Chapter 23

The crowds had ceased to collect round her table, to watch the "wonderful Miss Grant." It is the sensational wins, where piles of gold and notes mount up, that people rush to gaze upon. They are not amused by seeing money monotonously swept off the tables, even in immense sums. It discourages and depresses them. Nobody likes to be discouraged and depressed; therefore Mary had lost her audiences. Still she played on, and listened to no advice.

This morning, however, when she woke to remember her promise to the curé, she felt oddly disinclined to go to the Casino. Usually she wakened, after dozing fitfully, dreaming over again last night's worries, with an almost tremulous longing to be at the tables once more, a longing that seemed even more physical than mental, an aching of the nerves. Now the burning desire was suddenly assuaged, or forgotten in the powerful sway of a new thought, as illness can be forgotten in sudden fear or joy. The Casino appeared unimportant, trivial. All there was of her was already on the mountain, in the little garden which Rose Winter had said was like fairyland.

Mary did not wish to be questioned by anybody in the house, however; so she went out at the usual hour, found her employé in the long queue of those who waited before the Casino doors, paid him, and said that he might keep the seat for himself. She then went to walk on the terrace, hoping that no one she knew might be there: and it seemed likely that she would have her wish, for most of her acquaintances were keen gamblers who considered a morning wasted outside the Casino.

Mary walked to the eastern end of the terrace, where the _ascenseur_ comes up from the level of the railway station below. She remembered how she had heard the little boy give his musical cry, and how she had looked out of the train window, and his smile had decided her not to go on. If she had gone on, how different everything would have been, how much better perhaps; and yet--she could not be sorry to-day, as she was sometimes in bitter moments, that she had come to Monte Carlo.

As she stood by the balustrade, looking away toward Italy, a voice she knew spoke behind her. She turned, and saw Hannaford, his hat off, his marred face pale in the sunshine.

"Oh," she said impulsively, "I think you're the one person I could endure talking to just now!"

Since the night of the ball on the yacht, when they had sat on the terrace in the moonlight, they had become good friends, she and Hannaford. She had no feeling of repulsion for him now. That was lost in pity, and forgotten in gratitude for the sympathy which made it possible to confide in him as she could in no one else. He stood entirely apart from other men, in her eyes, as he seemed to stand apart from life, and out of the sun. When she spoke to him of her troubles or hopes it was not, to her, as if she spoke to a man like other men, but to a sad spirit, who knew all the sadness her spirit could ever know.

Often they had walked here together on the terrace, but it was usually in the afternoon, when Hannaford could persuade her out of the Casino for a few minutes, to "revive herself with a breath of fresh air," or to see the gold-and-crimson sunset glory behind the Rock of Hercules. Since Hannaford had won the money he wanted for the buying of his villa, he had kept his resolution not to play seriously; but he spent a good deal of time in the Casino, unobtrusively watching over Mary. He did not feel the slightest desire to play, he told Carleton, and other men who were amused or made curious by the sudden change in him. He had a "new interest in life," he explained; and every one took it for granted that he meant the villa, now his own. But he never said it was that which had made life better worth living for him.

"If it's a question of bare endurance of me, I'll go," he answered Mary's greeting, "and leave you to walk by yourself."

"No," she assured him. "I'd really like to have you. I thought I wanted to be alone. But I see now that being with you is better."

Hannaford drew in a long breath of the exquisite air, and looked up into the sunshine as if for once he did not feel himself unfitted for the light. "Do you really mean that, I wonder?" he asked in a low voice.

"Yes. I wouldn't say it if I didn't," Mary answered with complete frankness. "How do you happen to be here at this time of day?"

"To tell the truth, I saw you go down the steps, and followed to ask the same question."

"I came, because for some reason I have to be out of doors. I _couldn't_ go into the Rooms! I'd take a long walk, if I knew where to go."

"Good. I'm glad to hear it. Will you let me guide you somewhere, and give you a surprise?"

