Quest of the Golden Girl Part 16

CHAPTER VII

"COME UNTO THESE YELLOW SANDS!"

Nothing further happened to me till I reached Yellowsands, except an exciting ride on the mail-coach, which connected it with the nearest railway-station some twenty miles away. For the last three or four miles the road ran along the extreme precipitous verge of cliffs that sloped, a giant's wall of gra.s.sy mountain, right away down to a dreamy amethystine floor of sea, miles and miles, as it seemed, below. To ride on that coach, as it gallantly staggered betwixt earth and heaven, was to know all the ecstasy of flying, with an added touch of danger, which birds and angels, and others accustomed to fly, can never experience. And then at length the glorious mad descent down three plunging cataracts of rocky road, the exciting rattling of the harness, the grinding of the strong brakes, the driver's soothing calls to his horses, and the long burnished horn trailing wild music behind us, like invisible banners of aerial bra.s.s,--oh, it stirred the dullest blood amongst us thus as it were to tear down the sky towards the white roofs of Yellowsands, glittering here and there among the clouds of trees which filled the little valley almost to the sea's edge, while floating up to us came soft strains of music, silken and caressing, as though the sea itself sang us a welcome. Had you heard it from aboard the Argo, you would have declared it to be the sirens singing, and it would have been found necessary to lash you to the mast. But there were no masts to lash you to in Yellowsands--and of the sirens it is not yet time to speak.

It was the golden end of afternoon as the coach stopped in front of the main hotel, The Golden Fortune; and for the benefit of any with not too long purses who shall hereafter light on Yellowsands, and be alarmed at the name and the marble magnificence of that delightful hotel, I may say that the charges there were surprisingly "reasonable," owing to one other wise provision of the young lord and master of that happy place, who had had the wit to realise that the nicest and brightest and prettiest people were often the poorest. Yellowsands, therefore, was carried on much like a club, to which you had only to be the right sort of person to belong. I was relieved to find that the hotel people evidently considered me the right sort of person, and didn't take me for a Sunday-school treat,--for presently I found myself in a charming little corner bedroom, whence I could survey the whole extent of the little colony of pleasure. The Golden Fortune was curiously situated, perched at the extreme sea-end of a little horse-shoe bay hollowed out between two headlands, the points of which approached each other so closely that the river Sly had but a few yards of rocky channel through which to pour itself into the sea. The Golden Fortune, therefore, backed by towering woodlands, looked out to sea at one side, across to the breakwater headland on another, and on its land side commanded a complete view of the gay little haven, with its white houses built terrace on terrace upon its wooded slopes, connected by flights of zigzag steps, by which the apparently inaccessible shelves and platforms circulated their gay life down to the gay heart of the place,--the circular boulevard, exquisitely leafy and cool, where one found the great casino and the open-air theatre, the exquisite orchestra, into which only the mellowest bra.s.s and the subtlest strings were admitted, and the Cafe du Ciel, charmingly situated among the trees, where the boulevard became a bridge, for a moment, at the mouth of the river Sly. Here one might gaze up the green rocky defile through which the Sly made pebbly music, and through which wound romantic walks and natural galleries, where far inland you might wander

"From dewy dawn to dewy night, And have one with you wandering,"

or where you might turn and look across the still lapping harbour, out through the little neck of light between the headlands to the s.h.i.+mmering sea beyond,--your ears filled with a melting tide of sweet sounds, the murmur of the streams and the gentle surging of the sea, the rippling of leaves, the soft restless whisper of women's gowns, and the music of their vowelled voices. It was here I found myself sitting at sunset, alone, but so completely under the spell of the place that I needed no companion. The place itself was companion enough. The electric fairy lamps had popped alight; and as the sun sank lower, Yellowsands seemed like a glowing crown of light floating upon the water.

I had as yet failed to catch any sight of Rosalind; so I sat alone, and so far as I had any thoughts or feelings, beyond a consciousness of heavenly harmony with my surroundings, they were for that haunting unknown face with the violet eyes and the heavy chestnut hair.

