Chapter XII

M. Isidore's Heartache

It was among the many exasperating features in Arthur's character that you could never tell if a good, honest knock hit him hard or only just glided off him, so atrocious was the depth of his secretiveness and undemonstrativeness. He could have carried foxes, wolves, hyenas, even rats, under his cloak, and let them gnaw him till his last gasp, without giving a sign.

It was only from side-lights flashed from family and friendly letters that his wife could have enjoyed the just satisfaction of hearing that he was supremely uncomfortable in her absence; and even that was denied her, by reason of his perversity in remaining on that mysterious circular business tour, that never seemed to end, and respecting which he gave the most meagre information. There was no hope of his being uncomfortable on that tour; on the contrary, he was quite certain to enjoy it immensely. That is one of the irritating things in life--the supreme satisfaction with which business fills the male mind. Business is a large word; it embraces all the concerns of men that exclude women, or rather wives--so Mrs. Allonby sometimes explained to young friends about to marry.

Still, she could not help hoping that he was desperately uncomfortable and longing for her earlier return, though the wretch never had the decency to hint at anything of the kind. Well, she would not tell him of the unlucky necessity for her early return; she would simply appear in Kensington as if on a sudden impulse, and say that the Riviera was too hot, too cold, too rowdy, too respectable--either adjective fitted--but never confess to the misfortunes of Monte Carlo.

But the incident of the necklace had so strengthened her worst suspicions connecting the woman of mystery that, before she slept that very night, the headache having vanished, she took pen and paper, and, by the light of a moon looking steadily from a dark-blue vault, cleared of cloud by rain, related the whole story to her husband, not omitting the sudden irruption of improvised aunts at Monte Carlo, or the dark intriguings with the young English prodigal and the elderly Russian Anarchist. "If that creature," she wrote, with reference to the Anarchist, "dogs my footsteps and glares at me through his detestable goggles much more, I shall have to leave the place. I do hope he is not smitten by me, but sometimes I fear it. No doubt he ought to be in Siberia, where at least there would be nothing but wolves for him to glare at and scheme against." These remarks occasioned her correspondent some diversion of a harmless character. For her other _bête noire_--namely, the woman of mystery--she wrote, she thought it might be possible to obtain some information concerning her. Should she apply to the nearest British Consul, or ask information of the French police? It was becoming dangerous to be mixed up with a woman who had actually gone the length of trying to make her an accomplice in selling priceless jewels, of which she was obviously not the rightful owner.

It was while inditing this sentence that a beautiful thought flashed upon Ermengarde's mental vision, and, laying aside pen and paper, and sweeping her hair back from her shoulders, she leant her chin on her hands and looked out upon the silver-steeped olive-groves and pine-woods and the broad, bright path of sea trembling in silvery sparkles beneath the moon.

She would sell the chain flung to her at the Carnival.

It was certainly hers, and quite as certainly she would never wear the thing. She remembered the high price of that she had seen at Spink's. This one appeared to be quite as good, the pearls of quite as excellent colour and lustre, the diamonds the same. It ought to fetch something substantial.

With this comfortable thought she folded her letter and went to bed, and slept till morning blushed (as it did at the proper time in vivid crimson), while the poor suspected woman in the next room tossed upon an uneasy pillow, and racked her brains in vain, feverish efforts to find some way of turning the sapphires into money, until youth and nature conquered, and she too sank into blissful forgetfulness.

Ermengarde found it useless to take the thin man into her confidence with regard to the woman of mystery; his mind on that subject seemed to be of impenetrable brass. Had Mr. Welbourne observed this or that singular proceeding on the part of Miss Somers? drew from him a look of blank stupidity, a brazen want of comprehension, or some remark to the effect that Miss Somers was a young lady of singular charm; that she possessed intelligence of a high order, was remarkably well-informed, a most restful companion, with unusual conversational powers, enhanced by the still more unusual faculty of knowing when to be silent; that her beauty was of a very distinguished order, the marble whiteness of her complexion having the quality of _morbidezza_, and being due to an exceptionally fine and clear skin, rather than to ill-health.

