THE BLACK BUTTERFLIES
The Turin-Paris express--the most direct, the Italians call it--was
too popular by half to suit the taste of morose beings who wished for
solitude. With great trouble and pains I had ferreted out a single
vacant compartment; but as four o’clock sounded and the whistle blew for
departure, a belated traveler joined me--worse still, an acquaintance
who could not be quite ignored.
The unwelcome intruder was Mr. John Van Blarcom, my late fellow-voyager,
and he accepted the encounter with a better grace than I.
“Why, hello!” he greeted me cheerfully. “Going through to France? Glad
to see you--but you’re about the last man that I was looking for. I got
the idea somehow you were planning to stop a while in Rome.”
I returned his nod with a curtness I was at no pains to dissemble. Then
I reproached myself, for it was undeniable that on the _Re d’Italia_ he
had more than once stood my friend. He had offered me a timely warning,
which I had flouted; he had obligingly confirmed my statement in my
grueling third degree. Yet despite this, or because of it, I didn’t like
him; nor did I like his patronizing, complacent manner, which seemed
fairly to shriek at me, “I told you so!”
“Changed my plans,” I acknowledged with a lack of cordiality that failed
to ruffle him. He had hung up his overcoat and installed himself facing
me, and was now making preparations for lighting a fat cigar.
“Well,” he commented, with a chuckle of raillery, after this operation,
“the last time I saw you you were in a pretty tight corner, eh? You
can’t say it was my fault, either; I’d have put you wise if you’d
listened. But you weren’t taking any--you knew better than I did--and
you strafed me, as the Dutchies say, to the kaiser’s taste.”
“Good advice seldom gets much thanks, I believe,” was my grumpy comment,
which he unexpectedly chose to accept as an apology and with a large,
fine, generous gesture to blow away.
“That’s all right,” he declared. “I’m not holding it against you. We’ve
all got to learn. Next time you won’t be so easy caught, I guess. It
makes a man do some thinking when he gets a dose like you did; and those
chaps at Gibraltar certainly gave you a rough deal!”
“On the contrary,” I differed shortly,--I wasn’t hunting
sympathy,--“considering all the circumstances, I think they were
extremely fair.”
“Not to shoot you on sight? Well, maybe.” He was grinning. “But I guess
you weren’t hunting for a chance to spend two days cooped up in a cabin
that measured six feet by five.”
“It had advantages. One of them was solitude,” I responded dryly. “And
it was less unpleasant than being relegated to a six-by-three grave. See
here, I don’t enjoy this subject! Suppose we drop it. The fact is, I’ve
never understood why you came to my rescue on that occasion, you didn’t
owe me any civility, you know, and you had to--well--we’ll say draw on
your imagination when you claimed you saw what I threw overboard that
night.”
“Sure, I lied like a trooper,” he admitted placidly. “Glad to do it. You
didn’t break any bones when you strafed me, and anyhow, I felt sorry for
you. It always goes against me to see a fellow being played!”
Thanks to my determined coolness, the conversation lapsed. I buried
myself in the Paris “Herald,” but found I could not read. Simmering with
wrath, I lived again the ill-starred voyage his words recalled to
me, breathed the close smothering air of the cabin that had held me
prisoner, tasted the knowledge that I was watched like any thief. An
armed sailor had stood outside my door by day and by night; and a dozen
times I had longed to fling open that frail partition, seize the man by
the collar, and hurl him far away.
Glancing out at the landscape, I saw that Turin lay back of us and that
our track was winding through dark chestnut forests toward the heights.
Confound Van Blarcom’s reminiscences and the thoughts they had set
stirring! In ambush behind my paper I gloomily relived the past.
Our ship, following sealed instructions, had changed her course at
Gibraltar, conveying us by way of the Spanish coast to Genoa instead of
Naples. From my port-hole I had gazed glumly on blue skies and bright,
blue waters, purple hills, and white-walled cities, and fishing boats
with patched, gaudy sails and dark-complexioned crews. Then Genoa rose
from the sea, tier after tier of pink and green and orange houses and
shimmering groves of olive trees; and I was summoned to the salon, to
face the captain of the port, the chief of the police of the city, and
their bedizened suites.
Surrounded by plumes and swords and gold lace, I maintained my innocence
and heard Jack Herriott, on his opportune arrival, pour forth in weird,
but fluent, Italian an account of me that must have surrounded me in the
eyes of all present with a golden halo, and that firmly established
me in their minds as the probable next President of the United
States. Thanks to these exaggerations and to various confirmatory
cablegrams--Dunny had plainly set the wires humming on receiving my
S.O.S.,--I found myself a free man, at price of putting my signature
to a statement of it all. I shook the hand of the ever non-committal
Captain Cecchi, and left the ship. And an hour after good old Jack was
gazing at me in wrath unconcealed as I informed him that I was in the
mood for neither gadding, nor social intercourse, and had made up my
mind to proceed immediately to duty at the Front.
“You’ve been seasick; that’s what ails you,” he said, diagnosing my
condition. “Oh, I don’t expect you to admit it--no man ever did that.
But you wait and see how you feel when we’ve had a few meals at the
Grand Hotel in Rome!”
This culinary bait leaving me cold, he lost his temper, expressed a hope
that the Germans would blow my ambulance to smithereens, and assured me
that the next time I brought the Huns’ papers across the ocean I might
extricate myself without his assistance from what might ensue. However,
though he has a bark, Jack possesses no bite worth mentioning. He even
saw me off when I left by the north-bound train.
Leaning moodily forward, I looked again from the window and wished I
might hurry the creaking, grinding revolution of the wheels. We were
climbing higher and higher among the mountains. The chestnuts, growing
scanter, were replaced by dark firs and pines. Streams came winding down
like icy crystal threads; the little rivers we crossed looked blue and
glacial; pale-pink roses and mountain flowers showed themselves as we
approached the peaks. A polite official, entering, examined our papers;
and with snow surrounding us and cold clear air blowing in at the
window, we left Bardonnecchia, the last of the frontier towns.
