The hidden fountains murmur among the trees and the sun stabs at the lovers, a dagger bright as diamonds through the branches. This place will do for me, my dear cousin. While our famous neighbour meditates his next stanzas and Mr. Bowler stays a while at the Hotel Rialto in Venice, I am mistress here. Knowing my nature as you do, you may imagine whether or not it suits me to have the lynx-eyed Miss Jones at twenty and the nymph Marit at fifteen as my playthings.
I will tell you at once that some rascal in the past has constructed a secret spy-hole in either wall of my own boudoir which enables the occupant to watch whatever passes in the other two bedrooms. Add to all this the delights of the Villa Lola and its gardens. At night one walks on this terrace and sees the lights twinkle across the water from Malcesine and Bardolino. The air is laden with scents of thyme and eucalyptus, ancient as Catullus himself. One hears the distant beat of the steamer's paddles, the cicadas among the olive trees, and the drifting music of mandolins from a cafe in the little town below us. Enough of such things, my dear Augustus. You can find the details of geography in Herr Baedeker's guides. It is beauty of another sort, the knowing eyes and seductive limbs, that has made the Villa Lola memorable to me.
Yesterday afternoon, when the heat of the day began to dwindle and the sky above the lake turned a deeper blue, I took my parasol and made an excursion into our little lakeside town. It is a place constructed entirely for the pleasures of the elegant and the discerning. To either side of the pink-paved promenade, the shore at the foot of the hills extends in castellated villas with green walled gardens or cream-coloured palazzi whose waterfront windows peep out among the hanging purple of wisteria and vines. A fine crimson bougainvillea climbs to the very eaves of the Hotel Savoy. With my footman at a little distance behind me I watched the green water rock in a gentle swell as the afternoon steamer churned out from the jetty and headed north to the narrower and more mountainous end of the Lago di Garda. The street which lies behind the palms and cafes of the promenade is no mere jumble of greengrocers and coffee shops. It is the haunt of the beau monde, where the couturiers of the Via Roma or the Rue de Rivoli offer their creations next to windows displaying the finest work of the jeweller and goldsmith, which the Place Vendome could scarcely rival. Like so many temples to the goddess of beauty, these boutiques line either side of the street. If you doubt the standing of Mr. Bowler in such matters, you need only see the splendid emporium which he has taken for the summer in order to display so many velvet gowns and silken dresses. In our society, my dear Augustus, he is despised as a mere shopkeeper or a man of trade. Here he is the arbiter of style and the confidant of nobility. Many a countess or a duchess will wait her turn for half an hour of his advice in the matter of her wardrobe. In England, the squire's lady or the wives of the bourgeoisie would speak of him as “Bowler” or “the tailor,” and never pay his bill. Here in the summer society of Garda, where beauty is more than rank, he is known and addressed as “Milor.” By the same token, our neighbour the sublime poet is “Signore” to all the world.
