They stayed on, after their friend had come to them; and all three sat
together in the arbour, while the shadows hewed quarries of sapphire
deep into the side of the mountains; and in the violet rain of twilight
everything on land and water that was white seemed to become magically
alive: the fishing boats turned to winged sea birds: the little waves
were lilied with foam blossoms: the sky became a garden of stars.
When Mary first went to live at the convent, an impressionable child of
eight, one of the nuns told her that the stars were spirits of children
in heaven's nursery, sent out to play in the sky, that their mothers
might see them and be glad: and the moon was their nurse. She repeated
the legend to Vanno and the curé, and said that she had been brought up
from childhood in a convent school, because she had lost her mother, and
her father had gone away to India; but she did not say that she had
taken the first steps toward becoming a nun. She wanted Vanno to hear
this first, when they were alone together. Not that she feared the
knowledge might endanger his love for her. In this immortal hour it
seemed that nothing could ever again come between them.
"That accounts for what she is, does it not?" the curé exclaimed,
turning to Vanno with the joy of the discoverer. "A convent school! Now,
my son, what puzzled you in her is made clear. I, at least, might have
guessed. A girl brought up by a band of good and innocent cloistered
women must always be different from other girls. She should not be let
out to wander alone in the world without guardians, as this child has
been; for without a guide a few mistakes at the beginning are certain.
Now, she has made all the mistakes she need ever make; and she is no
longer alone."
"Never again!" Vanno said fervently, pressing her hand under the blue
cover of dusk.
It did not occur to Mary that they both took her for a much younger girl
than she really was. She had lived so entirely under the jurisdiction of
those older than herself that in many ways she had remained a child. And
she had begun by feeling still younger than before, after suddenly
blossoming into independence. It was only since the night of Christmas,
when the frost of unhappiness nipped the newly unfolded petals, that the
flower had begun to droop. Now that dark time was already forgotten. She
could hardly realize that it had ever been. In the joy of Vanno's love
for her, and his old friend's fatherly kindness, she basked in the
contentment of being understood, loved, taken care of; and she knew that
she was a woman, not a child, only by the capacity to love a man as a
woman loves. If she had said, "But I am nearly twenty-five," the two
men would have realized at once that her school days must have ended
long ago, even if prolonged beyond the usual time; and they would have
asked themselves, if they had not asked her, where she had spent the
years between then and now, in order to account for that ignorance of
the world which to them explained and excused everything she had done at
Monte Carlo. But it did not enter Mary's mind to mention her age.
"Upon some natures such teaching might not have made the same
impression, of course," the curé went on, thoughtfully. "This dear
child, it seems to me, has a very--how shall I express it?--a very
old-fashioned nature. Nothing, I believe, could ever have turned her
into one of those hard modern girls they are running up now like
buildings made of concrete on steel frames. But the convent teaching has
accentuated all in her that was already what I call 'old-fashioned.' And
you, too, my Principino, you are old-fashioned!"
"I?" exclaimed Vanno, surprised.
"Yes. You will suit each other well, you two, I prophesy. You have an
old-fashioned nature: but do not think when I say that, I place you on a
shelf at the back of the world's cupboard. All Romans, all Italian men,
are old-fashioned at heart--and it is the heart that counts, though we
do not always know it; and most of us would not like others to know it
of ourselves. You have been much in the East, Principino, and you have
learned to love the desert; but you would not have loved it as you do
were it not for the spirit of romance which keeps you old-fashioned
under a very thin veneer of what is modern. I saw this in you when you
were a boy and my pupil; and I must say it made me love you the better.
It is perhaps the secret which draws the love of others toward you,
without their knowing why, though it has caused life to jar on you
often, no doubt, and may again. You would not, perhaps, have fallen into
the mistake by which you hurt yourself and this dear child if you had
not been old-fashioned. Don't you see that?"
"I suppose it is old-fashioned to have an ideal," Vanno admitted,
laughing a little.
"Yes. And most old-fashioned of all, even I can see, are your ideas of
women. So it is well you have fallen in love with one who is not
modern."
"I know she is the Only Woman. But I grant that I may have picked up
some Eastern ideas of what a woman's life ought to be. I must get rid of
them, I suppose."
"You didn't 'pick those ideas up,' my son. They were in your blood. All
the same, you may get rid of a few--a very few--with advantage. And
safely too, because you are going to have an old-fashioned girl for your
wife."
"I'm going to have her very soon, I hope," Vanno added, in a different
tone.
