M. Isidore's Heartache
It was among the many exasperating features in Arthur's character
that you could never tell if a good, honest knock hit him hard or
only just glided off him, so atrocious was the depth of his
secretiveness and undemonstrativeness. He could have carried foxes,
wolves, hyenas, even rats, under his cloak, and let them gnaw him
till his last gasp, without giving a sign.
It was only from side-lights flashed from family and friendly letters
that his wife could have enjoyed the just satisfaction of hearing
that he was supremely uncomfortable in her absence; and even that was
denied her, by reason of his perversity in remaining on that
mysterious circular business tour, that never seemed to end, and
respecting which he gave the most meagre information. There was no
hope of his being uncomfortable on that tour; on the contrary, he was
quite certain to enjoy it immensely. That is one of the irritating
things in life--the supreme satisfaction with which business fills
the male mind. Business is a large word; it embraces all the
concerns of men that exclude women, or rather wives--so Mrs. Allonby
sometimes explained to young friends about to marry.
Still, she could not help hoping that he was desperately
uncomfortable and longing for her earlier return, though the wretch
never had the decency to hint at anything of the kind. Well, she
would not tell him of the unlucky necessity for her early return; she
would simply appear in Kensington as if on a sudden impulse, and say
that the Riviera was too hot, too cold, too rowdy, too
respectable--either adjective fitted--but never confess to the
misfortunes of Monte Carlo.
But the incident of the necklace had so strengthened her worst
suspicions connecting the woman of mystery that, before she slept
that very night, the headache having vanished, she took pen and
paper, and, by the light of a moon looking steadily from a dark-blue
vault, cleared of cloud by rain, related the whole story to her
husband, not omitting the sudden irruption of improvised aunts at
Monte Carlo, or the dark intriguings with the young English prodigal
and the elderly Russian Anarchist. "If that creature," she wrote,
with reference to the Anarchist, "dogs my footsteps and glares at me
through his detestable goggles much more, I shall have to leave the
place. I do hope he is not smitten by me, but sometimes I fear it.
No doubt he ought to be in Siberia, where at least there would be
nothing but wolves for him to glare at and scheme against." These
remarks occasioned her correspondent some diversion of a harmless
character. For her other _bête noire_--namely, the woman of
mystery--she wrote, she thought it might be possible to obtain some
information concerning her. Should she apply to the nearest British
Consul, or ask information of the French police? It was becoming
dangerous to be mixed up with a woman who had actually gone the
length of trying to make her an accomplice in selling priceless
jewels, of which she was obviously not the rightful owner.
It was while inditing this sentence that a beautiful thought flashed
upon Ermengarde's mental vision, and, laying aside pen and paper, and
sweeping her hair back from her shoulders, she leant her chin on her
hands and looked out upon the silver-steeped olive-groves and
pine-woods and the broad, bright path of sea trembling in silvery
sparkles beneath the moon.
She would sell the chain flung to her at the Carnival.
It was certainly hers, and quite as certainly she would never wear
the thing. She remembered the high price of that she had seen at
Spink's. This one appeared to be quite as good, the pearls of quite
as excellent colour and lustre, the diamonds the same. It ought to
fetch something substantial.
With this comfortable thought she folded her letter and went to bed,
and slept till morning blushed (as it did at the proper time in vivid
crimson), while the poor suspected woman in the next room tossed upon
an uneasy pillow, and racked her brains in vain, feverish efforts to
find some way of turning the sapphires into money, until youth and
nature conquered, and she too sank into blissful forgetfulness.
Ermengarde found it useless to take the thin man into her confidence
with regard to the woman of mystery; his mind on that subject seemed
to be of impenetrable brass. Had Mr. Welbourne observed this or that
singular proceeding on the part of Miss Somers? drew from him a look
of blank stupidity, a brazen want of comprehension, or some remark to
the effect that Miss Somers was a young lady of singular charm; that
she possessed intelligence of a high order, was remarkably
well-informed, a most restful companion, with unusual conversational
powers, enhanced by the still more unusual faculty of knowing when to
be silent; that her beauty was of a very distinguished order, the
marble whiteness of her complexion having the quality of
_morbidezza_, and being due to an exceptionally fine and clear skin,
rather than to ill-health.
