Madame Claire

Front matter

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Chapter I

If you wish to be relieved from the worries of housekeeping; if you wish to cultivate the society of retired army folk, or that of blameless spinsterhood, ask for a room (inclusive terms) at the Kensington Park Hotel, Kensington. It is unpro¬ gressive, it is Early Victorian—though of late that term has lost some of its reproach—but it is eminently safe and respectable.

Although neither of these qualities had ever particularly attracted Lady Gregory—or Ma¬ dame Claire, as her grandchildren called her— she found herself at the age of seventy a candi¬ date for admission. It was out of the question for her to keep up the big house in Prince’s Gar¬ dens after her only son Eric married. Live with him she would not, valuing his love for her and his own happiness too much to risk a menage-atrois with a daughter-in-law—even a daughter-in-law of whom at that time she approved. For Madame Claire not only faced facts squarely, but she had a way of seeing under and around them as well, which greatly endeared her to the more discriminating of her children and grand¬ children.

It was eight years since Eric had married Louise Broughton, and eight years since Madame Claire had come to live at the Kensington Park Hotel. Her little suite was arranged with charming taste. Guests of the hotel were not encouraged to furnish their own rooms, but Ma¬ dame Claire had succeeded little by little in oust¬ ing the hotel atrocities and had put in their place some favorite pieces left from the sale of the house in Prince’s Gardens. Her meals were served in her sitting-room by Dawson, her elderly maid, and there too she held her little court. She had a great pity for other old ladies less fortunately placed, who were obliged to be in, yet not of, the homes of their children or grand¬ children—“Always there, like pieces of furni¬ ture. Whereas,” she would say, “ if my family wish to see me they must come to me, and make an occasion of it.”

A wonderful woman she was then at seventy-eight, with all her senses very much on the alert.

She read a great deal, but thought more, looking out of her windows at the world. She usually dressed in gray or dark blue, avoiding black which she said was only for the young. She was more nearly beautiful at seventy-eight than at any other period of her life, though she had always been a woman of great charm. She had been a loved and invaluable wife to the late Sir Robert Greg¬ ory, whom the world knew best as ambassador to Italy. She often said that for the connoisseur there were only two countries, England and Italy.

When Robert Gregory died, leaving her a widow of sixty, she was speedily—too speedily some said—sought in marriage by their life¬ long friend, Stephen de Lisle. That was eighteen years ago. Refused by her, and perhaps made to feel just a little an old fool, he went abroad in one of his black tempers, and she had not heard one word from him since. It was a great sorrow to her, for both she and her husband had loved him devotedly. The grandchildren, especially Judy and Noel, thought it a delightful romance. They liked having a grandmother who had re¬ fused a famous man at sixty and broken his heart. But it was a subject on which she would permit no affectionate comment. It would have meant so much to her to have had him as a dear con¬ temporary and friend.

One foggy morning in late December when the whole world seemed bounded by the thick yellow fog which pressed against her window panes, Dawson brought her a letter bearing a French stamp. She knew the handwriting at once, though it had been firmer in the old days. She read a few lines of it, then stopped and turned to her maid who was busy about the room.

“Dawson,” said Madame Claire in a voice that was far from steady, “here’s a letter from Mr. de Lisle.”

“Oh, m’lady!” cried Dawson who loved sur¬ prises, “it’s like a voice from the grave, isn’t it now?”

“He’s not well,” continued her mistress, read¬ ing on. “Gout he says, poor old thing. He writes from Cannes, where he’s gone for the sunshine. He has to have a nurse. How he must hate it!”

“And you as strong and well as ever,” exulted Dawson. It was a source of peculiar joy to her when any of Madame Claire’s contemporaries fell victims to the maladies of old age, or that severest malady of all, death. Her beloved mis¬ tress seemed to her then like the winner in a

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great race, and who was she, Dawson, but the groom who tended and groomed the racer? She thrilled with pride.

