The Lonely House (Lowndes)/Chapter 22
CHAPTER XXII
WHEN they were in the open air they both stopped, and Lily said, almost in a whisper: “How beautiful Monte Carlo is at night!”
The now waning moon silvered the great white buildings and shed shafts of delicate, quivering light across the dark sea to their right.
“I wonder if you'd mind our walking up to La Solitude?” said Lily's companion suddenly. “Were they expecting you back early?”
“No; they didn't think I could be home before eleven.”
They made their way across the great open space in front of the Casino, and started walking along one of the deserted paths which led through the gardens. It was indeed a very fairyland of mysterious beauty. Through the high feathery trees could be seen the vast star-powdered sky.
At last Angus Stuart began to speak, but there was something cold, almost icy, in his voice.
“I know I haven't a right to interfere with anything you do, still less to criticise your behaviour, Miss Fairfield”
“Why do you say that?” She felt sharply hurt and also angry. It did not look as if her companion was going to give her any opportunity of being “kind.”
The man walking by her side was looking down into her upturned face with lowering eyes. She had not known that Angus Stuart could look at anyone as he was looking at her now. It was almost as if he hated her! Her lip quivered. She made a great effort over herself—she must not show him how pained she felt.
“The truth is,” he said abruptly, “I couldn't stand the way that fellow Beppo Polda behaved to you to-night. I thought him such a cad to talk as he did! Popeau has found out that he hasn't at all a good reputation in Rome. He makes love to every woman he meets!”
While he was saying those words the speaker was cursing himself for a fool. This was not the way he had meant to speak. He had meant to warn Lily in quiet, measured accents of the danger she was running.
“M. Popeau is prejudiced against Beppo Polda,” She spoke with a good deal of spirit, though she felt on the brink of tears. “As for his manner, a great many foreigners have that sort of manner. Look what absurd compliments M. Popeau used to pay me on our journey from Paris! Beppo may have a bad reputation, but the Pescobaldis are devoted to him. I've made friends with the Marchesa—she's quite a nice woman.”
“Is she indeed?” There was a depth of wordless scorn in the Scotsman's now steadied voice.
“Why, you don't know her—you know nothing about her! You're very prejudiced too,” cried Lily.
“Perhaps I am prejudiced,” he said curtly.
“You must not be offended with me, Captain Stuart, if I say that with regard to Beppo Polda you are also very unfair!”
“If you think me prejudiced and unfair, it's no use my saying what I meant to say,” he said coldly.
“You can say anything you like to me,” said Lily impulsively. “After all, where's the good of our being friends if we can't say what we like to one another!”
And then, to her surprise, Angus Stuart burst out: “Of course, I know that Popeau thinks I'm jealous. Frenchmen are like that. But I'm not jealous—at least, I hope not! It's your true interest, and that alone, that I have at heart.”
“I never thought you were jealous,” said Lily. Then she rather wondered at herself—she was generally a very truthful girl—for saying such a thing.
He turned to her: “You may not have thought so, but—I'm not going to lie—and it's true that I'm very, very jealous! I'm jealous of Beppo Polda—I'm jealous of your being fond of him—but far, far stronger than my jealousy, is my fear that you, Miss Fairfield”
He hesitated, and she said in a low tone: “What is it you're afraid of?”
“I'm afraid that you may be cajoled into making a very unhappy marriage,” he blurted out.
“I don't know why you should think such a thing.” Lily spoke in a hesitating, troubled voice.
“It's clear to me—as clear to me as it is to Popeau, who is a shrewder man than I am—that those people, the Count and Countess Polda, want you to become their son's wife.”
Lily remained silent. She asked herself agitatedly whether, after all, this might not be the simple truth. She could not but see that the Countess was doing everything she could to throw her and Beppo together.
Captain Stuart hurried on: “The young man is a ne'er-do-well; something of an adventurer, too, if Popeau's information is correct.”
He felt surer of himself. He had feared Lily would be very angry with him, but he could see that, though deeply troubled, she was not angry.
