PURSUING A WILL-O'-THE-WISP
Aunt Sarah and the girls were much annoyed and their annoyance did not
grow less when, after a half-hour of diagnosis, the chauffeur emerged,
grease-stained and exhausted from under the car, shaking his head. He
frankly admitted that his worm's eye view had failed to enlighten him as
to the trouble. Aunt Sarah turned upon me eyes mirroring a faith
sufficient to move even stalled motor cars.
"I am sure, my dear," she said, sweetly, "your mechanical aptitude can
find a remedy for this difficulty."
It was, of course, an order to burrow into the confined space between
the road bed and the bottom of the car, and of course I burrowed. For a
time I was out of touch with all matters transpiring in the great outer
world, but finally I saw the inverted face of our chauffeur gazing in
upon me and heard his bellowing voice. I have hitherto neglected to
mention that our chauffeur was neither French nor Italian, but Irish.
He was, in fact, an excellent fellow, and the only member of our party
whom I found companionable.
"Sure, sor," he yelled, "there's another car in trouble just around th'
turn av' th' road."
I supposed that he was imparting this information only out of the
assumption that misery loves company, and inasmuch as my reply was
profane, it need not be quoted. In a moment more, however, his grinning
visage reappeared at the road level. "They wants to know if you can't be
afther lending 'em a tire-iron?"
"What do they think this is?" I roared back, squirming far enough to
clear my face for utterance, but not far enough to see what was going
on. "This isn't a repair crew."
It was hardly a gracious response to a fellow motorist in trouble, but
my point of view was oppressed with the weight of a paralyzed car, and
Aunt Sarah and the girls, and I was misanthropic to the degree of
sourness. From my position whatever conversation ensued was merely an
incoherent babble of voices. Palpably, despite my discourtesy, Mr.
Flannery had supplied the inquirers with whatever they needed, and they
had gone their way. I, in the course of the next few minutes, emerged
from my hedge-hog isolation, tinkered with the carburetor, and crawled
back again into concealment. Then someone returned the borrowed
tire-iron. I did not have the opportunity to speak to the Someone, and I
should not have seen the Someone at all had I not happened to catch the
shouted words of Mr. Flannery. Mr. Flannery had so accustomed himself to
pitting his voice against machinery that even in moments of quiet he
hurled his words like the roar of a bull. So, as he spoke now to the
unknown person, I recognized an allusion to myself. The words which set
me to extricating myself as speedily as possible from my humble position
were as follows:
"Sure, ma'am, th' boss would be afther bein' more polite to yer, only
the car is layin' a little heavy on his stummick, and it gives him a bit
of a grouch."
The word which excited me was the "ma'am," and my excitement was no
means allayed when I stood clear in the road and saw just disappearing
around a curve a figure which I recognized. It could be no other figure,
for no other figure that I had ever seen could walk with the same
triumphant and lissome grace. Again the face was turned away from me,
and about her hat floated a confusing cloud of veil. But she had been
there within a few feet and possibly had even heard my surly responses
to her request for assistance. Possibly she had seen my wriggling feet
while I, who would have esteemed it the greatest possible privilege to
have assisted her in any way, had lain there surrounded by dust and
profanity. I was seized with a mad impulse to run after her, but I knew
that the return of my iron signified that their tire-mending was
finished and they were on their journey.
My own repairs were not finished, and I stood there with streaks of
grease across my face, caked with dust and by no means presenting the
appearance with which a man might hope to appear acceptable in the eyes
of divinity. Aunt Sarah and her bevy of young intellectuals, I found,
had withdrawn to the greater comfort of a near-by road-house, and could
give me no information, while Flannery's description was on the whole,
unsatisfactory. The idiot had not asked her name, and in answer to all
my questions could only assure me vaguely that the young lady was "a
peach." One thing he had noticed. The car, which had passed us a quarter
of an hour before was a large blue touring car, of high horse-power. It
is strange what details impress certain minds and what goes unseen. So
again I had missed my chance, and the incident had not served to
reconcile me to my serfdom.
Several days later I had succeeded in gaining a brief leave of absence
from my duties as courier, and was spending an interval of sadly needed
rest.
I had the hope that the unknown girl and her party would be stopping for
a while in one of the closely grouped towns along the coast: Nice,
Cannes, Mentone, Monte Carlo--it mattered little which one it might be.
If she was in any of these, I should eventually find her, and I haunted
the dazzling whiteness of the Boulevard des Anglais, with a buoyant
pulse beat of expectancy. At any moment I might again catch a glimpse of
her in a shop or cafe, and if I did, I meant that it should be more than
a glimpse, and that she should not again escape until I had at least
seen her face. I spent most of my time wondering what she was like.