Mary looked undecided. "I'd like that. But I have an engagement this afternoon. Not in the Casino--or anywhere at Monte Carlo. It's up at Roquebrune. I have promised to go and see the--the curé's garden there."

"I'll bring you back from my expedition in plenty of time, if that's all," said Hannaford. He did not urge, but Mary knew that he very much wanted her to say yes.

"Will it be out of doors?"

"All the time out of doors, except for a few minutes when you're looking at a curiosity. First we have to get to Mentone. I'll spin you over there in a taxi. Then we can walk to--to the surprise. I'm sure you've never been."

"Is it to see your villa?" Mary asked, for he had suggested her going there some day.

"No, for I wouldn't take you to my house alone. We're not very conventional, you and I, I'm afraid; but there must be a party for your first visit to my 'castle in Spain' transplanted into Italy. I'll give you, and any people you like to ask, a picnic luncheon over there. But to-day I want you to lunch with me alone somewhere."

There was rather an odd ring in his voice, which made Mary look up quickly, but his face was calm, even stolid, as usual; and she thought that she had been mistaken. She put herself quietly into his care, feeling the comfort of perfect ease in his companionship. She could talk to him if she chose, or be silent. Whatever she liked, he too would like.

Half an hour later the taxi which Hannaford had hired stopped at the bridge dedicated to the Empress of Austria, the bridge which marks the dividing line between the communes of Roquebrune and Mentone. Then the two walked along the sea front, where the spray spouted gold in the sun, and a salt tang was on the breeze. It was a different world, somehow, from the world of Monte Carlo, though it was made up of pleasure-seekers from many countries. There were smartly dressed women, pretty girls with tennis rackets, men in flannels, with Panama hats pulled over their tanned faces; men with fine, clear profiles, who had been soldiers; solemn judges on holiday; fat old couples who waddled from side to side, as if their legs were set on at the corners, like the legs of chairs and tables; thin, middle-aged ladies with long, flat feet which showed under short tweed skirts; ladies clothed as unalluringly as possible as if to apologize for belonging to the female sex; elderly gentlemen with superior, selfish expressions, and faces like ten thousand other elderly gentlemen who live in _pensions_, talk of their "well-connected" friends, and collect all the newspapers to brood over in corners, as dogs collect bones. There were invalids, too, in bath-chairs, and children playing with huge St. Bernards or Great Danes, and charming actresses from the Mentone Casino, with incredibly slim figures, immense ermine muffs, and miniature Japanese spaniels. Mary could see no reason why these people who promenaded and listened to the music should be different both individually and in mass from a crowd to be seen at Monte Carlo, yet the fact remained that they were different; and among the faces there were none she knew, save those of the bird-like girl and her mother, half forgotten since the meeting in the train.

Hannaford took her by the Port, and past the old town whose heights towered picturesquely up and up, roof after roof, above the queer shops and pink and yellow houses of the sea level. Then came the East Bay, with its new villas and hotels, and background of hills silvered with olives; and at last, by a turn to the right which avoided the high road to Italy, they dipped into a rough path past a pebble floored stream, where pretty kneeling girls sang and scrubbed clothing on the stones.

Two douaniers, one French, the other Italian, lounging on opposite sides of the little stream flowing down from the Gorge of St. Louis, told that this was the frontier. It was not the road to Italy that Mary knew, when once or twice she had motored over the high bridge flung across the dark Gorge of St. Louis on excursions to Bordighera and San Remo. Nevertheless they were in Italy, and a mysterious change had come over the landscape, the indefinable change that belongs to frontiers. The buildings were shabbier; yet, as if in generous pity for their poorness, roses and pink geraniums draped them in cataracts of bloom. Gardens were less well kept, yet somehow more poetic. The colour of the old plastered walls and pergolas was more beautiful here, because more faded, stained green with moss, and splashed with many flower-like tints born of age and weather.

