Ermengarde listened with a sympathetic face and proper interjections, wondering if the rounded softness of that passionately dark blue sea-rim, so much less sharply edged than paler seas—if that came from the clear and vapourless air, through which one saw so far over the very slope of the world; and presently, when the Odyssey came to a pause, she made some reference to the romance and charm of Provence.
"Provence," mused the woman of substance. "H'm, yes; Provence roses. Never was there in my life. But I dare say you have travelled a good deal."
"But surely you came by theTrain de Luxeyesterday?"
"Oh yes. Mr. Robinson's extravagance—quite unnecessary——"
"Then you were in Provence yesterday," murmured Ermengarde drowsily, quite sure now that she saw over the earth-slope, and the woman of substance, coupling this obviously inaccurate statement with the unaccountable excursions into foreign languages of the previous day, looked curiously at her, and wondered if it was drink or incipient insanity.
"So young, too!" she reflected mournfully, turning away to find a comfortable and yet substantial seat, but turning once again to look at the figure extended in the sun among the flowers in the dish-cover hat, the uncompromising dowdiness of which conveyed comforting assurance of respectability to her motherly soul. Vice and that hat could never be companions, she was sure.
Once again Ermengarde made a feeble effort at correspondence. Arthur would expect letters, though absent from home and without definite address. It was quite easy to write "Dear Arthur," but how to go on was the difficulty. Of the misadventures and discomforts of the journey it was inadvisable to write, lest the joy of "I told you so" should make him exult; neither was it politic to dilate upon the probable criminality of the woman of mystery, and on her complicity and secret understanding with the Anarchist. Of the latter, as a source of terror and danger to the community at large, she wrote much, not without some gentle complacence in her own perspicacity in detecting, and courage in braving, by dauntless but insupportable glances, the villainy and scheming of this truculent being.
"The power of the human eye, especially over beasts of prey and hardened criminals," she wrote, "has not been exaggerated. One honest, fearless, straightforward look will unmask the vilest and most cunning, and cause the blackest heart to quail, as that creature's invariably did—at least, his eyes did—before mine." And this sentence, like all referring to the man, when after many days it reached him, filled the recipient of the letter with peculiar and ecstatic joy, producing explosions of mirth unutterable.
But of this same Anarchist she could get but the scantiest information—even from M. Isidore. No one appeared to have observed the presence of any such person at dinner the night before, or to have seen him come and go at Les Oliviers. After much meditation, M. Isidore supposed she must refer to a foreigner, presumably a Pole, since his name ended in ski, who had dined there, or lunched, or both, on the preceding day. As to whether he had slept there, or was likely to return, M. Isidore was unable to give any information. No one apparently had seen him at breakfast, or luncheon, or about the place, that morning. Neither had anyone observed his arrival; he had come and gone like a phantom, or a suspicion. He was an absolute mystery. She began to suspect that she must have dreamt him.
After all, perhaps everything past was a dream. All this clarity of atmosphere and bright light, steeping the fairy-like loveliness of mountain, gorge, and sea, seemed to have blotted out past trouble and pain, as if those dark, transparent waters were some celestial wine, or waters of Lethe, drunk in spirit, and giving both healing and oblivion.
The obstinate letters utterly refused to get themselves written that afternoon, but the ever-helpful M. Isidore produced picture-cards, the inscription of which was a sop to still the barkings of conscience, and had them posted.
The sun sloped away and away from the stocks and lemons, until the wooded summit topped by the convent was one mass of shadow with cross-tipped gables, cypress-flame, and eucalyptus-top, all etched in sharp outline on a sky of lucid gold. Ermengarde shivered as she drew her furs about her throat, and heard a sound like the patter of sudden rain behind her, but turning, saw that it was only the rustle of wind in the branches of a palm.
"Where are they all going?" she asked as the lotus-eating groups basking on the terrace melted away before the slanting shadow.
"They follow the sun; it is a veritable fire-worship," M. Isidore said, picking up her scattered properties. "Madame will be among the worshippers?"
Out of the shadow, and up marble steps, with "roses, roses all the way" again, to a little rock platform west of the villa, giving a prospect round the convent hill, they came upon a fresh world of wide, sunlit space, with another ravine half in purple shadow, and other villages and houses, and, high up, dark against a lucid sky, giant peaks turning pink and gold where they caught the blaze of the sun, that was sinking in a green and lilac sky, above a sea of molten gold touched with scarlet.
Here were seats under a shelter of rye-straw thatch that caught and retained the whole blaze and warmth of the shifting pageant of the sunset. Here, too, it was quiet and peaceful, the lotus-eaters having gone elsewhere, and here her guide left her to absorb the solemn hush and splendour. The little homely convent seemed to have grown naturally out of the rocks; to which it clung unevenly, as a pine-tree throws twisted roots from rock to rock to get firm hold, ending in garden terrace on the sunniest face of the rock, now bright in the westering rays. Far off the surf, breaking on the long, low headland of Cap Martin, was visible in the glow, taking rose and orange tints in its fall. The mountain flanks sent up little blue spirals of smoke from every fold and dimple, where cot and hamlet nestled; the earth breathed deepest peace. A spirit of prayer was everywhere; the smoke was like incense from many altars; sounds of common life came distinct and clear, yet hushed, through the stilled and waiting air. The ever-changing colours on mountain, sky, and sea hinted at the progress of some glorious spiritual drama of mysterious import. It seemed in the waiting hush as if the secret of the universe might soon be whispered abroad.
But Nature worshipped alone; there was no sweet-toned Angelus floating over crest and gorge, from convent to church tower, and trembling far away over darkening waves, to give the antiphon and complete the evensong of the world. Republican France is too free to allow men to worship publicly as they please.
Ermengarde, uplifted, tranquillized, yet full of unrest and a sort of compunction mingled with longing, was like a wondering child at some solemn rite, dimly guessed at through the faces of those present. She lost herself completely in watching the moving drama of flushed sky and sea. What pure, pale-green spaces above the sun-glow, what lakes of rose, purple, violet, and orange! the whole spectrum broken up and scattered, while the deep peacock blue of the Eastern sea grew deeper than ever.
The sunlight lying so lovingly on vine and olive-covered steep, turning blue gloom of pines to glowing velvet, and calling out all the warmer tints in the mysterious grey-green of olives, slanted more and more till every wood and cultivated patch and building on gorge and flank facing the light, had its true colour, flushed, darkened, and faded. Night was gathering in vales and clefts, and stealing up the great shoulder ofMont Agel, dark upon the west; the eastern peaks were crimson jewels paling to palest claret. Ermengarde was absorbed in the silent symphony of melting and mingling colour to that degree she scarcely seemed to breathe, when voices jarred suddenly into the stillness from beneath her feet, where the mule-path ran unseen under the rocky steep.
With the voices came the soft patter of asses' feet, and the firm step of a man, light laughter, and then a single voice, cheerful, masculine, English.
"Not going to play to-night? Come now," it remonstrated.
"When I have tell you I am broke to stone," returned a reproachful, metallic treble. "And my next lastparureof diamonds is what you call pop for a nozzing. I will no more gif my fine jewels to ze Shoos for two sous. Also I haf lend from a friend hundred louis zat I lose last night."
They stopped where the path broadened on a rocky jut, their party having gone in at the hotel gates higher up. Ermengarde could hear the donkey improving the occasion by a vigorous cropping of tough herbage. She was sure the woman was painted, and fancied that the odour of musk floated up.
"All the more bound to play, Countess," the genial baritone replied. "You're bound to rake 'em in somehow, don't you know. How else get the things back? Let me lend you——"
"No, no,mon cher. I rob not the poors. Not you, my poor child, who are poor like ze mouse at Mass—you say."
