Olura Read Online Free Page B

known Olura for
thirty-six hours, my recklessness, sympathy, devotion—whatever you like to call it—is inexplicable without its full background.
    It would be absurd to claim that I had fallen in love with her. She was in another world, and her character far too complex and difficult for a don with half his mind on relics of prehistory in
the Basque language. About the other half of it I have been crudely honest. I was very much aware that she was in holiday mood, unattached except for her duty to Mr Mgwana, and that if she were
feminine enough—she certainly was—to look for relaxation in captivating some casual male companion, I was available, sexually excited—a revolting phrase to express my
enchantment—and reasonably presentable.
    On that disastrous evening of July 21st I remember with astonishment that I was bored, and missed Vigny and des Aunes. Olura and Leopold Mgwana dined in Bilbao and did not return till after
eleven. On arrival she went up to have a bath. He was more interested in a long and tinkling drink, for the night was like a steam-room.
    He appeared most grateful for the afternoon’s tour. Having seen only towns, England, his own tropics and the desiccated coasts of Egypt and North Africa, the abrupt savagery of those green
mountains plunging to the Atlantic was strange to him. Half modest, half uneasy, he said that there must still be so many currents of European life which he did not understand.
    He told me with one of his deep chuckles that Olura considered me a member of the Establishment, but still with a soul to be saved. He was too practical a man not to be amused by her
over-enthusiasm. Yet, like Vigny, he thought her a person of importance, a mover of public opinion. I couldn’t believe he was right. In these days there is no salon influence corresponding to
that of the great Victorian and Edwardian hostesses. Olura’s entertainment of the citizens, prominent or promising, of new countries was well conceived and undoubtedly useful. But it was not
an exercise of power. It remained a generous and ambitious eccentricity.
    Mgwana left the lounge a little before midnight, saying that he had a couple of hours’ work before him. I read the local paper and then went up myself. Looking along the line of balconies,
I noticed that Olura’s light was still on. I remember thinking that she was not the type to draw curtains automatically and that, since there was nothing but the Biscay swell between Brittany
and her bedroom for three hundred miles, she would certainly prefer casements opening on the foam.
    I was in a first half-sleep, obsessed with pots of cactus and miniature orange trees—association with the sort of balcony Olura would have in London and the difficult choice of a seat
which would face Keats’ nightingale—when I heard my name being whispered. I sat up, and there was Olura standing just inside my own magic casement.
    ‘Don’t turn the light on!’ she said.
    The situation looked very hopeful. This approach fitted her self-imposed sincerity, and she was very scantily dressed so far as I could judge in the liquid, dark-blue shine from the sea behind
her. I slid out of bed and asked her to come in.
    ‘No. Philip, I need you in my room immediately. Along the balconies. I’ve just done it. The bedroom windows are all shut.’
    Her voice was steady, but there was something wrong with her breathing.
    ‘Are you ill, Olura?’ I asked.
    ‘No, no! come at once and don’t let anyone see you!’
    Obviously this was not an occasion for dressing-gown and pyjamas. What was up I couldn’t begin to guess; but whether it was a large moth or burglars or a violently overflowing lavatory
cisten, action had to be taken. So I grabbed beach shirt, trousers and sandals. After reconnoitring all visible balconies in case some romantic was leaning out to have a look at nothing, I slipped
across to her room. One of the wrought-iron barriers on the way was impassable except by way of