"You know the two beggars who stand by the bridge, just over the
Monegasque frontier as you go toward Cabbé-Roquebrune and Mentone?" Rose
said, her eyes no longer on Carleton, but fixed upon something she alone
could see. "Of course you know they keep off Monaco territory by half an
inch or so, because begging is forbidden in the principality. There's an
old white-haired man with rather a sinister face. I'm not sure if he's
deformed in any way, or if he just produces on the mind an odd effect of
some obscure deformity. He's one of the beggars; and the other's a
little humpbacked elf of a creature, hardly human to look at, with his
big head and ragged red eyelids; but he's always smiling and gay, bowing
and beckoning. It's his _métier_ to be merry, just as it's the other's
pose to be overwhelmed with gloom."
"I know them both," said Dick. "I can't resist throwing the little
humpback a fifty-centime piece now and then, from Jim's automobile,
though Jim scolds me for it in a superior way--the way people have who
take a firm moral stand against beggars. Jim's on the firm moral stand
about a lot of things. He's a strong man, body and soul and mind, but I
have a whole brood of pet weaknesses running about that I hate to
destroy. The other day when I was going over to Nice to try my luck with
the _Flying Fish_ for the first time, I'm ashamed to say I chucked that
little red-eyed, grinning imp five francs for luck--my luck, not his?"
"It's a wonder you didn't get out and rub his hump, as a lot of gamblers
do. They say he's quite a rich man, owing to that sort of silly
superstition, but I can't resist him, either. And I feel it quite a
feather in my cap of fascination that I've made the other one--the
gloomy beggar--smile, though I've never given him a sou. He has quite a
sense of humour, when you get to know him--and when he's realized that
he can't fool you. I often walk to the bridge and back, just for a chat
with the two beggars, instead of everlastingly promenading up and down
the Terrace, bowing to every one I know, when I want exercise. I thought
I was the only person original enough or brave enough or depraved enough
to visit the beggars socially; but the other morning I was on my way to
pay them a call, when I saw that somebody else was ahead of me. It was
quite a picture. You remember the blazing hot day we had last week?"
"Wednesday. The best we had at Nice. Not a breath of wind. The day
Rongier tried the Della Robbia parachute the second time and made his
sensational descent."
"Well, then it was Wednesday. It was like June. The beggars were having
a lovely time. They'd taken off their comfortable winter overcoats with
those wing-like, three-leaved capes which they've been wearing ever
since the beginning of December, and had gone back to summer things:
nice, shady, flapping felt hats and cool clothes; and they were having
one of their pleasant little feasts which I used quite to envy them when
we first came, while the weather was still very warm. A rough table in
the road, close to the stone wall, with thick chunks of black bread, and
cheese and salad, and chestnuts instead of the figs they had in autumn,
all spread out on a paper tablecloth. They had wine of the country, too,
with slices of lemon in it; and when I came along a girl was there,
peeling a big chestnut for herself which the beggars had given her.
She'd taken off her gloves and laid them on the table, with a perfectly
gorgeous gold chain bag blazing with jewels, and a gold vanity box to
keep the gloves down. Just imagine! On the beggars table! And they
didn't seem to grudge her such splendid possessions one tiny bit. They
were grinning at her in the most friendly way, as if they loved her to
have pretty things and be rich and beautifully dressed. You could see by
their air that they considered themselves chivalrous knights of the road
being gallant to a lovely lady. That gloomy old wretch was grinning at
least an inch wider for her than he ever did for me; and she was
smiling, with heaven knows how many dimples flashing as brilliantly as
her rings, while she peeled the chestnut."
"Yes, that must have been Miss Grant!" exclaimed Dick, delightedly. "I
never saw such dimples as she's got."
"Or else you've forgotten the others. Well, I walked slowly so as not to
break up the picture. She had on a thin veil, so I thought maybe she
wouldn't be as pretty or young without it, but it was like a pearly mist
with the sun shining on it, and it gave her that kind of mysterious,
magic beauty of things half seen which stirs up all the romance in you."
"Don't I know?" Dick muttered. "But she's always got that, with or
without a veil. It's a peculiar quality of her features or her
expression--I don't know which--that can't be described exactly, any
more than the lights on the clouds can, that I see sometimes when I've
got up a few hundred feet high in the sunrise. I wouldn't have said all
this about her if you hadn't begun. But anybody must feel it."
"I believe the beggars did, without knowing it. I did--even I, a woman.
