Chapter XIV

At Turbia

"What Roman strength Turbia showed In ruin by the mountain road. How like a gem, beneath, the city Of little Monaco, basking, glowed."

"Little Monaco, basking," and glowing, too, as the poet says, sits on its rock that runs out into the sea, in a world of its own, cut off, distinct, aloof from the every-day world, like some enchanted princess, walled away from reality in a faery land by rose and fire. The tiny city, that is also a principality, with a tiny harbour and arsenal at the rock foot, and a castled palace where it joins the mainland, is little more than a stone's throw--less than a long-range rifle-shot--from Monte Carlo, but in atmosphere worlds away. It has nothing in common with it, except the deep gorge stretching behind both and backed by the craggy bastion of the Tête du Chien and the dark rich sea, that breaks impartially upon the rocky base of each.

You may step into a tram-car at the Casino out of a crowd of painted women, sporting men, Jews, semi-invalids, respectable tourists, and disreputable sharpers from every capital in Europe, and from some in Africa and America, and in five minutes find yourself in an impossible fairy region of tranquil beauty--a town that is partly Italian and partly dream-magic, scantily peopled by priests, nuns, lay-sisters in various garb and wide-winged cap, orphanage children, Monagask soldiers, a few peasant folk leaning from roof-gardens and loggias in narrow, silent streets, and a sprinkling of humble bourgeois in the recesses of small dark shops, selling humble necessaries that nobody seems to want. Sometimes a procession of richly vestured priests, and acolytes with candles and swinging censers, slowly traverses the empty ways. The silence is so deep you can almost hear it. Every vista is closed by pines, through the deep-green boughs and ruddy stems of which glows that glorious deep-blue sea under a sky of paler blue.

And what a road it is that leads to the still city, winding round and up the steep rock, upon which she sits superb above the waters, a rock hung with rich-hued tapestry of geranium, cactus, rose, and even our old friend the homely blackberry, transformed by the wizardry of the winter sun into splendour of crimson and golden arras. Very few steps past the dazzling new cathedral, that rises snow white above the quiet streets, lead you by a short turn into those strange gardens, that are really enchanted woods of olive, palm, and pine, with glorious flowers for undergrowth, cresting the sheer, sea-fronting steep of rock, down the face of which flowers, gorgeous creepers and hanging plants overflow to the white-combed breakers beneath. Thence the Armida gardens and glaringly vulgar Monte Carlo Casino gleam idealized in frames of olive foliage and pine-boughs, and all the beauty of the vast sweep of coast in its amphitheatre of circling mountains. Nightingale song throbs quick and rich above the deep murmur of surging wave and sighing pine-top, always providing you go at the right time; bees hum and the ring of a sail running down a mast with the wash of steam vessels and motors is faintly heard through the clear and sunny air. You may go back from this fairy land to the racket and worldliness of Monte Carlo through the strange vegetable diablerie and Arabian Nights' charm of the Casino gardens and their surrounding and intermingling shops and restaurants, and enjoy a still more striking contrast in the simple act of taking a seat in what Germans call a go-chair--Fahr-stuhl.

This prosaic modern convenience is found in a small dark enclosure that recalls a prison exercise yard, sunless, squalid. Take a seat in it, and wait patiently until it occurs to the mountain gnome or brownie in charge to work some spell of Nature magic, when the thing rises like the Arabian carpet, and in two minutes all the blazing diamonds, Parisian costumes, and blatant vulgarities centred round the glaring Casino sink and fade into a few blurred scars on the terraced hill-face below. Meanwhile the occupant of the cushioned go-chair winds and soars between cultivated vine and lemon terraces, scattered at intervals, with here and there a homestead and here and there a pergola and flower-garden, but mainly through woods of black-coned, light-foliaged Mediterranean pine and huge gnarled olives, black-fruited, of inconceivable antiquity, their grey columnar trunks writhen by secular, perhaps millennial, storms, rising from rich red soil between pale grey boulders--soars and winds up the vast sides of the mighty gorge, so thick and dark with olive and pine that the sparsely scattered brightness of vine and lemon and mimosa is lost among dense foliage; winds and soars till the woods thin and orange, olive, and myrtles are left far below, the gardens and vineyards grow poorer, the air keener, and the long, craggy bluff ending in the Tête du Chien is scaled, and the go-chair stops finally under the shadow of the stately Roman tower of Turbia, massive and scarcely worn by time, but half ruined by the wanton violence of eighteenth-century spoilers.

