Desolate splendour

AS the door clanged behind his visitors, Rockarvon roused himself.

“Send the Marchesa here and order the carriage.”

She loomed into his presence, pale, with remote eyes and hands that teased eternally the thin, gold chain.

“You can go now, Laura,” said the earl. “Donchet will give you your money. I can’t send you home, as I need the carriage. Good afternoon. I’ll let you know when I want you again.”

She bobbed her head submissively and faded from sight. Her employer, carried by his faithful negroes to his dressing-room, was arrayed for driving. In a short while, wrapped in furs and wearing a black felt hat, wide-brimmed and pulled low over his eyes, he was tucked in the corner of his brougham. The sun had vanished behind layers of cold, grey cloud; a sulky wind gathered the dust and rubbish from the roads and flung them listlessly against the housefronts; behind steamy windows the café lights began to gleam. Along the Boulevard St. Germain, Rockarvon’s brougham on its rubber tyres rolled stealthily; then took a side street to the right, another to the left, threaded the noisy chaos of the Rue de Rennes and again mounted. The earl shrank into the cushions and shivered. He felt the wheels stumble over unequal paving; saw as they passed slowly by the window, the dirty, plaster housefronts; the small cafés; the cavernous mouths of fuel shops, that mark poor quarters of the town. The road began to fall rapidly. Through the tangle of old streets and crumbling rookeries that lie to the south eastward of the Lycée Henri IV, the brougham picked its way. At last it drew up at the porte cochère of what once had been a fine hôtel. The footman opened the door and helped his master to the ground. Thus supported, Rockarvon climbed the steps and made his way into the flagged hall that led from the street into an inner court. A door on the right, pushed open by the footman, admitted the callers to what had the appearance of a curio-shop. From behind a chest of drawers, piled high with books, and glass, and miscellaneous oddments, rose a small Jew, bald and spectacled. He greeted his visitor with the pliable servility of his kind. Rockarvon, deposited in a chair, dismissed his servant.

“I shan’t be very long,” he said in French. “Tell Jacques to walk the horses to the Place and back.” Then, turning to the dealer gave him belated greeting. “Have you the book?” he asked.

The little man spread apologetic hands.

“Alas, milord, it has not come. I wrote to my brother most urgently. But the postal authorities have been watchful lately. Perhaps he is taking precautions. He will not want to get into trouble, milord, and the price was very low for such a rarity.”

“Don’t be a fool, Léon! The price was more than plenty. And it’s been paid. When I pay, I like to have my purchase. What are you doing to hasten matters?”

“I wrote to my brother, milord,” repeated the little Jew plaintively. “It is two days to Brescia. The castle where the book lies is many kilometres from the city. And it is but a short week since I wrote.”

Rockarvon waved away these serviceable excuses.

“If you are playing any game with me, my friend, you will be sorry for it. Mark that. I know a good deal about your precious business, Léon. More than most people. See to it that the book reaches me four days from now. You must send some one for it, if necessary. And now have you anything else to show me, to compensate me for my disappointment?”

With a look of conspiratorial salacity, the dealer raised a dirty forefinger. “Ah! That reminds me. I have something. Something to show you, milord; to sell you, alas, no, for they are as good as sold. But very curious, very curious indeed. Never in my experience have I seen anything of the kind. You will be interested, milord, of that I am sure....”

While he spoke, he was rummaging among the litter of packages, boxes, pictures and tousled textiles that strewed a table in the corner of the shop. Rockarvon, paying no heed to the wheedling murmur that rose above the clatter of search, let his keen eyes stray about the room. They fell on a dirty blotting-pad and dust-caked inkstand that occupied a small clean space on a bureau flap to the left of the stove. This was Léon’s desk, his counting-house, his board-room. From where Rockarvon sat, the blotter was easily visible and, on the blotter, an envelope. More from vanity in the exercise of his powers of long sight than from idle curiosity, the earl read the superscription. With a quickening of interest he re-read it. “Mrs. Rowena Plethern,” he read. “Morvane, Sawley, Gloucestershire, Angleterre.” Then he turned toward the dealer who, holding in his hand a small cardboard box, was shuffling his way across the room again.

“I have found them, milord. Now, look at them, look at the beautiful things and tell me if they are not unique!”

