Juggernaut Part 5

There was no audible reply. Esther retreated upward a few steps, then descended with a brisk step and opened the door. She observed Lady Clifford sitting with a submissive mien on the edge of a stiff Francois Premier chair, biting her underlip and pulling a small lace-edged handkerchief between her fingers. The doctor, with an immovable face, was filling a hypodermic syringe from a small phial.

"I'm sorry, doctor----" Esther began, when he interrupted her.

"No, no, it's all right, nurse, I found I had some here after all.

Now, if you will a.s.sist Lady Clifford with her dress----"

"I suppose you give it in the thigh?"

"In the thigh."

Lady Clifford had crossed to the hard couch by the window, and was now seated, leaning up against the cushions at the end, cautiously, so as not to disarrange her hat. Esther drew up the narrow skirt, exposing slender legs encased in gossamer stockings and six inches or so of a diaphanous under-garment, pink georgette, delicate as a cobweb and scented like the rest of its owner with an indefinable and slightly cloying perfume. On the white skin just below the hip there showed startlingly a blue-black bruise, the size of a franc piece--the visible mark of repeated injections. Esther sponged a fresh spot and the doctor shot in the long needle with a casual indifference.

Simultaneously the woman on the couch closed her eyes and stretched out her limbs with a feline luxurious movement. Esther was tempted to believe she enjoyed the stabbing pain. There were people who took a sensual delight in suffering, or at least she had heard that there were. She watched curiously the sort of rapturous twist of the patient's body, the convulsive grip of her hands on the rim of the couch.

Hands? For the first time Esther noticed them. What was it about them that was different, that filled her with a mixture of fascination and repugnance? They were not large; they were soft, milky-white, marvellously manicured, each nail a plaque of carmine enamel. Yet there was something wrong, almost like a deformity. Of course! It was the shortness of the fingers, or rather, of the first joint, a general look of stumpiness, the nails trained to long points to hide the deficiency. The thumbs, in particular--how squat, how stunted! They appeared to have only two joints instead of three. Somehow they gave her a feeling akin to nausea.... She sponged the puncture with iodine, smoothed down the skirt, cleaned and replaced the needle in its case, and all the time she was thinking of those oddly repulsive hands.

Repulsive to her, that is. She knew that not many people would have noticed them specially.

Lady Clifford had risen, a sort of nervous expectancy in her manner.

The doctor glanced at her, then turned to Esther.

"You may as well go home, if you like, Miss Rowe," he said. "I don't think I shall need you for anything more."

"Oh, thank you, doctor!"

It still wanted half an hour until the time she usually left off. For a moment it flashed upon her that there was, after all, a spark of kindliness concealed in that big, slow-moving machine, and the thought warmed and pleased her. She always wanted to like the people she worked for, it was so much jollier. But when she smiled her appreciation she met with no answering gleam whatever. He had already forgotten her as a person, was merely waiting for her to leave the room.

"There's no use," she sighed ruefully as she closed the door. "I might as well try to be fond of the Woolworth Building!"

"Oh, nurse," Lady Clifford called to her suddenly. "Perhaps you will be so good as to give a message to my chauffeur. Tell him he is not to wait, but to call instead for Sir Charles at his club."

"Yes, Lady Clifford."

She quickly got into her things and slipped out of the front door. The car waiting by the curb was a luxurious Rolls, the sandy-haired English chauffeur was smoking a cigarette and reading the _Sporting Times_ by the aid of a tiny electric light. Inside the car on dark blue cushions a small Aberdeen terrier, the picture of patient good-behaviour, sat gazing resignedly out of the window. The rug heaped beside him showed a lining of sable pattes. Clearly Lady Clifford, whoever she might be, possessed an abundance of this world's goods. How doubly odd that she should allow her physician to order her about in so peremptory a fashion! Probably no one else dared to, she looked arrogant enough herself, for all her fairness and fragility.

The chauffeur stared at Esther attentively while she delivered the message, then with a stolid face, "Right-o, miss," he replied and, touching his cap, started the engine.

"How do you do, Miss Rowe? Is this the place where you are employed?"

Esther jumped, astonished at anyone's knowing her name. Then, seeing who it was who had come up behind her, she smiled in recognition.

"Oh! Miss Paull! I had no idea."

It happened that Miss Paull was the one person at her hotel with whom she had any extensive conversation. She was a tall and angular Englishwoman, clad always in voluminous black, a wide-brimmed, old-fashioned hat resting uneasily atop her mountain of snowy hair.

"Yes, that is the doctor's house," added Esther in reply to her acquaintance's question. "I'm just off for the day."