And ever as the crude luxury and meretricious ornament of the pleasure-town sinks, the splendour of the sea-bounded prospect spreads and grows, from the purple majesty of Bordighera headland, running down from its Alpine background, to the promontory of Cap d'Ail beyond the craggy bluff that shelters Monte Carlo; with many a sheltered town and towered villa and headland stepping into foam-fringed bays, enclosed in the grand sweep of mountain coast. Just within the curve of the deep gorge under Turbia the Irish-looking column of Les Moulins stands up clear and gaunt far below, on the level-topped rock fringed with wood; Monaco shows bright and distinct on the broad plain of vivid blue sea, and, the centre of all, softened and lessened by distance, the white marble domes of the Casino are traced upon the liquid sapphire, vulgar no more, but lovely as if seen through

"Magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn."

Only nothing is forlorn in this land of light and colour; all is gay, friendly, full of laughter and life.

Yet on a certain radiant forenoon the Fahr-stuhl, or rope-railway, lifted through all this wild poetic beauty a healthy, full-blooded young Englishman, bright-eyed and well-groomed, blind to all.

He had wandered, aimless and unseeing, through the contrasted charm and picturesque strength of Monaco, strolled by the tiny harbour, up the hill, through the weird suggestion of writhen bone-like cactus-trees and richness of palm and aloe, caroub and rose and glowing flower-bed, past Casino and hotel, still unseeing, his features, made for facile laughter and easy geniality, lined by care and drawn into heavy frowns. From the gardens of Monaco he had looked long and wistfully into the sea breaking so softly at the rock foot, and once again by the harbour, with a sort of irresolute longing that came to nothing. In the funicular he had read and re-read letters, and made calculations with pencilled figures, and then with weary impatience torn them up and scattered them where the line ran steep and sheer above the gorge.

And when he stepped out upon the craggy mountain rim at Turbia, his listless feet took him to the plaster hotel tracing its mean outlines upon the sky, beside the majesty of the fine tower that marks Cæsar's subjection of conquered Liguria--subject to so many masters since--to Rome.

Perhaps he only went that way because the other occupants of the go-chair, the lady with blackened eyes and red curls pinned outside her hat-brim, the gentleman with the hooked nose, shiny hair, and vast white waistcoat, the grave family party scattering exclamations of _Wunderschön_, _Prachtvoll_, _Echt malerisch_, on the sunny air, the mature maidens, absorbed in Baedekers, and lordly, tweed-clad Britons, conversing in grunts, went straight from the rich flesh-pots of Monte Carlo to the oil and wine of a mean restaurant perched on the stately crag-wall, making the centre view point for scores of miles round.

For when he found himself in the grounds looking down upon the vast splendour of mountain and sea, he seemed to recollect himself, turned and went through the village that lies modestly behind the Roman tower, over cobbled paths, under Roman archways, through narrow streets, picturesque with loggia and outside stair and dark-arched entrance, through wide, pleasant spaces planted with trees and scattered with long blocks of limestone, used as seats, and polished to marble by the friction of generations; here meeting a slow-paced pack-mule, peasant-led; here a woman, wearing a huge and heavy basket on her head, like a crown; and here a group of soldiers, in baggy trousers of stained red and worn tunic of soiled blue, with a general air of having slept, unwashed, for weeks in uniform. And west of the ancient village the craggy crest of the Tête du Chien, the fortress of to-day, and east and south sea and mountain, and everywhere garden growth, foliage, and scented blossom, and the beauty of children at play and young women and handsome youths at work.

For all this the traveller, looking round and searching in the rich vocabulary of British youth for a term at once fit and comprehensive, found the choice phrase, "Rotten hole, this."

He stopped at a corner house abutting on a tree-shadowed square, with a loggia ending in a sort of roof-garden; and, stumbling through a dark archway, and falling over several garden and household tools on to a steep stairway, drew further upon his vocabulary for the epithet, "Beastly rotten hole." By this time the rumble tumble of his wild scramble up the stairs had brought out a stalwart form, a few rays of light and words of welcome, from the door of a room opening on the loggia.

