A Comedy of Masks Part 16

Certainly the excursion into which he had been inveigled, rather from indolence than from any freak of his inclination, afforded him, now that it was undertaken, a certain desultory pleasure to which he had long been a stranger. Into the little shrug, comic and valedictory, of Mrs. Dollond's shoulders, as they pa.s.sed the _Octroi_, a gesture discreetly mocking of the conditions they had left, he could enter with some humour, the appreciation of a resident who still permitted himself at times the licence of a casual visitor on his domain.

"Tell me," Mrs. Dollond had asked, as they rattled out of the further gate of Ventimiglia, "why did the excellent lady who tried to monopolize conversation in the _salon_ last night appear so scandalized when I told her where we were going? Was I--surely now, Mr. Rainham, I was not indiscreet?"

"Ah, Mrs. Dollond," said Rainham humorously, "you know it was a delicate subject. At our hotel we don't recognise Monte Carlo. We are divided upon the other topics in which we are interested: the intrigues of the lawn tennis club, and the orthodoxy of the English chaplain. But we are all orthodox about Monte Carlo, and Mrs. Engel is the pillar of our faith. We think it's----"

"The devil?" interrupted Mr. Dollond, bending forward a little, with his bland smile.

"Precisely," said Rainham; "that is what Mrs. Engel would say. Oh no, Mrs. Dollond, we don't drive over to Monte Carlo from Bordighera. At Mentone it is more regular; you see, you can get there from Mentone pretty much by accident. But from Bordighera it has too much the appearance of being a preconcerted thing."

"It was particularly preconcerted here," put in the Academician with a yawn, and Mrs. Dollond remarked innocently that people who wintered in these places must have very singular ideas.

The prospect was increasing in beauty as they wound their way along the historical road, now rendered obscure by the thick groves of olives on either side, now varied by little glimpses of the sea, which again they skirted from time to time, and so nearly that, as Mrs. Dollond remarked, it was like driving along the sands. Rainham identified spots for them as the prospect widened, naming sea-girt Mortola with its snug chateau, Mentone lying placidly with its two bays in the westering sun, and, now and again, notorious peaks of the Alpes Maritimes which bounded the horizon beyond. At the frontier bridge of St. Louis, where they alighted to meet the requirements of the Douane, even Mrs. Dollond's frivolity was changed into silent admiration of the savage beauty of the gorge.

They stood for a while leaning upon the desolate bridge, turning reluctantly from the great beetling rocks of the ravine above to gaze with strange qualms into the yawning precipice beneath. Rainham pointed out the little thread of white which was the one dangerous pathway down the gorge, confessing his sympathy with the fatal fascination with which it had filled so many--he mentioned the name of a young Englishman staying at Mentone the year before amongst the number--at the ultimate cost of their lives.

"Horrible!" exclaimed Mrs. Dollond, retreating to the carriage, which awaited them on the French side of the bridge. "I shall dream of it to-night."

"I have dreamt of it," said Rainham simply. "When I was a boy I used to dream of climbing to the edge of the world and falling over.

Nowadays, I dream of dropping over the Pont St. Louis: the sensation is much the same."

"A very disagreeable one, I should think," said Mrs. Dollond, settling herself in her wraps with a little shudder.

"No," said Rainham, with a smile. "I think, Mrs. Dollond, it was rather nice: it was the waking up which was disagreeable."

They made their breakfast--a very late one--at Mentone, and dawdled over it, Mr. Dollond having disappeared at the last moment, and been found, after a lengthy search, sketching, in serene disregard of the inappropriateness of the occasion, a doorway in St. Michele.

When at last they drove into the princ.i.p.ality, the evening was well advanced. Even the irrepressible Mrs. Dollond was not to be enticed by the brilliant windows of the Casino from the sofa upon which she had stretched herself luxuriously, when their extensive dinner was at an end; and Rainham with a clear conscience could betake himself immediately to bed. But, in spite of his fatigue, he lay for a long time awake; the music of the concert-room, the strains of M.

Oudshorn's skilful orchestra, floated in through the half-closed _persiennes_ of his room, and later mingled with his dreams, tinging them, perhaps, with some of that indefinable plaintiveness, a sort of sadness essentially ironical, with which all dance music, even the most extravagant, is deeply pervaded.

A week later, as from the window of the receding Italian train he caught a last glimpse of the Dollonds on the crowded platform, he waved a polite farewell to them with a sensible relief. It was a week in which Mrs. Dollond had been greatly on his hands, for her husband had made no secret of the willingness with which he had accepted Rainham's escort for the indefatigable lady amongst the miscellaneous company of the tables, leaving him free to study the picturesque in the less heated atmosphere which he preferred. And a week of Mrs. Dollond, as Rainham was obliged to confess, was not good for any man to undergo.

Nor was Mrs. Dollond's verdict upon their acquaintance, who had become for the s.p.a.ce of seven days an intimate, more complimentary.

"I suppose he was better than n.o.body," she remarked with philosophy as they made their way up the terrace. "He looked after my stakes, and did not play much himself, and was always at hand; but he was really very dull."

"Better than me, I suppose you mean, my dear?" suggested her husband humorously. "Was he so dull? You ought to know; I really have hardly spoken to him."

"Don't be absurd!" she remarked absently. Then she said a little abruptly: "It seems funny, now that one knows him, that there should be those stories."

"Stories? About Rainham?"

Her husband glanced at her with some surprise.

"Yes," she said. "Of course, you never know anything; but he is talked about."

"Ah, poor man!" said Mr. Dollond. "What has he done?"

Mrs. Dollond's fair eyebrows were arched significantly, and Mrs.