"In short, my dear creature," Ermengarde reflected, "you think her far too good-looking to be criticized, much less suspected."

She remembered that the thin man was a bachelor, and not so very old, probably not much more than forty, the age of most acute susceptibility to feminine attraction. In the sight of men of that age, beauty can do no wrong. Yet the thin man honestly detested poor Miss Boundrish; he had been known to flee as if for life, and hide behind trees, rocks, trellises, and folding screens, even on one occasion behind an upright piano, where by mischance he was imprisoned for two solid hours, in trying to escape the society of that coral-lipped, dewy-eyed sylph.

But the woman of mystery had known how to tame that wild and shy bachelor heart to her hand. Perhaps she would make _him_ sell the sapphires.

"Supposing," Ermengarde asked Mr. Welbourne, the day after her refusal to oblige Agatha by that small service, conscience having given her some uncomfortable qualms on that account--"supposing some one were to ask you to sell extremely valuable jewels for them, on the ground that _they_ did not wish to be seen selling diamonds, would you do it?"

"Why not? If it were a lady, of course I would," he said promptly, reflecting that he was in for it, and could make better bargains than she, and hoping that parting with her jewels would be a lesson to Mrs. Allonby on the folly of gambling.

"But supposing you were another lady?"

"How suppose anything so utterly impossible?" What on earth had that to do with it, he wondered.

"Well, would one woman ask another woman to do such a thing without very strong reason?"

The man's brain swam; certainly she was not asking him to sell jewels for her. What could she be driving at?

"Dear lady, I hope you will forgive my saying that the common consent of mankind throughout the ages agrees that your sex never acts upon reason."

"I can't forgive anything so insulting to my sex. My impression is that the woman stole the necklace."

"Ah, now we leave the abstract and come to the concrete--a particular woman and a particular necklace--and forgetting logic, we go gallantly upon feelings, intuitions. Still, the impression that certain costly jewels have been stolen by an individual acquaintance is somewhat powerful, not to say aggressive. Modern altruism, still less old-fashioned Christian charity, would scarcely cherish an impression of that kind, would it?" After all, he reflected, this little woman is not as simple as she appears.

"Well, but if she wants to sell them, why can't she do it herself?"

"People exist who never, as a matter of principle, do anything they can get anybody else to do for them. I can't defend the principle, though I often act upon it; indeed, it appears to have its roots very deep in human nature, like the propensity to bottle up trumps at bridge."

"One dislikes to be disobliging; it seems unkind."

"If," replied the thin man, a light suddenly breaking upon his bewildered brain, "the lady in question should happen to be our dear young friend of the too frequent laugh, Mrs. Allonby, don't be afraid. She has neither the wit nor the self-command to make a big haul like that. But she is quite silly enough to get into difficulties over play or dress"--here Ermengarde's cheeks vied with the scarlet salvias blooming hard by--"and to sell jewels on the sly, and it would be the worst service you could do a child like that to help her."

"Sweet girl! I quite agree with you. She's much too small for large sins. And I've never seen her with valuable jewels. Dear Mr. Welbourne, your advice is as always so excellent. Ever since we met here you have been a second father to me."

The thin man sighed. It is a sweet and seemly thing to be the father of a charming and lovely young woman, but only when one is too old for other relationships. It occurred to him that it might be wise to shave; a beard sometimes gives a false appearance of age. The patriarchs wore beards, while Greek gods, with the exception of Zeus, are mostly represented as beardless. No one ever heard of a bearded angel. Only yesterday Miss Boundrish had wondered publicly and at the top of her voice why Mr. Welbourne "had never married," and he had replied very meekly that it was not his custom to do anything in a hurry; upon which Miss Boundrish's mother had encouragingly cited the case of a cousin's uncle on the other side, who had married at eighty-five.