"Here at last, young un? How many more of you? Row enough for ten."

It was a shaggy-bearded, brown-faced man, with deep-set eyes of piercing lustre and a forehead like a cliff-wall, roughly dressed, but clean-looking as an Englishman, though his name ended in ski; he had risen from a table covered with papers of various script, newspaper cuttings and journals in many tongues, and furnished with a type-writing machine. A bed, a chest of drawers topped by a milk-jug in a slop-basin, a small, square looking-glass, a clothes-press, two chairs, an easel, a bag of golf-clubs, some walking-sticks and mineral-water bottles, several pairs of boots, a wood basket and books of all sizes, falling out of packing-cases and strewn over bed, chairs, floor and every available ledge, completed the furniture of a fair-sized sunny room with an open hearth, on which some wood ashes gave token of a former fire.

"Snug," the host said, indicating the surroundings with a sweep of the hand, and tipping a pile of books off a chair.

"Topping," replied the guest, stepping gingerly through the archipelago of books, and surveying the scene with ill-dissembled disgust.

"You seem jolly chippy this morning. What's the row?" continued the host, handing a cigarette-box.

"Nothing much. Only stone-broke."

"What, again? I say, young un, you'll do this once too often."

"I jolly well have."

"Oh, come along and have some lunch. Can you do with native fare? I feed at the _osteria_ over there, and hear all the gossip of the place. Olives, cheese, omelettes, sardines, salad, coffee, _vin du pays_."

"Thanks. I bar the vinegar."

The enjoyment of this simple menu appeared to lighten the young man's cheer considerably. His appetite, for a person who had been contemplating a violent exit from a world of care at intervals all the forenoon, was not bad--a circumstance not unobserved by his host. The table talk was impersonal and even lighter than the fare. An anecdote spiced with dry humour drew from the stony-broke a light-hearted, boyish laugh, the gay ring of which attracted the attention and sympathetic smiles of some workmen and peasants.

"He has a light heart, that one," they told each other in their patois, as if the possession of a light heart were guarantee of all that is admirable in man.

"Didn't you try ranching once?" the light-hearted one suddenly asked the man of piercing gaze.

"I did. Once."

"Any money in ranching?"

"Best part of mine left in it."

"What _has_ money in it? That's what I want to know?"

"What is that to you? You don't want money."

"Oh, don't I just! When I tell you I'm stone-broke."

"With you it's chronic. No, you don't want money. What you want is sense."

"Anything else?"

"Just a trifle of self-control, a smattering of principle, manliness--h'm--_honour_!"

"Thanks, awfully. Have one of these?" His face crimsoned, darkened, and set in a sullen ferocity. The elder man smiled behind his beard, glad to have touched some harder stuff under the facile sweetness.

"Yes, young one, that's the right word," he repeated.

The boy got up, very pale, thanked him for the luncheon, and said that he had to go. The man rose, too, put some silver on the table, and followed him into the sunny street. There they walked silently side by side till they reached the outskirts of the village, behind the Roman tower, where the turf was broken by grey boulders and dotted with thorn and bramble-bushes, and the air was sharp even in the brilliant sun.

"Very English," the elder man said, pointing to the turf; but the young one was silent still, and his friend saw that he was fighting to keep back tears.

"Just look at those soldiers," he added, when their road crossed another, quite open, but labelled _défense militaire_, where some men in shabby uniforms and dented _képis_ were strolling. "Did they come out of a second-hand clothes shop?"

"They don't walk; they shamble," the young man replied, roused to look at them with a critical eye, and thinking of the smart, well-set-up fellows under his own command with a home-sick pang.

"What should you give yours for that, eh?"

"It isn't so much your English, as your slang, that I wonder at, de Konski. Where on earth did you get it?" the young man asked.

"In England probably. Yes, I have spent some time in England. Do you know, Paul, I used to see a good deal of your mother at one time, and I have never lost touch with her."

"Ah, _she_ didn't teach you slang," he reflected, wondering if the man had been an old flame of his mother's. That he was for some good reason passing under an assumed name he knew; that he was on intimate terms with people of his acquaintance, and conversant with all his family affairs, he was well aware, else he knew only that the man had befriended and helped him as a friend of his cousin's.

