Читать книгу Prodigals of Monte Carlo - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 8

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The room into which the two young people were ushered upon their arrival seemed to them like a foretaste of the luxury to come. They found themselves seated upon a huge divan, close to a roaring fire, piled with blazing logs. The curtains were thick enough to deaden the sounds from the streets outside. A few impressive oil paintings hung upon the walls. On a massive mahogany sideboard a coffee tray, bottles of liqueur, cigars and cigarettes were displayed. Low bookcases encircled the room, and on the writing table was a marvellous bronze, a replica of Donatello’s “David.”

“Sir Hargrave is just finishing dinner,” the manservant who had shown them in announced. “He desires me to say that he will be with you in a minute or two.”

“I am sorry we are so early,” Violet said. “Please beg Sir Hargrave not to hurry.”

The man bowed and withdrew. They both looked about them in wonderment, Violet especially appreciating the pictures, the books, the statuary, the colouring of the room and the profusion of flowers upon the tables.

“The fellow must have money, all right,” Robert observed.

“He must have wonderful taste too,” she added. “But then, one might believe that. He looks like it.”

“Never felt so shabby in my life,” the young man remarked.

“Nor did I,” she agreed. “I’m almost sorry that man made me take off my mackintosh. Never mind, Robert, he won’t notice, or if he does, he’ll pretend not to. He’s that sort.”

“All right for you,” Robert muttered, looking across at her slim, beautiful young body, the lines of which even her shabby, black frock could not conceal. “I would have worn a linen collar anyhow, if I’d known.”

“He’ll see us just as we are,” she sighed. “Perhaps it will be better.”

Presently the door was opened and Hargrave entered. His manner was gravely pleasant, but so entirely matter of fact that it was difficult for even Robert to feel embarrassed.

“I’m so glad to see you both,” was his greeting—“especially as I hope, Miss Martin, it means that you have decided to accept my offer. This is your brother, I suppose. How do you do.”

The two men shook hands. Andrews, who had followed behind his master, brought the coffee tray and liqueurs to a table nearer the fire and silently served them. Hargrave, standing between the two, stirring his coffee, recommended the brandy to Robert, the cointreau to Violet, and the cigarettes to both of them. He skilfully conducted a general and insignificant conversation until the door was closed behind the retreating servant. Then he turned to Violet.

“I suppose this visit means that you accept?”

“I accept,” she answered. “Who wouldn’t?”

“That is exceedingly pleasant,” Hargrave said. “You understand, Mr. Martin, that you are to be my guest from this evening until your return from Monte Carlo, whenever that may be. Any inconvenience your firm may be put to by your absence will be my concern. It will also be my concern to see that you are re-established with them on your return. The same thing, of course, applies to your sister.”

The young man, who had flinched for a moment at the sound of his name, was for once in his life honest.

“You won’t need to worry about my return, sir,” he said. “I’ve been with a firm of shipbuilders for the last twelve months and they told me to-day that they couldn’t keep me on any longer. They haven’t been doing well lately, and trade’s bad, anyway.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” was Hargrave’s sympathetic comment, “but at any rate it enables you to get away comfortably. I have some influence in shipbuilding circles. I may be able to help you to another post.”

The young man sipped his brandy. It inspired him, perhaps, with confidence.

“That’s very good of you, sir,” he acknowledged. “I wonder whether you’d mind my asking you a question?”

“There is no harm in your asking any question you wish to.”

“Why are you doing this for—my sister and me?”

“I shall give you a reason which is not a reason,” Hargrave replied, leaving the cigarette box near the young man, lighting one himself and subsiding into an easy-chair. “I am doing this for a whim. I am a rich person and I rather enjoy gratifying my fancies. On this occasion I am grateful to your sister for her acquiescence.”

“But we are such strangers,” the young man persisted. “You have never seen me before in your life, and Violet tells me that she has never spoken to you except in the manicure rooms where she is employed and once to-day in the street.”

