"Is she going to your place?"
"At three o'clock she will be there. You had better come a little earlier."
"I shall not come at all," Vanno blazed out, with violence. "She believes already that I've persecuted her. I won't give her reason to think it."
"Poor child, she is very unhappy," the curé sighed, meekly.
"At least, it isn't I who have made her so."
"Perhaps it is herself, and that is sadder—to have only herself to blame. You say you must be allowed to go to the devil in your own way. Well, you are a man. You do not want another man, even if he be a priest, to try and save you. But she needs a man to save her, a strong man who loves her well. She is drifting, without a rudder. She told me to-day—with such a look in her eyes!—that she has 'gambler's blood' in her veins. Only one thing can save her now, for she has got the idea in her head that she is the victim of Fate. The one thing is: an interest ten million times greater than gambling—Love."
The blood rushed to Vanno's face.
"I'm not fit——" he stammered.
"The soul that's in you is fit to do God's work, for love is part of God. 'Thy soul must overflow,if thou another's soul would reach.' Now, my son, I won't keep you any longer. At two-thirty to-morrow in my garden."
He did not remember until he was halfway up the mule path that he had meant to speak of Idina Bland.
There came a moment when it seemed to Mary that she had promised to do an undignified thing, a thing which would make Vanno respect her less than ever. To go out deliberately to meet him, after all that had passed!—it was impossible. She must send a message to the curé saying that she could not come to his garden.
She even began such a letter, late on the night after his call; but as she wrote, the good brown eyes of the priest seemed to look at her, saying, "I thank you for trusting me." Then she tore up the sheet of paper, and went on trusting him blindly. She slept better afterward than she had slept since Christmas, her first night in the Villa Bella Vista.
Mary's habit was to go to the Casino every morning as soon as the doors opened, and she paid the artist whom she had met in the Paris train to seize a place for her, in the rush of early players. For doing this he received ten francs, which gave him two stakes at roulette, and sometimes enabled him to play for several hours before he was "cleaned out." She had lost a good deal by this time; all her original winnings, and had begun to fall back on her own capital, for her luck had never returned for more than a few hours together. A hateful sense offailure was upon her. She was feverishly anxious to get back her losses, not so much for the money's sake as for the pleasure of "beating the bank," as she had continually beaten it at first. Once, she had had the great white, good-natured animal under her feet, and people had looked at her with wondering admiration, as if she had been Una leading an obedient lion. Now the admiring looks, tributes to her lovely face and pretty clothes or jewels, were tempered with pity. The lion had Una in his mouth. There seemed to be no question in the public mind as to how he would eventually dispose of her. Mary felt the difference keenly. She could hardly submit to it. She wanted desperately to do something which, in every sense, would turn the tables. She risked huge sums in a wild hope that her courage might conquer luck, that again she might know the peculiar joy, the indescribable thrill of seeing the "bank" send for more money. Yet deep down within her a voice said that the moment would never come again; and she had no longer her old gay confidence in placing her stakes.
The crowds had ceased to collect round her table, to watch the "wonderful Miss Grant." It is the sensational wins, where piles of gold and notes mount up, that people rush to gaze upon. They are not amused by seeing money monotonously swept off the tables, even in immense sums. It discourages and depresses them. Nobody likes to be discouraged and depressed; therefore Mary had lost her audiences. Still she played on, and listened to no advice.
This morning, however, when she woke to remember her promise to the curé, she felt oddly disinclined to go to the Casino. Usually she wakened, after dozing fitfully, dreaming over again last night's worries, with an almost tremulous longing to be at the tables once more, a longing that seemed even more physical than mental, an aching of the nerves. Now the burning desire was suddenly assuaged, or forgotten in the powerful sway of a new thought, as illness can be forgotten in sudden fear or joy. The Casino appeared unimportant, trivial. All there was of her was already on the mountain, in the little garden which Rose Winter had said was like fairyland.
Mary did not wish to be questioned by anybody in the house, however; so she went out at the usual hour, found her employé in the long queue of those who waited before the Casino doors, paid him, and said that he might keep the seat for himself. She then went to walk on the terrace, hoping that no one she knew might be there: and it seemed likely that she would have her wish, for most of her acquaintances were keen gamblers who considered a morning wasted outside the Casino.
Mary walked to the eastern end of the terrace, where theascenseurcomes up from the level of the railway station below. She remembered how she had heard the little boy give his musical cry, and how she had looked out of the train window, and his smile had decided her not to go on. If she had gone on, how different everything would have been, howmuch better perhaps; and yet—she could not be sorry to-day, as she was sometimes in bitter moments, that she had come to Monte Carlo.
As she stood by the balustrade, looking away toward Italy, a voice she knew spoke behind her. She turned, and saw Hannaford, his hat off, his marred face pale in the sunshine.
"Oh," she said impulsively, "I think you're the one person I could endure talking to just now!"
Since the night of the ball on the yacht, when they had sat on the terrace in the moonlight, they had become good friends, she and Hannaford. She had no feeling of repulsion for him now. That was lost in pity, and forgotten in gratitude for the sympathy which made it possible to confide in him as she could in no one else. He stood entirely apart from other men, in her eyes, as he seemed to stand apart from life, and out of the sun. When she spoke to him of her troubles or hopes it was not, to her, as if she spoke to a man like other men, but to a sad spirit, who knew all the sadness her spirit could ever know.
Often they had walked here together on the terrace, but it was usually in the afternoon, when Hannaford could persuade her out of the Casino for a few minutes, to "revive herself with a breath of fresh air," or to see the gold-and-crimson sunset glory behind the Rock of Hercules. Since Hannaford had won the money he wanted for the buying of his villa, he had kept his resolution not to play seriously; but he spent a good deal of time in theCasino, unobtrusively watching over Mary. He did not feel the slightest desire to play, he told Carleton, and other men who were amused or made curious by the sudden change in him. He had a "new interest in life," he explained; and every one took it for granted that he meant the villa, now his own. But he never said it was that which had made life better worth living for him.
"If it's a question of bare endurance of me, I'll go," he answered Mary's greeting, "and leave you to walk by yourself."
"No," she assured him. "I'd really like to have you. I thought I wanted to be alone. But I see now that being with you is better."
