The "Sire" de Corancez—as Madame de Carlsberg disdainfully called the Southerner—was not a man to neglect the slightest detail that he thought advantageous to a well-studied plan. His father, the vine-grower, used to say to him, "Marius? Don't worry about Marius. He's a shrewd bird." And, in truth, at the very moment when the Baroness Ely was beginning her melancholy confidences in the deserted garden alleys of the Villa Brion, this adroit person discovered Hautefeuille at the station, installed him in the train between Chésy and Dickie Marsh and manœuvred so skilfully that before reaching Nice the American had invited Pierre to visit the next morning his yacht, the Jenny, anchored in the roadstead at Cannes. But the next morning would be the last hours that Corancez could spend at Cannes before his departure, ostensibly for Marseilles and Barbentane, in reality for Italy.
He had the promise of Florence Marsh that Hautefeuille's visit to the Jenny would be immediately followed by an invitation to take part in the cruise of the 14th. Would Pierre accept? Above all, would he consent to act as witness in that clandestine ceremony, at which the queerly named Venetian abbé, Don Fortunato Lagumina, would pronounce the words of eternal union between the millions of the deceased Francesco Bonnacorsi and the heir of the doubtful scutcheon of the Corancez? The Provençal had but this last morning to persuade his friend.
But he had no fear of failure, and at half-past nine, fresh, in spite of the fact that he had returned from Monte Carlo on the last train the night before, he briskly descended the steps of the hill that separates Cannes from the Gulf of Juan. Pierre Hautefeuille had installed himself for the winter in one of those hotels whose innumerable flower-framed windows line this height, which the people of Cannes have adorned with the exotic name of California.
It was one of those mornings of sun and wind—of fresh sunlight and warm breeze—which are the charm of winter on this coast. Roses bloomed by hundreds on hedge and terrace. The villas, white or painted, shone through their curtains of palm trees and araucarias, aloes and bamboos, mimosas and eucalyptus. The peninsula of La Croisette projected from the hill toward the islands, and its dark forest of pines, flecked with white houses, arose in strong relief between the tender blue of the sky and the sombre blue of the sea, and the Sire de Corancez went on gayly, a bouquet of violets in the buttonhole of the most becoming coat that a complacent tailor ever fashioned for a handsome young man in chase of an heiress, his small feet tightly fitted in russet shoes, a straw hat on his thick, black hair; his eyes bright, his teeth glistening in a half smile, his beard lustrous and scented, his movements graceful.
He was happy in the animal portion of his nature; a happiness that was wholly physical and sensual. He was able to enjoy the divine sunlight, the salt breeze, odorous with flowers; this atmosphere, soft as spring; to enjoy the morning and his own sense of youth, while the calculator within him soliloquized upon the character of the man he was about to rejoin and upon the chances of success:—
"Will he accept or not? Yes, he will beyond any doubt, when he knows that Madame de Carlsberg will be on the boat. Should I tell him? No; I would offend him. How his arm trembled in mine last night when I mentioned her name! Bah! Marsh or his niece will speak to him about her, or they are no Americans. That is their way—and it succeeds with them—to speak right out whatever they think or wish.—If he accepts? Is it prudent to have one more witness? Yes; the more people there are in the secret, the more Navagero will be helpless when the day comes for the great explanation.—A secret? With three women knowing it? Madame de Carlsberg will tell it all to Madame Brion. It will go no further on that side. Flossie Marsh will tell it all to young Verdier. And it will stop there, too. Hautefeuille? Hautefeuille is the most reliable of all.—How little some men change! There is a boy I have scarcely seen since our school-days. He is just as simple and innocent as when we used to confess our sins to the good Father Jaconet. He has learned nothing from life. He does not even suspect that the Baroness is as much in love with him as he with her. She will have to make a declaration to him. If we could talk it over together, she and I. Let nature have her way. A woman who desires a young man and does not capture him—that may occur, perhaps, in the horrible fogs of the North, but in this sunlight and among these flowers, never.—Good, here is his hotel. It would be convenient for a rendezvous, these barracks. So many people going in and out that a woman might enter ten times without being noticed."