Always ahead, as Mary walked on with Hannaford, the high red wall of the Rochers Rouges glowed as if stained with blood where the sun struck it; and between the towering heights of rock and the turquoise sea he stopped her at an open-air restaurant roofed with palm leaves. There Hannaford ordered luncheon, at a table almost overhanging the water, and while the _bouillabaisse_ was being made, he took her to the cave of the prehistoric skeletons.

Mary was interested, yet depressed. Life seemed such a little thing when she thought of all the lives that had passed in one unending procession of brief joys and tedious tragedies since those bones had been clothed with flesh and had caged hearts which beat as hotly as hers was beating now. "What does it matter," she said, "whether we are happy or not?"

"Does it not matter to ourselves?" Hannaford answered, rather than asked.

"Just at this moment, I'm not sure."

"Does it matter more about making others happy?"

"Perhaps. I should like to think that in my life I had made some others happy."

"I'm going to tell you by and by," he said, "how you can make one other very happy. It's just a suggestion I have to offer. There may be nothing in it."

He spoke rather dryly and perfunctorily, as he helped her down the stairs of the cave-dwellers' rock-house. Mary had a vague idea that he meant to interest her in a "sad case," as he had done once or twice before, when he thought she needed to be "taken out of herself." She expected to hear a tale of some poor girl who had "lost all," and must be redeemed from disaster by a helping hand lest worse things happen; and as he was evidently determined not to tell his story then, Mary waited without impatience.

They were lunching early, and had finished before many people began to arrive dustily in carriages and automobiles. Hannaford had ordered his taxi at two o'clock, and there was no hurry. He told the Italian musicians to play softly, some simple old airs that he loved. Then, when Mary sat staring dreamily into the water, far down through clear green depths, he put his elbows on the table, his chin in his hands, and leaned across to her.

"Of course you know," he said, "that I love you. Don't speak yet--and don't look at me, please. Keep your eyes on the water. I told you I had something to ask; but it's not for your love I'm asking. I know that no woman, not even with your kind and gentle heart, could love a man like me. But something has hurt you. I told you once before that I didn't want to hear what it was. Only I'm afraid you're not happy, and perhaps--if the hurt was in your heart--you may never be happy again in exactly the old way, as a young girl is when she is full of hope. We feel alike about a lot of things, you and I. We are good friends. At least, you look on me as your friend. And as for you, no man will ever be your friend, as you think of that word. I'm your friend to this extent, that you've given me back my interest in the world. I used to want to get out of it all, but I don't now, because you're in it. Anyhow, I don't want to go if you'll let me be of use to you--if you'll let me love you. Is it possible, dear, that you could think of marrying me--just in a friendly sort of way, you know, to have a protector, a man to look after you, and worship you, without any return except a little sympathy and kindness?"

Not once had Mary looked up at him, after the first fluttering glance of surprise when he began. Even when Hannaford stopped, and waited, she still kept her eyes on the water; but he saw that her hand trembled on the balustrade, and that a little pulse beat in her throat.

"I never thought!" she quavered, miserably.

"I know that, very well. I wouldn't believe most women who made such an excuse, after being as kind to me as you have been--a man like me! I should have thought you knew, and that you were playing, as the boys play with the frogs. But I realized from the first that you weren't going to 'think,' unless I put thoughts into your head. I wouldn't ask such a thing of you if you were happy, but you're not happy. I don't believe you know what to do with your future. You're not interested in things, as you were when you first came--except in the Casino, and that can't go on forever. The sort of thing you're doing now eats a woman's soul away. Men can stand it longer than women. Almost anything else would be better for you. Even marrying me. Maybe you would take an interest in the place I've bought. It could be made so beautiful! You can't imagine the joy I've had in simply picturing you there."

"I should love to come--to see it--but only as your friend," Mary said, stammering guiltily, as if she were doing wrong in refusing him. "Oh, I can't tell you how sorry, how sorry I am!"

