Phroso. Anthony Hope

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СКАЧАТЬ he’s a German, isn’t he?’

      ‘He thinks so,’ I answered. ‘He’s not certain, you know. Anyhow, he chatters Greek like a parrot. He’s a pretty good man in a row, too. But there won’t be a row, you know.’

      ‘I suppose there won’t,’ admitted Denny ruefully.

      ‘For my own part,’ said I meekly, ‘as I’m going for the sake of quiet, I hope there won’t.’

      In the interest of conversation I had forgotten our neighbours; but now, a lull occurring in Denny’s questions and surmises, I heard the lady’s voice. She began a sentence—and began it in Greek! That was a little unexpected; but it was more strange that her companion cut her short, saying very peremptorily, ‘Don’t talk Greek: talk Italian.’ This he said in Italian, and I, though no great hand at that language, understood so much. Now why shouldn’t the lady talk Greek, if Greek were the language that came naturally to her tongue? It would be as good a shield against eavesdroppers as most languages; unless indeed I, who was known to be an amateur of Greece and Greek things, were looked upon as a possible listener. Recollecting the glances which I had detected, recollecting again those chance meetings, I ventured on a covert gaze at the lady. Her handsome face expressed a mixture of anger, alarm, and entreaty. The man was speaking to her now in low urgent tones; he raised his hand once, and brought it down on the table as though to emphasise some declaration—perhaps some promise—which he was making. She regarded him with half-angry distrustful eyes. He seemed to repeat his words and she flung at him in a tone that grew suddenly louder, and in words that I could translate:

      ‘Enough! I’ll see to that. I shall come too.’

      Her heat stirred no answering fire in him. He dropped his emphatic manner, shrugged a tolerant ‘As you will,’ with eloquent shoulders, smiled at her, and, reaching across the table, patted her hand. She held it up before his eyes, and with the other hand pointed at a ring on her finger.

      ‘Yes, yes, my dearest,’ said he, and he was about to say more, when, glancing round, he caught my gaze retreating in hasty confusion to my plate. I dared not look up again, but I felt his scowl on me. I suppose that I deserved punishment for my eavesdropping.

      ‘And when can we get off, Charley?’ asked Denny in his clear young voice. My thoughts had wandered from him, and I paused for a moment as a man does when a question takes him unawares. There was silence at the next table also. The fancy seemed absurd, but it occurred to me that there too my answer was being waited for. Well, they could know if they liked; it was no secret.

      ‘In a fortnight,’ said I. ‘We’ll travel easily, and get there on the 7th of next month;—that’s the day on which I’m entitled to take over my kingdom. We shall go to Rhodes. Hogvardt will have got me a little yacht, and then—good-bye to all this!’ And a great longing for solitude and a natural life came over me as I looked round on the gilded cornices, the gilded mirrors, the gilded flower-vases, and the highly-gilded company of the Optimum.

      I was roused from my pleasant dreams by a high vivacious voice, which I knew very well. Looking up, I saw Miss Hipgrave, her mother, and young Bennett Hamlyn standing before me. I disliked young Hamlyn, but he was always very civil to me.

      ‘Why, how early you two have dined!’ cried Beatrice. ‘You’re at the savoury, aren’t you? We’ve only just come.’

      ‘Are you going to dine?’ I asked, rising. ‘Take this table, we’re just off.’

      ‘Well, we may as well, mayn’t we?’ said my fiancée. ‘Sorry you’re going, though. Oh, yes, we’re going to dine with Mr. Bennett Hamlyn. That’s what you’re for, isn’t it, Mr. Hamlyn? Why, he’s not listening!’

      He was not, strange to say, listening, although as a rule he listened to Beatrice with infinite attention and the most deferential of smiles. But just now he was engaged in returning a bow which our neighbour at the next table had bestowed on him. The lady there had risen already and was making for the door. The man lingered and looked at Hamlyn, seeming inclined to back up his bow with a few words of greeting. Hamlyn’s air was not, however, encouraging, and the stranger contented himself with a nod and a careless ‘How are you?’ and, with that, followed his companion. Hamlyn turned round, conscious that he had neglected Beatrice’s remark and full of penitence for his momentary rudeness.

      ‘I beg your pardon?’ said he, with an apologetic smile.

      ‘Oh,’ answered she, ‘I was only saying that men like you were invented to give dinners; you’re a sort of automatic feeding-machine. You ought to stand open all day. Really I often miss you at lunch time.’

      ‘My dear Beatrice!’ said Mrs. Kennett Hipgrave, with that peculiar lift of her brows which meant, ‘How naughty the dear child is—oh, but how clever!’

      ‘It’s all right,’ said Hamlyn meekly. ‘I’m awfully happy to give you a dinner anyhow, Miss Beatrice.’

      Now I had nothing to say on this subject, but I thought I would just make this remark:

      ‘Miss Hipgrave,’ said I, ‘is very fond of a dinner.’

      Beatrice laughed. She understood my little correction.

      ‘He doesn’t know any better, do you?’ said she pleasantly to Hamlyn. ‘We shall civilise him in time, though; then I believe he’ll be nicer than you, Charley, I really do. You’re—’

      ‘I shall be uncivilised by then,’ said I.

      ‘Oh, that wretched island!’ cried Beatrice. ‘You’re really going?’

      ‘Most undoubtedly. By the way, Hamlyn, who’s your friend?’

      Surely this was an innocent enough question, but little Hamlyn went red from the edge of his clipped whisker on the right to the edge of his mathematically equal whisker on the left.

      ‘Friend!’ said he in an angry tone; ‘he’s not a friend of mine. I only met him on the Riviera.’

      ‘That,’ I admitted, ‘does not, happily, in itself constitute a friendship.’

      ‘And he won a hundred louis of me in the train between Cannes and Monte Carlo.’

      ‘Not bad going that,’ observed Denny in an approving tone.

      ‘Is he then un grec?’ asked Mrs. Hipgrave, who loves a scrap of French.

      ‘In both senses, I believe,’ answered Hamlyn viciously.

      ‘And what’s his name?’ said I.

      ‘Really I don’t recollect,’ said Hamlyn rather petulantly.

      ‘It doesn’t matter,’ observed Beatrice, attacking her oysters which had now made their appearance.

      ‘My dear Beatrice,’ I remonstrated, ‘you’re the most charming creature in the world, but not the only one. You mean that it doesn’t matter to you.’

      ‘Oh, don’t be tiresome. It doesn’t matter to you either, you know. Do go away and leave me to dine in peace.’

      ‘Half a minute!’ said Hamlyn. ‘I thought I’d СКАЧАТЬ