"Aggie," he cried, "dear, dearest Aggie, I was a beast yesterday. I was a beast! You were right. All you said was true. I had no right to ask such things of you—no man has of any woman. Yet you had saved me, you had picked me out of the gutter all the time. No, it's no use saying anything. I saw the necklace and guessed. The beast sold it to Strozzi—and made upon it, trust him! It's in Strozzi's window. Aggie, how could you? The dear old necklace! I'm not worth it, my dear—no, not worth picking out of the mud. But I will be—at least, I won't be the cur I've been. And some day—some day, perhaps—at least, if you're not bound to the long artist-man—perhaps—oh! I shall never be fit to look to you—Don't talk of my mother—she'll be ready for anything after this. I wish I hadn't been such a brute to you. It's—it's as if I had been drunk all along—but not with wine; and now, now at last I've waked up, sober—quite sober, Aggie—darling."
What she said, or if she said anything, she knew not and never knew; nor did he. There was one kiss, too spontaneous, reciprocal and inevitable to be thought of except as a matter of course, though the first since the old baby-kissing days; and then he was gone, racing for his train, that was perilously near the starting-time now. But he turned suddenly by the shrine where she had seen him on that first evening with the countess, for one last look. "Don't have the long painter-man," he cried; "he's too old; he really is; de Vieuxbois told me. And nobody's good enough for you, no, not by half." Then, with some of the old boyish gaiety lighting his face again, he vanished in the soft olive-shadows, racing for dear life.
The woman of mystery, bewildered and half stunned, and vaguely wondering who de Vieuxbois was, and what he had told Ivor, and what would happen if Ivor lost his train and so broke his leave, and how much Ivor's mother would know of the transaction of the necklace, and seeing a deeper, purer blue on the velvet calm of the windless sea, and a more golden depth in the warm sunlight, and a greater gladness and glory on everything, went quietly on her way to Villa Gilardoni.
As to Ermengarde, on whose behalf Villa Gilardoni was to be inspected, she no longer wished to go anywhere except home—that is to say, somewhere within reach of Charlie and her mother. Those two she instinctively longed for and no others; the boy, because his ignorance and childish selfishness made him uncritical and kept his clinging affection unimpaired; the mother, because the sympathetic insight and indestructible unselfishness of the love that protects and cherishes can be trusted to know the worst, and only grow deeper and more pitiful with the knowledge. As for Arthur, his image inspired a mixture of terror and resentment. His unkindness, his want of feeling and sympathy, had sent her all alone into a far-off, unfamiliar, incomprehensible world, in which she had made stupid mistakes, played the fool generally, and proved herself quite unfit to be alone and unguided. If there had been anyone near to confide in, to point things out, to discuss things frankly, she could never have made such a fool of herself.
And where was Arthur all this time? Arthur, the poor man, who six weeks ago could afford no holiday jaunt either for wife or self—until she was fairly out of the way. Then he had suddenly flamed across the sky, a meteor of literary brilliance, and betaken himself to mysterious regions of private enjoyment, whence only the most meagre accounts of his goings on were allowed to trickle at wide intervals—that he was well and busy and uncertain in his movements, that he hoped she was stronger, and was glad she appeared to be enjoying the foreign trip, and advised her to be careful not to risk chills in sudden changes of climate—nothing more. Apparently Arthur had done with her, and, casting off all domestic ties, was recklessly plunging into wild, unknown vortices of pleasure, Heaven only knew where, but, presumably, where there were no post-offices.
When Mrs. Allonby left the unlucky Dorris smothering her sobs and confessing her follies that sunny sweet afternoon, she felt exceedingly cheap and small—even cheaper and smaller than when she had unexpectedly closed an afternoon of shocked moralizing on the sinful pleasures of gambling and pigeon-shooting by landing herself on the Casino steps, too completely cleaned out by roulette to have the price of a cup of tea left. Madame Bontemps' gratuitous information that morning had greatly enlightened her on many subjects. She knew now the meaning of many once incomprehensible things, and especially why she had been asked to leave the hotel—yes; and she remembered that the woman of mystery, whose fallen nature was to have been uplifted by the example and infection of her own exalted and unspotted disposition, and Ivor Paul, the wastrel, had looked as if they perfectly understood the cause of the mischance that she had so light-heartedly and recklessly related to them at Rumpelmayer's—the half-smile on each face was guarantee of that—yes; and she remembered that when Agatha learnt that the fury of Madame had been preceded by an Italian lesson, raked by the fire of eyes from the office window, she at once recognized the cause of that fury. And now Madame Bontemps' violent words over the balustrade had made all patent and clear to everybody in the place. This was much worse than roulette. She could never face any of them again.