"In short, my dear creature," Ermengarde reflected, "you think her
far too good-looking to be criticized, much less suspected."
She remembered that the thin man was a bachelor, and not so very old,
probably not much more than forty, the age of most acute
susceptibility to feminine attraction. In the sight of men of that
age, beauty can do no wrong. Yet the thin man honestly detested poor
Miss Boundrish; he had been known to flee as if for life, and hide
behind trees, rocks, trellises, and folding screens, even on one
occasion behind an upright piano, where by mischance he was
imprisoned for two solid hours, in trying to escape the society of
that coral-lipped, dewy-eyed sylph.
But the woman of mystery had known how to tame that wild and shy
bachelor heart to her hand. Perhaps she would make _him_ sell the
sapphires.
"Supposing," Ermengarde asked Mr. Welbourne, the day after her
refusal to oblige Agatha by that small service, conscience having
given her some uncomfortable qualms on that account--"supposing some
one were to ask you to sell extremely valuable jewels for them, on
the ground that _they_ did not wish to be seen selling diamonds,
would you do it?"
"Why not? If it were a lady, of course I would," he said promptly,
reflecting that he was in for it, and could make better bargains than
she, and hoping that parting with her jewels would be a lesson to
Mrs. Allonby on the folly of gambling.
"But supposing you were another lady?"
"How suppose anything so utterly impossible?" What on earth had that
to do with it, he wondered.
"Well, would one woman ask another woman to do such a thing without
very strong reason?"
The man's brain swam; certainly she was not asking him to sell jewels
for her. What could she be driving at?
"Dear lady, I hope you will forgive my saying that the common consent
of mankind throughout the ages agrees that your sex never acts upon
reason."
"I can't forgive anything so insulting to my sex. My impression is
that the woman stole the necklace."
"Ah, now we leave the abstract and come to the concrete--a particular
woman and a particular necklace--and forgetting logic, we go
gallantly upon feelings, intuitions. Still, the impression that
certain costly jewels have been stolen by an individual acquaintance
is somewhat powerful, not to say aggressive. Modern altruism, still
less old-fashioned Christian charity, would scarcely cherish an
impression of that kind, would it?" After all, he reflected, this
little woman is not as simple as she appears.
"Well, but if she wants to sell them, why can't she do it herself?"
"People exist who never, as a matter of principle, do anything they
can get anybody else to do for them. I can't defend the principle,
though I often act upon it; indeed, it appears to have its roots very
deep in human nature, like the propensity to bottle up trumps at
bridge."
"One dislikes to be disobliging; it seems unkind."
"If," replied the thin man, a light suddenly breaking upon his
bewildered brain, "the lady in question should happen to be our dear
young friend of the too frequent laugh, Mrs. Allonby, don't be
afraid. She has neither the wit nor the self-command to make a big
haul like that. But she is quite silly enough to get into
difficulties over play or dress"--here Ermengarde's cheeks vied with
the scarlet salvias blooming hard by--"and to sell jewels on the sly,
and it would be the worst service you could do a child like that to
help her."
"Sweet girl! I quite agree with you. She's much too small for large
sins. And I've never seen her with valuable jewels. Dear Mr.
Welbourne, your advice is as always so excellent. Ever since we met
here you have been a second father to me."
The thin man sighed. It is a sweet and seemly thing to be the father
of a charming and lovely young woman, but only when one is too old
for other relationships. It occurred to him that it might be wise to
shave; a beard sometimes gives a false appearance of age. The
patriarchs wore beards, while Greek gods, with the exception of Zeus,
are mostly represented as beardless. No one ever heard of a bearded
angel. Only yesterday Miss Boundrish had wondered publicly and at
the top of her voice why Mr. Welbourne "had never married," and he
had replied very meekly that it was not his custom to do anything in
a hurry; upon which Miss Boundrish's mother had encouragingly cited
the case of a cousin's uncle on the other side, who had married at
eighty-five.
