The Lonely House (Lowndes)/Chapter 11

FTER a delicious fish lunch, which included the celebrated bouillabaisse so delightfully sung by Thackeray, none of the three felt in the mood for a visit to the Prince's famous aquarium. Instead, they slowly went up to old Monaco and lazed about in the terraced gardens which overhang the sea.

After a while M. Popeau exclaimed: “I'm afraid I ought to go back now to the Hôtel de Paris, for I'm expecting a message from Paris.”

He looked at Captain Stuart and at Lily Fairfield in an odd, undecided way, and Captain Stuart reddened slightly under his tan. “I'll take Miss Fairfield up to La Solitude,” he said shortly.

“I suppose that will be all right,” but the Frenchman still looked as if uncertain what to do.

“I can walk back to La Solitude quite well by myself,” said Lily smiling.

It always amused her to notice that M. Popeau seemed to regard her as something fragile and delicate, that required a great deal of looking after.

“I do not think that will be necessary, Mademoiselle,” the Frenchman said in a rather dry voice. “I can trust our friend here to see that you are provided with an escort.”

And then he took the girl's hand and held it in his powerful, cool grasp for a moment or two.

“I am sorry you have had all this trouble,” he said feelingly. “You must forget that poor Mr. Ponting ever existed.”

“I don't think I shall ever forget that, M. Popeau,” said Lily slowly, “or your kindness to me about it all.”

He ambled off, swaying a little as he walked. Lily looked after the peculiar and rather ungainly figure with a touch of affectionate regret.

“What a pity M. Popeau doesn't take more exercise—just to keep himself in condition,” she said. It was strange to feel, as she did feel, that this foreigner, whom she had only known a fortnight, had already a very secure niche in her heart—in fact, a niche next to her dear Uncle Tom. “What a dear he is!” she exclaimed.

And then, for her companion remained silent and began tracing imaginary patterns on the sandy path with his stick, Lily suddenly felt overwhelmed with a sensation very new to her—that of intense shyness.

Strange to say—it really was strange when she came to think of it—this was the very first time she had ever been alone with a man who sat so curiously silent by her side, for she did not count the few moments they had spent together yesterday morning. She remembered a funny little interchange of words they had had yesterday on the golf course, when Captain Stuart had said in such a whimsical way that he wished they two could walk on and on “beyond the mountains' purple rim.” It had been said lightly, as if in fun, and yet—though Lily's mind and thoughts were then still full of her dreadful discovery—she had felt somehow that Captain Stuart's fanciful suggestion had come from his heart.

He turned towards her, and, as if echoing her thought: “I wonder if you realise that this is the very first time, if we except yesterday morning, I've ever had an opportunity of saying a word to you alone!” he exclaimed.

And Lily answered with that touch of unconscious hypocrisy which even the most truthful girl may show in such a circumstance, “I suppose it is.”

“Our good friend, M. Popeau,” Angus Stuart spoke with a touch of irony, “shows himself a most efficient chaperon, Miss Fairfield”

“He has very old-fashioned ideas,” said Lily a little awkwardly, “but I like him all the better for that.”

“So do I,” her companion's voice altered, the irony died out of it. “Most nice Frenchmen have old-fashioned ideas—I mean about young ladies. I found that out during the war. But all the same—well, I often feel envious of M. Popeau, for he seems to be always doing things for you.” He turned round on the bench on which they were both sitting, and looked at her very earnestly. “I'm a lazy chap, but I'd like to—to be able to prove”

Then he stopped dead, and Lily's heart began to beat unaccountably.

What a pity it is sometimes that two human beings cannot see what is passing through each other's minds and hearts. What a lot of trouble, pain—aye, and danger—their doing so would often save.

Angus Stuart was feeling exasperated with himself, and yet—and yet how could be take advantage of this unlooked-for opportunity? Deep in his heart he knew that he had fallen in love, practically at first sight, with Lily Fairfield, and that he was falling deeper and deeper into love each day. And yet, in a conventional sense, he hardly knew her, for they never could escape from M. Popeau. This was really the first time they had ever had a chance of a real talk together!