Rubbing his hands in gluttonous complacency, he stood back to watch the effect of his merchandise upon his noble client. Rockarvon took from the box a pack of cards. They were all illustrated, even the number-cards being expressed with varied pictorial ingenuity. At the first glance, the observer’s eye brightened. Carefully he went through the pack, from the first to the last, examining each in detail, saying no word. Then he replaced them in their box and looked lazily at the expectant Jew.

“They are something quite new to me,” he said. “I like them. What is the price?”

Léon’s hands waved agitatedly above his head.

“But, milord, I told you! I cannot sell them to you! I have offered them to a client who will certainly buy them. My clients trust me to watch their specialties. It would harm——”

“Whatever your client is paying, I will double,” interrupted the earl. “Do you accept?”

Torn between fear, avarice and business sense, the antiquarian Hebrew wrung his hands once more.

“Cursed unfortunate that I am, milord, to displease you twice in one short quarter of an hour! But I dare not disappoint my client. I write; I have a reply—virtually an order for the cards—and a request for the price; I write the price. The client will come for them, will come all the way on purpose to fetch them!”

“All the way?” cut in Rockarvon. “All what way?”

“I did not mean——” began Léon hastily.

“Yes you did, man, you said and you meant all the way. You are selling these abroad. Tell me to what country.”

For a moment the natural secretiveness of the shopkeeper battled with the awe in which Léon held his inquisitor. At last, subdued by the menacing gleam of those compelling eyes, he yielded.

“They are going to England, milord.”

“England?” queried Rockarvon. “I only know of two people in England who would buy such things as those.”

“Yes?” murmured the dealer.

“Only two,” repeated Rockarvon thoughtfully. “One is Sir Laurence Clitheroe. He lives in London. The other is a lady, Mrs. ——. Dear me, I forget the name. What is the name, Léon? Surely you know it?”

“No, milord,” said the Jew obstinately. “I do not know whom you mean.”

Rockarvon changed the subject; asked to see some engravings; talked at length and at random on collecting themes. The little dealer, who had something of the true artistry of his race under the unsavoury crust of his disreputable peddling, warmed to the discussion. At last:

“You are a remarkable man, Léon,” said the earl kindly. “I don’t think there is an antiquarian subject or an antiquarian authority in the whole world you do not know something of.”

Smirkingly the Hebrew ancient disclaimed abnormal expertise.

“Milord is too kind. But my business brings me into touch with many things and many people. That is what interests me. Human nature is alike in every country and I make it my trade to serve human nature.”

“By the way,” observed Rockarvon, as though an idea had freshly crossed his mind. “Perhaps you can help me. I want to get into touch with an English lady, a collector who wrote some notes in an English artistic paper on a subject that I happen to know something of. But I have lost the magazine and cannot recall the name. It was something like “Plender.” Do you know anyone with such a name?”

The recent compliments of his distinguished client had driven all memory of their earlier conversation from Léon’s head. Also he felt a desire still further to ingratiate himself with this threatful lord, who had commended his talents and his knowledge.

“Was the name ‘Plethern,’ milord?”

Rockarvon considered, as though in uncertainty.

“Plethern—Plethern—it might have been. Tell me something about this Plethern. Perhaps that will remind me....”

“There is a Mrs. Plethern who does some business with me. She has a great collection——” He broke off. The earl caught him up sharply.

“A collection of what, Léon?”

The little Jew saw that he had gone too far to retreat.

“Of playing cards, milord.”

The earl nodded contentedly.

“I thought so, my friend. Now listen to me. When is this Mrs. Plethern coming for her cards? I ask because I am particularly anxious to make her acquaintance. I do not want to seize her pretty cards from her, Léon. Set your mind at rest on that score. Rarities should always go where is already a nucleus of their kind; that is the essence of collecting altruism. I have no cards and I will not at this late hour start looking for them. But I want to meet your Mrs. Plethern. You will arrange it, Léon? You will let me know when she is coming? If you contrive a pleasant acquaintance between us, I will not forget it. Well?”

