"What man?"
"Oh, that foreign chap, that Pole—de Konski, as he calls himself. He's on some secret service; half English he says he is. He's all right for me; but for you to be his secretary!"
"Certainly I am—his confidential secretary."
"Good Lord! Confidential! Mixed up in all that underhand business—intrigues—who knows what devilry! In his pay! And why? When you have a good home, when mother is wanting you, and would give anything to have you back with her."
"Surely you know why, Ivor—not that your poor mother does. We try to keep the worst from her. The girls help a little—she thinks it is her own money. She can't realize how that has dwindled—and then my—pay is very good."
"O Lord! As bad as that! And if only—yes, I might have gone straight, I might—if only—if only you had given me a chance, a hope, had kept true to me!"
"True? I have always been the same to you. We have always been friends, Ivor, ever since we were such little things, playfellows, then companions. Always fond of each other—in that way—till now, when you reproach me and make other claims upon me."
"I should never have got into this mess if only you would have cared for me."
He knew this was untrue; but the Circean spell, working so strongly in his blood, darkened his brain and made him savage to her who had power to set him free.
"What nonsense, Ivor! Why should I care for you in that way? Anything of that kind was hateful to your mother; you know that she was always against it. Even if you had spoken out, she had other views for you. She trusted me, and told me, and you know it, Ivor. How could I, under her roof, eating her bread—how could I take her son from her and spoil her happiness?"
"Spoilingmyhappiness is nothing, of course. Yet she chose her husband. A man has a right to choose his wife."
"But you had not chosen me. She was not sure. She was only afraid of what might be if we were much together. You were so young, even if you had really cared——"
"Really cared? If? When you knew——"
"I knew nothing but her fears and objections. You said nothing——"
"It was understood——"
"Only by you. And so you took it for granted, till just now since you found me here? You had no right to do so. You never spoke, Ivor."
"And if I had spoken? Agatha!"
"I could only have asked you to forget. I knew her dislike of it. I was no match for you. I had less than nothing. My dear aunt was quite right. She knows you. Are you the sort of man to be happy on a crust? Yet she is no lover of mercenary matches."
He let go the hand, till now squeezed so fiercely to his side; the touch of it sent a mortal chill through him. She could sit there, calm and cold and unmoved, and discourse of the unwisdom of penniless marriages, while he was thirsting for a word or sign responsive to the love that thrilled him, and the need of love that devoured him, and the longing for sympathy that filled him with a desolate despair. And yet it was not such love as hers that he wanted in his secret heart, but a wilder, fiercer flame, though he did not know it. Yet he knew and feared the baser enchantment working in his blood, and in his better self revolted against it.
Her voice was even and sweet; all that she said was reasonable, cold, and calculated. She was so self-contained, so perfectly composed; kind and gentle, but with no hint of hidden fervour or suppressed feeling. Could nothing carry her off her feet; could she never forget herself in any sudden warmth, any gust of unconscious emotion?
And all the time the glow and stir of that other woman's tempestuous, self-forgetting passion moved him; the love-thrilled voice, the impassioned gestures, the splendidly moulded figure, the transfiguring tenderness on the beautiful, though faded, face, dazzled and inebriated him, in spite of moments of repulsion and disgust.
"Money," he muttered, "money! when all that one hungers for is a little love. Oh, you good women, cold and calculating and condescending to us poor, hot-headed, hot-blooded sinners, who only want a hand to help us out of the mud—a hand you won't reach out ever so little for fear of tumbling in yourselves."
"How unjust you are, Ivor," she cried, with tears in her voice and eyes, "you who clung to the mud you speak of, and refused to be helped out of it!"
"Help me now," he murmured. "Reach out a hand now—now that I'm sinking—deeper and deeper. I'm a beast, and a selfish beast at that. But marry me; it's my only chance. I haven't a penny in the world, and I've no prospects. I'm done for—broken, good for nothing—but—marry me—pick me out of the gutter."
"Ivor! Are you mad?"
"Yes, and drunk too—raving mad and blind drunk," he shouted savagely. "I was always in love with you," he faltered, "even when you were a little mite of a thing in short frocks and long hair, when you used to bowl for me and bat for me and field for me, and I used to swing you in the swing in the big horse-chestnut——" He dropped his face in his hands with a heavy sigh, his arms propped on his knees, and his eyes bent frowningly on the gravel.
She was trembling now, but controlled her voice too well.
"And yet," she said, "I have no power with you—you will do nothing for me—you want me to go on batting and bowling and fielding for you in the perpetual, desultory cricket you make of life."
"And you," he retorted—"you want me to go on swinging you everlastingly under the humdrum, goody-goody chestnut you make of life."
"And this," said Agatha bitterly, "is love—a man's love!"
"Oh, I'll swing you," he returned savagely, "if you'll only have me—swing you for all I'm worth, if you'll only love me—love me, love me, Agatha—backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, as long as you like, till my arms crack and drop off. That's love—a man's love."
She could not speak for the hot rush of sobs rising in her throat. She shut her hands tight, choked back the sobs, and looked straight before her at the broad blue sea glowing deeply in the sun. The dolphin-like hill-spur of Bordighera, all dreamy blue, with violet tints, paled while she looked and slipped suddenly under a veil of grey mist, while a huge black cloud, rising rapidly behind it, threw its shadow over the sea, changing peacock-blue and turquoise into deepest indigo. The chill of it struck into her. She drew in her breath and swallowed down her tears, and spoke in a low, even voice.
"Ivor," she said, "will you do this for me—only this one thing—the thing I have asked you so often before?"
"I'll do anything, everything; but I can't turn Methody, if you mean that—even for you——"
"Will you, once for all—I ask it for the last time—for my sake, give up gambling in every form—cards, betting——"
"How can I? Oh, you can make terms and conditions. You can stop and haggle over whether I'm worth raking out of the gutter or not. Well, I'm not. You may stake all you're worth on that. But if you cared twopence for me, you'd never stop to think whether I was or not; you'd just reach out a hand before you knew where you were, and haul me out. I know what love is, what even a woman's love can be. You don't——"
"Ah! Don't I?——"
"I'm not worth raking out. I know that fast enough. And I've only one chance to make it worth while fromyourpoint of view, and that is to square Mosson somehow. De Konski thinks it just possible; he may get him to wait awhile on a heavy percentage and say nothing. My leave is up in two days, and in those two days I must somehow rake in the dollars—supposing the beast will wait, that is—and of course my infernal luck is bound to turn now. And when I get home I know a horse or two I stand to make a pot of money on. So you see I can't do the thing you ask anyhow. Ask me something easier, Agatha; there's nothing I won't do for you but that, which I absolutely can't."
"But this is all I want," she said, shivering In the growing chill. "Promise this one thing, Ivor."
"It's mocking at me to ask that. It can't be done. If Mosson sticks to his pound of flesh, as he jolly well will—there's only just the off-chance that he won't—it means I'm broken, have to send in my papers—you know what the chief is—sell up the last stick, raise something on expectations, and begin again with no chances and a heavy debt. The best would be to work out a passage to Canada or South Africa and try my luck there. Else—there is only the sea," he said, looking at the waves darkening under the great cloud sailing up from Bordighera with a cold blast before it, that drove sand and small pebbles into their faces and swept the promenade clear of people, donkeys, and mules in a minute, crashing eucalyptus-boughs together, twisting and twining tulip-tree and catalpa, and making the palm-tops writhe and rattle drily with a sound of pattering rain.
