CHAPTER IV.

THE ART OF CONVERSATION.

"It's difficult to hold a conversation With three or five, odd numbers are a bore, For some one's sure to be _sans_ occupation, So talk should always be 'twixt two or four. One can't gain any secret information, If there should be a single person more: But four's a pleasant number without doubt, Because there's not a chance to be the 'odd man out.'"

It was certainly a very pleasant little party which was seated on the terrace of the Villa Tagni, talking social nonsense under the clear glow of the sunset sky. Behind the solemn hills the sun had disappeared, leaving the sky filled with soft rosy tints, against which the serrated outline of tall peaks stood clear and distinct. Slender clouds of liquid gold floated in the roseate western sky which resembled in its pale flushing the delicate tints of a rose-heart, softening off by degrees into a cold blue, which in its turn gave place towards the darkening east to faint shadows and throbbing stars glimmering in the aerial gloom of coming night.

But the four people on the terrace took no notice of the wonderful gradations of colour, but chatted gaily over the cakes and tea provided by the hospitality of Villa Tagni. All the gentlemen, tired of the thin wines of Italy, had taken tea, and Otterburn was especially enthusiastic as he drained his cup with keen relish.

"I'm a perfect old woman for tea here," he said, handing back his cup for a second supply. "A don't know why, as I never bothered much about it at home."

"That's because you can't get a decent cup here," observed Eustace drily, "man always longs for the impossible."

"I long for a decent dinner," retorted Otterburn with a hollow groan. "I'm not a particularly greedy sort of chap--don't laugh, please, Lady Errington, I assure you I'm not--but these Italians haven't the slightest idea how to cook."

"Well you see their ideas of cooking differ from yours, Mr. Macjean," said Alizon, smilingly handing him back his cup.

"Yes, that's true enough. I daresay they give a fellow the best they can, but look at their victuals; bread that's all full of holes, some yellow mess they call polenta, skinny chickens and sour wine, you can't make a square meal of such stuff."

"Some people could," said Errington, who was listening to the boy's remarks with an amused smile, "but I agree with you about the roast beef of old England."

"Or the wholesome parritch of Scotland," observed Eustace satirically. "As a North Briton you surely forget that, Master."

"No, I don't," retorted Macjean. "I got too much of that when I was young."

"Being so aged now."

"Isn't that shabby?" said Otterburn good-humouredly, turning to Lady Errington. "He's always making fun of my age--as if youth were a crime."

"It's a very charming crime at all events," replied Alizon pleasantly; "don't you mind Mr. Gartney, he is a poet, and poets are always praising--and envying--youth."

That's true enough, said Eustace with a sigh, "all the poets from Mimnurmus downward have ever lamented the passing of youth. What a pity we can't always remain young."

"And why not? I don't count age by years, but by experience," said Lady Errington quietly. "One may be old at twenty and young at fifty."

Eustace, knowing what her experience had been, looked curiously at her fair placid face as she said this, and she must have guessed his thoughts, for a flush burned in her cheeks under his searching gaze.

"That's what I say," cried Guy, referring to his wife's remark. "If a fellow's got health, wealth and a good temper, the world's a very jolly sort of place."

"The best of all possible worlds, according to Voltaire," remarked Eustace, leaning back with a disbelieving smile, "but you've left out one ingredient which some people consider very necessary."

"And that is----?"

"Love!"

"Ab, I've got that," said Guy turning a fond eye on his wife.

"Lucky man, other people are not so fortunate."

"No," observed Otterburn with a huge sigh, having finished a very decent meal, "it's so difficult to procure the genuine article."

"Hark to the cynic of one-and-twenty," cried Gartney.

"It's your example, Eustace," observed Guy, producing a cigarette case, "but don't for Heaven's sake start a philosophical discussion on happiness. Why should the children of the king go mourning when the soothing weed is within reach? Have a cigarette, Macjean."

"Thank you--if Lady Errington----"

"Oh, I do not mind. Guy has habituated me to smoke. Light your cigarettes by all means."

