The restaurant of the Grand Hotel in Rome was filling up. People were
dining rather late--it was the end of May and the entertainments were
lessening, so they could dawdle over their repasts and smoke their
cigarettes in peace.
Stella Rawson came in with her uncle and aunt, Canon and the Honorable
Mrs. Ebley, and they took their seats in a secluded corner. They looked
a little out of place--and felt it--amid this more or less gay company.
But the drains of the Grand Hotel were known to be beyond question,
and, coming to Rome so late in the season, the Reverend Canon Ebley
felt it was wiser to risk the contamination of the over-worldly-minded
than a possible attack of typhoid fever. The belief in a divine
protection did not give him or his lady wife that serenity it might
have done, and they traveled fearfully, taking with them their own
jaeger sheets among other precautions.
They realized they must put up with the restaurant for meals, but at
least the women folk should not pander to the customs of the place and
wear evening dress. Their subdued black gowns were fastened to the
throat. Stella Rawson felt absolutely excited--she was twenty-one years
old, but this was the first time she had ever dined in a fashionable
restaurant, and it almost seemed like something deliciously wrong.
Life in the Cathedral Close where they lived in England was not highly
exhilarating, and when its duties were over it contained only mild
gossip and endless tea-parties and garden-parties by way of recreation.
Canon and the Honorable Mrs. Ebley were fairly rich people. The Uncle
Erasmus' call to the church had been answered from inclination--not
necessity. His heart was in his work. He was a good man and did his
duty according to the width of the lights in which he had been brought
up.
Mrs. Ebley did more than her duty--and had often too much momentum,
which now and then upset other people's apple carts.
She had, in fact, been the moving spirit in the bringing about of her
niece Stella's engagement to the Bishop's junior chaplain, a young
gentleman of aesthetic aspirations and eight hundred a year of his own.
Stella herself had never been enthusiastic about the affair. As a man,
Eustace Medlicott said absolutely nothing at all to her--though to be
sure she was quite unaware that he was inadequate in this respect. No
man had meant anything different up to this period of her life. She had
seen so few of them she was no judge.
Eustace Medlicott had higher collars than the other curates, and
intoned in a wonderfully melodious voice in the cathedral. And quite a
number of the young ladies of Exminster, including the Bishop's second
daughter, had been setting their caps at him from the moment of his
arrival, so that when, by the maneuvers of Aunt Caroline Ebley, Stella
found him proposing to her, she somehow allowed herself to murmur some
sort of consent.
Then it seemed quite stimulating to have a ring and to be congratulated
upon being engaged. And the few weeks that followed while the thing was
fresh and new had passed quite pleasantly. It was only when about a
month had gone by that a gradual and growing weariness seemed to be
falling upon her.
To be the wife of an aesthetic high church curate, who fasted severely
during Lent and had rigid views upon most subjects, began to grow into
a picture which held out less and less charm for her.
But Aunt Caroline was firm--and the habit of twenty-one years of
obedience held.
Perhaps Fate was looking on in sympathy with her unrest. In any case,
it appeared like the jade's hand and not chance which made Uncle
Erasmus decide to take his holiday early in the year and to decide to
spend it abroad--not in Scotland or Wales as was his custom.
Stella, he said, should see the eternal city and Florence before
settling down in the autumn to her new existence.
Miss Rawson actually jumped with joy--and the knowledge that Eustace
Medlicott would be unable to accompany them, but might join them later
on, did not damp her enthusiasm.
Every bit of the journey was a pleasure, from the moment they landed on
French soil. They had come straight through to Rome from Paris, where
they had spent a week at a small hotel; because of the lateness of the
year they must get to their southern point first of all and return
northward in a more leisurely manner.
And now anyone who is reading this story can picture this respectable
English family and understand their status and antecedents, so we can
very well get back to them seated in the agreeable restaurant of the
Grand Hotel at Rome--beginning to partake of a modest dinner.
Mrs. Ebley (I had almost written the Reverend Mrs. Ebley!) was secretly
enjoying herself--she had that feeling that she was in a place where
she ought not to be--through no fault of her own--and so was free to
make the most of it, and certainly these well-dressed people were very
interesting to glance at between mouthfuls of a particularly
well-cooked fish.
Stella was thrilling all over and her soft brown eyes were sparkling
and her dazzlingly pink and white complexion glowing with health and
excitement, so that even in the Exminster confection of black grenadine
she was an agreeable morsel for the male eye to dwell upon.
There were the usual company there: the younger diplomats from the
Embassies; a sprinkling of trim Italian officers in their pretty
uniforms; French and Austrian ladies; as well as the attractive-looking
native and American representatives of the elite of Roman society.