Relieved at a request so reasonable, and too experienced to wonder why, for a simple introduction between clients, he should receive monetary reward, the dealer eagerly undertook to do what was required of him. What he had dreaded was insistence on Rockarvon’s part that the playing cards be withdrawn from their virtual purchaser. Only the irritation of the earl at being kept waiting for the book he coveted had tempted the cautious Léon to the unusual course of showing one client goods really the property of another. He had repented his rashness—until this startling moment when it seemed that he had unwittingly done himself a good turn after all. Rubbing his hands, he purred over his involuntary acumen.

As he drove home, Rockarvon was no less satisfied with his afternoon’s achievement. Certainly fortune was with him, thus to discover a Plethern whose tastes were of a kind to suggest at least broad-mindedness. Who ‘Mrs. Rowena Plethern’ was, he had no idea. His memories of the Rockarvon-Morvane law-suit were vague at best and even during its continuance no women had figured among his known adversaries. But this Rowena Plethern lived at Morvane; collected playing cards of an unusual type; was due in Paris shortly. The earl was not the man to let slip opportunities. It was more than possible that something might be made of broad-minded Mrs. Plethern. He had a score to pay against Morvane, whose master had insulted him. Never would he forgive that cool, contemptuous scrutiny, the scornful words: “You want to marry Viola!” Surely the lady-expert in erotica came providentially within his reach. Rockarvon stirred pleasurably among his furs. He had hopes beyond those of mere revenge; hopes of another kind. Closing his eyes, he called to his mind’s vision the white shapeliness of Viola, her movements lithe and balanced as a boy’s.

§ 2

When, to her campanile, came an offer from the ingenious Léon of a unique pack of hand-painted playing cards—Italian, eighteenth century and very curious—Mrs. Plethern felt the true thrill of the collector. With all her unholy preference for salacity, she was a genuine amateur of cards, knew her subject thoroughly and spared no pains to add rarities to her already numerous examples. The opportunity of securing a pack so desirable as, reading between the cautious lines of Léon’s letter, she believed this one to be, was too precious to be lost. By return of post she wrote, buying the cards in principle, asking for particulars of price and adding a note to the effect that she would come herself to fetch the treasures, once the negotiation was concluded.

A journey of the kind, though rare with her, was not so rare as she pretended publicly. The lengthy absences from home of her eldest son had in the past made trips to London and abroad easy of secret practice. Wherefore Bathsheba, ordered to pack her mistress’ luggage and her own for a brief stay in Paris, felt surprise as little as she did pleasure, being of a temperament that reacted only to the distasteful, and that was usually the unexpected.

It was the twentieth of December when they left Victoria. Three o’clock on the afternoon of the twenty-first found them in Léon’s shop. By half-past three transaction and incidental compliments were over, the cards were in Mrs. Plethern’s bag, the money neatly folded in the dealer’s wallet. As the old lady rose to go, the shop door opened and a tall, limp figure, supported on a servant’s arm, crawled into the room. Léon bustled forward.

“Good afternoon, milord. I hope you are bearing the winter cold fairly well? Madame Plethern,” turning to his earlier customer, “I congratulate myself on the good fortune of this encounter. This gentleman, who honours me seldom enough, alas!——”

Rockarvon interrupted. His voice was singularly ingratiating.

“Madame, I am charmed!” He bowed. “If you will forgive me, I will sit. I am not strong and standing tires me. You may go, Jean.” The servant left the shop and during the pause incidental to his going the earl, carefully but unobtrusively, studied the features of his so promising acquaintance. He saw a pale face, large-featured, secret-eyed. He saw pale hair, flecked with white, under the conventional, black bonnet of old ladyhood. With the closing of the door after the departing Jean, he spoke again:

“I must explain, madame. Léon here, from whom occasionally I have made purchases for my collections, showed me a week or two ago some very curious playing cards. I was delighted with them; indeed—and Léon will confirm it!—I almost coveted them myself. But the good man is loyal to his clients; he refused even to speak of parting with them. I am an old acquaintance and I think a good customer—am I right, Léon?”—the delighted Hebrew bowed and scraped—“and eventually, knowing my interest in the obscure but fascinating department of the arts to which these cards belong, he told me for whom they were destined. Further, that their owner would shortly come to Paris and take them home with her. It is to my importunity, madame—the importunity of a collector—that you must ascribe my intrusion. May I hope for pardon?”

