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 Fées 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 Fées, 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 Provençal 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 Fées 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 Fées. 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 Fées. 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 fiancée. 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 Fées 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 Fées!
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?”
“I said, ‘Oh! really. Are you in Cannes?’ And then the Grand Duke asked me some question, and I turned away to him. If the Grand Duke hadn’t happened to be there it would have been no fun at all. You see how wicked and worldly I have grown. Then Mr. Brownlow asked if he might call at Villa des Fées, and I said we were so much engaged we hadn’t any day at home. Mrs. Vereker is dying to know Lady Campstown, who doesn’t care whether she meets a leader in New York or a leader in Allison’s Cross Roads. I won’t ask you to tell me about your travels, for darling Lady Campstown has read me every line of your late letters, and even some you wrote her as a boy. I know how you stroked the crew of that splendid boat-race at college, and when you shot the lion on the Upper Nile, and what you ate in South Africa. After my talks with her this winter I used to go home thinking you certainly the biggest and greatest and bravest person in the world!”
Her girlish raillery seemed to him the most delicious fooling. He tossed his hat and stick into the flower-border behind them, and dropped again upon the bench beside her. Beside the cool green shadow of their verdurous niche, the sunshine seemed to lie on the marble pavement beyond, like a slab of gold, the mad wind whistling outside harmless. And neither noticed that Mrs. Darien, who had been standing dark with menace, still as Fate, in the shrubbery at their rear, had leaned over and possessed herself of the dangerous Makila stick.
A few moments later, Glynn, where he sat down in the lower garden, heard Posey scream once, then silence.
He sprang up and flew to the spot whence the sound issued, some under-gardeners reaching it at the same time. They found Miss Winstanley upon her feet, with horror in her eyes, Lord Clandonald endeavoring to lift from the ground the form of a senseless woman, his right arm hanging helpless, an ugly bleeding wound upon his brow.
“It’s all right!” he exclaimed to them grimly. “This person attacked Miss Winstanley, and I caught the blow, that’s all.”
“Oh! John, John, how thankful I am to see you!” cried Posey. “Help Lord Clandonald, please; he is badly hurt. It is Mr. Glynn, Lord Clandonald, and for my sake you must let him serve you.”
Clandonald, wavering upon his feet, was glad to be assisted to the bench where they were sitting when Mrs. Darien aimed her deadly blow. But he retained sufficient understanding to thank Glynn, and urge on him the necessity of having the woman, who had been evidently overtaken by some kind of a seizure, removed quietly from the place, and put in charge of Lady Campstown—“who will understand.” After which brief direction, he uttered one sigh, and fainted.
So Helen found the little group whom tragedy had grazed! Posey, holding Clandonald’s head in her arms, his limp body lying across the seat! Helen was carrying in her hand the letter she had come outside to show Posey, in fulfilment of her promise to the girl—the letter to Mariol, telling him she would be his wife!
To her, with a hurried explanation of the affair and of his presence there, Glynn consigned Posey, who seemed scarcely conscious of where she was and what had happened, begging Miss Carstairs to take her to her room. Before all things, it was desirable that Miss Winstanley’s name should be kept out of the business, which he believed would end favorably for Clandonald. Helen led her away, obedient as a child, although trembling violently, and holding her hand over a spot upon the breast of her white gown where Clandonald’s blood had stained it.
Glynn, fetching some water from the fountain, soon brought Mrs. Darien’s victim back to consciousness. Clandonald’s first act was to look about for the murderous weapon, and ask Glynn to suppress it; his second to eagerly question the two gardeners, who, having borne Mrs. Darien away, had now returned with remedies from the servants at Villa Julia, secured under pretence that one of their number had met with an accident.
“Quant à la dame, milor,” said one of these men, who had been for a long time on the place and knew very well the skeleton in his neighbor’s closet. “It was not found necessary to trouble Milady Campstown with her. The housemaid, Rosa, was waiting in the cab, much frightened, since she thought that Madame Darien had looked exceedingly ill when she went into the garden against Rosa’s advice. Madame Darien had revived and bidden the men assist her into her carriage, and the housemaid had driven off with her to the station. It was not needful to tell anyone else what occurred, since, the Virgin be praised, no serious harm appeared to have been done.”
Glynn, whose French fell short in moments of emergency, tried to explain to the men that his and Mr. Winstanley’s gratitude for their excellent service and consideration would continue to be remembered substantially in proportion to their reticence upon the subject. He emphasized it by a transfer of gold to each brown right hand, which the Provençals received with blushes of becoming modesty.
“And now, you will go back to your work, comprehendez vous?” added John, “leaving me to conduct ce monsieur to Villa Julia, explaining that a branch fell from a tree across his cheek and arm!”
Clandonald smiled wanly.
“That will do for a stop-gap,” he said. “But I have my fears that the woman who committed this unexplained assault will again be heard from on the subject. I fancy you know, Mr. Glynn, who she is, and that Miss Winstanley has been for months an object of her virulence.”
“I should tell you,” said Glynn, while aiding him to get upon his feet, “that I had some experience of Mrs. Darien upon my former visit to Cannes. I, in fact, then found it better to go to her lodgings in Nice, and try to perfect a little arrangement for Miss Winstanley’s protection. That, it seems, has failed.”
“The person is irresponsible,” answered Clandonald, a dark flush, coming into his face. “And, I am afraid, incorrigible.”
“All the same, I am going to ask your permission to interfere so far as to look her up again to-night.”
“You know that is what I most want?”
“I think so. I put myself in your place.”
“More than that no man can do for another,” said Clandonald warmly.
After Glynn had gotten him into his own bedroom, called up his servant, and telephoned for the family physician of Lady Campstown (who, herself, remained still fortunately absent upon her round of calls), they parted like friends of years.