by Susan Barrie
Paul spoke plausibly, even cajolingly.
“Signorina Brown, let us discuss this matter,” he said. He attempted, very gently, to thrust her back into her chair. “I will pour you some coffee and then we will talk, and later Edouard, who has to return to his hotel, will offer you a lift in his motor-boat. Is that not sensible, Edouard?” looking across the room at him.
Edouard lighted a cigarette in a strange, methodical manner, put it between his well-cut but cynical lips, and smiled bleakly.
“That is sensible,” he admitted.
CHAPTER II
Cathleen returned to her hotel in time for an early dinner, but before that she had an opportunity to enlist the support of the unlikely Frenchman, Edouard Moroc, in the cause of her vanished half sister, Arlette.
Edouard—whose standing in the social world she judged to be reasonably elevated since he dressed well and expensively and was obviously a close friend of Paul di Rini—was too bored (although later she wondered whether it was simply that he was disapproving) at first to do more than press her to drink a second cup of his strong black coffee when her first had been disposed of, was a degree less frosty in his attitude towards her when he returned to the studio where Paul was being interrogated by her. And after he had casually agreed to let her share his motorboat when they left the palazzo a few more degrees of unapproachableness departed from his manner.
Although she had refused a cigarette from the Count she accepted one of his, and after he had lighted it for her he sat beside her on the broad studio couch and studied her openly as she sipped his coffee. It was thick and black, almost like Turkish coffee, and he apologised for it if it was not her favourite beverage.
“Paul is not very good at entertaining his friends,” he observed, flicking a queerly contemptuous glance at him as he paced up and down, frowning in new concentration at the carpet. “He expects them to entertain him rather than put himself to the trouble of behaving like a first-class host. If Bianca were here it would be different.”
“Bianca?”
“Paul’s sister.”
“Oh, yes, of course.” But Cathleen was not really interested in any other member of the di Rim family. She had a problem on her hands, and she had to cope with it. She could not simply depart without some satisfaction having come all this way. “Would Signorina di Rini be able to provide me with my sister’s address, do you think?” she enquired hopefully.
Edouard did not answer, and Paul—whose pacing up and down was rather like that of a panther in a cage—came suddenly to a halt and seemed inspired by a notion.
“Why, of course!” he exclaimed. “Bianca and Arlette were always good friends, and it is just possible she will know where your sister is likely to be found! She is at the hairdresser this afternoon, but this evening we are entertaining a few friends to dinner. You must join us, Miss Brown, and Bianca will tell you all she knows, I’m sure.”
He had the smug look on his face of a cat who had stumbled by accident on a saucer of cream.
But Cathleen hesitated.
“I could come back to-morrow and see the signorina...”
“No, to-night, I insist! If the matter is important to you it cannot be allowed to wait. And Edouard can collect you at your hotel about nine o’clock and act as your escort back here to the palazzo. If you stay in Venice for any length of time you will get used to our waterways, but for a young woman alone it is not the most convenient method of travel. Edouard will be delighted to escort you, I am sure!”
Cathleen looked at Edouard, and he barely nodded his head.
“But of course,” he said, as if it was neither a pleasure nor a penance that he should have to undertake such a task.
Paul went to a cupboard in a corner and produced a bottle of cognac, some of which he added to his own coffee.
“Then that is settled,” he declared. Cathleen received the impression that he was mentally rubbing his hands together. He certainly directed at her a brilliant, white-toothed, flashing smile. “By the way, signorina, what is the name of your hotel?”
She supplied it, and he looked even more pleased. Without realising it she had picked upon one of the most exclusive Venetian hotels, but that could have been because she had accidentally disclosed the amount of her legacy to the booking-clerk in England when she booked, and he had no doubt decided that she could afford it.
“You will be very comfortable there, I assure you. As a matter of fact, when we do not wish to entertain at the palazzo we throw parties there ... and they are always extremely successful. Is that not so, Edouard?”
Edouard looked cynical once more as he nodded.
“Very successful.”
“My sister is an accomplished hostess, and although I fail her at every turn she never lets me down on such occasions. She is always dependable.”
“Very fortunate for a bachelor,” Cathleen could not resist remarking, and Edouard glanced at her as if in faint surprise. And then she thought he frowned slightly.
His gondola was actually a motor-boat, very high-powered, and also very comfortable. He helped her into it and saw her seated, and then took his place beside her and waved up at the balcony from which Paul stood watching them. As the engine started up and they chug-chugged away Cathleen realised for the first time that it was almost dark.
The lingering light of the afterglow lay like golden silk on the water, however, and there was still a fascinating riot of colour in the sky. It was very dark when they slipped beneath the bridges, and the warmth of the day seemed to have culminated in a sensuous sensation like acute physical well-being, and in the brief tunnels of gloom the warmth seemed to reach out at them and encompass them. Cathleen had noticed earlier the unmistakable smell of the waterways, but in her nostrils it was not unpleasant ... there was even something exciting and unusual about it, and although she knew it stemmed from sewage, and was particularly noticeable at low tide, it did not affect her enjoyment of this evening trip along the canal.
