Read Ebook: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55 No. 340 February 1844 by Various

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"I thought of doing that," said Captain Stuart, a little awkwardly.

They all three smiled at what had become by now a special little joke, and gratefully Lily followed the two men up the broad steps which looked more like those in a palace than in a railway station, till they reached the road running through the beautiful, tropical-looking gardens, which always seem to have an unreal touch of fairyland about them.

Captain Stuart turned round. He had not been listening to M. Popeau, for his mind was full of the English girl to whom he was about to say what he fully intended should only be a very temporary farewell. "Yes," he said mechanically. "Thanks awfully."

"Listen to me!" exclaimed M. Popeau imperiously. "You are to tell the manager of the H?tel de Paris that our food has been--what do you say in England?--filthy for the last two days! Ask him to arrange that a lunch of surpassing excellence is ready in forty minutes from now. Can I trust you to do this, my friend?" He spoke so gravely that Lily began to laugh.

"There's still plenty of time to change your mind!" exclaimed both men simultaneously.

"My friends will have waited lunch for me." She did feel sorry that she could not go along with these kind people and have a good lunch before meeting Count and Countess Polda. But not for nothing had her Uncle Tom always called her, fondly, his dear old-fashioned girl.

She held out her hand to Captain Stuart. He took it in his big grasp, and held it perhaps a moment longer than she expected, but at last:

"Good-bye," he said abruptly. "Good-bye, Miss Fairfield. Let me see--to-day is Saturday. I wonder if I might call on you to-morrow, Sunday?"

"Yes, do," she said a little shyly. "You've got the address? La Solitude?"

It was nice to know that they would meet again to-morrow.

As for M. Popeau, who was looking about him trying to find out if any changes had taken place in five very long years, he was telling himself, for perhaps the thousandth time in his life, what very queer, odd people the British were!

He liked them, even better than he had done when, as a young man, he had met with a good deal of kindness in England. But still, how queer to think that a nice girl--a really nice girl--should permit such a stranger as was this Captain Stuart to call on her--without any kind of proper introduction. He hoped her Italian friends--or were they relations?--would not misunderstand. He feared they certainly would do so, unless she pretended--but somehow he did not think she would do that--that the young man was an old acquaintance, someone who had known her at home, in her uncle's house.

And then his quaint, practical French mind began to wonder whether Captain Stuart was well off--whether his affections were already engaged--whether, in a word, he would, or would not, make a suitable husband for this so charming girl?

Sad to say, M. Popeau's peculiar walk in life during the war-worn years had made him acquainted with the fact that it sometimes happens that quite delightful-looking Englishmen are capable of behaving in a very peculiar manner when in a foreign country, and when in love!

He turned around abruptly. Captain Stuart was already some way off; and the Frenchman's eyes softened as they rested on the slender figure of the girl now standing by his side. She looked so fresh, so neat, too--in spite of the long, weary, dirty journey from Paris.

Lily, who, when she thought of her appearance at all, was rather disagreeablely aware that she was clad in a pre-war coat and skirt, would have been surprised and pleased had she known how very well dressed she appeared in this middle-aged Frenchman's eyes--how much he approved of the scrupulously plain black serge coat and skirt and neat little toque--how restful they seemed after the showy toilettes and extraordinary-looking hats worn by the fair, and generally eccentric, Parisiennes with whom fate brought him in constant contact.

A victoria drawn by two wiry-looking, raw-boned little steeds dashed down upon them. M. Popeau put up his hand, and the horses drew up on their haunches.

Giving the porter a very handsome tip, M. Popeau helped Lily into the carriage and then got in himself. "La Solitude!" he called out to the driver.

The man pointed with his whip to the mountain sky-line.

"Twenty-five francs," he exclaimed, "and that only because I wish to oblige monsieur and madame! I ought to ask fifty francs. It's a devil of a pull up there!" He rapped out the words with an extraordinary amount of gesticulation.

Lily had had some trouble in following what he said, but her experience with the Belgians stood her in good stead. A pound for what she believed must be a short drive? That seemed a great deal.

She turned in some distress to her companion. "Pray don't come with me," she exclaimed. "The man will take me there all right. I quite understood all he said."

"Of course I'm going to take you there," said M. Popeau. "My lunch will taste all the better for a little waiting. But you? Will you not change your mind and come and lunch at the H?tel de Paris, mademoiselle?"

Poor Lily! She felt sorely tempted. But she shook her head.

And then something rather curious happened. A taxicab passed slowly by. M. Popeau stood up and hailed it. He took out of his pocket-book a dirty ten-franc note. "Here, my friend," he said, addressing their astonished driver, "it is too great a pull for your gallant little steeds, so we will take that taxi. Help me to transfer the young lady's luggage."

