The Lonely House (Lowndes)/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI
THEY strolled about the Rooms for a while, and finally spent an amusing half-hour watching the “trente-et-quarante” players. But all the time Lily was asking herself what there could have been in the letter which Captain Stuart had written to her, and which had not yet reached her? As for the loss of her money, she really did manage to forget it.
Angus Stuart put a pink counter, that is, twenty francs, on the board three separate times, and each time he lost.
“Unhappy in play, happy in love, my friend!” quoted M. Popeau chaffingly. “I think I shall have to give you a mascot.”
And then Lily bethought herself of what Aunt Cosy had said concerning the Marchesa Pescobaldi. “Do you believe in the Evil Eye,” she asked eagerly.
Somewhat to her surprise, M. Popeau hesitated.
“That is a curious question,” he said, “but I will answer you truly. I have long thought that there are in this strange world both men and women who can bring misfortune on those whom they do not like—just as there are human beings who radiate happiness and goodness.”
Captain Stuart broke in: “Surely persons may have the Evil Eye and so injure what they love best in the world, without being able to help it?”
“Yes,” said M. Popeau gravely, “that is the true Evil Eye. I hope you have not met anyone with the Evil Eye lately, Mademoiselle? That would certainly account for the theft of your winnings this afternoon!”
“Yes, I'm afraid I have.” She laughed gaily.
“Has Count Beppo the Evil Eye?” asked M. Popeau.
“Oh, no! Whatever made you think such a thing? The person who is supposed to have the Evil Eye is a woman. Beppo Polda is staying here with a certain Marchese and Marchesa Pescobaldi. According to my aunt”—Lily had now quite slipped into the way of calling the Countess Polda her aunt—“this Italian lady has the Evil Eye.”
“I don't know that I would believe everything the Countess Polda would say about another lady,” said M. Popeau reflectively. Then he added, almost as if speaking to himself: “I did not realise that Count Beppo was with the Pescobaldis.”
“They all came together, and they are all going away together, very soon,” said Lily.
“And what do you think of the Marchesa?” asked the Frenchman. “She was a very beautiful woman when I last saw her—before the war.”
“She is very, very beautiful still!” exclaimed Lily. “Her eyes are lovely—like large sparkling jewels. I looked well into them, but, of course, I could not see which was the Evil Eye!”
“Do not laugh at the Evil Eye,” said M. Popeau warningly. “I could tell you some curious stories about those who are supposed to possess it. The most dramatic of all my tales concerned the terrible fire which took place in Paris years ago, at what was called the Charity Bazaar. There were people who were so unkind as to suggest that the tragedy occurred owing to the presence of a very high Italian personage who was known to have the Evil Eye. He had just left the building when the fire broke out.”
They wandered about, all over the Casino, and then they went across to the Hôtel de Paris and M. Popeau ordered tea. Both the young Scotsman and the elderly Frenchman vied with one another in “fussing” over their guest, and Lily felt happy and exhilarated—what a delightful day she was having!
“And now,” said M. Popeau at last, “I fear it is time that I fulfilled my promise of escorting you back to La Solitude, Mademoiselle.”
“I hope you will allow me” began Captain Stuart, but before he could finish his sentence, Lily exclaimed, “Why, there's Beppo Polda!”
Hurrying towards them was a tall, dark man to whom Angus Stuart took an instant, instinctive, violent dislike. He told himself that Beppo Polda looked a foppish, theatrical fellow. That, however, was very unfair—it only meant that Beppo looked exceptionally well-dressed, what some people call “smart.”
“I was so afraid that I should miss you!” he exclaimed, taking very little notice of Lily's companions. “Are you ready, Lily? I've got the car outside. We ought to start pretty soon, as I have to get back to the Hidalgo by five o'clock.”
“You will do that very easily,” interposed M. Popeau. “It's only a quarter-past four now.”
Stuart felt annoyed that the Frenchman seemed to take it for granted that Lily would go off with this dandified-looking foreigner.
“I propose taking Miss Fairfield for a short drive first.” There was a touch of haughty decision in the young Count's voice. It was not that he resented M. Popeau's apparent friendship with Lily, but already he reciprocated Angus Stuart's sudden, unreasoning dislike. He pretended not to know that the Scotsman belonged to the little party.
“Beppo,” said Lily, rather awkwardly, “this is Captain Stuart. Captain Stuart, may I introduce my cousin, Count Beppo Polda?”
The two men looked at one another with a long, measuring glance, then they shook hands frigidly.
As they were making their way to the door, Lily fell behind for a moment by Angus Stuart's side. “Perhaps I shall find your letter at La Solitude,” she whispered. She added: “I hope I shall.”
His thin, keen face lit up. “D'you really mean that, Miss Fairfield?”
“Of course I do!”
