CHAPTER XIII
You could have knocked me down with a feather. It is a trite metaphor,
I know; but it is none the less excellent. I repeat, therefore,
unblushingly--you could have knocked me down with a feather. I gasped.
The little man wiped his eyes. He was the tearfullest adult I have
ever met, and I once knew an Italian /prima donna/ with a temperament.
"Captain Vauvenarde? The man with the shoebrush hair and the rolls of
fat at the back of his neck? Are you sure?"
The dwarf nodded. "I set out from England to find him. I swore to the
/carissima signora/ that I would do so. I have done it," he added,
with a faint return of his self-confidence.
"Well, I'm damned!" said I, in my native tongue.
I don't often use strong language; but the occasion warranted it. I
was flabbergasted, bewildered, out-raged, humiliated, delighted,
incredulous, and generally turned topsy-turvy. In conversation one has
no time for so minute an analysis of one's feelings. I therefore
summed them up in the only word. Captain Vauvenarde! The wild goose of
my absurd chase! Found by this Flibbertigibbet of a fellow, while I,
Simon de Gex, erstwhile M.P., was fooling about War Offices and
regiments! It was grotesque. It was monstrous. It ought not to have
been allowed. And yet it saved me a vast amount of trouble.
"I'm damned!" said I.
Anastasius had just enough English to understand. I suppose, such is
mortal unregeneracy, that it is the most widely understood word in the
universe.
"And I," said he, "am eternally beaten. I am trampled under foot and
shall never be able to hold up my head again."
Whereupon he renewed his lamentations. For some time I listened
patiently, and from his disconnected remarks I gathered that he had
gone to the Cercle Africain in view of his gigantic combinations, but
that the demon of gambling taking possession of him had almost driven
them from his mind. Eventually he had lost control of his nerves, a
cloud had spread over his brain, and he had committed the unspeakable
blunder which led to disaster.
"To think that I should have tracked him down--for this!" he exclaimed
tragically.
"What beats me," I cried, "is how the deuce you managed to track him
down. Your magnificent intellect, I suppose"--I spoke gently and not
in open sarcasm--"enabled you to get on the trail."
He brightened at the compliment. "Yes, that was it. Listen. I came to
Algiers, the last place he was heard of. I go to the cafes. I listen
like a detective to conversation. I creep behind soldiers talking. I
find out nothing. I ask at the shops. They think I am crazy, but
Anastasius Papadopoulos has a brain larger than theirs. I go to my old
friend the secretary of the theatre, where I have exhibited the
marvellous performance of my cats. I say to him, 'When have you a date
for me?' He says, 'Next year.' I make a note of it. We talk. He knows
all Algiers. I say to him, 'What has become of Captain Vauvenarde of
the Chasseurs d'Afrique?' I say it carelessly as if the Captain were
an old friend of mine. The secretary laughs. 'Haven't you heard? The
Captain was chased from the regiment----'"
"The deuce he was!" I interjected.
"On account of something," said Anastasius. "The secretary could not
tell what. Perhaps he cheated at cards. The officers said so.
"'Where is he now?' I ask. 'Why, in Algiers. He is the most famous
gambler in the town. He is every night at the Cercle Africain, and
some people believe that it belongs to him.' My friend the secretary
asks me why I am so anxious to discover Captain Vauvenarde. I do not
betray my secret. When I do not wish to talk I close my lips, and they
are sealed like the tomb. I am the model of discretion. You, Monsieur,
with the high-bred delicacy of the English statesman, have not
questioned me about my combination. I appreciate it. But, if you had,
though it broke my heart, I should not have answered."
"I am not going to pry into your schemes," I said, "but there are one
or two things I must understand. How do you know the banker was
Captain Vauvenarde?"
"I saw him several times in Marseilles with the /carissima signora/."
"Then how was it he did not recognise you to-night?"