It was while Mr. Welbourne was sighing and meditating on his own
beard and the probable extent of her pecuniary difficulties that
Ermengarde, who, with his helping hand had just climbed up among the
twisted roots of some pines to the height on which the monastery was
built, caught sight of the figure of a stranger. He was pacing the
broad and level walk beneath the cypresses, outside the building,
where the ridge was highest, and whence the outlook over mountain
gorges on one hand and capes and headlands running out to sea on the
other was widest and of most varied beauty. It was a tall, thin,
black figure in a hooded cloak, with a clean-shaven, ascetic face
bent over the book he carried and was perusing with devout interest.
"Surely," she said, stopping to rest on the low, crumbling wall by
the steps leading on to this plateau--"surely that must be one of the
expelled monks, or his ghost, come back to the old home. Reading his
breviary."
Mr. Welbourne found a seat on the wall beside her, carefully avoiding
a geranium-bush, that had grown up to the top among the broken
stones, and gave out a delicate scent where Ermengarde's skirt swept
it.
"No," he said, looking at the studious figure, "it is not a monk. I
doubt if the book he is studying with such devout interest is a book
of hours--or a psalter."
"An interesting type--pale, worn, emaciated, deep-set eyes, a keen,
subtle face--the true ascetic type. What stories that face could
tell," she mused aloud--"that is, the mouth."
"Well, yes; it has told a few thumpers to my certain knowledge. No,
it is not a monk, Mrs. Allonby. It is only Mr. Mosson."
"You know him? How interesting!"
"Oh, everybody knows Mr. Mosson--everybody who has come to grief,
that is."
"A philanthropist? The modern form of religious enthusiasm--deeds,
not words; feeding the hungry instead of saying prayers. A holy
materialism."
How soon, Mr. Welbourne reflected, misfortune breeds cynicism. It
was hardly forty-eight hours since calamity at the tables had
befallen this young woman, and she could talk like this. "Should you
be in want of money," he continued, "you have merely to name the sum
to our ascetic friend, and it is forthcoming. People often want
money in these regions, because everybody here is rich. It is only
the rich who want money."
"Really? Then what on earth do the poor want?"
"Oh, lots of things--food, fire, friends, advice, sympathy, clothes,
work, but money never."
"Really? Then how very, very rich I must be."
"Undoubtedly you are. But here comes our friend."
They had to stand in the narrow path to let the reverend man pass on
his pious way, and, the _déjeuner_ bell having just left off
sounding, followed him into the house very shortly after, but at too
small a distance to permit further discussion of his virtues--a point
much on Mr. Welbourne's conscience at the time, but unfortunately
soon driven from his memory by after-events.
The benefactor of his species in the meantime, unconscious of the
veneration he inspired, took his place at a small solitary table in
the background, silent and, after the first few moments of curiosity
his presence excited, unnoticed, and presumably absorbed in schemes
for the amelioration of mankind. With the _déjeuner_ he vanished,
but was again discovered at his secluded table at dinner, just as if
he had never moved, and so for several days.
Rumour spoke of a motor-car waiting daily at the foot of the ridge,
and bearing him away in a cloud of dust and unpleasant smell. M.
Bontemps hinted that he came up to Les Oliviers for a few days' rest,
much to Mrs. Allonby's surprise. She had had no idea that the
practice of beneficence was so fatiguing.
People often came up to the little house on the ridge for rest and
quiet, out of the closer air of the town, out of the racket and
turmoil of the huge and hideous barrack hotels, that desolated the
face of the country for many a mile round, even drawing great
splotches of aggressive ugliness across the lovely wooded slopes of
the mountains, so that no eye could possibly escape the sight of
them. And after a brief sojourn, refreshed and soothed to the point
of boredom, they returned with renewed zest to the horrors of
civilization and excessive wealth in the barracks.
Les Oliviers itself was certainly not beautiful, and it was visible
from far, but its humble position behind and beneath the monastery,
its moderate size and similarity to the little green-shuttered houses
dotted among vineyards and olive-gardens, with its absence of all
pretence and meretricious ornament, redeemed it from vulgarity, and
put its want of comeliness out of mind. So at least Mrs. Allonby
told M. Isidore, who acknowledged the compliment with a bow, and
observed with a sigh of deepest melancholy that it was the home of
his heart's desire.