Madame Claire read the letter through to the end, and then went at once to her desk, with as free a step, Dawson thought, as she had ever had.

“I must write to him immediately,” she said, a flush on her old cheeks.

The letter took her several hours to write, because there was so much to tell him. He kept it, as he kept all her letters, and when he died they came into Eric’s possession, and finally into the writer’s.

“My dear old Stephen” she wrote,

“Nothing that has happened to me in the last ten years has given me as much pleasure as your letter from Cannes . After a silence a fifth of a century long, you have come alive for me again . Stephen, Stephen! How am I to for¬ give you for that silence? But I do forgive you, as you knew I would, and I thank you for the happiness you have given me by breaking it.

“I don’t believe you have changed much, though you say you are an invalid — gout, phlebitis, rheu¬ matism! Infirm, crotchety old Stephen! Infirm as to legs, but very active, I (father, as to brain, heart, and temper. How I wish we might see each other! But you cannot travel f and I — yes, I can, but I will not. I motor gently down to my little house in Sussex in the summer, and back again in the autumn, and that is enough. The rest of the time I dwell in peace and security in three rooms here at the Kensington Park Hotel, and it suits me very well.

“How good it is that we can pick up the threads of our friendship again! As far as I am concerned it has neither lapsed nor waned. You say I dealt you a great blow. But, Stephen, how could you expect Robert’s widow, already a grand¬ mother, to have married again? That, my dear¬ est friend, would have been an elderly folly for which I would never have forgiven myself. You sulked badly, Stephen, and I think now you owe it to your years and mine to laugh. Do laugh! There is nothing like the mirth of old age, for old age knows why it laughs.

“You say you want me to write you about everything that concerns myself. I know you are only trying to cover up your tracks here, for the one you really want to hear about is Judy. I am well aware of your elderly partiality for my granddaughter, with whom you fell in love when she was seven—twenty years ago. But I don’t intend to pander to it at the expense of the oth¬ ers. Judy must take her turn along with the rest .

u Stephen, would you he young again? You, thinking of your gout and your phlebitis, would cry ‘Yes!’ But don’t you see that you would merely he inviting gout and phlebitis again? For myself, the answer is no, no, no! And I have been happy, too, and with reason. Not for any¬ thing would I be blind again, uncertain, groping; feeling my way, wondering where my duty lay, dreading the blows of fate before they struck, valuing happiness too highly. That is life. Now the turmoil has died down, confusion is no more. It’s like sitting on a quiet hilltop in the light of the setting sun. Fate cannot harm me — I have lived. There is nothing to be feared, and there is nothing to be expected except the kindly hand of death, and the opening of another door. Perhaps one is a little tired, but the climb, after all, was worth it, and one can think here, and listen to the cries of birds, and the sound of the wind in the grass. The lie of the land over which one has come takes on a diferent aspect and falls into a pattern. Those woods where one felt so lost—how little they were, and how many open¬ ings they had, if one had only gone forward, instead of rushing in blind circles. . . .

s u Gordon, my tactless grandson, said the other day that no one would dream I was nearly eighty if it were not for the evidence of the family tree. That did not please me. I take as much pride in being nearly eighty as I once took in being six - teen. After all, being an old woman is my role at present, and naturally it is a role I wish to play well. Perhaps you } ll say that I would accept old age less philosophically if I were blind, or deaf, or bedridden. I wonder? Even without all one f s faculties, surely there are thoughts and memories enough to furnish the mind. (Why, why, Stephen, don } t we cultivate CONTEMPLA¬ TION?) And that tantalizing veil that shuts us off from the beyond should be wearing thin at our age, so that by watching and waiting one should be able to catch glimpses of what it hides.

<( And now you will say, ( For Heaven f s sake stop moralizing and tell me about Judy?