"I was then but an acquaintance of Madame; not her intimate friend,
counsellor, champion, as I am now. I did not have the honour of being
presented to Captain Vauvenarde. I went to-night to make sure of my
man, to play the first card in my gigantic combination--but, alas! But
no!" He rose and thumped his little chest. "I feel my courage coming
back. My will is stiffening into iron. When the /carissima signora/
arrives in Algiers she will find she has a champion!"
"How do you know she is coming to Algiers?" I asked startled.
"As soon as I learned that Captain Vauvenarde was here," he replied
proudly, "I sent her a telegram. 'Husband found; come at once.' I know
she is coming, for she has not answered."
An idea occurred to me. "Did you sign your name and address on the
telegram?"
He approached me confidentially as I sat, and wagged a cunning finger.
"In matters of life and death, never give your name and address."
As Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos was himself again, and as I began
to sneeze--for the night was chilly--I rose and suggested that we
might adjourn this conference till the morrow. He acquiesced, saying
that all was not lost and that he still had time to mature his
combinations. We crossed the road, and I hailed a cab standing by the
Cafe d'Alger. I offered Anastasius to drive him to his hotel, but he
declined politely. We shook hands.
"Monsieur," said he, "I have to make my heartfelt apologies for having
caused you so painful, so useless, and so expensive an evening. As for
the last aspect I will repay you."
"You will do no such thing, Professor," said I. "My evening has, on
the contrary, been particularly useful and instructive. I wouldn't
have missed it for the world."
And I drove off homewards, glad to be in my own company.
Here was an imbroglio! The missing husband found and, like most
missing husbands, found to be entirely undesirable. And Lola,
obviously imagining her summons to be from me, was at that moment
speeding hither as fast as the /Marechal Bugeaud/ could carry her. If
I had discovered Captain Vauvenarde instead of Anastasius I would have
anathematised him as the most meddlesome, crazy little marplot that
ever looked like Napoleon the Third. But as the credit of the
discovery belonged to him and not to me, I could only anathematise
myself for my dilettanteism in the capacity of a private inquiry
agent.
I went to bed and slept badly. The ludicrous scenes of the evening
danced before my eyes; the smoke-filled, sordid room, the ignoble
faces round the table, the foolish hullaballoo, the collapse of
Anastasius, my melodramatic intervention, and the ironical courtesy of
the fleshy Captain Vauvenarde. Also, in the small hours of the night,
Anastasius's gigantic combinations assumed a less trivial aspect. What
lunatic scheme was being hatched behind that dome-like brow? His
object in taking me to the club was obvious. He could not have got in
save under my protection. But what he had reckoned upon doing when he
got there Heaven and Anastasius Papadopoulos only knew. I was also
worried by the confounded little pain inside.
On the following afternoon I went down to meet the steamer from
Marseilles. I more than expected to find the dwarf on the quay, but to
my relief he was not there. I had purposely kept my knowledge of
Lola's movements a secret from him, as I desired as far as possible to
conduct affairs without his crazy intervention. I was not sorry, too,
that he had not availed himself of my proposal to visit me that
morning and continue our conversation of the night before. The
grotesque as a decoration of life is valuable; as the main feature it
gets on your nerves.
I stood on the sloping stone jetty among the crowd of Arab porters and
Europeans and watched the vessel waddle in. Lola and I, catching sight
of each other at the same time, waved handkerchiefs in an imbecile
manner, and when the vessel came alongside, and during the tedious
process of mooring, we regarded each other with photographic smiles.
She was wearing a squirrel coat and a toque of the same fur, and she
looked more like a splendid wild animal than ever. Something inside me
--not the little pain--but what must have been my heart, throbbed
suddenly at her beauty, and the throb was followed by a sudden sense
of shock at the realisation of my keen pleasure at the sight of her. A
wistful radiance shone in her face as she came down the gangway.
"Oh, how kind, how good, how splendid of you to meet me!" she cried as
our hands clasped. "I was dreading, dreading, dreading that it might
be some one else."
"And yet you came straight through," said I, still holding her hand--
or, rather, allowing hers to encircle mine in the familiar grip.