No sooner said than done, in spite of a very sulky protest from the taxi-driver, who had not the slightest wish to take on a new fare. He had brought a party out to Monte Carlo from Mentone, and was going back there.

"You should be glad, very glad indeed, my good boy," exclaimed M. Popeau, "to have the chance of earning twenty-five francs by a few moments' drive. Come, come, be amiable about it! You know perfectly well that you are bound to take me by the law."

"Not in Monaco," said the man sullenly. "The law is not the same in France as in Monaco."

"If you are a Monegasque," exclaimed M. Popeau, "then you must be well acquainted with my friend, M. Bouton."

The man's manner changed, and became suddenly cringing.

"Aha! I thought so!" M. Popeau turned to Lily. "My friend Bouton is Police Commissioner here," he observed significantly.

"Where do you want me to go?" asked the man, in a resigned tone.

"To La Solitude."

Without any more ado the taxicab turned round and started at a speed which seemed to Lily very dangerous. It was a whirlwind rather than a drive. But once they had left the beautiful gardens, and were through the curious network of town streets which lie behind the Casino grounds, the man slowed down, and soon they were breasting the hill up what was little more than a rough, dry, rutted way through orange groves and olive trees.

"Turn your head round," said M. Popeau suddenly, "and then you will see, my dear lady, one of the six most beautiful views in the world, and yet one which comparatively few of the visitors to Monte Carlo ever take the trouble to climb up here and enjoy."

Lily obeyed, and then she uttered an exclamation of delight at the marvellous panorama of sea, sky, and delicate vivid, green-blue vegetation which lay below and all about her. Monte Carlo, with its white palaces, looked like a town in fairyland.

Up and up they went, along winding ways cut in the mountain side. Even M. Popeau was impressed by the steepness of the gradient, and the distance traversed by them.

All at once the taxi took a sudden turn to the left and drew up on a rough clearing surrounded by old, grey olive trees. The atmosphere was strangely still, and though it was a hot day, Lily suddenly felt chilly--a touch, no doubt, of the mountain air. There crept over her, too, a queer, eerie feeling of utter loneliness.

"Your friends have certainly well named their villa! Even I, who thought I knew the whole principality of Monaco more or less well, never came across this remote and lonely spot."

"This is the most convenient point by which a carriage can approach the villa," said the driver turning round. "The house is not far--just a few yards up through the trees."

"All right. Get down and help me carry the lady's luggage."

The man loaded himself up with Lily's small trunk, and M. Popeau took a big Gladstone bag she had had on the journey. "Please don't do that!" she exclaimed. "The man can come back presently for the bag. I'll give him a good tip in addition to the twenty-five francs."

"Nonsense!" said M. Popeau, quite sharply for him. "Of course this cab is my affair. It's going to take me back to the H?tel de Paris. I intend to give the driver thirty francs--I had no idea it was as far."

At the top of a row of steps cut in the rocky bank was a wicket gate, on which were painted in fast-fading Roman letters the words "La Solitude."

The cabman opened the gate, and the three passed through into a grove of orange trees. Soon the steep path broadened into a way leading straight on to a lawn which fell sharply away from the stone terrace which formed the front of a long, low, whitewashed house.

In a sense, as M. Popeau's shrewd eyes quickly realised, La Solitude had an air of almost gay prosperity. It was clear that the bright green shutters, those of the six windows of the upper storey and those of the windows which opened on to the terrace, had but recently been painted.

Two blue earthenware jars, so large that they might well have formed part of the equipment of the Forty Thieves, stood at either end of the terrace, their comparatively narrow necks being filled with luxuriant red geranium plants, which fell in careless trails and patches of brilliant colour on the flagstones.

Built out at a peculiar angle, to the left of the villa, was a windowless square building which looked like a studio.

Lily was surprised to see that every window on the ground floor of the house had its blind drawn down, and that above the ground floor every window was shuttered. But that, as any foreigner could have told her, had nothing strange about it. Most people living in Southern Europe have an instinct for shutting out the sun, even the delightful sun of a southern winter day. Still, to Lily's English eyes the drawn blinds and closed shutters gave a deserted, eerie, unlived-in look to La Solitude.

As they all three stood there, M. Popeau and the driver having put down the luggage for a moment on the hard, dry grass, the first sign of life at La Solitude suddenly appeared in the person of a huge black and white cat. It crept slowly, stealthily, round the left-hand corner of the house, intent on some business, or victim, of its own, and rubbed itself along the warm wall.

Lily felt a little tremor of surprise and discomfort. It was an odd coincidence that she should have seen in her dream-nightmare just such a cat as was this cat now moving so stealthily across her line of vision!

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