The Only Hope
The storm had become so furious that the driver, after taking
Ermengarde up from Rumpelmayer's, insisted on putting in for shelter
under the crowded _porte cochère_ of the nearest hotel.
"We might as well have stayed at Rumpelmayer's, after all," she
murmured, the wretchedness evoked by reading the publisher's parcel
rushing back upon her at the first dull moment. Rumpelmayer's
bon-bons were pleasant, and several interesting glimpses of human
nature had been given her there at the little tables which were
unusually thronged for the time of day on account of the storm.--"It
was at least warm at Rumpelmayer's. And what of Villa Gilardoni,
Miss Somers?"
"Oh, Villa Gilardoni! What _will_ you think of me, dear Mrs.
Allonby? My cousin began talking of--family matters; they were
absorbing; time somehow slipped away, and the storm rushed up so
suddenly--it was impossible to stand against it----"
"And so 'the hobby-horse, the hobby-horse, was forgot'? But it was
too kind of you even to propose this fag on my behalf, much less to
try to carry it out. And yet--you are looking very tired, dear Miss
Somers."
"I am not tired," she replied hastily; "I am exhausted. I--oh! these
storms upset one's nerves."
"Which storms?" Ermengarde wondered, and came to the conclusion that
nothing merely meteorological had caused this upset. Could it be
remorse? or was it the connexion by marriage? How much easier,
simpler, and sweeter life would be were there no men in the world,
she reflected, though, like other Utopias and earthly paradises, she
thought it might be just a trifle dull. And who knew that, not only
man, but even the devil himself might have his uses in the economy of
things? The latter supposition she prudently confided to the secrecy
of her own breast, while murmuring sympathetic common-places to
Agatha, until such time as it pleased the driver to brave the abating
fury of the storm, and take them through the drenched town to the
sheltered road under the plane-trees, and so to the foot of the ridge
where there was nothing for it but to walk or ride up on donkeys and
mules.
They chose the former alternative, the heavy rain having given place
to a hailstorm by this time, and, before they had climbed in the
shelter of vineyard-walls and steep rock-ledges to the first ridge,
the hail gave over and the storm-beaten, indigo sea spread darkly,
dashed with white foam-ridges, to their sight, when they stopped to
take breath and shake out their skirts, whitened by hail.
Some fresh mimosa boughs in a jar of rough country pottery adorned
one of the faded shrines of the Seven Sorrows. Who had placed it
there, and in memory of what anguish? Agatha wondered, and
Ermengarde told her of the phantom nuns Heinrich the porter had seen
haunting the shrines at night.
"He must have believed that he saw them," she argued, "because nuns
are improbable. If he had invented them, they would have had to be
monks, since this was a male community--and still is--for the
brothers come back occasionally now. How the people must miss them!
They used to serve that church across the ravine. And look--this is
how they got to their church."
She pointed to a long straight flight of narrow steps, hewn by
hand-labour out of one steep and solid rock, making a long and giddy
descent of slippery and uncertain footing where the narrow steep
stairs were mossed and uneven; so steep and so long the flight was
that the greater part of it was hidden from sight below.
Agatha looked with unseeing eyes, her heart too full of her grief to
be interested in anything unconnected with it. She remembered well
her first acquaintance with those pathetic shrines, deserted but
still finding some humble hearts to honour them in their evil hour.
She remembered her anguish and prayer--prayer she knew now
ungranted--on the convent steps, in the very face of the consolation
offered upon the cross planted there as if in welcome. All the earth
had seemed full of silent prayer in the hush and glory of sunset, on
that first evening; every hill and ridge had been an altar smoking
with sacrificial incense, and the amphitheatre of mountains standing
round the broad sweep of the bay a vast temple of adoration, in the
centre of which the cross on the top of the steps spread out its
welcoming, protecting arms.
She remembered, too, the sight that had afterwards met her gaze from
the convent wall; and even now, as she walked wearily past the
shrines, fancied the rank odours of musk and cigars tainting the
purity of the sweet, still air. Even while she had been wrestling in
prayer for him on that evening, Ivor had passed, laughing and fooling
with that evil woman who had been his destruction.
