Part 14

"The carriage is ordered, soon, for a round of visits I have to make. How much rather had I spend the time, as I often do at this hour, going in through the green door to sit with Posey in the orange walk--near the fountain with the broken-nosed Triton, you remember. It's her favorite spot, and nothing but rain will prevent her sitting there for an hour with her book or work."

"Then I'll see you at tea-time, if not before."

"I'll be back, you may trust me. Nothing I dislike more than having my tea out, at houses where a woman sits behind a little table, talking to everybody that comes, and mixing the most abominable doses of half-cold tea, and too much cream and sugar, for her unoffending guests, forgetting whether the water boils or the tea-pot has stood too long! Keep to the bamboo walk, my dear, the mistral is blowing hard to-day, and you're not like me, acclimatized to it. Down there you'll be sheltered and private, and can smoke your pipe in peace."

Clandonald had hardly left his aunt standing before the fireplace in her sunny drawing-room, pondering upon the surprising intelligence he had communicated, when Lady Campstown's parlor-maid came in with a rather frightened face.

"Well, Parks, what is it? Have you broken a piece of my old Sevres in putting out the dessert service, or has pussy had a fit?"

"It's only, my lady," said the girl, haltingly, "that the--er--lady you gave us orders not to admit has driven up to the gate in a cab, and insists upon seeing you on business of the highest importance, so she says."

"You mean the person calling herself Mrs. Darien?" asked the dowager, in icy tones.

"That were the name, your ladyship."

"What can I do?" passed through Lady Campstown's much-perturbed and angered brain. "Clan's being here complicates matters dreadfully. She is quite capable of making a scene that will echo through the neighborhood. I have declared that I will not again hold speech with her. If she were herself, I believe even she would not push into my house and presence. The horrible fear is that she is not herself, but under the influence of drink. In that case I must get old Rosa, who loves her still, to take her off quietly.

"Say that Lady Campstown will see Mrs. Darien for ten minutes before she goes out to keep an engagement. And, Parks, tell the cab to wait. Not outside the front gate, but in the lane at the bottom of the garden. And, Parks, send Rosa to me at once."

The Provencal servant, called Rosa, with a rather pale and guilt-stricken face and manner, came hastily into the drawing-room, stepping back to hold open its door for Mrs. Darien, who followed close upon her heels.

"Stop where you are, Rosa," said the mistress of the dwelling, now the great lady in every muscle and fibre of her stately little form. She spoke in the woman's own tongue, and her low, clear voice was charged with indignant emphasis. "From this lady's appearance in my house, I assume that she is in some degree irresponsible for her actions, and that she needs a caretaker to escort her back whence she came. I desire you to make yourself ready to go with her, now, directly, without delay, and not to return under my roof until you can report to me that you have done so."

"No such great hurry, Aunt Lucy," said Mrs. Darien, with careless insolence. "I'm really in a very normal and pacific state of mind, considering the way the mistral is blowing, and that I, last night, spent my last sou at Monte Carlo, and will be turned out of my room at Nice if I can't pay for it before a couple of days have passed."

"You can stoop to ask me for money?" said Lady Campstown, in English.

"When one's flat on the ground one hasn't to stoop, you know," answered the visitor, calmly arranging the folds of her veil drawn over a cheap plumed hat, under which a chalk-white countenance with gleaming eyes revealed itself menacingly. "I chanced to see in the local paper that Clan had arrived to stop with you, and so simply timed my visit when you would feel most impelled to pay to get rid of me. What, for instance, if he were to step in at this moment, through that window into the garden? Wouldn't it be rather cheap at the price to see the last of me for a couple of hundred francs or so?"

Lady Campstown, with a swelling heart, walked over to her escritoire, unlocking a compartment thereof to take out two bank-notes of the amount indicated. She despised herself for the action, but could not trust her voice to speak.