Hannaford drew in a long breath of the exquisite air, and looked up into the sunshine as if for once he did not feel himself unfitted for the light. "Do you really mean that, I wonder?" he asked in a low voice.
"Yes. I wouldn't say it if I didn't," Mary answered with complete frankness. "How do you happen to be here at this time of day?"
"To tell the truth, I saw you go down the steps, and followed to ask the same question."
"I came, because for some reason I have to be out of doors. Icouldn'tgo into the Rooms! I'd take a long walk, if I knew where to go."
"Good. I'm glad to hear it. Will you let me guide you somewhere, and give you a surprise?"
Mary looked undecided. "I'd like that. But I have an engagement this afternoon. Not in theCasino—or anywhere at Monte Carlo. It's up at Roquebrune. I have promised to go and see the—the curé's garden there."
"I'll bring you back from my expedition in plenty of time, if that's all," said Hannaford. He did not urge, but Mary knew that he very much wanted her to say yes.
"Will it be out of doors?"
"All the time out of doors, except for a few minutes when you're looking at a curiosity. First we have to get to Mentone. I'll spin you over there in a taxi. Then we can walk to—to the surprise. I'm sure you've never been."
"Is it to see your villa?" Mary asked, for he had suggested her going there some day.
"No, for I wouldn't take you to my house alone. We're not very conventional, you and I, I'm afraid; but there must be a party for your first visit to my 'castle in Spain' transplanted into Italy. I'll give you, and any people you like to ask, a picnic luncheon over there. But to-day I want you to lunch with me alone somewhere."
There was rather an odd ring in his voice, which made Mary look up quickly, but his face was calm, even stolid, as usual; and she thought that she had been mistaken. She put herself quietly into his care, feeling the comfort of perfect ease in his companionship. She could talk to him if she chose, or be silent. Whatever she liked, he too would like.
Half an hour later the taxi which Hannaford had hired stopped at the bridge dedicated to the Empress of Austria, the bridge which marks the dividing line between the communes of Roquebrune and Mentone. Then the two walked along the sea front, where the spray spouted gold in the sun, and a salt tang was on the breeze. It was a different world, somehow, from the world of Monte Carlo, though it was made up of pleasure-seekers from many countries. There were smartly dressed women, pretty girls with tennis rackets, men in flannels, with Panama hats pulled over their tanned faces; men with fine, clear profiles, who had been soldiers; solemn judges on holiday; fat old couples who waddled from side to side, as if their legs were set on at the corners, like the legs of chairs and tables; thin, middle-aged ladies with long, flat feet which showed under short tweed skirts; ladies clothed as unalluringly as possible as if to apologize for belonging to the female sex; elderly gentlemen with superior, selfish expressions, and faces like ten thousand other elderly gentlemen who live inpensions, talk of their "well-connected" friends, and collect all the newspapers to brood over in corners, as dogs collect bones. There were invalids, too, in bath-chairs, and children playing with huge St. Bernards or Great Danes, and charming actresses from the Mentone Casino, with incredibly slim figures, immense ermine muffs, and miniature Japanese spaniels. Mary could see no reason why these people who promenaded and listened to the music should be different both individually and in mass from a crowd to be seen at Monte Carlo, yet the fact remained that they weredifferent; and among the faces there were none she knew, save those of the bird-like girl and her mother, half forgotten since the meeting in the train.
Hannaford took her by the Port, and past the old town whose heights towered picturesquely up and up, roof after roof, above the queer shops and pink and yellow houses of the sea level. Then came the East Bay, with its new villas and hotels, and background of hills silvered with olives; and at last, by a turn to the right which avoided the high road to Italy, they dipped into a rough path past a pebble floored stream, where pretty kneeling girls sang and scrubbed clothing on the stones.
Two douaniers, one French, the other Italian, lounging on opposite sides of the little stream flowing down from the Gorge of St. Louis, told that this was the frontier. It was not the road to Italy that Mary knew, when once or twice she had motored over the high bridge flung across the dark Gorge of St. Louis on excursions to Bordighera and San Remo. Nevertheless they were in Italy, and a mysterious change had come over the landscape, the indefinable change that belongs to frontiers. The buildings were shabbier; yet, as if in generous pity for their poorness, roses and pink geraniums draped them in cataracts of bloom. Gardens were less well kept, yet somehow more poetic. The colour of the old plastered walls and pergolas was more beautiful here, because more faded, stained green with moss, and splashed with many flower-like tints born of age and weather.
Always ahead, as Mary walked on with Hannaford, the high red wall of the Rochers Rouges glowed as if stained with blood where the sun struck it; and between the towering heights of rock and the turquoise sea he stopped her at an open-air restaurant roofed with palm leaves. There Hannaford ordered luncheon, at a table almost overhanging the water, and while thebouillabaissewas being made, he took her to the cave of the prehistoric skeletons.
Mary was interested, yet depressed. Life seemed such a little thing when she thought of all the lives that had passed in one unending procession of brief joys and tedious tragedies since those bones had been clothed with flesh and had caged hearts which beat as hotly as hers was beating now. "What does it matter," she said, "whether we are happy or not?"
"Does it not matter to ourselves?" Hannaford answered, rather than asked.
"Just at this moment, I'm not sure."
"Does it matter more about making others happy?"
"Perhaps. I should like to think that in my life I had made some others happy."
"I'm going to tell you by and by," he said, "how you can make one other very happy. It's just a suggestion I have to offer. There may be nothing in it."
He spoke rather dryly and perfunctorily, as he helped her down the stairs of the cave-dwellers' rock-house. Mary had a vague idea that he meant to interest her in a "sad case," as he had done once or twice before, when he thought she needed to be "taken out of herself." She expected to hear a tale of some poor girl who had "lost all," and must be redeemed from disaster by a helping hand lest worse things happen; and as he was evidently determined not to tell his story then, Mary waited without impatience.
They were lunching early, and had finished before many people began to arrive dustily in carriages and automobiles. Hannaford had ordered his taxi at two o'clock, and there was no hurry. He told the Italian musicians to play softly, some simple old airs that he loved. Then, when Mary sat staring dreamily into the water, far down through clear green depths, he put his elbows on the table, his chin in his hands, and leaned across to her.