"Didn't you command me to do so?"
I could not explain matters to her then and there among the hustle of
passengers and the bustle of porters. Besides, Rogers, who had come
down with the hotel omnibus, was at my side touching his hat.
"I have ordered you a room and a private sitting-room with a balcony
facing the sea. Put yourself in charge of me and your luggage in
charge of Rogers and dismiss all thoughts of worry from your mind."
"You are so restful," she laughed as we moved off.
Then she scanned my face and said falteringly. "How thin and worn you
look! Are you worse?"
"If you ask me such questions," said I, "I'll leave you with the
luggage in charge of Rogers. I am in resplendent health."
She murmured that she wished she could believe me, and took my arm as
we walked down the jetty to the waiting cab.
"It's good to hear your voice again," I said. "It's a lazy voice and
fits in with the lazy South." I pointed to the burnous-enveloped Arabs
sleeping on the parapet. "It's out of place in Cadogan Gardens."
She laughed her low, rippling laugh. It was music very pleasant to
hear after the somewhat shrill cachinnation of the Misses Bostock of
South Shields. I was so pleased that I gave half a franc to a
pestilential Arab shoeblack.
"That was nice of you," she said.
"It was the act of an imbecile," I retorted. "I have now rendered it
impossible for me to enter the town again. How is Dale?"
She started. "He's well. Busy with his election. I saw him the day
before I left. I didn't tell him I was coming to Algiers. I wrote from
Paris."
"Telling him the reason?"
She faced me and met my eyes and said shortly: "No."
"Oh!" said I.
This brought us to the cab. We entered and drove away. Then leaning
back and looking straight in front of her, she grasped my wrist and
said:
"Now, my dear friend, tell me all and get it over."
"My dear Madame Brandt--" I began.
She interrupted me. "For goodness' sake don't call me that. It makes a
cold shiver run down my back. I'm either Lola to you or nothing."
"Then, my dear Lola," said I, "the first thing I must tell you is that
I did not send for you."
"What do you mean? The telegram?"
"It was sent by Anastasius Papadopoulos."
"Anastasius?" She bent forward and looked at me. "What is he doing
here?"
"Heaven knows!" said I. "But what he has done has been to find Captain
Vauvenarde. I am glad he has done that, but I am deeply sorry he sent
you the telegram."
"Sorry? Why?"
"Because there was no reason for your coming," I said with unwonted
gravity. "It would have been better if you had stayed in London, and
it will be best if you take the boat back again to-morrow."
She remained silent for a while. Then she said in a low voice:
"He won't have me?"
"He hasn't been asked," I said. "He will, as far as I can command the
situation, never be asked."
On that I had fully determined; and, when she inquired the reason, I
told her.
"I proposed that you should reunite yourself with an honourable though
somewhat misguided gentleman. I've had the reverse of pleasure in
meeting Captain Vauvenarde, and I regret to say, though he is still
misguided, he can scarcely be termed honourable. The term 'gentleman'
has still to be accurately defined."
She made a writhing movement of impatience.
"Tell me straight out what he's doing in Algiers. You're trying to
make things easy for me. It's the way of your class. It isn't the way
of mine. I'm used to brutality. I like it better. Why did he leave the
army and why is he in Algiers?"
"If you prefer the direct method, my dear Lola," said I--and the name
came quite trippingly on my tongue--"I'll employ it. Your husband has
apparently been kicked out of the army and is now running a gambling-
hell."
She took the blow bravely; but it turned her face haggard like a
paroxysm of physical pain. After a few moments' silence, she said:
"It must have been awful for him. He was a proud man."
"He is changed," I replied gently. "Pride is too hampering a quality
for a knight of industry to keep in his equipment."
"Tell me how you met him," she said.
I rapidly sketched the whole absurd history, from my encounter with
Anastasius Papadopoulos in Marseilles to my parting with him on the
previous night. I softened down, as much as I could, the fleshiness of
Captain Vauvenarde and the rolls of fat at the back of his neck, but I
portrayed the villainous physiognomies of his associates very neatly.
