The Necklace Again
"After all," Ivor said, as he walked with the Anarchist through the
gardens of the Casino, now sleeping with doubled magic under a starry
sky, "this isn't such a beastly hole. I've had a ripping time
altogether."
De Konski looked at the bright-eyed, smiling face in amazed
curiosity, touched with pity. He thought the look directed towards
the lighted Casino somewhat wistful, and reflected that only an hour
or two and the sumptuous farewell dinner they had just had at Giro's
together divided this light-hearted youth from the despairing and
perverse prodigal of the afternoon. The storm that had rushed up in
a moment in indigo shadow from behind Bordighera had not passed more
quickly than this young man's anguish and inward conflict.
"Thanks to you, I've come through this rotten business without a
scratch," the laughing lips added. "If only----"
"If only?" echoed the Anarchist. "Ah! well for you that your word is
given. Nothing short of that would keep you straight--off that rock."
"Oh, that's all right, thanks to you."
"And to no one else, Ivor? That was a long talk in the gardens this
afternoon."
"Oh well, we had been teaing at Rumpelmayer's with that pretty little
Mrs. Allonby--awfully jolly little woman--"
"Eh? what?" growled the Anarchist, an angry flame in his eye.
"--She's in an awful hole, that little woman. Turned out of her
hotel, and can't find fresh quarters anywhere. I was recommending
Villa Gilardoni."
"What do you mean by turned out?" cried the Anarchist savagely.
"The poor little woman took it very pluckily--she told it as a
ripping joke. She doesn't suspect your Turbia friend's tongue may
have had a hand in it"--an inarticulate snarl broke from the
Anarchist--"the hotel people simply told her to clear out, bag and
baggage. She's been to every blessed hotel in Mentone this
afternoon, and found them all crammed full----"
"Ah! And you were discussing that lady's affairs with Miss Somers in
the gardens?"
"I was showing Miss Somers the way to the Villa. I say, what the
deuce is the matter, de Konski?"
"Nothing, nothing. Except that I must be off or lose the last lift.
Goodnight. If only--remember."
But there was another and very different _if_ to what the Anarchist
suspected in the young man's heart. If Agatha had only stooped to
pick him up! Her cruelty spoilt all. He had certainly asked much of
her, he acknowledged to himself, but less would have been nothing,
for love, he told himself, gives all or nothing. While the
countess----
On reaching his hotel he found a letter from his mother, and read it
more than once. What there was in that letter more than in countless
others she had written, he could not say; it was tender and warm and
intimate with a sort of gay comradeship infrequent in maternal
letters--but so were all her letters. Still, in this he found
something that brought the water to his eyes, and the old childish
confidence and comfort to his heart, and made him very glad and
thankful to have signed that paper in the afternoon. There was a
little folded slip from a sister inside the envelope. "So glad you
are coming home," it said; "mother is counting the days. She is not
quite herself lately, and seems to be fretting for you."
After all, there is no love like a mother's, especially when life is
hard and hearts are wounded and sore.
The poor countess's image had already grown dim and indistinct; it
seemed ages since that morning's scene; the fumes of that
intoxication had almost evaporated; the evil enchantment nearly
faded. He wondered at having been so much moved by that passionate,
self-abnegating devotion, when a vague memory of it flitted across
his mind, with a pity that was more akin to contempt than love. Of
course Agatha had been right in reminding him of his mother's
objection to his choice of herself; but equally of course, had she
cared for him, all that would have been thrown to the winds.
People's relations--especially mothers--always make a point of
objecting to and hindering the course of true love, while lovers
always make a point of overriding all such hindrances and defying all
such objections--it was an accepted part of the game, absolutely
orthodox.
Flinging things into suit-cases and kit-bags next morning, he
remembered that he had no little keepsake to take home to the mother,
and ran out to ransack the shops crammed with glittering inutilities
for something to please her. Under present impecunious
circumstances, this could only be done by going home second-class,
and Monte Carlo shops scarcely lend themselves to modest gifts;
customers in that City of Dis are expected to reckon in golden
four-louis pieces. It was a bewildering and irritating thing to a
hurried man to review those windows, ablaze with diamonds and glowing
with rubies, piled with rich-scented russia leathers, clasped and
bound and fitted with gold and silver inconveniences of every
description, or run the eye over daintily carved ivories, costly
bric-à-brac, gorgeous apparel, and priceless lace, in search of
something at once exquisite, suitable, and inexpensive.
