The Great Paolo
"Condescension is an excellent thing; but it is strange how
one-sided the pleasure of it is."--R.L. STEVENSON.
After I went to bed that night, I thought long and bitterly of the
Little Pal's defection. Mentally I addressed him as a young gazelle
who had gladdened me with his soft dark eye, only to withdraw the
light of that orb when it was most needed. As he apparently wished me
to understand that, now he was on with Gaetà, he would fain be off
with me, I would take him not only at his word, but before it. I would
make an excuse to avoid stopping at the Contessa's villa, but would
let him revel there alone in his glory; if one did not count the Di
Nivolis.
Next morning we met by appointment at eight o'clock, and tried to
behave as if nothing had happened; but I realised that I would have
been a dead failure as an actor. I was grumpy and glum, and the
coaxing, child-like ways which the Boy used for my beguiling were in
vain. I did not say anything about my change of plans for Aix, but I
brooded darkly upon them throughout the day, my mood eating away all
pleasure in the charming scenery through which we passed, as a black
worm eats into the heart of a cherry.
We had about twenty-nine kilometres to go, and by the time that the
shadows were growing long and blue, we were approaching Aix-les-Bains.
Nature had gone back to the simple apparel of her youth, here. She
was idyllic and charming, but we were not to ask of her any more
sensational splendours, by way of costume, for she had not brought
them with her in her dress-basket. There were near green hills, and
far blue mountains, and certain rocky eminences in the middle
distance, but nothing of grandeur. Poplars marched along with us on
either side, primly on guard, and puritanical, though all the while
their myriad little fingers seemed to twinkle over the keyboard of an
invisible piano, playing a rapid waltz.
Then we came at last into Aix-les-Bains, where I had spent a merry
month during a "long," in Oxford days. I had not been back since.
Already the height of the season was over, for it was September now,
but the gay little watering-place seemed crowded still, and in our
knickerbockers, with our pack-mule and donkeys, and their attendants,
we must have added a fantastic note to the dance-music which the very
breezes play among tree-branches at light-hearted Aix.
"Pretty, isn't it?" I remarked indifferently, as we passed through
some of the most fashionable streets.
"Yes, very pretty," said the Boy. "But what is there that one misses?
There's something--I'm not sure what. Is it that the place looks
huddled together? You can't see its face, for its features. There are
people like that. You are introduced to them; you think them charming;
yet when you've been away for a little while you couldn't for your
life recall the shape of their nose, or mouth, or eyes. I feel it is
going to be so with Aix, for me."
The villa which the Contessa had taken for a few weeks before her
annual flitting for Monte Carlo, was on the way to Marlioz, and we had
been told exactly how to find it. Still silent as to my ultimate
intentions, I tramped along with the Boy beside me, Joseph and
Innocentina bringing up the rear. We would know the villa from the
description we had been given, and having passed out of the town, we
presently saw it; a little dun-coloured house, standing up slender and
graceful among trees, like a charming grey rabbit on the watch by its
hidden warren in the woods.
"I'm tired, aren't you?" asked the Boy. "I shall be glad to rest."
Now was my time. "I shan't be able to rest quite yet," said I, with a
careless air. "I shall see you in, say 'How-de-do' to the Contessa,
and then I must be off to the hotel where I used to stop. I remember
it as delightful."
"Why," exclaimed the Boy blankly, "but I thought--I thought we were
going to stay with the Contessa!"
"You are, but I'm not," I explained calmly. "My friends the Winstons
may very likely turn up at the same hotel" (this was true on the
principle that anything, no matter how unexpected, _may_ happen); "and
if they should, I'd want to be on the spot to give them a welcome. I
wouldn't miss them for the world."
"The Contessa will be disappointed," said the Boy slowly.
"Oh no, I don't think so; and if she is, a little, you will easily
console her."
"If I had dreamed that you wouldn't----" The Boy began his sentence
hastily, then cut it as quickly short.
I opened the gate. We passed in together, Joseph remaining outside
according to my directions, keeping Fanny-anny as well as Finois,
while Innocentina followed the Boy with the pack-donkey.
A turn in the path brought us suddenly upon a lawn, surrounded with
shrubbery which at first had hidden it from our view. There, under a
huge crimson umbrella, rising flowerlike by its long slender stem from
the smooth-shaven grass, sat four persons in basket chairs, round a
small tea table. Gaetà, in green as pale as Undine's draperies, sprang
up with a glad little cry to greet us. The Baron and Baronessa smiled
bleak "society smiles," and a handsome, fair young man frankly glared.
Evidently this was the great Paolo, master of the air and ships that
sail therein; and as evidently he had heard of us.
Now I knew what the Baron had meant when he said to his wife:
"Something _shall_ happen, my dear." He had telegraphed a
danger-signal to Paolo, and Paolo had lost not a moment in responding.
This looked as if Paolo meant business in deadly earnest, where the
Contessa was concerned; for how many dinners and medals must he not
have missed in Paris, how many important persons in the air-world must
he not have offended, by breaking his engagements in the hope of
making one here?
