After all, Philip Rainham loitered on his way South. He spent a week
in Paris, and passing on by way of the Mont Cenis, lingered in
Turin, a city with a treacherous climate and ugly rectangular
streets, which he detested, out of sheer idleness, for three days.
On the fourth, waking to find winter upon him suddenly, and the
ground already dazzling from a night's snow, he was seized with
panic--an ancient horror of falling ill in strange places returning
to him with fresh force, as he felt already the chill of the bleak
plains of Piedmont in his bones. It sent him hurrying to his
destination, Bordighera, by the first train; and it was not too
soon: the misused lung asserted itself in a hæmorrhage, and by the
time he reached the fair little town running out so coquettishly,
amid its olive yards and palm-trees, into the blue Mediterranean, he
was in no proper temper to soliloquize on its charms.
The doctor had a willing slave in him for three weeks; then he
revolted, and found himself sufficiently cured to sit when the sun
shone--and sometimes when it did not--covered in a gray shawl,
smoking innumerable cigarettes on a green, blistered seat in the
garden of his hotel. He replied to the remonstrating that he had
been ill before this bout, and would surely be ill again, but that
temporarily he was a well man. It was only when he was alone that he
could afford to admit how savage a reminder of his disabilities he
had received. And, indeed, his days of captivity had left their mark
on him--the increased gauntness of his figure apart--in a certain
irritation and nerve distress, which inclined him for once to regret
the multitude of acquaintance that his long habit of sojourning
there had obtained. The clatter of English tongues at _table d'hôte_
began to weary him; the heated controversy which waged over the
gambling-tables of the little principality across the bay left him
arid and tired; and the gossip of the place struck him as even more
tedious and unprofitable than of old. He could no longer feign a
decent interest in the flirtations of the three Miss Smiths, as they
were recounted to him nightly by Mrs. Engel, the sympathetic widow
who sat next to him, and whose sympathy he began, in the
enlightenment of his indisposition, to distrust.
The relief with which he hailed the arrival of the post and a budget
of letters from England surprised himself. It struck him that there
was something feverish and strange in this waiting for news. Even to
himself he did not dare to define his interest, confessing how
greatly he cared.
Lightmark's epistles just then were frequent and brief. The marriage
was definitely fixed; the Colonel, his uncle, had been liberal
beyond his hopes: a house in Grove Road of some splendour had been
taken for the young couple, who were to install themselves there
when the honeymoon, involving a sojourn in Paris and a descent into
Italy, was done. Hints of a visit to Rainham followed, which at
first he ignored; repeated in subsequent epistles with a greater
directness, their prospect filled him with a pleasure so strangely
mixed with pain that his pride took alarm. He thought it necessary
to disparage the scheme in a letter to Lightmark, of a coldness
which disgusted himself. Remorse seized him when it had been
despatched, and he cherished a hope that it might fail of its aim.
This, however, seemed improbable, when a fortnight had elapsed and
it had elicited no reply. From Lady Garnett, at the tail of one of
those long, witty, railing letters, in which the old lady excelled,
he heard that the marriage was an accomplished fact, and the birds
had flown. Mrs. Lightmark! the phrase tripped easily from his tongue
when he mentioned it at dinner to his neighbour, Mrs. Engel, to whom
the persons were known. Later in his room, face to face with the
facts which it signified, he had an intolerable hour. He had
extinguished his candle, and sat, partially undressed, in a mood of
singular blankness by the fire of gnarled olive logs, which had
smouldered down into one dull, red mass; and Eve's face was imaged
there to his sick fancy as he had seen it last in Dick's studio in
the vague light of an October evening, and yet with a certain new
shadow, half sad and half reproachful, in the beautiful eyes. After
all, had he done his best for the child? Now that this thing was
irrevocable and complete, a host of old misgivings and doubts, which
he had believed long ago banished, broke in upon him. He had only
asked that she should be happy--at least, he said, it had never
been a question of himself. He certainly knew nothing to Lightmark's
discredit, nothing which could have justified him in interfering,
even if interference could have prevailed. The two had fallen in
love with one another, and, the man not being visibly bad, the
marriage had come about; was there more to say? And yet Rainham's
ill-defined uneasiness still questioned and explored. A hundred
little episodes in his friendship with the brilliant young painter,
dismissed as of no import at the time, returned to him--instances,
as it seemed now to his morbid imagination, in which that character,
so frank and so enigmatic, rang scarcely true. And suddenly the
tragical story of Kitty Crichton intruded itself before him, with
all its shameful possibilities. Could Lightmark have lied to him?