He was consigning the total merchandise of Monte Carlo to perdition,
in a last and frantically hopeless marshalling of a jeweller's
window, when his eye was caught by a necklace of costly gems and
beautiful workmanship, at which he gazed in open-mouthed amazement
for some seconds. The design, unusual and unmistakable, the
jewels--sapphires set with diamonds--all were familiar and
recognizable at a glance. It was an exact duplicate of the Somers
sapphires, the necklace inherited by Agatha, and constituting her
chief fortune, of the value of some thousands of pounds--the necklace
she had often been counselled by outsiders to sell, but never by the
family--and had always consistently refused to part with. She had
worn that necklace at his coming-of-age dance, the day on which he
had definitely recognized the nature of his feelings for her. It was
spoken of in the family as her dowry. There it lay, sparkling and
quivering in the clear morning sunlight, among stars, tiaras,
collars, and _rivières_ of diamonds, and ornaments set with every
known jewel. It shone out with a distinction all its own from these
splendid and costly things, an exact counterpart of Agatha's
necklace, here for sale, in this very Monte Carlo shop before his
dazed eyes; the gems, winking and sparkling with many colours, seemed
alive and beckoning to him, burdened with secrets they longed to
tell. In a moment he was in the shop, stammering in unintelligible
French, and pointing to the necklace.
"Oui, oui, M'sieur; the sapphires are exceptionally fine and the
diamonds of good water," the lady at the counter acknowledged; "the
value being so great we are willing to take much less than they are
worth. Yes; it is fresh in the window this morning. Second-hand?
But naturally; the workmanship, very fine and of exquisite art, is
long out of date. Such things are no longer made. It is absolutely
unique."
"It came from England?" he asked in his native tongue. "It must have
come from England. It is known; it has a history. There is but one
necklace like that, and I've known it all my life."
"On the contrary," said the proprietor, stepping across from the
other side of the shop, and desirous of showing his undoubted right
to it, "the necklace was sold to me only yesterday by M. Mosson, the
well-known M. Mosson, with whom we frequently have dealings of this
kind. Sometimes we sell them on commission, sometimes we buy them
outright. But M. Mosson is careful in the extreme. He takes nothing
of which the proprietorship is doubtful. The history of this
beautiful and unique specimen of jeweller's art is well-known to him.
But Monsieur is suffering? A glass of water? Cognac?"
Ivor, white and dizzy, had dropped into an armchair in the middle of
the shop, and was staring stupidly before him, trying to piece the
thing out in his mind, and realize what it meant, while the jeweller,
who had paid a sum down, instead of selling on commission this time,
was a little anxious lest the astute Mosson should have made a
mistake. He remembered that the sum the usurer had taken was known
by both of them to be far under the real value, and that he had
seemed anxious to have the money without delay. It was unlike that
benefactor of his species to betray anxiety on any subject.
"Has Mosson come back?" Ivor gasped presently, "or is he still at
that place up in the mountains?" and learnt in reply that Mr. Mosson
had so far refreshed himself by his stay in that sequestered region
that he had returned to his well-known villa hard by, upon hearing
which Ivor at once rushed from the shop and hurried in the direction
of the villa, to the disquietude of the jeweller, who repaired
without loss of time to a private room to discuss the matter with
Madame.
"What, again?" the philanthropist asked with a cynical smile, when
his young client burst in upon his pious reflections and
calculations; "and accounts closed only yesterday? Now this is most
unfortunate--because I am not in a position to accommodate you at
present, M. Paul."
"The necklace," the boy gasped, "the necklace?"
"H'm?"
"Where did you get that sapphire and diamond necklace that you sold
to M. Strozzi yesterday?"