It was while Mr. Welbourne was sighing and meditating on his own beard and the probable extent of her pecuniary difficulties that Ermengarde, who, with his helping hand had just climbed up among the twisted roots of some pines to the height on which the monastery was built, caught sight of the figure of a stranger. He was pacing the broad and level walk beneath the cypresses, outside the building, where the ridge was highest, and whence the outlook over mountain gorges on one hand and capes and headlands running out to sea on the other was widest and of most varied beauty. It was a tall, thin, black figure in a hooded cloak, with a clean-shaven, ascetic face bent over the book he carried and was perusing with devout interest.

"Surely," she said, stopping to rest on the low, crumbling wall by the steps leading on to this plateau--"surely that must be one of the expelled monks, or his ghost, come back to the old home. Reading his breviary."

Mr. Welbourne found a seat on the wall beside her, carefully avoiding a geranium-bush, that had grown up to the top among the broken stones, and gave out a delicate scent where Ermengarde's skirt swept it.

"No," he said, looking at the studious figure, "it is not a monk. I doubt if the book he is studying with such devout interest is a book of hours--or a psalter."

"An interesting type--pale, worn, emaciated, deep-set eyes, a keen, subtle face--the true ascetic type. What stories that face could tell," she mused aloud--"that is, the mouth."

"Well, yes; it has told a few thumpers to my certain knowledge. No, it is not a monk, Mrs. Allonby. It is only Mr. Mosson."

"You know him? How interesting!"

"Oh, everybody knows Mr. Mosson--everybody who has come to grief, that is."

"A philanthropist? The modern form of religious enthusiasm--deeds, not words; feeding the hungry instead of saying prayers. A holy materialism."

How soon, Mr. Welbourne reflected, misfortune breeds cynicism. It was hardly forty-eight hours since calamity at the tables had befallen this young woman, and she could talk like this. "Should you be in want of money," he continued, "you have merely to name the sum to our ascetic friend, and it is forthcoming. People often want money in these regions, because everybody here is rich. It is only the rich who want money."

"Really? Then what on earth do the poor want?"

"Oh, lots of things--food, fire, friends, advice, sympathy, clothes, work, but money never."

"Really? Then how very, very rich I must be."

"Undoubtedly you are. But here comes our friend."

They had to stand in the narrow path to let the reverend man pass on his pious way, and, the _déjeuner_ bell having just left off sounding, followed him into the house very shortly after, but at too small a distance to permit further discussion of his virtues--a point much on Mr. Welbourne's conscience at the time, but unfortunately soon driven from his memory by after-events.

The benefactor of his species in the meantime, unconscious of the veneration he inspired, took his place at a small solitary table in the background, silent and, after the first few moments of curiosity his presence excited, unnoticed, and presumably absorbed in schemes for the amelioration of mankind. With the _déjeuner_ he vanished, but was again discovered at his secluded table at dinner, just as if he had never moved, and so for several days.

Rumour spoke of a motor-car waiting daily at the foot of the ridge, and bearing him away in a cloud of dust and unpleasant smell. M. Bontemps hinted that he came up to Les Oliviers for a few days' rest, much to Mrs. Allonby's surprise. She had had no idea that the practice of beneficence was so fatiguing.

People often came up to the little house on the ridge for rest and quiet, out of the closer air of the town, out of the racket and turmoil of the huge and hideous barrack hotels, that desolated the face of the country for many a mile round, even drawing great splotches of aggressive ugliness across the lovely wooded slopes of the mountains, so that no eye could possibly escape the sight of them. And after a brief sojourn, refreshed and soothed to the point of boredom, they returned with renewed zest to the horrors of civilization and excessive wealth in the barracks.