"Thanks, so very much," said Ruby, superbly putting her gains into a bag of gilded meshes hanging at her waist. "And as I see you flashing the lightning of your virtuous eye upon that poor, shuddering numbskull of a Rosa there, let me at least exonerate her from any complicity in the arrangement for my visit here to-day."

"I have heard that you have been seen lately in the lane below my garden," exclaimed the dowager hotly, "and that some one in my household is under suspicion of having been holding conversation with you in the bamboo walk. I can only say that if this happens again Rosa goes out of my service on the minute."

Ruby, who had been covetously looking around the luxurious, familiar room, shrugged her shoulders indifferently.

"I suppose I must not detain you," she said conventionally, turning to withdraw. "But since you have suggested it, I would be really quite glad to have Rosa escort me back to my hotel. The effort of coming here--perhaps the force of old associations--has proved something of an ordeal to me. My heart is rather spinning around, and I am not altogether sure I can answer for the strength necessary to support my legs on the retreat."

"Go, Rosa, put on your hat and jacket as I bid you, and accompany Madame," said Lady Campstown, nervously anxious to end the scene at any cost. A fuller view of Mrs. Darien's face had showed her the awful extent to which time and an evil life had ravaged it. She would not look at her a second time, but, shuddering, walked away to the window and set it wide open, standing with her back to the offender, in speechless disgust and misery.

To be one minute unobserved was enough for Ruby Darien. She had been standing near a little cabinet, on a shelf of which was accustomed to lie Lady Campstown's own especial pass-key through the little green door into the garden of Reine des Fees. Since the occupation of the place by tenants this had not been used. But things were not wont to change their position often at Villa Julia, and the key still lay in its old corner undisturbed. Ruby's nimble fingers closed upon and transferred it to the interior of her little gilded bag, while Lady Campstown, resolved not to speak to her visitor again, kept her position at the window.

"I suppose, then, I may go?" said Ruby, laughing softly. "In view of your inhospitable attitude, I have really no excuse for lingering. _Au revoir_, Aunt Lucy. I will return to you your old Rosa unspotted by the world. And if it will add to Clan's pleasure to hear I am near him, give him my compliments."

*CHAPTER XI*

Clandonald, meantime, was walking up and down in the bamboo avenue, chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy. Lady Campstown's loving babble had put him in possession of an idea that haunted him like sweet music. "Posey has been fairly _living_ on talk of you and reminiscences of you ever since we met." With all due allowance for the predisposition of the kind speaker in his favor, there was a suggestion of conviction in her manner that he could not forget or put away. Was ever flattery so subtly delicious as this thought? The fine stern resolution he had made to flee from Posey's vicinity seemed to take to itself wings and vanish in thin air. What? Go without seeing her once alone, without thanking her for her kind thought of him, her mission of ministration to his relative in his absence? It would be a truly unheard-of thing to do. He even chose to forget the swiftly advancing marriage--the betrothed lover who was doubtless now upon the ocean, speeding as fast as steam could bring him to make sweet Posey his. Nothing weighed, nothing counted, beside Clandonald's strong, overpowering desire to look upon her face, to touch her hand again, to have her clear eyes search the recesses of his soul.

In two words, he had come down off his high horse, and was now madly anxious to get inside the Reine des Fees garden on the chance of finding Miss Winstanley sitting alone in the spot indicated by his aunt as her favorite retreat at that hour of the day--the orange walk, near the fountain with the broken-nosed Triton. It was one of the most secluded spots about the grounds, he remembered. Anything might happen there and the inhabitants of the villa be none the wiser for it. What good fortune if he should have the luck to find her alone and undisturbed in this sequestered nook! And even if Miss Carstairs should be with Posey, he would trust to her woman's tact to leave them alone for a little talk.

