"Silly boy, it's too late. Here's tea; and here's St. George; and here will be some of the flock presently, who generally appear on the stroke of half-past four."
In another moment Carleton was shaking the hand of a slender, pale man with auburn hair worn rather long, a sensitive mouth, delicate nostrils, and beautiful, bright, hazel eyes which shone with a spiritual, unworldly enthusiasm. He looked like one who would cheerfully have been a martyr to his faith had he lived a few centuries earlier. And Dick thought his cousin's simile of the high Alps not too far fetched, after all. But there was a warm light in the beautiful eyes as they turned upon Rose; and something in the man's smile hinted that he did not lack a sense of humour, except when too absent-minded to bring it into play. Dick felt happy about Rose, and happier about Miss Grant, because Rose would go and see her.
XIV
Life was not running on oiled wheels at the Villa Bella Vista.
A spirit of discontent, a feeling that they had been lured to the house under false pretences, grew among Lady Dauntrey's visitors and was expressed stealthily, a word here, a word there, and sullen looks behind the backs of host and hostess. Even on the first day disappointment began to wriggle from guest to guest, like a little cold, sharp-nosed snake, leaving its clammy trail wherever it passed.
In the first place the villa, which had been described glowingly by Lady Dauntrey to the Collises and Dodo Wardropp, was not what she had painted it. Indeed, as Dodo remarked to Miss Collis, it was not what any one had painted it, at least within the memory of man. Once it had been a rich gold colour, but many seasons of neglect had tarnished the gold to a freckled brown, which even the flowering creepers that should have cloaked it seemed to dislike. In depression they had shed most of their leaves; and bare serpent-branches, which might be purple with wistaria in the late spring long after everybody had gone to the north, coiled dismally over the fanlike roof of dirty glass that sheltered a blistered front door. Inside, a faint odour of mouldiness hung in the air of the rooms, which had been shut up unoccupied for a long time. The ugly drab curtains in the drawing-room smelled of the moth-powder in which they had been wrapped through the summer heat. The imitation lace drapery underneath them had been torn and not mended. Bits of thick brown paper pasted over the windows during the hot months still stuck to the glass. The furniture was heavy, not old but middle-aged, lacking the charm of antiquity, and in the worst French taste. The pictures were banal; and there was no garden. More painful than all, the house was in the Condamine; and Dodo, when she had spent a few days at "Monte" on her way to England from Australia, had been told that "nobody who was anybody lived down in the Condamine: only the 'cheap people' went there." And Dodo did not consider herself a cheap person. She was paying high to be the guest of a "lady of title": she wanted her money's worth, and soon began to fear that there was doubt of getting it.
Servants had been engaged in advance for Lady Dauntrey by the agent who had let the house. There were too few; and it needed but the first night's dinner to prove that the cook was third rate, though Lady Dauntrey carefully referred to him as the chef. In addition to this person, occasionally seen flitting about in a dingy white cap, there was a man to wait at table and open the door—a man, Dodo said, with the face of a sulky codfish; and a hawk-nosed, hollow-cheeked woman to "do the rooms" and act as maid to the ladies, none of the three having brought a maid of her own. Their hostess had said she could not put up her guests' servants, but they might "count upon a first-rate maid in the house." They reminded each other of this promise, the day after their arrival, and grumbled. Secundina had as much as she could do to keep the rooms in order; and the only other service she was able to give the visitors was to recount gruesome stories of the villa while she made their beds or took a top layer of dust off their dressing-tables. According to her, the Bella Vista was the cheapest furnished house to let in the principality, because years ago a murder had been committed in it. A woman had been killed for the sake of her jewels by the tenants, a husband and wife. They had kept her body in a trunk for days, and had attempted to get out of France with it, but had been arrested on their way to Italy. Nobody who was superstitious would live in the house, and so it was not often let. Secundina did not know where the murder had taken place, but believed it was in the dining-room, and that the trunk had been kept in the cellar.
It was Dodo to whom the tale was told, and she repeated it to Mrs. Collis and her daughter, the three having forgotten their slight differences in making common, secret cause against the Dauntreys, or, rather, against Lady Dauntrey; for they were inclined to like and be sorry for her husband, pitying him because misfortune or weakness had brought him to the pass of marrying such a woman. "You could make a whole macadamized road out of her heart," remarked Mrs. Collis.
"It would serve her right if we all marched out of this loathsome den in a body," said Dodo, emphatically, when they had met to talk things over in the Collises' room. "She's a selfish cat and thinks of nobody but herself. She won't even let the men come near us girls if she can help it, though you and I both know perfectly well, Miss Collis, that she hinted about the most wonderful chances of great marriages, nothing lower than an earl at meanest. Not that you and I need look for husbands. But that isn't the point; for anyhow, she has no business to snap them out of our mouths. Now, she's jealous if Dom Ferdinand or the Marquis de Casablanca so much as looks at one of us. And she's given us the worst rooms, so she can take in other poor deluded creatures and get more money out of them. And there isn't enough to eat. And all the eggs and fish have had a past. And Secundina says there are black beetles as large as chestnuts in the kitchen. Still——"