The day after the christening of the Kerr-de Jones baby, Frank, having
received a telegram from Ottercove inviting him to come to Nice, went
abroad. His wife was grazing somewhere--he didn’t know where.
He didn’t bother about Cynthia. He didn’t see why he should bother about
her. He could have divorced her, or she could have divorced him, but he
didn’t see why he should go to the bother of divorcing her. He simply
didn’t bother about her. And, moreover, she didn’t bother about him.
Mrs. Kerr, he recalled, had been conspicuous at the christening of the
Honourable Richard Mosquito, and Pilling had been loud in extolling,
some felt rather indiscreetly, the Kerr strain in the baby. Raymond,
hastily adopted by de Jones, officiated in the absence of his father at
the side of Eleonor. He looked very red and hot and embarrassed at the
arrival of his little son-brother and resented Pilling’s _faux pas_,
who, conscious of his blunder, and anxious to agree that the baby was
the image of de Jones, added inadvertently: “But of course! The image of
his grandfather,” while Mr. Kerr walked about sardonically, as if
saying: “This is my revenge.”
“Can’t stand that man Pilling,” Raymond said bitterly.
“I, on the contrary,” rejoined his mother, “find him a very charming,
intellectual young man.”
“Why doesn’t he marry Zita?”
“My dear, he can’t. He is already married.”
“Then why doesn’t he leave her to marry another?”
“They live together--just the same as if they were married. That is a
common custom nowadays among the more intellectual classes. Already in
my youth it was accepted. You even find it in Turgenev and Dostoevski.”
In parting on the kerb, Frank overheard Mrs. Kerr thanking her son.
“Chris can give me nothing now. And if he could, he would give it all to
Eva.”
“Eleonor,” said Raymond, “has no banking account of her own. But she has
a cheque book and draws on her uncle’s account to an unlimited extent.”
“A very nice, well-read, original young woman, and I am very fond of
her,” was Mrs. Kerr’s reply.
Smiling thus over these insistent memories of yesterday, Frank pulled
open the blinds in the morning: the blue train was touching the south
coast of France.
Nice. The most beautiful thing about Nice is its name, full of a
delicious springtide fragrance. Apart from the name, it may be
questioned, Frank thought, whether there was anything else particularly
beautiful about the town, that somewhat hard and heartless courtesan de
luxe organised for the sale of dubious pleasure.
Already from the window of your carriage you behold the long train
bending like a serpent as it races up the coast carrying dutifully its
load of passengers who had dribbled from the four corners of the world,
congregating towards Paris, rushed in the night through northern wet and
wind and bleakness, to turn the corner at Marseilles at daybreak, and
now gaily down the sunny Côte d’Azur, past all the pink and cream and
white of basking villas, towards Nice.
In another three hours, Frank reflected, he would see Eva, and the
benignant luxury of the scenery illustrated his anticipation. The train
curved amid the rocky hills and flowery valleys, past the rose-white
garden villas perched above the blue, blue sea--all swiftly whirling by.
Nice.
“His lordship is lunching in the restaurant and asks you to come in,
sir.”
Entering the huge dining-room, Frank instantly perceived Lord
Ottercove’s steel-grey eye peering at him in its essential hardness,
but softened as it were by an air of bonhomie. There was about the
baron’s face something at once fine and comic, stern and pantaloonish,
Jehovahian and George Robian. His glinting eyes blazed with a righteous
blue fire, while his tilted nose protruded a naïve, peeping curiosity
about human affairs, and his noble brow frowned olympically. When he
closed one eye at you to glint with double force with the other, he
looked a satyr. At one side of him was Eva, gay and spring-like in
appearance; on the other, Lord de Jones, more shark-like than ever. No
one could look less a peer than de Jones.
“Why won’t you take off your coat and come and have lunch?” said
Ottercove, genially. The three of them looked as though they had been
revelling considerably.
“You do all look washed out,” said Frank.
“We’ve decided to make a halt here before going on to Rome,” said
Ottercove. “I must recuperate my forces before I tackle Mussolini over
the craters.”
“Do you expect any serious opposition?”
“Yuh,” said Ottercove. “I guess they’ll want heavy compensation. The
Vesuvius alone, they argue, is a steady source of revenue, attracting
hordes of tourists.”
“But he must see the international side of it if he has any good will in
him.”
“The good will among men,” said the baron, “is a moral support
physically precarious for individual man to lean on. But all the better
for us. We are in no hurry since the General Election is again delayed.
We must give the illusion of warring, of desperately battling with evil
and sinister forces and win the battle of David and Goliath.”
“Well, you certainly look exhausted.”
“Don’t look at Chris,” said Eva. (So she already called him ‘Chris’!)
“He is always dirty looking, he can’t help it. I mean he’s clean, but
dirty-looking. There are such people. And there are others, who are
dirty and always look quite clean.”
“You wise little girl, Eva,” said Ottercove tenderly.
“Lord Ottercove, have you read Ferdinand’s novel?” she asked.
“I’ve read it twice.”
“H’m.--I must read it again,” she said.
After lunch, Lord Ottercove took them up to his suite. On the table in
the drawing-room copies of his newspapers were spread out invitingly. “I
can’t,” said Frank, fingering _The Evening Ensign_, “behold this
newspaper without an inward pang.”
Lord Ottercove frowned. He did not like to be reminded of it. Instead,
and in pursuance of a certain association of ideas, he asked,
“What have you done to Cynthia?”
“Alas! Alack!” said Frank, who, in the absence of his host’s material
interest in their marriage, did not see himself compelled to satisfy
the baron’s idle curiosity.
Learning from Frank that he had put up at another hotel and would not
move over to this for fear of being ruined, “Stay with me two or three
weeks,” said Lord Ottercove. “You don’t know what pleasure it gives me.”
His words were so warm and inviting. “Gilbert,” he said softly, “go and
see if there are any more rooms on this floor.”
“Yes, m’lord.”
Gilbert returned to say that there was the choice of an imperial and an
ordinary suite. Which of the two did his lordship wish him to reserve
for Mr. Dickin?
“Mr. Dickin will see and choose for himself,” said Lord Ottercove. “And
now I will jump into bed. I will see the three of you, I hope, at dinner
and take you to the Opera at Monte Carlo.”
“Agreed!”