The Venture/Poor Little Mrs. Villiers
POOR LITTLE MRS. VILLIERS.
"Where is little Mrs. Villiers?" demanded Miss Hooley. The question was prefaced by a disconcerting gaze directed towards the new-comer in the seat opposite—a seat presumably occupied as a rule by the lady of the diminutive.
Mrs. Lawrence concealed a smile. Though her schooldays were now somewhat dim memories, she felt distinctly like the new girl who is expected to apologize for her existence. Glancing down the long table she was aware that a pension bore a ghastly resemblance to a boarding-school, twenty years after. Was "little Mrs. Villiers" the popular girl, she wondered? And if so, on what grounds?
"She's changed her place," volunteered Miss Pembridge, a spare lady, who dressed with the chastened smartness of one ever mindful of her high calling as the niece of a bishop.
"Oh! I'm so sorry. She will be a great loss to our table, dear little thing," exclaimed Miss Mullins. She delivered the remark, amiable in substance, with the air of one hurling a bomb-shell, and Mrs. Lawrence awaited the explosion of the apparently harmless missile with some curiosity. Its effect was almost instantaneous.
"That's entirely a matter of opinion," ejaculated Miss Rigg, her opposite neighbour. The observation was attended by a prolonged sniff, and Miss Mullins' comfortable fat face slowly crimsoned with indignation. While she meditated a sufficiently crushing retort, her opportunity for making it was cut short by the first speaker.
"Where's she going to sit then?" enquired Miss Hooley, refusing macaroni with the air of one wearied with an oft repeated performance.
"There, of course," returned Miss Rigg, sniffing again, as she nodded in the direction of a small table near the wall.
At the table indicated a young man was already seated. His shamefaced manner of glancing about the room while he eat his soup, not only proclaimed him a fresh arrival, but one somewhat overwhelmed by the eternal feminine.
"That's too bad of you," stammered Miss Mullins. "Poor little thing!—under the circumstances too."
"The very circumstances you'd expect it under," returned Miss Rigg, with an acrimony as obvious as her sentence was obscure."
"I agree with Miss Mullins entirely. Potatoes raw again," exclaimed Miss Hooley.
During the course of the dinner, Mrs. Lawrence learnt to disentangle this lady's ejaculations about the food, from the main trend of her conversation, but the effect was at first confusing.
"She's very late," ventured Miss Pembridge diluting with filtered water the dangerous strength of her vin ordinaire.
"Got to dress up for the occasion of course," was Miss Rigg's instant explanatinon. "Ah! here she comes, at last. Now you'll see whether I'm right!"
Mrs. Lawrence looked up with interest as the door opened, and noticed that "little Mrs. Villiers" was not only very pretty but also singlarly childish in appearance.
Her hair—soft brown fluffy hair, hung in baby tendrils on her forehead and round her little ears, and her wide opened blue eyes had the wondering half startled child-look so touching in baby faces. She was very simply dressed in white muslin, and a row of pink corals round her throat, emphasised her youth, and the charming innocence of her expression. At the door she paused a moment, with an air of hesitation, and a surprised glance to find all the seats at the long table occupied.
Guiseppe, the waiter, darted forward. "Madame is placed at the little table to-night," he explained, leading the way.
"Oh! is my place changed then?" she murmured, following.
"Very much surprised, no doubt," ejaculated the irrepressible Miss Rigg in a triumphant undertone.
"If there's anything I despise it's a spiteful mind. Boiled beef again," said Miss Hooley in something that was intended for a whisper.
Mrs. Lawrence, meanwhile, watched with some curiosity the effect produced upon the grave young man across the room, by the sudden appearance of youth and beauty at his lonely table. He reddened visibly; moved forks and spoons about with nervous hesitation, and kept his eyes fixed upon the rim of his plate.
Little Mrs. Villiers studied the menu, and Mrs. Lawrence was recalled to a sense of social duty by a remark from her too long neglected left hand neighbour.
Glancing at the small table at a later stage in the dinner, she was amused to see the young people chattering like a couple of children. Now that the boy had lost his awkward shyness, she thought him a somewhat engaging youth, frank, boyish and apparently enthusiastic; and his companion was charming.
She said as much to the lady on her left, whose assent was accompanied by a lowering of eyelids, and just the flicker of a smile at the corner of a humourous mouth.
The pension drawing-room was much like other pension drawing-rooms she found, later on, when everyone trooped towards it.
The usual little groups, which included the few men of the party, gathered round the card tables. Nondescript ladies with knitting, lined the walls. A strenuous, unattached woman studied Baedeker, and with her short-skirted friend, planned out a fierce day's work for the morrow. Groups of ordinary girls, chattered and giggled, and the usual people drew white shawls about their shoulders, discussed the treacherous nature of the Italian climate, grumbled about the food, and felt the customary draught.
Mrs. Lawrence moved her chair nearer to Mrs. Coltingham, the woman who had attracted her at dinner, and whose circumstances she had already discovered to be much like her own.