“I hate describing people—especially those I love, but I will try. She is lovely in her strange way, with moments of real beauty. I say strange, because she follows no accepted rules. She is somber, but lights up charmingly when she smiles . I suppose her mouth is too wide, but I like it. She _ is dark—the sort of girl who wears tawny colors well. She has brains and humor and in responsiveness is not even second to Eric. Her mother, my daughter Millicent whom you will of course remember, is foolishly trying to goad her into marriage. How I pity youth! It } s so vul¬ nerable! Judy tells me she sometimes wakes at night in a sort of fever, hagridden by the thought that she may have made a mess of her life by not marrying this man or that, fearful that she may never meet the right one at all, hating the thought of spinsterhood, and, she says, seeing nothing else for it.

“ ‘What,’ you may ask, ‘are all the young men aboutV Well, we lost many of our best in the war, as you and I know full well, and Judy ex¬ pects — everything—And why not, as she has everything to give? She is not a girl to make concessions easily. Noel, her younger brother, is a great joy to her. Do you remember Noel, or can you only remember Judy? He was a dear little boy in those days, with his prickly, unusual notions, and his elfishness. He is not exactly good-looking, but his height, and his extremely attractive smile make him at least noticeable. He lost his left arm in France, and is now finding it very difficult to fit into a job. His health was so bad before the war that he had never settled down to anything, and the doctors had frightened him and all of us into the belief that a severe winter cold would kill him. Then the war came, and three winters in the trenches made a new man of him.

“Gordon, of course, went back to the Foreign Office, where he seems perfectly happy. He will never fit his grandfather’s shoes, however. Rob¬ ert had more wit in his little finger than Gordon has in his handsome head—but it is a very hand¬ some head.

“Do you know that I am practicing great selfrestraint? I have hardly mentioned your godson Eric—for fear, perhaps, of saying too much. He was away at school when you were last here, so he must be a very shadowy figure to you. He might have been like a son to you all these years, if only you had not cut yourself adrift from us all. For five years, you say, you have been almost within a day’s journey of England without once crossing the Channel. And yet time was when London was like a ball at your feet. Your great fault, Stephen, is that you take defeat badly. I Still believe that you could have turned your po¬ litical reverse at least into victory if you had stayed.

“At forty-one Eric is very like what Robert was at that age, but more dynamic * Keep that ii word in mind if you would know him. He infuses life into me through his voice, through his smile, through his intensely blue eyes. He is impetuous and headlong—but headlong always on the side of fairness. He has his father’s quick grasp of things. He is tremendously interested in what you say—in what he says—and in you. When he smiles he makes you smile, when he laughs you must laugh too. He treats me as if I were an interesting old friend whom he likes, as well as his mother whom he loves.

(t His wife—he married Louise Broughton, the daughter of old Admiral Broughton — doesn’t in the least understand him. If I have a regret in the world it is that. But I will tell you more about her another time.

({ And now a few words about Millicent whom you knew as a sedate young matron. She is still sedate. She is in fact the very embodiment of all that is correct and conventional (I almost said and dull) in the English character. By that I mean that she is always well-poised and com¬ pletely mistress of herself whether at Court or in her nightdress in an open boat. (Where indeed she was, poor thing, for she was torpedoed cross¬ ing from America during the war. She had gone there to raise funds for the Belgians. An eyewitness told me she presided all the time, espe¬ cially when it came to handing round the rum and biscuits. She was always a good, if stiff, hostess. He said that her nightdress, barely covered by a waterproof and a lifebelt, became by some mir¬ acle of deportment a quite proper and suitable garment, and made the women who were wrapped in furs look overdressed. I can imagine it per¬ fectly.)

“I have never outgrown a feeling of amaze¬ ment at having achieved anything as correct as Millicent. She is always certain she is right, and she never sees obstacles. When Gordon, Eric, and Noel went to the war she never worried, but looked quite calmly to their safe return, com¬ pletely ignoring the awful and uncertain ground between. I believe she thought that the Almighty had a special mission to look after Pendletons and Gregorys. It seems she had some grounds for her belief, only Judy says she forgot to con¬ centrate on Noels arm.

