PAUL strolled out on to the quay after dinner. It was his first night in St. Antoine and he was feeling very good after a couple of apéritifs, a cuisine bourgeoise dinner, and a bottle of white wine.
The sun had disappeared behind the old houses round the port, and lights were coming out in the cafés. The whole town seemed to be out for a promenade, and Paul thought it all looked very like the scene in a ballet or an opera. Girls in bright-coloured shawls were walking up and down arm-in-arm, talking and laughing and very conscious of the matelots, smart in their flat white hats with red pompons and blue-and-white suits, who were standing about in groups with the fishermen. The high masts and crossed rigging of sailing boats moored right up to the town made patterns against the twilit sky.
Paul went into a big café with its tables spilling across the pavement, sat down and ordered coffee and a fine. He looked round hoping he might see his friend of the train who had disappeared so abruptly the night before; for though he’d looked for her among the crowd on Marseille station that morning, he could not find her, nor had she been on the afternoon train to St. Antoine. Whether she had already come here or was staying in Marseille he did not know, and worse still he did not know her name. There was no sign of her in the café—though, sure enough, here were the “bright young people in bright young jumpers.” Everyone seemed to be burnt the colour of mahogany, and wearing what to Paul’s inexperienced eye was fancy dress. At the next table a stout figure in a little pair of shorts and a pale blue-and-white sleeveless tricot, surmounted rather surprisingly by a square-cut beard, a ferocious expression, and a monocle, was engaged in earnest conversation with a slim-hipped blond whose mouth was painted to match her scarlet béret. As Paul watched them they were joined by a brunette in black pajamas and a young man whose costume appeared to be in faithful imitation of Tom Mix. Amid a babel of talk he could distinguish English, Russian, American, German—very little French.
Waiters rushed about between the crowded tables performing feats of balance with drink-laden trays.
Outside, someone was playing a guitar.
Paul turned to look at a long yellow-and-black Hispaño-Suiza which had just drawn up in front of the café with a gentle purr of its engine. Most of the people at the tables seemed to know the occupants, and conversation died down while greetings were shouted to them. A man got out of the driver’s seat. Dressed to match his car, he wore a saffron-yellow tricot tucked into beautifully creased black trousers. He was tall and lithe, and Paul caught a momentary glimpse of almost jet-black eyes in an olive-skinned face, before he turned to speak to someone in the car. He had evidently been dining extremely well and swayed a little on his feet. A man who got out the other side and strolled round the bonnet, patting it nervously as he passed, presented an extraordinary contrast to him. His clothes were rather eccentric, consisting of a very wide pair of almost white corduroy trousers, liberally bespattered with paint, a vividly checked shirt open at the neck, and a black béret. He looked between thirty and forty, obviously an Englishman, with a humorous, deeply lined face, rather a big nose, and a long upper lip. Surveying the company through half-closed eyes, he waved a vague greeting in answer to shouts from the various tables, before turning to a girl who was getting out of the car. Evidently a popular figure, and an interesting-looking chap, Paul thought. But his attention was immediately concentrated on the third person, who stepped on to the pavement and slipped her hands into the arms of the two men. Very young and slim, she was hatless, and her chestnut-brown shingled hair, disordered by a drive in the open car, was blown back from her face. Her fresh white linen frock was moulded to her figure and was short and sleeveless, showing up the startling tan of her arms and legs. Paul stared at her small oval face with its flowerlike mouth and half rose from his chair. At last, it was the girl of the train. But he sank back again; she seemed to know everyone in the place and was laughing and talking with people at the tables round her.
“We represent Brueghel’s picture of the Blind leading the Blind. Imitation, very difficile!” he heard her say. “My dears, I’m so glad to be back from the land of fogs and savages. It was raining, as usual.”
She disentangled one of her hands to receive the kiss of an immaculate youth who bent over it, saying, “I salute thee, O Moon of my delight! Did you survive the perils of the P.L.M.?” (Paul could have killed him.)
“Barely,” she smiled. “I arrived completely shattered, but Ben and I have been dining at the Rich Man’s Table and he stayed us with flagons and comforted us with caviar.”
“Talking of flagons—” said the Englishman in the check shirt, and started to pilot her across to a vacant table. Halfway over she caught sight of Paul in his corner. She stopped dead. All the laughter went out of her face, she paled and flushed, and then suddenly making up her mind she murmured an excuse to the two men with her and crossed over to Paul’s table. She held out her hand with a friendly smile. Paul stood up and greeted her eagerly.