Not even the presence of Edouard Moroc on the seat beside her, or the knowledge that so far her mission had proved fruitless, could do that. This was, after all, her first trip abroad, and at twenty-two a first trip abroad—or a first anything that is out of the ordinary run of things—has a special value all its own. She would have been less than human if she had not been capable of forgetting Arlette for a short while, and living her own life.
Moroc, who was very silent at first, suddenly spoke to her.
“This is your first visit to Venice, mademoiselle?”
“Yes,” she answered, almost eagerly. “As a matter of fact, it’s the first time I’ve been abroad.”
“Indeed?”
“I—I’ve always wanted to travel, of course, but until now it hasn’t been possible.”
“You mean your financial position was such that you couldn’t contemplate it?” She glanced at him quickly, sideways, realising that he must have overheard her admission to the Count that she had recently been left a sum of money. “Travel is expensive, and although it broadens the mind it also requires to be paid for.”
“Yes.” She wondered whether she should tell him the truth about her legacy, and then decided that it was really none of his business. “Fortunately I can now do quite a lot of things I’ve always wanted to do, and which at one time I couldn’t have thought of doing.”
“You are fortunate,” he observed drily.
Once again she glanced at him sideways.
“You—you met my sister, Mr. Moroc?” she asked.
“On quite a few occasions,” he admitted.
“You—you don’t happen to have the least idea where I—where I can start looking for her?”
“I’m afraid not, mademoiselle.”
His voice was so toneless that she decided he was completely uninterested.
“You knew the late Contessa well, I suppose?”
“Very well. She was my godmother.”
“I—I see.”
The darkness had d
eepened almost imperceptibly, and by this time it was like a velvet mantle dropped about their shoulders. Their passage through the water was clean, and smooth, and almost too hurried ... and Cathleen looked up at the far-away points of fire that were the first stars and was conscious of regret. In the old days, when a slow-moving gondola conveyed one from palace to palace, it must have been enchanting. She could imagine setting off for the evening in satins and silks, while the lights were reflected in the water, and someone played a guitar...
“You are thinking?” Moroc asked, as if her upturned face gleaming palely through the gloom intrigued him.
She confessed what she had been thinking, and a faint smile curved his lips.
“You should have come here fifty years ago—even twenty years ago—Miss Brown, when the pace of life was slower. Today it is as feverish as anywhere else in Europe. But even so, Venice has a lot to offer the tourist, and I’m sure if you stay here for even a few days you will see enough to provide you with a rich store of memories to take home with you to England. There are enough churches and fine architecture to satisfy anyone’s aesthetic sense, and if having seen the inside of one of the lesser Gothic palaces you still have an appetite for that form of residence the rebuilt Fondaco dei Turchi, on the northern side of the Grand Canal, and the Ca’d’oro Palace are well worth a visit. If your taste runs to museums then I recommend the Correr and the Querini Palace, and if art is your passion the Academy will satisfy you. If you wish to acquire a golden tan you can do so on the Lido, and if night life is the thing you cannot do without then that, too, is to be found here in abundance.”
Cathleen stared at him through the gloom, and then burst out laughing.
“You sound like a guide-book,” she said. “Either that, or you have an interest in selling me the delights of Venice.”
For the first time she saw him smile naturally, and his white teeth gleamed in the dusk.
“I have no particular interest in anything Venetian, Miss Brown, but I like strangers to be made aware of the treats in store. After all, is that not why they come here? Or most of them,” he added, remembering why she had come.
She fingered the warm red leather of the seat against which they were reclining.
“I’ve come here for a purpose, but I mean to see something of Venice, too,” she admitted. “I would be foolish if I didn’t, wouldn’t I?”
“It all depends how preoccupied you are with the reason for your visit,” he replied.
They had slid alongside the landing-stage, and he helped her out. He saw her to her hotel, and then parted from her in the entrance.
“I hope it isn’t going to inconvenience you very much collecting me to-night?” she said, looking at him.
“Not at all, mademoiselle,” he assured her. “I shall look forward to it,” he added drily.
She couldn’t resist asking him a question.
“You are not Italian, are you?” just in case she had made a mistake.
“No. I have a little Italian blood in my veins, but mostly it is French ... Norman French. I have also one or two drops of English,” smiling down at her mockingly as he held her hand very lightly.
“Then you are a citizen of Europe?”
“I like to think a citizen of the world.”
“And you live in Venice?”
“For part of the time.”
They parted, and she watched him run down the steps and slip behind the wheel of a rakish, low-slung white car that was parked there. During the brief journey he had encountered one or two people who had smiled at him in a pleased fashion, and members of the hotel staff seemed particularly deferential when they caught sight of him. As a result of being returned to the hotel by him she seemed to come in for some of the extra attention herself, and it could not be explained away by the fact that she was a newcomer, that she was from England and was well provided with traveller’s cheques.
