Chapter XVII

The Promenade du Midi

"Do you know that you are half an hour before time?" Agatha said as soon as they were out of hearing in the gardens.

"Yes; but I didn't expect to find you yet. But when I spotted you at the tea-shop I had to come. I thought you were alone. The game's up at last, and no mistake. This is good-bye, sweetheart--good-bye for ever now!"

There was a sudden break in his voice. He wanted to tell her that he had hungered for a sight of her, and longed for a word to restore him to hope, courage, self-respect; that he had lost his bearings, and was drifting headlong upon hidden rocks and quicksands; but would not founder without throwing up some danger signal, and catching at any spar floating by or any rope flung to him. But he could find no words. The hoarse murmur of the broken surf and subdued roar of the ground-swell mingled with the heavy surging of blood in his ears, and dazed and stupefied him, as they walked in the nearly deserted gardens, their eyes on the ground.

Presently Agatha looked up and saw that the surface laughter had died from his face, which was white and drawn, and almost stern in its gravity.

"Now you look like your mother, Ivor," she said gently; and he retorted with sudden fierceness:

"Heaven forbid she should look like me! She is a good woman, Agatha; it was a bad day for her when she brought me into the world. I've always been in the wrong box, somehow. To go straight I ought to have been born rich; I'm made like that. But it's all done and over now. And I want you to tell her--tell her--I'm sorry for her sake--I've gone under. That's all."

"No, Ivor, not all. Let me tell her--for her sake, that you have risen again--as you can and must--for her sake."

"You talk like a woman," he said impatiently. "And what do women know?"

How could he tell her--not that he wished to--what had driven him there to be near her, if not actually with her, an hour before the time fixed, for succour and refuge from shipwreck more complete and terrible than that of which she knew--in part, at least--already? How could she enter ever so slightly into the passion and misery that were tearing him, into the struggle of all that was best in him enlisted on the side of all that was worst, of a weak and wavering will, drawn hither and thither by the fierce contention of honour and chivalry, gratitude and compunction--against despair and passion and a certain dire, half-conscious need of that tenderness, even protection, that weak woman often gives to strong man?

The dumb and piteous appeal in his eyes--great, soft eyes, like a loving repulsed dog's--went to her heart, but what did it mean? Was he only sorry for himself, this great man-child, helpless before his own passions, or was the spring of real penitence touched at last? Did he want comforting exculpation and the assurance that his mother would never know half or grieve for a quarter, and that all would come right by some mysterious magic? Silently, with a gentle pressure, she slipped her hand into his arm; he pressed it hard against his throbbing side, with a deep, gasping breath, and drew her to a bench, set back in shining foliage outside the gardens fronting the sea, where they sat looking absently at sunlit sails dipping and gliding over the broad blueness, and listening absently to the continuous plunge and break of tumbling waves.

He had been in quite other company that day, and was still tingling and throbbing with the sound of another voice and the excitement of a scene of sudden, unimagined passion, the thought of which made him press the hand in his own more convulsively to his side, as if it had power to save him, like a frightened child clinging to a mother.

It had come so suddenly. He had been loitering drearily in the Casino gardens in the forenoon to kill time till the appointed meeting at Mentone, loitering by a hedge of prickly pear, its bare, bone-like stems and fleshly leaves spread like distorted hands, its dull-red, warty fruit, grotesquely suggestive of weird spells and horrible enchantments, when round the corner all at once he had come eye to eye with the Countess, solitary, sad and with a new, subdued gentleness in her manner.

He must come in to her apartment, to the balcony looking on the gardens, he heard; she was alone; they must breakfast together; she was sure he had not breakfasted; they would have a bottle of that Clos Vougeot he had liked.

The breakfast had been very cheerful and reviving--dainty cookery, a lively and warm-hearted hostess bent on pleasing, and afterwards an excellent and favourite cigar and a cup of coffee of unimaginable perfection. Such things soften the bitterness of affliction and bring people to contemplate misfortune in gentler mood and through rosier light. And in this cool, sumptuously fitted apartment by the balcony that looked on the gardens, it was pleasant to linger and laugh, forgetful of the thorns of life. And there and then the offer to square the Spider had been pressingly renewed and courteously declined. No man preyed upon women.

But the woman this time was in luck; she could spare whatever was necessary to appease the cormorant; there was no question of preying on her.-- But men must stand or fall by themselves. No; he was cruel; he scorned her help; there were tears.

