WEEPING AND LAUGHTER.
Sir Douglas had gone to see his friend, but it was still too early
for the concert, so Lady Munro and the girls strolled round to the
terrace overlooking the sea.
"How lovely, how lovely!" said Lucy. "I wonder if there is any view
in all the world like this?"
"We must find those two statues by Sara Bernhardt and Gustave Doré,"
said Evelyn, looking up from her Baedeker. "One of them
represents----"
"Oh, bother the statues!" cried Lucy. "I want to feel things to-day,
not to look at them." Her voice changed suddenly. "Lady Munro," she
said very softly, "that is my boy leaning on the stone balustrade.
Now, did I exaggerate? Look at him!"
Lady Munro walked on for a moment or two, and then glanced at the lad
incidentally; but the glance extended itself with impunity into a
very deliberate study. The boy's face was flushed, and he was
muttering to himself incoherently as he gazed in front of him with
unseeing eyes.
"He looks as if he was going mad," remarked Evelyn frankly.
"He looks a great deal more like an acute maniac than most acute
maniacs do," said Lucy, with a proud recollection of a few visits to
an asylum. "Oh, Lady Munro, do, do go and speak to him! You would
do it so beautifully."
Lady Munro hesitated. She never went out of her way to do good, but
this boy seemed to have come into her way; and her action was none
the less beautiful, because it was dictated, not by principle at all,
but by sheer motherly impulse.
She left the girls some distance off, and rustled softly up to where
he stood.
"_Pardon, monsieur,_" she said lightly, "can you tell me where the
statue by Gustavo Doré is?"
He started and looked up. One did not often see a gracious woman
like this at Monte Carlo.
"I beg your pardon," he said, making a desperate effort to collect
his thoughts. Distraught as was his air, his accent and manner were
cultured and refined. Lady Munro's interest in him increased.
"Do you know where there is a statue by Gustave Doré?"
He shook his head. "I am sorry I don't," he said, and he turned away
his face.
But Lady Munro did not mean the conversation to end thus. "This is a
charming view, is it not?" she said.
"Ye-e-s," he said; "oh, very charming."
"I think I saw you at one of the tables in the Casino. I hope you
were successful?"
He turned towards her like a stag at bay. There was anger and
resentment in his face, but far more deeply written than either of
these was despair. It was such a boyish face, too, so open and
honest. "Don't you see I can't talk about nothings?" it seemed to
say. "You are very kind and very beautiful; I am at your mercy; but
why do you torture me?"
"You are in trouble," Lady Munro said, in her soft, irresistible
voice. "Perhaps it is not so bad after all. Tell me about it."
A woman more accustomed to missions of mercy would have calculated
better the effect of her words. In another moment the tears were
raining down the lad's cheeks, and his voice was choked with sobs.
Fortunately, the great terrace was almost entirely deserted. Lucy
and Evelyn sat at some distance, apparently deep in the study of
Baedeker, and in a far-off corner an old gentleman was reading his
newspaper.
The story came rather incoherently at last, but the thread was simple
enough.
The boy had an only sister, a very delicate girl, who had been
ordered to spend the winter at San Remo. He had taken her there, had
seen her safely installed, and--had met an acquaintance who had
persuaded him to spend a night at Monte Carlo on the way home. From
that point on, of course, the story needed no telling. But the
practical upshot of it was that the boy had in his purse, at that
moment, precisely sixty-five centimes in money, and a
twenty-five-centime stamp; he had nothing wherewith to pay the
journey home, and he was some pounds in debt to his friend.
Truly, all things are relative in life. While some men were
forfeiting their thousands at the tables with comparative equanimity,
this lad was wellnigh losing his reason for the sake of some fifteen
pounds.
"What friends had he at home?" was of course Lady Munro's first
question. "Had he a father--a mother?"
His mother was dead, and his father--his father was very stern, and
not at all rich. It had not been an easy matter for him to send his
daughter to the Riviera.
"That is what makes it so dreadful," said the lad. "I wish to heaven
I had taken a return ticket! but I wanted to go home by steamer from
Marseilles. The fatal moment was when I encroached on my
journey-money. After I had done that, of course I had to go on to
replace it: but the luck was dead against me. Oh, if I could only
recall that first five francs! If I could have foreseen this--but I
meant----"
"You meant to win, of course," said Lady Munro kindly.
The boy laughed shamefacedly, in the midst of his misery.