"And I know more about her now than you do, perhaps, for I know what is breaking her heart," the elder man added.

"Oh, hearts don't break so easily. But I know what will cut her up awfully when she hears it," the youth said, jamming his hat sullenly over his eyes. "But--well, my sisters will look after her. They'll make her happy. As for me--well, it must be the ranks, or the Colonies--or the first opportunity of being washed overboard--taken with cramp, swimming. No other way. I did think of the sea--or a shot--this morning. But--she mustn't think it's on purpose. She----"

"Come, come," remonstrated the elder man, laying a hand on his shoulder. "Let's hear all about it. It's a rare thing that is past mending."

"No mending for me. Played out, and done for at last. What you--you said--though you were a beast to say it--is true. Good for nothing--best out of the way."

On this road, that was sheltered from the sharp breeze by the cliff, it was hot. A glimpse of snow-peak up a gorge far inland was refreshing, and yonder, on the left across a wooded ravine, came the blue glow of the sea from the other side by unseen Villafranca behind the hill, whence warships were steaming slowly.

The elder man sat down on a rock by the road, and observed all this beauty of sunny sea and green mountain slope and far-vistaed gorge. The other saw nothing. He stood with his face turned from his companion, who observed a slight quiver in the square shoulder towards him; then the young man suddenly flung himself face downwards on the grassy bank by his side, while the bearded man lit a pipe and smoked thoughtfully for some seconds, till the faint convulsive motion of the shoulders had stopped.

"What is the net amount this time?" he asked then of the recumbent figure, which turned slowly on its back and sat up, staring vacantly out into the purple sea-spaces.

"It's the Spider," he said at last, "and, you see, it's been piled up gradually--heaven knows how--I hadn't a notion. He's been accommodating me from time to time with a few louis, and now he has stuck on his beastly interest--made it run into four figures, and flung it at me, yesterday. And the beast won't wait for my infernal luck to change, as of course it must before long. Threatens to ask the chief to stop it out of my pay."

"And what have you to meet this with?" asked the bearded man, taking and reading the figures on the paper handed to him.

The young man drew a few francs from his pocket. "These, and a longish score at the hotel, where they are beginning to dun me. Watch gone, everything, but a pair of gold sleeve-links. Two horses at home, and a few sticks in barracks, and several bills to pay. So the game's played out."

"It looks dark," the Pole acknowledged, "but there may be a gleam somewhere."

"I've been so unlucky," the young man sighed--"everything against me."

"You've had exactly the luck you deserve in this matter, and much better than you deserve in others."

"Oh, hit a man when he is down! But I shouldn't have gone to the dogs if _she'd_ have stuck to me."

"What girl with any self-respect could stick to you in the company you kept?"

"If you mean that poor woman--a good-hearted creature and more sinned against than sinning--what harm was there in helping her out of a tight place?"

"A good many tight places, from the time you've been at it, I should say. While your mother was pinching and denying herself, and your sisters were deprived of all society and every pleasure natural to their age and station. While your cousin was out in the world, working for daily bread----"

"Whose fault but her own? My mother's house always was and is open to her. My mother has begged and implored her to stay; it is the greatest grief to her to lose her."

"Your cousin is not the kind of woman to add to the burdens of those dear to her. Do you know that she supplies your sisters with typewriting work?"

"My sisters? Typewriting? What on earth for?"

"To help keep the house over your mother's head. People don't go on selling stock without lessening their income."

"Selling stock?"

"How do you suppose widows raise money without selling stock, or land, or whatever they happen to possess?"

"But I thought--I thought--her money was safely tied up."

"There are such things as releases--when the beneficiaries are of age----"

"Then that is what Agatha meant. She was bound not to let it out; she only hinted. I wish I had blown my brains out this morning."

"You'd never have felt the loss."

"I'm not the first man driven to the dogs by a woman's falseness, and I shan't be the last. They're all alike--cold, and hard, and unforgiving, making no allowance for a man's temptations, which they can't understand. Heaven defend us all from good women, de Konski."

"The good woman to whom I suppose you allude, your cousin, has been a great blessing to me."