Would the full view bring a greater sense of fascination or the pang of
disillusionment? It might be that when I saw her I should find myself
harshly awakened from a dream, but at all events, there would be
certainty, and an end to the tantalizing sense of following a
will-o'-the-wisp which constantly eluded. She gave me one very anxious
afternoon. I had been taking a horseback ride near town when I came upon
a wrecked and empty automobile. The physical facts showed clearly what
had happened. The car had evidently skidded while speeding, in an effort
to turn out for some passing vehicle, and had tried to climb a stone
wall. There must have been a very ugly moment, as the twisted front
wheels and crumpled hood attested. What frightened me was the fact that
it was a large, blue touring car of the same sort, if not identical,
with the one described by Flannery. I was commencing my ride when I saw
it, but I turned back at once to town and began an investigation. I
finally learned that the chauffeur for a local garage had taken a party
of his own friends for a joy ride, and that the expedition had come to
summary grief. My effort to trace the history of that particular car for
a week or two past resulted in nothing. I was informed that it had been
hired many times and to many unrecorded persons, usually for the
afternoon or day.
Several nights later I was sitting at a roulette table in Monte Carlo's
_Cercle des Etrangers_. I had fallen in with a coterie of chance
acquaintances, who for some reason held faith in my luck and insisted
upon my crowding into a vacant place at the wheel. My function was to
submit to the issue of fortune not only my own stack of _louis d'or_,
but also the considerable purse that they had raised among them.
My table was near the center of the main _salle_, and at my elbows
crowded the little party of men and women whose interests hung upon my
success or failure. It was the same old scene; the same old life that
one sees year after year in this chief cathedral of the gods of chance.
Men and women from both hemispheres stood or sat in the tense absorption
of eyes riveted on dancing ball and whirling disc. At my right was a
regally gowned woman whose delicate features were now as hard as agate
and whose eyes were avid. At my left was a saturnine Spaniard who smiled
indifferently, but who did not know his cigar had died to a stale
coldness. I was experiencing the sense of disillusionment which
invariably comes to me afresh when I enter the Casino of Monaco. I
always ascend the stairs of the palace which the principality-supporting
syndicate has provided for its patrons with a mild elation of
expectancy. I always take my place at the tables with the realization of
disappointment. The sparkle of jewels is there; sometimes the beauty is
there, but the spirit that rules is not a spirit of gaiety; and the
glitter of eyes makes me forget the diamonds. The cold lust of greed
flashes in the hard brightness of set faces.
Between the droning announcements of the croupier insidious thoughts
force themselves. I think of the management's efficient ambulance
services; of the exhaustive arrangements by which unknown patrons may be
promptly identified; and the sinister discoveries of the beach. These
things were in my mind now as the stack of gold pieces at my front
alternately piled and dwindled under a fitful sequence of petty losses
and gains.
I may have been at the table an hour when I began to have the insistent
feeling of someone in particular standing at my back. Of course, there
were many people behind me. Besides my own party was the crowd of idle
onlookers as well as others who were impatiently waiting to seize upon
vacant places about the board.
And yet, just then I could not turn my head. My system involved leaving
the winnings upon the table for three successive spins of the wheel. I
had played a group of numbers in the black, cautiously avoiding the
alluring perils of the greater odds, and twice my little pile of _louis
d'or_ had drawn in its prize money. On the third spin we stood to lose
the entire amount of our augmented stake or see our pile swell
commandingly. While I waited for the croupier to close the betting and
touch the button, I twisted my head backward, to determine whose
presence in the throng had so subtly announced itself to my
consciousness. But the barrier of faces that pressed close against my
chair cut off all who stood further back. The wheel raced; the ball
danced madly about its rim; the crowd stood bating its breath; and the
scattered piles of gold lay in doubt on the green baize diagram.
It was over. The croupier sang out the winning number, column and
combinations. The rake was extended to push over to me a fairly imposing
pile of French gold. I was conscious of coming in for more than my
individual share of interest. Luck had been with me, and at Monte Carlo,
the lucky man is the man of moment. But the sense of some personality
above the many personalities was now borne in upon me with irritating
force. I was impatient to rise and push back my chair and look about me,
but as I attempted to do so, the men and women whose capital I had
increased raised a chorus of remonstrance. I reluctantly resumed the
place which I had been about to abdicate and once more laid out my
stake. This time I pushed the entire pile out onto the green cloth in a
pyramid on the black. I knew if I lost it they would willingly surrender
my services. Even at that cost I wanted freedom.
