The Convent Steps
The band had long stopped playing; the afternoon sunshine was growing
soft, and the Jardins Publics were empty of all but a few
stragglers--_bourgeois_ babies playing round mothers basking on sunny
benches and among beds of carnations and cyclamen, and people
crossing the paths on their way home. Agatha turned at the top of
the long series of parterres bordered by orange-trees, palms,
eucalyptus and pepper trees, that lay between street and street, and
was bounded by the band of glowing purple sea, whence on either hand
long hill-spurs ran up into the mountain amphitheatre just behind the
town, and wondered at all the sunny beauty. Especially at the palms,
which sprang up, straight and sturdy, everywhere closing street
vistas, lending charm to featureless buildings and romance to ugly
ones, and sometimes spreading their broad tops above a knot of
dark-faced Arabs, lounging picturesque in burnous and fez.
"It was lovely once," the man at her side granted. "The torrent bed
ran down in wild, broken beauty all the way to the sea a few years
since. There's your house yonder on the ridge. Do you walk up?
Well, take time. The way's straight enough. Report as often as you
can. Be very careful. I thought the whole thing was exploded more
than once yesterday--especially----"
"Oh! There was not the faintest suspicion. You were quite out in
that. But I will be careful. Good-bye."
He went up the road to the station; she passed under the viaduct by
the torrent bed and paused, watching women stepping down under the
oleanders from the other side to beat linen in the stream, and then
turned and went on with a lagging step, that meant dejection more
than fatigue. Winding along under the grey ghostliness of arching
plane-tops was a string of pack-mules, leisurely plodding under bales
and panniers; fine, strong, patient beasts, in curious contrast to
the long, smoke-snorting dragon of a train that roared and rattled
out of sight over the railway bridge at the avenue's end in about two
hoof-beats. Were people unhappy up there in those mountain villages,
where life was simple and close to Nature? There was a restfulness
and an air of cheerful romance about this little procession of
plodding mules and bright-eyed peasants, a feeling of the
picturesque, of leisurely labour in sunshine and sweet air, very
comforting to a torn heart, wasted by anxiety. If one could but
vanish and fade away into those mountain fastnesses and forget,
working peacefully by some quiet hearth, under one of those sunlit
church towers cresting the pine ridges.
But sorrow is heavy and hard to bear in youth, when fullness of life
throbs in every heart-beat, rebelling at every denial and refusing
every pang; and there are moments when all that should console and
soften suffering contributes to deepen and intensify it. As the
graceful solitary figure walked wearily along the torrent bed in a
network of shadows woven by the plane-tops, all the sunny beauty of
gorge and peak, of lemon orchard and glowing pine-top and dream-soft
olive haze, and all the purple splendour of sea and sky and blue
bloom of distance wrought upon her with such power that every sense
and faculty, uplifted and expanded, helped to put an edge on the
anguish within her. The higher the rocky path turning from the level
bed was, the greater the beauty grew, and the pain; every hanging
wreath of geranium and scented myrtle, every blaze of cactus trailing
down the rock walls, through which the steep, stair-like path
climbed, impressed itself sharply upon her. She turned with a
movement of impatience, and looked back, and every sunlit sail and
turquoise shade on the purple sea and every shadow of the hills made
itself acutely felt. And when the path led under the solemn shadow
of olives, and the light misty foliage parted here and there to give
glimpses of sea and red-roofed town and far headland, her heart was
like to break; and yet the majesty of far-stretching mountains, the
glory and beauty of land and sea, had never been more vividly sweet
to her.
For this is a strange thing, that the whole weight and power, the
whole magic and mystery of beauty in Nature and Art, can only be felt
in supreme moments of gladness or sorrow, when the mind and heart are
full and every faculty is tense. The beauty deepens the pain with
the very balm it brings, it magnifies the gladness with the very awe
that chastens it.
Now she knew what olive-trees meant; and they mean so much, in
loveliness so subtle, so manifold in suggestion; they cannot be read
through and taken in at a glance, except in emotional crises, when
veils are lifted and faculties quickened.
