Adam Johnstone's Son Part 5

"Generally," answered the young girl, and she began to eat the orange.

Brook took another from the dish before him.

"Let me see," he said, turning it round and round. "You cut a slice off one end." He began to cut the peel.

"Not too deep," said Clare, "or you will cut into the fruit."

"Oh--thanks, awfully. Yes, I see. This way?"

He took the end off, and looked at her for approval. She nodded gravely, and then turned away her eyes. He made the two cuts round the peel, crosswise, and looked to her again, but she affected not to see him.

"Oh--might I ask you--" he began. She looked at his orange again, without a smile. "Please don't think me too dreadfully rude," he said.

"But it was so pretty, and I'm tremendously anxious to learn. Was it this way?"

His fingers teased the peel, and it began to come off. He raised his eyes with another look of inquiry.

"Yes. That's all right," said Clare calmly.

She was going to look away again, when she reflected that since he was so pertinacious it would be better to see the operation finished once for all. Then she and her mother would get up and go away, as they had finished. But he wished to push his advantage.

"And now what does one do?" he asked, for the sake of saying something.

"One eats it," answered Clare, half impatiently.

He stared at her a moment and then broke into a laugh, and Clare, very much to her own surprise and annoyance, laughed too, in spite of herself. That broke the ice. When two people have laughed together over something one of them has said, there is no denying the acquaintance.

"It was really awfully kind of you!" he exclaimed, his eyes still laughing. "It was horridly rude of me to say anything at all, but I really couldn't help it. If I could get anybody to introduce me, so that I could apologise properly, I would, you know, but in this place--"

He looked towards the German family and the English old maids, in a helpless sort of way, and then laughed again.

"I don't think it's necessary," said Clare rather coldly.

"No--I suppose not," he answered, growing graver at once. "And I think it is allowed--isn't it?--to speak to one's neighbour at a table d'hote, you know. Not but what it was awfully rude of me, all the same," he added hastily.

"Oh no. Not at all."

Clare stared at the wall opposite and leaned back in her chair.

"Oh! thanks awfully! I was afraid you might think so, you know."

Mrs. Bowring leaned forward as her daughter leaned back. Seeing that the latter had fallen into conversation with the stranger, she was too much a woman of the world not to speak to him at once in order to avoid any awkwardness when they next met, for he could not possibly have spoken first to her across the young girl.

"Is it your first visit to Amalfi?" she inquired, with as much originality as is common in such cases.

Brook leaned forward too, and looked over at the elder woman.

"Yes," he answered, "I was with a party, and they dropped me here last night. I was to meet my people here, but they haven't turned up yet, so I'm seeing the sights. I went up to Ravello this morning--you know, that place on the hill. There's an awfully good view from there, isn't there?"

Clare thought his fluency developed very quickly when he spoke to her mother. As he leaned forward she could not help seeing his face, and she looked at him closely, for the first time, and with some curiosity. He was handsome, and had a wonderfully frank and good-humoured expression.

He was not in the least a "beauty" man--she thought he might be a soldier or a sailor, and a very good specimen of either. Furthermore, he was undoubtedly a gentleman, so far as a man is to be judged by his outward manner and appearance. In her heart she had already set him down as little short of a villain. The discrepancy between his looks and what she thought of him disturbed her. It was unpleasant to feel that a man who had acted as he had acted last night could look as fresh, and innocent, and unconcerned as he looked to-day. It was disagreeable to have him at her elbow. Either he had never cared a straw for poor Lady Fan, and in that case he had almost broken her heart out of sheer mischief and love of selfish amus.e.m.e.nt, or else, if he had cared for her at all, he was a pitiably fickle and faithless creature--something much more despicable in the eyes of most women than the most heartless cynic.

One or the other he must be, thought Clare. In either case he was bad, because Lady Fan was married, and it was wicked to make love to married women. There was a directness about Clare's view which would either have made the man laugh or would have hurt him rather badly. She wondered what sort of expression would come over his handsome face if she were suddenly to tell him what she knew. The idea took her by surprise, and she smiled to herself as she thought of it.