A cheery laugh rang out. "Not now," the gay voice cried. "Bless you, dear Countess, I've got a system now, and I raked 'em in for all I was worth last night. I'm simply swimming in gold and notes. Don't know what to do with 'em. Thought the banker would have gone for me."
"Ah, ze banker enraged himself? Good." Then, in a changed voice, in which the note of greed was audible: "How much louis have you win,mon bon ami? No, I rob not. Ach! all the world is come behind. Make but this donkey to march, Monsieur."
"Gee up, then! The little beast's mouth's made of iron. Jay, jay. Come up, you little devil! Take a poor hundred louis, Countess, just for luck. Give me the pleasure. Just to give me luck."
"Ah, but how will I pay?"
"Give me—give me that heather in your belt. White heather means good luck, don't you know."
A deep sigh, one of those melancholy French sighs that are semi-groans and half-caresses, was heard; and then, as the donkey suddenly decided upon moving on with a quick patter of little hoofs, there was a complicated stamping and much joyous laughter from the Englishman, who, Ermengarde was quite sure, had been leaning his arm on the back of the lady's saddle, and just missed being tumbled down the gorge by the animal's unexpected change of mind. She had just risen from her seat, gathering that the conversation was private. Her movement brought the speakers into her line of vision, and she recognized the young Englishman on the Monte Carlo platform, the sight of whom had so perturbed the woman of mystery the day before. She had been right in supplying the lady with powder and paint. As they disappeared round the corner, she caught the gleam of orange-dyed curls, pinned on a Parisian and unsuitable hat, and the healthy glow of the young man's upturned face. Then the path was crowded by half a dozen donkeys and riders, followed by some with panniers and a few pedestrians, and in two minutes the whole company had passed noisily out of sight, leaving the mountain stillness stiller than ever.
To come there, and in face of all that solemn peace and splendour, flaunt their sordid vices and petty anxieties! What had they to do in the heart of that austere mountain beauty? A vile reek of musk and cigars floated after them; they had tainted the very air in their passage over the ridge.
The enchantment vanished. The mountain-peaks were all grey and cold now under some silver stars, but the sea still kept some mauve and gold and chrysolite reflections from the lucid western sky; thickening shadows stole heavily up the mountain flank; the air had a sharp edge. She went slowly back to the garden, and stood by the border of scented stocks, and was looking down the gorge to the clean-roofed town by the sea, pensive and a little homesick, when out of the lemon-tops rose a face, and then a slim figure, and recognizing the woman of mystery, she hastened to meet her with a little cry of joy.
The band had long stopped playing; the afternoon sunshine was growing soft, and the Jardins Publics were empty of all but a few stragglers—bourgeoisbabies playing round mothers basking on sunny benches and among beds of carnations and cyclamen, and people crossing the paths on their way home. Agatha turned at the top of the long series of parterres bordered by orange-trees, palms, eucalyptus and pepper trees, that lay between street and street, and was bounded by the band of glowing purple sea, whence on either hand long hill-spurs ran up into the mountain amphitheatre just behind the town, and wondered at all the sunny beauty. Especially at the palms, which sprang up, straight and sturdy, everywhere closing street vistas, lending charm to featureless buildings and romance to ugly ones, and sometimes spreading their broad tops above a knot of dark-faced Arabs, lounging picturesque in burnous and fez.
"It was lovely once," the man at her side granted. "The torrent bed ran down in wild, broken beauty all the way to the sea a few years since. There's your house yonder on the ridge. Do you walk up? Well, take time. The way's straight enough. Report as often as you can. Be very careful. I thought the whole thing was exploded more than once yesterday—especially——"
"Oh! There was not the faintest suspicion. You were quite out in that. But I will be careful. Good-bye."
He went up the road to the station; she passed under the viaduct by the torrent bed and paused, watching women stepping down under the oleanders from the other side to beat linen in the stream, and then turned and went on with a lagging step, that meant dejection more than fatigue. Winding along under the grey ghostliness of arching plane-tops was a string of pack-mules, leisurely plodding under bales and panniers; fine, strong, patient beasts, in curious contrast to the long, smoke-snorting dragon of a train that roared and rattled out of sight over the railway bridge at the avenue's end in about two hoof-beats. Were people unhappy up there in those mountain villages, where life was simple and close to Nature? There was a restfulness and an air of cheerful romance about this little procession of plodding mules and bright-eyed peasants, a feeling of the picturesque, of leisurely labour in sunshine and sweet air, very comforting to a torn heart, wasted by anxiety. If one could but vanish and fade away into those mountain fastnesses and forget, working peacefully by some quiet hearth, under one of those sunlit church towers cresting the pine ridges.
But sorrow is heavy and hard to bear in youth, when fullness of life throbs in every heart-beat, rebelling at every denial and refusing every pang; and there are moments when all that should console and soften suffering contributes to deepen and intensify it. As the graceful solitary figure walked wearily along the torrent bed in a network of shadows woven by the plane-tops, all the sunny beauty of gorge and peak, of lemon orchard and glowing pine-top and dream-soft olive haze, and all the purple splendour of sea and sky and blue bloom of distance wrought upon her with such power that every sense and faculty, uplifted and expanded, helped to put an edge on the anguish within her. The higher the rocky path turning from the level bed was, the greater the beauty grew, and the pain; every hanging wreath of geranium and scented myrtle, every blaze of cactus trailing down the rock walls, through which the steep, stair-like path climbed, impressed itself sharply upon her. She turned with a movement of impatience, and looked back, and every sunlit sail and turquoise shade on the purple sea and every shadow of the hills made itself acutely felt. And when the path led under the solemn shadow of olives, and the light misty foliage parted here and there to give glimpses of sea and red-roofed town and far headland, her heart was like to break; and yet the majesty of far-stretching mountains, the glory and beauty of land and sea, had never been more vividly sweet to her.
For this is a strange thing, that the whole weight and power, the whole magic and mystery of beauty in Nature and Art, can only be felt in supreme moments of gladness or sorrow, when the mind and heart are full and every faculty is tense. The beauty deepens the pain with the very balm it brings, it magnifies the gladness with the very awe that chastens it.
Now she knew what olive-trees meant; and they mean so much, in loveliness so subtle, so manifold in suggestion; they cannot be read through and taken in at a glance, except in emotional crises, when veils are lifted and faculties quickened.
Yet there was comfort in those endless steps, that were in reality vine-terraces made on south-fronting declivities, and in the thought of the human patience and long labour of centuries, that had carried up and enriched every strip of soil on these hand-hewn ledges, and buttressed them solidly with rock till they glowed with the gladness of purple vintage and glory of emerald leaves. And here, in the olive shade, and there, backed by a rock terrace tangled in myrtle and white-blooming heath and the goblin foliage of prickly pear, were little red-roofed shrines, with frescoes telling the Seven Sorrows, blotched and dim, with scanty votive flowers withering in coarse earthen pots. The pathos of these humble, deserted shrines touched her; they seemed friendly in their silent desolation. Yet Mrs. Allonby, in her wild ascent the day before, had hardly seen them.
But this tall, clear-eyed young woman was so drawn by the fascination of the forlorn shrines that she followed the path they lined, and it led her astray. She laid a spray of flowering rosemary on the Seventh—"for remembrance"—and sighed. For she who bore that sevenfold sword of sorrow in her heart could never have borne this of looking on, helpless, and baffled in every wild effort to save, at the gradual ruin and degradation of any she loved; that barren and bitter sorrow at least was spared her.
But what if she, whose pain had been so fruitful to man, could hear, and from her place of peace give balm to crushed and broken hearts? Human sympathy may not be confined to this brief passage through time and space, she mused.
