"After all," Ivor said, as he walked with the Anarchist through the gardens of the Casino, now sleeping with doubled magic under a starry sky, "this isn't such a beastly hole. I've had a ripping time altogether."
De Konski looked at the bright-eyed, smiling face in amazed curiosity, touched with pity. He thought the look directed towards the lighted Casino somewhat wistful, and reflected that only an hour or two and the sumptuous farewell dinner they had just had at Giro's together divided this light-hearted youth from the despairing and perverse prodigal of the afternoon. The storm that had rushed up in a moment in indigo shadow from behind Bordighera had not passed more quickly than this young man's anguish and inward conflict.
"Thanks to you, I've come through this rotten business without a scratch," the laughing lips added. "If only——"
"If only?" echoed the Anarchist. "Ah! well for you that your word is given. Nothing short of that would keep you straight—off that rock."
"Oh, that's all right, thanks to you."
"And to no one else, Ivor? That was a long talk in the gardens this afternoon."
"Oh well, we had been teaing at Rumpelmayer's with that pretty little Mrs. Allonby—awfully jolly little woman—"
"Eh? what?" growled the Anarchist, an angry flame in his eye.
"—She's in an awful hole, that little woman. Turned out of her hotel, and can't find fresh quarters anywhere. I was recommending Villa Gilardoni."
"What do you mean by turned out?" cried the Anarchist savagely.
"The poor little woman took it very pluckily—she told it as a ripping joke. She doesn't suspect your Turbia friend's tongue may have had a hand in it"—an inarticulate snarl broke from the Anarchist—"the hotel people simply told her to clear out, bag and baggage. She's been to every blessed hotel in Mentone this afternoon, and found them all crammed full——"
"Ah! And you were discussing that lady's affairs with Miss Somers in the gardens?"
"I was showing Miss Somers the way to the Villa. I say, what the deuce is the matter, de Konski?"
"Nothing, nothing. Except that I must be off or lose the last lift. Goodnight. If only—remember."
But there was another and very differentifto what the Anarchist suspected in the young man's heart. If Agatha had only stooped to pick him up! Her cruelty spoilt all. He had certainly asked much of her, he acknowledged to himself, but less would have been nothing, for love, he told himself, gives all or nothing. While the countess——
On reaching his hotel he found a letter from his mother, and read it more than once. What there was in that letter more than in countless others she had written, he could not say; it was tender and warm and intimate with a sort of gay comradeship infrequent in maternal letters—but so were all her letters. Still, in this he found something that brought the water to his eyes, and the old childish confidence and comfort to his heart, and made him very glad and thankful to have signed that paper in the afternoon. There was a little folded slip from a sister inside the envelope. "So glad you are coming home," it said; "mother is counting the days. She is not quite herself lately, and seems to be fretting for you."
After all, there is no love like a mother's, especially when life is hard and hearts are wounded and sore.
The poor countess's image had already grown dim and indistinct; it seemed ages since that morning's scene; the fumes of that intoxication had almost evaporated; the evil enchantment nearly faded. He wondered at having been so much moved by that passionate, self-abnegating devotion, when a vague memory of it flitted across his mind, with a pity that was more akin to contempt than love. Of course Agatha had been right in reminding him of his mother's objection to his choice of herself; but equally of course, had she cared for him, all that would have been thrown to the winds. People's relations—especially mothers—always make a point of objecting to and hindering the course of true love, while lovers always make a point of overriding all such hindrances and defying all such objections—it was an accepted part of the game, absolutely orthodox.
Flinging things into suit-cases and kit-bags next morning, he remembered that he had no little keepsake to take home to the mother, and ran out to ransack the shops crammed with glittering inutilities for something to please her. Under present impecunious circumstances, this could only be done by going home second-class, and Monte Carlo shops scarcely lend themselves to modest gifts; customers in that City of Dis are expected to reckon in golden four-louis pieces. It was a bewildering and irritating thing to a hurried man to review those windows, ablaze with diamonds and glowing with rubies, piled with rich-scented russia leathers, clasped and bound and fitted with gold and silver inconveniences of every description, or run the eye over daintily carved ivories, costly bric-à-brac, gorgeous apparel, and priceless lace, in search of something at once exquisite, suitable, and inexpensive.
He was consigning the total merchandise of Monte Carlo to perdition, in a last and frantically hopeless marshalling of a jeweller's window, when his eye was caught by a necklace of costly gems and beautiful workmanship, at which he gazed in open-mouthed amazement for some seconds. The design, unusual and unmistakable, the jewels—sapphires set with diamonds—all were familiar and recognizable at a glance. It was an exact duplicate of the Somers sapphires, the necklace inherited by Agatha, and constituting her chief fortune, of the value of some thousands of pounds—the necklace she had often been counselled by outsiders to sell, but never by the family—and had always consistently refused to part with. She had worn that necklace at his coming-of-age dance, the day on which he had definitely recognized the nature of his feelings for her. It was spoken of in the family as her dowry. There it lay, sparkling and quivering in the clear morning sunlight, among stars, tiaras, collars, andrivièresof diamonds, and ornaments set with every known jewel. It shone out with a distinction all its own from these splendid and costly things, an exact counterpart of Agatha's necklace, here for sale, in this very Monte Carlo shop before his dazed eyes; the gems, winking and sparkling with many colours, seemed alive and beckoning to him, burdened with secrets they longed to tell. In a moment he was in the shop, stammering in unintelligible French, and pointing to the necklace.
"Oui, oui, M'sieur; the sapphires are exceptionally fine and the diamonds of good water," the lady at the counter acknowledged; "the value being so great we are willing to take much less than they are worth. Yes; it is fresh in the window this morning. Second-hand? But naturally; the workmanship, very fine and of exquisite art, is long out of date. Such things are no longer made. It is absolutely unique."
"It came from England?" he asked in his native tongue. "It must have come from England. It is known; it has a history. There is but one necklace like that, and I've known it all my life."
"On the contrary," said the proprietor, stepping across from the other side of the shop, and desirous of showing his undoubted right to it, "the necklace was sold to me only yesterday by M. Mosson, the well-known M. Mosson, with whom we frequently have dealings of this kind. Sometimes we sell them on commission, sometimes we buy them outright. But M. Mosson is careful in the extreme. He takes nothing of which the proprietorship is doubtful. The history of this beautiful and unique specimen of jeweller's art is well-known to him. But Monsieur is suffering? A glass of water? Cognac?"
Ivor, white and dizzy, had dropped into an armchair in the middle of the shop, and was staring stupidly before him, trying to piece the thing out in his mind, and realize what it meant, while the jeweller, who had paid a sum down, instead of selling on commission this time, was a little anxious lest the astute Mosson should have made a mistake. He remembered that the sum the usurer had taken was known by both of them to be far under the real value, and that he had seemed anxious to have the money without delay. It was unlike that benefactor of his species to betray anxiety on any subject.