Had not his sudden acquiescence in the painter's rendering of the
thing implied a lack of courage--been one of those undue indolences,
to which he was so prone, rather than any real testimony of his
esteem? Would not a more rigorous inquiry, a little patient
investigation into so curious a coincidence, have been the more
seemly part, as much for his friend's sake as for Eve's, so that
this haunting, intolerable doubt might have been for ever put
away--as surely it would have been? The contrary issue was too
horrible for supposition. And he ended by mocking at himself with a
half-sigh for carrying fastidiousness so far, recognising the
mundane fitness of the match, and that heroic lovers, such as his
tenderness for the damsel would have had, are, after all, rare,
perhaps hardly existing out of visions in a somewhat gross world,
where the finest ore is not without its considerable alloy.
Two days later, as he sat upon his wonted seat, in lazy enjoyment of
the midday sun, a _vetturino_, heralded far down the road by the
jingle of his horse's bells, deposited a couple at the door whose
faces were familiar. At _table d'hôte_, though he was separated from
the new-comers by half a dozen covers, he had leisure to identify
them as the Dollonds; and by-and-by the roving, impartial gaze of
the Academician's wife encountering him, he could assure himself
that the recognition was mutual. They came together at the end of
_déjeuner_, and presently, at Mrs. Dollond's instigation, started for
a stroll through the olives towards the old town.
"Are you wintering here?" he asked after a moment, feeling that an
affirmative answer would hardly be to his taste.
But Mrs. Dollond, with an upward inclination of her vivacious
shoulders, repudiated the notion. A whim of her own, she explained
to Rainham confidentially, as they came abreast in the narrowing
path, while Mr. Dollond strolled a little behind, cutting down
vagrant weeds absently with his heavy oak stick.
"Hugh wanted a month's holiday; and I wanted"--she dropped her
voice, glancing over her shoulder with an air of mock mystery--"yes,
Mr. Rainham, you must not be shocked, but I wanted a fortnight at
Monte Carlo; and so I may as well tell you that our destination is
there. We came from San Remo this morning, meaning to drive over
right away; but this place was so pretty that Hugh insisted on
staying."
Rainham helped her up a difficult terrace, and remarked urbanely
that he was in fortune's way.
She threw him a brilliant smile.
"Ah, Mr. Rainham, if we had only known that you were here! then we
might have arranged differently; we could have stayed here
pastorally, and driven up to that delightful little place on the
hill. Tell me, how is it called?"
She pointed with her scarlet parasol--they had emerged now on to the
main road--at a little, turreted town perched far above them on the
brow of an olive-crested hill.
"It is Sasso," said Rainham. "I should have been delighted to come
with you, but I am afraid it is out of the reach of carriages, and
of invalids. You might go there on a mule."
"Oh no!" she laughed; "I think on the whole we shall be more
comfortable at the Hôtel de Paris. Can't we induce you to come with
us now?"
Rainham lifted his eyebrows, smiling a little and groping vaguely
for an excuse, while Mrs. Dollond turned to her husband with a look
which demanded corroboration of her speech.
"Yes, Mr. Rainham, do come, if you possibly can," supplemented Mr.
Dollond, coming forward in burlesque obedience. "We are boring each
other horribly--I can answer for myself--and it would be an act of
real charity."
