So passed the rich pageantry of Gaveston’s second term, and once again he was speeding through the sun-washed river-meadows towards the vast smoky antre of Paddington. While the train curved grandly through beautiful Maidenhead, he took out his pocket-book, a slim wallet of polished eftskin which the Contadina da Chiesa had given him, with her coronet set in sapphires in one corner, as an Eastertide gift. He unfolded a letter on thick mauve notepaper.
Villa des Grues,
Route des Rastaquouères,
Monico.
Valentine’s Day.
Gav dear,—I feel my health coming back to me. The doctor is a Frenchman. Don’t you find beards rather attractive? Becky Stein is in the next villa and we’ve been seeing such a lot of your friend Belijah and the Dick-Worthies—you remember them in the old days, don’t you, Wertheim they were then? Son Altesse is also in residence. I love this place, except for the pigeon-shooting. What a terrible radical you must think I am!
Love from your poor old
Mother.
Spi is a perfect companion and does so want to meet you, he says. He’s so grateful to you, you know. Why not come and join us. I saw the Princess de Levi-Malthusi in the Rooms. She was in ermine and did you know she was dear Joey Rosenbaum’s first wife? We have a lot in common. I forget when Cambridge breaks up? Excuse blots, dear.
Gav folded up the letter meditatively. How familiar its Ambre perfume was to him! All the dear memories of childhood were delicately impregnated with its haunting scent, and from his snug first-class carriage now thundering through Hayes he was borne on the magic drugget of its subtle associations to Aix and Montreux and Harrogate and Nauheim and—but scarce a spa of Western Europe that had not once been his boytime’s playground.
But the vacation? A certain weariness crept over his usually flamboyant imagination as he pondered its possibilities. The Riviera? No: he hated all that chromatic monotony: the sky was blue and so was the sea, and the trees were simply green. And then there was all that cruel publicity of press photographers. Decidedly he must find some less unvariegated paesaggio, a land with waters of chrysoprase and topaz trees and, hanging dome-like over all, a firmament of purest jargoon. And through the enchanted pathways of his mind flitted vividly a processional of marvellous cities—Modane and Vallorbe and Hendaye, Domodossola, Bobadilla the beautiful, which no traveller in fair Iberia can leave unvisited, and Poggibonsi with its very name drenched in dear romance.…
Paddington! And the blue-and-gold Renault awaiting him.…