They stayed on the sh.o.r.e till the sky behind the castle glowed to a soft daffodil colour. Venables was a good companion; his limericks and his riddles and his anecdotes were nearly as silly, nearly as devoid of all point or relevance, as the Crevequers' own. He might have been capable, on occasion, of exercising a more grown-up and polished wit; but when he played with the Crevequers he admirably adapted himself to their young comprehension. He was a person of tact, when he chose to use it. He did not always choose. He had a habit--an insolent habit, his cousin called it--of wearing in his manner, plain to be read by the initiated, the shades of feeling which he merely did not think it worth while to hide better, because he relied, with careless, supercilious confidence, on the inapprehensiveness, the unreceptive blindness, of those with whom he came in contact. The world was, after all, in the main stupid; his own cleverness possibly sometimes overrated this stupidity; the swift enlightenment of a glance, the flash of some phrase, would occasionally rend his veil across and reveal him--even to the stupid--sitting, amused, contemptuous, discerning, behind his flimsy screen. This att.i.tude, of lurking in careless concealment, his cousin characterized as insolent.

'One should try not to insult people's intelligence more than one can help, I suppose,' she would observe.

'Well, but when they haven't got any----Anyhow, we all do it; one's got to in polite life,' he would aver, defending himself.

'They've mostly got some; and if one's real self sits despising and criticizing, one's outer self has no business to be a decoy. Even if the real self keeps quite behind the screen, it's unfair; and if it keeps looking out, as yours does, it's insolent as well. You insult them by as good as saying, "It's not much of a screen, but it will do for you. If you do see behind it sometimes, it doesn't matter very much; and if the people looking on, who know me better, see behind all the time, it doesn't matter in the least." A screen, to be at all courteous, should be impenetrable both to the people concerned and to the lookers-on; and even then it's not honest--one should quite withdraw.'

'You know, if one quite withdrew from all the people one doesn't quite like, one's world would get very limited.'

'Well, yes'--she wrinkled her forehead in doubt--'only they should know the terms, that's all.'

It was probable that Miss Varley might have disapproved of the manner of the homeward journey in the motor, for the Crevequers, who were slightly inexperienced, drove, as they had suggested, by turns; and behind Venables' screen of serenity his real self undoubtedly watched anxiously, and occasionally looked out, betraying itself by the nervous tension of the hands waiting in readiness to seize the wheel; the screen was, indeed, rather insultingly flimsy. They ran along the white coast road, with the gold of the west behind them, and the pale blue winter sea beside them, and the bright city of many hues growing larger in front of them as they circled the bay. They went much too fast, and it was very amusing.

'You must show Baja to my mother sometime,' Venables said. 'She has only visited it with the native guides so far; and you will be able to tell her so much that's interesting and new--very new.'

Betty sighed after that renounced game.

'I'm afraid not, do you know.... Tommy, you awfully nearly slew that goat. And I'm sure it's my turn now.'

She had swerved from the subject with a laudable impulse of shame, her first in this matter. At the same time, she knew very well that Venables minded nothing; also, that if she had looked at him his amused eyes would have twinkled into hers. That she did not might have been taken to imply in her the rudiments of a growing conscience; or possibly of a feeling that, though she and Tommy might laugh at a person's mother, the person might well keep out of it. His not resenting it--but this she did not word to herself at all, for she would not for some time know it--showed that he accepted so much, easily and without surprise.

Why resent that, of all things? it seemed to imply. It was, indeed, hardly worth a comment; it was so wholly in keeping; as he would have said, so obvious.

This easy, unsurprised acceptance of things as they were, in which Prudence Varley might have discovered insult, bore to the Crevequers no message, no implication. Their att.i.tude towards such tolerance was the measure of their inapprehensiveness.

But, as Betty had had her moment of half-realization, so Tommy had his.

Perhaps such moments came to the one whose turn to drive it was not, and who had therefore leisure to perceive. Tommy's moment came through _Marchese Peppino_. Betty observed, abstractedly, between fluctuating swerves and recoveries:

'Tommy's paper, you know ... has been getting into rows ... being sued for libel....'

Venables, his eyes on the road, his hand waiting in nervous readiness for emergency, said:

'Yes?... Mind that flock of goats.' It was, possibly, the distance of the flock of goats--quite two hundred yards--which partly gave Tommy his moment of enlightenment. Perhaps he had half known it before; anyhow, he took in freshly now that the large acceptance did not quite include _Marchese Peppino_. Even the tolerance of contempt has got, after all, to draw its line somewhere. Tommy almost took in, too, the slight lift of the brows, which might be taken to convey 'Does anyone really think it worth the sueing--that rag?' Venables himself had certainly the air of not thinking it, under any circ.u.mstances, in the least worth the sueing.

Tommy, his melancholy eyes on Venables' profile, faintly flushed.

CHAPTER VI

GRADONI

'Les clefs des portes sont perdues, Il faut attendre, il faut attendre, Les clefs sont tombees de la tour, Il faut attendre, il faut attendre, Il faut attendre d'autres jours....'

MAETERLINCK.

