Chapter 10

But even this was not the end of his interference. When Madeleine rose and Mary sprang up obediently, he proposed that they, the three men, should see the ladies home. This plan was carried out; and when Mary had been left at the door of the Hôtel de Paris, they insisted on taking Madame d'Ambre at once down the hill to her lodgings in the Condamine. The penance was made only a little lighter to the victim by a lift in Schuyler's automobile. She was far from grateful to its owner, and made no answer except a twist of the shoulders to his last words: "Remember not to change your mind. It isn't safe in this climate."

When they had dropped Hannaford at his hotel, also in the Condamine, Carleton lost no time in satisfying his curiosity. "I never saw you take so much trouble, Jim, over a woman. Is it a case of love at first sight, old man?"

"Bosh!" said Schuyler, "Don't you know me better? That girl puzzles me. There's something very odd about her. I'm conceited enough to think I can generally size people up pretty well at first sight, but she beats me. I can't make her out. And besides----"

"Besides--what?"

"I know I never saw her before, yet her face seems familiar. I associate her with--it's idiotic--but with the person I care for most in the world. Heaven knows why. I don't."

"Do I know who that person is?" Carleton ventured, unable to resist the temptation.

"No, you don't know," the older man returned, rather gruffly. "And I'm pretty sure you never will, because the less I talk or think about that person the better for me. That part of the story has nothing to do with the case. There's only this queer impression of mine. And I had a weird feeling as if it were my bounden duty to see that this little girl wasn't victimized by an unscrupulous woman. So I did what I could."

"I should think you did!" exclaimed the other. "I couldn't have done as much. Poor Madame d'Ambre."

"Her real name's probably the French for Smith, without a 'de' in it, unless it's to spell devil. If she's a widow, she's a grassy one. Her game is to be found crying on the Casino terrace by moonlight, preparatory to drinking poison, because she's tired of life and its temptations. If it's a young lieutenant just off his ship for a flutter at Monte, or some other lamb of that fleeciness, he's soon shorn. There's quite a good living in it, I understand. She always contrives to make the youngsters believe her an innocent angel, whom they must try to save."

"But you seem to have been on in that act. Was it a moonlight scene?"

"Plenty of moonshine--and clear enough for me to see through the angelhood to the designing minxhood. The poison was water, coloured, I should think, with cochineal, and pleasantly flavoured with a little bitter almond. But--well, one sees through people sometimes, as if they were jelly-fish, and yet is a little sorry for them just because they _are_ jelly-fish, stranded on the beach."

"I see," said Carleton.

They were spinning along the white way that winds between mountain and sea, out of the principality, and so toward Cap Martin, Mentone, and on to Italy. The tramcars had ceased to run; the endless daytime procession of motor-cars and carriages was broken by the hours of sleep, and the glimmering road was empty save for immense, white-covered carts which had come from distant Lombardy, and over Alpine passes, bringing eggs and vegetables for the guests of Hercules. Slowly, yet steadily, shambled the tired mules, and would shamble on till dawn. There were often no lights on the carts, which moved silently, like mammoth ghosts, great lumbering vehicle after vehicle, each drawn by three or four mules or horses. As the lamps of Schuyler's powerful car flashed on them round sharp rock-corners, tearing the veil of shadow, they loomed up unexpectedly in the night, like some mystery suddenly revealed in a place of peace.

Schuyler liked motoring at night on the Riviera; for he never tired of the dark forms of mountains, cut out black in the creamy foam of star-spattered clouds, or the salt smell of the sea and its murmur, singing the same song Greeks and Romans had heard on these shores. He never tired of meeting the huge carts from Italy, travelling slowly through the dark. He always had the same keen, foolish wish to know whence they came, and what were the thoughts behind the bright eyes which waked from sleep and stared for an instant, as his lamps pried under the great quaking canopies: and more than all he enjoyed arriving at his own gate, seeing the pale shimmer of his marble statues against backgrounds of ivy and ilex, and drawing in the sweetness of his orange blossoms and roses. Because he never tired of these things the two months at Stellamare, often spent alone except for servants, were the best months of his year. Through stress and strain he thought of them, as a thirsty man thinks of a long draught of cool water; and he spent them quietly, living in each moment: not complicating his leisure with many acquaintances or amusements, and neither vexed nor pleased because people called him selfish, and gossipped about his palace in a garden as a place mysterious and secret. He was not quite in Paradise in his retreat there, because he was not a perfectly happy man; but he did not expect perfect happiness, and hoped for nothing better on earth than his lonely holidays at Stellamare.

Descending a steep hill toward the sea as the big car slipped between tall marble gate-posts, a perfume as of all the sweetest flowers of the world, gathered in a bouquet, was flung into the two men's faces. In the distance, beyond the house whose windows suddenly lit up as if by magic, a wide semi-circle of marble columns glimmered pale against the sea's deep indigo. And away across the stretch of quiet water glittered the amazing jewels of Monte Carlo.

