The next morning Paul breakfasted on the terrace. The gay greetings of
old friends, the pleasant babble in the breakfast room ill suited his
reflective mood.
And as he sat alone under the fragrant pergola enjoying his cigarette
and dividing his attention between his coffee and the Paris Edition of
the _Herald_, a pale, dark-haired lady passed by as she sought the
terrace for an early stroll. Paul's eyes were on his paper at that
moment--and if the lady's well-bred glance lingered on him for a brief
instant as he turned the pages of the daily, he was all unconscious of
her presence.
Perhaps the lady may have seen something about the strong, wholesome,
well-groomed Englishman that pleased her, perhaps she was simply glad
to be alive upon that glorious morning, with the bracing breeze
blowing fresh from the lake, and the sun sending his welcome rays down
upon the mountainside. At all events, her lips parted in the merest
shadow of a smile as she walked along the gravelled path with the
veriest air of a princess.
Alas! the smile and the dainty picture which the dark-haired lady made
as she moved down the flower bordered path in the sunshine, her
morning gown clinging gracefully about her slender figure, were alike
lost on the engrossed Paul. With his eyes glued to the criticism of a
sharpened writer on the last measure before Parliament, he read on,
all oblivious to his surroundings. Even here, at his beloved Lucerne,
the man of affairs could not escape the thrall of the life into which
he had thrown the whole effort of his fine mind.
Sir Paul had not quite finished the breezy article when, with an all
pervading blast of a sweet-toned, but unnecessarily loud Gabriel horn,
a big green touring car came dashing up to the gate of the little
hotel, and with a final roar and sputter, and agonized shriek of
rudely applied brakes, came to a sudden stop. From it there emerged,
like a monster crab crawling from a mossy shell, a huge form in a
bright green coat--a heavy man with a fat, colourless face and puffy
eyes, and Paul, glancing up at the ostentatious approach, recognized
in him a _nouveau riche_ whom a political friend had insisted on
introducing in London a few days before.
Schwartzberger, his name was (Paul had a peculiar trick of remembering
names)--the fellow was said to have made a fortune in old rags--no, it
was tinned meats--in Chicago. It was his proud boast that he started
in the business as a butcher's errand boy but a few years ago, and
now, no supper bill at the _Moulin Rouge_, no evening's play at Monte
Carlo, had ever made a material depletion in the supply of gold that
always jingled in the pockets of his loud clothes. His was the fastest
car and the gayest coloured on all the Continent, and he was alike the
hero and the easy dupe of every servant.
As the stout American came waddling uncertainly up the walk, with a
certain elephantine effort at jauntiness, he nearly collided with the
foreign lady who had crossed his path to reach the further limits of
the terrace. Not having a cautioning horn attached to his anatomy to
warn heedless trespassers from his way, the large person was forced to
give ground, but had some difficulty in veering from his course
sufficiently to avoid an accident. However, the _grande dame_ slipped
past him quickly and disappeared amid the shrubbery--but not before
her extraordinary beauty had dazzled the pork-packer's beady eyes.
He turned and stared at her.
"Gee! What a peach!" he murmured aloud, in words which came wheezing
from between thick lips. "I wonder if that's the Countess's lady
friend she spoke of."
Then, catching sight of Verdayne, and knowing him at once for the
swell English guy he had met at the Savoy, he panted up and slapped
Paul's shrinking back with his fat, white hand.
"Hullo, Verdayne! Just the man I'm looking for! I didn't know you were
in this part of the world. Hurry up with your breakfast and join me
and my friend, the Countess de Boistelle, in a spin around the lake.
Perhaps you know her already. No? That's easy arranged--she's a
particular friend of mine, and she's got a chum of her's staying here
too, I guess. Make up a foursome with us and I'll promise you this old
place won't be half slow. When it comes to making things hum, nobody's
got anything on the Countess."
"Damned bounder!" growled Paul under his breath; and aloud: "Thanks, I
have an engagement. Awfully sorry, and all that, you know." And he
rose, as if to end the interview.
"I'll bet you've got a date with that queen you were just talking to.
Verdayne, you're the foxy one. Well, I can't say you haven't got good
taste, anyhow, though she's a little too quiet for me."
"Talking with whom?" inquired Paul, in a cold voice.
"Why, that lady that just left here. She nearly ran into me getting
away."
"Schwartzberger," answered Paul, with great deliberation, as he folded
his newspaper, "I believe that a lively imagination is as necessary to
the ideal management of the pork-packing industry as to all other
business activities. Permit me to observe that I can predict for you
no cessation of the remarkable results you have achieved in your
chosen profession." And with a short nod he started down the path.