"That, my young friend, is entirely my affair."
"Look here, Mosson, somebody, some friend of mine, yesterday, wiped
off what I owed you to the last penny."
"Quite so. An unknown friend--on conditions. Now that is done.
Good morning. Au revoir, I must not say."
"That friend was the owner of the necklace."
"If you say so, I must believe it."
"You can't deny that she was. Besides, there can't be a
duplicate--that's beyond a coincidence."
"If Monsieur is so well informed on a subject that I confess has
little interest for me, why waste valuable time in vain
interrogations? For the rest, with regard to the debt and
conditions, the transaction was confidential, the person who
negotiated it having ensured my silence upon the matter. So once
more, M. Paul, I wish you good day, and better luck at the game of
life than you have had of late at roulette."
Ivor looked steadily at the sharp features and cold glittering eyes,
not unconscious of the cynical tolerant contempt expressed in the
thin, tight-drawn lips, and was quite sure.
Perhaps, after all, he was having better luck at the game of life
than he had hoped or deserved; perhaps, after all, she had picked him
out of the gutter, though she would not risk the slightest splash on
her own white raiment to save him. Perhaps. His head went round
dizzily as he walked blindly from the usurer's house, trying to
realize what this meant for both of them. She had set him free; had
already done it yesterday, when she had seemed so hard and pitiless,
and upbraided him so hotly and sternly; she had set him free at the
sacrifice of her one earthly treasure, her little fortune, at the
cost of who knows what repulsion and disgust in dealing with the
notorious Spider. _Could_ she have approached the man personally?
Yet how else could she have effected this? She had loved those
jewels; they had meant so much for her; their history, their
associations, the tradition of good fortune they brought to their
owner--all had been discussed and laughed over and made a handle for
teasing, many and many a time, from the days when they were children
at play. Then a cold shiver went through him at the sudden thought
that she was herself in straits--working for money--she might have
pledged them for her own needs. But they had not been pledged,
unless to Mosson. Yes, that might be; Mosson was such a beast, they
being pledged to him and unredeemed, he might have realized his debt
upon them. Again, no--what need could she possibly have of such a
sum of money as that? Oh no, there could be no doubt, none whatever.
The necklace had been sold for _him_. De Konski knew; but there was
no time to get at him. He sat on a bench under a palm, with his face
in his hands, staring into the clear brook that rippled among
water-lilies and maidenhair over an artificial rock-bed, and thought.
Hard work this thinking to the poor, light-hearted lad. He had
thought more in the last few days than ever in his life before, and
it had taken the rounded outlines of youth from his face, deepened
his eyes, made shadows under them, and given firmness to a too facile
mouth. What a beast he had been yesterday in the gardens when the
storm was coming up over Bordighera; no wonder she had been repelled;
no wonder such selfish madness had been flouted and condemned. He
seemed to be waking out of a long, fantastic dream or some wild,
prolonged delirium to a sober, sane view of life. Tears came into
his eyes, and dropped slowly on the gravel between his feet. A
memory of the countess yesterday, with glowing eyes and thrilling
voice, made him shiver; the thought of her beauty gave him a
sensation of physical nausea. But yesterday, as yesterdays sometimes
are, was long and long ago. And here he was, with scarcely two hours
to spare before catching the last possible train home. And there was
only one thing to be done, and that was impossible.
Agatha, in the meantime, had no suspicion of what was passing in her
prodigal's mind. She had made her last throw for him and lost. She
could only bow her head before an unsearchable dispensation and wait.
Her first fierce participation in the execution of the unfortunate
Dorris had soon given place to a compunction which prompted her to
withdraw, after a vain attempt to stem the torrent of the long-pent
wrath of the hotel. She therefore had a quieter conscience than some
of the rest, and quickly dismissed the business from her mind. She
had quieted Mrs. Boundrish's fears of spotted fever by persuading her
that the sweet child was only a little hysterical, a view of the case
shortly afterwards confirmed by Mrs. Allonby, who recommended
solitude and cheerfully prophesied slumber. This charitable office
accomplished, the woman of mystery fared forth in the afternoon
sunshine to resume the visit of inquiry to Villa Gilardoni,
interrupted by the storm on the previous day, taking with her some
papers in the cipher that stamped her with Heaven knows what
iniquities in the eyes of Ermengarde, and consulting them as she went
down the mule-path, as if they contained instructions or indications
of what to do next.
