The Guests Of Hercules Part 25

"n.o.body has a right to think that," Hannaford answered, quietly as always. "If any man has insulted you, tell me, and I'll make him sorry."

"I--there is nothing to tell," she stammered, frightened back into reticence. "It's only--an idea that came into my head because of--something I can't explain. But, oh, do be honest with me, Captain Hannaford, if you are my friend, for I can never ask any one else, and I can never ask you again. It's just asking _itself_ now, this question, for I want an answer so much. Is there anything very different about me, and the way I behave, from other girls or women--those who try to be good and nice, I mean?"

It was a strange appeal, and went to the man's heart. If Mary had puzzled him once, and if at first he had thought cynically of her, as he thought of most pretty women he met, love had washed away those thoughts many days ago: and in this moment when she turned to him for help he wondered how it was that he had ever been puzzled. He saw clearly now into the heart of the mystery, and it was a heart of pure rose and gold, like the heart of an altar fire.

"Wait a minute," he said, "before I answer that, and let me ask _you_ a question. Did you ever hear the story or see the play of Galatea?"

"No. Not that I remember. What has it to do with me?"

"I'll tell you about her, and then maybe you'll see. The story is that a Greek sculptor made a beautiful statue which he worshipped so desperately that the G.o.ds turned it into a living girl. Well, you can imagine just how much that girl knew about life, can't you? She looked grown up, and was dressed like other young women of her day, but any kitten with its eyes open was better equipped for business than she, for kittens have claws and Galatea hadn't. Naturally she made some queer mistakes, and because a rather beastly world was slow to understand perfect innocence--the pre-serpentine innocence of Eve, so to speak--a lot of injustice was done to the poor little statue come alive. Some of the people wouldn't believe that she'd ever been a statue at all."

"I see!" exclaimed Mary, sharply. Then she was silent for a moment, thinking; but at last she put a sudden question: "What happened to Galatea?"

"Oh, the poor girl was so disgusted with the world that she went back to being a statue again eventually. I think myself it was rather weak of her, and that if she'd waited a bit she might have done better."

"I'm not sure," Mary said, slowly. "To-night I feel as if there was _nothing_ better--than going back and being a statue."

"You won't feel like that to-morrow. The sun brings courage. I know--by experience. You think, Miss Grant, for some reason or other--I don't even want you to tell me what, unless it would do you good to tell--that you're down in the depths. But you're not. You never can be. Where you are it will always be light, really."

"What makes you believe I am good, if others don't believe it?" She turned on him with the question, the moon carving her features in marble purity, as if Galatea were already freezing again into the coldness of a statue. The whole effect of her, in the long white cloak with its hood pulled over the shining hair, was spiritual and unearthly. Hannaford would have given his life for her, happily, just then.

"I don't know what others believe," he said. "I have seen for a long time now, almost since the first, that you were a very innocent sort of girl enjoying yourself in a new way, and losing your head over it a little. Perhaps because I've been down in the depths we talked about, and look on life differently from what I did before, I may have clearer sight. I don't know what you did or were until you came here, but I've realized to-night all of a sudden that you are absolutely a child. There is no worldly knowledge in you. You're what I said. You're Galatea."

"_You_ see this, without any telling," she cried. "And yet----" She bit her lip and kept back the words that would have rushed out, to shame her. But he knew with the unerring knowledge of one who loves, that she had nearly added: "And yet the one man who ought to understand me, does not. It is only you."

It was a bitter knowledge, but he faced it, hating the other man, who had hurt and did not deserve her. But he did not guess that the man was Prince Vanno Della Robbia. He had not heard Vanno almost commanding Mary to dance with him, and had not seen them go up on the bridge together.

Hannaford was not even aware that they knew each other. The man in his mind was d.i.c.k Carleton, or possibly the Maharajah of Indorwana, whom some women found strangely attractive.

"I should like to be the one to make all others see--any fools or brutes who don't," he said.

"I don't want anybody _made_ to see."

"Of course you don't. Well, there isn't one anywhere about worthy to think of you at all--not a man Jack of us--including me."

"And yet," Mary said, almost pitifully, "I have _liked_ men to think about me! It's been so new, and interesting. What harm have men done me, that I should avoid them, just because they are men? Are they all so much worse than women, I wonder? Oughtn't we to be nice and sweet to them? It would seem so ungrateful to be cold, because they are so very, very kind to us. At least, that is what I felt till now--I mean till quite lately. Men interested me, because they seemed rather mysterious, so different from us; and I wanted to find out what they were really like, for I've been with women all my life. I wish now--that is, I hope I haven't behaved in ways to make people misunderstand?"

"Only fools, as I said before."

"But--what have I done to make the fools misunderstand? You must tell me!"

"Nothing serious. Only--well, you have gone about with a queer lot sometimes."

"Men or women?"

"Madame d'Ambre, for instance."

"Yes; but I haven't talked to her for a long time now."

"You've talked to others like her, and--worse."

"Would you have me be cruel? If some of the poor, pretty creatures here aren't quite what they ought to be, because they've been badly brought up or unfortunate, would you think it right and womanly not to answer when they speak, or to turn one's back on them, or slam the Casino door in their faces, as some cross-looking people do? Wouldn't that drive them to being worse?"