Such agony overcame her at this thought that companionship of any
kind was insupportable. She made some excuse for prolonging her walk
in another direction, while Ermengarde took the most direct way home,
under the steep on which the monastery garden spread its fertile
terraces to the south, showering vine-trails, fig-branches and
prickly pears down the walls to the very edge of the mule-path. But
Agatha turned aside and climbed the slope where the cultivator's
pink-walled house stood, or rather reclined, among fruit-trees and
pergolas, and passed on and up to the convent steps, weariness of
mind and body reacting upon each other to such a degree that she
would fain have flung herself down on the wet herbage and risen no
more. She had definitely asked the man who demanded and implored her
love to renounce for her sake the vice that had brought him to ruin,
and he had definitely refused to do so. He loved her; he besought,
almost commanded her love, but would give up nothing for her. Even
while proclaiming his own worthlessness he had claimed her entire
devotion and self-sacrifice. What was such love worth? And what was
such a man worth? Could he even be called a man and not rather a
petulant, dissolute boy, heedless of all but his own comfort and
enjoyment, unable to deny himself the gratification of any passion
for any sake? And yet--he had shown some compunction in regard to
his mother, had been really grieved to cause her pain and such
privation as had been hitherto unknown to her. That is to say, he
was not entirely without feeling for the woman who had loved and
blessed him from his earliest breath, was not absolutely unnatural
and unfilial. And yet Agatha loved him, in wild wonder that such as
he should kindle love in any heart; and yet she felt that he had no
real love for her, though he required and desired her whole heart's
devotion.
Had she been hard to him, too hard?--for some hardness is the only
kindness to such natures as his. Was it some true instinct, after
all, that impelled him to fly to her to pick him out of the mire and
save him? Her last words to him had indeed been hot and harsh; she
had seen him wince and quiver under them--poor Ivor! She would have
softened their effect with some kinder and sweeter words but for the
storm and the baleful interruption of the Anarchist, who should have
known better than to intrude at such a moment. Now she would see him
no more; nothing could heal the wounds she had made; they would
always rankle in his memory; the acid would bite deeper and deeper,
as time went on and he plunged deeper and deeper into the mire of
which he had spoken, whence gentler words and the love he craved
might have drawn him. And yet her words had been terribly true.
Yes, but she might have put them more gently and sweetly; she had
blundered with a bludgeon, where a silken lash or the prick of a
knife-point might have been enough. If only the storm and the
Anarchist had kept away a few minutes, just a few precious, golden,
irretrievable minutes, longer! But he would never have made the
renunciation she asked. No; but if she had been kinder; if she had
let him see that she was to be won; nay, if she had even given way,
held out the hand he asked for and let him grasp it firmly, who knows
but she might gradually and with much pain and anguish have rescued
him? Who could tell? She might at least have given him hope. And
even if all had been in vain, could it have been much worse than this?
She pictured him in his despair and anger, hardening day by day,
descending deeper and deeper, reckless, loveless, degraded. She
began to hate this mad, proud reticence of women, that will only give
love for assured, declared love; what was it in comparison with a
man's salvation? Why not have told the poor boy she loved him? Too
late now. It was all over; her sacrifice had been in vain. Oh! she
should have given more. She should have thrown herself into the
breach, her whole self and all her shrinkings and loathings, her
pride and reticence. No; that too would have been vain; to stain
herself would never make him clean; nor could her descent ever lift
him up.
His mother, that sweet, long-suffering mother and high-souled woman,
what pain for her! Now she would have to bear this bitter sorrow
always. Had a true instinct and no common sense prudence warned her
that Agatha could do nothing for her prodigal, when she besought her
so earnestly to give no response to his advances? These thoughts
warring in her heart brought her to distraction and took the last
remnants of strength from her tired body; she could hardly drag
herself ever so slowly and falteringly up the steps, with gasping
breath and throbbing pulse.
The storm had completely passed now; the divine stillness of the
mountain solitudes had returned; sound there was none, save the
distant roar of the vexed and chafing sea, whence the indigo stain
had fled, leaving it darkly and deeply blue as before, with tumbling
ridges of white foam, touched with gold. For now the setting sun
flashed out from broken cloud, throwing rose-gold radiance across the
western bay, striking up wooded hill-spurs, bringing towers and
village walls into sudden glow, and flushing the wet, bare mountain
peaks one after another with crimson fire.
Even Agatha's sad heart was quickened as she lifted her eyes to that
glorious spectacle and saw the rose flame kindle peak after peak in
the vast sweep of engirdling mountains with vivid changing splendour.
It was as if the fire of Heaven had visibly descended upon that
temple of many altars, in token of some hidden, accepted sacrifice,
some offered incense found worthy and well-pleasing. The splendour
glowed and deepened till every barren, craggy peak, veined with
shadow and streaked with fresh snow, was a crimson flame on a violet
sky; the deep silence was a mystic, triumphant psalm of praise to
which the solemn roar of the troubled sea was a humbler antiphon, a
more earthly response. "The Lord sitteth above the water-flood--The
Lord is King be the people never so impatient," the far-off surges
sang, and the impatience died from her troubled heart; the poignancy
of her despair abated. The celestial fire, changing and quivering as
with life-breath, kindled upon ridge after ridge; every village
tower, every cottage and hut glowed in the jewel-flame; the white
convent walls gleamed in pale claret and lambent gold from between
dark cypress and eucalyptus boughs; and at the top of the steps, its
welcoming arms flung wide to the world, the great wooden cross, one
blaze of rose-gold fire, proclaimed the one hope in all the wide
waste tumult of human life, the one eternal sacrifice, the Calvary
that is the only road to any Paradise.
