At Turbia
"What Roman strength Turbia showed
In ruin by the mountain road.
How like a gem, beneath, the city
Of little Monaco, basking, glowed."
"Little Monaco, basking," and glowing, too, as the poet says, sits on
its rock that runs out into the sea, in a world of its own, cut off,
distinct, aloof from the every-day world, like some enchanted
princess, walled away from reality in a faery land by rose and fire.
The tiny city, that is also a principality, with a tiny harbour and
arsenal at the rock foot, and a castled palace where it joins the
mainland, is little more than a stone's throw--less than a long-range
rifle-shot--from Monte Carlo, but in atmosphere worlds away. It has
nothing in common with it, except the deep gorge stretching behind
both and backed by the craggy bastion of the Tête du Chien and the
dark rich sea, that breaks impartially upon the rocky base of each.
You may step into a tram-car at the Casino out of a crowd of painted
women, sporting men, Jews, semi-invalids, respectable tourists, and
disreputable sharpers from every capital in Europe, and from some in
Africa and America, and in five minutes find yourself in an
impossible fairy region of tranquil beauty--a town that is partly
Italian and partly dream-magic, scantily peopled by priests, nuns,
lay-sisters in various garb and wide-winged cap, orphanage children,
Monagask soldiers, a few peasant folk leaning from roof-gardens and
loggias in narrow, silent streets, and a sprinkling of humble
bourgeois in the recesses of small dark shops, selling humble
necessaries that nobody seems to want. Sometimes a procession of
richly vestured priests, and acolytes with candles and swinging
censers, slowly traverses the empty ways. The silence is so deep you
can almost hear it. Every vista is closed by pines, through the
deep-green boughs and ruddy stems of which glows that glorious
deep-blue sea under a sky of paler blue.
And what a road it is that leads to the still city, winding round and
up the steep rock, upon which she sits superb above the waters, a
rock hung with rich-hued tapestry of geranium, cactus, rose, and even
our old friend the homely blackberry, transformed by the wizardry of
the winter sun into splendour of crimson and golden arras. Very few
steps past the dazzling new cathedral, that rises snow white above
the quiet streets, lead you by a short turn into those strange
gardens, that are really enchanted woods of olive, palm, and pine,
with glorious flowers for undergrowth, cresting the sheer,
sea-fronting steep of rock, down the face of which flowers, gorgeous
creepers and hanging plants overflow to the white-combed breakers
beneath. Thence the Armida gardens and glaringly vulgar Monte Carlo
Casino gleam idealized in frames of olive foliage and pine-boughs,
and all the beauty of the vast sweep of coast in its amphitheatre of
circling mountains. Nightingale song throbs quick and rich above the
deep murmur of surging wave and sighing pine-top, always providing
you go at the right time; bees hum and the ring of a sail running
down a mast with the wash of steam vessels and motors is faintly
heard through the clear and sunny air. You may go back from this
fairy land to the racket and worldliness of Monte Carlo through the
strange vegetable diablerie and Arabian Nights' charm of the Casino
gardens and their surrounding and intermingling shops and
restaurants, and enjoy a still more striking contrast in the simple
act of taking a seat in what Germans call a go-chair--Fahr-stuhl.
This prosaic modern convenience is found in a small dark enclosure
that recalls a prison exercise yard, sunless, squalid. Take a seat
in it, and wait patiently until it occurs to the mountain gnome or
brownie in charge to work some spell of Nature magic, when the thing
rises like the Arabian carpet, and in two minutes all the blazing
diamonds, Parisian costumes, and blatant vulgarities centred round
the glaring Casino sink and fade into a few blurred scars on the
terraced hill-face below. Meanwhile the occupant of the cushioned
go-chair winds and soars between cultivated vine and lemon terraces,
scattered at intervals, with here and there a homestead and here and
there a pergola and flower-garden, but mainly through woods of
black-coned, light-foliaged Mediterranean pine and huge gnarled
olives, black-fruited, of inconceivable antiquity, their grey
columnar trunks writhen by secular, perhaps millennial, storms,
rising from rich red soil between pale grey boulders--soars and winds
up the vast sides of the mighty gorge, so thick and dark with olive
and pine that the sparsely scattered brightness of vine and lemon and
mimosa is lost among dense foliage; winds and soars till the woods
thin and orange, olive, and myrtles are left far below, the gardens
and vineyards grow poorer, the air keener, and the long, craggy bluff
ending in the Tête du Chien is scaled, and the go-chair stops finally
under the shadow of the stately Roman tower of Turbia, massive and
scarcely worn by time, but half ruined by the wanton violence of
eighteenth-century spoilers.