"Of course you know," he said, "that I love you. Don't speak yet—and don't look at me, please. Keep your eyes on the water. I told you I had something to ask; but it's not for your love I'm asking. I know that no woman, not even with your kind and gentle heart, could love a man like me. But something has hurt you. I told you once before that I didn't want to hear what it was. Only I'm afraid you're not happy, and perhaps—if the hurt was in your heart—you may never be happy again in exactly the old way, as a young girl is when she is full of hope. We feel alike about a lot of things, you and I. We are good friends. At least,you look on me as your friend. And as for you, no man will ever be your friend, as you think of that word. I'm your friend to this extent, that you've given me back my interest in the world. I used to want to get out of it all, but I don't now, because you're in it. Anyhow, I don't want to go if you'll let me be of use to you—if you'll let me love you. Is it possible, dear, that you could think of marrying me—just in a friendly sort of way, you know, to have a protector, a man to look after you, and worship you, without any return except a little sympathy and kindness?"
Not once had Mary looked up at him, after the first fluttering glance of surprise when he began. Even when Hannaford stopped, and waited, she still kept her eyes on the water; but he saw that her hand trembled on the balustrade, and that a little pulse beat in her throat.
"I never thought!" she quavered, miserably.
"I know that, very well. I wouldn't believe most women who made such an excuse, after being as kind to me as you have been—a man like me! I should have thought you knew, and that you were playing, as the boys play with the frogs. But I realized from the first that you weren't going to 'think,' unless I put thoughts into your head. I wouldn't ask such a thing of you if you were happy, but you're not happy. I don't believe you know what to do with your future. You're not interested in things, as you were when you first came—except in the Casino, and that can't go onforever. The sort of thing you're doing now eats a woman's soul away. Men can stand it longer than women. Almost anything else would be better for you. Even marrying me. Maybe you would take an interest in the place I've bought. It could be made so beautiful! You can't imagine the joy I've had in simply picturing you there."
"I should love to come—to see it—but only as your friend," Mary said, stammering guiltily, as if she were doing wrong in refusing him. "Oh, I can't tell you how sorry, how sorry I am!"
"You needn't be sorry," he answered. "I might have known what I wanted was too good to come true. I might have known I was beyond the pale. And I did know, in my heart. Only I had to find out, for sure. You mustn't mind. I wouldn't be without the memory of this day with you, anyhow—not for the world. It's good enough to live on for the rest of my life."
"But—you speak as if we weren't to see each other any more," said Mary. "Can't we go on being friends?"
"Yes. Wherever we are, we'll 'go on being friends.' But you may leave Monte. You probably will. And I—I shall be leaving too. Still, we'll 'go on being friends.' And the next favour I ask of you, if you possibly can, will you grant it?"
"Indeed I will," Mary promised eagerly. "Ask me now."
"Not yet. Not quite yet. The time hasn'tcome. But it will before long. Then you must remember."
"I'll remember always." She stood up and held out her hand. He took it in his, and shook it heartily. His manner was so quiet, so commonplace, his face and voice so calm, that she could hardly believe that he really cared, that he really "minded much," as she put it to herself. Can a man shake hands like that with a woman, she wondered, if he is broken-hearted because she has refused him?
"Now we must go," she said. "I—shouldn't like to be late for my appointment."
"You shan't be late," he assured her, cheerfully. Then, just as they were moving away from the table, he stopped. "Will you give me one of those roses," he asked, "to keep for a souvenir?"
Their waiter had adorned the little feast with a glass containing a few short-stemmed roses. Mary selected the prettiest, a white one just unfolding from the bud, and gave it to Captain Hannaford. So quickly that no one saw, he laid it against her faintly smiling lips, then hid it inside his coat.
When the taxi had rushed up the upper Corniche and had taken the carriage road to Roquebrune, Mary said goodbye to Hannaford in thePlaceunder the great wall of the old castle. She guessed that, perhaps, he would have liked an invitation to go with her to the curé's garden, which he had never seen. But she did not give the invitation. She even lingered, so that he must have seen she wishedhim to drive away; and he took the hint, if it were a hint, at once.
"Goodbye," he said, pleasantly. "Thank you a thousand times, for everything."
"But it's I who have to thank you!" she protested.
"If I could think you would ever feel like thanking me for anything, I should be glad."
He released her hand, after pressing it once very hard; got into the taxi, gave the chauffeur the name of his hotel in the Condamine, and was whirled away. The last that Mary saw of him he was looking back, waving his hat as if he were saying goodbye for a long, long time.
The big clock had just finished striking three when Mary entered the church of the old rock-town on the hill. She could feel the vibration of the last stroke, as if the heart of the church were beating heavily, in sympathy with her own.
Coming into the dimness after the golden bath of sunlight outside was like being plunged into night. For an instant all was dark before Mary's eyes, as if she had been pushed forward with her face against a black curtain. The once familiar perfume of incense came pungently to her nostrils, sweet yet melancholy, like a gentle reproach for neglect. She seemed to be again in the convent chapel of St. Ursula-of-the-Lake. Every well-known feature of the place was sharply visible; she saw the carved screen of black oak; the faces of Reverend Mother and the sisters, white and ardent in the starlike light of tall wax candles; she heard the voices of women singing, crystal clear, sweet and sexless as the song of angels. The old oppression under which she had panted in the last days of her novitiate fell upon her again, like a weight. She felt that her soul was in a strait-jacket. Then, as she had often felt—and prayed not to feel—while the pure voices soared, the sensation of being shut up in a coffin came backto her. She was nailed into a coffin, lying straight and still under cool, faintly scented flowers; dead, yet not dead enough to rest. The terrible longing to burst the coffin lid and live—live—made her draw a deep, quick breath as of one choking, just as she had often struggled gaspingly back to realities after this obsession, while the singing went on in the dim chapel of the convent.
It began, and was all over in a few seconds. By the time her eyes had grown used to the twilight the impression of old, past things was gone; and relieved, as if she had waked from a dream of prison, Mary took note of everything round her: the largeness of the church, the effect of bareness, the simple decorations of the altar. She dipped her finger in the holy water, and knelt to pray for a moment, wondering if she had the right: and when she rose from her knees, the curé stood before her.
"Welcome, my daughter," he said. "I thought you were of the old faith. Now I am sure. Thank you for coming. I should like to give you my blessing before you go into the garden."
