Chapter VI

The two women sat on the terrace of their wistaria-covered villa,--Madame de Ponière hunched up in her chair, smoking a cigarette through a long tube; Pauline, her reputed niece, her coffee and cigarette alike neglected, gazing fixedly seawards. Their immediate environment suggested at once a taste for luxury and the means to gratify it. The linen and silver on the little table at which they had just lunched was of the finest possible quality,--the former lace-bordered and adorned with a coronet. A bowl of pink roses occupied the centre of the table. The coffee had been served in little cups of the finest Sèvres china. In the background, a single servant was standing, dressed in plain black livery, a man grey-haired and with lined face, but tall and of powerful build. He possessed to the full the immobility of feature of the trained English servant, but there was something entirely foreign in his sphinx-like attitude and expression. He had the air of one who neither saw nor heard save at his mistress’s orders.

“I am weary of everything here except the sun,” Pauline declared deliberately.

The woman opposite knocked the ash from her cigarette. Hers was an aged and withered face, but her black eyes were still full of life and fire. Her long, thin hand, on which flashed several strangely set rings, was suddenly extended towards the waiting servant. Without a word he bowed and disappeared.

“One must wait,” Madame de Ponière declared.

“For what?” the girl asked lazily.

The older woman’s eyes glittered for a moment.

“For what will surely come,” she declared. “The portents are all there. The writing is no longer upon the wall--it blazes to the sky.”

“And meanwhile,” Pauline murmured, “the sun shines, my heart beats in tune to it, and I feel all the time the weariness of the days.”

“It is the insurgence of youth,” the older woman conceded indulgently. “I suppose the greatest must feel it some day.”

“There was a girl in the dressmaker’s shop,” Pauline went on. “The good Madame Lénore amused me by speaking of her. She is a peasant, it seems, picked up on the road by two young Englishmen and brought here for the first time in her life only yesterday. These young men have amused themselves by decking her out in the clothes of another class. The girl is beautiful, and she sees fairyland everywhere. She is in love with one of the young men, of course. One could see that in her face.”

“A very ordinary affair,” the older woman observed. “What of it?”

“Nothing except that I rather envy the girl.”

Madame de Ponière’s black eyes glistened dangerously.

“It would be easy to change places with her,” she said coldly. “You are probably as beautiful, and the trifle of breeding you possess might be considered an asset.”

Pauline smiled, and her face was at once more attractive than ever. There were little creases about her soft brown eyes, her mouth lost its discontented curve and became at once tremulous and gentle.

“It is an encouraging thought,” she murmured, “especially as the young man whom the girl appears to fancy has already endeavoured to make my acquaintance.”

“It is the worst of this place,” Madame de Ponière declared, a little viciously. “The men are all _boulevardiers_. _Canaille!_”

“The young man in question happens to be an aristocrat,” Pauline observed, her eyes fixed upon the adjoining villa.

“The more reason for care,” the woman muttered.

Pauline sighed.

“I might perhaps save him from the peasant girl. They tell me that these young Englishmen often regard an intrigue of this sort differently from our own people. He might even be led to marry her. He looks like a man of weak character.”

The older woman thrust another cigarette into her tube and lit it. She inhaled with the long, regular breaths of the confirmed smoker. Her delicately shaped but talon-like fingers were stained with nicotine.

“Zubin arrives this week,” she announced.

Pauline yawned.

“More mysteries,” she murmured, “more false hopes, more exaggerated stories. Nothing good will come of Zubin’s visit but the money he brings, unless by any chance he has news of Stepan.--Meanwhile, dear Madame, I bore myself. I rather wish that I had been born an American.”

The woman showed no sign of anger, yet somehow or other she seemed to diffuse an atmosphere of contempt.

“It is perhaps a pity,” she admitted, “that you are descended from one of the greatest rulers the world has ever known. It is perhaps a pity.”

“Give me something to rule over,” the girl declared, “and I will be repentant--the souls and liberties of a few million people, or the hearts of a few men. I am twenty-three years old and the sun is warm. And then there is the music, our one resource when there is no money to gamble with. What is the use of music, Madame, to one who lives behind the bars? It simply makes one pull at them a little harder. I am as badly off as Stepan himself, who loves me from behind the fortress walls. Sometimes I wish that I were there with him.”

Madame de Ponière reached for an ivory-topped stick and rose to her feet. Almost as though by magic, from somewhere within the dim, cool recesses of the room beyond, the grey-haired manservant was by her side. She leaned upon his arm.

“We drive at four o’clock, Pauline,” she said. “Afterwards, we will watch the play at the Sporting Club.”

Pauline shrugged her shoulders. It was the same yesterday afternoon, and every day behind. It would probably be the same to-morrow,--the same for her, but not for that peasant girl. For her there was no stereotyped routine. She looked intently across the narrow gorge towards that other villa. A two-seated car had turned in from the road and was crawling up the winding avenue. She stretched out her hand for the field glasses which lay on the table by her side. The young man at the wheel was the young man at whom the peasant girl had looked.

Pauline rose to her feet. Almost as mysteriously as the manservant had appeared a few moments before, a black-robed maid hastened towards her. Pauline shook her head.

“This afternoon I do not wish to rest,” she decided. “I shall walk in the gardens.”

“Mademoiselle desires that I shall attend her?” the maid asked.

Her mistress hesitated.

“I desire to be alone,” she announced.

Pauline descended the stone steps, crossed the drive, and plunged into a narrow footpath which wound its way through a plantation of stunted but sweet-smelling pine trees, downwards towards the sea. The path was not an easy one, and Pauline’s shoes were scarcely designed for such an adventure. Nevertheless, she persevered. She had almost to push her way through a grove of oleanders, and to wrap her skirts carefully around her as she passed between some spiky cactus trees. As last, however, she gained her end. She stood upon the little strip of sand, besprinkled with rocks, which bordered the sea. Only a few yards away the shimmering blue water rocked towards the land in little wavelets. She turned and looked back. The villa from which she had come seemed like a doll’s house shining out of its sheltering clump of cypresses. More directly above her now was the far more extensive residence of Lord Hinterleys. She looked towards it searchingly. There were several people upon the broad verandah, amongst them the slim figure of a young man at its farther edge, gazing intently in her direction. She smiled a little as she picked her steps across the yellow sand to the edge of the sea and clambered on to a rock. There was a breeze here which she had scarcely anticipated. For the first time she realised that she was bareheaded, ungloved,--she to whom usualness in all things was almost an instilled religion. A queer fit of heedlessness, however, was upon her. She stood upon the top of the slippery rock, finding a strange pleasure in the salt-laden air and the wind which brought a thousand ripples of light to the trembling blue sea, which blew her skirts about, and even brought disarrangement to her smoothly bound hair. This tempering of the sunshine brought a new joy to its warmth. She stood there basking in a purely sensuous pleasure, forgetful for a moment of the depression of the morning. The sound of tumbling stones in the little gorge behind scarcely disturbed her. It was not until she heard footsteps upon the strip of beach that she turned her head. Coming towards her, already only a few yards away, was a young man of personable appearance and unwontedly determined expression. For once in his life, Gerald had made up his mind.