The path led with a sudden turn through garden ground, unfenced, then past a pink house with a pergola, and ended at an abrupt fall of narrow vine terraces down the ravine. Thence was seen a fuller, broader prospect facing south, bounded by a sea of purple and gold shot with crimson. There she turned, and climbing a broad flight of steps leading to the low-walled summit of the ridge, became aware of a large wooden cross standing against the pure sky on the top, as if with open arms of welcome.
Above and around it were quivering spires of cypress and plumy tops of eucalyptus, and, between black cypress boughs, the white gleam of convent walls.
The weight of silent, secret grief grew to a physical burden on those weary steps; her heart sank and died when she reached the top, and stood in rich sunshine at the foot of the great bare cross, its arms uplifted in witness and welcome for many and many a mile round, and listlessly spelt out the words cut round the centre:
Ave, crux, spes unica!
Then something gave way in her aching breast, the four healing words echoed and found response in her heart.
"Ave, ave!" she faltered, her slender figure bowed in the golden light, the healing scent of eucalyptus blossom floating down to her, and the majesty of those soaring mountain peaks and buttressed hill-flanks spreading far above in the hush and glow of the passing day. There, with her face pressed to the sun-warmed wood and her arms clasping it, a huge weight—"the burden and the mystery of all this unintelligible world"—fell away from her heart, and the great prayer that has no words filled it with peace beyond understanding—thespes unica—the only road to solution of all the tangled mystery of life.
When she rose the world was changed. On either side of the cross stood a tall eucalyptus tree; long tresses of pale fragrant blossom hung among their scimitar-shaped leaves; their cinnamon-coloured trunks, whence rolls of scented bark peeled, were so forked that the branched stems made a comfortable seat; there the tired girl rested in the ruddy glow, silently absorbing the same tranquil pageant of vesper splendour that light-hearted Ermengarde was watching from the hotel garden above. Sea murmurs were faintly audible in the deep stillness, the incense curling bluely from hill-altars was sweet, glorious were the grandly-grouped peaks and mountain masses changing and glowing with life-like motion in the sliding lights, silent, majestic witnesses to the everlasting beauty that underlies and transfuses all things. God was speaking through all that beauty; doubt and fear vanished; in spite of misery, care, and sin, all must be well at last.
Lightened at heart, she leant on the low convent wall and looked down the ravine, that was rapidly filling with shadow, and across it at the white village poised on a hill, its slender tower uplifted like a standard under the purple-shadowed mountain peak.
Suddenly a harsh high laugh broke upon the charmed stillness, and was followed by strident voices and a confused hurry of footsteps, as the whole rout of pleasure-seekers from the hotel gate clattered round the corner under the convent walls unseen, while a polyglot cackle, playing round the words systems, hotels, Monte, tables, winnings, losings, dinners, poured out in passing crescendo and died gradually away in the distance.
But before they were quite out of hearing, as they filed out upon a part of the path visible from the convent wall, the young woman's gaze was startled and arrested by the same lady and attendant youths whose talk had already been overheard from the hotel gardens, and her heart stood still and her colour went at the sight.
These two? Was it these two really beyond doubt? Then what she had heard and what had been feared was true, much too true. And for such as they, of what avail to wrestle, to agonize, to beat at the gate of heavenly mercy with fastings and tears and inward silent heart-bleeding? Even now the boy's mother must be praying at home for him. And of what avail? Yet was not yonder vast cathedral reared to the lucid sky telling in superb and solemn beauty of the infinite power and love and pity of the divine poet and artificer of all? And even if that calm majesty had no power to rebuke fretting or silence despair, there was thespes unicashining in the deepening after-glow, a beacon to storm-driven hearts.
A little withered old woman passed along under the rock wall, leading a self-willed goat, and briskly knitting. She sent up a shrill and cheerful "Buon sera," laughed, and nodded, and went on her tranquil way. Then the lay brother in charge of the deserted garden, passing the eucalyptus on his way home from work, told her she had taken the longest way, and put her on the shorter, and she went down the steps as the first few stars trembled into the sky, and so round through olives and pines to the hotel. And there, in the glowing twilight above the lemon-tops, was the face of her fellow-traveller, brightening at the sight of her with smiles of welcome.
"My dear woman of mystery, where did you spring from?" she cried. "I thought you had gone on to Italy. And how on earth did you climb up this terrific hill? And where is your luggage? And how very glad I am to see you again!"
That Italy was just round the corner, that the parting had been but yesterday, and that it was possible for an able-bodied woman to climb a mile of mountain-path without utter destruction, filled Ermengarde with a wonder only less than her wonder at her own unfeigned delight in unexpectedly meeting this woman, who appeared to be somewhat overpowered by her effusive reception.
"Dear Mrs. Allonby," she protested faintly, while being carried off to the house, "indeed, I am not at all hungry, and not so very tired."
"Oh, but you are!" she insisted. "Dreadfully tired. And you must have some tea at once—in my room. I had mine long ago, out of doors. I will make tea for you in my own Etna—the one that upset in my dress-basket. Are you expected? Have you engaged rooms? Let me take you in to Madame Bontemps, proprietress and manager. Most civil and obliging; will make you very comfortable. We shall find her in the office. Heinrich? What's become of the porter? Madame Bontemps? What on earth's the matter?"
The inner door, which had been closed at sunset, yielded to pressure, and let a torrent of strident voices and sounds of discord pour out upon the startled air, disclosing a spectacle that caused both ladies to retreat in momentary terror, and despair of all peaceful and safe passage through the hall.
Madame Bontemps had, as it were, taken the stage—that is, the middle of the hall—and with blazing eyes and murderous gestures, was calling down what sounded the most terrific maledictions upon the devoted head of the stalwart Swiss porter, Heinrich, who, with bristling moustache and hair and balled fists, thundered back denunciations even more terrific with gestures of even greater violence.
"And not a policeman to be had!" Ermengarde lamented. "What on earth is to be done? She will be killed, and so will he. Heinrich! Madame! Monsieur Bontemps! Feu—au secours!" she cried, heedless of the new arrival's suggestion to wait till the storm was over. But of this there appeared to be little chance. Madame Bontemps, her features distorted with fury, shrieked fiercer and fiercer maledictions at the retreating Heinrich, springing across the hall at him, when he fled from her onset, soon to return to the charge, before which she in her turn retreated, with denunciations and gestures that put Madame Bontemps' life at a pin's fee.
"If there was only a fire-bell," murmured Ermengarde, looking round, deaf to her companion's reassurance that the contest would be bloodless, "or a police-whistle, or even a cab-stand!"
But Madame, undismayed and active, her rolled back hair quivering, her tall form dilating, her hands on her hips, repulsed the charge of Heinrich with such a torrent of abuse as drove him back once more to the middle of the hall. There both stood, still shouting and misunderstanding each other in three languages for a measurable space, during which Monsieur Bontemps lounged in an easy attitude, cigarette in mouth, at the office door, softly stroking his beard, and contemplating the engagement with indifference, tinged with approval and admiration of the majesty and fury of Madame.
"It is just this," he explained, with gentle condescension, when the storm lulled, "the French of Madame is incomplete; she supplements it with the Italian of the country—a tongue entirely unknown to Heinrich. The French of Heinrich, on the contrary, is absolutely vile. He supplements it with German, of which both he and Madame are partly ignorant, and with Swiss-German, a tongue known to none but those mountaineers. Hence misunderstandings. Myself, I ignore all. Que voulez-vous?"
