Chapter VI

Mountain Sunset

Nobody seemed to know what was the exact position M. Isidore occupied in the hotel, nor, indeed, did anybody care, as long as he was civil and made himself generally useful. Yet there was a vague feeling of mystery associated with the light-hearted youth, who in some inexplicable way commanded a certain amount of deference that excluded familiarity. His name floated continually on the surface of general conversation. It was "Ask M. Isidore this--M. Isidore will see to that," or, "Where _is_ M. Isidore?" and the vivid face and dancing eyes were there.

He had a habit of suddenly appearing without audible summons in crises of discomfort and perplexity, when, as if by magic, things came straight, and, with a jest and a shrug, he vanished--Heaven only knew whither, for he seemed to possess neither local habitation nor surname. You never knew where to look for him, yet he was always to be found.

If donkeys from Mentone were wanted, he tapped and clicked in a little corner cupboard, and after one or two soft "Ola's!" listened as if in communion with subject spirits to whom he whispered words of power, whereupon, in no time to speak of, gaily-caparisoned but self-willed animals, in charge of women in flat straw hats, stood waiting on a little sort of bastion on the ridge, outside the gate at the back of the house.

If people wanted to know what the weather was going to be--and only newcomers asked what everybody else knew by experience to be unchangeably superb--or the menu, or the temper of riding mules, or the hire of carriages, the weight of postal packets, and the best places to buy oranges to send home, or when every train left, and arrived at, Mentone, or the probable cost of sailing to Africa, the price and programme of every entertainment at Nice, Mentone, and Monte Carlo, the most trustworthy hair-dressers and restaurants in the town, the hours of Divine worship, and the most infallible system of winning at roulette, they unhesitatingly asked M. Isidore in any language they happened to know best, and he as unhesitatingly replied in the same--namely, his own. Hence it happened that his replies often exercised and impressed the imagination as strongly as those of the Delphian oracle, and like those were subject to diverse interpretations by diverse hearers. And, if the oracles were unfulfilled, this in no wise detracted from the confidence reposed in his omniscience. For, given three different interpretations, it was obviously impossible for all to be fulfilled, and if one was fulfilled it was equally obvious that that must have been the right one. If people lost their way or fell off donkeys in the mountains, they were usually met or picked up by M. Isidore. If they wanted change, postage-stamps, picture-cards, these were invariably in his pocket. And if, as occasionally occurs in cosmopolitan boarding-houses, things became a little dull after dinner, M. Isidore would cheerfully swallow carving-knives, and make small articles of personal property change owners unseen, boil eggs in hats and turn wine into ink, and make people's flesh creep delightfully by reading their thoughts, telling their fortunes, and divining their characters. He would also play billiards in the French manner.

If Madame Bontemps, the proprietress, a tall and handsome woman, were ruffled in spirit by domestic contrarieties, inefficient service, exacting inmates, and the general tendency of things to be broken, lost, spoilt, and worn out, he could always soothe her exasperated feelings, and soften the asperities of her speech. He stood between her wrath and guilty servants; he defended her from the attacks of infuriated guests. He even teased that majestic woman, and openly made fun of her smaller vices, thereby drawing a soft suggestion of smiles about her iron mouth. Madame Bontemps never laughed, probably because she never had time. But she had a husband, who sadly needed discipline. When she had a few moments' leisure, which was seldom, she sat in a small office, and received complaints and orders, gave advice, made up accounts, drew cheques and knit stockings. Indeed, she never ceased to knit stockings, unless her busy brown fingers were otherwise employed. It was supposed that she knit stockings in bed, if she ever went to bed, which was generally doubted. She had been heard at dawn in the garden giving orders in a tongue that none but the labourers could understand, except perhaps her husband, for it was that in which she usually quarrelled with him. She was sometimes found patrolling the corridors and stairs at night, after lights were out and the hotel was ostensibly plunged in repose.

If anything--illness, fire, or burglars--happened during the night, Madame always appeared fully dressed with unruffled hair. At any hour of the day she might be seen in gardens, vineyards, and lemon orchards, directing labourers, or in the kitchen, making the chef's hair bristle with terror, or in the topmost corridors discovering the sins of trembling _femmes de chambre_, or in the poultry yard, cow-stall, or dairy; and wherever Madame Bontemps found things done as they should not be done, she was capable, not only of commenting in vigorous terms upon the subject, but also of practically showing how they should be done.