Presently, close by, the notes of a guitar came like little gold b.u.t.terflies out of the twilight, and then a woman's voice rose like a silver bird on the air. It was a gay wooing measure to which she sang.

I listened with ears and heart. "All ye," it went,--

All ye who seek for pleasure, Here find it without measure-- No one to say A body nay, And naught but love and leisure.

All ye who seek forgetting, Leave frowns and fears and fretting, Here by the sea Are fair and free To give you peace and petting.

All ye whose hearts are breaking For somebody forsaking, We'll count you dear, And heal you here, And send you home love-making."

"Bravo!" I cried involuntarily, as the song ended amid mult.i.tudinous applause; and I thus attracted the attention of another who sat near me as lonely as myself, but evidently quite at home in the place.

"You haven't heard our sirens sing before?" he said, turning to me with a pleasant smile, and thus we fell into talk of the place and its pleasures.

"There's one feature of the place I might introduce you to if you care for a stroll," he said presently. "Have you heard of The Twelve Golden-Haired Bar-maids?" I hadn't, but the fantastic name struck my fancy. It was, he explained, the name given to a favourite buffet at the Hotel Aphrodite, which was served by twelve wonderful girls, not one under six feet in height, and all with the most glorious golden hair. It was a whim of the management, he said.

So, of course, we went.

CHAPTER VIII

THE TWELVE GOLDEN-HAIRED BAR-MAIDS.

Now it was not without some boyish nervousness that I followed my newly made friend, for I confess that I have ever been a poor hand at talking to bar-maids. It is, I am convinced, an art apart, an art like any other,--needing first the natural gift, then the long patient training, and finally the courageous practice. Alas for me, I possessed neither gift, training, nor courage. Courage I lacked most of all. It was in vain that I said to myself that it was like swimming,--all that was needed was "confidence." That was the very thing I couldn't muster. No doubt I am handicapped by a certain respectful homage which I always feel involuntarily to any one in the shape of woman, for anything savouring of respect is the last thing to win the bar-maid heart divine. The man to win her is he who calls loudly for his drink, without a "Please" or a "Thank you," throws his hat at the back of his head, gulps down half his gla.s.s, and, while drawing breath for the other half, takes a hard, indifferent look at her, and in an off-hand voice throws her some fatuous, mirthless jest.

Now, I've never been able to do this in the convincing grand manner of the British male; and whatever I have said, the effect has been the same. I've talked about theatres and music-halls, of events of the day, I've even--Heaven help me--talked of racing and football, but I might as well have talked of Herbert Spencer. I suppose I didn't talk about them in the right way. I'm sure it must be my fault somewhere, for certainly they seem easy enough to please, poor things! However, my failure remains, and sometimes even I find it extremely hard to attract their attention in the ordinary way of business. I don't mind my neighbour being preferred before me, but I do object to his being served before me!

So, I say, I couldn't but tremble at the vision of those golden-haired G.o.ddesses, standing with immobile faces by their awful altars. Indeed, had I realised how superbly impressive they were going to be, I think I must have declined the adventure altogether,--for, robed in l.u.s.trous ivory-white linen were those figures of undress marble, the wealth of their glorious bodies pressing out into bosoms magnificent as magnolias (n.o.bler lines and curves Greece herself has never known), towering in throats of fluted alabaster, and flowering in coiffures of imperial gold.

Nor was their temple less magnificent. To make it fair, Ruskin had relit the seven lamps of architecture, and written the seven labours of Hercules; for these windows through a whole youth Burne Jones had wors.h.i.+pped painted gla.s.s at Oxford, and to breathe romance into these frescos had Rossetti been born, and Dante born again. Men had gone to prison and to death that this temple of Whiskey-and-Soda might be fair.

Strange, in truth, are the ministrations to which Beauty is called.