It was difficult to answer this question with due regard to the laws of G.o.d and man, and at the same time give Galatea a lesson in social decorum. "I suppose," he said slowly, "you'll just have to follow your star."

"I don't see any star now worth following. Oh, Captain Hannaford, I was so happy! It was such a beautiful, lovely world till to-night! Now I feel as if joy and luck were both gone."

"Does it comfort you a little to know that here's one man who'd do anything for you?" he asked. "There never was such a friend as I'll try to be, if you'll have me."

"Thank you," Mary answered. "I shall be very glad of your friendship. I shall feel and remember it wherever I go."

"Wherever you go? You mean----"

"Yes. I think I must go away--go on to Italy."

"If somebody has hurt you, don't go yet," Hannaford urged. "It would look as if--well, as if you felt too much. Don't you see?"

"I shouldn't like to give that impression," she said, almost primly.

Then, with a change of tone, "But I can't--I won't stay at the hotel where I am. To-night at her house Lady Dauntrey invited me to come and stay there. I was asked before, to Christmas dinner. I could accept, I suppose?"

"Hm!" Hannaford grumbled, frowning. But he thought quickly, and it seemed to him that perhaps even Lady Dauntrey's chaperonage might be better than none. There was nothing against the woman, as far as he knew, except that she whitewashed her face and had strange eyes. The rich Mrs. Ernstein, who was staying at the Villa Bella Vista, was undoubtedly--even dully--respectable, if common. Neither was there any real harm in Miss Wardropp; and poor Dauntrey did not seem to be a bad fellow at heart.

"It's not ideal there, I'm afraid," Hannaford said at last, "but for lack of a better refuge it might do."

Mary felt suddenly as if some very little thing far down in herself was struggling blindly to escape, as a fly struggles to escape when a gla.s.s tumbler has been shut over it on a table. She drew in a long, deep breath.

"I'll leave the Hotel de Paris to-morrow," she said, as if to settle the matter with herself once and for all. "And I'll go and stay at Lady Dauntrey's."

Almost unconsciously her eyes were fixed upon the old hill town of Roquebrune, asleep under the square height of its ruined castle, which the moon streaked with silver. All the little firefly lights of the village had died out except one, which still shone "like a good deed in a naughty world."

"It is perhaps the cure's light," Mary thought; and told herself that as he was a friend of the Prince, she would never dare to go and see him now.

XVIII

Vanno stood without moving for some minutes, when Mary had gone. She had forbidden him to follow, but it was not her command which held him back.

It was the command laid upon him by himself. In a light merciless as the crude glare of electricity he saw himself standing stricken, a fool who had done an unforgivable thing, a clumsy and brutal wretch who had broken a crystal vase in a sanctuary. For the blinding light showed him a new image of Mary, even as she had suddenly revealed herself to Hannaford: a perfectly innocent creature whose ways were strange as a dryad's way would be strange if transplanted from her forests into the most sophisticated colony in Europe.

Something in Vanno which knew, because it felt, had always p.r.o.nounced her guiltless; but all of him that was modern and worldly had told him to distrust her. Now he was like a judge who has condemned a prisoner on circ.u.mstantial evidence, to find out the victim's innocence after the execution.

Standing there on the bridge, the dance-music troubled the current of his thoughts, rising to the surface of his mind, though he heard it without listening, like the teasing bubbles of a spring through deep water. Though he tried, he could not fully a.n.a.lyze his own feelings; yet he was sharply conscious of those two conflicting sides of his nature which Angelo saw, and he could almost hear them arguing together.

The part of him that was aristocrat and ascetic excused itself, asking what he could have done, better than he had done? Had he not broken his resolve for a good motive and for the girl's sake, not his own? Had he begged anything of her for himself? Ought she not to have understood that though he loved her, he could not ask her to be his wife unless or until she could prove herself worthy--not of him--but of a name and of traditions honoured in history? Ought she not to have trusted him, and seen that he was resisting temptation, not yielding to it, when he implored her to take his help and friendship?

Already Angelo had disappointed their father, by marrying a girl of whom no one knew anything except her beauty and talent as an artist. Marie Gaunt had come to Rome to paint the portrait of a fashionable woman; had been "taken up" by other _mondaines_; and Angelo, meeting her at a dinner, had fallen in love with and followed her to Dresden, where she lived and had made her reputation as an artist. In spite of the Duke's objections they had married; and Vanno, who was his father's favourite, surely owed some duty to the old man who loved him. At worst, Marie Gaunt the artist had in no way laid herself open to gossip. According to what friends had written from Rome, she was more than discreet, demure as a Puritan maiden, and the elderly chaperon who travelled with her was a dragon of virtue. With this girl whom Vanno had met at Monte Carlo it was different. She was not discreet. Whatever else she might be, she was not Puritan. She was gossiped about on all sides, and gayly fed the fire of gossip by appearing in startling dresses, by doing startling things, and picking up extraordinary acquaintances. Even as far away as Mentone and Nice she was talked about. Two women had started some story about her travelling to Paris with a French artist; and the man himself, who had arrived since, had made a fool of himself at the Casino, and apparently tried to blackmail her. She was said to have given him money.

No love, no matter how great, could justify Prince Giovanni Della Robbia in making such a girl his wife while uncertain of the truth which underlay her amazing eccentricities, and the gossip which followed her everywhere, like a dog that barked at her heels.