Idols

CHAPTER XXII

An idle, average sensual man, and an idle woman from whom wantonness emanates like a perfume, cannot meet each other every day for a couple of weeks without finding themselves progressing by leaps and bounds in mutual intimacy. The flesh speaks, the world is complaisant, and the devil leers beatifically. The attraction which Gerard first felt towards the transfigured money-lender’s daughter developed quickly into a more vivid sentiment. Except that of an old club acquaintance whom he had run across in the gaming-rooms, he had no other society than Minna’s in Monte Carlo. She became his occupation. The circle of friends to whom she introduced him aroused his British contempt. He was as much out of touch with the overdressed cosmopolitan ladies as with the excessively polite cosmopolitan men. He treated them all civilly enough, with a certain uncomfortable indifference, when he met them in her company, but avoided them studiously when he was alone.

Minna held a reception every Tuesday night at the Casa Benedetta. At first, Mrs. Delamere had tried to put her in the way of knowing good people. She had worked and intrigued most sedulously, and had been successful in inducing a certain set to take up her charge. But seeing Minna play recklessly with all kinds of fire, they dropped her, out of regard for their own fingers. Minna called them Tartuffes and Pecksniffs, uttering scornful doubts as to the honour of the men and the chastity of the women, whereupon Mrs. Delamere shrugged her shoulders and began to experiment upon the next strata of society. These, by turns, refusing to support Minna, she had come upon the riff-raff. And the riff-raff of Monte Carlo is a very curious and heterogeneous formation. No one knows its past or its future. The men have perfect manners, the women perfect complexions. The ones are worth the others.

Minna’s receptions were brilliant enough. They were distinguished by animated conversation, excellent music, and irreproachable champagne. But to the stolid Philistine perception of Gerard Merriam there was an indefinable air of something wrong, such as strikes a guest at a perfectly well-conducted gathering at an expensive private lunatic asylum. When the ladies of the house were engaged with their guests, he lounged, hands in pockets, by the door leading on to the loggia, and surveyed the scene stonily. They were a damned lot, he murmured to himself; and added a couple of uncompromising Saxon vocables indicating the respective categories under which the men and women fell. Disrepute, as practised by foreigners, is a tawdry and contemptible thing in respectable though immoral British eyes.

Thus he stood one Tuesday evening some three weeks after his meeting with Minna. The room was brilliantly lighted. In a corner sat an eager crowd around a little roulette-table. On divans and easy chairs the remainder of the company laughed and chatted. Minna was the centre of a little group of men, two bald, scrupulously attired, wearing ribbons in their button-holes. One was telling a story. By the guffaws that followed, and by the way in which Minna held her fan before her face, Gerard guessed its nature. He glowered at her. As French was spoken, which he understood very badly, he felt an added sense of outrage.

A stout lady in mauve and rubies left the roulette and came over to Minna.

“Present to me your tame bear, my dear,” she said in a shrill falsetto. “He is sulking because no one is making him dance.”

Minna laughed, glanced at Gerard and met his lowering look. Then she bit her lip. It was ridiculous for a man to behave so foolishly. She rose; resigned her seat to the lady, and walked with her slow, languid step to Gerard.

“Madame Raborski is dying to make your acquaintance.”

“It would be a good thing to let her die,” said Gerard.

“Well, she will soon. Grant her this last favour.”

Annoyance screwed his features. “I can’t talk inanities to rouged women,” he said.

“You can talk them to me.”

“You’re not rouged. If you were, I shouldn’t.”

“I don’t think you ought to speak in this way of my friends,” she remarked.

“I suppose I am rude, and I beg your pardon. But they’re not your friends. They are a troupe of mountebanks whom you engage to entertain you. Come out on to the loggia.”

“And catch my death of cold? No, thank you.”

“You have scarcely spoken a word to me all the evening.”

“I speak to those who amuse me.”

“With blackguardly French stories.”

“That’s my affair.”

“I don’t like to see those fellows leering at you,” he said, sulkily.

To such a point of intimacy had three weeks’ intercourse brought them. Minna broke into the low notes of her laughter.

“Why shouldn’t they? It pleases them and doesn’t hurt me. And vice versa. Also, you know, I’m not a monopolisable woman. If you’ll go and talk nicely to Madame Raborski, I’ll let you give me some supper.”

“All right,” he said; “where is the siren?”

She conducted him to the group, performed the introduction. He bowed with the Englishman’s stiffness. The other men politely made place for him. He sat down and endured a quarter of an hour’s anguish. Minna joined the roulette-players, where Mrs. Delamere was staking on even chances, according to an infallible system in which one only plays every tenth or fifteenth game. It suited her purse and protracted the excitement. After winning a few hundred francs, Minna released Gerard from Madame Raborski, who had been trying to create an impression. But the supper-room was full; the hostess became the centre of flowery compliment, delivered with much uplifting of shoulders and spreading of thin bejewelled hands. Gerard chafed and felt his own great fingers tingle. He was not a man accustomed to the amenities of society. During his domesticated days, he went out with Irene only under compulsion. Women bored him, save those whom he appropriated to himself. Then he preferred seclusion with the chosen individual. Among these easy-mannered adventurers and satirical, sharp-witted women, he seemed as uncouth as a bear in a wilderness of monkeys. The comparison was Minna’s, in an after talk with Mrs. Delamere. Consciousness of his lack of adaptability did not soothe his temper. He felt annoyed with himself for coming. “Don’t look so glum,” whispered Minna. “Give me some of that pâté and look after the truffles.” He helped her solemnly, and brought the plate to the corner of the table where she was sitting. Then stood by her, at attention, while she jested with her neighbours. When she had finished, he escorted her to the salon, where she left him to join a handsome woman, in a very low dress, who was playing the piano. Mrs. Delamere, who had abandoned the roulette-table, took pity on him, and sat down with him on a divan against the wall. Being an Englishwoman of his own class, she could make herself companionable, and draw him on to his own subjects, the fortune he had made, the big game he had shot. She had known Freewintle, the mighty hunter with whom he had been associated, and gave satirical sketches of his family history. She was an authority on genealogies, a subject which, by one of the intellectual freaks not uncommon in men of Gerard’s type, interested him greatly. It is a curious fact, but a true one, that all genealogists are related to one another. Mrs. Delamere conclusively proved her connection with the Norfolk Merriams through the Freemantles. They were all East Anglians.

