“Damn it—I believe it is Wellsford!”
Miss Morley was at work at the third chapter of her new novel when the man Allard arrived on the terrace of the Hotel Bella Vista. Miss Morley held that a particular corner on the terrace was sacred to herself and her craft, and when she saw Mr. Allard’s busy legs and self-assertive hat travelling in her direction she was annoyed. A woman’s work can always be interrupted! It occurred to her that Mr. Allard resembled a dancing faun, an irresponsible and mischievous creature to whom the whole of creation was a joke.
He took off his hat to her.
“Scusi. But—really—I have something important to ask you.”
Miss Morley put down her fountain pen.
“Indeed!”
“Yes, you remember the Italian chap I was talking to you about. I think you said he was deaf?”
Miss Morley snubbed him.
“Yes, he is so fortunate, so very fortunate.”
She resumed her pen and sat waiting for Allard to appreciate the superfluity of his presence. That third chapter had just begun to trickle down on to the unruled foolscap, and though Miss Morley’s inspiration was apt to be tenuous she cling to it tenaciously, but Allard pulled out a cigarette case and sat down on one of the iron garden chairs.
“Scusi. You’ll forgive me if I unearth for you a human document. You say that this fellow is the husband——”
Miss Morley once more laid down her pen. Obviously, that third chapter and Mr. Allard were incompatibles.
“O, yes, the husband of the proprietress. They live in that little white house above the hotel. Three children. All the conventions.”
“Have they been married long?”
Miss Morley shrugged. Well—really! Did the man expect her to be intimately familiar with the history of these Italians? She hastened to tell him all that she knew.
“The lady is buxom and swarthy, and some day will have a moustache. To us she is the padrona, a good sort and fat. She feeds us well, and the beds are clean. Her name? Oh—Ambrogia Panicale, or something like that, but Italian names go the other way round, don’t they? We call her Ambrosia, ice-cream, spikenard. No, I don’t know her husband’s name. Why should I?”
She gave Mr. Allard a brittle glance that said—“Now, go away, you incurable old gossip. If there is a flea in a bed, I’d expect you’d find it.”
Mr. Allard smoked his cigarette.
“Have you any idea how long Ambrosia has been running this hotel?”
“Not the least idea.”
“Does she speak English?”
“Passably.”
“I think I shall come and stay here for a few days.”
Miss Morley was frank with him.
“I shouldn’t—if I were you. The ‘bridge’ is rotten and we are not conversational. Besides—the hotel is full”—and she breathed to her pen a faint—“Thank god.”
But knowing her Allard, and realizing that the third chapter was hanging in the air, she chose to remember that she had forgotten her bottle of ink and that her pen needed refilling. She left Mr. Allard on the hard, iron chair, and found Mrs. Ambrosia in the little bureau behind the lounge.
“Oh, madam, a few words.”
The Italian woman, huge and tranquil and pleasant, looked at Miss Morley with eyes like grapes.
“Yes, Mees Morlee.”
“If an English gentleman named Allard should come and ask for a room I should like to suggest that he is a tiresome creature.”
Ambrosia was knitting a pink woollen jumper. Her large white face remained placid, but for a moment she lowered her eyes.
“I quite understand, Mees Morlee. In English—fussee. Is that not so?”
Miss Morley smiled at the admirable creature.
“Exactly. A man who nibbles, and interferes.”
Ambrosia nodded her magnificent head.
“He shall not come. I expect other people. Always—I expect other people on such occasions.”
Miss Morley, having blocked Mr. Allard’s rat-hole, went up to her room, and Ambrosia, after linking up six more stitches, rose with a kind of large deliberation, and walked out of her hotel and up through the garden and the terraces to the white house among the olives. An Italian girl was sitting on a chair by the door, preparing a salad, and under the vine pergola three children were playing a game. Ambrosia smiled at the girl.
“The padrone?”
The girl turned her head.
“Working. Pruning vines.”
Ambrosia walked slowly round the white house, her knitting still in her hands. Her face had a thoughtful solemnity.