The convent walk was no longer a sanctuary for meditation; she had
been there in the morning and found men busy opening and cleaning and
setting in order both the church and the monastery. At their
suggestion she had gone in, inspected the empty cells, simply but
sufficiently furnished with bed and table, desk and bookshelf--a book
here, a pen there, pointed to recent suddenly interrupted
occupation--and wondered over the quiet, harmless, and probably happy
and useful lives of the men who had been thrust out, and how they
fared now in the loud, perplexing world, and what disgust or
disappointment might have driven some of them into this haven of
stillness.
She had inspected and admired the church, beautifully and lovingly
adorned, though so plain outside, and beautifully kept as if in
constant use, and had been touched by the votive offerings hung about
on the walls--ships chiefly, with here a gun, here a crutch and there
a heart--all so quaint to unaccustomed eyes; and the thought of all
the unsuspected heart-breaks and secret agonies of prayer, in that
quiet mountain solitude alone, besides those throbbing and aching in
the great, lonely, million-peopled world outside, rolled up like a
huge tidal wave and crashed upon her heart. But that some prayers
were answered, some secret agonies had happy ending, the quaint
votive offerings bore witness, filling her with a hope full of peace,
and assuring her that some day, ever so distant perhaps, but some
day, before the ending of time, all humble, heartfelt prayers of
earnest faith and unselfish love would at last bring forth some fruit.
What a different world to-day, sunning itself in splendour of blue
and gold and green, to that of yesterday, when the darkness of storm
and the chill lash of hail had been over all. Everything seemed made
for happiness; the gladness of flowers blooming in every crack and
crevice, pink rock-roses creeping about the rocky path, white and
pink cistus starring the bushes on every slope, lavender spikes here,
and tall purple and black iris there, masses of peach-bloom edging
olive-woods, with many an unknown, unconsidered blossom, all turned
sweet faces in gladness to the sunshine; all the deep dark verdure of
gorge and mountain-flank, with vine and garden-growth about terrace
and house, seemed as if breathing a deep and joyous and peaceful life
round village and cot, while ever-soaring sunlit mountain-peaks
rushed up with glad and silent aspiration into the pure dark sky, the
hill-spurs at their feet thrusting many a noble, firm-based buttress
far out into the dark splendour of a sapphire and turquoise sea.
Even the clean-walled, smokeless town and white ribbon of road, over
which toy vehicles and horses and tiny doll-men crawled along the
torrent-brink, in oleander shade far below, seemed much too gay and
gladsome to admit any shadow of tragedy or sting of pain.
And yet what heart-break, what despair, what loneliness of heart
might be--nay, must be--there, hidden and silently borne with more or
less valour; and how the very gladsomeness and glory of all this
lovely earth seemed to put a sharper knife-edge on the pain, that
turned and turned insupportably in the heart, Agatha mused in the
weariness and dull apathy weighing her down after yesterday's sharp
suffering.
What was life worth, after all, at best? How could people go on,
year in, year out, under their tragic burdens and sordid pains? How
many a weary year of sunless, monotonous suffering she would have to
drag out, unless some merciful mischance befell her body and released
her soul, she sighed, with a great yearning for the peace of not
being--in the strong deep agony of youth, that has so many
prospective years to endure in. And then, suddenly, at the turn
leading to the convent cross, she came face to face with a figure
hurrying with springing steps up the path by the deserted shrines,
and the simultaneous surprised cry of "Ivor!" and "Agatha!" and the
look flashed from eye to eye in one moment changed all the world and
made everything clear to each, as they stood silent, each with both
hands outstretched and clasping the other's.
There was a look never seen before in Ivor's face, and a soft
gladness unknown in Agatha's; both faces were in clear sunlight
outlined upon a rock-wall overhung by the quaint, goblin-handed
boughs of prickly pear.
