It was among the many exasperating features in Arthur's character that you could never tell if a good, honest knock hit him hard or only just glided off him, so atrocious was the depth of his secretiveness and undemonstrativeness. He could have carried foxes, wolves, hyenas, even rats, under his cloak, and let them gnaw him till his last gasp, without giving a sign.
It was only from side-lights flashed from family and friendly letters that his wife could have enjoyed the just satisfaction of hearing that he was supremely uncomfortable in her absence; and even that was denied her, by reason of his perversity in remaining on that mysterious circular business tour, that never seemed to end, and respecting which he gave the most meagre information. There was no hope of his being uncomfortable on that tour; on the contrary, he was quite certain to enjoy it immensely. That is one of the irritating things in life—the supreme satisfaction with which business fills the male mind. Business is a large word; it embraces all the concerns of men that exclude women, or rather wives—so Mrs. Allonby sometimes explained to young friends about to marry.
Still, she could not help hoping that he was desperately uncomfortable and longing for her earlier return, though the wretch never had the decency to hint at anything of the kind. Well, she would not tell him of the unlucky necessity for her early return; she would simply appear in Kensington as if on a sudden impulse, and say that the Riviera was too hot, too cold, too rowdy, too respectable—either adjective fitted—but never confess to the misfortunes of Monte Carlo.
But the incident of the necklace had so strengthened her worst suspicions connecting the woman of mystery that, before she slept that very night, the headache having vanished, she took pen and paper, and, by the light of a moon looking steadily from a dark-blue vault, cleared of cloud by rain, related the whole story to her husband, not omitting the sudden irruption of improvised aunts at Monte Carlo, or the dark intriguings with the young English prodigal and the elderly Russian Anarchist. "If that creature," she wrote, with reference to the Anarchist, "dogs my footsteps and glares at me through his detestable goggles much more, I shall have to leave the place. I do hope he is not smitten by me, but sometimes I fear it. No doubt he ought to be in Siberia, where at least there would be nothing but wolves for him to glare at and scheme against." These remarks occasioned her correspondent some diversion of a harmless character. For her otherbête noire—namely, the woman of mystery—she wrote, she thought it might be possible to obtain some information concerning her. Should she apply to the nearest British Consul, or ask information of the French police? It was becoming dangerous to be mixed up with a woman who had actually gone the length of trying to make her an accomplice in selling priceless jewels, of which she was obviously not the rightful owner.
It was while inditing this sentence that a beautiful thought flashed upon Ermengarde's mental vision, and, laying aside pen and paper, and sweeping her hair back from her shoulders, she leant her chin on her hands and looked out upon the silver-steeped olive-groves and pine-woods and the broad, bright path of sea trembling in silvery sparkles beneath the moon.
She would sell the chain flung to her at the Carnival.
It was certainly hers, and quite as certainly she would never wear the thing. She remembered the high price of that she had seen at Spink's. This one appeared to be quite as good, the pearls of quite as excellent colour and lustre, the diamonds the same. It ought to fetch something substantial.
With this comfortable thought she folded her letter and went to bed, and slept till morning blushed (as it did at the proper time in vivid crimson), while the poor suspected woman in the next room tossed upon an uneasy pillow, and racked her brains in vain, feverish efforts to find some way of turning the sapphires into money, until youth and nature conquered, and she too sank into blissful forgetfulness.
Ermengarde found it useless to take the thin man into her confidence with regard to the woman of mystery; his mind on that subject seemed to be of impenetrable brass. Had Mr. Welbourne observed this or that singular proceeding on the part of Miss Somers? drew from him a look of blank stupidity, a brazen want of comprehension, or some remark to the effect that Miss Somers was a young lady of singular charm; that she possessed intelligence of a high order, was remarkably well-informed, a most restful companion, with unusual conversational powers, enhanced by the still more unusual faculty of knowing when to be silent; that her beauty was of a very distinguished order, the marble whiteness of her complexion having the quality ofmorbidezza, and being due to an exceptionally fine and clear skin, rather than to ill-health.
"In short, my dear creature," Ermengarde reflected, "you think her far too good-looking to be criticized, much less suspected."
She remembered that the thin man was a bachelor, and not so very old, probably not much more than forty, the age of most acute susceptibility to feminine attraction. In the sight of men of that age, beauty can do no wrong. Yet the thin man honestly detested poor Miss Boundrish; he had been known to flee as if for life, and hide behind trees, rocks, trellises, and folding screens, even on one occasion behind an upright piano, where by mischance he was imprisoned for two solid hours, in trying to escape the society of that coral-lipped, dewy-eyed sylph.
But the woman of mystery had known how to tame that wild and shy bachelor heart to her hand. Perhaps she would makehimsell the sapphires.
"Supposing," Ermengarde asked Mr. Welbourne, the day after her refusal to oblige Agatha by that small service, conscience having given her some uncomfortable qualms on that account—"supposing some one were to ask you to sell extremely valuable jewels for them, on the ground thattheydid not wish to be seen selling diamonds, would you do it?"
"Why not? If it were a lady, of course I would," he said promptly, reflecting that he was in for it, and could make better bargains than she, and hoping that parting with her jewels would be a lesson to Mrs. Allonby on the folly of gambling.
"But supposing you were another lady?"
"How suppose anything so utterly impossible?" What on earth had that to do with it, he wondered.
"Well, would one woman ask another woman to do such a thing without very strong reason?"
The man's brain swam; certainly she was not asking him to sell jewels for her. What could she be driving at?
"Dear lady, I hope you will forgive my saying that the common consent of mankind throughout the ages agrees that your sex never acts upon reason."
"I can't forgive anything so insulting to my sex. My impression is that the woman stole the necklace."
"Ah, now we leave the abstract and come to the concrete—a particular woman and a particular necklace—and forgetting logic, we go gallantly upon feelings, intuitions. Still, the impression that certain costly jewels have been stolen by an individual acquaintance is somewhat powerful, not to say aggressive. Modern altruism, still less old-fashioned Christian charity, would scarcely cherish an impression of that kind, would it?" After all, he reflected, this little woman is not as simple as she appears.
"Well, but if she wants to sell them, why can't she do it herself?"
"People exist who never, as a matter of principle, do anything they can get anybody else to do for them. I can't defend the principle, though I often act upon it; indeed, it appears to have its roots very deep in human nature, like the propensity to bottle up trumps at bridge."
"One dislikes to be disobliging; it seems unkind."
"If," replied the thin man, a light suddenly breaking upon his bewildered brain, "the lady in question should happen to be our dear young friend of the too frequent laugh, Mrs. Allonby, don't be afraid. She has neither the wit nor the self-command to make a big haul like that. But she is quite silly enough to get into difficulties over play or dress"—here Ermengarde's cheeks vied with the scarlet salvias blooming hard by—"and to sell jewels on the sly, and it would be the worst service you could do a child like that to help her."
"Sweet girl! I quite agree with you. She's much too small for large sins. And I've never seen her with valuable jewels. Dear Mr. Welbourne, your advice is as always so excellent. Ever since we met here you have been a second father to me."
The thin man sighed. It is a sweet and seemly thing to be the father of a charming and lovely young woman, but only when one is too old for other relationships. It occurred to him that it might be wise to shave; a beard sometimes gives a false appearance of age. The patriarchs wore beards, while Greek gods, with the exception of Zeus, are mostly represented as beardless. No one ever heard of a bearded angel. Only yesterday Miss Boundrish had wondered publicly and at the top of her voice why Mr. Welbourne "had never married," and he had replied very meekly that it was not his custom to do anything in a hurry; upon which Miss Boundrish's mother had encouragingly cited the case of a cousin's uncle on the other side, who had married at eighty-five.
