1
Virginia was certainly right about the trains from Paris to the south
being packed: there was not a sleeping-car to be had for months to come,
and for an ordinary seat one had to fight; so that the capacity of
French railway officials for being rude and being bribed was being
exercised to the utmost. The _douaniers_ were also charming, and people
remarked on the genial smiles with which the passport officials at the
ports greeted them.... The dawn of peace, the new year of 1919! What
wonder that those who could rushed quickly away from the homes they had
so long and vigorously protected, to the bright Mediterranean coast! The
_Sketch_ and the _Tatler_ said that the Riviera had “at one bound”
regained its pre-war glories of rank, fashion, and riches, and published
photographs in proof of same. Carelessness was upon the world again--in
1919--and life glittered as of old, or even brighter. And what
wonder--in 1919! Spectres there still were, but solaces abounded....
The hill of Cimiez, as all the world knows, adorns the background of the
town of Nice; and the hill of Cimiez, as all the world knows, was
adorned by Queen Victoria, who stayed there for a period, or two
periods, upon its very crest. That crest is now distinguished by a
statue of her person and a monument to her name--which is no less than
the Hotel Victoria Regina, a very large and white hotel indeed, from
whose windows the prospect of the Mediterranean seems but a little
thing. A huge white palace it is, reigning on the hill of Cimiez, and
quite dominating the smaller white palaces which are scattered about the
slope of the hill, one here and the other there, on each side of the
winding road that takes adventurous quality down to Nice, the pleasaunce
of the mob. The presence of the great queen has left a deep impress on
Cimiez, for what streets are not named directly after her despise any
but the nomenclature of English majesty: whence come the rue Edward
VII., the Avenue de Prince des Galles, the Place Regina, and recently
the Avenue George V. Of course there are no shops on Cimiez. Those white
patches of elegant shape that you see as your car climbs the winding
road from Nice, are villas; and in the villas are rich Greeks from
Egypt, India, and Smyrna; Jews from Egypt, India, Smyrna, and England;
Englishmen from Lancashire; Americans and Grand Dukes from Paris; and
Lord and Lady Tarlyon. And these last in the whitest and most elegant
villa of all (the property of Mr. James Michaelson of Lancaster Gate) at
the far end of the rue Edward (not Edouard) VII.
This villa was long and low and white, and severe after its manner: for
upon and about it were none of those playful ebullitions of taste, such
as conical towers, domed roofs, embattlements, statues, coloured tiles
and crenellations, such as are dear to architects of villas all the
world over. Lady Tarlyon’s chauffeur, sent long in advance of her to
choose a villa not too utterly offensive, for she considered him a man
of discernment, had been instantly pleased by its air of quiet dignity
qualified by a certain bravado: its air of frankly yet discreetly
compromising between a Georgian mansion and a Texas ranch, with both of
which Lady Tarlyon’s chauffeur was familiar. One of its main
attractions, and perhaps the one mainly indicative of Texan influences,
was a verandah that ran the length of the house on its front and
southern side. Now this was a real verandah, not one of your merely
decorative ones, a verandah about which men could pace and smoke cigars
and women drop fans to break strained silences: a verandah with a wide
prospect over the distant Mediterranean, for that brilliant blue sheet
was cut short some way without the coast by the trees that cover the
flanks of Cimiez and make Nice invisible to those who would rather live
out of it. It was, in fact, a verandah of chairs and gossip and silence,
to seduce each to the indulgence of his own nature, whether it most
pleased him to look upon his companion or over the sea: to dream, maybe,
of nothing but what lies in that wanton sea, for ever so tenacious of
men’s homage and for ever so reckless of their honour.
2
On an afternoon that February, Lady Tarlyon’s house-party were sitting
in an uneven group on the verandah. From the verandah were imposing
marble steps--the chauffeur had apologised for those steps--to lead
leisured feet down to a considerable lawn; but the gardeners of Mr.
James Michaelson of Lancaster Gate had rather neglected the lawn during
the war, and it looked a little odd, as a lawn. However, no one needed
to look at it twice, for there was always the Mediterranean, which is a
tidy sea during the season.
George Tarlyon (blue serge jacket, white trousers, a Brigade tie, and
brown-and-white shoes) was there, also a brandy-and-ginger-ale. Virginia
was there. Major Cypress was there--Hugo Cypress, the last of the _beaux
sabreurs_, bless him! Lois was there, and her husband, the companionable
little Earl. And Mrs. Chester was very evidently there, in a chair
beside Tarlyon.
