Major Stroud had also been invited to tea at Madame Claire's, but was to
be out of town, and as Noel had to see a man about a job, the party had
dwindled to three, and Chip found his way to the hotel alone. He was
prompt to the minute and feeling extremely nervous. He had so looked
forward to seeing Judy again that he felt sure everything--except Judy
herself--would be disappointing. Madame Claire would find him
uninteresting, and Judy would be kind but bored. He would very likely
upset his tea. He had been a fool to accept. He had far better have
stayed away and allowed himself to return to the comfortable oblivion
from which the accident had dislodged him. Better be a kindly memory
than a dull actuality.
But there was something reassuring about the way the homely Dawson
opened the door to him and took his hat and coat. She received him like
an old friend and smiled as though she shared some secret with him. The
sight of Judy and his hostess bending over plans for a Pisé de Terre
cottage to be built for Judy on Madame Claire's little place in Sussex,
also gave him courage. He loved plans, and was soon making suggestions
and alterations in a way that, Judy said, was as domineering as an
architect's.
"It's entirely furnished and decorated inside," she said. "I've thought
about it so much that I wouldn't be surprised to find it had
materialized. You must look next time you go down, Madame Claire. It
might look rather odd without its outsides of course."
It had long been a dream of Judy's to have her own cottage--shared,
needless to say, with Noel--and if they could only get it built cheaply
enough, there was a chance that it might be fulfilled. At any rate, they
enjoyed planning it, and if it served no other purpose it put Chip at
his ease with them--a thing she had prayed for.
Madame Claire guessed easily enough that he was on the way to falling
in love with Judy, and that Judy herself was on the same road. She
thought there was something very lovable about Chip, and felt sure that
he was as gallant a soldier as he was a modest one. Major Stroud had
more than hinted to Judy that his D.S.O. should have been a V.C. Madame
Claire loved a good soldier, for she had a theory that to be a good
soldier a man must be a great gentleman. And, like Judy, she felt the
charm of the man of forty--the age that lies like a savory filling
between what is callow in the young generation and outworn in the old.
His poverty had kept him out of touch with things. She guessed that if
he danced at all, it would be in the stiff, uncompromising manner of the
late nineties. He should learn the new ways. He wasn't nearly old enough
to think of himself as on the shelf.
Judy inquired about his injuries. Had the stiffness nearly gone? No, it
was no good his saying that it had entirely gone, because she had
noticed that he was limping slightly when he came in.
"That's old age," he said.
"Very well. Only don't forget to limp the next time we meet. And what
about your head?"
"Oh, quite recovered, thanks! That is, it aches a bit, of course, if I
do much writing, but the doctor says that's bound to be so for a while.
Really," he said, turning to Madame Claire, "I feel I owe my life to
Miss Pendleton and her chauffeur. Any one else would have run gayly
over me and gone on. I think it was such amazingly good luck that it
happened to be that particular car."
"I'm rather inclined to agree with you," laughed Madame Claire. "Some
day I'd like to hear something about your book. It sounds tremendously
interesting. But what I'd like to know now is this. Are all your eggs in
one basket? I mean, does this book occupy your whole time, or do you
work on it when other occupations permit?"
"I'm afraid that ... well, that not only are all my eggs in one basket,
but that there's only one egg. You see," he explained, "I chucked the
army in order to give all my time to it. It meant as much to me as that.
To my mind, no one's ever written scientifically enough about
religions."
"That may be, but I feel you need diversions. When people become so
obsessed by one idea that they walk under omnibuses and into motor cars,
it's time for an antidote."
"That's just what I did," he admitted.
"Very well then, I suggest diversions."
"But what sort? I play golf now and then, but it doesn't take my mind
off the book. Why, I remember perfectly solving a problem once--it had
something to do, I think, with levitation--while I was trying to get my
ball out of a bunker."
Madame Claire laughed heartily.
"You're a most unusual man then. What else can we think of, Judy?"
"There's always dancing," said Judy.
"Dancing! Of course! He must learn to dance. You can't dance and think
about religions. I defy you to do it."
"But I couldn't dance. I'm too old and stiff. Besides, no one would
dance with me."
"Three excuses, and none of them any good."
"I'll teach you," Judy said. "I might even dance with you."
"Would you really? That's awfully kind. But I ought to tell you that I
really don't think I'm teachable."
"You must let me judge of that. We might begin at Eaton Square one
night, in a small way. Gordon and Noel and I often ask a few friends in
for dancing, and there's a little anteroom reserved for practicing.
There will only be a few, and it won't be at all alarming even for
hermits."
Chip looked pleased and dubious at the same time.
"There won't be any flappers, will there? I'm terrified of flappers."
"Nothing more flapperish than myself," laughed Judy. "Was I ever a
flapper, Madame Claire?"
"Never. Millie kept you out of sight until you were able to fly. I
didn't altogether approve. After all, we must all try our wings some
time. You see, I like the present day, Major Crosby. I like it far
better than what people call my own day, though why this one isn't just
as much mine as it is anybody's, I really don't know."