I felt I must see if she'd be as pretty when she lifted her veil to eat
the chestnut, so I stopped not far off, on the Monaco end of the bridge,
and pretended to tie up my shoe-string. I thought I'd never seen a face
like hers--not at all modern, somehow. Who is it says romance is the
quality of _strangeness_ in beauty? Hers has that. It seemed to me when
she got her veil up that she was more wonderful, not belonging to any
century in particular, but to all time, as if thousands of lovely
ancestresses had given her something of themselves as a talisman."
"Rose, what a darling you are!" Dick said, seizing her hands and
squeezing them hard.
"Oh," she laughed, wincing a little. "You couldn't do that to _her_ with
all her rings. I was just trying to _draw_ you! Now I've found out all I
want to know. You're dreadfully, frightfully in love with Miss Grant."
"Am I?" he asked. "Perhaps. I'm not sure. Only I see that there's
something rare about her, and she's too precious to be living as she
does, surrounded by a weird gang who all want to get something out of
her, or else to give her something she oughtn't to take. Like that
Indian chap, the Maharajah of Indorwana--confound the little beast! He's
tried to make her take a diamond star and a rope of pearls."
"I suppose she needn't, unless she wants to."
"Oh, I don't know, she's so good-natured, and somehow childlike. She had
both the things on at the Casino last night; said he insisted on lending
them to her, for luck, and she didn't like refusing them, as he almost
cried. And then there's that jeweller man from Paris--has a shop in the
Galerie Charles Trois. She strolled into his place to buy the gold bag
you saw on the beggars' table and he went wild about her. Cheek of him!
Sent her a bracelet she had to send back. How dare a fellow like that
have the impudence to fall in love with a girl like her?"
"Cats may look at kings, and I suppose kings embrace queens, don't they?
You needn't be so mad. You come from a democratic country, and Grandma
Carleton's father was a grocer."
"He was a super-grocer. And, anyhow, Americans are different."
"Some of them fly high nowadays, eh, Mr. Air-pirate?"
Dick laughed. "You haven't told me yet what happened next at the
beggars' feast, and how you found out who _she_ was."
"Nothing happened to any one except me. They went on feasting and gave
her some more chestnuts. I don't know what she'd given them! But she'd
probably rubbed the lucky hump and paid for it. I was dying to go up and
speak to my pals, and perhaps be introduced to the girl, but I hadn't
got quite cheek enough, and they seemed to be having such a good time,
it was a shame to interrupt. The elf was talking, with explosive sort of
gestures in between mouthfuls, evidently telling something very
interesting. And you know, I always pretend to myself in a kind of fairy
story that he's really a person of immense, mysterious influence, a
weird power behind the throne, starting or stopping revolutions. Of
course it's nonsense--all founded on my seeing him with one of the new
revolutionary newspapers in his hand--the ones they allow nowadays to be
sold in the principality, against the Prince, and the Casino, and
everything. But if I were to write a sensational story of Monte Carlo,
that little red-eyed dwarf at the bridge should be the hero. And just as
I was thinking about all that, and tying my second shoe, along came a
taxi with poor Captain Hannaford in it. He'd been into Italy to see
Madame Berenger, the actress, at her villa, which he would like to buy,
and was coming back to lunch; so he made the chauffeur pull up while he
asked if he could drive me home? I said yes, because I saw him lift his
hat to that girl, and I hoped he could tell me something about her."
"What did he tell you?"
"Not so very much. He didn't seem to want to talk about her, I thought.
That didn't surprise me, because he has an idea that women feel disgust
for him and can't bear to look at him if they can help it--all but me,
for I've convinced him that I'm really his friend. He only said that her
name was Miss Grant, and that she was very lucky at the Casino. And in
about three minutes we were at the door of this house."
"Well, I'm mighty glad you're interested in her, and that you're willing
to call."
"Willing? I'm charmed. I'll go to-morrow."
"You--you couldn't go to-day, I suppose?"
"Silly boy, it's too late. Here's tea; and here's St. George; and here
will be some of the flock presently, who generally appear on the stroke
of half-past four."
In another moment Carleton was shaking the hand of a slender, pale man
with auburn hair worn rather long, a sensitive mouth, delicate nostrils,
and beautiful, bright, hazel eyes which shone with a spiritual,
unworldly enthusiasm. He looked like one who would cheerfully have been
a martyr to his faith had he lived a few centuries earlier. And Dick
thought his cousin's simile of the high Alps not too far fetched, after
all. But there was a warm light in the beautiful eyes as they turned
upon Rose; and something in the man's smile hinted that he did not lack
a sense of humour, except when too absent-minded to bring it into play.
Dick felt happy about Rose, and happier about Miss Grant, because Rose
would go and see her.