clementina sat in the vestibule and fanned herself with the telegram. it was from marseilles and had been telegraphed on from london. it ran:
“doctors say i am dying. come at once here h?tel louvre. matter of life and death. am wiring quixtus also. for heaven’s sake both come.—will hammersley.”
it was a shock. hammersley’s letter of a few weeks ago had prepared her for his indefinite advent; but the thought of death had not come to her. will hammersley was dying, apparently alone, in an hotel at marseilles; dying, too, in an atmosphere of mystery, for he must see her, and quixtus too, before he died. the message was urgent, the appeal imperative.
“oh, clementina, i hope it’s not bad news,” cried etta.
clementina handed the telegram to tommy.
“it’s from the sick man of shanghai who pined for the english lanes.”
“poor chap,” said tommy very gently. “poor chap! i remember him well. a fine upstanding fellow, one of the best. once he gave me a cricket-bat.” the artist in him shivered. “it’s awful to think of a man like that dying. what are you going to do?”
“what do you think?”
“take the night train to marseilles,” replied tommy.
“then why did you ask?” said clementina.
“but what shall we do?” cried etta.
“oh, you and tommy can stay here till i come back.”
etta gasped and blushed crimson. “that would be very nice—but—but—i don’t think dad would quite like it.”
“oh lord!” cried clementina, “i was forgetting those confounded conventions. they do complicate life so. and i suppose i can’t send you away with tommy in the motor either. and now i come to think of it, i can’t go away to-night and leave you two to travel together to london to-morrow. what on earth are women put in the world for, especially young ones? they’re more worry than they’re worth. and if i left tommy here and took you with me to marseilles, you’d be as handy to travel with, in the circumstances, as a wedding-cake. i don’t know what to do with you.”
etta suggested that the jacksons—the friends whom she had visited the previous day—might take her in till clementina came back. indeed, they had invited her to stay with them.
“go and telephone them at once,” said clementina.
“you’ll have uncle ephraim as a travelling companion,” tommy remarked as etta was leaving them.
clementina rubbed a distracted brow, not to the well-being of her front hair.
“lord save us! he’ll be worse than etta.”
“poor dear clementina,” he said, and turned away to administer help and counsel to his beloved in the complicated matter of the telephone.
suddenly clementina started to her feet. perhaps quixtus’s telegram had not been forwarded as hers had been. in this contingency it was her duty to let him know the unhappy news, and she must let him know at once. an ordinary woman would have sent tommy round with the telegram. but clementina; accustomed all her life long to act for herself, gave no thought to this possibility. she bolted out of the door of the hotel and made her way back to the tea-room.
the crowd had thinned, but quixtus and his friends still lingered. mrs. fontaine, her elbows on the table, leaning her cheek against her daintily gloved hands, was engaged in earnest talk with him, to the exclusion of the other pair. lady louisa mailing was eating pastry and drinking chocolate with an air of great enjoyment, while huckaby, hands in pockets, leant back in his seat, a very bored mephistopheles. he had exhausted his martha’s conversation long ago, and he was weary of the eternal companionship. why should not faust have a turn at martha now and again? decidedly it was an unfair world. to add, also, to his present discomfort, the confused frame of mind in which he had originally introduced his patron to mrs. fontaine had gradually become more tangled. clean living had grown more to his taste, abstinence from whisky much more simple to accomplish than his most remorseful dreams of reform had ever conceived. and that morning a letter from billiter had filled him with disgust. billiter upbraided him for silence; wanted to know what was going on, hinted that a dividend ought to be due by this time, and expressed, none too delicately, a suspicion of his partner’s business integrity. the cheap tavern-supplied note-paper offended against the nicety of huckaby’s refined surroundings. the gross vulgarity of billiter himself revolted him. a week had passed and mrs. fontaine had shown no signs of having accomplished her ends. he had not dared question her. he had begun; too; to loathe his part in the sordid plot. but that morning he had summoned up courage enough to say to mrs. fontaine;
“i’ve just had a letter from billiter.”
whereupon her pale cheeks had flushed red and her alluring eyes had gleamed dangerously.
