Chapter II

Exactly one week later Clodagh arrived in Paris on her way to England. Simonetta Ottolenghi--an Italian woman, who had been in her service as maid for nearly four years--was her only companion; there was no friend to meet or welcome her in the unfamiliar city, and even the dog Mick--the companion of so many solitary hours--had been left behind in Florence until she could conveniently send for him; yet, incongruous as it may sound, her feelings were happy--her mind was free from loneliness as her train steamed into the crowded railway station and she found herself free to drive to her hotel. After all, life undeniably stretched before her, and there was no prohibition against letting her eyes dwell upon the vistas it opened up!

Knowledge of duty done--be the doing ever so tardy--is the best stimulus for the wayfarer in the world's by-ways; and Clodagh, as she stepped from her train on that February afternoon, was conscious of some such reassuring certainty.

In the last two years, life for her had been a thing of physical inaction, accompanied by a subtle process of mental development. The night of tempestuous excitement--when, in a whirl of pain, chagrin, and passionate self-contempt, she had repudiated Venice and her newly made friends--had been the birth of a fresh phase in her existence. With all the ardour, all the enthusiasm, whereof her vivid nature was capable, she had veered from her former point of view to another almost as extreme. The return to Florence, the taking up of existence in the secluded villa, had been like the incidents of a dream; then, in the days that had succeeded--in the early mornings, or the late evenings--as she sat upon the marble rim of the drowsy fountain in the garden, gazed down from Fiesole upon the sleeping Roman amphitheatre, or knelt in a dim recess of the old church of San Dominico, rendered mystical by the smell of incense and the flicker of wax tapers, the dream had shaped itself. It had become a tapestry, into the pictures of which many figures were woven, but where only two took place and prominence--her own and one other.

For in those silent hours the thought of Gore--the remembrance of Gore--had come back to her as tangible things. In that solitude peopled by imagination, she had forgotten the hurt vanity, the bitter disappointment, that had clothed her last interview with him; and remembered only that, seeing fit to reprove her, he had dared to do so--that, seeing the brink upon which she had stood, he had put out his hand to draw her back.

And, standing in this new light, Gore became an ideal, a being apart, endowed with endless power to inspire high deeds. An idealist born, Clodagh was created to make-believe. The make-believes were probably the swaying of an impulsive mind from one emotional pole to the other; but in this case, at least, benefit accrued. She developed a sudden gentle tolerance of Milbanke--an altogether unprecedented care for his comfort and well-being.

The working of this profoundly subtle emotion was far too deep to be even guessed at by herself. And had any student of human nature told her that the new tenderness for the timid, unassuming husband, who made so few demands upon her consideration, arose from the fact that another man had crossed her life--rousing at once her imagination, her antagonism, and her admiration, showing her new depths in the world around her, new possibilities within herself--she would have been both incredulous and indignant.

But no student of human nature visited the villa. And she lived undisturbed in her atmosphere of dreams. Whether the vague, subconscious thought that Gore, away in his own world, might hear of her graver attitude towards life and might secretly approve, ever lent zest to her self-imposed duties, it would have been impossible to say; but certain it is that if the thought came, it came unbidden and stayed unrecognised.

And now Milbanke was dead. And life--not the mythical life of memories, of dreams, even of ideals, but the life of hope and warm human possibilities--was hers, as it had been long ago, before her husband's name had ever been spoken in her presence.

Her mind was at peace, as she drove through the narrow streets of Paris, with their cheerful characteristic chorus of shouting newsvendors, and cracking whips.

The hotel she had chosen was a small one, close to the Place Vendome; and when her fiacre stopped and she entered the vestibule, her sense of pleasure and contentment increased. The quiet air of the place contrasted agreeably with her previous experience of hotel life.

Still conscious of this impression of security, she turned away from the bureau where she had registered her name, and crossed the vestibule to the lift. Taking her place on the velvet-covered seat, she watched the attendant close the iron doors and turn to set the lift in motion. But at the moment that he laid his hand upon the button, she saw the swinging doors of the hotel open, to admit a lady.