And ever as the crude luxury and meretricious ornament of the
pleasure-town sinks, the splendour of the sea-bounded prospect
spreads and grows, from the purple majesty of Bordighera headland,
running down from its Alpine background, to the promontory of Cap
d'Ail beyond the craggy bluff that shelters Monte Carlo; with many a
sheltered town and towered villa and headland stepping into
foam-fringed bays, enclosed in the grand sweep of mountain coast.
Just within the curve of the deep gorge under Turbia the
Irish-looking column of Les Moulins stands up clear and gaunt far
below, on the level-topped rock fringed with wood; Monaco shows
bright and distinct on the broad plain of vivid blue sea, and, the
centre of all, softened and lessened by distance, the white marble
domes of the Casino are traced upon the liquid sapphire, vulgar no
more, but lovely as if seen through
"Magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn."
Only nothing is forlorn in this land of light and colour; all is gay,
friendly, full of laughter and life.
Yet on a certain radiant forenoon the Fahr-stuhl, or rope-railway,
lifted through all this wild poetic beauty a healthy, full-blooded
young Englishman, bright-eyed and well-groomed, blind to all.
He had wandered, aimless and unseeing, through the contrasted charm
and picturesque strength of Monaco, strolled by the tiny harbour, up
the hill, through the weird suggestion of writhen bone-like
cactus-trees and richness of palm and aloe, caroub and rose and
glowing flower-bed, past Casino and hotel, still unseeing, his
features, made for facile laughter and easy geniality, lined by care
and drawn into heavy frowns. From the gardens of Monaco he had
looked long and wistfully into the sea breaking so softly at the rock
foot, and once again by the harbour, with a sort of irresolute
longing that came to nothing. In the funicular he had read and
re-read letters, and made calculations with pencilled figures, and
then with weary impatience torn them up and scattered them where the
line ran steep and sheer above the gorge.
And when he stepped out upon the craggy mountain rim at Turbia, his
listless feet took him to the plaster hotel tracing its mean outlines
upon the sky, beside the majesty of the fine tower that marks Cæsar's
subjection of conquered Liguria--subject to so many masters since--to
Rome.
Perhaps he only went that way because the other occupants of the
go-chair, the lady with blackened eyes and red curls pinned outside
her hat-brim, the gentleman with the hooked nose, shiny hair, and
vast white waistcoat, the grave family party scattering exclamations
of _Wunderschön_, _Prachtvoll_, _Echt malerisch_, on the sunny air,
the mature maidens, absorbed in Baedekers, and lordly, tweed-clad
Britons, conversing in grunts, went straight from the rich flesh-pots
of Monte Carlo to the oil and wine of a mean restaurant perched on
the stately crag-wall, making the centre view point for scores of
miles round.
For when he found himself in the grounds looking down upon the vast
splendour of mountain and sea, he seemed to recollect himself, turned
and went through the village that lies modestly behind the Roman
tower, over cobbled paths, under Roman archways, through narrow
streets, picturesque with loggia and outside stair and dark-arched
entrance, through wide, pleasant spaces planted with trees and
scattered with long blocks of limestone, used as seats, and polished
to marble by the friction of generations; here meeting a slow-paced
pack-mule, peasant-led; here a woman, wearing a huge and heavy basket
on her head, like a crown; and here a group of soldiers, in baggy
trousers of stained red and worn tunic of soiled blue, with a general
air of having slept, unwashed, for weeks in uniform. And west of the
ancient village the craggy crest of the Tête du Chien, the fortress
of to-day, and east and south sea and mountain, and everywhere garden
growth, foliage, and scented blossom, and the beauty of children at
play and young women and handsome youths at work.
For all this the traveller, looking round and searching in the rich
vocabulary of British youth for a term at once fit and comprehensive,
found the choice phrase, "Rotten hole, this."
He stopped at a corner house abutting on a tree-shadowed square, with
a loggia ending in a sort of roof-garden; and, stumbling through a
dark archway, and falling over several garden and household tools on
to a steep stairway, drew further upon his vocabulary for the
epithet, "Beastly rotten hole." By this time the rumble tumble of
his wild scramble up the stairs had brought out a stalwart form, a
few rays of light and words of welcome, from the door of a room
opening on the loggia.