"Well, Hugh, I am ashamed of you! You really ought not to say such
things. If you can't behave better than that, you may go on
maltreating those thistles. I declare we have left a regular trail
of heads in our wake,--like the Revolution, or Judge Jeffreys."
"Bloody Jeffreys!" suggested Mr. Dollond mildly.
His wife turned to Rainham with the little despairing gesture which
she reckoned one of her most effective mannerisms.
"Is not he dreadful? But you _will_ come, Mr. Rainham? I am sure you
know all about systems, and--and things. You know I insist on
winning; so I must have a system, mustn't I?"
"Ah, Mrs. Dollond," said her companion humorously, "you remind me
that the only system I have is a very bad one. I am afraid my doctor
would not trust me with it at Monaco."
"Oh!" said Mrs. Dollond reflectively; "but you need not gamble, you
know! You can help me, and see that I don't get cheated. Hugh and I
will see your doctor, and promise to take care of you. Hugh shall
carry your shawl--he likes carrying shawls."
"He is getting used to it," interposed her husband dryly.
"Ah, well, that is settled," continued the lady gaily, leaving her
victim no time to formulate more than the lamest of protests.
By this time they had reached the middle of the cape, and they stood
for a moment by the lazy fountain looking down at the Marina
straggling below the palms; and beyond, at the outline of the French
coast, with white Mentone set in it, precisely, like a jewel.
"The dear little place!" cried Mrs. Dollond in a rapture; "I suppose
Monaco is behind that cape. I wish we could see it. And it would not
look a bit wicked from here. I declare, I should like to live
there!"
"I've no doubt you would, my dear!" said her husband; "but you
sha'n't, so long as I have any voice in the matter. I don't get so
much for my pictures that I can afford to contribute to M. Blanc's
support."
Rainham followed the direction of her eyes absently. "I have half a
mind to go with you after all," he said.
"Of course," said Mrs. Dollond; "it will do you worlds of good; we
will drive you over with us to-morrow. And now, Mr. Rainham, if you
don't mind, I think we will sit down. I can see that Hugh is getting
out his sketch-book."
She sank down as she spoke upon one of the rough stone seats which
are scattered about the cape. Mr. Dollond had ensconced himself
behind them, and was phlegmatically starting on a rough study of the
old town, which rose in a ragged, compact mass a hundred yards away,
with its background of sad olives and sapphire sky.
Rainham followed the lady's example, tired himself by their scramble
under the hot sun, and contented himself for a while by turning a
deaf ear and polite, little mechanical gestures to her perennial
flow of inconsequent chatter, which seemed quite impervious to
fatigue, while he rested his eyes on the charming prospect at their
feet; the ragged descent of red rocks, broken here and there by
patches of burnt grass and pink mallows, the little sea-girt chapel
of St. Ampelio, and the waste of violet sea. His inattentive ear was
caught at last by the name of Lightmark occurring, recurring, in the
light eddy of his companion's speech, and he turned to her with an
air of apologetic inquiry.
"Yes," Mrs. Dollond was observing, "it was quite a grand
wedding; rather pretentious, you know, we thought it, for the
Sylvesters--but, oh, a great affair! We stayed in London for it,
although Hugh wanted to take a holiday. I could tell you all about
the bridesmaids' dresses, and Mrs. Lightmark's, but I suppose you
would not care. She looked very charming!"
"Yes?" said Rainham, with a curious light in his averted eyes. Then
he added, somewhat abruptly, "Brides always do, I suppose?"
"Of course, if they have a good dressmaker. And the presents--there
was quite a show. Your pearl necklace--how I envied her that! But,
after all, weddings are so much alike."
"I have never been to one," said the other absently.
"Ah, then you ought, if only to get a little experience before your
own time comes, you know. Yes, you really ought to have been there.
It was quite a foregone conclusion that you would be best man. It
was so funny to see Colonel Lightmark in that _rôle_, with that young
Mr. Sylvester giving away the bride. It would have been so much
better if they could have changed parts."