Les Oliviers itself was certainly not beautiful, and it was visible from far, but its humble position behind and beneath the monastery, its moderate size and similarity to the little green-shuttered houses dotted among vineyards and olive-gardens, with its absence of all pretence and meretricious ornament, redeemed it from vulgarity, and put its want of comeliness out of mind. So at least Mrs. Allonby told M. Isidore, who acknowledged the compliment with a bow, and observed with a sigh of deepest melancholy that it was the home of his heart's desire.

A cloud had for some days past hung over the habitual gaiety of the cheery little man, a cloud neither black with thunder nor leaden with low-hanging rain, but rather one of those pearly transparencies that flutter about sunset skies, catching and transmuting every glorious glow of crimson and gold and purple. He was obliging, courteous, full of wit and gaiety, as ever; but interspersed his sallies with deep-drawn sighs, emotional exclamations, and those little, half-humorous groans, that are the peculiar characteristic of the lively Gaul.

He had even discussed--with Mrs. Allonby--the frequency and inevitableness of self-destruction as a result of feminine scorn and variableness, and of blighted hopes, together with the best way of effecting it. For this, he had been gently, very gently, rebuked, and wisely and kindly counselled, and recommended to give back scorn for scorn.

"What care I how fair she be?" etc.

In rejoinder he had referred to the tragic circumstance that he possessed a heart, placing his hand over the region where hearts are supposed to be, with a gesture expressive of severe internal pain.

In short, there was no manner of doubt that M. Isidore was the victim of unrequited passion of the most powerful description, or that the sympathy implied or expressed by Mrs. Allonby's reception of his hinted confidences was balm to his wounded breast.

She told him quite plainly that he was a fool--a fact that he admitted with gusto--that he was young, and would soon get over it, which he denied with fury. Some such confidences had been imparted during chance meetings and aimless rovings along paths through pine-woods aromatic with undergrowth of myrtle and juniper; through solemn olive-groves, hushed and dim, their drooping foliage tangled with azure lights; between vineyards; by lonely cottages, pergola-shaded; through shadowy dells and along sunny ridge-tops. In the bee-haunted silence of these secluded ways suddenly, round a corner, up a ravine, down a steep, emerging from an aisle of pine-trunks, anything or anybody might appear as if by magic. Sometimes a mule, pattering softly and steadily under panniers of household goods and garden stuff, and followed by a peasant with ready smile and chat in broken French; now an old woman leading a goat; sometimes men or women laden with faggots and grass more heavily than their own patient, soft-eyed beasts; sometimes a gaily-caparisoned donkey bearing a tourist, sometimes a whole noisy troop of them; now a solitary pedestrian, now a numerous party, breaking the charmed quiet by confused babble of nasal American, guttural German, slurred English, or burred French; sometimes the sudden, abhorred gurgle of Miss Boundrish.

The suddenness and unexpectedness of these apparitions, the feeling that anything--a wood-nymph, a fairy, a mountain gnome, a Greek faun, the face of an old friend, or the bearer of some new fresh happiness--might appear was a great charm. One afternoon Ermengarde had been sitting under a pine-tree on a sandy bank by the path, looking across the ravine at the great sweep of crag-peaked mountains running down to a broad blue space of sea, when the figure of M. Isidore issued from hidden depths, and was suddenly outlined on the sky in front of her.

Quite naturally, and without hesitation, he let himself down on the myrtle-covered bank near the lady, but a little lower down, so that in speaking he had to look up. The easy, friendly ways of this attendant Ariel sometimes aroused a momentary wonder, soon stilled by the reflection that it was "only M. Isidore," a convenient and agreeable foreigner, outside conventions, socially non-existent, like the peasants who chatted and smiled so pleasantly in passing.

Though the daily unacknowledged offering of flowers continued, none had been worn since the episode of the Malmaisons. Not that any importance was to be attributed either to the French youth's graceful courtesy in giving flowers, or to the woman of mystery's unwarranted hints of gossip about it. Mrs. Allonby seldom wore flowers at table now, unless they were obviously wild; that was all.