Presently he pointed to the open door which framed a bright picture of sky, and flowers growing against a low green and gold background of orange and lemon trees.
"Go out alone," he told her. "I have to stay here in church a while. Walk down the path to the wall, and look at the beautiful view. Then to the left you will see an arbour at the end of the garden.Wait there for me. I shall follow before you have time to grow impatient."
He said nothing of Vanno, whom she had been brought there to meet, and to "save." Perhaps the Prince had not cared to come. This seemed very probable to Mary; yet the thought that he might be avoiding her did not stab the girl's heart with any sharp pang of shame or pain. A radiant peace had taken possession of her spirit, stealing into it unaware, as the perfume of lilies may take possession of the senses, before the lilies are seen. Though she felt gratitude and something almost like love for the curé, she was glad that he had sent her into his garden alone. The flowery knot pinned on the bare breast of mountain seemed even more to her than the "fairyland" Rose Winter had described. "Angel-land," she thought, as she saw how secret and hidden the bright spot was on its high jutting point of rock, with its guardian wall of towering, ivied ruin on one side, and the tall pale church on another. She felt that here was a place in which she might find herself again, the self that had got lost in the dark, somewhere far, far below this height.
She stood by the low wall which kept the garden from the precipice; and when she had looked eastward to Italy, and westward where the prostrate giant of the Tête de Chien mourns over Monaco, she turned toward the arbour in which the curé had told her to wait. Most of the big gold and copper grape-leaves had fallen now, but some were left,crisped by frost until they seemed to have been cut from thin sheets of metal; and over the mass of knotted branches rained a torrent of freshly opened roses. They and their foliage made a thick screen, and Mary could not see the inside of the arbour; but as she reached the entrance Vanno stood just within, waiting for her, very pale, but with a light on his face other than the sunlight which streamed over him. Then Mary knew that something, more intimately herself than was her reasoning mind, had expected him, and had never believed that he would refuse to come.
He held out both hands, without a word; and without a word she gave him hers. He lifted them to his lips, and kissed first one, then the other. Still keeping her hands fast, he drew them down so that her arms were held straight at her sides. Standing thus, they looked into each other's eyes, and the glory of the sun reflected back from Vanno's almost dazzled Mary. Never in her life had she known happiness like this. She felt that such a moment was worth being born for, even if there were no after joy in a long gray existence; and the truth of what she had many times read without believing, pierced to her heart, like a bright beam from heaven: the truth that love is the one thing on earth which God meant to last forever.
"Will you forgive me?" Vanno asked, his eyes holding hers.
"Yes," she said. "And will you forgive me, for not forgiving you?"
"How could you forgive me, when you thought of me as you did? But you know now that you thought wrong."
"Yes. I know. Though I don't know how I know."
"And I know you to beyourself. That means everything. I can't say it in any other way. Because it was your real self I knew at Marseilles—the self I've known always, and waited for, and am unworthy of at last."
"Don't call yourself unworthy."
"I won't talk about that part at all—not yet. I love you—love you! and—God! how I need you."
"And I——"
"You love me?"
He loosed her hands, and catching her up, lifted her off her feet, her slight body crushed against his, her head pressed back; and so he kissed her on the mouth, a long, long kiss that did away with any need of explanation or forgiveness. There was no returning afterward to the old selves again, they both knew before their lips had parted. It was as if they two had climbed to the top of a high tower together, and a door had been shut and locked behind them.
By and by he made her sit on the wooden seat under the rose canopy; and going down on one knee, he took up a fold of her dress and kissed it. No man but one of Latin blood could have done this and kept his dignity; but as he did the thing it was beautiful, even sacred to Mary, as if he knelt to pour balm on the wound that once he had given her.Though his lips touched only her dress, the very hem of it, she felt the thrill of the touch, as she had felt his kiss on her mouth. This was her lover, and her knight. She half feared, half adored the thought that from this moment she had granted him rights; that a man loved her, and had kissed her, and that she had confessed to loving him. It was so different from anything which she had dreamed could come to her that she could hardly believe it was happening: for when she had left the convent she was still a nun in her outlook upon life.
Yet now this bowed dark head, and the rim of brown throat between the short, thick hair and the stiff white collar, looked somehow familiar, as if the man who knelt there had always been hers. So dear was the head, so boyish in its humility, that ridiculous tears rushed smarting to her eyes. She wanted to laugh and to cry. Where his lips had touched her dress, she almost expected to see a spark of light clinging, like a fallen star.
When he looked up and saw the tears, still kneeling he put his arms around her, and slowly drew her to him. Then her hands stole out to clasp his neck, her fingers interlacing, and she let her cheek lie softly against his. His face was hot as if the sun had scorched it, and she could feel a little pulse beating in his temple. There was a faint suggestion rather than a fragrance of tobacco smoke about his hair and his clothes, which made her want to laugh with a delightful, childish sense of amusement that mingled with the thrill of her love for him.
"You always belonged to me, you know," he said. "What time I have wasted, not finding you before! But I knew you existed. I knew always that I should meet you some day. And then I nearly lost you—but we won't talk of that, because you have forgiven me: and forgiving means forgetting, doesn't it?"
She answered only by pressing her face more closely against his.
"But there are other things for you to forgive," he went on. "I used to think I was very strong, not only in my body but in my will. Now I see that I can be weak. Can you love a man who does things he knows to be beneath him? I have made a fool of myself in the Casino—a fool like the rest. I began because I was miserable, but——"
"Was it I who made you miserable?"
"Yes. But that is no excuse for me. I deserved it all and more: I'd hurt you. And afterward, I went on being a fool, because—it gave me a kind of pleasure, when I'd lost pleasure in other things. It's the weakness of it that I hate in myself, not so much the thing I did. A woman should have a man's strength to lean on, if she is to love him. Weakness is unpardonable in a man. Yet I'm asking you to forgive it, and let me begin over again."
"I love you as you are," Mary said. "What am I, to judge? What have I myself been doing?"
"You are a girl; and you are so young. You knew no better. I knew. You were led on. I walked into the trap with my eyes open."
"I was warned. My father just before he died wrote me a letter saying there was 'gambler's blood' in my veins. Those words always run in my head now. And a friend who loves me begged me not to come to Monte Carlo."