I concluded by repeating my assertion that our project had proved
itself to be abortive.
"He must be pretty miserable," said Lola.
"Devil a bit," said I.
She did not answer, but settled herself more comfortably in the
carriage and relapsed into mournful silence. I, having said my say,
lit a cigarette. Save for the clanging past of an upward or downward
tram, the creeping drive up the hill through the long winding street
was very quiet; and as we mounted higher and left the shops behind,
the only sounds that broke the afternoon stillness were the driver's
raucous admonition to his horses and the wind in the trees by the
wayside. At different points the turns of the road brought to view the
panorama of the town below and the calm sweep of the bay.
"Exquisite, isn't it?" I said at last, with an indicative wave of the
hand.
"What's the good of anything being exquisite when you feel mouldy?"
"It may help to charm away the mouldiness. Beauty is eternal and
mouldiness only temporal. The sun will go on shining and the sea will
go on changing colour long after our pains and joys have vanished from
the world. Nature is pitilessly indifferent to human emotion."
"If so," she said, her intuition finding the weakness of my slipshod
argument, "how can it touch human mouldiness?"
"I don't know," said I. "The poets will tell you. All you have to do
is to lie on the breast of the Great Mother and your heartache will go
from you. I've never tried it myself, as I've never been afflicted
with heartache."
"Is that true?" she asked, womanlike catching at the personal.
I smiled and nodded.
"I'm glad on your account," she said sincerely. "It's the very devil
of an ache. I've always had it."
"Poor Lola," said I, prompted by my acquired instinct of eumoiriety.
"I wish I could cure you."
"You?" She gave a short little laugh and then turned her head away.
"I had a very comfortable crossing," she remarked a moment later.
I gave her into the keeping of the manager of the hotel and did not
see her again until she came down somewhat late for dinner. I met her
in the vestibule. She wore a closely fitting brown dress, which in
colour matched the bronze of her hair and in shape showed off her
lithe and generous figure.
I thought it my duty to cheer her by a well-deserved compliment.
"Are you aware," I said, with a low bow, "that you're a remarkably
handsome woman?"
A perfectly unnecessary light came into her eyes and a superfluous
flush to her cheeks. "If I'm at least that to you, I'm happy," she
said.
"You're that to the dullest vision. Follow the /maitre d'hotel/," said
I, as we entered the /salle a manger/, "and I'll walk behind in
reflected glory."
We made an effective entrance. I declare there was a perceptible
rattle of soup-spoons laid down by the retired Colonels and maiden
ladies as we passed by. Colonel Bunnion returned my nod of greeting in
the most distracted fashion and gazed at Lola with the frank
admiration of British Cavalry. I felt foolishly proud and exhilarated,
and gave her at my table the seat commanding a view of the room. I
then ordered a bottle of champagne, which I am forbidden to touch.
"It isn't often that I have the pleasure of dining with you," I said
by way of apology.
"This is the very first time," she said.
"And it's not going to be the last," I declared.
"I thought you were going to ship me back to Marseilles to-morrow."
She laughed lazily, meeting my eyes. I smiled.
"It would be inhuman. I allow you a few day's rest."
Indeed, now she was here I had a curious desire to keep her. I
regarded the failure of my eumoirous little plans with more than
satisfaction. I had done my best. I had found (through the dwarf's
agency) Captain Vauvenarde. I had satisfied myself that he was an
outrageous person, thoroughly disqualified from becoming Lola's
husband, and there was an end of the matter. Meanwhile Fate (again
through the agency of Anastasius) had brought her many hundreds of
miles away from Dale and had moreover brought her to me. I was
delighted. I patted Destiny on the back, and drank his health in
excellent Pommery. Lola did not know in the least what I meant, but
she smiled amiably and drank the toast. It was quite a merry dinner.
Lola threw herself into my mood and jested as if she had never heard
of an undesirable husband who had been kicked out of the French Army.
