by Grant Allen
“Now, Mr. Armitage,” Nea said mischievously, “it’s you who’re responsible for our original introduction to the scallywag and his friend. Speak up for their antecedents! You’ve got to account for your acquaintances to madame.” And she drew a circle with her parasol on the gravel-path as if to point the moral of the impossibilities of his ever escaping them.
“Well, to begin with, they’re Oxford men,” Armitage said, clearing his throat and looking dubiously about him. “They’re both of them Oxford men.”
Mme. Ceriolo’s back relaxed somewhat. “Oh, Oxford men,” she answered in an appeased voice. “That’s always something.” Then, after a pause, under her breath, to herself, “Ja woh!, ja wohl! C est toujours quelque chose.”
It was part of Mme. Ceriolo’s point, in fact, as a cosmopolitan woman of the world, that she always thought to herself in French or German, and translated aloud, as it were, into English. It called attention now and again in passing to what casual observers might otherwise have overlooked — her Tyrolese origin and her Parisian training.
“And Gascoyne, the scallywag,” Armitage went on reflectively, “appears to be a sort of tutor or something of the kind to the other one, Thistleton.”
Mme. Ceriolo’s back collapsed altogether. “An Oxford tutor!” she cried, smiling most genially. “Why, that’s quite respectable. The pink of propriety. Tout ce qu’il a de plus comme il faut! Nothing could be more proper.”
“I don’t think he’s exactly a tutor. Not in the sense you mean,” Armitage continued hastily, afraid of guaranteeing the scallywag too far. “I think he’s merely come abroad for the vacation, you know, bringing this other young fellow along with him as a private pupil, to give him a few hours’ reading and accompany him generally. I fancy he hasn’t taken his own degree yet.”
“Then they’re both of them students still!” Isabel Boyton interjected. “Oh, my! Aint that nice! Two Oxford students! You always read in English books, you know, about students at Oxford.”
Armitage smiled.
“We don’t call them students at Oxford or Cambridge; though, for obvious reasons,” he said, with British tolerance for transatlantic ignorance; “we know too well what they go there for, Miss Boyton, for that. We call them undergraduates.”
“Well, undergraduates, anyway,” Isabel answered good-humoredly. She was accustomed to snubbing. “It don’t much matter what you call them, I guess, as long as they’re men, and come from Oxford. Are you satisfied about them now, in your own mind, Mme. Ceriolo?”
Mme. Ceriolo smiled her gracious little smile. She was as pretty and well-preserved a woman of forty as you would wish to see across a table d’hôte at dinner any day.
“If they’re really Oxford men, and your mamma approves of them,” she replied, with just the faintest little undertone of malice, “I am sure they’ll be an acquisition to Mentone society. Though I could wish that one of them was not a scallywag, if Mr. Armitage has explained the meaning of the name he applies to him correctly.”
“Chut!” Armitage murmured in a gentle undertone. “Talk of the devil! Here comes Thistleton!”
“We say in Austria, ‘Speak of an angel, and you hear the rustle of his wings,’” madame answered demurely. “C’est plus poli, notre proverbe à nous; n’est-ce pas, monsieur? And which is Thistleton? The pupil or the scallywag?”
“The pupil,” Armitage whispered, in a flutter of uneasiness. “But take care — take care! He’ll see we’re talking of him.”
“The pupil! C’est bien!” madame mused in reply. And in effect it was well; for experience and analogy led her to conclude that the pupil is usually richer in this world’s goods than his master or instructor.
“Though after all,” madame reflected to herself wisely, “it isn’t always the richest people, either, you can get most out of.”
Her reflections, however, philosophical as they might be, were cut short by the arrival of the pupil himself, whom Armitage advanced to greet with friendly right hand, and presented duly to the ladies of the party.
“Mme. Ceriolo, Miss Boyton, Miss Blair; Mr. Thistleton.”
The new corner bowed. He was a blond young man, tall, hearty, and athletic, with a complexion indicative of serious attention to beefsteak for breakfast, and he wore a well made knickerbocker suit that suggested unlimited credit at a West End tailor’s.
