by Grant Allen
“Look here, now, Gascoyne, as the Highland meenister said in his prayer, this is clean rideeklous. Do you mean to say you’re too grand to ride a donkey? You think it infra dig for a B. of B. K. — there, will that suit you? — to be seen on a beast which is quite good enough —— —— —”
Paul cut him short once more with a gesture of impatience. “It’s unkind of you, Thistleton,” he said, “to go on harping so often on that threadbare string, when you see how very much pain and annoyance it causes me. You know it’s not that. Heaven knows I’m not proud — not that way, at least — what on earth have I got not to be ashamed of? No, the simple truth is, if you must have it, I don’t want to go to the expense of a donkey.”
“My dear fellow! Why, it’s only five francs for the whole day, they tell me.”
Paul Gascoyne smiled. “But five francs is a consideration to me,” he answered, after a slight mental reckoning. “Fifty pence, you see; that’s four and twopence. Four and twopence is an awful lot of money to fling away for nothing!” And he rearranged the logs on the fire reflectively.
“Well, look here, Gascoyne; sooner than mar the harmony of the meeting, I’ll tell you what I’ll do — I’ll stand you a donkey.”
Paul gave a little start of surprise and uneasiness. His color deepened. “Oh, no,” he said. “Thistleton, I couldn’t allow that. If I go at all I shall go on my own legs, or else take a beast and pay my own expenses.”
“Who’s proud now?” the blond young man exclaimed, with provoking good humor.
Paul looked down at him gravely from the corner of the mantelpiece on which his arm rested.
“Thistleton,” he said, in a serious voice, growing redder still in the face as he spoke, “to tell you the truth, I’m ashamed already of how much I’m letting you do for me. When I first arranged to come aboard with you, and have my expenses paid, I hadn’t the remotest conception, I assure you, of what an awful sum the expenses would come to. I’ve never lived at an hotel like this before, or in anything like such extravagant luxury. I thought the ten pounds I charged for tuition would be the chief item; instead of which, I see now, you’ve already paid almost as much as that for me in railway fares and so forth, and I tremble to think how much more you may have to pay for my board and lodging. I can’t let you stand me my amusements, too, into the bargain.”
The blond young man puffed away at his cigar for a moment or so with vigorous good humor.
“What a devil of a conscience you’ve got,” he observed at last, in the intervals of the puffs; “and what a devil of a touchy sense of honor, as well, Gascoyne! I suppose it’s in the family! Why, it’s the regular rule, if you take a vacation tutor to a place of your own choice abroad, you pay his way for him. I call it only fair. You contract to do it. There’s no obligation on either side. A mere matter of business.”
“But you come to such a grand hotel and live so royally!” Paul objected with fervor.
-”Am I to go to a cabaret and live upon garlic, just to suit your peculiar views of expenditure?” Thistleton retorted with spirit. “Can I drink sour wine and eat black bread because you like to be economical? No, no, my dear fellow. You mistake the position. I want to come to Mentone for the winter. Beastly climate, Yorkshire; dull hole, the governor’s; lovely coast, the Riviera; Monte Carlo always laid on at a convenient distance; lots of amusement; plenty of fun; the very place to spend the Christmas vacation in. If I go and say to the governor:
‘Look here, old boy: I want a pony or two to run down south and amuse myself, just to escape this infernal dull hole of yours, and to have a turn or two at roulette or something,’ why the governor’d no doubt advise me to go and be hanged, in language more remarkable for its force than elegance. Very well, then; what do I do? I go to him and say, pulling a long face, ‘Look here, sir; I want to read up for my next examination. Devilish clever fellow at my own college — studious, steady, economical — excellent testimonials — all that sort of thing. Sure to come out a first in Greats next time. I propose to read with him at some quiet place in the south of France — say Mentone,’ suppressing the little details about Monte Carlo, you understand; ‘he’ll go for a tenner and his own expenses.’ What’s the result? The governor’s delighted. Fishes out his purse — stumps up liberally. Claps me on the back and says, ‘Charlie, my boy, I’m gratified to see you’re turning over a new leaf at last, and mean to read hard, and get through with credit.’ And that’s the real use, you see, of a vacation tutor.”