They were forced to get up and shelter from blinding sand and pebbles behind the trees and shrubs in the gardens, whither the storm pursued them, piercing through every chink. Ivor's hat went, and he had to plunge some yards after it, while Agatha, half blinded by a branch dashed in her face, stood waiting, cowering from the wind behind shrubs, through the stems of which she could see the broad band of sea, the western half still glowing deeply like a peacock's throat in vivid sunlight, and the eastern half meeting it in accurate sharp division, as darkly and deeply indigo, the shallow waters shading to duck's-egg. Calm and storm, brightness and darkness, were in close contention, like the spirits in Ivor's soul—the dark and the bright, the pure love and the impure. Yet the sunlight lay deep and warm on the western waves, and the western sky was clear and cloudless above the shadowed bluffs.
"Only the sea," he repeated sullenly, striding back to her, holding on his hat, and bracing himself against the fierce blast; "and you'll all be jolly well rid of me."
"Why will you talk like an idiot?" she cried through the loud wind. "Be a man, Ivor, for once. Your own folly brought you to this, you know perfectly well. Try to use a little sense, a little manliness. Pick yourself out of the mud and make a better thing of life than you have ever done yet. Give up this miserable gambling, for your own sake, if not for mine. Square the man yourself. He can get nothing by breaking you. Who can get blood from a stone? What if you have to leave the Service? Use those muscles of yours to some purpose. Use your brains. You are not the idiot or the child you make yourself out. Think of those who depend upon you, and don't talk of being dependent on women. Don't for a moment suppose that I, or any woman of spirit, would dream of marrying a man who can't stand on his own foundation."
They were walking against the wind, fighting their way through the deserted gardens to shelter behind the bandstand. The storm was so wild that things displayed outside shops parallel to the gardens were swept away before there was time to take them in; china hung on the walls rattled, clashed, and even cracked; newspapers, cards, handkerchiefs and scarves, flew hither and thither across street and gardens; the sunshine left the mountains, and the sky darkened.
"I was an ass to think you would," he replied grimly, maddened by her scorn, and in spite of the beating wind on it his face was quite white; for he knew that of the spirits casting dice for his soul the black one had won. "But," he added, stopping to catch the scarf that flew from Agatha's hand as she tried to wind it round her neck—"but—— Hullo, here's de Konski!"
The Anarchist was sheltering from the storm inside a café, and came out on their approach in the first great drops of a pelting rainstorm. "Yes, here I am," he repeated, saying something to Agatha in a language that had no meaning for Ivor, to which she replied quickly in the same, stepping aside in the shelter while the Anarchist hailed and stopped a fiacre flying past to stables. Then she wished Ivor good-bye, offering her hand, which he either did not or would not see.
"Good-bye," he said, when de Konski was handing her into the carriage. As she got in, she looked out and saw him replace his hat in the buffeting wind. Then she drove to Rumpelmayer's, where Ermengarde was still waiting. She could not catch the expression of his face as she drove off, but fancied a softening in its sullen hardness, while Ivor, unable in the rain and wind to catch a full glance of her face, turned back into the café with a dreadful sickness of heart, feeling that he had parted once for all with the better influences and purer hopes of his life, and was thrown definitely back to such consolation as a dishonourable union offered. Nothing mattered now; a sort of reckless joy took hold of him at the thought, and he shook off the heart-sickness with a wild laugh.
"Let's have a bock," he cried gaily. "If we must go to the devil, let's go with a light heart."
"But why go to the devil at all?" de Konski asked, when the waiter brought the drink.
"Nowhere else to go to, old chap. Nobody else to so much as look at the likes of me. I ain't worth the snap of a finger. Lord bless you, de Konski, that young saint you just popped into the trap out of my contaminating company never cared a hang for me—no, not a twopenny damn, so she says, and now I'm down on my luck she won't—— O Lord! Well! who cares? Better fish in the sea than ever came out of it, eh?"
"That depends on your fishing. Sometimes you net one with gold in its mouth. Pity to let that kind go."
"I shall never net this one," he sighed, setting down the glass he had drained, and staring blankly at the table before him. "She never did and never could care for me," he repeated silently to himself. And all the malign enchantment of the morning rushed back in full force, now that, scorned and rejected of one, he felt free to surrender himself to the other. "But I'll do the square thing," he told himself. "I'll marry her, I'm blest if I won't. She shall have her chance at last, poor woman!"
The Anarchist, sitting opposite at the wine-stained table, contemplated him with interest. "How," he asked presently, "do you propose to make the journey?"
"Going to marry for money, to begin with."
"No occasion, then, to trouble about the Spider any more?"
"O Lord, that beast! I'd forgotten all about him. I'm an ungrateful brute, de Konski. I'm awfully obliged to you, though, all the same. Shylock sticks out for his pound of flesh, of course?"
"Well, hardly that. After all, even he's human, Paul."
"Oh, I say, though, you don't mean to say—you can't mean to say—you've squared the beast!" he cried, springing up and making the glasses dance on the table.
"Well, yes, I've squared him—in a way."
"What way? Half my pay as interest? Seventy per cent. at the final square up six months hence?"
"No; but on conditions——"
"Conditions? Mosson making conditions?"
"Here is a paper signed by him. It is in duplicate, signed and witnessed. He remits you——"
"Mosson remitting? The sun'll tumble out of the sky."
"He remits you the whole, gives you a receipt in full—there it is in black and white—on condition that you bind yourself to play no more, to give up every kind of gaming and betting, and sign to that effect—witnessed by me. So now, Paul, you are a free man. No question of the descent to Avernus, the mercenary marriage, or anything of the sort—always providing you take this pledge."
"Oh, I say!" he muttered thickly, the drops starting on his forehead. "It can't be true—it can't. And the chief?——"
"Will know nothing."
"But Mosson?" he gasped. "Mosson to make me a present of all that? It's unheard of! Besides, it isn't the square thing; he must be paid—you can't rook him, if he's ever such a beast. And it's nothing to him whether I go under or not."
"Mosson is paid to the last centime—that is, he will be if you make this promise."
"Paid by whom?" he asked hoarsely.
"Naturally not by an enemy. By some one who makes it a stipulation that you never know, by some one who has your welfare so much at heart as to be willing to pay a price for it, who wishes you to be absolutely free and unfettered by any obligation—except that of giving up this stupid, ruinous vice."
"The countess!" he whispered, turning cold and sick, as he sank back in the chair he had left, covering his face with his hands.
"Pff! Is it likely? I may not give you the smallest hint; I'm bound in honour, so don't ask. But, if you mean the woman you are always helping out of tight places, is it likely? Look here, Paul, there is the paper and its duplicate. Here is a pen—a fountain. Read and sign it. But think before you sign."
