Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  Gerard, after playing languidly for half an hour, pocketed his little heap of gold — the notes having been swept away by the inexorable rake, and gave himself up to observation of the players. How beautiful some of those faces were — and most of them how wicked! Here the bright black eyes and tilted nose of the soubrette type, there a Roman profile, with eyes and hair like Erebus, and there again a Saxon beauty with milky skin, pale eyes, and yellow hair. They all hailed from Paris these syrens, Lutetia being the paradise and happy hunting-ground of their kind; but they were of various nationalities, including a hard-eyed and hard-headed Englishwoman, with a plain face and a perfect figure, in a close-fitting tailor gown, severe and uncompromising amongst the sumptuous demi-toilettes of sister syrens. This lady was reputed to be richer than any other of the feminine gamesters, and was further reported to have refused her hand in marriage to a British Duke. But there was one face at the trente et quarante table which interested Gerard Hillersdon more than all this cosmopolitan beauty, the one only face which wore the typical expression of the gambler, a face haggard with intensity, pinched and worn with inward fever. It was the face of a small elderly woman, who sat at the end of the table near the dealer, and who from time to time consulted a perforated card, upon which she marked the progress of the game; a small face, with delicate aquiline features, thin lips, silvered hair, and dark eyes that seemed too large for the pinched face. There was that in the careless attire, the shabby little black lace hat, of a fashion of four or five years ago, the Spanish lace shawl hanging in slovenly folds over one shoulder, ragged and rusty with long wear, the greasy black silk gown, which told of womanhood that had done with womanly graces, and had sacrificed to one darling vice all the small follies, caprices, and extravagances of the sex. Gerard became more interested in this one player than in the fortunes of the table, so absorbed indeed that Jermyn had to touch his shoulder twice before he could attract his attention.

  “It is close upon eleven o’clock,” said Jermyn, “and the rooms shut at eleven. What are we to do with the rest of the evening? There are plenty of people here whom I know. Shall I invite a few of them, the most amusing, to your rooms?”

  “By all means. Ask them to supper. Let us make believe that the world is nearly two centuries younger, that we are living in the Regency, and that Philip of Orleans is our boon companion. Your follies cannot be too foolish nor your dissipation too wild for my humour. Let this Rock be our Brocken, and invite all the handsome witches of your acquaintance.”

  “What! even the poor pretty girl with the red mouse in her mouth? And Marguerite; what of Marguerite?”

  Gerard winced at the allusion.

  “My Marguerite has chosen her destiny,” he said. “If she were like Goethe’s Gretchen she would have chosen differently. Love would have been all in all with her.”

  Gerard strolled out of the rooms alone, while Jermyn passed quickly and quietly from group to group and briefly whispered his invitations, which were accepted with a nod or a smile. The people to whom these invitations were given belonged to a class which might adopt the motto of a certain great border clan for their own: Je suis prêt! Always ready for the chances of the moment, always ready to be entertained at anybody else’s expense, be the entertainer a Watts or a Pullinger, ripe for Portland, or a typical vulgarian of the Hibernian-American type; always ready for ortolans and champagne, for turtle and whitebait, for a saturnalia on a house-boat at Henley, or an orgie at the Continental. Always ready: ready as the vultures are ready, for dead hero or dead dog, when the scent of the carrion is wafted to them from afar off on the wings of the wind.

  Gerard strolled slowly, very slowly, up the hill to the big brand new caravansary where the electric light gave something of that elfin brilliancy which suggests the halls of Eblis. Slowly as he walked up that brief ascent, carefully graduated by artful windings for the footsteps of the weak-lunged, he was breathless when he arrived in the vestibule, and had to rest for a few minutes before he could give his orders to the manager.

  “A supper — all that there is of the best — for, say, a party of twenty. Do all you can in fifteen minutes. You can give us those little green oysters, and plenty of them. Chateau Yquem, Clos Vougeot. For champagne, well, Heidsec or G. H. Mumm — but I leave the details to you and my friend Mr. Jermyn. Be sure there are lights and flowers in the loggia. And if you can get us any music worth hearing so much the better.”