It was while Mr. Welbourne was sighing and meditating on his own beard and the probable extent of her pecuniary difficulties that Ermengarde, who, with his helping hand had just climbed up among the twisted roots of some pines to the height on which the monastery was built, caught sight of the figure of a stranger. He was pacing the broad and level walk beneath the cypresses, outside the building, where the ridge was highest, and whence the outlook over mountain gorges on one hand and capes and headlands running out to sea on the other was widest and of most varied beauty. It was a tall, thin, black figure in a hooded cloak, with a clean-shaven, ascetic face bent over the book he carried and was perusing with devout interest.
"Surely," she said, stopping to rest on the low, crumbling wall by the steps leading on to this plateau—"surely that must be one of the expelled monks, or his ghost, come back to the old home. Reading his breviary."
Mr. Welbourne found a seat on the wall beside her, carefully avoiding a geranium-bush, that had grown up to the top among the broken stones, and gave out a delicate scent where Ermengarde's skirt swept it.
"No," he said, looking at the studious figure, "it is not a monk. I doubt if the book he is studying with such devout interest is a book of hours—or a psalter."
"An interesting type—pale, worn, emaciated, deep-set eyes, a keen, subtle face—the true ascetic type. What stories that face could tell," she mused aloud—"that is, the mouth."
"Well, yes; it has told a few thumpers to my certain knowledge. No, it is not a monk, Mrs. Allonby. It is only Mr. Mosson."
"You know him? How interesting!"
"Oh, everybody knows Mr. Mosson—everybody who has come to grief, that is."
"A philanthropist? The modern form of religious enthusiasm—deeds, not words; feeding the hungry instead of saying prayers. A holy materialism."
How soon, Mr. Welbourne reflected, misfortune breeds cynicism. It was hardly forty-eight hours since calamity at the tables had befallen this young woman, and she could talk like this. "Should you be in want of money," he continued, "you have merely to name the sum to our ascetic friend, and it is forthcoming. People often want money in these regions, because everybody here is rich. It is only the rich who want money."
"Really? Then what on earth do the poor want?"
"Oh, lots of things—food, fire, friends, advice, sympathy, clothes, work, but money never."
"Really? Then how very, very rich I must be."
"Undoubtedly you are. But here comes our friend."
They had to stand in the narrow path to let the reverend man pass on his pious way, and, thedéjeunerbell having just left off sounding, followed him into the house very shortly after, but at too small a distance to permit further discussion of his virtues—a point much on Mr. Welbourne's conscience at the time, but unfortunately soon driven from his memory by after-events.
The benefactor of his species in the meantime, unconscious of the veneration he inspired, took his place at a small solitary table in the background, silent and, after the first few moments of curiosity his presence excited, unnoticed, and presumably absorbed in schemes for the amelioration of mankind. With thedéjeunerhe vanished, but was again discovered at his secluded table at dinner, just as if he had never moved, and so for several days.
Rumour spoke of a motor-car waiting daily at the foot of the ridge, and bearing him away in a cloud of dust and unpleasant smell. M. Bontemps hinted that he came up to Les Oliviers for a few days' rest, much to Mrs. Allonby's surprise. She had had no idea that the practice of beneficence was so fatiguing.
People often came up to the little house on the ridge for rest and quiet, out of the closer air of the town, out of the racket and turmoil of the huge and hideous barrack hotels, that desolated the face of the country for many a mile round, even drawing great splotches of aggressive ugliness across the lovely wooded slopes of the mountains, so that no eye could possibly escape the sight of them. And after a brief sojourn, refreshed and soothed to the point of boredom, they returned with renewed zest to the horrors of civilization and excessive wealth in the barracks.
Les Oliviers itself was certainly not beautiful, and it was visible from far, but its humble position behind and beneath the monastery, its moderate size and similarity to the little green-shuttered houses dotted among vineyards and olive-gardens, with its absence of all pretence and meretricious ornament, redeemed it from vulgarity, and put its want of comeliness out of mind. So at least Mrs. Allonby told M. Isidore, who acknowledged the compliment with a bow, and observed with a sigh of deepest melancholy that it was the home of his heart's desire.
A cloud had for some days past hung over the habitual gaiety of the cheery little man, a cloud neither black with thunder nor leaden with low-hanging rain, but rather one of those pearly transparencies that flutter about sunset skies, catching and transmuting every glorious glow of crimson and gold and purple. He was obliging, courteous, full of wit and gaiety, as ever; but interspersed his sallies with deep-drawn sighs, emotional exclamations, and those little, half-humorous groans, that are the peculiar characteristic of the lively Gaul.
He had even discussed—with Mrs. Allonby—the frequency and inevitableness of self-destruction as a result of feminine scorn and variableness, and of blighted hopes, together with the best way of effecting it. For this, he had been gently, very gently, rebuked, and wisely and kindly counselled, and recommended to give back scorn for scorn.
"What care I how fair she be?" etc.
In rejoinder he had referred to the tragic circumstance that he possessed a heart, placing his hand over the region where hearts are supposed to be, with a gesture expressive of severe internal pain.
In short, there was no manner of doubt that M. Isidore was the victim of unrequited passion of the most powerful description, or that the sympathy implied or expressed by Mrs. Allonby's reception of his hinted confidences was balm to his wounded breast.
She told him quite plainly that he was a fool—a fact that he admitted with gusto—that he was young, and would soon get over it, which he denied with fury. Some such confidences had been imparted during chance meetings and aimless rovings along paths through pine-woods aromatic with undergrowth of myrtle and juniper; through solemn olive-groves, hushed and dim, their drooping foliage tangled with azure lights; between vineyards; by lonely cottages, pergola-shaded; through shadowy dells and along sunny ridge-tops. In the bee-haunted silence of these secluded ways suddenly, round a corner, up a ravine, down a steep, emerging from an aisle of pine-trunks, anything or anybody might appear as if by magic. Sometimes a mule, pattering softly and steadily under panniers of household goods and garden stuff, and followed by a peasant with ready smile and chat in broken French; now an old woman leading a goat; sometimes men or women laden with faggots and grass more heavily than their own patient, soft-eyed beasts; sometimes a gaily-caparisoned donkey bearing a tourist, sometimes a whole noisy troop of them; now a solitary pedestrian, now a numerous party, breaking the charmed quiet by confused babble of nasal American, guttural German, slurred English, or burred French; sometimes the sudden, abhorred gurgle of Miss Boundrish.
The suddenness and unexpectedness of these apparitions, the feeling that anything—a wood-nymph, a fairy, a mountain gnome, a Greek faun, the face of an old friend, or the bearer of some new fresh happiness—might appear was a great charm. One afternoon Ermengarde had been sitting under a pine-tree on a sandy bank by the path, looking across the ravine at the great sweep of crag-peaked mountains running down to a broad blue space of sea, when the figure of M. Isidore issued from hidden depths, and was suddenly outlined on the sky in front of her.
Quite naturally, and without hesitation, he let himself down on the myrtle-covered bank near the lady, but a little lower down, so that in speaking he had to look up. The easy, friendly ways of this attendant Ariel sometimes aroused a momentary wonder, soon stilled by the reflection that it was "only M. Isidore," a convenient and agreeable foreigner, outside conventions, socially non-existent, like the peasants who chatted and smiled so pleasantly in passing.