We talked of many things. I described in fuller detail my adventure
with Anastasius and Saupiquet, and we laughed over the debt of fifteen
sous and the elaborate receipt.
"Anastasius," she said, "is childish in many ways--the doctors have a
name for it."
"Arrested development."
"That's it; but he is absolutely cracked on one point--the poisoning
of my horse Sultan. He has reams of paper which he calls the dossier
of the crime. You never saw such a collection of rubbish in your life.
I cried over it. And he is so proud of it, poor wee mite." She laughed
suddenly. "I should love to have seen you hobnobbing with him and
Saupiquet."
"Why?"
"You're so aristocratic-looking," she did me the embarrassing honour
to explain in her direct fashion. "You're my idea of an English duke."
"My dear Lola," I replied, "you're quite wrong. The ordinary English
duke is a stout, middle-aged gentleman with a beard, and he generally
wears thick knickerbockers and shocking bad hats."
"Do you know any?"
"Two or three," I admitted.
"And duchesses, too?"
I again pleaded guilty. In these democratic days, if one is engaged in
public and social affairs one can't help running up against them. It
is their fault, not mine.
"Do tell me about them," said Lola, with her elbows on the table.
I told her.
"And are earls and countesses just the same?" she asked with a
disappointed air.
"Just the same, only worse. They're so ordinary you can't pick them
out from common misters and missuses."
Saying this I rose, for we had finished our dessert, and proposed
coffee in the lounge. There we found Colonel Bunnion at so wilful a
loose end that I could not find it in my heart to refuse him an
introduction to Lola. He manifested his delight by lifting the skirt
of his dinner-jacket with his hands and rising on his spurs like a
bantam cock. I left her to him for a moment and went over to say a
civil word to the Misses Bostock of South Shields. I regret to say I
noticed a certain frigidity in their demeanour. The well-conducted man
in South Shields does not go out one night with a revolver tucked away
in the pocket of his dress-suit, and turn up the next evening with a
striking-looking lady with bronze hair. Such goings-on are seen on the
stage in South Shields in melodrama, and they are the goings-on of the
villain. In the eyes of the gentle ladies my reputation was gone. I
was trying to rehabilitate myself when the chasseur brought me a
telegram. I asked permission to open it, and stepped aside.
The words of the telegram were like a ringing box on the ears.
"Tell me immediately why Lola has joined you in Algiers.
--KYNNERSLEY."
Not "Dale," mark you, as he has signed himself ever since I knew him
in Eton collars, but "Kynnersley." Why has Lola joined you? Why have
you run off with Lola? What's the reason of this treacherous
abduction? Account for yourself immediately. Stand and deliver. I
stood there gaping at the words like an idiot, my blood tingling at
the implied accusation. The peremptoriness of it! The impudence of the
boy! The wild extravagance of the idea! And yet, while my head was
reeling with one buffet a memory arose and gave me another on the
other side. I remembered the preposterous attitude in which Dale had
found us when he rushed from Berlin into Lola's drawing-room.
I took the confounded telegram into a remote corner of the lounge,
like a dog with a bone, and growled over it for a time until the
humour of the situation turned the growl into a chuckle. Even had I
been in sound health and strength, the idea of running off with Lola
would have been absurd. But for me, in my present eumoirous
disposition of mind; for me, a half-disembodied spirit who had cast
all vain and disturbing human emotions into the mud of Murglebed-on-
Sea; for me who had a spirit's calm disregard for the petty passions
and interests of mankind and walked through the world with no other
object than healing a few human woes; for me who already saw death on
the other side of the river and found serious occupation in exchanging
airy badinage with him; for me with an abominable little pain inside
inexorably eating my life out and wasting me away literally and
perceptibly like a shadow and twisting me up half a dozen times a day
in excruciating agony; for me, in this delectable condition of soul
and this deplorable condition of body, to think of running hundreds of
miles from home with--to say the least of it--so inconvenient a
creature as a big, bronze-haired woman, the idea was inexpressibly and
weirdly comic.
