Free Blood Royal by Dornford Yates Page B

she had everything to gain by inaction and nothing to lose.
    By folding her hands at Anger, she might well have escaped a future to her more repulsive than death. Yet she had come out to fight…
    The matter passed my understanding, and I would very gladly have put it out of my mind: but this I could not do, and that for a reason which I think I have made plain enough.
    George Hanbury was speaking, as though to himself.
    “‘Vanity of Vanities,’” he said slowly. “‘All is vanity.’ And that’s a peach of a watchword for a couple of fools who are going to Vanity Fair.”
    “One fool,” said I quickly.
    “Two,” said George. “If I had any sense, I should take you back to Maintenance – if necessary, by force.”
     
    We lunched very well and simply beneath the awning of a tavern in the heart of the town. Far above us the bells of the cathedral rang with a pleasing jingle each quarter of the hour: on the roof of an aged house we could see a stork, like a sentry, beside his nest: an apothecary’s faced us, with monks behind the old counter and a Latin superscription above the door, and next to this stood a handsome white-stone cinema-house, whose boards announced a film which was being shown in London two months before.
    In the streets, which were old and paved, yokes of oxen went plodding by the side of open taxis as silent of movement as themselves, and peasants, clad in white linen and wearing embroidered sashes and waistcoats laced with gold, were mingling with men and women whose attire would have passed unremarked in the Place Vendôme.
    Later, when we went strolling, we found these curious conditions on every side. Ancient and modern fashions seemed to thrive knee to knee, and primitive styles and manners were neighboured by others which might have come straight from Paris the day before.
    When, however, we sought an hotel, there was none to be found, and a man we accosted advised us to go to the station, if we had need of a bed. Thither we accordingly went, but the lodging offered us was shameful, and I would sooner have slept on the riverside.
    We then returned to the tavern where we had lunched and asked the host to recommend us an inn, but to our dismay he immediately mentioned the station as affording the only shelter which we could possibly use. When we protested, the fellow threw up his hands. Vigil, he declared, had boasted two handsome hotels before the Great War: as luck would have it, the one vying with the other, each had been wholly refitted in 1914 – this at prodigious expense which the custom sure to be attracted was to defray: instead of increasing their custom, the black years which followed had taken even that which they had and had brought them both to ruin, so that one was now the War Office and the other had been turned into flats. There were inns, he said, for the peasants, but at these we should find no bedding nor so much as a private room, and, though there was always the monastery, the discipline there was a byword, and at nine o’clock of the evening the doors were shut.
    This unexpected setback disordered our simple plans, for, our personal comfort apart, we were especially anxious not to attract attention and had, to that end, decided to make no use of the Rolls, but to lay her up in some garage until we should need her again. Now, however, it seemed that, since there was no room in Vigil, we should have to leave the city and put up at some country inn and – what was far worse – go to and fro daily, because the Grand Duchess was expecting that I should be within call. The more I considered such a shift, the less I liked it, and I was wondering desperately whether we could find a house-agent and hire some flat or apartment for two or three weeks, when the landlord, who had left us staring, came back and ventured to ask us whether we were proposing to make some considerable stay.
    George shrugged his shoulders.
    “Man proposes, but Vigil disposes,” he said. “How the