The new-comer, seeing that the lift was about to ascend, hurried towards it; and Clodagh, idly interested by the sound of rustling silk, leaned forward in her seat. But the light in the vestibule was dim, and she caught nothing beyond the outline of a large hat and the suggestion of a pale green dress. Then, suddenly, the stranger spoke, and her heart gave a tremendous leap.

"Wait!" she called in French--"wait! I am coming!"

It needed but the five words, spoken in a clear, dictatorial voice, to assure Clodagh that the speaker was known to her; and as the attendant paused in his task, and, turning promptly, opened the grilled door, her mind was prepared for the vision of Lady Frances Hope.

But if she was prepared for the encounter, the new-comer was taken completely by surprise. Entering the lift, she glanced casually at its other occupant; then her whole face changed.

"It is---- It can't be! It _is_ Mrs. Milbanke!" Her glance passed rapidly over Clodagh's deep mourning and her expression altered in accordance. "My dear Mrs. Milbanke," she said softly, "how thoughtless of me not to realise at once! I heard through Mr. Barnard. How are you?--how are you?"

She pressed the hand Clodagh had offered her, and looked sympathetically into her face. Then, as the lift, gliding upwards, stopped at the first floor and Clodagh rose, her expression changed again.

"Are you located on this floor? How delightful! We are neighbours. I am number five. What are you?"

"Seven," Clodagh said gently, speaking for the first time. There was something very strange to her in this meeting--something not altogether unpleasant. In the two years since they had met--and in the light of her last evening in Venice--the image of Lady Frances Hope had become slightly distorted. And there was a sense of surprise, of reassurance in finding her so kindly, so gracious, so unalarming.

"Seven!" Lady Frances repeated. "Delightful! You must dine with me to-night. I have a private room, and am quite alone. It will be an act of charity. I am on my way south. By the way, where are you bound for?"

Clodagh smiled.

"I am going home."

"Home?"

"To England."

"England! My dear child, not England in February? Why, the atmosphere is a combination of fog and sleet; and the people----" She made a gesture of horror. "Everybody who hasn't influenza is either expecting it or shaking it off."

Clodagh laughed a little.

"I have never had influenza. It will be an experience. But I must look after my maid. Travelling is new to her."

She glanced down the corridor to where Simonetta was awaiting her beside a mountain of luggage.

Lady Frances made haste to echo her laugh.

"Well, well!" she said. "It's good to have the enthusiasm of youth. But you will dine with me? Dinner in an hour."

Clodagh hesitated. Yesterday she would have ardently avoided a meeting with Lady Frances Hope. Now that it had been thrust upon her, it seemed to possess no danger. What was it Gore had said on that memorable night? "I am not depreciating Lady Frances Hope or her social standing----" Very swiftly she recalled the words and construed them in the light of her present feelings. After all, she was not the child she had been two years ago. And it was not Lady Frances, but the set that surrounded her, to which Gore took exception.

Her companion, seeing the hesitation in her eyes, gave a quick, bright smile.

"Do come! I will give you news of--every one."

Clodagh coloured slightly.

"Very well!" she said. "In an hour. Thank you very much!"

And with an agreeable, unfamiliar sense of interest and excitement, she turned and passed down the corridor to where Simonetta stood.

Before opening her own door, Lady Frances Hope stood for a few seconds watching the retreating figure; then, apparently without reason, she frowned, drew her lips together, and pushing her door hastily open, passed out of sight.

Still imbued with the sense of contentment, Clodagh changed her heavy black travelling dress for one of lighter texture, allowed Simonetta to rearrange her hair, and, at the appointed hour, presented herself at Lady Frances Hope's door.

Lady Frances had also discarded her elaborate costume for something lighter and more comfortable, and was ensconced on a low divan, reading a French novel, when her guest was announced. Immediately Clodagh's name reached her, she threw the book aside, and rose with great cordiality.