"By Jove! no Roman emperor could have had a lovelier garden, or a more splendid palace on this coast," said Carleton, as he stood on the steps of the house modelled after the description of Pliny's villa at Laurentum. "Your greatest wish must be fulfilled."

"My greatest wish," Schuyler echoed, with a faint sigh. And in the starlight his face lost its hard lines. But Carleton did not see.

The door was thrown open by an old Italian servant, who had the profile of a captive Saracen king.

They went in together, and left the night full of perfume, and the song of little waves fringed with starlight, that broke on the rocks like fairy-gold--the vanishing fairy-gold of the Casino across the water.

And at the same moment (for it was very late) the dazzling illumination of the Casino terrace was dimmed, as if half the diamonds had been shut up in velvet cases.

A great peace fell upon the night, as though the throbbing of a passionate heart had ceased.

X

Vanno Della Robbia wished to think no more of the false stars that he had followed; for there was every reason now to believe them false stars. Yet something deep down in him refused to believe this; and he could not help thinking of them as before. But he would not give way to what seemed like weakness, and so he fought against the memory.

If he had come to Monte Carlo only for the sake of the girl, he would have left again next morning. Having come for other things, however, it would have been weaker to go than stay. His brother and sister-in-law had not arrived yet at their villa at Cap Martin, and were not due for some days, as Angelo had taken his bride to Ireland, to show her to a much loved cousin, the Duchess of Clare. Also there was the week of aviation, to which Vanno had been looking forward with interest during the voyage from Alexandria to Marseilles. A parachute which he had invented was to be used for the first time.

Though he could not help thinking of the eyes which haunted him with their lure of purity and innocence, he would not concern himself further with the comings and goings of Miss M. Grant of London. He went instead about his own affairs. He slept badly; but Vanno was accustomed to taking little sleep, therefore it did not occur to him to be tired because he woke finally at seven, after having lain awake till the ringing of Ste. Devote's five o'clock bells, down in the ravine. Instead, he felt a kind of burning energy which forced him to activity of some sort. After his cold bath he dressed quickly, and went out to walk, wishing himself back in the Libyan desert, where he had not seen or thought of any woman.

It was only half-past seven, and the sun was still low in the east, just rising above the mountains of Italy. It shone through a slit in two long purple clouds, and its shining lit the sea. Vanno ran down the steps to the Casino terrace, coming upon it near the clump of nymphlike palms, and the marble bust of Berlioz that Mary could see from her window. Hercules' Rock was on fire with sunrise, and the Prince's palace looked in the magic flame like a strange Valhalla.

Not a soul was to be seen, not even a gardener employed by the Casino, and all the watching eyes of the horned animal were asleep. Vanno stared at the great cream-white building with a brooding resentment, because of the influence which he believed it to exert over his clouded star. He fancied that she had been drawn here by its extraordinary magnetism which pulsed like electricity across Europe; and that, if she had not already been swept off her feet, soon she would be, and her soul drowned. To his own surprise, he could himself feel the mysterious power of the place. As he looked at the long windows framed in rose-red marble he remembered what his Arab friend, the astrologer in the desert, had said to him about this month of December.

"Could it be possible, if there were anything in the science of astrology," Vanno asked himself, "that the stars could rule the chances in a game of chance?" Vaguely he thought, with the mystic side of his nature, that to study, and prove or disprove this idea, might be interesting. But the side that was stern and ascetic thrust away the suggestion. He remembered the thousands of people who drifted here from all over the world, hoping for one reason or other to get the gold guarded by this big white dragon. Some perhaps believed in their stars; others had studied systems, and tried them on little roulette wheels at home; but nearly all went away defeated. The form of the long, high mountain called the Tête de Chien looked to Vanno like a giant man lying face down in despair, the shape of his head, his back, and supine legs tragic in desperate abandon. "That's a symbol," Vanno said, half aloud, and felt no longer the strange pulling at his heartstrings which for a moment had drawn him, too, under the influence. He thought of himself as one of the few, the very few, people within a wide range of Monte Carlo for whom the Casino meant nothing. For surely there were few indeed. Even the peasants among the mountains owed their living indirectly to the Casino. Because of its existence they were able to command large prices for their fruit and flowers and vegetables, or anything they could produce which pleasure-lovers drawn by the Casino could possibly want. Over there on the Rock, where red roofs of houses crowded closely together, everybody lived in one way or other by the Casino. No one, Vanno had been told, who was not Monegasque by birth or nationalization was allowed to live on the Rock. Probably many of the croupiers in the Casino and their families had houses there, and perhaps many were shopkeepers down in the Condamine, where the cheap hotels and lodging-houses were. Few of those hotels, or the more luxurious ones at Monte Carlo itself, would exist if it were not for the Casino, and the whole Riviera would be less prosperous. But Vanno was persuaded that he cared nothing for the gold of the dragon.