"Aggie," he cried, "dear, dearest Aggie, I was a beast yesterday. I
_was_ a beast! You were right. All you said was true. I had no
right to ask such things of you--no man has of any woman. Yet you
_had_ saved me, you _had_ picked me out of the gutter all the time.
No, it's no use saying anything. I saw the necklace and guessed.
The beast sold it to Strozzi--and made upon it, trust him! It's in
Strozzi's window. Aggie, how could you? The dear old necklace! I'm
not worth it, my dear--no, not worth picking out of the mud. But I
will be--at least, I won't be the cur I've been. And some day--some
day, perhaps--at least, if you're not bound to the long
artist-man--perhaps--oh! I shall never be fit to look to you--Don't
talk of my mother--she'll be ready for anything after this. I wish I
hadn't been such a brute to you. It's--it's as if I had been drunk
all along--but not with wine; and now, now at last I've waked up,
sober--quite sober, Aggie--darling."
What she said, or if she said anything, she knew not and never knew;
nor did he. There was one kiss, too spontaneous, reciprocal and
inevitable to be thought of except as a matter of course, though the
first since the old baby-kissing days; and then he was gone, racing
for his train, that was perilously near the starting-time now. But
he turned suddenly by the shrine where she had seen him on that first
evening with the countess, for one last look. "Don't have the long
painter-man," he cried; "he's too old; he really is; de Vieuxbois
told me. And nobody's good enough for you, no, not by half." Then,
with some of the old boyish gaiety lighting his face again, he
vanished in the soft olive-shadows, racing for dear life.
The woman of mystery, bewildered and half stunned, and vaguely
wondering who de Vieuxbois was, and what he had told Ivor, and what
would happen if Ivor lost his train and so broke his leave, and how
much Ivor's mother would know of the transaction of the necklace, and
seeing a deeper, purer blue on the velvet calm of the windless sea,
and a more golden depth in the warm sunlight, and a greater gladness
and glory on everything, went quietly on her way to Villa Gilardoni.
As to Ermengarde, on whose behalf Villa Gilardoni was to be
inspected, she no longer wished to go anywhere except home--that is
to say, somewhere within reach of Charlie and her mother. Those two
she instinctively longed for and no others; the boy, because his
ignorance and childish selfishness made him uncritical and kept his
clinging affection unimpaired; the mother, because the sympathetic
insight and indestructible unselfishness of the love that protects
and cherishes can be trusted to know the worst, and only grow deeper
and more pitiful with the knowledge. As for Arthur, his image
inspired a mixture of terror and resentment. His unkindness, his
want of feeling and sympathy, had sent her all alone into a far-off,
unfamiliar, incomprehensible world, in which she had made stupid
mistakes, played the fool generally, and proved herself quite unfit
to be alone and unguided. If there had been anyone near to confide
in, to point things out, to discuss things frankly, she could never
have made such a fool of herself.
And where was Arthur all this time? Arthur, the poor man, who six
weeks ago could afford no holiday jaunt either for wife or
self--until she was fairly out of the way. Then he had suddenly
flamed across the sky, a meteor of literary brilliance, and betaken
himself to mysterious regions of private enjoyment, whence only the
most meagre accounts of his goings on were allowed to trickle at wide
intervals--that he was well and _busy_ and uncertain in his
movements, that he hoped she was stronger, and was glad she appeared
to be enjoying the foreign trip, and advised her to be careful not to
risk chills in sudden changes of climate--nothing more. Apparently
Arthur had done with her, and, casting off all domestic ties, was
recklessly plunging into wild, unknown vortices of pleasure, Heaven
only knew where, but, presumably, where there were no post-offices.