"Has Mosson come back?" Ivor gasped presently, "or is he still at that place up in the mountains?" and learnt in reply that Mr. Mosson had so far refreshed himself by his stay in that sequestered region that he had returned to his well-known villa hard by, upon hearing which Ivor at once rushed from the shop and hurried in the direction of the villa, to the disquietude of the jeweller, who repaired without loss of time to a private room to discuss the matter with Madame.
"What, again?" the philanthropist asked with a cynical smile, when his young client burst in upon his pious reflections and calculations; "and accounts closed only yesterday? Now this is most unfortunate—because I am not in a position to accommodate you at present, M. Paul."
"The necklace," the boy gasped, "the necklace?"
"H'm?"
"Where did you get that sapphire and diamond necklace that you sold to M. Strozzi yesterday?"
"That, my young friend, is entirely my affair."
"Look here, Mosson, somebody, some friend of mine, yesterday, wiped off what I owed you to the last penny."
"Quite so. An unknown friend—on conditions. Now that is done. Good morning. Au revoir, I must not say."
"That friend was the owner of the necklace."
"If you say so, I must believe it."
"You can't deny that she was. Besides, there can't be a duplicate—that's beyond a coincidence."
"If Monsieur is so well informed on a subject that I confess has little interest for me, why waste valuable time in vain interrogations? For the rest, with regard to the debt and conditions, the transaction was confidential, the person who negotiated it having ensured my silence upon the matter. So once more, M. Paul, I wish you good day, and better luck at the game of life than you have had of late at roulette."
Ivor looked steadily at the sharp features and cold glittering eyes, not unconscious of the cynical tolerant contempt expressed in the thin, tight-drawn lips, and was quite sure.
Perhaps, after all, he was having better luck at the game of life than he had hoped or deserved; perhaps, after all, she had picked him out of the gutter, though she would not risk the slightest splash on her own white raiment to save him. Perhaps. His head went round dizzily as he walked blindly from the usurer's house, trying to realize what this meant for both of them. She had set him free; had already done it yesterday, when she had seemed so hard and pitiless, and upbraided him so hotly and sternly; she had set him free at the sacrifice of her one earthly treasure, her little fortune, at the cost of who knows what repulsion and disgust in dealing with the notorious Spider.Couldshe have approached the man personally? Yet how else could she have effected this? She had loved those jewels; they had meant so much for her; their history, their associations, the tradition of good fortune they brought to their owner—all had been discussed and laughed over and made a handle for teasing, many and many a time, from the days when they were children at play. Then a cold shiver went through him at the sudden thought that she was herself in straits—working for money—she might have pledged them for her own needs. But they had not been pledged, unless to Mosson. Yes, that might be; Mosson was such a beast, they being pledged to him and unredeemed, he might have realized his debt upon them. Again, no—what need could she possibly have of such a sum of money as that? Oh no, there could be no doubt, none whatever. The necklace had been sold forhim. De Konski knew; but there was no time to get at him. He sat on a bench under a palm, with his face in his hands, staring into the clear brook that rippled among water-lilies and maidenhair over an artificial rock-bed, and thought.
Hard work this thinking to the poor, light-hearted lad. He had thought more in the last few days than ever in his life before, and it had taken the rounded outlines of youth from his face, deepened his eyes, made shadows under them, and given firmness to a too facile mouth. What a beast he had been yesterday in the gardens when the storm was coming up over Bordighera; no wonder she had been repelled; no wonder such selfish madness had been flouted and condemned. He seemed to be waking out of a long, fantastic dream or some wild, prolonged delirium to a sober, sane view of life. Tears came into his eyes, and dropped slowly on the gravel between his feet. A memory of the countess yesterday, with glowing eyes and thrilling voice, made him shiver; the thought of her beauty gave him a sensation of physical nausea. But yesterday, as yesterdays sometimes are, was long and long ago. And here he was, with scarcely two hours to spare before catching the last possible train home. And there was only one thing to be done, and that was impossible.
Agatha, in the meantime, had no suspicion of what was passing in her prodigal's mind. She had made her last throw for him and lost. She could only bow her head before an unsearchable dispensation and wait. Her first fierce participation in the execution of the unfortunate Dorris had soon given place to a compunction which prompted her to withdraw, after a vain attempt to stem the torrent of the long-pent wrath of the hotel. She therefore had a quieter conscience than some of the rest, and quickly dismissed the business from her mind. She had quieted Mrs. Boundrish's fears of spotted fever by persuading her that the sweet child was only a little hysterical, a view of the case shortly afterwards confirmed by Mrs. Allonby, who recommended solitude and cheerfully prophesied slumber. This charitable office accomplished, the woman of mystery fared forth in the afternoon sunshine to resume the visit of inquiry to Villa Gilardoni, interrupted by the storm on the previous day, taking with her some papers in the cipher that stamped her with Heaven knows what iniquities in the eyes of Ermengarde, and consulting them as she went down the mule-path, as if they contained instructions or indications of what to do next.
The convent walk was no longer a sanctuary for meditation; she had been there in the morning and found men busy opening and cleaning and setting in order both the church and the monastery. At their suggestion she had gone in, inspected the empty cells, simply but sufficiently furnished with bed and table, desk and bookshelf—a book here, a pen there, pointed to recent suddenly interrupted occupation—and wondered over the quiet, harmless, and probably happy and useful lives of the men who had been thrust out, and how they fared now in the loud, perplexing world, and what disgust or disappointment might have driven some of them into this haven of stillness.
She had inspected and admired the church, beautifully and lovingly adorned, though so plain outside, and beautifully kept as if in constant use, and had been touched by the votive offerings hung about on the walls—ships chiefly, with here a gun, here a crutch and there a heart—all so quaint to unaccustomed eyes; and the thought of all the unsuspected heart-breaks and secret agonies of prayer, in that quiet mountain solitude alone, besides those throbbing and aching in the great, lonely, million-peopled world outside, rolled up like a huge tidal wave and crashed upon her heart. But that some prayers were answered, some secret agonies had happy ending, the quaint votive offerings bore witness, filling her with a hope full of peace, and assuring her that some day, ever so distant perhaps, but some day, before the ending of time, all humble, heartfelt prayers of earnest faith and unselfish love would at last bring forth some fruit.
What a different world to-day, sunning itself in splendour of blue and gold and green, to that of yesterday, when the darkness of storm and the chill lash of hail had been over all. Everything seemed made for happiness; the gladness of flowers blooming in every crack and crevice, pink rock-roses creeping about the rocky path, white and pink cistus starring the bushes on every slope, lavender spikes here, and tall purple and black iris there, masses of peach-bloom edging olive-woods, with many an unknown, unconsidered blossom, all turned sweet faces in gladness to the sunshine; all the deep dark verdure of gorge and mountain-flank, with vine and garden-growth about terrace and house, seemed as if breathing a deep and joyous and peaceful life round village and cot, while ever-soaring sunlit mountain-peaks rushed up with glad and silent aspiration into the pure dark sky, the hill-spurs at their feet thrusting many a noble, firm-based buttress far out into the dark splendour of a sapphire and turquoise sea. Even the clean-walled, smokeless town and white ribbon of road, over which toy vehicles and horses and tiny doll-men crawled along the torrent-brink, in oleander shade far below, seemed much too gay and gladsome to admit any shadow of tragedy or sting of pain.