A cloud had for some days past hung over the habitual gaiety of the
cheery little man, a cloud neither black with thunder nor leaden with
low-hanging rain, but rather one of those pearly transparencies that
flutter about sunset skies, catching and transmuting every glorious
glow of crimson and gold and purple. He was obliging, courteous,
full of wit and gaiety, as ever; but interspersed his sallies with
deep-drawn sighs, emotional exclamations, and those little,
half-humorous groans, that are the peculiar characteristic of the
lively Gaul.
He had even discussed--with Mrs. Allonby--the frequency and
inevitableness of self-destruction as a result of feminine scorn and
variableness, and of blighted hopes, together with the best way of
effecting it. For this, he had been gently, very gently, rebuked,
and wisely and kindly counselled, and recommended to give back scorn
for scorn.
"What care I how fair she be?" etc.
In rejoinder he had referred to the tragic circumstance that he
possessed a heart, placing his hand over the region where hearts are
supposed to be, with a gesture expressive of severe internal pain.
In short, there was no manner of doubt that M. Isidore was the victim
of unrequited passion of the most powerful description, or that the
sympathy implied or expressed by Mrs. Allonby's reception of his
hinted confidences was balm to his wounded breast.
She told him quite plainly that he was a fool--a fact that he
admitted with gusto--that he was young, and would soon get over it,
which he denied with fury. Some such confidences had been imparted
during chance meetings and aimless rovings along paths through
pine-woods aromatic with undergrowth of myrtle and juniper; through
solemn olive-groves, hushed and dim, their drooping foliage tangled
with azure lights; between vineyards; by lonely cottages,
pergola-shaded; through shadowy dells and along sunny ridge-tops. In
the bee-haunted silence of these secluded ways suddenly, round a
corner, up a ravine, down a steep, emerging from an aisle of
pine-trunks, anything or anybody might appear as if by magic.
Sometimes a mule, pattering softly and steadily under panniers of
household goods and garden stuff, and followed by a peasant with
ready smile and chat in broken French; now an old woman leading a
goat; sometimes men or women laden with faggots and grass more
heavily than their own patient, soft-eyed beasts; sometimes a
gaily-caparisoned donkey bearing a tourist, sometimes a whole noisy
troop of them; now a solitary pedestrian, now a numerous party,
breaking the charmed quiet by confused babble of nasal American,
guttural German, slurred English, or burred French; sometimes the
sudden, abhorred gurgle of Miss Boundrish.
The suddenness and unexpectedness of these apparitions, the feeling
that anything--a wood-nymph, a fairy, a mountain gnome, a Greek faun,
the face of an old friend, or the bearer of some new fresh
happiness--might appear was a great charm. One afternoon Ermengarde
had been sitting under a pine-tree on a sandy bank by the path,
looking across the ravine at the great sweep of crag-peaked mountains
running down to a broad blue space of sea, when the figure of M.
Isidore issued from hidden depths, and was suddenly outlined on the
sky in front of her.
Quite naturally, and without hesitation, he let himself down on the
myrtle-covered bank near the lady, but a little lower down, so that
in speaking he had to look up. The easy, friendly ways of this
attendant Ariel sometimes aroused a momentary wonder, soon stilled by
the reflection that it was "only M. Isidore," a convenient and
agreeable foreigner, outside conventions, socially non-existent, like
the peasants who chatted and smiled so pleasantly in passing.
Though the daily unacknowledged offering of flowers continued, none
had been worn since the episode of the Malmaisons. Not that any
importance was to be attributed either to the French youth's graceful
courtesy in giving flowers, or to the woman of mystery's unwarranted
hints of gossip about it. Mrs. Allonby seldom wore flowers at table
now, unless they were obviously wild; that was all.
