December Love Part 6

CHAPTER V

Though ordinary enough in her youthful egoism, and entirely _du jour_ in her flagrantly shown vanity, Miss Van Tuyn, as Craven was to find out, was really something of an original. Her independence was abnormal and was mental as well as physical. She lived a life of her own, and her brain was not purely imitative. She not only acted often originally, but thought for herself. She was not merely a very pretty girl. She was somebody. And somehow she had trained people to accept her daring way of life. In Paris she did exactly what she chose, and quite openly. There was no secrecy in her methods. In London she pursued the same housetop course. She seldom troubled about a chaperon, and would calmly give a lunch at the Carlton without one if she wanted to. Indeed, she had been seen there more than once, making one of a party of six, five of whom were men. She did not care for women as a s.e.x, and said so in the plainest language, denouncing their mentality as still afflicted by a narrowness that smacked of the harem. But for certain women she had a cult, and among these women Lady Sellingworth held a prominent, perhaps the most prominent, place.

Three days after his visit to the Hyde Park Hotel Craven, having no dinner invitation and feeling disinclined for the well-known formality of the club where he often dined, resolved to yield to a faint inclination towards a very mild Bohemianism which sometimes beset him, and made his way in a day suit to Soho seeking a restaurant. He walked first down Greek Street, then turned into Frith Street. There he peeped into two or three restaurants without making up his mind to sample their cooking, and presently was attracted by a sound of guitars giving forth with almost Neapolitan fervour the well-known tune, "O Sole Mio!" The music issued from an unpretentious building over the door of which was inscribed, "Ristorante Bella Napoli."

It was a cold, dark evening, and Craven was feeling for the moment rather depressed and lonely. The music drew his thoughts to dear Italy, to sunshine, a great blue bay, brown, half-naked fishermen pulling in nets from the deep with careless and Pagan gestures, to the thoughtless, delicious life only possible in the golden heart of the South. He did not know the restaurant, but he hesitated no longer. Never mind what the cooking was like; he would eat to the sound of those guitars which he knew were being thrummed by Italian fingers. He pushed the swing door and at once found himself in a room which seemed redolent of the country which everyone loves.

It was a narrow room, with a sanded floor and the usual small tables.

The walls were painted with volcanic pictures in which Vesuvius played a princ.i.p.al part. Vesuvius erupted on one wall, slept in the moonlight on another, at the end of the room was decked out in all the glories of an extremely Neapolitan sunset. Upon the ceiling was Capri, stretching out from an azure sea. For the moment the guitars had ceased, but their players, swarthy, velvet eyed, and unmistakable children of Italy, sat at ease, their instruments still held in brown hands ready for further plucking of the sonorous strings. And the room was alive with the uproar of Italian voices talking their native language, with the large and unselfconscious gestures of Italian hands, with the movement of Italian heads, with the flash and sparkle of animated Italian eyes. Chianti was being drunk; macaroni, minestra, gnocchi, ravioli, abione were being eaten; here and there Toscanas were being smoked. Italy was in the warm air, and in an instant from Craven's consciousness London was blotted out.

For a moment he stood just inside the door feeling almost confused.

Opposite to him was the padrona, a large and l.u.s.trous woman with sleepy, ox-like eyes, sitting behind a sort of counter. Italian girls, with coal-black hair, slipped deftly to and fro among the tables serving the customers. The musicians stared at Craven with the fixed, unwinking definiteness which the traveller from England begins to meet with soon after he pa.s.ses Lugano. Where was a table for an Englishman?

"Ecco, signorino!"

An Italian girl smiled and beckoned with a sort of intimate liveliness and understanding that quite warmed Craven's heart. There was a table free, just one, under Vesuvius erupting. Craven took it, quickly ordered all the Italian dishes he could think of and a bottle of Chianti Rosso, and then looked about the long, little room. He looked--to see Italian faces, and he saw many; but suddenly, instead of merely looking, he stared. His eyelids quivered; even his lips parted. Was it possible?

