moment, she looked so, in her splendid wrath and scorn. Clandonald did
not pursue the subject, and something warned her that neither was this
the time for pursuance of the light vision of the American girl whom she
had fondly pictured taking Ruby's place in the desolate old house. They
talked of family matters, of Clan's travels, of things present and to
come until Lady Campstown and her maid were obliged to leave. When her
nephew had put her into the brougham to go to the station, Lady
Campstown rallied her courage for a final appeal.
"You'll drop in for luncheon, tea or dinner whenever you've nothing
better, won't you, dear boy?" she asked, surveying him wistfully. "You
know I go out so little I'm apt to be always there. I'm to have
luncheon on Tuesday, and go to some pictures with these pleasant friends
of yours who've just left us; and, Clan, dear, isn't it nice that
they're coming to Cannes this winter? Miss Carstairs' father is to be
there in the yacht. He must be a very interesting man. Such a power,
one can't fail to--oh! thank you, Jenkins" (this to the gardener,
arriving with a huge nosegay of late roses and chrysanthemums, and a
basket of ruddy peaches), "they are most lovely, I am sure. You will
certainly not fail to make me that promised visit in January? It seemed
so lonely, last year, nobody inhabiting your room. Come, promise, Clan,
and I know you will never break your word!"
"I am afraid, Aunt Lucy," he said, giving her a final loving kiss, "that
I had better not promise anything, just now, if I'm to keep up my good
reputation in your eyes. Think what you like as to my being spooney
about a pretty American. But it is arranged between Mariol and
myself--though we can't agree about our destination--that we are to set
out for somewhere early next week. Mariol leans toward Tibet, I to the
Balkans. To decide it, we shall probably toss up a sovereign. But this
much is certain--off we go."
It was not until December, when Lady Campstown was fairly established at
Villa Julia, on the slope of the Californie, under house-walls obscured
by bougainvillea and arbutilon and Gloire de Dijon roses, that she felt
in the least assuaged of her disappointment. She had left London swathed
in a yellow fog of appalling density, had run down to Dover in an
atmosphere of pea-soup; had found Paris under weeping skies; had
traversed France in a murky mist; and only on waking up in Cannes next
morning had renewed acquaintance with the sun.
As she looked out of her window, the olives and palms seemed to wave a
welcome to the south. The sea laughed in every ripple of its wide
expanse, the mountains slept under their veil of azure, the light over
all was almost intolerably bright. The flowers that she so well loved,
blooming overhead and underfoot, springing from wall crannies,
gladdening and glorying every available spot of earth, made her ladyship
feel once more like her own even-tempered, happy self!
She had not heard from the wanderers in the Balkans, but had felt
resigned that dear Clan had not pushed on to that dreadful far-away
Tibet, where men were flayed alive if they happened not to please the
rulers upon whose land they were trespassing, which would have been so
much worse! She and her maid, and a servant or two brought out from
England, occupied themselves for a day in unpacking and readjusting
ornaments, putting flowers and plants about the rooms, and looking over
the garden, a lovely tiny place where roses ran riot, and palm trees
waved their feathered tops or clashed together their spiked leaves with
a little metallic ring, when the breeze stirred them from their majestic
calm.
There were many finer, many larger, many more cared-for gardens in the
town, though none that gave more satisfaction to its owner. Lady
Campstown knew and loved every inch of it, but the spot most often
resorted to by her, in hot sunshine, was a tunnel cut in a thicket of
bamboos terminating her domain, from which a gate led out under the wall
of the adjoining lordly pleasure house called "Villa Reine des Fees."
Above this wall arose the symmetrical shafts of a cypress avenue, into
which, and far beyond it, Lady Campstown had been accustomed to
penetrate at will, through a little green door hidden by verdure, placed
there for the convenience of the gardeners. The lodge-keeper of this
deserted dwelling, to whose child her ladyship had ministered in
illness, and all the other employees of the place, had always made
welcome the little figure in black, wearing a mushroom hat and carrying
a long tortoise-shell stick, who from time to time appeared among the
alleys and under the flowery pergolas of a veritable fairyland of trees
and turf and shrubs and blossoms.