I was speeding toward France; but where was the girl of the _Re
d’Italia_? To what dubious rendezvous, what haunt of spies, had she
hurried, once ashore? The thought of her stung my vanity almost beyond
endurance. She had pleaded with me that night, swayed against me
trustingly, appealed to me as to a chivalrous gentleman and, having
competently pulled the wool over my eyes, had laughed at me in her
sleeve.
I had held myself a canny fellow, not an easy prey to adventurers;
a fairly decent one, too, who didn’t lie to a king’s officer or help
treasonable plots. Yet had I not done just those things by my silence
on the steamer? And for what reason? Upon my soul I didn’t know, unless
because she had gray eyes.
“Hang it all!” I exclaimed, flinging my unlucky paper into a corner, and
becoming aware too late that Van Blarcom was observing me with a grin.
“I’ve got the black butterflies, as the French say,” I explained
savagely. “This mountain travel is maddening; one might as well be a
snail.”
“Sure, a slow train’s tiresome,” agreed Van Blarcom. “Specially if
you’re not feeling overpleased with life anyway,” he added, with a
knowing smile.
An angry answer rose to my lips, but the Mont Cenis tunnel opportunely
enveloped us, and in the dark half-hour transit that followed I regained
my self-control. It was not worth while, I decided, to quarrel with the
fellow, to break his head or to give him the chance of breaking mine.
After all, I thought low-spiritedly, what right had I to look down on
him? We were pot and kettle, indistinguishably black. It was true that
he had perjured himself upon the liner; but so, in spirit if not in
words, had I!
Thus reflecting, I saw the train emerge from the tunnel, felt it jar
to a standstill in the station of Modane, and, in obedience to staccato
French outcries on the platform, alighted in the frontier town. Followed
by Van Blarcom and preceded by our porters, I strolled in leisurely
fashion towards the customs shed. The air was clear, chilly,
invigorating; snowy peaks were thick and near. And the scene was
picturesque, dotted as it was with mounted bayonets and blue territorial
uniforms--reminders that boundary lines were no longer jests and that
strangers might not enter France unchallenged in time of war.
Van Blarcom’s elbow at this juncture nudged me sharply.
“Say, Mr. Bayne,” he was whispering, “look over there, will you? What do
you know about that?”
I looked indifferently. Then blank dismay took possession of me. Across
the shed, just visible between rows of trunks piled mountain high, stood
Miss Esme Falconer, as usual only too well worth seeing from fur hat to
modish shoe.
“Ain’t that the limit,” commented the grinning Van Blarcom; “us three
turning up again, all together like this? Well, I guess she won’t have
to call a policeman to stop you talking to her. You know enough this
time to steer pretty clear of her. Isn’t that so?”
But I had wheeled upon him; the coincidence was too striking!
“Look here!” I demanded, “are you following that young lady? Is that
your business on this side?”
“No!” he denied disgustedly, retreating a step. “Never saw her from the
time we docked till this minute; never wanted to see her! Anyhow, what’s
the glare for? Suppose I was?”
“It’s rather strange, you’ll admit.” I was regarding him fixedly. “You
seemed to have a good deal of information about her on the ship. Yet
when that affair occurred at Gibraltar, you were as dumb as an oyster.
Why didn’t you tell the captain and the English officers the things you
knew?”
“Well, I had my reasons,” he replied defiantly. “And at that, I don’t
see as you’ve got anything on me, Mr. Bayne. You’re no fool. You put
two and two together quick enough to know darned well who planted those
papers in your baggage; so if you thought it needed telling, why didn’t
you tell it yourself?”
“I don’t know who put them there,” I denied hastily, “except that he was
a pale little runt of a German, pretending to be a thief, who will wish
he had died young if I ever see him again.”
An inspector had just passed my traps through with bored indifference.
I turned a huffy back on Van Blarcom and went to stand in line before
a door which harbored, I was told, a special commission for the
examination of passports and the admission of travelers into France.
Reaching the inner room in due course, I saluted three uniformed men
who sat round an unimposing wooden table, exhibited the _vise_ that Jack
Herriott had secured for me at Genoa, and was welcomed to the land. Then
I stepped forth on the platform, retrieved my porter and my baggage, and
placed myself near the door to wait until the girl should come.
I must have been a grim sort of sentinel as I stood there watching. I
knew what I had to do, but I detested it with all my heart. There was
one thing to be said for this Miss Falconer--she had courage. She was
pressing on to French soil without lingering a day in Italy, though
she must be aware that by so swift a move she was risking suspicion,
discovery, death.
As moment after moment dragged past, I grew uneasy. Would she come out
at all? Could she win past those trained, keen-eyed men? The more I
thought of it, the more desperate seemed the game she was playing. This
little Alpine town, high among the peaks, surrounded by pines and snow,
had been a setting for tragedies since the war began. These territorials
with their muskets were not mere supers, either. But no! She was
emerging; she was starting toward the _rapide_. There, no doubt, a
reserved compartment was awaiting her, and once inside its shelter, she
would not appear again.
I drew a deep breath in which resolve and distaste were mingled. She had
crossed the frontier, but she was not in Paris yet. I couldn’t shirk the
thing twice, knowing as I did her charm, her beauty, her air of proud,
spirited graciousness--all the tools that equipped her. I couldn’t, if
I was ever again to hold my head before a Frenchman, let her pass on, so
daring and dangerous and resourceful, to do her work in France.
As she approached, I stepped in front of her, lifting my hat.
“This is a great surprise, Miss Falconer,” said I.