LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

stepped into a large and lofty room where in the play of bright flames under a heavy and tall mantel-piece the shadows seemed very much disturbed by his entrance. Cosmo approached the blaze with satisfaction.

      "I had enough trouble to get them to light it," remarked the valet in a resentful tone. "If it hadn't been for a jack-tar with big whiskers I found down in the hall it wouldn't be done yet. He came up from the ship with one of these sea officers downstairs. He drove the fellows with the wood in fine style up here for me. He knows the people here. He cursed them each separately by their Christian names, and then had a glass of wine in the kitchen with me."

      Meantime Signor Cantelucci, wearing the aspect of a deaf man, had lighted, on two separate tables, two clusters of candles which drove the restless gloom of the large apartment half-way up to the ceiling, and retired with noiseless footsteps. He stopped in the doorway to cast a keen glance at the master and the man standing by the fire. Those two turned their heads only at the sound of the closing door.

      "I couldn't think what became of you, sir. I was getting quite worried about you. You disappeared without saying anything to me."

      "I went for a walk down to the sea," said Cosmo, while the man moved off to where several cowhide trunks were ranged against the wall. "I like to take a look round on arriving at a new place."

      "Yes, sir; but when it got dark I wondered."

      "I tarried on a tower to watch the sunset," murmured Cosmo.

      "I have been doing some unpacking," said the servant, "but not knowing how long you mean to stay..."

      "It may be a long stay."

      "Then I will go on, sir; that is if you are going to keep this room."

      "Yes. The room will do, Spire. It's big enough."

      Spire took up one of the two candelabras and retired into the neighbourhood of a sort of state bed, heavily draped, at the other end of the room. There throwing open the trunks and the doors of closets he busied himself systematically, without noise, till he heard the quiet voice of his young master:

      "Spire."

      "Yes, sir," he answered, standing still with a pile of shirts on his arm.

      "Is this inn very full?"

      "Yes, very," said Spire. "The whole town is full of travellers and people from the country. A lot of our nobility and gentry are passing this way."

      He deposited the shirts on a shelf in the depths of the wall, and turned round again.

      "Have you heard any names, Spire?"

      Spire stooped over a trunk and lifted up from it carefully a lot of white neck-cloths folded neatly one within the other.

      "I haven't had much time yet, sir. I heard a few."

      He laid down the neck-cloths by the side of the shirts while Cosmo, with his elbow on the mantel-piece, asked down the whole length of the room:

      "Anybody I know?"

      "Not in this place, sir. There is generally a party of officers from the man-of-war staying here. They come and go. I have seen some Italian gentlemen in square-cut coats and powdered hair. Very old-fashioned, sir. There are some Austrians too, I think; but I haven't seen any ladies.... I am afraid, sir, this isn't the right sort of inn. There is another about a hundred yards from here on the other side of the square."

      "I don't want to meet anybody I know," said Cosmo Latham, in a low voice.

      Spire thought that this would make his stay in Genoa very dull. At the same time he was convinced that his young master would alter his mind before very long, and change to that other inn, patronised by travellers of fashion. For himself he was not averse to a little quiet time. Spire was no longer young. Thirty years ago, before the war and before the Revolution, he had travelled with Sir Charles in France and Italy. He was then only eighteen, but being a steady and trustworthy lad, was taken abroad to look after the horses. Sir Charles kept four horses in Florence, and Spire had often ridden on Tuscan roads behind Sir Charles and the two Misses Aston, of whom one later became Lady Latham. After the family settled in Yorkshire he passed from the stables to the house, acquired a confidential position, and whenever Lady Latham took a journey, he sat in the rumble with a pair of double-barrelled pistols in the pockets of his greatcoat and ordered all things on the road. Later he became intermediary between Sir Charles and the stables, the gardens, and in all out-of-door things about the house. He attended Lady Latham on her very last drive, all the details for that lady's funeral having been left to his management. He was also a very good valet. He had been called one evening into the library where Sir Charles, very gouty that day, leaning with one hand on a thick stick and with the other on the edge of a table, had said to him: "I am lending you to Mr. Cosmo for his travels in France and Italy. You will know your way about. And mind you draw the charges of the pistols in the carriage every morning and load them afresh."

      Spire was then requested to help Sir Charles up the stairs and had a few more words said to him when Sir Charles stopped at the door of his bedroom.

      "Mr. Cosmo has plenty of sense. You are not to make yourself a nuisance to him."

      "No, Sir Charles," said the imperturbable Spire. "I will know how to look after Mr. Cosmo."

      And if he had been asked, Spire would have been able to say that during the stay in Paris, and all through France and Switzerland on the way to Genoa, Mr. Cosmo had given him no trouble at all.

      Spire, still busy unpacking, glanced at his young master. He certainly looked very quiet now leaning on his elbow with the firelight playing from below on his young thoughtful face with its smooth and pale complexion. "Very good-looking indeed," thought Spire. In that thoughtful mood he recalled very much the Sir Charles of thirty or thirty-five years ago. Would he too find his wife abroad? There had been women enough in Paris of every kind and degree, English and French, and all sorts. But it was a fact that Mr. Cosmo sought most of his company amongst men of whom also there had been no lack and of every degree. In that too the young man resembled very much his father. Men's company. But were he to get caught he would get caught properly; at any rate for a time, reflected Spire, remembering Sir Charles Latham's rush back to Italy, the inwardness of which had been no more revealed to him than to the rest of the world.

      Spire approaching the candelabra, unfolded partly a very fine coat, then refolded it before putting it away on a convenient shelf. He had a moment of regret for his own young days. He had never married, not because there had been any lack of women to set their caps at him, but from a sort of half-conscious prudence. Moreover, he had a notion somehow or other that Sir Charles would not have liked it. Perhaps it was just as well. Now he was care-free attending on Mr. Cosmo, without troubling his head about who had remained at home.

      Spire arranging the contents of a dressing-case on the table cast another sidelong look at the figure by the fire. Very handsome. Something like Sir Charles and yet not like. There was a touch of something unusual, perhaps foreign, and yet no one with a pair of eyes in his head could mistake Mr. Cosmo for anything but an English gentleman.

      Spire's memories of his tour with Sir Charles had been growing dim. But he remembered enough of the old-time atmosphere to have become aware of a feeling of tension, of a suggestion of restlessness which certainly was new to him.

      The silence had lasted very long. Cosmo before the fire had not moved. Spire ventured on a remark.

      "I noticed people are excited about one thing and another hereabouts, sir."

      "Excited. I don't wonder at it. In what way?"

      "Sort of discontented, sir. They don't like the Austrians, sir. You may have noticed as we came along...."

      "Did they like us when we held the town?"

      "I can hardly say that, sir. I have been sitting for an hour or more in the courier's room, with all sorts of people coming in and out, and heard very wild sort of talk."

      "What can you know about its wildness?"

      "To look at their faces was enough. It's

Скачать книгу