Yet there was comfort in those endless steps, that were in reality
vine-terraces made on south-fronting declivities, and in the thought
of the human patience and long labour of centuries, that had carried
up and enriched every strip of soil on these hand-hewn ledges, and
buttressed them solidly with rock till they glowed with the gladness
of purple vintage and glory of emerald leaves. And here, in the
olive shade, and there, backed by a rock terrace tangled in myrtle
and white-blooming heath and the goblin foliage of prickly pear, were
little red-roofed shrines, with frescoes telling the Seven Sorrows,
blotched and dim, with scanty votive flowers withering in coarse
earthen pots. The pathos of these humble, deserted shrines touched
her; they seemed friendly in their silent desolation. Yet Mrs.
Allonby, in her wild ascent the day before, had hardly seen them.
But this tall, clear-eyed young woman was so drawn by the fascination
of the forlorn shrines that she followed the path they lined, and it
led her astray. She laid a spray of flowering rosemary on the
Seventh--"for remembrance"--and sighed. For she who bore that
sevenfold sword of sorrow in her heart could never have borne this of
looking on, helpless, and baffled in every wild effort to save, at
the gradual ruin and degradation of any she loved; that barren and
bitter sorrow at least was spared her.
But what if she, whose pain had been so fruitful to man, could hear,
and from her place of peace give balm to crushed and broken hearts?
Human sympathy may not be confined to this brief passage through time
and space, she mused.
The path led with a sudden turn through garden ground, unfenced, then
past a pink house with a pergola, and ended at an abrupt fall of
narrow vine terraces down the ravine. Thence was seen a fuller,
broader prospect facing south, bounded by a sea of purple and gold
shot with crimson. There she turned, and climbing a broad flight of
steps leading to the low-walled summit of the ridge, became aware of
a large wooden cross standing against the pure sky on the top, as if
with open arms of welcome.
Above and around it were quivering spires of cypress and plumy tops
of eucalyptus, and, between black cypress boughs, the white gleam of
convent walls.
The weight of silent, secret grief grew to a physical burden on those
weary steps; her heart sank and died when she reached the top, and
stood in rich sunshine at the foot of the great bare cross, its arms
uplifted in witness and welcome for many and many a mile round, and
listlessly spelt out the words cut round the centre:
Ave, crux, spes unica!
Then something gave way in her aching breast, the four healing words
echoed and found response in her heart.
"Ave, ave!" she faltered, her slender figure bowed in the golden
light, the healing scent of eucalyptus blossom floating down to her,
and the majesty of those soaring mountain peaks and buttressed
hill-flanks spreading far above in the hush and glow of the passing
day. There, with her face pressed to the sun-warmed wood and her
arms clasping it, a huge weight--"the burden and the mystery of all
this unintelligible world"--fell away from her heart, and the great
prayer that has no words filled it with peace beyond
understanding--the _spes unica_--the only road to solution of all the
tangled mystery of life.
When she rose the world was changed. On either side of the cross
stood a tall eucalyptus tree; long tresses of pale fragrant blossom
hung among their scimitar-shaped leaves; their cinnamon-coloured
trunks, whence rolls of scented bark peeled, were so forked that the
branched stems made a comfortable seat; there the tired girl rested
in the ruddy glow, silently absorbing the same tranquil pageant of
vesper splendour that light-hearted Ermengarde was watching from the
hotel garden above. Sea murmurs were faintly audible in the deep
stillness, the incense curling bluely from hill-altars was sweet,
glorious were the grandly-grouped peaks and mountain masses changing
and glowing with life-like motion in the sliding lights, silent,
majestic witnesses to the everlasting beauty that underlies and
transfuses all things. God was speaking through all that beauty;
doubt and fear vanished; in spite of misery, care, and sin, all must
be well at last.
