Читать книгу Devil's Laughter: A Tale of Paris - John Hunter A.A. - Страница 10

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To Paul Laroche, the most difficult phase of the affair of Gabrielle was the necessary explanation to Anton.

He loved Anton sincerely, devotedly. For Anton he was prepared to sacrifice much, and in the boy he saw all that he himself might have been. It pleased him to think that Anton represented in the fullest and best sense a side of his own character which had been suppressed, submerged, and, at length, overwhelmed.

Steeped in unspeakable villainy himself, he admired and reverenced all that was fine in his son, and was determined that Anton’s good qualities should increase, should be more patent day by day. However deeply he himself had to delve into the festerous burrows of crime, Anton should mount with wings like an eagle.

He sent for Anton.

Their conversation was long, and never in all his life had Laroche used his mastery of words and phrases to such effect, his ability to act, his gift for expressing emotion in a gesture.

He told Anton of his discovery of his mother’s unfaithfulness, and in the telling there was no heat. He and Anton stood alone. Both had been betrayed. The hurt was theirs, the suffering, and for them must be silence. He wove a net of words and cast it around Anton, and the boy, stupefied by all that he heard, made no struggle to escape from it.

Gabrielle had gone. Laroche etched an account of his interview with her, as an artist etches a picture, the lines that are omitted meaning much to the imaginative beholder. Gabrielle, it seemed, had known for some time. She had been in her mother’s confidence. She had not cared. Laroche broke down at the right moment in the right way and brought Anton to his side in instant sympathy.

Gabrielle had gone away with a hot word on her lips and scorn in her eyes. She wanted nothing of Laroche, nothing of Anton. Laroche had set the police to the task of finding her.

The interview taxed Laroche severely. He had been hours planning it, setting it out, actually writing down a great deal of what he intended to say, and revising it and revising it until he considered that it achieved the effect he desired.

Painstaking and appallingly efficient, never had his capacity for endeavour nor his efficiency shown to a greater advantage than in this talk which wrecked Anton’s dreams, which won him to his father’s side, which made him think of Gabrielle as something sweet who had died, and, in dying, had permitted the birth of a creature incredibly light and ungrateful.

Anton grieved for the loss of his sister, for the dishonour of his mother as bereavement only could never have made him grieve. Dishonour, hitherto, had never touched him; now it touched him closely. He was like a man who walks round a corner in his life’s pathway, and meets something unexpected and hideous.

For some time he lost all zest in life. He would wander round Paris, avoiding his former friends like one who would hide from the world. But—the transmutation that his father’s cunning story had worked was not so much outwardly apparent as deep within him, a vital change which had far-reaching consequences.

There came an evening when his self-imposed solitude fretted him, and, as he dressed, he suddenly determined that he would seek some amusement in those places which are popularly supposed to provide it. “On rit, on chant, on danse!” A little bitter smile curled Anton’s lips as he thought of the oft-used announcement. He would laugh and sing and dance.

He went to a theatre and afterwards slipped into the tide of Parisian night life. It carried him up-hill to Montmartre, and he wandered from one cabaret to another, finding nothing at which to laugh, nothing he could sing, nobody with whom he wanted to dance.

He felt a little savage and at war with the world. From l’Abbaye Thélème, packed to the doors, he drifted into Zelli’s. There was a big crowd there, mostly foreigners, and the place reeked with heat. Anton stood near the little bar and watched. He had seen it all often before, and wondered why he ever imagined it would amuse him.

He was not contemptuous of it. He had long since passed the half-baked stage when he pointed to this spendthrift pretence at amusement and declared that it was not Parisian night life, and hinted mysteriously, as certain folk do, that there is another more joyous, more abandoned “life” hiding somewhere in France’s capital. Anton knew that, save for various expensive night clubs, this place was typical of the night amusements provided by Paris.