People going to her office and finding it empty had only to press an electric button, and she appeared as if attached to a secret spring. No one knew what Madame Bontemps did not do.

On the other hand, nobody knew what M. Bontemps did. But he was invariably polite and cheerful, and invariably provided with cigarettes and criticisms of life, for which he entertained a tolerant contempt, mixed with appreciation. He always referred to Madame with profound deference as the one supreme authority on earth. It was rumoured, but not generally credited, that he had once carried a pannier of wood up to some one's room. He had beautiful dark blue eyes, inherited by his youngest daughter. His eldest was cast in sterner mould, more like her mother. She spoke English well but not willingly; her frame was tall and powerful, her bearing majestic, her face dark and strong, with those very dark liquid eyes full of latent passion, that suggest a Moorish or Saracenic strain in the ancestry. Mlle. Geneviève, Ermengarde understood, was learning hotel management under her mother, whose able lieutenant she had already become. Some of these facts were gathered from the thin man and some from M. Isidore himself, in the course of the first, long, idle, dreamy day of basking on the sunny garden terrace.

It is probable that these things lost nothing in their transmission through Mrs. Allonby's letters home. As she lay in a long chair among spiced stocks in the still clear sunlight, she supposed herself to be writing letters. But in reality she was absorbing the beauty of the pictures spread before her, and realizing how much more exhausted she had been by her illness than had been suspected, and how unfit to cope with the trouble that had invaded her guarded, commonplace life. Only stillness and this healing warmth of sunlight seemed any good to her now. The stocks touching her feet were backed by a rustic balustrade, twined with roses and jasmine, immediately above a narrow belt of lemon-trees, the yellow-fruited tops of which were just visible, on the edge of the ridge which fell so steeply that, as she lay, there was nothing between her eyes and the distant band of dark blue sea. She seemed to be poised in mid air, with the lemons and roses, between sea and sky.

There was now no need to leave the house, the Anarchist having apparently taken his departure. With what anxiety she had listened to the voices of people breakfasting that first morning in the sunny air beneath her open window, while she took her coffee and roll cosily in bed, fearing to detect the harsh tones of the Anarchist among them. But she could only distinguish the plaintive notes of the thin man and the high treble and artificial gurgling laugh of Miss Boundrish, the daughter of the woman of ample girth, above the general cheerful ripple of morning chat. Her window being _au troisième_, she ventured once, modestly veiled in lace curtains, to peep out upon this amazing picture of people breakfasting out of doors at eight o'clock of a mid-winter morning, and, as every face was turned from the house to the glorious prospect of sunlit space, and most were too immediately beneath her to look up without dislocated necks, there was little fear of being seen. How pleasant it was, this intermittent sound of voices in open air. There was the thin man in a picturesque hat, breakfasting all alone on the edge of a little jutting plateau, his head outlined upon the blue space of the ravine, his face seaward. There is but one pleasanter thing than this social breakfasting out of doors--to lie in bed and hear other people do it through open windows.

The voices were chiefly insular with a sprinkling of _Jawohls_ and _Sos_ and _Mais ouis_. Little bursts of laughter and detached sentences sometimes floated up to the window _au troisième_. Once she heard, in Miss Boundrish's overpowering head voice, "Mrs. Allonby, oh!" followed by the artificial gurgle that in the course of time jarred people's nerves; then Ermengarde knew that she had been given as it were to the lions, and was being served hot as a relish to the coffee and rolls, that her character, features, dress, complexion, figure, her probable past and possible present, her position, her upbringing and connexions, were being tossed from beast to beast, and disputed, growled, and chortled over. And once, in the voice of Miss Boundrish's mother, she heard the ejaculation, "What? _the_ Allonby?" and wondered which of Arthur's relations had been hung, and why he had never told her.

Yet Miss Boundrish's mother had actually conferred upon Mrs. Allonby the shady white hat that reposed upon her hair as she sat in the garden terrace this afternoon.

"I tried to wear it to pacify Mr. Boundrish, who's always worrying about sunstrokes and fevers, my dear," the kind lady said; "but it was too young for me, and Dorris is _very_ particular about her hats, as you may have noticed."