I stepped into the drawing-room close by and drew up a telegram to
Dale.
"Lady summoned by Papadopoulos on private affairs. Avoid lunacy
save for electioneering purposes.--SIMON."
Then I joined Lola and Colonel Bunnion. She was lying back in her
laziest and most pantherine attitude, and she looked up at me as I
approached with eyes full of velvet softness. For the life of me I
could not help feeling glad that they were turned on me and not on
Dale Kynnersley.
Almost immediately the elder Miss Bostock came up to claim the Colonel
for bridge. He rose reluctantly.
"I suppose it's no use asking you to make a fourth, Mr. de Gex?" she
asked, after the subacid manner of her kind.
"I'm afraid not," I replied sweetly. Whereupon she rescued the Colonel
from the syren and left me alone with her. I lit a cigarette and sat
by her side. As she did not stir or speak I asked whether she was
tired.
"Not very. I'm thinking. Do you know you've taught me an awful lot?"
"I? What can I have taught you?"
"The way people like yourself look at things. I'm treating Dale
abominably. I didn't realise it before."
Now why on earth did she bring Dale in just at that moment.
"Indeed?" said I.
She nodded her head and said in her languorous voice:
"He's over head and ears in love with me and thinks I care for him. I
don't. I don't care a brass button for him. I'm a bad influence in his
life, and the sooner I take myself out of it the better. Don't you
think so?"
"You know my opinions," I said.
"If I had followed your advice at first," she continued, "we needn't
have had all this commotion. And yet I'm not sorry."
"What do you propose to do?" I asked.
"Before deciding, I shall see my husband."
"You shall do no such thing."
She smiled. "I shall."
I protested. Captain Vauvenarde had put himself outside the pale. He
was not fit to associate with decent women. What object could she have
in meeting him?
"I want to judge for myself," she replied.
"Judge what? Surely not whether he is eligible as a husband!"
"Yes," she said.
"But, my dear Lola," I cried, "the notion is as crazy as any of
Anastasius Papadopoulos's. Of course, as soon as he learns that you're
a rich woman, he'll want to live with you, and use your money for his
gaming-hell."
"I am going to meet him," she said quietly.
"I forbid it."
"You're too late, dear friend. I wrote him a letter before dinner and
sent it to the Cercle Africain by special messenger. I also wrote to
Anastasius. I asked them both to see me to-morrow morning. That's why
I've been so gay this evening."
At the sight of my blank face she laughed, and with one of her
movements rose from her chair. I rose too.
"Are you angry with me?"
"I thought I had walked out of a nightmare," I said. "I find I'm still
in it."
"But don't be angry with me. It was the only way."
"The only way to, or out of, what?" I asked, bewildered.
"Never mind."
She looked at me with a singular expression in her slumbrous eyes. It
was sad, wistful, soothing, and gave me the idea of a noble woman
making a senseless sacrifice.
"There is no earthly reason to do this on account of Dale," I
protested.
"Dale has nothing to do with it."
"Then who has?"
"Anastasius Papadopoulos," she said with undisguised irony.
"I beg your pardon," I said rather stiffly, "for appearing to force
your confidence. But as I first put the idea of joining your husband
into your head and have enjoyed your confidence in the matter
hitherto, I thought I might claim certain privileges."
As she had done before, she laid her hands on my shoulders--we were
alone in the alcove--and looked me in the eyes.
"Don't make me cry. I'm very near it. And I'm tired to-night, and I'm
going to have a hellish time to-morrow. And I want you to do me a
favour."
"What is that?"
"When I'm seeing my husband, I'd like to know that you were within
call--in case I wanted you. One never knows what may happen. You will
come won't you, if I send for you?"
"I'm always at your service," I said.
She released my shoulders and grasped my hand.
"Good-night," she said, abruptly, and rushed swiftly out of the room,
leaving me wondering more than I had ever wondered in my life at the
inscrutable ways of women.
