Rostov’s glance seemed to narrow. He was on the alert.
“Yes; that is true.”
“And there are many refugees——”
“Yes.”
“Well, my dear, I can offer you a profession. Together we might contrive to help your people and to please me. I presume you meet many Russians.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Well, my dear, why not bring them to me. You can act as my confidential agent. I am a very rich woman. I adore gems; they are my passion. But I am not a Jew. Rather—you could describe me as a banker who buys securities. Now, wouldn’t it be quite easy for you to go about and find people who had jewellery to sell, and bring them to me. It would be so nice and easy for them; no horrible haggling, no sneaking into shops.”
Rostov’s face was very pale.
“I see. You suggest, madame, that I explore Cap d’Or?”
“Not only Cap d’Or. But when I go to Monte Carlo, or Nice, or Cannes, or Paris, or London, you follow me, my dear, and act as my agent. It will pay you better than giving dancing lessons. It might lead to—something.”
She was very plausible, sitting there like a fairy godmother in a golden wig and with her cherry blossom face, but Rostov had one of those moments of illumination when a man knows things without being able to say how he knows them. Suddenly he knew her to be a succulent, greedy old woman, far worse than any of the Jews she spoke of, and he felt a chilliness up his spine; tremors of disgust. But he was the diplomat. He felt in the hip pocket of his trousers and brought out a little black leather case.
“Madame will excuse me.”
He watched her face. He saw it sharpen and harden just as many women’s faces grew hard and alert and greedy at the bridge table. Her pupils were pin-points.
“My last resource, madame. One must keep something in reserve. May I show it to you?”
“Of course.”
He sprang the catch and raised the lid, and displayed to her a superb emerald in an old Italian setting. It had belonged to his mother. It was worth a great deal of money, and always he carried it about with him buttoned up in his hip pocket.
Mrs. De Quincy Evans’ eyes caressed it, but she was astute, a good business woman.
“A pretty thing, madame. The emerald is perfect. Perhaps madame will value the ring for me.”
She took it in her thick and stumpy fingers, held it up to the light, and examined the setting.
“Do you wish to sell it, my dear?”
“That might depend.”
“Well, a hundred pounds—perhaps. There is a slight discolouration——”
Rostov, deliberately and with grave politeness, recovered the ring from her pink palm, and returned it to the case.
“You hag,” he thought; “the thing is worth five hundred if it is worth a penny.”
He bowed to her.
“Madame will excuse me, but I do not sell. Nor am I tempted to be madame’s agent, and help her to buy cheaply from poor devils who have just a little left. No; I have not yet fallen so low. I apologize for having permitted myself to eat madame’s food and drink her wine.”
But she had phlegm; she was not a sensitive sort of woman; she laughed, and got up on her stout legs, and made as though to box his ears.
“Don’t be silly, my dear. Do you think I should buy that ring from you without having it valued by an expert? Don’t be so dignified and silly. That’s the worst of you people with half a mile of family tree behind you, you want everything taken at your own valuation. You want things done for you en prince. Don’t be silly.”
She pushed the cigar box towards him. She was jocund, soothing, maternal.
“Put half a dozen of those in your pocket, and don’t quarrel with good business. I’m not a bad sort of woman. You would find me kinder than the management of the Cosmopolis. I am moving on to Cannes next month. If you have any sense of the value of things——”
His face looked narrow and old, his eyes sunk in his head.
“Madame, there are insuperable difficulties. You see—I am married; I have a wife in Cap d’Or.”
The effect on her was instant, and obvious. Her pink face seemed to shrivel up like an apple that had been kept too long in a dry place. Her eyes lost their kindness.
“Indeed! How very superfluous. I suppose the management of the Cosmopolis considered a married man—less interesting. Bad business, marriage, my dear——? Isn’t that so?”
He stood looking at her for one moment. He seemed to see her for what she was, a painted old woman with claws. He felt stifled. He wanted to get out of her damned villa.
