Chapter XVIII

The Only Hope

The storm had become so furious that the driver, after taking Ermengarde up from Rumpelmayer's, insisted on putting in for shelter under the crowded _porte cochère_ of the nearest hotel.

"We might as well have stayed at Rumpelmayer's, after all," she murmured, the wretchedness evoked by reading the publisher's parcel rushing back upon her at the first dull moment. Rumpelmayer's bon-bons were pleasant, and several interesting glimpses of human nature had been given her there at the little tables which were unusually thronged for the time of day on account of the storm.--"It was at least warm at Rumpelmayer's. And what of Villa Gilardoni, Miss Somers?"

"Oh, Villa Gilardoni! What _will_ you think of me, dear Mrs. Allonby? My cousin began talking of--family matters; they were absorbing; time somehow slipped away, and the storm rushed up so suddenly--it was impossible to stand against it----"

"And so 'the hobby-horse, the hobby-horse, was forgot'? But it was too kind of you even to propose this fag on my behalf, much less to try to carry it out. And yet--you are looking very tired, dear Miss Somers."

"I am not tired," she replied hastily; "I am exhausted. I--oh! these storms upset one's nerves."

"Which storms?" Ermengarde wondered, and came to the conclusion that nothing merely meteorological had caused this upset. Could it be remorse? or was it the connexion by marriage? How much easier, simpler, and sweeter life would be were there no men in the world, she reflected, though, like other Utopias and earthly paradises, she thought it might be just a trifle dull. And who knew that, not only man, but even the devil himself might have his uses in the economy of things? The latter supposition she prudently confided to the secrecy of her own breast, while murmuring sympathetic common-places to Agatha, until such time as it pleased the driver to brave the abating fury of the storm, and take them through the drenched town to the sheltered road under the plane-trees, and so to the foot of the ridge where there was nothing for it but to walk or ride up on donkeys and mules.

They chose the former alternative, the heavy rain having given place to a hailstorm by this time, and, before they had climbed in the shelter of vineyard-walls and steep rock-ledges to the first ridge, the hail gave over and the storm-beaten, indigo sea spread darkly, dashed with white foam-ridges, to their sight, when they stopped to take breath and shake out their skirts, whitened by hail.

Some fresh mimosa boughs in a jar of rough country pottery adorned one of the faded shrines of the Seven Sorrows. Who had placed it there, and in memory of what anguish? Agatha wondered, and Ermengarde told her of the phantom nuns Heinrich the porter had seen haunting the shrines at night.

"He must have believed that he saw them," she argued, "because nuns are improbable. If he had invented them, they would have had to be monks, since this was a male community--and still is--for the brothers come back occasionally now. How the people must miss them! They used to serve that church across the ravine. And look--this is how they got to their church."

She pointed to a long straight flight of narrow steps, hewn by hand-labour out of one steep and solid rock, making a long and giddy descent of slippery and uncertain footing where the narrow steep stairs were mossed and uneven; so steep and so long the flight was that the greater part of it was hidden from sight below.

Agatha looked with unseeing eyes, her heart too full of her grief to be interested in anything unconnected with it. She remembered well her first acquaintance with those pathetic shrines, deserted but still finding some humble hearts to honour them in their evil hour. She remembered her anguish and prayer--prayer she knew now ungranted--on the convent steps, in the very face of the consolation offered upon the cross planted there as if in welcome. All the earth had seemed full of silent prayer in the hush and glory of sunset, on that first evening; every hill and ridge had been an altar smoking with sacrificial incense, and the amphitheatre of mountains standing round the broad sweep of the bay a vast temple of adoration, in the centre of which the cross on the top of the steps spread out its welcoming, protecting arms.

She remembered, too, the sight that had afterwards met her gaze from the convent wall; and even now, as she walked wearily past the shrines, fancied the rank odours of musk and cigars tainting the purity of the sweet, still air. Even while she had been wrestling in prayer for him on that evening, Ivor had passed, laughing and fooling with that evil woman who had been his destruction.

