Part 16 (1/2)

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!”