  “There are the Neapolitan singers, monsieur; I dure say we can find them.”

  “Funicoli, funicola, I suppose. C’est connu, but it will be better than nothing.”

  Before the stroke of midnight he was sitting at a supper table crowded with roses and azaleas, stephanotis and lilies of the valley, and surrounded with the fine flower of the Parisian demi-monde. What a fairy ring of bright eyes and jewels as dazzling, of eccentric and exquisite toilettes, the very newest colours in fashion’s ever-changing rainbow; a general abandonment to the delight of the hour; not vicious — for even sinners are not always bent on sin — but unrestrained! What light laughter; what frank, joyous jesting; airy sentences which in that particular environment sounded like epigrams, but which would seem witless in print; lightest talk of the Paris theatres, the dramas that had succeeded, Heaven knows why, the brilliant comedies which had gone out in the foul smoke of ridicule, failure, and disappointment; the intrigues in the great world and the half-world; the undiscovered crimes; the impending disasters! These careless speakers discussed everything, and decided everything, from dynasties to dressmakers.

  Gerard Hillersdon relished that light touch-and-go of the Celtic intellect, trained to folly, but folly spiced with wit. He had tried pleasure in London, and had found it dull and dreary. The ladies he met at the Small Hours were mostly so intent upon being ladies that they forgot to be amusing. The days were past of that fair mauvaise-langue who charmed the peerage, and whose sturdy British bon-mots were circulated over civilised Europe, plagiarised in Paris, and appropriated in Vienna. He had sought wild gaiety, and he had found decent dulness. Here, the spirit of fun was not wanting, and the joyous laughter of his guests was loud enough to drown the voices of the Neapolitans in the loggia, yea, even the twanging of their guitars. And by-and-by the Neapolitans were pushed into a corner, and bidden to twang only waltzes, and those loveliest women in Paris were revolving in rhythmical movement in the arms of the keen, clever men, of no particular profession, who constituted their travelling body-guard. Gerard took two or three turns with a lovely German girl, with a creamy complexion and innocent blue eyes, who had done little more than smile sweetly upon the contest of wit and animal spirits, and who was said to have rincé (Anglice, beggared) one of the wealthiest Jew bankers of Frankfort.

  He could not stand more than those two or three gentle turns to a slow three-time waltz, and he sat in the loggia breathless and exhausted, while the fair Lottehen tripped away to her friends and told them that it was finished with yonder crétin, who would very soon find his way to the Boulanger.

  “En attendant, he has given us a capital supper,” replied a lady who was called Madme la Marquise in society, but plain Jeannette Foy in all legal documents. “ I hope he will leave us money for mourning. Moi, je me trouve ravissante en noir!”

  Gerard enjoyed the restful solitude of the loggia for half an hour, the fun within having waxed fast and furious, and his guests being somewhat oblivious of his existence. Yes, it was a wild whirl of mirthful abandonment which verily suggested the witches’ dance upon the haunted hills. There were little spurts of malignity now and again from the lips of beauty, which were like the red mouse that dropped out of the rosy girlish mouth. Gerard watched this pandemonium from the cool seclusion of the loggia, while the Neapolitans played languidly, and even dozed over their guitars, with an occasional automatic twang. Yes, it was like a witches’ Sabbath, or like a dance of wicked spirits in the halls of Eblis. Thank Heaven, in that gaudy, many-coloured crowd, amidst the flashing of diamonds and waving of plumed
fans, and flutter of silk and lace, there was no ghastly warning vision of his absent love, that Hester whom he had loved so fondly and left so heartlessly.