The dwelling at Reine des Fees, sheltered from prevailing winds by a
thick olive grove resting like a gray cloud upon the hillside above it,
was of considerable size and pretension. Ascending, by a long flight of
white marble steps, the two terraces with their mosaic pavements and
marble balustrades, over which orange and lemon trees hung their fruit
and flowers, one reached an imposing portal, where roses climbed upon
the white facade of the many-windowed house, to fall back in rivulets of
bloom. The gardens were a marvel of skilfully massed semi-tropical
shrubbery and trees, shutting out the view of other villas and revealing
at happy turns vistas of the Mediterranean, the two islands, and the
blue jagged line of the Esterels; while tall box-hedges, cypresses,
fountains and pergolas wedded the tender grace of Italy to the warm,
witchery of Provence.
The place had been originally constructed by a wealthy Russian as a
bower for his young wife who had died there in early married life; and
for a long time had remained unoccupied, although scrupulously kept up.
Upon the death of the owner it had passed to his younger brother who,
intending to live in it according to his luxurious tastes, had put in
"lifts," baths, and sundry up-to-date conveniences; had renewed the
furniture, china and glass, prepared the stables for many horses, and
then vanished from sight of man into a house he had in the
Caucasus--melancholy mad!
For two years Villa Reine des Fees had now been in the market for a
tenant, yet none had presented himself. Whether or not the house had a
name for bringing ill-luck to its inhabitants, or that the price fixed
upon it was prohibitively high, it had remained vacant, as before. Lady
Campstown could not regret this circumstance.
So long the enchanted ground behind the rose-wall had seemed an annex to
her own modest property, she begrudged the idea of its overflowing with
noisy gay people, with their dinners and dances, their motor cars
puffing up the drive, their tennis matches and tea-parties,
piano-practising and perhaps spoiled children and dogs, to invade her
sylvan solitudes.
The one fate that Lady Campstown kept in reserve as the most painful
that could possibly overtake Villa Reine des Fees, was for it to be
inhabited by Americans. Now, upon her return (although recently born
again, as it were, to a new sense of the excellent possibilities of her
transatlantic kinsfolk!) she learned with dismay, from her gardener,
that the house had actually been leased to an American family, who were
to arrive the following day! Details of the calamity she could not at
first bring herself to acquire. It was enough that her worst fears for
her cherished playground were about to be realized. She turned pale at
thought of the changes sure to come.
Directly after luncheon Lady Campstown took down her mushroom hat and an
Inverness cape that her maid had hung on a peg in the entry, armed
herself with her tortoise-shell stick--a gift from Clandonald, by the
way--and trotted down the walk of her own garden leading out under the
bamboos to the little green door in her neighbor's wall. This was open,
and she went in, sadly resolved to make a final pilgrimage to all the
familiar spots henceforward to be blocked from her view as effectually
as newspaper paragraphs by the ink-marks of a Russian censor.
The day was glorious, earth, sea and sky lustrous with intense sunshine,
the air filled with odors of orange-blossom and violet, jasmine and
rose, the palms bending gently under a summer breeze. Never had the
grounds of Villa Reine des Fees seemed in more perfect order. She gave
one glance up at the gleaming house-front above the stately balustrades,
and saw that its windows were open, new curtains fluttering in the
breeze. In the loggia adjoining the boudoir of the poor little dead
princess, wicker chairs, gayly cushioned, were grouped under the rose
wreaths. The signs of coming habitation were too evident.
Lady Campstown would not look again. Sorrowfully she directed her steps
along the lower terrace, her tortoise-shell stick tapping impatiently
upon the renaissance birds and beasts of its pavement. She even hoped
not to meet any of the friendly Provencals who worked upon the place,
with whom she had been wont to stop and talk about themselves and
families, the prospects of the flower-crop for neighboring cultivators,
and affairs of the town in general.
At some distance from the house this terrace was rounded into a lookout,
commanding a wondrous avenue of palms, their trunks enwrapped in roses
and jasmine, at the end of which the hillside fell sharply away,
revealing an unimaginably lovely view of the sea and islands. From
here, as the visitor now seated herself to gaze her last at a favorite
prospect, she saw coming toward her, beneath the arch of palms, between
borders of violets, a very tall young woman, modishly attired in white
embroidered cloth, with a large white-plumed hat that breathed of the
Rue de la Paix, in Paris.