Yielding to pressure, however, he at length drew the infuriated lady's attention from the combat to the claims of her guests. In a moment her looks of fury were replaced by smiles of courteous welcome; her blazing eyes shed light of soft inquiry, and she came forward with a stately bow and a genial, "Bon soir, mesdames," while Heinrich as quickly forgot his wrongs and his wrath, and, dissolving into cheerful smiles, took his usual station by the door. Finally, the tumult being succeeded by perfect calm, he blandly picked up a few of the woman of mystery's parcels, which had arrived beforehand, and carried them to her room, whither they were preceded by the stately presence of Madame Bontemps herself.
The new arrival never forgot the tea brewed for her that evening. To that she attributed every digestive disturbance that afflicted her all her life after.
Nor did Ermengarde lightly dismiss from memory her own joy and fatigue in making that tea with her own hands, and for the first time, over a complicated and expensive new patent spirit-lamp, expressly devised to boil a minimum of water with a maximum of peril, inconvenience, and delay. A serious initial difficulty in lighting the lamp was presently overcome by the discovery that there was no spirit in it. A little of this, after some deliberation and delay, was borrowed of Miss Boundrish's mother. "But on no account tell Dorris," the latter implored; "she don't like lending things." The second difficulty of the kettle not boiling was surmounted after finding that it had no water—a circumstance which nearly resulted in burning a hole in it—by ringing the bell not more than five times for water of unimpeachable purity. The kettle at last having been filled, boiled over during a long and futile search for the tea, several parcels of which had been artfully mislaid in improbable portions of wearing apparel with the guileful purpose of evading douaniers and defrauding the French Republic of revenue. At last the brilliant idea of following up the trail of those packets, that had burst and peppered priceless raiment with black dust and broken stalks, resulted in their discovery. No matter how widely friends at home had differed in their advice to those about to travel, all had agreed that as much tea as the regulations by utmost stretching permitted, besides as much again as that, must be carried in every separate parcel and trunk, with the result that Ermengarde, finding little use during her travels for the tea upon which she had squandered so much substance, and incidentally making all her things smell like a grocer's shop, furtively shed small packets of it all across the Continent on her return home, in vague terror of incurring mysterious pains and penalties by secreting so much contraband.
"Is it refreshing?" she asked, when at last, flushed with triumph and heat, and smudged with lamp-black, besides having burnt her hand in a spirit-flare, she handed the precious beverage in an enamelled tin mug without a saucer. She would not have had a saucer for the world; it would have spoilt the whole thing.
"It's—very—hot," gasped the recipient, with watering eyes and a look of deep anguish.
"It's a very special tea," Ermengarde said impressively, watching the sufferer's agonies with complacence.
"Very special," sighed the victim; "most special."
"I got it myself, from a woman whose cousin married a tea-planter. He sends her a chest every now and then to sell to intimate friends to pay for Church work," Ermengarde continued, with intense satisfaction. "That accounts for the remarkable flavour."
"No doubt it does," murmured the sufferer, recovering breath, and correctly attributing the mingled taste of old boots and public-houses, that characterized the special tea, to the probability of the kettle having had no lid on and a strong spirit flare under it.
"Poor dear; you must have been dying for a cup!" her tormentor murmured, with relentless benignity.
"From a cup," the victim thought; but by degrees she gallantly swallowed the whole dose, finding it impossible to evade the pleased and compassionate eyes bent so persistently upon her.
"How odd that we should have been coming to the very same house all the time!" Ermengarde said, wearily drawing a lamp-blacked hand across her still aching forehead, and sinking upon the nearest seat, when the tea-drinking was over.
"Ah, yes," with a little hesitation.
"And chance upon rooms adjoining, too!"
"Very odd."
"How glad I am it's you, and not that dreadful Anarchist, Miss—ah——"
"My name is Somers—Agatha Somers," she said quickly, with a flush, not unnoticed.
"Only think, if the wretch were to come back? Do you think he will?" suddenly, with a keen look.
"How can I possibly guess?" she replied, with the stone blank expression noticed in the train.
"Strange that he should have come up here for a single night, instead of going to one of the hotels in the town."
"Did he? Perhaps he thought this dull. It is a little—secluded."
"If ever I saw guilt written on a human face," thought Ermengarde, her suspicions all awake again, in a moment of sudden repulsion. "Well," she added, rising to go, "au revoir till dinner. But I must give you one piece of advice, Miss Somers," she added, turning back and sitting on the edge of the bed, her eye chancing to fall on an open letter that had slipped from a hand-bag on the bed—a strange letter, written in what was no doubt cipher, all dots and dashes and lines and bars, with little explosions here and there. "Don't say anything not meant to meet the ear of the public on the path outside the straw shelter. I'll tell you what I heard this afternoon. As you can't possibly know the people, it can't matter; it is not tale-telling. And I dare say that poor boy has a mother," she sighed, at the close of her tale, "who little knows what harpies are preying upon him. By the way," she added, "do you remember seeing a tall, cheery-looking English lad at Monte Carlo Station yesterday? It was that very boy."
The woman of mystery, in the act of raising the lid of a trunk before which she was kneeling, let it fall with a crash that drew a faint sudden sound of pain from her.
"It was the lock," she faltered, rising to her feet, and leaning against the tall French window frame, rather pale and holding her hand. "Oh, not really hurt; it only smarts for the moment. But what were you saying? I beg pardon. You recognized a friend at Monte Carlo Station yesterday? How observant you are, dear Mrs. Allonby! And one English boy is so like another."
"But this one has such a happy laugh, so infectious, so jolly, so devil-may-care. And that painted foreign thing was such a cat. She'd got her claws so deep in him. Such a Countess as poor Yvette's mother, I should say—a Countess in her own—wrong. I suspect there are tons of that sort at Monte Carlo."
"No doubt," Agatha returned, absently looking out of the window at the lights lying along the torrent-bed like a thin river of light, broadening into an estuary where the roofs of the town were crowded together by the darkened sea. "I think I will take your advice, dear Mrs. Allonby, and lie down till dinner. I'm more tired than I thought."
That Dorris Boundrish was an exceedingly pretty girl her severest critics could not deny, nor could her greatest admirers refrain from a suspicion that she was scarcely as irresistible or as brilliant as she imagined. Her mouth was like pink coral, small and sweet, but with hints of peevishness and discontent in the corners; her face had wild-rose tints; her eyes were clear, speedwell blue, but a little hard at times; something on her velvety forehead said, "Not much in here." Of that deficiency poor Miss Dorris was wholly unaware; on the contrary, she supposed the premises to be unusually spacious and well-stocked, and in this persuasion was benignantly given to impart her superfluous knowledge to an ungrateful world to an extent that sometimes made people thankful to be spared such information as that sea-water is too strong of salt to make a pleasant drink, or that two and two amount together to the round number of four.
All evils have their compensations; and this amiable weakness of Miss Dorris sometimes became a source of joy to the community of Les Oliviers, when properly manipulated by M. Isidore, for example. For it was the especial delight of this fair young creature to impart recently acquired knowledge to her neighbours, and recently acquired knowledge being undigested, and in many cases hastily and inaccurately received, sometimes emerges from its temporary lodging in the brain in a changed, even unrecognizable, form. Moreover, M. Isidore, having an imagination of unusual fertility and an impish delight in mischief, was tempted to confide myths having only a poetic and ideal foundation in fact, to the ear of Dorris, in the sure anticipation of hearing them issue in some novel form from the pink coral lips attable d'hôte; always providing he listened, as he frequently did, unseen behind an open door, to the general buzz of table talk, above which Miss Boundrish's arrogant treble shrilled high and incessant. When the intelligence conveyed by the pink coral lips was very wildly improbable, that every conscript, for example, during his first month of service, was dieted entirely on frogs to inspire him with martial courage, the thin man, usually silent, would, very gently expressing astonishment, venture to ask the source of Miss Boundrish's information.