"It was Fate brought you—to give you to me. Do you regret it?"
"I don't regret anything—if you don't; because what is past—for both of us—doesn't feel real. This is the only real part. We were brought to Monte Carlo for this, it seems now."
"It seems, and it is."
They looked with one accord down at the Casino far below, which from the curé's garden had more than ever the semblance of a large, crouching animal. Its four horns glittered in the beginning of sunset, as if they were crusted with jewels of different colours. Its dominance over all that surrounded it, all that was smaller and less powerful and impressive than itself, was astonishingly evident from this bird's-eye point of view; but brightly as the jewels gleamed, they had lost their allurement for these two. With Vanno's arms around her, Mary wondered how she could ever have felt that the Casino was a vast magnet compelling her to come to it in spite of herself, drawing her thoughts and her money to itself, as an immense magnetic rock might draw the nails from the sides of a frail little boat. WithMary's fingers warm and soft as rose-petals against his neck, her cheek on his, Vanno could have laughed with contemptuous pity at the wretched image of himself which he seemed to see down below, stupidly hurrying along with an offering for the Casino. He was not so much shocked at his own yielding to the attraction as he was surprised that there could have been so strong an attraction.
"Doesn't it look stupid down there?" Mary asked, almost in a whisper. "Like a lot of toy houses for children to play with?"
"And the children are tired of playing with them!" Vanno answered. "The toys there were only worth playing with when there was nothing better to do."
"That's it!" she echoed. "When there was nothing better to do. I think that was what the curé must have meant."
"The curé!" Vanno echoed. "I'd forgotten him!"
"So had I. How ungrateful of us. But you have made me forget everything except—you."
She rose slowly, reluctantly, and then pretended to exert her strength in lifting him up from his knees. "The curé stayed away on purpose," she said.
"Yes. For he meant this to happen—just as it has."
Mary smiled, half closing her eyes, so that the world swam before her in a radiant mist. She was less afraid of love and the man who gave and took it, now. Already it seemed that Vanno and she had always been lovers, not sad, parted lovers, but happy playmates in a world made for them. Therecould not have been a time when they did not understand each other. Everything before this day had been a dream. "Do you know," she said, "why I came here—I mean, why the curé asked me? He told me that I must come and 'save' you. As if I could! It was I who needed saving."
"'It was Fate brought you—to give you to me. Do you regret it?'""'It was Fate brought you—to give you to me. Do you regret it?'"
"He knew," Vanno answered, speaking more to himself than to her, "that we should save each other."
As he spoke, a foot ostentatiously rattled the gravel of the path, at a safe distance. The curé coughed, and coughed again. A serious catching in the throat he seemed to have, for a man who lived in the fresh air and laughed at the notion of a "sunset chill."
Vanno took Mary's hand and kept it in his as he led her out of the arbour.
"This is what your blessing has done, Father," he said.
Then, the curé must have blessed him, too!
The priest smiled his good smile as he came toward them, the sky flaming behind his black-clad figure, like banners waving.
"I thought. I hoped. No, I knew!" And he smiled contentedly. "The stars have ceased to desire the moth, a well-known phenomenon which often upsets the solar system. The moth has lost its attraction. The stars have found each other."
"We have found each other," Mary said, "and I believe—I believe that we have found ourselves, our real selves."
"You have found yourselves and each other," echoed the curé, "which means that you have found God. I have no more fear"—and he waved a hand toward the towered building down below, set on fire by the sun—"no more fear of the moth."
They stayed on, after their friend had come to them; and all three sat together in the arbour, while the shadows hewed quarries of sapphire deep into the side of the mountains; and in the violet rain of twilight everything on land and water that was white seemed to become magically alive: the fishing boats turned to winged sea birds: the little waves were lilied with foam blossoms: the sky became a garden of stars.
When Mary first went to live at the convent, an impressionable child of eight, one of the nuns told her that the stars were spirits of children in heaven's nursery, sent out to play in the sky, that their mothers might see them and be glad: and the moon was their nurse. She repeated the legend to Vanno and the curé, and said that she had been brought up from childhood in a convent school, because she had lost her mother, and her father had gone away to India; but she did not say that she had taken the first steps toward becoming a nun. She wanted Vanno to hear this first, when they were alone together. Not that she feared the knowledge might endanger his love for her. In this immortal hour it seemed that nothing could ever again come between them.
"That accounts for what she is, does it not?" the curé exclaimed, turning to Vanno with the joy of the discoverer. "A convent school! Now, my son, what puzzled you in her is made clear. I, at least, might have guessed. A girl brought up by a band of good and innocent cloistered women must always be different from other girls. She should not be let out to wander alone in the world without guardians, as this child has been; for without a guide a few mistakes at the beginning are certain. Now, she has made all the mistakes she need ever make; and she is no longer alone."
"Never again!" Vanno said fervently, pressing her hand under the blue cover of dusk.
It did not occur to Mary that they both took her for a much younger girl than she really was. She had lived so entirely under the jurisdiction of those older than herself that in many ways she had remained a child. And she had begun by feeling still younger than before, after suddenly blossoming into independence. It was only since the night of Christmas, when the frost of unhappiness nipped the newly unfolded petals, that the flower had begun to droop. Now that dark time was already forgotten. She could hardly realize that it had ever been. In the joy of Vanno's love for her, and his old friend's fatherly kindness, she basked in the contentment of being understood, loved, taken care of; and she knew that she was a woman, not a child, only by the capacity to love a man as a woman loves. If she had said, "But I am nearly twenty-five,"the two men would have realized at once that her school days must have ended long ago, even if prolonged beyond the usual time; and they would have asked themselves, if they had not asked her, where she had spent the years between then and now, in order to account for that ignorance of the world which to them explained and excused everything she had done at Monte Carlo. But it did not enter Mary's mind to mention her age.
"Upon some natures such teaching might not have made the same impression, of course," the curé went on, thoughtfully. "This dear child, it seems to me, has a very—how shall I express it?—a very old-fashioned nature. Nothing, I believe, could ever have turned her into one of those hard modern girls they are running up now like buildings made of concrete on steel frames. But the convent teaching has accentuated all in her that was already what I call 'old-fashioned.' And you, too, my Principino, you are old-fashioned!"
"I?" exclaimed Vanno, surprised.