“John, her husband, is as negligible as ever. I cannot think what you found in him to dislike, unless you, like Nature, abhor a vacuum.

“As for Connie—my poor Connie! Stephen, I don f t know where she is, nor whether she f s alive or dead.

“Get better of your gout and the other things, and come to England. After all y there is no place like it. Although we are in the midst of winter and coal is scarce and dear, and though the de¬ scendants of the daughters of the horseleech have multiplied exceedingly and cry louder than ever, l Give, give, give! } And although even the children nowadays seem to lisp in grumbles, for the grumbles come, it is still the best country in the world and you must come back to it and take it to your heart again before—but you hate the thought of that, so I won y t say the words.

“I will write again next week; there is so much to tell you . So good-bye, for now.

“Claire.”

Chapter II

Dawson thought her mistress must have begun to write her “memoyers,” she wrote so long. She said as much to Judy and Noel when they came to pay Madame Claire a visit the next day. They were much interested in the news. Judy remem¬ bered “Old Stephen,” as she had called him years ago, and identified him by describing a mole that he had on one cheek. It was her first experience with moles, and for a long time after she con¬ fused that little mound on his face, with the big¬ ger mounds the moles made in the lawn, and thought that a much smaller animal of the same species must have been to blame for it.

As a child she had an extraordinary memory— a memory that seemed to go beyond the things of this life. She came trailing clouds of glory in a way that used to alarm her mother and delight her grandmother. Millicent was quite shocked at a question of hers when she was four.

“Mummy, whose little girl was I before I was yours?”

Of course Millicent answered:

“Little silly, you’ve always been my little girl.”

But Judy wouldn’t hear of it, and shook her head till the curls flew.

When her grandmother questioned her about it, she would only repeat:

“It was another mummy under the big tree.”

Millicent was convinced that she only said it to annoy.

Noel too had little peculiarities as a child. Loud music always hurt his eyes, he said, and when he heard a noisy brass band he would shut them tightly and cry out:

“It’s hideous! It’s so red. I hate that color.”

He always saw color in music and heard music in color, and never knew that he was different from other people until he went to school, and there the boys teased him out of it. Think of the individual oddnesses that are strangled (for bet¬ ter or for worse) in school! Limbo must be full of childish conceits and strange gleams of knowl¬ edge.

On that particular afternoon the two of them amused their grandmother even more than usual. They had no secrets from Madame Claire, which of course is the greatest compliment the young can pay to the old.

The subject of Judy’s spinsterhood was introduced by her brother. She had refused a friend of his a week before, and he pretended that the situation seriously alarmed him.

“There’s not a man on the tapis at present,” he told Madame Claire. “She’s given poor old Pat Enderby his walking papers, and I’m hanged if I know what she’s going to do now. There isn’t even a nibble that I’m aware of.”

“My dear boy,” said Judy from the other end of the sofa, “I’ve got till I’m thirty-five. That’s nearly eight years. If I don’t find somebody by that time, I’ll know I’m not intended for matri¬ mony.”

“Every woman is intended for matrimony,” said her brother judicially.

“That’s nonsense. And anyway,” Judy de¬ fended herself, “I’ve no intention of rushing about looking for a husband. I’m quite content to stay single as long as I have you.”

“Rot,” said Noel unfeelingly. “I want a lot of nephews and nieces, and Gordon’s would be such awful prigs.”

“So might mine be,” she retorted. “There’s no telling, apparently. Who’d think that Mother was Madame Claire’s daughter?”

“Well, if they were prigs, their Uncle Noel would soon knock it out of them. Besides, proi7

vided you don’t marry a prig—which heaven for¬ bid, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be regu¬ lar young devils.”

“You seem to be well up in eugenics, Noel,” observed Madame Claire, her eyes twinkling. She was sitting near the fire in an old chair with a high, carved back. She loved their nonsense, and liked to spur them on to greater absurdities.