There was silence for some time—silence except for the fitful return of the quieting storm outside, the crackle of hail on roof and pavement, and the last faint pattering of rain before it stopped. Ivor did not move from his posture, his head fallen forward on the table between the glasses, his face in his hands, his shoulders slightly convulsed once, then rigid. The Anarchist looked at him with a sort of weary patience, but said nothing.
At last Ivor got up and went to the window, drawing the back of his hand across his eyes, and looked out on the drenched gardens, where orange-trees and palms were still quivering in the half-spent blast and the hail lay in great stones like lumps of sugar on the sunlit grass. Then he turned back, read the papers carefully, and silently asked for the pen and signed, his signature being duly attested by de Konski, who gave him one paper and kept the other.
"Now you are free," the Anarchist said, shutting up the pen and pocketing one paper.
"Yes, free," repeated Ivor, like a man in a dream.
The storm had become so furious that the driver, after taking Ermengarde up from Rumpelmayer's, insisted on putting in for shelter under the crowdedporte cochèreof the nearest hotel.
"We might as well have stayed at Rumpelmayer's, after all," she murmured, the wretchedness evoked by reading the publisher's parcel rushing back upon her at the first dull moment. Rumpelmayer's bon-bons were pleasant, and several interesting glimpses of human nature had been given her there at the little tables which were unusually thronged for the time of day on account of the storm.—"It was at least warm at Rumpelmayer's. And what of Villa Gilardoni, Miss Somers?"
"Oh, Villa Gilardoni! Whatwillyou think of me, dear Mrs. Allonby? My cousin began talking of—family matters; they were absorbing; time somehow slipped away, and the storm rushed up so suddenly—it was impossible to stand against it——"
"And so 'the hobby-horse, the hobby-horse, was forgot'? But it was too kind of you even to propose this fag on my behalf, much less to try to carry it out. And yet—you are looking very tired, dear Miss Somers."
"I am not tired," she replied hastily; "I am exhausted. I—oh! these storms upset one's nerves."
"Which storms?" Ermengarde wondered, and came to the conclusion that nothing merely meteorological had caused this upset. Could it be remorse? or was it the connexion by marriage? How much easier, simpler, and sweeter life would be were there no men in the world, she reflected, though, like other Utopias and earthly paradises, she thought it might be just a trifle dull. And who knew that, not only man, but even the devil himself might have his uses in the economy of things? The latter supposition she prudently confided to the secrecy of her own breast, while murmuring sympathetic common-places to Agatha, until such time as it pleased the driver to brave the abating fury of the storm, and take them through the drenched town to the sheltered road under the plane-trees, and so to the foot of the ridge where there was nothing for it but to walk or ride up on donkeys and mules.
They chose the former alternative, the heavy rain having given place to a hailstorm by this time, and, before they had climbed in the shelter of vineyard-walls and steep rock-ledges to the first ridge, the hail gave over and the storm-beaten, indigo sea spread darkly, dashed with white foam-ridges, to their sight, when they stopped to take breath and shake out their skirts, whitened by hail.
Some fresh mimosa boughs in a jar of rough country pottery adorned one of the faded shrines of the Seven Sorrows. Who had placed it there, and in memory of what anguish? Agatha wondered, and Ermengarde told her of the phantom nuns Heinrich the porter had seen haunting the shrines at night.
"He must have believed that he saw them," she argued, "because nuns are improbable. If he had invented them, they would have had to be monks, since this was a male community—and still is—for the brothers come back occasionally now. How the people must miss them! They used to serve that church across the ravine. And look—this is how they got to their church."
She pointed to a long straight flight of narrow steps, hewn by hand-labour out of one steep and solid rock, making a long and giddy descent of slippery and uncertain footing where the narrow steep stairs were mossed and uneven; so steep and so long the flight was that the greater part of it was hidden from sight below.
Agatha looked with unseeing eyes, her heart too full of her grief to be interested in anything unconnected with it. She remembered well her first acquaintance with those pathetic shrines, deserted but still finding some humble hearts to honour them in their evil hour. She remembered her anguish and prayer—prayer she knew now ungranted—on the convent steps, in the very face of the consolation offered upon the cross planted there as if in welcome. All the earth had seemed full of silent prayer in the hush and glory of sunset, on that first evening; every hill and ridge had been an altar smoking with sacrificial incense, and the amphitheatre of mountains standing round the broad sweep of the bay a vast temple of adoration, in the centre of which the cross on the top of the steps spread out its welcoming, protecting arms.
She remembered, too, the sight that had afterwards met her gaze from the convent wall; and even now, as she walked wearily past the shrines, fancied the rank odours of musk and cigars tainting the purity of the sweet, still air. Even while she had been wrestling in prayer for him on that evening, Ivor had passed, laughing and fooling with that evil woman who had been his destruction.
Such agony overcame her at this thought that companionship of any kind was insupportable. She made some excuse for prolonging her walk in another direction, while Ermengarde took the most direct way home, under the steep on which the monastery garden spread its fertile terraces to the south, showering vine-trails, fig-branches and prickly pears down the walls to the very edge of the mule-path. But Agatha turned aside and climbed the slope where the cultivator's pink-walled house stood, or rather reclined, among fruit-trees and pergolas, and passed on and up to the convent steps, weariness of mind and body reacting upon each other to such a degree that she would fain have flung herself down on the wet herbage and risen no more. She had definitely asked the man who demanded and implored her love to renounce for her sake the vice that had brought him to ruin, and he had definitely refused to do so. He loved her; he besought, almost commanded her love, but would give up nothing for her. Even while proclaiming his own worthlessness he had claimed her entire devotion and self-sacrifice. What was such love worth? And what was such a man worth? Could he even be called a man and not rather a petulant, dissolute boy, heedless of all but his own comfort and enjoyment, unable to deny himself the gratification of any passion for any sake? And yet—he had shown some compunction in regard to his mother, had been really grieved to cause her pain and such privation as had been hitherto unknown to her. That is to say, he was not entirely without feeling for the woman who had loved and blessed him from his earliest breath, was not absolutely unnatural and unfilial. And yet Agatha loved him, in wild wonder that such as he should kindle love in any heart; and yet she felt that he had no real love for her, though he required and desired her whole heart's devotion.
Had she been hard to him, too hard?—for some hardness is the only kindness to such natures as his. Was it some true instinct, after all, that impelled him to fly to her to pick him out of the mire and save him? Her last words to him had indeed been hot and harsh; she had seen him wince and quiver under them—poor Ivor! She would have softened their effect with some kinder and sweeter words but for the storm and the baleful interruption of the Anarchist, who should have known better than to intrude at such a moment. Now she would see him no more; nothing could heal the wounds she had made; they would always rankle in his memory; the acid would bite deeper and deeper, as time went on and he plunged deeper and deeper into the mire of which he had spoken, whence gentler words and the love he craved might have drawn him. And yet her words had been terribly true. Yes, but she might have put them more gently and sweetly; she had blundered with a bludgeon, where a silken lash or the prick of a knife-point might have been enough. If only the storm and the Anarchist had kept away a few minutes, just a few precious, golden, irretrievable minutes, longer! But he would never have made the renunciation she asked. No; but if she had been kinder; if she had let him see that she was to be won; nay, if she had even given way, held out the hand he asked for and let him grasp it firmly, who knows but she might gradually and with much pain and anguish have rescued him? Who could tell? She might at least have given him hope. And even if all had been in vain, could it have been much worse than this?
