Chapter XI

Katzenjammer

In its leisurely progress back to Mentone the train passed through the same scenes as in leaving it, but they had not the same charm. The sun was set, the air chill, the world inclined to be grey.

Everybody, except Miss Boundrish, who gurgled till both Ermengarde and the thin man prayed earnestly to be delivered from the temptation to choke her, was silent. Agatha's face had taken on its deepest expression of sadness; she seemed absorbed in thought too melancholy for words, and weighed by care too heavy for human sufferance. Ermengarde felt smaller, cheaper, and of less account than she had done for years. She would have to go home at least a fortnight earlier than she had intended in consequence of that afternoon's diversion; there would be no margin for pleasant expensive nothings and no gifts for Charlie. And for the first time in a new place Charlie's picture post-cards had been forgotten. The thought of it burnt her cheeks and clouded her eyes. And as for Arthur--well, he had not expressed any very acute anguish at their separation. He was obviously enjoying life as much as possible in that prolonged business excursion of his, to judge by the brevity and infrequency of his letters. Why should men have all the fun?

"You appear to have had a delightful afternoon, Mrs. Allonby," Miss Boundrish's mother said at dinner. "What lovely carnations! Did _they_ come from Monte Carlo?"

"Will you have one, Mrs. Boundrish?" she returned, with a sweet smile, wondering if she were really bound in honour not to give Dorris away.

"And did M. Isidore play _too_?" was another question from some one across the table, eliciting the frigid reply that Mrs. Allonby knew nothing of M. Isidore's recreations.

"Now tell me in confidence, dear Mrs. Allonby," urged a third persecutor, pursuing her to a corner, into which she had tucked herself cosily, after dinner in the salon. "How much _did_ you lose, and was it _very_ exciting? I hear that M. Isidore makes quite a little income by his average winnings. Of course, he has a system."

There was something in Mrs. Boundrish's allusion to her flowers that fired a train of thought in Mrs. Allonby's mind. Fresh flowers had always appeared on her table before dinner; she had taken them in her inexperience as part of the usual entertainment for man and beast to be expected at hotels, not observing that none were on Agatha's table, and that no charge for flowers appeared in the bills. But these superb Malmaison carnations were obviously not from the Oliviers garden. Moreover, instead of donkey-riding up to the house with the others that afternoon, she had taken the steep, short cut through the lemons and olives, finding the kind assistance of M. Isidore in this ascent most useful in the dusk. Just as they came up into the light of the electric lamp in the grounds by a very steep climb, for which M. Isidore had given her a hand up, that gallant gentleman dropped a large paper cornet he had personally conducted with great care from Monte Carlo. And when Mrs. Allonby stopped its descent into the lemon-trees with her sunshade, it burst open and disclosed a sheaf of Malmaisons, exactly like those found afterwards on her table.

Further, when she went to the office after dinner, she found Mademoiselle Geneviève in charge, smiling and radiant, with a huge sheaf of Malmaisons in her belt and one flower nestling becomingly in her dark hair. M. Isidore, as often happened at that hours sat near her on the sofa, and conversation of a joyous and pleasant nature appeared to be forward. How could Miss Boundrish call this girl plain and frumpish? To-night she was positively handsome in a brilliant Southern style, her face lit with laughter, her great, liquid dark eyes sparkling, her white, even teeth gleaming between full red lips. Her figure was fine in a statuesque way, strong and stately. Mlle. Bontemps was unusually gracious in supplying the information desired until her full, dark eye lit on the Malmaisons in Mrs. Allonby's belt; then her face changed; she turned with a flash of fury and looked at M. Isidore, who looked studiously through the open doorway at nothing at all, while Ermengarde beat a retreat as hasty as was consistent with dignity and a proper Parisian accent. Afterwards, at the first opportunity, she asked the chambermaid whence the flowers on her table came, and heard with misgiving that they were so placed daily by command of M. Isidore.

"So it is the duty of M. Isidore to supply all the dressing-tables with bouquets?" she asked carelessly.

"Mais, Madame," came in deep, contralto remonstrance, "est-ce que tout le monde dépense comme ça pour les fleurs?"

