The Point of View: Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The restaurant of the Grand Hotel in Rome was filling up. People
were dining rather late--it was the end of May and the
entertainments were lessening, so they could dawdle over their
repasts and smoke their cigarettes in peace.

Stella Rawson came in with her uncle and aunt, Canon and the
Honorable Mrs. Ebley, and they took their seats in a secluded
corner. They looked a little out of place--and felt it--amid this
more or less gay company. But the drains of the Grand Hotel were
known to be beyond question, and, coming to Rome so late in the
season, the Reverend Canon Ebley felt it was wiser to risk the
contamination of the over-worldly-minded than a possible attack of
typhoid fever. The belief in a divine protection did not give him
or his lady wife that serenity it might have done, and they
traveled fearfully, taking with them their own jaeger sheets among
other precautions.

They realized they must put up with the restaurant for meals, but
at least the women folk should not pander to the customs of the
place and wear evening dress. Their subdued black gowns were
fastened to the throat. Stella Rawson felt absolutely excited--she
was twenty-one years old, but this was the first time she had ever
dined in a fashionable restaurant, and it almost seemed like
something deliciously wrong.

Life in the Cathedral Close where they lived in England was not
highly exhilarating, and when its duties were over it contained
only mild gossip and endless tea-parties and garden-parties by way
of recreation.

Canon and the Honorable Mrs. Ebley were fairly rich people. The
Uncle Erasmus' call to the church had been answered from
inclination--not necessity. His heart was in his work. He was a
good man and did his duty according to the width of the lights in
which he had been brought up.

Mrs. Ebley did more than her duty--and had often too much
momentum, which now and then upset other people's apple carts.

She had, in fact, been the moving spirit in the bringing about of
her niece Stella's engagement to the Bishop's junior chaplain, a
young gentleman of aesthetic aspirations and eight hundred a year
of his own.

Stella herself had never been enthusiastic about the affair. As a
man, Eustace Medlicott said absolutely nothing at all to her--
though to be sure she was quite unaware that he was inadequate in
this respect. No man had meant anything different up to this
period of her life. She had seen so few of them she was no judge.

Eustace Medlicott had higher collars than the other curates, and
intoned in a wonderfully melodious voice in the cathedral. And
quite a number of the young ladies of Exminster, including the
Bishop's second daughter, had been setting their caps at him from
the moment of his arrival, so that when, by the maneuvers of Aunt
Caroline Ebley, Stella found him proposing to her, she somehow
allowed herself to murmur some sort of consent.

Then it seemed quite stimulating to have a ring and to be
congratulated upon being engaged. And the few weeks that followed
while the thing was fresh and new had passed quite pleasantly. It
was only when about a month had gone by that a gradual and growing
weariness seemed to be falling upon her.

To be the wife of an aesthetic high church curate, who fasted
severely during Lent and had rigid views upon most subjects, began
to grow into a picture which held out less and less charm for her.

But Aunt Caroline was firm--and the habit of twenty-one years of
obedience held.

Perhaps Fate was looking on in sympathy with her unrest. In any
case, it appeared like the jade's hand and not chance which made
Uncle Erasmus decide to take his holiday early in the year and to
decide to spend it abroad--not in Scotland or Wales as was his
custom.

Stella, he said, should see the eternal city and Florence before
settling down in the autumn to her new existence.

Miss Rawson actually jumped with joy--and the knowledge that
Eustace Medlicott would be unable to accompany them, but might
join them later on, did not damp her enthusiasm.

Every bit of the journey was a pleasure, from the moment they
landed on French soil. They had come straight through to Rome from
Paris, where they had spent a week at a small hotel; because of
the lateness of the year they must get to their southern point
first of all and return northward in a more leisurely manner.

And now anyone who is reading this story can picture this
respectable English family and understand their status and
antecedents, so we can very well get back to them seated in the
agreeable restaurant of the Grand Hotel at Rome--beginning to
partake of a modest dinner.

Mrs. Ebley (I had almost written the Reverend Mrs. Ebley!) was
secretly enjoying herself--she had that feeling that she was in a
place where she ought not to be--through no fault of her own--and
so was free to make the most of it, and certainly these well-
dressed people were very interesting to glance at between
mouthfuls of a particularly well-cooked fish.

Stella was thrilling all over and her soft brown eyes were
sparkling and her dazzlingly pink and white complexion glowing
with health and excitement, so that even in the Exminster
confection of black grenadine she was an agreeable morsel for the
male eye to dwell upon.

There were the usual company there: the younger diplomats from the
Embassies; a sprinkling of trim Italian officers in their pretty
uniforms; French and Austrian ladies; as well as the attractive-
looking native and American representatives of the elite of Roman
society.