Mary spoke not a word; and he did not press her then for an answer. But
when the sudden darkness of the southern evening had warned them that
it was time to go, he began in the same strain again, after they had
left the tunnelled streets of the rock-village. It was so dark that
Vanno had the excuse of saving Mary a stumble on the rough cobblestones,
as they went slowly down the mule path. He held her tightly, his arm
around her waist. She walked bareheaded, trailing her hat in her hand;
and the warm perfume of her hair came to him like the scent of some
hitherto unknown flower, sweeter than any other fragrance that the
evening dew distilled. "I want you to be my wife very soon," he said. "I
must have you. And if you're as old-fashioned as the curé thinks, you
won't say no to me when I tell you that. Shall he marry us?"
"Oh--that would mean it must be _dreadfully_ soon!"
"Is there a 'dreadfully?' But--there's one thing, dearest, that I almost
forgot. I must write to my father. Not that anything he could say would
make any difference now; only I want him to love you, and our marriage
to bring him happiness, not pain, even in the thought of it before he
sees you. My brother Angelo has married lately, and he didn't let our
father know till just before the thing was done. Perhaps it was not his
fault. I can't tell as to that: there must have been a strong reason.
But our father was deeply hurt; and it would be even worse with me, for
he makes it no secret that I'm his favourite son. I believe I'm more
like my mother than Angelo is. She was an Irish-American girl, and my
father adored her: though sometimes I wonder if he knew how to show his
love. Anyhow, she died young, and he's been almost a recluse ever since.
I'll write him at once--and I may even go to see him, though I can
hardly bear to think of leaving you long enough for that. Still, it
needn't be for more than three or four days and nights. I could go and
come back in that time. I'll see! But if I do go, it must be to tell him
we're to be married at once, from my brother's house."
"Your brother's house?" Mary repeated.
"Yes. Angelo has taken a villa at Cap Martin for the season. Perhaps
you've seen it. He and my new sister-in-law went to Ireland to visit
relatives of my mother, and to England afterward. They've been married
more than two months; but I saw my sister-in-law for the first time on
New Year's eve, the day they arrived. She's English, though she has
lived mostly in southern Germany, I believe. She's an artist--does
portraits beautifully, I hear, and was much admired in Rome, where she
had come to paint, when my brother met her. I know very little of her
except that she's pretty and charming--if any woman who is not _you_ can
be either. I'm sorry for all the men in the world, poor wretches,
because there's only one you, and I've got you for mine, and I shall let
them see as little of you as possible."
"That really _is_ old-fashioned!" Mary laughed.
"Do you mind? Do you want to see them?"
"Not particularly. Because you have begun to make me feel the others
aren't worth seeing."
"Angel!"
They both laughed, and Vanno was entranced when her heel slipped on a
stone, and he could clasp her so tightly as to feel the yielding of her
body against his arm. He would have liked to sing, the night was so
wonderful, and all nature seemed to be singing. Distant bells chimed,
silver sweet; frogs in hidden garden pools harped like bands of fairy
musicians; and from everywhere came the whisper and gurgle of running
water: springs from the mountains, pouring through underground canals to
houses of peasants, who bought water rights by the hour.
As the two walked down the many windings of the mule path they met
labourers coming up from the day's work in the country of the rich, far
below. Some of the young men, clattering along in groups, joined in
singing the strange tuneless songs, memories of Saracen days, which
Vanno had heard on his first mountain walk. The old men did not sing.
They climbed stolidly, with heads and shoulders bent, yet not as if
discouraged by the thought of the long, steep way before them before
they could rest at home. They had the air of taking life as it was,
entirely for granted.
The darkness was bleached with a sheen of stars, and the pulsing beams
that shot across the sky from the lighthouses of Cap Ferrat and Antibes.
Here and there, too, an electric lamp dangled from a wire over the mule
path, and revealed a flash of white teeth in a dark face or struck a
glint from a pair of deep Italian eyes. But they were the eyes and the
teeth of young men, or of girls climbing with baskets of washing on
their heads. The old men looked down, watching their own footsteps; and
their stooping figures were vague and shadowy as ships that pass in the
night, not to be recognized if seen again by daylight. Now and then a
little old woman stumbled up the path, driving a donkey which tripped
daintily along in silent primness, under a load of fresh-cut olive
branches. The sound of the tiny feet on the stones and the swish of
olive leaves against the wall added to the poetry of the night for
Vanno, though he reflected that it was all commonplace enough to the
donkeys and the women, who were as important as he in the scheme of
things. After all, it was but a question of thinking!
