Читать книгу The Giant's Strength - Basil King - Страница 8

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^"Couldn't you take me somewhere?" Paula asked, turning with a smile to the Duke as they pushed hack their chairs after lunch at Ciro's. "Laura and George are going to Cap Martin, and I have nothing to do."

"We might motor over to Eze and see Alice," he suggested.

"No; let's walk up to Monaco. I've never been there, and you know you promised to take me."

The Duke was radiant—or as near radiant as any one could be with so little power of facial expression. As they traversed the Galérie Charles III., on their way out, he bumped into people and overturned chairs, with a joy in walking with his mistress like that of an affectionate dog. From the hotels and restaurants the crowds were sauntering towards the Casino, and there were so many salutes and greetings to exchange that only the most broken remarks were possible till they neared the sea-wall. Paula knew they offered a topic of conversation to passers-by, strangers and friends alike; and again she was conscious of the utterly foolish wish that he had been taller, and that in his springlike attire and soft gray hat he had less the air of a prosperous grocer on the stage. If she had not known that he was only thirty-eight, looking it up for herself in Debrett, she would certainly have put him down as fifty. She blamed herself for such thoughts as these, when she knew, as well as her father did, his many sterling virtues. They chatted of indifferent things as they descended towards the Condamine, and Paula wondered how he would turn the talk into the channel he preferred. She wondered even more what reply she would make to him when he did.

"Have you seen your friend Mr. Winship to-day?" she summoned up courage to ask, as they ascended the brick-paved footway that leads up the face of the cliff to the old town of Monaco.

"Yes; for a minute this morning. He's over at Eze, spending the day at Alice's."

Paula caught herself up before she could regret not having accepted the Duke's suggestion after luncheon. "They know each other very well, I think you said."

"Oh, very well. You must come over and see Alice's little place some day, too. I fancy she's only been waiting for some definite—"

"Oh, I'm out of breath!" Paula exclaimed, suddenly, turning round. "Do let us wait a bit. What a glorious view!"

The level of the Condamine lay beneath them in the foreground, a cluster of tawny, yellow houses roofed in ochre red. On the height behind, Monte Carlo, with its hotels and villas, terraced one above another, sloped steeply down towards the sea. Still farther back, shutting in the horizon, the mountains of dull brown and olive green were crowned with a light, glistening January snow. On the pale, bottle-green of the bay the Prince of Monaco's yacht made a sharp white streak. Gray green on the sea lay the long stretch of Cap Martin, covered with hoary olive-woods and dotted with white villas. Then, on and on, into the east, followed the successive headlands towards Italy, flecked with snow at the highest points, and unchanged, except in the number of their clustering towns, since the days when the Phoenicians toiled along in their high-beaked triremes, on their way towards Cornwall or Marseilles.

"It's like those bits of landscape," Paula said, with a timid attempt to bring the conversation back to the theme she had started—"those bits of landscape which the old Italian masters show you through a window, behind a Last Supper, or a—portrait."

"Do you think so?" Wiltshire argued, in his literal way. "Isn't it rather that the old painters give you a glimpse of the life of their day?—a line of hills, a village, a castle, a religious procession, a knight riding with his hounds, a ploughman working in the fields. This is too little typical for what they wanted; and besides, it isn't the life that has grown out of the soil, but the one which idlers from other lands have implanted on it." So they fell to discussing Monte Carlo, and Paula was foiled again. She sighed softly to herself as they moved on, and, after passing through an old gray gateway vaulted with yellow arches, came up into the Place du Palais.

On the left, across the great square, stood the old town, a mass of mellow red and orange. The palace, a long, simple structure with battlemented towers, lay on the right. The Monagasque sentries, in blue-and-red uniforms, and sweeping, picturesque, blue cloaks, had the air of stepping through some romantic play. In the background, to the north and west, the Tête du Chien rose like a majestic couchant mastiff keeping watch over the Principality. Between its paws Cap d'Ail, with its terraces, olive-trees, and red-roofed villas, lay like a plaything. In towards the shore the sea reflected all the shades that mingle in a peacock's breast, while farther away, towards Spain and Africa, it deepened into Homeric wine-dark violet.

"How wonderful!" Paula murmured, just above her breath. "This air! This immensity!"

She moved a step or two in advance, as though eager to cross the level Place and reach some spot where she could best command the whole sea-line of the hills, from the distant east to the distant west, from the blue vagueness of Piedmont, past San Remo, past Bordighera, past Mentone, past Cap Martin, past Monaco, past Nice, past Cannes, on into the golden haze that hung above Provence. When she stood still, at the western edge of the terrace, the Duke came to her side and explained where the different points of interest lay.

"This is what we come to Monte Carlo for," he said. "It isn't to be in the tide of fashion; it's because nature seems to have chosen the Principality of Monaco as the single point of vantage from which to behold all her beauties in one glance. We soon tire of Monte Carlo, but this—"

With a gesture that was not without dignity, he indicated the vast panorama of sea and sky, of headland and town, of blossoming gardens and snows on the hills. Paula thought she saw another far-off opening, and carefully pointed her remarks towards it.

