Читать книгу The Reckless Lady - Philip Gibbs - Страница 3

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Anybody passing up the steep road which climbs the heights behind Monte Carlo to the terraced vineyards on the mountain-slopes could look over the low wall of the Villa Margherita, not far above the Hôtel des Anglais. Most passers-by did look over that wall because of the garden inside, full of flowers even in February, and because of the open verandah and a glimpse of a drawing-room with chintz-covered chairs, a rosewood piano, and, sometimes, a young girl playing there, or a middle-aged lady—her mother, beyond all doubt, and very beautiful—reading aloud to a boy who was often painting at an easel with his legs curled round a wooden stool.

The peasants trudging through the white dust of the winding road to their mountain-villages perched on high crags above the olive-groves liked that glimpse of English home life over the wall of the Villa Margherita. They had known the family for four years, since the war. Always Madame Fleming came with her boy and girl—children at first, but now growing tall—as soon as the snow began to melt on the high peaks of the Alpes Maritimes and before the first tide of foreign visitors to Monte Carlo and Nice and all the pleasure towns of the Riviera. The peasants welcomed their return as the first promise of a good season when the price of oranges would go up in the market, and when the arrival of King Carnival would announce the full glory of all that wealth which flowed in a golden stream from foreign purses through the cities of pleasure and in smaller tributaries to the farmsteads of the countryside.

One of the peasants—a young fellow with a white donkey—leaned his arms on the low wall of the Villa Margherita, spat into the garden in a friendly way, and grinned at the young English girl on the verandah.

“Bon jour, mademoiselle!”

She was lying at full length on a wicker-chair with a book in her lap, but instead of reading she was looking over the orange-trees with their early harvest of golden fruit, and above the grey foliage of the olive-groves down the slopes, to where Monte Carlo shimmered white below. The sun flashed on the dome of the Casino and its white walls and surrounding palaces—the great hotels de luxe crowded already with the leisured folk of Europe. The sea was as blue as the sky, deeply and enchantingly blue. No noise of rag-time music from all the orchestras down there, no cry of “Faites vos jeux—rien ne va plus”—the sing-song of the gambling-rooms—came up from that city of amusement to that villa by the side of the dusty road above it.

The girl turned her head at the sound of the peasant’s “Good evening, miss,” and answered him cheerily:

“Bon jour! Comment ça va?”

“Tres bien!”

The young peasant grinned at her again, and his black eyes roved over her face and figure with French appreciation of feminine beauty. They were milk-white, these English girls—the young ones—though the old ladies were mostly hideous, he thought. He would like to play in the Carnival with a girl like that, kiss her little white throat and push confetti down her neck. But of course that was impossible. She was one of the rich folk. Not for the likes of him. Well, there was a red-lipped wench waiting for him up in the village. Not too bad for a lad like himself....

He gave his donkey a poke, called out again, “Bon jour, mademoiselle!” and went up the steep road, singing.

The girl sat up in the wicker-chair, yawned a little, and looked over to her brother, who had his legs twined round the wooden stool, with his easel on the edge of the verandah. He was painting the ruin of an old castle perched above the ravine on the other side of the road, higher up. The sun glinted in his shock of reddish hair, and revealed just a faint touch of down on his upper lip—the first faint sign of a moustache and manhood.

“Stephen,” said the girl, “I’m getting rather angry with the way people stare over our garden wall. It’s like living in a glass house.”

The boy answered carelessly.

“We’ve nothing to be ashamed of. At least, I haven’t. Do you want to hide any guilty secret, old dear? You were an unconscionable time saying goodbye to the Italian Count last night.”

The girl blushed rather vividly and ignored this challenge.

“I don’t mind the peasants. They’re simple and harmless. But I object to foreign visitors staring in here as though we were public property. There’s one of them—an elderly man—who comes every day. He stares and stares.”

“Likes the look of us,” said the boy. “I’m not a bad-looking ass for my age, and you’re a beauty, Sylvia, as well you know! Youth—beauty—sunshine! Why grudge him the treat?”

He lit a cigarette by striking the match on his flannel trousers—rather shabby old trousers—and scanned his work with half-closed eyes.

“Stephen!” said the girl in a startled way. “There he is again!”

She drew back into the verandah and half concealed herself behind a curtain of striped cotton.

A man stood outside the wall, looking into the garden and then into the verandah. He could not see the boy, Stephen, who was concealed behind a bit of trellis-work and a tall palm growing in a green tub. He was an elderly man, clean-shaven, and well-dressed in a light suit of English-made cloth.

“Rather an old swell,” thought Stephen, regarding him through the trellis-work. He had a handsome hawk-like face, rather ruddy, and keen blue eyes with little wrinkles about them. He might have been a successful actor, thought the boy, or a retired naval officer. English, certainly. It was obvious that he was particularly interested in the Villa Margherita. He stood behind a clump of orange-trees, thinking, perhaps, that he could not be seen in that position, and stared at the little villa with its colour-washed walls and flat roof and painted decoration of clustered grapes and vine leaves above the windows. He stood there so long that the boy became impatient and walked out of the verandah to the garden gate.

“No,” he said in a decided voice. “This villa is not to let, sir.”

The elderly man was clearly startled by this sudden challenge. He turned sharply and for a moment looked as though he would walk away without a word. Then he recovered his self-possession and smiled, though he answered in a nervous, hesitating way.

“Excuse me.... A charming villa, anyhow. And a beautiful afternoon. I was just taking a walk. An uphill climb!”

