# Madame Claire/Chapter 9

It was just a week after the accident that Judy and Noel went to Campden Hill to see Major Crosby. A message had come at last from Dr. Ferguson to the effect that if Miss Juggernaut and her brother cared to see their victim, they might do so between three and five that afternoon.
Major Stroud had rung them up almost daily, and Noel had found it difficult to account to the family for the sudden interest taken in him by some one they had never heard of before. For it was a household in which reticence was frowned upon and discouraged. Only Gordon, being the eldest son, was permitted to go and come without explanations. He was naturally secretive, and on the few occasions when he was pleased to give an account of his doings, his mother listened to him with something very like reverence. So Major Stroud became "a fellow at my club," which, as it chanced, he was, and Millicent gave up the attempt to penetrate further.
Judy had never felt as shy as on that Wednesday afternoon in the middle of January. She and ​Noel rode up Campden Hill on a bus, and walked briskly, for it was a bitter day, from Church Street to Chip's rooms.
On the way up the stairs she said:
"Don't leave me to do all the talking, Noel. I feel idiotically nervous. I don't know what to talk about."
"Chuck maidenly modesty to the winds for once," he advised, "and talk about the weather."
"You're not very helpful."
"And when you've done with the weather, there's always the climate."
"Thank you."
"What I mean is, why not just be natural? I expect he's safely unmarriageable, from the money point of view. So you can let the barbed wire alone."
"Anyhow," she said thankfully, "Major Stroud will be there, and he's always noisy and cheerful."
He was there, and at their knock admitted them, looking very large and out of place in the narrow hall. He was one of those men who seem to belong astride a high, bony horse, or in the solid armchair of a spacious London club. He shook hands with great heartiness, and led the way to the sitting room with a loud and reassuring tread.
​"Visitors, Chip, old man," he announced, and flung open the door.
Chip was lying stretched out on the sofa, pillows behind his head and a striped rug across his knees. His quiet manner of welcoming them seemed to Judy to contrast almost humorously with his friend's bluff cheeriness.
He had a nervous little speech all ready for them.
"I'm ashamed," he said, "to be the cause of all this bother. It's most awfully good of you to come. You'll forgive my not getting up, won't you? I'm not allowed to, for some reason."
"I should hope not," said Noel, as they shook hands.
"As for being a bother," Judy told him, "that's the sort of thing invalids say when they know they're not strong enough to be shaken. Major Crosby, I can't—I can't tell you how sorry we are." She hurried on, fearful of showing emotion. "Let's not say any more about that part of it. You know what we feel. . . ."
"And after all," put in Major Stroud, after the manner of Major Strouds, "accidents will happen, ye know, and as I tell Chip, he simply barged into you."
"Well," said Judy, "it's silly, both sides ​saying it's their fault. But there are two good things about it. The doctor says you'll soon be all right again, and—well, if it hadn't been for what happened that night, we'd never have met, would we?"
"That's a good effort, Judy," Noel encouraged her. "I second everything you've said. But let's cut out speeches now."
They all laughed, and after that it was easier to talk.
Major Stroud monopolized Noel, to whom he seemed to have taken a great fancy, and Judy found herself cut off from the other two, in a chair beside the sofa. For there is no room so small that a party of four cannot quite easily split up into twos.
Major Crosby looked much as Judy had expected him to look. That first sight of his face in the light from the car's lamps was, she knew, one of those mind pictures that refuse to fade. She was uncertain about the color of his eyes, which now proved to be gray, and though they smiled and had a habit of smiling as the lines about them showed, there were other lines about the forehead that spoke of anxiety. His hair was of that fine and unreliable quality that abandons its owner early in life, and Chip was already ​a little thin about the top. His long legs under the rug displayed pointed knees, and he moved his thin, well-shaped hands nervously.
"If I can only put him at his ease with me!" thought Judy.
They talked commonplaces at first, and then, stretching out her hand, she said:
"May I see what you were reading?"
He picked up a finely bound book that lay beside him on the rug, and gave it to her.
"I don't know why it is," he said, smiling, "but one always feels slightly apologetic when discovered reading poetry."
It was The Spirit of Man, and Judy was conscious of a feeling of satisfaction. They liked the same books, then.
"It's a dear friend," she said.
"Really? I'm glad of that."