And yet what heart-break, what despair, what loneliness of heart might be—nay, must be—there, hidden and silently borne with more or less valour; and how the very gladsomeness and glory of all this lovely earth seemed to put a sharper knife-edge on the pain, that turned and turned insupportably in the heart, Agatha mused in the weariness and dull apathy weighing her down after yesterday's sharp suffering.
What was life worth, after all, at best? How could people go on, year in, year out, under their tragic burdens and sordid pains? How many a weary year of sunless, monotonous suffering she would have to drag out, unless some merciful mischance befell her body and released her soul, she sighed, with a great yearning for the peace of not being—in the strong deep agony of youth, that has so many prospective years to endure in. And then, suddenly, at the turn leading to the convent cross, she came face to face with a figure hurrying with springing steps up the path by the deserted shrines, and the simultaneous surprised cry of "Ivor!" and "Agatha!" and the look flashed from eye to eye in one moment changed all the world and made everything clear to each, as they stood silent, each with both hands outstretched and clasping the other's.
There was a look never seen before in Ivor's face, and a soft gladness unknown in Agatha's; both faces were in clear sunlight outlined upon a rock-wall overhung by the quaint, goblin-handed boughs of prickly pear.
"Aggie," he cried, "dear, dearest Aggie, I was a beast yesterday. Iwasa beast! You were right. All you said was true. I had no right to ask such things of you—no man has of any woman. Yet youhadsaved me, youhadpicked me out of the gutter all the time. No, it's no use saying anything. I saw the necklace and guessed. The beast sold it to Strozzi—and made upon it, trust him! It's in Strozzi's window. Aggie, how could you? The dear old necklace! I'm not worth it, my dear—no, not worth picking out of the mud. But I will be—at least, I won't be the cur I've been. And some day—some day, perhaps—at least, if you're not bound to the long artist-man—perhaps—oh! I shall never be fit to look to you—Don't talk of my mother—she'll be ready for anything after this. I wish I hadn't been such a brute to you. It's—it's as if I had been drunk all along—but not with wine; and now, now at last I've waked up, sober—quite sober, Aggie—darling."
What she said, or if she said anything, she knew not and never knew; nor did he. There was one kiss, too spontaneous, reciprocal and inevitable to be thought of except as a matter of course, though the first since the old baby-kissing days; and then he was gone, racing for his train, that was perilously near the starting-time now. But he turned suddenly by the shrine where she had seen him on that first evening with the countess, for one last look. "Don't have the long painter-man," he cried; "he's too old; he really is; de Vieuxbois told me. And nobody's good enough for you, no, not by half." Then, with some of the old boyish gaiety lighting his face again, he vanished in the soft olive-shadows, racing for dear life.
The woman of mystery, bewildered and half stunned, and vaguely wondering who de Vieuxbois was, and what he had told Ivor, and what would happen if Ivor lost his train and so broke his leave, and how much Ivor's mother would know of the transaction of the necklace, and seeing a deeper, purer blue on the velvet calm of the windless sea, and a more golden depth in the warm sunlight, and a greater gladness and glory on everything, went quietly on her way to Villa Gilardoni.
As to Ermengarde, on whose behalf Villa Gilardoni was to be inspected, she no longer wished to go anywhere except home—that is to say, somewhere within reach of Charlie and her mother. Those two she instinctively longed for and no others; the boy, because his ignorance and childish selfishness made him uncritical and kept his clinging affection unimpaired; the mother, because the sympathetic insight and indestructible unselfishness of the love that protects and cherishes can be trusted to know the worst, and only grow deeper and more pitiful with the knowledge. As for Arthur, his image inspired a mixture of terror and resentment. His unkindness, his want of feeling and sympathy, had sent her all alone into a far-off, unfamiliar, incomprehensible world, in which she had made stupid mistakes, played the fool generally, and proved herself quite unfit to be alone and unguided. If there had been anyone near to confide in, to point things out, to discuss things frankly, she could never have made such a fool of herself.
And where was Arthur all this time? Arthur, the poor man, who six weeks ago could afford no holiday jaunt either for wife or self—until she was fairly out of the way. Then he had suddenly flamed across the sky, a meteor of literary brilliance, and betaken himself to mysterious regions of private enjoyment, whence only the most meagre accounts of his goings on were allowed to trickle at wide intervals—that he was well andbusyand uncertain in his movements, that he hoped she was stronger, and was glad she appeared to be enjoying the foreign trip, and advised her to be careful not to risk chills in sudden changes of climate—nothing more. Apparently Arthur had done with her, and, casting off all domestic ties, was recklessly plunging into wild, unknown vortices of pleasure, Heaven only knew where, but, presumably, where there were no post-offices.
When Mrs. Allonby left the unlucky Dorris smothering her sobs and confessing her follies that sunny sweet afternoon, she felt exceedingly cheap and small—even cheaper and smaller than when she had unexpectedly closed an afternoon of shocked moralizing on the sinful pleasures of gambling and pigeon-shooting by landing herself on the Casino steps, too completely cleaned out by roulette to have the price of a cup of tea left. Madame Bontemps' gratuitous information that morning had greatly enlightened her on many subjects. She knew now the meaning of many once incomprehensible things, and especially why she had been asked to leave the hotel—yes; and she remembered that the woman of mystery, whose fallen nature was to have been uplifted by the example and infection of her own exalted and unspotted disposition, and Ivor Paul, the wastrel, had looked as if they perfectly understood the cause of the mischance that she had so light-heartedly and recklessly related to them at Rumpelmayer's—the half-smile on each face was guarantee of that—yes; and she remembered that when Agatha learnt that the fury of Madame had been preceded by an Italian lesson, raked by the fire of eyes from the office window, she at once recognized the cause of that fury. And now Madame Bontemps' violent words over the balustrade had made all patent and clear to everybody in the place. This was much worse than roulette. She could never face any of them again.
She would fly to the paternal arms of the great Cook, and take counsel and tickets of him for the home journey to-morrow. She would give out to her friends that the climate was killing her—she was being slowly but surely poisoned by hotel food—devoured by mosquitoes—reduced to the verge of insanity by sleepless and ever-croaking frogs—go home and pour all her follies, mischances and miseries into the ever-sympathetic, ever-comforting bosom of her mother—but not of her father. No; he must be put off with mosquitoes, frogs, poisonous food and murderous climates. And, above all, Arthur must never, never be made acquainted with the melancholy nature of her recent experiences. To be sure, there was one comfort, unless some officious creature told him, he would never want to know the nature of those recent sorrows; his interest in her affairs was far too slight. Oh yes, that was a very great comfort indeed, she reflected, with a great choke that testified to her joy, and obliged momentary recourse to a pocket-handkerchief that suddenly became wet through.