“You have done me good, Mr. Merriam,” she remarked. “I had almost forgotten that there was such a thing as a county family in existence. Look at these people here—I suppose they belong to somebody—but to whom?”

“If they had mothers, it’s about all,” replied Gerard, laughing. Mrs. Delamere had put him into a good humour. Soon afterwards he took his leave.

“Shall I see you to-morrow?” he asked Minna, while bidding her good-bye.

“Perhaps—I don’t know. If I go over to Monte Carlo you may meet me there. There are too many burdens in life to add to them voluntarily by making arrangements for the morrow.”

“You are looking tired,” he said. “A course of late hours and stuffy rooms becomes unhealthy if it’s overdone. Let me take you for a drive to-morrow.”

“With Mrs. Delamere?”

“No. You alone. I can get a decent turn-out in Nice, I suppose. I’ll call for you at two o’clock.”

“Where are you staying?”

“At the Grande Bretagne.”

“I’ll send you word in the morning. It depends how I feel.”

“I shall be wretchedly disappointed if you don’t come.”

“Will you?” she said with her lazy intonation. “Nous verrons.”

Later, when the guests had gone, Mrs. Delamere began to sound Gerard’s praises. He was a thorough Englishman, intelligent, masculine. Not like the effeminate creatures who had never seen a gun go off in their lives or ridden anything more spirited than a Turbie donkey. He was like a colossus amid these little men, she said, with a vague reminiscence of Shakespeare. It was then that Minna snapped out her bear and monkey comparison. She was thoroughly weary, lay back exhausted and spiritless in a chair, and regarded Gerard’s apologist with an air of tired resignation. The room was hot and stale with the breaths of many people, and the refuse of many perfumes.

“Bear or not,” replied Mrs. Delamere, drawing some crumpled and greasy bank notes from the pocket of her black silk dress, and delicately folding them, “I like to meet an honest, healthy English gentleman again. And I pity the man. I always pity men whose wives go wrong.”

“Pearls before swine,” said Minna, listlessly. “Oh, I am not so hard as that upon the women.”

“You mistake my meaning,” said Minna. “He is the hog.”

Mrs. Delamere looked up surprised. “I thought you disliked her so. And you certainly have been encouraging him.”

Minna drew her body together in a kind of shudder, and threw out her hand in a gesture of repulsion. “He gives me the creeps!” she said.

Mrs. Delamere did not reply. She rose and gathered her gloves and fan from a table where they were lying, and then came calmly up to Minna’s chair. “You are overdone. It is time for bed.”

She was not without kindly instincts. In her placid, well-bred way, she stooped and put her arm beneath Minna’s and helped her to rise. She stood for a moment without withdrawing her arm.

“You are leading a weary life, my poor child,” she said.

Minna looked at her for a minute. Her lips quivered.

“Oh! a hell of a life,” she whispered.

And to Mrs. Delamere’s consternation, the girl gave one or two little convulsive sobs and, turning swiftly, burst into miserable crying upon her shoulder.

“I wish I were dead. I can’t find peace or happiness anywhere. It is a hell of a life!”

The elder woman soothed her as best she could. Eventually Minna dried her eyes, kissed, for the first time, her friend’s faded cheek, and went out of the room.

“Why is it,” said Mrs. Delamere to herself, “that when a woman wants to go to the devil, she always does so by water?”

Gerard was up early the next morning, and after enquiries went in search of a respectable turn-out for the proposed drive. He found a high American phaeton and a pair of Irish ponies which the livery stable keeper had recently purchased from a dissipated young Englishman who, having ruined himself at the tables, had hurriedly hastened to England to enlist in a foot regiment. On returning towards the Public Gardens, he encountered his club acquaintance sitting outside the Café de la Victoire. He joined him in an apéritif, described his recent hire. The friend smiled indulgently.

“I suppose it’s for the Queen of Sheba.”

Gerard frowned surprise. “Who’s that?”

“The girl I’ve seen you with several times. They call her that, I suppose, because she’s wealthy, dusky, and indiscreet.”

“I used to know her in London long ago,” said Gerard, stiffly.

Suddenly the man remembered, flushed, and apologised.

“I’m awfully sorry. A thousand pardons. But one gets into a bad way of talking of public characters—and unfortunately every one talks of the lady by that name.”

Gerard sipped his vermouth coolly.

“What do you know about her?”

“Oh, nothing much. Really—I——”

“It would rather interest me to learn,” insisted Gerard.

“Well, she squanders a lot of money at the tables. And then she’s always attached to some new man or the other. Somewhat speckled, you see, in reputation. Introduction not necessary. That sort of thing. I don’t know if it’s true. I hope not.”

“Oh, I suppose it’s true,” said Gerard. “Women generally live a bit below their reputation.”

“I’m glad my indiscretion was not serious,” said his friend.

“Oh, dear, no,” laughed Gerard; and, turning the subject aside, “If you are doing nothing you might as well come and have some lunch with me at the Grande Bretagne.”