"How sweet you look!" she exclaimed. "You are the first dark woman I've ever liked in black. But then, of course, you are not exactly dark. Sit down! Dinner will be served in a moment. How did you know of this place? Have you stayed here before?"

Clodagh had come forward and seated herself beside her hostess. Now, as she looked about her, she noticed with a feeling of restfulness that the room was pretty and homelike, and that there were flowers on the tables and soft yellow shades on the electric lamps.

"No; I have never been here before. Mr. Barnard gave the address to my--my husband, when we were in Venice; and I came across it among his papers after--after----" She hesitated.

Lady Frances leaned forward sympathetically.

"Poor child!" she murmured. "Don't talk of it! You have had a most trying time. Barny told me all about it only a week ago. But this place is really quite good," she added, in a cheerful voice; "better now than ever. They have just secured the chef from the 'Abbati' Restaurant in Venice. But, of course, you knew 'Abbati's.'"

Her quick glance passed over Clodagh's face. Then she rose and moved to the table, as two waiters entered, and dinner was announced.

Clodagh coloured, and crossed the room in her hostess's wake.

"Yes," she said, taking her seat at the table--"yes; I once dined there. It was a wonderfully fascinating place. Has it been a failure?"

Lady Frances shrugged her shoulders.

"Vanished! But tell me about yourself!" She turned to her guest with a change of manner. "You are not seriously contemplating England at this time of year?"

Clodagh smiled calmly.

"Quite seriously."

"But, my dear child, why, if one may be inquisitive?"

"Because I want to know England--to know the English."

Lady Frances's eyes narrowed very slightly; then she gave one of her bright laughs.

"Then come back with me to the Riviera! Any English people worth studying will be found there. Change your plans! Come back with me!"

Clodagh looked up. She was uncertain whether the suggestion had been made in jest or earnest, and the smiling, searching glance of her hostess did not enlighten her. With a slight feeling of embarrassment, she broke off abruptly into another channel of talk.

"And how is Mr. Barnard?" she asked.

"Barny! Oh, optimistic as ever!"

"Then there is one amusing person left in England!"

Lady Frances laughed.

"Only temporarily. He takes his holiday next month. Last March he joined the Luards and me in Naples, and we all went on to Sicily. It was tremendous fun."

She laughed again over some recollection; and entered upon a history of her Sicilian adventures that occupied the rest of dinner.

At the termination of the meal, however, when the waiters had brought in coffee and silently retired, she dropped her reminiscent tone, and, rising from table, moved back to the divan, which was drawn pleasantly near to a bright wood fire.

"Come here, and let's be comfortable!" she said. "I always have a cigarette after dinner. I forget whether you smoke."

Clodagh smiled, as she came slowly forward.

"Not since my cousin and I used to smoke in the top branches of an apple tree in Ireland. I should be afraid to try the experiment again; I might lose an illusion. No other cigarettes could taste like those stolen ones!"

She gave a little sigh, then a little laugh, and seated herself.

Lady Frances looked up from the cigarette she was drawing from her case.

"Illusions!" she said. "Why, life is all illusions at your age!" She paused; then, after a moment's silence, went on again, but in a slower, more considered voice: "You thought I was jesting at dinner, when I asked you to come south with me. But I wasn't. I meant it." She struck a match and lighted her cigarette. "You don't know how you would enjoy Nice. You lost yourself in the delights of roulette at Venice. Think what Monte Carlo would be!"

With a sudden tumultuous confusion, Clodagh flushed.

"I--I have ceased to care about things like that," she said in a hurried voice.

Lady Frances's expression changed to one of deep interest, sharpened by surprise.

"Ceased to care?" she repeated softly. "Since when? And why?"

"Since"--Clodagh hesitated--"oh, since that time in Venice."

Her hostess flicked the ash from her cigarette.