  He pictured her in the wind-swept garden by the river, where the March skies were grey and gloomy, and the hyacinths were shivering in the nipping air. Why was she not with him here? Why was she not sitting by his side, they two alone, looking out over the sleeping town, the colony of white villas in the crescent-shaped hollow, the old, old steep-roofed houses and twin-towered cathedral, yonder on the jutting rock? Why were they not together in the star-shine of the balmy night; here, as they had been on the starlit river last year, all in all to each other, knowing no duty, no religion, no law but to adore each other? It was her own fault that they were parted. Had she been with him, these ribald revellers would not have been there. He would have found enough happiness in her sweet society. He had never changed to her. It was she who had changed to him.

  He was glad to have escaped from that atmosphere of remorse, glad to be on his way to his first love, glad most of all to be in this fairer world, by the side of the sea of deathless memories, glad to be under these brighter stars. Even folly was pleasant to him as a relief from too much thought. When his new acquaintances of the night remembered his existence so far as to come out into the loggia to take leave, in the faint roseate glow of approaching day, he invited the fairest and wittiest among them to breakfast with him.

  “Not to-morrow, but to-day,” he said; “Jermyn must devise new pleasures for us — picnics, excursions, by sea or mountain. I mean my brief stay here to be all holiday — if you will help me.”

  He held the fair Bavarian’s hand in his, while the bright black eyes and white teeth of the pug-nosed Comtesse Rigolboche smiled down upon him.

  “I had booked my place in the train de luxe for to-morrow,” said Rigolboche, “but I’ll change the date, and stay here as long as you do. We’ll all help you to conjugate the verb rigoler. Rigolons, rigolez.”

  The other voices took up the word, and the revellers departed to a chorus of Rigolons, rigolez.”

  Mr. Jermyn was equal to the occasion. He ordered dejeuners and dinners. He elicited the talents of the chef, he taxed the resources of the well-found hotel. He kept the telegraph wires employed between Monte Carlo and Nice, Marseilles, and Paris, and choicest dainties were expressed along the line. Alternating with messages that involved life and health, fortune, all that is gravest in the destiny of man, flew orders for Perigord pies or monster lobsters, Chasselas grapes. Alpine strawberries, oysters, ortolans, quails. Everything Jermyn touched was successful, and that week at Monte Carlo was a triumph of gourmandise and wild amusement. The hills echoed with the songs of the revellers; the sea waves danced to the music of their laughter as they sailed round the point of Rocque Brune, or lay becalmed in the sheltered Gulf of Ospedaletti. The weather was exquisite — that perfect atmosphere of spring-time on the Riviera which makes one forget that those lovely shores have ever been visited by mistral and sirocco, rain and sleet. It was earthquake weather, Justin Jermyn said, remembering how fair had been that February which was startled by an appalling shock of earthquake. He told them that this glad, beautiful shore was preparing itself for just such another convulsion, but the joyous band laughed him to scorn.

  If a great pit were to open in this mountain and swallow us all alive I should not care,” said Rigolboche, emptying her glass with a piquant turn of her wrist and small neat hand. “J’ai vecu. I have lived my life.”

  Hillersdon sighed. How lightly this woman thought of life, while he counted each vanishing hour, and clung with longing desire to the remnant of his days, and could not resign himself to the inevitable end, could not bring himself to say, “I have lived, and am content to die.”

  Lottchen, the Bavarian girl, had attached herself to him with devotion since that first waltz when she had spoken of him with such brutal scorn. She had gone from scorn to pity, and pity had deepened into love. In all their revellings she tried to be near him, hung upon his footsteps, sought his society. Her soft, clinging ways touched his heart, but that heart was cold to all her charms. She was no more to him than a pretty child by the roadside, holding up a handful of flowers as his carriage drove by.

  Rigolboche, too, the reckless and brilliant Rigolboche, who spent more money and who owed more than any lady of her set, tried all the keenest weapons of her wit upon the deux-fois millionaire — des millions sterling, bien entendu — but the wit of the Parisienne had no more power to fascinate Gerard Hillersdon than the blonde loveliness of the Bavarian. It may be that he had outlived the power of loving; that in his intensified anxiety for his own life all other personalities had become indifferent. If he was looking forward eagerly to reunion with Edith Champion it was because to that reunion he hoped to recover the freshness of his vanished youth, to become once again hopeful and full of energy, as in the days that were gone.