"How much you enjoy beauty—I mean beauty for its own sake. There are so few people who do. Now, I take only a second-hand interest in it. I like to have seen Egypt or Switzerland or California, in order to be able to follow with some intelligence what others say about them. But with you it's different. So it is with your sister—or it seemed to me so the few times I've seen her."

"Oh, Alice is all right. She really knows about it, and I don't. She lives for art and artists."

"And I'm sure she does a lot of good. I thought what you said about her last night was so charming—I mean about her taking that poor blind lady, Mrs. Winship, to stay with you at Edenbridge."

"Oh, you'll like Alice when you know her well. She's got her queer ways, like any other old maid with ten thousand a year, but her heart is sound."

"Tell me about them—about the Winships."

He turned to her with a faint smile.

"Haven't we something else to talk of first?"

"No, not first—afterwards. Couldn't we go somewhere—out of the sun—and sit down?"

"We should be likely to find seats over there."

"I wanted to ask your advice about something," she ventured, timidly, as they entered the wonderful garden that clambers over the cliff, and goes down, down, down till it almost meets the sea.

"Here's a good place, don't you think?"

He pointed to a bench, in a nook formed by giant cacti of every sinister shape, massed in with pink and red geraniums growing like tall shrubs. Overhead there was a shade of cedar, cypress, and pine, while far below the blue-green sea broke with a monotonous rumble.

"My advice?" he questioned, as they sat down.

"You're such a good friend," she murmured, tremulously. "I'm in a great deal of perplexity."

"Is it about me?"

"Partly; but it isn't only that."

"You know that I should never want to bring the shadow of a care upon you—not even if it was to give me what I want so much. You're sure of that, aren't you?"

"That's why I turn to you," she said, simply. "There's no one else in the world I could trust in the same way."

"And you'll never regret having given me your confidence, however full it may be. I know I'm not much to look at, but at least I can offer you devotion and truth to the uttermost—to the uttermost."

"I want you to tell me about the Winships," she began again, looking down at the tip of her parasol, with which she traced aimless lines in the sand. "How did you come to know them?"

"Oh, it was a long time ago—let me see—ten, eleven, twelve—yes, it must be quite fifteen years ago. After my mother died and Alice was free, she went to Paris for a year or two to study art. In the atelier where she worked she fell in with Marah Winship."

"Is that the sister of the man I saw last night?"

"Yes, an older sister—a good deal older. She must be somewhere about Alice's age, not far off fifty."

"And does she paint, too?"

"Yes, poor thing."

"Why do you say poor thing?"

"Because she's had such a hard life. She had only the smallest kind of talent, if she had any at all, and yet she made herself a painter by sheer determination and pluck. I've heard Alice say that, in the atelier, they used to think she couldn't possibly succeed, and yet she did—in a measure. 'I had to succeed,' she has told me herself—but that was afterwards, when Alice used to have them at Edenbridge."

"Why had she to succeed?"

"You see, their father was dead, and they had lost all their money. There was a mother to be taken care of—a splendid, majestic creature, when first I knew them, but already growing blind. Then there was this brother—"

"But he's a man."

"I'm speaking of fifteen years ago. He was only a lad then. The sister thought he had it in him to become one of the great portrait-painters of the day, and so she brought him to Paris to give him the best chance. By Jove! she's been a plucky one! I've never seen anything like it. She has not only worked like a slave, but she's done the impossible. She's turned herself into what nature never meant her to become, and she's made a living for them all—a poor living, it must be admitted, and one of great privation, but a living all the same, and somehow they've managed to pull through."

"Do you know why they've been so poor?"

It was more the tone than the question that astonished Wiltshire.

"No," he replied, rather blankly.

"It's because we took their money and their mines, and everything they had, away from them."

"We? Who?"

"Our family—my father. Oh, Duke, I didn't know anything about it till last night, and to-day I feel as if we were a band of robbers. When I think of the way we've lived, and the way they've lived—"

"Tell me about it," he said, soothingly, as she broke off, choking.

"I don't think I can. There's so little to tell—and yet so much. It's all so dreadful—and it's—it's my father, Duke."

"For that very reason you shouldn't be in a hurry to judge—"

"I know, but I can't help it. It's like a kind of jealousy in me—a jealousy for his honor, that I thought so far above attack."

The Duke's mouth twitched with a queer, significant expression, while a look of pity stole into his dull eyes.

"This Miss Winship's father was my father's competitor, and my lather crushed him and ruined him and killed him. He died in the middle of all sorts of lawsuits, and then my father ruined the widow—the poor lady, who, you say, is blind. Everything they possessed came to us—I can't exactly tell you how, but my cousin George would explain it if you asked him."

"I can guess."

"Yes, because you understand about business. But it's all so cruel, Duke. I spend a great deal of money, but I can't spend it fast enough. I don't know what to buy that I haven't bought over and over again, and yet the money heaps itself up in spite of me. And now, when you tell me of that poor Marah, working against the grain, trying to achieve the impossible, and doing it—"

Her tone rose, with a sharp, nervous inflection, till she found herself unable to go on.