Though the daily unacknowledged offering of flowers continued, none had been worn since the episode of the Malmaisons. Not that any importance was to be attributed either to the French youth's graceful courtesy in giving flowers, or to the woman of mystery's unwarranted hints of gossip about it. Mrs. Allonby seldom wore flowers at table now, unless they were obviously wild; that was all.
Nor had the Italian lessons M. Isidore had been giving her stopped—he gave conversational lessons in that language to Miss Boundrish, to Mr. Welbourne, and other male visitors as well. There was nothing tedious or fatiguing in the Italian lessons given to Mrs. Allonby. They always began withOllendorffianquestions and answers in slow and indifferent Italian, as thus: "Do you like cheese? I do not like cheese, but the sister-in-law of the Italian organ-grinder likes cheese," and ended in light and gay discussions in quick, fluent French upon subjects of various interest, art, literature, the only drastic and effectual remedy for blighted hopes, the best place to pop and redeem jewels in, the last big haul at Monte Carlo, and the eminent personalities to be seen playing there—topics upon which this light-hearted youth was very well informed.
"Ah, Madame!" he sighed on this sunny afternoon, his beautiful dark eyes uplifted to her sympathetic face, and his hand fervidly pressing the upper part of his waistcoat; "if I might but reveal to you the anguish that is consuming me!"
Bees were drowsily humming in masses of grey-blue rosemary bloom, so drowsily that they accentuated the deep mountain silence, upon which the minor tones of the lovelorn youth's voice fell plaintive and clear. Ermengarde, regarding him with the unconsciously sweet expression that had won her many a heart, was replying, "Well, why not? Perhaps the trouble is not so great as it seems," when she became sympathetically aware, without looking up, through a sudden nervous tremor in her young friend's frame, of another presence on the path, and turned simultaneously with him to see the statuesque figure and cold, rigid face of Mlle. Bontemps.
She had apparently sprung up unobserved from the depths of the earth, as everybody did on that ridge, and stood waiting, her massively coiled hair shining uncovered in the fading sun, for an opportunity to speak.
The luckless Isidore was on his feet with a bound, while Ermengarde started with a smothered exclamation, and recovered with a little embarrassed laugh.
"How you startled me, Mademoiselle!" she said. "One hears nothing on this soft sand."
Mademoiselle seemed neither to see nor to hear Mrs. Allonby. Looking coldly at the embarrassed and apologetic Isidore, she said with a kind of weary calm, "Maman is still waiting," turned and walked away with her usual haughty bearing, and sank out of sight down the steep path, pursued, after a moment of despairing gesture, in which his hair suffered, and a wild exclamation of, "Mon Dieu! je l'avais oubliée, cette vieille!" by M. Isidore, to the mingled amusement and regret of Ermengarde, who justly divined that the charm of her society had beguiled the unfortunate youth into forgetfulness of the hour of some domestic duty, and that his reception at the hotel might be stormy.
"He really is a very dear boy," she reflected, leaning back against the gnarled pine-trunk, and watching the shadows fill hollow and ravine with vague blueness and the upward slanting sunlight steep the mountain peaks in crimson and rose, while the hushed sea grew bluer than its own incredible blue, and the clear, deep sky took a violet tinge. "How on earth did this boy come to be born in this small hotel-keeper class? He has the bearing of a prince, the instincts of a knight of romance, and the charm of a gallant child. And then to be sulked at and called over the coals by a girl like Geneviève, and at the beck and call of a woman like this Madame Bontemps!"
The situation was odious, impossible. She wished the poor boy were her son. When youngish women—women under thirty—find themselves wishing to be the mothers of full-grown and fascinating youths, they should at once begin to think as hard as possible of something else. Instead of this, Mrs. Allonby went on thinking how this young Isidore might be her son. He could not be more than twenty-one, certainly; it was hardly possible to be a mother at seven—but at seventeen? Had she been born just ten years earlier, the thing would have been not only possible, but probable. She might have been forcibly married to some unpleasant elderly person at sixteen—some foreign vicomte, who, after a few years, would have conveniently and politely died, leaving her in the bloom of youth, free and rich, as they do in French novels.
Then she might have met Arthur and married him, at eight or nine and twenty—a much more appropriate age for Arthur's wife—that is, in the event of Arthur having had the sense to be born on the date of his actual birth, though, of course, a man so exasperating was capable of anything. It would have been so interesting to marry a French noble and have those few years' glimpse of foreign life. And, in that case, the poor dear boy would certainly not have found himself in this sordid hotel-keeping element; he might have been in the diplomatic service; he was made for it. Why had her life not been arranged on these lines? An elder brother would have been so good for Charlie; she would have been less tempted to spoil the child; and being nearer his age, and having already trained one husband, she would have been more capable of understanding Arthur's freaks and fancies; and some recent regrettable incidents might never have occurred. But it is a crooked world.
Turning with a sigh, she found herself face to face with a figure that had come down unseen in the shadows, and proved to be that of a fellow-visitor. "Where is M. Isidore?" this lady asked abruptly in the German manner.
Hardly had Ermengarde expressed polite ignorance on the subject, when her musings were again interrupted by the appearance of Miss Boundrish's parents, on their evening stroll, with the same query, followed by expressions of disappointment at her inability to satisfy their curiosity.
"But where can he be?" exclaimed Mrs. Boundrish with irritation, upon which she was tartly advised to go back to the hotel and telephone for the required information.
"But you must know which way he went?" Mrs. Boundrish persisted obstinately.
"Indeed, I am neither as observant nor as curious as you suppose," she replied sweetly, vexed at having shown temper to a casual travelling acquaintance—a mere "passing ship"—whereupon Mr. and Mrs. Boundrish exchanged glances; while Ermengarde, incidentally remarking upon the well-known chill of the sunset hour, rose and walked in the opposite direction to her inquisitors—homewards—remembering as she went that it was not the first time that questions concerning the youth who might have been her son, if she had been ten years older, had annoyed her. The pettiness and impertinence of these underbredtourists—tourists are never of the first person; people have owned to criminality, but not to being tourists—the worst of these small hotels—people are so mixed up and thrown together.
"Well, and if the poor boy is hard hit," she meditated, "a grand passion is a necessary phase in a young man's development, and the more hopeless the better. But thebourgeoismind cannot grasp the beauty of an ideal devotion, of the unselfish homage a gallant youth gladly pays to one in every way hopelessly above him. A Boundrish can vulgarize even that poetic passion. How very lucky that the object of the poor lad's devotion happens to be a staid and sensible matron old enough to give motherly advice and young enough to be sympathetic," she reflected complacently, while she went slowly back to the house and dressed fortable d'hôte.
She was still pursuing this current of reflection while she went downstairs in her simple semi-toilet, adorned no longer by tributary flowers, and sank upon the least hard-hearted of the drawing-room easy-chairs.
"Oh, I say, Mrs. Allonby!" cried Miss Boundrish, bursting into the half-lighted, empty room with her usual grace and charm, and punctuating her remarks with gurgles, "I'm jolly glad you're safe, so far. That Bontemps girl is going for you the minute she sees you. There has been the most awful row downstairs about you. Best double-lock your door to-night, and be careful to eat nothing that has not been tasted by somebody else."
"MydearMiss Boundrish," she replied gently, observing that no one else was in the room; "you are young, and your imagination is vivid;doyou think it quite wise to mix yourself up with the people of the house?"