“I say, it is nice to see you. I’ve been looking for you all the evening,” he said, and was puzzled to see the curious expression that seemed very like fear flash across her face. It was quickly replaced by a smile as she sat down in the chair he offered her. (Of course he’d been mistaken.)
“I think it’s very nice of you to say so after the appalling way I rushed off last night,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I was—I was terribly afraid you were a journalist on my tracks when you asked me if I knew Adelaide Moon because—well, I am Adelaide Moon myself, you see.”
Before he could speak she rushed on: “I don’t mean that I’m suffering from delusions that the whole of Fleet Street is hanging on my lips—but I have just had a show in London now, and I do so loathe being interviewed. You’ve no idea how humiliating it is to read things like ‘Girl Artist thinks women should use lipstick,’ just because some of one’s miserable canvases are hanging in a well-known gallery. I assure you!” as Paul laughed.
“Why, last year the Cube Gallery bought one of my paintings; it was one I did down here of a Provençal farmhouse and there happened to be a woman and a child sitting there while I was working so I put them in—rather a good design it made. My dear, would you believe it—the Ladies’ World wanted my views on Motherhood! When I come down here to paint I never tell anyone where I’m going or even leave an address for letters. It makes me feel absolutely free—and this place is so personal and absorbing that I forget all about any other life, and then I can begin to paint.”
“Yes, I can absolutely understand that,” said Paul. “It is amazingly full of character and flavour down here—London seems quite a vague memory to me already. As a matter of fact, until you came in I was feeling rather like a disembodied spirit, not knowing a soul here. Everyone seems to know everyone else.”
She laughed. “We’ll soon put that right,” she said. “I want you to come over and meet a great friend of mine, Benvenuto Brown. Yes, over there in the check shirt. He’s a perfect darling—I’ve known him for ever,” she added, and refusing his offer of a drink she led him across to the table where the two men were sitting. They stood up as she approached. Judging by the drinks on the table, they had not been idle.
“Ben, I want to introduce you to a friend of mine, Mr.—” She hesitated, looked at Paul and laughed.
“Paul Ashby,” he said, shaking hands with the Englishman, thinking as he did so that it would take him a long time to catch up in the matter of drinks. The Englishman was looking mellow and amiable, while the man in the yellow jumper had apparently reached the morose stage. Adelaide introduced him.
“Don Hernandez de Najera, Mr. Ashby,” she said. “He’s got a lot of other names as well, but that’s all I can manage at the moment.”
De Najera bowed stiffly and then smiled down at Adelaide in a way that Paul found himself very much disliking.
“What are you two going to drink?” asked the Englishman as they seated themselves; and as he leant back to order brandies and sodas Paul turned to Adelaide.
“Er—did you say his name was Benvenuto Brown?” he asked her quietly. She laughed.
“It really is,” she said, and then, confidentially, “I do hope you’re going to like him. He’s a most frightfully nice and frightfully interesting person—but he’s just a little bit drunk to-night.” She leant across the table. “Ben, Mr. Ashby wants to know if you were really christened Benvenuto.”
He was surveying the world through half-closed eyes from behind a cloud of smoke, a pipe in the corner of his mouth, his chair tipped back, and wearing an expression at once dry and benign. He nodded gravely. “I had that honour,” he said. “Possibly it does merit explanation. I understand my parents were drawn together in the first instance by a mutual enthusiasm for the Fine Arts which eventually led them to Italy on a honeymoon, Ruskin and Baedeker in hand. It appears that they discovered Florence to be their spiritual home and decided to settle there. When I burst on an astonished world about a year later my mother, having determined to give birth to an artist, decided to call me Benvenuto. I understand she dallied with the idea of Fra Angelico for a time, but a nice ear for alliteration finally decided her choice.”
He paused and they raised glasses.
“Oh, Ben, I would love to meet your mother,” laughed Adelaide. “She must be a perfect pet.”
“I’m afraid there isn’t a hope, my dear,” said Benvenuto. “She is, as you say, a pet—but having practically raised me in the Uffizi she cannot bring herself to forgive me for being conscious of the existence of Picasso. You see, painting, or Art as she prefers to call it, is her religion, and she thinks my mild efforts with the brush are positively blasphemous. She’s always been rather a vague person and I think she tries to forget that she brought someone into the world who has turned out an exponent of cubism, dadaism, vorticism, or what not. She’s accused me of each in turn.”
He drained his glass and called for more drinks, and the talk became general. De Najera, however, remained silent, drinking hard, with a sullen expression on his handsome, rather vicious face. Benvenuto Brown also appeared to be getting extremely drunk, and Paul looked with some disgust at his vague smile and half-closed eyes. He was trying to draw De Najera into a conversation, but the latter either could not or would not respond.