She pictured him in his despair and anger, hardening day by day, descending deeper and deeper, reckless, loveless, degraded. She began to hate this mad, proud reticence of women, that will only give love for assured, declared love; what was it in comparison with a man's salvation? Why not have told the poor boy she loved him? Too late now. It was all over; her sacrifice had been in vain. Oh! she should have given more. She should have thrown herself into the breach, her whole self and all her shrinkings and loathings, her pride and reticence. No; that too would have been vain; to stain herself would never make him clean; nor could her descent ever lift him up.
His mother, that sweet, long-suffering mother and high-souled woman, what pain for her! Now she would have to bear this bitter sorrow always. Had a true instinct and no common sense prudence warned her that Agatha could do nothing for her prodigal, when she besought her so earnestly to give no response to his advances? These thoughts warring in her heart brought her to distraction and took the last remnants of strength from her tired body; she could hardly drag herself ever so slowly and falteringly up the steps, with gasping breath and throbbing pulse.
The storm had completely passed now; the divine stillness of the mountain solitudes had returned; sound there was none, save the distant roar of the vexed and chafing sea, whence the indigo stain had fled, leaving it darkly and deeply blue as before, with tumbling ridges of white foam, touched with gold. For now the setting sun flashed out from broken cloud, throwing rose-gold radiance across the western bay, striking up wooded hill-spurs, bringing towers and village walls into sudden glow, and flushing the wet, bare mountain peaks one after another with crimson fire.
Even Agatha's sad heart was quickened as she lifted her eyes to that glorious spectacle and saw the rose flame kindle peak after peak in the vast sweep of engirdling mountains with vivid changing splendour. It was as if the fire of Heaven had visibly descended upon that temple of many altars, in token of some hidden, accepted sacrifice, some offered incense found worthy and well-pleasing. The splendour glowed and deepened till every barren, craggy peak, veined with shadow and streaked with fresh snow, was a crimson flame on a violet sky; the deep silence was a mystic, triumphant psalm of praise to which the solemn roar of the troubled sea was a humbler antiphon, a more earthly response. "The Lord sitteth above the water-flood—The Lord is King be the people never so impatient," the far-off surges sang, and the impatience died from her troubled heart; the poignancy of her despair abated. The celestial fire, changing and quivering as with life-breath, kindled upon ridge after ridge; every village tower, every cottage and hut glowed in the jewel-flame; the white convent walls gleamed in pale claret and lambent gold from between dark cypress and eucalyptus boughs; and at the top of the steps, its welcoming arms flung wide to the world, the great wooden cross, one blaze of rose-gold fire, proclaimed the one hope in all the wide waste tumult of human life, the one eternal sacrifice, the Calvary that is the only road to any Paradise.
Ave Crux Spes Unica,
she read once more on the glowing centre of the cross.
Only a few hours since, she had prayed and implored, even knelt to, the Jewish usurer near that very cross for Ivor—and all to no purpose. It had been very bitter, to humble herself to that man, to lay bare to his contemptuous and cruel gaze that secret heart-sanctuary a woman veils jealously even from herself. He had said things that brought the crimson to her face and cut her to the very quivering heart; he had laughed and prophesied the futility of what she implored, even though he had melted and given way with respect, almost tenderness, at last. What if her own sacrifice, poor and petty, though so much to her, were vain, could that symbolized in the plain wood steeped in glorious rose-lustre above her ever fail?
No; that could never fail, never be in vain, not wholly, not eternally, in vain, something whispered to her stricken heart, and she fell on her knees among the melting hailstones, and prayed with greater passion than ever before, consumed with anguish, uplifted by faith, quivering with love and adoration, thrilled through all her sorrow with a deep divine sweetness; and notwithstanding the fervour of her supplication, full of quiet acquiescence in whatsoever the divine will should accord, even though it seemed despair.
The rosy fire died from the cross and the lower hill-crests, and faded lingeringly from the topmost peaks, leaving wooded steep and gorge in deep shadow, while Agatha poured out her heart on the rock steps with tears and prayers unutterable.
And when she rose, soothed and tranquillized, and sat a moment in the fork of the eucalyptus, looking down across the torrent and the town to the café by the sea, where she had left Ivor an hour before, she could not know that he had just signed the papers put before him by the Anarchist. Yet she turned from the darkening, murmuring sea and faded sunset sky, and walked lightly home through the monastery grounds in the violet afterglow, her heart full of peace.
Not that she was destined to reach home without further adventure; for she had but crossed the level under the cypresses when a slender figure that had been leaning on the western wall, watching the dying glory change on mountain and sea, stood up, darkly outlined against the lucid sky, and came forward to meet her with quick but halting step.
"I thought I could not be mistaken," the thin man said; "I have a keen ear for footsteps, and at once recognized yours. But——" He paused, struck by the mingled fatigue and exaltation on her face, seen clear in the after-glow. "You are tired; you have been worried—more than worried. Pardon me, Miss Somers; but you are young, you are alone and unprotected—a friend may be of service to you, however intrusive and undesired. Is there anything I could do for you? Could I knock somebody down? I observed something this morning—here—on this very spot—you had been annoyed—upset—a person—I trust you had been subjected to no undesirable attention from that unworthy quarter."
A gentle smile flitted over Agatha's face; the idea of the thin man knocking anybody down—or even entertaining such a project—was extremely funny. Indeed, there was this evening something entirely foreign to his usual self in Mr. Welbourne's voice and manner. His self-control was imperfect; he stammered; there was fire in his eye.
"I wonder," he added, "that the people of the house should admit that man to a small and respectable hotel like this. It is an outrage——"
"Mr. Mosson? Oh, poor Mr. Mosson is not as bad as all that, Mr. Welbourne. Indeed, he is not without heart, after all. And I must confess that, far from his annoying me with his company, it was I who trespassed upon the poor man's leisure. I—I wanted to speak to him—on—on a matter of business, and he was most obliging—most accommodating——"
"Accommodating? obliging? Good heavens! Miss Somers, do you know that to be accommodated by this rascally Jew spells ruin? Once in his toils, his victims rarely escape. Don't you know that Mosson is a most notorious usurer, is the too well-known Spider? I do most earnestly trust that he has not accommodated you to a large amount—and as a man of the world—which naturally no lady is expected to be—I warn you—I entreat you to allow me to be your banker—it happens that I have a good deal of capital lying idle for the moment—let me enable you to pay this man off at once, before the interest has accumulated. Give me this pleasure, I beseech you. I—I—require a small interest—one and a half per cent.——"
"But indeed, dear Mr. Welbourne, you are quite mistaken. I have borrowed no money of anybody, really. I can't say how deeply I appreciate your kindness in offering this. No; the poor Spider only did me a—kindness—in the way of business; he lent me nothing at all, I assure you. Nor do I need money, thank you. I thank you many times."
"Oh!" said the thin man, amazed beyond words and disappointed as well.