Yes, it was! At a table tucked into a corner by the window were sitting Beryl Van Tuyn and actually--Santa Lucia!--Lady Sellingworth! And they were both eating--what was it? Craven stretched his neck--they were both eating Risotto alla Milanese!

At this moment the guitars struck up that most Neapolitan of songs, the "Canzona di Mergellina," the smiling Italian girl popped a heaped-up plate of macaroni blushing gently with tomato sauce before Craven, and placed a straw bottle of ruby hued Chianti by the bit of bread at his left hand, and Miss Van Tuyn turned her corn-coloured head to have a good look at the room and, incidentally, to allow the room to have a good look at her.

The violet eyes, full of conscious a.s.surance, travelled from table to table and arrived at Craven and his macaroni. She looked surprised, then sent him a brilliant smile, turned quickly and spoke to Lady Sellingworth. The latter then also looked towards Craven, smiled kindly, and bowed with the careless, haphazard grace which seemed peculiar to her.

Craven hesitated for an instant, then got up and threading his way among Italians, went to greet the two ladies. It struck him that Lady Sellingworth looked marvellously at home with her feet on the sanded floor. Could she ever be not at home anywhere? He spoke a few words, then returned to his table with Miss Van Tuyn's parting sentence in his ears; "When you have dined come and smoke your Toscana with us."

As he ate his excellently cooked meal he felt pleasantly warmed and even the least bit excited. This was a wholly unexpected encounter. To meet the old age and the radiant youth which at the moment interested him more than any other old age, any other radiant youth, in London, in these surroundings, to watch them with the music of guitars in his ears and the taste of ravioli on his lips, silently to drink to them in authentic Chianti--all this gave a savour to his evening which he had certainly not antic.i.p.ated. When now and then his eyes sought the table tucked into the corner by the window, he saw his two acquaintances plunged deep in conversation. Presently Miss Van Tuyn lit a cigarette, which she smoked in the short interval between two courses. She moved, and sat in such a way that her profile was presented to the room as clearly and definitely as a profile stamped on a finely cut coin.

Certainly she was marvellously good-looking. She had not only the beauty of colouring; she had also the more distinguished and lasting beauty of line.

An Italian voice near to Craven remarked loudly, with a sort of coa.r.s.e sentimentality:

"_Che bella raga.s.sa!_"

Another Italian voice replied:

"_Ha ragione di venire qui con quella povera vecchia! Com'e brutta la vecchiezza!_"

For a moment Craven felt hot with a sort of intimate anger; but the guitars began "Santa Lucia," and took him away again to Naples. And what is the use of being angry with the Italian point of view? As well be angry with the Mediterranean for being a tideless sea. But he glanced at the profile and remembered the words, and could not help wondering whether Miss Van Tuyn's cult for Lady Sellingworth had its foundations in self-love rather than in attraction to her whom Braybrooke had called "the most charming _old_ woman in London."

Presently Miss Van Tuyn, turning three-quarters face, sent him a "coffee-look," and he saw that a coffee apparatus of the hour-gla.s.s type was being placed on the table by the window. He nodded, but held up a clean spoon to indicate that his zabaione had yet to be swallowed.

She smiled, understanding, and spoke again to Lady Sellingworth. A few minutes later Craven left his table and joined them, taking his Toscana with him.

They were charmingly prepared for his advent. Three cups were on the table, and coffee for three was mounting in the hour gla.s.s. The two friends were smoking cigarettes.

As he prepared to sit down on the chair placed ready for him with his back to the window, Miss Van Tuyn said:

"One minute! Please give the musicians this!"

She put five shillings into his hand.

"And ask them to play the Sicilian Pastorale, and 'A Mezzanotte,' and the Barcarola di Sorrento, and _not_ to play 'Funiculi, Funicula.' Do you mind?"

"Of course not! But do let me--"

"No, no! This is my little treat to Lady Sellingworth. She has never been here before."

