AT SANT’ AGNESE.
ONCE restored to the free use of his own two legs, Paul Gascoyne was at once himself again. As the one member of the party, except the donkey boys, who went afoot, he was here, there, and everywhere, in waiting upon everybody. What prodigies of valor did he not perform in hauling fat old Mrs. Newton’s donkey up the steepest bits, or in slipping down round the sharpest corners to help Nea Blair safely round some difficult gully! What useful services did he not lavish on the golden-haired Pennsylvanian and her shriveled mamma, walking by their sides where the ledges were narrowest and calming their fears where the rocks toward the slope were loosest and most landslippy! How he darted from the rear up short cuts of the zigzags, and appeared in front again, a hundred yards ahead, on some isolated bowlder, to encourage and direct their doubtful footsteps! How he scrambled over inaccessible faces of cliff to fetch some fern or flower for Nea, or to answer some abstract question as to the ultimate destination of the minor side-paths from Isabel Boyton! He was a good climber, and he enjoyed the climb — though he feared for his old boots and his carefully conserved trousers.
The road was long — Sant’ Agnese stands some three thousand feet above sea-level — but at every turn the views grew lovelier, and the sense of elation in the mountain air more distinct and delicious. They passed from the region of olives into the zone of pine woods, and then again into that of bare white rock, scarcely terraced here and there by Provençal industry to support a few stunted vines and undersized chestnut trees. The path wound slowly up the sides of a stony ravine, and then mounted in a series of sharp elbows the sheer peak itself, to an accompaniment of cries of Franco-German distress from Mme. Ceriolo and shrill transatlantic exclamations of horror from the goldenhaired Pennsylvanian. At last they reached the goal of their pilgrimage — a rocky platform high up the last peaks of the jagged mountain, with a great Ligurian village just clinging to the slopes, and almost indistinguishable from the still grayer wall of bare rock that rose above it in sharp tors and weather-worn chimneys against the deep blue heaven.
“What a glorious view!” Nea Blair exclaimed, as they looked down unexpectedly on the northern side into a profound and naked basin of rock, at whose bottom the Borrigo torrent roared and brawled amid its scattered bowlders. “And what magnificent great peaks away across the valley there!”
“I guess we’d better fix up lunch on that flat piece by the chapel,” Isabel Boyton remarked with occidental practicality, spying out forthwith the one patch of tolerably level ground within reach of the village. It was a spur of the mountain, covered with that rare object in the Provençal Alps, a carpet of turf, and projecting from the main range far into the semicircle of the deep rock-basin.
“We’ll fix it up right away,” Mme. Ceriolo answered with good-natured mimicry. Mme. Ceriolo had the natural talent for languages which seems to go inseparably with the rôle of Continental adventuress, and she spoke American almost as well and with almost as good an accent as she spoke her other alternative tongues. “If your mamma and Mrs. Newton’ll set themselves down right here, and make themselves comfortable, Mr. Gascoyne and I will just unpack the baskets. Come along here, Nea, we want you to help us. Miss Boyton, you get the plates and things ready, will you?”
For a few minutes they were busy arranging everything. Armitage, the blond young man, and Paul rendering all due assistance; and Paul was aware in an indefinite way that Mme. Ceriolo was somehow anxious to keep him off as much as possible from the golden-haired Pennsylvanian. But as this gave him the opportunity of conversing more with Nea, and as, duty to the contrary notwithstanding, he very much preferred Nea to the heiress of Pactolus, he by no means resented madame’s obvious anxiety in this respect. On the contrary, he salved his conscience with the reflection that it was madame rather than inclination that kept him away from the lady of the golden hair and prospects.
Such a picnic as that December morning’s Paul had never before borne a part in. There were dishes from Rumpelmayer’s, cunningly compounded of aspic and olives, whose very names he had not so much as heard, but whereof the rest of the party, more instructed in cookery, talked quite glibly. There were curious salads, and garnishings of crayfish and candied fruits, and pastry and nougat of artistic manufacture. There was much champagne, and vintage clarets, and Asti mousseux for those who liked it sweet, and green chartreuse poured from a Cantagalli bottle. For though the picnic was nominally a joint affair of Nea’s and the American’s, it was Isabel Boyton who contributed the lion’s shore of the material provision, which she insisted upon doing with true Western magnificence. The lunch was so good, indeed, that even the beauties of nature went unnoticed by comparison. They had hardly time to look at the glimpse of calm blue sea disclosed between the ridges of serrated peaks, the green basking valleys that smiled a couple of thousand feet below, with their orange and lemon groves, or the flood of sunshine that poured in full force upon the moldering battlements of the grim and wasted Alps in front of them.
After lunch, however, Paul somehow found himself seated on the slope of the hill with Nea. They had discussed many things — Mentone, and the view, and the flowers, and the village — and Nea had just told him the strange old legend of the castle that clings to the topmost peak — how it was founded by a Saracen who levied tax and toll on all the Christian folk of the country round, and finally became converted to the faith of Europe by the beautiful eyes of a peasant-girl whose charms had-enslaved him, when suddenly she came back plump to the nineteenth century with the point-blank question, Where do you live when you’re at home, Mr. Gascoyne?”