Such agony overcame her at this thought that companionship of any kind was insupportable. She made some excuse for prolonging her walk in another direction, while Ermengarde took the most direct way home, under the steep on which the monastery garden spread its fertile terraces to the south, showering vine-trails, fig-branches and prickly pears down the walls to the very edge of the mule-path. But Agatha turned aside and climbed the slope where the cultivator's pink-walled house stood, or rather reclined, among fruit-trees and pergolas, and passed on and up to the convent steps, weariness of mind and body reacting upon each other to such a degree that she would fain have flung herself down on the wet herbage and risen no more. She had definitely asked the man who demanded and implored her love to renounce for her sake the vice that had brought him to ruin, and he had definitely refused to do so. He loved her; he besought, almost commanded her love, but would give up nothing for her. Even while proclaiming his own worthlessness he had claimed her entire devotion and self-sacrifice. What was such love worth? And what was such a man worth? Could he even be called a man and not rather a petulant, dissolute boy, heedless of all but his own comfort and enjoyment, unable to deny himself the gratification of any passion for any sake? And yet--he had shown some compunction in regard to his mother, had been really grieved to cause her pain and such privation as had been hitherto unknown to her. That is to say, he was not entirely without feeling for the woman who had loved and blessed him from his earliest breath, was not absolutely unnatural and unfilial. And yet Agatha loved him, in wild wonder that such as he should kindle love in any heart; and yet she felt that he had no real love for her, though he required and desired her whole heart's devotion.

Had she been hard to him, too hard?--for some hardness is the only kindness to such natures as his. Was it some true instinct, after all, that impelled him to fly to her to pick him out of the mire and save him? Her last words to him had indeed been hot and harsh; she had seen him wince and quiver under them--poor Ivor! She would have softened their effect with some kinder and sweeter words but for the storm and the baleful interruption of the Anarchist, who should have known better than to intrude at such a moment. Now she would see him no more; nothing could heal the wounds she had made; they would always rankle in his memory; the acid would bite deeper and deeper, as time went on and he plunged deeper and deeper into the mire of which he had spoken, whence gentler words and the love he craved might have drawn him. And yet her words had been terribly true. Yes, but she might have put them more gently and sweetly; she had blundered with a bludgeon, where a silken lash or the prick of a knife-point might have been enough. If only the storm and the Anarchist had kept away a few minutes, just a few precious, golden, irretrievable minutes, longer! But he would never have made the renunciation she asked. No; but if she had been kinder; if she had let him see that she was to be won; nay, if she had even given way, held out the hand he asked for and let him grasp it firmly, who knows but she might gradually and with much pain and anguish have rescued him? Who could tell? She might at least have given him hope. And even if all had been in vain, could it have been much worse than this?

She pictured him in his despair and anger, hardening day by day, descending deeper and deeper, reckless, loveless, degraded. She began to hate this mad, proud reticence of women, that will only give love for assured, declared love; what was it in comparison with a man's salvation? Why not have told the poor boy she loved him? Too late now. It was all over; her sacrifice had been in vain. Oh! she should have given more. She should have thrown herself into the breach, her whole self and all her shrinkings and loathings, her pride and reticence. No; that too would have been vain; to stain herself would never make him clean; nor could her descent ever lift him up.

His mother, that sweet, long-suffering mother and high-souled woman, what pain for her! Now she would have to bear this bitter sorrow always. Had a true instinct and no common sense prudence warned her that Agatha could do nothing for her prodigal, when she besought her so earnestly to give no response to his advances? These thoughts warring in her heart brought her to distraction and took the last remnants of strength from her tired body; she could hardly drag herself ever so slowly and falteringly up the steps, with gasping breath and throbbing pulse.

The storm had completely passed now; the divine stillness of the mountain solitudes had returned; sound there was none, save the distant roar of the vexed and chafing sea, whence the indigo stain had fled, leaving it darkly and deeply blue as before, with tumbling ridges of white foam, touched with gold. For now the setting sun flashed out from broken cloud, throwing rose-gold radiance across the western bay, striking up wooded hill-spurs, bringing towers and village walls into sudden glow, and flushing the wet, bare mountain peaks one after another with crimson fire.

Even Agatha's sad heart was quickened as she lifted her eyes to that glorious spectacle and saw the rose flame kindle peak after peak in the vast sweep of engirdling mountains with vivid changing splendour. It was as if the fire of Heaven had visibly descended upon that temple of many altars, in token of some hidden, accepted sacrifice, some offered incense found worthy and well-pleasing. The splendour glowed and deepened till every barren, craggy peak, veined with shadow and streaked with fresh snow, was a crimson flame on a violet sky; the deep silence was a mystic, triumphant psalm of praise to which the solemn roar of the troubled sea was a humbler antiphon, a more earthly response. "The Lord sitteth above the water-flood--The Lord is King be the people never so impatient," the far-off surges sang, and the impatience died from her troubled heart; the poignancy of her despair abated. The celestial fire, changing and quivering as with life-breath, kindled upon ridge after ridge; every village tower, every cottage and hut glowed in the jewel-flame; the white convent walls gleamed in pale claret and lambent gold from between dark cypress and eucalyptus boughs; and at the top of the steps, its welcoming arms flung wide to the world, the great wooden cross, one blaze of rose-gold fire, proclaimed the one hope in all the wide waste tumult of human life, the one eternal sacrifice, the Calvary that is the only road to any Paradise.