He said:
“Madame is privileged. I have eaten her food. Sometimes one is hungry, but it is worse for a man when his wife is hungry. I will wish madame good night.”
And he went.
Outside the night was calm and clear, and the mountains and the sea seemed to meet under the moon, the same old moon confronting yesterday and to-morrow, and he thought how damnable it was that people should be poor and hungry on such a night, and so much at the mercy of circumstance and of greedy old women. If only one could live on moonlight. Also, he had a feeling that he had made a fool of himself in allowing the cold, raw edge of his anger to show rather like the edge of a tattered shirt. He had insulted Mrs. De Quincy Evans, it would do him no good; it might do him a great deal of harm.
Climbing the four flights of stairs he found the little living-room in darkness. Vera had gone to bed. But she had left the bedroom door open, and the bedroom light on.
“Is that you, Michael?”
“It is.”
“I’m so sorry, Michael—my headache—I’m afraid I am going to be ill.”
He was shocked, frightened, touched, for her voice appealed; it was excusatory, humble, defensive. Almost she apologized to him for fearing she was going to be ill. It was a disaster. He found her lying on her back in the bed with her dark hair brushed out like a halo; her eyes excused herself:
“Don’t be angry with me, Michael, I’m so sorry.”
He bent down and kissed her.
“What is it—serious?”
He was frightened, but trying not to look so.
“It feels like ’flu, Michael. These wretched bodies of ours!”
During the week that followed the Cosmopolis and its various women wondered what was the matter with Rostov. He looked ill and exhausted. He danced like a man who was half asleep; he seemed to be stifling yawns; his eyes were frightened. The management had to complain, for Rostov was caught asleep in one of the lounge chairs at five o’clock in the afternoon when he should have been dancing.
“This won’t do, my lad. What’s wrong?”
Rostov, startled, yet still half submerged, blurted out the truth to the spruce person.
“My wife’s ill. I’m having to nurse her. I don’t get much sleep.”
“Haven’t you got a nurse?”
“I can’t afford a nurse.”
The truth was out. The confession was overheard by four people who were playing bridge, and by two separate women who were reading novels. It spread. The Cosmopolis experienced one of those revelations of surprise and compassion. It discovered the humanity at the back of itself and of life in general and in particular.
“The poor lad! Falling asleep on his feet!”
It forgave him the concealment of matrimony; in fact it accepted his marriage, and made a personal affair of it. The hotel was moved.
Three gentlewomen formed themselves into a committee. They collected nearly five thousand francs. They asked the management to present the money to Rostov without giving the names of the donors.
When Rostov received the money his face became all shimmery and soft. He had to go into the cloak-room and pretend to brush his coat before facing the lights and the faces.
He found someone looking at him kindly, a woman who had looked at him less kindly a week ago.
“Mr. Rostov, how is your wife?”
He bowed stiffly; he wa
s a little inarticulate.
“Better—thank you. It was pneumonia. People—people have been so kind.”
“Might I go and see your wife? No; I won’t tire her. I was very ill myself before I came down here.”
So Vera had visitors. They managed to climb those four flights of stairs. They thought Vera Rostov “sweet,” and said so. Also, they heard things about Michael, touching things. There was much more in the fellow than you would have suspected; he was not all dinner-jacket and patent-leather feet.
Said an influential lady to her influential husband:
“Really—those two young things—so pathetic. I wish you could do something, Bill.”
Bill was buttoning his braces.
“I had a talk to the fellow. He’s a good lad. I have been looking out for a chap to send abroad, or to travel with me, a fellow with languages and manners, a young fellow with some nous and breeding. I think I might do something.”
“Do, Bill. You are always rather a dear.”
Something was done.