When Mrs. Allonby left the unlucky Dorris smothering her sobs and
confessing her follies that sunny sweet afternoon, she felt
exceedingly cheap and small--even cheaper and smaller than when she
had unexpectedly closed an afternoon of shocked moralizing on the
sinful pleasures of gambling and pigeon-shooting by landing herself
on the Casino steps, too completely cleaned out by roulette to have
the price of a cup of tea left. Madame Bontemps' gratuitous
information that morning had greatly enlightened her on many
subjects. She knew now the meaning of many once incomprehensible
things, and especially why she had been asked to leave the
hotel--yes; and she remembered that the woman of mystery, whose
fallen nature was to have been uplifted by the example and infection
of her own exalted and unspotted disposition, and Ivor Paul, the
wastrel, had looked as if they perfectly understood the cause of the
mischance that she had so light-heartedly and recklessly related to
them at Rumpelmayer's--the half-smile on each face was guarantee of
that--yes; and she remembered that when Agatha learnt that the fury
of Madame had been preceded by an Italian lesson, raked by the fire
of eyes from the office window, she at once recognized the cause of
that fury. And now Madame Bontemps' violent words over the
balustrade had made all patent and clear to everybody in the place.
This was much worse than roulette. She could never face any of them
again.
She would fly to the paternal arms of the great Cook, and take
counsel and tickets of him for the home journey to-morrow. She would
give out to her friends that the climate was killing her--she was
being slowly but surely poisoned by hotel food--devoured by
mosquitoes--reduced to the verge of insanity by sleepless and
ever-croaking frogs--go home and pour all her follies, mischances and
miseries into the ever-sympathetic, ever-comforting bosom of her
mother--but not of her father. No; he must be put off with
mosquitoes, frogs, poisonous food and murderous climates. And, above
all, Arthur must never, never be made acquainted with the melancholy
nature of her recent experiences. To be sure, there was one comfort,
unless some officious creature told him, he would never want to know
the nature of those recent sorrows; his interest in her affairs was
far too slight. Oh yes, that was a very great comfort indeed, she
reflected, with a great choke that testified to her joy, and obliged
momentary recourse to a pocket-handkerchief that suddenly became wet
through.
The thin man had called himself a fool seven times in sight of his
looking-glass the night before; but Ermengarde must have applied the
name to herself seventy times seven that afternoon, when, after
tucking Dorris up in eider-downs, comforting her with eau-de-Cologne,
and leaving her to slumber and the digestion of good counsel, she
fled blindly out to the mountain-path, whither she neither knew nor
cared. But as you had--owing to the narrowness of the ridge behind
the hotel--only two possible ways to go, one up and one down, she
instinctively took the upper, as leading farther from the haunts of
mankind, which had in the mass suddenly become distasteful and
abhorrent to her.
Yes; she saw it all now--the Carnival incidents, the scene at dawn on
the brink of the ravine, the Malmaison episode, M. Isidore's
impassioned declaration during the Italian lesson watched by
Geneviève, and avenged upon herself by instant sentence of expulsion
from the little mountain paradise. Everybody had fooled her--she
herself most of all. Fool, not seven times, nor seventy, but seventy
times seven! Even the woman of mystery, for all the darkness of her
suppositions cloud of strange, unknown sins, had tried to warn her
from her folly. The bitterness of being warned, and vainly warned,
by such as she! To be patronized, protected, and advised, to owe
anything to the good-nature, the compassion even of an unfortunate
young person, whose undesirable companionship would never have been
tolerated, except for the pity she inspired and the capacity for
better things she occasionally showed. Red horror flushed her cheeks
at the thought of what inferences M. Isidore might have drawn from
her tacit acceptance of his supposed homage. The little traitor, the
coxcomb! No; never again--from a Frenchman. What heavenly comfort
in the thought that Arthur would never know the true history of those
few weeks--at least, not unless he turned quite nice and sympathetic,
when both were grey and old, and preparing to end their days. Then
it might be safe to tell him, not before.