"Shall we walk along together then?" suggested the other, slightly modifying her tremendous strides. In spite of her elderly and quaint appearance--rather in the style of an ancient Du Maurier drawing--the lady was a tireless pedestrian, covering miles daily, armed with an umbrella, a water-colour box, and a folding camp-stool. Esther had more than once met her, racing along, not the least impeded by her paraphernalia, her black cloak and veil streaming behind her in the wind.

"Do you know this neighbourhood?" Esther was inquiring, when she noticed that her companion had stopped stock still and was regarding with frank curiosity the Rolls Royce, which had just succeeded in reversing its position.

"I seem to know that car," remarked Miss Paull. "I certainly know the chauffeur's face. Can it be--yes, now I know." She walked on again with a satisfied air. "That car belongs to a countryman of mine; he has a villa over there"--she waved a black-gloved hand--"in the part that they call La Californie."

"Really!"

Esther's tone was one of lively interest. Now she would hear something.

"He's a Mr. Clifford--or no, he is Sir Charles Clifford now, he was knighted for something or other during the war. He's a big mill owner in Lancashire--cotton, you know. Perhaps you've heard of the firm of Seabrook & Clifford?"

Esther had not.

"No, of course not. I forgot you don't know England. It's an important firm, though, several big factories. They make the Seacliff Fabrics. Sir Charles was our Conservative member for years. He has a place near my home, between Chester and Altringham. I've often seen him."

"There is a Lady Clifford with the doctor now. What is she--a daughter-in-law? She's quite young."

"Is she French?"

"Yes."

"Ha! That's his wife. His second wife, of course. He married again about six years ago, some Frenchwoman he met down in this part of the world. There was a great deal of excitement about it at the time, the whole neighbourhood was astonished. It must have been a shock to his family."

"Then he has a family?"

"Only a son, he lost another boy in the war. And then, of course, there is a sister, unmarried, about my own age. I've met her sometimes at charity bazaars and so on."

"Do you know Lady Clifford?"

"Heavens, no! Though I've seen her here in Cannes. I believe she was an actress."

There was no mistaking Miss Paull's sentiments in regard to the stage.

Esther was secretly amused.

"They spend nearly all their time here now," continued the spinster, "though whether on account of Sir Charles's health or because his wife prefers it I can't say. I daresay it wasn't gay enough for her in Cheshire--not enough distractions. You know how it is with these young women who marry old men, they don't want to sit at home and do needlework."

She ended on an expressive note, as though implying more than her delicate maiden mind would permit her to say. Esther thought of the young Englishman in the restaurant at the Casino, and was silent.

Their walk led them through the older, more picturesque part of the town, a portion Esther loved, finding in its steep winding streets and irregular architecture the charm that was missing from the modern cities of her knowledge. Here, she thought, one could imagine anything happening--intrigues, romantic incident, crimes even, all the material that went to form tales of adventure. This was its habitat. From the newer, cleaner streets, the luxurious Promenade de la Croisette, the heterogeneous Route de Gra.s.se, or that region of plutocrats, La Californie, one expected nothing of the kind.

"Fascinating, isn't it?" remarked her companion, echoing her thoughts.

"I am so fond of all this part. When the weather gets a little warmer I am going to bring my sketchbook out one day and get a few nice bits.

That corner, for instance--delightful, don't you think?"

They dawdled a bit, through a littered street of open markets where they examined the contents of barrows--flowers, cheap lace, stockings, furs, trays of battered coins and bits of china, bra.s.s and copper vessels--now and then peering into a provocative alley-way, held by the spell of the exotic. Hatless women with smooth shining heads bustled past them, children in black pinafores played noisily in the gutters, _ouvriers_ in dust-coloured corduroys bound about the waist with red sashes lurched along, often with a clatter of black varnished sabots.

In a doorway one of these fellows, a swarthy brigand, was feeding a particularly ill-favoured mongrel, kneeling beside it and admonishing it to eat. "_Allez, vite, mange donc, Helene!_" he was saying, and Esther found entertainment in the mangy cur's rejoicing in the name of Helene.

It was dark now, lights flared in the windows. Leaving the market, they turned into a street of shops which Esther had several times explored, and paused before an antiquaire whose windows showed a display of old majolica, silver-gilt, and Limoges enamel against a Flemish tapestry.

"This is one of my favourite shops," said Miss Paull. "You know it, too? But of course I never buy anything, the things are too dear for my purse. Cannes is like Chester when it comes to antiques--too many tourists."

As she spoke a taxi rattled up the street at a characteristic break-neck speed, stopping abruptly at the shop next door, a dingy jeweller's. From the taxi stepped a woman, young, smartly dressed.

She paid the fare, then stood looking somewhat uncertainly at the name on the shop door.