With an artful affectation of going toward the town, he proceeded to stroll down the walled street for a bit, then turning, doubled on his tracks, and went in at the large gate of the Villa Reine des Fees, inquiring of the woman who sat in the vine-wreathed doorway of the lodge playing dominoes with an old, old man, and who admired milord Clandonald greatly, whether "the ladies" were at home. Upon receiving from her a smiling assurance that she knew them to be somewhere about the grounds, since her husband, the gardener, had just then called to Miss Winstanley where she sat in the orange walk, to receive some orders about a new flower-bed, he bowed, thanked his informant, and took his way to the designated spot.

Clandonald had regained his boyish beauty after so many days in the saddle and nights under the stars. His complexion was well with healthy blood, the haggard look had fled from his eyes, his magnificent form was in perfect condition, his heart beat like a schoolboy's beneath his summer flannels. As he walked on with a rapid, springing step, he brandished in his hand a Makila stick of tough Pyrenean wood, of which the handle was formed of a single rounded pebble, and having at the lower end an iron spike--one of the dangerous canes fabricated by the Basque peasants, dear to the heart of Northern Spain, brought by him from Biarritz, long ago, and left hanging by its leathern loop in his aunt's entry, where, as a relic of her nephew, it was religiously preserved. His hat, of fine Panama braid, shaded his eyes from the too glaring ardor of the Provencal sun after the middle of the day.

The gardener's wife, looking after him, smiled appreciatively. She knew his hard luck story, and, like everybody else, hoped that Clandonald had at last emerged again from under the shadow of the undeserved cloud of Ruby Darien. When he had disappeared behind the shrubbery, and was well out of hearing, the good woman curved her hand around her mouth and remarked to her ancient sire, in a patois hard for an outsider to understand, that she hoped at last the _Bon Dieu_ was going to make up to this poor young milord for the troubles He had sent to him--just, for all the world, as if he had been a peasant like themselves!

Clandonald did not notice her further, nor other inhabitant of the enchanted garden than himself, until he arrived through a flowery arch directly in the presence of Miss Winstanley, seated alone upon a marble bench in a niche of glossy green, wiping tears out of her eyes, like a naughty dryad put in a corner for punishment.

At the same moment, ascending the hill from the town, came another young man, whose destination also was the orange walk, where Posey sat disconsolate. John Glynn, finding at the last moment in New York that he could get a quick passage to Genoa by an ocean greyhound put on for an occasion, had returned to Europe several days before he was expected, and neglecting to wire from Genoa, expected to take his friends here by surprise. He had walked from the station, entering the villa grounds from the lower gate. It seemed to him something queer was inspiring the forces of Nature that afternoon. A strange, weird, exciting wind was astir under brilliant sunshine--a wind to provoke and condone any act of nervous irritability. Glynn felt glad to take refuge from its fury by pausing under a great eucalyptus at the foot of the garden, and resting there a while.

All during his quick eight days' passage across the southern route of the Atlantic, he had been alternately drawn and repelled by the consideration of his forthcoming marriage. At the idea of his benefactor, the maker of his fortunes, the dear confiding old man whom he could never repay for benefits conferred, he felt ready to march up to the church door and surrender himself to Posey without a look behind. But it was different when the reverie centred upon the young girl whose innocent thoughts were translated into words as fast as her impulse gave them birth, whose fun and daring, joy and pain, succeeded each other like ripples on a summer sea; he wondered if he had a right to make of her an unloved wife.

For since that fateful hour when he had sat close to Helen in the railway train, and since their meeting at the wayside chapel on the hill, their hearts pulsing together, their thoughts yearning each toward the other, stern resolve forcing them apart, he had known that to say he would cease to love Helen had not made it any better with him, as far as the only woman he had ever desired to marry was concerned. Absence from her, a voyage to and from America, tough work which he had surmounted successfully, a negotiation so skilfully concluded that it had saved Mr. Winstanley grave loss, none of these circumstances had lessened his passionate yearning for her whom he had first held in his arms and kissed as his future wife. When, after one of these outbursts of feeling for Helen, he thought of Posey, it was always with keen shame and abiding pity; it did not seem to him that he was "playing fair"--and yet, here he was, back again at Cannes, the day of the wedding was shortly to be set, and, as Posey's husband, he was to enter upon a career in his native country, the breadth and magnitude of which would surpass the fondest dreams of his ambitious boyhood.

