Bennett Arnold
Lilian
III
The Casino
Lilian, in a negligé, was somnolently stretched out in the easy chair in her room when Felix peeped in. He looked at her enquiringly in silence for a moment, and she gave him a hazy smile.
"Oh!" he said. "Then you won't feel like going into the Casino to-night after all?"
"Nothing to stop me," she replied, with a peculiar intonation, light and yet anxious.
"Hurrah!" exclaimed Felix very gaily, almost boyishly. "Then we'll go."
The apprehension which now for two days had been eating like a furtive cancer into her mind suddenly grew and contaminated the whole of her consciousness; she could not understand his levity, for she had not concealed from him the sinister misgiving.
"Yes!" she murmured with a sort of charming and victimized protest. "That's all very well, but-" And she stopped, and the smile expired from her face.
He shrugged his shoulders, gave a short, affectionate, humouring laugh, and said with kind superiority, utterly positive:
"What have I told you? The thing's absolutely imposs!"
And just as suddenly she was quite reassured and the apprehension vanished away. It could not exist against his perfect certitude. She lit up a new smile.
"Look here," he went on, "we'll dine in the Casino if we can. Of course, every blessed table may be booked, but I'll have a try."
A quarter of an hour later, when she had begun to dress, he returned with the exciting information that, at precisely the right instant, somebody had telephoned to countermand an inside table and he had secured it.
They arrived very late in the Casino restaurant, yet more diners came after them than had come before, so that ultimately it would have been difficult to draw a straight line between dinner and supper. The stars in the arched firmament of the vast and lofty hall challenged the stars of heaven in number and splendour, and seemed to win easily. Light fell in glittering floods on the flowered tables and on the shoulders of the women. In the centre of the floor was an oblong parquet sacred to dancing. The band, in which Englishmen and varied dagoes were mingled, sat, clothed apparently in surplices, on a daïs in a mighty alcove. The drummer and the banjoist each procured an unnatural union of light and sound by electric illumination of their instruments from within. The leader wore a battered opera hat, and at the end of a piece he would exclaim grimly and scornfully, "So that's that!" or, "We are the goods!" or some such phrase. Now and then the band overflowed into song, and the wild chants of the Marquesas or the Fiji Islands rang riotously through the correctness of the restaurant, and Lilian caught fragments of significant verse, such as:
"The rich get rich,
And the poor get children,
Ain't we got fun?"
showing that one touch of nature makes the Southern archipelago the very sister and bride of Europe.
The primary mission of the band was to induce a general exultant gaiety; and the mission was accomplished, nobody understood how. Lilian exulted in the food, the wine, the glitter, the noise, the wise, humorous face of Felix, and the glances which assailed her on every hand. All care fell away from her. She forgot the future, and the whole of her vitality concentrated itself intensely in the moment. Most of the conversation at neighbouring tables was in English, and it was all about gambling, dancing, golf, lawn-tennis, polo, cards, racing, trains de luxe, clothes, hotels, prices, and women. Even in the incomprehensible French gabble that reached her she could distinguish words like "golf," and "bridge," and "picnic."
Then four elegant, waisted young men appeared mysteriously from nowhere and approached certain tables and bowed with an assured air, and instantly four elegant young women rose up, without being asked, and the professional couples began to display to the amateurs the true art of the dance. Lilian had never seen such dancing.
"Why are they all Spanish girls?" she innocently asked, struck by the rich, dark skin of the women.
"They're no more Spanish than you are," said Felix. "You perceive that one there. She's at our hotel, on our floor, and I've seen her as blonde as a Norwegian. The dark olive is the result of strange cosmetics, and a jolly fine result, too. Nothing finer has been invented for a century. It's so perverse. Don't you like it?"
"I think it's lovely!" she agreed with enthusiasm, also with a vague envy.
Later, when the senoritas had left their partners and resumed their interrupted meals, and the parquet was empty again, she said:
"I do really think it's awful, all this! It's so expensive, everything; and it's all for pleasure. The whole town's for pleasure." In the background she had a vision of her working life, with its discipline and cast-iron hours and wristlets and fatigue and privations and penury. The click of the typewriter, the green-shaded lamps, the Tube, the cold bedroom, the washing and sewing done in the cold bedroom! The blue working frock with its pathetic red line of clumsy embroidery!
"What about Margate?" Felix demanded quietly.
She was nonplussed.
"Oh! But that's different!"
