Madame Claire/Chapter 18
"It won't be wildly gay," said Noel as he saw Judy off at Victoria Station two days later, "but you'll have sun and a change of scene. Anyhow, I have a pretty good hunch that the old boy's going to get better."
Judy was talking to him through the window, feeling like anybody in the world but Judy Pendleton. She, of all people, to be going to Cannes; and alone! Well, nothing ever happened but the unexpected, and this was the unexpected in one of its pleasantest forms. And if only Noel should prove to be right about his "hunch"! . . .
"He must get better! I should so love to see him and Claire hobnobbing together. Write to me at least every other day, won't you? And tell me all about Connie and Petrovitch—only I hope there won't be much to tell—and Eric and Louise, and"
"Anything else?"
"Yes," she said. "Find out what the family thought of Chip. I'm longing to know."
As the train moved off, he walked beside it for a few feet.
"Oh, by the way, I think I've got a job."
"Noel! Why didn't you tell me sooner? What is it? Quick!"
"I'll write," he called out. "Not positive yet. Good-by!"
"It's something that means going away," thought Judy, as she arranged herself and her belongings. "That's why he wouldn't tell me sooner."
The thought of it sent her spirits down considerably, but she made up her mind not to borrow trouble. If he hadn't spoken of it before, it was because he wasn't sure. Life without Noel would be . . . no, it didn't bear thinking of. Time enough to worry when she heard from him. Wasn't she on her way to the Riviera, for the first time? The word had always been a magical one, to her. It meant color, warmth, life. She would see the Mediterranean. And it was her first adventure. Mr. Pendleton had most unexpectedly presented her with fifty pounds, telling her to buy herself some dresses in Cannes. It was very nearly a fortune. Madame Claire herself was paying for the trip, and had given her a little money to gamble with.
"For of course you must play," she had said. "You're sure to find friends there; and even if Stephen dies—which Heaven forbid!—I don't see why you shouldn't stay on for a little and enjoy yourself."
The next day the sight of Marseilles, golden in the sunshine, made her forget every trouble, past and to come. She had an impression of old houses with greeny-blue shutters, and bare plane trees, the twisted limbs of which looked white and strange in the sunlight. And beyond, the incredibly blue water. She could hardly keep her delight to herself as the train wound its leisurely way along the lovely, broken coast. She gloried in the greeny-gray of the olive trees, in the rich, red earth, in the burning blue of sea and sky.
"I should like to live here," she thought, as they passed some blue-shuttered house behind its vines and its fig trees. Or, "no, here!" as another even more alluring showed itself among its terraced olive groves. She thought, with commiseration, of her parents who might have been there too had they cared to make the effort, stuffily going their rounds— "It isn't as though they couldn't afford it," she said to herself. "I believe it's because they want to save for Gordon."
Miss McPherson, a little, calm, thin-lipped Scotch woman, met her at the station in Cannes. She seemed glad, in her quiet, professional way, to see Judy, and as they drove to the hotel in the omnibus, she told her about Stephen.
"It was a slight stroke," she explained, "but we won't be calling it that because Mr. de Lisle doesn't know, or doesn't want to know. He will have it that it was an attack of some sort. But he's much better to-day, and in a fortnight or so, he'll be as well as he was before. Of course that isn't saying that he'll be enjoying robust health."
"Does that mean that he can never come to London?" Judy asked.
"Oh, dear me, no, I wouldn't say that. You'll do him good. And I think he's been here long enough." Then she added with a twinkle in her little gray eyes:
"He was just determined to see you or Colonel Gregory. Between you and me, Miss Pendleton, my poor old patient's very bored here."
Judy nodded.
"I see," she said. "I'm more than ever glad that I came. I'm thankful to hear he's no worse; I was afraid of—something really desperate. We must amuse him somehow. Doesn't he ever go motoring?"
The little nurse shook her head.
"He says it's so dull with just him and me. The poor old gentleman should have had a family. It's dreadful for him being alone. It just takes all the heart out of him."
"Well, I've come to be the family," said Judy. "Oh, what wonderful palms!"
They turned into a driveway lined with them, and up to the hotel. It was an imposing building, dazzling in fresh white paint; and glossy orange trees, heavy with ripe fruit, stood on either side of the entrance.
