The Sapphire Necklace
The path immediately behind Les Oliviers, worn by the steps of many
generations of mules and men, was steep and rugged, here and there
sinking deeply and filled in with broken fragments and buttressed
with rock slabs. A little further on the ridge ran up in an abrupt
narrow steep; a clump of pines on its summit stood out clear and
glowing upon the sky, with a straw-roofed hut under the dark boughs.
Ermengarde loved that little clump of pine-trees soaring up above the
house and grounds, whether, as now, in the full glow of forenoon, or
in still, golden afternoons, or flushed with sunset upon a crimson
and amber sky, or, later still, traced on the pale clear green of
after-glow, or black against a blue-black vault pierced with shining
stars. She had often and vainly tried to draw it; but even the thin
man had failed to catch its charm; much paper had been spoiled and
colour wasted in the attempt. When you gained that abrupt eminence
you seemed to have reached the top of the world, which unrolled
itself beneath, and spread blue and far to the unseen African shore;
but when you turned from the sea, and saw the path winding higher
along the wooded brink to mountain summits endlessly unfolding, you
knew that you were still very far from the top.
The warm bright air was spiced with aromatic scents. Myrtle and
lavender, cistus and juniper, rosemary, thyme, and pine, clothed and
climbed every cliff and steep down to the torrent beds that ran on
each side the ridge, and sprang from every crack and crevice in rock
and cliff. Higher still, the ridge broadened into a pine-wood, and
narrowed abruptly upon its steep wooded sides, then widened again
into a grassy plateau, where the columnar trunks of hoary olives
showed dim and solemn through shadows of drooping foliage shot with
subdued, changing colour.
Where the pine-wood ended and the olive-grove began the ridge-side
fell more gently, laying a slope of myrtle and rosemary open to the
full south sun. Here Ermengarde sat, the mysterious murmur of
pine-woods on one hand, the solemn stillness and blue-grey haze of
olives on the other. The sunny bank was grey with massed rosemary
blossom, into which countless bees plunged and buzzed drowsily in the
warmth. Far below, forest and olive-terrace sank into purple bloom
of shadow; the distance was closed by bare mountain peaks rolling up
in great billows of stone above wooded slopes, and towered villages
white in sunlight.
All this solemn beauty rebuked her and made her ashamed. She knew
that she had forgotten the message and missed the healing of the
mountains. She had played the fool and made herself a mark for
fool's gossip. Oh, how small and cheap she felt, and how very sick
of herself and her petty follies!
Such feelings are not at all comfortable; it was a relief to forget
them in indignation at the indignity of being turned out of a hotel.
How had the woman dared? Was she, Ermengarde Allonby, to submit to
the creature's impertinence, to be driven away by the insolence of an
unmannerly Frenchwoman? Never, though at first she had intended to
go straight home.
Turned out of a hotel? Well, after all, _à qui la perte_? Les
Oliviers was not the only house of entertainment on the Riviera. It
would be something to escape from the eternal cackle of the
Boundrish; there could not possibly be two Boundrishes along the
Azure Shore. It was an opportunity to drop the undesirable
friendship with the woman of mystery. Somehow, the prospect of
dropping this friendship was not wholly agreeable. There was a
dreadful fascination about that young woman, whose good points were
undeniable. Besides, Ermengarde was so sorry for her, and so ready
to do her any service short of selling doubtfully acquired jewellery
for her. Then there was the moral regeneration of this frail sister
to be considered. That certainly had not as yet made great progress;
indeed, some faint hesitation as to her own power of effecting it was
beginning to creep into Ermengarde's mind. She realized that she was
herself hardly a saint. After all, there is not so much superfluous
virtue floating loose in the world that people can afford to share
any with erring brothers and sisters. Perhaps her own lamp wanted a
little trimming and replenishing.
It would be lonely work to go into a strange hotel, and probably more
expensive than staying here. No; she must go home--home to fogs and
mud and east winds; home to a husband who, besides not being there,
never had, and never would, care for her; who had been capable of
becoming suddenly famous by writing the most powerful and remarkable
novel of the last twenty years, and never telling her a word about it.