Whereupon Otterburn accepted the small roll of paper and tobacco with much satisfaction, and was soon puffing away contentedly, Guy following his example.

"These are jolly good cigarettes," he said emphatically. "You can't get decent tobacco in Italy, so I smuggled these past the Customs at Chiasso. I suppose it's no use offering you one, Eustace?"

"Not in the least," responded Gartney smiling. "It's a pity to spoil this perfect fragrance with tobacco smoke."

"Ah, that's so like you poets--always sacrificing the comforts of life for the sake of its illusions. Well, we won't spoil your esthetic feelings on the subject, Come, Macjean, let us leave these two to continue the conversation, and we'll walk up and down till we finish our smoke."

Angus glanced enquiringly at Lady Errington, who smilingly gave the requisite permission, and was soon strolling up and down the terrace with Errington, talking sport, upon which subject both gentlemen were quite in accordance.

Left alone with Lady Errington, Eustace lay back in his deep chair gazing dreamily at her as she sat silent and pensive, fanning herself slowly with an absent expression in her blue eyes.

The charm of the scene, the influence of the hour, the presence of this pale, beautiful woman, and the delicate fragrance of the flowers which permeated the still air, all touched the poetical part of his nature, and he could not help wondering in his own mind how such a spiritual nature as that of Alizon Errington's could tolerate such a matter-of-fact man as her husband, who could leave her so calmly to talk sport with a shallow-minded boy. In this, however, Eustace Gartney was entirely wrong, as love is not to be measured by sentimental talk or silent adoration, and a man who loves a woman in an honest respectful fashion does not need to be constantly on his knees to prove the sincerity of his passion. But then Eustace, who believed in this exaggerated fashion of love-making, was a poet, and poets have whimsical ways of manifesting their sentiments.

From these musings he was aroused by the voice of his hostess, who had suddenly awakened to the fact that Eustace was silent, and feared she had neglected her social duties.

"You are singularly silent, Mr. Gartney!"

Eustace started suddenly as her voice struck on his ear, and looked idly at her with a vague smile on his lips.

"The influence of the hour and the scene, I suppose," he said idly; "one is always silent in Paradise."

"I should think that depended upon the absence or presence of Eve," replied Alizon demurely.

"Or of the serpent. Confess now, Lady Errington, the serpent was a charming conversationalist."

"And a bad companion--for a woman."

"No doubt Adam thought so--after the Fall."

"What a pity there should have been a Fall," said Lady Errington after a short pause. "It would have been a charming world."

"Humph! consisting of what the French call a _solitude à deux_."

"Oh, but I was supposing the Garden of Eden became populated. It would have been a world without sin or temptation."

"I beg 'your pardon. The trees of knowledge and life would still have been flourishing to tempt the primeval population nor do I suppose the wily serpent would have been wanting."

"Satirical, but scarcely true."

"Ah, but you see we're both talking the romance of what-might-have-been," said Gartney smiling, "so my view of the subject is no doubt as probable as your own. However this Italian Paradise with all its faults, consequent on our present-day civilization, has exquisite scenery, and if one were to live here for some years I daresay he would arrive at the nearest approach to primeval happiness possible in this world."

"I'm afraid we shall not have an opportunity of testing the truth of your assertion. We leave here in a fortnight, for Guy is longing for England and the country."

"A nostalgia of the coverts, I presume?"

"Exactly! 'It's a fine day, let us go and kill something.'"

Eustace laughed at this reply, as the neatness of it satisfied his somewhat cynical sense of humour.

"Don't you feel nostalgia yourself, Mr. Gartney?" asked Lady Errington, arranging the lilies at her breast.

He turned his expressive face towards her with a sad smile.

"Not of this earth! I am like Heine, _un enfant perdu_, and have a home-sickness for an impossible world."

"Created by your own fancy no doubt."

"Yes! Though I dare say if my fancy world became a real one it wouldn't be so pleasant as this one. After all, Chance is the most admirable architect of the future. When men like Sir Thomas More, Plato, Bulwer Lytton and the rest of them, have indulged in paper dreams of ideal worlds, they have always committed the fatal mistake of making the inhabitants insufferable bores, who have attained perfection--and when perfection is attained happiness ceases."