[Illustration: She saw coming toward her, beneath the arch of palms, a
very tall young woman, modishly attired.]
Lady Campstown wished that she could believe this engaging person to be
some one who, like herself, had strayed into Villa Reine des Fees
through curiosity--a guest from one of the adjacent smart hotels.
But she could not. She knew in her British soul that it was none other
than one of the temporary owners of the property, and that she herself
stood revealed a trespasser. In her intense vexation, the dowager arose
again, striking her stick on the hot marble underfoot, till two little
green lizards scampered away in fright at its sharp resonance.
"I beg your pardon," she said in her well-bred old voice, "I live in the
next house, and of course had no idea that the villa was yet inhabited."
"Please don't speak of it," was the surprisingly friendly answer. (The
girl was thinking, "Here, surely, is the Fairy Godmother.") "We decided
at the last minute to come a day earlier, so anxious were we to get out
of gloomy, wet Paris. You see, my father has been very ill, and the
doctors rather wanted to hurry him to Provence. We took the night train,
arriving this morning, and already he seems to feel the benefit, and is
now getting a good sleep."
As she spoke she came up upon the terrace, and stood by Lady Campstown's
side.
"I am glad to hear it," answered the old lady, forgetting her
resentment. "I should explain that this house has been so long
unoccupied, I have felt at liberty to stray in from time to time, and
see the flowers and so----"
"Indeed, you are not to say another word," said the hostess, with pretty
emphasis. "If you had the least idea how I was just bursting to let out
of me some of my delight!"
"'Bursting to let out of me'!" Lady Campstown was certain that she knew
no one who would have been responsible for that peculiar phrase, but the
joyous appeal of the young voice and eyes, the radiantly smiling mouth,
were not to be resisted.
"You feel it, then?" she said, smiling in return.
"Down to the ground!" said the tall girl. "I don't believe I ever had
such thrills in my life before. I've been walking up and down under
these oranges and lemons and palms, wondering if it can be I? To think
we're to have this little heaven all to ourselves for daddy to get well
in! You see, there are only my father and myself, and we know very few
people over here in Europe. We are Americans."
"I believe so," said Lady Campstown, with restraint.
"The villa was taken for us through our doctor in Paris, who had seen
it, and told daddy. I thought the rooms in our hotel in Paris too
lovely for anything, but this goes a long way ahead. I've got that
splendid big front chamber with the dressing-room and bath, and the sort
of little porch covered with vines, where the servants seem to expect me
to have my breakfast by myself. The truth is, I don't care where I eat
these old continental breakfasts; only rolls and coffee, and perhaps one
miserable little egg, and that extra, I'm always hungry again by eleven.
Daddy's got a huge room opposite mine, all carved furniture with a bed
like a church pew, but he likes it, and the man nurse that takes care of
him says he's better already for the change. It's ridiculous for only us
two to try to fill this regular little palace, isn't it? If I were
home, I could ask some of the girls, but, over here, I don't know any
but one, and we haven't actually got a chaperon for me yet. We talked of
it, you know, but when it came to the point, daddy dreaded her being
perched up between us like Poe's raven, at meals, and everywhere, and so
we put it off. Perhaps, if you live here you wouldn't mind giving me a
word of advice about how to do things. There's a housekeeper that goes
with the house, and she engaged the extra servants, such a lot I never
saw! I came out into the garden to get rid of the whole kit and boodle
of them! But after a while I'll learn my way, and then not feel so
awkward as I do now. Maybe you are thinking it strange why I don't know
these things, but I've no mother, and no near relations but daddy, and
till now we've lived in a very plain way, at home."