She had no home to go to; she had been turned out of a third-rate
hotel. So many sorrows were out of proportion to her demerits; she
was very, very sorry for herself. Warm sunshine drew out the
fragrance of rosemary and myrtle; the still air was drowsy with the
buzzing of innumerable bees; mountain peaks nodded, shadowy dells and
wooded slopes heaved gently like summer waves; the humming deepened
to a sea-surge, to organ-booming, and now Ermengarde sank back
against a springy cushion of grey-white heather, her head pillowed on
rosemary-bloom, fast asleep.
The bees went on humming in the rosemary, droning all sorts of
suggestions into her ear. Now it was the hum of a schoolroom about a
little curly-headed boy, with his fingers in his ears, his elbows on
a desk, and his brows knitted over a dog's-eared book not unstained
by tears. "_Musa_--a song, _Musæ_--of a song," he was drearily
droning over and over again. Then it was an interminable clergyman
in a lofty pulpit upon the crags, discoursing wearily of the sins of
the woman of mystery and the follies of Ermengarde, for which there
seemed to be no remedy. The clergyman was curiously like the thin
man, and was beginning to be very wearisome on the indiscretions of
the young Isidore, when he suddenly changed to Arthur, standing on
the drawing-room hearthrug at home, and holding forth on the same
topics with the name and identity of Ivor Paul confused with those of
M. Isidore.
Arthur's voice was unmistakable; it was rather deep, and liable to
become monotonous, especially when he discoursed upon excesses in
hats and gowns, of the desirability of keeping accurate accounts, of
never exceeding one's allowance or letting bills run on, of the
excellent household management of his mother, and inferior
capabilities of ladies of the present generation. The voice became
clearer and more resonant, the dreamer grew conscious of
rosemary-scent and sunshine, the grey columns of the olive-grove swam
out of a haze of sunshot foliage, and became distinct above patches
of golden light on flowery grass. Arthur's voice rumbled away in
confused murmurs; there was a faint sound of skirts brushing herbage
and a woman's lighter voice; finally, the well-known figures of the
woman of mystery and the Anarchist were seen upon the path under the
olives, leading away from the rosemary bank, and Ermengarde knew that
she had been dozing, and was now wide awake again.
Her heart was beating hard; the dream of Arthur had been so vivid.
She could not realize that it had only been a dream; it was as if he
had actually been standing here on the thin grass under the pendent
olive-branches in the tender shadowy light. The familiar voice was
still in her ears, stirring all sorts of buried memories and
slumbering feelings. Oh, why was he not with her? How was it that,
with all the leisure and independence this great success must mean,
he could not leave that miserable, so-called business of his, and
come and take care of her, and rescue her from the insults of
hotel-keepers and the persecutions of Anarchists? It was not as if
he were obliged to stay in London. She was so lonely, so unfriended,
so desperately home-sick. Yes, home-sick; that was the name of this
lonely, gnawing heart-pang that grew worse from day to day.
The woman of mystery and her cavalier struck into a sloping path
immediately in front of her, leading to the first terrace beneath the
mule-path, where they were screened from the sight of people passing
on the ridge, but not from the eyes of Ermengarde, whose
reclining-place was behind a myrtle, through the stems of which she
saw without being seen. The olives on this first terrace were
gnarled and hoary, like those bordering the mule-path; the sunshot,
lavender mist of their drooping boughs gave the same air of mystery
and magic. The two figures actually standing on the grass, vivid
with anemone and dark with violet, seemed less real than those of her
dream.
She was too little interested to reflect that they were unaware of
her presence, and might not wish to be seen. They kept close to the
turfed wall behind them, and were screened by the massive olive-trunk
in front, but only the thin myrtle-boughs came between her drowsy
eyes and a full side-view of them. But they were too far off for
anything more than confused murmurs of their conversation to reach
her. It suddenly struck her that Agatha might be the Anarchist's
wife, or even daughter, though she was undoubtedly English. An
English wife might be very useful in all these "treasons, stratagems,
and spoils" of his, though what but sudden and probably temporary
insanity could have induced any Christian female to marry that hairy,
unwashed Orson of a man was unimaginable to any sane observer.
Two red admirals fluttered past, one over the other, in pure joy of
life; a lizard darted across the path at her feet. She saw the rosy
bloom of a peach-tree far down on the last olive-terrace, and then
became aware that the woman of mystery was agitated and the Anarchist
silent and interested. There followed a brief bass murmur, and then
something suddenly flashed in the sunlight, making Ermengarde's heart
jump into her mouth.