"Oh, has she? And how?"

"In many ways. Partly by the stimulus of a brave and beautiful nature, purified by suffering, and unselfish to the core. In a more material sense, as a most capable and useful and discreet secretary."

"Secretary? Private secretary? To you--to a man?"

"Certainly. The calling is recognized and honourable. There are many more arduous and less pleasant ways of earning a competence--for women. Still, I shall be glad for her sake when the day comes, as it surely will, for me to lose my valuable secretary by a suitable marriage, though I can't help being a little grateful to you for making it necessary for her to work."

"I? When I've been ready to marry her, and would have asked her any time this two years, but for her everlasting snubbing and coldness?"

"Oh, I thought you said she was false."

"When I implored her not to leave my mother----"

"Whose bread you were taking to help disreputable females out of tight places."

"By Heaven, de Konski, you hit hard! Of course I knew that my cousin was in some way working for pay, but somehow I didn't realize---- Oh, Lord, a private secretary! Mixed up in political intrigues! A paid secretary!"

"Who is to defend good women from dissipated boys? Yes, that sweet and noble lady's fate is hard indeed. And the boy's mother! If good women are hard, some of them have a pretty hard time of it."

"Well, they'll soon be shut of me, and the sooner the better. As for that other poor woman, she knows how to stand by a fellow when he's knocked out of time. She--she--well, never mind about her----"

"Is she going to help you out of a tight place?"

"She would. She'd raise half for six months and the whole for three, at five per cent."

"Does she think you would accept?"

"Do you?" he returned fiercely, giving de Konski's searching look steadily back. "Am I a cur?"

The bearded face softened in a smile that was almost tender. "Poor chap!" he said, laying a hand on his shoulder, and looking with unseeing eyes across the gorge and away over the sea to the faint mountain chain rising dim and dreamlike on the horizon.

"_I_ was in a tight place once," said the Anarchist presently. "I had been playing the fool rather more than most young asses do. So I went straight to my chief and made a clean breast of it----"

"You were a soldier? I always thought so."

"And he put me on honour never to touch a card again--and helped and--saved me."

"Mine breaks a chap," the boy said wearily. "Chauffeurs get good pay, they say. I might be that, mightn't I?"

"What you have to do now is to raise this money, cut the whole thing, before it comes to your chief's ears, and go straight. He won't stand this kind of thing. I've heard him say it's incurable. But nothing is--except cruelty, perhaps. Yes; this money must be raised at once."

"But how?" the boy asked, looking up with wondering eyes and a gleam of incredulous hope.

De Konski was silent, smoking steadily with long, even puffs, and staring with close-drawn brows at the sea, over which the black hulls of battle-ships were now ranged in lines and squadrons half-hidden by the smoke of their guns, beginning to boom in the opening thunders of sham fight.

"But how?" the lad repeated, impatiently scanning the thoughtful face, that seemed to seek solution of the problem from those smoke-hidden monsters upon the velvety blue.

The firing was too fierce and incessant for any speech to be audible for some seconds; then it suddenly stopped, and de Konski turned and was about to reply, when his attention was arrested by the sound of a high treble voice coming round the bend of the rock-strewn bank on which they were sitting, screened from the sight of those approaching from Turbia. Many had come thence and passed in the last half-hour on their way to see the review off Villafranca.

"It's notorious," the high voice proclaimed. "She tried to pass as the wife of _the_ Allonby, the 'Storm and Stress' man, and took everybody in till I asked her straight out one day, and caught her on the hop. She was so taken aback that she let out she was not his wife at all--only a connexion by marriage. And I don't believe she's even that, or Mrs. Allonby at all, or Mrs. Anybody. Miss Nobody-in-particular, _I_ should say. They ought to be more careful who they take in at these small hotels. Fast? _Rather_. A regular Monty harpy; lives on the tables, they say. That poor young Isidore is infatuated--absolutely. It's the talk of the hotel. She scarcely lets him out of her sight. One is always stumbling upon the pair--looking unutterable things at each other. Quite unpleasant for us. Pretty? That sort always are. But as for manners, and good breeding--well, anything goes down with foreigners and silly old owls like Welbourne. You know she has broken off Isidore's engagement."

