Phroso: A Romance. Hope Anthony
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 got it just now, but it’s gone again. Look here, though, I believe it’s one of those long things that end in poulos.’
‘Oh, it ends in poulos, does it?’ said I in a meditative tone.
‘My dear Charley,’ said Beatrice, ‘I shall end in Bedlam if you’re so very tedious. What in the world I shall do when I’m married, I don’t know.’
‘My dearest!’ said Mrs Hipgrave, and a stage direction might add, Business with brows as before.
‘Poulos,’ I repeated thoughtfully.
‘Could it be Constantinopoulos?’ asked Hamlyn, with a nervous deference to my Hellenic learning.
‘It might conceivably,’ I hazarded, ‘be Constantine Stefanopoulos.’
‘Then,’ said Hamlyn, ‘I shouldn’t wonder if it was. Anyhow, the less you see of him, Wheatley, the better. Take my word for that.’
‘But,’ I objected – and I must admit that I have a habit of assuming that everybody follows my train of thought – ‘it’s such a small place, that, if he goes, I shall be almost bound to meet him.’
‘What’s such a small place?’ cried Beatrice with emphasised despair.
‘Why, Neopalia, of course,’ said I.
‘Why should anybody, except you, be so insane as to go there?’ she asked.
‘If he’s the man I think, he comes from there,’ I explained, as I rose for the last time; for I had been getting up to go and sitting down again several times.
‘Then he’ll think twice before he goes back,’ pronounced Beatrice decisively; she was irreconcilable about my poor island.
Denny and I walked off together; as we went he observed:
‘I suppose that chap’s got no end of money?’
‘Stefan – ?’ I began.
‘No, no. Hang it, you’re as bad as Miss Hipgrave says. I mean Bennett Hamlyn.’
‘Oh, yes, absolutely no end to it, I believe.’
Denny looked sagacious.
‘He’s very free with his dinners,’ he observed.
‘Don’t let’s worry about it,’ I suggested, taking his arm. I was not worried about it myself. Indeed for the moment my island monopolised my mind, and my attachment to Beatrice was not of such a romantic character as to make me ready to be jealous on slight grounds. Mrs Hipgrave said the engagement was based on ‘general suitability.’ Now it is difficult to be very passionate over that.
‘If you don’t mind, I don’t,’ said Denny reasonably.
‘That’s right. It’s only a little way Beatrice – ’ I stopped abruptly. We were now on the steps outside the restaurant, and I had just perceived a scrap of paper lying on the mosaic pavement. I stooped down and picked it up. It proved to be a fragment torn from the menu card. I turned it over.
‘Hullo, what’s this?’ said I, searching for my eye-glass, which was (as usual) somewhere in the small of my back.
Denny gave me the glass, and I read what was written on the back. It was in Greek, and it ran thus:
‘By way of Rhodes – small yacht there – arrive seventh.’
I turned the piece of paper over in my hand. I drew a conclusion or two; one was that my tall neighbour was named Stefanopoulos; another that he had made good use of his ears – better than I had made of mine; for a third, I guessed that he would go to Neopalia; for a fourth, I fancied that Neopalia was the place to which the lady had declared she would accompany him. Then I fell to wondering why all these things should be so, why he wished to remember the route of my journey, the date of my arrival, and the fact that I meant to hire a yacht. Finally, those two chance encounters, taken with the rest, assumed a more interesting complexion.
‘When you’ve done with that bit of paper,’ observed Denny, in a tone expressive of exaggerated patience, ‘we might as well go on, old fellow.’
‘All right. I’ve done with it – for the present,’ said I. But I took the liberty of slipping Mr Constantine Stefanopoulos’s memorandum into my pocket.
The general result of the evening was to increase most distinctly my interest in Neopalia. I went to bed still thinking of my purchase, and I recollect that the last thing which came into my head before I went to sleep was, ‘What did she mean by pointing to the ring?’
Well, I found an answer to that later on.
CHAPTER II
A CONSERVATIVE COUNTRY
Until the moment of our parting came, I had no idea that Beatrice Hipgrave felt my going at all. She was not in the habit of displaying emotion, and I was much surprised at the reluctance with which she bade me good-bye. So far, however, was she from reproaching me that she took all the blame on herself, saying that if she had been kinder and nicer to me I should never have thought about my island. In this she was quite wrong; but when I told her so, and assured her that I had no fault to find with her behaviour, I was met with an almost passionate assertion of her unworthiness and an entreaty that I should not spend on her a love that she did not deserve. Her abasement and penitence compelled me to show, and indeed to feel, a good deal of tenderness for her. She was pathetic and pretty in her unusual earnestness and unexplained distress. I went the length of offering to put off my expedition until after our wedding; and although she besought me to do nothing of the kind, I believe that we might in the end have arranged matters on this footing had we been left to ourselves. But Mrs Hipgrave saw fit to intrude on our interview at this point, and she at once pooh-poohed the notion, declaring that I should be better out of the way for a few months. Beatrice did not resist her mother’s conclusion; but when we were alone again, she became very agitated, begging me always to think well of her, and asking if I were really attached to her. I did not understand this mood, which was very unlike her ordinary manner; but I responded with a hearty and warm avowal of confidence in her; and I met her questions as to my own feelings by pledging my word very solemnly that absence should, so far as I was concerned, make no difference, and that she might rely implicitly on my faithful affection. This assurance seemed to give her very little comfort, although I repeated it more than once; and when I left her, I was in a state of some perplexity, for I could not follow the bent of her thoughts nor appreciate the feelings that moved her. I was however considerably touched, and upbraided myself for not having hitherto done justice to the depth and sincerity of nature which underlay her external frivolity. I expressed this self-condemnation to Denny Swinton, but he met it very coldly, and would not be drawn into any discussion of the subject. Denny was not wont to conceal his opinions and had never pretended to be enthusiastic about my engagement. This attitude of his had not troubled me before, but I was annoyed