But it was not a dagger, or any other murderous implement, she
observed, after winking away the first dazzle; only the quivering
brilliance of diamonds and sapphires glancing and dancing in Agatha's
hands. It was, in fact, the necklace shown to her in the firelight
on that wet afternoon, the improvised history of which had fallen on
such sceptical ears--the necklace of doubtful origin but undoubted
value that this mysterious and secretive young woman had asked her to
sell for her. Why had she not asked the Anarchist in the first
place, she wondered, or could he be the unlawful acquirer of that
shining treasure? Had he suggested or commanded the making a
cat's-paw of her? But, from the way in which he took and looked at
the jewels, it seemed that they were new to him. He held them in
this light and that, pushing the spectacles up to his forehead to
examine them more closely, weighing them thoughtfully in his hand,
and exchanging remarks upon them with Agatha, who presently took the
necklace back, and held it this way and that, as if discussing its
value. Finally, she clasped it round her neck over her white blouse,
as she had done by the fire that day, with the same air of using
herself to show off the jewels, and looked absently across the blue
bloom of the ravine to the high mountains, while the Anarchist,
thoughtfully stroking his beard, and with his goggles pushed up under
his hat-brim, contemplated the necklace gem by gem, but not the
wearer, evidently appraising the beauty and value of each sparkling
drop and pendant as it flashed and quivered in the sun.
Then he turned and paced the grassy terrace, while Agatha took off
the necklace and laid all the shining splendour carefully in its
velvet bed, and again looked absently and sadly away across the blue
bloom of distance to the mountain peaks. Then the Anarchist came
back, said a few words, took the morocco case, and put it away in an
inner breast-pocket, at the same time handing her a paper, which she
read with interest and anxiety, and returned to him with a sigh and a
look of relief. He held her hand a moment, then, saying something
that made her turn her head away to hide tears, that Ermengarde saw
sparkling in the sunshine, he sprang up the turf-banked terrace where
it was a little broken, walked across the grass under the olives, and
disappeared on the other side, where a steep path led by the
olive-dresser's cottage and wound down the precipitous ridge-side to
the high-road by the torrent-bed.
He could not have gone far down the steep, when he was seen emerging
upon the olive-shadowed plateau once more, and hastily stepping back
across it and down the bank to the woman of mystery, who was
evidently more surprised than pleased at this return. Saying
something quickly, he took out the morocco case, and, after some
reluctance and apparent objection on her part, placed it in her
hands, pointed, to Ermengarde's horror, towards her hiding-place,
again climbed the terrace bank, hurried across the path, and vanished
down the steep; while Agatha, after a short pause, as of indecision,
suddenly seemed to become resolute, put the case in her pocket,
turned and dashed quickly, almost at a run, straight along the
terrace towards Ermengarde, who gave herself up for lost.
But before she could collect her senses sufficiently to decide
whether to lie back and pretend to be asleep or get up and seem to be
just emerging from the wood behind her, Agatha had flashed by like a
whirlwind, her skirts brushing Ermengarde's feet, looking straight
ahead and in too great a hurry to see what lay on the rosemary-bank
behind the myrtle.
Then Ermengarde, petrified with amazement, got up and went back to
the path over the ridge, remembering that the way taken by the woman
of mystery through the wood was shorter than the mule-track along the
ridge, so that there was no fear, unless she went at a much greater
rate than Agatha, of overtaking her and leading her to suppose that
she had been in the olive-garden during the interview.
She therefore walked slowly back along the mule-path, meditating upon
the mysterious and nefarious proceedings of her young friend, and
alternately blaming herself for watching the interview, and wondering
what it meant, and congratulating herself on having accidentally been
the witness of what justified her suspicions about that necklace, and
reached the gate of the hotel just in time to see that same Agatha
and Mr. Mosson coming out from a path on the wooded convent steep in
earnest colloquy.
There was no reason why two of the hotel visitors should or should
not be walking in the monastery grounds at the same time; but, as the
descent by the hotel gate was very abrupt and much tangled by
interlacing roots of pine-trees, there was every reason why Mr.
Mosson, even if, instead of being a benefactor to his species, he had
been a misanthrope (and from the grim set of his jaw and hard eyes,
and thin, tight-drawn mouth, Ermengarde was inclined to think him
that), should hand Miss Somers carefully over the snaky roots and
crumbling ledges, as he did with the greatest politeness and
deference, standing aside with raised hat to let her pass into the
grounds before him, and on perceiving Ermengarde's approach from the
opposite direction, extending the same courtesy to her. And yet the
juxtaposition of these two seemed to confirm her suspicions
concerning Agatha and stamp her with double intrigue. Was Mr. Mosson
a suppositious uncle of Agatha's?--an aunt he clearly could not
be--so she debated, walking by necessity at this suspicious young
woman's side through the garden paths.