The thin man had called himself a fool seven times in sight of his looking-glass the night before; but Ermengarde must have applied the name to herself seventy times seven that afternoon, when, after tucking Dorris up in eider-downs, comforting her with eau-de-Cologne, and leaving her to slumber and the digestion of good counsel, she fled blindly out to the mountain-path, whither she neither knew nor cared. But as you had—owing to the narrowness of the ridge behind the hotel—only two possible ways to go, one up and one down, she instinctively took the upper, as leading farther from the haunts of mankind, which had in the mass suddenly become distasteful and abhorrent to her.
Yes; she saw it all now—the Carnival incidents, the scene at dawn on the brink of the ravine, the Malmaison episode, M. Isidore's impassioned declaration during the Italian lesson watched by Geneviève, and avenged upon herself by instant sentence of expulsion from the little mountain paradise. Everybody had fooled her—she herself most of all. Fool, not seven times, nor seventy, but seventy times seven! Even the woman of mystery, for all the darkness of her suppositions cloud of strange, unknown sins, had tried to warn her from her folly. The bitterness of being warned, and vainly warned, by such as she! To be patronized, protected, and advised, to owe anything to the good-nature, the compassion even of an unfortunate young person, whose undesirable companionship would never have been tolerated, except for the pity she inspired and the capacity for better things she occasionally showed. Red horror flushed her cheeks at the thought of what inferences M. Isidore might have drawn from her tacit acceptance of his supposed homage. The little traitor, the coxcomb! No; never again—from a Frenchman. What heavenly comfort in the thought that Arthur would never know the true history of those few weeks—at least, not unless he turned quite nice and sympathetic, when both were grey and old, and preparing to end their days. Then it might be safe to tell him, not before.
An Italian afternoon sun smote upon the rock-hewn path with lances of fire; shadow there was none; the way was steep; her wild flight had carried her hardly farther than the end of the hotel precincts to the sudden, bold little eminence topped by pine-trees, round which the path wound. Here a jutting rock, half buried in undergrowth of juniper, rosemary, and such-like, offered a broad seat, sheltered from view by the turn of the pine-topped steep to those mounting the ridge, but fully exposed to the broad sun-blaze beating on the mule-path; and here she subsided, looking across the shadowy blue of the ravine through wet eyes, and propping herself by clutching at the lichen-embroidered edge of the rock, a prey to these mournful reflections, when something stirred under the feathery bunch of pines overhead, some pebbles and earth came rattling down, there was a light thud on the path beside her, and there, with melancholy eyes and a face expressive of the utmost concern, stood M. Isidore, handsome as ever. She looked up with a little cry, and dashed the tears from her face; but, before English lips could frame a syllable, an overwhelming torrent of eloquent French apology broke forth from the gallant Gaul, sweeping everything before it in its rushing course.
That he should have been the innocent and unwitting cause of insult and inconvenience to Madame broke his heart and drove him to distraction, she heard. He was ready to do anything in expiation and amendment; if, indeed, any were possible; she might command him; he was there, at her service absolutely. Did she wish apartments, pension, anything, elsewhere? He would fly to the ends of the earth to secure them; he would telegraph north, south, east, and west; let her but name her locality, her terms, and her aspect, they should be hers. She could, of course, not remain an hour under that roof after such an insult. What broke his heart most severely and drove him to uttermost distraction and maddest desire to slay himself, was the thought of Madame's invariable and continuous kindness to himself. At this a deepening crimson obliged Madame to spread a damp and flimsy wisp of handkerchief over as much of her face as circumstances permitted, attempting some faint murmurs of deprecation; she had only been decently civil, as to others. How he should have fared in the agonizing vicissitudes by which his bosom had been so cruelly furrowed and torn, without the unvarying sympathy and counsel Madame was good enough to extend to him, M. Isidore shuddered to think. Enough; she had saved him, she had recalled him to manhood and enabled him to endure, even to hope. In return for this she had suffered outrage, insult, desecration, from a breast of granite, from the impure rage of a hyena heart. She had been involved in the persecutions and maledictions of a ferocious fate that had blasted and blighted him from earliest youth—he looked about eighteen as he spoke—the poison of his misery had infected her. He wondered why he had been born, and rejoiced that it was not impossible for a brave man to die. In the meantime, and before resorting to this ultimate course of action, he had a favour to ask, an enormous favour, that nothing but previous experience of the inexhaustible goodness, the boundless tenderness, of Madame emboldened him to implore. She was aware of the misconstructions that a viperous and impure nature had cast upon the kindness and good counsel, he might almost say, despite her youth, the maternal counsel of Madame. He was powerless to explain these misconstructions, or remove the venomous suspicions with which a guileless and loving ear had been systematically and fatally poisoned. Madame alone had power to do this. Five words face to face with Mlle. Bontemps alone could effect it. Mademoiselle, prejudiced, poisoned against him, shuddering under base imputations to him of a terrible perfidy, reluctantly persuaded by venomous tongues, by the hissings of human serpents, of basest betrayal on the part of one she trusted to the utmost, wounded, as she imagined, by the hand she loved most, transfixed to the heart's core, bleeding from the stab of a supposed treachery without parallel, and almost lifeless, Mademoiselle absolutely refused to admit him to her adored presence, whence he was pitilessly chased by the entire Bontemps family. Madame was acquainted with the history of his devouring passion for this young girl, to win whose love he had stooped to serve, as Jupiter and other gods in like cases had so frequently done, assuming the form of a river, a bull, a shower of gold—what you will. The tenderness of Mademoiselle had been kindled by the amazing fire of his devotion, the marble prejudices even of her stony-hearted parents had been shattered after her rescue from the violence of a—— in short, after her rescue had been effected at the Carnival in the disguise of a crocodile; and, as Madame was doubtless aware, he had, in consequence of that, been permitted to salute Mlle. Geneviève as his betrothed. Of venomous and absurd misconceptions, partly due in all cases to his own folly and indiscretion, Madame was but too well aware. Would she have the extreme complaisance to explain this both to Mlle. Bontemps and to her iron-breasted parents?