Lightened at heart, she leant on the low convent wall and looked down
the ravine, that was rapidly filling with shadow, and across it at
the white village poised on a hill, its slender tower uplifted like a
standard under the purple-shadowed mountain peak.
Suddenly a harsh high laugh broke upon the charmed stillness, and was
followed by strident voices and a confused hurry of footsteps, as the
whole rout of pleasure-seekers from the hotel gate clattered round
the corner under the convent walls unseen, while a polyglot cackle,
playing round the words systems, hotels, Monte, tables, winnings,
losings, dinners, poured out in passing crescendo and died gradually
away in the distance.
But before they were quite out of hearing, as they filed out upon a
part of the path visible from the convent wall, the young woman's
gaze was startled and arrested by the same lady and attendant youths
whose talk had already been overheard from the hotel gardens, and her
heart stood still and her colour went at the sight.
These two? Was it these two really beyond doubt? Then what she had
heard and what had been feared was true, much too true. And for such
as they, of what avail to wrestle, to agonize, to beat at the gate of
heavenly mercy with fastings and tears and inward silent
heart-bleeding? Even now the boy's mother must be praying at home
for him. And of what avail? Yet was not yonder vast cathedral
reared to the lucid sky telling in superb and solemn beauty of the
infinite power and love and pity of the divine poet and artificer of
all? And even if that calm majesty had no power to rebuke fretting
or silence despair, there was the _spes unica_ shining in the
deepening after-glow, a beacon to storm-driven hearts.
A little withered old woman passed along under the rock wall, leading
a self-willed goat, and briskly knitting. She sent up a shrill and
cheerful "_Buon sera_," laughed, and nodded, and went on her tranquil
way. Then the lay brother in charge of the deserted garden, passing
the eucalyptus on his way home from work, told her she had taken the
longest way, and put her on the shorter, and she went down the steps
as the first few stars trembled into the sky, and so round through
olives and pines to the hotel. And there, in the glowing twilight
above the lemon-tops, was the face of her fellow-traveller,
brightening at the sight of her with smiles of welcome.
"My dear woman of mystery, where did you spring from?" she cried. "I
thought you had gone on to Italy. And how on earth did you climb up
this terrific hill? And where is your luggage? And how very glad I
am to see you again!"
That Italy was just round the corner, that the parting had been but
yesterday, and that it was possible for an able-bodied woman to climb
a mile of mountain-path without utter destruction, filled Ermengarde
with a wonder only less than her wonder at her own unfeigned delight
in unexpectedly meeting this woman, who appeared to be somewhat
overpowered by her effusive reception.
"Dear Mrs. Allonby," she protested faintly, while being carried off
to the house, "indeed, I am not at all hungry, and not so very tired."
"Oh, but you are!" she insisted. "Dreadfully tired. And you must
have some tea at once--in my room. I had mine long ago, out of
doors. I will make tea for you in my own Etna--the one that upset in
my dress-basket. Are you expected? Have you engaged rooms? Let me
take you in to Madame Bontemps, proprietress and manager. Most civil
and obliging; will make you very comfortable. We shall find her in
the office. Heinrich? What's become of the porter? Madame
Bontemps? What on earth's the matter?"
The inner door, which had been closed at sunset, yielded to pressure,
and let a torrent of strident voices and sounds of discord pour out
upon the startled air, disclosing a spectacle that caused both ladies
to retreat in momentary terror, and despair of all peaceful and safe
passage through the hall.
Madame Bontemps had, as it were, taken the stage--that is, the middle
of the hall--and with blazing eyes and murderous gestures, was
calling down what sounded the most terrific maledictions upon the
devoted head of the stalwart Swiss porter, Heinrich, who, with
bristling moustache and hair and balled fists, thundered back
denunciations even more terrific with gestures of even greater
violence.
"And not a policeman to be had!" Ermengarde lamented. "What on earth
is to be done? She will be killed, and so will he. Heinrich!