"Oh, it's perfectly true, Mr. Welbourne," the overbearing treble would scream down the table, "I had it from a man who had been in the French army himself. The frogs are those little green things in the tanks, that are beginning to make such a croaking every night. Of course, you know that Mont Agel isterrain militaire, where nobody is allowed to go for fear of disturbing these frogs, which are kept in tanks on purpose. The diet is so stimulating, you know, it makes the soldiers long to fight."
"Really?" the thin man would murmur pensively. "How very interesting! What a remarkably ingenious people the French are! Would such an idea ever occur to the dull British brain, do you suppose?"
Then a smile would go round the table, and coughs and suppressed chokings would be heard, and M. Isidore would dance with rapture in the corridor outside, and, on being severely interrogated by Ermengarde and the thin man afterwards, would truthfully say that he only asked Mademoiselle if she had heard of this curious custom of dieting on frogs for courage, and with regard to Mont Agel had chanced to mention that the public were excluded from that, as from all terrain militaire, and that many tanks containing frogs were there, as everywhere in the hills.
"The imagination of Mademoiselle," he would observe innocently, "invests things with a magic of its own. In short, she is a poet." Then he would laugh gently, and Ermengarde would shudder for his future, though she was not above suggesting to him themes similar to the results of a frog diet for Miss Boundrish's imagination to develop. So thattable d'hôtewas sometimes the scene of some remarkable additions to human knowledge.
To account for her various and invincible charms, speculation as to where Miss Boundrish had been dragged up was frequent and diverse. Yet her parents were there in attendance upon her, harmless, worthy people of the comfortable, Philistine, mid-middle class, the father rather deaf—he had registered her with two r's, because her mother insisted on the short o in Doris, and the man was too logical to leave his child with insufficient letters—the mother placidly content with the wildest utterances of her only child, and both well trained in the ways in which modern parents are expected to go. That no subject was too abstruse for Dorris's discussion, and that nothing could be spoken of upon which she was not quite as well informed as anyone present, or better, caused them no apparent surprise. But Miss Boundrish's father was a little deaf, and Miss Boundrish's mother once confided to the thin man that it was a little tiring to be the mother of an exceptionally gifted and accomplished child, and that a few days' visit to Nice, contemplated by Dorris, would afford her a welcome opportunity of taking a "much-needed" rest. "I should like," she sighed, "to have two solid days to do nothing in and to think nothing in—and," she added, after a pause, "tofearnothing in."
"So that one hopes the fair Dorris doesn't beat her," the thin man commented to Ermengarde, who thought her quite capable of it. But Agatha suggested that even Miss Boundrish's mother might not be quite insensible to the fury some of her little ways evoked from the community; that pretty little way of drawing up a chair or of walking up and stopping dead for the express purpose of breaking into intimate or interesting dialogue, that even prettier way of pursuing people bent on solitude, dual or otherwise, to pleasant points of view, and pouring out entirely familiar, guide-book information.
As, for instance, when the setting sun brought the craggy peaks that wall the high hill-village of St. Agnes into unusual beauty, and a party coming home from an excursion and another drawn out to the mountain from the hotel, stood silently enjoying it, and Dorris's high voice suddenly rang over the gorge with the history of the walled hill-villages, of the abduction of the innocent young Agnes by Saracens in one of their raids, and of the miracle wrought by her faith, which resulted in the conversion of many, the restoration of St. Agnes to her home among the crags, and a yearly commemoration of the event to this day by a procession of villagers.
"Why," murmured the thin man on that occasion, "why are there no Saracens to-day?"
"There are plenty, Mr. Welbourne," cried the shrill voice unexpectedly. "I saw some Moors in the town yesterday. They're all the same, you know."
"But they don't——" the thin man paused, allowing a daring word to die on his lips. "That is—the great days of old—the days of daring and romance—are over. We live in a degenerate age."
He spoke so mournfully that Miss Boundrish was much moved, and joined him in lamentation over the past, while every heart present echoed his unspoken thought, that a Saracen raid upon the Riviera might involve the abduction of Miss Boundrish, the mere idea of which filled them with joy. They were sure that she would have pleased the Saracenic taste, and doubted if her prayers would work a miracle.
"Where on earth did you pick up that Somers girl, Mrs. Allonby?" the sweet girl asked one day with pleasing directness and candour. It was during a descent upon the town to see the Carnival, arranged between the thin man, Ermengarde, and Agatha. Miss Boundrish, overhearing this arrangement the night before—she always overheard everything—had offered to make a fourth in the party, so suddenly, so loudly, and with such a certainty of conferring a favour, and also so immediately in the hearing of her mother, that neither of the three was ready with a civil excuse for declining the honour, though each said sadly to the others afterwards, "Why are there no Saracens now?"
"That Somers girl," Ermengarde repeated slowly and thoughtfully, as if wondering to whom she referred.
"Idon't think much of her," continued Dorris. "You know you can't be too particular who you get to know in places like this. Very queer people in these cheap Continental pensions."
"How true!" Ermengarde murmured thoughtfully. "I've never seen a Carnival, have you?"
"You ought to see the Nice Carnival; this is a very one-horse thing. Did you know Miss Somers in England?"
"Did you?"
"Not exactly, but I knew of her. That is, I knew the man she was supposed to be engaged to. I—I knew him rather well, in fact." Miss Boundrish's smile suggested worlds.
"Were you engaged to him, as well?"
"Well—not exactly engaged. Poor Ivor!" with the usual gurgle. "Such an escape for him."—So Ermengarde thought.—"They say his people knew nothing about it. So you picked her up abroad?"
"She—if you mean Miss Somers—picked me up once, on the floor of a corridor carriage. Not pleasant to tumble down in a faint on the floor of a train. One is thankful to be picked up and taken care of——"
"By anybody, of course," with the gurgle so familiar at Les Oliviers. "Well, you'd better be on your guard, that's all. Did you lose any money, anything of value on the way?"
"Miss Boundrish, what are you talking about?" was the sharp rejoinder.
"Only that, going about in the world, I get to know a lot of things. There are so many sharpers about on the Continent—gangs of them in league together. They follow people to Nice and Monte Carlo, and all these places, and rook them in all sorts of ways. They are regular birds of prey, living by their wits. Some think the police are in their pay. Robbery after robbery takes place in trains and custom-houses; at least, jewels, money, and letters of credit disappear from locked and registered luggage, and the thieves are scarcely ever found out. I say, where do you think she spent the afternoon of the day she came to Les Oliviers?—Ah! here they are," as Miss Somers and the thin man came in sight of the waiting-place in the Jardins Publics. "Poor Mr. Welbourne, he's quite gone on her already. She can't leave him alone a minute."
"Four seats on the stand, but not together," said the thin man, unconscious of personal comment. "How shall we divide?"
Although Ermengarde had by this time made some progress in the art of sticking on to a perpendicular donkey acting as an intermittent see-saw, somebody having given her some lessons on the most gentle-paced beast to be found, she was not enamoured of that form of gymnastic, and of two evils had thought a descent by a shorter path through gardens and woods on foot with Miss Boundrish, the less, leaving Miss Somers to ride down the longer mule-path with the thin man, whose slight lameness made him a poor pedestrian. But her feeling of relief when the other two came up brought her to the conclusion that even donkeys were preferable to Dorris. Yet the hints from the pink coral lips were not without effect upon her, chiming as they did with her own inferences, and she was dying to know where Agatha had spent the afternoon of that first day, which Dorris had also passed away from the hotel.
The party being now complete, they left the gardens and wound through the holiday streets in the sunshine, now jostled by a cheerful and apologizing devil, black from head to heel, with bat-wings of black crape stretched on cane; now mixed up in a flock of geese with human legs and monstrous cackling beaks; now avoiding the attentions of dominos flinging paper serpents and trying to draw them into impromptu dances whenever a band was heard along the street.
