Читать книгу The Reckless Lady - Philip Gibbs - Страница 10

Table of Contents

Mrs. Fleming waited until she heard the front door close behind her son and listened to the scrunch of his footsteps down the gravel path, and then the click of the garden gate and his quick long stride outside, until the sound of it was faint and then lost round the bend of the road. Then she got out of bed again and dressed quickly with trembling fingers. She put on an evening gown, with a “diamond” bow in her hair. They had been real diamonds once, before she changed them into this sham and poured the price of the others—her husband’s wedding gift—on to the green cloth in the Casino at Aix-les-Bains. She had had a run of luck. She had won enough to pay some of her debts and Sylvia’s school-bills. That was before her luck ran out. Well, it must change again some time. Unless it changed to-night she would be broken. Down and out! It was her last chance. Only a few pounds lay between her and the finish of things.

She had staked heavily in the desperate hope of eluding her husband. Now she was in a worse hole. Caught—round the neck.

“For the children’s sake!”

She prayed a little, aloud, in that bedroom.

“O God, give me this last bit of luck! If only I win to-night I’ll never play again. Never as long as I live, if I can scrape out of this unholy mess and keep my children. Dear God! be kind to a poor, weak wretch! This once—this very last time!”

The woman went down on her knees to the God of Luck whom she had worshipped “for her children’s sake,” as she had said, in self-excuse, and perhaps in that moment the God of Pity heard and was pitiful.

She swayed a little as she stood up, and at the sight of her white face in the mirror above the dressing-table she took some rouge from a pot and touched her cheeks. For a moment she stood looking at the image of herself, with her long white arms glowing in the candlelight and the false diamonds shining in her hair.

“I’m getting like the others,” she said. “Those ghastly old women at the tables!”

She opened a drawer in her dressing-table and grabbed at a little packet of those white “chips” which are exchanged for money in the gambling-rooms of Monte Carlo. There were ten of them, as she counted with nervous fingers.

She put a fur cloak over her shoulders, pulled its hood over her hair, and blew out the candles in her bedroom. It was by the light of the moon that she stole out of the Villa Margherita, and ran down the steep road to Monte Carlo, ran fast, as a woman in a desperate hurry.

Some boys and girls in fancy costumes were coming up the other way, tired after the Carnival procession, but still singing, with linked arms. The moonlight made them look fantastic in their false noses and velvet masks. They stared back at the woman in the white fur cloak, running past them, alone. One of the boys laughed, and said some ribald thing, and the girls screeched in their high, mirthful voices.

Mrs. Fleming did not run all the way. At the beginning of the houses in Monte Carlo she walked slowly, with the hood about her face. She recovered her breath by standing a little under the palm-trees in the gardens of the Casino. Lovers were about, whispering, kissing, in the shadowland that lay beyond the glare of the electric lights.

She looked quite calm, perfectly serene with expressionless eyes and tight lips, as she gave her cloak to the women attendants in the cloak-room of the Casino. One of the women smiled at her and spoke a few words of French.

“Bonne chance, madame!”

It was a wish of good luck to a regular visitor who had been losing heavily, as the woman knew—from a croupier friend.

It was the crowded hour, on a night of Carnival; after the gala dinners in the great hotels. It was difficult to move through the rooms, owing to the press of people. There were rows three deep round the tables, and a confused murmur of voices in many languages—Italian, French, Russian, German, English. It was English which predominated in every room.

“Frightfully hot here!”

“Look at that appalling female!”

“She might wear a few more clothes!”

“Those old ladies ought to be knitting at their firesides. Old enough to know better!”

The old ladies and their white-headed husbands had slipped over from Mentone, Cannes, the villas on the outskirts of Monte Carlo, the less luxurious hotels which cater for retired colonels and maiden ladies who let their flats in London for a season on the Riviera, where they live cheaply on the French exchange. They were risking a few francs—twenty—fifty—on the wheel of fortune. If they lost there was no harm done. If they won it would mean a good dinner or two at the gayest restaurants, and a present to the youngsters at home. There were other people to whom these gaming-rooms meant nothing more than a little “flutter,” an expensive thrill, an amusing touch of melodrama. There were young English girls, tall and fair and fresh, untouched by the stale atmosphere and evil spirit of this place, and American visitors who had come to see European life at its best and worst, and young ex-officers of the Great War, some of them with an empty sleeve, or a stiff leg, escaping from the boredom of peace, without much purpose in life, and restless. Mrs. Fleming made her way through these amateurs, these casual worshippers at the shrine of luck. She was one of the professionals. One of the slaves of luck—its bondwoman, tied to the wheel. The others knew her as one of them. In the salle privée where the stakes were highest, an old man made way for her next to the croupier. He was an old vulture with bald head and bagged eyes and beak-like nose over a pendulous underlip. He blinked at her and whispered a word or two.

“My little system fails to work to-night, dear lady. Dead against me! Try treize, en plein. It’s bewitched this evening.”

They had met at the same table in Biarritz, Trouville, Evian les Bains. He was a dissolute old roué, famous in scandalous history forty years before, a dirty old wreck hardly human in vicious senility. The croupier shifted his chair a little for Mrs. Fleming to take her place, and said “Good evening, madame,” while he raked in a pile of chips mostly belonging to an old woman with an auburn wig and pencilled eyebrows and enamelled face, whose thin lips had a fixed smile whether she won or lost. Round the table, utterly silent, were foreign-looking men with bald heads and blue chins and hard mouths and fish-like eyes. Impossible to guess their nationality, or what thoughts, emotions, sensibilities lay hidden behind the human masks. They made notes in little pocket-books recording the way the figures ran, putting to the test some theory of luck, and its mysterious laws. Among them, silent also, except for the sound of their breathing, sat women in evening gowns, with bare arms and backs, fair fleshy women of uncertain age, and thin, dark, moody-eyed women, with rouged cheeks and painted lips. Mrs. Fleming knew them all—these devotees of luck. She knew their secret histories, their hidden tragedies, the abominations of some of them, the generous recklessness, the good-nature, the smiling immorality of others. It was easy to know. They told these things frankly, boringly, interminably, in hotel lounges and the corners of tea-rooms. Now and then one of them disappeared, broken on the wheel of luck.

“Poor dear Mrs. Venables! You remember her? The one who was with the Polish banker at Biarritz. Had the most wicked luck last year. Lost thousands! Well, she had pluck, I will say that. I shouldn’t care to choose that way of escape. So painful and unpleasant!”

Mrs. Fleming had avoided these women as much as possible, kept them away from Stephen and Sylvia—especially Sylvia—and tried to prevent her own soul from being sullied by their evil whisperings. They hated her for that, could not understand her pretence of virtue. She was one of them all right, although she pretended to be so good, and kept so fresh, and lived a dull, respectable life with her boy and girl, just as if she were a middle-class mother!

Mrs. Fleming did not glance at them. She changed her ready money—her last—for another bundle of chips. The croupier handed them out as carelessly as usual, not knowing that this was her last throw with Fate—not caring, anyhow. He gaped behind his hand. A boring, tedious, exacting job! Now, a nice little hotel, somewhere on the edge of Cannes....

The woman by his side had won. He raked over a pile of chips from the central squares. She was doubling her stakes. He gaped again. Five more hours of this awful tedium! ... He could get his chef from the Hôtel des Anglais. There would be no profits the first year. Too much to expect....

The woman by his side had won again. He raked over another pile.

She doubled her stake again.

The croupier wished she would not breathe so hard. It was Mrs. Fleming. Rather a handsome woman, he thought, and good-natured. She generally had a little joke with him. Asked after his wife and children as if she really wanted to know. More human, less selfish than most of these people....

She won again.

The room was crowding up. There was a double row of onlookers behind the table. The croupier’s eyes roved down their lines, as a professional duty. It was necessary to keep a sharp look-out. He had known a woman to grab some of the winnings. He had seen a man steal a pearl necklace while the woman who wore it was absorbed in her play. To-night he noticed a man standing behind the others, with a strained expression on his face—uneasy, disapproving, pitiful. He was a tall, middle-aged man with grey hair and ruddy face. English, of course, one of those English hypocrites, thought the croupier, coming to study the vices of the “idle rich,” very shocked because women show their bare arms, but secretly disappointed because it was all so respectable. He would go back and write a letter to his parish magazine, “Flaming Sin at Monte Carlo.” He knew the type, did this croupier who was so bored with the dullness of his life.

The woman by his side—Mrs. Fleming, yes, that was her name—had won again. It was her night out. Well, she needed it. She had had bad luck lately, he remembered.

There were only three inches between Mrs. Fleming and the croupier with his ivory rake which distributed gains and losses as carelessly as though these “chips” were worthless counters. He could hear the sharp indrawing of her breath which she tried to quieten. But he could not know the violence of her emotion, the wild rush of thoughts that were racing through her brain, while, very calmly as it seemed, with a quite steady hand, with no change of expression on her face—she had learnt that amount of self-discipline—she placed her stakes on the table haphazard, without thought, recklessly, and saw them win, again and again.

She would be able to pay her debts in Monte Carlo, or some of them. She could get away from that man who wanted a “share” of her children.... She would hide her new address from everyone. Even from dear old Henry and brother Jack.... She could get out of that villa without a scene; anyhow, without the police on her track.... She would buy Sylvia some new frocks. The poor girl needed them badly.... She would give Stephen his chance. A year in Paris in the Life school. He needed that, and they would see his genius.... Her luck was in again. God had forgotten His grudge.... Yes, she had won again! People were watching her, with admiration, with wonderment. Well, she wouldn’t show by the quiver of an eyelid that she was a little mad with the joy of it, because it lifted the black shadow of fear and put her straight again, and saved the children from their father. She would never part with them.

Of course she couldn’t always win. No, this time she lost. Well, that was always the way on the tables. A run of luck, then a few losses, then luck again, with higher stakes. Not to be afraid of the losses. That was the great game. Perfect faith in a lucky night, beginning well.... Lost again! Courage! Courage! ...

Mrs. Fleming had courage. The lookers-on admired her nerve when all her gains were swept away. Only by a slight tightening of the lips did she show the strain upon her, and her despair. When she rose from the table—cleaned-out, beggared—she did not tremble, or move awkwardly, or let her lips weaken. The people were watching her. She must not let them see the despair in her soul. Ruined. Yes, that was it, this time. Lost. Utterly broken. How could she tell Stephen and Sylvia? They were dancing somewhere in the Carnival. She would have to tell them. Or would it be better to let them find out? They would come home, stealing in on tip-toe, thinking her asleep. Supposing they found her asleep, and could not waken her? It might be better like that. People would help them. The young American would help, for Sylvia’s sake. Or at least the Harveys. And Dick would get them after all! She would leave a note for him, saying, “More than a share. All yours now. But they’ll always love me best, whatever you tell them.” She would be asleep endlessly, unless she waked up to pay the price of wickedness—somewhere else. God might have something to say about it. But He would understand. He would not be hard on a woman who had done her best for her babes, suffered hell for them already. It would be easy to go to sleep, never to wake up, in that little villa....

“Did you have good luck to-night, madame?” asked the woman attendant, with her kindly smile, as she wrapped Mrs. Fleming in her white cloak.

Mrs. Fleming smiled and shook her head.

“I was rather unlucky,” she said, and was surprised at the strangeness of her own voice.

She saw two or three people she knew, and nodded to them.

“We have just left your young people, Mrs. Fleming,” said a tall Englishwoman with an elderly man who looked like one of the generals of the Great War. “Sylvia looks adorable and the American young man is having a great time with her.”

“Splendid!” said Mrs. Fleming.

She laughed and nodded, and passed into the central hall of the Casino and, in spite of the heat, shivered a little, and felt all the colour ebb from her face. It would be silly if she fainted now, after wearing her mask so well.

Someone touched her on the arm and spoke to her.

“You’re looking ill. Better take my arm, Helen. I’ve been watching you. Those high stakes! Good heavens!”

It was her husband, Colonel Fleming, looking distressed and pitiful.

She turned round slowly, and swayed a little, and put her hands up to her throat, and then laughed in a foolish, hysterical way, as though a little mad.

“You here?” she said. “Well, you’ve won the children from me. That ought to please you.”

She put her hand against a marble pillar and laughed again, but in a queer, strange way.

“Hush!” said Colonel Fleming, nervously. “Don’t make a scene, Helen. Not here—with all those people about. If you cared to take my arm——”

He put his hand on her arm and led her out of the Casino into the gardens. They stood in the shadow of the palm-trees, like the lovers who hide there for the sake of kisses.

“Helen,” said the man, “I’m afraid you’ve been very foolish. This gambling! ... Horrible!”

“I wanted the money,” she said, with a kind of wailing cry. “How do you think I live?”

She swayed again, and would have fallen if he had not helped her to a seat, one of those wooden seats painted white, up the little avenue where the motor-cars stand waiting for the crowd inside. A group of chauffeurs were talking and smoking. One of them gave a loud guffaw and spoke in Cockney accents. “Gord, what a life!”

Colonel Fleming stood in front of his wife, staring at her thoughtfully.

“Do you mean to say you’ve been living in that way? Playing for money? Surely not, Helen! It’s madness!”

She did not answer him, and put her handkerchief to her lips, looking very ill, as he could see.

“I thought your people were looking after you,” he said. “I understood your brother made you an allowance. In any case——”

She made an impatient movement, but did not speak.

Colonel Fleming poked the gravel about with his stick, as he had done when he first talked to her, two days before.

“If it’s money you want,” he said, “you can draw on me. I’ve never been mean. Every penny I’ve saved are for the boy and girl. I always made that clear to your brother. Why didn’t you ask for it before? It’s been lying there in Coutts’s. Not a great deal, but enough to save you from—well, this kind of thing. Why didn’t you, Helen?”

She answered him for the first time, with a kind of hard scorn.

“You know why I didn’t. I wanted to keep my children for myself, so that they should owe nothing to you. Don’t you understand what pride means?”

Colonel Fleming groaned a little, and then laughed rather bitterly.

“Pride? I’ve lived on it! You’ve never taken my feelings into account. A lonely devil in India eating his heart out, brooding over a wrecked life, sensitive, too—damnably sensitive to the old scandal of it. ‘Richard Fleming,’ they said. ‘Yes, his wife ran away from him. Couldn’t stand his temper! As hard as nails, I should say.’—Hard, yes, but it’s the strong man who suffers most. Proud! Yes, too proud to wear my heart on my sleeve.”

Mrs. Fleming was silent again. She sat on the wooden seat as though turned to stone, except that for a moment she was shaken by a sob.

Colonel Fleming spoke more gently, even with a certain pity.

“All that’s an old story. I’m sorry I went back on it. I’ve forgiven you after all these years, though you say you don’t want my forgiveness. Well, that doesn’t matter much, either. What matters now is the children’s welfare, and my duty to them, and my claim to them. A share of them.”

He used that word “share” again, and it seemed to madden Mrs. Fleming, so that she cried out aloud, as though agonised.

“Hush!” said her husband. “Hush! Be sensible, Helen!”

“They’re all yours now,” she said, in a dull, despairing voice. “I’m beaten. I’ve lost everything. The children, and all I’ve lived for. I’m down and out, with no pride left.... I wish I were dead!”

She broke into a passion of weeping, out of control.

Colonel Fleming was alarmed. He tried to soothe her, even put his hand on her shoulder.

“It isn’t as bad as all that. What’s in your mind, Helen? I don’t want to take the boy and girl away from you. Surely I can see them now and then? As for the money side of things, I can straighten that out. No need to worry about that. I want to be reasonable—and kind. Kind in every possible way. Considerate. If you’ll let me know your troubles—and your wishes—I don’t want to thrust in brutally, or put the law to work, or anything like that. Now, be sensible. Pull yourself together, my dear. Hush, hush! I beg of you.”

Mrs. Fleming fell back against the back of the seat in a state of collapse. She looked very ill, alarmingly ill, to the husband who was watching her with anxious eyes.

“I’ll take you home,” he said. “I can’t leave you here—like that. Impossible!”

For a moment he left her, but it was to signal to one of the drivers of the waiting cars.

“Give me a hand,” he said. “This lady is unwell.”

Together they carried her into the car.

“Drive up the road behind the Hôtel des Anglais,” said Colonel Fleming. “There’s a little villa on the left. The Villa Margherita. I’ll tell you when we get there.”