Lady Campstown's heart melted incontinently. The rapidity and scope of
the girl's confidences were atoned for by her youth and the direct gaze
of her childlike eyes, to say nothing of the beauty that had been
sinking into the old lady's impressionable senses. Also, her ladyship
was always genuinely interested in the details of a perilous illness;
and those of the invalid's recent grave attack of pneumonia were
received with not to say satisfaction, but something that nearly
approached it. She gave the girl much sound advice, and as they strayed
together onward from point to point through the grounds, which Lady
Campstown knew _con amore_, she found herself equipped with an
astonishing relish for the situation so unexpectedly attained. When
they were both quite out of breath with talking and walking, she
furthermore accepted, graciously, an invitation to step indoors and
rest. She had thought her new friend a tyro in social arts, but when
they reached the top of the long, hot gleaming flight of white marble
stairs, and stood together between the potted bamboos and pelargoniums
in the vestibule, was pleased to have her step back with charming grace
and execute a little curtsey, saying:
"I don't think you can know that my name is Pamela Winstanley, and I'd
be very glad if you wouldn't mind telling me yours."
It is not, therefore, to be numbered among things incredible that soon
after four o'clock that afternoon, when the sun like a ball of fire had
dropped behind the blue barrier of the Esterels, leaving the world to
darkness and a sudden glacial chill, Miss Winstanley, attended by one of
her brand-new footmen carrying a sheaf of rare roses, repaired, in her
turn, through the little green doorway in the flowery wall dividing
Villa Reine des Fees from Villa Julia. She was wrapped in a smart
fur-lined cloak, and her mission was to take tea with Lady Campstown!
A trim maid ushered her into the long, low drawing-room with its
hangings of sunflower yellow, its mirrors and consoles and twin Empire
sofas, its square of dull red Turkey carpet in the centre of a slippery
waste of parquetry, its brass-trimmed tables and chairs, bought with the
house and never altered. But over all had been diffused a look of home
that Villa Reine des Fees could not attain. There was a folding screen
covered with miniatures, behind the couch whereon Lady Campstown sat
crocheting in rosy wool one of the new _pelerines neigeuses_; there were
flowers and books and a wide writing-table, with silver bound blotting
book and silver fittings. A small table, covered with a web of white
linen and lace that a Cardinal might have worn upon a day of festa, was
spread for the tea to be brought in by and by; and Posey did not know
that, to fit it to her guest's age and supposed tastes, Lady Campstown
had sent a special messenger to the rue d'Antibes for marrons glaces and
wondrous crystallized fruits!
A little fire of gnarled olive roots, pine cones, and eucalyptus boughs
was blazing on the hearth. The girl, carrying her own flowers now,
paused on the threshold with an exclamation of delight.
"Oh! how good, how sweet of you to let me come!" she cried, "and,
please, would you think me very rude if I sat down on the rug and played
with your Orange pussy?"
The tea over, the new friends talked with ever-increasing cordiality.
Lady Campstown soon knew all there was to know of the girl's former
modest position in life and her recent information by her father that
she was expected to spend his large income as she pleased.
"He asked me, poor dear, not to hold back for anything in reason, but to
find out all that we ought to have, and order it. And you'd better
believe, Lady Campstown, that an American girl knows how to do that
same! It seems he had a talk on our steamer, just before we landed, with
a friend both he and I trust in, and she told him it was his duty to
live up to his fortune. He's known he had all this money for nearly a
year past, but had no idea how to begin to spend it. And so we branched
right out in Paris, and got a suite of rooms that a royalty had before
us. I went straight off to the Only Adorable Worth, and bought
everything in the way of gowns. I had masters in French and singing,
and when we drove in the Bois, or went to the galleries and shops, and
everybody stared, I took to it as naturally as a duck to water. But I
must say it was lonesome. I longed and longed for somebody to tell how
I felt about it all in my inmost heart.... Then, my darling old daddy
fell ill, and his life was in danger, and all the grandeur fell flat as
a pancake. I didn't care a straw for my clothes, my carriage, my fine
maid, even my new pearls--the whirling wheel of life stood still, still,
and I heard only my heart-beats! I thought I was going to lose the
dearest, tenderest father in the world, and be left a poor wretched
orphan with nothing but things to comfort me!"
