Proper Pride: A Novel (Complete‪)‬

December in Malta is very different from that month in England. There is no snow, no black frost, no fog; a bright, turquoise-blue sky, and deep indigo sea, smooth as glass, and dotted here and there with the white sails of fishing-boats, make a becoming background for this buff-coloured island. The air is soft, yet exhilarating; a perfume of oranges, cheroots, and flowers pervades the atmosphere. Little boys, with superb dark eyes, are thrusting delicious bunches of roses and heliotrope into the hands of passers-by, and demanding “sixpence.” The new piano-organs are grinding away mercilessly at the corner of every street. A trooper, a Peninsular and Oriental, and a vicious-looking ironclad are all in simultaneously, and Valetta is crammed. Such, at least, was the scene one December afternoon, not many years ago. It was the fashionable hour; the Strada Reale was full of shoppers, sightseers, and loungers; half the garrison were strolling up and down. Fat monks in brown, thin nuns in black, fruitsellers, Maltese women in their picturesque faldettas, soldiers, sailors, rich men, poor men, beggar men, and no doubt thieves, thronged the hot white pavement.

Outside Marîche’s, the well-known tobacconist, two young men, bearing the unmistakable stamp of the British warrior of the period, were smoking the inevitable weed.

Cox, “the horsey,” with hands in pockets, was holding forth at intervals, to Brown, “the blasé,” and ladies’ man par excellence, of the gallant smashers.

“Never saw such a hole as this is in my life—never! No hunting, no shooting, no sport of any kind. Think of all the tiptop runs they are having at home now! If The Field is to be believed, there never was such going; nor, for the matter of that, such grief. Here we are—stuck on an island; water wherever you look; not a horse worth twenty pounds in the place!”

“Oh come, my dear fellow,” remonstrated his friend, “what about the Colonel’s barb, and half-a-dozen others I could mention?”

“Well, not a hunter, at any rate, and that’s all the same. If we are left here another year, I believe I shall cut my throat—or get married.”

Looking at his companion with critical gravity, to see how he took this tremendous alternative, but observing no wonderful expression of alarm or anxiety depicted on his face, he continued to puff furiously at the cigar, which he held almost savagely between his set teeth. Suddenly he exclaimed:

“By Jove, there’s that Miss Saville that all the fellows are talking about! Why she’s nothing but a schoolgirl after all.”

“Nevertheless, she is the prettiest girl in Valetta,” replied Mr. Brown, taking his cheroot out of his mouth and gazing with an air of languid approval after a tall slight figure, in a well-cut blue serge costume, that, in company with an elderly lady, was crossing the Palace Square.