“He thinks he is,” Judy said. “But honestly, spinsterhood is fast losing its terrors for me. One ought to be proud of it, and put it after one’s name, like an order of merit. I shall begin sign¬ ing myself, ‘Judy Pendleton, V.F.C.’ Virgin From Choice. Doesn’t it sound charming?”

“Horrible!” exclaimed Noel. “I certainly wouldn’t advertise the fact. I think spinsterhood is awful. I believe I’d rather see you a lady of easy virtue than a spinster, Judy.”

“Really, Noel!” cried Judy. “And before Madame Claire!”

“She doesn’t mind,” scoffed Noel. “Besides, she agrees with me. Don’t you, Madame Claire?”

She appeared to consider the question.

“I think spinsterhood would be less dull, in the long run,” she answered. “After all, no one is i8 freer from ties—if that is a desirable thing—than the modern unmarried woman.”

“Of course,” Judy seconded her. “Noel’s point of view is ridiculously young. Personally I could be quite content if I had some money of my own, freedom, and a few friends.”

“Bosh,” spoke man through the mouth of Noel. “If you mean to include men friends, let me tell you that men are afraid of unmarried women over thirty-five or so. They can’t make them out. Neither fish, flesh, nor fowl.”

Judy did not pretend to dislike men.

“That’s rather a dreadful thought,” said she.

Tea arrived at this point, and Noel proceeded to make absurd conversation with Dawson, who had known the brother and sister from babyhood. Absurd, at least, on his part, but perfectly serious on hers. She always asked him how his arm was, meaning, presumably, the place where they took it off.

“Splendid, thanks, Dawes,” he replied. “They’re going to give me a new one soon, I’m glad to say. They make wonderful artificial limbs now, that can do most anything.”

“So they tell me, Mr. Noel,” said Dawson, arranging the tea things.

“For instance,” he went on, “the one I’m going to have knows all about raising chickens. It’s trained specially. I’m thinking of going in for chicken farming, you know.”

“Is that a fact, Mr. Noel?” breathed Dawson.

“Oh, yes,” went on the deceiver of women. “You see, I don’t know a thing about chickens, and all I’ll have to do will be just to follow my arm about, so to speak. It can tell the age of a pullet to a day, just by pulling its leg. That’s why they call a young hen a pullet, you know. As for eggs, it can find ’em anywhere. It doesn’t matter how cleverly the old hens hide them, this

arm of mine can smell ’em out as quick as wink-

Dawson gaped with astonishment.

“I never would have believed it, would you, m’lady?” exclaimed the dear old London-bred soul. “They do invent wonderful things these days, don’t they now?”

“Oh, that’s nothing,” went on Noel merci¬ lessly. “A chap I know lost both his legs in the war. He never was much of a sportsman, but he made up his mind he’d like to go in for golf. So they made him a specially trained pair of golf legs, and hang it all! the poor fellow has to play all day long now. The worst of it is he doesn’t care much about it, now that he’s had a taste of it. Bores him, he says. But those blessed legs of his, they take him off to the golf links rain or shine, every day of his life; and they won’t let him off at nine holes, either. Has to play the whole blooming eighteen.”

At this point, Dawson’s slow mind gave birth to a faint suspicion.

“Now, Mr. Noel,” she said, her plain old face red with one of her easy blushes, “I believe you’re just having me on.”

“Nothing of the sort,” said he, looking the picture of earnest candor, “you haven’t heard the half of it yet. Why, another chap I know had even worse luck than that. Nice fellow, too—has a wife and family. He lost his right arm. Well, they made a mistake with him and sent him an arm that was specially designed for another chap —a Colonel in the War Office—devil of a fellow and all that. Would you believe it, every time my friend went near a Wraf or a Waac, that arm of his nearly jumped out of its socket trying to get round the girl’s waist? Awkward, wasn’t it?”

Dawson’s expression was almost too much for him.

“Don’t look so cut up about it, Dawes,” he said, reaching for a cake. “It all came out right in the end. He and the Colonel swapped arms, and so he got his own, finally. It was specially designed for spanking the kids, and as the Colo¬ nel was a bachelor it was no good to him. So they both lived happy ever after.”