These, of course, had to be dried. There followed assurances of gratitude, friendship, respect; then the counter-assurance of her suddenly inherited wealth. Still her desire to recognize and return old kindnesses was not held to justify preying upon women. He was sincerely grateful, but she must not be hurt by an absolute refusal of her generous offer.

Then came the bolt from the blue, in the shape of an outburst of frenzied passion, fiercely tender, throbbing with life, deep as death.

She loved him. It was the one deep and lasting and genuine passion in a life of many loves, light, fugitive, and easily forgotten; no pale, self-regarding girl's love, but the fervid and passionate self-devotion, the worship, of a matured and full-blooded nature, of one who had drunk deeply of the cup of life, who knew the world and had sounded all the mysteries of passion. She asked nothing in return--nothing but leave to adore, to cherish. They would go to some sunny summerland, where he was not known, wherever he pleased; they might cruise about in their own yacht; they might live on her estate sometimes--anywhere, only together. If he were, as he said, cast broken and friendless upon the world, without a crust, with neither friends, nor hope, nor prospects, why not take refuge in her love? Her wealth was ample. All she had was his without reserve. He might exchange into a regiment on foreign service; he might serve in a foreign army. He might not think it, but she could be a tame, fireside woman for his sake: she would make him a true and devoted wife, married or not. When a woman loved truly she was capable of anything.

Her appeal had the irresistible force of real passion; she was handsome--he had had no idea how handsome till now. Emotion brought back the sweet freshness of youth to her face, called out wonderful tones in her voice and strange brilliance in her eyes. Now she was tender, gentle, sisterly; now she was tragic, fierce, despairing; then suppliant and reproachful, but always with that electric flame of passion kindling and overcharging an atmosphere of mysterious enchantment akin to the magic of the weirdly beautiful gardens and the diablerie of the glittering Casino.

The details of that wild scene he could in no wise recall; nor could he remember exactly how it had come to an end, and he had found himself once more in the free air, thrilled, intoxicated, revolted, bewildered, fascinated, but not bound.

After all, there were worse women than the poor countess. She was a good comrade, and infinitely to be pitied. Was it her fault that she had been torn from her convent in the white innocence of ignorant girlhood and flung without power of protest into the arms of an elderly and unlovable husband, with no pause for reflection, and neither knowledge nor a moment's experience of life? What was there to guide and protect a lovely, lonely, fascinating girl, childless and unloved, and unconscious alike of her power and her weakness, through the rocks and quicksands of a hard and cruel world? Poor child--poor, dear, good-hearted countess! And if her reputation were a trifle damaged, how many, far less tempted and yet of spotless fame in the eyes of a hoodwinked world, were frailer than she! And, after all, who was spotless among women--except Agatha?

To be near Agatha would be calm and safety from that wild and wandering fire. And yet, as he sat listening to the multitudinous murmur of broken seas, with her hand pressed hard to his side, he was powerless to shake off the spell of that passionate hour; the physical attraction, the glowing eyes, the transfigured beauty, the thrilling voice, the pathos, the pity, the deep emotion, were always in his eyes and ears and heart. What could Agatha know of that, or of the intensified power of it all in an hour of desperate need and misery?

"Is it true," he asked, after a long silence, "that my mother is pressed for money, and that you give typewriting to the girls?"

"Ask her yourself. I may say nothing."

"And are you _that man's_ paid secretary? Don't say that's true--not that."

"What man?"

"Oh, that foreign chap, that Pole--de Konski, as he calls himself. He's on some secret service; half English he says he is. He's all right for me; but for you to be his secretary!"

"Certainly I am--his confidential secretary."

"Good Lord! Confidential! Mixed up in all that underhand business--intrigues--who knows what devilry! In his pay! And why? When you have a good home, when mother is wanting you, and would give anything to have you back with her."

"Surely you know why, Ivor--not that your poor mother does. We try to keep the worst from her. The girls help a little--she thinks it is her own money. She can't realize how that has dwindled--and then my--pay is very good."

"O Lord! As bad as that! And if only--yes, I might have gone straight, I might--if only--if only you had given me a chance, a hope, had kept true to me!"

"True? I have always been the same to you. We have always been friends, Ivor, ever since we were such little things, playfellows, then companions. Always fond of each other--in that way--till now, when you reproach me and make other claims upon me."

"I should never have got into this mess if only you would have cared for me."

He knew this was untrue; but the Circean spell, working so strongly in his blood, darkened his brain and made him savage to her who had power to set him free.