“In Surrey,” Paul answered vaguely, growing uncomfortably hot.
“Surrey’s a big address,” Nea Blair answered, pulling a tiny rockrose from a cranny in the precipice. “Any particular part, or do you occupy the county generally?”
Paul laughed, but not with quite a gracious laugh.
“About twenty-five miles from London,” he answered, with evasive vagueness.
“I’ve lots of friends in Surrey,” Nea went on innocently, unconscious of the mental pangs she was carelessly inflicting on him. “Do you know Hillborough?”
“Why, that’s just where I live,” Paul answered, with a suppressed start.
“Dear me; how funny I haven’t met you!” Nea exclaimed in surprise. “I’m always down at Hillborough, stopping with the Hamiltons.”
“Indeed,” Paul responded in a very dry voice.
“You must know the Hamiltons,” Nea persisted, all innocence. “Sir Arthur Hamilton, of the Grange, at Hillborough. He used to be Governor of Madras, you know, or somewhere.”
“I know them by name, of course,” Paul admitted uneasily.
“But not personally?”
“No, not personally. We — a — we move in different circles.”
“Then you must know the Boyd Galloways?” Nea went on interrogatively.
“Only by sight. I haven’t any large acquaintance at Hillborough.”
“The Jacksons?”
“Colonel Jackson I sometimes see, it’s true; but I don’t know him. They’re not the kind of set I mix with.”
“Well, of course you know the rector,” Nea exclaimed, nailing him. “The dear old Archdeacon — he’s so nice with everybody.”
“He comes to us occasionally,” Paul answered with some reluctance. Then, after a pause, he added, lest he should seem to be claiming too great an honor. “But much more often he sends the curate.”
Even yet Nea failed to take in the situation, not because she was slow of understanding, but because it was quite a novel one to her. “Perhaps you live alone?” she suggested in explanation.
Paul could put off the damning truth no longer.
“On the contrary,” he said, “my father and mother live and have always lived entirely at Hillborough. But they’re not in position to see much of the local society — in fact they’re not in society in any way. We’re quite poor people — what your friend, Mr. Armitage, to use a favorite word of his, would call scallywags.”
There was an awkward pause. Then Nea said again, with a becoming blush:
“Forgive my pressing you. — It — it never occurred to me.” Next moment feminine tact induced her to change the subject, not too abruptly. “I visit a good deal at Hillborough myself, and I thought we’d be sure to have acquaintances in common. But I live in Cornwall. Have you ever been in Cornwall, Mr. Gascoyne? In summer it’s almost as beautiful as this; it is, really.”
“No, I’ve never been there,” Paul answered, grateful to her for the clever diversion. “But I shall hope to go,” he added quite seriously.
“Oh, you must when I get back again there next summer,” Nea cried most warmly. “It’s so awfully lovely. As soon as I’m well I shall long to get home again.”
“You are not here for your health?” Paul inquired, catching her up.
“For my health? Yes. But it isn’t serious. Not my lungs, you know,” for Paul had laid his hand instinctively on his chest. “Only to recover from the effects of an upset in a boat last summer. I’ve no mother, and papa couldn’t bring me abroad himself because of leaving his parish; so he got Mme. Ceriolo to take care of me. She’s accustomed to traveling, Mme. Ceriolo.”
“Where on earth did he pick her up?” Paul inquired with some curiosity, for, inexperienced in the ways of the world as he was, Mme. Ceriolo’s personality had already struck him as a sufficiently singular one for her present occupation.
“Oh, he heard of her from a governess’ agency,” Nea answered with much confidence. “She had excellent testimonials from people of title. She’s well connected. And she’s a good little thing enough when you really get to know her.”
“I daresay,” Paul answered in that dubious tone which means, “I don’t think so, but I wouldn’t be rude enough to contradict you.”
What Nea said next he didn’t catch, for his ear was that moment distracted by a side conversation carried on at some little distance between Armitage and old Mrs. Newton. They were talking low, but, in spite of their low tones, he overheard more than once the vague murmur of his own name: and that man were surely more than mortal whom the sound of his own name overheard in his neighbors’ talk would not draw away even from a pretty girl’s unimportant causerie. He listened without pretending to hear, and put in “yes” and “no” to Nea’s remarks à tort et à travers. “Only one family of Gascoynes with a ‘y’ and without a ‘g,’” Mrs. Newton was observing; “and that’s the baronet’s. Old Sir Emery Gascoyne, the last of the lot, was very rich, and lived down in Pembrokeshire — in Little England beyond Wales, as they call it locally. But this young man can’t be one of those Gascoynes, because—” and there her voice sank still lower.
Paul strained his ears, but could hear no more. “So very odd, wasn’t it?” Nea was saying appealingly.
“Extremely odd,” Paul assented like a man, though to what particular proposition he was thus boldly committing himself he really hadn’t the faintest idea; but, as Miss Blair said so, he had very little doubt it must have been positively ludicrous.
