He certainly made a very good cocktail and with added appetite we ate the ham and anchovies with which our dinner began.
My host had a pleasant humour and his fluent conversation was agreeable.
“You must forgive me if I talk too much,” he said presently.
“This is the first chance I’ve had to speak English for three months.
I don’t suppose you will stay here long and I mean to make the most of it.”
“Three months is a long time to stay at Positano.”
“I’ve hired a boat and I bathe and fish.
I read a great deal.
I have a good many books here and if there’s anything I can lend you I shall be very glad.”
“I think I have enough reading matter.
But I should love to look at what you have.
It’s always fun looking at other people’s books.”
He gave me a sharp look and his eyes twinkled.
“It also tells you a good deal about them,” he murmured.
When we finished dinner we went on talking.
The stranger was well-read and interested in a diversity of topics.
He spoke with so much knowledge of painting that I wondered if he was an art critic or a dealer.
But then it appeared that he had been reading Suetonius and I came to the conclusion that he was a college professor.
I asked him his name.
“Barnaby,” he answered.
“That’s a name that has recently acquired an amazing celebrity.”
“Oh, how so?”
“Have you never heard of the celebrated Mrs Barnaby?
She’s a compatriot of yours.”
“I admit that I’ve seen her name in the papers rather frequently of late.
Do you know her?”
“Yes, quite well.
She gave the grandest parties all last season and I went to them whenever she asked me.
Everyone did.
She’s an astounding woman.
She came to London to do the season, and, by George, she did it.
She just swept everything before her.”
“I understand she’s very rich?”
“Fabulously, I believe, but it’s not that that has made her success.
Plenty of American women have money.
Mrs Barnaby has got where she has by sheer force of character.
She never pretends to be anything but what she is.
She’s natural.
She’s priceless.
You know her history, of course?”
My friend smiled.
“Mrs Barnaby may be a great celebrity in London, but to the best of my belief in America she is almost inconceivably unknown.”
I smiled also, but within me; I could well imagine how shocked this distinguished and cultured man would be by the rollicking humour, the frankness, with its tang of the soil, and the rich and vital experience of the amazing Mrs Barnaby.
“Well, I’ll tell you about her.
Her husband appears to be a very rough diamond; he’s a great hulking fellow, she says, who could fell a steer with his fist.
He’s known in Arizona as One-Bullet Mike.”
“Good gracious! Why?”
“Well, years ago in the old days he killed two men with a single shot.
She says he’s handier with his gun even now than any man West of the Rockies.
He’s a miner, but he’s been a cowpuncher, a gun-runner, and God knows what in his day.”