"It is. It's not half as good. You must remember there's nothing new in all this. It's been going on in the Mediterranean for thousands of years, and it's likely to go on for thousands of years more. It's what human nature is. What are you going to do about it? Would you abolish luxury and pleasure? Not you. Do you imagine that God created the shores of the Mediterranean and this climate for anything else but this? What frightens you is the tremendous organization and concentration of the affair. Nothing else. And let me tell you that this town is the most interesting town on the coast just now. The fellow that's got the new concession for the casino is a bit of a genius. He's moulding the place into something fresh. It used to be the primmest place on earth. He discovered that the English don't want to be prim any more; he showed them to themselves. Do you suppose all these women began to come here on their own? They're pawns in his great game. He brought them; but no nice-minded person asks how, nor whether they really pay for their meals or their rooms, nor how they manage to encourage big gambling in the baccarat rooms. This fellow has put the wind up to the next town up the coast: it used to be the most corrupt town in the whole of Europe, that place used to be! And now the rival genius there is introducing large families of children and nurses there in the hope of persuading the English that they prefer to be prim and domestic after all. The fact is these two geniuses are gambling against one another for far bigger stakes than any of the baccarat maniacs. It's a battle for the command of the coast. That's what it is. You don't get the hang of it all at once; but you will in time. Let's dance."
Lilian was startled by the invitation, for they had not yet danced together. She remembered how, on that night when he first talked to her about herself, he had known that she was being deprived of an evening's dancing. They stood up as the chicken was being removed. She smiled at him with fresh admiration. He had impregnated her with new ideas; he had reassured her; he had justified her enjoyment; he was amazing; he was mad about her, in his restrained style; and now he would surprisingly dance with her.
Although they took the floor early in the dance, when only two other couples had begun to dance, it was impossible for her to be nervous within his arm. Half the room gazed at her, for she had attracted attention from the first. She knew that half the room was gazing at her, and she liked it. She guessed that half the room was saying: "Look at that fresh young creature who's with that middle-aged man-she must be really very young." And she liked it. She liked to show herself with the man who was more than old enough to be her father, worn by knowledge and experience and the corrupting of the world; to contrast her untried simplicity-the bloom of the virginal scarcely gone from it-with his grey hairs and his wrinkled, disillusioned, passive eyes. She was happy in the thought that everybody knew that she must have given herself to him, and that there was something strange, sinister, and even odious in her abandonment. He had used the word "perverse." She did not wholly understand the word, but it appealed to her, and for her it expressed her mood.
She had noticed, in the room, how the women no longer unquestionably young were more consciously and carefully charming towards their men, receiving adulation but rendering it back; whereas the unquestionably young were more negligent and far more egotistic. And so she behaved like one no longer unquestionably young. She glanced up at her partner with ravishing, ecstatic smiles; she publicly adored him. And she was glad that her green and gold frock with its long arm-holes was not of the Wigmore Street cut, but quite other in origin and spirit and in its effect upon the imagination.
The dancing had by this time become general, but the olive-tinted temptresses were still prominent in the throng, and sometimes she touched them in the curves of the dance. She knew where they beat her and where she beat them. And it was vouchsafed to her from the eyes of Felix that she was lovely and marvellous. She felt intensely, inexpressibly happy, and more than happy-triumphant. Her quiet, obstinate resentment against the domestic policy of her father died out, and she forgave him as she danced. She thought with a secret sigh almost painful in its relief:
"Thank God I have fulfilled myself and succeeded not too late!"
She had premonitions of power, a foretaste of dominion. Felix was hers. She could influence him. She could re-make him. And for the thousandth time she breathed to him in her soul: "I have made you happy, but I will make you more happy-infinitely more happy. You don't know yet what I am capable of." He danced very correctly and quite nicely, – rather stiff, of course, but with a certain clever abandonment of his body to the rhythm. She thought: "With what women did he learn to dance? He must have danced a lot. Never will I ask! Never!" The fox-trot ended.
As they were crossing the floor to their table she saw Lord Mackworth dining with a man older than himself at a table near the windows. She sat down to the sweet. He had caught sight of her and was looking at her fixedly. She stared at him for a moment with the casually interested stare of non-recognition, perfectly executed.
"The yacht hasn't left, then, after all," she reflected, and to Felix: "Did that big yacht leave to-night?"
"No," said Felix. "I heard they'd changed their minds." Felix had the faculty of hearing everything.
In spite of herself Lilian was disturbed.
IV
Chemin de Fer
When Felix said that of course they must visit the baccarat rooms she vaguely acquiesced. A mood of the old apprehension had mysteriously succeeded her exultation; she wanted to exorcise it and couldn't. She would have tried to dance the gloom away, but Felix did not suggest another dance; she understood that he had danced once because it was proper for an enlightened amateur of life to forgo no sensation, and that he would not dance again unless asked. She would not ask. He had given her a cigarette and a liqueur; she had accepted a second liqueur and then declined it, afraid of it and anxious for her reputation in his eyes. There were formalities to accomplish at the entrance to the baccarat rooms-forms to be filled up and money to be paid.