"M. Isidore, I will do what I can. But how can I?" she faltered, having fresh recourse to the sadly inefficient handkerchief, now more like a wet sponge. "But they won't believe me. And I am so sorry about the—the It-It-Italian lessons you were goo-good enough to give me, never dreaming——"
"Andthe Monte Carlo incident," added M. Isidore, who was eminently practical. "Ah, Madame!" he cried, sinking with infinite grace and dexterity on one knee on a comparatively soft piece of rock, "you are acquainted with the depth of my passion, my infatuation, the agony, with which my bosom is torn. Grant me this one favour—only this one. I know that I am asking much—but consider my passion—have pity on my despair——"
"Stop that," suddenly growled a bass voice in British accents, as the tall figure and picturesque untidiness of the Anarchist appeared from round the corner of the pine-topped bluff, to the stupefaction of M. Isidore, who sprang to his feet with a deep involuntary "Mon Dieu!" and of Ermengarde, who removed the wet wisp from her face with a little stifled shriek, and gazed horror-struck on the intruder, who had the satisfaction of spoiling this moving scene of a weeping lady sadly resisting the passionate importunity of a kneeling, supplicating cavalier.
"Que diable voulez-vous ici, de Konski?" cried M. Isidore, quickly recovering himself, and fiercely and haughtily twirling his moustache.
"What the devil are you doing here, de Vieuxbois?" retorted the Anarchist in French. "What do you mean by masquerading as a waiter in a hotel? Stop annoying this lady at once."
"It is, on the contrary, Monsieur, you that annoy Madame. Have the complaisance to leave us without delay," commanded M. Isidore, his moustache stiff with rage.
"Oh, please go away," cried Ermengarde distractedly, shivering and white—"go at once, all of you—all of you!"
For herself the luckless Ermengarde had no option; she was totally incapable of flight, the path being narrow, and blocked on the one hand by M. Isidore and on the other by M. de Konski, while the bluff towered steeply above her and the ravine fell abruptly below. She wished the rock-path would split open and swallow her up, that the bluff would topple down and bury her under it, that she could get past the antagonists and fall headlong down the ravine, down to the very bed of the torrent below; in fact, she hardly knew what she wished in her desperation.
"Leave this lady, Vicomte," thundered the Anarchist. "Go, at once, before I make you!"
The little Frenchman turned, bowing respectfully to the trembling, almost weeping, Ermengarde. "Madame," he said mournfully, "I regret deeply. One moment, and you are disembarrassed from the unwarrantable intrusion of this person. Go you, M. de Konski," he added, facing about with gestures of command, "before I hurl you to the depths below. Is it probable that I permit a stranger to molest with his undesired presence a lady who honours me with her acquaintance and commands my protection?"
"No more of that, de Vieuxbois," came the stern retort. "You have annoyed this lady more than enough. Off with you."
"And pray, M. de Konski," demanded M. Isidore, with flaming glance and fierce accent, "what is Madame to you, that you thus arrogantly dare to essay to chase people from her presence?"
"Oh, not much," the Anarchist replied bitterly—"not much. Only—only a—connexion—by marriage."
At this moment a wild cry from the distressed lady, followed by the sudden and precipitate descent of the Anarchist's beard down the ravine, a similar flight of his broad felt hat and goggles in the same direction, sequent on the uprising from her rocky seat of Ermengarde, who, indeed, had initiated the movements of these things, with the terrified exclamation of "Arthur!" struck M. Isidore dumb with amazement for about the space of seven seconds, at the end of which he observed with a gentle smile, "Pardon, Monsieur, I was mistaken; I had not understood. The connexion appears to be somewhat intimate. I congratulate," and airily raising his hat, he slipped lightly up the path to where it was possible to scale the cliff, up which he sprang, vanishing in the clump of pines on the top.
Ermengarde always maintained afterwards that she had suspected the Anarchist's identity from the first, though this assertion scarcely agreed with the descriptions she had written of that baleful person in letters still extant.
She would have been more accurate in saying that the sudden exclamation of "Stop that!" in a perfectly undisguised and familiar voice had first conveyed a suspicion of the awful truth to her mind in a paroxysm of terror and bewilderment, and that not until the Anarchist's sarcastic assertion that she was only a connexion by marriage had the terrified suspicion become a dread certainty, and moved her to tear off his disguise.
"Well," said Arthur, standing grim and gaunt before her in his proper person, after the considerate departure of M. Isidore had left the connexions by marriage in possession of the field, dropping his cloak and looking some inches taller in consequence. "Well, Ermengarde?"
He was looking straight and stern in her face, with eyes coldly blazing and full of reproof, indignation and condemnation, but no relenting. Ermengarde's spirit rose at the injustice of the implied condemnation; she returned his gaze steadily, unflinchingly, and silently, bracing herself to face the situation and on no account give in.
"Well?" she returned coolly, at the end of a long, searching, unblenching gaze.
"You little fool!" he said, withdrawing his eyes after a time, with a curious little laugh.
"I certainly have been a fool—in more ways than one," she returned calmly. "And how about yourself?"
"I find you in a nice predicament," he replied. "I hear casually yesterday that you are turned out of your hotel, treating the matter as a joke, and relating it as an amusing story to absolute strangers—turned out—how can I say it, Ermengarde? for silly—for compromising intimacy—ugh!—with the hotel-keeper's daughter's fiancé——"
"Really? Much obliged for your kind interest in my affairs. Slater's detectives? Most ingenious. And, of course, you believed all you were told by your Sherlock Holmes's and Paul Prys."
"And," he continued, ignoring these sarcasms, "to-day I come personally to see for myself——"
"In the disguise of a Polish Anarchist——"
"And find you with that accursed young French idiot at your feet——"
"Young French idiots fall at people's feet on very small provocation."
"Making violent love to you—apparently."
"Ah! It's just as well you put in that 'apparently'," she commented quite tranquilly, though all the time she was saying to herself, "Bluff, Ermengarde, bluff! it's your only chance."
"You were crying——"
"Probably; I've had a good deal to cry about of late——" She looked down as she spoke to arrange the set of her blouse, and gave her drapery a few careful little pats.
"—Agitated. Perhaps you will offer some explanation of this?"
"Perhaps. In the meantime, perhaps you will offer some explanation of your conduct." She looked up, quite satisfied now with the set of the blouse belt.
"My dear child, this folly must end; this is a serious matter and not an amateur farce. You have landed yourself in a most compromising situation, made yourself the cause, the patent, acknowledged, loudly proclaimed cause, of an engagement being broken off; and you simply laugh at the whole thing."
"And if I have, as you say, brought myself into such a situation, pray, whose fault was it?"
"Whose should it be but your own, your own folly and wilfulness and insane disregard of common proprieties and decent conventions."
She had always understood that the Socratic method of conducting an argument consisted in asking, and never answering, perpetual questions, and being under the impression that Socrates was a person of quite remarkable sagacity, resolved to employ it. As on this wise.
"Who refused to take me abroad for my health when I needed it, and then followed me secretly in disguise to spy out and magnify every mistake I might make? Who employed spies about me to report and distort every incident of my life here? Who had grown so cold and cruel and faithless to me at home that it was no home any more, and I felt I could endure it no longer? Who was too busy and too poor to send his wife to the South after illness, when he had just made a great success and was planning a tour of his own to the very place he actually followed her to, disguised as a spy? Who kept all his good fortune from his wife's knowledge?" A faint sob, disguised as a cough, interrupted this interrogatory.