He had just decided to go when he heard his name, and turning found himself face to face with Baring, the Englishman he had met that night which seemed so long ago, when Gabrielle had dined at the Ermitage Moscovite with Calverley, his mother’s old friend.

“Monsieur Laroche. This is top-hole.” Baring’s hand was outstretched. Anton took it.

Baring went on: “I’ve been thinking a great deal about you, and about your sister.” He paused at the changed expression on Anton’s face. “I called, you know. I hadn’t heard about your mother. I called to see your sister, and received a most extraordinary message to the effect that your father had no daughter.” Baring hesitated once more. “But I’m hurting you. I’m sorry.”

Anton gestured. “That’s all right, Monsieur. The message told you the truth. I was just going from here. I find it hot.”

They stood for a little while, silent and awkward. Baring wished he had not spoken to Anton, and Anton wished he could explain more to this Englishman whom he had liked at first sight. Then he added: “I was going down to my club. Would you care to join me? I hate these places. I don’t know why I came.”

Baring had a car in the street, and he drove Anton down to the club. They spent an hour together, chatting indifferently, but without any reference to Gabrielle or Anton’s family, and at the end of the hour Baring drove Anton home.

“We’ll have to meet again,” said Anton. “I’ll give you a ’phone call, or you give me one, in the next few days. We might make a four at dinner, one night. I know plenty of girls we could take along. Game?”

“Any time you like,” agreed Baring, and left him.

The meeting with Baring perturbed Anton. He found that he would always associate the Englishman with Gabrielle, for she had spoken of him after her first meeting with him, and for this reason Anton wondered why he should feel so friendly towards him. He wished he had not met him, and made up his mind to avoid him in future.

This decision was largely indicative of Anton’s state of mind. There was nothing decisive in his life. Every attempt at pleasure brought only pain and a sense of emptiness. If he found a friend he ceased immediately to want him.

That fate against which, in his attempts to fashion the life and character of Anton, Laroche was playing, dictated that within forty-eight hours of his encounter with Baring, Anton should meet a woman who was destined to play an ironically important part in his life.

She was taking tea at Armenonville. Anton had driven there haphazard, selecting the place as he selected most of his destinations in those days. He saw the woman sitting alone at a table near the edge of the dance floor. It was obvious to him that she had been expecting somebody, for she constantly glanced towards the entrance. She was tall and dark, an elegant thing dressed with impeccable taste. Her glance met Anton’s.

He walked across and asked if she would dance. She accepted the invitation, and he found her a delicious dancer, svelte and easy, lithe and soft against him, with a perfume that touched his nostrils softly and bewitchingly. When they reseated themselves Anton had his tea brought to her table, and they talked.

Anton stayed at Armenonville for an hour, and in that hour found his first pleasure for many days. The woman was charming. She had a soft voice that held a caress, dark eyes that flashed occasionally with humour, a ready wit, and an ability to talk of things more serious than the theatre and the dance hall. Anton, starving for companionship, feeling himself adrift, was enchanted by her.

“What is your name?” he asked, as they walked towards the little black-and-ivory car she drove.

She laughed and thought for a moment. “Call me Hélène. It is one of my names. That’s true, Monsieur. And you?”

Anton laughed with her. He liked this mystery, for it lent romance to the encounter. “I have more than one name, and one of them is Robert. If I telephoned the Café de Paris to reserve a table for half-past seven this evening, would you join me?”

The woman had already seen Anton’s long Hispano Suiza drawn up in the car park, had already appraised the costliness of his clothes and his linen, and she smiled her acceptance. “No,” she said, as Anton added a further invitation. “I don’t want to go to the theatre. Let us talk, and dance a little while afterwards. Besides, I dislike being home very late too often, and I was late last night.”

She refused to permit him to call for her, and withheld her address, promising to meet him inside the restaurant at the appointed hour.

From the time he left her until the rendezvous at the Café de Paris Anton was excited and near to being jubilant. Suddenly he had acquired an interest in life. He could vividly recall all the expressions of his new friend, her little tricks of speech, the way her eyes softened when they smiled at him, how delicious and fragrant was the perfume she used, the elegance of her dress.

He went to the restaurant like a boy going to his first assignation. She joined him within five minutes of his arrival.

Anton could not quite understand her. She did not mean him to do that. Though pressed, she gave him no further information about her name, and asked him, with a little mischievous glance, whether Hélène were not pretty enough to suffice.

She still refused to tell him where she lived, and though she flirted prettily with her eyes and her speech, though she once permitted Anton’s hand to rest on hers under the downcast light of the table-lamp, she went no further.

She was mysterious, and Anton, being a very young man, was entranced by this mystery. She was undeniably beautiful, as only a richly dark woman can be beautiful. When her hair brushed Anton’s cheek during the dance it sent his pulses throbbing wildly.

“We must meet again,” he said, as the car took them away from the restaurant. “That is permissible, isn’t it?”

She appeared to hesitate. “Yes, if you wish. But not at once. In another week’s time.”

She had gauged him correctly and knew it would increase his ardour if he had to wait.

“You aren’t married, are you?” asked Anton, after a short silence.

She laughed merrily. “Of course not. Is that so dreadfully disappointing? Does it slay all the romance?”

“No. It widens the possibilities.” Anton’s tone reflected the merriment in hers. “You prefer to be mysterious, but I shall be open with you. I am Anton Robert Laroche, the son of Paul Laroche, and I live in the Avenue Malakoff. Perhaps you have heard of my father?”

Certainly she had heard of Paul Laroche, for all Paris knew the name. Her heart was beating slightly faster as she realized the riches to which this young man was heir.

By the Arc de Triomphe she told him to stop the car. “You have promised not to follow me,” she warned Anton. “I have a very short distance to walk, and shall be quite safe. And I, in turn, promise that the next time we meet you shall learn all about me. That is a bargain?”

“My hand on it,” said Anton. She took his hand and gave him a smile that he found entrancing.

“As a matter of fact, it was rather foolish of me to accept your invitation to-night, although now I am sure I shan’t regret it; so you must permit me a little reserve until we know each other better. I have your telephone number, and I promise you that I will ring you without fail. That is definite.”

She drifted into the darkness, and Anton, sitting back in the car as it swung round the Arc, directed the driver to drop him at his club. He did not wish to sleep yet. He wanted to sit and think of this woman he had met, with her judicious combination of reserve and frankness, her eyes which sparkled with such fun and yet could be so serious, the fragrance of her, the femininity, the allure.

And the woman, walking down the Avenue Niel, reflected on Anton. He was the wealthy son of one of the wealthiest men in France. She knew, by long experience, that she was “handling” him correctly, for she had watched the eagerness come to life in his eyes.

For him she planned there should be no kisses, save such as she permitted him to bestow on her fingers from time to time. For him there should be a hint of intimacy and nothing more. She should build on this chance meeting something that might protect her in the years ahead.

The question rose in her thoughts as to whether she should tell Le Cagnard of the encounter and of the rich chance it offered, and she succumbed immediately to the temptation to say nothing—for the present.

No blame could be attached to her for failing to disclose her friendship with the son of Paul Laroche before that friendship showed signs of bearing fruit. And—she dreamed dreams as she walked swiftly along the darkened pavements.

This Anton Laroche might one day mean more to her than a chance acquaintance. Handled properly, he might prove her financial salvation, might afford her an opportunity to escape from the dark things she had always thought lay ahead of her, when her beauty was faded and her wit no longer drew men to her side.

The only man she had ever loved was dead, slain by the orders of that same master from whom she now proposed to hide all knowledge of her encounter with Anton. She knew she would never forgive him. She knew that, should chance present itself, she would strive to hit back at the omnipotent being whose word had killed her love.

For the woman’s name was Malou.