Once before, when he was almost a boy, he had come here with his brother Angelo for a few days. They had gone to see the Prince, whose ancient family, the Grimaldis, was older and more important even than the house of Rienzi. Vanno had promised Angelo that he would call at the palace this time, and he decided to do so formally in the afternoon; the morning he resolved to spend in walking up to La Turbie and down again. The exercise would clear his brain; and he fancied that he remembered the way well enough to find it again without asking directions.

There was something else he might do also, if there were time. A priest whom, as a boy, he had known well at Monte Della Robbia was now curé at Roquebrune. They corresponded, and in coming to the Riviera, Vanno had planned to look him up. He was in a mood to want a full day's programme.

In a few moments' walking he left Monte Carlo behind and came out upon the open hillside, where, above him, he saw the path leading skyward like an interminable staircase. Often as he mounted, bareheaded, his hat in his hand, he caught himself mentally trespassing on forbidden ground, thinking of his lost Giulietta, and wondering what she had been doing, every day and hour of her life since she was a child. He had never felt this pressing, insistent curiosity about any human being before. His thoughts followed the girl everywhere, wherever she might be; and something--the same Something which refused to disbelieve in her--seemed to know where she was at that moment, even how she looked, and what was in her soul, though his outer intelligence could see nothing. That rebellious Something longed to turn back toward Monte Carlo, to keep near her and guard her. It cried out strongly to do this, but Vanno would not listen. He sang to himself as he walked up the mule path among olive trees; and peasants coming down from the mountains, their nailed boots rattling on the cobblestones, were singing, too, strange wordless songs without tune, songs neither French nor Italian, but with a wild eastern lilt leaping out of their monotony, reminiscent of the days when Saracens ruled the coast. Some faces, too, were like the faces of eastern men, high featured, with enormous, flashing eyes. Here and there was one of a bold yet dreamy, gray-eyed, brown-haired type Vanno had not met before in any of his travels. He remembered that this country had belonged to the Ligurians before his ancestors, the Romans, took it after two hundred years' hard fighting: and types are persistent. He had heard that there were ruined Ligurian forts to be traced still, among the higher hills and mountains; and the monument of La Turbie, whither he was bound, was Augustus Cæsar's emblem of triumph over the Ligurian tribes.

The funicular was not running at this hour, and the white lacings of the Upper Corniche were empty save for a cart or two, bringing down loads of wallflower-tinted stone from some mountain quarry, for the building of a villa. Vanno had easily found his way on to a mule path, rough yet well kept, and ancient perhaps as the hidden Ligurian forts. Round him was the gray-green shimmer of olive trees, and their old, thick roots that crawled and climbed the rocks were like knotted snakes asleep. Bands of pines marched and mourned along the skyline, and in the midst of glittering laurels cypress trees stood up straight and black as burnt-out torches.

Clouds that had darkened the east when Vanno started veiled the sun now, like lazy eyelids. The gay glitter was gone from the world, and the sea was of a dull velvety gray, dappled with silver-gleams that sifted through holes in the clouds, making the water look like scales on a fish's back. Far below lay the strip of frivolous fairyland, all that most strangers know of the Riviera: the pleasure towns with their palms and tropical flowers, the decorated villas, to live in which Vanno thought would be like living in hollowed-out birthday cakes. And the soft, thoughtful grayness which was dimming the sunshine suited this different, higher world as well as it suited his mood. The loveliness of trees, and the pale splendour of mountain peaks carved in bas-relief against the pearl-gray sky, rang out to his soul like a chime of bells from a cathedral tower, giving him back the mastery of himself. It was good to be here, where there were no sounds except the voice of Nature, singing her eternal song, in the universal language, and where the life of man seemed as distant as the far-down windows that glittered mysteriously out of shadows, as the eyes of a cat glitter at night.

Inarticulate, enchanting whispers of the love and joy which have been in the world and may be again floated up to Vanno's imagination like the chanting of mermaids heard under the sea. He felt that, if he should meet his Giulietta now, he would believe in her, and his belief would make her worthy of itself, if she were not already worthy. "May the wings of our souls never fail us," he said aloud, as if it were a prayer.