Madame! Monsieur Bontemps! Feu--au secours!" she cried, heedless of
the new arrival's suggestion to wait till the storm was over. But of
this there appeared to be little chance. Madame Bontemps, her
features distorted with fury, shrieked fiercer and fiercer
maledictions at the retreating Heinrich, springing across the hall at
him, when he fled from her onset, soon to return to the charge,
before which she in her turn retreated, with denunciations and
gestures that put Madame Bontemps' life at a pin's fee.
"If there was only a fire-bell," murmured Ermengarde, looking round,
deaf to her companion's reassurance that the contest would be
bloodless, "or a police-whistle, or even a cab-stand!"
But Madame, undismayed and active, her rolled back hair quivering,
her tall form dilating, her hands on her hips, repulsed the charge of
Heinrich with such a torrent of abuse as drove him back once more to
the middle of the hall. There both stood, still shouting and
misunderstanding each other in three languages for a measurable
space, during which Monsieur Bontemps lounged in an easy attitude,
cigarette in mouth, at the office door, softly stroking his beard,
and contemplating the engagement with indifference, tinged with
approval and admiration of the majesty and fury of Madame.
"It is just this," he explained, with gentle condescension, when the
storm lulled, "the French of Madame is incomplete; she supplements it
with the Italian of the country--a tongue entirely unknown to
Heinrich. The French of Heinrich, on the contrary, is absolutely
vile. He supplements it with German, of which both he and Madame are
partly ignorant, and with Swiss-German, a tongue known to none but
those mountaineers. Hence misunderstandings. Myself, I ignore all.
Que voulez-vous?"
Yielding to pressure, however, he at length drew the infuriated
lady's attention from the combat to the claims of her guests. In a
moment her looks of fury were replaced by smiles of courteous
welcome; her blazing eyes shed light of soft inquiry, and she came
forward with a stately bow and a genial, "Bon soir, mesdames," while
Heinrich as quickly forgot his wrongs and his wrath, and, dissolving
into cheerful smiles, took his usual station by the door. Finally,
the tumult being succeeded by perfect calm, he blandly picked up a
few of the woman of mystery's parcels, which had arrived beforehand,
and carried them to her room, whither they were preceded by the
stately presence of Madame Bontemps herself.
The new arrival never forgot the tea brewed for her that evening. To
that she attributed every digestive disturbance that afflicted her
all her life after.
Nor did Ermengarde lightly dismiss from memory her own joy and
fatigue in making that tea with her own hands, and for the first
time, over a complicated and expensive new patent spirit-lamp,
expressly devised to boil a minimum of water with a maximum of peril,
inconvenience, and delay. A serious initial difficulty in lighting
the lamp was presently overcome by the discovery that there was no
spirit in it. A little of this, after some deliberation and delay,
was borrowed of Miss Boundrish's mother. "But on no account tell
Dorris," the latter implored; "she don't like lending things." The
second difficulty of the kettle not boiling was surmounted after
finding that it had no water--a circumstance which nearly resulted in
burning a hole in it--by ringing the bell not more than five times
for water of unimpeachable purity. The kettle at last having been
filled, boiled over during a long and futile search for the tea,
several parcels of which had been artfully mislaid in improbable
portions of wearing apparel with the guileful purpose of evading
douaniers and defrauding the French Republic of revenue. At last the
brilliant idea of following up the trail of those packets, that had
burst and peppered priceless raiment with black dust and broken
stalks, resulted in their discovery. No matter how widely friends at
home had differed in their advice to those about to travel, all had
agreed that as much tea as the regulations by utmost stretching
permitted, besides as much again as that, must be carried in every
separate parcel and trunk, with the result that Ermengarde, finding
little use during her travels for the tea upon which she had
squandered so much substance, and incidentally making all her things
smell like a grocer's shop, furtively shed small packets of it all
across the Continent on her return home, in vague terror of incurring
mysterious pains and penalties by secreting so much contraband.