Ave Crux Spes Unica,

she read once more on the glowing centre of the cross.

Only a few hours since, she had prayed and implored, even knelt to, the Jewish usurer near that very cross for Ivor--and all to no purpose. It had been very bitter, to humble herself to that man, to lay bare to his contemptuous and cruel gaze that secret heart-sanctuary a woman veils jealously even from herself. He had said things that brought the crimson to her face and cut her to the very quivering heart; he had laughed and prophesied the futility of what she implored, even though he had melted and given way with respect, almost tenderness, at last. What if her own sacrifice, poor and petty, though so much to her, were vain, could that symbolized in the plain wood steeped in glorious rose-lustre above her ever fail?

No; that could never fail, never be in vain, not wholly, not eternally, in vain, something whispered to her stricken heart, and she fell on her knees among the melting hailstones, and prayed with greater passion than ever before, consumed with anguish, uplifted by faith, quivering with love and adoration, thrilled through all her sorrow with a deep divine sweetness; and notwithstanding the fervour of her supplication, full of quiet acquiescence in whatsoever the divine will should accord, even though it seemed despair.

The rosy fire died from the cross and the lower hill-crests, and faded lingeringly from the topmost peaks, leaving wooded steep and gorge in deep shadow, while Agatha poured out her heart on the rock steps with tears and prayers unutterable.

And when she rose, soothed and tranquillized, and sat a moment in the fork of the eucalyptus, looking down across the torrent and the town to the café by the sea, where she had left Ivor an hour before, she could not know that he had just signed the papers put before him by the Anarchist. Yet she turned from the darkening, murmuring sea and faded sunset sky, and walked lightly home through the monastery grounds in the violet afterglow, her heart full of peace.

Not that she was destined to reach home without further adventure; for she had but crossed the level under the cypresses when a slender figure that had been leaning on the western wall, watching the dying glory change on mountain and sea, stood up, darkly outlined against the lucid sky, and came forward to meet her with quick but halting step.

"I thought I could not be mistaken," the thin man said; "I have a keen ear for footsteps, and at once recognized yours. But----" He paused, struck by the mingled fatigue and exaltation on her face, seen clear in the after-glow. "You are tired; you have been worried--more than worried. Pardon me, Miss Somers; but you are young, you are alone and unprotected--a friend may be of service to you, however intrusive and undesired. Is there anything I could do for you? Could I knock somebody down? I observed something this morning--here--on this very spot--you had been annoyed--upset--a person--I trust you had been subjected to no undesirable attention from that unworthy quarter."

A gentle smile flitted over Agatha's face; the idea of the thin man knocking anybody down--or even entertaining such a project--was extremely funny. Indeed, there was this evening something entirely foreign to his usual self in Mr. Welbourne's voice and manner. His self-control was imperfect; he stammered; there was fire in his eye.

"I wonder," he added, "that the people of the house should admit that man to a small and respectable hotel like this. It is an outrage----"

"Mr. Mosson? Oh, poor Mr. Mosson is not as bad as all that, Mr. Welbourne. Indeed, he is not without heart, after all. And I must confess that, far from his annoying me with his company, it was I who trespassed upon the poor man's leisure. I--I wanted to speak to him--on--on a matter of business, and he was most obliging--most accommodating----"

"Accommodating? obliging? Good heavens! Miss Somers, do you know that to be accommodated by this rascally Jew spells ruin? Once in his toils, his victims rarely escape. Don't you know that Mosson is a most notorious usurer, is the too well-known Spider? I do most earnestly trust that he has not accommodated you to a large amount--and as a man of the world--which naturally no lady is expected to be--I warn you--I entreat you to allow me to be your banker--it happens that I have a good deal of capital lying idle for the moment--let me enable you to pay this man off at once, before the interest has accumulated. Give me this pleasure, I beseech you. I--I--require a small interest--one and a half per cent.----"

"But indeed, dear Mr. Welbourne, you are quite mistaken. I have borrowed no money of anybody, really. I can't say how deeply I appreciate your kindness in offering this. No; the poor Spider only did me a--kindness--in the way of business; he lent me nothing at all, I assure you. Nor do I need money, thank you. I thank you many times."

"Oh!" said the thin man, amazed beyond words and disappointed as well.