"No doubt I am extravagant, Louise," she confessed humbly, "but the flowers usually come from the gardens or the mountains, and are not charged for in the bills."

Louise smiled approval of this reply; she had studied life in many aspects. She liked Mrs. Allonby, whom she had made acquainted with the whole of her family history, and of whom she had asked and received counsel and munificent tips--but the latter unasked.

"Stupid boy!" Ermengarde said to herself, with vexation. She had dined publicly in his flowers night after night, beginning with the tea-roses he gave her in the garden on her arrival. And the crocodile at the Carnival had thrown her Parma violets. Yes, and she had worn them--idiot!--without thinking. Luckily, nobody would know--except Miss Boundrish and her mother, and---- But, after all, what are flowers? and what did this French boy's impertinence or ignorance matter?

A wet day, accompanied by a furious headache and the state of mind Germans call _Katzenjammer_, followed the thrilling afternoon of real life at Monte Carlo. Odd to think that it was actually raining at Les Oliviers. But not common, dreary rain, such as makes London streets a foretaste of the future habitation of sinners. No, fairy rain, clean, bright, transparent, a sort of crystalline veil through which that beautiful Southern shore could be seen with undazzled eyes, and yet more distinctly than in the clear sunlight, like a lovely human form, lovelier through transparent drapery. The clouds were not leaden, but of pearly lustre; the feathery, misty grace of olive-woods was no longer confused with the heavier mass and colour of pines; the delicate symmetry of those flights of steps that were vine-terraces, connected by miniature flights that were real stairs, came into view; every solitary cottage and every towered hamlet stood out clear on its crest beneath the solemn mountain peaks. The sea behind those shining curtains of moving rain was still blue, and there was leisure now to be glad of a four-square house on a mountain ridge, with a wide and glorious prospect from every window, and a different view on every side of the house.

Mr. Welbourne was trying to catch an impression from five sides at once, and in despair wandered up and down the corridors looking at each in turn. An amateur was thumping music-hall melodies on the ground-floor piano, which was out of tune, while another played fragments of Wagner in the drawing-room immediately above it, and Miss Boundrish practised _solfeggi_ in the room over that.

And yet Ermengarde's headache and _Katzenjammer_--or mental atmosphere sequent on nights enjoyed less wisely than well--steadily increased as the day wore on. After luncheon, quite overcome and flattened out by these afflictions, she retired shivering to bed. On this the woman of mystery, at once transformed into Sir Walter Scott's ministering angel, tucked her up cosily, kindled a wood fire on her hearth, and sat silent and thoughtful in its light, softly blowing up the logs with a little carved bellows fetched from her own room. To her the tinkle and plash of this sweet, clear rain was soothing after the long dryness, and the silvery light a relief from the perpetual purple splendour of sky and sea. Ermengarde, soothed by these attentions and the soft sound of the bellows, watched the fire-light play on Agatha's still, clear-cut features and graceful form, and meditated on her failings. Sad that one so fair should be presumably so false, paying imaginary visits to fictitious aunts, and conspiring with bearded Anarchists and beardless prodigals in goodness knew what wickedness; but she enjoyed being petted, and knew that in their common estimation of Miss Boundrish's varied social charm Agatha and she were one. There was something that strongly attracted her in this mysterious young person. Might this fine nature have been perverted by unfortunate surroundings and evil example in youth? Who could tell?

The Good, but suspected, Samaritan read her to sleep, and on her waking made her excellent tea, unobtrusively and silently in her own room, and brought it in with biscuits, and shared it in a comfortable, home-like way; whereupon Ermengarde's heart expanded and her tongue was loosed, and she recounted her ill-fortune at the tables, and received sympathy untouched by scorn.

In return she heard--in the spirit of a Sadducee--somewhat of the family history of Miss Somers' "connexion by marriage." Mr. Paul's mother, it appeared, had married twice; her second husband and that youth's step-father being Miss Somers' uncle. Mr. Paul's mother was consequently her aunt--a species of relative that Ermengarde was inclined to regard as shadowy and thin, and much too capable of multiplication at will.

"How many aunts have you, dear Miss Somers?" she asked gently; "it is sometimes an advantage to possess several of them."