Boys coming up from some late errand, played at being soldiers, and
sprang out at each other from behind jutting corners of rock, imitating
the firing of guns, or uttering explosive cries.
Vanno felt a great kindness for all the world, and especially for these
people who--almost all of them--had the blood of Italy in their veins.
He remembered the curé's saying with a smile that even now, if all
Italians were banished from the French coast between Cannes and Mentone,
the Riviera would be emptied of more than half its inhabitants; and it
gave him a warm feeling in his heart to be surrounded by people of his
own blood, at this moment of his great happiness. He would have liked to
give these men something to make them happy also, for he knew that they
were poor, and that those who were most fortunate were those who worked
hardest. Each shadowy figure, as it passed on its way up the mountain,
gave out a faint odour, not disagreeable or dirty, but slightly pungent,
and like the smell of iron filings: what Tolstoi called "the good smell
of peasants."
The fire which had enveloped all Monte Carlo at sunset had burnt out
long ago, but in the west a faint red-brown glow smouldered, as if a
smoky torch had been trailed along the horizon. Monte Carlo and the Rock
of Monaco rose out of the steel-bright sea like one immense jewel-box,
or a huge purple velvet pincushion, stuck full of diamond and topaz
headed pins, with here and there a ruby or an emerald. These lights,
reflected in the water, trailed down into mysterious depths, like
illuminated roots of magic flowers; and the bright shimmer spreading out
over the moving ripples lay on the surface like glittering chain-armour.
Although they had the blaze of these amazing jewels always before their
eyes, somehow in talking Mary and Vanno contrived to lose the way,
descending to the high road nearer Cap Martin than Monte Carlo. It was
six o'clock, and a long tramp home along the level, in the dust thrown
up by motors and the trotting hoofs of horses, but in the distance a
tram car coming from Mentone sent out a shower of electric sparks, like
fireflies crushed to death between iron wheels and iron track. As the
car advanced, Vanno stepped out into the road and hailed it. No _arrêt_
was near, but the driver stopped, with an obliging, French-Italian
smile, and the two young people almost hurled themselves into empty
seats at the first-class end of the tram.
Faces which had been inclined to frown at the illegal delay, even of six
seconds, smoothed into good nature at sight of the handsome couple.
Every one at once took it for granted that they were lovers. Mary's
hair, ruffled by the hasty putting on of her hat, without a mirror, told
the story of a stolen kiss to German eyes swimming with sentiment and
romance--eyes which to an unappreciative world appeared incapable of
either. Most of the eyes in this first-class compartment were German
eyes, and some of the faces out of which they looked were round and
uninteresting; but not all. German was the language being loudly talked
across the car, from one seat to another; and a German mandate had
caused all the windows and ventilators to be shut, in fear of that fatal
thing, "a draught." English people sitting stiffly in corners, boiling
with the desire to protest yet too reserved and proud to "risk a row,"
raged internally with the belief that their German neighbours were
coarse, food-loving, pushing, selfish creatures who cared nothing for
the beauty of the Riviera, and came only because of the cheap round
trip, and the hope of winning a few five-franc pieces. The real truth
was very different. The "pushing creatures" were selfish only because
they were not self-conscious. They were as perfectly happy as children.
They raved loudly in ecstasy over the beauty of everything, and were
blissfully ignorant that it was possible for any one to despise or hate
them. Frankly they admired Vanno and Mary, staring in the unblinking,
unashamed, beaming way that children have of regarding what interests
them; and their kind, unsnobbish hearts went out to the young couple as
no English hearts in the car went out.
Two persons sitting together at the other end, but on the same side as
the newcomers, could not see what the pair were like, without bending
forward and stretching out their necks. One of these, fired by the
intense interest displayed on German faces, could not resist the
temptation to be curious. She peered round the corner of a large,
well-filled overcoat from Berlin, and saw Mary and Vanno smiling at each
other, as oblivious of all observers as though they had the tram to
themselves.
"You must take a peep, St. George," she said in her husband's ear, that
she might be heard over the noise of the tram, without roaring. "It's
that beautiful Miss Grant I told you about; and she's with the Roman
Prince who invented the parachute Rongier used in the Nice 'flying
week.' They are certainly in love with each other! They couldn't look as
they do if they weren't. Perhaps they're engaged. Poor Dick! All his
trouble for nothing."
"Why poor Dick?" inquired the Reverend George Winter.