"They make a small charge for emptying your pockets," said Felix. "They pretend to be rather particular about their victims."
The select rooms were crowded. Every table in the blazing interior had round it a thick ring of sitters and standers, and many people were walking to and fro, disappointed or hopeful. By tiptoeing and supporting herself on Felix's shoulder Lilian could just see the green cloth of a table, like the floor of a pit whose walls were bodies elegant in evening dress; it was littered with white, rose, and green counters, banknotes, cards, ash-trays, cigarette cases, and vanity bags. More women were seated than men. A single croupier dominated and ruled the game. Cards and counters were thrown about from side to side.
"It seems frightfully exciting," murmured Lilian, scarcely audible, into the ear of Felix.
"It is," said Felix gruffly. "It's the real thing, you know, gambling is. When people lose they lose real money, and when they win, ditto. You can genuinely ruin yourself here. There's no sham about it. You may go out without even your fare home." He offered these remarks separately, between considerable pauses.
"Is baccarat easy to learn?"
"Very. But not here-and this isn't baccarat. This is chemin de fer-equally easy, though. I'll get a pack of cards at the hotel and teach you. It's chemin de fer at every table. I suppose that's why they call the rooms 'baccarat'?"
He was edging nearer the croupier. A stout, middle-aged woman whose flesh seemed to be insecurely and inadequately confined within frail silk rose from her chair, gathering up bag and cigarette case-all that remained to her.
"Sit down here and keep the chair for me," Felix said sharply, and pushed Lilian into the seat.
Everybody gazed at her, and her constraint showed the conviction that everybody guessed she had never sat at a gaming-table before. Felix had vanished, and she was thrown with her arresting, innocent beauty upon the envious and jealous world. He had gone to exchange notes for counters, but she did not know. After a moment that was an hour he returned and took the seat.
"You stand behind me and watch," said he. "And when you get bored walk about and see things for yourself, and when you need moral support again come and put your hand on my chair. I'll stop playing whenever you tell me." He spoke in a muttering voice, but three or four persons around could not fail to catch every word; this, however, appeared not to trouble him.
Lilian was in a state of high excitation, but she was also extremely confused, the game being a complete enigma to her. The croupier was continually raking cards to and fro and counters to and fro, continually tearing tickets out of a book, ripping them to pieces and throwing the pieces behind him, continually dropping cards into a big hole, and continually dropping counters into a little hole. An official opposite the croupier, with pockets full of counters, was continually, and with miraculous rapidity, exchanging rose counters for green and white counters for rose. The player next to Felix had a small table behind him furnished with champagne and sandwiches, which he consumed in hasty gulps and mouthfuls, as one who feels the dread hour at hand when no man may eat or drink. The players ejaculated short incomprehensible words, and at brief intervals Lilian seized a word that sounded like "baunco." She heard Felix utter the word, saw him turn up two cards, and then receive from the croupier's rake a large assortment of green and rose counters. He never looked at her to smile; she was ignored, but she guessed that he must be winning. Soon afterwards his piles of counters had strangely diminished.
The heat stifled her, and the odour of flesh and tobacco and scent nauseated. She held no key to the vast and splendid conundrum, unless by chance her fundamental commonsense was right in its casual suggestion that she was surrounded by lunatics. Yet how could persons so well-dressed, so sure of themselves, so restrained and stylish in manner, and seemingly so wealthy, be lunatics? Impossible! She grew profoundly and inexplicably sad.
At length she walked away, aimless. Felix did not notice her departure. She thought it almost certain that Lord Mackworth would be somewhere in the rooms; she desired above everything to avoid the danger incident to meeting him face to face; but she walked away. All the tables were the same as the table at which she had left Felix-crowded, entranced, self-concentrated and perfectly unintelligible; and at every table the croupier was continually dropping counters into a little hole, and tearing up tickets and throwing the fragments behind him on to the crimson carpet. The sole difference between the tables was that some held more banknotes than others. The heaps of blue thousand-franc notes piled about one table caused Lilian to halt and gaze.
"Some ready there!" said a very young man to a fierce old woman.
"Ah! But you should have seen it in the days of gold plaques before the war. You could call a hundred-franc gold piece 'ready,' then, if you like." The old woman sighed grimly.
