Madame Claire/Chapter 5

by Susan Ertz

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."