"Yes. You will suit each other well, you two, I prophesy. You have an old-fashioned nature: but do not think when I say that, I place you on a shelf at the back of the world's cupboard. All Romans, all Italian men, are old-fashioned at heart—and it is the heart that counts, though we do not always know it; and most of us would not like others to know it of ourselves. You have been much in the East, Principino, and you have learned to love the desert; but you would not have loved itas you do were it not for the spirit of romance which keeps you old-fashioned under a very thin veneer of what is modern. I saw this in you when you were a boy and my pupil; and I must say it made me love you the better. It is perhaps the secret which draws the love of others toward you, without their knowing why, though it has caused life to jar on you often, no doubt, and may again. You would not, perhaps, have fallen into the mistake by which you hurt yourself and this dear child if you had not been old-fashioned. Don't you see that?"
"I suppose it is old-fashioned to have an ideal," Vanno admitted, laughing a little.
"Yes. And most old-fashioned of all, even I can see, are your ideas of women. So it is well you have fallen in love with one who is not modern."
"I know she is the Only Woman. But I grant that I may have picked up some Eastern ideas of what a woman's life ought to be. I must get rid of them, I suppose."
"You didn't 'pick those ideas up,' my son. They were in your blood. All the same, you may get rid of a few—a very few—with advantage. And safely too, because you are going to have an old-fashioned girl for your wife."
"I'm going to have her very soon, I hope," Vanno added, in a different tone.
Mary spoke not a word; and he did not press her then for an answer. But when the sudden darkness of the southern evening had warned them that itwas time to go, he began in the same strain again, after they had left the tunnelled streets of the rock-village. It was so dark that Vanno had the excuse of saving Mary a stumble on the rough cobblestones, as they went slowly down the mule path. He held her tightly, his arm around her waist. She walked bareheaded, trailing her hat in her hand; and the warm perfume of her hair came to him like the scent of some hitherto unknown flower, sweeter than any other fragrance that the evening dew distilled. "I want you to be my wife very soon," he said. "I must have you. And if you're as old-fashioned as the curé thinks, you won't say no to me when I tell you that. Shall he marry us?"
"Oh—that would mean it must bedreadfullysoon!"
"Is there a 'dreadfully?' But—there's one thing, dearest, that I almost forgot. I must write to my father. Not that anything he could say would make any difference now; only I want him to love you, and our marriage to bring him happiness, not pain, even in the thought of it before he sees you. My brother Angelo has married lately, and he didn't let our father know till just before the thing was done. Perhaps it was not his fault. I can't tell as to that: there must have been a strong reason. But our father was deeply hurt; and it would be even worse with me, for he makes it no secret that I'm his favourite son. I believe I'm more like my mother than Angelo is. She was an Irish-American girl, and my father adored her: though sometimes I wonder ifhe knew how to show his love. Anyhow, she died young, and he's been almost a recluse ever since. I'll write him at once—and I may even go to see him, though I can hardly bear to think of leaving you long enough for that. Still, it needn't be for more than three or four days and nights. I could go and come back in that time. I'll see! But if I do go, it must be to tell him we're to be married at once, from my brother's house."
"Your brother's house?" Mary repeated.
"Yes. Angelo has taken a villa at Cap Martin for the season. Perhaps you've seen it. He and my new sister-in-law went to Ireland to visit relatives of my mother, and to England afterward. They've been married more than two months; but I saw my sister-in-law for the first time on New Year's eve, the day they arrived. She's English, though she has lived mostly in southern Germany, I believe. She's an artist—does portraits beautifully, I hear, and was much admired in Rome, where she had come to paint, when my brother met her. I know very little of her except that she's pretty and charming—if any woman who is notyoucan be either. I'm sorry for all the men in the world, poor wretches, because there's only one you, and I've got you for mine, and I shall let them see as little of you as possible."
"That reallyisold-fashioned!" Mary laughed.
"Do you mind? Do you want to see them?"
"Not particularly. Because you have begun to make me feel the others aren't worth seeing."
"Angel!"
They both laughed, and Vanno was entranced when her heel slipped on a stone, and he could clasp her so tightly as to feel the yielding of her body against his arm. He would have liked to sing, the night was so wonderful, and all nature seemed to be singing. Distant bells chimed, silver sweet; frogs in hidden garden pools harped like bands of fairy musicians; and from everywhere came the whisper and gurgle of running water: springs from the mountains, pouring through underground canals to houses of peasants, who bought water rights by the hour.
As the two walked down the many windings of the mule path they met labourers coming up from the day's work in the country of the rich, far below. Some of the young men, clattering along in groups, joined in singing the strange tuneless songs, memories of Saracen days, which Vanno had heard on his first mountain walk. The old men did not sing. They climbed stolidly, with heads and shoulders bent, yet not as if discouraged by the thought of the long, steep way before them before they could rest at home. They had the air of taking life as it was, entirely for granted.
The darkness was bleached with a sheen of stars, and the pulsing beams that shot across the sky from the lighthouses of Cap Ferrat and Antibes. Here and there, too, an electric lamp dangled from a wire over the mule path, and revealed a flash of white teeth in a dark face or struck a glint from a pair of deep Italian eyes. But they were the eyesand the teeth of young men, or of girls climbing with baskets of washing on their heads. The old men looked down, watching their own footsteps; and their stooping figures were vague and shadowy as ships that pass in the night, not to be recognized if seen again by daylight. Now and then a little old woman stumbled up the path, driving a donkey which tripped daintily along in silent primness, under a load of fresh-cut olive branches. The sound of the tiny feet on the stones and the swish of olive leaves against the wall added to the poetry of the night for Vanno, though he reflected that it was all commonplace enough to the donkeys and the women, who were as important as he in the scheme of things. After all, it was but a question of thinking!
Boys coming up from some late errand, played at being soldiers, and sprang out at each other from behind jutting corners of rock, imitating the firing of guns, or uttering explosive cries.
Vanno felt a great kindness for all the world, and especially for these people who—almost all of them—had the blood of Italy in their veins. He remembered the curé's saying with a smile that even now, if all Italians were banished from the French coast between Cannes and Mentone, the Riviera would be emptied of more than half its inhabitants; and it gave him a warm feeling in his heart to be surrounded by people of his own blood, at this moment of his great happiness. He would have liked to give these men something to make them happy also, for he knew that they were poor,and that those who were most fortunate were those who worked hardest. Each shadowy figure, as it passed on its way up the mountain, gave out a faint odour, not disagreeable or dirty, but slightly pungent, and like the smell of iron filings: what Tolstoi called "the good smell of peasants."