How gay and odd and foolish and delightful it was to unsophisticated Ermengarde! The narrow, foreign streets, palms closing their vistas, great hotels, in gardens glowing with gorgeous exotics and flowers, breaking their lines here and there; the warm deep purple of the sea barring every side street on one hand; the picturesque old Italian town climbing the wooded hill-spur and cresting it with its tower on the other; and the great mountain amphitheatre stretching far up beyond that, with bare peaks, violet-veined, crystalline, drawn clear and sharp on the deep, clear, velvety sky; the motley crowd of mad masks and dominos, cheaply gaudy, childishly absurd, helplessly gay; the rippling laughter and confused babble of local dialect and foreign tongues on the liquid air; the droll family parties, transparently disguised, even the babies, in coloured calico; the trim little mountain soldiers, bright-eyed and smiling, keeping the streets; the hawkers of toys, sacks of confetti, and endless paper coils; the vendors of strange local pastry and sweets on little standings; the look of expectant enjoyment on every face, especially the broad and business-like bourgeois countenance; the atmosphere of spontaneous gaiety, sunshine, and enjoyment, all went to English Ermengarde's head. Old life-long artificial restraints gave way; the joy of life sprang up; she could almost have taken hands and danced with the maskers dancing along the street. The eternal child, dormant in us all, was awake and happy in her.
It was not the show, that was poor and disappointing, all its cheap and tawdry vanities blotting the pure beauty of atmosphere and setting, that gave this new vivid sense of unconstrained gladness. Perhaps she had never seen people madly, spontaneously, and yet decorously gay before. The Carnival folk were all, young and old, rich and poor, merry and not wise and bent upon being merry and not wise, and yet they were not in the least ashamed or conscious of any cause for shame. Even some Americans, a people never young but aged and biases from their cradles, snatched a brief hour of long-deferred childhood, and a few self-conscious Britons, their gloomy national pride concealed in dominos, condescended to diversions that in their own personality they scorned as only fit for foreigners and fools. No wonder that the sparkling sunny sea-air and atmosphere of infectious enjoyment dissipated light-hearted Ermengarde's insular self-consciousness, and she suddenly discovered that there is more enjoyment in life than is commonly supposed.
What was the mad tune band after band kept playing as the huge cars, grotesquely laden, filed slowly past; it was jingly and poor, but so crazily full of headlong mirth—La Mattschiche? Long afterwards it gave her a pleasant thrill to hear it shouted by street boys, thumped on pianos and street organs, and blared on brass bands. It was "full of the warm South" for her.
Mr. Welbourne, an artist and no Philistine, though a true-born Englishman, public-school-milled, politely and unobtrusively bored, was agreeably surprised by his countrywoman's interest in the show; it was like taking a child—a real old-fashioned child—to a pantomime. Even Agatha observed her with grave but pleased surprise. Dorris, when not explaining things in a loud voice, expressed unmitigated contempt for everything; yet Ermengarde, though she longed for Saracenic invasions when the gurgle was too persistent, scarcely knew that Miss Boundrish was sitting beside her on the stand erected in front of the Mairie, the thin man and Agatha being in the row behind them. Mr. Welbourne, though simple and honest in his ways, had sufficient guile to contrive that.
The stout elderlybourgeoisewith a bad cold and strong scent of garlic, sitting next Ermengarde, had come, she told her, from Monte Carlo, under sad anxiety lest the bad cold should keep her at home, and never stopped showering confetti on everybody that passed, always missing them, yet wrought to ecstasy when confetti were thrown to her, and pleased as a child when her paper serpents caught in the snapping jaws of the crocodile on a car full of these creatures of all sizes.
Another very dowdy old dame in front was quite as active; she was as thickly snowed over with confetti and wound about with paper serpents as Lot's wife in her salt.
"I say, Mrs. Allonby," Dorris suddenly hissed in her ear, "look behind, quick!" And Ermengarde, obeying at once, saw nothing but the woman of mystery, unwinding a paper serpent coiled round her neck by a man with a huge false nose in a smart carriage full of silk dominos.
"The sting is in the tail," murmured Dorris, and Ermengarde became aware of a small packet at the end of the coil, that Agatha hastily glanced at and slid into her hand-bag, her cheek flushing when she looked up and caught eyes upon her.
Ermengarde sighed madly for Saracens. "How could you?" she reproached Dorris, who became mysterious and full of dark hints.
Then a serpent was coiled round Mrs. Allonby's neck, and looking up at the thrower, she recognized a Spanish cavalier on a mule, who had already thrown her confetti and bouquets several times in passing the Mairie. She had scattered most of the flowers on the crowd, but kept some especially sweet tea-roses, also a bunch of Parma violets, thrown from the car that carried a few family parties of crocodiles, opening and shutting their long jaws, to the great delight of the populace.
There was something in the Spaniard, a flash of the eyes under the broad sombrero, that made her heart beat. Where and when could she have seen that whiskered face? He threw both serpents and confetti freely as he passed, but no flowers, except to her. Very few flowers were thrown by anyone.
When the serpent was unwound, there was a little weight at the end of the coil. A letter? A bomb? Perhaps only chocolate. This was thrilling and mysterious, but entirely delightful—a thing that could not possibly happen at home—at least, not with propriety. The weight turned out to be a morocco box wrapped in tissue paper. The man had evidently taken her for somebody else—a respectable somebody else, it was to be hoped; she had dropped into the middle of some romantic entanglement, or some dreadful Anarchist or Nihilist plot. Heavens! it might have been meant for her mysterious fellow-traveller, and contain a signal for the instant assassination of some distinguished statesman or royal person recognized through his disguise, or for the blowing up of the whole place. The spring tentatively and gingerly touched, the lid flew up, but—though she shut her eyes for quite two seconds—nothing whatever happened, nothing went off, nobody was killed; there was neither explosive nor written instruction inside—nothing but a thin gold chain, its delicate links separated at every inch by pearls or diamonds, daintily coiled on the violet velvet lining. Could it be poisoned, or charged with accumulated electricity to a deadly extent? A dainty toy it looked; she had seen and longed for one just like it at Spink's, not long ago. "Well, when the money-ship comes home," Arthur had growled; and that, of course, meant never.
"Just look," she cried, holding it up in the sunshine. "I had no idea people threw things like this to strangers."
"They don't," Dorris said grimly. "It was carefully aimed."
"Then it can't be for me," she mused, and turned back to Agatha, who was reading the folded paper flung in the end of her coil, her hand shielding her face from the sun, which struck full upon her. Just then such volleys of confetti came broadside from a high car representing a ship that nothing but defence could be thought of, and the chain was slipped into a purse and forgotten. And when Ermengarde turned again to Agatha, she saw her, to her unspeakable amazement, bending over the side of the stand, speaking to the Spaniard—now dismounted and stopping on his way through a lane at the corner of the stand.
This incident had not escaped Miss Boundrish, who smiled acidly at Ermengarde's look of surprise. "Now we can guess the true destination of the chain," she whispered.
But the sudden spectacle of the thin man across the road biding the pelting of a pitiless storm of confetti from three several silken dominos at once, with bent head and a face of resigned anguish, was so joyous that Ermengarde forgot her momentary desire to murder Dorris; and when Mr. Welbourne had taken refuge in such flight in an opposite direction as his infirmity permitted, the temporary blinding and partial choking of Miss Boundrish, who had received a dexterous handful while enjoying a hearty, but unconcealed, yawn, further blunted the edge of her murderous desires, and made her offer Eau de Cologne instead of poison, with whole-hearted enjoyment of the damsel's spluttering indignation and vehement assertions that she was poisoned.
