THE CHINK IN THE ARMOUR. Marie Belloc Lowndes
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Parisian invalids, too poor to go elsewhere, came to take medicinal waters, she felt a pang of disappointment. Lacville, as seen from the railway, is an unattractive place.
"Is this Madame's first visit to Lacville?" asked her fellow-traveller, helping her out of the railway carriage. "If so, Madame would doubtless like to make her way to the lake. Would she care to accompany us thither?"
Sylvia hesitated. She almost felt inclined to go back to Paris by the next train. She told herself that there was no hope of finding Anna in such a large place, and that it was unlikely that this dreary-looking town would offer anything in the least pleasant or amusing on a very hot day.
But "It will be enchanting by the lake!" she heard some one say eagerly. And this chance remark made up her mind for her. After all, she might as well go and see the lake, of which everyone who mentioned Lacville spoke so enthusiastically.
Down the whole party swept along a narrow street, bordered by high white houses, shabby cafés, and little shops. Quite a crowd had left the station, and they were all now going the same way.
A turn in the narrow street, and Sylvia uttered a low cry of pleasure and astonishment!
Before her, like a scene in a play when the curtain is rung up, there suddenly appeared an immense sunlit expanse of water, fringed by high trees, and bordered by quaint, pretty châlets and villas, fantastic in shape, and each surrounded by a garden, which in many cases ran down to the edge of the lake.
To the right, stretching out over the water, its pinnacles and minarets reflected in blue translucent depths, rose what looked like a great white marble palace.
"Is it not lovely?" said the Frenchman eagerly. "And the water of the lake is so shallow, Madame, there is no fear of anyone being drowned in it! That is such an advantage when one has children."
"And it is a hundred times more charming in the afternoon," his wife chimed in, happily, "for then the lake is so full of little sailing-boats that you can hardly see the water. Oh, it is gay then, very gay!"
She glanced at Mrs. Bailey's pretty grey muslin dress and elegant parasol.
"I suppose Madame is going to one of the great restaurants? As for us, we shall make our way into a wood and have our luncheon there. It is expensive going to a restaurant with children."
She nodded pleasantly, with the easy, graceful familiarity which foreigners show in their dealings with strangers; and, shepherding their little party along, the worthy pair went briskly off by the broad avenue which girdles the lake.
Again Sylvia felt curiously alone. She was surrounded on every side by groups of merry-looking people, and already out on the lake there floated tiny white-sailed boats, each containing a man and a girl.
Everyone seemed to have a companion or companions; she alone was solitary. She even found herself wondering what she was doing there in a foreign country, by herself, when she might have been in England, in her own pleasant house at Market Dalling!
She took out of her bag the card which the landlord of the Hôtel de l'Horloge had pressed upon her. "Hôtel Pension, Villa du Lac, Lacville."
She went up rather timidly to a respectable-looking old bourgeois and his wife. "Do you know," she asked, "where is the Villa du Lac?"
"Certainly, Madame," answered the old man amiably. "It is there, close to you, not a hundred yards away. That big white house to our left." And then, with that love of giving information which possesses so many Frenchman, he added:
"The Villa du Lac once belonged to the Marquis de Para, who was gentleman-in-waiting to the Empress Eugénie. He and his family lived on here long after the war, in fact"—he lowered his voice—"till the Concession was granted to the Casino. You know what I mean? The Gambling Concession. Since then the world of Lacville has become rather mixed, as I have reason to know, for my wife and I have lived here fifteen years. The Marquis de Para sold his charming villa. He was driven away, like so many other excellent people. So the Villa du Lac is now an hotel, where doubtless Madame has friends?"
Sylvia bowed and thanked him. Yes, the Villa du Lac even now looked like a delightful and well-kept private house, rather than like an hotel. It stood some way back—behind high wrought-steel and gilt gates—from the sandy road which lay between it and the lake, and the stone-paved courtyard was edged with a line of green tubs, containing orange trees.
Sylvia walked through the gates, which stood hospitably open, and when she was half-way up the horseshoe stone-staircase which led to the front door, a man, dressed in the white dress of a French chef, and bearing an almost ludicrous resemblance to M. Girard, came hurrying out.
"Madame Bailey?" he exclaimed joyously, and bowing very low. "Have I the honour of greeting Madame Bailey? My cousin telephoned to me that you might be coming, Madame, to déjeuner!" And as Sylvia smiled in assent: "I am delighted, I am honoured, by the visit of Madame Bailey!"
Sylvia laughed outright. She really could not help it! It was very nice and thoughtful of M. Girard to have telephoned to his cousin. But how dreadful it would have been if she had gone straight back to Paris from the station. All these kind people would have had their trouble for nothing.
M. Polperro was a shrewd Southerner, and he had had the sense to make but few alterations to the Villa du Lac. It therefore retained something of the grand air it had worn in the days when it had been the property of a Court official. The large, cool, circular hall into which the hotel-keeper ushered Sylvia was charming, as were the long, finely decorated reception-rooms on either side.
The dining-room, filled with small oval tables, to which M. Polperro next led his honoured guest, had been built out since the house had become an hotel. It commanded a view of the lake on the one side, and of the large, shady garden of the villa on the other.
"I have arranged for Madame a little table in what we call the lake window," observed M. Polperro. "As yet Lacville is very empty. Paris is so delightful," he sighed, "but very soon, when the heat comes, Lacville will be quite full," he smiled joyously. "I myself have a very choice clientèle—I do not deal with rubbish." He drew himself up proudly. "My clients come back to me year after year. Already I have six visitors, and in ten days my pension will be au grand complet. It is quality, not quantity, that I desire, Madame. If ever you know anyone who wishes to come to Lacville you may safely recommend them—I say it with my hands on my heart," and he suited his action to his words—"to the Villa du Lac."
How delightful it all was to Sylvia Bailey! No wonder her feeling of depression and loneliness vanished.
As she sat down, and looked out of the bay window which commanded the whole length of the gleaming, sun-flecked lake, she told herself that, pleasant as was Paris, Lacville on a hot day was certainly a hundred times pleasanter than Paris.
And the Casino? Sylvia fixed her blue eyes on the white, fairy-like group of buildings, which were so attractive an addition to the pretty landscape.
Surely one might spend a pleasant time at Lacville and never play for money? Though she was inclined to feel that in this matter of gambling English people are curiously narrow. It was better to be philosophical about it, like that excellent Frenchwoman in the train, who had not grudged her husband a little amusement, even if it entailed his losing what she had described as "hard-earned money."
Though she had to wait nearly half an hour for her meal, the time passed quickly; and when at last déjeuner was served to her well and deftly by a pleasant-faced young waitress dressed in Breton costume, each item of the carefully-prepared meal was delicious. M. Polperro had not been chef to a Princess for nothing.
Sylvia Bailey was not greedy, but like most healthy people she enjoyed good food, and she had very seldom tasted quite such good food as that which was served to her at the Hôtel du Lac on this memorable June day.
She had almost finished her luncheon when a fair young man came in and sat down at a small table situated at the other end of the dining-room, close to the window overlooking the garden of the Villa du Lac.
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