking about my distressing Arturo by playing around with the two Bastoni, aren't you?"

"I suppose so; yes."

She nodded, laughed again and went on: "You and the princess and Mr. Rennie—and, incidentally, my mother—can't understand how I could waste my time going places with the Bastoni and letting them hang about me here, when there's such a splendid young man as Arturo available. That's it, isn't it? In the first place, you wonder why I don't accept him, and in the second, why I annoy him by seeing something of two men he despises. Well, since that's my mystery, I'll clear it up for you, Mr. Orbison. You've been such an attentive audience, I think I owe it to you. I haven't accepted Don Arturo because he hasn't proposed to me."

"What! But his mother——"

"She didn't tell Mr. Rennie her son had proposed to me, Mr. Orbison."

"But——"

"Oh, dear me!" she cried, and her laughter sounded gayly desperate. "I don't deny he wants to. I haven't let him."

"But that's the same thing, isn't it?"

"No, it isn't. If I'd let him go that far it would mean I intended him to, and I don't. I think that's clear enough on this point, Mr. Orbison. About the Bastoni, the honest truth is that I think they're terribly amusing—I like to dance with 'em and they speak the funniest English I ever heard. Arturo's nice, but he isn't funny—and they are! That's all there is to my mystery, Mr. Orbison."

He stared at her from under deeply frowning eyebrows; and she was amazed to see that he was serious; she had thought he would laugh with her. "You——" he said. "It's astounding! It's like a——" He stopped, frowned even more harshly, and then asked: "Would you care to hear what you remind me of?"

"I'm not sure," she replied. "You don't look as if it were anything very encouraging. But perhaps—since you've begun it——"

"You remind me of a child I saw in Flanders one day. She was a little bright-eyed dancing sort of fairy creature and she'd got hold of some things it amused her to play with. They were new shells, charged with high explosives, and she was having a beautiful, light-hearted, good time with 'em."

"Good gracious! I don't believe poor Arturo is very likely to explode, Mr. Orbison."

"No; he's a gentle boy—patient and self-contained, I should say, no matter what he suffers. You don't understand my reference, naturally. There are things beneath the surface in Raona, Miss Ambler. It isn't as if you were playing around with American young men—or British, either. I wonder if you could attach some seriousness to the princess's anxiety for her son. Mr. Rennie does. He told me that Don Arturo was in a position here that possibly involved the element of personal peril and that your playing around, so to speak, might add to it."

"What!" Claire's eyes opened widely; she was indignant. "I think I never heard anything much more absurd in my life! Is that his mother's idea—and Mr. Rennie's—and yours? That in my playing around I play them off against each other?"

"No, no," he said hurriedly. "That wasn't implied—not exactly."

"'Not exactly'!" she exclaimed, her eyes flashing. "That means it was!"

"No. I don't imply it was in your intention; but it might result in the same effect as if it were."

"How?"

"The Bastoni might interpret themselves as in a manner competitors with Don Arturo for your favour. They might believe themselves his rivals."

"Oh!" she cried. "What utter nonsense!"

"So far as your intention is concerned, it is," Orbison said. "I don't doubt it. But Mr. Rennie has an idea that the two brothers do regard themselves somewhat in that light. And since they are young Liana's bitter enemies politically, and the passions of people here are very different from the kind you've known elsewhere, Miss Ambler——"

"Good heavens!" she cried. "What on earth have I to do with all that? Do you think the Bastoni want to marry me? Both of them? They've been just ordinarily polite, in their way, like anybody else. I know they're against Don Arturo politically; even our valet de chambre talks about that, and says they're determined not to let Arturo organize Fascismo here; but that's nothing I could have the slightest effect upon, even if I tried. I don't think the Bastoni have a personal feeling about Arturo, anyhow. He was hurt with me yesterday because I went to the Salone with Giuseppe, and then he came there and I soothed him down; but he looked so disapproving that the baron noticed it and spoke of it to me. I told him what was the matter and the baron didn't think anything of it; he began to talk of other things right away. If he felt anything personal he'd have shown it then, because——"

"Pardon me," Orbison interrupted. "You say you 'told him what was the matter.' Do you mean you told him that young Liana had asked you not to go there with them?"

"The baron asked me if Arturo had advised me not to go to the Salone with his brother. Well, Arturo didn't want me to go there with anybody; he hates the place."

"But what did you tell the baron when he asked you that about his brother?"

"Why!—I said 'Yes,' of course."

"You did?"

"But good gracious!" Claire cried. "Why shouldn't I? I've just told you it didn't make the slightest difference. We were dancing, and I doubt if he even noticed what I said. As a matter of fact, I'm positive he didn't. I'm not wholly an idiot, Mr. Orbison!" She spoke with agitation and there was a smarting threat of tears in her eyes, in spite of her. This was not at all the conversation she had expected to hold with the invalid gentleman when she had bravely left the pergola to speak to him; and she was bewildered, even chagrined. "I really am not an idiot," she said. "I'm not—even though I see you think I am!"

"No, no——"

"You do!" she said huskily, her emotion increasing. "Of course you do! You think I've done harm."

He lifted a thin hand in protest. "No, no! I hope you haven't."

"Ah! That means you do think so! That's what your watching me and thinking about me, ever since you came here, amounts to! I asked you to tell me what you thought of me, and I get what I deserve for being a bold enough idiot to ask you such a question! You've looked me well over and you've decided I'm a fool!"

Distressed, for she spoke passionately, he gently touched her forearm. "My dear Miss Ambler!" he said. "Don't you remember we began our talk with an apology from me for being so intrusive as to think of you at all?"

She looked at the emaciated fingers placatively just touching her arm; and suddenly the tears that had threatened filled her eyes; but she smiled upon him through them. "You didn't owe me an apology for that," she said. "I've been doing as much thinking about you as you have about me."

He looked startled. "What? No—you mustn't——"

She leaned toward him a little. "I'm not the kind of fool you think I am," she said. "But there are some things nobody can help!"

Then, not permitting a second anti-climax to mar the conclusion of this interview that had begun with one, she jumped up and walked quickly back into the hotel. Emotions varied and conflicting wrung her, yet at the same time thrilled her. They were altogether genuine and far from shallow; but what actually controlled her, in spite of them, was her sense of dramatic effect. Claire's exits were always excellent.