She climbed a flight of steps and stood listening. Birds twittered, for it was one of her husband’s eccentricities—his refusal to shoot small birds. She approved, and above the twittering of the little creatures she heard the snip-snap of the pruning shears. Ambrosia ascended more steps and saw the figure in blue and white bending over the gnarled and twisted vines. She looked to the right and to the left before calling to him with her deep, smooth voice.
“Pietro.”
The man heard her at once, and Miss Morley’s assertion that he was deaf could only be explained by the supposition that Pietro Panicale preferred to be deaf in the presence of strangers. He turned and walked between the vine-rows towards his wife, who, with an air of placidity had resumed her knitting. They looked at each other, and the blue eyes of the man were troubled. He had an air of waiting upon the woman, of depending on her, while she—a large and dark Madonna—diffused a protective and placid beneficence.
She said—“The little man has been here. Miss Morley has told me that he wishes to stay with us.”
She saw her husband’s blue eyes grow fierce.
“Stay here! The infernal little rat! I told you, Ambra, that some day——”
He blurted out three words in English, and her dark eyes reproved him, while her placid hands continued to knit.
“But I shall not have him here. Do not worry.”
She gave him a quiet and comprehending glance, a glance that was both possessive and protective. She smiled.
“Besides—what difference would it make? A little, idle creature who runs about the world—sniffing.”
“He played a trick on me. He recognized me.”
“My dear, do not be so sensitive. You are afraid that the English who come here——”
His blue eyes fell into a stare, while his right hand played with the pruning shears.
“Life’s so good here, Ambra. Oh, I suppose I’m a fool, but when you have buried a thing and some little busybody comes along with a spade and amuses himself by digging up your past—yes, it makes me see red. Why can’t the devil just shut his mouth and go away? But no, he is one of those little sensation-mongers who feel a little important when they have a bit of tainted flesh to show.”
She went and stood close to him, as though her very nearness would be soothing.
“My boy takes things so seriously. An insect may bite you, and you just brush it off.”
“An insect can leave poison behind.”
She laid a large, soft hand on his shoulder.
“Now, now, do not see what you call red. See the sun and the sea and Ambra, and the children, and the olive trees and the vines, and Bo-bo the dog. It is all real, my dear. No one can take it away from you. What does the past matter?”
And suddenly he turned his head, and bending, put his mouth to her hand.
“Yes—you’re real. I’ll try not to be such a fool. But when you’ve put on clean linen, and a little fellow comes along with a handful of dirt——”
“Yes—a mischievous little urchin of a man. But do not take him too seriously. People are kinder than you think, my dear.”
“I tell you what, Ambra, if he comes sneaking round here I’ll get my gun.”
She made herself laugh.
“Now—now, you know you do not shoot small birds—and this little old parrot——! Don’t be foolish. Perhaps I will flap my apron at
him and he will fly away.”
She showed him her wise, dark eyes, and with a nod of the head she turned away.
“Go on pruning the vines, my dear, and forget the travelling English. We make money out of them, that is all. Go on pruning the vines.”
She left him and returning to her small hotel, found Mr. Allard sitting in the lounge. He looked innocently perky, rather like a sleek little jackdaw. He rose and addressed Ambrosia.
“Madam, your hotel seems very quiet and comfortable. I should like to stay here.”
Ambrosia smiled upon him.
“I am full of regrets, sir, but my hotel is full.”
“Next week, perhaps?”
She put on a tragic air.
“I am so sorry; it is impossible. I have other clients coming. Every room is let.”
Mr. Allard’s face suggested that he did not quite believe her. Or was she preparing to pick his pocket?
“I might make it worth madam’s while.”
She assumed an expression of solemn stupidity.
“How can it be so when I have no room, sir? I cannot disappoint my clients. You see—it is impossible.”
Mr. Allard gave a curious little snigger, and with his head held on one side, observed her for a moment, and then moved towards the door.
“Apologies for troubling you, madam. Ahem—good day.”