She shook hands with him and with M. Popeau; and a few moments later the car was going at a good pace past the Casino, in the opposite direction to that which would have taken them up to La Solitude.
“Is Captain Stuart an old friend of yours?” asked Beppo abruptly.
Lily hesitated. To her secret relief, he went on at once, without waiting for an answer: “The word friendship may mean so much or so little, my little cousin!”
“That is very true!” said Lily demurely.
“But there can be no such doubt about the word love!”
Her eyes dropped before her companion's eager, searching, ardent gaze. Was this what M. Popeau had meant to warn her against?
The motor slowed down. They were now looking across the great green promontory which juts out of the blue sea to the left of Monte Carlo.
“I wish I could stay on a little longer,” said Beppo in a low voice. “What a cursed thing is money! Still, we poor mortals can't do without it. So I shall go back to Rome and try to make what we call a lucky hit, eh? Then I shall come back, and perhaps stay up at La Solitude. Shall I be welcome, Lily?”
She looked up at him. “Yes,” she said slowly. “Of course you will be welcome, Beppo!”
As is almost invariably the case with a certain type of girl, Lily liked to mix the jam of flirtation with the powder of good advice, and she did feel that Beppo, with regard to his father and mother, was indeed very thoughtless and selfish. So she added, deliberately: “Your return will be welcome to me, and also”
“Also?” he repeated eagerly. He tried to guess what she was going to say, but failed.
“Also to your father and mother,” she said gravely. “I wonder if you know how much they care for you? They really live for you, and for nothing else, Beppo!”
To her surprise he looked disturbed and troubled. “I'm afraid that's true,” he said ruefully. “And yet, Lily, seriously, I feel I really know very little about them! I know they love me, Lily—nay, that there is nothing that they would not do for me—and yet they seem to me almost like strangers.”
Lily was indeed astonished. “I don't understand,” she exclaimed. “What exactly do you mean, Beppo?”
Somehow they seemed to have come much nearer to one another in the last two or three minutes, for Beppo Polda's deep, vibrant voice had in it a note of sincerity which surprised the girl, and made her feel far more really kindly to him than she had done yet.
“They never tell me anything about their private affairs,” he went on slowly. “I need not tell you—for, of course, you must have seen it for yourself—that mamma's is the master mind. She is a very clever woman. Sometimes”—his voice dropped—“I wonder if she is not too clever! I speak to you thus frankly because I feel that you are already one of the family.”
Lily felt touched by his words—though she thought it an odd thing to say, for, of course, she was not really related to them at all. She wondered, uncomfortably, if Beppo knew that she was his parents' paying guest.
“Ought we not to be turning now?” she suggested. “I'm afraid Aunt Cosy will be getting anxious about me. She is very particular.”
“One can never be too particular about a young girl,” observed Beppo sententiously. “But still, it won't hurt mamma to be anxious for another twenty minutes or so.”
They drove on, and Lily told herself that it was very pleasant to be motoring through this beautiful country, while listening to Beppo's full, caressing voice. She found herself answering all kinds of questions about her own childhood and girlhood, and she could not help feeling flattered that Beppo was so obviously interested in all that concerned her. In that he was very unlike Captain Stuart. He seemed to take everything for granted. Beppo was even anxious to know of what illnesses her father and mother had died!
In some ways this fine, strong-looking young fellow seemed to the English girl more like a woman than a man. He was so interested in the sort of things which are supposed, perhaps erroneously, only to interest women. He spoke admiringly of her frock and her hat, and she gave him a lively account of her expedition to Mme. Jeanne.
“Excellent Jeanne!” he at once exclaimed. “I must manage to find time to go and see her.” He added: “She has a sister who keeps an hotel in the Condamine. My father was saying only to-day that Jeanne's sister had written to him about some man in her hotel who desired a card of admission to the Club. Papa is so good-natured!”
Lily made no answer to that remark. She did not think the Count at all good-natured. He was entirely absorbed in himself, and in his own concerns. But, of course, there could be no doubt at all about his great love for his son.
They were nearing La Solitude when Lily bethought herself of what had happened in the restaurant about the gold snuff-box. “I want to ask you something,” she said suddenly.
Beppo turned his face down on his pretty companion. “Ask me anything you like,” he exclaimed gaily. “And I promise that you shall have a true answer!”
“It's only,” she said, rather nervously, “that I wish you would show me that lovely little cigarette-box again, Beppo. Is it really true that you bought it in Milan? Somehow I don't think it is”
“Well, no,” Beppo answered smiling. “It is not true. But you are a clever little witch to have discovered the fact!”
He stopped the car. They were on a lonely cross-road, and Lily will always remember the exact spot, and what was said there, though at the time it did not make very much impression on her.
He took the gold box out of his pocket and handed it to her.
“Look here!” he exclaimed. “If you've taken such a fancy it it, allow me to present it to you, my fair cousin—just as a souvenir?”