So strong had been the current of inclination turning him from his destined way, that he had actually come afoot from the station, and sent his belongings by a cab, rather than expedite his progress to Reine des Fees by driving. He had no idea that Helen had become a temporary inmate of the establishment. His one letter received from Posey during his swift run home, had described her friend as having sailed away on the "Sans Peur," in company with that "utterly odious Mrs. Carstairs," and "looking so sad and spiritless it wrung one's heart to see her."

Helen in Naples or Sicily, even if he knew her to be far from happy, was better than Helen in Cannes, looking on at his wedding with Posey!

If Glynn could have suspected that at the identical moment, when he was sitting under the eucalyptus tree trying to screw his courage to pushing boldly up the hill, Miss Carstairs was at the writing-table in her room, inditing with hot hands and desperate resolve a letter to Mariol, telling him she would be his wife!

But he dreamed of none of the threads of Destiny weaving together that day and hour while the mistral blew fiercely around Villa Reine des Fees. He only thought he would tarry a little while longer, his legs and spirits feeling weighted as if with lead, before announcing himself at the house, the hero of the "happy event" to come.

A third unexpected visitor to the garden now also advanced from the direction of Villa Julia, and moved furtively behind the hedges toward the Triton fountain.

As Ruby had found herself in the lane about to get into her carriage, with Rosa in attendance, she had caught sight of Clandonald lightly striding ahead of her, his evident destination the gilded iron grille opening into the drive of Reine des Fees. Instantly, the burning, unreasoning jealousy of Posey, that had never forsaken Mrs. Darien, sprang up again to madden her into action.

What she desired to do, to say, to accomplish, she knew not, but (the bad wind, no doubt, aiding) an evil spirit in her blood commanded her imperatively to enter and lurk in the forbidden garden, with the hope of hearing or seeing something pass between the two. She knew from public announcement that Miss Winstanley was about to marry Glynn, the man who had supposed he had bought Ruby's forbearance from troubling his fiancee. If any prick of conscience assailed the desperate creature it was at thought of her sworn promise to John Glynn--a promise about to be forfeited in most treacherous fashion--to say nothing of her loss of his indispensable allowance. For, in stealing the key of the green door from Lady Campstown, she had really meant to be more mischievous and offensive than openly aggressive. She intended to keep it until the chance came to give, as she termed it, "that vindictive old hag, Aunt Lucy," a rousing fright, and at the same time, perhaps, satisfy her curiosity as to how things were going on between Clandonald and the Winstanley girl.

And here was her opportunity sooner than she had hoped. She had sharply ordered the alarmed Rosa to keep watch in the cab until her return; had heeded not the woman's beseechings, for the love of all the Saints, not to run this risk of offending Milady Campstown; and had let herself into Reine des Fees by means of the key which Posey had begged Lady Campstown to use at will, now that the green door was kept permanently locked.

To cross the forbidden threshold seemed to inspire Ruby with more rancorous thoughts than ever before. Why should Clandonald, also Glynn, have paid her so heavily to protect this girl, already favored by fortune, whilst she wandered in outer darkness? She hated Posey the more, not only because these two men stood before her, but because Ruby's best endeavor had not seemed to do her material harm; because the girl had ceased being insignificant and was now rich and powerful; and lastly, because Lady Campstown was her best friend.

Ruby knew that by taking the nearer way she would arrive upon the scene before Clandonald could do so, and be safely in ambush watching him. If he were merely to enter the house for a conventional call she could do nothing, and might slip back to rejoin Rosa, unseen. But she counted rather confidently upon what she had ascertained from questioning her tool, that Miss Winstanley and her friend were generally to be found out-doors at this hour of the afternoon.

