He frequently insisted on the treachery of the climate. If he happened to cough ever so slightly, he would say that the entire Riviera was bad for the throat and that a sore throat was the most dangerous complaint known to man. Lilian indulgently thought him fussy about her health and his own and the awful menaces of the exquisite climate; but she did not attribute his fussiness to his age; she regarded him as merely happening to be a bit fussy on certain matters. Nor did she regret the fussiness, for it gave her new occasions to please him and (in her heart) to condescend femininely towards him.
"I shan"t need it----"
"Please! I"ll fetch it, and I"ll carry it. No! You stay there."
"But do you know where it is, Felix?"
"I know where it is." His voice had become very firm and somewhat tyrannic.
She stood on the pavement, put up her orange sunshade, and mused contentedly upon his prodigious care for her--proof of his pa.s.sionate attachment. People were pa.s.sing in both directions all the time on the broad _digue_ beyond the roadway. Some strolled in complete possession of idleness; others hurried after it, with tools such as tennis rackets to help them. Nearly all, men and women, stared at her as they pa.s.sed, until at length she turned round and faced the revolving door of the hotel.
"Oh! _Thank_ you, dearest; you"re spoiling me horribly. Do let me take it."
"I will not. Of course I am spoiling you. That is what you"re here for. Your highest duty in life is to be spoiled. Let"s go on the Mole."
They set off. A dark man, overdressed in striped flannels, nearly stood still at the sight of Lilian, gazing at her as though he had paid five francs for the right to do so.
"My goodness!" she muttered. "How they do stare here!"
"Why grudge them harmless enjoyment," Felix observed. "You"re giving pleasure to every man that looks at you, and envy to most of the women.
You"re fulfilling a very valuable function in the world, If anyone is justified in objecting, I am, and I don"t object. On the contrary, I"m as proud of the staring as if I"d created you. There"s nothing to beat you on this coast, with your ingenuous English style of beauty, and half the pretty women here would sell their souls to look as innocent as you _look_, believe me!"
Lilian said nothing in reply. The fact was that the man simply could not open his mouth without giving her more to think about than she could manage.
At the quay they examined all the yachts, big and little, that were moored, stern on, side by side. There were three large steam yachts, and the largest of the three, with two decks and a navigating deck, all white and gold and mahogany and bunting and flowers and fluttering awnings, overpoweringly dominated the port. Felix stopped and stared at the glinting enormity.
"Is that only a yacht?" Lilian cried. "Why! It"s bigger than the Channel steamer!"
"No!" said Felix, "but she"s the fourth largest yacht in the world.
That"s the celebrated _Qita_. Crew of eighty odd. She came in last night for stores, and she"s leaving again to-night, going to Naples.
And here are the stores, you may depend." A lorry loaded with cases of wine drove up.
"But it"s all like a fairy tale," said Lilian.
"Yes, it is. And so are you. You see, the point is that she"s just about the finest of her kind. And so are you. She costs more than you to run, of course. A machine like that can"t be run on less than a thousand pounds a week. Come along. Who"s staring now?"
"A thousand pounds a _week_!" Lilian murmured, aghast. Her imagination resembled that of a person who, on reaching a summit which he has taken for the top of the range, sees far higher peaks beyond. And the conviction that those distant peaks were unattainable saddened her for a moment. "It"s absolutely awful."
"Why awful? If you have the finest you must pay for it. A thousand a week"s nothing to that fellow. Moreover, he"s a British citizen, and he did splendid service for his country in the war. Among other things, he owns two of the best brands of champagne. The War Office gave him a commission and a car; and he travelled all over Europe selling his own champagne at his own price to officers" messes. After all, officers couldn"t be expected to fight without the drinks they"re accustomed to, could they?"
Lilian obscurely divined irony. She often wished that she could be ironical and amusing, as Felix was; but she never could. She couldn"t conceive how it was done.