"So Ivor and I call ourselves cousins," Miss Somers added, not enumerating her aunts. "And, as I have always been very fond of my aunt, I am very much interested in this boy, and exceedingly anxious that he should keep straight."

"Naturally," Ermengarde assented. "What inventive power!" she thought. "By the way," she added suddenly, "Ivor is not a very common name, and Miss Boundrish was once engaged to an Ivor, who knew you. This might be the same man."

"Miss Boundrish engaged to Ivor! Oh! how funny!" Agatha laid down her toy bellows as if to enjoy the visionary relationship, laughing quietly to herself. "Miss Boundrish! But an Ivor who knew me! What on earth has that girl been romancing about me?"

Ermengarde studied the leaves in the bottom of her cup, and smiled sadly over human infirmity. The pot is always calling the kettle, and not only the kettle, but even the silver tea-pot--black.

"What a dangerous girl," continued Agatha. "In a house like this, too. And how very unlucky that she saw you at tea with M. Isidore yesterday."

"And pray why should I not have tea with the boy?" Ermengarde demanded with sudden dignity.

"Why not, indeed? But--please don't think me impertinent or intrusive, dear Mrs. Allonby"--she spoke with a sort of childlike appeal and affection--"the most innocent and obvious things are not always wise, especially in a world in which unmuzzled Boundrishes run about loose."

She looked so guileless, so sweet, so tenderly pleading; her eyes uplifted to Ermengarde's had the transparent candour of a child's; there was a tremulous diffidence about her mouth that went to Ermengarde's heart. A woman who could invent aunts and male connexions by marriage on the spur of the moment, who wrote and received surreptitious letters in cipher--only that afternoon she had been perusing one by the fire, when Ermengarde opened her eyes after a doze, and had quickly pocketed it on discovering that she was watched.

"Boundrishes," continued the woman of mystery, not blenching under the searching gaze upon her, "are--not that this one means any harm, it's only vanity and silliness--they are unconscious gossip-conductors and accumulators combined; they are always discharging whatever happens to have come into their heads, and nothing ever seems to go in quite straight, and all comes out enlarged and distorted."

"Dear Miss Somers, I congratulate you on your truly serpentine wisdom. How did you manage to acquire it?"

"Women who get their own living have to keep their eyes open, else they go down. I sometimes wonder if you realize what the actual position of this young Isidore is, Mrs. Allonby?"

"That surely is obvious, even to eyes not very wide open. But tell me about yourself and your work, dear Miss Somers; women who work are always interesting."

Her work, she replied, was not particularly interesting, rather drudging and casual. Family misfortune had obliged her to provide for herself; she had not been brought up to any profession, but to leisure and comparative affluence. She had tried companioning and secretarial work, even a little hack literary work. She had no decided talent for anything. Her parents were early lost; she had been partly brought up by an aunt--"What! another aunt?" Ermengarde murmured to herself--whose affairs had become entangled and her means diminished, especially during late years. "So I have to work," the woman of mystery said, with a sigh that implied intense weariness and disgust at the necessity, "to take at least one burden from my poor aunt's shoulders."

"Far too thin," Ermengarde thought, and hazarded the observation that the woman of mystery must be greatly enjoying her present holiday; to which she replied that she certainly was, her expenses being supplied by her employer, to whom her sojourn in those regions was in some vague way useful.

"You are possibly collecting information on his behalf?"

"In a way--yes," she admitted, with a faint blush.

"A detective way? Shadowing? Family mysteries?"

"One can't always explain--in detail----"

"Especially in work of such a delicate nature."

The sphinx mask had suddenly fallen back on the woman of mystery's features, and she had audibly remembered a letter to take down for the post.

Having done this, she returned only just in time to dress for dinner and bring the menu for the invalid to select from.

"And I'll see that you have what you choose," she promised. "Louise will bring it up. Ah! she has brought your flowers already," with a quick change of expression.

"Yes--with the hot water," Ermengarde faltered, changing colour quickly. "She always puts flowers on my table for dinner."

"Would she put them on mine, I wonder?"

"Miss Somers, what can it matter? Why in the word shouldn't the stupid boy give me flowers if he likes? Besides, I only found it out yesterday."

