This villa was long and low and white, and severe after its manner: for upon and about it were none of those playful ebullitions of taste, such as conical towers, domed roofs, embattlements, statues, coloured tiles and crenellations, such as are dear to architects of villas all the world over. Lady Tarlyon’s chauffeur, sent long in advance of her to choose a villa not too utterly offensive, for she considered him a man of discernment, had been instantly pleased by its air of quiet dignity qualified by a certain bravado: its air of frankly yet discreetly compromising between a Georgian mansion and a Texas ranch, with both of which Lady Tarlyon’s chauffeur was familiar. One of its main attractions, and perhaps the one mainly indicative of Texan influences, was a verandah that ran the length of the house on its front and southern side. Now this was a real verandah, not one of your merely decorative ones, a verandah about which men could pace and smoke cigars and women drop fans to break strained silences: a verandah with a wide prospect over the distant Mediterranean, for that brilliant blue sheet was cut short some way without the coast by the trees that cover the flanks of Cimiez and make Nice invisible to those who would rather live out of it. It was, in fact, a verandah of chairs and gossip and silence, to seduce each to the indulgence of his own nature, whether it most pleased him to look upon his companion or over the sea: to dream, maybe, of nothing but what lies in that wanton sea, for ever so tenacious of men’s homage and for ever so reckless of their honour.
2
On an afternoon that February, Lady Tarlyon’s house-party were sitting in an uneven group on the verandah. From the verandah were imposing marble steps—the chauffeur had apologised for those steps—to lead leisured feet down to a considerable lawn; but the gardeners of Mr. James Michaelson of Lancaster Gate had rather neglected the lawn during the war, and it looked a little odd, as a lawn. However, no one needed to look at it twice, for there was always the Mediterranean, which is a tidy sea during the season.
George Tarlyon (blue serge jacket, white trousers, a Brigade tie, and brown-and-white shoes) was there, also a brandy-and-ginger-ale. Virginia was there. Major Cypress was there—Hugo Cypress, the last of the beaux sabreurs, bless him! Lois was there, and her husband, the companionable little Earl. And Mrs. Chester was very evidently there, in a chair beside Tarlyon.
Ann Chester, quiet and soft-moving as was her elegant habit, was always very evidently everywhere; you couldn’t help but notice her, you understand, as she came into a room, a restaurant, or a theatre. She was a woman of thirty-five: which is not very old for a woman nowadays—and is, as a matter of fact, considered a proper age for a lovely woman, if only she can stay at it: Mrs. Chester could. She was of a tall and slightly full figure—only slightly full—and she wore clothes so that Frenchwomen looked like Englishwomen beside her. Mrs. Chester was American originally. It was said that she sprang from the F.F.V.,[E] but it was also said that she had sprung so far that she wouldn’t be able to get back. Mr. Chester was nonexistent, in that no one had ever met him or heard of him until the death was reported of an American gentleman, Mr. Beale Chester, during a week of misunderstandings in Odessa. Ann’s accent was just faintly American enough to be very attractive—she would say, “I’m going to Paris, France, to-morrow”—and she was, indubitably, a lady. She was really very lovely, in quite a classical way, of feature, complexion, and hair: and always softly smiling, softly. Her eyes were gray and understanding—the eyes of a dear! which, you know, she was. The stage had missed a great beauty when Ann Chester had decided on life as a career: which is such a banal witticism to make about women that it is sometimes true about a few of them. She attracted by sheer womanliness of body and mind, and sheer stupidity. And hers was that mature and exquisitely soignée womanliness which, they say, drives sensible Jews and newly-created peers to madness and bankruptcy. If a precious young man were essaying a precious study of her in a precious magazine, all of which might quite easily happen, he would say, “Even her soul was manicured,” and he would be utterly wrong—for, mysterious Mrs. Chester, she could fall in love! It had been remarked about her, she could fall in love! and not only within the commonplace limits of a béguin either, which are the only limits that nice women allow to the passions of women not so nice. She had been known to sacrifice things, even jewellery. Now a man beloved of Ann Chester appalled the imagination of other men—of what stuff was he made, what queer virtue was his? For imagine Ann clinging, clinging, moved at last out of her softly smiling acquiescence into a fullness of surrender, beseeching your sincerity in return for hers, that hair of cosmopolitan gold at last malsoignée with abandon—imagine it!—our Ann clinging in desire! Oh, it was inconceivable!
The hour of four-thirty is not a lively hour in Southern Europe. Lady Tarlyon’s guests sat on the terrace lazily, in white becushioned wicker arm-chairs, talking just enough. Later on they would dress and motor eastwards, along the higher Route de la Corniche, to Monte Carlo: there to dine at the Paris and gamble at the inevitable Sporting Club. The house-party of the villa at the far end of the rue Edward VII. despised Nice and all its works, but one and a half kilometres below them; they did not like Nice, it bored them; and so far they had done nothing at all about Nice except to motor through it.
Lord Tarlyon had a theory about Nice.
“Nice,” said Lord Tarlyon, “is just like Blackpool——”
Lois lodged a complaint.
“He once knew a man who had some picture-postcards of it,” Mrs. Chester explained. “Yes, George?” and her gray eyes enfolded him, and he grinned sideways at her. Virginia’s lips were smiling, just a little, at the sea. George often made her smile.