"But I do," she added, seeing his bewilderment and distress, "I do need, we all need, at all events sometimes, kindness. And for yours I thank you most cordially."

She offered her hand; he took it and bowed over it with such reverent courtesy as belongs to an earlier day than this decadent time of ours, but remained silent still, as if struggling with some deep feeling. And, when he again raised his head and relinquished her hand, she saw that he was flushed and agitated, and came to the conclusion that the poor gentleman in some far-off, foolish days of youth had probably been ensnared by some old-time Spider, who had drained his blood and left him to drag out a withered and blighted life. Hence possibly his celibate condition.

"It--it is a great relief," he said, "a very great relief," and yet the relief he expressed was scarcely evident in his face, upon which the utmost dejection was traced, "to hear that you owe that hard, bad man nothing. May such a misfortune never befall you. And may you never need to borrow of anyone. Should you, however, be so unfortunate, I trust that I may be allowed the great privilege of accommodating you with whatever may be necessary. I know--of course," he added, "that I have no right--no claim--no--that is to say--I am but a casual acquaintance, after all. And yet--pardon my presumption in venturing to say so--I believe that you have no truer, no more devoted friend in the world than I am."

"You have always been kind," she replied with the unconscious cruelty of a mind too much preoccupied to be very observant. "Mrs. Allonby and I have often said that you have been a father to us both from the moment we entered the house."

Mr. Welbourne started; he turned and looked at the moaning sea, whence the last rose-tints were dying, and then he turned and looked at the mountain peaks, above which a trembling star hung lustrous. "Oh!" he sighed very sadly at last; and Agatha wondered why he looked so sad, not knowing that the last relationship the thin man desired with her was that of a parent.

"But that is no reason why either of us should plunder you," she added very kindly and tenderly, as they passed into the shadow of the pines on the other side of the monastery.

"I suppose," he rejoined meekly, "that I seem quite--old in your young eyes."

"Oh no!" she assured him earnestly, observing, as she took the hand with which he was helping her over the same twisted roots that had afforded Mr. Mosson an opportunity of civility in the morning, that it trembled, and fearing she had hurt his feelings, "I don't think you old at all, dear Mr. Welbourne. In these days people don't even begin to be old till seventy."

"I am not yet seventy," murmured the thin man, handing her down the last steep little ledge in the dusk, with a mixture of resignation and despair.

"I should think not, indeed," she returned reassuringly, "but I hope," she added in a burst of generous feeling, "that you soon will be."

"Good Heavens!" ejaculated the poor man, "soon be seventy!"

"I mean," she hastily corrected, "I hope you will live to a good old age--full of honours--with troops of friends----" Oh, Heaven! the kindly patronage in her voice, the gracious condescension of youth to age, the total absence of any feeling but that of cold respect and half pitiful gratitude!--"And that I may have a place among those many friends," she added, regretting to have expressed herself clumsily; she was tired; had had a day of worries, was stupid.

"I ought not to bore you with my prosy affairs and blundering surmises," he confessed. And yet, owing either to the malice of some demon, or that madness which comes to those the gods menace with ruin, before they reached the lighted hall full of people, he had made her acquainted with his true age--at which she expressed untimely and unthinking surprise--and the whole state of his worldly affairs, not forgetting the temporary nature and cause of his lameness, and his position in life, besides asking her to honour him by the acceptance of a bunch of carnations, which she did with matter-of-fact calm, hardly remembering a hasty "Thank you" when she left him on the stairs.

So the thoughts he confided to the piano in the dusk before dinner that evening were in plaintive minor keys and chords of dissonant intervals slowly resolved.

Ermengarde, who had stolen noiselessly in to listen unseen, was much soothed by this music; she was sure that the thin man was telling the piano of the lost dreams and broken hopes of his youth in those subdued minor melodies and daring, harmonic progressions, till the fair Dorris, flouncing in, loudly pronounced them "Shopping reminiscences," and so broke the charm.

The tale of woe Mrs. Allonby confided to the thin man's paternal ear after dinner evoked tepid sympathy; indeed, it struck her that her filial confidences were but half understood, and that the interest displayed in her affairs was spasmodic and forced. There was clearly something wrong with Mr. Welbourne; had he been losing at the tables, or was it impending gout? Her father was just like that before a fit of gout.

The poor man disappeared early into the solitude of his room, and after pacing the parquet dejectedly for some time, turned on a full light, stood before a mirror, and studied the lines in his face and the grey streaks in his hair. Then he called himself a fool seven times, at uncertain intervals, and finished a drawing he was making of a woman's face.