The fire which had enveloped all Monte Carlo at sunset had burnt out long ago, but in the west a faint red-brown glow smouldered, as if a smoky torch had been trailed along the horizon. Monte Carlo and the Rock of Monaco rose out of the steel-bright sea like one immense jewel-box, or a huge purple velvet pincushion, stuck full of diamond and topaz headed pins, with here and there a ruby or an emerald. These lights, reflected in the water, trailed down into mysterious depths, like illuminated roots of magic flowers; and the bright shimmer spreading out over the moving ripples lay on the surface like glittering chain-armour.
Although they had the blaze of these amazing jewels always before their eyes, somehow in talking Mary and Vanno contrived to lose the way, descending to the high road nearer Cap Martin than Monte Carlo. It was six o'clock, and a long tramp home along the level, in the dust thrown up by motors and the trotting hoofs of horses, but in the distance a tram car coming from Mentone sent out a shower of electric sparks, like fireflies crushed to death between iron wheels and iron track. As the car advanced, Vanno stepped out into the road and hailed it. Noarrêtwas near, but the driverstopped, with an obliging, French-Italian smile, and the two young people almost hurled themselves into empty seats at the first-class end of the tram.
Faces which had been inclined to frown at the illegal delay, even of six seconds, smoothed into good nature at sight of the handsome couple. Every one at once took it for granted that they were lovers. Mary's hair, ruffled by the hasty putting on of her hat, without a mirror, told the story of a stolen kiss to German eyes swimming with sentiment and romance—eyes which to an unappreciative world appeared incapable of either. Most of the eyes in this first-class compartment were German eyes, and some of the faces out of which they looked were round and uninteresting; but not all. German was the language being loudly talked across the car, from one seat to another; and a German mandate had caused all the windows and ventilators to be shut, in fear of that fatal thing, "a draught." English people sitting stiffly in corners, boiling with the desire to protest yet too reserved and proud to "risk a row," raged internally with the belief that their German neighbours were coarse, food-loving, pushing, selfish creatures who cared nothing for the beauty of the Riviera, and came only because of the cheap round trip, and the hope of winning a few five-franc pieces. The real truth was very different. The "pushing creatures" were selfish only because they were not self-conscious. They were as perfectly happy as children. They raved loudly in ecstasy over the beauty of everything, and wereblissfully ignorant that it was possible for any one to despise or hate them. Frankly they admired Vanno and Mary, staring in the unblinking, unashamed, beaming way that children have of regarding what interests them; and their kind, unsnobbish hearts went out to the young couple as no English hearts in the car went out.
Two persons sitting together at the other end, but on the same side as the newcomers, could not see what the pair were like, without bending forward and stretching out their necks. One of these, fired by the intense interest displayed on German faces, could not resist the temptation to be curious. She peered round the corner of a large, well-filled overcoat from Berlin, and saw Mary and Vanno smiling at each other, as oblivious of all observers as though they had the tram to themselves.
"You must take a peep, St. George," she said in her husband's ear, that she might be heard over the noise of the tram, without roaring. "It's that beautiful Miss Grant I told you about; and she's with the Roman Prince who invented the parachute Rongier used in the Nice 'flying week.' They are certainly in love with each other! They couldn't look as they do if they weren't. Perhaps they're engaged. Poor Dick! All his trouble for nothing."
"Why poor Dick?" inquired the Reverend George Winter.
"Oh, my dear Saint, don't put on your long-distance manner, and forget everything that hasn't a direct connection with heaven. But these two quitelook as if they'd just been up there by special aeroplane. Don't you remember my telling you, Dick's awfully in love with this girl, and took me to see her again yesterday, though she never returned my first call? But I was glad I went, because she was really sweet and charming, and I hated to think of her living in that deadly villa."
"Yes, I remember distinctly," said Winter, with a twinkle of humour in the eyes which seemed always to see things that no one else could see. "You told me when I was in the midst of writing a sermon, and had got to a particularly knotty point; so I tangled Dick and his love affairs into the knot, while trying to put them out of my mind. I'm afraid they didn't do my sermon much good. And beautiful as Miss Grant may be, I won't dislocate my neck to look at her in a tram. I advise you not to do so, either. Set our German friends a good example."
"Why is it the best of people always advise you not to do all the things you want to do, and vice versa?" observed Rose, pleased with her success in catching Mary's eye. They bowed to each other, smiling warmly. Vanno took off his hat, and Rose thought him exactly what a prince ought to be and generally is not.
"That's the wife of the English chaplain at Monte Carlo," Mary informed Vanno, in a stage whisper, "She's an American. She called on me yesterday; and only think, though she'd never seen me before, she said she would like me to visit her."
"Did you accept?" Vanno asked.
Mary shook her head. "No. It would have hurt Lady Dauntrey's feelings, perhaps. And besides, yesterday I—I thought of going away soon, to Italy—to Florence. I was travelling to Florence when suddenly it occurred to me to get off at Monte Carlo instead. Oh, how thankful I am now! Think, if we had never met?"
"We should have met. I was following you from Marseilles, you know, and watching to see where you got off. What can your people have been made of, letting you run about alone—a girl like you?"
"Oh, but I have no people—who count. Only such a disagreeable aunt and her daughter! I haven't written to them since I came here. I telegraphed, and gave no address. I shall not write—until—until——"
"I know what you mean, though you won't say it. 'Until we are married.' You need not, unless you like, for they must have been brutes of women to have been disagreeable to you. But I wish you would stay with this lady—the chaplain's wife. Or else with my sister-in-law. I shall go to see her and Angelo to-morrow morning, and tell them about you. I'll ask them to call at once, and then—I feel almost sure—Marie will invite you to visit her. Would you accept? For that would be best of all. And in any case we must be married from their house."