But Dorris was not to be crushed; she only gurgled scornfully, and would have made some pert retort, had not the thin man, who, after all, had been lounging unseen in a shadowed corner, suddenly glided to the piano, struck some full bass chords and begun to improvise in a pleasant fashion he had at times: when the room was empty and he felt moved to confide his thoughts and dreams to the spirit in the instrument.
Then Ermengarde, ruffled and inwardly raging, but grateful for Mr. Welbourne's paternal care, took a seat touching the piano, and was silent; the man with the ascetic face came in and stood like a statue behind the player; the room slowly filled; but Mr. Welbourne, contrary to custom, played on, as if something within him must find expression in music, even when a buzz of talk hummed through the room and lights were turned up, until dinner.
Though conjectures as to the manner in which poor Agatha Somers had become possessed of the necklace disturbed Ermengarde's sleep, and the glow of the sapphires coloured all her thoughts of her, she was obliged to take the creature to her heart; there was in her something so lovable and so pathetic, especially that appeal in her eyes—so she confided to Mr. Welbourne, who smiled and seemed gratified by this view of their mutual friend, though he said little.
She seems fond of me, Ermengarde reflected; I wonder why? How great, she mused, is the attraction that virtue has for the depraved and rectitude for the outcast! Who could tell what redeeming influence a good woman's kindness might exercise upon this erring young soul? She would certainly befriend the wanderer in every possible way, except that of helping her to dispose of ill-gotten jewellery. Perhaps there might be some grain of truth, some small foundation in fact, for the circumstantial family history this ingenious young person had related to her by the wood fire that evening. She was undoubtedly well-bred, possibly well-born; it was highly probable that she had been nurtured in comfort, if not luxury—still, how did she come by that necklace? It was a small fortune in itself. Nobody reduced to bread-labour would keep so much money locked up. Again, what possible work of a secretarial character could she be doing in this land of lotus-eating? Or how could a penniless young woman afford such an expensive holiday as this? Was she, could she be, a female detective?
In that case, who could she be shadowing, up here in the mountains, among this little company of highly respectable, not to say frumpish, folk? Surely not the thin man—yet human character abounds in the unexpected and even the incredible—had Mr. Welbourne, after all, a wife desirous of shunting him? Was he a wolf in sheep's clothing, a hypocrite steeped in iniquity? Lame and deformed people often have a twist in their character—not that poor Mr. Welbourne was deformed—indeed, had his fleshly covering been a little more abundant, he would have been rather good-looking, his features well-cut, his eyes bright and animated. There was nobody else to shadow at Les Oliviers—no English body else, that is—the visitors mostly consisted of family parties.
No; she must be some kind of spy or conspirator, in league as she was with the Anarchist. Yet Ivor Paul was hardly a spy or a conspirator; both the thin man and the fair Dorris agreed in placing him as the scion of a family of rank; they knew that he was only five lives off a peerage, but those lives were young and vigorous. Lady Seaton, who knew the ins and outs and most intricate ramifications of every family of consequence, and never forgot who married who, and how they were connected with everybody else, a widow old enough to mention her age without prevarication, and herself allied in some distant and complicated manner to every coronet-bearing English name, had known his father in his youth; she remembered that his mother had married a second time; she had forgotten the man's name; it would come back to her presently. Sir George, her late husband, had been in public life; the present baronet represented a North-country constituency, and had been a Minister. So far, the truth of Agatha's story was confirmed; though what the woman of mystery's relations with this young man might be, it was wiser not to dwell upon. And if she improvised ailing aunts at need, so did Miss Boundrish, about whom, with all her delightful deviations from the normal English girl, there was no manner of mystery, her father giving himself out for what he undoubtedly was—a plain, substantial British merchant.
"Our young friend," Mr. Welbourne observed one day after some act of kindness on the part of Agatha to Ermengarde, whose weakness had not yet entirely left her, "appears to be much attached to you, Mrs. Allonby."
"But I can't think why," she replied; "though I can't help liking the girl myself."
"Why should you help it? A kindly nature," he added, with a sigh so deep and so despairing that she was sorry for him. Had the thin man met with so few kindly natures on his earthly pilgrimage; or was it, could it, at his age be, hopeless passion?
Lady Seaton had but recently come up to the peace of the house on the ridge from one of the great hotels below, where there was too much crowding and racket for her. She was fairly well read and interested in many things, and had shown much friendliness, mixed with something that was almost deference, to Ermengarde. In the course of half an hour's desultory chat in the garden she had become acquainted with all the leading facts in Mrs. Allonby's life; Charlie's name, age, school, disposition, and beauty; the busy journalist husband; the attack of influenza; the subsequent depression, and present holiday trip; while Ermengarde had had a vague notion that they had been discussing the climate and topography of the Riviera, and Lady Seaton's own health, all the time.
"You must be very proud of your husband, Mrs. Allonby," she said, when they were parting on that occasion, and Ermengarde made some vague and wondering assent to the assumption.
A husband is a not unusual piece of personal property; why on earth be proud of it? Still, she was not going to let people think she was ashamed of poor old Arthur, who, with all his faults, was probably no worse than other men—besides, even if he were ever so bad, he washerman, and she must stand up for him. "A poor thing, sirs, but mine own."
Since Lady Seaton's arrival Ermengarde had been dimly conscious of a difference in people's manner to her, as if that of the kind-hearted old lady had been infectious, or her avowed interest had conferred some distinction upon her.
Once, when she had tucked herself up cosily in a nook behind a rose-trellis and fallen asleep in the sunshine, she had been waked by a murmur of voices from people on the other side of her trellis, and heard in the adored treble shout of the Boundrish, "Well! I simply call it scandalous. I wonder the Bontemps put up with it. Such goings on are a reflection upon us all."
"You need have no fear, Miss Boundrish," replied Lady Seaton's low, distinct voice, in which Ermengarde detected a subtle hint of sarcasm, "you are quite beyond any such reflection."
"Well, I don't know about that," she replied with complacent gurgles. "One doesn't care to associate with people who get themselves talked about. An inherited instinct, I suppose," with more gurgles. "Besides, how do you know who she is, or whether she has a husband at all? Grass-widows who run about the Continent alone, and play at Monty to that extent that they have to pop their jewels——"
Ermengarde smiled at this. "After all, I'm not the only one who pops jewels here," she thought; "but who on earth can the Boundrish be going for now?"
"—Why, I saw her go in myself, and she thought I didn't know her under her black gossamer, and I saw the things in the window afterwards——"
"You were there, too?" the thin man interjected, with a greenish glitter in his eye.
"Oh yes; nothing escapesme——"
"So it appears, and nobody," he murmured to himself.
"—A grass-widow who does that kind of thing needn't go about with her nose in the air, snubbing people she couldn't possibly get in with at home, not to speak of the disgraceful way in which she persecutes that poor silly young Isidore, who will probably get the sack owing to her, besides losing his fiancée——"
Ermengarde smiled to herself. Was the poor boy engaged, then? and how could his engagement affect the only grass-widow besides herself in the house? It certainly was well known that the latter gave the young man a good deal of unnecessary trouble, but what had that to do with this supposed engagement of his?
"Though it's true," the artless girl continued, "that she has given up wearing his flowers at dinner, just to put people off the scent, and persuades herself that nobody notices all the little walks and talks on the quiet—
Ermengarde, who had listened guilelessly, supposing these remarks to be addressed to the general public, suddenly changed colour, while another voice, that of Agatha, as suddenly struck in, "Miss Boundrish, you are positively slanderous. Such things ought not to be said, even if true, which they are not."