The friend assented. They strolled off together. At the hotel, the hall-porter gave Gerard a note which had just arrived. It was a line from Minna promising to be ready for the drive. He felt by no means displeased by his friend’s gossip; if anything, rather more settled in his mind. A beautiful and courted woman with several thousands a year commanded deference. The Queen of Sheba, of Monte Carlo scandal, on the other hand, was fair game. And the ease of the chase appealed to a man who was too masculine in his tastes to have cultivated the delicate gallantries of philandering. He crushed the note roughly into his pocket.

“A put off?” queried his friend.

“I guess not,” replied Gerard fatuously.

CHAPTER XXIII

Why Minna sent the note of acquiescence she herself could not tell. Her caprices were past accounting for. Vanity had its share. The man whom she had regarded as the most contemptuous and remote of a priggish society was now at her feet. Revenge prompted her to pay her ancient grudge against that society by kicking him as he grovelled. Again, desperate satiety drove her to new sensations. And lastly, a reaction from her expansiveness of the night before set her obstinately counter to Mrs. Delamere’s somewhat injudicious advice to remain within doors.

She kept him waiting in the loggia for half an hour, while the ponies stamped and rattled their bits below. At last she appeared, dressed in her flaring daffodil-yellow costume, which she had not worn since her original encounter with him. She met him somewhat defiantly, without apology for her delay.

“Do I look decent?” she enquired nonchalantly of Mrs. Delamere, who had been keeping Gerard company.

“You look ripping,” said Gerard.

She signed to him that she was ready to start. He picked up his hat and gloves from the balustrade and followed her downstairs, helped her into the high phaeton, took the reins from the man at the horses’ heads, and turned out of the front gate. Then a cut of the whip sent the ponies at a dashing pace down the Cimiez Road, through the town, towards the sea.

“We will go Antibes way, along the coast,” said Gerard.

“Anywhere except the Corniche road,” replied Minna. “I am sick of it.”

“You seem to be sick of most things. Why so? You’ve got money and beauty and independence. What more can you want?”

“Suppose I said I wanted somebody to understand me—some one whom I could meet soul to soul?” she said sarcastically. “Don’t you ever feel that?”

He laughed, as he piloted the ponies past a company of bicyclists, at whose machines they seemed disposed to shy.

“I’ve heard too much of that jargon,” he answered. “I’ve been cured of a belief in souls.”

“Or if they do exist,” said Minna, “people only talk of them as they do of their livers—when they are diseased.”

“You began talking of yours. Is it out of order? You try it a bit, don’t you?”

Hardened as Minna was, and readily as she would have laughed at the speech coming from the lips of another man, yet in the remorseful bitterness of her heart, which this sudden association with him seemed to have swelled to sensitive tenseness, she felt his words jar through her body.

“One’s own self-mockery is enough,” she replied, coldly.

“Oh, come,” he cried with a laugh, “we are not going to turn ourselves inside out, as if we were at a London afternoon tea and anatomy crush. It’s rough on the ponies. You haven’t even admired them.”

As they turned on to the smooth white road between the Public Gardens and the sea, and dashed down the long Promenade des Anglais, with great clatter of hoofs and tossing of impatient heads, Gerard felt the man’s pride in association with respectable horseflesh. He was in luck. Such a turn-out is not to be met with in every Riviera livery stable. And the elemental pride in temporary possession of female beauty added to his satisfaction. Yet the fact that he was driving the notorious Queen of Sheba, before the eyes of all Nice, brought a satirical smile to his lips.

“There would be a nice little scandal about, if either of us were attached,” he said. “It is comfortable not to have to bother about the proprieties.”

“I consider this Bayswatery in its conventionality,” replied Minna. “If you look upon this as an adventure, I wonder what you’d think of anything really audacious.”

“I am ready to commit any audacity. Name one.”

She leaned back and twirled her parasol languishly. To see her face he had to turn his head.

“I will kiss you now if you like, coram publico. You’re bewitching enough,” he said in his rough fashion.

“The idea is unimaginative and—repulsive,” replied Minna. And she began to look idly at the sea.

It was at its loveliest that afternoon, melting through all gradations from cobalt to pale turquoise, flecked with the rich tones of the brown Mediterranean sails, and meeting far ahead in a sapphire haze the dreamy stretch of the Cap d’Antibes. But Minna’s thoughts were far from its intoxicating beauty. She wished she had not come for this drive. This man was getting upon her nerves. She had half intended to lash him with ridicule and set him adrift. But she lacked courage. In his last admiring glance she had read that which made her fear. Her nervousness began to grow hysterical, especially after the lapse of some minutes during which he had not spoken.

“Do say something,” she said at last, irritably.

“I thought you were absorbed in the poetry of nature,” he replied.

“You Englishmen are so heavy. You were scandalised at meeting a crowd of shady foreigners at my house last night. They can talk amusingly. That’s why.”

“An Englishman generally acts, which is better,” said Gerard.

They pursued the theme for a while; then, piqued by her disadvantageous comparison, he began to make love outright. As he proceeded, her sense of loathing and of impotence increased. She scarcely spoke. Gerard took her silence for assumption of modesty; the satirical smile deepened about his lips.

The ponies went down the white road at a spanking pace. They had reached the open country and traffic was scanty. The road undulated between banks pungent with thyme and rosemary; now rose in full view of the sea and the great sweep of coast, now skirted villas nestling in the slopes that heave downwards to the shore from the cool grey Maritime Alps, shimmering against the violet sky. Swarthy, barelegged children ran out from the wayside cottages to stare at the wheels flashing amidst the cloud of dust, and now and then a great shovel-hatted curé looked up from his greasy breviary as the English couple dashed by. Suddenly at the top of a steep incline a bicyclist whirred past them, and coasted swiftly down. The ponies shied, plunged. The phaeton was not fitted with a brake. Gerard, deep in amorous schemes and taken off his guard, slashed the ponies, tried to pull them up, bungled, with the result that they bolted furiously down the hill.