Nor had the Italian lessons M. Isidore had been giving her
stopped--he gave conversational lessons in that language to Miss
Boundrish, to Mr. Welbourne, and other male visitors as well. There
was nothing tedious or fatiguing in the Italian lessons given to Mrs.
Allonby. They always began with _Ollendorffian_ questions and
answers in slow and indifferent Italian, as thus: "Do you like
cheese? I do not like cheese, but the sister-in-law of the Italian
organ-grinder likes cheese," and ended in light and gay discussions
in quick, fluent French upon subjects of various interest, art,
literature, the only drastic and effectual remedy for blighted hopes,
the best place to pop and redeem jewels in, the last big haul at
Monte Carlo, and the eminent personalities to be seen playing
there--topics upon which this light-hearted youth was very well
informed.
"Ah, Madame!" he sighed on this sunny afternoon, his beautiful dark
eyes uplifted to her sympathetic face, and his hand fervidly pressing
the upper part of his waistcoat; "if I might but reveal to you the
anguish that is consuming me!"
Bees were drowsily humming in masses of grey-blue rosemary bloom, so
drowsily that they accentuated the deep mountain silence, upon which
the minor tones of the lovelorn youth's voice fell plaintive and
clear. Ermengarde, regarding him with the unconsciously sweet
expression that had won her many a heart, was replying, "Well, why
not? Perhaps the trouble is not so great as it seems," when she
became sympathetically aware, without looking up, through a sudden
nervous tremor in her young friend's frame, of another presence on
the path, and turned simultaneously with him to see the statuesque
figure and cold, rigid face of Mlle. Bontemps.
She had apparently sprung up unobserved from the depths of the earth,
as everybody did on that ridge, and stood waiting, her massively
coiled hair shining uncovered in the fading sun, for an opportunity
to speak.
The luckless Isidore was on his feet with a bound, while Ermengarde
started with a smothered exclamation, and recovered with a little
embarrassed laugh.
"How you startled me, Mademoiselle!" she said. "One hears nothing on
this soft sand."
Mademoiselle seemed neither to see nor to hear Mrs. Allonby. Looking
coldly at the embarrassed and apologetic Isidore, she said with a
kind of weary calm, "Maman is still waiting," turned and walked away
with her usual haughty bearing, and sank out of sight down the steep
path, pursued, after a moment of despairing gesture, in which his
hair suffered, and a wild exclamation of, "Mon Dieu! je l'avais
oubliée, cette vieille!" by M. Isidore, to the mingled amusement and
regret of Ermengarde, who justly divined that the charm of her
society had beguiled the unfortunate youth into forgetfulness of the
hour of some domestic duty, and that his reception at the hotel might
be stormy.
"He really is a very dear boy," she reflected, leaning back against
the gnarled pine-trunk, and watching the shadows fill hollow and
ravine with vague blueness and the upward slanting sunlight steep the
mountain peaks in crimson and rose, while the hushed sea grew bluer
than its own incredible blue, and the clear, deep sky took a violet
tinge. "How on earth did this boy come to be born in this small
hotel-keeper class? He has the bearing of a prince, the instincts of
a knight of romance, and the charm of a gallant child. And then to
be sulked at and called over the coals by a girl like Geneviève, and
at the beck and call of a woman like this Madame Bontemps!"
The situation was odious, impossible. She wished the poor boy were
her son. When youngish women--women under thirty--find themselves
wishing to be the mothers of full-grown and fascinating youths, they
should at once begin to think as hard as possible of something else.
Instead of this, Mrs. Allonby went on thinking how this young Isidore
might be her son. He could not be more than twenty-one, certainly;
it was hardly possible to be a mother at seven--but at seventeen?
Had she been born just ten years earlier, the thing would have been
not only possible, but probable. She might have been forcibly
married to some unpleasant elderly person at sixteen--some foreign
vicomte, who, after a few years, would have conveniently and politely
died, leaving her in the bloom of youth, free and rich, as they do in
French novels.