"What nonsense, Ivor! Why should I care for you in that way? Anything of that kind was hateful to your mother; you know that she was always against it. Even if you had spoken out, she had other views for you. She trusted me, and told me, and you know it, Ivor. How could I, under her roof, eating her bread--how could I take her son from her and spoil her happiness?"

"Spoiling _my_ happiness is nothing, of course. Yet she chose her husband. A man has a right to choose his wife."

"But you had not chosen me. She was not sure. She was only afraid of what might be if we were much together. You were so young, even if you had really cared----"

"Really cared? If? When you knew----"

"I knew nothing but her fears and objections. You said nothing----"

"It was understood----"

"Only by you. And so you took it for granted, till just now since you found me here? You had no right to do so. You never spoke, Ivor."

"And if I had spoken? Agatha!"

"I could only have asked you to forget. I knew her dislike of it. I was no match for you. I had less than nothing. My dear aunt was quite right. She knows you. Are you the sort of man to be happy on a crust? Yet she is no lover of mercenary matches."

He let go the hand, till now squeezed so fiercely to his side; the touch of it sent a mortal chill through him. She could sit there, calm and cold and unmoved, and discourse of the unwisdom of penniless marriages, while he was thirsting for a word or sign responsive to the love that thrilled him, and the need of love that devoured him, and the longing for sympathy that filled him with a desolate despair. And yet it was not such love as hers that he wanted in his secret heart, but a wilder, fiercer flame, though he did not know it. Yet he knew and feared the baser enchantment working in his blood, and in his better self revolted against it.

Her voice was even and sweet; all that she said was reasonable, cold, and calculated. She was so self-contained, so perfectly composed; kind and gentle, but with no hint of hidden fervour or suppressed feeling. Could nothing carry her off her feet; could she never forget herself in any sudden warmth, any gust of unconscious emotion?

And all the time the glow and stir of that other woman's tempestuous, self-forgetting passion moved him; the love-thrilled voice, the impassioned gestures, the splendidly moulded figure, the transfiguring tenderness on the beautiful, though faded, face, dazzled and inebriated him, in spite of moments of repulsion and disgust.

"Money," he muttered, "money! when all that one hungers for is a little love. Oh, you good women, cold and calculating and condescending to us poor, hot-headed, hot-blooded sinners, who only want a hand to help us out of the mud--a hand you won't reach out ever so little for fear of tumbling in yourselves."

"How unjust you are, Ivor," she cried, with tears in her voice and eyes, "you who clung to the mud you speak of, and refused to be helped out of it!"

"Help me now," he murmured. "Reach out a hand now--now that I'm sinking--deeper and deeper. I'm a beast, and a selfish beast at that. But marry me; it's my only chance. I haven't a penny in the world, and I've no prospects. I'm done for--broken, good for nothing--but--marry me--pick me out of the gutter."

"Ivor! Are you mad?"

"Yes, and drunk too--raving mad and blind drunk," he shouted savagely. "I was always in love with you," he faltered, "even when you were a little mite of a thing in short frocks and long hair, when you used to bowl for me and bat for me and field for me, and I used to swing you in the swing in the big horse-chestnut----" He dropped his face in his hands with a heavy sigh, his arms propped on his knees, and his eyes bent frowningly on the gravel.

She was trembling now, but controlled her voice too well.

"And yet," she said, "I have no power with you--you will do nothing for me--you want me to go on batting and bowling and fielding for you in the perpetual, desultory cricket you make of life."

"And you," he retorted--"you want me to go on swinging you everlastingly under the humdrum, goody-goody chestnut you make of life."

"And this," said Agatha bitterly, "is love--a man's love!"

"Oh, I'll swing you," he returned savagely, "if you'll only have me--swing you for all I'm worth, if you'll only love me--love me, love me, Agatha--backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, as long as you like, till my arms crack and drop off. That's love--a man's love."

She could not speak for the hot rush of sobs rising in her throat. She shut her hands tight, choked back the sobs, and looked straight before her at the broad blue sea glowing deeply in the sun. The dolphin-like hill-spur of Bordighera, all dreamy blue, with violet tints, paled while she looked and slipped suddenly under a veil of grey mist, while a huge black cloud, rising rapidly behind it, threw its shadow over the sea, changing peacock-blue and turquoise into deepest indigo. The chill of it struck into her. She drew in her breath and swallowed down her tears, and spoke in a low, even voice.