They reached the Mole, which was quite deserted, being off the map of correctness, and surveyed the entire scene--ships, blue water, white hotels, casino, villas, green wooded slopes all faint in the haze, and rising sharply out of the haze the lofty line of snow. In the immediate foreground, almost under their feet, was a steel collier from the north.
Along the whole length of the ship carts were drawn up and cranes were creaking, and grimy ragged men hurried sweating to drop basketfuls of coal into the carts, and full carts were always departing and empty carts always coming. The activity seemed breathless, feverish and without the possibility of end--so huge was the steamer and so small were the pair-horse carts.
Two yacht"s officers pa.s.sed in shiny blue with gilt b.u.t.tons and facings.
Growled one:
"Yes, and how the h.e.l.l do they expect me to keep my ship clean with this thing between me and the weather?"
"Yes," agreed the other. "How in h.e.l.l do they? Why they don"t make "em unload somewhere else beats me."
Then Felix and Lilian turned seawards and watched the everlasting patience of the fishers on the rocks below.
"Better put your fur on," said Felix suddenly.
She put it on.
Returning to the quay Lilian could not keep her eyes off the superb yacht. But in a moment she bent them suddenly and quickened her pace.
"You"re feeling chilly," said Felix triumphantly. "The sun"s got behind the fort."
On the lower deck of the yacht, under an awning and amid easy chairs and cushions, she had seen a tall man earnestly engaged in conversation with a young and pretty girl. She thought the man was Lord Mackworth. She felt sure it was Lord Mackworth. She wanted to turn her head and make certain, but she dared not lest he should see her. She was blushing.
There was nothing whatever in the brief relations between Lord Mackworth and herself to which the slightest exception could be taken by the strictest moralist. Yet she was blushing. She blushed because of the dreams she had once had concerning him. Her old, forgotten thoughts, which n.o.body on earth could ever have guessed, made her into a kind of criminal. It was very strange. Perhaps also she feared a little what Lord Mackworth might think of her if he saw her in that place, in those clothes, with a man much older than herself. How inexpressibly fortunate that the yacht was leaving that night! Instead of looking over her shoulder at Lord Mackworth, she looked over her shoulder at Felix, to rea.s.sure herself about her deep fondness for him and about his reliability in even the greatest crises.
"I love him," she reflected, "because he is so marvellously clever and kind and dependable and just, and because he worships me--I don"t know why."
But she was devoted to him because he had picked her out of a batch and opened her eyes to the apple on the tree and made her eat it, and because she had worked and watched and suffered for him in the office, and been cast out of the office for him, and because of a funny enigmatic look in his wrinkled eyes. She would have liked him just the same if he had been cruel and undependable and had not worshipped her.
And she desired ardently to be still more and more beautiful and luxurious for him, and more and more to be stared at for him, and to render him still happier and happier. She was magnificently ready to kill him with bliss.
After several hundred yards she turned round and looked at the yacht.
No figures were distinguishable now on the deck. She thought captiously:
"I wonder who that doll was and what they were talking about with their heads so close together."
III
The Casino
Lilian, in a _neglige_, was somnolently stretched out in the easy chair in her room when Felix peeped in. He looked at her enquiringly in silence for a moment, and she gave him a hazy smile.
"Oh!" he said. "Then you won"t feel like going into the Casino to-night after all?"
"Nothing to stop me," she replied, with a peculiar intonation, light and yet anxious.
"Hurrah!" exclaimed Felix very gaily, almost boyishly. "Then we"ll go."
The apprehension which now for two days had been eating like a furtive cancer into her mind suddenly grew and contaminated the whole of her consciousness; she could not understand his levity, for she had not concealed from him the sinister misgiving.
"Yes!" she murmured with a sort of charming and victimized protest.
"That"s all very well, but----" And she stopped, and the smile expired from her face.
He shrugged his shoulders, gave a short, affectionate, humouring laugh, and said with kind superiority, utterly positive: