There was a jumble of old streets and buildings in Turin,
flourishing out of sight behind the Palazzo Reale--like a scrap of
wild thicket overlooked in the reclamation of a waste--which, to the
many enamoured of orderliness and respectability, was a scandal, and
to the few, having an eye for haphazard picturesqueness, the solitary
oasis in a desert of uniformity. This irregular quarter, called
“L’Anonimo,” possessed the qualities of its heterodoxy, and was
consistent in nothing but its moral unconformableness. It was not so
much a rookery as a hive, whence gold-ringed _donnaccias_ flew to
gather their honey, and, having collected, came back to store it,
against a winter’s day, in their unconventual little cells. It was
always very vivid and very busy--a never-ending fair, full of life and
frivolity. Its stalls displayed a characteristic opulence of cheap
Parisian hosiery and Genoese jewellery. White ankles twinkled for ever
in its doorways. Its stones were dinted with the clatter of little
gilded heels. It had its own _cafés_, and its lottery-office, of
course, and its Government shops for the sale of salt and tobacco; for
even nonconformity had to subscribe to the relentless _gabelle_.
Finally, it had its drones; but they for the most part loafed at home.
It was not so very bad, this quarter, even at its heart, and rippled
into less and less expression of itself the further one got from it,
like the concentric rings extending from a splash in water. At quite a
little distance it began to merge into a compromise with order--became
a sort of sedate St John’s Wood--until, down by the Dora, it lapped
itself away in an unimpeachable colony of washerwomen.
In the meanwhile, flowing down by many outlets, it threaded none
prettier than that which was called the Lane of Chestnuts. And of all
the whitewashed _maisonnettes_ in that same fragrant alley, the
Signorina Brambello’s was assuredly the whitest and most sweet.
It, this little house, was called the Capanna Sermollino (which means
Wild-thyme Cottage), and it looked and smelt up to its name. Its walls
were the shrine to a candid heart; its jalousies were of the green of
Nature; and its mistress, whose beauty and perfume had come straight
out of an English village, was Molly Bramble Bona roba--nothing worse
and nothing better.
Poor Molly! once a rustic toast, queen of a single May, and then,
alas! stolen--to what? She stood no further from honour now than by
the thickness of a screen of convention. Loyalty, faith,
honesty--these were all hers unimpaired; you could not look in her
eyes and doubt it. Her shame was one man’s possession--near enough to
the virtue of wifehood to be forgotten by her, except, perhaps, in the
presence of children. Cartouche was to answer for it all.
She was lovely, of course. Her face, like a human face sketched by
some amorous Puck, was a little out of drawing--a dear imperfection of
prettiness. But the artist had rubbed its cheeks with real conserve of
roses, and painted in its eyes with blue succory petals, and scented
its rich brown hair with fragrance from the oakwoods. L’Anonimo, even
in its purlieus, could hardly have justified a claim to Molly Bramble.
“I never hear your name spoken, Molly _mia_,” said Cartouche, “but it
seems to bring a whiff of blackberries across the footlights.”
She was dressed in a clean lilac-sprigged muslin, with a fichu, soft
as “milkmaids,” half-sheathing the white budding of her womanhood. A
mob cap sat at grace on her pretty curls. A pity that her atmosphere
was all of Spring, which perishes so soon. Molly had no arts to reap
love’s winter.
Cartouche spoke, took a pride in speaking, English like a native.
Molly’s “Frenchings” were as sweet an imperfection as her lips.
She laughed, busy at the table preparing his breakfast, coffee and
chocolate mixed in a little glass and garnished with a number of tiny
rolls like pipe-stems.
“And I never hear yours,” she said, “without thinking of a silly
fellow.”
She took a chair by him while he ate and drank. He did it all
daintily; but she would have watched him with as much delight if he
had guzzled like a hog. It is all one to a woman whether her baby is
nice or gluttonous. But I have known a man turn disgusted from a
ravenous infant.
Cartouche sat preoccupied a long time, nibbling his rusks. Suddenly he
looked up, dark and troubled.
“Why have you such a sweet face, _ma mie_?” he said. “I wish I had
never brought a blush to it.”
She started up, and went to the table again, affecting business there.
Then she turned, and her lashes were winking.
“Let that flea stick in the wall,” she said. “I’d rather you had its
blushes than its frowns.”
Her under lip was trembling a little, as she came again and knelt at
his feet.
“What is it, Cherry?” she said, looking wistfully into his face.
“There’s something, I know--something different, since you--since
you--. Is it anything to do with that fellow you brought here last
night?”
“No--yes--” he answered. “Perhaps--I can’t say.”
“Well, I mustn’t ask, I suppose,” she said. “You’ve taught me not to,
though its made me cry my eyes out sometimes. If you’re bad, dear, I
don’t want you anything else--it’s like a man. He--he doesn’t want to
take you from me, does he?”
She nestled her face, willy-nilly, between his unresisting hands.
“To take you?” he said distressfully. “His code isn’t mine, Molly. I
daresay he’d like to. Like a man, quotha! It’s like a blockish boy,
rather, to make a toy of love--a doll out of a goddess. He wouldn’t
have done it.”
She uttered a faint cry.
“Then he does want to separate us!”
“How can he, little fool? He doesn’t know you, even.”
“O, you frightened me so! Love your Molly, Cherry!”
He had taught her early to call him “_Chéri_,” which, on her sweet
fruitful lips, had become Cherry; and so her love had christened him.
Kent was her county.
“I have shown my reverence for love,” he said sadly, “by desecrating
its Host. I have broken open its tabernacle and eaten the sacred bread
because it was forbidden. A greedy, blockish boy, Molly.”
She wrung her hands to him.
“What is it? Everything seems wrong. I saw it in your face last night,
the moment you and he came in--and me near crazed with joy to hear you
at the door again--O, Cherry! after all these months!”
He smoothed the hair from her temples.
“That’s it, dear heart,” he whispered, “after all these months. Well,
rest satisfied; I’d not been in Turin twelve hours before I came to
you.”
She pouted; gave a little tearful laugh.
“O, a fine coming! to charge me with a tipsy gentleman.”
“Poor Louis-Marie!”
“Is that his name?”
“Saint-Péray to you, Madam, if you please. I’ll tell you of him in a
moment. He’d lost his head, but not his legs.”
“La, now! he won’t bless its finding, I’m thinking. I warrant it aches
this morning.”
“You shall ask him. He’ll be down anon to greet his landlady.”
“Let him lie on, for me. It’s only you I want; and a tongue to say ten
thousand things at once. Where have you come from?”
“Le Prieuré.”
“That takes--let me see--how long?”
“It took me a month.”
“A month!”
“I came on foot; I loitered by the road; I had ten thousand things,
not to say, but ponder.”
“Cherry!”
She looked at him amazed. A shadow of some sick foreboding would not
leave her heart. She had never yet known him, her “gentleman,” her
fond heart’s tyrant, in this strangely sober mood.
“Go on,” she whispered. “Won’t you tell me?”
“What?” he said. “Of my adventures by the way? I had one or two. Once
a thunderstorm overtook me near a village. Some children, hurrying for
the church, bade me come and help them ring the bells to keep the
lightning off. I smiled the poor rogues away--cried, ‘I should attract
it rather,’ and went on. The bells were already clapping behind me,
when there came a flash and crash. The tower had been struck and every
mother’s infant of them killed. The devil fends his own; or perhaps he
is as blind as justice. Well, I stayed to see them put in the ground,
and--I cried a little, Molly.”
“Cry now with me, darling. O, Cherry! the poor dears!”
“Another time I passed some peasants preparing to fill in an old well.
A little whimper came out of its depths while I watched. ‘Only a cur,
Monsieur, that has fallen in,’ they said. They were going to shovel
the earth atop of him without a care. I asked them to lower me, and
they did, and presently up we came together. He set his teeth in my
hand, the little weasel; and I called him Belette for it. See the mark
here. It was only because his leg was broken, and I hurt it. There was
a bone-setter in the village, an old toothless Hecuba--a lady you’ve
not heard of. She could mend bone, if she couldn’t graft it on her
withered gums. Belette was made whole by her, and I waited out his
cure. When he was done with, the rascal came along with me, eager to
show that he had adopted me for ever. He’s thy rival for my love,
Mollinda.”
“And I’ll kiss him for it, if that’s all.”
He did not answer immediately.
“Is it not all?” she urged; and, staring at him, sank away, sitting on
her heels.
“No, it’s not all,” she whispered, gulping. “There’s more you’ve got
to say. Don’t I understand. It’s the old lord has got a match for you,
and I’m to go. Speak out, and be a man. Is he here? Did he come with
you?”
“He’s dead.”
Cartouche rose, and went hurriedly up and down, a dozen times in
silence, before he stopped and spoke to her again where she crouched
upon the floor.
“He’s dead, and so my wages end.”
She put out groping hands to find his feet. He heard her sobbing and
whispering:--
“I’ll work for you.”
Then he knelt, and touched her, and spoke to her very tenderly.
“Not so bad as that. You shall work for me, indeed; but not with these
soft hands. Listen, while I tell you how he died; and why God killed
him; and what is the moral of it all to me.”
She turned her ear to him, one arm, like the rustic Griselda she was,
bent across her weeping face. But his first words seemed to catch her
breath back, and fill out her bosom, holding her dumb from speech and
tears alike.
“There was a lady in Le Prieuré called the lily, because she was so
sweet and pure of heart. She was of an ancient family, but poor--the
child of a proud, cold man. She had pledged her love, unknown to her
father, to a stranger of modest means, a soul as good and pious as
she. But the man was weak of purpose, and delayed to confess himself
to the parent. Then came di Rocco, doating, and asked her hand of her
father; and she was given to him on condition that he settled
everything he possessed on her, and that the marriage was to be one in
form only for the space of a year. And the poor child was forced in a
moment into complying, and she became di Rocco’s wife, and a
broken-hearted woman. She sought refuge, defying her father, now that
it was done, in a little _auberge_ on the hills; and thither her
husband, scorning his vow, followed her secretly one stormy night in
order to force her to his will. But Heaven intervened before he could
accomplish his vile purpose, and he went astray on the ice, and fell
into a crevasse and was killed.”
He paused. The girl did not speak for a minute. Her mind was still
loitering on the road to that tragic conclusion. Di Rocco’s death was
only of relative interest to her. Her first word showed it.
“Is she--prettier--than I am?”
Cartouche smiled.
“She is only an angel, _ma mie_; but eligible--eligible! Have you
forgotten her lover?”
She clasped her hands, looking for the first time breathlessly into
his face.
“I know now. It’s him there--upstairs.”
“Yes,” he said: “It’s _him_.”
“Why doesn’t he go and claim her, then? She’s better worth the winning
than she was.”
“Soberly, my girl! It’s early yet to rake over the weeds. Besides,
there are broken faiths to mend. He took his jilting hardly. An angel
himself, she’d been his goddess. He’s down in the mud at present.
These sanctities are always for extremes. There’s no middle course for
them. The devil’s the gentleman for moderation; that’s why he’s so
convincing. We must nurse up this friend of mine between us--restore
him to reason. She’s better worth his winning, says you. No doubt:
but, by the token, miles further removed from a poor suitor.”
“That’s nothing, if they love.”
She spoke it impulsively; and stopped.
“Poor!” she whispered suddenly. “What’s his ruin to that she’s brought
upon my sweetheart! So the old man’s gone and left you nothing.”
“No fault of hers, child. Don’t breathe or think it. Yes, he had to
put his house in order; settle old scores before he asked new grace.
He parted with me the day before his death. He’d already sent Bonito
packing--you know him, the old hungry dog. He got his master’s curse
for wages: I, at least, got a handful of jewels. Why should I love his
memory? Yet, though he died justly, it was not good that anyone should
kill my father.”
Even then, she hardly seemed to listen. But she saw her lover moved
beyond her knowledge of him, and put her arms about his neck, and
entreated him passionately:--
“Don’t throw me over, Cherry--not altogether. Give me enough to live
on, and keep good--for her sake--there, I’ll say it--if she’s shown
you what a woman ought to be.”
He sat on the floor beside her, and took her in his arms, pressing her
wet cheek against his own.
“You shall understand,” he said, much moved. “This lady’s for my
friend--we’ll bring him round to see it by-and-by, we two. But the
lesson of her whiteness is for all. Am I Cartouche to own it? I only
know she’s taught me to respect something I never respected before. To
pay to keep you good, my darling? With a fortune, if I had it. That’s
it. Shall we be good together, sweetest--never, never, never sin
again? You’ve loved me one way: will you love me better this--own the
wrong and renounce it? show--”
“Not her. I’ve been wicked. I’ll pray to God to forgive me. He’s a
man.”
His face twinkled.
“Hush!” he said. “Our act of grace shall be to mend this tragedy with
love. That’s why I brought him here. You shall teach him the way.
Don’t you see, Molly--can’t you see all that that means?”
She clung to him with a burst of tears.
“O, I’ll be good, Cherry! And perhaps--perhaps, some day, you’ll want
to learn from me.”
He heard a sound overhead, and, rising, lifted her to her feet.
“Dry your eyes,” he whispered; “he’s coming. He mustn’t find a
wet-blanketing hostess.”
“No,” she said. “I’ll get his coffee. Let me go--O, let me go! I shall
be right in a minute”--and she went hurriedly from the room.
A minute later Louis-Marie came down, his haggard face bright-eyed out
of fever. But there was an expression on it such as one might imagine
in the face of a convicted felon summoned to hear his reprieve.
“Such dreams, Gaston,” he said, crossing the room eagerly: “but the
dream of all was the dream that went to bed and woke with me. I
thought I had saved a life, Gaston.”
“That was no dream, my friend.”
Louis-Marie came and fondled him, smiling all the while. His actions
were marked by a curious haste and agitation, as if in everything he
were restless to hurry conclusions, to spurn the passing moment, to
urge on the hands of time.
“Wasn’t it?” he said. “What a meeting, dear Gaston, my brother! Who
would have dreamt of _that_! And the occasion! We are always saving
lives between us, it seems--you more than I, I expect. Isn’t it
strange? I know so little about you, and you my blood-brother. Do you
always lodge here when you come to Turin?”
“Generally.”
“Your life, your habits, your story are all a shadow to me. I--”
Cartouche interrupted him.
“My story is told in a word, Louis-Marie. Would you like to hear it?”
“Indeed I should.”
“Very well. It won’t edify you, I’m afraid; but it’s quite right you
should know the truth about me. Innocent souls like you are apt to
take too much on trust--to judge all men by their pure self-standards.
It’s time, perhaps, you grew up, Louis-Marie.”
“Nay, Gaston,” muttered his friend. “If to be grown up is to be
wicked, I’m a giant already. Prove yourself what you like--the worse,
the nearer to me.”
Trix laughed.
“Listen to this, then,” he said. “I was born in Mayfair, in
London--during the absence of my mother. That was why she would never
acknowledge me. My father always believed that I was her son by him;
but, as he was not her husband, she had no difficulty in proving an
_alibi_. He may have been mistaken, _for he had many irons in the
fire_; but the upshot of it for me was that, as no one would claim me,
I was pronounced a changeling and put out to nurse. From that state di
Rocco rescued me--for reasons of his own. I was very like him, for
one--an extraordinary coincidence. He brought me up, and treated me as
if I were his son. Paternity always came easy to him. I grew up under
his tutelage. The result is what you see; but, in case its expression
lacks eloquence, I may tell you that I am a very accomplished
person--a scholar, a wit, a capital swordsman, a rakehell and a
star-gazer. There is no folly of which I am incapable but love; no
hypocrisy but self-sacrifice. I owe the world nothing but myself: and
that is a debt I pay back, with interest, on each occasion of its
demand. _Enfin_, I am your very faithful servant, M. Louis.”
He rose and bowed, with a grace of mockery. His feeling towards this
blood-brother of his was always mixed of devotion and contempt. He
could resist one no more than the other. But he loved the poor fool:
that sentiment predominated.
Saint-Péray looked down and away from him, his jaw a little fallen.
At that moment his hostess entered, carrying his bread and coffee. He
raised his head and saw her, uttered an exclamation, and then, like a
lost child who recognises a friend in a crowd, suddenly burst into
tears.
No, it was certain that Louis-Marie would never ascend Mont Blanc.