"Have you been up the ridge?" asked Agatha, with cheeks flushed and
eyes over bright.
"I came back through the olives, so pleasant and peaceful," replied
Ermengarde, observing a tremor in her companion's voice, and
wondering what had been the last experience of the necklace. "And
you?"
"I have been up by the monastery," she said. "Bordighera is very
beautiful to-day: an indescribable peacock blue bloom upon it."
"Velvety, and yet with the clear brilliance of a jewel," Ermengarde
commented pensively. "By the way, Miss Somers," as if struck by a
sudden thought, "_did_ you ever succeed in selling that lovely
necklace of yours?"
"Oh yes. I disposed of it quite satisfactorily," she returned in the
half-bored way in which people refer to things long over and done
with. "It cost me a pang."
"I wonder what it cost _him_?" Ermengarde mused, as they were merged
in a stream of sun-burnt, sun-hatted people flocking in to luncheon
in the cool shadow of the house.
For all his reputed benevolence and ascetic cast of face there was a
curious feline quality in Mr. Mosson, Ermengarde observed. He sat at
his solitary table in a corner, quietly intent on what was put before
him, yet all the time stealthily watching people from under drooped
eyelids, with an occasional hungry flash in his eyes when suddenly
bent upon some individual, as, for instance, to-day upon Agatha, and
slightly crouching in his chair like some great creature of the cat
tribe, gathering itself together to spring on its prey.
So he might look at and spring upon her, she reflected with a shiver,
if she put herself within reach of that quick, aggressive paw (now
peeling oranges with slow and stealthy ferocity, as if they were
alive and felt being skinned so closely), and so he might devour her,
crunching her audibly, bones and all, as he crunched the crisp
_zwieback_ that he slowly munched from time to time to fill in the
pauses between courses. Was Agatha being slowly crunched and ground
to powder by those cruel jaws? or was she on the tiger-man's side, a
tool or decoy to bring his prey within range?
It was embarrassing to the last degree, and yet it was a sort of
comfort, to find that Agatha was not only going down into
Mentone--"down below," as it was pleasantly termed on the ridge--but
was bent on accompanying her in her quest for fresh quarters.
Two people, the woman of mystery truly said, were better than one;
they presented a more imposing front to the enemy--that is, the
hotel-keeper--and in case of any bluffing or attempt at imposition,
offered a double supply of the courage necessary to unmask and combat
his stratagems of war.
"But why leave Les Oliviers?" she questioned, as they stepped down
the ravine side together. "Surely there could be nothing more
charming, or half as healthy, down below?"
To this Mrs. Allonby began with haughty reticence, to the effect that
one had excellent reasons not always possible or desirable to
explain, and ended, before they reached the town, by confiding to her
that she had been turned out of Les Oliviers, the manner of which
turning out she related not without humour, the absurd side of the
catastrophe having suddenly presented itself to her imagination. The
whole episode now showed itself in the light of an excellent joke and
capital opportunity of getting a change. Les Oliviers was
undoubtedly dull, euphemistically, restful. It had been remarked by
foreign visitors that none but English could put up with the dulness
of that high-placed, solitary house.
The woman of mystery observed that the onslaught of Madame Bontemps
was sudden and apparently unprovoked, and Ermengarde returned that it
was absolutely unprovoked; she had not so much as seen either mother
or daughter for a couple of days at least, so that an opportunity of
provocation had not been forthcoming even.
"I was out nearly all day yesterday," she said, "and went straight to
my room when I came in at night, and I was down late this morning,
and breakfasted alone in the corner looking down the gorge, and never
moved till I went in. I couldn't move, in fact, because my Italian
lesson came immediately afterwards."
"Oh, your Italian lesson," said Agatha, with a look of enlightenment.
"Ah! and you found Mlle. Bontemps in the office? I see."
Having found the key to the mystery, she suddenly became so
absent-minded as not to hear the question, "What do you see?" Then
she began to warn Mrs. Allonby equally against the larger hotels and
any in the Caravan Bay, and Ermengarde took the opportunity of
finally refusing to drag her into the fag of hotel-hunting, and got
into a tram going towards Caravan by herself.
