Читать книгу The Celestial City - Baroness Orczy - Страница 7

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On the rare occasions when Lady Chartley was “at home,” the whole of the élite of Cannes society and of the neighbourhood got into its motors and drove over to the beautiful Château de Pertuis. These were memorable afternoons. There had only been three in the last two years; but whatever other engagement one had, it had to be put aside for the sake of this one important social event. It would have been terrible indeed to be asked, “Are you going to the Château this afternoon?” and obliged to answer, “No, I have promised to go over to Nice to see So-and-so, an old friend,” etc. Nobody would have believed in the old friend: the conclusion would inevitably be, “Poor things! they haven’t been asked.” And there would be a kind of commiserating little lifting of the eyebrows and a gentle query, “You don’t know the Chartleys, perhaps.” And one either knew the Chartleys or one did not. And that was all there was to it.

And if you belonged to the set that was asked to the Château de Pertuis once during the season, then you were indeed fortunate. You drove over on a beautiful, sunny spring day—it was always fine when Lady Chartley had an “at home”—up the Corniche d’Or, and you admired the famous view, when the dust from charabancs and other motors did not intervene like an evil-smelling veil between you and the sea, way down below, that glittered like a sheet of sapphire all besprinkled with diamonds. And as you drove along you recognised the occupants of other cars who also were fortunate enough to be going to the Château.

And then when you got there, you met all your friends, all the élite. They were all there, all the people you knew and who, of course, were the only people worth knowing; they stood about in the wonderful marble hall, or made their way up the grand staircase, and they talked about the weather, and the “flu” they were afflicted with last month. Also about the respective merits of Cannes and Monte Carlo as the chief resort of fashion. And presently they would catch sight of the hostess, standing, perhaps, at the moment at the head of the stairs, in one of those wonderful blue gowns specially “created” for her by Pierre Pommard, a certain shade of blue that vied with the colour of her eyes and enhanced their wonder-look and their mystery. Having caught sight of Lady Chartley, the men would try hard to get at least one look from those mysterious eyes, in which sadness and joy for ever seemed to be chasing one another; and the women would study on that prettily shaped golden head the latest way of wearing shingled hair—very smooth it was this year, and brushed obliquely across the head at the back, rich waves over the temples, and delicious curls to hide the ears.

Then when Lady Chartley had passed on to other guests, or concentrated on the important duty of welcoming the august personage who had just entered the hall, the élite in their numbers strolled into the winter garden, where tea was served to the accompaniment of a Russian Balalaïka orchestra, lately arrived in Cannes, whilst those who were artistically minded paused in one or other of the stately reception-rooms to look on the two Romneys, the Gainsborough, and the three Raeburns which Sir Philip Chartley had recently brought across from his place in Rutlandshire, in order to adorn his home here in the South. Others, again, wandered out into the garden, from whence, right over a foreground of tangled anemone roses and judas trees in full bloom, they gazed on the most beautiful view to be obtained on the Riviera, right over Théoule and Cannes and the Pointe de l’Esquillon on one side, and on the other over the massed Peaks of the Estérels, with Mont Vinaigre wrapped in a silvery mist, and the blue Mediterranean merged in the blue of the sky.

There was always something to see at the Château, something to admire, something for every taste, however fastidious. There was also plenty for the gossip-mongers to talk about: and even the élite is not above gossiping, while sipping excellent China tea, coffee, or chocolate, and eating all the cream tarts, the effect of which could only be held in check by a Parisian corsetière of renown or a season at Brides-les-Bains.

There was a cosy corner made up of luxurious chairs and cushions, a small table covered with delicacies, and a background of trailing roses, where Mrs. Silverthorne held a miniature court. She was an American of great wealth and Parisian taste in dress. Until Lady Chartley’s advent upon the social horizon of Cannes, Mrs. Silverthorne had been its queen. So when an enthusiastic twister with profound “feminist” tendencies exclaimed eagerly:

“Isn’t Lady Chartley just too lovely? And her gown to-day, isn’t it a dream?” Mrs. Silverthorne only remarked coolly:

“Yes! She isn’t as young as she was, is she? I don’t know that that blue is as judicious as it was a few years ago.”

But there were two men sipping tea in that same cosy corner where Mrs. Silverthorne—whose age was as uncertain as her ancestry—held her miniature court, and they protested loyally and loudly.

“A few years ago!” one of them exclaimed. “Great Lord! why, she hasn’t been long out of the schoolroom.”