Ave Crux Spes Unica,
she read once more on the glowing centre of the cross.
Only a few hours since, she had prayed and implored, even knelt to,
the Jewish usurer near that very cross for Ivor--and all to no
purpose. It had been very bitter, to humble herself to that man, to
lay bare to his contemptuous and cruel gaze that secret
heart-sanctuary a woman veils jealously even from herself. He had
said things that brought the crimson to her face and cut her to the
very quivering heart; he had laughed and prophesied the futility of
what she implored, even though he had melted and given way with
respect, almost tenderness, at last. What if her own sacrifice, poor
and petty, though so much to her, were vain, could that symbolized in
the plain wood steeped in glorious rose-lustre above her ever fail?
No; that could never fail, never be in vain, not wholly, not
eternally, in vain, something whispered to her stricken heart, and
she fell on her knees among the melting hailstones, and prayed with
greater passion than ever before, consumed with anguish, uplifted by
faith, quivering with love and adoration, thrilled through all her
sorrow with a deep divine sweetness; and notwithstanding the fervour
of her supplication, full of quiet acquiescence in whatsoever the
divine will should accord, even though it seemed despair.
The rosy fire died from the cross and the lower hill-crests, and
faded lingeringly from the topmost peaks, leaving wooded steep and
gorge in deep shadow, while Agatha poured out her heart on the rock
steps with tears and prayers unutterable.
And when she rose, soothed and tranquillized, and sat a moment in the
fork of the eucalyptus, looking down across the torrent and the town
to the café by the sea, where she had left Ivor an hour before, she
could not know that he had just signed the papers put before him by
the Anarchist. Yet she turned from the darkening, murmuring sea and
faded sunset sky, and walked lightly home through the monastery
grounds in the violet afterglow, her heart full of peace.
Not that she was destined to reach home without further adventure;
for she had but crossed the level under the cypresses when a slender
figure that had been leaning on the western wall, watching the dying
glory change on mountain and sea, stood up, darkly outlined against
the lucid sky, and came forward to meet her with quick but halting
step.
"I thought I could not be mistaken," the thin man said; "I have a
keen ear for footsteps, and at once recognized yours. But----" He
paused, struck by the mingled fatigue and exaltation on her face,
seen clear in the after-glow. "You are tired; you have been
worried--more than worried. Pardon me, Miss Somers; but you are
young, you are alone and unprotected--a friend may be of service to
you, however intrusive and undesired. Is there anything I could do
for you? Could I knock somebody down? I observed something this
morning--here--on this very spot--you had been annoyed--upset--a
person--I trust you had been subjected to no undesirable attention
from that unworthy quarter."
A gentle smile flitted over Agatha's face; the idea of the thin man
knocking anybody down--or even entertaining such a project--was
extremely funny. Indeed, there was this evening something entirely
foreign to his usual self in Mr. Welbourne's voice and manner. His
self-control was imperfect; he stammered; there was fire in his eye.
"I wonder," he added, "that the people of the house should admit that
man to a small and respectable hotel like this. It is an outrage----"
"Mr. Mosson? Oh, poor Mr. Mosson is not as bad as all that, Mr.
Welbourne. Indeed, he is not without heart, after all. And I must
confess that, far from his annoying me with his company, it was I who
trespassed upon the poor man's leisure. I--I wanted to speak to
him--on--on a matter of business, and he was most obliging--most
accommodating----"
"Accommodating? obliging? Good heavens! Miss Somers, do you know
that to be accommodated by this rascally Jew spells ruin? Once in
his toils, his victims rarely escape. Don't you know that Mosson is
a most notorious usurer, is the too well-known Spider? I do most
earnestly trust that he has not accommodated you to a large
amount--and as a man of the world--which naturally no lady is
expected to be--I warn you--I entreat you to allow me to be your
banker--it happens that I have a good deal of capital lying idle for
the moment--let me enable you to pay this man off at once, before the
interest has accumulated. Give me this pleasure, I beseech you.
I--I--require a small interest--one and a half per cent.----"
"But indeed, dear Mr. Welbourne, you are quite mistaken. I have
borrowed no money of anybody, really. I can't say how deeply I
appreciate your kindness in offering this. No; the poor Spider only
did me a--kindness--in the way of business; he lent me nothing at
all, I assure you. Nor do I need money, thank you. I thank you many
times."
"Oh!" said the thin man, amazed beyond words and disappointed as well.