"Here at last, young un? How many more of you? Row enough for ten."
It was a shaggy-bearded, brown-faced man, with deep-set eyes of
piercing lustre and a forehead like a cliff-wall, roughly dressed,
but clean-looking as an Englishman, though his name ended in ski; he
had risen from a table covered with papers of various script,
newspaper cuttings and journals in many tongues, and furnished with a
type-writing machine. A bed, a chest of drawers topped by a milk-jug
in a slop-basin, a small, square looking-glass, a clothes-press, two
chairs, an easel, a bag of golf-clubs, some walking-sticks and
mineral-water bottles, several pairs of boots, a wood basket and
books of all sizes, falling out of packing-cases and strewn over bed,
chairs, floor and every available ledge, completed the furniture of a
fair-sized sunny room with an open hearth, on which some wood ashes
gave token of a former fire.
"Snug," the host said, indicating the surroundings with a sweep of
the hand, and tipping a pile of books off a chair.
"Topping," replied the guest, stepping gingerly through the
archipelago of books, and surveying the scene with ill-dissembled
disgust.
"You seem jolly chippy this morning. What's the row?" continued the
host, handing a cigarette-box.
"Nothing much. Only stone-broke."
"What, again? I say, young un, you'll do this once too often."
"I jolly well have."
"Oh, come along and have some lunch. Can you do with native fare? I
feed at the _osteria_ over there, and hear all the gossip of the
place. Olives, cheese, omelettes, sardines, salad, coffee, _vin du
pays_."
"Thanks. I bar the vinegar."
The enjoyment of this simple menu appeared to lighten the young man's
cheer considerably. His appetite, for a person who had been
contemplating a violent exit from a world of care at intervals all
the forenoon, was not bad--a circumstance not unobserved by his host.
The table talk was impersonal and even lighter than the fare. An
anecdote spiced with dry humour drew from the stony-broke a
light-hearted, boyish laugh, the gay ring of which attracted the
attention and sympathetic smiles of some workmen and peasants.
"He has a light heart, that one," they told each other in their
patois, as if the possession of a light heart were guarantee of all
that is admirable in man.
"Didn't you try ranching once?" the light-hearted one suddenly asked
the man of piercing gaze.
"I did. Once."
"Any money in ranching?"
"Best part of mine left in it."
"What _has_ money in it? That's what I want to know?"
"What is that to you? You don't want money."
"Oh, don't I just! When I tell you I'm stone-broke."
"With you it's chronic. No, you don't want money. What you want is
sense."
"Anything else?"
"Just a trifle of self-control, a smattering of principle,
manliness--h'm--_honour_!"
"Thanks, awfully. Have one of these?" His face crimsoned, darkened,
and set in a sullen ferocity. The elder man smiled behind his beard,
glad to have touched some harder stuff under the facile sweetness.
"Yes, young one, that's the right word," he repeated.
The boy got up, very pale, thanked him for the luncheon, and said
that he had to go. The man rose, too, put some silver on the table,
and followed him into the sunny street. There they walked silently
side by side till they reached the outskirts of the village, behind
the Roman tower, where the turf was broken by grey boulders and
dotted with thorn and bramble-bushes, and the air was sharp even in
the brilliant sun.
"Very English," the elder man said, pointing to the turf; but the
young one was silent still, and his friend saw that he was fighting
to keep back tears.
"Just look at those soldiers," he added, when their road crossed
another, quite open, but labelled _défense militaire_, where some men
in shabby uniforms and dented _képis_ were strolling. "Did they come
out of a second-hand clothes shop?"
"They don't walk; they shamble," the young man replied, roused to
look at them with a critical eye, and thinking of the smart,
well-set-up fellows under his own command with a home-sick pang.
"What should you give yours for that, eh?"
"It isn't so much your English, as your slang, that I wonder at, de
Konski. Where on earth did you get it?" the young man asked.
"In England probably. Yes, I have spent some time in England. Do
you know, Paul, I used to see a good deal of your mother at one time,
and I have never lost touch with her."
"Ah, _she_ didn't teach you slang," he reflected, wondering if the
man had been an old flame of his mother's. That he was for some good
reason passing under an assumed name he knew; that he was on intimate
terms with people of his acquaintance, and conversant with all his
family affairs, he was well aware, else he knew only that the man had
befriended and helped him as a friend of his cousin's.