Lilian passed on under their combined stare. She glimpsed herself in mirrors, as once she used to glimpse herself in the shop windows of Bond Street, and was satisfied with the vision. Her walk was as remarkable as her beauty. Yes, she knew how to put her feet on the ground and how to make her body float smoothly and evenly above the moving limbs. Her spirit rose as she began to suspect that no woman in the rooms was getting more notice than herself. Fancy Felix being absorbed in his gambling! She had forgotten Lord Mackworth; she had decided that he was not in the rooms; and then suddenly, sprung from nothingness like a ghost, he stood in her path between the wall and the end of a table. She was disposed to retreat; besides, his attention was fixed on the table and she might get by him unperceived. But just as she approached he turned. Although she might have ignored him, and in the circumstances was indeed entitled to do so, she did not because she could not. She blushed, only slightly, acknowledged their acquaintance with a faint smile, then stopped, but did not advance her hand to meet his.
"Ought I to have shaken hands?" she thought anxiously. All her quickly acquired worldliness of manner left her in an instant. She was the typewriting girl again, wearing the wristlets. He had all the physical splendour that she remembered, and the style, and the benignant large-hearted tolerance of an extensive sinner. As he looked at her he drew back his chin and made several chins of it in just the old way. He was enormous, superb, and perfect. And if not a boy he had real youth; once more she had to contrast his youth with Felix's specious sprightliness. She fought on behalf of Felix in her mind, and on points Felix won; but in her mind Lord Mackworth had supporters which derided all reasoning. And as she fronted him the old frightful apprehension was powerfully revived, and it seemed to be building a wall between her and the young man, and she was intensely dejected beneath the brightness of her demeanour.
"Very hot here, isn't it?" she was saying. ("A stupid typewriting girl remark," she reflected as it slipped out.)
"A great change since I was here last just before the war," said Lord Mackworth gaily.
"Warmer, do you mean?"
"No! Much more cheery now. Jollier!" He waved a hand towards the company in general.
"Oh, that!" said Lilian, marshalling all her forces in a determined effort to lose the typewriting girl in the woman of the world. "You mean the company." She shrugged her shoulders, borrowing some of his tolerance, "Of course, you know they've been brought here on purpose. It's all part of a great battle for the command of the coast."
The effort succeeded beyond her hopes. Lord Mackworth was clearly impressed; he put questions which Lilian answered out of the mouth of Felix. Strange that this man should be he who had inexcusably omitted to pay his trumpery bill at Clifford Street, the man through whose unconscious agency she had been unjustly cast into the street! However, the past did not in the least affect her feeling for him. What she most vividly recalled was that she had striven to serve him and had served him. He made no reference-doubtless from delicacy-to the night of their meeting; nor did he betray even the very smallest surprise at seeing her, the typewriting girl, exquisitely and expensively dressed, in the finest baccarat rooms on the Riviera. (Of course, she might be married, or have inherited a fortune-he could think as he chose.)
They went on talking and then a pause came, and Lord Mackworth said bluntly:
"I saw you from the yacht this afternoon."
"Oh! What yacht?"
"The Qita."
"The big one? Is it yours?"
"Oh lord, no! She belongs to my friend Macmusson-we dined together here to-night."
"It must be terribly big. I suppose you have an enormous party on board?"
"Not a bit. Only Macmusson and his three old aunts, and his niece-adopted daughter. Nobody else."
"That's the girl you were making love to," Lilian's heart accused him. "She's going to be very rich and she'll pay all your family debts. That's what it is. But what difference does it make?" her heart added, "You are you." And aloud: "I heard the yacht was leaving to-night."
"She was. But I persuaded old Macmusson to stop another day."
"Really!"
"And do you know why?"
"No."
"Because I had some hope of meeting you here to-night."
She flushed again. She saw the ante-room at Clifford Street at the moment when he came back to ask her to wake him by telephone. He must have been well aware, then, that he had made a conquest, because in the ante-room she had not been able to hide her soft emotion. From that moment he had forgotten her; yet he could not have forgotten her. Perhaps he had somehow been prevented from meeting her in the meantime. Now at the mere second sight of her he had stopped the great yacht on the chance of talking to her! He had thrown over the young rich girl at a single glimpse of Lilian as she passed! It was astounding. But in fact she was not astounded. She glanced up at him. His smooth, handsome red face was alive with admiration. And was she not really to be admired, even by the Lord Mackworths? Was she not marvellous? Did not all the company in the rooms regard her as marvellous? She thrilled to the romance of the incredible event. He was so young and big and strong and handsome; he had such prestige in her eyes. She saw visions.
But the frightful apprehension-no longer a wall, rather a cloud-swallowed up the visions and froze the thrill. Felix held her. A gust of ruthless common sense inspired her to say primly:
"It's always dangerous to give reasons for what one's done." And, nodding, she left him. Immediately afterwards she had to sit down.