"Mr. de Lisle's still in bed, of course," Miss McPherson told her, "but you may see him after lunch. And I've promised him he may go out with you in a day or two. In a bath-chair, at first."
She left Judy to unpack, and have her lunch, and hurried back to her patient.
"I shall get on with her," Judy said to herself, "she's human."
At about half-past two she knocked at Stephen's door.
Miss McPherson had told her that he still complained of numbness in his legs, so she was prepared for the sight of the long, gaunt figure stretched out so inertly on a bed near the window. His head was turned her way, and as he held out a long arm, a pair of searching, sunken eyes met hers.
"Judy! Good girl, good girl!" he cried. "I meant to turn my face to the wall if you didn't come. Miss McPherson, place her chair a little nearer. That's it. Judy, Judy!"
"You're exactly the same 'Old Stephen' I remember," said Judy, unexpectedly moved at this meeting, "only gray instead of iron-gray." It was silly to feel tearful. "Do—do I look a bit as you thought I'd look?"
He answered in a lower voice, still holding her hand in a grip of surprising strength:
"You're like your grandmother, thank God! I prayed that you might be. It's the eyes, I think—yes, it's the eyes and expression. I can build her up, around your eyes. You always promised to be a little like her. Ah, my dear, my dear, it was good of you to come!"
"Good of me! You little know what you saved me from!"
"Saved you from?"
"Yes. You—I was simply desperate. I'd begun to hate myself and every one else, except Madame Claire and Noel."
"Madame Claire," he repeated. "Yes, I like that. And what then?"
"I was longing to get away. You see I haven't been out of England since I was sixteen. Except to Scotland, and I don't count that. And I felt—stale. You've saved my life, I think, and now you say I'm going to save yours. . . . We'll have a wonderful time, won't we, Miss McPherson?"
"It will be very nice," said she.
"Miss McPherson tells me you'll be out in a day or two," Judy went on. "I'm looking forward to the day when we can go motoring. There must be glorious trips to be taken."
He turned his eyes toward his nurse.
"What else did you tell her?" he demanded.
"Everything I thought necessary." She pressed her lips together but her eyes smiled.
"I thought you were Scotch enough to keep a secret."
"I can keep them when I choose."
"Judy," Stephen said, "I'm not as bad as I pretended I was. I had a stroke. Yes, you needn't jump, you over there. Thought I didn't know, I suppose. Pish! Of course I knew. It wasn't a bad one, Judy, but I knew it meant no London for me for weeks, perhaps months. So I made up my mind I was going to have you or Eric. You, preferably. Something Claire said made me think you might welcome a change just now, so I made Miss McPherson wire. And now you know."
"You are even nicer than I thought you were," laughed Judy. "And what about Madame Claire? Does she know too, that you're not—seriously ill?"
He moved his head slightly.
"She knows." He smiled, and Judy noticed how his smile lightened his face with its rather tragic lines and hollows. "She said nothing but sudden death or an earthquake would get you away from your family. But I've been pretty bad. Even Miss McPherson admits that. Very bad. And," he said, glowering into the corner where Miss McPherson sat, "I may be worse."
"Well, you won't be while Miss Pendleton's here," said she, "so I'll just be taking a little air. With your permission."
"Bless you, run along! Poor child, she's hardly left me for a minute."
As Miss McPherson went out, he watched her upright little figure affectionately, from under his strikingly white eyebrows.
"A plucky little soul," he said, "and she has borne with me wonderfully. Now, Judy, tell me about your trip. Tell me about Claire, everything you can think of, and about Noel and Eric. Good Lord, how good this is!"
Judy sat and talked till the sky turned from blue to deep orange, and the sun, long after it had dropped behind the sea, sent beams like yellow fingers raying up into the clear color its own going had made; till the lovely Esterel Mountains had grown warmly, richly purple—a purple that seemed mixed with gold dust, and the palms, untamed things that they are, made wild and ragged silhouettes against the sunset.
At half-past four a waiter brought in tea, and Miss McPherson, with color in her cheeks, came in to officiate. Judy had talked herself out for the present, so left the conversation to the other two, who sparred in what appeared to be their customary way. She watched the sky deepen to the larkspur blue of night, and saw the lights come pricking out in the harbor, and heard the yacht bells and far-off voices, and knew that she was very content.