"Ivor," she said, "will you do this for me--only this one thing--the thing I have asked you so often before?"

"I'll do anything, everything; but I can't turn Methody, if you mean that--even for you----"

"Will you, once for all--I ask it for the last time--for my sake, give up gambling in every form--cards, betting----"

"How can I? Oh, you can make terms and conditions. You can stop and haggle over whether I'm worth raking out of the gutter or not. Well, I'm not. You may stake all you're worth on that. But if you cared twopence for me, you'd never stop to think whether I was or not; you'd just reach out a hand before you knew where you were, and haul me out. I know what love is, what even a woman's love can be. You don't----"

"Ah! Don't I?----"

"I'm not worth raking out. I know that fast enough. And I've only one chance to make it worth while from _your_ point of view, and that is to square Mosson somehow. De Konski thinks it just possible; he may get him to wait awhile on a heavy percentage and say nothing. My leave is up in two days, and in those two days I must somehow rake in the dollars--supposing the beast will wait, that is--and of course my infernal luck is bound to turn now. And when I get home I know a horse or two I stand to make a pot of money on. So you see I can't do the thing you ask anyhow. Ask me something easier, Agatha; there's nothing I won't do for you but that, which I absolutely can't."

"But this is all I want," she said, shivering In the growing chill. "Promise this one thing, Ivor."

"It's mocking at me to ask that. It can't be done. If Mosson sticks to his pound of flesh, as he jolly well will--there's only just the off-chance that he won't--it means I'm broken, have to send in my papers--you know what the chief is--sell up the last stick, raise something on expectations, and begin again with no chances and a heavy debt. The best would be to work out a passage to Canada or South Africa and try my luck there. Else--there is only the sea," he said, looking at the waves darkening under the great cloud sailing up from Bordighera with a cold blast before it, that drove sand and small pebbles into their faces and swept the promenade clear of people, donkeys, and mules in a minute, crashing eucalyptus-boughs together, twisting and twining tulip-tree and catalpa, and making the palm-tops writhe and rattle drily with a sound of pattering rain.

They were forced to get up and shelter from blinding sand and pebbles behind the trees and shrubs in the gardens, whither the storm pursued them, piercing through every chink. Ivor's hat went, and he had to plunge some yards after it, while Agatha, half blinded by a branch dashed in her face, stood waiting, cowering from the wind behind shrubs, through the stems of which she could see the broad band of sea, the western half still glowing deeply like a peacock's throat in vivid sunlight, and the eastern half meeting it in accurate sharp division, as darkly and deeply indigo, the shallow waters shading to duck's-egg. Calm and storm, brightness and darkness, were in close contention, like the spirits in Ivor's soul--the dark and the bright, the pure love and the impure. Yet the sunlight lay deep and warm on the western waves, and the western sky was clear and cloudless above the shadowed bluffs.

"Only the sea," he repeated sullenly, striding back to her, holding on his hat, and bracing himself against the fierce blast; "and you'll all be jolly well rid of me."

"Why will you talk like an idiot?" she cried through the loud wind. "Be a man, Ivor, for once. Your own folly brought you to this, you know perfectly well. Try to use a little sense, a little manliness. Pick yourself out of the mud and make a better thing of life than you have ever done yet. Give up this miserable gambling, for your own sake, if not for mine. Square the man yourself. He can get nothing by breaking you. Who can get blood from a stone? What if you have to leave the Service? Use those muscles of yours to some purpose. Use your brains. You are not the idiot or the child you make yourself out. Think of those who depend upon you, and don't talk of being dependent on women. Don't for a moment suppose that I, or any woman of spirit, would dream of marrying a man who can't stand on his own foundation."

They were walking against the wind, fighting their way through the deserted gardens to shelter behind the bandstand. The storm was so wild that things displayed outside shops parallel to the gardens were swept away before there was time to take them in; china hung on the walls rattled, clashed, and even cracked; newspapers, cards, handkerchiefs and scarves, flew hither and thither across street and gardens; the sunshine left the mountains, and the sky darkened.

"I was an ass to think you would," he replied grimly, maddened by her scorn, and in spite of the beating wind on it his face was quite white; for he knew that of the spirits casting dice for his soul the black one had won. "But," he added, stopping to catch the scarf that flew from Agatha's hand as she tried to wind it round her neck--"but---- Hullo, here's de Konski!"