"Say, Miss Somers, don't you get mad," the American lady began. "I judge this young Isidore can look after himself some, whoever makes eyes at him, Miss Boundrish. There are folks must flirt, if it's only with a broomstick; they just can't help making eyes when there's any men around. I guess they don't know they're doing it all the time."
"When people are attractive," came in Lady Seaton's exact intonation, "they are often accused of trying to attract."
"Oh, attract," gurgled Miss Boundrish. "How anyone can be attracted by a nose like that—why, you might hang your hat upon it. And as for her waist——"
"Want of style," her mother suggested, "while her dress——"
"Oh, she don't calculate to dress any. She just slumps along anyhow up in these mountains, I judge. I never was much on the apple-cheeked, yalla-haired sort—British gells are too beefy for my taste—else she's pretty enough, and, my! don't her eyes snap; nights, when she kind of fancies herself!"
"And thinks she can play bridge, and tries to strum on the piano," added Dorris viciously.
"Were our fair friend the subject of masculine comment," observed Mr. Welbourne impressively, "the verdict would, I venture to predict, be one of whole-hearted admiration on every count."
"Thank you," sighed Ermengarde in her corner, whence she dared not try to escape.
"Oh, a man's woman is pretty much the same as a lady's man," Dorris gurgled, "so they say."
"You may stake your pile on that, Miss Boundrish," the American corroborated.
"And you don't suppose that hair of hers is all grown on the premises," continued Dorris acidly.
"Whatever you suppose, I've seen it brushed out," Agatha retorted—"lovely hair, like floss-silk."
"At any rate, no hair could be that colour naturally, and it gets brighter every day—thanks to the climate, I suppose. The Monte Carlo yellows are famous, you know——"
"Cat!" murmured Ermengarde. "How I should enjoy the twisting of yours!"
"But what I simply can'tstand," pursued the injured maiden plaintively, "is her making herself out to be somebody—pretending to be that man's wife——"
"Ah, well! this can't be me.Idon't pretend to be anybody's wife," thought Ermengarde.
"Sheishis wife," Agatha said.
"Or one of his wives. He may have dozens for all we know——"
"Dorris, mydear," faltered her poor mother, blushing wildly.
"Well, mater, so he may; that kind of man often does. And, as I said before, nobody knows anything about her, or whether she has any husband at all—she may have five—or six——"
"Seven is considered a round, complete, and therefore sacred, number, though the wife of Bath only had five," observed Mr. Welbourne thoughtfully.
"Bath! What Bath? D'you mean Lord Bath's wife?" Dorris asked. "And did he get her divorced?"
"For the Land's sake, Miss Boundrish," shouted Mrs. Dinwiddie, the American lady, "if you don't just tickle me to death! Lord Bath——" while the thin man chuckled grimly to himself.
"I nevercanremember about titled people," Dorris complained bitterly, as if this defect of memory was owing to the malice of present company. "And I should have thought that Americans never knew anything to forget," she added vindictively.
"That is so—'cept when we marry dukes. But don't you fret, Miss Boundrish, there's a sight of things better worth knowing than that, you put your bottom dollar on it."
Agatha and Lady Seaton had in the meantime drawn Mrs. Boundrish into other talk, and the thin man had reminded them of an early promise to come to a private view of his sketches, in which project Miss Boundrish, who was within earshot, promptly included herself.
The American went off in another direction, and Ermengarde, unable to stir an inch without attracting attention, kept her eyes fiercely shut, so as to look asleep, till the footsteps died away. Then she rose and went round to the front of the terrace, where Agatha still sat among the flowers, with a fountain pen and a paper partially covered with cipher in her hand, but looking over the sunny amplitude of space to the sea.
She started at seeing Ermengarde, and seemed relieved when the latter told her she had been dozing behind the trellis, and had waked to hear the conversation. "For your part of which, thank you," she said, smiling. "No doubt I ought to have got away, but I hadn't wit or pluck enough," she added, sitting by Agatha, and laying her hand caressingly on her arm. "What that horrid cat said about popping jewellery was partly true. I sold the chain I got at the Carnival, and—a ring—and—h'm—I redeemed the ring only yesterday—there it is—and I hope nobody else will ever know what a fool I've been. The solid truth is, I should have had to go home to England at once if I hadn't got back those few louis I lost that afternoon—and I badly wanted to stay on."
"Did Mr. Mosson give you a wrinkle, or was it pure luck?" Agatha asked, warmed to the heart by this unwonted cordiality.
"Oh, pure luck."
"It's so beguiling—that first luck," Agatha sighed. "And then, when the luck goes, there's the necessity and hope of getting the losses back. The demon of chance sits there, I suppose, like a great spider, weaving, weaving his poison-webs, till the poor fly, caught and tangled hopelessly all round, can struggle no more. And people live on this—on these blighted lives, broken homes, shattered hearts, and widespread misery and despair! Have you seen the cathedral, Mrs. Allonby—that snow-white, brand-new, dazzling immensity of marble at Monaco, flaunting among the palms and pines and flowers, all built out of these cruel gains, these despairs and miseries and degradations? And that palace? Nearly all the palace is new, built out of Casino winnings, as you remember."
"Perhaps that's why it's so vulgar. You want to wipe it out of the picture—cathedral and palace, too, built of money."
"Not of money," she said, her eyes shining with a hard brilliance. "No, built of broken hearts—women's hearts, mothers' hearts, wives' hearts. Oh, to see the whole accursed monstrosity levelled to the ground! I cannot speak of it."
What did this sudden passion mean, Ermengarde wondered; then she remembered the "connexion by marriage," and was sorry for her.
"According to Mr. Welbourne, it is not the gamblers who make the income," she said. "It is the people who stop a few days at Monte Carlo, and throw away a couple of louis at the tables to pass the time. After all, most amusements have to be paid for, and what enjoyment is not liable to abuse?"
"Enjoyment," cried Agatha, "enjoyment!"
"The gambling instinct, the delight in the excitement of chance, seems pretty deeply rooted in human nature."
"What vile passion is not deeply rooted in human nature? Mrs. Allonby, I could tell you tragedies. But no——"
Could anything be more moral, correct, and praise-worthy than this impetuous outburst?
And yet, on the very next day, who should Ermengarde meet in the Casino, coming out of theSalle de Jeu, but the woman of mystery herself? Not alone, certainly, but in earnest conversation with the ubiquitous and elusive Anarchist, whom she began to suspect of being no creature of flesh and blood, but some sinister spirit haunting her path with evil intent. So absorbed in their talk were those two that they passed her without recognition, as she turned aside to go into the concert-hall with the American lady and the thin man, who chanced to be with her that day.
A Thursday Classic Concert was being given by the world-famous orchestra; the hall was crowded. Ermengarde thought she recognized everybody she knew on the Riviera in different parts of the house. An aunt, a genuine relative of her own, from Cap Martin, nodded across the fauteuils to her, and missed her in coming out, not wholly to Mrs. Allonby's regret. Elderly relatives are for the fireside, with purring cats, singing tea-kettles and buttered muffins, but they scarcely seem in keeping with places of public amusement. Family matters should never be discussed at full-dress functions.