“i wish to god i had never seen that brute in all my life!”
and he had said; “i wish to god i had never done so either.”
she had looked at him full, searchingly, inscrutably, for a long moment and saying nothing, had turned away. what was to be the outcome of it all? huckaby was perplexed. the week had passed pleasantly. even his enforced and sardonic attendance on martha had not been able to spoil the charm of the new life, bastard though it was. mrs. fontaine had continued not to let her friends in paris know of her presence in the city, and the week had been a history of peaceful jaunts—to chantilly, fontainebleau, sèvres (where monsieur sardanel had spread before their ravished eyes his collection of mexican rattles and masks and obsidian-edged swords); to “robinson” on the island in the seine, where they had lunched in the tree restaurant; in a word, to all sorts of sweet summer places where the trees were green and the world was bathed in sunshine and innocence. the week had evidently passed pleasantly for quixtus, who had given no intimation of the date of his return to london. he was lotus eating; obviously, too, under the charm of the sorceress, wax in her hands. of his fiendish purpose huckaby still had no suspicion. as far as huckaby could see, mrs. fontaine had made an easy conquest of his patron, and why she had up to now forborne to carry out the essential part of the plot, he could not understand. perhaps she loathed the idea as much as he did. her outburst against billiter gave weight to the theory. it was all very complicated. and here were these two engaged in a deep and semi-sentimental conversation while lady louisa stuffed herself with chocolate, and he, huckaby, was bored to death. what was going to happen?
the thing that did happen was clementina’s inrush. she marched straight up to the table, and, disregarding startled eyes, thrust the telegram into quixtus’s hand.
“read that. you may find one like it at your hotel, or you may not. i thought it right to bring it.”
mrs. fontaine kept her elbows on the table, and regarded clementina with well-bred insolence. lady louisa finished her chocolate. quixtus read the telegram and his face grew a shade paler and his fingers trembled a little. huckaby rose and, drawing a chair from another table, offered it to clementina. she waved it away, with a curt acknowledgment. quixtus looked up at her.
“this is terrible—will hammersley dying——”
he made an attempt to rise, but clementina put her hand on his shoulder.
“don’t get up. i’m going.”
a sudden hardening change came over quixtus’s features.
“stay,” said he. “it was very kind of you to bring this; but i’m afraid it has nothing to do with me.”
“nothing to do with you?”
she regarded him in amazement. “your lifelong friend is dying and implores you to come to him, and you say it’s nothing to do with you?”
“he was a villain, a base villain,” said quixtus, with quivering lips.
“stuff and nonsense!” cried clementina indignantly.
had the man gone absolutely crazy after all?
“i am saying what i know,” he returned darkly. “he was no friend to me.”
“and he wants you to go to his death-bed?” asked mrs. fontaine, taking her elbows off the table. “how very painful!”
“you had better put such lunatic ideas out of your head, and take the night train to marseilles,” said clementina roughly.
quixtus bit his knuckles and stared at the litter of tea in front of him. the orchestra for their last number played a common little jiggety air.
“are you coming?” asked clementina.
“why should dr. quixtus,” said mrs. fontaine; “travel all the way to marseilles to witness the death of a man whom he dislikes? i think it’s unreasonable to ask it.”
“yes, yes,” said quixtus. “it’s unreasonable.”
“and it would break up our pleasant little party,” pleaded lady louisa.
“confound your party!” exclaimed clementina; whereat lady louisa withered up in astonishment. “i’m telling him to perform an act of humanity.”
“he was my enemy,” said quixtus in a low voice.
“and so you can hardly ask him to go and gloat over his death,” said lady louisa stupidly.
“eh? what’s that?” cried quixtus, straightening himself up.
“we’re dealing with christian gentlemen, not devils,” clementina retorted.
“no, not devils—oh, certainly not devils,” said quixtus with a chuckling catch in his voice.
clementina plucked him by the sleeve.
“i can’t stand here all the afternoon arguing with you. even if you have got it into your head that the man offended you, you did care for him once, and it’s only common charity to go to him now that he’s at the point of death. are you going or not?”
quixtus looked helplessly from one woman to the other.
“there’s such a thing as straining quixotism too far, my dear dr. quixtus,” said mrs. fontaine. “i see no reason why you should go.”
“i’m a decent woman and i see every reason,” said clementina, infuriated at the other’s intervention. “i’ll see that he goes. i’ll get tickets now from cook’s and come round to the continental in a taxi and fetch you.”
quixtus rose and extended his hand to clementina.
“i shall go. i promise you,” he said with all his courtliness of manner. “and i shall not trouble you to get my ticket or call for me. au revoir.”
he accompanied her to the door. on parting he said with a smile;
“i have my reasons for going—reasons that no one but myself can understand.”
and when he returned to mrs. fontaine, who was biting her lips with annoyance at clementina’s apparent victory, he repeated the words with the same smile and the curious gleam of cunning that sometimes marred the blandness of his eyes. he had his reasons.
“after all,” said the lady, during their faust and marguerite walk to the h?tel continental entrance in the rue castiglione, “i can’t blame you. it’s an errand of mercy. doubtless he wishes to absolve his conscience from the wrong, whatever it was, that he did you. your pétroleuse friend was right. it is a noble action.”