Am I not fortunate, dear Gussie, to have “Milor” and “Signore” as my two protectors and providers in this delightful resort? So I stood in the peach-yellow sunlight of the Italian afternoon and admired Mr. Bowler's summer premises. Behind the plate-glass windows, the waxy limbs of slim mannequins stood like the figures of an entablature, motionless in morning-gowns or driving-costumes, riding breeches and promenade-dresses, silken tea-gowns or evening satin worn tight and sleek over hips and seat. You may be sure it was not the wax slaves with their innocent eyes and parted lips which had drawn a group of well-dressed gentlemen to admire the display of fashion. Among their cold polished limbs stood another figure whose warm gold skin pulsed a little with the flow of blood and the tremor of passion. It was no other than Miss Jones! It is greatly to your disadvantage, Augustus, that you have never met Miss Jones. I assure you she would soon cure you of your pale mewling attachment to the little strumpet who has had the impudence to seduce your affections at present. They call her Carissima here. How shall I describe Miss Jones to you? She is a randy little wriggler of twenty years old or so. Her figure is neat and its golden skin gives her the look of a Mediterranean or perhaps Egyptian lineage. Though she is English by speech and birth, a serpent of old Nile was perhaps her grandmother. In the tight-lidded slant of her almond eyes, in the long slope of her brown and sharp young nose, there is a hint of passion and perversity. One of her little vanities is to vary the style of her coiffure according to the fashion of her age. At fifteen years old, Miss Jones's dark hair was close-cropped. By seventeen, as if she had passed from being a working-girl to a model of sophistication, it was worn long and put up into an elegant beehive dome on the crown of her head. A year or two more and she preferred it sleek but shorter, brushed back from the tall slope of her forehead and rounded at her nape, for all the world like a randy young temple priestess of Rameses himself. Now her taste has changed again. Her crowning glory is a short upward-brushed crop of lightly curled hair. You may be sure that it was not merely the art of the young coiffeuse which had attracted the attention of these gentlemen in the warm boulevard. Miss Jones was busy among the mute immobile effigies which displayed the creations of Paris and Rome. It was not a labour to be performed in flowing hems and starched petticoats. By no means. This aforesaid “randy little wriggler” had chosen to display herself in a costume which must have stiffened the manhood of every gentleman who passed by. She wore a white blouse which fitted a little too tight for decency. One cannot deny, of course, that it told the world of her pert little breasts, nipples erect from the friction of cotton, and a slim straight back which came down to a narrow waist. You see no great harm in that, Augustus, do you? Many a schoolgirl wears such a blouse. But few beauties of the fourth or fifth forms would dare show themselves dressed from the waist down in Miss Jones's style. The little minx had availed herself of a pair of riding-jeans, which fitted tight as on the hips and thighs of a heroine riding the range!
Indeed, I swear that Miss Jones was deliberately taunting her admirers by wearing pants which were a size too small for her. You may imagine the sight she presented. In England there would have been a complaint to the magistracy and a stop put to such scandalous display.
Happily, we have stronger constitutions here. Some of those who now admired her yearned only for a chance to browse with their lips upon the delicate moulding of her bare brown neck, uncovered by the upward brushing of her dark curls, or to murmur and kiss the neat whorls of her ears with their little pearls at each lobe. The rest stared at her lower limbs and groaned with adoration. In the tight fit of denim, her legs and thighs appeared trim and quite slender, her hips lithe and perfectly rounded. Her warm gold body has the qualities of neatness and energy, a reward which any man might covet. Miss Jones's bottom was perfectly outlined by the tight seat of the denim. Its cheeks are deliciously round, yet taut and resilient, never fat.
Moreover, the pronounced upward branching of her thighs from the knees had a charmingly lewd effect. When she bends or kneels forward, the warm swellings of Miss Jones's buttocks are widely and deeply parted in a most suggestive manner. It will not surprise you, then, that those who now admired her licked their lips and sighed with adoration, each gentleman feeling that the front of his trousers had grown uncomfortably tight. There was one lad, no more than sixteen, who appeared to be carrying in his trouser pocket the head of a very large hammer. Miss Jones stared out across the sunlit promenade, the feline beauty of her almond eyes under their tight lids unmoved by the staring desire of the onlookers. Yet she was not unaware of their helpless longing. She moved about her tasks, walking with a tight little swagger to exaggerate the rounding and twitching of her bum-cheeks, as if mocking those who yearned and moaned. I crossed over to a cafe, just opposite, and ordered tea, so that I might witness the conclusion of this drama without myself being the subject of attention. One by one the men dispersed, having tried in vain to engage Miss Jones's interest by promises of every kind of reward if only she would make them lords of her bed. It was the lad with the hammer in his pocket who remained at last. By this time, the sun was slanting lower above the western hill and shooting with gold the wavelets of the lake. The girl, with a little brush, was brushing up the nap of the felt on the floor where the wax models stood. With the nimbleness of her fine-boned hands she worked energetically, driving the brush round in tight circles. What a view she offered as she worked away vigorously on all fours for the next twenty minutes!