As for Stephen, he took her hand for an instant as she was about to go to her room to rest before dressing for dinner, and said:
"Bless you, Judy! I haven't been as happy as this for over twenty years!" ****** "Could anything be lovelier?" thought Judy as she stood at her window the next morning. The wailing pipe of some street peddler had waked her earlier—a weird, Oriental sound, pleasant to open one's eyes to. She looked out over crooked red roofs and beyond them to gray-green hills, while below, to her left, the white yachts rode in the harbor—the calm blue surface of which was unmoved by a single ripple—beside less aristocratic but more picturesque craft with pointed, dark red sails.
The waiter had brought her her breakfast in bed, but she had carried it to a table by the window, and was having it there. A few moments later the postman walked in—the casual way people walked in and out of her room she thought novel and charming—and handed her a letter from Madame Claire, which was dated the same day she left London.
That wonderful old woman! Judy knew that she, from her two rooms at the Kensington Park Hotel, had more influence on her life than any one else in it. More even than Noel.
Stephen was getting better slowly and with patient determination, but although she could see an improvement in him from day to day, it was not until the fifth day of her stay that he was considered well enough to go out in a bath-chair—a vehicle he despised. His detestation of it was somewhat mitigated by the fact that Judy was walking beside it, and he was persuaded, before they had been out very long, to admit that he was enjoying it. They went past the Casino as far as the harbor, which seemed to Judy more Italian than French, and they walked under the weird maze made by the tortured gray branches of the plane trees, that reminded her of something in Dante's Inferno; then to the market place where she bought persimmons bursting with over-ripeness, and ate them then and there, ruining her handkerchief. Stephen bought flowers, and chatted in his excellent French with the brown-faced peasant women who sold them. They walked along the front again as far as La Reserve, where he promised to take her for lobsters as soon as he was well enough. Handsome cars flashed past them and Judy had just said, "I didn't know the Rolls-Royce was a hibernating bird," when a particularly fine one went slowly by. She saw a man's face looking back at them through the little window at the rear, and in another second the car stopped and began backing.
"Who's that?" asked Stephen gruffly. He disliked bothering with people he knew only slightly, and it annoyed him to have people continually asking him how he was.
A man got out of the car and walked toward them—a strange figure in the sunlight. He gave the impression of heaviness and at the same time of agility. His movements were quick and forceful. He wore a shapeless black overcoat—a hideous enough garment at any time—but there, in the gold light of the southern sun, it seemed to cast a Philistine gloom all about it. He would have passed unnoticed in Wall Street or the City, but on the Riviera in his bowler hat and his dark clothes, Judy thought he insulted the day.
He went straight to Stephen, and the moment he spoke, Judy knew he was an American.
"May I recall myself to your memory, sir?" he inquired, aware that he was not immediately recognized. "I am Whitman Colebridge, whom you last knew out in the Argentine."
"Whitman Colebridge! Of course, of course!" exclaimed Stephen with some geniality. "Well, well! That's more years ago than I like to remember."
"It's a good spell," agreed the other. "But I never forget a face or a name, once I've known them both pretty well. I'm glad of an opportunity of renewing our acquaintance. You were very good to the young man I was then, sir."
"Was I? Was I indeed? That seems to have slipped my memory. But I am delighted to hear it. Judy, my dear, allow me to introduce quite an old friend, Mr. Whitman Colebridge, of . . . of . . . wait!" He held up a thin hand, smiling. "Of Cincinnati."
"Now that's pretty smart of you, sir, to remember that," exclaimed the younger man, who had shaken hands strongly with Judy.
"I don't know why it is," Stephen remarked to Judy, "but in America it's always 'Mr. Jones of St. Louis,' or 'Mr. Smith of Council Bluffs,' or Mr. Robinson of Denver.' One learns to associate the name with the place."
"Which shows," suggested Judy, "that a love of titles still lingers in the Republican breast."
"That's so, I expect," smiled Mr. Colebridge, in whose eyes Judy, it seemed, had immediately found favor. "But what about this old-fashioned vehicle of yours? This doesn't signify that you're an invalid, I trust?"
"I've been a miserable, good-for-nothing old man for some time," Stephen answered, "with most of Job's ailments, but without his virtues. Now, however, since Miss Pendleton of London has come to lighten my darkness, I mean to get well. Yes, distinctly I mean to get well."