"Good Heavens! Ermengarde," cried Arthur, the expression of whose face had undergone a variety of changes, mostly merging into one of stupefaction, during this address, "what can you mean? What can you have taken into your head? What on earth do you mean by faithless?"
"What," she cried, losing her head suddenly, and throwing prudence and pride to the winds, though still adhering to the Socratic method—"what did you mean by that scene in your study, the night I came home early with a headache from my mother's, and looked in?"
"Scene in my study? There was never any scene in my study. What night are you talking of? Look into my study whenever you like, and you'll see nothing there but a man working or smoking, or both."
At this the Socratic method went by the board as well as pride and prudence.
"The night—after—after—you had been so unkik-kik-kind about my ha-ha-hats and gug-gug-gug-going abroad," she gasped, "the night the—the woman was there—cry-crying—and being com-com-comforted?"
"Woman crying?" he muttered, puzzled. "Women don't come and cry in my study. What on earth have you been imagining? Women don't come—except, of course, the secretary—at all. You can't mean Miss Scott? By George, now I come to think of it, she did come and cry there once, poor girl. And of course, I tried to comfort her."
"Oh,of course!"
"Ermengarde! How can you?"
"How coo-coo-coo-couldyou?"
"Really one might almost suppose you had lowered yourself to some vulgar suspicions——"
They had now arrived by slow degrees, and after various stops and turns to emphasize rhetoric, at a place where the top of the ridge widened, and the path ran between pine-woods clothing the side of the ravine, that here sloped steeply instead of falling perpendicularly.
"You were, at any rate, landed in a mostcompromising situation," she broke in, recovering her calm, "a nice predicament," she added, stepping from the path into the wood among aromatic undergrowth and tall white heath. "And when that predicament is satisfactorily explained, it will be time——"
"You poor little fool!" he cried, suddenly turning, taking both her hands and looking straight into her eyes, "you must have been off your head——"
"Arthur, how dare you!"
"Regularly off your head to stoop to such miserable suspicions——"
She wrenched her hands away. "I, at least, never spied on you. I had no wish to verify any suspicions—I had seen more than enough," she said scornfully.
"You could have falsified them at once with one question?"
"I—I couldn't—stoop—to that," she wept.
"My child, you must have had hysteria rather badly. I must have been brutally impatient; I was so rushed just then. Poor Miss Scott brought some typing that night and wrote shorthand notes until she was tired out. Then I just happened to ask her a question about a family trouble I knew was worrying her—you remember I engaged her on a family recommendation; her people are old friends of mine—my question was an unlucky one, and the poor girl broke down; she was so thoroughly tired out. You must have chosen that exact moment to open the door——"
"I didn't at least go up on purpose, and come suddenly round a corner in disguise," she protested.
"Most unfortunately you did not. But—Ermengarde——"
"And if I had stooped to ask explanations," she interrupted; "I ask none; I wish none now; I merely suggest that before you demand explanations of what you must know can have been nothing you could possibly complain of, certain little eccentricities on your own part require to be cleared up. What, for instance, took place under the olives yonder only yesterday morning? Why all those secret meetings and communications in cipher with a young woman of doubtful antecedents, of mysteries, of evasions, of perpetual assignations and private interviews with notorious usurers and pretended cousins? I don't wish to know—but—I resent the imputations you cast upon my intercourse with a young man who is half secretary and half waiter at this house, and at the beck and call of all here alike. I might," she added, "go further, and ask why you chose to follow me about in a ridiculous disguise, and worry and frighten me to death by spying on me and posing as an Anarchist and conspirator?"
"Because I was an ass, probably. And when did I pose as anything but a foreigner? Except at the Carnival, which is all masquerade"—"The Carnival?" she murmured, puzzled—"We have both been infernal idiots, Ermengarde. We quarrelled about nothing in particular to begin with——"
"If you call sarcasm, neglect, unkindness, coldness—nothing——"
"I certainly was a beast. Such a rush of work had come all at once, and I hadn't time to consider that that infernal Flu had made you hysterical. And you did cut into me about going abroad on your own finance. But look here, Ermengarde, how could I have let you go alone, weak as you were? First I got Miss Scott to go and look after you as your companion——"
"Miss Scott? Why, I never saw the woman in my life—except her back in the study that night—if it was she—and as for a companion, I never had such a thing in my life——"
"My dear child, Miss SomersisMiss Scott——"
"Oh-o-o-o-oh! The woman of mystery?—my companion?"
"She doesn't care to typewrite and do secretary under her own name, but, coming here with you, and having relations she was bound to meet all over the place——"
"Ah—a-a-a-ah! Aunts? Step-cousins? Ivor Paul?"
"Yes; her cousin, her uncle's stepson—she had to go back to her own name. And then, that blessed book coming out and at once promising a boom, unexpectedly put me in funds to come and look after you myself. I was a good deal used-up, and ordered a rest-cure. As intelligence officer and paper correspondent I've done disguises before—the only way to get information—and incidentally I've picked up a lot of copy and been able to help Agatha Somers in that family trouble, too. I didn't mean to keep up the disguise more than to see you safe here at first. But it turned out to be so useful. And, I say, look here, you little silly; don't let's quarrel any more."
It was pleasant on the wooded steep; myrtle-bushes gave out a delicious aroma; innumerable bees made an organ-bourdon in grey masses of rosemary-bloom; grasshoppers chirped in shrill pleasure; loveliest tints and shadows were tangled in drooping olive-foliage; rugged peaks, soaring far above gorge and ridge, ran up into a velvety blue sky; and, looking far down the ravine's course, the connexions by marriage caught the deep warm bloom of a peacock-blue sea, glowing in full sunshine and crossed by silvery sails and long black hulls of steam vessels.
After all, a good hard shoulder is a pleasanter thing to lean one's head upon than a cold, sharp rock or a rough and turpentiny tree-trunk; and any more comfortable place to have a really good cry on has never yet been imagined. Besides, however perverse and exasperating they may be, husbands occasionally come in handy, when things suited to their obtuse intellects have to be done—bills paid—insolent landladies tackled—hotel accommodation provided.
So it was in a very light-hearted mood that Mrs. Allonby stepped out into the olive-grove and walked along the mule-path, when the sun was declining and western valleys were filling with purple shadow, and the light pad-pad of a patient, soft-eyed mule warned them to step aside, on pain of being jostled by his laden panniers, giving opportunity of answering a dark-eyed peasant woman's "Buon sera," and admiring her pleasant smile and white teeth, as she passed on, bearing her own burden behind her four-legged slave's.
"I always wanted to show you this bit," Ermengarde said, when the woods parted and sank at the top of the ridge and a sudden burst of broad purple sea glowed to the east, where the gorge opened, and a smaller bay disclosed itself on the west, all golden shimmer under a rose-gold sun. "And you had been seeing it all the time. What a fraud you are!"