"Is it refreshing?" she asked, when at last, flushed with triumph and
heat, and smudged with lamp-black, besides having burnt her hand in a
spirit-flare, she handed the precious beverage in an enamelled tin
mug without a saucer. She would not have had a saucer for the world;
it would have spoilt the whole thing.
"It's--very--hot," gasped the recipient, with watering eyes and a
look of deep anguish.
"It's a very special tea," Ermengarde said impressively, watching the
sufferer's agonies with complacence.
"Very special," sighed the victim; "most special."
"I got it myself, from a woman whose cousin married a tea-planter.
He sends her a chest every now and then to sell to intimate friends
to pay for Church work," Ermengarde continued, with intense
satisfaction. "That accounts for the remarkable flavour."
"No doubt it does," murmured the sufferer, recovering breath, and
correctly attributing the mingled taste of old boots and
public-houses, that characterized the special tea, to the probability
of the kettle having had no lid on and a strong spirit flare under it.
"Poor dear; you must have been dying for a cup!" her tormentor
murmured, with relentless benignity.
"From a cup," the victim thought; but by degrees she gallantly
swallowed the whole dose, finding it impossible to evade the pleased
and compassionate eyes bent so persistently upon her.
"How odd that we should have been coming to the very same house all
the time!" Ermengarde said, wearily drawing a lamp-blacked hand
across her still aching forehead, and sinking upon the nearest seat,
when the tea-drinking was over.
"Ah, yes," with a little hesitation.
"And chance upon rooms adjoining, too!"
"Very odd."
"How glad I am it's you, and not that dreadful Anarchist,
Miss--ah----"
"My name is Somers--Agatha Somers," she said quickly, with a flush,
not unnoticed.
"Only think, if the wretch were to come back? Do you think he will?"
suddenly, with a keen look.
"How can I possibly guess?" she replied, with the stone blank
expression noticed in the train.
"Strange that he should have come up here for a single night, instead
of going to one of the hotels in the town."
"Did he? Perhaps he thought this dull. It is a little--secluded."
"If ever I saw guilt written on a human face," thought Ermengarde,
her suspicions all awake again, in a moment of sudden repulsion.
"Well," she added, rising to go, "au revoir till dinner. But I must
give you one piece of advice, Miss Somers," she added, turning back
and sitting on the edge of the bed, her eye chancing to fall on an
open letter that had slipped from a hand-bag on the bed--a strange
letter, written in what was no doubt cipher, all dots and dashes and
lines and bars, with little explosions here and there. "Don't say
anything not meant to meet the ear of the public on the path outside
the straw shelter. I'll tell you what I heard this afternoon. As
you can't possibly know the people, it can't matter; it is not
tale-telling. And I dare say that poor boy has a mother," she
sighed, at the close of her tale, "who little knows what harpies are
preying upon him. By the way," she added, "do you remember seeing a
tall, cheery-looking English lad at Monte Carlo Station yesterday?
It was that very boy."
The woman of mystery, in the act of raising the lid of a trunk before
which she was kneeling, let it fall with a crash that drew a faint
sudden sound of pain from her.
"It was the lock," she faltered, rising to her feet, and leaning
against the tall French window frame, rather pale and holding her
hand. "Oh, not really hurt; it only smarts for the moment. But what
were you saying? I beg pardon. You recognized a friend at Monte
Carlo Station yesterday? How observant you are, dear Mrs. Allonby!
And one English boy is so like another."
"But this one has such a happy laugh, so infectious, so jolly, so
devil-may-care. And that painted foreign thing was such a cat.
She'd got her claws so deep in him. Such a Countess as poor Yvette's
mother, I should say--a Countess in her own--wrong. I suspect there
are tons of that sort at Monte Carlo."
"No doubt," Agatha returned, absently looking out of the window at
the lights lying along the torrent-bed like a thin river of light,
broadening into an estuary where the roofs of the town were crowded
together by the darkened sea. "I think I will take your advice, dear
Mrs. Allonby, and lie down till dinner. I'm more tired than I
thought."