Читать книгу The Strange Vanguard - Arnold Bennett - Страница 5

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The large, low, oval dining-saloon of the yacht Vanguard, with a pale stained-glass ceiling faintly lighted from above. The pale, curved walls, diversified with mirrors and with panels of mythology in the Delia Robbia style. The huge, oval table, glittering white, with crested earthenware and crystal and many flowers. Stewards in blue and gold, with white gloves, circling watchfully round and round with food for the famished and the dyspeptic. The chief steward, behind Count Veruda’s chair, attentive, directive, imperative, monosyllabic: exercising dominion by glance and gesture. Between the ring of stewards and the edge of the table—the guests!

Now, as regards the guests, it would seem that the yacht’s dining-room must have become a mortuary and a lunatic asylum; for many of them reiterated that they were tickled to death at being aboard the yacht, and the rest reiterated that they were crazy about being aboard the yacht. The truth rather was that they were crushed, morally, by the magnificence of the spectacle and the entertainment offered to them by Count Veruda. In vain did the more brazen ones try to pretend by an off-hand demeanour that they had been familiar with such scenes from their youth up and were, therefore, quite unmoved; they failed every minute to maintain the pose. And if suspicions had existed in the minds of some of them concerning the authenticity and solidity of the Count, those suspicions were now in a fair way to be destroyed.

The process of crushing had begun as soon as the invited horde crossed the street from the hotel portals to the landing steps. Two great mahogany launches were awaiting them at the steps, each manned by a blue-and-gold crew of four. There was plenty of room for everybody in the capacious bosoms of the launches. If these commodious craft were only the attendant launches, what must the yacht be? Persons whose notion of a yacht and yachting was a frail, wobbling bark, with a tin of sardines, a cottage loaf and tea out of a tin mug, were obliged at once, and radically, to revise that notion. The launches shot off like torpedoes, tandem, into the dark, mysterious, balmy bay. Up the invisible flank of Vesuvius ran a rope of fire—the electric lamps of the funicular railway. The shore-lights of Naples gradually spread out into two semi-circles behind the foamy wash of the launches, and above these tiaras rose the lighted hills of the background of the city. A Neapolitan moon had poised itself aloft in the deep purple sky. Then the whiteness of the yacht Vanguard grew plainer, and larger and still larger! Commands! A shutting-off of engines! To the high side of the yacht clung an illuminated stair of mahogany, teak, and shining brass—broken mid-way by a flat space for the recuperation of the short-winded. At the top of the stair stood officers, who with dignified respect raised their caps in grave welcome to the exalted guests. And lo! the guests were fairly on board the main-deck, which was lighted like Broadway or Piccadilly Circus. No hitch! No hesitations! No delay! A set of gongs played a tune, and in three minutes or less the guests were at the table.

Of course the Mauretania or the Majestic was bigger; but for real style, from table-appointments to stewards, the Vanguard had every transatlantic liner well beaten: so much was admitted unanimously and handsomely by all Americans well experienced in marine travel.

But what crushed the spirit most effectively was not the style, nor the grandeur, nor the glitter, but simply the cost of it all. The Vanguard belonged to one man, not to a limited company with a capital of fifteen million pounds. The Americans had no qualms about the concentration of such a quantity of wealth in the hands of a single individual; for they knew and felt that just as every soldier of Napoleon had a field-marshal’s baton in his knapsack, so every American citizen has a two-thousand-ton yacht in his capacious hip-pocket. But in the pockets of certain humble Britons were concealed misgivings as to whether all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds. These faint-hearted persons thought of the droves of unemployed in the streets and slums of their industrial towns; they even thought of the perspiring, rebellious kitchen-serfs of the Splendide desperately risking a livelihood to snatch perhaps an extra fourpence-halfpenny from the Splendide’s managerial tills, while Count Veruda, owner of the Vanguard, spent as much on petrol in a month as would have kept seven Neapolitan families for seven years. However, as sherry followed cocktails and champagne followed sherry and port followed champagne and Chartreuse followed port, these crude sociological qualms vanished away, together with the sense of being morally crushed. A golden mist spread in the saloon, and through it gleamed the bright truth that everything positively was for the best in the best of all possible worlds. As of course it is.

Meanwhile, Count Veruda, with the chief steward behind him, was modestly trying—and not without success—to look as though he were not the owner of the gorgeous Vanguard and a multi-millionaire. Indeed, he wore his wealth most unpompously; it was apparently naught to him.

Then a faint vibration made itself felt in the yacht, and particularly in every part of the dining-saloon. The vibration grew in strength. And straightway the more alert spirits in the company began preposterously to suspect that Count Veruda was not all that he seemed to be, that he was indeed a perfidious and cunning pirate, and that the yacht’s engines were being made to revolve as the first action in a plot to abduct the entire body of guests and hold them to ransom for incredible amounts in some distant, inhospitable isle hitherto uncharted on Mediterranean maps.

Dismay sat on the faces of several. The dismay spread. Glasses were no longer raised. Gratitude vanished from the hearts of the entertained. The nervous imaginative could feel the heaving of the yacht at sea.

“That is the dynamos,” said Count Veruda, silently laughing. “I expect we’re using rather more electricity than usual, and the Chief Engineer wishes to be on the safe side.”

How absurd those slanderous suspicions!

But a few of the wary and the timid were not quite reassured. An old lady on Mr. Sutherland’s left tremblingly murmured something in his ear. Mr. Sutherland, gently smiling, tranquillized her ridiculous fears with a word.

“The yacht cannot be moving,” said he. “She must have had an anchor down, if not two, and in a comparatively small ship like this the anchor could not possibly have been raised without our hearing the noise of the chain.” Still, the old lady was not quite at her ease, and spoke again. Mr. Sutherland forgave her tedious insistence because he knew what old ladies were, always had been, and always would be. And not old ladies only.

A white screen was at this point let down on the after wall of the dining-saloon; and Count Veruda unassumingly announced:

“I now propose, with your permission, to show you the new Valentino film. It has been seen in London and, I think, in Paris. But nowhere else.”

The whirr of cinema apparatus seemed to put an end to the vibration caused by the dynamos. The dining-saloon suddenly became dark. The effect was highly disconcerting. The unrolling of the reel started.

“I hate films,” said Mr. Sutherland quietly to the dark young lady who, in the hotel, had expressed doubt as to the authenticity of the Count’s title; Mr. Sutherland had contrived that she should be on his right.

“So do I,” the young woman replied.

Mr. Sutherland greatly dared.

“Shall we creep out and explore the yacht a bit?”

He trembled lest she should refuse the audacious suggestion.

“Let’s,” said she.

Mr. Sutherland thrilled in anticipation of joy in the exclusive possession of her companionship.

The darkness hid their furtive departure from the eye of the host. They passed through the lounge into which the dining-saloon opened, and so to the deck.