Ambrosia, still knitting, watched his departure. She frowned, and with needles clicking busily she went and stood in the doorway, and squared her massive shoulders. Her lips moved expressively, and the words that rose to them were dressed in the Italianate English of Soho, but she did not utter these words. Her full lips seemed to compress themselves. She walked out on the terrace, and standing by the balustrade made sure that Mr. Allard was taking the winding road that would lead him down to the sea. Interfering, meddlesome little wretch, the kind of man who would lift a sheet and look at a dead face just to satisfy his curiosity.
Now, had Mr. Allard been anything of a man instead of a little, desiccated, gossiping quidnunc he should have known that Ambrosia could be a far more dangerous enemy than her husband. She might appear to be a placid creature with grapelike eyes, a mother and a wife, a stout lady who kept an hotel, and a most respectable hotel, and whose hands played with soft pink wool. But Ambrosia belonged to the south, and Mr. Allard had spent a great part of his life chattering in club chairs. If he was a little mischievous dog with a bone—well it was just a bone. He could bury it and dig it up again. The game of resurrecting Geoffrey Wellsford was just such another form of recreation. It did not suggest to Mr. Allard the rifling of a tomb, or any sort of sacrilegious interference. He would be able to go back to his club in Pall Mall and tell a story. “Who do you think I dug up in Italy? No, not Cæsar or Marcus Aurelius, but that chap Wellsford. Yes, the Wellsford who was involved in the Hennessy affair, and who was supposed to have died of drink. Yes, he’s gone native in Italy, married a dago woman with a moustache, who weighs about twenty stone. Funny world, isn’t it!”
Ambrosia happened to have a brother who was head waiter at the Santa Maria casino, one Luigi, who bore a very great resemblance to Italy’s dictator, and in private life Luigi was a very truculent fascist, and the leader of the local squadrilla or whatever it was called. Ambrosia sent for Luigi. She explained Mr. Allard to him, and Luigi sat and dandled Ambrosia’s latest baby and agreed that such interfering foreigners were an insult to Italy. For centuries Italy had been the sport of the interferers, but now Italy was to do some of the interfering. Besides Ambrosia’s English husband was a very good fellow who had bought his wife this property and settled it upon her.
Luigi kissed the top of the baby’s head.
“I’ll have the fellow watched.”
But it was Mr. Allard himself who provoked a crisis. He had made certain tactless remarks upon the Italian regime in the hearing of one of the casino waiters and this was reported to Luigi, and an agent was sent to make inquiries at Mr. Allard’s hotel. The English gentleman was out. As a matter of fact Mr. Allard had gone out to play with his bone. He had taken the mule path that led up behind the Hotel Bella Vista. He had made up his mind to unearth Wellsford and make the dead man talk. Why shouldn’t Wellsford talk? Mr. Allard was incorrigible.
But in scrambling down the rocky hill-side just above the Bella Vista vineyards Mr. Allard precipitated both himself and a crisis. He fell with his foot wedged between two stones; he felt something go crack in his left ankle, and when he tried to stand that left ankle hurt him so acutely that he was constrained to sit still. And he was sitting among the vines upon Ambrosia’s property, well away from the path, and out of sight of the world.
He realized that he might sit there till sunset, and Mr. Allard was very fussy about his health. Unquestionably he had broken a bone in his ankle, and unless some Good Samaritan should arrive he would be left there derelict. He would be obliged to shout for help, and shout he did in a voice that was a little shrill and tremulous, for Mr. Allard was pitying himself very seriously.
He had come to speak with the ghost of Wellsford, and it was Wellsford who heard that voice calling in the wilderness. He stood listening with his mattock resting on his shoulder, and then, climbing from terrace to terrace he came suddenly upon Mr. Allard.
Mr. Allard’s little face brightened.
“I say—I’m afraid I’ve broken my ankle.”
He was about to say “Wellsford” when something in the other man’s eyes made him smother the name, for Wellsford’s eyes were fixed on him with a queer blue glare. The sunlight glinted on the blade of the mattock, and to Mr. Allard it suggested a weapon. Moreover, the man who carried it had the appearance of some fierce barbarian, blond and blue-eyed and wrathful.
Mr. Allard’s face fell. Almost he looked apologetic; he spoke nervously.