Nor had the Italian lessons M. Isidore had been giving her stopped--he gave conversational lessons in that language to Miss Boundrish, to Mr. Welbourne, and other male visitors as well. There was nothing tedious or fatiguing in the Italian lessons given to Mrs. Allonby. They always began with _Ollendorffian_ questions and answers in slow and indifferent Italian, as thus: "Do you like cheese? I do not like cheese, but the sister-in-law of the Italian organ-grinder likes cheese," and ended in light and gay discussions in quick, fluent French upon subjects of various interest, art, literature, the only drastic and effectual remedy for blighted hopes, the best place to pop and redeem jewels in, the last big haul at Monte Carlo, and the eminent personalities to be seen playing there--topics upon which this light-hearted youth was very well informed.

"Ah, Madame!" he sighed on this sunny afternoon, his beautiful dark eyes uplifted to her sympathetic face, and his hand fervidly pressing the upper part of his waistcoat; "if I might but reveal to you the anguish that is consuming me!"

Bees were drowsily humming in masses of grey-blue rosemary bloom, so drowsily that they accentuated the deep mountain silence, upon which the minor tones of the lovelorn youth's voice fell plaintive and clear. Ermengarde, regarding him with the unconsciously sweet expression that had won her many a heart, was replying, "Well, why not? Perhaps the trouble is not so great as it seems," when she became sympathetically aware, without looking up, through a sudden nervous tremor in her young friend's frame, of another presence on the path, and turned simultaneously with him to see the statuesque figure and cold, rigid face of Mlle. Bontemps.

She had apparently sprung up unobserved from the depths of the earth, as everybody did on that ridge, and stood waiting, her massively coiled hair shining uncovered in the fading sun, for an opportunity to speak.

The luckless Isidore was on his feet with a bound, while Ermengarde started with a smothered exclamation, and recovered with a little embarrassed laugh.

"How you startled me, Mademoiselle!" she said. "One hears nothing on this soft sand."

Mademoiselle seemed neither to see nor to hear Mrs. Allonby. Looking coldly at the embarrassed and apologetic Isidore, she said with a kind of weary calm, "Maman is still waiting," turned and walked away with her usual haughty bearing, and sank out of sight down the steep path, pursued, after a moment of despairing gesture, in which his hair suffered, and a wild exclamation of, "Mon Dieu! je l'avais oubliée, cette vieille!" by M. Isidore, to the mingled amusement and regret of Ermengarde, who justly divined that the charm of her society had beguiled the unfortunate youth into forgetfulness of the hour of some domestic duty, and that his reception at the hotel might be stormy.

"He really is a very dear boy," she reflected, leaning back against the gnarled pine-trunk, and watching the shadows fill hollow and ravine with vague blueness and the upward slanting sunlight steep the mountain peaks in crimson and rose, while the hushed sea grew bluer than its own incredible blue, and the clear, deep sky took a violet tinge. "How on earth did this boy come to be born in this small hotel-keeper class? He has the bearing of a prince, the instincts of a knight of romance, and the charm of a gallant child. And then to be sulked at and called over the coals by a girl like Geneviève, and at the beck and call of a woman like this Madame Bontemps!"

The situation was odious, impossible. She wished the poor boy were her son. When youngish women--women under thirty--find themselves wishing to be the mothers of full-grown and fascinating youths, they should at once begin to think as hard as possible of something else. Instead of this, Mrs. Allonby went on thinking how this young Isidore might be her son. He could not be more than twenty-one, certainly; it was hardly possible to be a mother at seven--but at seventeen? Had she been born just ten years earlier, the thing would have been not only possible, but probable. She might have been forcibly married to some unpleasant elderly person at sixteen--some foreign vicomte, who, after a few years, would have conveniently and politely died, leaving her in the bloom of youth, free and rich, as they do in French novels.