"How so?"

"Because the greatest pleasure in life is work, and when perfection renders work unnecessary, life becomes a lotos-eating existence."

"Well surely that is a very pleasant thing."

"To the few Yes, to the many No! Some men need constant excitement to make them enjoy life. I can quite understand Xerxes offering a reward to the man who could invent a new pleasure, for if Xerxes had not attained the perfection of debauchery, he would not have found existence a bore."

"You can hardly call such an ignoble height perfection," said Lady Errington quietly. "I should call it satiety."

"No doubt you are right. But what does it matter what we call it? the thing is the same."

"That sounds as if you spoke from experience, and at your age that can hardly be the case."

"I remember," observed Eustace a trifle satirically, "that a short time ago you said you measured youth by experience not by age. It is the same with me, I am only thirty eight years of age, yet in that short time I have exhausted all that life has to give."

"Surely not!"

Eustace Gartney laughed in a dreary, hopeless manner that showed how truly he spoke.

"I'm afraid it is," he remarked with a sigh. "I have been all over the world and seen what is to be seen. I have mixed with my fellow creatures and found the majority of them humbugs. I've been in love and been deceived. I've published books and been abused, in fact I've done everything possible to enjoy life, and the consequence is I'm sick of the whole thing."

"Your own fault entirely," said Lady Errington warmly, "as you have denied yourself nothing you now reap the reward of such indulgence and enjoy nothing. Your present satiety is the logical sequence of your own acts. Why not therefore try and lead a nobler and better life? Go among the poor and give them the help they so much need. Look upon your fortune as money entrusted to you, not to squander on unsatisfying pleasures, but to use for the benefit of humanity. Do this, Mr. Gartney, and I assure you the result will be satisfactory, for you will find in such well-doing the new pleasure which Xerxes desired but never obtained."

With a sceptical smile on his massive features Eustace listened to her earnest speech, and at its conclusion laughed softly in his own cynical manner.

"A most delightful view of one's duties to the world at large," he said satirically, "but hardly satisfactory. That recipe for happiness has been given to me before, Lady Errington, and is, I think, more charming in theory than in practice. Suppose I did take this advice you give me in the goodness of your heart, and went out into the world to play the thankless part of a philanthropist, what would I gain--only a more intimate knowledge of human selfishness and human iniquity. If I assisted A, a most deserving person from his own point of view, I've no doubt A would become my bitterest enemy because I had not done enough for him. I might rescue B from the workhouse, and B would consider me shabby if I did not support him for the rest of his natural life. As for C, well, I need not go through the whole alphabet, in order to illustrate my views of the matter, but I assure you, Lady Errington, if I employed my money in alleviating the distresses of my fellow creatures, I would get very little praise and a great deal of blame during my life, and when I died no doubt a short paragraph in a newspaper as 'an earnest but misguided philanthropist!' No! believe me I have thought deeply about the whole thing, and the game is not worth the candle."

"You look at things in a wrong light."

"In the only possible light, I'm afraid. Rose-coloured spectacles are not obtainable now-a-days."

"Still such a pessimistic view----"

"Is forced upon us by circumstances. This is the nineteenth century, you know, and we have no illusions left--they went out with religion."

"Well, I must try and convince you of the falsity of your views some other time," said Alizon closing her fan with a sigh, "but at present I see Guy and Mr. Macjean are coming to interrupt our conversation."

She rose to her feet as she spoke, a tall, slim, white figure, that seemed to sway like a graceful lily at the breath of the evening breeze. Eustace, ever prone to poetical impressions, made this comparison in his own mind as he left his chair and advanced with her to meet Guy and Angus.

"I say Alizon," cried Errington gaily as his wife came up, "just fancy! Aunt Jelly's ward, Miss Sheldon, is staying at the Villa Medici."

"Miss Sheldon," said Lady Errington reflectively, "is that the pretty girl I met at Miss Corbin's?"

"Yes! you remember. On the day we went to see Aunt Jelly and ask her blessing," replied Guy eagerly.