"But I do," she added, seeing his bewilderment and distress, "I do need, we all need, at all events sometimes, kindness. And for yours I thank you most cordially."
She offered her hand; he took it and bowed over it with such reverent courtesy as belongs to an earlier day than this decadent time of ours, but remained silent still, as if struggling with some deep feeling. And, when he again raised his head and relinquished her hand, she saw that he was flushed and agitated, and came to the conclusion that the poor gentleman in some far-off, foolish days of youth had probably been ensnared by some old-time Spider, who had drained his blood and left him to drag out a withered and blighted life. Hence possibly his celibate condition.
"It—it is a great relief," he said, "a very great relief," and yet the relief he expressed was scarcely evident in his face, upon which the utmost dejection was traced, "to hear that you owe that hard, bad man nothing. May such a misfortune never befall you. And may you never need to borrow of anyone. Should you, however, be so unfortunate, I trust that I may be allowed the great privilege of accommodating you with whatever may be necessary. I know—of course," he added, "that I have no right—no claim—no—that is to say—I am but a casual acquaintance, after all. And yet—pardon my presumption in venturing to say so—I believe that you have no truer, no more devoted friend in the world than I am."
"You have always been kind," she replied with the unconscious cruelty of a mind too much preoccupied to be very observant. "Mrs. Allonby and I have often said that you have been a father to us both from the moment we entered the house."
Mr. Welbourne started; he turned and looked at the moaning sea, whence the last rose-tints were dying, and then he turned and looked at the mountain peaks, above which a trembling star hung lustrous. "Oh!" he sighed very sadly at last; and Agatha wondered why he looked so sad, not knowing that the last relationship the thin man desired with her was that of a parent.
"But that is no reason why either of us should plunder you," she added very kindly and tenderly, as they passed into the shadow of the pines on the other side of the monastery.
"I suppose," he rejoined meekly, "that I seem quite—old in your young eyes."
"Oh no!" she assured him earnestly, observing, as she took the hand with which he was helping her over the same twisted roots that had afforded Mr. Mosson an opportunity of civility in the morning, that it trembled, and fearing she had hurt his feelings, "I don't think you old at all, dear Mr. Welbourne. In these days people don't even begin to be old till seventy."
"I am not yet seventy," murmured the thin man, handing her down the last steep little ledge in the dusk, with a mixture of resignation and despair.
"I should think not, indeed," she returned reassuringly, "but I hope," she added in a burst of generous feeling, "that you soon will be."
"Good Heavens!" ejaculated the poor man, "soon be seventy!"
"I mean," she hastily corrected, "I hope you will live to a good old age—full of honours—with troops of friends——" Oh, Heaven! the kindly patronage in her voice, the gracious condescension of youth to age, the total absence of any feeling but that of cold respect and half pitiful gratitude!—"And that I may have a place among those many friends," she added, regretting to have expressed herself clumsily; she was tired; had had a day of worries, was stupid.
"I ought not to bore you with my prosy affairs and blundering surmises," he confessed. And yet, owing either to the malice of some demon, or that madness which comes to those the gods menace with ruin, before they reached the lighted hall full of people, he had made her acquainted with his true age—at which she expressed untimely and unthinking surprise—and the whole state of his worldly affairs, not forgetting the temporary nature and cause of his lameness, and his position in life, besides asking her to honour him by the acceptance of a bunch of carnations, which she did with matter-of-fact calm, hardly remembering a hasty "Thank you" when she left him on the stairs.
So the thoughts he confided to the piano in the dusk before dinner that evening were in plaintive minor keys and chords of dissonant intervals slowly resolved.
Ermengarde, who had stolen noiselessly in to listen unseen, was much soothed by this music; she was sure that the thin man was telling the piano of the lost dreams and broken hopes of his youth in those subdued minor melodies and daring, harmonic progressions, till the fair Dorris, flouncing in, loudly pronounced them "Shopping reminiscences," and so broke the charm.
The tale of woe Mrs. Allonby confided to the thin man's paternal ear after dinner evoked tepid sympathy; indeed, it struck her that her filial confidences were but half understood, and that the interest displayed in her affairs was spasmodic and forced. There was clearly something wrong with Mr. Welbourne; had he been losing at the tables, or was it impending gout? Her father was just like that before a fit of gout.
The poor man disappeared early into the solitude of his room, and after pacing the parquet dejectedly for some time, turned on a full light, stood before a mirror, and studied the lines in his face and the grey streaks in his hair. Then he called himself a fool seven times, at uncertain intervals, and finished a drawing he was making of a woman's face.
No trace of storm remained next morning; it was, on the contrary, a day of brilliant and cloudless calm, a lotus-eating day, made for basking in sunshine and rejoicing only to be alive.
But Miss Boundrish was not content with merely being alive, she wished to be very comfortable as well; and to that end selected the pleasantest spot in the grounds, outside that same shelter of rye-straw whence Ermengarde had overheard scraps of conversation between two strangers on her first day there. Miss Dorris was quite aware of the acoustic properties of the place, whence she had on many occasions derived entertainment and information that she was not unwilling to impart. This little plateau, which was reached by a flight of marble steps, was not always well supplied with seats; on the present occasion, besides some iron chairs only fit to do penance in, there were only two very cosy cushioned wicker arm-chairs with deep low seats to be had. These the young lady arranged along the edge of the little platform immediately over the mule-path, and, sitting in one, put up her feet cosily on the other in such a way that she appropriated nearly the whole front, commanding the fair and extensive prospect seaward and across the mountain gorges. Thus extended at full length, holding up a huge white sunshade, she made an interesting foreground etched upon the purple bloom of distance, and considerately blotted out most of the sunshine and nearly all the view from the shelter. Provided with a novel, a packet of letters, a box of chocolates and the prospect of revelations of human character from people passing on the mule-path, she felt herself securely fortified against attacks of dulness, and surrendered herself with a gentle sigh to the voluptuous charm of a long morning ofdolce far niente.
She had not long enjoyed the amenities of this position, when her solitude was invaded by the sound of a slow and dragging step accompanied by faint gasps, and turning with a slight frown on her velvet brow, she perceived the figure of an elderly invalid emerging slowly from under the olive-boughs shading the steps. Encumbered with shawls, cushions, and writing and working materials, this poor lady made slow and panting progress, and was obliged to rest a minute on the wooden seat surrounding the olive-trunk; and upon perceiving a youthful form stretched on chairs along the foreground, of the aerial prospect before her, she was not without hope that the graceful figure in full bloom of health would get up and help her. In this she was disappointed, since the face of the fair damsel in question, after the first frowning glance, continued to be bent in studious absorption upon her book, as if undisturbed by or unaware of her presence. Observing this, the new-comer, in the habit of occupying one of the chairs now supporting the fairy figure, for whole mornings together, her infirmities not permitting her to walk or be carried in the ambulant arm-chairs known to common minds as donkeys, and supposing her approach to have been both unseen and unheard, rose, and gathering up her burdens, dragged herself across the platform to Dorris, with some friendly words.
