LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

upstairs, and when Vera had the drawing-room to herself. No visitors intruded on those long afternoons; for Lady Felicia's card gave the world to know that the first and fifteenth of May, June, and July, were the only days on which she was accessible to the friends and acquaintances who had not utterly forgotten "poor Felicia's" existence.

      It was a life of monotony against which an older girl would have revolted; but childhood is submissive, and accepts its environment as something inevitable, so Vera made no protest against Fate. But there was one golden season in her young life, one heavenly summer holiday in the West Country, when her aunt, Lady Okehampton, happening to call upon Lady Felicia, was moved to compassion at sight of the little girl, pale and languid, as she sat in the corner of the unlovely drawing-room, with an open book on her lap.

      "This hot weather makes London odious," said Lady Okehampton. "We are all leaving much earlier than usual. I suppose you and the little girl are soon going into the country?"

      "No, I shan't move till the end of October, when we go to Brighton, as usual. I have had invitations to nice places, the Helstons, the Heronmoors; but I can't take that child, and I can't leave her."

      "Poor little girl. Does she never see gardens and meadows? Brighton is only London with a little less smoke, and a strip of grey water that one takes on trust for the sea. Wouldn't you like a country holiday, Veronica? What a name!"

      "She is always called Vera. Her father was a poet——"

      "Lancelot Davis, yes, I remember him!"

      "And he gave her that absurd name because the Italian hills were purple and white with the flower when she was born."

      "Rather a nice idea. Well, Vera, if Grannie likes, you shall come to Disbrowe with your cousins, and you shall have a real country holiday, and come back to Grannie in September with rosy cheeks and bright eyes."

      Oh, never-to-be-forgotten golden days, in which the child of eleven found herself among a flock of young cousins in a rural paradise where she first knew the rapture of loving birds and beasts. She adored them all, from the gold and silver pheasants in the aviary to the great, slow wagon horses on the home farm, and the shooting dogs.

      Among the children of the house, and more masterful in his behaviour than any of them, there was an Eton boy of sixteen, who was not a Disbrowe, although he claimed cousinship in a minor degree. He was a Disbrowe on the Distaff side, he told Vera, a distinction which he had to explain to her. He was Claude Rutherford, and he belonged to the Yorkshire Rutherfords, who had been Roman Catholic from the beginning of history, with which they claimed to be coeval. He was in the upper sixth at Eton, and was going to Oxford in a year or two, and from Oxford into the Army. He was a clever boy, old for his years, quoted Omar Khayyam in season and out of season, and was already tired of many things that boys are fond of.

      But, superior as this young person might be, he behaved with something more than cousinly kindness to the little girl from London, whose pitiful story Lady Okehampton had expounded to him. He was familiar with the poetry of Lancelot Davis, whose lyrics had a flavour of Omar; and he was pleased to patronise the departed poet's daughter.

      He took Vera about the home farm, and the stables, and introduced her to the assemblage of living creatures that made Disbrowe Park so enchanting. He taught her to ride the barb that had been his favourite mount four years earlier. He seemed ages older than Vera; and he condescended to her and protected her, and would not allow his cousins to tease her, although their vastly superior education tempted them to make fun of the little girl who had only two hours a day from a Miss Walker, and to whom the whole world of science was dark. What a change was that large life at Disbrowe, the picnics and excursions, the little dances after dinner, the run with the otter-hounds on dewy mornings, the rustic races and sports, the thrilling jaunts with Cousin Claude in his dinghy, over those blue-green West Country waves, a life so full of variety and delight that the pleasures of the day ran over into the dreams of night, and sleep was a round of adventure and excitement! What a change from the slow walk in Regent's Park, or along the sea-front at Brighton, beside Grannie's Bath chair, or the afternoon drive between Hove and Kemp Town, in a hired landau!

      She thought of poor Grannie, who was not invited to Disbrowe, and was sorry to think of her lingering in the dull London lodging, when all her friends had gone off to their cures in Germany and Austria, and while it was still too early to migrate to the brighter rooms on the Marine Parade.

      These happy days at Disbrowe were the first and last of their kind, for though Lady Okehampton promised to invite her the following year, there were hindrances to the keeping of that promise, and she saw Disbrowe Park no more. Life in London and Brighton continued with what the average girl would have called a ghastly monotony, till Vera was sixteen, when Lady Felicia, after a bronchial attack of unusual severity, was told that Brighton was no longer good enough for her winters, and if she wished to see any more Decembers, she must migrate to sunnier regions in the autumn. Cannes or Mentone were suggested. Grannie smiled a bitter smile at the mention of Cannes. She had stayed there with her husband at the beginning of their wedded life, when she was young and beautiful, and when Captain Cunningham was handsome and reckless. They had been among the gayest, and the best received, and had tasted all that Cannes could give of pleasure; but they had spent a year's income in five weeks, and had felt themselves paupers among the millionaire shipbuilders and exotic Hebrews.

      Lady Felicia decided on San Marco, a picturesque little spot on the Italian Riviera, which had been only a fishing village till within the last ten years, when an English doctor had "discovered" it, and two or three hotels had been built to accommodate the patients he sent there. The sea-front was sheltered from every pernicious wind, and the sea was unpolluted by the drainage of a town. Peasant proprietors grew their carnations all along the shore, close to the sandy beach, and the olive woods that clothed the sheltering hill were carpeted with violets and narcissus.

      Lady Felicia described San Marco as a paradise; but her friends told her that there was absolutely no society, and that she would be bored to death.

      "You will meet nobody but invalids, dreadful people in Bath chairs!" one of her rich friends told her, a purse-proud matron who owned a villa at Cannes, and considered no other place "possible" from Spezzia to Marseilles.

      "I shall be in a Bath chair myself," replied Lady Felicia. "I want quiet and economy, and not society. At Vera's age it is best that there should be no talk of dances and high jinks."

      Mrs. Montagu Watson smiled, and shrugged her shoulders. "Girls have their own opinions about life nowadays," she said. "I don't think Theodora or Margaret would put up with San Marco, although they are still in the school-room. They want fine clothes and smart carriages to look at, when they trudge with their governess."

      "Vera is more unsophisticated than your girls. She will be quite happy reading Scott or Dickens in a garden by the sea. I mean to keep her as fresh as I can till I hand her over to one of her aunts to be brought out."

      "She is a sweet, dreamy child," said Mrs. Watson, who became deferential at the mere mention of countesses, "and I dare say she is going to be pretty."

      "I have no doubt about that," said Lady Felicia.

      They went to San Marco early in November, and found the hotel and the sea-front the abode of desolation, so far as people went. The habitual invalids had not yet arrived, and the weather was at its worst. The four cosmopolitan shops that spread their trivial wares to tempt the English visitor, and which gave a touch of colour and gaiety to the poor little street, were not to open till December. There were only the shabby little butcher, baker, and grocer, who supplied the wants of the natives.

      Vera delighted in the scenery, but she found a sense of dulness creeping over her, in the midst of all that loveliness of mountain and shore.

      Everything seemed deadly still, a calm that weighed upon the spirits. Her grandmother had caught cold on the journey, and the English doctor had to be summoned in the morning after their arrival.

      He was their first acquaintance in San Marco, and was the most popular inhabitant in that quiet settlement. Old ladies talked of him as "chatty" and "so obliging"; but objected to him on the ground of too frequent visits, which

Скачать книгу