For, in the moment that I had been standing there, I had caught a
glimpse of a retreating figure, which disappeared through the door,
almost at the instant that my eyes identified it. It was the figure of a
woman in evening-dress, or rather, I should say, of _the_ woman in
evening-dress. There was the same graceful majesty of bearing, the same
slim grace--and the same averted face. But because I wished to leave the
table fortune pursued me. Spin after spin doubled, tripled, quadrupled
my swelling pile of money. Finally I told them that I would remain for
three more tests of chance--but no more. I could hardly abandon these
enthused men and women without warning, but as soon as I had fulfilled
the obligation, I rose, and I fear there was more of precipitate haste
than of courtesy in my manner of shouldering my way through the press of
onlookers, to the door and the wonderful embroidery of flower beds
before the casino. Eyes followed me, for my luck had held and I was a
momentary sensation. It was still early, as hours go in a place where
the major activity belongs to night life, and for two hours I haunted
the cafes and boulevards without result. The next day proved equally
fruitless, but that night, as I was idling with my after-dinner cigar,
along the Boulevard de Condemine, I saw strolling at some distance ahead
of me, a young man and a girl. It was she, and I had only to hasten my
steps to overtake and see her. I could guess that the man with her was a
Frenchman. The cut of his clothes and the jaunty swagger of his bearing
were distinctively Gallic. My imagination could read the title "fortune
hunter" as though it were embroidered on his coat-tails.
I was resentful, and hurried on, but as usual I was destined to
disappointment. An untimely and inconsequential acquaintance loomed up
in my path, and when I attempted to brush hastily by him, he slapped me
on the back and hailed me with that most irritating of all conceivable
forms of address, "Well, how is the boy to-night?"
He did not find the "boy" particularly affable that night, but with an
accursed and persistent geniality he succeeded in delaying me for the
space of a few precious moments. At a distance, I saw her disappear into
a lighted doorway against which her face and figure showed only in
silhouette. Again I had lost her. I could hardly pursue her into the
entrances of private houses, but I noted the location and went back to
my apartments in the Hotel Hermitage with the comforting thought that we
were in the same town and that by rising early the next morning, and
searching tirelessly till midnight, I should ultimately be able to see
her.
Before sleep came to me a telegram was brought to my door.
Aunt Sarah had succeeded in becoming involved in some ludicrous
difficulty with the Italian customs officials. She implored that I come
at once to her rescue. How she had achieved it, was a matter of
inscrutable mystery. I had always found the politeness of Italian
customs officers as gracious as a benediction, but Aunt Sarah was a
resourceful person. I rejoined her detestable cortege long enough to
extricate her from her newest difficulty, and to discuss with her her
plans for the immediate future. I found that she and her young ladies
were yearning for the sepia tinted walls of Rome where, under every
broken column and crumbling arch their hungry souls might drink deep
draughts of improving tradition and culture. I knew that they would
waste no time musing by moonlight in the shadows of the Colosseum, but
that with Latin dictionaries they would decipher in the broad light of
day the inscriptions on the arcs of Titus and Constantine. None the
less, I encouraged their idea and enlarged upon the suitability of this
time. I looked up the train schedules and wired for hotel reservations.
Every moment that they hesitated I was excitedly quoting, though not
aloud, lines that came back from the days of a less-mature literary
taste:
"'Why dost thou stay and turn away,
Here lies the path to Rome.'"
I thought it the part of wisdom to refrain from mentioning until the
actual moment of their departure that my own way lay in an opposite
direction. But when I had seen them settled in their first-class
compartments and the accommodating guard had reassured me by locking
them in, I turned with a sigh of contentment and fled back to Monte
Carlo. I had been absent only a few days, but I returned to a dusty and
desolate town. Perhaps the numbers of gamblers and pleasure-seekers had
not actually diminished. Perhaps they had even increased, but a day's
search satisfied me that the unknown lady had gone, and for me the town
was empty.
What idiosyncrasy drove me to the Holy Land, I cannot say, unless it was
that after my exhausting term of cathedral inspection I felt a desire to
have a look at that temple which, except for the Taj Mahal, has always
appealed to me as the world's most beautiful place of worship--the
Mosque of Omar.
Riding one day on a donkey around the walls of Jerusalem, I had a
glimpse of Her standing on the ramparts above me by the gate of the
Needle's Eye. But as I looked up, the sun was full in my eyes and I
could distinguish only the lashing of her skirts in the wind, and a
halo-like aura of gold about her head, which was uncovered. At that
distance her face was a featureless oval. Until night came with its
howling of a thousand dogs I visited the places to which guides most
frequently conduct their charges. But in the Temple of The Sepulchre, on
the Mount of Olives, at the Jews' Wailing Place and among the vaulted
bazaars, there was only failure for my quest. For two days I hunted, and
while I hunted she must have gone down to Jaffa or departed for the
overland trip to Syria.