Hôtel des Palmes—the name justified by a tropical garden—appeared in dazzling letters on the façade of this building, whose gray walls, pretentiously decorated with gigantic sculpture, arose at a bend of the road. The balconies were supported by colossal caryatides, the terrace by fluted columns. Pierre Hautefeuille occupied a modest room in this caravansary, which had been recommended by his doctor; and if, on the night before, his sentimental reverie in the hall at Monte Carlo had seemed paradoxical, his daily presence in a cell of this immense cosmopolitan hive was no less so.
Here he lived, retired, absorbed in his chimerical fancies, enveloped in the atmosphere of his dreams, while beside him, above him, and below him swarmed the agitated colony which the Carnival attracts to the coast. Again on this morning the indulgent mockery of Corancez might have found a fitting subject, if the heavy stones of the building had suddenly become transparent, and the enterprising Southerner had seen his friend, with his elbows on the writing-table, hypnotized before the gold box purchased the evening before; and his mockery would have changed to veritable stupefaction, had he been able to follow the train of this lover's thoughts, who, ever since his purchase, had been a prey to one of those fevers of remorseful anxiety which are the great tragedies of a timid and silent passion.
This fever had begun in the train on the way back from Monte Carlo amid the party collected by Corancez. One of Chésy's remarks had started it.
"Is it true," Chésy asked of Marius, "that Baroness Ely lost this evening a hundred thousand francs, and that she sold her diamonds to one of the gamblers in order to continue?"
"How history is written!" Corancez responded. "I was there with Hautefeuille. She lost this evening just what she had gained, that is all; and she sold a trifling jewel worth a hundred louis,—a gold cigarette case."
"The one she always uses?" asked Navagero; then gayly, "I hope the Archduke will not hear this story. Although a democrat, he is severe on the question of good form."
"Who do you suppose would tell him?" Corancez replied.
"The aide-de-camp, parbleu," exclaimed Chésy. "He spies into everything she does, and if the jewel is gone, the Archduke will hear of it."
"Bah! She will buy it back to-morrow morning. Monte Carlo is full of these honest speculators. They, in fact, are the only ones who win at the game."
While Hautefeuille was listening to this dialogue, every word of which pierced to his heart, he caught a glance from the Marquise Bonnacorsi—a look of curiosity, full of meaning to the timid lover, for he plainly read in it the knowledge of his secret. The subject of the conversation immediately changed, but the words that had been spoken and the expression in Madame Bonnacorsi's eyes sufficed to fill the young man with a remorse as keen as though the precious box had been taken from the pocket of his evening coat, and shown to all these people.
"Could the Marquise have seen me buy it?" he asked himself, trembling from head to foot. "And if she saw me, what does she think?"
Then, as she entered into conversation with Florence Marsh, and appeared once more to be perfectly indifferent to his existence, "No, I am dreaming," he thought; "it is not possible that she saw me. I was careful to observe the people who were there. I was mistaken. She looked at me in that fixed way of hers which means nothing. I was dreaming. But what the others said was not a dream. This cigarette case she will wish to buy back to-morrow. She will find the merchant. He will tell her that he has sold it. He will describe me. If she recognizes me from his description?"
At this thought he trembled once more. In a sudden hallucination he saw the little parlor of the Villa Helmholtz—the Archduke had thus named his house after the great savant who had been his master. The lover saw the Baroness Ely sitting by the fire in a dress of black lace with bows of myrtle green, the one of her dresses which he most admired. He saw himself entering this parlor in the afternoon; he saw the furniture, the flowers in their vases, the lamps with their tinted shades, all these well-loved surroundings, and a different welcome—a look in which he would perceive, not by a wild hypothesis this time, but with certitude, that Madame de Carlsberg knew what he had done. The pain which the mere thought of this caused him brought him back to reality.
"I am dreaming again," he said to himself, "but it is none the less certain that I have been very imprudent—even worse, indelicate. I had no right to buy that box. No, I had no right. I risked, in the first place, the chance of being seen, and of compromising her. And then, even as it is, if some indiscreet remark is made, and if the Prince makes an investigation?"
In another hallucination he saw the Archduke Henry Francis and the Baroness face to face. He saw the beautiful, the divine eyes of the woman he loved fill with tears. She would suffer in her private life once more, and from his fault, on account of him who would have given all his blood with delight in order that mouth so wilfully sad might smile with happiness. Thus the most imaginary, but also the most painful of anxieties commenced to torture the young man, while Miss Marsh and Corancez in a corner of the compartment exchanged in a low voice these comments:—
"I shall ask my uncle to invite him, that's settled," said the young American girl. "Poor boy, I have a real sympathy for him. He looks so melancholy. They have pained him by talking so of the Baroness."