Ann Chester, quiet and soft-moving as was her elegant habit, was always
very evidently everywhere; you couldn’t help but notice her, you
understand, as she came into a room, a restaurant, or a theatre. She was
a woman of thirty-five: which is not very old for a woman nowadays--and
is, as a matter of fact, considered a proper age for a lovely woman, if
only she can stay at it: Mrs. Chester could. She was of a tall and
slightly full figure--only slightly full--and she wore clothes so that
Frenchwomen looked like Englishwomen beside her. Mrs. Chester was
American originally. It was said that she sprang from the F.F.V.,[E] but
it was also said that she had sprung so far that she wouldn’t be able to
get back. Mr. Chester was nonexistent, in that no one had ever met him
or heard of him until the death was reported of an American gentleman,
Mr. Beale Chester, during a week of misunderstandings in Odessa. Ann’s
accent was just faintly American enough to be very attractive--she would
say, “I’m going to Paris, France, to-morrow”--and she was, indubitably,
a lady. She was really very lovely, in quite a classical way, of
feature, complexion, and hair: and always softly smiling, softly. Her
eyes were gray and understanding--the eyes of a dear! which, you know,
she was. The stage had missed a great beauty when Ann Chester had
decided on life as a career: which is such a banal witticism to make
about women that it is sometimes true about a few of them. She attracted
by sheer womanliness of body and mind, and sheer stupidity. And hers was
that mature and exquisitely _soignée_ womanliness which, they say,
drives sensible Jews and newly-created peers to madness and bankruptcy.
If a precious young man were essaying a precious study of her in a
precious magazine, all of which might quite easily happen, he would say,
“Even her soul was manicured,” and he would be utterly wrong--for,
mysterious Mrs. Chester, she could fall in love! It had been remarked
about her, she could fall in love! and not only within the commonplace
limits of a _béguin_ either, which are the only limits that nice women
allow to the passions of women not so nice. She had been known to
sacrifice things, even jewellery. Now a man beloved of Ann Chester
appalled the imagination of other men--of what stuff was he made, what
queer virtue was his? For imagine Ann clinging, clinging, moved at last
out of her softly smiling acquiescence into a fullness of surrender,
beseeching your sincerity in return for hers, that hair of cosmopolitan
gold at last _malsoignée_ with abandon--imagine it!--our Ann clinging in
desire! Oh, it was inconceivable!
The hour of four-thirty is not a lively hour in Southern Europe. Lady
Tarlyon’s guests sat on the terrace lazily, in white becushioned wicker
arm-chairs, talking just enough. Later on they would dress and motor
eastwards, along the higher Route de la Corniche, to Monte Carlo: there
to dine at the Paris and gamble at the inevitable Sporting Club. The
house-party of the villa at the far end of the rue Edward VII. despised
Nice and all its works, but one and a half kilometres below them; they
did not like Nice, it bored them; and so far they had done nothing at
all about Nice except to motor through it.
Lord Tarlyon had a theory about Nice.
“Nice,” said Lord Tarlyon, “is just like Blackpool----”
Lois lodged a complaint.
“He once knew a man who had some picture-postcards of it,” Mrs. Chester
explained. “Yes, George?” and her gray eyes enfolded him, and he grinned
sideways at her. Virginia’s lips were smiling, just a little, at the
sea. George often made her smile.
“Nice,” he said, “is just like Blackpool, except that the air is cleaner
at Blackpool. We are thus led to the unpatriotic conclusion that if
Blackpool were as far from England as Nice is, we would at this very
moment be in Blackpool.”
“I wouldn’t,” Virginia said. She turned in her chair to stare definitely
at her husband. She would sometimes turn that sudden and definite stare
on to a man she knew well, as though recasting a theory about him.
Virginia never uttered her theories about people, so one could never
tell if they were silly or not. He gave her a cigarette.
The flank of the hill of Cimiez, as has been described, did homage to
their prejudice, for the white town of Nice was not visible below them,
there was but the sea and the bending coast towards Cannes. Far on the
right lay the little town of Antibes, a wan little cluster of luxury in
the sunlight: and the hills that hid Grasse waved gently back into the
distance of more serious (and less expensive) France. The sun owned the
day and the sea, and to the sun belonged all that was on the land. The
awning over the terrace was bright in its bravery of red and white
stripes, and through it the sunlight was subtly diffused over their
faces, it was as though the awning extracted the scent from the sun and
sprinkled it over the company below. Good-looking people....
George Tarlyon, at the side of Mrs. Chester, who was lazy in deliciously
silver _crêpe de Chine_, said nothing which couldn’t be sufficiently
answered by her smile. Lois was vaguely reading the _Daily Mail_
(continental edition), which fully reported arrival of self and husband
at Lady Tarlyon’s villa in Cimiez, and threw in a photograph of Virginia
out of sheer exuberance. The companionable little Earl was asleep. Hugo
Cypress was talking to Virginia about, of all things, Forestry! And
maybe Virginia was gaining much knowledge about Forestry, and maybe she
was not, for she seemed to listen with every now and then a quick smile
of understanding, but her eyes wandered vaguely about the horizon, and
they looked like eyes that suffered from expectation.
3
The villas in the rue Edward VII., so luxurious in every other respect,
do not have carriage drives through their gardens to their doors. Cars
stop without the little white wooden gates, and the company must needs
walk to further luxury, which was a nuisance when it rained, but then it
didn’t often rain. A large and dusty car stopped before Lady Tarlyon’s
gate this February afternoon; there was luggage behind it, a chauffeur
driving it, and a dark man in it--all very dusty. The dark man stepped
out, stretched himself, smiled at the driver, and passed through the
white wooden gate. It was a quite considerable walk from the gate to the
villa, up the narrow path that divided the neglected lawn. And as he was
rather cramped from his very long drive, he walked lazily.