At this the fair student raised her eyes languidly to the frail and bent figure standing at her side, and, having favoured her with a cool and contemptuous stare, observed in a patronizing tone that the morning was warm, and went back to her work without another word, to the poor lady's speechless amazement. A passing thought of asking her young friend if she could spare one of the easy-chairs and take a plain one for her feet was abandoned in sudden indignation at this heartless piece of impudence, and, being unable to accommodate herself to the hard iron bars and high seats of the straight chairs without actual pain, and seeing no one near to fetch her a less penitential seat, the invalid was obliged to beat a retreat with as little loss of dignity as possible, resting once more under the olive on her way, and then very slowly climbing down the marble steps.
There she met M. Isidore, fury firing his eyes and bristling his moustache, but gentleness in his voice when he spoke to her, relieving her of her encumbrances and giving her an arm to a less desirable shelter in the sun, where he surrounded her with every available comfort.
"I go now," he said with a very sweet smile, before vanishing, "to settle the other lady. She will have some fun, that one."
With this he sped across the grounds in all directions and thence into the house, whispering a word of power into the ears of those he met, and then sped back to the rear of the rye-straw shelter, where he had been sorting seeds, while the invalid, lulled by the warmth and beauty, and occupied with her needle, soon forgot her annoyance, and commented to a neighbouring lotus-eater on the pleasantness of that young man's manner, and the great addition he made to the charm and convenience of the house. "And I don't believe a word of what they say about him," she added indignantly; "he's just as nice to the old ladies as to the young ones—and a great deal nicer, too."
Meanwhile, the fair Dorris, munching chocolates, and nestling in her two easy-chairs, grew drowsy with warmth and comfort; her novel slipped from her fingers and her eyes closed; her flower-like head drooped on the slender stalk, her neck; she would soon have been in the land of dreams but for the sound of a cheery whistle on the mule-path, at which her blue eyes opened wide, and she started up, alert and listening, under her huge sunshade. Only a careless whistling of that catchy tune played at the Carnival. It broke off in the middle, but soon began again in a cheery tenor, brokenly still, and she recognized the voice of young Trevor, the Oxonian, staying in these parts to recover from something, whether from too much work, or too much play, was not clearly understood.
"No," she heard him say, in intervals of switching a juniper-bush on the brink with his stick, "I can't say I admire that black-a-vized style. I like 'em fresh and fair, curds and cream mixed with roses—like Miss Boundrish—she'sa ripper and no mistake."
A sweet smile illumined the curds and cream features of the ripper at this; she looked pensively at her hands, and wondered at the round whiteness of her wrists, and thought regretfully of the loveliness of her present pose, wasted upon empty air, and held her breath to listen and sniff more incense.
A female voice with an American accent rebuked the youth for levity in commenting upon feminine beauty in the concrete; he was told that he should confine his observations to the abstract.
"Well, but you can't say she isn't ripping," he remonstrated, "and why on earth shouldn't you mention a girl's name among her friends? You wouldn't discuss her in public, and you couldn't tell it to her face; but I bet anything she wouldn't mind the way I spoke of her, if she could only hear it."
Something unintelligible followed in a low voice, that Dorris recognized as the thin man's, and a light gush of laughter ensued.
"Well, and whose character is being thrown to the lions now? Oh, don't tell me, I know from the sound of that laugh that scandal's about. Is it poor me?" cried the cheerful voice of Mrs. Allonby at this juncture. She was rather breathless, as if she had just climbed up from somewhere.
"You scented the battle from afar, Mrs. Allonby. Well, you shall have your share of the spoil," said the Oxonian. "Here's a nice soft stone for a seat. It's only the beauty of Miss Boundrish that's on toast. I say she's ripping, and they say I'm rude to say it."
"I think her perfectly lovely. Those coral lips, that velvet brow——"
"Ah, you're charring now, Mrs. Allonby——"
"No, I really do admire the girl's face immensely if only——"
"Ah!" interjected the thin man piously, "that fatal 'if,' that always qualifies the admiration of ladies for each other!"
"Well, anyhow I guess it's a pretty big if this time, ain't it, Mrs. Allonby?" Mrs. Dinwiddie asked.
"Beasts," reflected the fair being above them. "Of course, all the men are for me and all the women against!"
"I was only about to regret," Ermengarde replied meekly, "that manners in that quarter scarcely match the beauty of the face."
"Manners?" cried the thin man enigmatically. "Ah, if you want manners!"
"Oh! manners," echoed the boy, "that's another matter. I was talking of beauty, and if that girl isn't a clinker——"
"'Manners makyth man,' as I trust all Wykehamists know——"
"Well, now, Mr. Welbourne, if manners makyth woman too," Mrs. Dinwiddie put in, "I judge that poor Boundrish gell wants making some. The way she'll take the only comfortable chairs."
"I'll poor-Boundrish-girl her as soon as I get the chance!" reflected the fair object of the discussion, her eyes winking with wrath.
"My dear lady," expostulated the boy, "we were speaking of beauty. You, who come from the countrypar excellenceof fair women, can you, even in comparison with your peerless countrywomen, deny that Miss Boundrish is a clinker?"
"Ah!" sighed poor Dorris, "I always thought Bertie Trevor as nice as they make them."
"Land's sake, Mr. Trevor, she clinks fast enough; she goes solid for beauty, if that's what you mean, and I guess she'd go for me if I darst deny it. But what, did Solomon say, is a beautiful woman without discretion?"
"Surely his was a somewhat jaundiced view of the sex, Mrs. Dinwiddie——"
"Anyhow, 'twas pretty extensive. He'd ought to know 'em if anybody did. He'd sampled 'em pretty well all round. King Solomon's reckoned about the most married man in history."
"Butisthe poor girl wanting in discretion?" asked Ermengarde's most dulcet tones.
"Not," replied Agatha, who had silently stolen into the circle, "if it is discreet to shout exaggerated scandal in public places"—in some occult way Agatha knew of Dorris's misadventure at Turbia—"or to make mischief between friends and breed dissension in families, by the most odious misrepresentations and insinuations. Not if it is discreet to catch up half a misunderstood tale and repeat it with a twist—
"I say, Miss Somers, hadn't you better hold up. The lady might be coming round the corner," remonstrated Bertie in an anxious voice.
"She can't. She's gone to Nice to see her aunt. So she told me at breakfast——"
"Gone to Nice!" came in a chorus of irrepressible ecstasy. "If she would onlystayat Nice."
"Too good to be true!" complained a male voice, that Dorris conjectured to be that of a certain Major Norris, whom she had more than once publicly appropriated as lawful spoil of her charms, and inveigled into winding and solitary walks alone with her.
"Couldn't somebody persuade her that Nice is the only spot on earth for the complexion?" asked one.
"She'd swallow any rot. That story of the frogs—feeding the conscripts with frogs to give them courage! Too bad to stuff her like that," said another.
"Surely you must acknowledge that the presence of our young friend at least makes for mirth at table," reproved the thin man's plaintive tones.
"You hypocritical old owl, you!" muttered Dorris, clenching her small fists and twisting them as if a gentle fancy had involved them in Mr. Welbourne's hair, which was artistically grown.
"Say," cried Mrs. Dinwiddie with sudden inspiration, "what was M. Isidore'smoton the Boundrish gell?"