She too was a childless widow, who had let her London house to find in travel the mental stimulus denied her in a somewhat empty and monotonous life.
"Where is the pretty little lady?" she began tentatively, with a glance round the room.
Before Mrs. Coltingham could reply, Miss Rigg had looked up from her knitting. "Oh! you'll find her in the passage, flirting with the boy," she announced with a laugh.
"Flirting! Poor little thing! I think her sad circumstances might protect her!" declared Miss Mullins, the stout lady Mrs. Lawrence had already designated as the "mother-sheep."
"Sad circumstances! I was brought up to consider divorced women not respectable," retorted Miss Rigg, warming to the fight.
"She divorced him remember!" returned Miss Mullins, pink in her defence of a sister woman.
"It makes a difference of course," remarked Miss Pembridge with maidenly hesitation. "Its not a subject one cares to talk about—quite. Still, sacred as the married tie is—"
"Sacred fiddlesticks!" interposed Miss Hooley, glaring at Miss Pembridge whom she detested. "Men are a lot of brutes, and if a few more women would divorce 'em before they married 'em, so much the better!"
Mrs. Lawrence and Mrs. Coltingham exchanged glances which led to a slightly abrupt change of seat on the part of both ladies.
At the further end of the drawing-room, when she could control her voice, Mrs. Coltingham remarked. "This happens every night, directly Mrs. Villiers' name is mentioned. We are frank in discussion to say the least of it. But you see most of us have lived here all the winter, and perhaps we know one another a little too well."
Mrs. Lawrence smiled "It's amusing at first, but I can imagine it palls . . . Who is this little 'Mrs. Villiers?'"
"No one knows, except that she has divorced Mr. Villiers, whoever he may be."
"She looks such a child!" "But children nowadays are precocious."
Mrs. Lawrence laughed. "You don't like her?"
"Oh! I didn't say that returned the other lady. Precocious children are sometimes amusing you know, and after four months in a foreign pension, one welcomes anything that's amusing. The house is torn by faction on her account." she went on still smiling.
"She has her devoted adherents, and her no less devoted enemies. Each party discusses her all day long, and I believe, far into the night. Every other topic fades into insignificance before the burning question of Mrs. Villiers' innocence and integrity, versus her depravity and guile."
"And to which side do you incline?"
Mrs. Coltingham shrugged her shoulders. "I—Oh, a plague on both your houses' is my attitude," she returned lightly. "To me she is merely an amusing little person."
In the vestibule, on her way upstairs to bed, Mrs. Lawrence passed little Mrs. Villiers and the boy. The vestibule, comfortably furnished and heated, was used as a second drawing-room by the visitors, and this evening it was fairly full.
Mrs. Villiers and her companion were seated near the door, and were evidently discussing art.
"Yes, I love pictures too," the little lady was saying as Mrs. Lawrence approached. "But I'm so ignorant about them. If only I could do the galleries with someone who—"
"If you———I mean, might I? could we sometimes," stammered the boy.
"Oh, would you? That would be splendid!" returned his companion in the natural delighted voice of a child. "I've been longing—"
By this time the deaf old lady stationed immediately in front of the door, had become aware that she was being requested to move, and Mrs. Lawrence was able to make her escape.
"I believe she's quite a nice little thing," she reflected on her way up to bed, carrying with her the memory of a girlish unaffected voice. "What a set these boarding house women are, to be sure."
In the course of the next few weeks Mrs. Lawrence learnt that "the boy" bore the not uncommon name of Brown, that this drawback notwithstanding, he was as she described him, "a delightful young fellow"—fresh, unaffected and unusually boyish; also that he was falling hopelessly in love with Mrs. Villiers. Mrs. Lawrence was not surprised. She herself had fallen in love with little Mrs. Villiers. The child was only two and twenty she discovered, and such a dear baby at that. It was impossible to realise that this fresh, girlish creature had experienced not only a woman's tragedy, in a wretched marriage, but also the humiliation and pain of the only escape the law provides. Hers Mrs. Lawrence reflected, was one of the rare temperaments over which evil has no power—the radiant joyous child-nature for which every day the world is newly created, and yesterday has no existence.
Only once had she ever mentioned her husband's name to Mrs. Lawrence, and on that occasion the elder woman had smiled tenderly over the sweet naivete of her little friend.
It was while they were walking together in the Boboli Gardens one warm afternoon in February, that Mrs. Villiers met an acquaintance. Mrs. Lawrence had already noticed this woman as she came towards them down one of the long tunnel-like avenues, and noticed her with disapproval. Showily dressed, obviously painted, walking with an exaggeration of the fashionable gait of the moment, her fastidious judgment had instantly affixed to her the label "bad style." It was therefore with a shock, the reverse of pleasant, that she found such an individual stridently claiming acquaintance with her little companion. Mrs. Lawrence walked on, and in a few moments Mrs. Villiers overtook her, a pink flush of annoyance on her face.