"And I know more about her now than you do, perhaps, for I know what
is breaking her heart," the elder man added.
"Oh, hearts don't break so easily. But I know what will cut her up
awfully when she hears it," the youth said, jamming his hat sullenly
over his eyes. "But--well, my sisters will look after her. They'll
make her happy. As for me--well, it must be the ranks, or the
Colonies--or the first opportunity of being washed overboard--taken
with cramp, swimming. No other way. I did think of the sea--or a
shot--this morning. But--she mustn't think it's on purpose. She----"
"Come, come," remonstrated the elder man, laying a hand on his
shoulder. "Let's hear all about it. It's a rare thing that is past
mending."
"No mending for me. Played out, and done for at last. What you--you
said--though you were a beast to say it--is true. Good for
nothing--best out of the way."
On this road, that was sheltered from the sharp breeze by the cliff,
it was hot. A glimpse of snow-peak up a gorge far inland was
refreshing, and yonder, on the left across a wooded ravine, came the
blue glow of the sea from the other side by unseen Villafranca behind
the hill, whence warships were steaming slowly.
The elder man sat down on a rock by the road, and observed all this
beauty of sunny sea and green mountain slope and far-vistaed gorge.
The other saw nothing. He stood with his face turned from his
companion, who observed a slight quiver in the square shoulder
towards him; then the young man suddenly flung himself face downwards
on the grassy bank by his side, while the bearded man lit a pipe and
smoked thoughtfully for some seconds, till the faint convulsive
motion of the shoulders had stopped.
"What is the net amount this time?" he asked then of the recumbent
figure, which turned slowly on its back and sat up, staring vacantly
out into the purple sea-spaces.
"It's the Spider," he said at last, "and, you see, it's been piled up
gradually--heaven knows how--I hadn't a notion. He's been
accommodating me from time to time with a few louis, and now he has
stuck on his beastly interest--made it run into four figures, and
flung it at me, yesterday. And the beast won't wait for my infernal
luck to change, as of course it must before long. Threatens to ask
the chief to stop it out of my pay."
"And what have you to meet this with?" asked the bearded man, taking
and reading the figures on the paper handed to him.
The young man drew a few francs from his pocket. "These, and a
longish score at the hotel, where they are beginning to dun me.
Watch gone, everything, but a pair of gold sleeve-links. Two horses
at home, and a few sticks in barracks, and several bills to pay. So
the game's played out."
"It looks dark," the Pole acknowledged, "but there may be a gleam
somewhere."
"I've been so unlucky," the young man sighed--"everything against me."
"You've had exactly the luck you deserve in this matter, and much
better than you deserve in others."
"Oh, hit a man when he is down! But I shouldn't have gone to the
dogs if _she'd_ have stuck to me."
"What girl with any self-respect could stick to you in the company
you kept?"
"If you mean that poor woman--a good-hearted creature and more sinned
against than sinning--what harm was there in helping her out of a
tight place?"
"A good many tight places, from the time you've been at it, I should
say. While your mother was pinching and denying herself, and your
sisters were deprived of all society and every pleasure natural to
their age and station. While your cousin was out in the world,
working for daily bread----"
"Whose fault but her own? My mother's house always was and is open
to her. My mother has begged and implored her to stay; it is the
greatest grief to her to lose her."
"Your cousin is not the kind of woman to add to the burdens of those
dear to her. Do you know that she supplies your sisters with
typewriting work?"
"My sisters? Typewriting? What on earth for?"
"To help keep the house over your mother's head. People don't go on
selling stock without lessening their income."
"Selling stock?"
"How do you suppose widows raise money without selling stock, or
land, or whatever they happen to possess?"
"But I thought--I thought--her money was safely tied up."
"There are such things as releases--when the beneficiaries are of
age----"
"Then that is what Agatha meant. She was bound not to let it out;
she only hinted. I wish I had blown my brains out this morning."
"You'd never have felt the loss."
"I'm not the first man driven to the dogs by a woman's falseness, and
I shan't be the last. They're all alike--cold, and hard, and
unforgiving, making no allowance for a man's temptations, which they
can't understand. Heaven defend us all from good women, de Konski."
"The good woman to whom I suppose you allude, your cousin, has been a
great blessing to me."