Out of the high heaven is she summoned, from mystic communion with her own perfection, from majestic labours in the Sistine Chapel of the Stars,--yea, she must put aside her gold-leaf and purples and leave unfinished the very panels of the throne of G.o.d,--that Circe shall have her palace, and her wors.h.i.+ppers their gilded sty.

As there were at least a score of "wors.h.i.+ppers" round each Circe, my nervousness became unimportant, and therefore pa.s.sed. Thus, as my companion and I sat at one of the little tables, from which we might gaze upon the sea without and Aphrodite within, my eyes were able to fly like bees from one fair face to another. Finally, they settled upon a Circe less besieged of the hoa.r.s.e and grunting mob. She was conspicuously less in height, her hair was rather bright red than golden, and her face had more meanings than the faces of her fellows.

"Why," in a flash it came to me, "it's Rosalind!" and clean forgetting to be shy, or polite to my companion, I hastened across to her, to be greeted instantly in a manner so exclusively intimate that the little crowd about her presently spread itself among the other crowds, and we were left to talk alone.

"Well," I said, "you're a nice girl! Whatever are you doing here?"

"Yes, I'm afraid you'll have but a strange opinion of me," she said; "but I love all experience,--it's such fun,--and when I heard that there was a sudden vacancy for a golden-haired beauty in this place, I couldn't resist applying, and to my surprise they took me--and here I am! Of course I shall only stay till Orlando appears--which," she added mournfully--"he hasn't done yet."

Her hours were long and late, but she had two half-days free in the week, and for these of course I engaged myself.

Meanwhile I spent as much time as I decently could at her side; but it was impossible to monopolise her, and the rest of my time there was no difficulty in filling up, you may be sure, in so gay a place.

Two or three nights after this, a little before dinner-time, while I was standing talking to her, she suddenly went very white, and in a fluttering voice gasped, "Look yonder!" I looked. A rather slight dark-haired young man was entering the bar, with a very stylish pretty woman at his side. As they sat down and claimed the waiter, some distance away, Rosalind whispered, "That's my husband!"

"Oh!" I said; "but that's no reason for your fainting. Pull yourself together. Take a drop of brandy." But woman will never take the most obvious restorative, and Rosalind presently recovered without the brandy. She looked covertly at her husband, with tragic eyes.

"He's much younger than I imagined him," I said,--reserving for myself the satisfaction which this discovery had for me.

"Oh, yes, he's really quite a boy," said Rosalind; adding under her breath, "Dear fellow! how I love him!"

"And hate him too!" she superadded, as she observed his evident satisfaction with his present lot. Indeed the experiment appeared to be working most successfully with him; nor, looking at his companion, could I wonder. She was a sprightly young woman, very smart and merry and decorously voluptuous, and of that fascinating prettiness that wins the hearts of boys and storms the footlights. One of her characteristics soothed the heart of Rosalind. She had splendid red hair, almost as good as her own.

"He's been faithful to my hair, at all events," she said, trying to be nonchalant.

"And the eyes are not unlike," I added, meaning well.

"I'm sorry you think so," said Rosalind, evidently piqued.

"Well, never mind," I tried to make peace, "she hasn't your hands,"--I knew that women cared more about their hands than their faces.

"How do you know?" she retorted; "you cannot see through her gloves."

"Would any gloves disguise your hands?" I persisted. "They would s.h.i.+ne through the mittens of an Esquimau."

"Well, enough of that! See--I know it's wickedly mean of me--but couldn't you manage to sit somewhere near them and hear what they are saying? Of course you needn't tell me anything it would be mean to hear, but only what--"

"You would like to know."

But this little plot died at its birth, for that very minute the threatened couple arose, and went out arm in arm, apparently as absurdly happy as two young people can be.

As they pa.s.sed out, one of Rosalind's fellow bar-maids turned to her and said,--

"You know who that was?"

"Who?" said Rosalind, startled.

"That pretty woman who went out with that young Johnny just now?"

"No; who is she?"