She was silent for a moment, and then glancing up, she said abruptly: "You hated the look of that woman?"
"Well!—to be quite frank"—began Mrs. Lawrence.
"I know! I know!" she interrupted hastily. "She—She—was one of my husband's friends. I was obliged then—" she broke off, her voice trembling a little.
They were alone in the avenue, and Mrs. Lawrence put a kind hand on her arm.
"I understand dear, of course. But now you are free, there is no occasion to know such people. Take my advice—drop her. Drop her at once."
"Oh, I will!" she returned with an energy which made the elder woman laugh.
"But how unlucky she should be staying in Florence! . . . . I had to know all sorts of people you see. And some of them———" she paused again; and Mrs. Lawrence experienced the rush of indignant pity one feels for a child exposed to evil influences.
"Oh! I'm so glad that's all over," she sighed.
"Yes," said Mrs. Villiers, simply. "It was dreadful of course. But people were very kind to me, and helped me to get free. And now, do you know, unless something like this happens to remind me, I have forgotten it."
She turned her wide opened blue eyes full upon Mrs. Lawrence, with an innocent surprised gravity which touched the elder women.
"That's right dear," she replied heartily. "It's the best thing that could happen."
"But," Mrs. Villiers added, "you're quite right about Mrs. ——— about the woman who spoke to me just now. I won't know her any more. I can't bear to think of knowing her when there are dears like you in the world," she added slipping her hand into Mrs. Lawrence's. "You don't think it's forward of me, saying that, do you?" she enquired, an anxious little pucker appearing on her downy forehead. "I've known you quite a little while, but I don't remember my mothor you see; and somehow—"
The sweetness in her appealing voice made Mrs. Lawrence, who did not look matronly, ashamed of the twinge she felt.
"Yes my dear," she laughed. "I'm getting quite an old woman of course, but a mother's a nice thing after all."
"Oh a very nice thing," agreed Mrs. Villiers, patting her friend's hand.
The "idyll" as she called the increasingly intimate friendship of the "Brown boy" and little Mrs. Villiers, became a source of much affectionate interest to Mrs. Lawrence. She watched its progress delightedly, and as she stood at the drawing-room window one afternoon, and saw them start on an expedition to Fiesole, her satisfaction overflowed into a comment addressed to Mrs. Coltingham, the only other occupant of the room.
"They will make a charming pair!" she exclaimed.
"I do so want to see the beautiful Mino da Fiesole in the tion of a certain babyish voice, that in spite of her annoyance, Mrs. Lawrence laughed.
"You are not fair to that child," she exclaimed after a moment, with some heat.
"Oh! I think I do her justice," returned the other lady.
Mrs. Lawrence had intended asking Mrs. Coltingham to accompany her to the Uffizi that afternoon, but she refrained. There were moments when she did not like Mrs. Coltingham. It was all very well to be a woman of the world; she, Mrs. Lawrence, was that herself, heaven was aware, but it was another thing to be hard and suspicious; to feel no pity for youth and misfortune so touchingly allied as in the case of little Mrs. Villiers. She was disappointed in Mrs. Coltingham. It was sad to have to admit that even a woman so much above the average as this one, could not rise above vulgar prejudice.
It was with these reflections passing through her mind, while she stood buttoning her gloves in the hall, that she encountered the padrone, Signora Valli, also ready to start from the house.
Mrs. Lawrence was going in her direction. She would in that case case be more than charmed to accompany her. Ecco! The post. Two for Madame Lawrence. Ah! one, and she hoped a pleasant one, for dear little Mrs. Villiers, the rest Guiseppe could sort, and arrange on the hall table.
Thus, amidst torrents of English fluent enough if strongly Page:The venture; an annual of art and literature.djvu/76 Page:The venture; an annual of art and literature.djvu/77 Page:The venture; an annual of art and literature.djvu/78 Page:The venture; an annual of art and literature.djvu/79 Page:The venture; an annual of art and literature.djvu/80 Page:The venture; an annual of art and literature.djvu/81 Page:The venture; an annual of art and literature.djvu/82 Page:The venture; an annual of art and literature.djvu/83 Page:The venture; an annual of art and literature.djvu/84 with a shock of surprise that she saw him leaning on the parapet which bounds the piazza of San Miniato. The great open space beneath the church, was empty, save for his solitary figure. While Mrs. Lawrence hesitated he turned with an abrupt movement, and she saw his haggard young face outlined for a moment against the sky. Then, without seeing her, he moved quickly away, and plunging down the steps between the cypresses, was lost to sight.
Mrs. Lawrence crossed to the place where he had stood, and looked down over the city. The fires of the sunset had faded, and all the hollow valley was filled with a violet haze, through which the river gleamed pale, a magic stream, holding in its depths jewels and shafts of light: gold and silver, and emerald. Half veiled in swimming vapour, the spires and domes, campaniles and towers rose from a city, breathless and spellbound. Groups of cypresses lifted dark fingers towards the sky, which began to be pierced with trembling stars.