"But I do," she added, seeing his bewilderment and distress, "I do
need, we all need, at all events sometimes, kindness. And for yours
I thank you most cordially."
She offered her hand; he took it and bowed over it with such reverent
courtesy as belongs to an earlier day than this decadent time of
ours, but remained silent still, as if struggling with some deep
feeling. And, when he again raised his head and relinquished her
hand, she saw that he was flushed and agitated, and came to the
conclusion that the poor gentleman in some far-off, foolish days of
youth had probably been ensnared by some old-time Spider, who had
drained his blood and left him to drag out a withered and blighted
life. Hence possibly his celibate condition.
"It--it is a great relief," he said, "a very great relief," and yet
the relief he expressed was scarcely evident in his face, upon which
the utmost dejection was traced, "to hear that you owe that hard, bad
man nothing. May such a misfortune never befall you. And may you
never need to borrow of anyone. Should you, however, be so
unfortunate, I trust that I may be allowed the great privilege of
accommodating you with whatever may be necessary. I know--of
course," he added, "that I have no right--no claim--no--that is to
say--I am but a casual acquaintance, after all. And yet--pardon my
presumption in venturing to say so--I believe that you have no truer,
no more devoted friend in the world than I am."
"You have always been kind," she replied with the unconscious cruelty
of a mind too much preoccupied to be very observant. "Mrs. Allonby
and I have often said that you have been a father to us both from the
moment we entered the house."
Mr. Welbourne started; he turned and looked at the moaning sea,
whence the last rose-tints were dying, and then he turned and looked
at the mountain peaks, above which a trembling star hung lustrous.
"Oh!" he sighed very sadly at last; and Agatha wondered why he looked
so sad, not knowing that the last relationship the thin man desired
with her was that of a parent.
"But that is no reason why either of us should plunder you," she
added very kindly and tenderly, as they passed into the shadow of the
pines on the other side of the monastery.
"I suppose," he rejoined meekly, "that I seem quite--old in your
young eyes."
"Oh no!" she assured him earnestly, observing, as she took the hand
with which he was helping her over the same twisted roots that had
afforded Mr. Mosson an opportunity of civility in the morning, that
it trembled, and fearing she had hurt his feelings, "I don't think
you old at all, dear Mr. Welbourne. In these days people don't even
begin to be old till seventy."
"I am not yet seventy," murmured the thin man, handing her down the
last steep little ledge in the dusk, with a mixture of resignation
and despair.
"I should think not, indeed," she returned reassuringly, "but I
hope," she added in a burst of generous feeling, "that you soon will
be."
"Good Heavens!" ejaculated the poor man, "soon be seventy!"
"I mean," she hastily corrected, "I hope you will live to a good old
age--full of honours--with troops of friends----" Oh, Heaven! the
kindly patronage in her voice, the gracious condescension of youth to
age, the total absence of any feeling but that of cold respect and
half pitiful gratitude!--"And that I may have a place among those
many friends," she added, regretting to have expressed herself
clumsily; she was tired; had had a day of worries, was stupid.
"I ought not to bore you with my prosy affairs and blundering
surmises," he confessed. And yet, owing either to the malice of some
demon, or that madness which comes to those the gods menace with
ruin, before they reached the lighted hall full of people, he had
made her acquainted with his true age--at which she expressed
untimely and unthinking surprise--and the whole state of his worldly
affairs, not forgetting the temporary nature and cause of his
lameness, and his position in life, besides asking her to honour him
by the acceptance of a bunch of carnations, which she did with
matter-of-fact calm, hardly remembering a hasty "Thank you" when she
left him on the stairs.
So the thoughts he confided to the piano in the dusk before dinner
that evening were in plaintive minor keys and chords of dissonant
intervals slowly resolved.
Ermengarde, who had stolen noiselessly in to listen unseen, was much
soothed by this music; she was sure that the thin man was telling the
piano of the lost dreams and broken hopes of his youth in those
subdued minor melodies and daring, harmonic progressions, till the
fair Dorris, flouncing in, loudly pronounced them "Shopping
reminiscences," and so broke the charm.
The tale of woe Mrs. Allonby confided to the thin man's paternal ear
after dinner evoked tepid sympathy; indeed, it struck her that her
filial confidences were but half understood, and that the interest
displayed in her affairs was spasmodic and forced. There was clearly
something wrong with Mr. Welbourne; had he been losing at the tables,
or was it impending gout? Her father was just like that before a fit
of gout.
The poor man disappeared early into the solitude of his room, and
after pacing the parquet dejectedly for some time, turned on a full
light, stood before a mirror, and studied the lines in his face and
the grey streaks in his hair. Then he called himself a fool seven
times, at uncertain intervals, and finished a drawing he was making
of a woman's face.