Dawson was on her way to the door. Before making her exit, she turned her crimson face to¬ ward Madame Claire.

“I do wish, m’lady,” she said, “that you’d tell Mr. Noel there’s some things that ought to be sacred. And I’ll say this, Mr. Noel. The arm you want is one that’ll pinch you when you tell fibs.”

“Good old Dawes,” commented Noel between mouthfuls. “She generally manages to get her own back.”

Judy and Noel were much interested at this time in Eric’s matrimonial affairs. Noel espe¬ cially was convinced that he and Louise were on the verge of a smash-up.

“Something’s got to happen,” he said. “The tension in that house is too awful. Dining there is like sitting over a live bomb and counting the seconds.”

“I can’t think how Eric stands it,” said Judy.

Madame Claire shook her head.

“There won’t be an explosion. Nothing so dramatic. What I dread most isn’t a smash-up, but a freezing-up. Like the Nortons’, Judy. Do you remember how they avoided each other’s eyes, and never laughed, nor even smiled? Their very faces became frozen. It was terrible.”

“It would take a considerable frost to freeze Eric,” Judy remarked with a laugh.

“Fortunately,” assented her grandmother. “What I most admire about him is that he’s al¬ ways ready to discuss peace. He’s always hoping for signs of friendliness from the enemy.”

“She treats him like a red-headed stepson,” Noel said indignantly. “If he’d only begun by beating her now and then-”

Madame Claire felt bound to make out a case for her daughter-in-law.

“She married the wrong man—for her—that’s all,” she said.

When Noel and Judy had gone, Madame Claire sat thinking about Eric and his unfortunate marriage. He was, as she had called him in her letter, dynamic. He was as impulsive and full of the love of life as his wife was joyless and cold. His chief charm lay in his perfectly sincere inter¬ est in everything and everybody. His mind was as elastic as his muscles, which were famous at Oxford, and while his wife found most things rather tedious, to him there was nothing old un¬ der the sun.

He thought he had married a charming girl, and indeed, for a while, she had charm. During his impetuous pursuit of her—for some instinct told her that the more she eluded him, the more eagerly he would pursue—she assumed a delicate sparkle that became her well. He could even remember a day when she threw out an alluring glow at which a hopeful lover might warm his hands, but it soon died, and the sparkle with it. Love may have told her how to spread the net, but of the cage in which to keep him she knew less than nothing.

Madame Claire understood better than any one else that he felt ties of the spirit far more than he felt ties of the flesh. That peculiarity he had inherited from her, for she had often been heard to say that she loved Eric because he was Eric and not because she had borne him. She de¬ clared that her affection for Judy and Noel was entirely due to their own charm and attraction for her, and had nothing to do with the fact that they were her grandchildren.

“Though I am very glad they were,” she would say, “for in that way intimacy has been made easy for us.”

With her daughter Millicent she had nothing in common but the blood tie, and though she rarely confessed it, there were times when it irked her.

/ And so her son found it impossible to be the conventional husband who takes his wife for granted. He never took Louise for granted for a single instant, and it shocked her. He treated her with the same courtesy and studied her moods as diligently as if she had been some one else’s wife. When he made her a present, which he liked to do, he expected her to show the same pleasure in the gift that she would have shown before their marriage. As for her, she would have asked for nothing better than to settle down into the take-everything-for-granted matrimonial jog-trot. When the clergyman pronounced them man and wife, he said, so far as Louise was con¬ cerned, the last word on the subject. Spiritual marriage was an undreamt of thing. She ex¬ pected her husband to be faithful to her and to look up to her, because, after all, she came of one of the oldest families in England. So they were rapidly growing apart. Threads had become twisted and lines of communication broken. And there seemed no good reason for it all. There was still a spark among the cooling embers, but some wind that was needed to blow upon it had shifted and gone elsewhere.