“That is quite true,” Hargrave admitted. “Your sister is almost as great a stranger to me as you are, yet in her case I will confess frankly that although I have never told her so, I have conceived a certain admiration for her character and deportment. There are special difficulties in connection with the post which your sister is filling, and during my last visit particularly it seemed to me that I had detected a self-respect, a sense of dignity which is not a common quality. It therefore causes me great pleasure to feel that, in gratifying my own fancy, I am bringing a short period of pleasure into her life. I hope,” he went on, with a smile, as he turned towards her, “that I am not talking too much like a schoolmaster, but I am anxious that there should be no misunderstanding between us three.”

“I’m afraid you’ll be very disappointed in me when you know me better,” she warned him.

“I am content to risk it,” he assured her. “We will now look upon our jaunt as a thing arranged, and discuss only the details. I shall want you both upon the platform at Victoria Station at ten-fifteen on the morning of Thursday week. My servant who served the coffee will meet you and register your luggage and find you your places, which will be already engaged in the Pullman.”

“But our luggage,” Violet began, a little hysterically——

“I quite understand,” Hargrave interrupted, rising to his feet and unlocking a drawer in his desk. “One of my stipulations is, as you may remember, that you are provided with the small necessities of travel. I shall ask you to accept these packets of notes,” he went on, returning and handing an envelope to each. “You will find there one hundred pounds. If you require more clothes, as you certainly will in Monte Carlo, you will find it quite as easy to procure them there as here, so you need only supply yourselves for the voyage and a day or so after our arrival.”

His manner was so entirely matter of fact that somehow or other the little packet reposing in the hands of each of them seemed more like the completion of some arrangement than a gift. Even Violet found it difficult to say anything in the nature of thanks.

“I’m afraid, young lady,” he continued, “that I can’t give you much advice in the way of what clothes to get, but I am quite sure you don’t require it. You needn’t worry about a dress coat,” he added, turning to Robert; “dinner clothes and an occasional white waistcoat are all that are required for the evening.”

“There’s no work we could do for you, I suppose,” Violet suggested, a little timidly. “Robert’s been a sort of secretary to the head of his department.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Hargrave replied, “but I want this to be a holiday. I want you both to forget for a short time all the responsibilities of life, to cultivate a little of the true, everyday philosophy, to reflect, if you reflect at all, that whatever has happened before has passed, that whatever may happen in the future is outside your control, but that the present, at any rate, is your own.”

“I wish I could understand,” the young man persisted, rather stupidly, “why Violet and I——”

“Chance alone selected my beneficiaries,” Hargrave interrupted, a little curtly.

They rose to go—perhaps because their host so obviously expected it—yet Violet was conscious of something incomplete in their interview. She longed to send Robert away, to be alone with Hargrave, and to question him, not mechanically like her companion but in her own fashion, in her own words. That, however, was impossible. Hargrave had clearly finished with them for the moment. He touched the bell and they prepared to take their leave.

“Until Thursday week, then,” he wound up. “We shall meet on the train and travel together. When we are once established in Monte Carlo, however, you will be entirely free to enjoy yourselves in your own way. All that I shall ask is that you free yourselves so far as possible from all anxieties and really do enjoy yourselves.”

The front door closed upon them. Both were looking a little dazed as they moved along the pavement.

“Well, what do you think about it all?” Violet asked.

Robert was not inclined to be hurried in his judgment.

“He’s younger than I thought, and better-looking. Seems to think a lot of you, too.”

“Well?”

He suddenly remembered the packet of notes in his pocket, the clothes he was going to buy, the thought of that train de luxe, the luxury of the next two months. He knew that Violet, with all her kind-heartedness, her loyalty, her gentleness of disposition, had in her a vein of something which it was never in him to understand. Nothing must be risked.

“I don’t know that it matters, of course,” he admitted. “We are probably just a couple of puppets to him, anyway. It’s a rum go, Violet, but I’m for it.”