"I am sorry to interrupt you," said Mr. Dollond, getting up and
putting away his sketch-book; "I can't sketch; the place is full of
locusts, and they are getting into my boots."
Mrs. Dollond started up, shaking her skirts apprehensively, with an
affectation of horror.
"How I do hate jumping things! And, anyhow, I suppose we ought to be
getting back to our hotel, or we shall be late for dinner. You don't
know what Hugh can be like when one is late for dinner. He is
capable of beginning without me."
Rainham had risen with a ready response to her words, bordering
almost on the ludicrous; and half an hour later he was congratulating
himself that at least six seats intervened between his place and
that of Mrs. Dollond at the dinner-table.
And yet on the morrow he found himself, and not without a certain
relief, sitting beside the mundane, little lady, and turning to her
incessant ripple of speech something of the philosophic indifference
to which her husband had attained, while a sturdy pair of
gaily-caparisoned horses, whose bells made a constant accompaniment,
not unpleasing in its preciseness, to the vagueness of Rainham's
thought, hurried them over the dusty surface of the Cornice.
Certainly the excursion into which he had been inveigled, rather
from indolence than from any freak of his inclination, afforded him,
now that it was undertaken, a certain desultory pleasure to which he
had long been a stranger. Into the little shrug, comic and
valedictory, of Mrs. Dollond's shoulders, as they passed the _Octroi_,
a gesture discreetly mocking of the conditions they had left, he
could enter with some humour, the appreciation of a resident who
still permitted himself at times the licence of a casual visitor on
his domain.
"Tell me," Mrs. Dollond had asked, as they rattled out of the
further gate of Ventimiglia, "why did the excellent lady who tried
to monopolize conversation in the _salon_ last night appear so
scandalized when I told her where we were going? Was I--surely now,
Mr. Rainham, I was not indiscreet?"
"Ah, Mrs. Dollond," said Rainham humorously, "you know it was a
delicate subject. At our hotel we don't recognise Monte Carlo. We
are divided upon the other topics in which we are interested: the
intrigues of the lawn tennis club, and the orthodoxy of the English
chaplain. But we are all orthodox about Monte Carlo, and Mrs. Engel
is the pillar of our faith. We think it's----"
"The devil?" interrupted Mr. Dollond, bending forward a little, with
his bland smile.
"Precisely," said Rainham; "that is what Mrs. Engel would say. Oh
no, Mrs. Dollond, we don't drive over to Monte Carlo from
Bordighera. At Mentone it is more regular; you see, you can get
there from Mentone pretty much by accident. But from Bordighera it
has too much the appearance of being a preconcerted thing."
"It was particularly preconcerted here," put in the Academician with
a yawn, and Mrs. Dollond remarked innocently that people who
wintered in these places must have very singular ideas.
The prospect was increasing in beauty as they wound their way along
the historical road, now rendered obscure by the thick groves of
olives on either side, now varied by little glimpses of the sea,
which again they skirted from time to time, and so nearly that, as
Mrs. Dollond remarked, it was like driving along the sands. Rainham
identified spots for them as the prospect widened, naming sea-girt
Mortola with its snug château, Mentone lying placidly with its two
bays in the westering sun, and, now and again, notorious peaks of
the Alpes Maritimes which bounded the horizon beyond. At the
frontier bridge of St. Louis, where they alighted to meet the
requirements of the Douane, even Mrs. Dollond's frivolity was
changed into silent admiration of the savage beauty of the gorge.
They stood for a while leaning upon the desolate bridge, turning
reluctantly from the great beetling rocks of the ravine above to
gaze with strange qualms into the yawning precipice beneath. Rainham
pointed out the little thread of white which was the one dangerous
pathway down the gorge, confessing his sympathy with the fatal
fascination with which it had filled so many--he mentioned the name
of a young Englishman staying at Mentone the year before amongst the
number--at the ultimate cost of their lives.