"I was sure you didn't know. Miss Boundrish only discovered it quite recently. She is of an inquiring disposition. And what she knows, or thinks she knows, is not long ignored by her world."

"She may know anything and everything she likes about me," Ermengarde flashed out furiously; "how many hairpins I use a day, whether I curl with Hinde's or with tongs, and where I get my gowns--and who pays for them and how much!"

How dared this young woman hint to her of prudence and propriety?

After dinner Agatha came up again, put on fresh logs, and sat meekly by the hearth. She described the desolation Mrs. Allonby's absence had created at _table d'hôte_, as well as Miss Boundrish's Christian desire to visit and console her in her affliction.

"Of course she has a headache," the fair Dorris had shouted across the table, "and no wonder after yesterday."

"Sweet girl!" Ermengarde commented, thankful that the visit scheme had been frustrated.

"I said this afternoon that I had no fortune," the woman of mystery observed presently, bringing in a morocco case from her room. "But I had forgotten this for the moment. It is a little fortune in itself; a thing that has been in our family since--oh, since nobody knows when."

"Very probably, not even the people they were sneaked from," Ermengarde reflected. The light had been switched off, and they had been talking and dreaming in the firelight. The woman of mystery, a slender figure in dead creamy-white, bent to the hearth, and, throwing a handful of eucalyptus bark on the embers, made a leaping blaze in which some jewels in a necklace she drew from the morocco case flashed and quivered like live things. Ermengarde gave a long sigh of wonder and admiration, not untinged by vague longing, at the sight of this rich and beautiful piece of jewellery.

"I never wear it," Agatha said, pensively regarding the gems flashing in her hands as she knelt in the hearth-glow. "How could I, dressing as I do, and of course ought to? And I do not suppose I ever shall. Yet one scarcely cares to part with an heir-loom--except under very serious pressure."

"Put it on," Ermengarde said, and Agatha clasped the necklace round her full white throat, still kneeling and looking into the fire, the jewels quivering with the rise and fall of her breath.

The foundation was a simple collar of lozenge-shaped sapphires, set thick with brilliants; sapphire drops set with brilliants began at the back below the collar and increased to a complicated interlacing of pendants in front, the largest and deepest being star-shaped, the sapphire centre of it unusually rich. The plain white woollen dress was not cut low enough to give the full effect of jewels on white and satiny skin, except to the throat collar and smaller pendants, but the sparkle and lustre they communicated to the finely-cut features and deep eyes was marvellous, while the indifference with which the necklace was worn and the far-away look often so characteristic of her face showed the wearer too deep in thought to care for trifles.

"You are made to wear jewels," Ermengarde said. "How lovely! And how costly!"

"They should be worth some thousands, I believe, and I must sell them--just as they are. I should like to keep part, if only one pendant. They are said to bring luck to our family."

"And have brought you the luck of having to sell them?"

She smiled rather sadly, spreading her hands to the glow and looking thoughtfully into the red chasms of burning wood, the diamonds winking and quivering in crimson and purple flashes in the light; then she drew a deep sigh.

"Jewels change hands often here," she said presently. "Did you notice the Monte Carlo shops, Mrs. Allonby, blazing with diamonds and opals in every shape? Half the shops seem to be jewellers, the windows massed and piled with tiaras, collars--thick dog-collars, solid with emeralds and diamonds--necklaces, rivières, negligés, set thick with them, and ropes and ropes of pearls. I never saw such a profusion of splendid and costly things. People lose at the tables, and sell their ornaments for half-price, and the jewellers sell them again for about three-quarters, glad to turn their money quickly. M. de Querouailles was showing some things he had got for a mere song for his daughter the other night in the salon--lovely things, for a few hundred francs."

"A place to buy rather than to sell in, then?"

"Oh, of course! But necessity is a hard master."

She sighed another long sigh, unclasped the necklace, held it a moment in the best light, looked steadily, almost lovingly, at it, laid it back in the case, and put it on a little table near the hearth. Ermengarde expressed some mild wonder at her hardihood in carrying her fortune so unguardedly about, and spoke of recent repeated jewel robberies.

