Chapter VIII

Myrtile was suddenly tired. She seated herself upon the trunk of a tree, and Christopher followed her example. Below them stretched the motley panorama of Monte Carlo, the wide bay and the glittering sea. The hillside and all the country within sight was dotted with villas. There was one especially, overhanging the sea, towards which she gazed wistfully.

“Do you know,” she said, “that I have not seen Monsieur Gerald for three days?”

“He has been busy,” Christopher answered shortly.

“Busy?” she queried.

“He plays golf and tennis every day. Then his father and sister take up a good deal of his time.”

“You always find time to come and see me every morning,” she said. “Besides--it was not his sister with whom I saw him motoring yesterday.”

“You must remember,” Christopher reminded her, “that Gerald had many friends before you came here.”

“I know,” she answered. “I cannot hope to count for very much. But why cannot he be at least kind like you? If only he knew how long the days seem when I do not even catch a glimpse of him!”

Christopher braced himself for an effort.

“Myrtile,” he began, “you know that I am fond of you.”

“You have been very kind,” she answered listlessly.

“Because I want to be kind, I am going to say things that may sound harsh,” he went on. “You are a very foolish girl to waste your time thinking and dreaming of Gerald. You should only let your thoughts dwell upon one man continually when there is some chance in the end that that man may become your husband.”

Her listlessness passed. She settled down to the subject seriously.

“But, Monsieur Christopher----”

“Christopher,” he interrupted.

“Christopher, then--you ask me to do what I plainly see no one else does. Wherever you have taken me here--wherever we go--there are men and women together who are fond of one another. One only needs to look at them to see it. It is so in the restaurants, in the gardens where we sit, in the cafés. I have seen love in the eyes of many girls since I have been here. They do not all expect to marry the men they are with.”

Christopher leaned over and laid his hand upon hers.

“Myrtile dear, will you listen to me?” he begged. “Look at me for a moment. I am twenty-six years old. I have lived in cities as well as the country. In London I am what you call an _avocat_. I have to use my brains every day, I have to understand my fellow creatures. Will you get that into your head?”

“It is not difficult,” she assured him, with a little smile. “I think you are very clever, and you know many, many things.”

“And as for you, Myrtile,” Christopher went on, “when one thinks of your upbringing, it is amazing to realise how much you have read, how much you know. But listen to me. Nothing that one reads can teach one what life is like. You spent many hours wondering what was at the end of the road. You think now, because you have passed over the hill, that you are there. My dear, you are not even at the beginning of the way.”

She plucked some grasses and twined them round her fingers.

“Go on,” she whispered.

“This is not life that you watch day by day. Mostly it is a very garish imitation of it. And in the same way, that light which you see is not always love. It is sometimes a very unworthy imitation of it.”

“They seem very happy,” she murmured.

“They are not happy--they are only gay,” Christopher insisted. “Sometimes they are only pretending to be gay. Sometimes their pretence comes from very unworthy motives. There are dancing girls who smile upon a king, but there is no love in the matter.”

“You mean that these people who seem so happy are not in earnest?” she asked.

“I mean that if they are in earnest,” he explained, “it is only for the moment. It is a sham earnestness which spoils the real thing when it comes. What you see here is not life. It is not even a very wonderful reflection of it. Mostly it is a little company of pleasure-seekers, come to cast aside for a time the serious side of life and gamble with their pleasures as they do with their money.”

“But some must be in earnest,” Myrtile protested.

“One of them who is not in earnest is Gerald, and I tell you so, although Gerald is my friend,” Christopher said. “He is here to amuse himself, and he would prefer to amuse himself without giving any one else pain. If that is impossible, however, he is sufficiently reckless not to count the cost where the other person is concerned.”

She drew a little away.

“That does not sound like the speech of a friend,” she reminded him reproachfully.

“But I can assure you that I am his friend, although a candid one,” Christopher declared. “All that I have said to you, I have said to him, and a great deal more. You will let me finish?”

She made no reply. She had gathered herself up into an attitude which in any one else would have been ungraceful, her chin resting upon her hands, her back curved. Her eyes were fixed upon the exact spot where the sea seemed to melt into the clouds. The grace of her slim body lent beauty even to the hunch of her shoulders.

“You are like a child who has been let out of a dark room,” Christopher went on. “Everything seems beautiful, but you don’t see clearly--your eyes aren’t strong enough yet. What you imagine to be love is a worse thing. Gerald does not love you. He can never marry you. He belongs to that world at which you are looking with blurred eyes.--Myrtile, how old were you when your mother died?”

“Ten years old.”

“I thought so!” Christopher exclaimed, in despair. “I am certain your mother was a good woman, Myrtile.”

“I know she was,” Myrtile answered.

“I wish to God she were alive!” he groaned. “Myrtile, don’t you want to be good?”

“I want to be happy,” Myrtile replied. “I shall always be good.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I am all good inside,” she said. “I couldn’t do any of the things that wicked people do.”

Christopher sat for a moment in puzzled thought.

“Look here,” he went on, “if you love Gerald, and Gerald doesn’t love you, and you are content with the pretence of his love, and you go on loving him, and you know that you cannot be his wife, then you are not good any longer.”

She shook her head.

“There is only once in my life,” she said, “that I have ever come near sin, and that is when I thought of staying at the farm and marrying Pierre Leschamps. I love Gerald. All that I need to be happy and good is that he should love me.”

“But Gerald does not love you and never will,” Christopher declared bluntly. “He is far too selfish. At the present moment he takes some one else for a motor ride every afternoon, and doesn’t get up in time to come and see you in the mornings because he is entertaining the young ladies of the Russian Ballet at supper every night.”

She looked at him sadly.

“And you are his friend,” she reminded him again.

“Dear, stupid little girl,” he said, “don’t you see that because I am his friend, and because I am your friend, and because I share the responsibility of having brought you away, I insist upon your realising the truth. Gerald, at the present moment, at any rate, is incapable of a stable affection, and if he were capable of it, his people would not allow him to marry you.”

“I do not wish him to marry me,” she declared, with a little choke in her voice.

“Perhaps not,” he replied. “In that case, you should listen to me more patiently. I want you to leave this place and go to some friends of mine in England.”

“What, alone?”

“Alone.”

She shook her head.

“Christopher,” she said, suddenly slipping her arm through his, “I think you want to be kind to me. I believe that you are very good--perhaps you are better than Gerald. But so long as Gerald wants me near, I shall stay. Even if he goes about with other people, he thinks of me. He has told me so, and he has promised to take me to one of those supper parties this week. I am looking forward to it more than to anything else in the world.”

Christopher’s face hardened.

“You will not go to one of those supper parties, Myrtile,” he insisted. “I would rather take you back to the farm.”

She turned her head and looked at him. There was something in her eyes from which he shrank,--something very much like hate.

“If you try to stop me,” she threatened, “I shall hate you for ever.”

She saw the pain in his face and she was suddenly remorseful. She clung to his arm again. Her cheek almost touched his.

“Christopher--dear Christopher,” she pleaded, “I did not mean to hurt you. I know how good you are, but just think how wonderful it would be for me to go with Gerald, to meet other girls, to laugh and talk, to sit by his side, his guest, to dance, perhaps--oh, it would be Paradise! Everybody else goes to parties, Christopher.”

“I will take you to the Opera,” he promised.

Her eyes glowed.

“It would be wonderful,” she murmured, “but you must not prevent my going to the party.”

“Myrtile,” he pointed out, “the young women whom you would meet there are not fit for you to know.”

“But what harm can they do me?” she persisted. “I know that they are not nice. I went to the hotel for a few minutes with Annette last night--she had to go and give her keys to her aunt--and in the distance I saw Gerald, and I hated the people he was with. But what does it matter? Gerald will take care of me.”

Christopher rose to his feet. There was a certain hopelessness about his task that he was slowly beginning to realise.

“Come,” he said, “it is time we went back. I am playing tennis with Gerald’s sister this afternoon.”

She took his arm as they scrambled down into the road.

“You are not cross with me, Christopher?” she ventured, a little timidly.

He shook his head.

“No, I am not cross.”

“You look so gloomy--even a little miserable,” she went on, clinging to his arm and looking up into his face. “I am a very great trouble to you, I fear. Are you not sorry that you ever brought me away?”

“I am not sorry yet, Myrtile,” he answered. “I only hope that I never may be.”

Her mood suddenly changed. She laughed gaily.

“Oh, là, là!” she cried. “If you look so glum, I shall sing and dance to you, here in the road, as we do at festival time. Gerald says that I must have dancing lessons. He is going to send me to a woman here.”

She pirouetted lightly on one foot, a miracle of buoyancy and grace. Then she went suddenly rigid, took her place by his side and clutched at his arm. An automobile whizzed past them, on its way up the hill: Gerald was leaning back in the low driving seat, the sun gleaming on his dark, closely brushed hair, his head bent towards his companion; Pauline sat a little aloof, haughty, unbending, her beautiful face cold, unrelieved by any light of sympathy or interest. Her eyes swept carelessly over Christopher and his companion, as they passed. Gerald did not even see them.

“Who is she?” Myrtile whispered.

“No one knows much about her,” Christopher replied. “She and her aunt have the next villa to Gerald’s father. She calls herself Mademoiselle de Ponière.”

Myrtile laughed quietly. She was already herself again.

“Mademoiselle is a very stupid girl,” she declared. “Gerald was looking at her and she looked only at the road. She does not care. Gerald will find that out.”

* * * * *

Gerald came to the tennis courts, an hour or so later, and played several sets almost in silence. He had lost for the moment all that light-hearted gaiety which made him, even amongst the foreigners who frequented the place, easily the most popular of the tennis-playing fraternity. He played brilliantly at times, but with obvious carelessness. He had the air of a man whose thoughts are busily engaged elsewhere. He took Christopher on one side, during one of the periods of rest, and flung his arm around his shoulder.

“Chris, old man,” he confided, “that girl is driving me mad.”

“Myrtile?” Christopher asked, with wilful obtuseness.

“Don’t be an ass,” was the impatient reply. “You know very well that I mean Pauline de Ponière.--Tell me, are you dining at the Villa to-night?”

“Not to-night. Your people are dining with the Prince.”

“I am engaged to Carruthers but I shall throw him over,” Gerald said eagerly. “I want to talk to you.”

“And I have a few words I want to say to you,” Christopher rejoined.

“We’re in this set,” Gerald pointed out, rising to his feet. “Let’s be alone somewhere, then--Ciro’s Grill at eight-thirty.”