Mme. Ceriolo cast her keen black eyes over him once from head to foot, through those impassive glasses, and summed him up mentally at a glance to herself; manufacturing interest, rich, good-humored, a fool with his money, strong, handsome, Britannic — the kind of young man, in fact, who, under other circumstances, it might have been well for a woman of the world to cultivate. But then — dear Nea! that excellent Mr. Blair; the Cornish rectory; her British respectability! Madame drew herself up once more at the thought, and bowed stiffly.
“Now, Nea, say he’s yours; you’ve got to ask him,” Isabel Boyton remarked after the usual formalities of the weather report and the bill of health had been duly exchanged by either party. “The scal—” she checked herself; even transatlantic freedom of speech has its final limits. “Mr. Gascoyne’s mine, and Mr. Thistleton’s yours, you know. So fire away, there’s a dear. ‘On Saturday next — the pleasure of your company!’”
“What is it?” the blond young man asked with a good-humored smile. “Tennis? a dinner? a tea fight?”
“Oh, dear, no; only a picnic, Mr. Thistleton,” Nea answered, blushing; a blush through that clear rich olive-dusky skin is so very becoming. “Miss Boyton and I are stopping at the Hôtel des Rives d’Or, and we’ve got up a little entertainment of our own—”
“With Mamma and Mme. Ceriolo,” Isabel interposed promptly, to save the convenances.
“To Sant’ Agnese on the hill-top there,” Nea went on, without noticing the interruption. “It’s on Saturday the twenty-fourth — the day before Christmas. Are you and Mr. Gascoyne engaged for Saturday?”
“Now, you’re asking my man, too,” Isabel put in, pretending to be vexed. “And I was going to write him such a sweetly pretty invitation!”
“We’re not engaged, as far as I’m concerned,” Thistleton answered, seating himself. “I shall be awfully delighted. But I’m not so sure about Gascoyne, Miss Blair. He’s such a shy sort of fellow, he won’t go out. However, I’ll convey Miss Boyton’s message to him.”
“But the trouble is,” Isabel said, glancing seaward, “that every man Jack of us is to go on a donkey.”
“And this meeting cordially recognizes the principle,” Armitage put in from behind, “that every man Jack of us, as Miss Boyton so charmingly phrases it, is to engage, provide, hire, and pay for his own animal.”
“Where’s Sant’ Agnese?” the blonde young man inquired, looking about him vaguely.
Armitage and Miss Boyton pointed it out together at once (of course in different places); and Armitage’s, as a matter of fact, happened to be the right one. Such is the perversity of men that they actually insist upon being unusually accurate in these unimportant details).
“Why, I could hop that lot on one foot,” Thistleton exclaimed contemptuously. “I’ll walk, Miss Blair. I don’t need any donkey.”
“But you don’t understand,” Armitage answered, smiling. “The point of this particular entertainment is that it’s to be fundamentally and essentially an exclusive donkey-picnic.”
“For which reason, Mr. Armitage, we’ve included you in it,” Isabel remarked parenthetically, in a stage undertone.
Armitage severely ignored the cheap witticism. A man of culture can afford to ignore Pennsylvanian pleasantry. “And it would mar the harmony of the entertainment,” he continued,” as bland as ever, “if any of us were to insist on going upon our natural organs of locomotion.”
“Meaning our legs,” Nea added, in explanation, for the blond young man seemed helplessly involved in doubt as to Armitage’s meaning.
Isabel Boyton glanced down at the ground with modest coyness. “Limbs,
we say, in America,” she murmured half inaudibly, to herself, with a rising blush.
“We are all vertebrate animals,” Armitage responded with cheerful ease. “Why seek to conceal the fact? Well, you see, Thistleton, the joke is just this; we shall start some ten or fifteen donkey-power strong, all in a row, to scale the virgin heights of Sant’ Agnese — is ‘virgin heights’ permissible in America, Miss Boyton? — and if any one of us were ignobly to walk by the side, he’d be taking a mean advantage of all the remainder.”