"Oh, has she? And how?"
"In many ways. Partly by the stimulus of a brave and beautiful
nature, purified by suffering, and unselfish to the core. In a more
material sense, as a most capable and useful and discreet secretary."
"Secretary? Private secretary? To you--to a man?"
"Certainly. The calling is recognized and honourable. There are
many more arduous and less pleasant ways of earning a competence--for
women. Still, I shall be glad for her sake when the day comes, as it
surely will, for me to lose my valuable secretary by a suitable
marriage, though I can't help being a little grateful to you for
making it necessary for her to work."
"I? When I've been ready to marry her, and would have asked her any
time this two years, but for her everlasting snubbing and coldness?"
"Oh, I thought you said she was false."
"When I implored her not to leave my mother----"
"Whose bread you were taking to help disreputable females out of
tight places."
"By Heaven, de Konski, you hit hard! Of course I knew that my cousin
was in some way working for pay, but somehow I didn't realize----
Oh, Lord, a private secretary! Mixed up in political intrigues! A
paid secretary!"
"Who is to defend good women from dissipated boys? Yes, that sweet
and noble lady's fate is hard indeed. And the boy's mother! If good
women are hard, some of them have a pretty hard time of it."
"Well, they'll soon be shut of me, and the sooner the better. As for
that other poor woman, she knows how to stand by a fellow when he's
knocked out of time. She--she--well, never mind about her----"
"Is she going to help you out of a tight place?"
"She would. She'd raise half for six months and the whole for three,
at five per cent."
"Does she think you would accept?"
"Do you?" he returned fiercely, giving de Konski's searching look
steadily back. "Am I a cur?"
The bearded face softened in a smile that was almost tender. "Poor
chap!" he said, laying a hand on his shoulder, and looking with
unseeing eyes across the gorge and away over the sea to the faint
mountain chain rising dim and dreamlike on the horizon.
"_I_ was in a tight place once," said the Anarchist presently. "I
had been playing the fool rather more than most young asses do. So I
went straight to my chief and made a clean breast of it----"
"You were a soldier? I always thought so."
"And he put me on honour never to touch a card again--and helped
and--saved me."
"Mine breaks a chap," the boy said wearily. "Chauffeurs get good
pay, they say. I might be that, mightn't I?"
"What you have to do now is to raise this money, cut the whole thing,
before it comes to your chief's ears, and go straight. He won't
stand this kind of thing. I've heard him say it's incurable. But
nothing is--except cruelty, perhaps. Yes; this money must be raised
at once."
"But how?" the boy asked, looking up with wondering eyes and a gleam
of incredulous hope.
De Konski was silent, smoking steadily with long, even puffs, and
staring with close-drawn brows at the sea, over which the black hulls
of battle-ships were now ranged in lines and squadrons half-hidden by
the smoke of their guns, beginning to boom in the opening thunders of
sham fight.
"But how?" the lad repeated, impatiently scanning the thoughtful
face, that seemed to seek solution of the problem from those
smoke-hidden monsters upon the velvety blue.
The firing was too fierce and incessant for any speech to be audible
for some seconds; then it suddenly stopped, and de Konski turned and
was about to reply, when his attention was arrested by the sound of a
high treble voice coming round the bend of the rock-strewn bank on
which they were sitting, screened from the sight of those approaching
from Turbia. Many had come thence and passed in the last half-hour
on their way to see the review off Villafranca.
"It's notorious," the high voice proclaimed. "She tried to pass as
the wife of _the_ Allonby, the 'Storm and Stress' man, and took
everybody in till I asked her straight out one day, and caught her on
the hop. She was so taken aback that she let out she was not his
wife at all--only a connexion by marriage. And I don't believe she's
even that, or Mrs. Allonby at all, or Mrs. Anybody. Miss
Nobody-in-particular, _I_ should say. They ought to be more careful
who they take in at these small hotels. Fast? _Rather_. A regular
Monty harpy; lives on the tables, they say. That poor young Isidore
is infatuated--absolutely. It's the talk of the hotel. She scarcely
lets him out of her sight. One is always stumbling upon the
pair--looking unutterable things at each other. Quite unpleasant for
us. Pretty? That sort always are. But as for manners, and good
breeding--well, anything goes down with foreigners and silly old owls
like Welbourne. You know she has broken off Isidore's engagement."