It was very pleasant outside in the sunlit Gardens by the café, where chairs in a commanding position had been easily found. Fine orchestral music agreeably excites the imagination while it soothes the nerves. Never had the Pathetic Symphony of Tchaikowsky been more beautifully played; it lingered and echoed with harmonious heart-break in the imagination, heightening the beauty of the scenery, making the fresh air fresher and the tea even more enjoyable.
Lady Seaton came up, bringing a nephew, and was easily induced to join the tea-party. The nephew turned out well. Ermengarde observed that his nose was in the Greek style, and his eyes twinkled like the little star of infantile verse. She was in the happy and peaceful mood induced by the subconsciousness of absolutely becoming and perfectly fitting costume. A glance snatched at a little mirror in her bag had assured her that not a hair was out of place, and neither flush nor pallor marred a complexion unsullied by powder or paint. In short, they were all in a mood of great content and enjoyment, when a sudden, a too familiar, sound struck upon Ermengarde's ear, and drew cold chills down her back. It was the voice of Miss Boundrish.
Vainly did the whole party, struck with sudden silence, try to look the other way, and avoid meeting the fair girl's speedwell blue eye, which beamed with friendly recognition and good fellowship. Making her way steadily through the crowd, with the captive Teuton in her wake, she bore resolutely down upon them, her coral lips wreathed in smiles, and graciously announced her intention to join their party.
The captive, innocent of offence, obediently placed chairs in their circle, and gloomily discoursed upon the performance of the orchestra and the shots at theTir aux Pigeonsin correct English and an accent of resigned despair, Dorris, whenever the conversation threatened to become at all interesting, breaking in upon it with some trivial personality.
Mrs. Dinwiddie, fortified by three cups of scented China tea, and refreshed by several deep plunges into a box of superfine bonbons handed her by the thin man, had been drawn from raptures over the kettle-drums into some enlightening hints at the mysteries of American political machinery in different States, of which she had experimental knowledge.
Everybody, especially the Prussian officer, was listening with interest; no one spoke, except to draw out further information; even Ermengarde's familiar demon, the Anarchist, who, to her disgust, was sitting at a table near, drinking something through a long straw, was hanging upon Mrs. Dinwiddie's words, when Dorris, after several baffled attempts by various irrelevant remarks and inept questions, promptly snubbed by the genial Yankee, to plunge headlong into the talk, suddenly shouted, "Mrs. Allonby, I do want to know something very badly," with such energy and emphasis that it was impossible not to give some faint response.
"Yes?" said Ermengarde, politely patient, though she had not forgotten the fair girl's depreciation of her nose, which certainly had a tiny tilt at the tip.
"I want badly to know," Dorris called across Mrs. Dinwiddie, "whether you really are the wife oftheAllonby?"
"That is so," echoed the American, her interest suddenly diverted. "Do tell, Mrs. Allonby, are you?"
"How can I tell?" she objected. "I know very well which is my Allonby, but how do I know which is yours?"
"Land's sake!" cried Mrs. Dinwiddie, "Why, the famous Allonby, to be sure—the author of 'Storm and Stress.' Are you a relative of that prominent writer?"
What was the woman driving at? 'Storm and Stress'? Was it—could it be the title of Arthur's latest effusion?
"Well," she replied slowly and thoughtfully, "I never like to be too certain about anything—it is not good manners, so I was brought up to think—but I—ah—I think—yes, I rather fancy that I am—connected with him—the writing-man you are speaking of. As far as Iknow, he is some sort of a connexion of mine—by marriage—only a connexion by marriage."
A curious snorting sound drew momentary and disgusted attention to the Anarchist, who appeared to be choking badly through the long straws—foreigners are so hopelessly ignorant of the niceties of table manners. Mrs. Dinwiddie looked disappointed, even defrauded, until she caught Ermengarde's eye, when her high-featured visage expanded into a genial smile. But Dorris was all gurgles, triumphant, exasperating. "I knew it all the time," she exclaimed scornfully. "I was sure you were not his wife, but Lady Seaton and Mr. Welbourne would have it you were."
"Mr. Allonby's is a very remarkable work," Lady Seaton said. "I don't know when I have been so thoroughly roused and invigorated by any book. All thinking people must be grateful to the author of 'Storm and Stress.'"
"All thinking people are," the nephew added; with firm conviction.
"Very kind of you to say so," Ermengarde faintly murmured.
"They're just mad about it on our side," Mrs. Dinwiddie told her. "We judge that Arthur Allonby has arrived with 'Storm and Stress' on our side."
"A not unusual way of crossing the Atlantic," Ermengarde hazarded, at her wits' end, and imagining some wild mistake or confusion of names, though not without some vague memory of the title mentioned, in connexion with a postal packet from Arthur's publishers, the contents of which she was always going, from a sense of duty, to investigate, and always from innumerable causes omitting to. It would not run away; it could be opened and read at any time, which is no time.
"Well, I reckon it didn't make him sick anyhow," Mrs. Dinwiddie replied, with a grim smile, and Dorris stridently supposed that successful writers usually went to America to read their works in public, and always found that American cookery upset their internal economy more seriously than crossing the Atlantic, an observation that appeared to afford joy to everybody but the captive, whom it plunged into reverie of a melancholy nature.
TheAllonby! Not her own native charm, then, but the prestige of that tiresome old Arthur's name was the cause of this new deference that had come to Ermengarde of late. And he had never told her—a lump rose in her throat—had left her to hear his good fortune casually from strangers. To be sure, he could hardly have been expected to write to her: "I have just become a celebrity," "My new novel is a marvel of genius," "I am one of the most remarkable men of this age." Still, she was injured. A wife should not be the last person to hear of a husband's promotion.
Going home in the train that afternoon, she found her neighbour absorbed in a Tauchnitz volume, and sudden curiosity overpowering good manners, she made out "Storm and Stress" on the top of the page. Dining with friends in one of the big barrack hotels that evening, she saw the book lying on little tables in the lounge, in the drawing-room, in her host's sitting-room; and, her glance being detected upon it, heard that it was being read all over Mentone, the Riviera, at Rome, at Florence, in the Engadine, in Paris, wherever wandering Britons congregated; that it was being discussed at suburban dinners and teas, and was found in the reading-rooms of West End clubs; that it had been consigned to the fire by Bishops, and preached about by Archdeacons; that it was talked of by people of culture, and had even penetrated to our most ancient Universities, where undergraduates, face downwards on the turf of sunny college gardens, had been known to pass shining hours in its perusal. And he had never said a word, and had grudged her five hats.
"How proud and happy you must be, dear Mrs. Allonby," said her hostess. "And how does he take it? Is he surprised, or does he take it all for granted? He must at least have known that he was going to make a hit."
"Do you know the sex of the sphinx?" she returned faintly, some hot inexplicable tears misting her eyes. "I have always been sure the sphinx must have been a man. Men are so subtle—especially mine."
"Somebody was saying that the Allonbys don't quite hit it off," her friend told her husband afterwards. "And it's my opinion that she doesn't know where he is. I wonder ifheknows wheresheis?"
When the wife oftheAllonby reached her shelter on the ridge that night, she avoided meeting anybody, especially Agatha, who was equally anxious to avoid meeting her, and for the same reason—that she had been having a good cry. But Agatha knew perfectly well why she had had recourse to those waters of comfort, while Ermengarde had not the remotest idea.
Having felt the usual relief from the world-old remedy, brushed out her hair, wrapped herself in a dressing-gown, and smelt M. Isidore's latest floral offering, Mrs. Allonby lighted a tall candle and set to work to master the contents of the publisher's parcel.
