AUTOCRAT’S ISLAND

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 809, 8 July 1933, Page 30 (Supplement)

AUTOCRAT’S ISLAND

*1

MARY HOWARD.

Author of " Windier Skies.**

CHAPTER I. A Woman Scorned. Dawn rose over Mont A 1 lasso gloriously ... a happening so beautiful that one would have thought the whole population would have risen to behold it, but the whole population, save for a few sailors, railwaymeu and suchlike, was still fast asleep. The population slept behind closed green shutters, underneath striped awnings, or behind expensive tussore blinds. It slept the sleep of the wicked and the righteous; even the selfsatisfied snore of replete wealth might be heard . . . but the dawn went on rising, serene in its loneliness. It flamed the sky with lemon and green, and turned one or two tiny clouds into pink chiffon roses. It touched the dusty palm trees and turned them into emeralds. Then with magic fingers it touched the great white masses of the hotels behind the plage and made chem into shining fairy places such as one would expect to see only on the legendary islands of the blest. A man sat on the edge of a wooden jetty in the harbour, dangling his shapely bare feet over the water and watching the sun rise. It seemed to him to give an added radiance to the water so that each spar, each sail and the painted sides of the ships were reflected more clearly than usual, dancing in the striped surface that breeze-ruffled water makes, dancing, dancing . . . and each ripple was tinged with the magic extra gold of the dawn. The man loved all this, for way down in his inward heart he was given to poetry and beauty, although he would have been both embarrassed and offended if one had accused him of such a thing. His mother was Italian, a Florentine, but he had been educated in England, his father's country, and therefore he was annoyed if people found out that he enjoyed the lovelier and softer things of life . . . although, being more or less intelligent, he had managed to forget his education. He sat on the side of the jetty and looked at the dawn and the ships and swung his bare feet. He wore a seaman’s coarse canvas shirt and rough blue trousers, his hair was thick and dark and wavy, and he looked rather like the faunlike St. John the Baptist in Parmiagino’s painting. That is to say, lie was tall, very tall, and beautifully muscled with the lithe and lovely muscle of one who is naturally strong and doesn't waste his time doing things to keep himself fit. He had a nice mouth, with strong, white teeth, and when he laughed his laughter rang and shouted, and he threw back his head and showed the muscles of his mighty throat. But he was not laughing now. He sat and dangled his feet and threw a pebble or two into the water and watched the dawn. There was a sound behind him. Tlie vague, soft sound of a footstep; and he turned with a heavy frown, and for all his Southern appearance remarked in perfect English: “Oh, Lord! You here again?’* The girl nodded, and sat down a few yards away on a little folding stool she had brought with her. The young man contemplated the dawn—and the girl contemplated him. i they sat there silently for a few minutes, then the man hunched liis shoulders impatiently, as though he could feel her glance on his back. ‘Can’t you look at something else?” he inquired impatiei^tly. “Why should I? I come here solely to look at you,” the girl assured him. “I think you are the only man worth looking at that I have seen in the whole of my short career. I realise, of course, that you probably have no brains—the peasant class never have —but just to look at you is extraordinarily satis.fying.” The peasant class! Confound her cheek! And his mother could trace her descent from the days of the Borgias! He drew his gaze away from the sea and regarded her curiously. It was the first time she had given any explanation for her presence on the jetty in the early dawn. She had been for four days past, in fact ever since she had arrived in the huge white yacht that lay in the harbour in front of them. At first he had thought she was another sun-worshipper like himself. But the steadfastness of her gaze, directed at himself, had at last convinced him that he was the object of interest. She evidently took him for a bit of local colour. “Maybe you'd like to put me in a glass case,” he suggested with heavy sarcasm. “Or stick me on a pin and label me?” “As a matter of fact I should l*»ve to,” she replied. “Not that I want to hurt you or curtail your liberty.” “Thank you, lady,” he murmured. “But I would like to have you somewhere safe. Somewhere where no one else can find you, and where I can go and look at you and please my eyes (which are tired of looking at tlie weeds that trail about the world in these enlightened times) with sheer masculine beauty!” The man swore mildly, and grinned. If his annoyance had permitted him really to see her, he would have found that” for all her exaggerated ego and apparent lunacy, she was well worth looking at. She had the air of one who has never had to ask for anything twice in her life. She might have been twentyone. She was fair, with a skin like white velvet, a straight little nose and a vividly red, impudent mouth. Her hair was yellow gold, perhaps by nature or j*erhaps by the most expensive art. It didn't matter . . it was lovely, anyway. She was rather small, slim, and dressed in white. A simple little dress that had probably cost all of ten guineas. The man, however, noticed none of these things. She was merely a woman who was trying .to pull his leg and he didn't like her. “What’s your name?” she asked suddenly. “Mine’s Roma Paul —and my father is the Mrs. Elmer Paul, of Paul’s Electricity Co. We own that yacht over there.” “How interesting,” said the man with a perfectly blank face. He wanted to go away and leave her. But he had found the place ... it was his place for watching the dawn from . . . there would be something undignified in retreat now. His supreme masculine conceit (the heritage of all men with the vaguest attempt at good looks, how- ] ever they deny it) was damaged and , he sought to restore it somehow. , “What is your name? What do you . dor And where did vou learn to speak , such perfect English?” inquired Roma imperiously.

