Читать книгу Marivosa - Baroness Orczy - Страница 15

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After dinner most of the company, including the ladies, went off to the Hotel Americano, where it seemed there was a good floor and a good band. Timothy managed to refuse the many invitations that were showered upon him to join one party or the other. He wanted to be alone and sort out his confused impressions. Fra Martino had gone some time ago, pleading parochial duties; but some of the men had remained behind, sitting in groups of twos or threes about the table, still sipping brandy. Timothy rose and took leave of his host.

‘I have to thank you...’ he began.

‘For nothing, my dear fellow. We are only too delighted to welcome you. The advent of a stranger in Monsataz is quite an event for us poor provincials.’

Timothy made a second attempt at taking his leave.

Said Dom Manoël casually: ‘By the way, my dear Major, Fra Martino tells me that you knew my old friend, Dudley Stone.’

‘Only by reputation,’ Tim replied.

‘He was an interesting personality.’

‘Very.’

‘But terribly reckless ... that last illness of his ... you know...?’

‘Yes?’

‘He would go shooting up the river and stayed out too late in the evenings. Doctor da Pinto often warned him, but he would not listen. It was a certain way of catching malarial fever. He didn’t believe, I suppose, what the doctor said. Many of us are like that. It was such a pity. I liked Stone very much.’

‘Yes?’

‘And he was genuinely fond of me. I was with him when he died.’

‘Were you?’

‘He had been staying, funnily enough, at the hotel you are at—the Angola.’

‘So I understand!’

‘But about a month before he died he came and stayed at my house. I was very glad afterwards that he did. It would have been terrible for him, poor fellow, to have had the discomfort—the misery, really, of a long illness in an hotel.’

‘It would, indeed.’

Dom Manoël did not appear to be disconcerted by Tim’s laconic comments. It seemed as if, having embarked on the subject of Dudley Stone, he could not again tear himself away from it. He talked and talked about the Englishman—his dear friend, as he called him—and seemed as if he could not say enough about his charm, his courage, his interesting personality.’

‘I first knew him in London,’ he said, at one time. ‘I was a young attaché there for a few months, the year before the war. Stone had just returned from Bulgaria, where he had fought like the devil against the Turks. He must have been a wonderful fighter, I imagine, for he knew no fear.

‘Of course,’ Dom Manoël went on, after a slight pause, during which he puffed away dreamily at his cigar, ‘I don’t know what happened during the war. I understand that poor old Stone fell very much into disfavour, but I never knew why.’

‘I never knew, either,’ Tim put in simply. ‘I was only a schoolboy at the outbreak of the war. Something occurred then—but I only knew it from hearsay, some time afterwards.’

‘Poor old Stone! I am confident, O’Clerigh, that he never did anything shabby in his life. Isn’t that so, doctor?’ he went on, half turning to da Pinto, in order to draw him into the conversation.

But the senhor doutor was by now midway to the land of Nod. He had drunk copiously and talked a great deal; sipping cognac and smoking an excellent cigar, he had gradually become silent and detached. Dom Manoël’s mellow but authoritative voice called him back to the realities of life for a moment or two. He looked round, somewhat bleary-eyed, and passed his hand through his grey thatch.

‘Eh?’ he queried vaguely. ‘What?’

‘You knew Dudley Stone? Do you think that he was capable of doing anything so mean as to be a traitor during the war?’

The doctor shook his big head with much energy.

‘No, no!’ he said, thickly. ‘Fine fellow, Stone—knew him intimately—attended him when he had malaria....’

‘You were with him to the end, weren’t you?’

‘Eh—what?’

‘You were with Stone when he died?’ the other insisted; and to Tim’s sensitive ear, strained to note every inflection in the man’s voice, the words, that had been obviously intended as a query, sounded more like an emphatic statement of fact, not to say a command.

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ the doctor said, roused for a moment out of his fuddled condition; ‘when Stone died ... I was with him ... I said so ... I swore on my oath ... Yes! yes! of course....’

Dom Manoël gave a contemptuous shrug.

‘Pity, isn’t it?’ he said, turning again to O’Clerigh and indicating the doctor, who had once more lapsed into semi-somnolence. ‘He had a splendid practice and a fine position here until he took to drink. But, as you were saying, my dear Major...’

‘I didn’t say anything, but I was thinking that it is fully time I took my leave....’

‘Oh! but not yet ... I really cannot allow...’

‘I must thank you and all the other members of the club for your marvellous kindness to me. I had heard something of Brazilian hospitality before, but had no idea...’

‘My dear fellow, the pleasure was ours, you may be sure. But won’t you change your mind and come along with me? I’d like to show you some of our night-life over here—and I can promise you that you won’t be dull. Come and have supper with me at the Americano—I can introduce you to one or two more charming ladies, and I am sure you are fond of dancing....’

‘That’s awfully good of you, but not to-night, if you don’t mind. I’ve a lot of letters to write, and if I don’t get through some of them to-night, when it’s cool, I shall never do them at all.’

It would have been bad form to insist and Dom Manoël never did or said anything that was bad form. Timothy took his leave of those who had remained to the last, including the doctor, who by this time didn’t know who it was who was bidding him good night and thanking him for a most pleasant evening. All the others were apparently intent on going on to some more lively form of entertainment. Night-life in the cities of Brazil is always of the gayest, and dancing goes on in every hotel, restaurant or café, big or small. Tim had all a young, healthy animal’s love of exercise and jumping about, but he already felt rather ashamed of having accepted hospitality from these men, among whom there were at least three whom he looked upon as perjurers, forgers and thieves, and whom he had every intention of unmasking and bringing to book. This evening’s affair had been necessary, of course, for the success of his venture, but by no possible standard of morality or honour could the acceptance of further hospitality from Dom Manoël be condoned.