"Marie!" Mary echoed the name, her voice dwelling upon it caressingly. "Marie! That wasthe name of my—not my best, but my second best friend at school. We were three Maries. It will be good of your Marie to call on me; but she is a bride, and it's still her honeymoon. Do you think, if we—that is——"
Vanno laughed. "If you put it in that way, I don't. No, ifwewere on our honeymoon I couldn't tolerate a third, if it were an angel. But it seems as if every one must want you."
"Hush! People will hear you."
Just then a party of three Englishwomen rose, and descended from the tram to go to a villa in the Avenue de la Vigie. This exodus left a vacancy opposite the Winters.
"Shall we move over there, before the tram gets going too fast?" Mary suggested. "I feel Mrs. Winter would like to talk to us."
Vanno agreed. He was anxious for the invitation to be renewed. And in a few moments after they had begun talking to the Winters across the narrow aisle, his wish was granted. Rose told her husband that she had asked Mary to stay with them, and ordered him to urge the suggestion.
"You see," Rose confided to her opposite neighbours, leaning far forward, her elbows on her knees, "I always try to have some perfectly charming person in our one little spare room, while the 'high season' is on, or else the most terrible bores beg us to take them in. People like that seem to think you have a house or an apartment on the Riviera for the sole purpose of putting them up for a fortnightor so. It's positively weakening! We've just got rid of an appalling young man, whom my husband asked out of sheer pity: a schoolmaster, who'd come here for his health and inadvertently turned gambler. At first he won. He used to haunt my tea-parties, which, as we're idiotically good-natured, are often half made up of criminals and frumps. Extraordinarily congenial they are, too! The criminals are flattered to meet the frumps, and the frumps find the criminals thrilling. This was one of our male frumps: like an owl, with négligé eyebrows, and quite mad, round eyes behind convex glasses. He used to shed gold plaques out of his clothes on to my floor, because whenever he won he was in the habit of tucking the piece down his collar lest he should be tempted to risk it on the tables again. But at last there were no more gold pieces to shed, and his eyes got madder and rounder. And then St. George invited him to stay with us, in order that I might reform him. I did try, for Iwassorry for the creature: he seemed so like one of one's own pet weaknesses, come alive. But after he threatened to take poison at the luncheon table, my husband thought it too hard on my nerves. I began to get so thin that my veils didn't fit; and George sent the man home to his mother, at our expense. At the present moment a soldier boy on leave—a Casino pet, whom all the ladies love and lend money to, and give good advice to, and even the croupiers are quite silly about, though he roars at them when he loses—is hinting to visit us, so that I may undertakethe saving of his soul, and incidentally what money he has left. But he carries a nice new revolver, and shows it to the prettiest ladies when they are sympathizing the most earnestly. And he hasnomother to whom we can send him, if he attempts to add his pistol to our luncheon menu. Do, do save us from the Casino pet, dear Miss Grant. I've been holding an awful aunt of George's over the young man's head, saying she may arrive at any minute. But you know how things you fib about do have a way of happening, as a punishment, and I feel she may drop down on us if the room isn't occupied."
They all laughed, even the chaplain, whom Mrs. Winter evidently delighted in trying to shock. "I should like Miss Grant to be with you," Vanno said; and this—if she had not guessed already—would have been enough, Rose thought, "to give the show away." "I should like her to go to you at once, since you are so kind."
"Kind to ourselves!" Rose smiled. "Will you come, Miss Grant?"
Mary hesitated. "I should love it, but—I hate to be rude to poor Lady Dauntrey."
"If I hadn't dedicated my life to a member of the clergy, I know what I should want to say about Lady Dauntrey," Rose remarked, looking wicked. "Can't you, Prince—well, notsayit, but do something to rescue Miss Grant, without damage to any one's feelings?"
"I mean to," Vanno answered. "I wanted herto visit my brother and sister-in-law, but—they're on their honeymoon, and——"
"I see," Rose interpolated. She did not volunteer the information that her own honeymoon was but just ended. Evidently it was to be taken quietly for granted that these two were engaged. She guessed that Prince Vanno had hinted at the truth in order that she should not misconstrue Mary's actions. He was almost forcing their relationship upon her notice, and her husband's notice, as if to justify his being with the girl unchaperoned.
"Not that we should have minded," Rose said to herself. "There's no room in St. George's 'thought-bag' for any bad thoughts, it's so cram full of good ones. And he's taught me how horrid it is, always rehearsing the judgment day for one's friends."
She threw a warm-hearted glance at her husband, valuing his kindly qualities the more because they two had just come from a tea-party, at a villa where the alternative to bridge had been telling the whole truth about people behind their backs, and digging up Pasts by the roots, as children unearth plants to see if they have grown. Luckily St. George had remained in blissful ignorance of the latter popular game. People showed only their best side to him, and made good resolutions about the other, while his influence was upon them.
"As for us," Rose went on, "we're quite a staid married couple, and I feel I'm intended by nature for the ideal chaperon—for a blonde likeMiss Grant. We shall look charming together, and though we mayn't make her comfortable, I guarantee to amuse her; for as a household we are unique. We live in an ugly, square apartment house—a kind of quadrupedifice—and our cook is in love, consequently her omelettes are like antimacassars; but I have a chafing-dish, and the most wonderful maid, and our tea-parties are famous—honey-combed with countesses and curates, to say nothing of curiosities. And my husband, though a clergyman, lets me go to all the lovely concerts where the dear conductor grabs up music by the handful and throws it in the faces of his orchestra. The only thing beginning with a C, which Miss Grant will have to miss with us, is—the Casino."
"I shan't miss that!" Mary exclaimed; then flushed brightly.
"Does that mean you will come?"
"Yes. It does mean that she will come," Vanno spoke for her.
"I think," remarked Rose, "that your future husband is a masterful person who intends you to 'toe the line.' But if it's his heart line, it will be all right."
"Perhaps," said Vanno, "for we are both very old-fashioned." He looked at Mary, and she at him. It was adorable to have little secrets that nobody else could understand.
Rose, dearly as she loved her husband, almost envied them for an instant: lovers only just engaged, with no cooks and housemaids and accountsto think of: nothing but each other, and poetry and romance. Yet, she was not quite sure, on second thoughts, that she did envy them. Vaguely she seemed to see something fatal in the two handsome, happy faces; something that set them apart from the comfortable, commonplace experiences of the rest of the world.
"I think—after all I'd rather be myself than that girl," she decided.