"No, no," said Corancez. "He is in despair at having missed, by his own fault, a chance of speaking with his idol this evening. Imagine, at the moment when I went up to her—piff—my Hautefeuille disappeared. He is remorseful at having been too timid. That is a sentiment which I hope never to feel."
Remorse. The astute Southerner did not realize how truly he had spoken. He was mistaken in regard to the motive, but he had given the most precise and fitting term to the emotion which kept Hautefeuille awake through the long hours of the night, and which this morning held him motionless before the precious case. It was as though he had not bought it, but had stolen it, so much did he suffer to have it there before his eyes. What was he to do now? Keep it? That had been his instinctive, his passionate desire when he hurried to the merchant. This simple object would make the Baroness Ely so real, so present to him. Keep it? The words he had heard the night before came back to him, and with them all his apprehension. Send it back to her? What could be more certain to make the young woman seek out who it was who had taken such a liberty, and if she did find out?
A prey to these tumultuous thoughts, Pierre turned the golden box in his hands. He spelled out the absurd inscription written in precious stones on the cover of the case: "M.E. moi. 100 C.C.—Aimez-moi sans cesser," the characters said; and the lover thought that this present, bearing such a tender request, must have been given to Madame de Carlsberg by the Archduke or some very dear friend.
What agony he would have felt had the feminine trinket been able to relate its history and all the quarrels that its sentimental device had caused during the liaison of the Baroness Ely with Olivier du Prat. How often Du Prat, too, had tried to discover from whom his mistress had received this present—one of those articles whose unnecessary gaudiness savors of adultery. And he could never draw from the young woman the name of the mysterious person who had given it, of whom Ely had said to Madame Brion, "It was some one who is no longer in this world."
In truth, this suspicious case was not a souvenir of anything very culpable; the Baroness had received it from one of the Counts Kornow. She had had with him one of her earliest flirtations, pushed far enough—as the inscription testified—but interrupted before its consummation by the departure of the young Count for the war in Turkey. He had been killed at Plevna.
Yes, how miserable Hautefeuille would have been if he could have divined the words that had been uttered over this case—words of romantic tenderness from the young Russian, words of outrageous suspicion from his dearest friend, that Olivier whose portrait—what irony!—was on the table before him at this moment. That heart so young, still so intact, so pure, so confiding, was destined to bleed for that which he did not suspect on this morning when, in all his delicacy, he accused no one but himself.
Suddenly a knock on the door made him start in terror. He had been so absorbed in his thoughts that he had not noticed the time, or remembered the rendezvous with his friend. He hid the cigarette case in the table drawer, with all the agitation of a discovered criminal. "Come in," he said in a quivering voice; and the elegant and jovial countenance of Corancez appeared at the door. With that slight accent which neither Paris nor the princely salons of Cannes had been able wholly to correct, the Southerner began:—
"What a country mine is, all the same! What a morning, what air, what sunlight! They are wearing furs up there, and we—" He threw open his light coat. Then, as his eye caught the view, he continued, thinking aloud: "I have never before climbed up to your lighthouse. What a scene! How the long ridge of the Esterel stretches out, and what a sea! A piece of waving satin. This would be divine with a little more space. You are not uncomfortable with only one room?"
"Not in the least," said Hautefeuille; "I have so few things with me—merely a few books."
"That's so," Corancez replied, glancing over the narrow room, which, with the modest case opened on the bureau, had the look of an officer's tent. "You have not the mania for bric-à-brac. If you could see the ridiculously complete dressing-case that I carry around with me, not to speak of a trunk full of knick-knacks. But I have been corrupted by the foreigners. You have remained a true Frenchman. People never realize how simple, sober, and economical the French are. They are too much so in their hate of new inventions. They detest them as much as the English and Americans love them—you, for example. I am sure that it was only by accident you came to this ultra-modern hotel, and that you abominate the luxury and the comfort."
"You call it luxury?" Hautefeuille interrupted, shrugging his shoulders. "But there is truth in what you say. I don't like to complicate my existence."