"Ah! M. Isidore'smot," echoed Ermengarde, "how did it run?"
"To be sure, M. Isidore'smot," went from mouth to mouth, ending in a general shout of laughter and ejaculations of ecstasy; but what themotwas poor Dorris never heard, for the simple and sufficient reason that M. Isidore was entirely innocent of having so much as imagined one, and was at that moment bending over the rose-covered rail above the path, with gesticulations expressive of mingled delight and resentment at the liberty taken with his name, to the great joy of Bertie Trevor, who made gestures of defiance at him in return. At this, M. Isidore, shaking his head as if in despair of the group below, turned his attention to Dorris—whom he could see through a chink in the rye-straw partition, and whose reception of public incense he had watched with tender, if spasmodic, interest from time to time—and was rewarded by perceiving symptoms of severe internal perturbation in the fair lady's demeanour.
The good-hearted little man had substantial and most bitter cause to dislike Dorris and all her ways; few things would have given him greater satisfaction than her instant and final disappearance from Les Oliviers, from France, from any and every place in which he might henceforth walk all his life long; but he had a heart and a soft one; he had also a French tenderness for the smaller woes of women, and what he saw through the chink smote him with such compunction that he left his seeds, leapt lightly down from the platform and ran round to the path, where the group of traducers were loitering, holding out his hands in appeal.
"Mais, mais, mesdames, messieurs! c'est un peu fort!" he cried; "does one talk so of ladies?"
"We were only admiring the dear girl's little ways," Ermengarde explained, "and her beauty."
"I do love her little way of listening to people talking among themselves, and picking their brains and passing their things off as her own," Major Norris said. "And that of patronizing her betters and flatly contradicting people on subjects she hasn't had the chance of understanding—even if she had the brains."
"The way she explained to me how we run elections in the States," added Mrs. Dinwiddie's husband, a humble, unconsidered dependent, occasionally found handy to fetch and carry for his liege lady. "She'd just as soon tell the Almighty the way to run the Universe, you bet——"
"But that charming laugh, Mr. Dinwiddie, surely that atones for much," murmured Lady Seaton, arriving from the convent to the Carnival tune that Bertie Trevor was whistling, as he had done at intervals during the whole interview, to the deep disgust and irritation of Dorris, who was more impatient than most people of tiresome tricks like humming and whistling—tricks she arrogated to herself as the peculiar privilege of one too lovely and attractive not to be always sure to please whatever she did. Dorris was, of course, not aware that whenever anyone came down the path or up the path or from the convent steep, Bertie, standing out on a little jut of rock, looking idly about, instantly began that Carnival tune, unless it was a stranger. In that case he whistled the Marseillaise and the talk paused.
"O Lord, that everlasting gurgle," growled the Major; "it's all over the place from morning till night. What the dickens does she do it for?"
Dorris's fists clenched themselves; she remembered bare-faced admiration of that charming laugh, and other tributes to her fascination, bold almost to impudence not a week old, from this false man.
"Well," replied Mrs. Dinwiddie, "I judge the poor gell can't so much as go to sleep without acting. She's just made up of affectations right through, top skirt and lining, inside and out. I should be surprised if her motherdidn'tget headache and her father the hump."
"I don't care," Bertie began doggedly, "if she has got the voice of a screech-owl——"
"Oh, come now, Mr. Trevor, her voice is well enough, poor girl, if she wouldn't always yell at the top of it."
"Beauty is beauty, however soulless," he continued stolidly. "And if she does strut like a peacock——"
"Et tu, Bertie!" the poor peacock sighed metaphorically.
"—She's got the peacock's justification. Her hair is perfectly stunning."
"So is her voice," muttered the Major.
"Assez, assez! cette pauvre demoiselle," M. Isidore remonstrated, as he had continued to do at intervals.
"And she can't help it," added the chivalrous Bertie.
"Very true," returned Mr. Welbourne, solemnly misunderstanding him. "Our young friend should not be judged harshly for what is misfortune rather than fault. What is to be expected of an ignorant and entirely brainless girl, vain and thoughtless, who has evidently never been in any decent society? She is too young and too inexperienced to be aware of her own defects, to which her kind and indulgent parents are affectionately blind——"
"I've seen her momma squirm at her antics more than once," Mrs. Dinwiddie put in.
"If some kind and judicious friend could but tell her——"
"But who'll bell the cat? Nobody wants to be clawed."
"—She would doubtless correct herself—she is young."
"Not she; she's a heartless little cat. So spiteful," cried a female voice.
"If somebody would only lock her up while she's correcting herself," sighed Ermengarde, eliciting variously expressed but unanimous agreement in her suggestion.
In the meantime M. Isidore had stolen one more glance at the victim on the block, discovering the mournful spectacle of Dorris on her knees between the two nefariously appropriated chairs, her arms on the seat of one, her face in her hands, trying to stifle bitter sobs.
Her position was truly unfortunate. A comfortable matron had appropriated a seat at the foot of the steps, and was tranquilly perusing a paper through the glasses she held, occasionally looking up and expressing mild wonder to a daughter a little way off at the continuous talk and merriment going on outside on the path—this lady even audibly entertained the idea of going out to see for herself what was forward—and, besides not being able to leave her now distasteful eminence without passing her, poor Dorris feared she would come up to her, little knowing that the good lady was purposely stationed there to cut off her retreat and ensure her sufficient castigation.
The sight was more than the kind-hearted little Frenchman could bear. Once more he sprang down and ran into the midst of the gossipers, whispering to one after the other, "Mais elle pleure, elle pleure à chaudes larmes."
"After all," commented the thin man with unconscious cruelty, in the sudden silence that followed these words: "vulgarity is not vice. It is involuntary and unconscious."
That was the last, worst stripe of all, that and M. Isidore's knowledge and compassionate betrayal of her sufferings. "Vulgarity." The word blistered her ears; she caught up a scarf, threw it over her face, and fled down the marble steps, past the comfortable matron, nearly upsetting her, and through the grounds, dashing in her wild career against some one, she neither knew nor cared whom.
Mr. Welbourne himself felt the vitriol of his ill-considered speech the moment it was spoken, but knew it to be past mending, and groaned audibly, while every member of the group, with the exception of Major Norris, who was a disciplinarian and a thoroughly good hater when once he began, was more or less visited by compunction.
"After all, it was beastly mean of us," Bertie Trevor said, turning away with a sullen face, when the flight of the victim was known.
"'Twas the way she acted to the lame lady set up my back," Mrs. Dinwiddie confessed.
"And quite right too," the Major rejoined; "the girl was a positive pest to everybody in the house."
"But at least," came in French, in a deep contralto voice from the spot whence the sufferer had fled, causing every eye to be raised to that eminence, to perceive the majestic figure of Madame Bontemps, a large cauliflower tucked under each arm, an apron full of fresh-gathered lemons and oranges, and a sharp bright knife threateningly flourished in her hand. "At least, this demoiselle was not chased from the house for inveigling the fiancé and breaking the heart of an innocent young girl."
Having thus spoken, Madame turned and receded majestically from sight, leaving the conspirators petrified with amazement.