"Some new influence?"

Clodagh was taken unawares.

"I--I have got to know myself better since that time in Venice," she said below her breath. "Some one--something--has made me see that it was not my true self that showed then. I was foolish in those days. I was carried away----"

A very faint smile flitted across Lady Frances's lips.

"That idea belongs to the some one else?" she said in a quiet, cordial tone that invited confidence.

Moved by a sudden impulse, Clodagh leant forward in her seat and clasped her hands. As on the day in Florence--the day when she had written her letter to Laurence Asshlin--her soul thirsted for confession. After two long years of silent thought, the temptation to open her heart in speech was overmastering. The room was comfortable, dimly lighted, almost homelike; the hour was propitious; her hostess's voice was extraordinarily kind. She stole one half-shy, half-eager glance at the averted face.

"Lady Frances," she said suddenly, "I was very childish, very foolish, that time in Venice. I knew it even before I--before I left."

With extreme tact, Lady Frances refrained from looking at her. Smoking quietly, she made her next remark in a low, reassuring voice.

"Then that was why you left so suddenly?"

"That was why."

"Walter Gore must have been very eloquent!"

Lady Frances spoke in the same even tone; but, as she felt the thrill of surprise with which Clodagh received her words, she turned quickly and decisively, and met her startled eyes.

"I always knew that Walter Gore went back with you to your hotel on that last night," she said. "I always knew that he read you a very moral lecture."

Clodagh drew a quick breath.

"But how did you know?"

Lady Frances studied her face for a moment; then she gave a direct answer to the question put to her.

"Walter himself told me," she said.

After she had spoken there was silence in the room. On her part it was the silence of the experimenter, who has taken a step in a new direction and is waiting for results; on Clodagh's, it was the silence of incredulity, of doubt, of dread. That Gore should have spoken of that last night in Venice to any third person was a circumstance that, at very least, needed explanation. She sat breathlessly waiting that explanation.

During the moment of fruitful silence Lady Frances Hope remained very still, fingering her cigarette, drawing in fitful puffs of smoke, avoiding with elaborate carelessness any observation of her companion's manner.

Then, as if some psychological crisis for which she was waiting had been achieved, she altered her position and her expression; and, turning, laid her hand upon Clodagh's.

"Dear Mrs. Milbanke," she said, "I am glad all this has happened; I am glad we have met. You are at a moment in your life when you need a friend--a friend who understands----"

Her fingers tightened upon Clodagh's in a warm, sympathetic pressure.

"You are young; you are free; you have the whole world at your feet. Don't spoil your life by taking it too seriously!

"When I was your age, or only a little older than you, I was left a widow--as you have been left; but I was unlike you in one particular: I had a very wise and far-seeing mother to help me with her advice. Do you know what her advice was?"

Clodagh sat silent.

"It was comprised in one sentence. 'Avoid scandal, but fly from sentiment!' Do you see all the wisdom in that advice to a woman who has just become her own mistress?"

Still Clodagh was silent, filled by a sense of uncertainty, of loneliness, of fear. She waited for Lady Frances's explanation with the numb sense of helplessness that is born of ignorance.

"Of course, I may be wrong," the strong, reliant voice went on; "but I feel you are in need of just such counsel. You are emotional; you are an idealist; you are coming out into life expecting it to be a fairy tale--and it is not a fairy tale. It is a realistic story--sometimes a long one, sometimes a short one, but always realistic. Take my advice! Make the best of it as it is! Don't break your heart because there are no dragons, or castles, or princes."

She paused at last; and at last Clodagh spoke.

"You are very kind--very good. But I don't see what it all has to do with me."

With a frank, almost an affectionate gesture, Lady Frances took both her hands, and, looking into her face, spoke the words for which she had so carefully prepared the way.