He was a young Captain who had served with some distinction in the Air Force, and he ought to have known better than to make such a remark, because, as a matter of fact, Mrs. Silverthorne gave very smart dinner and supper parties and was in other ways very kind to the younger members of H.M.’s fighting forces. The other man—a little older and one of the numerous English Colonels who inhabit the Riviera—scenting danger, broke in hurriedly with the bland query: “How long have the Chartleys been married?”

Mrs. Silverthorne shrugged her shoulders, meaning that she neither knew nor cared.

“I really couldn’t tell you,” she said. “Some time, I know.”

“Three years. I was at the wedding.”

This remark was made by an elderly spinster, who, although plain, poor, and insignificant, was always to be seen at every social function, big or small, all along the coast.

“I think Miss Murray is right,” the young Captain, heedless of storm-clouds, put in eagerly. “I remember——”

“Oh! I remember the wedding perfectly too,” Mrs. Silverthorne broke in coldly. “I didn’t know anybody had been asked. It was a very plain affair and kept very quiet, so I understood at the time, because Sir Philip’s family didn’t approve.”

“Sir Philip had no one to consult but himself,” Miss Murray rejoined. “He was quite an insignificant young man in those days and could marry whom he pleased. He covered himself with glory in the war, got the D.S.O. with two bars, the Legion of Honour, the Croix de Guerre, and I don’t know what else. But after he got himself demobbed he just took up farming, because he liked an outdoor life, and had been very badly done in by the Germans only a few weeks before the armistice.”

Mrs. Silverthorne disposed her ermine cloak more becomingly around her shoulders. Though the spring day was unusually warm and the atmosphere in the winter garden deliciously soft, it was always cold enough to wear an ermine cloak that had cost ninety thousand francs.

“How very interesting,” she said, and smiled indulgently at the ugly old maid. “I thought that farming was just Sir Philip Chartley’s hobby.”

“So it is in a way, now,” Miss Murray rejoined, “but when he first took it up, he meant it seriously. It was only two years ago, you know, that Sir Philip’s cousin, Sir Peter Chartley, met with a terrible accident. He and his two sons were drowned in an awful boating fatality in Scotland. Phil came into the title then and into one of the biggest fortunes in England.”

The two Englishmen nodded silently. They remembered the tragic circumstance.

“Ah!” Mrs. Silverthorne sighed, “if he had known what was coming, Sir Philip perhaps would not have married quite so—what shall I say?—precipitately.”

“Why should you say that?” Miss Murray queried sharply.

“My dear Miss Murray!” was the other woman’s retort.

“What?”

“We all know about that affair in Monte Carlo between Lady Chartley—or Mademoiselle Sterne as she was then—and the Comte de Malsabre.”

“And what about it? Malsabre behaved like a cad.”

“I dare say he did. The English colony was very much down on him.”

“I for one would have kicked him with pleasure,” Colonel Clyfton muttered half audibly.

“I never knew the rights of the story,” the young Captain whispered in reply.

“We must always remember,” Mrs. Silverthorne continued sententiously, “that in France the family counts for a great deal. A man does not marry just to please himself. Now, I happen to know the old Count and Countess de Malsabre intimately. They had arranged a marriage for their son with Jeanne de Croisier——”

“Arranged a marriage!” the twister broke in in disgust. “Lord preserve us!” and she glanced at the young Captain for approval of this sentiment. He murmured “Hear! hear!” and Miss Murray smiled approval; but Mrs. Silverthorne, who was conveying the impression that she only moved in the highest French aristocratic circles, resumed with a tone of indulgent reproof:

“My dear Sylvia, there are fewer unhappy marriages in France than in England or America, believe me! Love is all very well, but men don’t always know their own mind when they ask a girl in marriage just because she has a pretty face. A marriage between Mademoiselle Sterne and André de Malsabre would have been most unsuitable, and, fortunately for him, André realised this in time.”

“Fortunately for them both, you mean,” Miss Murray remarked drily.

Mrs. Silverthorne shrugged her shoulders, and selected a marron glacé before she spoke again.

“I am not sure,” she whispered as if to herself, “that Sir Philip wouldn’t have been better for a family spoke in his matrimonial wheel.”

“Well, I am quite sure that he wouldn’t,” the Colonel protested loyally. “I think that Philip Chartley is a jolly lucky fellow.”

“She is so lovely,” the twister sighed.

“Of course she had money,” Mrs. Silverthorne put in. “And Miss Murray says that at that time Philip Chartley was just a young man studying farming, who had neither money nor prospects.”