Mrs. Plethern had listened to this rhetorical address with heavy immobility. As, however, she came to understand that this ornate stranger was an art-collector; more, was an amateur of the same secret abnormalities as she herself enjoyed; she warmed to the prospect of congenial discussion of their mutual interests. The true collector, if he finds a fellow-maniac with tastes that range conveniently with his, asks for no voucher of character, hardly for name and standing, but engages forthwith in technical reminiscence and exchange of views. Rowena Plethern had this fine heedlessness of the collecting brotherhood. As Rockarvon finished speaking, she smiled her queer, crooked smile and answered:

“I am very pleased to meet a colleague. They are fine cards. Léon did well to keep them for me. I shall remember it in his favour”—once more the dealer shuffled with miserly delight—“also that he gave me the chance of your acquaintance, sir.”

Rockarvon expressed his pleasure at the lady’s courtesy.

“You are for long in Paris, madame?”

“I had meant to stay over Christmas. There are one or two other matters I would like to see about.”

“Then we could have a collectors’ talk some time? At my house, if you would honour me? I have several interesting and—er—amusing things. A number of engravings—Léon sold me some of them; they are curious engravings, are they not, Léon?”

The Jew cast eyes to heaven. He doubted whether Petersburg with its great collections, or the royal palace in Sofia could show such curious, such extremely curious engravings as those in milord’s house.

“I am afraid,” continued the earl with his mirthless smile, “that I have no playing cards! It is a genre I have never studied. But an art-lover finds interest in art of every kind. Permit me, madame, my card....”

A shock indeed for Mrs. Plethern, an unexpected, cruel shock! “Earl of Rockarvon!” That man of all ill-doers in an evil world! She did not move; she held the card in her black-gloved hand and read and read again those sudden, staggering words. What should she do? What could she do, in the pass to which reckless love of strange antiquity had lured her? And in the instant of perplexity there crept into her brain a question. Was this acquaintance, seeking something else than mere artistic interest? What did he want of her? She hesitated no longer. She would visit him and read the enigmas of his mind and then, the Devil willing, play her destined part. She acted admirably the pause of ordinary surprise.

“You must excuse me,” she said. “I had no idea—how very curious——!” Then with her usual, dull monotony of speech: “It would be interesting to see your things. To-morrow evening——?”

He was weaving deft apologies for startling her.

“I assure you, Mrs. Plethern, nothing was farther from my mind. Indeed I had for the moment forgotten our—what shall I say?—geographical connection. My head was full of the enthusiasms of my hobby. To-morrow evening will suit me admirably. If you will dine with me? At eight o’clock?” He bowed with ceremony. “I appreciate your kindness, Mrs. Plethern. You have a cab at the door, or may I drive you to your hotel?”

“Thank you. My cab is waiting. Good day, Lord Rockarvon. To-morrow night at eight o’clock. Good day, Léon. You will keep me in mind?”

“But, of course, madame, of course! Anything that would suit madame’s taste that comes into my hands....”

He trotted beside her to the door, helped her to her cab, shut her in and hurried to his shop again, muttering with pleasure, twisting his body into knots of gratified humility.

§ 3

In the collector’s cabinet, the most private of the many private rooms in the earl’s Paris mansion, Rockarvon and Rowena Plethern played the sorry game of allies that need but do not trust each other. About them, leaning against the walls, littered on floor and table, jutting from drawers and cupboards, were specimens of the evil products of evil minds of every land and every date. The earl had concealed no treasure of his enfer privé; the lady had recoiled from nothing, had indeed licked her pale lips to see such miracles. And gradually they had come to talk of the real purpose of their meeting.

“The girl pleases me,” he said at last, “and when things please me, I am accustomed to have them. I am too old to change my habits.”

“You offered Rockarvon to my son?” the old lady queried.

He nodded.

“I suppose I am stupid,” she went on, “but the bait seems curious. It invites rejection, such a proposal.”

“I am not so clumsy as you think me, Mrs. Plethern. Putting the matter more exactly, I offered the girl a title and my absurd wilderness in Gloucestershire. It remained for him to do the rest.”

“The rest?”

He was puzzled by her obtuseness. Seemingly there was an element she did not realize. Perhaps a change of approach would make the matter clear.

“Naturally,” he said, with a careless laugh, “I lay no stress on regularity. I am not a marrying man. But the whim took me to try conventional decency. It didn’t pay; it seldom does.”