When Edouard called for her at a quarter to nine she was ready and waiting for him. She had changed into a slim-fitting dress of cream silk shantung, and over it she wore a light coat. The coat was also cream, of slightly stiffer silk, and it rustled as she moved. She had put flower perfume behind her ears and on the insides of her wrists, her short, light brown hair was silky and shining, her delicately made-up face flower-like, and her eyes extraordinarily beautiful. Moroc paid her the compliment of staring at her as if under some sort of compulsion to do so, and she was considerably surprised when he exclaimed almost impulsively:
“But you are lovely, Miss Brown ... quite, quite enchanting!”
“Thank you,” she returned, dimpling ever so slightly. “Do you know,” she told him, surveying him also with interest because in impeccable evening garments he struck her as much more deserving of a title—old and distinguished as the di Rini title was—than the paint-stained Paul di Rini, even allowing for the fact that the latter had excellent features, “it would never have occurred to me that you would pay compliments.”
“No?” he said, and took her by the arm. In the lighted hotel entrance, where beautifully dressed women and smartly dressed men kept passing and repassing one another, the two of them seemed to attract quite a lot of attention. “But then you took me by surprise this afternoon, and I am never at my best when taken by surprise.”
“You were prepared to disapprove of me violently, weren’t you?” she said shrewdly.
I thought you were just another of Paul’s lady friends.”
“Possibly one whom he had neglected lately, and who wanted an explanation of why she had been neglected?”
“Possibly.”
“Does he have so many of them, then?” she wanted to know curiously. “Was Arlette very simple to be taken in by him?”
“Very simple, I’m afraid.”
They had reached the landing-stage and the spot where his gondola awaited them, and to her further surprise she found it was quite a different gondola from the one in which she had accepted a lift from the Palazzo di Rim. The same boatman was in charge of it, but by comparison with the smart motor-launch with its scarlet cushions this means of transport had a definitely antiquated appearance, and it was propelled by means of the old Venetian pole. The boatman stood leaning on it in the bows, and they took their seats in the stern. Cathleen, with eyes bright with appreciation, turned and looked at her escort.
“But this is an old-fashioned gondola,” she said. “Even I can recognise that!”
Edouard smiled.
“I decided to humour your whim,” he said, “although this type of craft is fast dying out now on the waterways. This one belongs to a friend of mine—a very ancient boatman—and it is guaranteed not to leak.”
As they slipped away from the landing stage he moved nearer to her and placed a light rug over her knees.
“It is cool on the water at night, and you are very thinly clad,” he said. “It would be a pity if you caught cold during your first trip to Venice. By the way, we may be a little late in reaching the palazzo, but they will understand, I’m sure, when I explain the reason ... and possibly, also, amused.”
“Oh, I do hope they won’t mind if we’re late,” she said. But she was excited by the darkness, the ripples on the water, the lights streaming from the ancient houses lining the banks. And this time it was really dark under the multitudinous bridges, and their slow passage made it possible for her to overhear the solemn plop of the pole as it was plunged into the inky depths of the water, and the slight gurgling that occurred in the wake of the gondola.
After the heat of the day the smell of the waterway was not as offensive, but there was a distinctly musty smell from the ancient velvet of the cushions that protected the hardness of the seat, and a kind of back flavour of moth-balls. But having come all the way from England Cathleen preferred these discomforts to the crude modernity of the motor-vessels that plied up and down the canals. And at night the palaces on the distant banks looked infinitely romantic, each with its landing-stage and lantern glimmering at the head of t
he flight of steps—in almost every case marble steps—leading up to the once impressive front doors.
The waterway was more lively by night than it was by day, and parties of people passed them on their way to dinner-parties or the night spots of Venice. Couples called across the water to Edouard, and waved their hands. Noisier parties were already in festive mood, and the wash of their motor-boats set the old-fashioned gondola rocking.
More than once Cathleen had to reach out and steady herself by clutching at Moroc, and he laughed in amusement.
“There is a certain amount of attraction about the old, but for convenience the new is best,” he murmured. “Perhaps you agree with me by this time?”
But Cathleen did not agree with him. She was actually looking forward to her evening ... while not forgetting how important it might be to Arlette that she should not be entirely carried away by the beauty and the charms of Venice.
The Palazzo di Rini was a blaze of light, as if some very important function indeed was being held there. Cathleen hardly recognised it as the badly faded, damp-stained, crumbling building she had seen for the first time earlier in the day. The balconies that overlooked the canal were, in particular, very brightly lighted, and for the first time she noticed the swinging baskets of flowers glowing excitingly in the bright glare of the illumination.
Paul di Rini was waiting for them on the steps. Unlike Edouard, who wore a conventional black dinner-jacket, he wore a crisp white one and cummerbund. Separated from his blue shirt and his paint-stained jeans he looked every inch an Italian aristocrat, and his greeting to Cathleen was courteous in the extreme. For one moment she thought he was about to kiss her hand after he had helped her out of the boat, and then she saw that his eyes were laughing at her although they were also filled with admiration.
“You are so beautiful,” he murmured, “you Englishwomen ... so much like flowers!” And then he did kiss her hand, and she snatched it away somewhat hastily, because it was the first time anything like that had happened to her and she was not at all sure she liked it ... not from the Count di Rinis of the world, anyway.