The sight of Clandonald walking unconcernedly ahead of her, twirling the Makila stick, which she recognized as a souvenir of their joint visit to Biarritz, was as fuel to her flame. He looked so young, so normally vigorous, so full of bounding life; he was so well groomed, so well turned out, as the men were not with whom she associated in the present phase of her existence. How long it was, with the exception of her talk with Glynn, since she had held converse with a clean, wholesome, and courteous gentleman!

And she was so thin, so bloodless, so unbeautiful; her empire over his sex was so nearly gone, she had so little left to hope for!

The immediate result of this contrast between herself and the man who had once taken her, for better, for worse, at the altar, was to make Ruby Darien furiously angry. As Clandonald passed out of her sight, between the ivied walls of the steeply descending street, she felt that she would have liked to spring upon him like a panther, and--ah! it was better that he had passed on!

Clandonald, as has been said, had unexpectedly stepped in through an arch of crimson ramblers, to find Posey, whom Helen Carstairs had just left to go in to write her letter to Mariol, weeping alone, and lovelier than even he had remembered her.

If Miss Winstanley had been on her guard, or chatting with a friend, or sitting with her book and looking up with a pleasant smile as he drew near, Lord Clandonald might not have forgotten himself, as he now unquestionably did!

Without a moment's forethought, following out the impulse one has to console a child whom one finds in distressful solitude, he made toward her a buoyant movement, taking her hand in both of his, and dropping upon the bench beside her.

In her present period of believing herself, as it were, deserted by John and Helen, who, so fitted for one another, had, figuratively, soared away out of her ken upon a rosy cloud, the girl welcomed Clandonald with lips and eyes too eloquent to be mistaken. Feeling that he must speak, knowing that he ought to choose his words most carefully, he ended by doing nothing of the kind.

"Oh, please don't cry!" he simply said. "You are too dear and lovely ever to shed a tear! If you were mine----"

In books it is where people make the beautiful set speeches that come out just right as to semicolons and periods, besides fitting exactly into place in conversation. In real life, under strong emotion, things are said brokenly that often have neither grammar, rhyme nor reason. This man certainly never meant to make love to this girl out of a clear sky. But his voice, his face, his manner, were all those of a lover such as Posey had not known in her brief experience. And the worst of it was, the same unaccountable, unbidden feeling of delight again rushed over her that she had felt for him upon the ship. It seemed sufficient for him to be near her for that to tingle in her veins! She thought he was the brightest, noblest object her eyes had ever rested upon, not a mere faulty man idealized. In plain words, "the old, old story was told again" in the garden of Reine des Fees!

But Posey had gained in self-control since her experience of the world. She checked the radiant return movement toward Clandonald, who, also pulling himself together, guiltily arose and stood at some distance away from her, holding his hat like a shy schoolboy, without saying another word.

"I'm not crying," she remarked, somewhat untruthfully. "I'm only thinking over a sad sort of talk I've just had with my friend, Miss Carstairs, who's staying with me, as you know. She told me, by the way, you'd been so nice to her on the journey, and so had M. de Mariol. We were sorry to miss you yesterday, and are looking forward to the dinner this evening. I didn't think you would call again to-day."

"Neither did I," he said, "but when it came to waiting for my aunt's dinner hour I had to. I hope you won't mind my taking the short cut to Paradise, without ringing at your front door. It got me here the sooner, see? And as my aunt had happened to let fall that you always came to the Orange Walk about this time, I ventured upon the liberty. But I didn't dare expect such good luck as finding you quite alone."

"Helen has just left me," she answered, a little confused by his ardent gaze. "I can see that it astonished you to find me so much grander than I was. But for me, I'm already used to it. Oh! Do you know, I had the greatest satisfaction yesterday. That Mrs. Vereker, who snubbed me so on the ship, you remember, and that stuffed image of a Mr. Brownlow, were both lunching at the Gold Club, at a table by themselves; and seeing us with some people they thought 'worth while,', came up and spoke to me, almost humbly!"

"How did you treat them in return?"