She had sprung up from the rug and was by this time seated on the couch
beside Lady Campstown, and that lady's kind little hand had found its
way into hers. If the dowager felt, at moments, a little dizzy with the
speed at which this episode of new acquaintance had progressed, she had
only to look across the room at the portrait of a girl who would have
been thirty had she lived, but in her mother's eyes seemed forever just
eighteen. Maybe she would have been ungrateful, unloving, _mondaine_ or
_devote_; she might have married ill, or died in bringing a child into
the world; or any one of a thousand every-day happenings might have
robbed the mother of joy in her companionship. But, to Lady Campstown,
her lost daughter was always young, prosperous, lovely, beyond reproach;
and for her sake, Pamela Winstanley, with all her imperfections of
bringing-up upon her golden head, was forgiven much! What wonder that
before they separated Posey had received assurance that Lady Campstown
would look after her in various substantial ways; and that Mr.
Winstanley's new motor car, ordered from Paris, being yet to come, the
girl should be invited to take her first view of the riant little town
from the cushions of Lady Campstown's well-known old landau, with the
quiet black horses and sober coachman? When they had thus agreed to go
shopping together in the tempting, if narrow and sunless, rue d'Antibes,
and Posey, for the second time, had arisen to take her leave, her eye
fell upon an imperial photograph, framed in silver, of a man she
recognized with a swift leap of the heart.
"My nephew Clandonald," said the dowager, heaving a little affectionate
sigh. "Almost all I have left to love. He is a dear fellow, and has
been much sinned against. Just now he is somewhere in the Balkans
loafing, as he calls it, with his friend M. de Mariol, but I trust he
will come back soon, and that certain things I hope for him will become
realities. I don't mind telling you, my dear, that there is a young
lady in the case, and that she's a countrywoman of your own. I have met
her, and love her already for his sake, but there's been mischief made,
and it will take time to straighten out the tangle of my poor Clan's
heart affairs, and, when you and I know each other better, I will
explain. In the meantime, we won't talk of it. You'll be ready at
half-past ten to-morrow, when I call for you? I'll take you around to
the right tradespeople, and afterwards we'll have a little turn on the
Croisette."
"An American girl!" Posey said within herself. "It must be said he
found consolation very soon." She was conscious of feeling rather
blank.
*CHAPTER VII*
"When in doubt where to go, stay in Paris," had been for some years of
travel Miss Bleecker's favorite saying. Helen, who had no great love
for the place from her chaperon's point of view, simply acquiesced when
told it was too early to go south. She begged Miss Bleecker to go on
with her own routine. Mornings in the shops were followed by luncheons
with old friends among the American residents, where, after luxurious
eating and drinking of light wines, the women sat for hours rooted upon
down couches, propped by silken cushions, exchanging hearsays of
stupendous gossip about their common acquaintances. Upon Miss Bleecker's
return from one of these intimate entertainments, Helen's views of human
nature were lowered for days to come.
In the afternoon, Miss Bleecker generally drove out with her charge, or
left cards upon people who would have resented her getting in as
earnestly as she. In her smart wrap and voluminous furs, with, her
plumed hat and dotted veil, the chaperon justly flattered herself that
some of the glances bestowed upon their victoria in the Bois and along
the Champs Elysees were a late plum fallen to her share. In Central
Park, at home, and in Fifth Avenue, every one knew it was only the same
old Sally Bleecker in a new French hat. Miss Bleecker had heard it
suggested that one must come abroad to find a proper deference paid to
years of maturity, which secretly was not what she desired. Her taste
was neither for the cold-blooded pushing to the wall of her generation
by young Americans, nor yet the reverent hand-kissing of the ancient,
observable in high life abroad. Since her morals were above reproach,
all she really asked was a recognition by the public of her successful
illustrations of the methods of Paquin and Alphonsine.
There were always teas to drop in for, after the drives, at the
cosmopolitan resorts of Ritz, or Columbin, or Rumpelmayer, or in private
dwellings. In Paris, the division of time between five and seven in the
afternoon has become as important for the achievement of social idling
of both sexes as in London.
It is in New York where the tea-drinking habit is a graft among the men,
and to the women an intermittent sacrifice to fashion's shrine. Miss
Bleecker was of the sort whom the steam of the tea-kettle inebriates as
well as cheers. She could better exist without her evening orisons than
her cup of tea between four and five.