"In that case," it was suggested, "best take an emetic at once," a proposition received with scorn and fury, and further declarations that she was blinded for life, and wondered why there were no gens d'armes, and considered that the least Mrs. Allonby could have done was to give the beast into custody, and she wished she had brought her father.
"But you can't give a large green frog on the top of a mountain on wheels into custody, dear Miss Boundrish—Oh! pff!"
It was now Ermengarde's turn to be pelted by a Cyrano de Bergerac, whose enormous nose was in striking contrast to his slender, elastic figure. The Cyrano, who had been one of the party in the carriage whence the serpent with the letter in its tail was thrown to Agatha, soon tired of raining paper on to a steadily held sunshade, and went away, finding better sport in a silken domino, one of a group walking in the road, who showed fight gallantly, revealing a pair of dark eyes flashing with spirit and challenge. After a sharp engagement, the domino's ammunition having run out, she turned and ran, pursued and stopped by the Cyrano, who pelted her unmercifully in the face, even holding a fold of the domino and spirting the confetti under it to make her uncover, till at last he brought her to bay just under the side of the stand, off the street.
"Beast!" muttered Ermengarde, her indignation intensified by the English accent of the unchivalrous Cyrano. She would actually have rushed to the assistance of the wronged lady, but that help came from another quarter in the shape of a crocodile, which suddenly descended in a series of astonishingly agile leaps from the very top of the great, shell-shaped car of crocodiles, that was lumbering by, and, seizing the Cyrano de Bergerac by the scruff of his neck, shook him like a rat till he was forced to let go the lady, just as she slipped the domino back, discovering the indignant, tearful face and blazing eyes of Mlle. Bontemps. This revelation was evidently more discomfiting to the Cyrano than the furious assault of the crocodile, from the slit-open throat of which glared the face of M. Isidore, white with fury.
"Why, it's the very crocodile who threw you the violets," shouted Dorris. "I thought I recognized him, and that plain and frumpish Bontemps girl!"
If only the Boundrish had been effectually choked! Why had a weak and culpable sympathy comforted her with Eau de Cologne?
The Cyrano was not to be shaken to death like a rat without showing fight; in the tussle that ensued his rich costume suffered considerably before the crocodile let him go; and what the one said and the other gasped and growled in reply, though not intelligible through the din of bands and crowds, was presumably of an uncomplimentary character.
Finally, flinging the long-nosed masquer from him, M. Isidore, his crocodile head thrown back like a hood and helplessly wobbling behind him, drew the insulted domino's hand through his arm with an air of possession and protection, the rescued damsel clinging to him with evident confidence and gratitude, and the two men, unconscious in their passion of their absurd appearance, the crocodile pale and calm, the long-nose red with confusion and fury and haughtily apologetic, stood glaring fiercely at each other with question, accusation, and explanation.
Presently the long-nose, as if at the crocodile's request, produced a small white square from the recesses of his sumptuous dress; the crocodile handed him a similar square in return; they bowed and separated. M. Isidore led Mlle. Bontemps away on his arm towards a blue glimpse of sea at the end of a side-street, and the Cyrano, removing his plumed cap, and with it his great nose, that had become very shaky in the course of the fray, disclosed to Ermengarde's astonished gaze the features of the young Englishman of Monte Carlo.
It was but a moment before the nose was hastily replaced, and its owner turned back into the main street, where he stood talking to a Pierrot, immediately in front of the stand, behind a soldier keeping the road.
"Thought you'd have known better than that," the Pierrot grumbled. "It wasn't playing the game."
"I could have sworn it was the Countess," the Cyrano was heard to say dejectedly. "And after yesterday—well, I didn't feel bound to play the game with her. Besides,shewouldn't have cared."
"Let us go," said Ermengarde, suddenly sick of the fooling, and worried by the band's mad tune repeated over and over again; but, looking round for Agatha, she found her place empty, and Mr. Welbourne, who had returned to his seat, unable to give any account of her.
Many thoughts were in Ermengarde's heart, while in response to the thin man's timely suggestion of tea at Rumpelmayer's, they slipped out of the press to the comparative quiet of the promenade by the sea, that glowed like a peacock's velvety throat on the horizon, with the near shallows of turquoise, and broke with a deep soft boom in snowy surf on the rocks.
She was glad of the fresh sea-breath and the beauty of the bay's broad sweep between the purple headland of Bordighera and the craggy bluffs above Monte Carlo. And when they turned into the Gardens under the tall eucalyptus, the appearance of the woman of mystery coming down an avenue of palms was a great relief. But a flush on Agatha's cheek and a vision of the Spaniard rapidly disappearing under palms in the opposite direction, filled her with misgiving again. What could all this atmosphere of intrigue and mystification portend? Certainly nothing praiseworthy.
"It was so hot and dusty on the stand," Agatha said, to explain her sudden disappearance, upon which Dorris alone had commented.
That evening, when they had gone to their rooms for the night, Ermengarde knocked at Agatha's door and handed her the little box containing the chain. "I think this must be yours, Miss Somers," she said. "Your friend the Spaniardthrew it, and it caught round my neck by mistake."
"My friend?" she asked, confused. "Oh, you mean the Spaniard who stopped by the stand to ask the way to the sea?"
"Yes, the Spaniard, not the Cyrano de Bergerac."
The flush died from the woman of mystery's cheek, and the stone mask settled upon it. She returned the chain, saying coldly it could not be intended for her, and that she knew nothing about it.
"The Cyrano," Ermengarde observed casually, as she turned from the door, "turned out to be the young Englishman of Monte Carlo, the same who was overheard offering money to the foreign Countess."
"Did he?" she replied, without interest. "Good night, dear Mrs. Allonby. You look tired."
Monte Carlo, justly reputed one of the loveliest spots on earth, is most magically beautiful perhaps when seen from the sea, or from the long, low, wooded headland of Cap Martin.
Thence, on her first visit one golden afternoon, Ermengarde enjoyed a most poetic vision of it, never forgotten and never surpassed. She had left her party, and was basking on a shore thick set with rich-fruited, wind-stunted myrtle and rosemary bushes, the odours of which mingled with pine scents and sweet, sharp sea-breath, while she listened to the soft boom of waves plunging in white, azure-shadowed foam on the rocks at the point, where the sea is more intensely blue than anywhere else and the foam whiter, yet always with that faint azure tinge in shadow.
From this point landwards an enchanting prospect spreads in long-drawn splendour from the gracefully sweeping outline of Bordighera, running far out to sea on the right, to that faint and fairy headland, whence rise the Provençal mountains, so bold in outline, in substance so dim and shadowy, beyond the abrupt crags of the Tête du Chien, which hold Monte Carlo as in a cup. Between these points the great Alpine amphitheatre sweeps grandly back in lofty, soaring outline, enclosing a rich and sunny Paradise of gorge and ridge and mountain spur, running in headland after headland, with tower-crested town, village, garden, and wood, into the clear dark sea. There, beyond the Italian frontier, sits Ventimiglia throned with many towers high above the waves, and there a white pyramidal mass of houses, based on the harbour arches on a sea-fronting steep and topped by a slender church-tower that dominates all for many a mile, is Mentone, regally beautiful. Here little Roccabruna shoulders itself into the sparkling blue, and in mountain recesses far behind it is many a hill village up to the very peaks. On that afternoon the battered Roman tower of Turbia showed clear on its craggy bluffs against the sky above Monte Carlo, but the ravine beneath and Monte Carlo itself were veiled in purply shadow, mystic, dim.