Then she might have met Arthur and married him, at eight or nine and twenty--a much more appropriate age for Arthur's wife--that is, in the event of Arthur having had the sense to be born on the date of his actual birth, though, of course, a man so exasperating was capable of anything. It would have been so interesting to marry a French noble and have those few years' glimpse of foreign life. And, in that case, the poor dear boy would certainly not have found himself in this sordid hotel-keeping element; he might have been in the diplomatic service; he was made for it. Why had her life not been arranged on these lines? An elder brother would have been so good for Charlie; she would have been less tempted to spoil the child; and being nearer his age, and having already trained one husband, she would have been more capable of understanding Arthur's freaks and fancies; and some recent regrettable incidents might never have occurred. But it is a crooked world.

Turning with a sigh, she found herself face to face with a figure that had come down unseen in the shadows, and proved to be that of a fellow-visitor. "Where is M. Isidore?" this lady asked abruptly in the German manner.

Hardly had Ermengarde expressed polite ignorance on the subject, when her musings were again interrupted by the appearance of Miss Boundrish's parents, on their evening stroll, with the same query, followed by expressions of disappointment at her inability to satisfy their curiosity.

"But where can he be?" exclaimed Mrs. Boundrish with irritation, upon which she was tartly advised to go back to the hotel and telephone for the required information.

"But you must know which way he went?" Mrs. Boundrish persisted obstinately.

"Indeed, I am neither as observant nor as curious as you suppose," she replied sweetly, vexed at having shown temper to a casual travelling acquaintance--a mere "passing ship"--whereupon Mr. and Mrs. Boundrish exchanged glances; while Ermengarde, incidentally remarking upon the well-known chill of the sunset hour, rose and walked in the opposite direction to her inquisitors--homewards--remembering as she went that it was not the first time that questions concerning the youth who might have been her son, if she had been ten years older, had annoyed her. The pettiness and impertinence of these underbred _tourists_--tourists are never of the first person; people have owned to criminality, but not to being tourists--the worst of these small hotels--people are so mixed up and thrown together.

"Well, and if the poor boy is hard hit," she meditated, "a grand passion is a necessary phase in a young man's development, and the more hopeless the better. But the _bourgeois_ mind cannot grasp the beauty of an ideal devotion, of the unselfish homage a gallant youth gladly pays to one in every way hopelessly above him. A Boundrish can vulgarize even that poetic passion. How very lucky that the object of the poor lad's devotion happens to be a staid and sensible matron old enough to give motherly advice and young enough to be sympathetic," she reflected complacently, while she went slowly back to the house and dressed for _table d'hôte_.

She was still pursuing this current of reflection while she went downstairs in her simple semi-toilet, adorned no longer by tributary flowers, and sank upon the least hard-hearted of the drawing-room easy-chairs.

"Oh, I say, Mrs. Allonby!" cried Miss Boundrish, bursting into the half-lighted, empty room with her usual grace and charm, and punctuating her remarks with gurgles, "I'm jolly glad you're safe, so far. That Bontemps girl is going for you the minute she sees you. There has been the most awful row downstairs about you. Best double-lock your door to-night, and be careful to eat nothing that has not been tasted by somebody else."

"My _dear_ Miss Boundrish," she replied gently, observing that no one else was in the room; "you are young, and your imagination is vivid; _do_ you think it quite wise to mix yourself up with the people of the house?"

But Dorris was not to be crushed; she only gurgled scornfully, and would have made some pert retort, had not the thin man, who, after all, had been lounging unseen in a shadowed corner, suddenly glided to the piano, struck some full bass chords and begun to improvise in a pleasant fashion he had at times: when the room was empty and he felt moved to confide his thoughts and dreams to the spirit in the instrument.

Then Ermengarde, ruffled and inwardly raging, but grateful for Mr. Welbourne's paternal care, took a seat touching the piano, and was silent; the man with the ascetic face came in and stood like a statue behind the player; the room slowly filled; but Mr. Welbourne, contrary to custom, played on, as if something within him must find expression in music, even when a buzz of talk hummed through the room and lights were turned up, until dinner.