“I am quite sure,” Miss Murray rejoined emphatically, “that Phil never thought either of money or prospects when he married Litta.”

“But there is no getting away from the fact that Mademoiselle Sterne was very rich.”

“She certainly had money of her own,” Miss Murray was willing to admit, “but I don’t think it was a great deal. She and Princess Bobrinsky lived very quietly in Monte Carlo——”

“I was told that she was some sort of connection of Princess Bobrinsky’s,” the Colonel now rejoined. “Her father, I believe, was Russian, and some people said that he had been agent or bailiff or something in the Princess’s family.”

“That I don’t know,” Miss Murray said curtly. “Princess Bobrinsky is devoted to Litta, and that’s about all I know.”

“Then I know a little bit more than that, Miss Murray,” the twister broke in with all the eagerness of her admiration for Lady Chartley. “Princess Bobrinsky told mother that she had first met Lady Chartley in the Train Bleu on her way to Monte Carlo.”

“That sounds more likely,” Mrs. Silverthorne said acidly, “than the story of the Russian agent who was a connection of the Princess. Well, Sylvia dear,” she went on graciously, “what else did Gabrielle Bobrinsky tell your mother?”

“Oh! not much more than that. It seems that the Princess had booked what she thought was a single berth on the Train Bleu. When she got to Calais she found, rather to her horror, that she had been put in a double berth, and that she was going to have a travelling companion.”

“Railway companies are awful thieves,” Miss Murray remarked sententiously.

“And I suppose that the unexpected travelling companion was Mademoiselle Sterne,” the Colonel suggested.

“Jolly nice!” was the Captain’s curt comment.

“Yes,” the twister went on eagerly. “Princess Bobrinsky told mother that she was simply knocked over when she saw this girl coming along. She was beautifully dressed—only in a plain tailor made I mean, but beautiful, and she had on an adorable hat—and then you know those lovely blue eyes. Princess Bobrinsky said she had never seen anything like them.”

“So she promptly fell in love with the girl,” was the old Colonel’s conclusion.

“I don’t wonder either,” echoed the Captain.

“Gabrielle Bobrinsky is a dear,” Miss Murray rejoined. “She was lonely and so was the girl. They struck up a friendship on the way. I remember,” she went on, “Litta Chartley telling me one day about this meeting in the Train Bleu.”

“Very romantic,” Mrs. Silverthorne remarked drily.

“Gabrielle and Litta have remained friends, which is more than most women do when they are thrown a lot in each other’s company. But these two travelled about together a lot—mostly in Italy, and they spent one or two winters in Monte Carlo, until that Malsabre affair came on and then Litta’s marriage.”

“I met them in London about three seasons ago,” Colonel Clyfton remarked. “But they did not go about a great deal.”

“London society was getting rather tired of Russian refugees by that time,” was Mrs. Silverthorne’s acid comment, at which Miss Murray’s loyalty was at once up in arms.

“Gabrielle Bobrinsky,” she broke in hotly, “was a Balleine of Balleidoo, one of the oldest families in Fifeshire; they have owned Balleidoo for eight hundred years,” she added, with the merest hint of spitefulness in her well-bred voice, “and that is a good enough recommendation for any girl she chooses to take about with her as friend or companion.”

Mrs. Silverthorne, whose best known forbear was a grandfather who had kept a grocery store at Frankfurt-on-the-Main, gave a supercilious little laugh.

“Quite good enough, my dear Miss Murray,” she said, nibbling at a chocolate which she held between fingers that disappeared in an armoury of diamond rings—“quite good enough, I agree. Especially when there is money to supplement the recommendation.”

She rose and gathered her expensive cloak about her shoulders.

“I mustn’t stop gossiping any longer, I am afraid,” she said. “I see His Majesty has glanced once or twice in this direction. I must go and pay my respects, or I shall get into trouble,” she added playfully.

Then she turned to the young soldier.

“Remember, Captain Gurney,” she said, “that we dine at nine this evening. The Grand Duchess is coming, and the Marquis and Marchioness of Flint, and the Field-Marshal and one or two others. Just an intimate little party. Don’t forget.”

“I am not likely to,” the young man murmured. He was helping to adjust the expensive cloak, and he stooped to pick up the jewelled bag. It wouldn’t do to offend Mrs. Silverthorne; her parties were both numerous and fine. But he drew a sigh of relief when the lady sailed off in the direction where the august personage was sitting drinking tea between two ladies of uncertain age who made eyes at him.

“Spiteful old cat!” Miss Murray declared under her breath. And the others heartily concurred.