, “My name is Jaime —” then he stopped. Why the devil should he tell her? An imp of mischief rose in liis eyes and he found a sudden amusement in the situation. He found his sense of humour and saw her beauty at the same time. The spoilt little idiot, he thought. Tlie spoilt pretty thing! He wondered just how far she would go. He grinned and began to lie to her, and his English was suddenly not so good. “My name is Jaime Mazzini . . .yes? I am a boatman here in the harbour. I can speak English because I was for five years in England.” “Oh, Oxford or Cambridge?” she asked mockingly. “Neither,” he lied. He was a Trinity man. “In Soho. One can learn to speak English well there, lady . . .all the best people come there sooner or later.” “Yes.”, she admitted, “they certainly do.” Then, her brow wrinkled with annoyance, she questioned: “You were a waiter?” “Yes,” he nodded complacently. An angry little frown came between her brows, and she took a cigarette from a tiny case, tapping it irritably before she lit it, throwing the match away into the water with an impatient flick. The dawn was not nearly so young and tender now. Already the air was beginning- to feel hot and the light had lost its lovely colours and was becoming yellow and ordinary. The sky had settled into a definite Madonna blue. Roma remembered it would soon be time for breakfast. , “It’s very annoying.” she said irritably. “I had got used to the idea of being attracted to some kind of fisherman. But to be in love with a waiter “Ex-waiter,” he said quickly. “Ex-waiter!” she repeated viciously. “It’s so ordinary. Tt*s so undignified. It’s the sort of thing that Monica Quorne would do. I mean I could tell people you were the world’s best-looking young man if you were a fisherman, and they would believe it. But a waiter. . . . they’d know at once you were some gigolo down on his luck.” Jaime raised his eyebrows. He quite agreed with her about Monica Quorne. He knew her quite well, and it was just tlie sort of thing the wonfun would do. Monica Quorne ... he shuddered. A man-eater if ever there was one. She had been after him last year at Lido, protesting that her affection was purely platonic. Heavens, but he hadn’t been able to get away fast enough . . even the aeroplane seemed to drag. This girl didn't look the Quorne type though. For one thing she was too young. “Is the signora going to adopt me, then?” he ventured. “Something of the kind,” she said, tapping her foot irritably. “We would, of course, not mention that you are a waiter.” “Of course. We could say I was a chauffeur .... or a hairdresser .... or anything. Does the signora usually find her lovers on the jetties .... in the dawn ?” The girl went as crimson as a schoolgirl, and rose indignantly to her feet. “Lover indeed! How dare you suggest such a thing?” “But the signora herself. . . .** he protested. “I said nothing of the sort,” she replied furiously. “How can you say such a thing? Merely because I’m tired of looking at the horrible faces of the young men of my own class, and because I can afford something decent to look at, and propose to buy it, you .... How dared you?” Tears shone in her eyes, tears of outraged and insulted girlhood. The man rose to his feet and stood towering above her, his hands deep in his pockets. Then he threw back his head and laughed. Laughed. Masculine, amused laughter, that seemed to echo across the harbour and shipping, to echo against the buildings on the shore and fill tlie world, right down into her very soul. For the first time in her egotistica') young life she felt exactly what she was All the flattering assurances of a bat talion of nurses, governesses, school mistresses, relations and boy friend: fell away. . . . she felt like a little girl who, while pretending to be a woman oi the world, had been badly found out All her assurance and the poise or which she prided herself, was lost, anc she stood in front of him fuming. “Stop laughing. How dare you laugl at me, you low beast!” “Oho Temper.” The man raised his eyebrows and continued to laugh a.*though some fresh amusement had beer added to the cause of his mirth. The tears hung on his long, thick Mack lashes and his teeth glistened ir the sunshine. In the midst of her anger she found herself thinking: “How bi own he is. . . . how strong . . . He turned away from her, walking along the stone pavement with a graceful, easy carriage, his hands deep in his pockets, still chuckling, his eyes alight with laughter. “Where are you going?” she called after him. “Will you be here tomorrow ?” Jaime called back over his shoulder., supremely male and contemptuous, enjoying his revenge to the full: “Maybe. . . . maybe in the dawn. ... or maybe in the moonlight. Maybe to see my Germaine, who is plump and pretty. . . . But not to see you, little signora, I do not want to see you. . . . not until you have grown up!” And he strode away on and round the corner of a great pile of baskets, and so out of sight. Roma stood still, watching his departure. If ever she had hated and wanted to hurt she did then. But more than to hurt she wanted, in the vulgar parlance, to “show him.” , She wanted to show him that she was not just a silly, useless little lady. . . . she was a woman, with a woman’s purpose, who had always had everything, yes, everything she had wanted from life. . . . and she could have him too, if she wanted. . . . She became suddenly conscious that the town and harbour were awake. All the blinds were up in the world and the chatter of the day’s amusement and commerce had begun. A hail from the yacht reminded her that breakfast would be waiting, and that she had promised to buy hats with the Quorne woman that morning. She picked up her camp stool and walked slowly and, it must be confessed, dejectedly, to the stone steps, at the foot of whieh her dinghy was moored. She climbed in aml pulled ofl across the oily water to the gleaming white side of the yacht. To be continued '