Minna, physically timid, shrieked and fastened a desperate clasp on Gerard’s arm.

“All right! Hold on tight. Not my arm. Nothing will happen,” he said reassuringly. The cyclist, hearing the frightened horses thundering behind him, set his feet on the pedals, put on the brake, and drifted into the hedge. The light carriage leapt and swung. Minna was terrified. In her fright she had left her parasol to the winds, and clung to Gerard’s body with both hands. She was very near him; for a second he took his eyes from the tossing manes and kissed her on her open mouth. She uttered a little cry and turned aside her head. But excitement had warmed his blood. He kissed her again; she could not get beyond his reach; dared not relax her grasp for fear of instant death. He had her at his mercy. As soon as he became aware of regained control of the animals, he let them follow, for a time, their foolish course, and kissed the frenzied girl beside him over and over again, heedless of her struggles and cries.

At last came a slight ascent and Gerard’s powerful arms brought the ponies to their senses. They broke into a moderate pace, and, all danger being over, Minna relaxed her hold and drew as far from Gerard as she could.

“You brute!” she cried tempestuously. “You brute! You cowardly brute!”

With a mighty wrench he pulled up the ponies at the top of the rise, and they stood trembling, spattering their chests with foam. He turned to reply to Minna, but she rose suddenly and, before he could interfere, was clambering out of the high phaeton.

“I shall not stay a moment longer with you. I shall walk back, if I die from it.”

She missed the step, and fell heavily to the ground. A peasant in a blue blouse, who was working in a little patch of garden by the side of the road, ran up and assisted her to rise. Then hailed by Gerard, he went to the horses’ heads, and Gerard sprang to Minna’s assistance.

“You haven’t hurt yourself?”

“I have twisted my foot,” she said sullenly, steadying herself by the phaeton. She was pale with anger and pain. Her veil and hat were awry, one of her gloves had split. The daffodil-yellow costume was white with dust. The consciousness of her aspect incensed her further.

“You’re in a great mess,” he said. And clumsily he began to brush the dust from her skirt. But she twitched it away from him with her free hand.

“Don’t touch me,” she said angrily. He stood up, thrust his hands in his pockets, and looked at her somewhat satirically.

“I am awfully sorry. But I’ll have to do something for you, if you have twisted your foot. You can’t remain there all the afternoon.”

“It’s better,” she declared. “Leave me—go away—I can walk home.”

With the words she removed her supporting hand and put her weight upon the sprained foot. But she uttered an involuntary little cry, and would have fallen, had not Gerard sprang forward and caught her.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to accept my escort back,” he said.

For reply she called out in French to the man who was holding the ponies.

“Is there an inn or café near by?”

The man broke into polite smiles, showing his white teeth. Effectively there was an inn, just at the turn of the road. Many visitors from Nice stopped there to eat fruit and drink coffee. Madame had hurt herself, without doubt, and wanted to rest. She would find herself quite comfortable there.

“I shall go to the inn,” she said, turning to Gerard. “Perhaps you’ll leave word at my house to send me a comfortable carriage. You need not come back with it.”

“Oh, nonsense,” he replied. “I can lift you into the phaeton and lift you out again. It’s idiotic to make this fuss.”

“I’d sooner crawl than drive back with you,” she flashed, vindictively.

Two sturdy and swarthy peasants had meanwhile come up with the group, and pausing by the horse-tender, received a voluble account of the situation. Gerard shrugged his shoulders.

“How do you propose to get to the inn?”

“These creatures will carry me.”

“I suppose you know you’re making yourself supremely ridiculous?”

“I am accustomed to do what I choose,” retorted Minna. “Dites donc, vous,” she said to the new arrivals.

They hastened to her side. Gerard moved off a few steps and lit a cigar. She explained her desires. The inborn gallantry of the children of the South manifested itself in expressions of delight. They made the military ambulance seat for her with crossed hands, took her up and set off at a brisk pace. Gerard marched behind them sardonically, cursing under his breath, and signed to the third man to follow with the ponies and phaeton. They formed a singular procession. At the turn of the road the little inn came in sight, upon the brow of an embankment overlooking the road. It was a squat white building with “Au Séjour du Soleil” inscribed in enormous letters across its façade. In front of it stood a ramshackle arbour of lattice work, covered with straggling vine, beneath which were rough tables and benches blistered by the sun. Leaving the carriage in the road below, Gerard followed the bearers up the steep path to the door of the inn. The place was quite deserted, save for some fowls, a goat tethered to a post, and the buxom patronne who was grinding coffee in the arbour.

The bearers put Minna to the ground, and she stood on one foot supporting herself between them. The landlady left her coffee, and rushed out to meet her.

“I want a room for an hour or two, where I can lie down until a carriage comes to me from Nice. This gentleman will fetch it,” said Minna.

An interval of explanation and enquiry followed. Then the patronne entered the house to look after the room.

“You need not wait,” said Minna to Gerard, coldly.

“I want to satisfy myself that you are comfortable,” he replied, sitting down on one of the benches.

The landlady reappeared in smiling bustle. The room was quite ready, if Madame would deign to enter and occupy it. The two peasants took up their charming daffodil bundle and vanished into the house, from which they emerged a moment or two afterwards with glowing faces. Gerard responded to their low bows and profuse acknowledgments of Monsieur and Madame’s generosity, with an Englishman’s impatient nod, and continued to swear softly to himself as he smoked. He rose and walked to and fro before the inn, chafing at the ignominious position in which Minna had placed him. Like most men of somewhat flaccid fibre he cursed, now that it was too late, his folly in yielding to her caprice. If he had taken her up bodily and set her in the phaeton and driven off with her, this tomfoolery would have been avoided. As for tamely going back for the carriage, it was out of the question. He would see her, at any rate, before he started, and try to bring her to a state of reason. He was not the man to slink off with his tail between his legs, after a slapped face, like a certain little cur of a Frenchman whom he remembered. Her tantrums were preposterous. She, the Queen of Sheba, to put on the prude for a few snatched kisses! He laughed disagreeably. His pride and his passions were armed allies. But he was not free from some pricks of compunction with regard to her accident. He had not intended to behave brutally, and yet his solicitude had not been very tenderly manifested.