"I didn't see this," she went on, "when I was prowling about the room the other night. For I did prowl, I admit it, and I found nothing but books on religion. You see I had to do something while I was waiting for the verdict."
"I expect it was in my room," he explained. "When the book I'm working on gets the better of me, or when I'm tired of it, I turn to that."
"You're very wise." She put the book on a ​table. "Now tell me about your own book. Major Stroud spoke of it the other night, and seemed to think it was to blame for the accident."
He laughed.
"He thinks it's to blame for everything. It's very dull, I'm afraid. It's about religions. They're my hobby. Not religion; religions. There's a difference, you see. I've tried to write a book that . . . well, how shall I explain it? . . . pulls them all together. Brings out their similarities. Fuses them, so to speak. It's tremendously interesting work and means a lot of research, and I like that."
"How long have you been working on it?"
"Oh . . . not very long. Let me see. . . . I started it in 1910. Twelve years. Well, I suppose that is a fairly long time. But you see the war interrupted things."
"There were four years when I suppose you did no work on it at all."
"I managed to get in a lot of reading. I was studying Druidism when I was in the trenches—most absorbing study. That was when things were fairly peaceful, of course. And when they weren't peaceful, one was . . . well, testing various beliefs, if you know what I mean. When ​there was heavy shelling, for instance, and you had to sit tight."
She smiled at him.
"Is it nearly done?"
"Well, the bulk of it's done, but I'm always adding things to it. You see I want it to be a sort of book of reference. If you want to find out where Mohammedanism resembles Buddhism you turn to where the two things are compared, belief by belief. But all this is very boring for you."
"It isn't. I like it. Don't you think it's extraordinary, with all the guidance that it has, that mankind goes so frightfully astray?"
"I suppose it is. But I always think that we expect too much of our fellow man. He's all right. Only give him time. He's got such a lot to unlearn."
"You mean he has all his brutal beginnings to forget?"
He nodded.
"I imagine I see him evoluting all the way from brute to angel, or something like it. He's about at Half Way House now, I think. Wars, of course, give him a bit of a setback."
"I suppose they do."
"Oh, rather! I'm sure they do. Not neces​sarily for every individual, you understand, but for the mass. I hate guns and noise and warfare like the majority of my kind. I always have and I always shall. But at the same time, when there's a fight on I've got to be there, and if there's going to be a top dog, I want my fellows to be it. Half Way House, you see!"
"And you think we'll get beyond it?"
"I don't doubt it for a moment. Do you?"
"I don't know. I always think that mankind looks its best under the microscope, so to speak, and that it's rather horrible when you see it in the mass."
"Like mold?" he suggested. "Ferns and flowers and lovely shapes when you magnify it, but very nasty indeed when you look at it on a damp wall."
"Yes. Just like that."
Her eyes smiled back at his eyes. It was at this moment that something greater than interest awoke in her. She knew it was there; she was aware of the very instant of its coming, and she meant, later, to examine it at her leisure.
Noel and Major Stroud were engaged in studying a map of the Somme, and were oblivious to them.
"You really must meet my grandmother, Lady ​Gregory—or Madame Claire, as Noel and I call her. She's the most wonderful person. When you're better you must come and have tea with us at her hotel."
"I should like that very much," he said. "I get on quite well with old ladies. I find young ones rather alarming nowadays, but perhaps it's because I don't see much of them."
Judy laughed at this.
"Do I alarm you?" she challenged him.
"No," he admitted. "It's very odd, but you don't."
"What a blessing! Shy people—and I am one—usually have the most devastating effect on other shy people. But you'll love Madame Claire. She looks on the world from a kind of Olympus."
"Yet most of us dread growing old," he remarked.
"Yes. Isn't it ridiculous? But I don't. There are times when I envy her her age, and her . . . imperviousness. What a word!"
"It's temperamental, that sort of thing. It's the people who are always seeking gayety that dread old age most. Being Scotch I like grayness, and austere hills, and quiet and mystery. All old things."
​Chip was surprised at the ease with which he could talk about himself. He felt half apologetic and looked at Judy as if to say, "Forgive me, but it must be some spell that you have cast upon me. . . ." A look passed between them then that was to both of them an unforgettable thing.
Their words had meant nothing, but they were mutually aware of a bond—a thing as fine as gossamer, and as strong as London Bridge. Judy was conscious of a queer little electric thrill that she felt to the very tips of her fingers. Their look had so plainly said:
"You and I. . . . We are going to be something to each other. What will that something be?"