"If what I am going to say hurts you, you must forgive me. I feel such centuries older than you, that I can risk a great deal. Don't spoil your life, don't throw away your pleasure, because of one moral lecture! It isn't worth while. I know what I am saying. People like Walter Gore are reprehensible. They take themselves so seriously, that sometimes other people make the mistake of taking them seriously too; and then things go wrong."

Clodagh's face became a shade paler.

"I--I am stupid," she said. "I don't seem to understand."

"My dear! It is so hard to say it bluntly."

"Please say it bluntly."

For an instant the older woman hesitated before the coldness of Clodagh's tone; but the next, she took the opening offered her.

"You are deliberately turning away from the best in life because some one, in a moment of enthusiasm, preached you a sermon. You make the mistake of thinking that Walter Gore did something unusual when he warned you against cards and roulette--against Lord Deerehurst and Val Serracauld and me--whereas, Walter was born to preach!"

Clodagh's lips parted. Lady Frances had justified herself. Gore _had_ spoken of that last interview. But why? And how?

"Lady Frances," she said very quietly, "why did Sir Walter Gore tell you all these things?"

Lady Frances freed the hands she had continued to hold.

"Oh, we are old friends. He tells me many things. I fought more than one battle for you, while you were in Venice--and afterwards."

"For me? After I left Venice?"

"Oh, many battles. Walter is so extreme in his judgments of men and things. I lose patience with him sometimes."

"And what was Sir Walter Gore's judgment of me--after I left Venice?"

Lady Frances gave a little deprecating laugh.

"Would that be quite fair?"

"Yes, I think so, if I wish to know."

The older woman took a fresh cigarette from the case beside her.

"And you won't be offended?"

"I won't be offended." Clodagh's voice sounded a little dry.

"Well, then--oh, really, it's very stupid! Perhaps I'd better not."

Clodagh rose quietly from the divan and walked to the mantelpiece.

"Please tell me," she said.

At her tone, her hostess ceased to dally. She struck a match and raised the cigarette to her lips.

"Well," she said, with another little apologetic laugh, "I think Walter has always imagined you a very pretty, very fascinating--little fool!"

There was another silence--very short but very tense. Lady Frances laid down her cigarette unlighted, and blew out the match.

"Mrs. Milbanke, you don't mind?"

Clodagh laughed--suddenly and almost loudly.

"Mind? Mind? Why _should_ I mind?"

Had her denial been a shade less intense, its steadiness might have deceived her companion; as it was, the faintest flickering smile touched her lips, as she also rose and came slowly forward.

"My dear child!" she murmured reproachfully--"my dear child, you have misunderstood. I never implied that Walter interested you personally; I merely used him as an illustration--as a means of conveying the folly of taking serious people seriously. But you are tired. I have been cruelly unreasonable. I shall send you straight to bed. You are fagged after that long journey."

She put out her hand and laid it on Clodagh's arm; but Clodagh was not in a mood to be caressed.

"It's all right!" she said abruptly. "I suppose we both misunderstood. I _am_ a little tired. I think I _will_ say good-night!"

"Good-night, dear child!" Lady Frances pressed her hand, and walked with her slowly across the room. As she passed out into the corridor, she waved a gay farewell. "Sleep well!" she called. "But dream of an English February--and wake with a changed mind!"

As she said the last words, Clodagh paused for a moment; then went on again without speaking, and entered her own room.

Tired though she was, she scarcely slept that night; and in the early hours of the morning she saw the bright dawn break over Paris. At eight o'clock she rang for Simonetta, and asked for ink, pen, and note-paper.

Sitting up in bed, she wrote the following note.

"DEAR LADY FRANCES,

"As we are both women, I can hope that you won't call me variable.
If you still want me as a companion, I think I will, after all, go
with you to Nice. Looking into the matter more closely, I find I
really have no affinity for sleet or influenza!

"Yours,

"CLODAGH MILBANKE."

Having despatched the note to Lady Frances Hope, she wrote two long, feverishly hasty letters--one to Laurence Asshlin at Orristown, the other to Nance at her school near London.