BARRON’S BROKEN HEAD
John Barron was standing on the Quai de la Fraternité of the old port of Marseilles. He had the Bourse and the Cannebiere behind him, and at his feet the dirty waters of the port embraced by the high old houses and carrying every sort of shabby craft—tramp steamers, launches, sailing ships. It was three o’clock on a January afternoon and the sun was shining. Trams clanged to and fro; motors clattered and hooted; the water blinked; a motor-boat full of tourists went scurrying out to visit the Château d’If; a swarthy fish-wench stood peeling an orange and throwing the yellow peel into the water. The place oozed with life, crawled with it—the strange, black, rather sinister life of a Mediterranean port.
Barron stood with his hands in his pockets and stared.
“Whither—and why?”
He had a most strange feeling as of standing naked on a cold beach, shivering yet indifferent. He was conscious of curiosity. Why had he come here? What was he going to do?
A most strange feeling this extraordinary indifference to life, especially as it concerned himself. For six months he had been possessed by the most profound boredom. It appeared that he had accomplished all that he wished to accomplish. He had been so successful that he had recoiled from success. He had talked of retiring from business; he had two young, energetic partners; his age was forty-seven; he was worth some fifty thousand pounds. He had a wife, two children, a pleasant place on the river.
And suddenly, dust and ashes!
There had seemed nothing left to be desired. Languor had descended on him. He had ceased to be interested in anything—in his wife, his children, his affairs, his golf. There had been mornings when he had felt overwhelmed by melancholy, not an active sadness, but a kind of gloomy indifference. He had been conscious of a queer sensation, as though a part of his brain had been removed, the part that was concerned with the normal man’s loves and hates and fears and ambitions.
Why had he come here? Where was he going? He did not know, and he did not care. Life seemed to have been cut in two. Or he was standing alone on the edge of some new world, feeling chilly and vaguely surprised and curious, just as though he had died and come to life in another world and had left his familiar self behind him.
Doctor’s advice.
“Look here—my dear chap, you want a change. Go off by yourself for a couple of months.”
He had taken his doctor’s advice. It had been a push in a certain direction, and he had gone in that direction, passively, feeling somehow that both he and the doctor were fools playing some meaningless game.
His wife had seen him off at Victoria Station.
Poor Kitty, she had tried to be so bright, and had looked worried. The impression of her worried and gentle face was the one impression that he seemed to have carried over across the curious gap between the now and the then. He remembered her standing and smiling at him through the window of the Pullman car as the train had moved off. There had been a quivering of her eyelids; her smile had broken suddenly; she had turned quickly away.
Poor Kitty, going a little grey, and with faint lines about her brown eyes! What had she to worry about? Him? There was nothing to worry about. Nothing was worth worrying about. He felt that he had a pad of ice in his head instead of a brain.
Here he was at Marseilles, and as free as any Monte Cristo. He could go to Cannes or Monte Carlo, or Corsica, or Algiers, or Tunis, or Egypt. He had only to decide. Yet—but decision was the one thing lacking. He did not care where he went; it did not matter—nothing mattered, not even poor Kitty’s troubled face.
The swarthy girl had finished her orange. She spat out a couple of pips, wiped her mouth with the back of a hand, and looked happy. Her eyes lighted upon Barron’s dead face, and seemed amused by it.
“Buy an orange, Mr. Englishman.”
She was hailed and smacked on both shoulders by two coal-grimed men who were passing.
“Hallo—Bam-Bam!”
She laughed and went along with them, and Barron turned his dead eyes towards the Cannebiere. He was still asking himself that question, but without feeling an urge to answer it. Whither? And why had his wife worn that worried look?
Yet to most women comes that crisis when the hand of her mate is withdrawn from hers. If she is wise she will hold her tongue and watch, wondering and waiting, however much her silence may hurt her. For a year or more Kitty Barron had watched the change that had been stealing over her husband. He had grown restless, bored, uninterested in the things that had always interested him. He had seemed to have no use for his garden. Noise had irritated him, the noise made by his own children. Always she had counted on his good temper and his kindness, and gradually both had failed her. He had become strange, aloof, very silent, with a dead look in his eyes that had made her afraid.