How strange that he should say that—it was almost exactly what poor George Ponting had said!
“I don't want it, thank you, Beppo. I only wanted to look at it again. Then if you did not buy it at Milan, how you get it?”
The more she looked at it, the more she felt certain that it was the box she had seen on the evening of her arrival at La Solitude.
“I don't see why I shouldn't tell you”; he hesitated a moment, then said frankly: “This box was a present from mamma. As a matter of fact, she gave it me yesterday, when you went off to see Cristina in the kitchen. Do you remember?”
“Yes,” said Lily in a low voice. “I remember when you mean.” And she handed the box back to him.
“I confess,” went on Beppo, “that I did not in the least understand why there should be any mystery about it! But, of course, I could not contradict mamma when she came out with that absurd tale of my having bought the box in Milan last year.”
At last they reached La Solitude. “No, I won't come in,” said Beppo, shaking his head. “I've got to go back to the Hidalgo Hotel, and take the Marchesa for a drive before it gets pitch dark.”
“I hope I haven't made you late!” exclaimed Lily, for as a matter of fact it was now after five o'clock.
“Oh, no. I shall say that something went wrong—things are always going wrong with this old car! It's high time the Marchese had a new one. But he is careful! Carefulness is an Italian virtue—I call it an Italian vice!”
“Aunt Cosy will be dreadfully disappointed,” said the girl.
And then Beppo suddenly changed his mind. The thought of spending even a few more minutes in Lily Fairfield's company was pleasant to him. He would tell the Marchesa that he had had a bad puncture.
“To please you I will just go up and say how-d'you-do to Mamma!” he exclaimed, looking at her tenderly.
Together they walked up through the wood, and so on to the lawn, whence Lily noticed Aunt Cosy's ample form behind one of the drawing-room windows.
The Countess waved her hand gaily to the young couple. She opened the window. “I was getting quite anxious about you, Lily,” she exclaimed. “But all's well that ends well.”
“Lily and I have had a delightful drive,” said Beppo. “And I've just come up to say how-d'you-do and good-bye!” And then, to Lily's discomfiture, he suddenly asked:
“By the way, Mamma, why did you tell that story—they call it a tarradiddle in England—about the snuff-box you so kindly gave to me?”
The Countess looked disturbed and surprised at the question.
“I will tell you why, my son,” she said slowly. “That beautiful box was given to me by a friend who is now dead. I did not wish to speak of him. That is why, my dear child, I made up that little tale.”
“You made me look like a fool!” said Beppo crossly. “You need not have said anything at all—and I would not have said anything either! After all, it is no one's business what you give me or what I give you.”
Still, he kissed her very affectionately and then went off, leaving them standing together.
Lily turned impulsively to the Countess.
“Then poor Mr. Ponting gave you that box when he said good-bye?” She spoke in a very low voice. “He offered to give it to me. But I wouldn't take it. He was grateful to you, Aunt Cosy, for all your kindness, so I quite understand his having given it to you.”
The Countess was now looking at Lily with a long, measuring, rather anxious look.
“Yes,” she said at last. “You have guessed the truth! That charming little object belonged to poor Mr. Ponting. He asked me to take it as a last gift; and though I, too, hesitated, feeling the delicacy that you so rightly felt, I did end by taking it, for I thought of Beppo. I knew he would like it. But I did not want to recall that sad affair to-day, when you were all so happy.”
“I wish you would let me tell M. Popeau,” said Lily. “I know the description of that snuff-box has been circulated all over Nice and Mentone”
“Let me beg you,” cried the Countess hurriedly, “to say nothing about it, Lily! We have suffered enough over that business. They would probably send up again from the police, and it would be odious.”
As the girl, surprised, remained silent, the other went on urgently: “May I trust you? Will you give me your word of honour you will say nothing about the gold box, dear child?”
“I certainly will say nothing if you would rather I did not do so,” said Lily. Still, she was sorry to know that she had unwittingly deceived both Mr. Ponting's friend and the police. She knew that they had attached considerable importance to the disappearance of the gold box.
Before going upstairs Lily went into the kitchen, and there, lying on the table was the letter which had been posted by Angus Stuart something like thirty-six hours ago. She took it up, Cristina watching her the while.
“Did this letter arrive yesterday morning?” she asked.
Cristina hesitated. “The Countess brought it in about an hour ago; I do not know when it arrived,” she said at last.
Lily took up her letter and turned away. She went up to her room, and walked right across to the window. Then she saw that the letter had been steamed open, and fastened down again rather clumsily. It was too bad of Aunt Cosy! It was hateful of her!
The letter ran as follows:
- Dear Miss Fairfield,
- This is to tell you that I am very, very glad you and I are friends as well as pals—pals as well as friends. I feel awfully distressed that such a fearful thing happened to you on Sunday. Remember your promise to your friend,
Angus Stuart.