“But, confound it, it’s her own fault,” he exclaimed, with a stamp of his foot.

Ten minutes passed. He waited for a glimpse of the patronne. At last he caught sight of her in the public room of the inn. She came, at his summons, to the door. In his bad French, he explained his desire to see the invalid. Nothing doubting as to his right, the woman bustled before him, and throwing open the door of a room, bade him enter. He strode boldly in. The chamber was rather dark, owing to the shutters being closed against the westering sun. A wooden table, a huge press, and a great four-post bed with white curtains took up most of the space. On the bed lay Minna, with rumpled hair, her feet covered with a shawl. A shoe and a stocking lying on the table by her hat, showed that her hurt had been tended. She rose, indignantly, to a sitting posture as he entered..

“What have you come here for? Why haven’t you gone for the carriage? I can’t stay here all night.”

“I want to make friends first,” he said mildly. “Come, let us forget this little episode. You are angry with me for kissing you. Well, you know, Minna, I wouldn’t have kissed you if I hadn’t cared for you, and if you hadn’t been so lovely and so near to me.”

“Oh, go, for goodness’ sake,” she said, twining her fingers together, nervously. His presence seemed to suffocate her.

“No, I am not going,” he answered, with sudden temper. “I am not the sort of man to be ordered about. I am not going to stir a foot until we literally kiss and make friends. You know perfectly well I have fallen in love with you. I wanted to have you all by yourself to-day to tell you so. So I tell you. I love you, and I insist on being heard.”

“You love me?” she said with great contempt. “You look like it!”

She jerked herself backwards so as to find support against the pillows as she sat.

“What do you propose to do?” she asked him, with an ugly look on her face.

As a matter of fact, he had made no plans whatever, the role of theatrical libertine never having come within his experience. But her question gave an opening for the brute that necessarily lingers in most men.

“I’ll stay here all night, until you kiss me of your own free will.”

“I have always thought of you as a coward,” she said. “I suppose that’s a threat to compromise me. It won’t do me much harm, I assure you.”

He threw his hat and gloves on the table and came close to the bedside. The brute led him on. Her beauty had captivated him. Her scorn angered him. His shifty blue eyes gleamed.

“If you don’t do what I ask—it’s a very small thing—I’ll take it by force and I’ll stay here all night, and I’ll follow you wherever you go and see you every day, until you come to your senses. I love you and I’m not going to be trifled with. And I’m damned if you can say you have given me no encouragement.” He bent forward. She thought he was going to throw his arms round her. All the pent-up hatred of him, all the fermenting elements of self-loathing, remorse, and despair, all the agonising recrudescence of hopeless, passionate love for the man that was and was not her husband, found vent in a hoarse inarticulate cry. And then she lost control of reason, and burst into passionate invective.

“You love me! You! You think a woman who knows what you are would have anything to do with you, save fool you and throw you aside. You who threw away a wife that was worth ten million of me, and a friend that was worth twenty million of you. I hate you. I despise you. I despise you as much as I despise myself, and that’s saying a good deal.” She spat the words at him: “When you were living smugly with your wife, you looked down upon me. Now you have got rid of her, you come to me like a brute and a coward.”

“You’ll kindly leave Mrs. Merriam out of the discussion,” said Gerard sardonically.

“She’s the whole question,” cried Minna. “She and nothing else—she who has been my burning torture and shame for four years. Do you think, because I live recklessly like a wanton woman, that I can’t feel degradation? And you shall feel it too. You fool! You worse than fool! She was as pure as a saint—as one of your Christian saints in heaven—and I was jealous of her—I didn’t know her then—but you—— Do you know where Hugh Colman was that night of the murder? He was with me—all night. The thieves came in by the window I had unbolted for him. He had been married to me for nearly a year. We had quarrelled. It was my fault. I thought I hated him. Oh, God, if you knew how I love him now! Then you would know what love is!”

She paused for breath, which came pantingly. Gerard stood stiff, his eyes fixed upon her, unmoving, as if turned to stone. He passed his tongue over his lips. The enormity of his folly paralysed him. At last words came.

“What kept him silent then?”

“As if you could understand,” she cried in her passionate scorn. “The honour of the bravest man that ever lived. That night—he had seen my father’s will—all my money to go if I married a Christian—we swore to part for ever and keep our marriage secret. I kept him to his promise. I let him go through all that horror—I was coming to tell you that awful night—I was taken ill. Your wife saved his life, not his. And I have been in hell fire ever since.”

“And there I hope to God you’ll remain,” said Gerard in a low voice.

“You shall taste some of it with me. Go to her now and ask her to forgive you.”

“I shall order the carriage for you,” said Gerard. And without another word he turned and walked out of the room.

“He will order the carriage for me. Ha! Ha!” cried Minna.

The buxom patronne heard the laugh, pricked up her ears, and flew to the beautiful lady’s assistance.

CHAPTER XXIV

Gerard gave the man who was holding the ponies a five-franc piece, and drove back at a break-neck pace. Minna’s revelation and taunts had set him in a frame of mind bordering on madness. He did not stop to question the truth of her statement. It cast too lurid a light upon the dark places of the mystery of four years ago. His egregious folly danced before his eyes. The wrong inflicted on a heroic woman and a loyal man loomed before him in ghastly significance. He could not hide behind sophistries. He was not a bad man, to contemplate the consequences of his actions with cynical complacency. Deep down in him lingered the conscience of the moral, if invertebrate, Briton. His conscience was appalled at the irreparable injury. Minna was suddenly transformed from the desired flesh feminine into an unthinkable hate. Irene assumed a new radiance of martyrdom.