"Well, I think my punishment equals my sin," he said. "I would
gladly live on bread and water for months, if I could undo two days
of my life. I keep thinking round and round in a circle, till I am
nearly mad. I cannot write to my father, and yet what else can I do?"
Lady Munro was silent for a few minutes when the lad had finished
speaking. She was wondering what Sir Douglas would say. When a
married woman is called upon to help her fellows, she has much to
think of besides her own generous impulses; and in Lady Munro's case
it was well perhaps that this was so. She would empty her purse for
the needy as readily as she would empty it for some jewel that took
her fancy, sublimely regardless in the one case as in the other of
the wants of the morrow. Ah, well! it is a good thing for mankind
that a perfect woman is not always essential to the _rôle_ of
ministering angel!
"I will try to help you," she said at last, "though I cannot
absolutely promise. In the meantime here is a napoleon. That will
take you to Cannes, and pay for a night's lodging. Call on me
to-morrow between ten and eleven." She handed him her card. "I
think," she added as an afterthought, "you will promise not to enter
the Casino again?"
It was very characteristic of her to ask as a favour what she might
have demanded as a condition. The boy blushed crimson as he took the
napoleon. "You are very kind," he said nervously. "Thank you. I
won't so much as look at the Casino again."
"Well, Miss Lucy, a pretty scrape you have got me into!" said Lady
Munro, as she joined the girls. "It will take fifteen pounds to set
that boy on his feet again."
"Tell us all about it," said Lucy eagerly. "Who is he?"
"His name is Edgar Davidson, and he is a medical student."
"I knew it! No wonder I was interested in a brother of the cloth!
What hospital?"
"I don't know."
"Is he going in for the colleges or for the university?"
"My dear child, how should I think of asking?"
"I suppose mother did not even enquire who his tailor was," said
Evelyn quietly.
"I don't mind about his tailor, but it would interest me to know
where he gets his scalpels sharpened. What brings him here during
term?"
Lady Munro had just time to give a sketch of the lad's story, when
they arrived at the door of the concert-hall--wonderful alike for its
magnificence and its vulgarity--to find the orchestra already
carrying away the whole room with a brilliant, piquant, irresistible
_pizzicato_.
"Do take a back seat, mother," whispered Evelyn; "we can't have Lucy
dancing right up the hall."
Lucy shot a glance of lofty scorn at her friend.
"I am glad at least that Providence did not make me a lamp-post," she
said severely.
The last note of the piece had not died away, when a young man came
forward and held out his hand to Lady Munro.
"Why, Mr Monteith, my husband has just gone to your hotel."
"Yes; he told me you were here, so I left him and my father together."
He shook hands with the two girls, and seated himself beside Lucy.
"You here?" she said with an air of calm indifference, which was very
unlike her usual impulsive manner.
"Nay, it is I who should say that. You here? And you leave me to
find it out by chance from Sir Douglas?"
"It did not occur to me that you would be interested," and she fanned
herself very gracefully, but very unnecessarily, with her programme.
"Little coquette!" thought Lady Munro. But Lucy looked so charming
at the moment, that not even a woman could blame her.
"How is Cannes looking?"
"Oh, lovely--lovelier than ever. Some awfully nice people have come."
"So you don't miss any of those who have gone?"
"Not in the least."
"And you would not care to see any old friend back again for a day or
two?"
There was a moment's pause.
"I don't think there would be room; the hotel seems full----"
With a sudden burst of harmony the music began, and there was no more
conversation till the next pause.
"Have you ever walked up to the chapel on the hill again?"
"Oh, lots of times!"
"You have been energetic. Have you chanced to see the Maritime Alps
in the strange mystical light we saw that day?"
"Yes. They always look like that."
"Curious! Then I suppose the walk has no longer any associations----"
"Oh, but it has--bitter associations! We left the path to get some
asparagus, and my gown caught in a bramble-bush, and a dog barked----"
The first soft notes of the violins checked the tragic sequel of her
tale, and the music swelled into a pathetic wailing waltz, which
brought the first part of the programme to an end.
Sir Douglas came during the interval to take them away, and Mr
Monteith walked down with them to the station.
"I am sorry there is no room for me at the hotel," he said, as he
stood with Lucy on the platform.
"Pray, don't take my word for it. I don't 'run the shanty.' Perhaps
you could get a bed."
"What is the use, if people would be sorry to see an old
acquaintance?"
"How can you say such things?" said Lucy, looking up at him
cordially. "I am sure there are some old ladies in the hotel who
would be delighted to see you."
"But no young ones?"