"What on earth is she driving at?" asked Ermengarde, looking straight at M. Isidore, a sudden flood of enlightenment rushing in crimson over her face and throat even as she spoke, and leaving her death-pale and trembling.
M. Isidore's face, from which she quickly withdrew her gaze, was marble in its rigid impenetrability. He made no reply, beyond a faint shrug of ignorance, but turned and offered some slight service to the lady standing next him. Then the group, which had been shifting the whole time, soon melted quietly away, each member with a feeling of having done an indifferent morning's work in this long-threatened and carefully planned conspiracy of rough justice.
That morning'sdéjeunerwas singularly devoid of gaiety. The conspirators looked guiltily at poor Dorris's empty place. Those of her father and mother were expected to be empty, else the execution could not have taken place. The lame lady innocently wondered what had become of Miss Boundrish, and mentioned having seen her in the grounds that morning. Even Major Norris enjoyed the absence of the strident voice and gurgling laugh less than he expected, and found fault with the weather, which was perfect, and the salad, which was not, characterizing both as rotten. The thin man, openly but dejectedly, laid a bunch of roses by the woman of mystery's plate, and observed plaintively to Ermengarde more than once upon the undesirability of lynch law, and the mistaken estimate by average Britons of the salutary effect of ragging on immature character.
"It is often unjust," he said, "and always goes too far. Though I don't know what we should have done at Winchester without it—even without the injustice and occasional savagery. Yes, Mrs. Allonby, the savagery. But that, I hear, is now very rare. You need not shrink from sending your boy to Winchester. It will make a man of him; though he will be let down very gently to what we were."
It was during this discourse that Ermengarde discovered what she had been too much preoccupied while assisting at the execution of Miss Boundrish to think out before, though all the time she had been conscious of a subtle change in the thin man's appearance—a change so great that every one who saw him that morning was so much struck by it as to look twice, even three times at him—his beard was gone. Now why, she pondered, had Mr. Welbourne's beard taken sudden flight? Had he foreboded a personal encounter with Miss Boundrish, and thought it well to give as little hold to her vengeance as possible?
"Ah!" she said, suddenly divining another cause, "I see that you are no longer afraid of sore throat, Mr. Welbourne. That is good. First, because it means that your health is restored, secondly, because it is a portent of spring."
"Sore throat?" he murmured, bewildered. "The Riviera throat only comes in the first weeks. But——" his hand suddenly went up to the newly reaped chin, when crimson of the deepest dye suffused and betrayed him. "Quite so," he added vaguely—"yes; it—it was a protection—oh!—themistral—ah—invalid ways—indolence——"
"I congratulate you on all counts," she said in a kind voice, wondering who was the object of Mr. Welbourne's passion, a sudden paralyzing fear suggesting herself. But no; that would be too terrible; M. Isidore, the Anarchist and the thin man, in those few, short weeks—Fate could hardly be so cruel as all that! And at his age! But he looked horribly young without the beard, and there was a certain gallant and knightly suggestion in the elegantly trimmed moustache left. There was no doubt that the thin man—no longer so thin and not at all so lame—was going forth in that moustache, conquering and to conquer. He had been heard to condemn the present clean-shaven mode as womanish. She had perhaps been too filial, too confiding with him, under the shadow of that venerable beard, and he had mistaken her. Then her eyes fell on the roses by Agatha's plate; she remembered that those two had often been elaborately unconscious of each other's presence lately; she remembered a long succession of gentle judgments on the woman of mystery's vagaries, and many delicate allusions to her beauty and charm, and in a flash she knew. Poor Mr. Welbourne! This was indeed tragedy.
After a sketchy and unsatisfactorydéjeuner, during which appetite and peace were alike annihilated by that dread pronouncement of Madame Bontemps "inveigling the fiancé and breaking the heart of an innocent young girl," ringing through her brain, Ermengarde, renouncing her intention of looking for quarters in Mentone, and thinking that San Remo would now be the nearest place in which she could venture to hide her diminished head and reflect upon the spitefulness of perverse fate, fled upstairs to her room to take counsel of solitude.
But in this she was balked before reaching her sanctuary by the encounter of Mrs. Boundrish, round-eyed and in very unfinished toilet, hurrying along the corridor in the greatest perturbation.
"Oh dear, Mrs. Allonby!" she cried in agitatedaccellerandothat admitted of no stops, "whatshallI do? Dorris is insucha state. I can't make anything of her. She was never taken like this before and this dreadful spotted fever about nobody knows how it begins but of course their poor brains and foreign doctors and chiefly the young and they go off so soon and so infectious and Boundrish at Nice oh dear! She won't speak."
"Butisshe spotted?" Ermengarde asked solemnly.
"She won't say; she won't speak," the poor woman sobbed, and Agatha, arriving then, bore her back to her room, while Ermengarde, hastily upsetting eau-de-Cologne in every direction, and holding a handkerchief soaked in it to her face to keep off infection, stole into the chamber of the unfortunate Dorris, trying to remember when and where and how the spots characterizing this terrible disease were to be expected.
Dorris had flung herself face downwards on her bed, and was sobbing faintly; the room was in great disorder, drawers open and clothing tossed recklessly about. Some scraps of torn paper, an open blotting-book, and pens and ink on the table, pointed to the writing and tearing up of letters.
At the sound of Ermengarde's cautious entrance the poor girl turned quickly, showing a tear-washed, wild-eyed and miserable, but quite spotless, face.
"Go away, go away! Oh, why can't I die?" she cried wildly, turning back to her original posture, while Ermengarde, carefully keeping the handkerchief to her face, felt her pulse and touched her brow softly, and asked where the pain was and what was the matter.
"And you can ask?" she moaned, "when you were there, and as bad as any of them. Somebody might have told me—privately—I didn't know. They all hate and despise me. I can never—never—nev-nev—never——"
"Dear Miss Boundrish, Iamso sorry," cried Ermengarde, suddenly dropping her handkerchief, her terrors, and her precautions, and putting a caressing arm round the sobbing figure on the bed. "We didn't mean it—at least, not more than a quarter of it. It was more than half in joke. And if you hadn't been rude to poor Mrs. Lamb—that put us up—and then we were carried away—forgot ourselves—everybody went one better than everybody else—you know how it is in a game like that. Think no more about it."
"But you do-do-do-don't—think me quite—such a—bib-bib-bibby—beast?"
"Certainly not," firmly and decisively.
"A scrik-scrik-screech-owl?" she sobbed; "a bun-bun-bun-bundle of aff-fec-fec-fectation? So-so-so-soulless——"
"Not in the least, dear child. It was all put on—at least, half was—just our fun. We knew you were a spoilt child, and wanted to give you a lesson, that was all. You are very young, my dear."
Then poor Dorris, touched more by the voice than the words, threw herself into Ermengarde's arms, confessed some of her sins, and acknowledged herself—after consenting to a cup of tea, made on the spot and administered by Ermengarde, and much petting, rose-water and eau-de-Cologne—a sadder, a humbler, and a wiser girl.
But her place at table knew her no more, and the familiar gurgle and strident voice never again troubled the air of Les Oliviers. A few days later her parents followed her to Cannes; Dorris, they said, required younger and gayer society.