He panted, as though exhausted by that uphill walk.

Stephen Fleming relented towards him. After all, if he admired the Villa Margherita, why shouldn’t he look at it? And he appeared an amiable old fellow. Not so enormously old either—going fifty, perhaps—and certainly a gentleman.

“Won’t you come in and have a bit of a rest?” asked Stephen politely. “My sister would be glad to make a cup of tea for you. Wouldn’t you, Sylvia?”

He turned and winked at his sister, who appeared from behind the curtain, after making a secret sign to her brother which he correctly interpreted as disapproval of his free-and-easy invitation.

The elderly man hesitated, smiled again, and looked undecided.

“Most kind of you! A cup of English tea, eh? That sounds good after that dusty walk. But I must be getting back, I’m afraid.”

“I could get tea in a second,” said Sylvia graciously.

Something in the man’s appearance, his distinguished look and kindly eyes, had disarmed her suspicion. She liked the appearance of this elderly gentleman who looked like an English aristocrat, as she had seen the type there in Monte Carlo and many foreign places where they had stayed a few weeks or a few months before wandering elsewhere in their queer nomad life.

“It’s very tempting,” said the man, “but I fear I’m intruding ... a perfect stranger, eh?”

He laughed in a nervous and embarrassed way and kept glancing towards the verandah. Perhaps it was because of shyness that he asked a curious question.

“Are you alone this afternoon? You two?”

Stephen reassured him. He understood the man’s fear of meeting a crowd of strangers. He felt that way himself at the prospect of a lot of chattering women such as one met at tea-time in some of the neighbouring villas.

“Only my sister and me,” he said cheerily. “My mother is down at the Casino. Won’t be back till six or seven.”

“Ah,” said the middle-aged gentleman. “But she might not like——”

The boy laughed at this hint of etiquette—this lack of proper introduction.

“Oh, we’re an unconventional family and not English in our ways—not stuffy, I mean.”

He spoke boyishly, and laughed at his awkward way of putting things.

“Not ashamed of being English, all the same,” he said, by way of toning down the criticism of English ways, to an old buffer so obviously English.

“Well,” said the stranger, “since you are so kind!”

He came in through the garden gate and took a chair on the verandah. Stephen noticed that his eyes followed Sylvia’s movements as she brought out the tea-things. The old dog had an eye for beauty—that was clear. But he was observant in other ways. He was quick to see Stephen’s easel.

“You go in for painting, I see.”

He strolled over to the easel and put his head on one side.

“My word,” he said, “that looks good! I should say that was a good bit of work.”

“Not too bad,” said Stephen, with the true detachment of an honest artist who knows when he has done a good thing. “It’s coming rather well.”

“I’d like to see some more of your work,” said the middle-aged man, rather wistfully. “You have a real gift, my boy.”

Stephen’s “Glad you think so” was spoken carelessly, but he liked the praise, being like all artists who need appreciation as a counteraction to self-disparagement and moments of depression.

“I’m keen on portrait work,” he said. “That’s what I’m aiming at. Here’s a thing I rather like.”

He picked up a canvas leaning against the trellis-work, and propped it up by the tea-pot which Sylvia had placed on the table.

It was the portrait of a good-looking lady—the boy thought her beautiful—in a black dress, with a rose at her breast. She was smiling, as she did when the boy painted her, and made little jokes to keep her happy—the little private jokes of mother and son who were the best of comrades.

The middle-aged man looked at the portrait for quite a long time.

“Yes,” he said presently, all the little wrinkles round his eyes puckered up. “A fine portrait! One would say the face of a good woman.”

He spoke the words with a queer smile about his lips.

“It’s my mother,” said Stephen sharply. “But I’m asking you to look at it as a piece of painting.”

He did not quite like that personal reference to his mother’s “goodness.” That had nothing to do with strangers.

“Yes,” said the visitor. “Excellent as a painting, I should say. Not that I know much about art. Not in my line, you know. I’ve been a soldier all my life.”

He glanced over at Sylvia and smiled.

“You must be very like your mother, if that portrait tells the truth.”

“I should be glad to think so,” said Sylvia, with admirable loyalty to her absent mother.

“And yet,” said the visitor, “most girls take after their fathers, I’m told.”

He stayed only a few minutes, drinking his tea quickly while he stood chatting. Once or twice he looked towards the garden gate when footsteps passed—peasants trudging by with their donkeys and mules.

Presently he turned to Sylvia and thanked her, with old-fashioned courtesy.

“It has been a treat to me. Like an oasis in the desert to a lonely old traveller. This garden at the end of a dusty road. The kindness of youth to old age!”

“It was nothing,” said Sylvia, blushing a little. “Just a cup of tea!”

She held out her hand to him and he took it and raised it to his lips in the Italian way, to which she was used in Rome, and here, among her mother’s friends.

He did not shake hands with Stephen, but put a hand on his shoulder.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re famous one day,” he said. “A great artist, eh? Well, good luck, anyhow!”

With that he turned and went out of the garden gate and on the other side of the wall waved his hand before going down the steep road to Monte Carlo.

“Queer old bird!” said Stephen, turning to laugh at his sister when the visitor had disappeared. “I seem to have seen him before somewhere.”

“Rather nice,” answered Sylvia. “Old-fashioned and courteous and shy. I like shy men.”

“Like me!” said Stephen, who, in his sister’s company at least, was brazen-faced and impudent.