Paul listened somewhat aghast to this candid explanation of his own true function in the modern commonwealth; then he answered slowly:
“It’s rather hard lines on the governor, I fancy. But I suppose I can’t interfere with that. Your arrangements with your father are your own business, of course. As to myself, though, I always feel a little uneasy. It may be all right, but I’m not accustomed to such a magnificent scale of expenditure, and I don’t want to put either you or him to any unnecessary expense in the matter of my living.” Thistleton threw back his head once more on the easy chair and mused aloud.
“What a conscience! What a conscience! I believe you wouldn’t spend an extra sixpence you could possibly save if your life depended upon it.”
“You forget,” Paul cried, “that I have special claims upon me.”
The peculiar stress he laid upon that emphatic word “claims,” might have struck anybody less easy going than Charlie Thistleton, but the blond young man let it escape his attention.
“Oh, I know what you mean,” he retorted carelessly. “I’ve heard that sort of thing from lots of other fellows before. Slender means — the governor poor — heavy expenses of college life — home demands — a mother and sisters.”
“I wish to Heaven it was only that,” Paul ejaculated fervently. “A mother and sisters I could easily put up with. But the claims upon me are far more serious. It’s a duty I owe to Somebody Else not to spend a single penny I can help, unnecessarily.”
“By Jove!” the blond young man exclaimed, waking up. “Not engaged? Or married?”
“Engaged! Married! No, no. Is it likely?” Paul cried, somewhat bitterly. —
“The golden haired Pennsylvanian’s a jolly good investment, I should say,” Thistleton went on meditatively. “Rolling in coin. A mint of money. She’ll be really annoyed, too, if you don’t come to her picnic, and, what’s more, ride a donkey.”
“Is she rich?” Paul asked, with a sudden and unexpected interest, as if a thought had instantly darted across his brain.
“Rich! Like Croesus, so Armitage tells me. Rich as Pactolus. Rich as wedding cake. Rich beyond the wildest dreams of avarice.”
Paul moved from his place at the corner of the mantelpiece, fiery red in the face now, and strolled as carelessly as he could across the room to the window. Then he opened his purse, counted the money furtively, and made a short mental calculation, unobserved. At the end of it he gave a very deep sigh, and answered aloud with a wrench:
“Well, I suppose I ought to go. It’s a precious hard pull; for I hate this sort of thing; but then, I have claims — very special claims upon me.”
“Still, you’ll go anyhow?” Thistleton asked once more.
“Yes, I’ll go,” Paul answered, with the air of a man who makes up his mind to have a tooth drawn.
“And you’ll ride a donkey?”
“I suppose I must, if the golden-haired Pennsylvanian absolutely insists upon it. Anything on earth where duty calls one.”
And he sank, wearied, into the chair by the window.
CHAPTER III.
AL FRESCO.
SATURDAY dawned as lovely a morning as the founders of the feast could possibly have wished it. It was a day to order. Not a touch of mistral embittered the air. The sea shone liquid blue, with scarcely a ripple dimpling its surface; the great gray peaks loomed clear and distinct in hard outline against a solid blue firmament. It is only on the Riviera that you get that perfect definiteness and contrast of color. Ever
ything looked sharp as in an early Italian picture, with an early Italian sky of uniform hue to throw up and intensify the infinite jags and tatters of the mountain profile.
At ten sharp the first arrivals began to greet one another with shouts of derision on the road by the station. Thistleton and Gascoyne were among the earliest on the scene. Punctuality, the blond young man remarked, was one of his companion’s most hopeless fallings. As they trotted up upon their mettlesome steeds — Paul’s more mettlesome, in fact, than was either seemly or agreeable — they found Armitage with four ladies in tow drawn up in a hollow square to receive them. Boys with the provisions stood expectant at the side, and Paul noticed with a distinct tinge of awe that from one of the baskets several necks of bottles protruded, wired and tied, and covered with gold or silver tissue. Then the picnic would actually run to champagne! What unbridled luxury! The goldenhaired Pennsylvanian must, indeed, as Thistleton had declared, be rich as Pactolus!