Schwartzberger's beady eyes blinked after Paul a moment.
"These Englishmen always do get up in the air over nothing," thought
the pork-packer, as he gazed after Paul with a puzzled look on the
wide expanse of his countenance. Then he turned his great bulk and
waddled ponderously into the hotel, in search of his particular
friend, the Comtesse de Boistelle.
Toward the landing on the lake Paul descended, with his heels biting
viciously into the gravel at every step.
"Confound these beastly people!" he growled. "Why are they allowed to
roam about the earth, making hideous the beautiful places." His soul
revolted at even the suggestion that he could have thought for any but
his beloved Lady--his Queen whom he had not seen for more than a
score of years, and would never, on this fair planet, behold again.
On a coign of vantage overlooking the steep slope the pale lady stood
with her face turned toward the Bürgenstock. She watched Paul as he
stalked angrily down the hillside, and in her mind compared him with
the monster she had just avoided. She gazed after him till he reached
the slip, where a small boat was ready for him; and she lingered on
while he stepped lightly into the skiff, picked up the oars, and rowed
away in the style an Eton man never forgets. Motionless she remained,
until he disappeared behind a fringe of larches that crept close to
the shelving shore. Then slowly, as with regret, she turned to resume
her stroll.
A faint colour had stolen into her cheeks; the wonderful eyes had
grown very bright and wistfully tender and deep. The rare old lace on
her bosom fluttered with her quickened breath, as softly she murmured:
"Ah! My entrancing one, now I have seen thee--and I understand!" And
the larches by the shore trembled as if in sympathetic emotion as the
gentle breeze echoed her sigh.
* * * * *
A half-hour later the big green touring-car spluttered on its noisy
way again; but its tonneau contained no _partie carrée_. A smartly
clipped poodle perched in the centre of the wide seat--on one side of
him lounged the shapeless green form of the pork-packer, on the other
side gracefully reposed the Comtesse de Boistelle.
And if the complacent admiring glances which Schwartzberger heavily
bestowed on the lady of his choice were perhaps too redolent of the
proprietorship in which a successful pork-packer might indulge, they
were at least small coins in the mart of love, which is Springtime in
Lucerne.
* * * * *
Up the lake Paul rowed briskly, working off his ill-humour in the
sheer exertion of his favorite sport. The splendid play of his
powerful muscles carried his light craft rapidly over the blue water,
until he reached a secluded little bay where he had often gone to
escape from troublesome travellers at the hotel. Beaching his skiff,
he threw himself at full length on the rocky shore, where he lay quite
still, drinking in the beauty of the prospect.
Occasionally the wind bore to him from some distant ridge or hidden
glen the tinkling of a cow-bell, as the herd wandered here and there
grazing upon the green uplands. Once--for an instant only--a mirage
appeared upon the southern sky, as if in mute testimony to the
transitory character of all earthy things, the fleeting phases of
human life. It seemed to Paul, with a score of years dimming the vista
of his young manhood, not more shadowy and unreal than the wonderful
scenes in which years before he had played all too brief a part.
Little by little, as he lay motionless, the sun stole toward the
zenith. But to Paul, alone with his memories, the earth seemed bathed
in a luminous pall--a mysterious golden shroud.
"Oh! God," he cried, out of the anguish of his soul, "what a hideous
world! Beneath all this painted surface, this bedizened face of earth,
lies naught but the yawning maw of the insatiable universe. This very
lake, with its countenance covered with rippling smiles, is only a
cruel monster waiting to devour. Everything, even the most beautiful,
typifies the inexorable laws of Fate and the futility of man's
struggle with the forces he knows not."
He looked far off, wistfully, to the great pile of the Bürgenstock,
the one place in the whole world that for him was most rich in tender
memories. And yet he knew that its undulating blueness hid hard,
relentless rock, as unyielding as the very hand of death itself.
"Love," he said slowly, his heart swelling with the deep sense of his
loss, "love should lead to happiness and peace--not to conflict,
murder, and sudden death."
And he lay there pondering, until at last, as always in the end, his
better genius triumphed. And when the evening sunshine turned the
windows of the distant hamlets into tongues of flame and set the
waters in the little bay a-dancing, he rowed slowly back to the hotel,
his own resourceful English self again.
Far up on the side of the Bürgenstock a dim light shone--a faint glow,
until a cloud bank, stealing ever nearer, nearer, crept between like
some soft curtain, and the silent mystery of the evening fell upon the
lake, and wrapped the mountains in a velvet pall.