"I know that prejudice," Corancez replied; "you are for the stairway instead of the lift, for the wood fire instead of the steam heater, for the oil lamp instead of the electric light, for the post instead of the telephone. Those are the ideas of old France. My father had them. But I belong to the new school. Never too many hot and cold water faucets. Never too many telegraph and telephone wires. Never too many machines to save you the slightest movement. They have one fault, however, these new hotels. Their walls are thin as a sheet of paper; and as I have something serious to say to you, and also a great service to ask of you, we will go out, if you are willing. We'll walk to the port, where Marsh will wait for us at half-past ten. Does that suit you? We'll kill time by taking the longest way."
The Provençal had a purpose in proposing the "longest way." He wished to lead his friend past the garden of Madame de Carlsberg.
Corancez was something of a psychologist, and was guided by his instinct with more certainty than he could have been by all the theories of M. Taine on the revival of images. He was certain that the proposition in regard to the plot at Genoa would be accepted by Hautefeuille for the sake of a voyage with the Baroness Ely. The more vividly the image of the young woman was called up to the young man, the more he would be disposed to accept Corancez's proposition.
Thanks to his innocent Machiavelism, the two friends, instead of going straight toward the port, took the road that led to the west of California. They passed a succession of wild ravines, still covered with olives, those beautiful trees whose delicate foliage gives a silver tone to the genuine Provençal landscape. The houses grew more rare and isolated, till at certain places, as in the valley of Urie, one seemed to be a hundred miles from town and shore, so completely did the wooded cliffs hide the sea and the modern city of Cannes.
The misanthropy of the Archduke Henry Francis had led him to build his villa on this very ridge, at whose foot lay that species of park—inevitably inhabited and preserved by the English—through which Corancez conducted Hautefeuille. They came to a point where the Villa Helmholtz suddenly presented itself to their view. It was a heavy construction of two stories, flanked on one side by a vast greenhouse and on the other by a low building with a great chimney emitting a dense smoke. The Southerner pointed to the black column rising into the blue sky and driven by the gentle breeze through the palms of the garden.
"The Archduke is in his laboratory," he said; "I hope that Verdier is making some beautiful discovery to send to the Institute."
"You don't think, then, that he works himself?" asked Pierre.
"Not much," said Corancez. "You know the science of princes and their literature. However, that doesn't matter to me in the least. But what I don't like at all is the way he treats his charming wife—for she is charming, and she has once more proved it to me in a circumstance that I shall tell you about; and you heard what they said last night, that she is surrounded by spies."
"Even at Monte Carlo?" Hautefeuille exclaimed.
"Above all at Monte Carlo," replied Corancez. "And then, it is my opinion that if the Archduke does not love the Baroness he is none the less jealous, furiously jealous, of her, and nothing is more ferocious than jealousy without love. Othello strangled his wife for a handkerchief he had given her, and he adored her. Think of the row the Archduke would make about the cigarette case she sold if it was he who gave it to her."
These remarks, in a tone half serious, half joking, contained a piece of advice which the Southerner wished to give his friend before departing. It was as though he had said in plain language: "Court this pretty woman as much as you like; she is delicious; but beware of the husband." He saw Hautefeuille's expressive face suddenly grow clouded, and congratulated himself on being understood so quickly. How could he have guessed that he had touched an open wound, and that this revelation of the Prince's jealousy had but intensified the pain of remorse in the lover's tender conscience?
Hautefeuille was too proud, too manly, with all his delicacy, to harbor for a moment such calculations as his friend had diplomatically suggested. He was one of those who, when they love, are afflicted by nothing but the suffering of the loved one, and who are always ready to expose themselves to any danger. That which he had seen the night before in the hallucination of his first remorsefulness he saw again, and more clearly, more bitterly,—that possible scene between the Archduke and the Baroness Ely, of which he would be the cause, if the Prince learned of the sale of the case, and the Baroness was unable to recover it.
So he listened distractedly to Corancez's talk, who, however, had had the tact to change the conversation and to relate one of the humorous anecdotes of his repertory. What interest could Pierre have in the stories, more or less true, of the absurdities or scandals of the coast? He did not again pay attention to his companion until, having reached La Croisette, Corancez decided to put the great question. Along this promenade, more crowded than usual, a person was approaching who would furnish the Southerner with the best pretext for beginning his confidence; and, suddenly taking the arm of the dreamer to arouse him from his reveries, Corancez whispered:—
"I told you a moment ago that Madame de Carlsberg had of late been particularly good to me, and I told you, as we left the hotel, that I had a service to ask of you, a great service. You do not perceive the connection between these two circumstances? You will soon understand the enigma. Do you see who is coming toward us?"