To cover the nakedness of that question that each was aware of in the mind of the other, Judy turned away her head.
"Noel," she said, raising her voice, "Major Crosby and Major Stroud must come to tea at Madame Claire's one day. Can't we decide on an afternoon now?"
"Being one of the unemployed," Noel answered cheerfully, "all afternoons are alike to me. When will they let you up again, Major Crosby?"
"Oh," he said, "in three or four days I expect to be carrying on as usual."
​They decided on the following Thursday, provided Madame Claire had no other engagement, and soon Noel and Judy, for fear of tiring their victim, got up to go.
"But you'll come and see me again, won't you?" asked Chip, then added, "but dash it all, I forgot! I'll be up soon."
They laughed, and his regret that they might not come again was so real that Judy said as they shook hands:
"Don't forget; Madame Claire's on Thursday, at four."
Major Stroud went out with them, leaving Chip looking after them rather wistfully.
Talking to her had been strangely easy as he lay there. It might never be the same again. He had looked at her to his heart's content, a thing he wouldn't have dared to do had they been talking in the ordinary way. His recollections of the accident were very confused. He had been conscious of some one at intervals—a sort of delightful presence. Major Stroud had filled in the rest for him—badly enough. The Major did not excel in word pictures.
Was she pretty . . . beautiful? He searched for the right word. She was lovely, that was it . . . lovely. She had taken off her gloves and ​her long ringless hands had lain in her lap as she talked. She was tall, but not too tall. He liked a woman to have height. He liked the paleness of her oval face, and the wide mouth with its satisfactory curves. Her dark brown eyes had a sparkle far at the back of them, like . . . like the reflection of a single star in a deep pool. . . .
He had been damned dull, as he always was.
"If she were only sitting there again," he thought, "I would say everything differently. I would say things that she might remember afterwards. I'm not such a dull fellow as all that."
Was he not? At least no woman would ever find out that he was not. He thought of his poverty and his book, that, in all probability, he alone believed in. He realized that his head had begun to ache again, and he closed his eyes.
Major Stroud went with Noel and Judy as far as the street door.
"He'll be all right," he assured them, indicating Chip upstairs. "Nothing to worry about now. Rest's doin' him good. Awfully good of you to come, Miss Pendleton, cheer him up. Terrible fellow for bein' alone, Chip is. Neglects his friends."
"Hasn't he any relations?" Noel asked.
​Major Stroud shook his head.
"Orphan . . . only child, too. He doesn't see enough people. Not like me; I like to keep goin' . . . gaddin' about."
Judy was amused at this. Solid, heavy Major Stroud, picturing himself as a sort of social butterfly!
"But you two see a good deal of each other, don't you?" Judy wanted to feel sure that Chip was not altogether alone.
"Oh, Lord, yes! Good old Chip! Been through two campaigns together." Then as Judy held out her hand, "'By, Miss Pendleton. I'll let you know how he gets on. Ought to be out to-morrow."
They walked briskly down Church Street, Judy with an arm through Noel's, and her chin buried in her furs.
"Well?" said Noel.
"Well?" she echoed.
"I said it first," remarked her brother.
"Translated, I take it to mean, how do I like Chip? Is that it?"
"Couldn't have put it better."
"I like him immensely," said Judy obligingly. "Now it's your turn."
​"Same here." Then after a pause, "Feeling less spinsterish?"
"I don't feel in the least spinsterish, thank you."
"Well," he said, "I never saw you looking less so. Chip, poor devil, lay there and gazed with his soul in his eyes."
"Really, Noel!"
"Fact. But you'll have to change your methods. You'll have to cut that 'he'll have to come all the way to me' business. Because he won't; he's too shy."
Judy would have been in a cold fury had any one else dared to speak so to her, but she took it from Noel with perfect good humor.
"I gather you'd like me to see more of him."
"Well, why not? If ever a man needed some woman to take an interest in him, that man is Chip."
"He may need it, but from the little I've seen of him I don't think he wants it."
"Of course he wants it. He's human. I wouldn't mind having him in the family."
Judy had to laugh.
"Don't you think it's rather soon to make up your mind? After all, you hardly know him."
​"That's nothing. I liked him the first minute I saw him."
"You have the impulsiveness of extreme youth."