Craven went round to the musicians and carried out his directions. As he did so he saw adoring looks of comprehension come into their dark faces, and, turning, he caught a wonderful smile that was meant for them flickering on the soft lips of Miss Van Tuyn. That smile was as provocative, as definitely full of the siren quality, as if it had dawned for the only lover, instead of for three humble Italians, "hairdressers in the daytime," as Miss Van Tuyn explained to Craven while she poured out his coffee.

"I often come here," she added. "You're surprised, I can see."

"I must say I am," said Craven. "I thought your beat lay rather in the direction of the Carlton, the Ritz, and Claridge's."

"You see how little he knows me!" she said, turning to Lady Sellingworth.

"Beryl does not always tread beaten paths," said Lady Sellingworth to Craven.

"I hate beaten paths. One meets all the dull people on them, the people who hope they are walking where everyone walks. Beaten paths are like the front at Brighton on a Sunday morning. What do you say to our coffee, dearest?"

"It is the best I have drunk for a long while outside my own house,"

Lady Sellingworth answered.

Then she turned to Craven.

"Are you really going to smoke a Toscana?"

"If you really don't mind? It isn't a habit with me, but I a.s.sure you I know how to do it quite adequately."

"He's an artist," said Miss Van Tuyn. "He knows it's the only cigar that really goes with Vesuvius. Do light up!"

"I'm thankful I came here to-night," he said. "I felt very dull and terrifically English, so I turned to Soho as an antidote. The guitars lured me in here. I was at the Emba.s.sy in Rome for a year. In the summer we lived at the Villa Rosebery, near Naples. Ever since that time I've had an almost childish love of guitars."

Miss Van Tuyn held up a hand and formed "Sh!" with her rosy lips.

"It's the Barcarola di Sorrento!" she whispered.

A silence fell in the narrow room. The Italian voices were hushed. The padrona dreamed behind her counter with her large arms laid upon it, like an Italian woman spread out on her balcony for an afternoon's watching of the street below her window. And Craven let himself go to the music, as so many English people only let themselves go when something Italian is calling them. On his left Miss Van Tuyn, with one arm leaning on the table, listened intently, but not so intently that she forgot to watch Craven and to keep track of his mind. On his right Lady Sellingworth sat very still. She had put away her only half-smoked cigarette. Her eyes looked down on the table cloth. Her very tall figure was held upright, but without any stiffness. One of her hands was hidden. The other, in a long white glove, rested on the table, and presently the fingers of it began gently to close and unclose, making, as they did this, a faint shuffling noise against the cloth.

Miss Van Tuyn glanced at those fingers and then again at Craven, but for the moment he did not notice her. He was standing by the little harbour at the Villa Rosebery, looking across the bay to Capri on a warm summer evening. And the sea people were in his thoughts. How often had he envied them their lives, as men envy those whose lives are utterly different from theirs!

But presently Miss Van Tuyn's persistent and vigorous mind must have got some hold on his, for he began to remember her beauty and to feel the lure of it in the music. And then, almost simultaneously, he was conscious of Lady Sellingworth, of her old age and of her departed beauty. And he felt her loss in the music.

Could such a woman enjoy listening to such music? Must it not rather bring a subtle pain into her heart, the pain that Italy brings to her devotees, when the years have stolen from them the last possibilities of personal romance? For a moment Craven imaginatively projected himself into old age, saw himself with white hair, a lined face, heavily-veined hands, faded eyes.

But her eyes were not faded. They still shone like lamps. Was she, perhaps, the victim of a youthful soul hidden in an old body, like trembling Love caged in a decaying tabernacle from which it could not escape?

He looked up. At the same moment Lady Sellingworth looked up. Their eyes met. She smiled faintly, and her eyes mocked something or someone; fate, perhaps, him, or herself. He did not know what or whom they mocked.

The music stopped, and, after some applause, conversation broke out again.

"Have you given up Italy as you have given up Paris?" Miss Van Tuyn asked of Lady Sellingworth.