"Horrible!" exclaimed Mrs. Dollond, retreating to the carriage,
which awaited them on the French side of the bridge. "I shall dream
of it to-night."
"I have dreamt of it," said Rainham simply. "When I was a boy I used
to dream of climbing to the edge of the world and falling over.
Nowadays, I dream of dropping over the Pont St. Louis: the sensation
is much the same."
"A very disagreeable one, I should think," said Mrs. Dollond,
settling herself in her wraps with a little shudder.
"No," said Rainham, with a smile. "I think, Mrs. Dollond, it was
rather nice: it was the waking up which was disagreeable."
They made their breakfast--a very late one--at Mentone, and dawdled
over it, Mr. Dollond having disappeared at the last moment, and been
found, after a lengthy search, sketching, in serene disregard of the
inappropriateness of the occasion, a doorway in St. Michele.
When at last they drove into the principality, the evening was well
advanced. Even the irrepressible Mrs. Dollond was not to be enticed
by the brilliant windows of the Casino from the sofa upon which she
had stretched herself luxuriously, when their extensive dinner was
at an end; and Rainham with a clear conscience could betake himself
immediately to bed. But, in spite of his fatigue, he lay for a long
time awake; the music of the concert-room, the strains of M.
Oudshorn's skilful orchestra, floated in through the half-closed
_persiennes_ of his room, and later mingled with his dreams, tinging
them, perhaps, with some of that indefinable plaintiveness, a sort
of sadness essentially ironical, with which all dance music, even
the most extravagant, is deeply pervaded.
A week later, as from the window of the receding Italian train he
caught a last glimpse of the Dollonds on the crowded platform, he
waved a polite farewell to them with a sensible relief. It was a
week in which Mrs. Dollond had been greatly on his hands, for her
husband had made no secret of the willingness with which he had
accepted Rainham's escort for the indefatigable lady amongst the
miscellaneous company of the tables, leaving him free to study the
picturesque in the less heated atmosphere which he preferred. And a
week of Mrs. Dollond, as Rainham was obliged to confess, was not
good for any man to undergo.
Nor was Mrs. Dollond's verdict upon their acquaintance, who had
become for the space of seven days an intimate, more complimentary.
"I suppose he was better than nobody," she remarked with philosophy
as they made their way up the terrace. "He looked after my stakes,
and did not play much himself, and was always at hand; but he was
really very dull."
"Better than me, I suppose you mean, my dear?" suggested her husband
humorously. "Was he so dull? You ought to know; I really have hardly
spoken to him."
"Don't be absurd!" she remarked absently. Then she said a little
abruptly: "It seems funny, now that one knows him, that there should
be those stories."
"Stories? About Rainham?"
Her husband glanced at her with some surprise.
"Yes," she said. "Of course, you never know anything; but he is
talked about."
"Ah, poor man!" said Mr. Dollond. "What has he done?"
Mrs. Dollond's fair eyebrows were arched significantly, and Mrs.
Dollond's gay shoulders shrugged with a gesture of elision, in which
the essence of many scandals, generated and discussed in the
discreet undertones of the ladies' hour, was nicely distributed.
"Don't be dense, Hugh! It is quite notorious!"
Mr. Dollond laughed his broad, tolerant laugh.
"Well," he said, "I should never have thought it."
Rainham, reaching his hotel the same afternoon, met Mrs. Engel in
the hall; her formal bow, in which frosty disapproval of the sin,
and a widow's tenderness for the middle-aged sinner, if repentant,
were discreetly mingled, amused if it scarcely flattered him. He was
still smiling at his recollection of the interview when the Swiss
porter, accosting him in elaborately bad English, informed him that
a lady and gentleman, who had left on the previous evening, had made
particular inquiries after him. The name, he confessed, escaped him,
but if Monsieur pleased---- He produced the visitors' book, in which
Rainham read, scarcely now with surprise, the brief inscription,
"Mr. and Mrs. Lightmark, from Cannes."