“I stopped there once, at Gascoyne Manor,” Armitage was saying once more, when next a scrap of the conversation was wafted toward him; “it was in old Sir Emery’s time, you know, before the present man came into possession. The present man’s not a baronet, I fancy; ah, no, exactly so; that’s just as I thought; but he’s very rich, and will be Lord Lieutenant of the county some day, I’m told. A splendid place, and awfully well kept up. No sort of connection, you may be pretty sure, with young Thistleton’s tutor.”
Paul’s ears were tingling hot by this time, and it was with difficulty that he so far roused himself as to understand when Nea said, “Shall we start at once, then?” that she had just been proposing a climb to the castle ruins, and that he had unconsciously promised to accompany her on her scramble. “Certainly,” he said, coming back with a start, and they rose at once, Mme. Ceriolo rising too to fulfill to the letter her appropriate functions as contracted and paid for. “Come,” she said, “Mr. Thistleton,” with her most girlish smile — and she looked seventeen when she meant to captivate—” come and give me a hand over these dreadful rocks. Mon Dieu! quels rochers! I shall stumble and fall, I know, if I haven’t one of the lords of creation to lean upon.”
As they passed through the dark and vaulted alleys of the quaint old town — mere filthy mole-tracks, built round on either side, and strengthened with vaults thrown across from house to house for greater stability in times of earthquake — Nea glanced up quickly at the gloomy old roofs, and exclaimed with a gay ease, “Oh, isn’t it picturesque! I should just love to sketch it.”
“Very picturesque,” Paul answered, looking down at the noisome small gutters underfoot, where barefooted children scrambled and crawled among the accumulated dirt of five-and-twenty centuries, “but very terrible, too, when you come to think that men and women live all their life in it.”
“Oh, they’re accustomed to it,” Nea replied lightly, with the easy-going optimism of youth and of the comfortable classes. “They’ve never known anything better, I suppose, and they don’t feel the want of it.”
“Miss Blair,” Paul said, turning round and facing her suddenly and quite unexpectedly, “that sentiment’s unworthy of you. You’re only saying, of course, what everybody else says; but we expect something better from you than from everybody. Look at the misery and dirt in which these people live, and if contentedly, then so much the more terrible. Discontent is the only spur to improvement. If they’re satisfied to live as they do, then they’re so much the less human, and so much the more like the beasts that perish. Look how here, on this breezy, open hilltop, among these glorious rocks, their houses are built without sun or air, turned only to the filthy, festering street, and away from the light, and the sea, and the mountains. They don’t care for the view, you say. Their views about views are, no doubt, rudimentary. But isn’t it just that that’s the saddest thing of all — that where they might enjoy so much fresh air, and sunshine, and health, and beauty, they’re content with such gloom, and dirt, and misery, and squalor? You talk like that because you hardly think any class but your own is wholly human. I know better. I know that, up and down, high and low, gentle or simple, all the world over, there’s a deal of human nature in men and women. And it seems to me a terribly painful thing that they should live like this — so painful as to spoil, to my mind, the very sense of picturesqueness in all this picturesque dirt and wretchedness!”
He turned round upon her so sharply, and his words flowed so quick, in such a spontaneous outburst of natural eloquence that Nea Blair was fairly taken by surprise.
“You’re right, I know,” she answered in a very low voice. “I spoke unthinkingly. I was only saying, as you say, what everyone else says. In future, Mr. Gascoyne, I shall remember to think of it and speak of it more seriously.”
Paul blushed in return. He felt he had allowed his natural indignation to carry him away too hastily and unreservedly.
Two hours later, as he came back alone from the Hotel des Rives d’Or, whither he had gone to see his hostess home, he reflected, with some pangs of remorse to himself, that he had, perhaps, done wrong in paying so much attention to Miss Blair and so comparatively little to the American heiress. Gold, gold! he should have gone for gold. It was wrong of him, no doubt — extremely wrong, with those heavy claims upon him. But, then, how very nice Miss Blair was, and how thoroughly he detested this hateful worship of the golden calf and the golden image! If only his lot had been framed otherwise! Marry for money — the hateful idea! How much a man must sacrifice to the sense of duty!
On the table of the salon he found a letter awaiting him with the Hillsborough postmark. The handwriting on the envelope was boldly commercial. He tore it open. It was brief and succinct. And this was what he read in it:
MY DEAR PAUL:
I ought to have written to you before you left Oxford to say that now you are going abroad it would be a great pity — in case you get thrown into good society — to spoil the ship for a ha’porth of tar, as the common saying is. The time is now coming when we may begin to expect to pull off our coup, as the sporting gentlemen call it. Don’t go singing small, as you’re too much inclined to do. Let them know who you are, and take your proper position. At the same time don’t spend too much, and don’t get dragged into unnecessary expenses. But keep up your dignity. For this purpose I enclose a ten-pound note, for which kindly sign note of hand herewith as usual. The noble bart and his lady are well and hearty, and send their respects.
Your obedient servant, JUDAH P. SOLOMONS.
Paul laid down the letter with a sigh of relief. It was a comfort, at any rate, to know he had not done wrong in paying five francs for the beast which, as luck would have it, he had never ridden. He entered it without one qualm of conscience on his accounts. “Donkey for picnic, 4s. 2d.” The item might pass. If Mr. Solomons approved, his mind was easy.