She would fly to the paternal arms of the great Cook, and take counsel and tickets of him for the home journey to-morrow. She would give out to her friends that the climate was killing her—she was being slowly but surely poisoned by hotel food—devoured by mosquitoes—reduced to the verge of insanity by sleepless and ever-croaking frogs—go home and pour all her follies, mischances and miseries into the ever-sympathetic, ever-comforting bosom of her mother—but not of her father. No; he must be put off with mosquitoes, frogs, poisonous food and murderous climates. And, above all, Arthur must never, never be made acquainted with the melancholy nature of her recent experiences. To be sure, there was one comfort, unless some officious creature told him, he would never want to know the nature of those recent sorrows; his interest in her affairs was far too slight. Oh yes, that was a very great comfort indeed, she reflected, with a great choke that testified to her joy, and obliged momentary recourse to a pocket-handkerchief that suddenly became wet through.
The thin man had called himself a fool seven times in sight of his looking-glass the night before; but Ermengarde must have applied the name to herself seventy times seven that afternoon, when, after tucking Dorris up in eider-downs, comforting her with eau-de-Cologne, and leaving her to slumber and the digestion of good counsel, she fled blindly out to the mountain-path, whither she neither knew nor cared. But as you had—owing to the narrowness of the ridge behind the hotel—only two possible ways to go, one up and one down, she instinctively took the upper, as leading farther from the haunts of mankind, which had in the mass suddenly become distasteful and abhorrent to her.
Yes; she saw it all now—the Carnival incidents, the scene at dawn on the brink of the ravine, the Malmaison episode, M. Isidore's impassioned declaration during the Italian lesson watched by Geneviève, and avenged upon herself by instant sentence of expulsion from the little mountain paradise. Everybody had fooled her—she herself most of all. Fool, not seven times, nor seventy, but seventy times seven! Even the woman of mystery, for all the darkness of her suppositions cloud of strange, unknown sins, had tried to warn her from her folly. The bitterness of being warned, and vainly warned, by such as she! To be patronized, protected, and advised, to owe anything to the good-nature, the compassion even of an unfortunate young person, whose undesirable companionship would never have been tolerated, except for the pity she inspired and the capacity for better things she occasionally showed. Red horror flushed her cheeks at the thought of what inferences M. Isidore might have drawn from her tacit acceptance of his supposed homage. The little traitor, the coxcomb! No; never again—from a Frenchman. What heavenly comfort in the thought that Arthur would never know the true history of those few weeks—at least, not unless he turned quite nice and sympathetic, when both were grey and old, and preparing to end their days. Then it might be safe to tell him, not before.
An Italian afternoon sun smote upon the rock-hewn path with lances of fire; shadow there was none; the way was steep; her wild flight had carried her hardly farther than the end of the hotel precincts to the sudden, bold little eminence topped by pine-trees, round which the path wound. Here a jutting rock, half buried in undergrowth of juniper, rosemary, and such-like, offered a broad seat, sheltered from view by the turn of the pine-topped steep to those mounting the ridge, but fully exposed to the broad sun-blaze beating on the mule-path; and here she subsided, looking across the shadowy blue of the ravine through wet eyes, and propping herself by clutching at the lichen-embroidered edge of the rock, a prey to these mournful reflections, when something stirred under the feathery bunch of pines overhead, some pebbles and earth came rattling down, there was a light thud on the path beside her, and there, with melancholy eyes and a face expressive of the utmost concern, stood M. Isidore, handsome as ever. She looked up with a little cry, and dashed the tears from her face; but, before English lips could frame a syllable, an overwhelming torrent of eloquent French apology broke forth from the gallant Gaul, sweeping everything before it in its rushing course.