Yet she could not help glancing at him again and again, as he talked across her with her mother, making very commonplace remarks about the beauty of the place. Very much in spite of herself, she wished to know him better, though she already hated him. His face attracted her strangely, and his voice was pleasant, close to her ear. He had not in the least the look of the traditional lady-killer, of whom the tradition seems to survive as a moral scarecrow for the education of the young, though the creature is extinct among Anglo-Saxons. He was, on the contrary, a manly man, who looked as though he would prefer tennis to tea and polo to poetry--and men to women for company, as a rule. She felt that if she had not heard him talking with the lady in white she should have liked him very much. As it was, she said to herself that she wished she might never see him again--and all the time her eyes returned again and again to his sunburnt face and profile, till in a few minutes she knew his features by heart.

CHAPTER IV

A chance acquaintance may, under favourable circ.u.mstances, develop faster than one brought about by formal introduction, because neither party has been previously led to expect anything of the other. There is no surer way of making friendship impossible than telling two people that they are sure to be such good friends, and are just suited to each other. The law of natural selection applies to almost everything we want in the world, from food and climate to a wife.

When Clare and her mother had established themselves as usual on the terrace under the vines that afternoon, Brook came and sat beside them for a while. Mrs. Bowring liked him and talked easily with him, but Clare was silent and seemed absent-minded. The young man looked at her from time to time with curiosity, for he was not used to being treated with such perfect indifference as she showed to him. He was not spoilt, as the phrase goes, but he had always been accustomed to a certain amount of attention, when he met new people, and, without being in the least annoyed, he thought it strange that this particular young lady should seem not even to listen to what he said.

Mrs. Bowring, on the other hand, scarcely took her eyes from his face after the first ten minutes, and not a word he spoke escaped her. By contrast with her daughter's behaviour, her earnest attention was very noticeable. By degrees she began to ask him questions about himself.

"Do you expect your people to-morrow?" she inquired.

Clare looked up quickly. It was very unlike her mother to show even that small amount of curiosity about a stranger. It was clear that Mrs.

Bowring had conceived a sudden liking for the young man.

"They were to have been here to-day," he answered indifferently. "They may come this evening, I suppose, but they have not even ordered rooms.

I asked the man there--the owner of the place, I suppose he is."

"Then of course you will wait for them," suggested Mrs. Bowring.

"Yes. It's an awful bore, too. That is--" he corrected himself hastily--"I mean, if I were to be here without a soul to speak to, you know. Of course, it's different, this way."

"How?" asked Mrs. Bowring, with a brighter smile than Clare had seen on her face for a long time.

"Oh, because you are so kind as to let me talk to you," answered the young man, without the least embarra.s.sment.

"Then you are a social person?" Mrs. Bowring laughed a little. "You don't like to be alone?"

"Oh no! Not when I can be with nice people. Of course not. I don't believe anybody does. Unless I'm doing something, you know--shooting, or going up a hill, or fishing. Then I don't mind. But of course I would much rather be alone than with bores, don't you know? Or--or--well, the other kind of people."

"What kind?" asked Mrs. Bowring.

"There are only two kinds," answered Brook, gravely. "There is our kind--and then there is the other kind. I don't know what to call them, do you? All the people who never seem to understand exactly what we are talking about nor why we do things--and all that. I call them 'the other kind.' But then I haven't a great command of language. What should you call them?"

"Cads, perhaps," suggested Clare, who had not spoken for a long time.

"Oh no, not exactly," answered the young man, looking at her. "Besides, 'cads' doesn't include women, does it? A gentleman's son sometimes turns out a most awful cad, a regular 'bounder.' It's rare, but it does happen sometimes. A mere cad may know, and understand all right, but he's got the wrong sort of feeling inside of him about most things. For instance--you don't mind? A cad may know perfectly well that he ought not to 'kiss and tell'--but he will all the same. The 'other kind,' as I call them, don't even know. That makes them awfully hard to get on with."

"Then, of the two, you prefer the cad?" inquired Clare coolly.

"No. I don't know. They are both pretty bad. But a cad may be very amusing, sometimes."