So that, when an orange and crimson sunrise came up gloriously out of a peacock green sea, it showed a woman asleep in an easy-chair by a guttering candle, her head on one arm on a table, and half-hidden in a cloud of fair hair, with a volume labelled "Storm and Stress" on the floor at her side.
"What Roman strength Turbia showedIn ruin by the mountain road.How like a gem, beneath, the cityOf little Monaco, basking, glowed."
"Little Monaco, basking," and glowing, too, as the poet says, sits on its rock that runs out into the sea, in a world of its own, cut off, distinct, aloof from the every-day world, like some enchanted princess, walled away from reality in a faery land by rose and fire. The tiny city, that is also a principality, with a tiny harbour and arsenal at the rock foot, and a castled palace where it joins the mainland, is little more than a stone's throw—less than a long-range rifle-shot—from Monte Carlo, but in atmosphere worlds away. It has nothing in common with it, except the deep gorge stretching behind both and backed by the craggy bastion of the Tête du Chien and the dark rich sea, that breaks impartially upon the rocky base of each.
You may step into a tram-car at the Casino out of a crowd of painted women, sporting men, Jews, semi-invalids, respectable tourists, and disreputable sharpers from every capital in Europe, and from some in Africa and America, and in five minutes find yourself in an impossible fairy region of tranquil beauty—a town that is partly Italian and partly dream-magic, scantily peopled by priests, nuns, lay-sisters in various garb and wide-winged cap, orphanage children, Monagask soldiers, a few peasant folk leaning from roof-gardens and loggias in narrow, silent streets, and a sprinkling of humble bourgeois in the recesses of small dark shops, selling humble necessaries that nobody seems to want. Sometimes a procession of richly vestured priests, and acolytes with candles and swinging censers, slowly traverses the empty ways. The silence is so deep you can almost hear it. Every vista is closed by pines, through the deep-green boughs and ruddy stems of which glows that glorious deep-blue sea under a sky of paler blue.
And what a road it is that leads to the still city, winding round and up the steep rock, upon which she sits superb above the waters, a rock hung with rich-hued tapestry of geranium, cactus, rose, and even our old friend the homely blackberry, transformed by the wizardry of the winter sun into splendour of crimson and golden arras. Very few steps past the dazzling new cathedral, that rises snow white above the quiet streets, lead you by a short turn into those strange gardens, that are really enchanted woods of olive, palm, and pine, with glorious flowers for undergrowth, cresting the sheer, sea-fronting steep of rock, down the face of which flowers, gorgeous creepers and hanging plants overflow to the white-combed breakers beneath. Thence the Armida gardens and glaringly vulgar Monte Carlo Casino gleam idealized in frames of olive foliage and pine-boughs, and all the beauty of the vast sweep of coast in its amphitheatre of circling mountains. Nightingale song throbs quick and rich above the deep murmur of surging wave and sighing pine-top, always providing you go at the right time; bees hum and the ring of a sail running down a mast with the wash of steam vessels and motors is faintly heard through the clear and sunny air. You may go back from this fairy land to the racket and worldliness of Monte Carlo through the strange vegetable diablerie and Arabian Nights' charm of the Casino gardens and their surrounding and intermingling shops and restaurants, and enjoy a still more striking contrast in the simple act of taking a seat in what Germans call a go-chair—Fahr-stuhl.
This prosaic modern convenience is found in a small dark enclosure that recalls a prison exercise yard, sunless, squalid. Take a seat in it, and wait patiently until it occurs to the mountain gnome or brownie in charge to work some spell of Nature magic, when the thing rises like the Arabian carpet, and in two minutes all the blazing diamonds, Parisian costumes, and blatant vulgarities centred round the glaring Casino sink and fade into a few blurred scars on the terraced hill-face below. Meanwhile the occupant of the cushioned go-chair winds and soars between cultivated vine and lemon terraces, scattered at intervals, with here and there a homestead and here and there a pergola and flower-garden, but mainly through woods of black-coned, light-foliaged Mediterranean pine and huge gnarled olives, black-fruited, of inconceivable antiquity, their grey columnar trunks writhen by secular, perhaps millennial, storms, rising from rich red soil between pale grey boulders—soars and winds up the vast sides of the mighty gorge, so thick and dark with olive and pine that the sparsely scattered brightness of vine and lemon and mimosa is lost among dense foliage; winds and soars till the woods thin and orange, olive, and myrtles are left far below, the gardens and vineyards grow poorer, the air keener, and the long, craggy bluff ending in the Tête du Chien is scaled, and the go-chair stops finally under the shadow of the stately Roman tower of Turbia, massive and scarcely worn by time, but half ruined by the wanton violence of eighteenth-century spoilers.
And ever as the crude luxury and meretricious ornament of the pleasure-town sinks, the splendour of the sea-bounded prospect spreads and grows, from the purple majesty of Bordighera headland, running down from its Alpine background, to the promontory of Cap d'Ail beyond the craggy bluff that shelters Monte Carlo; with many a sheltered town and towered villa and headland stepping into foam-fringed bays, enclosed in the grand sweep of mountain coast. Just within the curve of the deep gorge under Turbia the Irish-looking column of Les Moulins stands up clear and gaunt far below, on the level-topped rock fringed with wood; Monaco shows bright and distinct on the broad plain of vivid blue sea, and, the centre of all, softened and lessened by distance, the white marble domes of the Casino are traced upon the liquid sapphire, vulgar no more, but lovely as if seen through
"Magic casements, opening on the foamOf perilous seas in faery lands forlorn."
Only nothing is forlorn in this land of light and colour; all is gay, friendly, full of laughter and life.
Yet on a certain radiant forenoon the Fahr-stuhl, or rope-railway, lifted through all this wild poetic beauty a healthy, full-blooded young Englishman, bright-eyed and well-groomed, blind to all.
He had wandered, aimless and unseeing, through the contrasted charm and picturesque strength of Monaco, strolled by the tiny harbour, up the hill, through the weird suggestion of writhen bone-like cactus-trees and richness of palm and aloe, caroub and rose and glowing flower-bed, past Casino and hotel, still unseeing, his features, made for facile laughter and easy geniality, lined by care and drawn into heavy frowns. From the gardens of Monaco he had looked long and wistfully into the sea breaking so softly at the rock foot, and once again by the harbour, with a sort of irresolute longing that came to nothing. In the funicular he had read and re-read letters, and made calculations with pencilled figures, and then with weary impatience torn them up and scattered them where the line ran steep and sheer above the gorge.
And when he stepped out upon the craggy mountain rim at Turbia, his listless feet took him to the plaster hotel tracing its mean outlines upon the sky, beside the majesty of the fine tower that marks Cæsar's subjection of conquered Liguria—subject to so many masters since—to Rome.
Perhaps he only went that way because the other occupants of the go-chair, the lady with blackened eyes and red curls pinned outside her hat-brim, the gentleman with the hooked nose, shiny hair, and vast white waistcoat, the grave family party scattering exclamations ofWunderschön,Prachtvoll,Echt malerisch, on the sunny air, the mature maidens, absorbed in Baedekers, and lordly, tweed-clad Britons, conversing in grunts, went straight from the rich flesh-pots of Monte Carlo to the oil and wine of a mean restaurant perched on the stately crag-wall, making the centre view point for scores of miles round.