"There's one thing we must never forget," Wiltshire said, kindly. "We're the inheritors of the past; we're not the creators of it. All sorts of complicated situations come down to us, and in them we can only grope our way. You inherit the situation your father made for you, and Mr. Winship inherits that which his father made for him. You and I know too little to judge either side. We're too remote from all the conditions to apportion out the real rights and wrongs—"

"And therefore," Paula interrupted, somewhat bitterly, "we should settle down complacently to accept things as they are."

"Not quite that. But if we can't accept things as they are, we mustn't try to force them into being what they can't become. We can only learn by degrees how to adjust what's wrong—"

"But you can adjust anything with money—that is, if you have enough."

"Not everything, unhappily."

"But I could adjust this."

"You mean that you could give the Winships money? Oh no, you couldn't."

"I don't mean that I could give them alms, or do anything with condescension. But couldn't I give them a great deal—as much as they ever lost—more than that? I have a great deal of money of my own—I don't know how much—but it must be a large sum—and I'd give it all to them. You could help me. You know them, and I could do it through you, if you only would—"

"Softly, softly. You couldn't do anything of that sort. They wouldn't take it. Things aren't managed so directly as that in this complicated world. They'd be offended, you know. They wouldn't listen to me—"

"Oh yes, they would. Everybody listens when it's a question of getting money. You'd beg it as a favor. You'd say it was not in pity for them, but in kindness to me. You'd put it that way. And they'd take it. I know they would. I've never seen any one refuse money—if it was enough. Oh, Duke, do!"

She ended abruptly, with a quaver in her voice, like a little wail. Wiltshire sprang to his feet, and took two or three turns up and down the gravel-path. Returning, he resumed his seat beside her.

"You mustn't do anything rash in the matter," he said, gently. "You mustn't have the air of seeming to judge your father."

"I don't," she answered, quickly. "I know he didn't do anything wrong. I should never admit otherwise. Only—"

She did not finish the sentence, and Wiltshire, leaning towards her, laid his hand on hers.

"Dear Paula," he whispered, "couldn't we let it be, until you and I could manage it together?"

She did not withdraw her hand from his touch, but the eyes she lifted towards him were full of the mute appeal of an animal begging to be let off.

"You've never answered my question—my great question," he went on, tenderly.

"I've been trying to," she managed to say.

"And you don't find it easy?"

She shook her head, letting her eyes fall again.

"But you've been making the effort?"

"Yes," she murmured, just audibly.

"And it's been a great effort?"

"Yes."

"So great, in fact, that you don't feel the strength to make it."

"I'm trying to," she said, hurriedly. "I want to."

"You want to? In what way?"

Again she lifted her appealing eyes to him.

"I—I—want to please father," she stammered, "and make you happy, and—and—"

"And sacrifice yourself," he added.

"It wouldn't be a sacrifice if I could do those two things," she stammered on.

"That is," he corrected, "not so great a sacrifice but that you could make it."

She nodded her assent. A few seconds passed in silence, when Wiltshire slowly withdrew his hand and sat erect.

"I've hurt you," Paula cried, turning sharply towards him. "That isn't what I meant to say. You haven't understood me. I'm ready to be your wife, if it will make you happy. Indeed, I'm ready. You don't know how I honor you, how good I think you, how—"

"Oh yes, I do," he broke in, with a wan smile. "I only thought that perhaps it might be possible, after all, for a woman to do a little more than honor me, and think me—"

"I'm sure it is," Paula insisted, warmly. "Let me try, let me—"

"Oh, but you have tried. And such things as that don't come from trying. They come spontaneously, or not at all. I'm not hurt. I know you far too well to think you would hurt anything that breathes—and still less me. But I'll tell you something. We've always been good friends, haven't we—that is, for three or four years past?"

"Very."

"And I've rather spoiled things between us by bringing up this subject, which, I might have known from the first, was impossible. Suppose we go back to what we were before. Suppose we blot all this out, as if it had never happened. Wouldn't that be a relief to you?"

"Yes," she said, in an unsteady voice.

"Then we'll do it. I won't undertake to give up hoping. No one could to whom you hadn't absolutely said no. But I sha'n't bother you with my hopes, and if, in the end, I have to bury them—why, then, we'll see."

"How good you are!" Paula said, softly, two big tears falling in spite of her efforts to keep them back.

"Don't say that," he protested. "You speak of goodness only because you don't know—love. But you're tired," he added, rising. "Wouldn't you like me to take you home? I dare say we shall find a fiacre in the Place that will take us down by the carriage-road."

Late that evening, when Paul Trafford kissed his daughter to say good-night, she twined her arm over his shoulder and detained him.

"I've seen the Duke," she whispered, "and he wouldn't have me."

"He—" Trafford began, in a puzzled voice.

"He thought it was a sacrifice on my part," she explained, looking up at him with glowing eyes, "and he wouldn't let me make it. It's all over."

"And would it have been a—sacrifice?" he demanded, with shaggy brows drawn together.

"Not if I could have pleased you."

His face cleared as he bent low and kissed her again.

"Then I shall only keep my little girl the longer," was all he said.