“Sorry to trouble you, but I was explaining——”
He glanced up anxiously at the other man who stood and stared at him as though he was tempted to swing that mattock and strike, and Mr. Allard began to be frightened. Wellsford’s eyes were so queer.
He felt that he had to say something soothing, and he said the wrong thing.
“You’ll excuse me, but you are so like a man I used to know. Yes, I felt I had to find out, just for old times’ sake, you know.”
The reaction was not what he had hoped for. He saw the blue eyes flash. The mattock swung in the air, and suddenly Mr. Allard let out a little chattering cry and put up his hands.
“My dear Wellsford—please—don’t you know me? It’s old Tom Allard——”
The mattock remained poised for a moment, and then that berserker glare seemed to go out of Wellsford’s eyes. The head of the tool sank to the ground. Wellsford’s shoulders drooped, and suddenly he sat down among the vines, and with a crumpled look began to speak.
“What the devil did you come here for?”
Mr. Allard was showing the whites of his eyes.
“My dear Wellsford, just a coincidence.”
Wellsford was breathing deeply.
“My god, that coincidence nearly made me smash your skull. Why the devil can’t you leave well alone, and not come capering round like an infernal little monkey.”
Mr. Allard was shocked, but terror made him sympathetic.
“My dear fellow, I assure you—— I thought you were dead.”
Wellsford looked at him.
“I—am—dead. The sot you know died in London. But a woman carried the corpse out here and revived it. Wellsford’s dead. Do you understand?”
“Yes, yes—I understand. The padrona, the good lady.”
“She picked me out of a gutter in Soho. There are some women, Allard, with a curious and fine compassion. She got me clean or reasonably clean. She married me, and we came out here together. I had a little money left and I bought this place for her. We have children. It’s a sort of paradise to me. And then you come and poke your fingers——”
But something had happened to Mr. Allard. His li
ttle face looked all twisted. The shell of him had cracked.
“I’m awfully sorry, Wellsford—but I beg your pardon. I won’t use that name. Yes—I quite see; I begin to understand. It’s more—more significant than I thought. If you’ll give me a hand I’ll clear out and hold my tongue.”
Wellsford’s fingers stroked the handle of the mattock.
“That’s decent of you, Allard. I’m so damned sensitive about the past.”
Now, what did Wellsford do but pick up Mr. Allard and hump him down the hill-side to Ambrosia’s hotel, and carry him into the lounge. Ambrosia herself, appearing with the inevitable knitting, saw her husband lowering Mr. Allard into an arm-chair, and for one moment she was under the impression that Mr. Allard had been the victim of her husband’s anger. But it was Mr. Allard who smiled and winked at her and explained the situation.
“Apologies, madam. I slipped up there on the hill-side and hurt my ankle. Your husband understands no English, but he heard me calling, and came to the rescue.”
Ambrosia, with needles clicking, looked hard at Mr. Allard, and then at her husband. Wellsford smiled, nodded, and said something to her in Italian, and then—like the peasant in a palace—slouched self-consciously out of the lounge.
Ambrosia stood reflecting, with the corner of an eye on the old gentleman in the chair.
She said—“Fortunately, sir—I have a room vacant for a night or two.”
She put down her knitting, and placing a chair and a cushion she gently raised Mr. Allard’s injured limb and lowered it on to the cushion. He nodded his head at her, and his eyes were a little shy.
“Thank you, madam. It is very painful, but you touch me so gently.”
“Perhaps—sir—you would prefer to be driven to Santa Maria. I am afraid there is no ambulance.”
“I think I should prefer to stay in your hotel, madam, for a few days. I assure you I shall appreciate anything you do. I suppose there is a doctor at Santa Maria?”
“An Italian doctor, sir.”
“Will you telephone for him?”
“At once, sir.”
So Mr. Allard became a guest in the Hotel Bella Vista, and lay in bed in a sunny room with his ankle in plaster of Paris, and Ambrosia took it upon herself to nurse him. She was a very capable and pleasant nurse, but her ministrations to Mr. Allard were not wholly disinterested. She kept her large black eyes on him, and waited for Mr. Allard to prove himself either man or monkey.
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