"That's fine!" approved Mr. Colebridge. "This one-man Victoria that you've got here doesn't look good to me. I haven't forgotten our trip over the Andes together, sir."
"Ah!" agreed Stephen, nodding. "That was a trip! Pleasant to look back upon."
"Never mind," said Judy, "we'll take a trip over the Esterel Mountains in a day or two. Mr. de Lisle hasn't been out of Cannes since he first came here," she told Mr. Colebridge, "but we're planning some trips for next week."
"You have your own automobile here?" inquired Mr. Colebridge.
"No, no," Stephen said. "We mean to hire one."
"But why do that, sir? Here is mine"—he waved his hand toward his property—"at your disposal. The chauffeur is a native of these parts, and I needn't brag about the machine because you are well acquainted with its virtues. So why not make use of it, with or without its owner?"
"Oh, that's very kind," said Stephen, "but really . . . no, no, we couldn't think of it. I don't see why you should burden yourself with an irascible invalid. Do you, Judy?"
"Perhaps Mr. Colebridge will take us out some day, and see how he likes us," said Judy, who wasn't at all sure that she liked Mr. Colebridge. "But we certainly couldn't commandeer your car, as you so kindly suggest."
"I'm here alone," said Mr. Colebridge, "the machine holds seven, and I don't talk French. So you'd be doing me a real kindness. I'm staying at the Hotel Beaulieu. May I ask where you?"
"We're stopping at the Riviera," Stephen told him. "Come and see us."
"I shall avail myself of your kind invitation. I presume you play, Miss Pendleton?"
"Play? Oh, the Casino? I haven't been yet, but I mean to go, when Mr. de Lisle is better. I've never gambled and I'm longing to."
"I go there every night," said the heavy one. "I flatter myself I know the game, sir. When I'm ahead I quit. And I generally quit ahead." He clapped his hand to his pocket, and then felt inside his coat. Judy expected bank notes to appear, but instead he produced a gold cigar case.
"Will you smoke, sir? I reckon these are superior to what you can obtain hereabouts."
The old man waved them away.
"If they were made on Olympus for Jove himself, I couldn't smoke one," he said.
"Too bad!" commiserated the other, taking one himself. "You used to be fond of a good cigar in the old days, sir."
"Fond!" exclaimed Stephen. "Do you call that fond! I'd sell my immortal soul for one now, if it weren't for my doctor."
"Well," said Mr. Colebridge, turning to Judy, "I mustn't detain you. It's been a real pleasure to meet you, Miss Pendleton, and to see you again, sir. Suppose I come around Monday, and take you both to Grasse? That's just a pleasant, easy little run. Say about two-thirty. I hope you will do me the honor, Miss Pendleton."
There seemed no reason to refuse.
"If Mr. de Lisle's well enough—and I feel sure he will be," she said, shaking Mr. Colebridge's proffered hand. "It's very kind of you."
"On Monday, then. I shall look forward to that with real pleasure."
They watched him, his long black cigar in his mouth, get into his beautiful car again and go smoothly off.
"Well, well!" said Stephen. "That's an odd thing! I haven't thought of that fellow for over ten years."
"Tell me about him. What is he? One of the 'Captains of Industry'?"
"Something of that sort, I expect. We met in the Argentine."
"Don't tell me he was there on a holiday! That man never took a holiday in his life. Did you ever see such clothes? He looked as though he was on his way to a directors' meeting."
"He was just a younger edition in those days of what he is now. He told me, I remember, that he was the forerunner of 'big business.' Connected with some great exporting house, I think. Details have left my mind. But he impressed me. Kind, full of bluff, pushing, selfish, likable. No real humor. Oh, he can see a joke, but that doesn't always mean humor. No philosophy of life—yet. No sense of values. Values, yes! It's an interesting type. Egotistic. But powerful. I knew he'd get on. We had some long talks, I remember. He liked me for some reason. I was able to do him a good turn, I think, but I forget what it was."
"His æsthetic or beauty-loving side is utterly undeveloped," laughed Judy. "Hence those clothes. He's rather terrible in a way, and yet I dare say I might like him if I knew him better."
"You might," mused Stephen, "you might."