"I tell you what, Ermengarde; let's have the boy out when your mother comes later on. She can bring him. Easter falls early; and, after all, the little chap might as well miss the fag-end of the term. That'll set the old lady up, eh? Italian lakes on the way home, or a look at Florence, or what?"
When they reached the hotel-gate, a woman with a tired, but serene and sweet, face came down the twisted pine-root steps from the convent, with a little start and flush of surprise at seeing them—the ex-anarchist now a respectable, clean-shaven Briton, with a stable-cap in place of the broad felt hat, and the cloak rolled in a neatly strapped bundle.
"Aha, my dear woman of mystery!" cried Ermengarde gaily, with open hands. "Found out at last! All your machinations unmasked and exposed! How are you? My best respects to you. I hear that you have been looking after a certain Mrs. Allonby—connected withtheAllonby, don't you know—kind of dry-nursing the poor thing! If I'm not mistaken, you found her a pretty good handful, didn't you?"
"Well, pretty fair at times," she admitted, observing that Mrs. Allonby wore a diamond and pearl chain, closely resembling that flung to her by the Spaniard at the Carnival, and afterwards exposed for sale in a Monte Carlo window.
"Dear Miss Somers, I was a beast about the necklace. I am so sorry."
"Thought you'd sneaked the thing," Arthur blurted out with a grin, in that exasperating way of his.
"I didn't," she stoutly contradicted; "I thought he had sneaked it and madeyouthe cat's paw to sell it. And, oh, my goodness, Miss Somers!" she laughed out suddenly, "if I didn't think at one time that you were this man's wife! And didn't I pity you, just! But we are not going to act charades any longer. Nobody is to be anybody else any more; no, not even that wretched young Isidore, the fraud! Ah! I wonder if Mr. Welbourne will turn out to be some discontented duke in disguise," she cried, suddenly becoming aware of the mystified countenance of the thin man, who had come by the mule-path round the convent; "I'm not cracked, Mr. Welbourne, only a little crazy. Let me introduce my husband—just arrived."
The thin man congratulated and opined that the arrival was singularly opportune under the circumstances, while Arthur confessed that Mr. Welbourne's virtues had long been familiar to him through correspondence.
And then, after proper comments on the weather, Arthur, with no outward sign of terror, whatever he felt, sought the awful presence of Madame Bontemps, while Ermengarde, with her heart in her mouth, and cold chills running all over her, tried to be admitted to private conference with Mlle. Geneviève, the woman of mystery acting as intermediary in this difficult piece of diplomacy.
"The chain was from Spink's, after all," Mrs. Allonby admitted with a blush, observing Agatha's glance upon it, "and people with glass houses shouldn't throw stones. My husband saw the thing for sale at Poupart's, and went in and redeemed it. He knew it by a flaw in a pearl. And you may imagine I've had to sing pretty small, smaller than even the poor Boundrish this afternoon—and with better reason, I'm afraid."
"You have sung very sweetly to me, dear Mrs. Allonby, and, after all, I must have been a horrid nuisance——"
"You certainly were. But my husband, poor man, has to reckon with me for that."
"Mine was not the easiest position; to act companion anonymously——"
"And be taken for a spy, a conspirator——"
"And thief——"
"No, no; but that miserable man of mine pays the bill forall. And when you marry, dear Miss Somers, take my advice; keep him well in hand, but never let it come to a long sulk. Whatever it is, have it out with him at once and have done with it."
In the meantime, Madame Bontemps, all unsuspicious of what was coming, was sitting peacefully in the office, casting up the columns of the weekly bills with one part of her sane and practical mind, and gloating in memory over her powerful remarks of the morning in the garden with another; while with a third she threw out staccato commands and observations to M. Bontemps, who was placidly smoking a cigarette over hisPetit Niçoison the sofa, when a tall, clean-shaven, respectable Briton, with a keen, unflinching eye, and the usual British air of holding a subject universe in fee, walked in and bid her good evening in excellent French.
"This is without doubt Madame Bontemps," he said, introducing himself as the husband of a lady staying in the house, a Mrs. Arthur Allonby, and handing her his card, on reading which all Madame's bristles rose, and she prepared herself for the battle she felt to be imminent and also pregnant with victory to her side. Politely, but sadly, she desired her guest to be seated in a chair handed him at a sign from her by M. Bontemps, who smiled pleasantly to himself, expecting to be agreeably diverted by the forthcoming combat.
But Mr. Allonby, declining the chair, much to Madame's regret, as she found it easier to heckle opponents sitting than standing, began to address her sternly but gently, more in sorrow than anger, and always with that air of surprised dignity and unabated command. He had been led to suppose, he said very politely, that Les Oliviers was an exceptionally well-managed and high-class hotel, else, as Madame might easily surmise, he would never have selected it for the temporary sojourn of his wife while waiting till he would be able to join her. What, then, was his astonishment on learning that Mrs. Allonby had actually been requested to leave the house? Such a thing was outrageous, unheard-of, and must be apologized for without delay.
"Now for the fun!" reflected Monsieur, languidly adjusting a fresh cigarette, while Madame promptly seized her chance of returning fire, and turning about with expansive gestures and fluent delivery, poured in a steady and powerful broadside calculated to silence the Englishman's guns and shatter his forces beyond recovery.
What Monsieur had observed concerning Les Oliviers was absolutely correct, she replied. The proceeding alluded to was undoubtedly unheard-of, unparalleled, without precedent in the annals of that house—to which only persons of absolutely irreproachable character and assured position were admitted. Madame was filled with the profoundest compassion for Monsieur; her bosom was torn for him; she regretted from the profoundest depths of her being the necessity of inflicting upon him an immeasurable pain. But she was woman; more than that, she asserted brokenly and with deep sobs, she wasmother. One's children were one's life. What mother could view the silent, corroding anguish, could witness the perfidious betrayal of a child, a guileless, a trusting, an adored child, unmoved? What fiend in human shape could stand by in icy indifference and look upon the gradual, irreparable blighting of a cherished daughter's life, the slow destruction of her every hope, the corrosive agony perpetually gnawing at her breaking heart, the withering, in short, of the pure and maidenly flower of her youth, and raise no hand, utter no word, in her defence? Madame Bontemps was the unfortunate possessor neither of a bosom of adamant nor of a heart of granite; she possessed, on the contrary, those of a mother; with a sacred fury and a noble indignation she chased from her hearth the serpent whose envenomed tooth had poisoned the happiness of her child and ruined the tranquillity of a cheerful and affectionate family circle. That the serpent in question, whose wiles had been daily employed before her very eyes in beguiling the youthful and pardonably sensitive affections of M. Isidore from their lawful and pledged object, should be in effect the wife of Monsieur, was for him, she admitted, a circumstance of supreme misfortune and profoundly to be deplored, and upon which, from the depths of her woman's breast, she offered him condolences of the deepest and most sincere nature.