She certainly had noticed the rose-wreathed and unsuitable elegance in which Miss Boundrish had graced the table at luncheon. How delightful it had been to see people trooping into the cool, shadowy dining-room in summer hats and frocks, a little flushed with sun, and to think of shivering unfortunates with frost-tipped noses lunching at home by electric light, in a pea-green atmosphere flavoured with soot and sulphur. Mrs. Boundrish's hat was not what her daughter called chic, but it harmonized with Mrs. Allonby's simplest, least attractive costume; yet Ermengarde wore the thing contentedly. She was so tired, and so glad to rest from the innumerable petty complexities of suburban life, and steep herself in beauty and calm forgetfulness. As she lay in the sunny stillness, she wondered how she had borne with it so long, and was amazed to remember that she had cared about hats and been wounded by Arthur's contempt for those five. He would not believe his eyes if he could see her sitting thus in contented, humdrum chat with buxom Mrs. Boundrish, a woman of little more social consideration than her own cook, with a thing on her head like an inverted dish-cover, made of straw and garnished with two pocket-handkerchiefs.

"You may," the mother of Dorris--not classic Doris--apologized, "have thought me a little--ah--stiff last night; but the fact is," she added, suddenly confidential, "I took you for a foreigner."

"Ah!" returned Ermengarde, as much as to say, "That explains all."

"And, of course, in a place like this, one had to be so very particular."

"Very."

Ermengarde was wondering if the huge, bee-like insects plunging into the hearts of the quivering stocks were fireflies in their winter state--later, the thin man said they were humming-bird moths--and once more took a pencil and a little writing-block and began relating the perils of yesterday's donkey-ride to Charlie, while Miss Boundrish's mother, murmuring various platitudes, resumed her woollen crochet-work, till authoritatively summoned to some parental duty by the piercing voice of Dorris.

One line had contrived to get itself written--"My darling boy, your poor old mother"--then the pencil slipped--it is wonderful how easily pencils do this out of doors--from her fingers to the gravelled path, and before she could decide if it were possible to pick it up without disturbing the comfortable posture in which some Good Samaritan--either M. Isidore or the thin man--had tucked her up in rugs, the letter-block fell off on the other side.

Just then the woman of substance sailed up, and hoped with a deference that astounded the new visitor that she was rested after her journey, and recounted a whole Odyssey of her private misadventures during yesterday's ascent--how her _chaise_ positively broke down under her, and she had to be taken aside into a dreadful little smelly cottage, or rather the outside of it, under the vines, lest she should be trampled by the procession of donkeys and mules coming behind; and how those wretched foreigners did nothing but laugh and make faces and address impertinent remarks to her in an unknown tongue, that her husband said was neither French nor Italian, nor any civilized speech; and how finally her porters were doubled, and a sort of basket or tub was brought, and she was forced into it, and slung and jolted on four broomsticks by her four porters, at the peril of all five lives, to the present eminence, on which she supposed she must end her days, unless a proper road could be made before her time came.

Ermengarde listened with a sympathetic face and proper interjections, wondering if the rounded softness of that passionately dark blue sea-rim, so much less sharply edged than paler seas--if that came from the clear and vapourless air, through which one saw so far over the very slope of the world; and presently, when the Odyssey came to a pause, she made some reference to the romance and charm of Provence.

"Provence," mused the woman of substance. "H'm, yes; Provence roses. Never was there in my life. But I dare say you have travelled a good deal."

"But surely you came by the _Train de Luxe_ yesterday?"

"Oh yes. Mr. Robinson's extravagance--quite unnecessary----"

"Then you were in Provence yesterday," murmured Ermengarde drowsily, quite sure now that she saw over the earth-slope, and the woman of substance, coupling this obviously inaccurate statement with the unaccountable excursions into foreign languages of the previous day, looked curiously at her, and wondered if it was drink or incipient insanity.

"So young, too!" she reflected mournfully, turning away to find a comfortable and yet substantial seat, but turning once again to look at the figure extended in the sun among the flowers in the dish-cover hat, the uncompromising dowdiness of which conveyed comforting assurance of respectability to her motherly soul. Vice and that hat could never be companions, she was sure.

Once again Ermengarde made a feeble effort at correspondence. Arthur would expect letters, though absent from home and without definite address. It was quite easy to write "Dear Arthur," but how to go on was the difficulty. Of the misadventures and discomforts of the journey it was inadvisable to write, lest the joy of "I told you so" should make him exult; neither was it politic to dilate upon the probable criminality of the woman of mystery, and on her complicity and secret understanding with the Anarchist. Of the latter, as a source of terror and danger to the community at large, she wrote much, not without some gentle complacence in her own perspicacity in detecting, and courage in braving, by dauntless but insupportable glances, the villainy and scheming of this truculent being.