He was fair, with a Latin fairness, this famous young man. There was
nothing Saxon or Anglo-Saxon about him. No one could possibly bestow
him--in a guess--upon any other country than his native Italy. He was
thirty-one or two perhaps, long-limbed and wolfishly spare, like his
elder brother, whom he resembled thus only. He had an eagle nose,
prominent red lips, sulky and sensuous, a fine though narrow forehead
under brown hair cut _en brosse_, a shade darker than the small, waxed
moustache and pointed beard. His brows turned up slightly at the outer
corners, and his heavy-lidded, tobacco-coloured eyes were bold,
insolent, and passionate at the same time.
This was the man who wished to marry butterfly Gaetà, and who had come
on the wings of the wind, in an airship "shod with fire," or in the
_train de luxe_, to defend his rights against marauders.
His look, travelling from me to the Boy, and from the Boy to
Innocentina and meek grey Souris, was so eloquent of contempt passing
words, that I should have wanted to knock the sprawling flannelled
figure out of the basket chair, if I had not wanted still more to yell
with laughter.
He, the Boy and I were like dogs from rival kennels eyeing each other
over, and thinking poorly of the other's points. Paolo di Nivoli was
doubtless saying to himself what a splendid fellow he was, and how
well dressed and famous; also how absurd it really would be to fear
one of us dusty, knickerbockered, thick-booted, panama-hatted louts,
in the tournament of love. The donkey, too, with its pack, and
Innocentina with her toadstool hat, must have added for the aëronaut
the last touch of shame to our environment.
As for us,--if I may judge the Boy by myself,--we were totting up
against the Italian his stiff crest of hair, for all the world like a
toothbrush, rampant, gules; the smear of wax on the spikes of his
unnecessarily fierce moustache; the ridiculous pinpoints of his narrow
brown shoes; the flaunting newness of his white flannels: the
detestable little tucks in his shirt; his pink necktie.
In fact, each was despising the other for that on which the other
prided himself.
All this passed in a glance, but the frigid atmosphere grew no warmer
for the introduction hastily effected by Gaetà. To be sure, the Boy
bowed, I bowed, and Paolo bowed the lowest of the trio, so that we saw
the parting in his hair; but three honest snorts of defiance would
have been no more unfriendly than our courtesies.
Not a doubt that Gaetà felt the electricity in the air, with the
instinct of a woman; but with the instinct of a born flirt, she
thrilled with it. Her colour rose; her warm eyes sparkled. She was
perfectly happy; for--from her point of view--were there not here
three male beings all secretly ready to fly at one another's throat
for love of her; and what can a spoiled beauty want more?
She covered the little awkwardness with charming tact, for all her
childishness; and then the excuses I made for my defection caused a
diversion. She was so sorry; it was really too bad. I was going to
desert her for other friends. Were not we friends, nice new friends,
so much more interesting than old friends, whom you knew inside-out,
like your frocks or your gloves? But surely, I would come often, very
often to the villa--always for _déjeuner_ and _dîner_, till the other
friends arrived, was it not? And I would not try to take Signor Boy
(this was the name she had built on mine for him) away from her and
the dear Baronessa?
I reassured her on this last point, promised everything she asked, and
then got away as quickly as I could, lest I should disgrace myself by
letting escape the wild laughter which I caged with difficulty. It was
arranged that we should all meet that evening, after dinner, at the
Villa des Fleurs, for one of those _fêtes de nuit_ which Gaetà loved;
and then I turned my back upon the group under the red umbrella,
without a glance for the Boy.
I tramped into the town once more, with Joseph close behind, leading
his own Finois and Innocentina's Fanny, and found my way to the hotel,
in its large shady garden, where coloured lamps were already beginning
to glow in the twilight. Soon I had all the resources of civilisation
at my command: a white-and-gold panelled suite, with a bath as big as
a boudoir, and hot water enough to make of me a better man (I hoped)
than Paolo di Nivoli.
Later I dined on the wide balcony, with flower-fragrance blowing
towards me from the mysterious blue dusk of the garden. I ought, I
said to myself, to be well-contented, for the dinner was excellent,
and the surroundings a picture in aquarelles. Still, I had a vague
sense of something very wrong, such as a well brought up motor car
must feel when it has a screw loose, and can't explain to the
chauffeur. What was it? The Boy's absence? Nonsense; he didn't want
me, rather the contrary. Why should I want him? A few weeks ago I had
not known that he existed. I drank a pint of dry champagne, iced
almost to freezing point; but instead of hardening my heart against
the ex-Brat, to my annoyance the sparkling liquid gradually but surely
produced the opposite effect.
The fragrance of the flowers, the soft wind among the chestnut trees
in the garden, the beauty of the night, all reproached me for my
conduct to the young creature I had abandoned. What use was it to
remind myself that I had merely taken a leaf out of his book, that I
had even played into his hands, as he seemed to desire? The answer
would come that he was a boy, and I a man. No matter what he had done,
I ought not to have left him to flirt with Gaetà under the jealous
eyes of the Italian, who was "a whirlwind, and caught a woman off her
feet."
It was too late now to think of this, for I had refused Gaetà's
invitation to visit at her house, and having done so I could not ask
for another, even if I would. Probably the Boy would know well enough
how far to go, and to protect himself from consequences when he had
reached the limit.
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