  The spirits which Jermyn had assembled served to amuse the man who felt himself doomed, and that was much. That circle of bright faces shut out the dark images which were wont to press round him when he was alone. That festal companionship made thought impossible; and when the night of revelry ended, mostly on the edge of day, Gerard Hillersdon was so thoroughly wearied that he slept more soundly than he had done for along time.

  There was pleasure, too, in the knowledge that he was spending his money. The more lavish the entertainment, the more extravagant the feast, the better was he pleased. Rarely had the boatmen of la Condamine fared as they fared with him. It was his delight to see them rioting on the surplus of the banquet, devouring quails at a mouthful, swilling the costliest wines, digging their rude clasp-knives into pies that had come by express train from Chevet. He flung gold pieces about with the lavish bounty of an Indian Rajah. The waiters at the hotel fawned upon him as if he had been an emperor; the manager addressed him in hushed accents as if he had been a god.

  He spent an hour at the rooms every evening. He liked to see his syrens play, and he supplied them with the funds for their ventures at the trente et quarante tables. For his own part he played no more after the first evening. The game did not interest him, but the players did. So he moved about quietly, or stood in the background, and watched the faces in the lamplight.

  The little elderly woman with the dark haggard eyes was generally in the same place near the dealer, her bonnet always badly put on and carelessly tied, her lean, ungloved hands not conspicuously clean. Gerard derived a sinister pleasure from his observations of this woman. She was a study in morbid anatomy. All the forces of her being were concentrated upon the card-table. There were nights when she was radiant, glorified, as if some supernal lamp were burning behind the dull olive complexion, and flashing through the dark Italian eves. There were other nights when her face had a marble fixity, which would have been like death had not the unceasing movement of the anxious eyes made that marble mask more awful than death. Gerard found after a time that this woman was conscious of being observed, that, in spite of the concentration of all her facilities upon the gaming table, she had a restlessness under scrutiny, a nervous apprehension which showed itself from time to time in birdlike glances in his direction, or in an angry movement of the head or shoulders. He tried, perceiving this, to disguise his interest, and watched her furtively, hoping to escape observation. He had noted that on the thin black cord on which her pince-nez hung she had one of those horn-shaped corals which the Italian peasant deems a charm against the evil eye, and he had noted how as he passed near her on two or three occasions she had clutched this talisman in her skinny fingers, automatically, as if moved by an instinct of self-defence.

  It was his last night at Monte Carlo, and the eve of a water picnic which was to signalise his departure, and was to be the bouquet in the series of entertainments organised by Justin Jermyn. He had spent half an hour at a jeweller’s on the hill, and had chosen farewell gifts for the syrens, including a superb diamond hoop for the slim round wrist of Lottchen, in who
se eyes he had seen tears of real tenderness yesterday when a violent access of his cough had left him speechless and exhausted. For every tear he would give her a diamond of purest water, and yet would think her tears poorly recompensed.

  He went down to the rooms for the last time that season. Would he ever see those rooms again, he wondered, at any season? Were not all seasons fast closing for him: or would science, aided by wealth, patch up these feeble lungs of his, and spin out the frail thread of existence yet a few more years in the summer lands of earth? He would go anywhere; to the South Seas, to the West Indies, to the Himalayas; anywhere only to live; and he told himself that Edith Champion would deem no land a place of exile where they two could live together. She had no other ties, no superior claim of duty, or exaggerated filial love. Her sacrifice to her husband’s manes and to society’s good opinion had been made. Three-quarters of her year of widowhood were spent, and when she saw what need he had of a wife’s protecting companionship, she would doubtless waive the remnant of that ceremonial year, and marry him off-hand, at the Florentine Legation.