The fair being who originated these remarks, having her face slightly
turned to her companion, had not observed the presence of the two men
screened by the bend of the bank on which they sat. Nor would the
younger man have given a thought to these two ladies, but for the
effect they produced upon his companion, who started and listened
with blazing eyes and tense interest to every word that rang out on
the still air. Not content with hearing what was said in passing, he
rose, as if drawn by the voice, and followed the quick English steps,
quickly outpacing them. Then, planting himself in front of the two
ladies and raising his broad felt hat, he brought them to a
standstill.
"I have heard," he said, addressing the speaker in slow, distinct
French, "every word in the clear and accurate voice of Madame, and
venture to suggest that it is a perilous thing to speak English in
this country, unless you wish to be heard, English being now so
generally understood, even when not spoken."
"Much obliged," returned Dorris sharply, meaning to pass on; "but
it's nothing to me whether people hear what I say or not."
"Pardon me," he replied, barring her progress. "It may be much to
you; it is a serious matter in this country to speak slander in
public; it may have very grave consequences for you."
"Nonsense; I don't understand French--je ne comprends pas," she
muttered hastily and brokenly, looking round as if for protection.
Then, perceiving the younger man, "Mr. Paul," she cried piteously,
"Mr. Paul."
"That is my name," he admitted, rising and raising his hat, but not
approaching.
"Mr. Paul fully agrees with me upon the danger of speaking slanderous
things in public," said the Pole coolly, in English.
"It's no slander," she protested; "let me go. We were going to see
the review."
"Let us pass on; you have no right to stop people you don't know,"
shouted the other lady in a shaky voice.
"I happen to know the lady with whose name you were taking such
unwarrantable liberties," continued the Pole, keeping his blazing
eyes fixed on poor Dorris's terrified face. "She is incapable of any
such conduct as you attribute to her. Once more let me warn you that
you are in a country in which strange things happen; in which walls
have eyes and trees ears; in which people sometimes take the law into
their own hands with impunity."
"Mr. Paul," cried Dorris once more, with supplicating hands, "oh, Mr.
Paul!"
"Awfully sorry," he replied, "but it's true. You have to jolly well
mind what you say about people in this country."
"Good gracious! In what country?" cried the distressed damsel. "I
thought we were---- Oh, where on earth are we, Emily?"
"Oh, I don't know, dear; let us go home. Never mind the
review--never mind anything--only let us go home."
"You are practically, though not politically, in Italy, the land of
hired avengers. But I will detain you no longer, ladies. I have
sufficiently warned you of the peril in which slander places people,"
said the Pole, politely stepping aside with the ceremonious bow
seldom seen this side the Channel. Then he resumed his seat on the
rock, while Dorris and her friend, frightened out of their wits, fled
without any ceremony at all at the top of their speed along the white
road till a bend hid them from sight.
"I say, de Konski, you did give that girl beans. So you know Mrs.
Allonby?" asked the young man when they were gone. "Then you must
know the Johnnie they are making such a row about--the 'Storm and
Stress' chap--eh?"
"Yes," the Pole replied absently, his fury not yet appeased. "I know
them both--at least, I used to--especially him--rather well."
"Well! You did land that poor girl a nasty one. And, I say, you
_can_ speak English. You must have English blood in you somehow."
"Ah, yes! My--mother was English."
"Well, you never seemed like a foreigner to me. That's why I took to
you. Why, you must have served under our colours!"
"Why not? But about this fix of yours?"
"Well, what I thought when I came this morning was, that a man like
you, on secret service of some kind, knowing the ropes of most
things, and speaking every known lingo, might be able to get at this
beast, Mosson, and square him. Fake up some rot, as you did to those
poor women. Bluff."
"My dear boy, there's only one way of squaring the Spider, and that
is by paying him in full. Yes, I was hard on that poor fool of a
girl. But a tongue like that! And think of the other, the slandered
woman. By George! I could hardly keep my hands off the little liar.
But the Spider. He's quite another matter. What the Spider doesn't
know of the seamy side of life is not knowable. The only argument
with him is hard cash down on the nail."
"But how to get it?" sighed the boy once more. And even as he sighed
the fury of the Pole and the terror of the two women suddenly came
before his mind in such an absurd light that he burst into a roar of
light-hearted laughter. "My word! but you made that poor girl sit
up," he shouted. "You couldn't have gone for her worse if the other
woman had been your sister or mother."