“i have my reasons,” said quixtus.
“we have become such friends,” she said, after a little pause—“at least i hope so—that i shall miss you very much. i have very few friends,” she added with a sigh.
“if i am one, i esteem it a great honour,” said quixtus.
“i wonder whether you’ll care to see me when you get back to paris.”
“will you still be here?”
“if you promise to stay a little while and finish up our holiday.”
he met her upturned alluring eyes. for all his visionary malignancy he was a man—and a man who never before had been in the hands of the seductress; an unaccustomed thrill ran through him, causing him to catch his breath.
“i promise,” said he huskily, “to stay here as long as it is your good pleasure.”
“then you do care to see me?”
“you ought to know,” said the infatuated one.
“what signs have you given me?”
“signs that every woman must read.”
she laughed. “every man to his method. i like yours. it’s neither cinquecento nor louis xv. nor directoire. the nearest to it is jane austen. but it’s really quixtine.”
now nothing can flatter a man more than to be assured that he has an original method of love-making. quixtus glowed with conscious idiosyncrasy. he also felt most humanly drawn towards the flatterer.
“you may count on my returning to you at the earliest possible moment,” said he. “may i be commonplace enough to remark that i shall count the hours?”
“everything beautiful on the earth,” she replied with a sweet sentimentalism, “is but the apotheosis of the commonplace.”
the shrieking siren of a passing motor-car drowned this last remark. he begged her to repeat it and bowed his ear to her lips. her breath caught his cheek and made his pulses throb.
“i have a plan,” she said, as they entered the hotel. “why shouldn’t we have a little dinner to ourselves? your train doesn’t go till 9.35. i’m learned in trains, you see. and i’m also learned in paris restaurants.”
“nothing could be more delightful,” said quixtus.
it was only when he found himself alone in his room and reflected on the “reasons” for his journey to marseilles that the crazy part of his brain summed up his amatory situation. he laughed sedately. he held the woman’s heart in his hands. at any hour he could dash it on the pavement of paris, whereon so many hearts of women had been broken. at any hour could he work this great wickedness. but not to-night. to-night he would take the heart in a firmer grip. he would dally with the delicious malignity. besides, his fastidiousness forbade an orgy of pleasure. one wickedness at a time. was he not bound even now for marseilles, on a merciless errand? this deed of darkness must be accomplished swiftly. the other could wait. as a crown to his contentment came the realisation that these, his supreme projects of devildom, lay hidden in his own heart, secret from huckaby and his fellow minions. they were futile knaves, all of them. well, perhaps not huckaby. huckaby had more than once expressed the desire to reform. . . .
by the way, what should be done with huckaby during his absence in marseilles? he was useless in paris. why not send him back to london?
he summoned huckaby to his room, and, whilst packing, laid the question before him.
“for god’s sake don’t,” said huckaby, almost in terror.
“why shouldn’t i?”
“i can’t go back,” said he, tugging at his beard, no longer straggly, but neatly cut to a point. “i can’t go back to it all—to the squalor and drunkenness—it’s no use mincing words with you—i can’t do it. you’ve set me on the clean road, and you’ve got to see that i keep there. you’ve given me chances in the past and i abused them. you have the power to give me another—and i won’t abuse it. i swear i won’t. to kick me back again would be hellish wickedness.”
“you’re quite right,” replied quixtus gravely, balancing in his hand an ill-folded pair of trousers which he was about to put into his suit-case. “i appreciate your position perfectly. but, as i have implied to you before, in a similar conversation, hellish wickedness is what i—what i, in fact, am devoting my life to accomplish.”
he packed the trousers and walked up and down the room, pondering darkly. it was a tempting piece of villainy to kick huckaby back into the gutter. in a flash it could be done. but, as in all his attempted acts of vileness, the co-ordination between brain and will failed at the critical moment. a new aspect of the case flashed upon his disordered mind, showing an even more diabolical way of achieving huckaby’s ruin than throwing him back into the gutter. by a curious transmogrification, it was he, quixtus, who now blazed luridly as the master of mischief, and huckaby as the shrinking innocent. the enforced association of the shrinking innocent with the master of mischief could have no other result than the constant sapping of the victim’s volition and the gradual but certain degradation of his soul. to accomplish this was a refinement of devilry far beyond the imagination of his favourite fiend macathiel. he decided promptly and halted in front of his former myrmidon. it was once more necessary for him, however, like the villain in the old melodrama, to dissemble. he smiled and laid his hand on huckaby’s shoulder.
“all right,” said he, in the old, kind voice that in the past had so often stabbed huckaby’s conscience. “i’ll give you the chance. just stick loyally to me. stay with the ladies in paris, and when i come back we can talk about things.”
huckaby gripped his hand.