He could not see the people on the terrace, under that awning, but they
saw him; they stared at him. He had taken the alternative path from the
gate, not towards the marble steps, but to the left of the villa, where
he could see a door and open French windows.
“Here comes a dark stranger!” cried Mrs. Chester softly.
Lois screwed up her eyes at the figure coming up the path. Lois always
screwed up her eyes like that when looking at a distance, because she
saw more that way.
“But he’s not such a stranger as all that, either!” she cried. How many
years was it since she had seen Ivor Marlay? And Virginia had told no
one he was coming to the villa--typical of Virginia, that!
“Please, someone, who is he?” begged Mrs. Chester. “He’s so very tall
and black....”
“Marlay, novelist,” explained Hugo Cypress. “But comes of quite good
people--on one side. Missed an earldom by an heir’s breath....”
“Clever,” snapped Lois.
“Only by contrast, dear....”
“Well, I never!” sighed Mrs. Chester. “And is that what makes him so
bad-tempered looking? Tell me, George....” Ivor was bareheaded and
looked rather tousled, that’s all.
Tarlyon grinned at Virginia, but addressed Mrs. Chester. He waved his
hand towards the figure.
“We don’t know yet,” he said. “He is one of our leading authorities on
courtesans.”
“In that case,” Lois turned sharply on him, “he’ll talk less about them
than you do, George.”
“Oh, pretty!” said Hugo Cypress. And lashed out with his foot at the
companionable little Earl--Johnny was his name--who thus woke up just in
time to miss the pleasure of his wife’s wit. Lois could be sharp, very.
But Tarlyon never minded her.
“Hallo, they’re off!” he cried now. For the company on the terrace was
decreased by one. Suddenly, swiftly, silently, Virginia had left them.
Down the steps went her feet, and the others stared after her as she
walked across the grass towards her guest: who, seeing her, stepped from
the path towards her. They met. The lady had no parasol, and the sun
made festival of her hair. The sun shone furiously down on them,
revealing the gold of a woman’s hair and the mystery of a man’s smile,
for all smiles are mysterious from a distance; and Virginia had her back
to the terrace, they could see only Ivor Marlay’s smile of greeting. And
Lois thought: “That same rather courtly smile--how it used to annoy
Virginia years ago! Well, well, even Virginia grows up....”
Virginia said to Ivor with a quick smile:--
“I’m so glad you’ve come, Ivor. I didn’t think you would, really.”
He laughed shyly. Occasions made him shy, not people. He quibbled.
“Yours is a nice car,” he said, “but it’s got no ambition on the hills.
We were delayed a little.” That was their greeting.
They walked towards the house. The chauffeur, a suitcase dependent from
each hand, passed them and went ahead. There was a silence; and then
Virginia said suddenly:--
“You mustn’t mind what George says. My husband, I mean. He’s a child and
adores to annoy--and he’s terribly pleased if he succeeds. You won’t let
him succeed, will you, Ivor?”
He had realised now the battery of eyes from the terrace; it was a
curious feeling, after that long and solitary journey from a solitary
place in answer to a telegram; and he suddenly felt very hot and
bothered.
“My dear, I won’t mind what any one says if you will let me have the
loan of your bathrooms for half an hour or so. I’ve got more than two
days’ worth of French dust sticking to me, and feel monstrous.”
“Septic, George would say,” Virginia laughed.
They were almost at one of the open French windows.
“You will find,” she said, “as many bathrooms as you’ll need, scattered
about the first floor. And then tea on the terrace.... It was nice of
you to come, I do think,” she added in a quick breath.
He went indoors swiftly, without looking at her. Shy, she thought. It
pleased her that he was shy, for he had seemed rather inhuman ... long
ago.
She lingered on her way back to her guests. She took a cigarette from
her little case, which to-day was of lapis lazuli. Virginia had many
cigarette-cases, small ones, they had somehow come her way: of gold, of
platinum, of jade, of tortoise-shell, of crystal, of onyx, and little
boxes of worked silver that had once been snuff-boxes, but she nearly
always used this one of lapis lazuli, for she liked lapis lazuli. She
confined herself to five cigarettes a day, but to-day, somehow, she was
smoking more.
“What have you done with the dark young man?” Ann Chester asked her as
she rejoined them.
“He’s preparing himself for you, Ann,” Virginia answered rather shortly.
Lois glanced at her. A servant came out, wheeling a tea-table through
one of the windows.
“You are a divine hostess, Virginia,” said Johnny suddenly. He had not
said anything for a long time. “You are the only hostess I know who ever
gives one tea at tea-time. They generally offer you a wretched little
cup at about a quarter to six, when it tastes like a warm cocktail....
Would you like me to go on about this, Lois, or shall I shut up now?”
When people said that Lois and Johnny were very happy together, other
people exclaimed, “Well, who couldn’t be happy with Johnny?”