Almost before the time when Vanno Della Robbia had known words enough to clothe his most childish thoughts, he had possessed an unknown land, a kingdom and a castle of his own more beautiful than sunset clouds. To this land he always travelled when he was alone, and often at night in dreams. It had been around him in the desert where his errand had been to study the eastern stars; and the observatory at Monte Della Robbia, built with money left him by his mother, was one gateway to that land. When he was in this secret kingdom he was brother to the stars. All knowledge came echoing through his soul, as if whispered to him by past selves, other incarnations of himself, who had gleaned it in their lives, from days when the world was young. He had a thousand souls, which had known great sorrows and joys and adventures. His blood seemed to smoke gold, like spray on rushing surf in sunshine. Never had he admitted any one he had known (except the people his own mind created for inhabitants of that kingdom) into his land; but now the girl whose name he scarcely knew stood at the door of the castle, asking to come in, saying with her eyes, which he had likened to stars, that she was the princess who had a right to live there. Hers was the face of his dream. She was the song of the mermaids. The voice he had heard--would always hear in the sea--spoke of her. She was the light of the morning. Hers the face in the sunrise, and the twilight. If he lost her, still her spirit would haunt him, in music, in all beauty, for she was the one woman, the ideal which is the heart of a man's heart. She must be worthy, because there was no other princess for this kingdom of his, east of the sun and west of the moon; and without her the rooms of the castle would hold only echoes.

Vanno would have died rather than speak out such thoughts to any one on earth, for they were the property of that self which his brother Angelo said was at war with the other self, the self which the world knew.

Now and then, as he walked up the mule path with a step which became lighter with the lightness of the air, he threw a word in Italian to a passing peasant, some Ligurian-looking man who drove a bright-coloured market garden ending in a donkey's head and tail. Eyes and teeth flashed comprehension, but the answer was in a queer _patois_, a hotch-potch of Latin, Italian, French, and Arabic.

On the top of the mountain Vanno breakfasted, at a pink hotel fantastically built in hybrid Moorish style. From his window-table he could see the Tour de Supplice on a height below; a broken column of stone said to mark the place where Romans tortured and executed their prisoners. Far beneath lay the Rock of Hercules and Monte Carlo, the four unequal horns of the great white animal springing saliently to the eye even at this height. To the right, the great iron-gray bulk of the Tête de Chien hid the promontories which, like immense prehistoric reptiles, swam out to sea beyond Beaulieu; but to the left were the mountains of Italy, their highest ridges marbled with dazzling snow; and Cap Martin's green length was frilled with silver ripples.

Still Vanno was happy, as he had not been since he saw Mary dining alone in the restaurant of the Hôtel de Paris. He had made a plan for the next hours, which gave him hope for the future.

After breakfast, he walked into the gray and ancient mountain-village of La Turbie, whose old houses and walls of tunnelled streets were built from the wreckage of Cæsar's Trophy. Jewish faces peered at him from high, dark windows, for here it was that, in the Middle Ages, Jews fled from persecution, and made La Turbie a Jewish settlement. Even in the newer town of pink and blue and yellow houses there were Jewish faces to be seen in dusky shops where fruit was displayed for sale, in heaps like many-coloured jewels.

Just beyond the oldest outskirts Vanno came to the foot of the monument, unspeakably majestic still, though long ago stripped of its splendid marbles, and its statues that commemorated Cæsar's triumph. Men were working in the shadow of the vast column of stone and crumbling Roman brick, digging for lost knowledge in the form of broken inscriptions, hands and heads of statues, bits of carved cornice, and a hundred buried treasures by means of which the historical puzzle-picture might gradually be matched together. Vanno became interested, and spent an hour watching and talking to the superintendent of the work, a cultured archæologist. When he began his descent of the mountain, a train on the funicular railroad was feeling its way cautiously down the steep mountainside, like a child on tiptoe. A little weak, irritable sniff came up from its engine as the toy train paused at one of the three stopping places below La Turbie. It was like a very young girl blowing her nose after crying.

Vanno did not go down to the low levels; but asking the way of an old peasant whose head was wrapped in a red handkerchief, he learned how to find the hill-village of Roquebrune, keeping to the mule paths. He had made up his mind to invite himself to lunch with his old friend the curé.

This was another world from the world of the Casino and shops and hotels. The very air was different; nimble, and crystal clean. All the perfumes were aromatic; balsam of pine, and the country sweetness of thyme and mint, the pure breath of nature. Sloping down the mountains eastward toward Italy and descending more than halfway from La Turbie, Vanno came to the rock-town with the ruined castle which Mary had looked up to from Monte Carlo in last night's sunset. It seemed to have slid from a taller height above, and to have been arrested by miracle before much harm was done; and Vanno remembered the curé's first letter which had told him the legend of the place: how Roquebrune in punishment for the sins of its inhabitants was shaken off its high eyrie by a great earthquake, but stopped on the shoulder of the mountain through intercession of the Virgin, the special patron _sainte vierge_ of the district. The town and its dominating castle seen from below showed as if flattened against the mountain's breast; but coming into the place on foot, the mountain retired into the background, and the huge mediæval ruin was sovereign lord of all.