"Oh, my dear Saint, don't put on your long-distance manner, and forget
everything that hasn't a direct connection with heaven. But these two
quite look as if they'd just been up there by special aeroplane. Don't
you remember my telling you, Dick's awfully in love with this girl, and
took me to see her again yesterday, though she never returned my first
call? But I was glad I went, because she was really sweet and charming,
and I hated to think of her living in that deadly villa."
"Yes, I remember distinctly," said Winter, with a twinkle of humour in
the eyes which seemed always to see things that no one else could see.
"You told me when I was in the midst of writing a sermon, and had got to
a particularly knotty point; so I tangled Dick and his love affairs into
the knot, while trying to put them out of my mind. I'm afraid they
didn't do my sermon much good. And beautiful as Miss Grant may be, I
won't dislocate my neck to look at her in a tram. I advise you not to do
so, either. Set our German friends a good example."
"Why is it the best of people always advise you not to do all the things
you want to do, and vice versa?" observed Rose, pleased with her success
in catching Mary's eye. They bowed to each other, smiling warmly. Vanno
took off his hat, and Rose thought him exactly what a prince ought to be
and generally is not.
"That's the wife of the English chaplain at Monte Carlo," Mary informed
Vanno, in a stage whisper, "She's an American. She called on me
yesterday; and only think, though she'd never seen me before, she said
she would like me to visit her."
"Did you accept?" Vanno asked.
Mary shook her head. "No. It would have hurt Lady Dauntrey's feelings,
perhaps. And besides, yesterday I--I thought of going away soon, to
Italy--to Florence. I was travelling to Florence when suddenly it
occurred to me to get off at Monte Carlo instead. Oh, how thankful I am
now! Think, if we had never met?"
"We should have met. I was following you from Marseilles, you know, and
watching to see where you got off. What can your people have been made
of, letting you run about alone--a girl like you?"
"Oh, but I have no people--who count. Only such a disagreeable aunt and
her daughter! I haven't written to them since I came here. I
telegraphed, and gave no address. I shall not write--until--until----"
"I know what you mean, though you won't say it. 'Until we are married.'
You need not, unless you like, for they must have been brutes of women
to have been disagreeable to you. But I wish you would stay with this
lady--the chaplain's wife. Or else with my sister-in-law. I shall go to
see her and Angelo to-morrow morning, and tell them about you. I'll ask
them to call at once, and then--I feel almost sure--Marie will invite
you to visit her. Would you accept? For that would be best of all. And
in any case we must be married from their house."
"Marie!" Mary echoed the name, her voice dwelling upon it caressingly.
"Marie! That was the name of my--not my best, but my second best friend
at school. We were three Maries. It will be good of your Marie to call
on me; but she is a bride, and it's still her honeymoon. Do you think,
if we--that is----"
Vanno laughed. "If you put it in that way, I don't. No, if _we_ were on
our honeymoon I couldn't tolerate a third, if it were an angel. But it
seems as if every one must want you."
"Hush! People will hear you."
Just then a party of three Englishwomen rose, and descended from the
tram to go to a villa in the Avenue de la Vigie. This exodus left a
vacancy opposite the Winters.
"Shall we move over there, before the tram gets going too fast?" Mary
suggested. "I feel Mrs. Winter would like to talk to us."
Vanno agreed. He was anxious for the invitation to be renewed. And in a
few moments after they had begun talking to the Winters across the
narrow aisle, his wish was granted. Rose told her husband that she had
asked Mary to stay with them, and ordered him to urge the suggestion.
"You see," Rose confided to her opposite neighbours, leaning far
forward, her elbows on her knees, "I always try to have some perfectly
charming person in our one little spare room, while the 'high season' is
on, or else the most terrible bores beg us to take them in. People like
that seem to think you have a house or an apartment on the Riviera for
the sole purpose of putting them up for a fortnight or so. It's
positively weakening! We've just got rid of an appalling young man, whom
my husband asked out of sheer pity: a schoolmaster, who'd come here for
his health and inadvertently turned gambler. At first he won. He used to
haunt my tea-parties, which, as we're idiotically good-natured, are
often half made up of criminals and frumps. Extraordinarily congenial
they are, too! The criminals are flattered to meet the frumps, and the
frumps find the criminals thrilling. This was one of our male frumps:
like an owl, with négligé eyebrows, and quite mad, round eyes behind
convex glasses. He used to shed gold plaques out of his clothes on to my
floor, because whenever he won he was in the habit of tucking the piece
down his collar lest he should be tempted to risk it on the tables
again. But at last there were no more gold pieces to shed, and his eyes
got madder and rounder. And then St. George invited him to stay with us,
in order that I might reform him. I did try, for I _was_ sorry for the
creature: he seemed so like one of one's own pet weaknesses, come alive.