"That's so trite," he remarked, "to throw my youth at me. You only say that when you can't think of anything else to say. You must cultivate originality of thought."
"I do," she retorted, "but it's good manners to adjust one's conversation to suit one's hearers. Now let's continue about Chip."
"He has no money," he went on, quite unruffled, "and that's a pity, because you won't get much from the family. Gordon will get it all. But you'd make a better poor man's wife than most girls. What about the simple life for a change?"
"You go too fast, my friend. I've nothing against the simple life—though why they call it that I can't think; there's nothing less simple than trying to live on nothing a year. But what I wish to point out to you is that Major Crosby, to begin with, is not a marrying man."
"Oh, Lord!" groaned Noel, "what a cliché! How can a man be a marrying man until he marries?"
"To put it into words of one syllable, Major ​Crosby is not the sort of man who contemplates marriage. He is wedded to his bachelorhood and his book."
"That's tosh."
"But," she went on, "I very much hope he will let us be his friends."
"Oh, he'll let us right enough; if that's what you want. By the way, we mustn't let the Bennetts know about the accident."
"Didn't Mills tell them?"
"Not he. I fixed it up with old Mills. Mrs. Bennett is a nice old thing, but she'd fuss, and Chip would hate that. I'm glad we let him think it was our car. We can explain to him some day. You see, it really was his fault. He didn't look where he was going—didn't even stop to listen, Mills says. But I don't want him to think we think that."
"I'll leave it to you, Noel. It's getting too complicated for me." Then she remembered something.
"Did you know Eric had gone to Paris to fetch Aunt Connie home?"
He whistled.
"No. Nobody told me."
"Claire only told me this morning. Eric has wired for rooms for her in some small hotel, in ​Half Moon Street, I think. They'll be back to-morrow. Won't it be queer to have an aunt we've never seen since we were children?"
He agreed that it would.
"I think I shall rather like having a dissipated aunt," he remarked. "It's out of the common."
"I expect people have exaggerated things," Judy said. "And besides, she's getting on, you know. She's only a year or two younger than mother."
"Her sort never change," said the sage. "What about that rotten little Count?"
"I don't know what Eric means to do about him."
"Well, I know two people at least who will raise a row about her coming home. Mother and Louise."
"Nobody's told them yet," said Judy.
He whistled again.
"I see trouble ahead."
As they reached the house in Eaton Square the front door opened, and the figure of an immaculately dressed young man was sharply silhouetted against the yellow light.
"Hello, you two!" said he.
Gordon was extremely good-looking in his fair and rather wooden way. His beautiful evening ​clothes looked resplendent, and the coat he carried over one arm was there as a concession to his mother, for he was never cold.
"Hello, Gordon!" echoed the other two.
"Where've you been?" demanded the elder brother.
"Been to see a sick friend," said Noel.
Gordon looked at his sister.
"Are you coming to Lady Ottway's dance to-night? You were asked."
"I know. But I'm not coming. I can't stand her dances. I may be slow, but they're slower still."
"Don't say you can't stand her," advised Gordon, bending his handsome head to light a cigarette.
"Why not? If I feel like it?"
He threw away the match and puffed experimentally on the cigarette. Then, satisfied of a light, he said casually:
"Because she's going to be my mother-in-law. That's why."
"Gordon!" they exclaimed together.
"Fact. All arranged yesterday. Helen and I hope to be married early in June. So congratulate me."
"Gordon!" cried Judy again, "what a queer ​boy you are! I hadn't an inkling it had happened." She raised her face to kiss him, but he drew back.
"Not on the front steps. Keep that for later."
"That's so like you," she protested. "No one can see us. Anyway, Gordon, consider yourself kissed, and I do congratulate you, my dear, and I'm happy if you are. Does mother know?"
"Oh, yes. She's delighted, of course."
Noel put his hand on Gordon's shoulder.
"I'm awfully glad, Gordon old man."
"Thanks." He went down the steps and hailed a taxi that was crawling toward them. "I'd have told you before," he said over his shoulder, "only we don't keep the same hours. Never sure of seeing you. Well, so long!"
The taxi door shut with a bang that echoed loudly in the quiet square, and he was off.
"Isn't that Gordon all over?" asked Noel.
As Judy entered the hall she gave a little laugh that was almost a sob, and said:
"Thank God for you, Noel!"