Then she might have met Arthur and married him, at eight or nine and
twenty--a much more appropriate age for Arthur's wife--that is, in
the event of Arthur having had the sense to be born on the date of
his actual birth, though, of course, a man so exasperating was
capable of anything. It would have been so interesting to marry a
French noble and have those few years' glimpse of foreign life. And,
in that case, the poor dear boy would certainly not have found
himself in this sordid hotel-keeping element; he might have been in
the diplomatic service; he was made for it. Why had her life not
been arranged on these lines? An elder brother would have been so
good for Charlie; she would have been less tempted to spoil the
child; and being nearer his age, and having already trained one
husband, she would have been more capable of understanding Arthur's
freaks and fancies; and some recent regrettable incidents might never
have occurred. But it is a crooked world.
Turning with a sigh, she found herself face to face with a figure
that had come down unseen in the shadows, and proved to be that of a
fellow-visitor. "Where is M. Isidore?" this lady asked abruptly in
the German manner.
Hardly had Ermengarde expressed polite ignorance on the subject, when
her musings were again interrupted by the appearance of Miss
Boundrish's parents, on their evening stroll, with the same query,
followed by expressions of disappointment at her inability to satisfy
their curiosity.
"But where can he be?" exclaimed Mrs. Boundrish with irritation, upon
which she was tartly advised to go back to the hotel and telephone
for the required information.
"But you must know which way he went?" Mrs. Boundrish persisted
obstinately.
"Indeed, I am neither as observant nor as curious as you suppose,"
she replied sweetly, vexed at having shown temper to a casual
travelling acquaintance--a mere "passing ship"--whereupon Mr. and
Mrs. Boundrish exchanged glances; while Ermengarde, incidentally
remarking upon the well-known chill of the sunset hour, rose and
walked in the opposite direction to her
inquisitors--homewards--remembering as she went that it was not the
first time that questions concerning the youth who might have been
her son, if she had been ten years older, had annoyed her. The
pettiness and impertinence of these underbred _tourists_--tourists
are never of the first person; people have owned to criminality, but
not to being tourists--the worst of these small hotels--people are so
mixed up and thrown together.
"Well, and if the poor boy is hard hit," she meditated, "a grand
passion is a necessary phase in a young man's development, and the
more hopeless the better. But the _bourgeois_ mind cannot grasp the
beauty of an ideal devotion, of the unselfish homage a gallant youth
gladly pays to one in every way hopelessly above him. A Boundrish
can vulgarize even that poetic passion. How very lucky that the
object of the poor lad's devotion happens to be a staid and sensible
matron old enough to give motherly advice and young enough to be
sympathetic," she reflected complacently, while she went slowly back
to the house and dressed for _table d'hôte_.
She was still pursuing this current of reflection while she went
downstairs in her simple semi-toilet, adorned no longer by tributary
flowers, and sank upon the least hard-hearted of the drawing-room
easy-chairs.
"Oh, I say, Mrs. Allonby!" cried Miss Boundrish, bursting into the
half-lighted, empty room with her usual grace and charm, and
punctuating her remarks with gurgles, "I'm jolly glad you're safe, so
far. That Bontemps girl is going for you the minute she sees you.
There has been the most awful row downstairs about you. Best
double-lock your door to-night, and be careful to eat nothing that
has not been tasted by somebody else."
"My _dear_ Miss Boundrish," she replied gently, observing that no one
else was in the room; "you are young, and your imagination is vivid;
_do_ you think it quite wise to mix yourself up with the people of
the house?"
But Dorris was not to be crushed; she only gurgled scornfully, and
would have made some pert retort, had not the thin man, who, after
all, had been lounging unseen in a shadowed corner, suddenly glided
to the piano, struck some full bass chords and begun to improvise in
a pleasant fashion he had at times: when the room was empty and he
felt moved to confide his thoughts and dreams to the spirit in the
instrument.
Then Ermengarde, ruffled and inwardly raging, but grateful for Mr.
Welbourne's paternal care, took a seat touching the piano, and was
silent; the man with the ascetic face came in and stood like a statue
behind the player; the room slowly filled; but Mr. Welbourne,
contrary to custom, played on, as if something within him must find
expression in music, even when a buzz of talk hummed through the room
and lights were turned up, until dinner.