“In short, we mean to make ourselves ridiculous in a lot,” Nea said, coming to the rescue; “and none of us must be less ridiculous than the main body. You can’t think what fun it is, Mr. Thistleton, and what a cavalcade we shall make, zigzagging up and down the mountain side like so many billy-goats. Why, fat old Mrs. Newton at our hotel’s going to come on purpose — if she can get any donkey in Mentone strong enough to carry her.”
“The true philosopher,” Armitage observed sententiously, “is never deterred from doing that which suits his own convenience by the consideration that he is at the same time affording an innocent amusement to other people.” The blond young man yielded with grace forthwith. “Oh, if it’s only a case of making myself ridiculous to please the company,” he said, with native good humor, “I’m all there. It’s my usual attitude. I accept the donkey and the invitation. When and where do we start? We must have a rendezvous.”
“At the Gare, at ten sharp,” Nea said, ticking him off on her list of the apprised. “And mind you order your donkeys well beforehand, for there’ll be a brisk demand. Every donkey in Mentone’ll be in requisition for the picnic.” Mme. Ceriolo sighed. “What a character you’re giving us!” she exclaimed lackadaisically. “But, never mind, my child; la jeunesse s’amusera.”
And she looked as young and pretty herself, when she smiled, as a woman of forty can ever reasonably be expected to do.
CHAPTER II.
ROOM FOR THE HERO.
AN hour later the blond young man pursued the even tenor of his way, assisted by a cigar and swinging a stout green orange stick in his hand, along the Promenade du Midi, the main lounge of Mentone, toward the Hôtel Continental. Arrived at the grand staircase of that palatial caravanserai, the most fashionable in the town, he leapt lightly up three steps at a time into the entrance-hall, and calling out, “Here you, sir!” in his native tongue — for he was no linguist — to the boy at the lift, mounted hydraulically, whistling as he went, to the second story. There he burst into the neatly furnished sitting room, being a boisterous young man most heedless of the conventions, and, flinging his hat on the table and himself into an easy-chair before the superfluous fire, exclaimed in a loud and jolly voice to his companion, “I say, Gascoyne, here’s games to the fore! I’ve got an invitation for you.”
His friend looked up inquiringly. “Who from?” he asked, laying down his pen and rising from his desk to sun himself in the broad flood of light by the window.
“A pretty American,” Thistleton answered, knocking off his ashes into the basket of olive-wood. “No end of a stunner!”
“But I don’t know her,” Paul Gascoyne gasped out, with a half terrified look.
“So much the better,” his companion retorted imperturbably. “If a lady falls over head and ears in love with you merely from seeing your manly form in the street, without ever having so much as exchanged a single word with you, the compliment’s a higher one, of course, than if she waited to learn all your virtues and accomplishments in the ordinary manner.”
“Dinner?” Gascoyne asked with a dubious glance toward his bedroom door. He was thinking how far his evening apparel would carry him unaided.
“No, not dinner; a picnic, next Saturday as ever was,” Thistleton replied, all unconscious. “The ladies of the Rives d’Or invite us both to lunch with them on the green up yonder at Sant’ Agnese. It’s an awful lark. And the pretty American’s dying to see you. She says she’s heard so much about you—”
“A picnic!” Paul interposed, cutting him short at once, and distinctly relieved by learning of this lesser evil. “Well, I daresay I can let it run to a picnic. That won’t dip into much. But how did the ladies at the Rives d’Or ever come at all to cognize my humble existence?”
Thistleton smiled; an abstruse smile. “Why, Armitage told them, I suppose,” he answered carelessly. “But do you really imagine, at the present time of day, my dear fellow, every girl in the place doesn’t know at once the name, antecedents, position, and prospects of every young man of marriageable age that by any chance comes into it? Do you think they haven’t spotted the fashionable intelligence that two real live Oxford men are stopping at the Continental? I should rather say so! Gascoyne, my boy, keep your eyes open. We’ve our price in the world. Mind you always remember it!”
Paul Gascoyne smiled uneasily. “I wish I could think so,” he murmured half aloud.
“Yes, we’ve our price in the world,” his friend continued slowly, cigar turned downward and lips pursed, musing. “The eligible young man is fast becoming an extinct animal. The supply by no means equals the demand. And the result’s as usual. We’re at a premium in society, and, as economic units, we must govern ourselves accordingly.”