In the searchlight that was sweeping his horizon, he saw her transcendent faith in his equal greatness of soul; saw, too, his own ignoble narrowness of comprehension. He had been a fool, besotted by his own brutality. He lashed the ponies viciously. A man translates into external fury the shudder that a flash of self-knowledge sends through his soul.

Yet the story he had heard was amazing; compelling credence, as Tertullian has it, quia impossible. All its elements were characterised by a marvellous intensity. What he had taken for a vulgar intrigue had really been a drama of fierce passions and noble heroisms, in which he alone had played a vulgar part. His gorge rose at the idea of the sorry figure he must have appeared in the eyes of each of the three.

The ponies dashed, sweating and dusty, up to the front of the Villa Benedetta, before he realised how the journey had been accomplished. Mrs. Delamere, summoned in haste, descended to meet him. Seeing him alone and agitated, and the ponies dripping, she grew pale.

“Where is Minna?”

“She has twisted her ankle. Wouldn’t drive back with me. You are to send a closed landau for her at once. You will find her at the Séjour du Soleil, on the road before you get to Var.”

“Aren’t you going back with the carriage?”

“No,” he replied brusquely. “You send it. You needn’t be alarmed. She is not hurt.”

“Then I suppose I may guess the reason——?”

“You may guess anything you choose, Mrs. Delamere,” said Gerard. “Good evening.” And turning the ponies, he drove off.

Half an hour later he was back in his hotel, where he spent the evening trying to face the situation. There was only one course open to him. Humiliation at Irene’s feet. It was but her due. And then? He was baffled. He would offer remarriage. Perhaps she would accept. After all, he had been her husband, she his wife. In his commonplace system of ethics, the fact counted for much. But Irene was different from other women. He had a dim conception of her as something spiritual and masterful. Had she been of commoner mould, perhaps he would not have chafed at his shackles. What a worm he had been! In his chastened mood, the meanness of his eager belief in her guilt smote him sorely. He had been a blackguard all through. Gradually, as the hours passed, the atmosphere of remorse grew denser, and through it, by a kind of spiritual refraction, the illusory image of the long set sun of love appeared above his horizon.

His late pursuit of the female had, in some coordinating fashion, put him on the track of the feminine. The convulsion in his mind caused him to grasp at elusive supports. Remorse craved atonement. The many astounding factors in his situation, when he grew tired of considering each in turn, all combined to produce a queer, unnatural sentimentality. Without the dew of womanly sympathy, life seemed parched with sudden aridness. He lay awake that night, deluding himself into the longing for a lost paradise. He made magnanimous resolves. He would win back Irene, humble himself before Hugh. The next day he started for London, his head swimming with sick and angry fantasies.

And meanwhile, in her darkened room at Nice, Minna was regarding the mad betrayal of her secret in dazed and despairing terror.

Two days afterwards, Gerard paused in the doorway at the foot of the familiar staircase in the Temple, where Hugh’s chambers were situated, and scanned the list of names. The one he sought was still there. He hesitated for a moment, biting the ends of his moustache. His last meeting with Hugh had been unpleasant. The memory galled his pride. Perhaps it would be better to carry out an alternative plan, and obtain knowledge of Irene’s whereabouts from Harroway, or from Miss Beechcroft, her aunt. His heart failed him. He winced in anticipation before the steel-blue of Hugh’s eyes and the supercilious tones of his voice. Then suddenly conscious of the lack of moral courage, he threw angrily away the stump of cigar he was holding in his fingers, and mounted the stairs. The oak was unsported. He knocked; a voice bade him enter. Hugh’s clerk rose from a paper-heaped desk, and advanced to meet the visitor.

“Is Mr. Colman in?”

“No, sir,” said the clerk. “He hasn’t been gone more than half an hour.”

“When will he be back?”

“Monday morning, sir. This is Saturday. He doesn’t often come to chambers on Saturday afternoons.”

“Do you know where I can find him?” asked Gerard, growing impatient.

The clerk did know. Lawyer’s clerks are certain about most things.

“Mr. Colman is at home, at his private residence.”

“Where is that?”

“Are you a client, sir?” asked the clerk, with an air of importance.

“No, confound you,” exclaimed Gerard. “My name is Merriam. Perhaps you have heard of it. What’s your master’s address?”

“Fifty-two Windsor Terrace, Hyde Park, sir,” replied the clerk promptly.

Gerard nodded and withdrew. But for his previous hesitation, he would have gone on to Harroway. As his self-esteem, however, was piqued, he hailed a cab in the Strand, and continued his quest of Hugh in the direction indicated. He leaned over the panels, his gloves in his great sunburnt hands, and tried to distract his thoughts by contemplation of the busy thoroughfares. Their unchanged aspect impressed him with the returned wanderer’s illogical astonishment. But for his own incidented career during his absence he might have left them only yesterday. Life seemed to have stood still in London. He half pitied its stagnation. He himself had whirled through time; had made a fortune, braved countless adventures. Every day had differed from its predecessor. He had lived, while this unchanging scene had gone mechanically on, day after day, like the reiterated performance of some gigantic spectacle. The Strand, the Haymarket, Piccadilly Circus, held his attention, but when the cab turned off through the dull, decorous streets between Regent Street and Oxford Street, he leaned back in the cab, and his thoughts were again bent anxiously inwards. Again he felt the nervous reluctance to meet Hugh, tried to formulate in his mind the explanation and apology whose accomplishment was the main object of his visit. He had often styled himself, boastingly, a plain man. But a plain man is very much like a plain cook, unable to cope successfully with anything beyond the commonplace. His errand dealt with extraordinary issues. How should he fulfil it? And there was Hugh’s fiery temper to be reckoned with, and his command of scathing speech. Gerard had always been just a little afraid of Hugh in the old days, and the half-acknowledged habit of timorousness still survived.