Suddenly a rather prim-looking woman at the next table got up and, followed by her husband, left the café, glaring at them as she did so. Adelaide laughed.
“Ho, I ses, and swep’ out,” she murmured. She turned to Paul.
“I can’t think why people like that come down here. Those people have been here for weeks, disapproving violently of the whole place. They hate our costumes, manners, and customs—so why not leave us alone? I do so resent the cold breath of disapproval on our innocent pleasures.”
Benvenuto put down his glass with a crash and, rising with as much dignity as his unsteady legs would muster, addressed the café.
“My friends,” he said, “we must all have noticed from time to time a dishthreshing tendency amongst the bourgeoisie—hic—of all nations to regard the artist,” drawing himself up, “as a creature of strange habits and unbridled passions.” He turned round to frown at the author of a feeble cheer, and continued.
“I feel that the time has come to dishpel this illusion and to show ourselves to the world as we are—as we have been—from Tintoretto to Tonks—gentle creatures of domestic habits, moderate drinkers—hic—fond of children and dogs.”
He paused amid loud cheering and drained his glass. He turned and shook his fist at a mild-looking little man who was silently sipping his lemonade.
“You tell me Van Gogh cut off his ear and sent it to his mistress when she betrayed him. Now I put it to you—wouldn’t a business man have cut off hers?”
He glared fiercely round. “Can anyone here tell me of a single instance of an artist who has committed a social scholeshism greater than being late for meals?” He happened to catch Paul’s eye, who grinned nervously and said:
“What about Adolphus Smith?”
Benvenuto wrung him by the hand.
“My dear sir, a thousand thanks. The crowning point to my argument. The great modern example of the artist’s craving for domesticity, developed to such an exshtent that the man begins to found a family wherever he goes.”
Benvenuto subsided into his chair amidst laughter. By this time the whole café had gathered round them and people were standing on chairs and tables. Tom Mix had the black pajamaed girl perched on his shoulder, where she was screaming with laughter, and the bearded man in his infantile blue-and-white costume was listening with his mouth open while his blond companion translated Ben’s speech into his ear.
“Quel type,” he said, looking at Ben.
De Najera was at last roused from his apathy. He put his arm across Benvenuto’s shoulders.
“You will drink with me, my friend,” he said thickly. He stared round at the crowd of people and summoned the patron, who hurried up all smiles, evidently knowing his man. De Najera went on: “You are all my friends—you will all drink with me,” he indicated the company with a wide sweep of his arm.
“I will give you music, dancing, wine—you will come with me.”
Adelaide pulled at his arm.
“Not to-night,” she whispered. “Another time.”
He seized her hand and kissed it.
“Lady, I obey, but to-morrow—to-morrow night, I invite you all to Les Palmiers and we will dance and drink.”
He passed his hand across his forehead, evidently trying to remember something. “Yes, I will come back from Cannes in time. Tomorrow night at nine.”
He looked round. People were whispering to one another, but they all accepted with enthusiasm.
“You must come,” Adelaide murmured to Paul. “Hernandez’s parties are always marvellous. You and I and Ben will go together—dine with me first.”
Paul thanked her and agreed eagerly. This place was exceeding his wildest expectations.
Meanwhile trays of drinks were arriving and people were settling down at their own tables, some talking in low voices and casting covert glances at De Najera, who drained his glass and relapsed into a stupor. Paul wondered what they were saying. He thought he’d take advantage of an interval and ask a question that he’d had on the tip of his tongue for some time. Even Benvenuto seemed to have got past talking and was blinking down at a vague drawing he’d made on the table top. Paul turned to Adelaide.
“What I’ve been wanting to ask you all the evening is—do you know a man called Adrian Kent?”
De Najera’s chair went back with a crash as he leapt to his feet. Paul looked at him in amazement.
The man’s eyes were flashing, his face was dark with fury.
“Adrian Kent?” he shouted. “He murdered my sister!”
Before Paul could open his mouth he felt a hard grip on his arm, and a voice said: “Don’t take any notice of him. He’s drunk. Help me get him out of here, quick!”
Paul felt as if he were going mad. For it was Benvenuto Brown speaking. The blinking half-closed eyes were wide open, amazing eyes, of steely clear blue that changed his entire face as he looked at Paul commandingly, urgently. The amiably smiling mouth had set in a hard line, and he issued curt directions to Paul under his breath. The man was dead sober.
De Najera had slumped across the table. As they went to help him out Paul looked round for Adelaide. She had disappeared.