The fair being who originated these remarks, having her face slightly turned to her companion, had not observed the presence of the two men screened by the bend of the bank on which they sat. Nor would the younger man have given a thought to these two ladies, but for the effect they produced upon his companion, who started and listened with blazing eyes and tense interest to every word that rang out on the still air. Not content with hearing what was said in passing, he rose, as if drawn by the voice, and followed the quick English steps, quickly outpacing them. Then, planting himself in front of the two ladies and raising his broad felt hat, he brought them to a standstill.

"I have heard," he said, addressing the speaker in slow, distinct French, "every word in the clear and accurate voice of Madame, and venture to suggest that it is a perilous thing to speak English in this country, unless you wish to be heard, English being now so generally understood, even when not spoken."

"Much obliged," returned Dorris sharply, meaning to pass on; "but it's nothing to me whether people hear what I say or not."

"Pardon me," he replied, barring her progress. "It may be much to you; it is a serious matter in this country to speak slander in public; it may have very grave consequences for you."

"Nonsense; I don't understand French--je ne comprends pas," she muttered hastily and brokenly, looking round as if for protection. Then, perceiving the younger man, "Mr. Paul," she cried piteously, "Mr. Paul."

"That is my name," he admitted, rising and raising his hat, but not approaching.

"Mr. Paul fully agrees with me upon the danger of speaking slanderous things in public," said the Pole coolly, in English.

"It's no slander," she protested; "let me go. We were going to see the review."

"Let us pass on; you have no right to stop people you don't know," shouted the other lady in a shaky voice.

"I happen to know the lady with whose name you were taking such unwarrantable liberties," continued the Pole, keeping his blazing eyes fixed on poor Dorris's terrified face. "She is incapable of any such conduct as you attribute to her. Once more let me warn you that you are in a country in which strange things happen; in which walls have eyes and trees ears; in which people sometimes take the law into their own hands with impunity."

"Mr. Paul," cried Dorris once more, with supplicating hands, "oh, Mr. Paul!"

"Awfully sorry," he replied, "but it's true. You have to jolly well mind what you say about people in this country."

"Good gracious! In what country?" cried the distressed damsel. "I thought we were---- Oh, where on earth are we, Emily?"

"Oh, I don't know, dear; let us go home. Never mind the review--never mind anything--only let us go home."

"You are practically, though not politically, in Italy, the land of hired avengers. But I will detain you no longer, ladies. I have sufficiently warned you of the peril in which slander places people," said the Pole, politely stepping aside with the ceremonious bow seldom seen this side the Channel. Then he resumed his seat on the rock, while Dorris and her friend, frightened out of their wits, fled without any ceremony at all at the top of their speed along the white road till a bend hid them from sight.

"I say, de Konski, you did give that girl beans. So you know Mrs. Allonby?" asked the young man when they were gone. "Then you must know the Johnnie they are making such a row about--the 'Storm and Stress' chap--eh?"

"Yes," the Pole replied absently, his fury not yet appeased. "I know them both--at least, I used to--especially him--rather well."

"Well! You did land that poor girl a nasty one. And, I say, you _can_ speak English. You must have English blood in you somehow."

"Ah, yes! My--mother was English."

"Well, you never seemed like a foreigner to me. That's why I took to you. Why, you must have served under our colours!"

"Why not? But about this fix of yours?"

"Well, what I thought when I came this morning was, that a man like you, on secret service of some kind, knowing the ropes of most things, and speaking every known lingo, might be able to get at this beast, Mosson, and square him. Fake up some rot, as you did to those poor women. Bluff."

"My dear boy, there's only one way of squaring the Spider, and that is by paying him in full. Yes, I was hard on that poor fool of a girl. But a tongue like that! And think of the other, the slandered woman. By George! I could hardly keep my hands off the little liar. But the Spider. He's quite another matter. What the Spider doesn't know of the seamy side of life is not knowable. The only argument with him is hard cash down on the nail."

"But how to get it?" sighed the boy once more. And even as he sighed the fury of the Pole and the terror of the two women suddenly came before his mind in such an absurd light that he burst into a roar of light-hearted laughter. "My word! but you made that poor girl sit up," he shouted. "You couldn't have gone for her worse if the other woman had been your sister or mother."