"But I don't look rich," the woman of mystery assured her. "Nobody would suspect me of sapphires. Besides, when I travel, I wear them."

"And now, dear Mrs. Allonby," she added after a pause, "I want to ask you to do me a great favour. I have sudden and urgent need for a considerable sum of money. It is a family matter of some delicacy, and there are reasons why I should appear to have no hand in it. So I wonder--I wonder if you would be so very kind as to sell my necklace for me at Poupart's?"

"Good gracious! Why, I never sold anything in my life; I never even bought anything of this kind. I've no notion of the value of jewellery. The people would rook me without mercy."

"Oh, that is in the bill. They would rook anybody. I should say that--this--urgent necessity is as yet not quite certain; but if it should become certain, as I fear it will, in the course of a few days, then, dearest Mrs. Allonby, will you--_will_ you do me this very great kindness?"

"You have been kind--most kind to me, Miss Somers, and I should be exceedingly glad of an opportunity to do anything for you in return. But, indeed, I am not a good hand at this kind of thing; I should end in giving your necklace away very likely. I am no good, I assure you--for this."

The woman of mystery looked disappointed--the sphinx mask failed her for once--but she forbore to press her point. Ermengarde's heart misgave her; still she was firm. She felt that she really was not quite such a fool as she looked, and was quite capable of taking care of herself--a somewhat unsatisfactory source of pride, after all.

Of course, she saw through the whole thing, beautifully planned and acted, she confessed--the assumption of guileless interest and angelic sympathy; the delicate, unobtrusive attentions; the child-like, personal confidences; the casual, illuminating glimpses of family history; the carefully prepared, dramatic point of the necklace, so artlessly introduced in the firelight; and the casual unconscious carelessness of the carefully studied pose by the hearth. Yes, it was very well done; and a less acute observer might very well have been taken in by these wiles. Her old suspicion had been correct. Here were jewels of price, snatched probably from some unsuspecting fellow-traveller in the _Train de Luxe_, skilfully concealed upon the body, and covered by an innocent bearing and a pathetic smile, artfully calculated to disarm suspicion. And to dispose of this plunder without danger, she, Ermengarde Allonby, was to be used--she was to be the cat's-paw, and incur the risk of selling stolen goods. "A matter of delicacy," "Reasons for not appearing to be personally concerned," etc.--excellent reasons, a matter of the greatest delicacy, in good truth. What an escape! Arthur should know of this.

She had confided to Miss Somers her dark misgivings as to the Anarchist's interest in herself, to the intense and ill-concealed amusement of that lady, who was doubtless aware that her possessions, and not herself, were the object of his interest in her. Here she was, she reflected, when the lights were out and the house wrapped in silence, alone in a foreign country, utterly at the mercy of this unscrupulous and dangerously attractive young woman, who had made a dead set at her from the first, within an ace of being made her accomplice, practically in the same room with her; for the door of communication was unlocked, and the key had mysteriously disappeared. The police might at any time pounce upon them. She might be robbed to any extent--that is, had she happened to have possessed anything worth stealing--she might be implicated in robberies; stolen property might be secreted among her things to throw the police off the scent; she might be entangled in a conspiracy, mixed up with that dreadful Anarchist--anything--a frightful situation to be in, dangerous beyond imagination. Yet, after all, more amusing than the conventionalities and social amenities of Kensington, more thrilling even than that first wild experience of real life in the Casino Gardens.

And through all she had a sneaking kindness for this woman of mystery. Perhaps her sins were not entirely her fault; no doubt society had sinned against her and forced her into courses of a regrettable nature. Regrettable is a beautiful word. It was of absolutely incalculable value to us during the last Boer War, through which, indeed, we should never have come without it.

And however regrettable were the courses to which society had mysteriously condemned Agatha Somers, there was no doubt that she was a most charming and sympathetic companion, and read aloud to perfection. A nature of finest grain, however warped by circumstance; a kind heart beneath the sphinx mask; intelligence of high order, however misapplied; beauty of an unusual and distinguished kind, and a right instinct in dress--all these, Ermengarde reflected on her passage to the land of dreams, were the property of this fascinating but misguided young woman, whose life appeared to be exercising such a strong and sinister influence upon her own.