A stern sense of duty induced Paul to look around the group for that interesting personage. Unaccustomed to society as he was, and in the awkward position of being introduced from the back of a restive donkey, he was at first aware merely of a fiery heat in his own red face and a confused blurr of four perfectly unabashed and smiling ladies. Four names fell simultaneously on his unheeding ear, of the sound of which he caught absolutely nothing but the vague sense that one was Mme. Somebody, and that two of the rest were Miss Whatsername and her mamma. A clear sharp voice first roused him to something like definite consciousness. “Mr. Gascoyne’s my guest, Nea,” it said, in a full and rich American accent, which Paul had hardly ever before heard, “and Mr. Thistleton’s yours. Mr. Gascoyne, you’ve jest got to come and ride up right alongside of me. And I’ll trouble you to look after the basket with the wine in it.”
So this was the golden-haired Pennsylvanian! Paul glanced at her shyly, as one who meets his fate, and answered with what courage he could summon up, “I’ll do my best to take care of it, but I hope I’m not responsible for breakages.”
The lady in the deerstalker hat beyond — not the Pennsylvanian — turned to him with a quietly reassuring smile. “What a glorious day we’ve got for our picnic!” she said, flooding him with the light of two dark hazel eyes; “and what splendid fun it’ll be going all that way up on donkeys, won’t it?”
For those hazel eyes and that sunny smile Paul would have forsworn himself before any court of justice in all England with infinite pleasure. As a matter of fact, he disliked donkey-riding — he, who could clear a fence with any man in Oxford — but he answered sinfully (and I hope the recording angel omitted to notice the transgression), “Nothing could be more delightful; and with such lovely views, too! The lookout from the summit must be something too charming for anything.” After which unwonted outburst of society talk, lost in admiration of his own brilliancy, he relapsed once more into attentive silence.
Nea Blair had never indeed looked more beautiful. The tailormade dress and the unstudied hat suited her simple girlish beauty to a “T.” Paul thought with a sigh how happy he would have been had the call of duty led him thither, instead of toward the service of the golden-haired Pennsylvanian.
One after another the remaining guests straggled up piecemeal; and when all were gathered together — a quarter of an hour behind time, of course — for they were mostly ladies — the little cavalcade got itself under weigh, and began to mount the long steep stairs that lead from the Borrigo valley to the scarped hog’s back which separates the Val des Chataigners from the Val des Primevères. To Paul, in spite of the eccentricities of his mount, that first expedition into those glorious mountains was one of almost unmixed delight. As they threaded their way in long single file across the wooded col that divided the ravines, he looked down with surprise and pleasure into the gracious deep gorges on either side, each traversed by the silver thread of torrent, and reflected to himself with a sigh of pleasure that he had never known the world was so beautiful.
“Oh, my! aint it jest lovely?” Miss Boyton called out to him from behind, for he was sandwiched in between her and Nea Blair,” and aint they jest elegant, the lemon trees in the valley there!”
“Which are the lemons?” Paul asked, half dubious, for the ravine was filled with trees and shrubs whose very names he knew not.
“Why, the awfully green trees on the terraces down below,” Isabel Boyton answered, a little offhandedly.
“And the silvery gray?” Paul inquired with some hesitation. “Are they olives, I wonder?”
“Of course they’re olives,” the American answered, with some little asperity. “I guess you’ve never been along this way before, Mr. Gascoyne, have you?”
“It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever been out of England,” Paul answered humbly; “and everything is so strange, I find I’ve a great deal to learn all at once — to learn and to remember.”
“But the olives are lovely, aren’t they?” Nea Blair remarked, turning round upon him with that sunny smile of hers for a moment. “Lovelier even than your own willows round about Iffley, I think — if anything on earth can be lovelier than dear old Oxford.”
“Then you know Oxford!” Paul exclaimed, brightening up at once.
“Oh, yes; I had a brother a few years ago at Oriel. And I know Mrs. Douglas, the wife of the professor.”
“I wish I’d had a brother at Oxford College,” Miss Boyton put in parenthetically, urging on her donkey, “I’d have made him take me along and introduce me to all his aristocratic acquaintances. I mean some day to marry one of your English noblemen. I’ve made up my mind to catch an earl, and be Lady Isabel Something.”
“But you couldn’t be Lady Isabel by marrying an earl,” Paul answered, smiling a very curious smile. “In that case, of course, you’d be a countess.”