An Italian afternoon sun smote upon the rock-hewn path with lances of
fire; shadow there was none; the way was steep; her wild flight had
carried her hardly farther than the end of the hotel precincts to the
sudden, bold little eminence topped by pine-trees, round which the
path wound. Here a jutting rock, half buried in undergrowth of
juniper, rosemary, and such-like, offered a broad seat, sheltered
from view by the turn of the pine-topped steep to those mounting the
ridge, but fully exposed to the broad sun-blaze beating on the
mule-path; and here she subsided, looking across the shadowy blue of
the ravine through wet eyes, and propping herself by clutching at the
lichen-embroidered edge of the rock, a prey to these mournful
reflections, when something stirred under the feathery bunch of pines
overhead, some pebbles and earth came rattling down, there was a
light thud on the path beside her, and there, with melancholy eyes
and a face expressive of the utmost concern, stood M. Isidore,
handsome as ever. She looked up with a little cry, and dashed the
tears from her face; but, before English lips could frame a syllable,
an overwhelming torrent of eloquent French apology broke forth from
the gallant Gaul, sweeping everything before it in its rushing course.
That he should have been the innocent and unwitting cause of insult
and inconvenience to Madame broke his heart and drove him to
distraction, she heard. He was ready to do anything in expiation and
amendment; if, indeed, any were possible; she might command him; he
was there, at her service absolutely. Did she wish apartments,
pension, anything, elsewhere? He would fly to the ends of the earth
to secure them; he would telegraph north, south, east, and west; let
her but name her locality, her terms, and her aspect, they should be
hers. She could, of course, not remain an hour under that roof after
such an insult. What broke his heart most severely and drove him to
uttermost distraction and maddest desire to slay himself, was the
thought of Madame's invariable and continuous kindness to himself.
At this a deepening crimson obliged Madame to spread a damp and
flimsy wisp of handkerchief over as much of her face as circumstances
permitted, attempting some faint murmurs of deprecation; she had only
been decently civil, as to others. How he should have fared in the
agonizing vicissitudes by which his bosom had been so cruelly
furrowed and torn, without the unvarying sympathy and counsel Madame
was good enough to extend to him, M. Isidore shuddered to think.
Enough; she had saved him, she had recalled him to manhood and
enabled him to endure, even to hope. In return for this she had
suffered outrage, insult, desecration, from a breast of granite, from
the impure rage of a hyena heart. She had been involved in the
persecutions and maledictions of a ferocious fate that had blasted
and blighted him from earliest youth--he looked about eighteen as he
spoke--the poison of his misery had infected her. He wondered why he
had been born, and rejoiced that it was not impossible for a brave
man to die. In the meantime, and before resorting to this ultimate
course of action, he had a favour to ask, an enormous favour, that
nothing but previous experience of the inexhaustible goodness, the
boundless tenderness, of Madame emboldened him to implore. She was
aware of the misconstructions that a viperous and impure nature had
cast upon the kindness and good counsel, he might almost say, despite
her youth, the maternal counsel of Madame. He was powerless to
explain these misconstructions, or remove the venomous suspicions
with which a guileless and loving ear had been systematically and
fatally poisoned. Madame alone had power to do this. Five words
face to face with Mlle. Bontemps alone could effect it.
Mademoiselle, prejudiced, poisoned against him, shuddering under base
imputations to him of a terrible perfidy, reluctantly persuaded by
venomous tongues, by the hissings of human serpents, of basest
betrayal on the part of one she trusted to the utmost, wounded, as
she imagined, by the hand she loved most, transfixed to the heart's
core, bleeding from the stab of a supposed treachery without
parallel, and almost lifeless, Mademoiselle absolutely refused to
admit him to her adored presence, whence he was pitilessly chased by
the entire Bontemps family. Madame was acquainted with the history
of his devouring passion for this young girl, to win whose love he
had stooped to serve, as Jupiter and other gods in like cases had so
frequently done, assuming the form of a river, a bull, a shower of
gold--what you will. The tenderness of Mademoiselle had been kindled
by the amazing fire of his devotion, the marble prejudices even of
her stony-hearted parents had been shattered after her rescue from
the violence of a---- in short, after her rescue had been effected at
the Carnival in the disguise of a crocodile; and, as Madame was
doubtless aware, he had, in consequence of that, been permitted to
salute Mlle. Geneviève as his betrothed. Of venomous and absurd
misconceptions, partly due in all cases to his own folly and
indiscretion, Madame was but too well aware. Would she have the
extreme complaisance to explain this both to Mlle. Bontemps and to
her iron-breasted parents?