"You're very greedy," Judy told her. "You had Disraeli and Gladstone
and Jenny Lind, and now you want Lloyd George and Charlie Chaplin. All
the same, I don't wonder you like our age best. That one was so full
of hypocrisy and sentiment."
Madame Claire agreed with this.
"We were always pretending things. Men were always gentlemen or
monsters. Young girls were always innocent as flowers. We even tried to
believe that wars and poverty were picturesque and romantic."
"And you talked too much about love," said Judy. "That sort of golden,
sticky, picture-book love that even we were taught to expect. And a
gigantic hoax it is!"
"A hoax?" Chip looked at her to see if she were joking.
"Of course it is. Oh, I believed in it too, once. It's like Santa
Claus. I never could see that the pleasure of believing in him was
worth the awfulness of finding out that he's only a myth."
Chip wondered if she were making fun of love, or whether she was merely
holding the schoolgirl's idea of it up to scorn. He didn't know. He had
never expected to find a love that would transform the world, and he
had found it. What he had yet to discover was that women, after all,
are the terrible realists. Men manage to preserve their illusions
better. Few of them love with their eyes open, and women only really
love when their eyes are open. For women are meant to see faults,
being the mothers of children, and their critical faculties are more
on the alert.
Judy had looked for a miracle. She had been searching for a fairy
castle, and now found herself becoming interested in an imperfect modern
dwelling. Chip had not asked for a miracle, and lo! it had come to
pass. He listened to Judy making fun of romantic love--which she did
with great satisfaction to herself until interrupted by tea--and
refused to believe that she meant what she said. For romantic love
does undoubtedly come to very simple people, and Chip was very simple.
He didn't trouble to disagree with her. He was happy to be hearing from
her own lips that she had never been in love. Not that it made any
difference, beyond the pleasure that it gave him, for to love Judy was
not the same thing where he was concerned as to make love to her. That
was unthinkable.
They left Madame Claire's together at six, and Chip, happily reckless as
well as recklessly happy, walked with Judy all the way to Eaton Square.
It was settled that he was to dine there and begin his rejuvenation the
following Wednesday night. For Judy told herself that she couldn't keep
Chip a secret from the family forever, and they might as well meet him
and get done with it.
"I hope you won't be frightened of mother," she said. "I don't know why
it is, but she does frighten people. I don't think she wants to,
really. She and father are very keen on what Noel calls the 'kin
game.' You know the sort of thing I mean--who's related to who and
how."
"I see," said Chip.
"So perhaps you'd better tell me some of your family history. Then I
could tell them, and you won't be bothered. Because they're sure to want
to know."
She colored as she said it, and Chip guessed that there were mortifying
experiences behind her warning.
"With all the pleasure in the world," he said. "Only there isn't much to
tell."
He made short work of what there was. His father, Graham Crosby, an
explorer well known to geographical societies, had lost his life from
fever in a South American jungle at the age of thirty-seven. His
mother, faced with the prospect of almost unendurable poverty, tried
her hand at novel writing. "The sentimental kind that you would have
hated," he said with a smile. However, they had an enormous success,
and enabled her to send her only son to Sandhurst. She died at the
close of the Boer War. They were not related to any Crosbys that he
knew of, except some excessively dull ones who lived somewhere near
Aberdeen.
"Very poor pickings for your mother, I'm afraid," he said with a laugh.
Chip left her at the door with his rather old-fashioned bow, and she
watched him until he reached the corner. There he turned, as she had
guessed he would, and looked back, and as the maid opened the door, she
waved her hand to him gayly. He walked stiffly, thanks to the accident,
and leaned a little on his stick. Dear old Chip!...
So this was love! With her it took the form of a passionate tenderness.
She wanted him to have success, and happiness. She wanted to help him to
get them.
For Chip, the impossible thing that had happened was too dazzling, as
yet, to be more than blinked at. It was as though an old dried stick had
burst into blossom and leaf. As though water had been turned into wine.
That Judy might be persuaded to care for him in return never entered his
head. To love her was wonderful enough. Let a man of her own world, a
man of wealth and standing, try to win her. Some day such a man would
succeed, and he would have to bear that as he had borne lesser things.
If his book received recognition, he might continue to enjoy this
delightful friendship. If not, he must quietly drop out of Judy's life.
For he believed that a man had no right to accept a charming woman's
friendship unless he could lay appropriate and frequent sacrifices upon
her altar. Which shows that the world had been rolling along under
Chip's very nose without his having observed the manner of its rolling.
One pleasure he permitted himself that day. He went into a little flower
shop in Church Street and bought two dozen pink roses. It was one of his
happiest moments; he had been so denied the joy of giving. On his card
he wrote:
"_I hope you will forgive me if I am doing a presumptuous thing in
sending you these few flowers. But if they give you a little
pleasure, I shall be well content._"
He felt bold, because he had nothing to lose. It was early February,
too, with the softness of coming spring in the air, and hope dies hard
in the spring, even at forty.