But after he threatened to take poison at the luncheon table, my husband
thought it too hard on my nerves. I began to get so thin that my veils
didn't fit; and George sent the man home to his mother, at our expense.
At the present moment a soldier boy on leave--a Casino pet, whom all the
ladies love and lend money to, and give good advice to, and even the
croupiers are quite silly about, though he roars at them when he
loses--is hinting to visit us, so that I may undertake the saving of
his soul, and incidentally what money he has left. But he carries a nice
new revolver, and shows it to the prettiest ladies when they are
sympathizing the most earnestly. And he has _no_ mother to whom we can
send him, if he attempts to add his pistol to our luncheon menu. Do, do
save us from the Casino pet, dear Miss Grant. I've been holding an awful
aunt of George's over the young man's head, saying she may arrive at any
minute. But you know how things you fib about do have a way of
happening, as a punishment, and I feel she may drop down on us if the
room isn't occupied."
They all laughed, even the chaplain, whom Mrs. Winter evidently
delighted in trying to shock. "I should like Miss Grant to be with you,"
Vanno said; and this--if she had not guessed already--would have been
enough, Rose thought, "to give the show away." "I should like her to go
to you at once, since you are so kind."
"Kind to ourselves!" Rose smiled. "Will you come, Miss Grant?"
Mary hesitated. "I should love it, but--I hate to be rude to poor Lady
Dauntrey."
"If I hadn't dedicated my life to a member of the clergy, I know what I
should want to say about Lady Dauntrey," Rose remarked, looking wicked.
"Can't you, Prince--well, not _say_ it, but do something to rescue Miss
Grant, without damage to any one's feelings?"
"I mean to," Vanno answered. "I wanted her to visit my brother and
sister-in-law, but--they're on their honeymoon, and----"
"I see," Rose interpolated. She did not volunteer the information that
her own honeymoon was but just ended. Evidently it was to be taken
quietly for granted that these two were engaged. She guessed that Prince
Vanno had hinted at the truth in order that she should not misconstrue
Mary's actions. He was almost forcing their relationship upon her
notice, and her husband's notice, as if to justify his being with the
girl unchaperoned.
"Not that we should have minded," Rose said to herself. "There's no room
in St. George's 'thought-bag' for any bad thoughts, it's so cram full of
good ones. And he's taught me how horrid it is, always rehearsing the
judgment day for one's friends."
She threw a warm-hearted glance at her husband, valuing his kindly
qualities the more because they two had just come from a tea-party, at a
villa where the alternative to bridge had been telling the whole truth
about people behind their backs, and digging up Pasts by the roots, as
children unearth plants to see if they have grown. Luckily St. George
had remained in blissful ignorance of the latter popular game. People
showed only their best side to him, and made good resolutions about the
other, while his influence was upon them.
"As for us," Rose went on, "we're quite a staid married couple, and I
feel I'm intended by nature for the ideal chaperon--for a blonde like
Miss Grant. We shall look charming together, and though we mayn't make
her comfortable, I guarantee to amuse her; for as a household we are
unique. We live in an ugly, square apartment house--a kind of
quadrupedifice--and our cook is in love, consequently her omelettes are
like antimacassars; but I have a chafing-dish, and the most wonderful
maid, and our tea-parties are famous--honey-combed with countesses and
curates, to say nothing of curiosities. And my husband, though a
clergyman, lets me go to all the lovely concerts where the dear
conductor grabs up music by the handful and throws it in the faces of
his orchestra. The only thing beginning with a C, which Miss Grant will
have to miss with us, is--the Casino."
"I shan't miss that!" Mary exclaimed; then flushed brightly.
"Does that mean you will come?"
"Yes. It does mean that she will come," Vanno spoke for her.
"I think," remarked Rose, "that your future husband is a masterful
person who intends you to 'toe the line.' But if it's his heart line, it
will be all right."
"Perhaps," said Vanno, "for we are both very old-fashioned." He looked
at Mary, and she at him. It was adorable to have little secrets that
nobody else could understand.
Rose, dearly as she loved her husband, almost envied them for an
instant: lovers only just engaged, with no cooks and housemaids and
accounts to think of: nothing but each other, and poetry and romance.
Yet, she was not quite sure, on second thoughts, that she did envy them.
Vaguely she seemed to see something fatal in the two handsome, happy
faces; something that set them apart from the comfortable, commonplace
experiences of the rest of the world.
"I think--after all I'd rather be myself than that girl," she decided.