"M. Isidore, I will do what I can. But how can I?" she faltered,
having fresh recourse to the sadly inefficient handkerchief, now more
like a wet sponge. "But they won't believe me. And I am so sorry
about the--the It-It-Italian lessons you were goo-good enough to give
me, never dreaming----"
"_And_ the Monte Carlo incident," added M. Isidore, who was eminently
practical. "Ah, Madame!" he cried, sinking with infinite grace and
dexterity on one knee on a comparatively soft piece of rock, "you are
acquainted with the depth of my passion, my infatuation, the agony,
with which my bosom is torn. Grant me this one favour--only this
one. I know that I am asking much--but consider my passion--have
pity on my despair----"
"Stop that," suddenly growled a bass voice in British accents, as the
tall figure and picturesque untidiness of the Anarchist appeared from
round the corner of the pine-topped bluff, to the stupefaction of M.
Isidore, who sprang to his feet with a deep involuntary "Mon Dieu!"
and of Ermengarde, who removed the wet wisp from her face with a
little stifled shriek, and gazed horror-struck on the intruder, who
had the satisfaction of spoiling this moving scene of a weeping lady
sadly resisting the passionate importunity of a kneeling,
supplicating cavalier.
"Que diable voulez-vous ici, de Konski?" cried M. Isidore, quickly
recovering himself, and fiercely and haughtily twirling his moustache.
"What the devil are you doing here, de Vieuxbois?" retorted the
Anarchist in French. "What do you mean by masquerading as a waiter
in a hotel? Stop annoying this lady at once."
"It is, on the contrary, Monsieur, you that annoy Madame. Have the
complaisance to leave us without delay," commanded M. Isidore, his
moustache stiff with rage.
"Oh, please go away," cried Ermengarde distractedly, shivering and
white--"go at once, all of you--all of you!"
For herself the luckless Ermengarde had no option; she was totally
incapable of flight, the path being narrow, and blocked on the one
hand by M. Isidore and on the other by M. de Konski, while the bluff
towered steeply above her and the ravine fell abruptly below. She
wished the rock-path would split open and swallow her up, that the
bluff would topple down and bury her under it, that she could get
past the antagonists and fall headlong down the ravine, down to the
very bed of the torrent below; in fact, she hardly knew what she
wished in her desperation.
"Leave this lady, Vicomte," thundered the Anarchist. "Go, at once,
before I make you!"
The little Frenchman turned, bowing respectfully to the trembling,
almost weeping, Ermengarde. "Madame," he said mournfully, "I regret
deeply. One moment, and you are disembarrassed from the
unwarrantable intrusion of this person. Go you, M. de Konski," he
added, facing about with gestures of command, "before I hurl you to
the depths below. Is it probable that I permit a stranger to molest
with his undesired presence a lady who honours me with her
acquaintance and commands my protection?"
"No more of that, de Vieuxbois," came the stern retort. "You have
annoyed this lady more than enough. Off with you."
"And pray, M. de Konski," demanded M. Isidore, with flaming glance
and fierce accent, "what is Madame to you, that you thus arrogantly
dare to essay to chase people from her presence?"
"Oh, not much," the Anarchist replied bitterly--"not much.
Only--only a--connexion--by marriage."
At this moment a wild cry from the distressed lady, followed by the
sudden and precipitate descent of the Anarchist's beard down the
ravine, a similar flight of his broad felt hat and goggles in the
same direction, sequent on the uprising from her rocky seat of
Ermengarde, who, indeed, had initiated the movements of these things,
with the terrified exclamation of "Arthur!" struck M. Isidore dumb
with amazement for about the space of seven seconds, at the end of
which he observed with a gentle smile, "Pardon, Monsieur, I was
mistaken; I had not understood. The connexion appears to be somewhat
intimate. I congratulate," and airily raising his hat, he slipped
lightly up the path to where it was possible to scale the cliff, up
which he sprang, vanishing in the clump of pines on the top.