“We care a great deal for that which is really beautiful; most of all when it is fresh and new.”
“Ah! that’s what Mr. Hawberk says—I am all the better because I am not highly trained like other singers. My ignorance is my strength.”
“But she has worked,” interposed la Zia; “ah! how hard she has worked! At her piano; at the English language. She has such a strong will. She has but to make up her mind, and the thing is done.”
“One can read as much, Signora, in those flashing eyes; in that square brow and firmly moulded chin,” said Sefton, putting down his hat and cane, and establishing himself in one of the prettily draped basket-chairs. “And pray how did it happen that you two ladies made up your minds to seek your fortunes in London?”
“It was the impresario who brought us. We were at Milan, and we came to London to sing in the chorus at Covent Garden. It was good fortune which brought us so far from home.”
“And you hate London, no doubt, after Italy?”
“No, indeed, Signor. London is a city to love—the wide, wide streets; the big, big houses; the great squares—ah! the Piazza is nothing to your square of Trafalgar—and the shops, the beautiful shops! Your sky is often gloomy, but there are summer days—heavenly days—when the wind blows down to the sea, and sweeps all the darkness out of the heavens, and your sky grows blue, like Italy. Those are days to remember.”
“True! They are rare enough to be counted on the fingers of one hand,” answered Sefton, stooping to take hold of the boy, who had been pursuing his kitten on all-fours, and had this moment plunged between Sefton’s legs to extract the animated ball of white fluff from under his chair. He felt nothing but aversion for the handsome, dark-eyed brat; but he felt that he must take some notice of the creature, if he wanted to stand well with the mother.
“Che sta facendo, padroncino?”
The boy was friendly, and explained himself in a torrent of broken speech. The cat was a bad cat, and wouldn’t stay with him. Would the Signor make him stay? Sefton had to stoop and risk a scratching from the tiny claws, in a vain endeavour to get hold of the rebellious beast, which rolled away from him, hissing and spitting, and finally scampered across the room and took refuge behind the piano. Sefton lifted the boy on to his knee, and produced his watch, that unfailing object of interest to infancy, usually denominated, on the principle of all slang nomenclature, “tick-tick.” Once interested in the opening and shutting of the “tick-tick,” Paolo sat on the visitor’s knee, comme un image, and allowed Sefton to talk to Lisa and her aunt.
He was careful to make himself agreeable to the elder lady, who was charmed to find an Englishman who understood her native tongue. She had contrived to learn a little English, but had made no such progress as her niece, and it was a labour to her to talk. What a pleasure, therefore, to find this suave, handsome Englishman, with his courtly manners, quick comprehension, and ready replies.
From la Zia he heard a good deal about Lisa’s early life; yet there was a certain wise reticence even on that loquacious lady’s part. She breathed no word of Lisa’s Englishman, the first Mr. Smith, or of the second. In all her talk of their old life, in Venice, at Milan, there was no hint of anyone but themselves. They appeared to have been alone, unprotected, dependent on their own small earnings.
After waiting in vain for any allusion to Vansittart, Sefton came straight to the point, with a direct question.
“I think you know a friend of mine, Signora,” he said to Lisa. “Mr. Vansittart?”
“Vansittart?”
Lisa repeated the name slowly, with a look of blank wonder.
“Have you never heard that name before?”
“Never.”
“So,” thought Sefton, “she knew him under an alias. That means a good deal, and confirms my original idea.”
He put the boy off his knee almost roughly, and rose to depart.
“Goodbye, Signora. You will let me call in again some day, I hope?”
“If you like. Why did you think I knew your friend, Mr. Van—sit—tart?”
“Because last May I saw you in Cheyne Walk talking to a man whom I took for Vansittart. A tall man, with fair hair. You seemed very friendly with him; your hands were clasped upon his arm: you were smiling up at him.”
This time Lisa blushed a deep carnation, and her face saddened.
“Oh, that,” she stammered—“that was someone I knew in Italy.”
“Not Vansittart?”
“No.”
“But the gentleman has a name of some kind,” persisted Sefton.
“Never mind his name,” she answered abruptly. “I don’t want to talk about him. I may never see him again, perhaps.” And then, brushing away a tear, and becoming suddenly frivolous, she asked, “How did you come to remember me—after so long?”
“Because that moment by the river yonder has lived in my memory ever since—because no man can forget the loveliest face he ever saw in his life.”
With that compliment, and with a lingering clasp of the strong hand, he concluded his first visit to Saltero’s Mansion, la Zia accompanying him to the door and curtsying him out.
XX
Peggy’s Chance
If there were blue skies now and then in a London February, what was February along the Riviera but the most exquisite springtime? And perhaps on all that favoured shore, Cannes has the richest firstfruits of the fertile year, for it is then that the mimosas are in their glory, and the hill of Californie is a yellow fairyland, an enchanted region, where all the trees drop golden rain.
Eve and her lover husband were at Cannes. Delicious as the place was at this season, and new as the shores of the Mediterranean were to Eve, she and her husband had not come there for their own