The cab drove down Oxford Street, past the Marble Arch, and turned up one of the thoroughfares leading north. A quiet street to the left contained Windsor Terrace. Gerard alighted at Number Fifty-two, dismissed the cabman, and knocked at the door. A maid-servant opened. On seeing him, she started and looked at him in some bewilderment.

“Is Mr. Colman in?” asked Gerard.

“No, sir.”

“When do you expect him?”

“Quite soon, sir.”

“Could I come in and wait?”

“There is Mrs. Colman upstairs, sir,” said the maid, perplexedly.

“Mrs. Colman!” echoed Gerard.

The announcement confused him. He had reckoned upon finding Hugh in bachelor quarters. He had left Mrs. Colman in Nice. For a moment or two his lip curled at a satirical thought. Probably one of Hugh’s indiscretions. It was one of those houses from which the general visitor was excluded. He glanced at the servant, whose perturbation became evident. He drew out his card-case.

“Would you tell your mistress that an old friend of Mr. Colman’s has very important business with him, and asks the favour to be allowed to wait until he returns?”

Jane took the card and ran up the stairs. Gerard remained in the hall. Suddenly he was aware of the dim stirrings of past association. There was something familiar in the girl’s features and voice. Of whom did she remind him? He tapped his foot irritably, seeking to get upon the track. Presently Jane returned, with a flushed face.

“Will you come up to the drawing-room, sir?”

She preceded him up the stairs, held open the drawing-room door. As she stood aside to let him pass, he again looked at her sharply. Certainly he had seen her before. She gave him no time for enquiries, for as soon as he had entered, she quickly closed the door and disappeared. Gerard walked across the tastefully furnished room, whose arrangements bore evidence of the hand of a refined woman. As he glanced round him, his eye fell upon a photograph of Irene in a silver frame. He crossed to the table on which it was, examined it closely. It was evidently quite recent. She had grown older, he thought; her face, spiritualised. He felt vaguely disappointed. The portrait did not suggest the woman crushed by contumely whose face would grow radiant at the news he was bringing her. For lately he had begun to regard himself somewhat as her deliverer. Her aspect of serenity gave him apprehensive qualms. On the same table was a photograph of Hugh, proud, with his head thrown back, looking somewhat scornfully at the beholder. In the centre, hidden from the first casual glance by a vase with flowers, was the photograph of a pretty two-year-old boy. A dawning uneasiness, too dim as yet for suspicion, had just arisen in his mind, when, turning away from the table, he noticed upon the mantelpiece two richly chased silver candlesticks, which were strikingly familiar. They used to be Irene’s most cherished possessions, heirlooms in her family. Had she given them to Hugh? Quickly he looked about the room. Against the wall hung a signed Seymour Haden that had belonged to his wife. What did it mean? Beneath stood a little cane work-basket. Scarcely aware of his purpose, he turned over the silks and spools. A fragment of paper bore a pencilled set of directions for some fancy stitch. It was in Irene’s handwriting. Gerard put his hand to his forehead, drew it away moist. Some books were lying on a table. He strode impetuously thither. The top one was “The New Atlantis, by Hugh Colman.” Gerard took it up. On the fly-leaf was written, “Irene, from Hugh.” Irene, Irene everywhere.

Then swiftly the lost association connected with the servant found its place in his brain. She was one of their Sunnington servants. Her name returned to his memory—Jane, a favourite of Irene’s. With a sudden exclamation of amazement, foreboding and anger, he rushed to the table with the photographs, and seeing that of the boy, scanned it intently.

At this moment the door opened and Irene herself entered the room. She was very calm, though pale, and she looked straight into his eyes. For a moment or two they regarded one another in silence, Gerard, with his back to the light of the window, still holding the photograph.

“How do you come to be in this house?” he said, somewhat hoarsely..

“It is my own,” she answered steadily. “Mine and my husband’s.”

“And this?”

“Is our son,” said Irene.

He looked at her, stupefied by anger and lacerated vanity. The photograph fell from his fingers on to the carpet.

“You mean that he is your—protector,” he said.

Irene’s eyes flashed dangerously.

“I don’t know what your object in coming here is. I thought it was important business. I came down to spare my husband the possible pain of an interview. It seems that you have come to insult me. Hugh is my lawful husband. We were married three years ago. If your object was to learn this, you have attained it.”

She spoke haughtily, drawing herself up in all her dignity. His presence offended her. Feminine delicacies rose in hot revolt within her. Yet she could not repress an almost savage thrill at the contrast between him and the man who was now her husband.

How had she ever stupefied herself into the delusion that she loved him? He looked coarse and commonplace. A movement of his neck to free itself from pressure of the collar revealed a small mole, horribly familiar to her. She shuddered in all her being. Yet she faced him bravely.

“If that is all,” she added, “we can spare each other the discomfort of further conversation.”

“But it isn’t all, Irene,” he burst out, with genuine spirit. “I swear insult was the last thing in my thoughts. I never knew of this. I came to get your address from Colman—to ask your forgiveness. But I don’t understand. Tell me. Are you really his wife?”

“I have already said so,” replied Irene. “If you are come to ask my forgiveness for your action towards me, I am prepared to grant it. But—I am Hugh’s wife.”

“And seeing you his wife, I don’t understand. Unless I have been made an utter fool of a second time by a woman.”