But when, a couple of hours later, she found herself leaning on the
balustrade by the sea on the Promenade du Midi, very tired and hot,
and unable to find any room in the crowded hotels just visited, she
was partly annoyed and partly pleased to see the tall, slight figure
of this woman of mystery coming towards her.
"I never saw it more darkly and deeply blue," Agatha said, stopping
and leaning at her side, "or the turquoise of the shoal water more
clear and lovely."
The soft boom of surf on the rocks was very lulling and sweet, and
the scent of the pure, azure-shadowed spray that dashed from waves
breaking in fine curves of every shade of blue, with never a tint of
green, fresh and vivifying. Even the subdued menace of the
ground-swell was mellow, not harsh with the scream of dragged
shingle, as in paler, greyer seas. It was restful to look and look,
to plunge and steep the sight in the intense glowing blue, and wonder
if it could be true, a real sea rolling through this mid-earth, and
not some incredible splendour of "faery lands forlorn." Even the
wickedness and cruelty of Arthur took a softer complexion in the
light of that warm and clear dark sea. Far out towards the horizon
the velvety depth of blue made the sky white by comparison; but
nearer it had a liquid quality, a sparkling sweetness that promised
to assuage thirst and renew failing pulses as with some divine
elixir. One might drink deep of that clear wave and lose all memory
of pain and grief, or, like the waters of Eunoe, it might bring to
mind all that is beautiful--lost joys, forgotten aspirations, divine
desires, old sweet loves.
But in a world of prose and fatigue tea was a more desirable, or at
least a more attainable, elixir; for was not Rumpelmayer's hard
by--Rumpelmayer's of the pure and perfumed China leaf and select
company? Thither Ermengarde turned, and secured a table outside,
with that broad purple splendour still in sight, and its salt
freshness stealing through the palm-colonnade and rustling the
feathery tops of the giant eucalyptus in the public gardens opposite;
and thither, after some hesitation and consultation of her watch, the
woman of mystery was persuaded to accompany her.
The last strains of the band were dying away in the dark greenery of
the gardens; people were streaming off in every direction in the
golden afternoon; Rumpelmayer's was rapidly filling to overflow
inside and out--carriage after carriage rolling up and setting down
charming costumes of muslin and pale summer tints of various texture,
oddly finished with furs and sunshades of dainty hue. There was a
cheery murmur of voices and laughter all around, with the solemn
undertone of sea-surges booming through all. Ermengarde had left
Agatha to fill the cups with that exquisite China fragrance, while
she went in to choose cakes, and was just coming out with a heaped
plate when she met the smiling gaze of Ivor Paul, who seemed to have
been strolling aimlessly with the crowd, when he stopped to speak to
Agatha, whose manner conveyed an impression of unrest and anxiety,
rather than embarrassment, at this meeting.
"You may have forgotten Mr. Paul, who was at Les Oliviers some time
since," she said; and Ermengarde, replying graciously, reflected that
her opportunities of forgetting this young man had been singularly
scanty. He positively haunted them; he was as persistent as a family
ghost, or the Anarchist himself.
He proved more entertaining than either of those, however,
discoursing most gaily and pleasantly about nothing, laughing at
less, and listening with due sympathy to the sorrows and fatigues of
Ermengarde in her expulsion from one hotel and ineffectual hunt for
another, and observing that it was a beastly shame, and that
hotel-keepers were a rotten lot, which confirmed her in a growing
conviction that this turning-out was of the nature of an excellent
joke and delightful adventure. Had Mrs. Allonby tried Pension
Gilardoni? An aunt, or some such elderly and respectable relation,
of his had wintered there, and found it most satisfactory and quite
reasonable--altogether a ripping place. It was just along there on
the west of the gardens by the sea. It would give him pleasure to
conduct her to the house there and then.
But Ermengarde had had enough of hotel-hunting for that day, and
after a little pressure accepted the woman of mystery's offer to go
and explore the house for her, personally conducted by Mr. Paul; or
rather, as she reflected when left to sip her second cup alone, the
two young people had simply gone off at once upon this benevolent
quest, without waiting for any consent or comment, vanishing among
the palms before there was time to take breath, and leaving Agatha's
steaming second cup to waste its perfume on the unthinking crowd.