M. Popeau, well as he knew English, did not always express himself very happily. “Take advantage of her to-day, my friend,” was what he had said this very morning. But that was the very last thing he, Angus Stuart, would care to do with regard to any human being, least of all with a girl whom he was almost angry with himself to find he loved.

There had been a hint, too, about her having money. If there was anything in that, it also put him off. He was, as are so many young Scottish soldiers, “a penniless lad with a long pedigree.” Yet he didn't want to marry what M. Popeau had called “a 'airess.” Still, deep in his heart he knew that all that really mattered to him was that he loved Lily Fairfield. During those long, dreary days at Milan he had thought of her the whole time—of her and of nothing else.

Stuart realised that he loved everything about Lily—from every shining hair on her well-set head, down to the unpractical buckled shoes on her pretty little feet. He had supposed, in his simplicity, that when one fell in love the right words always came. But they did not come to him to-day, sitting there by her side in that solitary garden full of brilliant bloom and colour, with the marvellous blue sea spread out before and below them, as far as the eye could see.

There are men, many men, who are in love with love. They delight in falling in love; the fact that they fall out of love almost as easily as they fall into love makes no odds at all.

But Angus Stuart was not that sort of man. Love was still to him an unfamiliar, rather menacing shape. He was ashamed of the strength of his feeling for Lily Fairfield. Now, at this moment, he felt he would give years of his life to have the right to turn round, take her in his arms and kiss her. What madness was this that was working in his brain?

He got up, and in a voice which shook a little, he said, “Shall we walk about a bit? You've never been up here in Monaco before, have you? ”

“No,” said Lily. “And in some ways I like it even better than Monte Carlo. It's as if one stepped right back into history, isn't it?”

But she felt chilled, and somehow disappointed. She would have been quite content to sit on there in the lovely, deserted garden. She had thoughts that her acquaintance with Captain Stuart would make great strides once they were really alone together—that he would tell something about himself and his people. Why, she didn't even know if he had a sister!

And yet in a way she did feel as if she already knew the young Scots soldier very well. It was as if they were bound by a strong invisible link the one to the other. She remembered the wonderful gentleness and kindness of his manner when she had come up breathless to the hotel door yesterday morning, her face blurred with crying. He had seemed to understand exactly what she was feeling, and he had soothed and comforted her. But now, this afternoon, he seemed quite unlike the man whom she had first told of her hideous discovery.

“I think I must be going up to La Solitude soon,” she said rather nervously. “Beppo Polda is arriving to-morrow, and they're having a kind of spring cleaning in his honour she smiled a little. “I said I'd help Cristina with it.”

“Surely you needn't go yet? It's quite early,”—there was an urgent note in Captain Stuart's voice.

“I ought to have been back by four. It's that now,” she said.

As they walked through the narrow, mediæval street which leads to the great square in front of the Palace of Monaco, and as they made their way across the square to the kind of mall where stand the ancient iron cannons pointing their toy-like muzzles towards France, the barrier, the impalpable, yet very real barrier, which each felt had arisen between them seemed to melt gradually away.

It was Lily who first broke the barrier down. He had just told her that early in the war he had been given a special training job and had been stationed, though only for five weeks, near Epsom.

“I wish we had met then,” she said quickly, regretfully.

He answered eagerly. “I wish we had! Those were the loneliest five weeks of my life!” And then he said something implying that though there had been a great deal in the papers early in the war about showing soldiers hospitality, not much of it had come his way.

“That was perhaps a little bit of your own fault.” Lily wondered at her own daring, but he took it in good part.

“I daresay it was,” he said gravely. “I—I don't make friends easily, Miss Fairfield.” Something outside himself prompted him to add: “I've never had what so many chaps seem to have now—a woman pal.” He added, honestly enough, “I never felt I wanted one till now.” And then, more lightly, “I wish you'd think of me as you do of—of M. Popeau.”

And then for the first time with him, there came a touch of coquetry into Lily Fairfield's manner—that touch of coquetry which nature teaches every normal, happy-natured girl when the ball lies at her feet.

