What he meant he could not have told. The remark, passably oracular, had but sprung into the sudden utterance, which, occasionally, prophecies take. Dismissed at the time in immediate embraces, afterward it was shudderingly recalled.
V
The Villa Portugaise
To the cosmopolite, Deauville is delightful. The days fall by in an atmosphere dripping with ammonia and desire, scented with caprices and brine, shuttled too by that general deviltry, which those consorts of society, wealth and idleness, inevitably produce.
The house there which the Malakoffs had taken was known as the Villa Portugaise. The reason of that was inscrutable. Instead of the patio, loggia, fountains and blooms which the name implied, there was a trim lawn fronting a thoroughly English dwelling that looked obliquely at the sea.
In spite of the Britannic reserve of its appearance, there was in it an ease, an entire liberty, a complete sans-gêne that harmonised very perfectly with the Deauvillian air.
On the ground floor were the living rooms, spacious, cool, perhaps a trifle severe. These gave on the ocean. On the lawn side was a wide hall that extended from one end of the house to the other. In the centre was the entrance. At the right of the doorway was a table on which were reviews, papers, periodicals. Above it was a rack in which letters were put. To the left of the entrance, at the extreme end, a flight of steps started, continued for a few steps, then halting, turned abruptly and directly up to a galleried floor above where the bedrooms were, which for general convenience had been numbered.
When, on the evening of the , Maud and Welden arrived, they were met in the hall by Sally, by Malakoff, the Cérisys, the Solférinos and a dozen others, among whom was Cantire.
The boy, attired in beautifully cut evening clothes, looked hot, or rather red. Mme. de Cérisy, taking advantage of his youth, had put to him questions which even at Deauville were perhaps indiscreet. Mrs. Cawtree, who had come over from her own very neighbourly villa, had overheard and was laughing.
“Hasten, my children,” Sally, after the first greetings, called in French. “We dine and at once.”
Maud was then taken to No. 10, a room at the head of the stairs. Opposite was No. 12. It was there Welden was shown. The arrangement was so convenient that he congratulated himself on its idyllic simplicity.
A little later when he and Maud had dressed and both were about to descend the stair, they could hear Sally exclaiming.
In her hand was a blue rag of a telegram on which a string of typewritten words had been gummed.
“What is it?” Malakoff asked.
“Giselle Oppensheim who wires that she comes tomorrow. But where shall I put her? Where?”
“Bah!” answered Malakoff. “It will arrange itself. On s’avisera.”
Mrs. Cawtree, who knew everything, everything fashionably knowable that is, looked admiringly at Sally. It was not every bride and particularly it was not every American bride, who was capable of being so indulgently sans-façon. Mrs. Cawtree’s esteem for Sally mounted. But at once an attenuation followed. Probably she does not know, the lady reflected.
“Do you fancy that the duchess knows about Mme. Oppensheim?” she asked of Cantire when presently she found him next to her at dinner.
“Knows what?” the boy inquired, choking down as he spoke, the velvet of a bisque.
“I remind myself,” Mrs. Cawtree inconsequentially resumed, “of the woman who asked Dumas whether there was anything between him and the Princess Belgioso. ‘Madam,’ he replied, ‘sometimes nothing whatever.’ ”
It was a moment before Cantire got it. When he did he laughed in a fashion so disorderly that to steady him, Mrs. Cawtree asked him to a frisk at her house the next night.
The effort succeeding, she turned with a similar invitation to Aquaviva who was opposite, after which she asked Prince Saraguine who sat between her and Sally.
Kara Saraguine had an air of having lived extensively and of fully intending to continue such living. At the moment he was eating mussels from the sauce of a sole Normande and while listening to Sally’s chatter, had an eye on Maud, who sat a little beyond, on the other side of the table.
“That youthfulness is ravishing,” he remarked and wiped his mouth. “A compatriot, Duchess? One could devour her.”
Cantire’s eyes were now on the girl, so were Malakoff’s and Solférino’s, and Maud, knowing of old the ideality of men’s thoughts, blushed suddenly and divinely.
But at once, for countenance’ sake, leaning forward, she called, in English, to Sally.
“What sort of a place is Étretat? While I was dressing they brought me a telegram from my father. He is to motor there from Frascati’s tomorrow. Is it nice?”
“Charming!” Saraguine volunteered in French. “The downs, the cliffs, the view, whatever you will, is charming, except the world there. No, frankly, Mademoiselle, that is everything there is of most grocer.”
“Étretat!” Solférino, also in French, exclaimed. “I promenaded myself once that way. Once, that is permissible, twice would be a sin. And I, I am not exacting. I—”
Solférino ran on. Presently everybody seemed to be talking at once. Momentarily Maud’s too alluring looks were forgotten. But when the dinner was over, several men gathered in the hall about her and there remained until drawn into the fumoir, where Welden was the last to follow and where, afterward, with the hopelessness of a regret that is to be eternal, he wished he had never gone.
There, a footman was trundling a chest on wheels. In it were cigars of different shades and sizes, cigarettes of various brands. As Welden entered, the man steered it up to him. He took a londrès and surveyed the room.
Near by was a buffet, hospitably inviting. On it were decanters of chartreuse and maraschino; flagons of brandy and gin; bottles of Vichy and Eau de Vals. These latter had obviously been attacked. But with that abstemiousness which is a characteristic of the way we live now, the liquors and liqueurs were