“Well, a duke then,” Miss Boyton answered, imperturbably, “or a marquis, or a viscount, or whatever other sort of nobleman was necessary to make me into Lady Isabel.” Paul smiled again. “But none of them,” he said, “could make you Lady Isabel. You’d be Lady Somebody, you know — Lady Jones, for example, or Lady Smith, or Lady Cholmondeley.”
“Or Lady Gascoyne; that sounds just lovely,” Miss Boyton interposed with an air of perfect simplicity.
Paul started at the sound, and scanned her close. His ears tingled. Was she really as innocent and harmless as she looked, or had it somehow come round to her — but oh, no; impossible. “Yes,” he went on quietly, without noticing the interruption; “but you must be born a duke’s, or an earl’s, or a marquis’s daughter to be called Lady Isabel.”
Miss Boyton’s countenance fell not a little.
“Is that so?” she exclaimed plaintively. “You don’t tell, really! Then I can’t be Lady Isabel no matter who I married?”
“No matter whom you married,” Paul answered, with the stern precision of Lindley Murray and a British Peerage in equal proportions.
“Well, now, if that aint jest too bad,” Isabel Boyton exclaimed with deep mock pathos. “Say, Nea, Mr. Gascoyne’s crushed the dream of my life. I don’t care a cent to be Lady Somebody if I can’t be Lady Isabel. And I can’t be Lady Isabel whoever I marry. I call it jest heartrending.”
“Won’t an honorable or a courtesy lord do as well?” Nea asked, laughing.
“Oh, my, no,” Isabel answered promptly; though what manner of wild beast a courtesy lord might be she hadn’t the faintest conception. “I’d most as soon go back to Philadelphia again, returned empty, and marry a stockbroker. I’ve made up my mind to be Lady Isabel or nothing.”
“Then I’m afraid,” Paul said, with a faint smile, “I can do nothing for you.”
“But if it were only to make her plain ‘My Lady,’ now!” Nea put in laughingly.
Paul laughed in return — an uneasy laugh. They had just reached one of the sudden steep ascents where the surefooted little donkeys, straining every nerve and muscle in their stout, small legs, climb up the bare rocks like mountain goats, with their
human burdens jerking in the saddles like so many meal-bags. “How the little beasts grimp!” Paul cried, half surprised; “such plucky little creatures, and so strong for their size! They’re really wonderful!”
“That’s a good word—’ grimp,’” Nea answered from in front. “Is it pucker English, I wonder?”
“I do admire it,” Isabel Boyton replied from behind. “Here, get up, donkey. My Arab steed don’t carry me regularly.”
Just at that moment a loud cry of “Ach, Himmel!” resounded from the forefront of the cavalcade, where Mme. Ceriolo led the way — Mine. Ceriolo, even in the most trying circumstances, never forgot to keep up her French and German — followed next instant by a sharp “Mon Dieu! quelle affreuse petite bête!” and the shambling, scrambling noise of a fallen donkey endeavoring to recover itself.
Paul and Armitage were at her side in a moment, to pick up Mme. Ceriolo and her unhappy mount. Madame made the most noise, but Blanchette, the donkey, had received by far the most injury. The poor little beast’s knees were cut and bleeding, “Je l’ai couronnéc la méchante.” madame said carelessly, and Paul saw at a glance it would be quite unable to continue the journey.
It’s an ill wind, however, that blows nobody good. Paul seized the opportunity to effect a double stroke of business — to do a politeness to Mme. Ceriolo and to get rid of the onus of his own donkey. Almost before she could have a voice in the matter, or any other man of the party equally gallant or equally uncomfortable could anticipate him, he had shifted the side saddle from poor, patient, shivering, broken kneed Blanchette, and transferred it forthwith to the bigger beast he himself had been riding. “Merci, monsieur, merci; mille renier ciments,” madame cried, all smiles, as soon as she had recovered her equanimity and her company manners. “And you, you little brute,” turning to poor Blanchette and shaking her wee gloved fist angrily in its face, “you deserve to be whipped, to be soundly whipped, for your nasty temper.”
“The poor creature couldn’t help it,” Paul murmured quietly, tightening the girths; “the road’s very steep and very slippery, you can see. I don’t wonder they sometimes come an awful cropper!”