"Who is she with?" asked Lady Errington; "surely Miss Corbin----"

"Oh no," interrupted Eustace, mirthfully. "You might as well expect to meet the Monument abroad as Aunt Jelly. I asked Miss Sheldon all about it, and it appears that ever since her arrival from Australia she has been anxious to come to the Continent, so as a friend of Aunt Jelly's was making what she calls the 'grand tower' with her husband, this young lady was placed under their mutual protection."

"I wish she was under mine," said Otterburn audibly, on whom the charms of the young lady in question had evidently made a deep impression, "she's so awfully pretty."

"I'm afraid it would be a case of the blind leading the blind," remarked Eustace drily.

"By the way," observed Guy, "who is Miss Sheldon? I asked Aunt Jelly, but she told me, sharply, to mind my own business."

"Wasn't that rather severe?" said Alizon mildly.

"Not for Aunt Jelly," retorted her husband. "Aunt Jelly's a huffy old party, but she's got a weakness for Eustace, who doesn't object to be sat upon, so perhaps he knows about this young lady."

"I think I've got a hazy idea," assented Eustace leisurely, "she comes from the City of Melbourne, Australia, and her name is Victoria, called after our gracious Queen, or the Colony, I forget which. Sheldon _père_ was an admirer of our mutual aunt in the old days when she was flesh and blood instead of iron. He went out with a broken heart to the Colonies because Aunt Jelly wouldn't marry him--fancy any man breaking his heart for such a brazen image! Well, at all events, he made a large fortune out there, got married, became the father of one little girl, and then, his life's work being done, died, leaving his fortune to his daughter Victoria, and his daughter Victoria to dear Aunt Jelly, who cherishes her for the sake of the one romance of her youth."

"How cruelly you tell the story," observed Lady Errington in a rather disapproving tone. "I've only seen Miss Corbin once, but I think she's got a kind heart."

"Most people are said to have that, who possess nothing else," retorted Eustace grimly. "However, you now know who Victoria Sheldon is, and I won't deny she's pretty, very pretty."

"Very pretty," echoed Otterburn, with a sigh.

"You ought to marry her, Macjean," said Eustace, "she has plenty of money."

"I wouldn't marry a girl for her money alone," remonstrated Angus indignantly.

"Then take the American advice," said Sir Guy gaily, "never marry a girl for money, but if you do meet a nice girl with any, try and love her as hard as ever you can."

"I think I'll call and see Miss Sheldon," observed Alizon, after a pause, "for, as she is a ward of your Aunt's, I shall very likely see a good deal of her. Are the people she is with pleasant?"

"That," observed Eustace calmly, "depends greatly on individual taste. The Honourable Henry Trubbles is the most egotistical specimen of misshapen humanity I have ever met with, and his wife, whom he married for her money, is a modern edition of Mrs. Malaprop with a dash of Sary Gamp and a flavouring of the Sleeping Beauty."

"What a mixed description," said Errington laughing. "How does she resemble the Sleeping Beauty?"

"Only in sleeping."

"You make me quite curious to see her," cried Alizon smiling. "And if--well, I won't promise anything about what I intended yet."

"What did you intend?" asked her husband.

"To have a small dinner party, and give Mr. Macjean a real English dinner, but I'll first see how I like this extraordinary couple, and then--well, we'll see."

"It would be awfully jolly," said Otterburn, whose stock of adjectives was limited.

"I know it's 'awfully' late," remarked Eustace, in a tone of rebuke, "and we have just time to get back to dinner."

"To what they call a dinner."

"It's better than nothing at all events--well, goodbye, Lady Errington; thank you for a pleasant afternoon."

"Don't forget your way to the Villa Tagni," said Alizon as she shook hands, and the two gentlemen, having vowed warmly that they would not, made their adieux, leaving Sir Guy and his wife alone on the terrace.

"Well, Alizon," said Errington, jocularly, "and what do you think of my cousin, Eustace?"

"I think," replied Lady Errington slowly, "that he is the most unhappy man I ever met with in my life."