The tables began to fill up before the Ebleys had finished their fish,
and numbers of the parties seemed to know one another and nod and
exchange words en passant.
But there was one table laid for a single person which remained empty
until the entrees were being handed, and Stella, with her fresh
interest in the whole scene, wondered for whom it was reserved.
He came in presently--and he really merits a descriptive paragraph all
to himself.
He was a very tall man and well made, with broad shoulders and a small
head. His evening clothes, though beautifully pressed, with that look
which only a thoroughly good valet knows how to stamp upon his master's
habiliments as a daily occurrence, were of foreign cut and hand, and
his shirt, unstarched, was of the finest pleated cambric.
These trifles, however, were not what rendered him remarkable, but that
his light brown hair was worn parted in the middle and waved back a la
vierge with a rather saintly expression, and was apparently just cut
off in a straight line at the back. This was quite peculiar-looking
enough--and in conjunction with a young, silky beard, trimmed into a
sharp point with the look of an archaic Greek statue, he presented a
type not easily forgotten. The features were regular and his eyes were
singularly calm and wise and blue.
It seemed incredible that such an almost grotesque arrangement of
coiffure should adorn the head of a man in modern evening dress. It
should have been on some Byzantine saint. However, there he was, and
entirely unconcerned at the effect he was producing.
The waiters, who probably knew his name and station, precipitated
themselves forward to serve him, and with leisurely mien he ordered a
recherche dinner and a pint of champagne.
Stella Rawson was much interested and so were her uncle and aunt.
"What a very strange-looking person," Mrs. Ebley said. "Of what nation
can he be? Erasmus, have you observed him?"
Canon Ebley put on his pince-nez and gave the newcomer the benefit of a
keen scrutiny.
"I could not say with certainty, my dear. A northerner evidently--but
whether Swedish or Danish it would be difficult to determine," he
announced.
"He does not appear to know he is funny-looking," Stella Rawson said,
timidly. "Do you notice, Aunt Caroline, he does not look about him at
all, he has never glanced in any direction; it is as if he were alone
in the room."
"A very proper behavior," the Aunt Caroline replied severely, "but he
cannot be an Englishman--no Englishman would enter a public place,
having made himself remarkable like that, and then be able to sit there
unaware of it; I am glad to say our young men have some sense of
convention. You cannot imagine Eustace Medlicott perfectly indifferent
to the remarks he would provoke if he were tricked out so."
Stella felt a sudden sympathy for the foreigner. She had heard so
ceaselessly of her fiance's perfections!
"Perhaps they wear the hair like that in his country," she returned,
with as much spirit as she dared to show. "And he may think we all look
funny, as we think he does. Only he seems to be much better mannered
than we are, because he is quite sure of himself and quite unconscious
or indifferent about our opinion."
Both her aunt and uncle looked at her with slightly shocked
surprise--and she saw it at once and reddened a little.
But this incident caused the remarkable looking foreigner to
crystallize in interest for her, especially when, in raising his glass
of champagne, she saw that on his wrist there was a bracelet of
platinum with a small watch set with very fine diamonds. She could
hardly have been more surprised if he had worn a ring in his nose, so
unaccustomed was she to any type but that of the curates and young
gentlemen of Exminster.
Canon and Mrs. Ebley finished their dinner in disdainful silence and
sailed from the room with chilling glances, but as Stella Rawson
followed them demurely she raised her soft eyes when she came to the
object of her relatives' contempt, and met his serene blue ones--and
for some reason thrilled wildly.
There was a remarkable and powerful magnetism in his glance; it was as
if a breath of some other world touched her, she seemed to see into
possibilities she had never dreamed about. She resented being drawn
into a far corner on the right hand of the hall, and there handed an
English paper to read for half an hour before being told to go to bed.
She was perfectly conscious that she was longing for the stranger to
come out of the restaurant, that she might see him again.
But it was not until she was obediently following her aunt's black
broche train to the lift up the steps again that the tall man passed
them in the corridor. He never even glanced in their direction, and
went on as though the space were untenanted--but had hardly got beyond,
when he turned suddenly, and walked rapidly to the lift door, passing
them again. So that the four entered it presently, and were taken up
together.
Stella Rawson was very close to the remarkable looking creature. And
again a wild nameless attraction crept over her. She noticed his skin
was faintly browned with the sun, but was otherwise as fine as a
child's--finer than most children's. And now she could see that three
most wonderful pearls were his shirt-studs.
He got out on the second floor, one beneath them, and said, "Pardon,"
as he passed, but not as a French word, nor yet as if it were English.
During these few seconds Stella was quite aware that he had never
apparently looked at her.
"I call such an appearance sacrilegious," Mrs. Ebley said. "A man has
no right to imitate one of the blessed apostles in these modern days;
it is very bad taste."