The tables began to fill up before the Ebleys had finished their
fish, and numbers of the parties seemed to know one another and
nod and exchange words en passant.

But there was one table laid for a single person which remained
empty until the entrees were being handed, and Stella, with her
fresh interest in the whole scene, wondered for whom it was
reserved.

He came in presently--and he really merits a descriptive paragraph
all to himself.

He was a very tall man and well made, with broad shoulders and a
small head. His evening clothes, though beautifully pressed, with
that look which only a thoroughly good valet knows how to stamp
upon his master's habiliments as a daily occurrence, were of
foreign cut and hand, and his shirt, unstarched, was of the finest
pleated cambric.

These trifles, however, were not what rendered him remarkable, but
that his light brown hair was worn parted in the middle and waved
back a la vierge with a rather saintly expression, and was
apparently just cut off in a straight line at the back. This was
quite peculiar-looking enough--and in conjunction with a young,
silky beard, trimmed into a sharp point with the look of an
archaic Greek statue, he presented a type not easily forgotten.
The features were regular and his eyes were singularly calm and
wise and blue.

It seemed incredible that such an almost grotesque arrangement of
coiffure should adorn the head of a man in modern evening dress.
It should have been on some Byzantine saint. However, there he
was, and entirely unconcerned at the effect he was producing.

The waiters, who probably knew his name and station, precipitated
themselves forward to serve him, and with leisurely mien he
ordered a recherche dinner and a pint of champagne.

Stella Rawson was much interested and so were her uncle and aunt.

"What a very strange-looking person," Mrs. Ebley said. "Of what
nation can he be? Erasmus, have you observed him?"

Canon Ebley put on his pince-nez and gave the newcomer the benefit
of a keen scrutiny.

"I could not say with certainty, my dear. A northerner evidently--
but whether Swedish or Danish it would be difficult to determine,"
he announced.

"He does not appear to know he is funny-looking," Stella Rawson
said, timidly. "Do you notice, Aunt Caroline, he does not look
about him at all, he has never glanced in any direction; it is as
if he were alone in the room."

"A very proper behavior," the Aunt Caroline replied severely, "but
he cannot be an Englishman--no Englishman would enter a public
place, having made himself remarkable like that, and then be able
to sit there unaware of it; I am glad to say our young men have
some sense of convention. You cannot imagine Eustace Medlicott
perfectly indifferent to the remarks he would provoke if he were
tricked out so."

Stella felt a sudden sympathy for the foreigner. She had heard so
ceaselessly of her fiance's perfections!

"Perhaps they wear the hair like that in his country," she

returned, with as much spirit as she dared to show. "And he may
think we all look funny, as we think he does. Only he seems to be
much better mannered than we are, because he is quite sure of
himself and quite unconscious or indifferent about our opinion."

Both her aunt and uncle looked at her with slightly shocked
surprise--and she saw it at once and reddened a little.

But this incident caused the remarkable looking foreigner to
crystallize in interest for her, especially when, in raising his
glass of champagne, she saw that on his wrist there was a bracelet
of platinum with a small watch set with very fine diamonds. She
could hardly have been more surprised if he had worn a ring in his
nose, so unaccustomed was she to any type but that of the curates
and young gentlemen of Exminster.

Canon and Mrs. Ebley finished their dinner in disdainful silence
and sailed from the room with chilling glances, but as Stella
Rawson followed them demurely she raised her soft eyes when she
came to the object of her relatives' contempt, and met his serene
blue ones--and for some reason thrilled wildly.

There was a remarkable and powerful magnetism in his glance; it
was as if a breath of some other world touched her, she seemed to
see into possibilities she had never dreamed about. She resented
being drawn into a far corner on the right hand of the hall, and
there handed an English paper to read for half an hour before
being told to go to bed. She was perfectly conscious that she was
longing for the stranger to come out of the restaurant, that she
might see him again.

But it was not until she was obediently following her aunt's black
broche train to the lift up the steps again that the tall man
passed them in the corridor. He never even glanced in their
direction, and went on as though the space were untenanted--but
had hardly got beyond, when he turned suddenly, and walked rapidly
to the lift door, passing them again. So that the four entered it
presently, and were taken up together.

Stella Rawson was very close to the remarkable looking creature.
And again a wild nameless attraction crept over her. She noticed
his skin was faintly browned with the sun, but was otherwise as
fine as a child's--finer than most children's. And now she could
see that three most wonderful pearls were his shirt-studs.

He got out on the second floor, one beneath them, and said,
"Pardon," as he passed, but not as a French word, nor yet as if it
were English.

During these few seconds Stella was quite aware that he had never
apparently looked at her.

"I call such an appearance sacrilegious," Mrs. Ebley said. "A man
has no right to imitate one of the blessed apostles in these
modern days; it is very bad taste."

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