“Forgive me. I was very rude this afternoon.” That was all. No signature, and no beginning. But my name was on the envelope, and spelled correctly, an unusual thing.
“Is there an answer?” asked the boy.
I looked up from the scrawled words. “No,” I said. “No, there isn’t any answer.”
When he had gone I put the note away in my pocket, and turned once more to my pencil drawing, but for no known reason it did not please me anymore; the face was stiff and lifeless, and the lace collar and the beard were like props in a charade.
4
The morning after the bridge party Mrs. Van Hopper woke with a sore throat and a temperature of a hundred and two. I rang up her doctor, who came round at once and diagnosed the usual influenza. “You are to stay in bed until I allow you to get up,” he told her; “I don’t like the sound of that heart of yours, and it won’t get better unless you keep perfectly quiet and still. I should prefer,” he went on, turning to me, “that Mrs. Van Hopper had a trained nurse. You can’t possibly lift her. It will only be for a fortnight or so.”
I thought this rather absurd, and protested, but to my surprise she agreed with him. I think she enjoyed the fuss it would create, the sympathy of people, the visits and messages from friends, and the arrival of flowers. Monte Carlo had begun to bore her, and this little illness would make a distraction.
The nurse would give her injections, and a light massage, and she would have a diet. I left her quite happy after the arrival of the nurse, propped up on pillows with a falling temperature, her best bed-jacket round her shoulders and beribboned boudoir cap upon her head. Rather ashamed of my light heart, I telephoned her friends, putting off the small party she had arranged for the evening, and went down to the restaurant for lunch, a good half hour before our usual time. I expected the room to be empty—nobody lunched generally before one o’clock. It was empty, except for the table next to ours. This was a contingency for which I was unprepared. I thought he had gone to Sospel. No doubt he was lunching early because he hoped to avoid us at one o’clock. I was already halfway across the room and could not go back. I had not seen him since we disappeared in the lift the day before, for wisely he had avoided dinner in the restaurant, possibly for the same reason that he lunched early now.
It was a situation for which I was ill-trained. I wished I was older, different. I went to our table, looking straight before me, and immediately paid the penalty of gaucherie by knocking over the vase of stiff anemones as I unfolded my napkin. The water soaked the cloth, and ran down onto my lap. The waiter was at the other end of the room, nor had he seen. In a second though my neighbor was by my side, dry napkin in hand.
“You can’t sit at a wet tablecloth,” he said brusquely; “it will put you off your food. Get out of the way.”
He began to mop the cloth, while the waiter, seeing the disturbance, came swiftly to the rescue.
“I don’t mind,” I said, “it doesn’t matter a bit. I’m all alone.”
He said nothing, and then the waiter arrived and whipped away the vase and the sprawling flowers.
“Leave that,” he said suddenly, “and lay another place at my table. Mademoiselle will have luncheon with me.”
I looked up in confusion. “Oh, no,” I said, “I couldn’t possibly.”
“Why not?” he said.
I tried to think of an excuse. I knew he did not want to lunch with me. It was his form of courtesy. I should ruin his meal. I determined to be bold and speak the truth.
“Please,” I begged, “don’t be polite. It’s very kind of you but I shall be quite all right if the waiter just wipes the cloth.”
“But I’m not being polite,” he insisted. “I would like you to have luncheon with me. Even if you had not knocked over that vase so clumsily I should have asked you.” I suppose my face told him my doubt, for he smiled. “You don’t believe me,” he said; “never mind, come and sit down. We needn’t talk to each other unless we feel like it.”
We sat down, and he gave me the menu, leaving me to choose, and went on with his hors d’？uvre as though nothing had happened.
His quality of detachment was peculiar to himself, and I knew that we might continue thus, without speaking, throughout the meal and it would not matter. There would be no sense of strain. He would not ask me questions on history.
“What’s happened to your friend?” he said. I told him about the influenza. “I’m so sorry,” he said, and then, after pausing a moment, “you got my note, I suppose. I felt very much ashamed of myself. My manners were atrocious. The only excuse I can make is that I’ve become boorish through living alone. That’s why it’s so kind of you to lunch with me today.”