"I can't answer for them."
"You can for yourself."
"Oh yes."
"And you don't care one way or the other?"
"No;" she shook her head slowly and regretfully.
"Not at all?"
"Not at all."
"Not the least bit in the world?"
Lucy lifted her eyes again demurely. "When one comes to deal with
such very small quantities, Mr Monteith," she said, "it is difficult
to speak with scientific accuracy. If you really care to know----"
"Yes?"
"Where are the Munros?"
"In the next carriage. Do finish your sentence."
"I don't remember what I was going to say," said Lucy calmly. "A
sure proof, my old nurse used to tell me, that it was better unsaid."
She sprang lightly up the high step of the carriage, and then turned
to say good-bye. The colour in her cheeks was very bright.
Ten minutes later she seemed to have forgotten everything except the
wonderful afterglow, which reddened the rocks and trees, and
converted the whole surface of the sea into one blazing ruby shield.
Sir Douglas was nodding over his newspaper. Lucy laid her hand on
Lady Munro's soft fur.
"You have been very good to me," she said. "I don't know how to
thank you. I really think you have opened the gates of Paradise to
me."
The words suggested a meaning that Lady Munro did not altogether
like, but she answered lightly,--
"It has been a great pleasure to all of us to have you, dear; but you
know we don't mean to let you go on Thursday."
Lucy smiled. "I must," she said sadly. "A week hence it will all
seem like a beautiful dream--a dream that will last me all my life."
"Well, I am glad to think the roses in your cheeks are no dream, and
I hope they will last you all your life, too."
And then the careless words re-echoed through her mind with a deeper
significance, and she wished Sir Douglas would wake up and talk, even
if it were only to grumble.
That night there were two private conversations.
Evelyn had gone into Lucy's room to brush her hair in company.
"What a touching sight!" said Lucy, laughing suddenly, as, by the
dancing firelight, she caught sight of the two fair young figures in
the mirror--their loosened hair falling all about their shoulders.
"Come on with your confidences! Now is the time. At least so they
say in books."
"Unfortunately I have not got any confidences."
"Nor have I--thank heaven!" She bent low over the glowing wood-fire.
"What slavery love must be!"
Evelyn watched her with interest, but Lucy's next words were somewhat
disappointing.
"Evelyn," she said, "how is it Mona has contrived to charm your
father so? I need not tell you what I think about her, but, broadly
speaking, she is not a man's woman, and I should not have fancied she
was the sort of girl to fetch Sir Douglas at all."
"I don't think it strange," said Evelyn languidly. "I have often
thought about it. You see, she is very like what my mother must have
been at her age, though not nearly so charming to mere acquaintances;
and then just where the dear old Mater stops short, the real Mona
begins. It must be such a surprise to Father!"
"That is ingenious, certainly. How Mr Monteith admires your mother!"
"Does he?"
"I wonder what he would think of Mona!"
"I can't guess."
"Have you known him long?"
"Father and Mother have known his father long."
"Do you think he is honest?"
"Which?"
"The son, of course."
"He never stole anything from me."
"Don't be a goose! Do you think he means what he says?"
Evelyn paused before replying.
"You don't?" said Lucy quickly.
"I was trying to remember anything he did say," Evelyn answered very
deliberately. "The only remark I can remember addressed to myself
was, 'Brute of a day, isn't it?' I think he meant that. He
certainly looked as if he did."
"Douglas," said Lady Munro, "would Colonel Monteith allow his son to
marry Lucy Reynolds?"
"Nonsense! what ideas you do take into your head!"
"Because, if he would not, things have gone quite far enough. George
said something to me about coming back to Cannes for a day or two.
Of course that child is the attraction. If you think it will end in
nothing, he must not come."
"So that is what her vocation amounts to!"
"My dear Douglas! what does she know of life? She is a child----"
"Precisely, and her father is another. God bless my soul!
Monteith's son must marry an heiress."
Lady Munro did not pursue the subject; she had something else to talk
of. She rose presently, and walked across the room.
"Douglas," she said, stopping idly before the glass, "I wish you
would give me your recipe for looking youthful. You will soon look
younger than your wife."
"Nonsense," he said gruffly, but he smiled. His wife did not often
make pretty speeches now-a-days. As it happened she was looking
particularly young that night, too. Perhaps that fact had struck
her, and had suggested the remark.
For half an hour they chatted together, as they might have done in
the old, old days, and then----
And then Lady Munro broached the subject of the boy at Monte Carlo.