“thank you, quixtus. i wish i could tell you—i’ve known all along—” he stammered in a hoarse voice—“oh, i’ve played the devil with everything—and i don’t know which is the damneder fool of us two.”
“i am quite certain,” said quixtus with a conscious smile, which he assumed was mephistophelean. “i am quite certain, my dear huckaby, that you are.”
in spite of the exultation that he felt (or deluded himself into feeling) at the triple wickedness wherewith he purposed to burden his soul, quixtus dined with mrs. fontaine in a subdued frame of mind. it was not the fault of the dinner, for it was carefully selected by mrs. fontaine, who smiled pityingly at quixtus’s gastronomic ignorance; nor was it that of the place, a cosy little restaurant in the passage jouffroy; nor that of the lady, who appeared bent on pleasing. deep down in his soul were stirrings of pity which his clouded brain could not interpret. their effect, however, was a mild melancholy. mrs. fontaine’s trained senses quickly noticed it, and she tuned her talk in key. she prided herself on being a sympathetic woman. by this time she had learned to discount his pessimistic utterances which she knew proceeded from the same psychological source as the lunatic desire to break a woman’s heart which had been the inspiration of the plot. she discerned the essential gentleness of the man, his tender impulses, his integral innocence, and established him in her own eyes as a pathetic spectacle. as to the heart-breaking, she felt secure. it was the only element of humour in the ghastly game, which day by day had grown more repulsive.
it was in this chastened mood that she met huckaby, on their return to the continental. quixtus went up to his room by the lift, and left them standing in the lounge.
“i can’t do it,” she said hurriedly. “billiter and the whole lot of you can go to the devil. i’m out of it. with a man who can take care of himself, yes. i’ve no compunction. it’s a fair fight. but this is too low down. it’s like robbing a blind beggar. it revolts me. understand—this is the end of it.”
“will you believe me,” said huckaby, “when i say that it’s more than i can swallow either? i’m honest. i’m out of it too. billiter can go to the devil.”
she looked at him, as she had done before that day; long and searchingly, and her hard eyes gradually softened.
“yes, i believe you.”
huckaby bowed. “i thank you, mrs. fontaine. and as we are on this painful subject, i should like to be frank with you. you know how this thing started. i began it in the first place as a joke, a wild jest, to humour him in his madness. the idea of quixtus breaking a woman’s heart is comic. but—god knows how—it developed into our—our association. the important part now is this—if you think you have been fooling him to the top of his bent, you’re mistaken. when it came to the point of beginning his heart-breaking career, he shied at it. told me the whole thing was profoundly distasteful and i must never mention the matter again.”
“well?” asked mrs. fontaine, “what does that mean?”
“it means,” said huckaby, “that you’ve succeeded in making him fond of your society, for its own sake.”
she drew a deep breath. “thank goodness, this nightmare of a farce is over.”
“now, i suppose you’ll go back to london,” said huckaby.
she looked away from him, unseeing, down the long lounge, and her gloved hands unconsciously gripped each other hard; her bosom heaved. in the woman’s dark soul strange things were happening, a curious, desperate hope was dawning. she remained like this for a few moments while huckaby, unconscious of tensity, selected and lit a cigarette.
“no, i shan’t go to london,” she said at last, without turning her head. “i’ll stay in paris. i owe myself a holiday.”
ten minutes afterwards quixtus had gone. they watched the wheels of the taxi that was carrying him to the lyons station disappear beneath the great archway, and, with something like a sigh, they returned slowly to the lounge. lena fontaine threw herself on a seat, her hands by her side, in an attitude of weariness.
“oh god, i’m tired,” she whispered.
huckaby suggested bed. she shrugged her shoulders. it was not her body that was tired, she explained, but the ridiculous something that people called a soul. that was dead beat. she looked up at him as he stood before her wondering to hear her talk so frankly.
“what was it that played the devil with you? a woman?”
“drink,” replied huckaby laconically.
“i hadn’t even that excuse,” said lena fontaine. she laughed mirthlessly. “don’t you wish you were good?”
he sat down by her side.
“why shouldn’t we try to be?”
“because the world isn’t a sunday school, my dear friend.”
huckaby ventured to touch her hand with the tip of his finger.
“let us try,” said he.
she smiled—this time only in half derision.
“let us,” she said.
a great silence fell upon them, and they sat there side by side for a long, long time, pretending to watch, like many other couples and groups in the lounge, the shifting life of the great hotel, but really far away from it all, feeling drawn together in their new-found shame like two dreary souls who had escaped from purgatory and were wandering through darkness they knew not whither.
