Dion nodded.
“Les Inglesi tres forts, molto forte!” he observed, mixing French with Italian to show his linguistic accomplishments, “Moi tres fort aussi.”
Dion talked to the man. When he left the boat at the quay he said he would take it again on the morrow. The intention to go away from Buyukderer, to drown himself again in the uproar of Pera, was already fading out of his mind. Mrs. Clarke’s silence had, perhaps, reassured him. The Villa Hafiz did not summon him. He could seek it if he would. Evidently it was not going to seek him.
Again he felt grateful to Mrs. Clarke. Her silence, her neglect of him, increased his faith in her friendship for him.
His second day in Buyukderer dawned; in the late afternoon of it, now sure of his freedom, he went to the Villa Hafiz.
He did not know that Mrs. Clarke was rich. Indeed he had heard in London that she only had a small income, but that she “did wonders” with it. In London he had seen her at Claridge’s and at the marvelous flat in Knightsbridge. Now, at Buyukderer, he found her in a small, but beautifully arranged and furnished, villa with a lovely climbing garden behind it. Evidently she could not live in ugly surroundings or among cheap and unbeautiful things. He saw at a glance that the rugs and carpets on the polished floors of the villa were exquisite, that the furniture was not merely graceful and in place but really choice and valuable, and that the few ornaments and pieces of china scattered about, with the most deft decision as to the exactly right place for each mirror, bowl, vase and incense holder, were rarely fine. Yet in the airy rooms there was no dreary look of the museum. On the contrary, they had an intimate, almost a homely air, in spite of their beauty. Books and magazines were allowed their place, and on a grand piano, almost in the middle of the largest room, which opened by long windows into an adroitly tangled rose garden where a small fountain purred amongst blue lilies, there was a quantity of music. The whole house was strongly scented with flowers. Dion was greeted at its threshold by a wave of delicious perfume.
Mrs. Clarke received him in her most casual, most impersonal manner, and made no allusion to the fact that she knew he had already been for two days in Buyukderer without coming near her. She asked him if his room at the hotel was all right, and when he thanked her for bothering about him said that Cyril Vane had seen to it.
“He’s a kind, useful sort of boy,” she added, “and often helps me with little things.”
That day she said nothing about the Ambassador and Lady Ingleton, and showed no disposition to assume any proprietorship over Dion. She took him over the house, and also into the garden.
Upon the highest terrace of the latter, far above the house, between two magnificent cypresses, there stood a pavilion. It was made of the wood of the plane tree, was painted dull green, had trees growing thickly at its back, and was partially concealed by a luxuriant creeper with deep orange-colored flowers, not unlike orange-colored jasmine, which Mrs. Clarke had seen first in Egypt and had acclimatized in Turkey. The center of the front of this pavilion was open to the terrace, but could be closed by sliding doors which, when pushed back, fitted into the hollow walls on either side. The interior was furnished with bookcases, divans covered with cushions and embroideries, coffee tables, and Eastern rugs. Antique bronze lamps hung by chains from the painted ceiling, which was divided into lozenges alternately dull green and dull gold. The view from this detached library was very beautiful. Over the roof of the villa, beyond the broad white road and the quay, the long bay stretched out into the Bosporus. Across its tranquil waters, and the waters beaten up into waves by the winds from the Black Sea, rose the shores of Asia, Beikos, Anadoli Kavak, Anadoli Fanar, with lines of hills and the Giant’s Mountain. Immediately below, and stretching away to right and left, were the curving shores of Europe, with the villas and palaces of Buyukderer held between the blue sea and the tree-covered heights of Kabatash; the park of the Russian Palace, the summer home of Russia’s representative at the Sublime Porte, gardens of many rich merchants of Constantinople and of Turkish, Greek and Armenian magnates, and the fertile and well-watered country extending to Therapia, Stania and Bebek on the one hand, and to Rumili Kavak, with the great Belgrad forest behind it, and to Rumili Fanar, where the Bosporus flows into the Black Sea, on the other.