“The man leads a completely idle life! Sometimes he has plenty of money to fling about; at other times he appears desperately hard up.”
“The thing I do not like about Beppo,” said Lily, in a low voice, “is that he didn't fight. I thinks that's such an extraordinary thing!”
And then Angus Stuart did a noble thing. He might have remained silent. Intsead, he said quickly:
“You mustn't blame Beppo Polda for that! Even Popeau admits that wasn't his fault. He wanted to go to the front, but his mother and the Marchesa Pescobaldi were determined he should run no risks, and so they pulled strings. I think ill of the fellow, and I want you to be on your guard against him. But I don't want you to think him worse than he is.”
They had now left the gardens, and were making their way through the dark streets.
Tears were rolling down Lily's cheeks.
“But what can I do?” she said at last. “Surely you don't want me to leave La Solitude just because Beppo Polda is going to stay there for a few days? He's not always as silly as he was to-night. When he and I are alone together he's quite different, and much nicer.”
She did not see the look that came over Angus Stuart's face, as he asked himsefl whether, after all, his words of warning had not come—as such words are so apt to come—too late.
“Perhaps I'm on the wrong track. If so, forgive me! After all, Popeau may be prejudiced. But, oh, Miss Fairfield, don't be in a hurry! Take time to consider whether life in Italy, as an Italian's wife, would be really a happy life for you. I do feel that your whole future happiness may depend on what happens in the next few days.”
Angus Stuart was speaking very agitatedly now. He thought he saw, at last, into Lily's heart. He believed that after all she did care for Beppo Polda, and the bitterness which had filled his heart melted away into a great selfless pity and concern. She looked so very young—almost like a child, and even in the dim light about them he could see the tears in her eyes.
“Look here!” he exclaimed. “I dare say the man's not half a bad fellow. Try to forget everything I said!”
“I don't want to forget what you've said,” exclaimed Lily—and then she went on, hesitatingly: “Sometimes—to-night, for instance—I feel as if I almost hated Beppo; and then, when he and I are alone together, and he speaks so kindly of his people, and of dear old Cristina, then I tell myself that he is nice, after all!”
“Still,” said Angus Stuart slowly, “you do enjoy his beastly compliments.”
Lily blushed a little, and sighed. “Every girl likes having pretty things said to her. I sometimes think that Englishmen don't say enough pretty things. Captain Stuart. I can't imagine any Englishman paying his mother or old nurse the sort of compliments Beppo pays Aunt Cosy and Cristina!”
“I wish a Scotsman could say the sort of thing you like—the sort of things Beppo Polda said to-night,” he muttered ruefully.
“Oh, I shouldn't like you to say such things at all!” Lily smiled up into his face.
They were now engaged in the lonely road leading to the heights above Monte Carlo, and they seemed alone in a moonlit enchanted world of beauty, and exquisite night scents. They walked on in silence for some moments. And then Lily just touched her companion's arm.
“I am grateful to you,” she whispered, “for having said what you did to me to-night! And I want to tell you that I'll follow your advice. I'll—I'll snub Beppo! I won't let him say the sort of things that you think are horrid—and which perhaps are horrid.”
There was a tremor in her voice. And all at once he turned on her. Why shouldn't he follow Popeau's advice? Why not burn his boats?
“Look here!” he exclaimed. “I don't see how you can help knowing—knowing” He stopped.
“Yes?” whispered Lily. “Knowing what?”
“That I love you! I dare say it seems absurd, considering what a little we've seen of one another, and how very seldom I've had a chance of talking to you alone. But there it is! I suppose I fell in love with you at first sight—in fact I know I did—in that big, grey, dirty Paris station. I've been a queer, lonely chap—a bit cantankerous, too. But there it is! I've never cared for anybody else. And I don't mind how long I wait—if there's the slightest chance that in the end I'll succeed. I oughtn't to speak like this now, for your people don't know anything about me.”