For when he found himself in the grounds looking down upon the vast splendour of mountain and sea, he seemed to recollect himself, turned and went through the village that lies modestly behind the Roman tower, over cobbled paths, under Roman archways, through narrow streets, picturesque with loggia and outside stair and dark-arched entrance, through wide, pleasant spaces planted with trees and scattered with long blocks of limestone, used as seats, and polished to marble by the friction of generations; here meeting a slow-paced pack-mule, peasant-led; here a woman, wearing a huge and heavy basket on her head, like a crown; and here a group of soldiers, in baggy trousers of stained red and worn tunic of soiled blue, with a general air of having slept, unwashed, for weeks in uniform. And west of the ancient village the craggy crest of the Tête du Chien, the fortress of to-day, and east and south sea and mountain, and everywhere garden growth, foliage, and scented blossom, and the beauty of children at play and young women and handsome youths at work.
For all this the traveller, looking round and searching in the rich vocabulary of British youth for a term at once fit and comprehensive, found the choice phrase, "Rotten hole, this."
He stopped at a corner house abutting on a tree-shadowed square, with a loggia ending in a sort of roof-garden; and, stumbling through a dark archway, and falling over several garden and household tools on to a steep stairway, drew further upon his vocabulary for the epithet, "Beastly rotten hole." By this time the rumble tumble of his wild scramble up the stairs had brought out a stalwart form, a few rays of light and words of welcome, from the door of a room opening on the loggia.
"Here at last, young un? How many more of you? Row enough for ten."
It was a shaggy-bearded, brown-faced man, with deep-set eyes of piercing lustre and a forehead like a cliff-wall, roughly dressed, but clean-looking as an Englishman, though his name ended in ski; he had risen from a table covered with papers of various script, newspaper cuttings and journals in many tongues, and furnished with a type-writing machine. A bed, a chest of drawers topped by a milk-jug in a slop-basin, a small, square looking-glass, a clothes-press, two chairs, an easel, a bag of golf-clubs, some walking-sticks and mineral-water bottles, several pairs of boots, a wood basket and books of all sizes, falling out of packing-cases and strewn over bed, chairs, floor and every available ledge, completed the furniture of a fair-sized sunny room with an open hearth, on which some wood ashes gave token of a former fire.
"Snug," the host said, indicating the surroundings with a sweep of the hand, and tipping a pile of books off a chair.
"Topping," replied the guest, stepping gingerly through the archipelago of books, and surveying the scene with ill-dissembled disgust.
"You seem jolly chippy this morning. What's the row?" continued the host, handing a cigarette-box.
"Nothing much. Only stone-broke."
"What, again? I say, young un, you'll do this once too often."
"I jolly well have."
"Oh, come along and have some lunch. Can you do with native fare? I feed at theosteriaover there, and hear all the gossip of the place. Olives, cheese, omelettes, sardines, salad, coffee,vin du pays."
"Thanks. I bar the vinegar."
The enjoyment of this simple menu appeared to lighten the young man's cheer considerably. His appetite, for a person who had been contemplating a violent exit from a world of care at intervals all the forenoon, was not bad—a circumstance not unobserved by his host. The table talk was impersonal and even lighter than the fare. An anecdote spiced with dry humour drew from the stony-broke a light-hearted, boyish laugh, the gay ring of which attracted the attention and sympathetic smiles of some workmen and peasants.
"He has a light heart, that one," they told each other in their patois, as if the possession of a light heart were guarantee of all that is admirable in man.
"Didn't you try ranching once?" the light-hearted one suddenly asked the man of piercing gaze.
"I did. Once."
"Any money in ranching?"
"Best part of mine left in it."
"Whathasmoney in it? That's what I want to know?"
"What is that to you? You don't want money."
"Oh, don't I just! When I tell you I'm stone-broke."
"With you it's chronic. No, you don't want money. What you want is sense."
"Anything else?"
"Just a trifle of self-control, a smattering of principle, manliness—h'm—honour!"
"Thanks, awfully. Have one of these?" His face crimsoned, darkened, and set in a sullen ferocity. The elder man smiled behind his beard, glad to have touched some harder stuff under the facile sweetness.
"Yes, young one, that's the right word," he repeated.
The boy got up, very pale, thanked him for the luncheon, and said that he had to go. The man rose, too, put some silver on the table, and followed him into the sunny street. There they walked silently side by side till they reached the outskirts of the village, behind the Roman tower, where the turf was broken by grey boulders and dotted with thorn and bramble-bushes, and the air was sharp even in the brilliant sun.
"Very English," the elder man said, pointing to the turf; but the young one was silent still, and his friend saw that he was fighting to keep back tears.
"Just look at those soldiers," he added, when their road crossed another, quite open, but labelleddéfense militaire, where some men in shabby uniforms and dentedképiswere strolling. "Did they come out of a second-hand clothes shop?"
"They don't walk; they shamble," the young man replied, roused to look at them with a critical eye, and thinking of the smart, well-set-up fellows under his own command with a home-sick pang.
"What should you give yours for that, eh?"
"It isn't so much your English, as your slang, that I wonder at, de Konski. Where on earth did you get it?" the young man asked.
"In England probably. Yes, I have spent some time in England. Do you know, Paul, I used to see a good deal of your mother at one time, and I have never lost touch with her."
"Ah,shedidn't teach you slang," he reflected, wondering if the man had been an old flame of his mother's. That he was for some good reason passing under an assumed name he knew; that he was on intimate terms with people of his acquaintance, and conversant with all his family affairs, he was well aware, else he knew only that the man had befriended and helped him as a friend of his cousin's.
"And I know more about her now than you do, perhaps, for I know what is breaking her heart," the elder man added.
"Oh, hearts don't break so easily. But I know what will cut her up awfully when she hears it," the youth said, jamming his hat sullenly over his eyes. "But—well, my sisters will look after her. They'll make her happy. As for me—well, it must be the ranks, or the Colonies—or the first opportunity of being washed overboard—taken with cramp, swimming. No other way. I did think of the sea—or a shot—this morning. But—she mustn't think it's on purpose. She——"
"Come, come," remonstrated the elder man, laying a hand on his shoulder. "Let's hear all about it. It's a rare thing that is past mending."
"No mending for me. Played out, and done for at last. What you—you said—though you were a beast to say it—is true. Good for nothing—best out of the way."
On this road, that was sheltered from the sharp breeze by the cliff, it was hot. A glimpse of snow-peak up a gorge far inland was refreshing, and yonder, on the left across a wooded ravine, came the blue glow of the sea from the other side by unseen Villafranca behind the hill, whence warships were steaming slowly.
The elder man sat down on a rock by the road, and observed all this beauty of sunny sea and green mountain slope and far-vistaed gorge. The other saw nothing. He stood with his face turned from his companion, who observed a slight quiver in the square shoulder towards him; then the young man suddenly flung himself face downwards on the grassy bank by his side, while the bearded man lit a pipe and smoked thoughtfully for some seconds, till the faint convulsive motion of the shoulders had stopped.
"What is the net amount this time?" he asked then of the recumbent figure, which turned slowly on its back and sat up, staring vacantly out into the purple sea-spaces.
"It's the Spider," he said at last, "and, you see, it's been piled up gradually—heaven knows how—I hadn't a notion. He's been accommodating me from time to time with a few louis, and now he has stuck on his beastly interest—made it run into four figures, and flung it at me, yesterday. And the beast won't wait for my infernal luck to change, as of course it must before long. Threatens to ask the chief to stop it out of my pay."
"And what have you to meet this with?" asked the bearded man, taking and reading the figures on the paper handed to him.