Mr Satterthwaite smiled in a pallid fashion.
‘A waste of good food, I call it,’ continued the Duchess robustly.
‘Did she get any food?’ asked Mr Satterthwaite enviously.
‘I happened to bring some biscuits and a stick of chocolate on board with me,’ said the Duchess. ‘When I found there was no dinner to be got, I gave the lot to her. The lower classes always make such a fuss about going without their meals.’
With a cry of triumph the launching of the gangway was accomplished. A Musical Comedy chorus of brigands rushed aboard and wrested hand-luggage from the passengers by main force.
‘Come on, Satterthwaite,’ said the Duchess. ‘I want a hot bath and some coffee.’
So did Mr Satterthwaite. He was not wholly successful, however. They were received at the hotel by a bowing manager and were shown to their rooms. The Duchess’s had a bathroom attached. Mr Satterthwaite, however, was directed to a bath that appeared to be situated in somebody else’s bedroom. To expect the water to be hot at that hour in the morning was, perhaps, unreasonable. Later he drank intensely black coffee, served in a pot without a lid. The shutters and the window of his room had been flung open, and the crisp morning air came in fragrantly. A day of dazzling blue and green.
The waiter waved his hand with a flourish to call attention to the view.
‘Ajaccio,’ he said solemnly. ‘Le plus beau port du monde!’
And he departed abruptly.
Looking out over the deep blue of the bay, with the snowy mountains beyond, Mr Satterthwaite was almost inclined to agree with him. He finished his coffee, and lying down on the bed, fell fast asleep.
At déjeuner the Duchess was in great spirits.
‘This is just what will be good for you, Satterthwaite,’ she said. ‘Get you out of all those dusty little old-maidish ways of yours.’ She swept a lorgnette round the room. ‘Upon my word, there’s Naomi Carlton Smith.’
She indicated a girl sitting by herself at a table in the window. A round-shouldered girl, who slouched as she sat. Her dress appeared to be made of some kind of brown sacking. She had black hair, untidily bobbed.
‘An artist?’ asked Mr Satterthwaite.
He was always good at placing people.
‘Quite right,’ said the Duchess. ‘Calls herself one anyway. I knew she was mooching around in some queer quarter of the globe. Poor as a church mouse, proud as Lucifer, and a bee in her bonnet like all the Carlton Smiths. Her mother was my first cousin.’
‘She’s one of the Knowlton lot then?’
The Duchess nodded.
‘Been her own worst enemy,’ she volunteered. ‘Clever girl too. Mixed herself up with a most undesirable young man. One of that Chelsea crowd. Wrote plays or poems or something unhealthy. Nobody took ’em, of course. Then he stole somebody’s jewels and got caught out. I forget what they gave him. Five years, I think. But you must remember? It was last winter.’
‘Last winter I was in Egypt,’ explained Mr Satterthwaite. ‘I had ’flu very badly the end of January, and the doctors insisted on Egypt afterwards. I missed a lot.’
His voice rang with a note of real regret.
‘That girl seems to me to be moping,’ said the Duchess, raising her lorgnette once more. ‘I can’t allow that.’
On her way out, she stopped by Miss Carlton Smith’s table and tapped the girl on the shoulder.
‘Well, Naomi, you don’t seem to remember me?’
Naomi rose rather unwillingly to her feet.
‘Yes, I do, Duchess. I saw you come in. I thought it was quite likely you mightn’t recognize me.’
She drawled the words lazily, with a complete indifference of manner.
‘When you’ve finished your lunch, come and talk to me on the terrace,’ ordered the Duchess.
‘Very well.’
Naomi yawned.
‘Shocking manners,’ said the Duchess, to Mr Satterthwaite, as she resumed her progress. ‘All the Carlton Smiths have.’
They had their coffee outside in the sunshine. They had been there about six minutes when Naomi Carlton Smith lounged out from the hotel and joined them. She let herself fall slackly on to a chair with her legs stretched out ungracefully in front of her.
An odd face, with its jutting chin and deep-set grey eyes. A clever, unhappy face—a face that only just missed being beautiful.
‘Well, Naomi,’ said the Duchess briskly. ‘And what are you doing with yourself?’
‘Oh, I dunno. Just marking time.’
‘Been painting?’
‘A bit.’
‘Show me your things.’
Naomi grinned. She was not cowed by the autocrat. She was amused. She went into the hotel and came out again with a portfolio.
‘You won’t like ’em, Duchess,’ she said warningly. ‘Say what you like. You won’t hurt my feelings.’
Mr Satterthwaite moved his chair a little nearer. He was interested. In another minute he was more interested still. The Duchess was frankly unsympathetic.
‘I can’t even see which way the things ought to be,’ she complained. ‘Good gracious, child, there was never a sky that colour—or a sea either.’
‘That’s the way I see ’em,’ said Naomi placidly.
‘Ugh!’ said the Duchess, inspecting another. ‘This gives me the creeps.’
‘It’s meant to,’ said Naomi. ‘You’re paying me a compliment without knowing it.’
It was a queer vorticist study of a prickly pear—just recognizable as such. Grey-green with slodges of violent colour where the fruit glittered like jewels. A swirling mass of evil, fleshy—festering. Mr Satterthwaite shuddered and turned his head aside.
He found Naomi looking at him and nodding her head in comprehension.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘But it is beastly.’
The Duchess cleared her throat.
‘It seems quite easy to be an artist nowadays,’ she observed witheringly. ‘There’s no attempt to copy things. You just shovel on some paint—I don’t know what with, not a brush, I’m sure—’
‘Palette knife,’ interposed Naomi, smiling broadly once more.
‘A good deal at a time,’ continued the Duchess. ‘In lumps. And there you are! Everyone says: ‘How clever.’ Well, I’ve no patience with that sort of thing. Give me—’
‘A nice picture of a dog or a horse, by Edwin Landseer.’
‘And why not?’ demanded the Duchess. ‘What’s wrong with Landseer?’
‘Nothing,’ said Naomi. ‘He’s all right.