She had questioned the doctor, a rather too cheerful man who was in a perpetual hurry.
“I’m worried about my husband.”
“Nothing radically wrong, Mrs. Barron. Physically, he is one of the soundest men—for his age—you would be likely to meet. Lost interest in things, has he?”
“Yes; nothing seems to interest him.”
“Oh! a phase. Men get like that—sometimes. He told me he thought of retiring.”
“He is too young to retire.”
“Quite so. Let him have two months or so loafing about by himself, and he will come back as keen as ever. Sure of it. Active men get bored with being bored.”
He spoke confidently. His advice was sound as far as it went—but how far did it go? Mrs. Barron doubted its completeness. Intuition is out of favour, but Kitty Barron divined more than did the doctor. Barron had never been a moody man. She and her husband were deeply attached to each other; their marriage had been a happy one. Then—-gradually—this indifference had spread, a cold restlessness. What did it mean?
She had watched other marriages. She knew that men could be incalculable creatures, as though the wild spirit of adventure possessed them suddenly, a nomad instinct, or insurgent sex, or a blind questing after something—they knew not what.
What did it mean in her husband’s case?
She had let him go; she had tried to smile. Meanwhile she trembled, aware of a terrible insecurity, a wounded loneliness. She was afraid for him. Their two lives were so closely interlocked.
Meanwhile, on that January afternoon John Barron wandered up the Cannebiere, a listless man in the thick of a southern crowd. His plans were as vague as his movements, and so vague were they that he had left his luggage at the station. An hotel? Oh, he could loaf about and look at the hotels; there was plenty of time; when he had made his choice he could hire a taxi to the station, take his luggage out of the consigne, and return to the hotel in time for dinner.
A tout accosted him at the corner of the Cours Belsunce, a shabby fellow with shifty eyes.
“Want a guide, sir?”
Barron ignored the man, to be waylaid further on by a gentleman who propose
d to sell him a pair of cheap opera-glasses, and who—when the Englishman declined the opera-glasses—produced from somewhere a packet of questionable postcards.
“Very nice, monsieur.”
Barron shrugged him off. Confound these shabby fellows! He turned into a café, and sat down at one of the little tables behind the glass screen. A white-aproned waiter came forward. Barron ordered coffee. He lit a cigarette and watched the passing crowd, but his glances were dull as though he—a man under sentence of death—watched these live people who had ceased to matter.
He had been there less than a quarter of an hour when a woman came in and sat down at a table facing him. She was young. She was dressed in black and wore a red hat. The perfume with which she was scented seemed to fill the café. Her face, with its brilliant pallor, vermilion mouth, and large, dark pencilled eyes, made Barron think of a wax figure in a hairdresser’s window. She ordered some strange drink, and opening her bag, produced a mirror, powder box and puff, and rouge stick. She appeared casually intent upon her complexion, and Barron watched her, not because he was particularly interested, but as a man may watch a dog scratching himself.
A moment later her eyes met his. She gave him a long, considering, suggestive stare.
Barron glanced away; but later he looked at her again. There was something about her that piqued him. She was so different from any northern women; her rich artificiality seemed to him extraordinary; she looked as though made of white wax and black glass and red pigment. She made him think of some strange, exotic fruit.
And then he realized that she was smiling at him.
He sat up a little awkwardly in his chair. He took and lit another cigarette. The woman was looking in her little mirror and using her rouge stick. Her mouth did not seem to need it.
She glanced up quickly and met his eyes. She made a roguish little grimace.
Barron watched the smoke from his cigarette.
He realized that it was dark outside, and that the lamps were lit. It was about time that he selected his hotel. He was aware of the woman in the red hat getting up and going out. She paused at the glass door and glanced at him. He remained in his chair.
The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping Page 74