Dollond's gay shoulders shrugged with a gesture of elision, in which the essence of many scandals, generated and discussed in the discreet undertones of the ladies' hour, was nicely distributed.

"Don't be dense, Hugh! It is quite notorious!"

Mr. Dollond laughed his broad, tolerant laugh.

"Well," he said, "I should never have thought it."

Rainham, reaching his hotel the same afternoon, met Mrs. Engel in the hall; her formal bow, in which frosty disapproval of the sin, and a widow's tenderness for the middle-aged sinner, if repentant, were discreetly mingled, amused if it scarcely flattered him. He was still smiling at his recollection of the interview when the Swiss porter, accosting him in elaborately bad English, informed him that a lady and gentleman, who had left on the previous evening, had made particular inquiries after him. The name, he confessed, escaped him, but if Monsieur pleased---- He produced the visitors' book, in which Rainham read, scarcely now with surprise, the brief inscription, "Mr. and Mrs. Lightmark, from Cannes."

CHAPTER XVII

There was a ceaseless hum of voices in the labyrinth of brilliant rooms, with their atmosphere of transient spring sunshine and permeating, faint odour of fresh paint. Few people came to see the pictures, which covered the walls with a crude patchwork of seas and G.o.ddesses, portraits and landscapes: all that by popular repute were worth seeing had been exhibited already to the people who were now invited to view them,--at the studios on Show Sunday, and on the Outsiders' Day. One entered the gloomy gates of Burlington House on the yearly occasion of the Private View because it was, socially, a great public function, in order to see the celebrities, who were sure to be there, from the latest actress to the newest bishop. In one corner a belated critic endeavoured to scratch hasty impressions on his shirt-cuff or the margin of a little square catalogue; in another an interested dealer used his best endeavours to rivet a patron's attention on the merits of his speculative purchase. The providers of the feast were not so much in evidence as their wives and daughters; the artist often affects to despise the occasion, and contents himself with a general survey--frequently limited to his own pictures--on Varnishing Day.

The Hanging Committee had dealt kindly with Lightmark's Academy picture. When it was pa.s.sed in review before these veterans, after a long procession of inanely smiling portraits, laboured, wooden landscapes, and preternaturally developed heroes, the expression of satiated boredom and d.a.m.nation of draughts, which variously pervaded the little row of arbitrators, was for a moment dissipated. There was a movement of chairs, followed by an exchange of complimentary murmurs; and the picture was finally niched into a s.p.a.ce which happened to fit it between two life-size portraits on the line in one of the smaller rooms.

On the fashionable afternoon Lightmark's work was never without the little admiring crowd which denotes a picture of more than usual interest. The canvas, which had loomed so large in the new studio in Grove Road, was smaller than many of its neighbours, but its sombre strength of colour, relieved by the pale, silvery gold of its wide frame, and the white dresses of the ladies portrayed in the pictures on either side, made it at once noticeable.

The critics next day referred to it as a nocturne in black and gold, and more than one of the daily journals contained an enthusiastic description of the subject--an ocean-steamer entering a Thames graving-dock at night-time, with torch-light effects; and a mist on the river.

Eve fluttered delightedly from room to room with her mother, recurring always to the neighbourhood of her husband's picture, and receiving congratulations by the score. It had been a disappointment to her when her husband, at the eleventh hour, expressed his inability to be present; but even Mrs. Sylvester's remonstrances had failed to move him, and the two ladies had come under the Colonel's escort.

"I didn't know your husband was so nervous," said Mrs. Dollond sceptically. "Is this the effect of matrimony?... Oh, Mrs.

Lightmark, do look at that creature in peac.o.c.k blue! Did you ever see such a gown? Have you seen my husband's pictures? He's got one in every room, nearly. Between you and me, they're all of them pretty bad; but so long as people don't know any better, and buy them, what does it matter? Ah, Colonel Lightmark, how do you do? Of course I've seen your nephew's picture. I've been saying all sorts of nice things about it to Mrs. Lightmark."

"It's pretty good, I suppose," suggested the Colonel radiantly.

"Have you seen the _Outcry_ this week? There's no end of a good notice about it, and about your husband's pictures, too."

"Really? I wonder who wrote it. I must ask him to dinner, if he's respectable. We never read critiques nowadays. They're so dreadfully rude to Academicians, you know--always talking about 'pot-boilers,'

and suggesting that they ought to retire on their laurels. As if laurels were any good! One can't keep a carriage on laurels."

"No, by Jove! it wouldn't be good for the horses. I say, though, Mrs. Dollond, is one supposed to go through all the rooms?"

"Oh yes," replied the lady composedly; "all except the water-colours, and sculpture, and architecture. One only goes there to flirt, as a rule. Personally, I always get up the pictures from 'Academy Notes,' when I haven't seen them at the studios, you know.

Yes; I should like some tea, please, since Mrs. Lightmark has deserted you. Is that Lady Garnett with her? What lovely white hair!

I wonder where she gets it."

Lady Garnett shrugged her shoulders a little petulantly after she had made the ghost of a return to Mrs. Dollond's airy greeting.

"My dear," she said, turning to Eve confidentially, "may I confess to you that I am not altogether too fond of that woman? Is she a great friend of yours, or don't you know her well enough to abuse her? I like the husband; he amuses me, though he is rather a bear.

Otherwise, I should not see very much of Mrs. Dollond, I promise you."

Eve smiled at the thought of Mr. Dollond's eccentricities, and then her face grew rather grave.

"Shall we go into the lecture-room?" she suggested. "It is cooler there among the statues, and perhaps we shall be able to sit down."

The old lady a.s.sented with alacrity.

"Yes," she said; "by all means let us leave these painty pictures, and we will have a chat; you shall tell me of your wanderings.