"You needn't be sorry," he answered. "I might have known what I wanted was too good to come true. I might have known I was beyond the pale. And I did know, in my heart. Only I had to find out, for sure. You mustn't mind. I wouldn't be without the memory of this day with you, anyhow--not for the world. It's good enough to live on for the rest of my life."

"But--you speak as if we weren't to see each other any more," said Mary. "Can't we go on being friends?"

"Yes. Wherever we are, we'll 'go on being friends.' But you may leave Monte. You probably will. And I--I shall be leaving too. Still, we'll 'go on being friends.' And the next favour I ask of you, if you possibly can, will you grant it?"

"Indeed I will," Mary promised eagerly. "Ask me now."

"Not yet. Not quite yet. The time hasn't come. But it will before long. Then you must remember."

"I'll remember always." She stood up and held out her hand. He took it in his, and shook it heartily. His manner was so quiet, so commonplace, his face and voice so calm, that she could hardly believe that he really cared, that he really "minded much," as she put it to herself. Can a man shake hands like that with a woman, she wondered, if he is broken-hearted because she has refused him?

"Now we must go," she said. "I--shouldn't like to be late for my appointment."

"You shan't be late," he assured her, cheerfully. Then, just as they were moving away from the table, he stopped. "Will you give me one of those roses," he asked, "to keep for a souvenir?"

Their waiter had adorned the little feast with a glass containing a few short-stemmed roses. Mary selected the prettiest, a white one just unfolding from the bud, and gave it to Captain Hannaford. So quickly that no one saw, he laid it against her faintly smiling lips, then hid it inside his coat.

When the taxi had rushed up the upper Corniche and had taken the carriage road to Roquebrune, Mary said goodbye to Hannaford in the _Place_ under the great wall of the old castle. She guessed that, perhaps, he would have liked an invitation to go with her to the curé's garden, which he had never seen. But she did not give the invitation. She even lingered, so that he must have seen she wished him to drive away; and he took the hint, if it were a hint, at once.

"Goodbye," he said, pleasantly. "Thank you a thousand times, for everything."

"But it's I who have to thank you!" she protested.

"If I could think you would ever feel like thanking me for anything, I should be glad."

He released her hand, after pressing it once very hard; got into the taxi, gave the chauffeur the name of his hotel in the Condamine, and was whirled away. The last that Mary saw of him he was looking back, waving his hat as if he were saying goodbye for a long, long time.

XXIV

The big clock had just finished striking three when Mary entered the church of the old rock-town on the hill. She could feel the vibration of the last stroke, as if the heart of the church were beating heavily, in sympathy with her own.

Coming into the dimness after the golden bath of sunlight outside was like being plunged into night. For an instant all was dark before Mary's eyes, as if she had been pushed forward with her face against a black curtain. The once familiar perfume of incense came pungently to her nostrils, sweet yet melancholy, like a gentle reproach for neglect. She seemed to be again in the convent chapel of St. Ursula-of-the-Lake. Every well-known feature of the place was sharply visible; she saw the carved screen of black oak; the faces of Reverend Mother and the sisters, white and ardent in the starlike light of tall wax candles; she heard the voices of women singing, crystal clear, sweet and sexless as the song of angels. The old oppression under which she had panted in the last days of her novitiate fell upon her again, like a weight. She felt that her soul was in a strait-jacket. Then, as she had often felt--and prayed not to feel--while the pure voices soared, the sensation of being shut up in a coffin came back to her. She was nailed into a coffin, lying straight and still under cool, faintly scented flowers; dead, yet not dead enough to rest. The terrible longing to burst the coffin lid and live--live--made her draw a deep, quick breath as of one choking, just as she had often struggled gaspingly back to realities after this obsession, while the singing went on in the dim chapel of the convent.

