Part 8

But the good aunt utilized her talk alone with Miss Bleecker to speak openly about Lord Clandonald's excellences, his wrongs at the hands of Ruby Darien, his desirable domestic traits, the subjects, in fine, rarely neglected when the female proprietor or backer of a man in the marriage market sees her chance. Lady Campstown was so genuinely unselfish in her desire to build up again the shattered fabric of her dear Clan's life, that another than the pachydermatous Miss Bleecker would have perceived the pathos of the situation, and condoned the openness of the attack. Miss Bleecker, however, was quite on her guard. She did not consider Clandonald anything to jump at in the way of a match for Helen. She was certain of Mr. Carstairs' disapproval; she knew that he could not be brought to supply cash for the palpably exigent repairs at Beaumanoir, and lastly, and more to the point, she had no idea of relinquishing while she could hold it, her comfortable billet as Miss Carstairs' chaperon. But she was aware that Lady Campstown, while possessing but a small and meagre establishment in London, had a pretty villa at Cannes, where she was a personage of undoubted influence and wide acquaintance. And as Miss Bleecker's doctor had advised the air of that favored resort for her relaxed throat, and Helen did not care where they went, Cannes was the secret object of the chaperon's intended movement southward at the season's height.

Therefore, the conversation, while the two elders strolled or sat under immemorial yews, and enjoyed grapes and peaches plucked in an enchanting old walled garden, waxed upon one side, more gracious and evasive, on the other, more perplexed and yet more hopeful. From all she could gather, Lady Campstown was convinced that Helen had been sent by Providence for Clan's regeneration. The hint given on their return to the house, that the American ladies would be in Cannes after Christmas, to remain there until joined probably by Mr. and Mrs. Carstairs in the well-known yacht, "Sans Peur," seemed to fit into her plans. A further suggestion from the dowager, that Miss Bleecker and her charge would allow Lady Campstown to have the pleasure of introducing them to some people and places in the south, came so quickly, and was accepted so suavely, that the stately little lady was herself a little startled and taken aback by it.

At this moment Clandonald and his other guests stepped in through a window opening upon a stone-paved court with fountains and statues and ancient trees, enclosed in walls of ivy and maiden-hair fern, reproducing prettily one of those haunts of Pan at Villa d'Este in Tivoli, adored by a former owner. Helen had been sitting upon a lichen-grown stone bench, too lapped in pure pleasure to want to move. A stable-clock striking somewhere back of shrubberies, had warned her that it was time for them to be thinking of their train up to town; and she rose regretfully.

"It has been a day to string upon Time's rosary," she said to her host, to whom she yielded the greater credit for his hospitality, because she saw that he had been worried and abstracted, and that it was Mariol's continued sparkle of wit and bonhomie that had really lent the occasion its subtle charm.

"It is very kind of you to have been willing to give me so much of your valuable time," he answered, with an effort to throw off what was possessing him, "and it has been a pleasant second chapter of our voyage."

"I wanted to tell you and M. de Mariol before we separate," went on Miss Carstairs, who had all day been trying for an opportunity to bring this in, and failed, simple as the matter seemed, "that I had, this morning only, a letter from Miss Winstanley. They decided, you know, to put off their visit to London till some later date, and have been wandering through the apple country of South Devon, to see the orchards and the cider-making. Some book Mr. Winstanley read had tempted him. They were to stop at Torquay, thence going to Dover and the Continent."

"Very nice--and very American," said Clandonald. "Fancy running after an apple-crop the moment one lands in Britain, because some man has put it into a novel! I hope Miss Winstanley has recovered from her indisposition?"

"She seemed to be well and happy. She asked to be kindly remembered to you and M. de Mariol."

Clandonald's courtesy had taken wings, in the emotion of a deeper sort that overcame him inconveniently. He had hoped to carry off easily this inevitable talk about the girl who had laid so strong a hold upon his broken life. But he said nothing at all, while Mariol, as usual, came to the rescue.

"I have been telling Clandonald the two interesting facts developed by you concerning our Alabama friend," he said, gracefully. "And we both unite in asking you to convey to her our best congratulations upon her intended marriage."

"What a glorious copper beech!" exclaimed Helen, suddenly looking away past its owner to where the trees arose like a fire fountain from velvet sward. "I beg your pardon. I will give her the message when I answer her characteristic letter. Perhaps I ought to have said before that, in a postscript, she asked me to tell you both of her engagement to Mr. Glynn, should I not have already done so."

Lady Campstown, having taken cordial leave of her nephew's guests, whom de Mariol escorted back to their private hotel in Curzon Street, remained over with Clandonald at Beaumauoir for tea. They drank it, thanks to a perfectly warm and well-aired afternoon, under the beech tree extolled by Miss Carstairs. Clandonald's dogs, the only friends of man who do not disappoint or change, clustered around his knee, a homely but human Schipperke gluing her faithful head upon her master's boot. The day, the hour, the pleasant rite, the dear old woman whose thin, pearl-white fingers twinkled among the tea cups as she looked over at him from time to time in a sort of speechless longing, touched and pleased the returned traveller, but could not cheer his melancholy.

Finally Lady Campstown took heart of grace to go to the point direct.

"I'm sorry to see you so down, Clan, my dear boy," she said, in handing him his second cup. "To-day, of all days, when you have had such a charming visitor. I can't tell you how well I am pleased with Miss Carstairs. You must know."

"Delighted, I'm sure, Aunt Lucy," he answered, with refrigerating vagueness. "But to talk of less agreeable subjects, I'm sorry to say Ruby has broken loose again, and is annoying me horribly. Having failed recently to make a scene for me--and another person--after her own heart, she has taken to writing me infernal hypocritical letters, saying she's back in England, stone-broke, ill, penitent, Lord knows what, and must have money."

"The old cry!" exclaimed Lady Campstown hotly. "Don't answer her, Clan, treat her as if you were locked in behind walls, and she in the street, outside."

"Her capacity for inventing malice and mischief is too great. She will find some way to circumvent me. Her price of peace is hard cash, and so for the present, I can breathe free again."

"You have been weak enough----" began his aunt, despairingly.

"I am not the only one involved," he said shortly. "Now, Aunt Lucy, say no more to me about it. I only wished to put you on your guard against any assault she might make upon your compassion."

"I am safe from that!" said the little lady grimly, and indeed, for the 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.

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!