The song of the breakers was lulling; the air, spiced with myrtle and sea-scent, sweet and stimulating; the fullness of colour a joy nothing could blight. Old happy rambles between cliff and sea, as a child, a bride, a young mother, came to mind, all the beauty of many lovely sea places gathered up in, and falling short of, this, which still wanted the cream and salt of all, the loves and companionships of old, young days—a thought that drew tears, not wholly sad.
Presently a silvery-grey cloud gathered over the Tête du Chien, and suddenly the whole shadowed hill-cup holding Monte Carlo, with Monaco sitting on the steep rock beneath it in the sea, flashed out, clear-cut and distinct in every detail. The broad hollow of the gorge, up to the very crags almost, seemed full of white buildings set in rich dark verdure, and crowding down to the water's edge. Fleets of tiny fishing-vessels cruised about round Monaco, and yachts, both white-sailed and steam-funnelled, flitted over the paling sea and rode at anchor in the harbour, the whole composing a picture of loveliness beyond imagining.
The thin man was in despair. He was an impressionist; and having had his painting things and himself conveyed hither and set down among the rosemary and lentisk, on purpose to record impressions, was so stunned and bewildered by the multitudes that rushed crowding in every variety of loveliness upon him, that he could only sit on his camp-stool with his easel before him, and hold his head in his hands and groan.
"Seize Monte Carlo!" Ermengarde shouted to him from her distant boulder when it flashed out, one glorious pearl, under the silvery cloud, and he seized and painted it with a trembling hand before it vanished and the great hill-cup was again a mass of purple shadow. The impression was faint, but the thin man was eternally grateful to Ermengarde for that, and for her further command to snap up Mentone, majestically enthroned above a glowing sapphire sea, and framed by wind-twisted pines, which threw ruddy stems and blue-black crowns from the low shore across it. And though another injunction to impress the long hill-spur running down to Bordighera, when it changed from indigo to warm deep violet with heliotrope shadings, plunged Mr. Welbourne back to despair, his gratitude broke out in a generous impulse.
"Let us go to Monte Carlo to-morrow," he cried. "Give me the pleasure of your company, Mrs. Allonby, since you don't care to go alone. It is not as terrible as you suppose."
"Well, why not? Only don't speak of it, or Miss Boundrish will manage to nip in again."
The thin man was really very handy on occasion; he made a respectable and entirely biddable escort, and, knowing so many people of Mrs. Allonby's acquaintance and being cousin to most of them, seemed more like an elderly relative than a chance acquaintance. He knew many things, and well knew how to talk; his old-fashioned pedantry and fulness of phrase was forgiven, as being in character with his neutral-tinted, old-bachelor personality; he impressed Ermengarde as a sort of social sofa-cushion, restful, harmless, and very useful in travelling.
"The success of any ramble, picnic, excursion, or small party," he added pensively, "depends entirely on arithmetic. No matter of what elements the party be composed, the addition or subtraction of one may spoil all," a pronouncement heartily endorsed by Ermengarde, as expressing her own feelings on the subject, though she had not guessed at what person's subtraction he was obscurely hinting as ruinous to his enjoyment. Nor did she for a moment suspect that, in arranging the Monte Carlo afternoon for two performers only, she had sadly diminished poor Mr. Welbourne's pleasure. Since the Carnival, the woman of mystery had not been asked to accompany Mrs. Allonby anywhere, nor had the two ladies once helped each other to dress or exchanged small talk from their adjoining rooms, which communicated by a door. A woman who received jewellery from one mask and letters from another, and held conversations and clandestine meetings with at least two suspicious male characters, was not a desirable acquaintance for a grass widow and a mother of unimpeachable respectability. Yet Ermengarde's heart misgave her when she met the silent question of Agatha's melancholy eyes at any approach to companionship on her part meeting with repulse. She hated herself especially the morning after the Cap Martin excursion when, with the full intention of spending the afternoon at Monte Carlo, she declined a mountain walk with Agatha on the ground that it was less tiring to bask in the sunny garden at home.
"Then I think I will run down to Mentone," Agatha said, in a confidence untouched by suspicion. "I have an invalid friend in the place who likes me to come in to luncheon sometimes."
After all, could there be anything more restful than these quiet lounges by train from spacious halls of leisure, called Gares in that country? the thin man and Ermengarde wondered, as they sauntered about the clean and airy emptiness of Mentone Station, and chanced to take seats in a train that happened to be strolling in the direction of France, and was entirely composed of first-class carriages, well-cushioned, and provided with antimacassars of spotless crochet-work. Other people as casually strolled over and rested, as if by happy chance, in the clean and comfortable carriages, and after some time, enjoyably spent with a prospect of sea and mountain and near view of palm and garden and sunny street, it seemed to occur to the person lounging upon the engine to propel the string of carriages gently in the direction of France, and they glided through the now familiar but never-lessening enchantment of rich scenery between mountain and sea, always plunging into the tunnelled darkness whenever a fairy headland ran out into blue and foam-fringed bays.
But what talk they heard on this fairy progress! The tongues were many, but the subject one alone. For example—
"You'll hardly be at the tables to-night, Ethel?"
"Why not? Easy to unpack and settle in before dinner. And only staying three weeks, a pity to lose a night."
"True, I shall put in a couple of hours before dinner as well as after."
Again, in Teutonic accents, "So Hedwig leaves next week?"
"Yes, her husband says they are thoroughly tired of Monte Carlo."
"So? I thought Hedwig had lost rather heavily of late. And Hermann's luck has evidently turned too."
Or it was, "System this, system that," and, "So many francs to the good at the end of the week," and the wonderful run of So-and-so's luck, and M. Tel-et-tel winning five hundred francs in half an hour, and the positive madness of putting anything on a number that had just turned up, and whyà traversmeant so much, and how a cool head and an accurate memory of the winning numbers of the last six or seven turns were absolutely necessary to work any system.
"But why," Ermengarde tragically demanded, "come to the loveliest spot on earth to do this devilry? A disused coal-mine would do equally well to gamble in."
The thin man conjectured that very likely the devil likes to kill two birds with one stone. "Because," he sighed, "the moment a beautiful and pleasant spot is discovered in any corner of the earth, he incites people to build flaring hotels and villas upon it, and run railways to it; and, if there is sea, to block it from sight with ghastly buildings, and spoil its strand with sea-walls and piers and promenades; and, if there are trees, to cut them down or blast them with smoke and chemicals; and, if there are mountains, to scar and tunnel them with lines of smut and iron; and, if meadows and grassy slopes commanding lovely prospects, to destroy their beauty and make rasping noises and knock balls over them all day. He gets people to rush in herds to places made for beauty and calm, to chatter and snigger and look at fashionable clothes-shops emptied on thoughtless females from every capital in Europe, and gorge themselves upon all the luxuries and vices of towns. And the lovelier the spot the greater satisfaction the devil seems to take in getting men to practise ugly and squalid sins in it, and to corrupt and degrade simple and sane folk for miles round it."
By this time they were crammed like sardines with others in a close box, that; by some invisible and probably diabolic agency, was drawn up to a higher level, upon which they were contumeliously ejected by a morose official who had previously mulcted them of small coin. Then, passing under avenues of wondrous exotic trees, by beds blazing with cyclamens, carnations, salvias, and petunias, and passing rivulets dancing and rippling down rocks covered with maidenhair and broadening in pools half hidden by water lilies, they emerged upon a terrace fronting a vast blue splendour, firmly rimmed beneath a nearly white band of sky, and bounded by the purple of Bordighera on one side, and Monaco, running out on its rock beneath the headland of Cap d'Ail on the other. And in the foreground, dainty steam and sailing yachts, some moored, some flitting over the sunny sea, and crowds of fishing-boats dotted here and there.