An ugly expression passed across his face. She looked so calm, self-contained; her whole attitude suggested aloofness. He began to feel his old discomfort in her presence, accentuated by the exasperating position in which he found himself. He cursed the day that turned his steps to Minna Hart. Had this been her revenge—this out and out mockery?

“I owe you an apology,” he said grimly. “I left a woman calling herself Mrs. Colman in Nice—Minna Hart. She informed me that she had been secretly married to Colman. That he had spent the night of the murder with her. I came straight from Nice here to tell you of my remorse and to offer you reparation. It seems she was lying. I humbly apologise.”

He laughed the short derisive laugh of indignation, and took three or four short impatient paces to and fro. Irene’s eyes flashed a second time.

“You have been fooled,” she said. “She cannot be his wife, since I am.”

He turned round upon her suddenly. “Perhaps it’s you that have been fooled.”

“What do you mean?”

“Perhaps her story is true, and I may still have the pleasure of asking for your pardon. The registers in Somerset House will tell me.”

“Do you mean to accuse my husband of marrying me while his first wife was alive? I would not believe a hundred registers!”

“Either he or she must be lying,” said Gerard.

“She is the liar!” cried Irene, thrilled with the magnificence of her faith. “I suppose she told it you in the same calm frame of mind as when I last saw her.”

It was Irene’s one ungenerosity. But a woman is not apt to choose her weapons when the man she loves is slandered by another woman. Primitive instincts get beyond control. But her words were an illumination to Gerard.

“That very evening she came to tell us her secret.”

“I will never believe it. And I would sooner die than insult him by asking. There is no need for us to talk further. I appreciate your motive in coming.”

Her words were a signal of dismissal. She moved towards the bell. But quick steps were heard on the stairs, and in a moment Hugh entered the room. He stood for a second transfixed with amazement at the sight of Gerard. Then quickly recovered himself.

“What are you doing here?” he asked haughtily.

He crossed the room, and stood by Irene’s side, hand on hips, looking very fiercely at his enemy. Involuntarily Irene slid her hand beneath his arm. And so the two confronted Gerard. A spasm of the old jealous envy passed through his heart. If he had been a primaeval savage he would have leaped at Hugh’s throat.

“I have come from the Mrs. Colman who resides at Nice,” he replied.

Hugh’s heart gave a great throb. For a moment the ground seemed to be slipping from under his feet. He collected himself quickly.

“Explain yourself,” he said.

“I have lately had the pleasure of meeting Miss Minna Hart at Nice. She confessed to a secret marriage with you, and entered upon such explanations as proved to me how baseless were my suspicions of—the present Mrs. Colman.”

“And you came to take your revenge. It is worthy of you.”

“Mrs. Colman will bear me out when I say that I came with other motives. Your second marriage was an entire surprise to me. As great a one as the first.”

“But the girl was lying to you—duping you. Can’t you understand?” cried Irene, breathlessly, looking from one man to the other, waiting in an agony of mystification for Hugh’s indignant denial.

Hugh set his teeth and strode up to Gerard, and looked him close in the eyes.

“Damn you!” he said, “couldn’t you have spared us this!”

“Then it is true?” cried Irene, aghast. “That that girl is your wife—and I am not?”

Hugh turned quickly from Gerard, and moved a pace nearer to her, and said, with a certain sad stateliness:

“Yes, dear, it is quite true.”

She stood for a moment or two white and trembling, as if stricken by a mortal malady. There was a dead silence. She looked at Hugh fixedly. Then she turned slowly and walked towards the door.

Gerard was frightened. The flabby conscience was wrung. This was the second time he had stabbed her to the heart. For the moment he forgot everything save her innocence and her anguish. He overtook her in two or three sudden strides.

“For God’s sake, Irene—I’m an infernal blackguard—forgive me.”

But, her back towards him, she waved him away, with outstretched hand, and in a few seconds had left the room.

“Now, we two,” said Hugh, drawing himself up. “What are your intentions?”

“What intentions can I have?” replied Gerard, sullenly. “You heard what I just said to Irene.” Hugh turned away with a gesture of helplessness, and catching sight of the boy’s photograph lying on the floor where Gerard had dropped it, he stooped mechanically and picked it up.

“I think you had better go,” he said, wearily, fingering the frame; “and if you have anything of the man left in you, you will leave her alone, and hold your tongue about all this.”

“I have no object in making it public,” replied Gerard.

“Very well,” said Hugh, looking at the boy’s portrait.

Gerard left the house, and drew a great breath on reaching the open air. He had made a fool of himself again. He had taken his revenge; had eaten the food of the humble. He wished, in a futile way, that he had not acted on Minna Hart’s confession. His Quixotic impulses had led him to ignominious upheaval among the sheep. Fate was serving him shabbily. He walked to the Marble Arch and idly entered the Park. His head was full of the past interview. Hugh Colman’s attitude had produced an irritating sense of discomfort. He had attacked him in the anticipation of unmasking a villain. He had unmasked him, and found the same proud, always bitterly envied man. Furthermore, he had found himself the villain.

For a hundred yards he tried to sentimentalise over his final and irrevocable loss of Irene. But he was honest enough to abandon the attempt. He called himself a fool for his lovesick pains; consoled himself with the assurance that she never was and never could be his style. Yet he felt sick of life, sick of his blundering and ill-used self. He walked on aimlessly.

At last he found himself in the Broad Walk of Kensington Gardens. It came on to rain from a leaden March sky. He hailed a cab, entered it and closed the panels.

“Where to, sir?” asked the driver, through the trap-door in the roof.

Gerard did not know. He mentioned his club. The cab started. The sudden decision brought his future plans before his mind. Somehow England seemed a cold, tame, unattractive place. His visions of a country estate in Norfolk lost their charm. He wished he had never left Africa.

“I’ll soon clear out of this beastly country again,” he said to himself.