“He asked me to call him 'Papa Popeau' to-day,” she said demurely. “Somehow I can't imagine your asking anyone to call you 'Papa Stuart!'”

They both laughed, a mirthful, youthful peal of joint laughter. “And are you going to call him 'Papa Popeau?'” asked Captain Stuart, smiling broadly.

She shook her head. “No, I really can't do that—though I do like him—most awfully!”

“I won't ask you to call me anything yet,” he said seriously.

He stopped speaking abruptly, and Lily, almost as if she was being “willed” to do it, turned and looked up into his face. She told herself that it was a fine, honest, strong face—not perhaps that of an always good-tempered man, but a face one would like to be looking up into if one were suddenly caught in a tight corner.

“I want to feel that we're friends—really friends,” he said slowly. “If anything else disagreeable or painful should happen to you—which God forbid!” he added hastily, for he saw her face quiver and change a little—“then I hope you'll come to me as readily as you would to—Papa Popeau!”

“I did come to you,” she said in a low voice. “I thought of you at once, yesterday morning. Aunt Cosy was furious with me because I didn't go back to the house. But somehow I felt I would much rather come and tell you the dreadful thing which had happened to me.”

“I'm awfully grateful to you for saying that!” Angus Stuart's measured voice became charged with emotion. He went on, speaking a little quickly: “I longed to take you to that police chap myself, but I knew that Popeau would do the job much better than I could do it. I suppose you know what Popeau really is?”

“I haven't the slightest idea!” she exclaimed.

“He's the head of a very important branch of the French Secret Service. Since the war he's been worked to death; and though he's on holiday now, they keep in very close touch with him.”

Lily was extremely surprised, and rather thrilled. “I wonder why he didn't tell me?” she exclaimed.

”He's an odd sort of man,” said Angus Stuart thoughtfully. “I don't think he's exactly proud of his job, Miss Fairfield. Perhaps he'd rather you didn't know. You'll keep the fact to yourself, eh?”

“Of course I will!” said Lily.

She was beginning to feel very tired, and her companion looked at her solicitously.

The last few minutes had made a great difference to him. He felt a curious sense of peace come over him. How angelic of her to want to come to him when that dreadful thing happened to her! He would never, never forget her saying that to him. It was the first mile-stone in their friendship—a golden moment in his life. He had always felt that a woman worth the winning must be wooed before she is won. He told himself, as they walked side by side across the great sunlit space, that he had made a very good beginning.

“Now I'm going to drive you up to La Solitude,” he exclaimed, with a touch of that masterfulness which somehow Lily liked—when it came from him.

He hailed the solitary open cab which stood in the shadow of the building, now a barrack, where gambling was first started in the Principality fifty years ago.

To Lily's distress, he did not bargain with the man—he simply threw him the name, “La Solitude,” in rather indifferent French.

The cabman whipped up his little horses, and a moment later they were rattling down the winding road cut in the side of the rock at a breakneck pace.

All too soon—or so it seemed to them both—they had reached the clearing below the Lonely House. Angus Stuart gripped Lily's hand. “Then from to-day we're pals—real pals?” he said, and Lily answered very seriously, “Yes.”

To Lily's relief, the Countess was far too full of Beppo's coming arrival on the morrow to trouble as to how the girl had spent her time after the funeral of George Ponting: and the rest of the afternoon was devoted to preparing a large front room, which was apparently always kept for Beppo.

There was not very much to be done, but certain pieces of furniture were moved in from the other rooms in order to make it more comfortable for the apparently luxurious young man's occupation.

When, at last, tired out by the varied emotions of the day, Lily was going off to bed, the Countess said briskly: “We must be off early to-morrow morning to choose your pretty frocks before Beppo's arrival! I shall be ready to start at nine o'clock. Your Uncle Angelo has ordered a carriage for us.”

Lily felt taken aback, and disappointed, too. She would so infinitely rather have chosen her new clothes herself! But there was nothing to be done, and as events turned out she was wrong to be disappointed, for she could not have done as well as she and Aunt Cosy did together.