He stopped speaking for a moment, then he began, again in a slow, thoughtful voice: “I'll tell you what I'll do”
Lily felt as if she must burst out laughing and crying together. She had never thought that this was the way a man proposed.
“I'll write out this very night an account of myself. I'll say where I went to school—what my people were like—what I've done—and what I hope to do. And then I'll ask you to send it to your uncle—I mean to that man who's exactly like your father. Tell him I don't mind how long I wait, if only I can win you for my wife! If it's true that you're not thinking of marrying Beppo Polda then—do give me a chance!”
He spoke in a quick, urgent, muffled voice, and all at once he turned, and took hold of her two hands.
“I can't expect you to like me yet—you don't know me well enough—”
And then Lily suddenly said in a very low, clear voice: “I do know you well enough!”
She was shaking all over. It had been a terrible effort to her to say those six words, but somehow she felt that she ought to say them.
He dropped her hands.
“I say,” he said earnestly, “you're not playing with me? Do you really mean that? Will you allow me to hope that in time I shall be able to persuade you to do more than like me?”
He bent forward and then, after he had heard her whispered “Yes,” he suddenly understood.
In less than a moment his arms were round her, he was straining her to his heart, and raining kisses on her face. Then—but Lily did not know it—he did a rather fine thing. He drew back.
“Forgive me!” he exclaimed. “That was wrong! But a man can't always do right. For—and I'm quite serious, mind you—we're not to consider ourselves engaged till you've written to your uncle, till you know a little more about me, till—till”—he could not say “till you do a little more than like me!” for he knew now that she did.
They walked on a little way in silence, both extraordinarily happy, yet both feeling extraordinarily shy.
“I'm not a bit jealous of Beppo Polda now,” he said suddenly. “But, oh, darling—darling, I wish that instead of talking you up to La Solitude I was taking you—well, anywhere else. Somehow I'm afraid of that place! I—I simply hate the Countess Polda!”—he spoke between his teeth. “Do you remember that first visit that Popeau and I paid there, when she forced me to tell her all sorts of things about myself?”
“I thought you managed very well,” said Lily, smiling in the darkness. “I shall never forget your saying you felt as if you'd known me a lifetime!”
“That was quite true,” he said seriously. “And, after all, there is a limit to the impudent questions one is obliged to answer truly. I saw her, without her seeing me, a few days ago—I suppose the day that she and Count Polda came down into Monte Carlo to meet their son—and I thought she had such an evil face, a face, too, full of such tremendous determination! I am certain she wants you to marry her son. Must you stay on at La Solitude?”
“I fear I must” Lily hesitated. “But—but—” she did not know what to call this man who now meant all the world to her, so she called him by that little English word which may mean so much or so very little. “I promise you, dear,” she said, “that I won't allow Beppo Polda to flirt with me. I am ashamed of the way I went on to-night; I oughtn't to have done it! But somehow something seemed to draw me on, in spite of myself.”
He took her hand and held it tightly in his, and, like two happy children, they walked on—Lily in a maze of surprise and of mingled feelings, in which perhaps comfort was the one which predominated. It was such a comfortable thing to feel that she had a friend as well as a lover, in the strong, dependable man now walking by her side. She had felt terribly lonely sometimes—now she would never feel lonely any more.
“Look here!” he said suddenly. “I can absolutely depend on you to tell me everything? I gather you had a pretty bad time with that woman after you found that poor chap's body?”
“Yes,” said Lily in a low tone. “I had a very, very bad time. She terrified me. I had never seen anyone so angry.”
“If anything of the kind happens again will you manage to get a message sent to me?”
“Nothing of the kind is in the least likely to happen again, and don't feel worried about the other thing; I think I can manage Beppo.”
He winced a little at the confidence with which she said those simple words.
They were now standing on the little clearing just below the gate of La Solitude.
“Please don't come up to the house,” she said nervously. “Let's say good-bye here.”
And then—for, after all, though a man of honour, he was also a man of flesh and blood—Angus Stuart took Lily Fairfield in his arms again, and kissed her—kissed her—kissed her!