“Ah, that’s all very well for rich men like you,” Paul began hurriedly.
“What do you mean to say,” Thistleton cried, rising and fronting him with a jerk, “that half the women one meets wouldn’t be only too glad to marry the son and heir of a British bar—”
Before he could utter the word that was gurgling in his throat, however, Gascoyne had clapped his hand upon that imprudent mouth, and cried out in a perfect agony of disgust, “No more of that nonsense, for Heaven’s sake, Thistleton! I hope you haven’t breathed a word about it to anybody here in Mentone? If you have, I think I shall die of shame. I’ll take the very next train back to Paris, I swear, and never come near either you or the place as long as I live, again.”
Thistleton sat down, red-faced, but sobered. “Honor bright, not a word!” he answered, gazing hard at his companion. “I’ve never so much as even alluded to it. The golden-haired Pennsylvanian was trying to pump me all she knew, I confess; but I listened not to the voice of the charmer, charmed she never so wisely through her neat little nose. I resisted the siren like bricks, and kept my own counsel. Now, don’t cut up rusty about it, there’s a good sensible fellow. If a man’s father does happen to be born—”
But a darted look from Gascoyne cut him short once more with unspoken remonstrance, and he contented himself with pulling down his collar and flashing his shirt-cuffs to imitate in pantomine a general air of close connection with the British aristocracy.
There was a short pause, during which Thistleton slowly puffed his cigar, while Paul looked out of the window in meditative mood and scanned the blue bay and purple sea, with Bordighera shining white on its promontory in the distance.
It would have been impossible for anybody to deny, as you saw him then, that Paul Gascoyne was essentially a scallywag. He looked the character to perfection. It wasn’t merely that his coat, though carefully brushed and conserved, had seen long service and honorable scars; it wasn’t merely that his tie was narrow and his collar démodé, and his trousers baggy, and his shoes antique; it wasn’t merely that honest poverty peeped out of every fold and crease in his threadbare raiment; the man himself had something of that shy and shrinking air which belongs by nature to those poor souls who slink along timidly through the back alleys of life, and fear to tread with a free and open footstep the main highways of respectable humanity. Not that, on the other hand, there was anything mean or small in Paul Gascoyne’s face or bearing; on the contrary, he looked every inch a man, and to those who can see below the surface, a gentleman also. He was tall and well-built, with handsome features and copious black hair, that showed off his fine eyes and high white forehead to great advantage. But the day of small things had weighed upon him heavily; the iron of poverty and ancestral care had entered i
nto his soul. The sordid shifts and petty subterfuges of a life harder than that of his companions and fellow students had left their mark deep upon his form and, features. He was, in short, what Armitage had called him, in spite of his good looks — an obvious scallywag, nothing more or less: a person rightly or wrongly conscious that, by accident or demerit, he fills a minor place in the world’s esteem and the world’s consideration.
He stood and gazed out of the window abstractedly, reflecting to himself after all that a climb up those glorious gray crags to Sant’ Agnese would be far from unpleasant, even though clogged by a golden-haired Pennsylvanian, no doubt wealthy, if only — when suddenly Thistleton recalled him to himself by adding, in an after-thought, “And we’ve got to order our donkeys early, for donkeys, too, will be at a premium on Saturday. Political economy very much to the front. Supply and demand, again, unequally balanced.”
Paul glanced up at the silent rocks once more — great lonely tors that seemed to pierce the blue with their gigantic aiguilles — and answered quietly, “I think I shall walk, for my own part, Thistleton. It can’t be more than a couple of thousand feet or so up, and half a dozen miles across country as the crow flies. Just about enough to give one an appetite for one’s lunch when one gets there.”
“Ah, but the pretty American’s commands are absolute — every man Jack to ride his own donkey. They say it’s such fun going up in a body like so many fools; and if everybody’s going to make himself a fool for once, I don’t object to bearing my part in it.” And the blond young man leaned back in his easy-chair and stuck his boots on the fender with a tolerant air of perfect contentment with all mankind and the constitution of the universe.
“I shall walk,” Paul murmured again, not dogmatically, but as one who wishes to settle a question offhand.