“More than a whim, Lord Rockarvon; an instinct for success, though you may not have known it. You would not have caught your bird by the more usual wiles. She is too clever.”

“I was concerned rather to catch the bird’s keeper. One does not rove Europe stealing heiresses these degenerate days without some form of sanction.”

“Heiresses!” The words came with enlightening venom. He caught a glimpse of his companion’s mind. She had been very cautious, very unrevealing, but there was no overlooking the bitterness of this exclamation.

“Is there an entail on your son’s estate?” he asked, with the polite curiosity of friendly interest.

She shook her head.

“For several reasons I prevented one.”

“Your sons—they are twins? I thought so. I have not the pleasure of the younger’s acquaintance, but his name—in general—is familiar to me. He must be a very clever man.”

(Insidious earl! How cunningly disposed, those half-lies! How skilfully deciphered, the heavy features of his guest!)

“James is a wonderful man!” she said warmly, tricked into self-betrayal by maternal love, as but a day ago she had been tricked by love of playing cards. “He could do anything, be anything, if only——”

Rockarvon laid a sympathetic hand upon her arm.

“I understand,” he said softly. “You are to be pitied. How often chance of birth baulks merit! The case is singularly hard when there are twins. He has children, your younger son?”

Mrs. Plethern praised Christopher, lengthily, extravagantly. He heard her out, then risked a throw.

“Until this girl came, the boy you speak of was the natural heir?”

She nodded. There was a brief silence.

“I will tell you now,” said Rockarvon, “why I made to your eldest son the proposal I did. The information should be useful. You are perhaps unaware that during recent years constant and ingenious attempts have been made to induce me to sell my land in Gloucestershire. They came from many different quarters, but I have clever lawyers and they traced back the various démarches. All originated at Morvane. You see the significance?”

“At Morvane! I——” she was still fogged; her mind brooded over James and Christopher; Charles and his possible ambitions held as yet no corner of that violent, tenacious brain.

“At Morvane,” he repeated slowly. “At Morvane. Come, Mrs. Plethern, surely it is obvious?”

She raised her dull, shadowy eyes to his. Slowly she gripped the fringes of his meaning.

“He wants Rockarvon——?” she mumbled.

“Wants it! Mrs. Plethern, he craves for it as he craves for nothing else! I know the type—they are land-mad. Let us respect them, for in their way they are collectors like ourselves. Your son is obstinately set upon my valley. It amused me to keep him dangling. It even amused me to let it rot, as further provocation to his mania. Can you imagine that one of your neighbours owns packs of valuable playing cards; he does not care for them, uses them for nursery games, tears and scatters them, but will not sell? Can you imagine that? How you would hate him! How your covetousness would grow and deepen! Something of the kind has been happening to your son during the last ten or fifteen years. It tickled me. I like being hated. I kept him on the string of his own greedy longing.”

While he was speaking, Mrs. Plethern leant forward with increasing excitement. Charles had been nicely tortured; this man had fancies after her own heart.

“You did well!” she broke in. “I like to see opportunities well used.”

He bowed.

“It was a diversion,” he said airily, “and I suppose I should have kept it up, had I not thought of a more alluring one. When I saw that girl, the idea came to me. Quid pro quo. I would release him from the ache of his desires—for a consideration.”

She rubbed her hands with slow delight.

“The consideration being that he release you from the ache of yours! Good—very good!”

“The fool chose to stand on his dignity. He also chose to be offensive. So he lost the opportunity of Rockarvon. But I do not feel sure I have lost my opportunity”—a pause—“have I, Mrs. Plethern?”

Rising, she smoothed the black silk of her gown; taking a statuette from the bureau at her side she turned it lovingly in her hands; set it down again; walked the length of the room, brow wrinkled, eyes veiled with thought. Then she turned to him.

“No,” she said slowly. “I think not; not necessarily.”

And she asked that Bathsheba be sent for from the servants’ quarters and a carriage to drive her home. At parting she shook hands.

“I will think and write to you. Better if I could talk to you. Will you be in London?”

“In such a cause, Mrs. Plethern, I will be anywhere. Let us say three weeks from now, in London. I will send you an address.”

He kissed her hand. A negro conducted her downstairs and to the door. She drove thoughtfully through midnight streets to her hotel.