Here M. Bontemps, profoundly touched by his wife's eloquence, dashed his cigarette despairingly to the floor, threw out his arms with gestures of despair, and groaned aloud, while Madame sought relief in tears. "Ma fille, ma Geneviève," she wailed, wildly smiting her breast, "mon enfant!"
But the stolid Englishman, surveying the afflicted parents with that direct, undauntable soldier-look of his, appeared to be entirely unmoved and awaiting further remarks from Madame Bontemps; and as these were not after some seconds forthcoming, he ventured to represent to Madame with infinite courtesy that she appeared to be the victim of an absurd misapprehension, which, in a woman of her intellect and capacity, paralyzed him with amazement. She had possibly taken some exaggerated statements uttered in the course of a lover's quarrel literally. Madame's words almost pointed to some vague suspicion that his wife—"my little wife," he repeated, smiling—had perturbed the relations between those young people, such a very droll supposition. If—as Madame here hastened to assert—M. le Vicomte de Vieuxbois, whose father had been a friend of his own, had been observed to converse in an agitated manner with Mrs. Allonby, to whom, as to other pensionnaires, the Vicomte had obligingly given Italian lessons, what more natural—Mrs. Allonby was herself a mother, the wife of the Vicomte's father's friend; she was older than she appeared, while M. de Vieuxbois was younger—what more natural than for a young man, suffering from the apparent coldness and misunderstandings of his betrothed, and far from his own mother, to seek counsel and comfort of a lady by her age and experience eminently calculated to give them? As a simple matter of fact, he was aware of all that had occurred; he had been deeply interested in the course of the young man's love, which had met with unusual, but not unnatural, obstacles, triumphantly and happily surmounted, until this unfortunate, but truly absurd, little misunderstanding arose. Madame probably knew thatEnglishwives had no secrets from their husbands, so that for M. de Vieuxbois to confide in Mrs. Allonby the depth of his passion and the misfortune of the various obstacles to its fulfilment, was in effect to confide in himself. What a pity to let suspicions so absurd divide two young and loving hearts! Mademoiselle's ear had doubtless been abused by mischievous, misunderstood tittle-tattle. Girls were like that, he knew from experience, and, having had the good fortune to win the best and most charming of wives himself, it hurt him to think of M. de Vieuxbois missing such a blessing—merely because of a little misconception of his conduct—a misconception absolutely incredible in a person of Madame's sagacity and knowledge of the world. In his anxiety for the young people's happiness, he actually found himself forgetting the necessity for extracting an apology for an unwarrantable act of incivility to his wife, the necessity of which both Monsieur and Madame Bontemps would at once admit.
They did at once admit it, and with a celerity and sudden change of front that not only took Mr. Allonby's breath away, but also that of M. Isidore, who happened—no doubt by the merest chance—to be lounging outside the ever open office door, intently studying theFigaro, and who also happened to have dispatched Heinrich, the porter, on an errand, by the latter deemed trivial and unnecessary to the last degree.
What M. Allonby had had the complaisance to observe, Madame Bontemps blandly stated in reply, put an entirely different complexion on the whole matter. She deeply regretted having, even in thought, wronged Madame or M. Isidore, whom she embraced as a son—he made a grimace over hisFigarooutside at this remark—she deplored the inconvenience suffered by Madame Allonby, and she should for the rest of her life cherish the memory of M. Allonby as that of a valued, a beloved, an inestimable, friend of the whole of her family.
M. Bontemps corroborated these assertions with tears of a noble and profound emotion; Mlle. Geneviève (just then at the climax of an explanatory and embarrassing interview with Mrs. Allonby) was promptly summoned from the depths of the back premises at the very moment when M. le Vicomte Isidore Augustin René Joseph Marie de Beauregard de Vieuxbois was making a dramatic entrance from the front hall; and all was joy, reconciliation, effusion, tears, transport, intoxication.
"It was all that little cat, Dorris," Ermengarde confided afterwards to those fellow-conspirators, the ex-Anarchist and the woman of mystery; "so that what she got this morning was perhaps not altogether wasted. Only I wish she hadn't had it quite so hot."
"My conscience pricks me about de Vieuxbois' people," Arthur confessed, when gratuitous champagne unexpectedly crowned the banquet in the evening, and the visitors were asked by Madame Bontemps to drink to the betrothal of M. Isidore and Mlle. Geneviève. "They won't thank me for this afternoon's work. Just fancy a man in de Vieuxbois' position falling in love with a girl like Mlle. Bontemps, and taking a post as general utility person in a small hotel for her sake. Romantic young ass! The girl showed her sense in refusing him. His mother is distracted. The whole family have been at him about it! But the little chap would have her—Madame la Vicomtesse!"
And when next day pack-mules waited by the place of Dorris's execution, laden with Ermengarde's belongings, and she herself stood by the lemon-laden trees and took a last view of the magnificent sweep of sea below, and the splendid amphitheatre of encircling mountains above, grasping a huge presentation bunch of roses, carnations, and heliotrope, with a last lingering bough of mimosa bloom and one of lemon flower, and receiving the farewells of the visitors, the salutations of the family and the betrothed pair, and dazzling smiles from the well-tipped Heinrich, waiters and chambermaids at windows, Ermengarde's heart rose in her throat; she squeezed the thin man's hand to agony point; kissed Mrs. Dinwiddie, Lady Seaton, and Miss Boundrish's mother; nodded to the young lady's father, Major Norris and Bertie Trevor, turned and fled through the lemon-orchard path so that Arthur could not overtake her till she came out upon the rock-hewn road far below, where she was discovered gazing over the clean red roofs and dark-leaved groves of Mentone out to sea, and unobtrusively restoring a handkerchief to its pocket.
"It—it really was such a very lovely place—such a unique charm about it," she said in apology.
"Tell you what, old lady, we'll come again next year if the boom keeps up," Arthur replied, lighting his pipe in the shelter of a rocky scarp. "But I bar squabbles first."
Before them the slender tower of St. Michel, just topping the mountain spur that hides the Old Town, gleamed white on a clear blue sea; it had rained during the night, and some cloud-wreaths still floated round the craggy summits, leaving light veinings of snow on the amethystine peaks; cheery voices and sounds rose from the saw-mill niched in the bottom of a little gorge across the torrent; the plane avenue was alive with passing wheels and steps and people of every sort and kind, but all gay as if they had never known a care; the sea had richer and deeper hues, the sun a warmer gold, the soaring mountains a more majestic outline, vegetation a more varied luxuriance and colouring; and Ermengarde, listening to Arthur's familiar, intermittent growl, and imparting pleasant secrets to him, was lighter of heart than ever before. The full magic and splendour of the azure shore was at last upon her, and the exhilaration and the pure joy of living went to her head, sparkled in her eyes, glowed in her cheeks, and thrilled her to the very finger-tips.
And yet she was at heart, if not a sadder, at least a wiser, and hoped to be a better, woman than before those joyous adventures on the Côte d'Azur.
THE END
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD