Читать книгу The Usurper - William J. Locke - Страница 5

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In coming to his irrevocable decision to see no more of Lady Alicia, Jasper Vellacot had not reckoned with rheumatic gout. That so prosaic a malady should be a factor in his romantic destiny (save that perhaps eventual crippledom might place him beyond the pale of romance altogether) never entered into his calculations. But when a man sets up to be a law unto himself, and disregards trivial things,—de minimis non curat,—the trivial things are apt to assert themselves.

The rheumatic gout was slight. He had been troubled with it before and had freed himself from symptoms. But this year it had returned. His doctor prescribed baths, and mentioned Aix-les-Bains. Jasper suggested Harrogate. It would be nearer to London. He could run up when his affairs needed his presence; could transact his business so easily. The doctor ordained an absolute holiday. Jasper still stuck to Harrogate, the doctor to Aix. Cudby supported the doctor, quoted the inefficacy of the waters of Abana and Pharpar, scolded, implored, cajoled, and at last prevailed. One August morning he saw his patron off at Charing Cross, and returned to Gower Street to have a peaceful time with his Shakespearean commentators.

So Jasper, accepting the inevitable, went to Aix-les-Bains to cure himself of his rheumatic gout. He put himself under the care of a specialist, began his prescribed course of douches, and for a time enjoyed the change exceedingly. The little town, all hotels and gardens, nestling by the side of its fairy lake in an amphitheatre of mountains, full of sunshine and idleness, gay with laughter and colour, seemed to knead the weariness from his heart just as his shampooer at the Établissement des Bains kneaded out the rheumatism from his limbs. Always modest in his personal expenditure, and somewhat morbidly shrinking from luxuriousness of life, he put up at one of the less expensive hotels, made friends with his American neighbours at the dinner-table, and enjoyed the pleasures of simple companionship.

Now at Aix-les-Bains the whole of its afternoon and evening life is concentrated in its two casinos, the Grand Cercle and the Villa des Fleurs. Each stands in its own pretty grounds, and the grounds adjoin. When you sit and sip your coffee on the terrace of the Cercle, you can watch the fireworks in the gardens of the Villa. When you have won money at the baccarat tables of the Villa, you can run round in two minutes and lose it at the Cercle; which is most convenient. Or when you are tired of the indoor afternoon concert at the Cercle, you can stroll across to the Villa and find a crowd of women in cool dresses and men in flannels, talking and reading under the shade of the great lime-trees, while waiters move about with glasses in which ice tinkles deliciously and straws stand invitingly, and while an orchestra in the kiosque at the further end discourses lively music. With characteristic twinges of self-reproach for leading this existence of frivolous peace, Jasper surrendered himself, as we have said, to the inevitable. He went on excursions in the little old paddle steamers about the lake. He dozed in the Villa grounds. He took three English children and their grandmother for drives about the country, while their mother went off to gamble. He found unexpected entertainment in fireworks. He wandered amusedly around the baccarat tables, and grew as fascinated as a child with the eternally gyrating little horses in the outer hall of the Cercle. For a week things went happily.

On the eighth evening he stood in the gaming-room of the Villa watching some high play at one of the four tables. The heat was great, the air charged with over-scented femininity. A discreet murmur of talk filled the room, and above it rose the monotonous cries of the croupiers. Each table had its crowd, but the throng around the table where Jasper stood was three or four deep. The spectacle half amused, half saddened him. This horrible greed of money moved his pity. Here were those who came to Aix mainly for the gambling,—well-known London money-lenders, keepers of gaming-hells in Belgium and Mexico, elderly women in cotton blouses and with untidy hair; there were many who had come for the treatment, looking as though they had rheumatism in their bodies and gout in their souls. There were American millionaires, cool, white-bearded, urbane; American women, elaborately costumed, tapping their hundred-franc plaques nervously with the sharp points of their pink, manicured nails. There was the ubiquitous cosmopolitan Hebrew of dark and devious finance, bald-headed, hook-beaked, with great moustache helped out by whisker, with hard, evil goggle-eyes, in irreproachable dinner-jacket, with a hothouse flower in his button-hole, a diamond in his shirt-front and diamonds on his hands. There were Parisian demi-mondaines stretching out over-jewelled fingers through the rows of players to receive the red louis counters handed up from the green cloth. There were fresh, laughing English girls in simple frocks taking their innocent fill of the excitement; there were clean-limbed Englishmen; pretty Frenchwomen grown for the moment hawk-eyed, as the chances of the game wavered.

“You don’t play, Monsieur?” said a girl in broken English to Vellacot.

“No,” he replied simply. “I am afraid.”

“Of what?” she laughed.

“Of winning.”

The girl raised her eyebrows, turned away, and reached hastily over the crowd in order to stake a louis on the hand.

“You are nothing if not original, Mr. Vellacot,” said a voice by his side.

He turned, with a great leap of his heart. There stood Lady Alicia, smiling serenely, a little teasing shadow hovering over her lips.

There was no help for it. The unreckoned rheumatic gout had its revenge. He must either pack up his things and escape from Aix at once, or he must put up with a course of Lady Alicia’s society. For Aix is really only one very big hotel where everybody meets everybody else a dozen times a day. Vaguely, dazedly, the alternatives passed through Jasper’s mind. All that he could do for the moment, however, was to apostrophise her by name in tones of astonishment.

“I come here for three or four weeks most years,” she explained calmly. “Not for myself, but for the sake of my aunt, Lady Luxmoore, who is a martyr to gout, poor dear! She lives with me, you know. When did you come?”

He answered the conventional question. They exchanged the commonplaces of opinions on the charms of Aix. Again he felt the curious restfulness of this woman even when she spoke stereotyped phrases. In his fancy her voice was like the murmur of many waters. He hated himself for listening enraptured. She was dressed in a pale rose-coloured gown, high to the neck, set off at the bosom with impalpable chiffon, and there were roses under her hat nestling against her adorable light brown hair. While they discussed the chances of baccarat, he wondered why on earth she had never married; breathed under his breath an impious wish that husband and children had come between him and those eternally kind hazel eyes. She explained her presence in the rooms that evening. She had been dining at the Villa with the Seagrims, Hertfordshire people, her neighbours, who were staying at her hotel, the Europe, next to the Villa. They were over there, on the opposite side of the table.

“So you don’t play because you are afraid to win!” she said at last. “You might lose. I don’t believe in such superstition.”

“I do,” he said.

“It would be interesting to try the experiment.”

“Whom could it possibly interest?”

“Me,” said Lady Alicia.

The banker at that moment retired; whether he had won or lost neither could say. The croupier was crying the auction of the bank.

“Why not take this bank?” asked Lady Alicia. “Do.”

The bank was going for five hundred louis. He cried six. The bank was adjudged to him. An American railroad magnate recognised him, and whispered to his neighbour that he was Jasper Vellacot the Australian millionaire. Like an electric flash the news went round the crowded table. The American called banco. The cards were dealt. Jasper won. A murmur went round. There were heavy stakes in the punt, the sum in the bank made up. Jasper won on both hands. The croupier with his flat spoon lifted all the stakes into the bank. The cards were dealt again. Jasper won again. He won six times running. An enormous sum was in the bank. The cosmopolitan Hebrew happened to hold the hand for his side of the table. He staked the maximum. There was breathless excitement as Vellacot looked at his cards and then threw down a nine, the winning number. He rose, gathered his winnings into the lacquered dish, and changed them for thousand-franc bank notes at the counter. He came up to Lady Alicia with a weary expression.

“Are you interested in any charities?” he asked her.

“Many. I am on the committee of the ‘Officers’ Widows Benevolent,’ for instance.”

“Then let me implore you use this for me as you think best,” he cried, thrusting the notes into her hand. “No, no—you must. It was you who made me play. I hate it. I am a sort of magnet for gold. You can’t understand how horrible it is. I should win on a million to one chance. It is more than a superstition; it is a doom. For Heaven’s sake, give it to your officers’ widows, Lady Alicia, or to whom you will.”

She had refused at first. But the man, speaking quickly in low tones, looked almost haggard in his earnestness.

“I accept—gratefully,” she replied, putting the notes in the rose-coloured satchel slung at her wrist.

“Will you come outside for a little?” he asked. “It is suffocating here.”

She assented, and they went out into the small garden at the back of the gaming-rooms and separated from them by a narrow terrace. The garden was deserted. The cane armchairs and tables gleamed in the starlight. From the terrace came the sound of women’s voices and laughter; through the open doorway beyond, a brilliant aperture of light and moving colour, came faintly the cries of the croupiers.

“I was wrong to have made you play,” said Lady Alicia, softly. “I never thought that these things could affect anyone so deeply. You must forgive an idle woman in a light mood for not checking her caprices. The atmosphere of that horrid room demoralises one. You do forgive me?”

What could he answer? Plenary absolution mumbled apologetically was given. As a matter of fact, he explained, his unvarying luck had got on his nerves. There was in it something uncanny, necromantic.

“Like the horrible luck of a man who has sold himself to the devil,” he said on a sudden impulse.

Lady Alicia shivered a little. She had lived all her life among well-to-do people; she herself had inherited an ample fortune. She had met millionaires upon whom the burden of wealth sat lightly, who took the most human interest in the making of money. There was Judge Blenkinson of Chicago, colossally rich,—he was standing even now at the doorway rattling his chips in his hand,—who was as delighted as a boy when he had won twenty francs. But she had never come across a man like Vellacot before; his point of view was original, brought into sight startling possibilities.

The sincerity of his tone touched her. The man was, in a certain sense, a pathetic figure. Lady Alicia knew that she passed among her friends for a sympathetic woman, and she took a delicate pleasure in acting up to her reputation. She was fond of sheltering the unfortunate under the white wing of her pity, glancing down graciously now and then to see how they did; to add this multi-millionaire with mediæval superstitions to the number was a temptation. She rested her chin on her ungloved hand and reflected before she spoke.

“I think I understand,” she said. “You feel that all this wealth coming to one individual is not in the kindly order of things—that it marks you as a man apart—separates you from your kind—sets some sort of brand upon you.”

“Yes, yes. That is just it,” he said eagerly.

“If there is a supernatural agency at work, why shouldn’t it be divine instead of diabolical? Look at the enormous amount of human suffering you are able to relieve. And as for the isolation, every man and woman who fulfils a great mission must stand alone to a certain extent.” Then, conscious of the danger of platitude, she shifted her position and changed to a lighter key. “But after all, you know,” she added with a laugh, “you will find lots of people who will be glad to be nice and kind to you and to help you along your way. Only you must not refuse all their invitations.”

“I have only had one, which I was unfortunately obliged to decline,” replied Jasper, making the best of it.

“Is that a reproach?” she asked good-humouredly.

“It is a regret.”

“And a promise by implication?”

“How could it be otherwise?” he answered politely.

“I seldom have great crushes,” she explained. “My At Homes are quite small affairs,—a few friends who I hope learn to like each other. But perhaps I was audacious in asking you, you must be sought after by so many.”

“I go out very little,” he said simply. “I haven’t many friends. You see—I have enough knowledge of the world to know, and I can say it without fatuity—I could be lionised if I liked. But what is the good? If it were for the sake of my brilliant intellect, my artistic powers, my personal charm, I should feel flattered perhaps. At any rate it would be a tribute to something intrinsic in me. But simply to stalk around drawing-rooms to show myself off in a suit of gold armour—no. I neither think what these people think, nor feel what they feel, nor hope what they hope. They are glittering beings out of my world. And humbler people—well, they’re afraid of me somehow.”

“My friendship is not worth much,” said Lady Alicia, gently. “But if you care to accept it, it is yours—in all frankness.”

She rose and stood in a stately attitude, as he leaped to his feet. The stars were dazzling in the velvet blackness of the sky. Her eyes seemed to catch the soft mystery of the starlight. Again he came beneath their spell.

“I haven’t a woman friend in the wide world,” said he, holding out his hand.

They said no more, but went into the rooms, where the Seagrims joined them. He was a red-nosed, pale-eyed, hunting English squire; she a faded lady who had once been pretty. Introductions were effected; commonplace civilities interchanged. As Jasper walked up to his hotel alone, he wondered what companionship a bird of paradise could find among crows,—good, honest birds, basing all their actions upon the most respectable of corvine traditions, but plain, common crows all the same. And he put it down to the infinite, tender sympathy of the bird of paradise.

This was the beginning of a daily comradeship. He was brought into her circle of friends, as a matter of course was included in arrangements for excursions, dinners, little festivities. He hired a carriage for the Battle of Flowers, and took in it Lady Alicia, her aunt, and the Seagrims, Seagrim sitting on the box-seat. He filled the vehicle with nosegays, and losing himself in the childish sport (Lady Alicia with flushed cheeks and hair adorably ruffled was sitting opposite), became as gay as any fresh, laughing girl who pelted him from the stands.

“I’m afraid I have made a dismal idiot of myself,” he said, in comic deprecation, as they parted.

“You have been delightful,” replied Lady Alicia.

All this was wrong. He knew it. His conscience ached with hourly questionings. By what right was he making merry in this frivolous little town? By what right was he resting in the sweet presence of this woman? But his iron bands of self-repression had burst and he could not rivet them again. Life, colour, gaiety were thrust before him, and his starved heart took its fill. When he went, of afternoons, into the grounds of the Villa, and his eye, with astounding instinct, rested upon the skirt of her dress and the top of her hat as she sat in a cane armchair with her back towards him, something new and strange, like a bird, fluttered within him, and he approached with a fearful joy. It was wrong. Yet what could he do? To leave Aix was to leave his cure unaccomplished. If in the pantheistic hierarchy there is a god of rheumatic gout, he must have hugged himself in much sardonic amusement. Jasper stayed. Lady Alicia was as restful as he had imagined her to be when he had first seen her at North Ham. She had the woman’s quick intuition of the soothing, understanding, or inspiriting thing to say. He gave her his confidence like a boy, sketched out his great philanthropic schemes, discussed his chances at the by-election next month against the Radical candidate. Lady Alicia professed great interest in the election. She liked his position of Tory Democrat. It appealed to her own temperament. She construed it into a standpoint remote from the great unwashed, whence he could look down upon them with broad benignance, scattering untold blessings the while upon their heads. It would be playing her own favourite part of Deputy Providence. Unaccustomed to search the by-ways of a woman’s mind, he did not perceive the fallacious reasons for her political sympathy; which was just as well, since perception might have caused him disappointment in his Egeria. As it was, her interest charmed and inspired him.

“You are looking a different man from what you were in London,” she said one day.

The change was not entirely due to the grey flannel suit, brown shoes, and alpine hat, which became him more than the awkwardly worn frock-coat.

“You look happier and brighter,” she continued.

“A holiday is good for everyone,” said he.

“I hate this place, in a general way, but I’ll feel kindly disposed towards it for having benefited you so much.”

“That is sweet of you,” said he, smiling. “To me it has been a little Eden.”

“Forbidden fruit and all?”

“I am afraid I have been living on nothing else since—since I came.”

“Now who forbids it you?” she asked, unconscious of the little break in his last remark.

“Who but himself can forbid a man anything?” he replied. “Who but myself can forbid me to slay this waiter who I see is bringing us milk with our tea when I ordered lemons?”

He stepped agilely back from the edge of perilous depths to the rippling shallows.

“I refuse to be metaphysical,” said Lady Alicia, looking inside the teapot. “Can you tell from inspection the difference between China tea and Ceylon tea?”

He joined in the examination of the teapot. His face was close to hers. The moment’s intimacy was very sweet.

“For if it’s China, we’ll have the lemons, and if it’s Ceylon, the milk,” she added.

“I’m afraid it’s a mixture,” said he. And they both laughed at the problem presented.

The milk was retained. The waiter departed. Lady Alicia poured out the tea. Her white fingers holding a square of sugar hovered enquiringly over his cup before they dropped it in. Fingers and sugar and tea and all were forbidden fruit; only he dared not tell her so. To change the topic, he took from the table a slender volume backed with parchment, which she had brought with her, and opened it.

“I saw quite an enthusiastic review of this in ‘The Times’ yesterday,” said he.

“Did you really?” she cried eagerly. “You must show it to me. Bunny will be so glad—that is Bonamy Tredgold. He’s a dear fellow. One of my great friends. Everyone calls him Bunny. He was born so. I can’t help feeling that he is going to be a great poet,—a very great poet. ‘The Times’ has taken six months to review the book, though, which is very unfair.”

Lady Alicia sipped her tea, as if to soothe her resentment. Jasper’s eye caught a lyric printed on one page. He read it through. An elusive thought in it caused him to re-read. Then, grasping the meaning, he felt as if a message had come to him from regions far away. The lines lingered in his mind with a haunting sense of the sound of sea-shells and the moan of the sea. He looked up at Lady Alicia and met eyes full of expectancy.

“The man who wrote that is already a great poet,” said he, surprised at the little emotional catch in his voice as he handed her the open book.

“Oh, I am glad you think so,—gladder than you can imagine,” she cried, with a flush in her cheeks. “This lyric is beautiful. It is one of my favourites. I love his work because it is so sane, the work of a clear healthy mind. There is nothing morbid or decadent about Bunny.”

“How old is he?” asked Jasper.

Lady Alicia poured him out another cup of tea. “I am afraid he is quite young,” she said, helping him to sugar.

“Afraid?” he echoed. “But we should be glad. Fancy what it means! To be young, and a poet; to have all the glory of the world inside one’s soul and to be twenty! what can man ask more of God?”

“Bunny is very poor,” said Lady Alicia.

“I would give ten years of my life for an hour of his,” said Jasper. “I have read very little poetry, I’m ashamed to confess. It hasn’t come my way. But I have a curious reverence for the great poet. A curious reverence,” he repeated, leaning back in his chair with his hands behind his head. “He explains the half-hidden things that a common man knows form an integral part of himself and yet cannot grasp. Somehow he seems to be in touch with Heaven, and is given charge of the things of the spirit. It can’t possibly matter to such a man whether he is poor or rich. He commands the earth,—the honour of men and the love of women. Money can’t buy these.”

There was a moment or two of silence, during which he dreamed vague dreams. Then Lady Alicia spoke lightly.

“When you come to see me in London, Mr. Vellacot, I should like you to meet Bonamy Tredgold. You could not help loving him. He is a man—to his finger-tips. And besides you are distant connections. He is another cousin of mine, but on the Harden side. Our grandfathers were brothers.”

Jasper’s thoughts dropped from heaven to a troubled earth. This was the first time that she had re-opened the question of cousinship. Foolishly he had fancied that she had either forgotten or had accepted his disclaimer. He saw now that, in her smiling, serene way, she had taken the relationship for granted. A chilly wind seemed to rustle through the leaves. The light went out of his face. He answered mechanically. To his relief the Seagrims came up with Lady Luxmoore in search of Lady Alicia. After a few moments’ desultory talk he left them and strolled moodily towards the gaming-rooms. He dared not think,—not just yet. He would find distraction in watching the play. But in the vestibule he came across Judge Blenkinson, the American millionaire, seated happily at the sparsely attended petits-chevaux table, staking francs. The old man greeted him, rose, and taking him to a quiet spot talked to him, until it was time to dress for dinner, of deals and corners, and entertained him with the fairy tales of Chicago.

Jasper, in repayment of various hospitalities, had invited a pleasant party to dinner at the Restaurant of the Cercle. As a matter of course, Lady Alicia was there by his side. He strove to play the genial host, and was morbidly conscious of failure. His old shyness returned. The people around his table seemed to be transformed into the glittering beings of another world of whom he had once spoken to Lady Alicia. She herself, with her sweet high-bred face and easy charm of manner, seemed cruelly remote. Nervous apprehension seized him lest she should jestingly proclaim the cousinship. The meal dragged on interminably.

At last it came to an end. The party split up, moved instinctively towards the baccarat. He vowed to himself that he would not be alone with her again. But the gods, and perhaps Lady Alicia herself, thought otherwise. In spite of his blundering diplomacy, he found himself walking by her side in the rear of the others. He quickened his pace. Her fan laid a detaining touch on his arm.

“Not those hot, greedy rooms,” she said. “One can only breathe in the open air on such a sultry night. I feel I need it. Do you mind?”

“Where shall we go?”

“Oh, into the grounds, where there is most air.”

They sat on a rustic seat in the half light cast by the brightly illuminated building. She referred no more to the cousinship, but chose to be very kind and restful. He gave himself up to the tremulous delight of her presence. He felt the rhythmic beat of her fan, and every beat seemed to bring him a subtle breath of her. She led him to talk of his early days, his wanderings, his struggles. It was many years since he had spoken of them. Never had he done so to a woman. Things that had long ached in his heart were charmed away.

The hour flew by magically. She rose to depart. He accompanied her to the gate of the Hôtel de l’Europe.

“Thank you for telling me all this,” she said, as they parted. “Now I know that we are friends.”

The sympathetic pressure of her soft palm sent the blood leaping in his veins. He went away filled with her—as a man is filled with a woman in the first flush of a great love. He wandered for a time almost drunkenly about the streets of the little town.

In his hotel bedroom he stared for a long time at the image of himself in the glass. It seemed to fade into a mist, and out of the mist came a dead man’s face; and the dead face faded and the living face of the same man, as he had seen it years afterwards, appeared framed in a railway-carriage window.

He turned away with a shiver, passing his hand over his eyes like a man awaking from sleep. Then he sat by the window and looked out, over the roofs of the dim white hotels, at the mountains sharply cut against the dark luminous sky. He was sane now. He knew that he loved this woman with all his heart. And he knew that he must add the burden of this love to that other burden of his life. He faced the future with set teeth, as he had done before. He was a strong man.