"The power of the human eye, especially over beasts of prey and hardened criminals," she wrote, "has not been exaggerated. One honest, fearless, straightforward look will unmask the vilest and most cunning, and cause the blackest heart to quail, as that creature's invariably did--at least, his eyes did--before mine." And this sentence, like all referring to the man, when after many days it reached him, filled the recipient of the letter with peculiar and ecstatic joy, producing explosions of mirth unutterable.

But of this same Anarchist she could get but the scantiest information--even from M. Isidore. No one appeared to have observed the presence of any such person at dinner the night before, or to have seen him come and go at Les Oliviers. After much meditation, M. Isidore supposed she must refer to a foreigner, presumably a Pole, since his name ended in ski, who had dined there, or lunched, or both, on the preceding day. As to whether he had slept there, or was likely to return, M. Isidore was unable to give any information. No one apparently had seen him at breakfast, or luncheon, or about the place, that morning. Neither had anyone observed his arrival; he had come and gone like a phantom, or a suspicion. He was an absolute mystery. She began to suspect that she must have dreamt him.

After all, perhaps everything past was a dream. All this clarity of atmosphere and bright light, steeping the fairy-like loveliness of mountain, gorge, and sea, seemed to have blotted out past trouble and pain, as if those dark, transparent waters were some celestial wine, or waters of Lethe, drunk in spirit, and giving both healing and oblivion.

The obstinate letters utterly refused to get themselves written that afternoon, but the ever-helpful M. Isidore produced picture-cards, the inscription of which was a sop to still the barkings of conscience, and had them posted.

The sun sloped away and away from the stocks and lemons, until the wooded summit topped by the convent was one mass of shadow with cross-tipped gables, cypress-flame, and eucalyptus-top, all etched in sharp outline on a sky of lucid gold. Ermengarde shivered as she drew her furs about her throat, and heard a sound like the patter of sudden rain behind her, but turning, saw that it was only the rustle of wind in the branches of a palm.

"Where are they all going?" she asked as the lotus-eating groups basking on the terrace melted away before the slanting shadow.

"They follow the sun; it is a veritable fire-worship," M. Isidore said, picking up her scattered properties. "Madame will be among the worshippers?"

Out of the shadow, and up marble steps, with "roses, roses all the way" again, to a little rock platform west of the villa, giving a prospect round the convent hill, they came upon a fresh world of wide, sunlit space, with another ravine half in purple shadow, and other villages and houses, and, high up, dark against a lucid sky, giant peaks turning pink and gold where they caught the blaze of the sun, that was sinking in a green and lilac sky, above a sea of molten gold touched with scarlet.

Here were seats under a shelter of rye-straw thatch that caught and retained the whole blaze and warmth of the shifting pageant of the sunset. Here, too, it was quiet and peaceful, the lotus-eaters having gone elsewhere, and here her guide left her to absorb the solemn hush and splendour. The little homely convent seemed to have grown naturally out of the rocks; to which it clung unevenly, as a pine-tree throws twisted roots from rock to rock to get firm hold, ending in garden terrace on the sunniest face of the rock, now bright in the westering rays. Far off the surf, breaking on the long, low headland of Cap Martin, was visible in the glow, taking rose and orange tints in its fall. The mountain flanks sent up little blue spirals of smoke from every fold and dimple, where cot and hamlet nestled; the earth breathed deepest peace. A spirit of prayer was everywhere; the smoke was like incense from many altars; sounds of common life came distinct and clear, yet hushed, through the stilled and waiting air. The ever-changing colours on mountain, sky, and sea hinted at the progress of some glorious spiritual drama of mysterious import. It seemed in the waiting hush as if the secret of the universe might soon be whispered abroad.

But Nature worshipped alone; there was no sweet-toned Angelus floating over crest and gorge, from convent to church tower, and trembling far away over darkening waves, to give the antiphon and complete the evensong of the world. Republican France is too free to allow men to worship publicly as they please.

Ermengarde, uplifted, tranquillized, yet full of unrest and a sort of compunction mingled with longing, was like a wondering child at some solemn rite, dimly guessed at through the faces of those present. She lost herself completely in watching the moving drama of flushed sky and sea. What pure, pale-green spaces above the sun-glow, what lakes of rose, purple, violet, and orange! the whole spectrum broken up and scattered, while the deep peacock blue of the Eastern sea grew deeper than ever.