It began, and was all over in a few seconds. By the time her eyes had grown used to the twilight the impression of old, past things was gone; and relieved, as if she had waked from a dream of prison, Mary took note of everything round her: the largeness of the church, the effect of bareness, the simple decorations of the altar. She dipped her finger in the holy water, and knelt to pray for a moment, wondering if she had the right: and when she rose from her knees, the curé stood before her.

"Welcome, my daughter," he said. "I thought you were of the old faith. Now I am sure. Thank you for coming. I should like to give you my blessing before you go into the garden."

Presently he pointed to the open door which framed a bright picture of sky, and flowers growing against a low green and gold background of orange and lemon trees.

"Go out alone," he told her. "I have to stay here in church a while. Walk down the path to the wall, and look at the beautiful view. Then to the left you will see an arbour at the end of the garden. Wait there for me. I shall follow before you have time to grow impatient."

He said nothing of Vanno, whom she had been brought there to meet, and to "save." Perhaps the Prince had not cared to come. This seemed very probable to Mary; yet the thought that he might be avoiding her did not stab the girl's heart with any sharp pang of shame or pain. A radiant peace had taken possession of her spirit, stealing into it unaware, as the perfume of lilies may take possession of the senses, before the lilies are seen. Though she felt gratitude and something almost like love for the curé, she was glad that he had sent her into his garden alone. The flowery knot pinned on the bare breast of mountain seemed even more to her than the "fairyland" Rose Winter had described. "Angel-land," she thought, as she saw how secret and hidden the bright spot was on its high jutting point of rock, with its guardian wall of towering, ivied ruin on one side, and the tall pale church on another. She felt that here was a place in which she might find herself again, the self that had got lost in the dark, somewhere far, far below this height.

She stood by the low wall which kept the garden from the precipice; and when she had looked eastward to Italy, and westward where the prostrate giant of the Tête de Chien mourns over Monaco, she turned toward the arbour in which the curé had told her to wait. Most of the big gold and copper grape-leaves had fallen now, but some were left, crisped by frost until they seemed to have been cut from thin sheets of metal; and over the mass of knotted branches rained a torrent of freshly opened roses. They and their foliage made a thick screen, and Mary could not see the inside of the arbour; but as she reached the entrance Vanno stood just within, waiting for her, very pale, but with a light on his face other than the sunlight which streamed over him. Then Mary knew that something, more intimately herself than was her reasoning mind, had expected him, and had never believed that he would refuse to come.

He held out both hands, without a word; and without a word she gave him hers. He lifted them to his lips, and kissed first one, then the other. Still keeping her hands fast, he drew them down so that her arms were held straight at her sides. Standing thus, they looked into each other's eyes, and the glory of the sun reflected back from Vanno's almost dazzled Mary. Never in her life had she known happiness like this. She felt that such a moment was worth being born for, even if there were no after joy in a long gray existence; and the truth of what she had many times read without believing, pierced to her heart, like a bright beam from heaven: the truth that love is the one thing on earth which God meant to last forever.

"Will you forgive me?" Vanno asked, his eyes holding hers.

"Yes," she said. "And will you forgive me, for not forgiving you?"

"How could you forgive me, when you thought of me as you did? But you know now that you thought wrong."

"Yes. I know. Though I don't know how I know."

"And I know you to be _yourself_. That means everything. I can't say it in any other way. Because it was your real self I knew at Marseilles--the self I've known always, and waited for, and am unworthy of at last."

"Don't call yourself unworthy."

"I won't talk about that part at all--not yet. I love you--love you! and--God! how I need you."

"And I----"

"You love me?"

He loosed her hands, and catching her up, lifted her off her feet, her slight body crushed against his, her head pressed back; and so he kissed her on the mouth, a long, long kiss that did away with any need of explanation or forgiveness. There was no returning afterward to the old selves again, they both knew before their lips had parted. It was as if they two had climbed to the top of a high tower together, and a door had been shut and locked behind them.