"I see the Count Navagero," Hautefeuille answered, "with his two dogs and a friend whom I do not know. That is all."
"It is the whole secret of the enigma. But wait till they pass. He is with Lord Herbert Bohun. He will not deign to speak to us."
The Venetian moved toward them, more English in appearance than the Englishman by his side. This child of the Adriatic had succeeded in realizing the type of the Cowes or Scarborough "masher," and with such perfection that he escaped the danger of becoming a caricature. Clothed in a London suit of that cloth which the Scotch call "harris" from its place of origin, and which has a vague smell of peat about it, his trousers turned up according to the London manner, although not a drop of rain had fallen for a week, he was walking with long, stiff strides, one hand grasping his cane by the middle, the other hand holding his gloves.
His face was smoothly shaven; he wore a cap of the same cloth as that of his coat, and smoked a briarwood pipe of the shape used at Oxford. Two small, hairy Skye terriers trotted behind him, their stubby legs supporting a body three times as long as it was high. From what tennis match was he returning? To what game of golf was he on his way? His red hair, of that color so frequent in the paintings of Bonifazio, an inheritance from the doges, his ancestors, added the finishing touch to his incredible resemblance to Lord Herbert.
There was, however, one difference between them. As they passed Corancez and Hautefeuille, the twins uttered a good morning—Bohun's entirely without accent, while the syllables of the Venetian were emphasized in a manner excessively Britannic.
"You have observed that man," Corancez continued, when they had passed beyond earshot, "and you take him for an Anglomaniac of the most ridiculous kind. But, when you scratch his English exterior, what do you suppose you find beneath it? An Italian of the time of Machiavelli, as unscrupulous as though he were living at the court of the Borgias. He would poison us all, you, me, any one who crossed his path. I have read it in his hand, but don't be uneasy; he has not yet put his principles into practice, only he has tortured for six years a poor, defenceless woman, the adorable Madame Bonnacorsi, his sister. I do not attempt to explain it. But for six years he has so terrorized over this woman that she has not taken a step without his knowing of it, has not had a servant that he has not chosen, has not received a letter without having to account for it to him. It is one of those domestic tyrannies which you would not believe possible unless you had read of them in the newspaper reports, or actually witnessed it as I have. He does not wish her to remarry, because he lives on her great fortune. That is the point."
"How infamous!" Hautefeuille exclaimed. "But are you sure?"
"As sure as I am that I see Marsh's boat," replied Corancez, pointing to the trim yacht at anchor in the bay. And he continued lightly, in a tone that was sentimental and yet manly, not without a certain grace: "And what I am going to ask you is to help me circumvent this pretty gentleman. We Provençaux have always a Quixotic side to our character. We have a mania for adventurous undertakings; it is the sun that puts that in our blood. If Madame Bonnacorsi had been happy and free, doubtless I should not have paid much attention to her. But when I learned that she was unhappy, and was being miserably abused, I fell wildly in love with her. How I came to let her know of this and to find that she loved me I will tell you some other day. If Navagero is from Venice, I am from Barbentane. It is a little further from the sea, but we understand navigation. At any rate, I am going to marry Madame Bonnacorsi, and I am going to ask you to be my groomsman."
"You are going to marry Madame Bonnacorsi?" repeated Hautefeuille, too astonished to answer his friend's request. "But the brother?"
"Oh! he knows nothing about it," Corancez replied. "But that is just where the good fairy came into the story in the form of the charming Baroness Ely. Without her, Andryana—permit me thus to call my fiancée—would never have brought herself to say 'yes.' She loved me, and yet she was afraid. Do not misjudge her. These tender, sensitive women have strange timidities, which are difficult to understand. She was afraid, but chiefly for me. She feared a quarrel between her brother and me—hot words, a duel. Then I proposed and persuaded her to accept the most romantic and unusual expedient,—a secret marriage. On the 14th of next month, God willing, a Venetian priest, in whom she has confidence, will marry us in the chapel of a palace at Genoa. In the meantime I shall disappear. I am supposed to be at Barbentane among my vineyards. And on the 13th, while Navagero is playing the Englishman on Lord Herbert Bohun's yacht, with the Prince of Wales and other royal personages, Marsh's boat, to which you will be invited, will sail away with a number of passengers, among whom will be the woman I love the most in the world, and to whom I shall devote my life, and the friend I most esteem, if he does not refuse my request. What does he answer?"
