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.