The sunlight lying so lovingly on vine and olive-covered steep, turning blue gloom of pines to glowing velvet, and calling out all the warmer tints in the mysterious grey-green of olives, slanted more and more till every wood and cultivated patch and building on gorge and flank facing the light, had its true colour, flushed, darkened, and faded. Night was gathering in vales and clefts, and stealing up the great shoulder of _Mont Agel_, dark upon the west; the eastern peaks were crimson jewels paling to palest claret. Ermengarde was absorbed in the silent symphony of melting and mingling colour to that degree she scarcely seemed to breathe, when voices jarred suddenly into the stillness from beneath her feet, where the mule-path ran unseen under the rocky steep.

With the voices came the soft patter of asses' feet, and the firm step of a man, light laughter, and then a single voice, cheerful, masculine, English.

"Not going to play to-night? Come now," it remonstrated.

"When I have tell you I am broke to stone," returned a reproachful, metallic treble. "And my next last _parure_ of diamonds is what you call pop for a nozzing. I will no more gif my fine jewels to ze Shoos for two sous. Also I haf lend from a friend hundred louis zat I lose last night."

They stopped where the path broadened on a rocky jut, their party having gone in at the hotel gates higher up. Ermengarde could hear the donkey improving the occasion by a vigorous cropping of tough herbage. She was sure the woman was painted, and fancied that the odour of musk floated up.

"All the more bound to play, Countess," the genial baritone replied. "You're bound to rake 'em in somehow, don't you know. How else get the things back? Let me lend you----"

"No, no, _mon cher_. I rob not the poors. Not you, my poor child, who are poor like ze mouse at Mass--you say."

A cheery laugh rang out. "Not now," the gay voice cried. "Bless you, dear Countess, I've got a system now, and I raked 'em in for all I was worth last night. I'm simply swimming in gold and notes. Don't know what to do with 'em. Thought the banker would have gone for me."

"Ah, ze banker enraged himself? Good." Then, in a changed voice, in which the note of greed was audible: "How much louis have you win, _mon bon ami_? No, I rob not. Ach! all the world is come behind. Make but this donkey to march, Monsieur."

"Gee up, then! The little beast's mouth's made of iron. Jay, jay. Come up, you little devil! Take a poor hundred louis, Countess, just for luck. Give me the pleasure. Just to give me luck."

"Ah, but how will I pay?"

"Give me--give me that heather in your belt. White heather means good luck, don't you know."

A deep sigh, one of those melancholy French sighs that are semi-groans and half-caresses, was heard; and then, as the donkey suddenly decided upon moving on with a quick patter of little hoofs, there was a complicated stamping and much joyous laughter from the Englishman, who, Ermengarde was quite sure, had been leaning his arm on the back of the lady's saddle, and just missed being tumbled down the gorge by the animal's unexpected change of mind. She had just risen from her seat, gathering that the conversation was private. Her movement brought the speakers into her line of vision, and she recognized the young Englishman on the Monte Carlo platform, the sight of whom had so perturbed the woman of mystery the day before. She had been right in supplying the lady with powder and paint. As they disappeared round the corner, she caught the gleam of orange-dyed curls, pinned on a Parisian and unsuitable hat, and the healthy glow of the young man's upturned face. Then the path was crowded by half a dozen donkeys and riders, followed by some with panniers and a few pedestrians, and in two minutes the whole company had passed noisily out of sight, leaving the mountain stillness stiller than ever.

To come there, and in face of all that solemn peace and splendour, flaunt their sordid vices and petty anxieties! What had they to do in the heart of that austere mountain beauty? A vile reek of musk and cigars floated after them; they had tainted the very air in their passage over the ridge.

The enchantment vanished. The mountain-peaks were all grey and cold now under some silver stars, but the sea still kept some mauve and gold and chrysolite reflections from the lucid western sky; thickening shadows stole heavily up the mountain flank; the air had a sharp edge. She went slowly back to the garden, and stood by the border of scented stocks, and was looking down the gorge to the clean-roofed town by the sea, pensive and a little homesick, when out of the lemon-tops rose a face, and then a slim figure, and recognizing the woman of mystery, she hastened to meet her with a little cry of joy.