"He answers," said Hautefeuille, "that if ever he was astonished in his life, he is so now. You, Corancez, in love, and so much in love that you will sacrifice your liberty. You have always seemed so careless, so indifferent. And a secret marriage. But it will not remain a secret twenty-four hours. I know your exuberance. You always tell everything you know to everybody. But I thank you for the friendship you have shown me, and I will be your groomsman."
As he said these last words he shook Corancez's hand with that simple seriousness which he showed for everything. His companion had touched him deeply. Doubtless this simplicity and candid trustfulness embarrassed the Southerner. He was very willing to profit from them, but he felt a little ashamed at abusing too much this loyal nature, whose charm he also felt, and he mingled with his thanks a confession such as he had never before made to any one.
"Don't think me so exuberant. The sun always has that effect. But, in truth, we men of the South never say what we mean.—Here we are. Remember," he said, with his finger on his lips, "Miss Marsh knows all, Marsh knows nothing."
"One word more," Hautefeuille replied; "I have promised to be your groomsman. But you will permit me to go to Genoa another way? I don't know these people well enough to accept an invitation of that kind."
"I trust to Flossie Marsh to overcome your scruples," said Corancez, unable to repress a smile. "You will be one of the passengers on the Jenny. Do you know why this boat is called the Jenny? Only an Anglo-Saxon would permit himself seriously such a play upon words. You have heard of Jenny Lind, the singer? Well, the reason the facetious Marsh gave this pretty name to his floating villa was because she keeps the high seas. And every time he explains this he is so amazed at his wit that he fairly chokes with laughter.—But what a delicious day."
The elegant lines of the Jenny's rigging and white hull could now be seen close at hand. She seemed the young, coquettish queen of the little port, amid the fishing boats, yawls, and coasters that swarmed about the quay. A group of sailors on the stone curb sang while they mended their nets. On the ground-floor of the houses were offices of ship companies, or shops, stored with provisions and tackle. The working population, totally absent from this city of leisure, is concentrated upon the narrow margin of the port, and gives it that popular picturesqueness so refreshing in contrast with the uniform banality imprinted on the South by its wealthy visitors. It was doubtless an unconscious sense of that contrast that led the plebeian Marsh to choose this point of the roadstead.
This self-made man who also had labored on the quays at Cleveland, by the shores of Lake Erie, whose waters are more stormy than the Mediterranean, despised at heart the vain and vapid society in which he lived. He lived in it, however, because the cosmopolitan aristocracy was still another world to conquer.
When he regaled some grand duke or prince regent on board his yacht, what voluptuous pride he might feel on looking at these fishermen of his own age, and saying to himself, while he smoked his cigar with the royal or imperial highness: "Thirty years ago these fishermen and I were equals. I was working just as they are. And now?" As Hautefeuille and Corancez did not figure on any page of the Almanach de Gotha, the master of the yacht did not consider it necessary to await his visitors on deck; and when the young men arrived they found no one but Miss Flossie Marsh, seated on a camp-stool before an easel, sketching in water colors. Minutely, patiently, she copied the landscape before her,—the far-off group of islands melting together like a long, dark carapace fixed on the blue bay, the hollow and supple line of the gulf, with the succession of houses among the trees, and, above all, the water of such an intense azure, dotted with white sails, and over all that other azure of the sky, clear, transparent, luminous. The industrious hand of the young girl copied this scene in forms and colors whose exactitude and hardness revealed a very small talent at the service of a very strong will.
"These American women are astonishing," whispered Corancez to Hautefeuille. "Eighteen months ago she had never touched a brush. She began to work and she has made herself an artist, as she will make herself a savante if she marries Verdier. They construct talents in their minds as their dentists build gold teeth in your mouth.—She sees us."
"My uncle is busy at present," said the young girl, after giving them a vigorous handshake. "I tell him he should call the boat his office. As soon as we