There are steep streets called _gradoni_, which climb up from the old town below to the new town above; their slope is a.s.sisted by shallow steps at intervals. So shallow are the steps that you hardly notice each as you take it. Not until you arrive at the top and look down on the ascending way do you perceive how its climbing was a.s.sisted. Of like nature is the ascending alley of human penetration. At the top is the daylight; in the a.n.a.logy, perceptiveness quite achieved.

In her ascending alley Betty should, by the end of February, have got far enough not to have taken Miranda Venables to lunch at the Trattoria Buonaventura with her friends Gina Lunelli and Morello, the painter. She met Miranda on Santa Lucia. Miranda remarked:

'I say, I'm jolly glad I've met you. I've lost Prudence. Mother sent me out with her to look at churches and things, because my ignorance is a disgrace, and Prudence stayed so long looking at some rotten mosaic things that I had to come out. Then we somehow missed each other, and I've been playing about alone. I say, I should think it would do if you showed me things, if I must see them. But there's nothing to see, is there? Nothing but the Aquarium, and I've seen that. Well, anyhow, I'll come round a bit with you, shall I, and then I can say I've seen something. Mother goes about with Murray; rotten book; I hate it. You haven't got it about you, have you?' she added suspiciously.

'No. You see, I'm a mine of information in myself. It is so nice to be well informed, isn't it?'

Miranda observed, between compliment and irony:

'You know an awful lot, I suppose.'

Betty nodded.

'One picks things up--one likes to learn. We might have a really instructive morning, only it's time for lunch. You'd better come and have lunch too. The Trattoria Buonaventura, in the Toledo--do you know it? No, probably not. I'm going to meet some friends there.'

'Well, I'll come. But it's only half-past twelve; it's a funny time for lunch.'

Betty supposed that it might seem so, remembering the breakfast at Parker's.

They went towards the Trattoria Buonaventura, and Betty pointed out objects cursorily, and, as a rule, with creditable veracity, by the way.

'The English church. Perhaps you know it, though? Is it nice inside?'

'No, it's not. But I don't like any churches; they're all stuffy. Mother keeps going to them, though she's an agnostic, you know. She hasn't got a religion--oh, I wasn't to say that; I mean she rejects dogmatic formulas--I think that's what she says. She won't let me reject them, because she says I'm not old enough to have thought it out yet.... What a funny place! Do you often come here? I love meals in restaurants, don't you?'

Miranda was introduced to Morello, the painter, whose ugly flexible face and expressive gestures set her wondering, and whose extraordinary skill at rapidly absorbing immense lengths of macaroni fascinated her. He talked with some vehemence, and did not seem to like to be interrupted.

Betty, who never left anyone out, talked to Miranda, and acted as interpreter. The Signorina Lunelli ate and drank a great deal, and smiled with immense cheerfulness; Miranda admired her large beauty and fine physique very much. All three, she perceived, were great friends, not only with each other, but with nearly every one in the room. It was a very sociable and merry meal.

'You don't smoke, I think?' Betty said, as the coffee arrived.

'I don't mind trying,' Miranda replied. 'I was ill last time, but that was three years ago. I was a kid then; besides, it was a cigar of Warren's. Dare say I could manage a cigarette now.'

'Oh, I wouldn't,' Betty counselled.

After about a minute and a half, Miranda wholly agreed with her. Her feeling when she looked up and saw her brother at the door was sheer relief.

'I expect Warren's come for me,' she said, coughing out a cloud of smoke.

Warren had come for her. It seemed that Mrs. Venables was anxious.

'I knew this was your lunch-place,' he explained to Betty, 'and we guessed she might be with you. I'm sorry to interrupt--but you have finished, haven't you? My mother will be anxious, you see.'

Miranda rose rather shakily and said good-bye. She had quite decided not to take to smoking.

The aspect which the episode bore of the rescue of a truant child from corrupting company was not a.s.sisted, certainly, by look or speech. It was perhaps an aspect obvious enough to be left to itself, unaccentuated and unadorned. Rather, indeed, it required, for courtesy's sake, modification. Venables possibly intended to give it this. He had greeted Betty and Gina and Morello (he had met these two before) with pleasantness. He always was pleasant to the Crevequers' friends, though the screen was sometimes rather flimsy. He was not, it seemed, shocked or annoyed to find his young sister smoking in such a restaurant among such company--merely his mother was anxious. His face, as his eyes had pa.s.sed from one to the other of his sister's companions, had been quite impa.s.sive. What gave to Betty such realization as she at the time got--it was not much--was mainly Mrs. Venables' anxiety, which must so hurriedly be appeased. Betty had not known Mrs. Venables for an anxious person; to be a fussing mother was to be _bornee_. But the suggestion was not aggressive. Partly the green tints of Miranda's round face served as a screen for the other elements in the situation. No one likes his sister to look sick in a restaurant.

So Venables informed Miranda as they drove to their hotel.

'It's not considered particularly good form, you know, to smoke in restaurants till you can do it fairly well. And, anyhow, that's not an especially elegant place to select for the purpose--or, for that matter, for any other purpose.'

'She always goes there,' Miranda returned limply.