"My dear," she said, "what has been puzzling me all the evening is their place of origin. Some, I regret to say, are actually our own compatriots. But where do they come from?"
"It's a special breed peculiar to pensions on the Riviera," I remarked; and together we ascended to the frowsy drawing-room, where the red plush-covered furniture exuded an odour of mustiness, and the carpet was sadly moth-eaten and thread-bare.
Around the central table a dozen angular women of uncertain age grouped themselves and formed a sewing-party; a retired colonel, who seemed a good fellow, buried himself in the Contemporary; a decrepit old gentleman wearing a skull-cap and a shawl about his shoulders, heaped logs upon the fire and sat with his feet on the fender, although the atmosphere was stifling, while somebody else induced a young lady with a voice like a file to sing a plaintive love-song, accompanied by the untuned piano.
During my previous winters in the South I had stayed at hotels. In my ignorance of the ways of cheap visitors to the Riviera, I believed this congregation to be unique, but Ulrica assured me that it was typical of all English pensions along the Côte d'Azur, from Cannes to Bordighera, and I can now fully endorse her statement.
To describe in detail the many comic scenes enacted is unnecessary. The people were too ludicrous for words. One family in especial endeavoured to entice us to friendliness. Its head was a very tall, muscular, black-haired French-woman, who had married an Englishman. The latter had died fifteen years ago, leaving her with a son and daughter, the former a school boy of sixteen, and the latter a fair-haired and very freckled girl of perhaps twenty. The woman's name was Egerton, and she was of that dashing type who can wear scarlet dresses at dinner, and whose cheeks dazzle one's eyes on account of the rouge upon them. She was loud, coarse, and vulgar. For the benefit of all the others, she spoke daily of the delicacies prepared by her own chef, sneered at the food of the pension, and ordered special messes for her own consumption. Before we had known her an hour she had given us a description of the wonderful interior of her house in Rome, enumerated her servants, and gave us to understand that she was exceedingly well-off, and quite a superior person. The people one meets on the Riviera are really very entertaining.
Ulrica was grimly sarcastic. As we had neither intention nor inclination to associate with this superior relict, we politely snubbed her, taking care that it should not be done in secret.
"I don't think our effort at economy has met with very much success," I remarked to Ulrica, when about a week later I sat over the cup of half-cold coffee, the stale egg, the hunk of bread and the pat of rancid butter, which together formed my breakfast.
"No, a week of it is quite sufficient," she laughed. "We'll leave to-morrow."
"Then you've given notice?"
"Of course. I only came here for a week's amusement. We'll go on to the 'Grand.'"