The Anarchist was sheltering from the storm inside a café, and came out on their approach in the first great drops of a pelting rainstorm. "Yes, here I am," he repeated, saying something to Agatha in a language that had no meaning for Ivor, to which she replied quickly in the same, stepping aside in the shelter while the Anarchist hailed and stopped a fiacre flying past to stables. Then she wished Ivor good-bye, offering her hand, which he either did not or would not see.

"Good-bye," he said, when de Konski was handing her into the carriage. As she got in, she looked out and saw him replace his hat in the buffeting wind. Then she drove to Rumpelmayer's, where Ermengarde was still waiting. She could not catch the expression of his face as she drove off, but fancied a softening in its sullen hardness, while Ivor, unable in the rain and wind to catch a full glance of her face, turned back into the café with a dreadful sickness of heart, feeling that he had parted once for all with the better influences and purer hopes of his life, and was thrown definitely back to such consolation as a dishonourable union offered. Nothing mattered now; a sort of reckless joy took hold of him at the thought, and he shook off the heart-sickness with a wild laugh.

"Let's have a bock," he cried gaily. "If we must go to the devil, let's go with a light heart."

"But why go to the devil at all?" de Konski asked, when the waiter brought the drink.

"Nowhere else to go to, old chap. Nobody else to so much as look at the likes of me. I ain't worth the snap of a finger. Lord bless you, de Konski, that young saint you just popped into the trap out of my contaminating company never cared a hang for me--no, not a twopenny damn, so she says, and now I'm down on my luck she won't---- O Lord! Well! who cares? Better fish in the sea than ever came out of it, eh?"

"That depends on your fishing. Sometimes you net one with gold in its mouth. Pity to let that kind go."

"I shall never net this one," he sighed, setting down the glass he had drained, and staring blankly at the table before him. "She never did and never could care for me," he repeated silently to himself. And all the malign enchantment of the morning rushed back in full force, now that, scorned and rejected of one, he felt free to surrender himself to the other. "But I'll do the square thing," he told himself. "I'll marry her, I'm blest if I won't. She shall have her chance at last, poor woman!"

The Anarchist, sitting opposite at the wine-stained table, contemplated him with interest. "How," he asked presently, "do you propose to make the journey?"

"Going to marry for money, to begin with."

"No occasion, then, to trouble about the Spider any more?"

"O Lord, that beast! I'd forgotten all about him. I'm an ungrateful brute, de Konski. I'm awfully obliged to you, though, all the same. Shylock sticks out for his pound of flesh, of course?"

"Well, hardly that. After all, even he's human, Paul."

"Oh, I say, though, you don't mean to say--you can't mean to say--you've squared the beast!" he cried, springing up and making the glasses dance on the table.

"Well, yes, I've squared him--in a way."

"What way? Half my pay as interest? Seventy per cent. at the final square up six months hence?"

"No; but on conditions----"

"Conditions? Mosson making conditions?"

"Here is a paper signed by him. It is in duplicate, signed and witnessed. He remits you----"

"Mosson remitting? The sun'll tumble out of the sky."

"He remits you the whole, gives you a receipt in full--there it is in black and white--on condition that you bind yourself to play no more, to give up every kind of gaming and betting, and sign to that effect--witnessed by me. So now, Paul, you are a free man. No question of the descent to Avernus, the mercenary marriage, or anything of the sort--always providing you take this pledge."

"Oh, I say!" he muttered thickly, the drops starting on his forehead. "It can't be true--it can't. And the chief?----"

"Will know nothing."

"But Mosson?" he gasped. "Mosson to make me a present of all that? It's unheard of! Besides, it isn't the square thing; he must be paid--you can't rook him, if he's ever such a beast. And it's nothing to him whether I go under or not."

"Mosson is paid to the last centime--that is, he will be if you make this promise."

"Paid by whom?" he asked hoarsely.

"Naturally not by an enemy. By some one who makes it a stipulation that you never know, by some one who has your welfare so much at heart as to be willing to pay a price for it, who wishes you to be absolutely free and unfettered by any obligation--except that of giving up this stupid, ruinous vice."

"The countess!" he whispered, turning cold and sick, as he sank back in the chair he had left, covering his face with his hands.

"Pff! Is it likely? I may not give you the smallest hint; I'm bound in honour, so don't ask. But, if you mean the woman you are always helping out of tight places, is it likely? Look here, Paul, there is the paper and its duplicate. Here is a pen--a fountain. Read and sign it. But think before you sign."

There was silence for some time--silence except for the fitful return of the quieting storm outside, the crackle of hail on roof and pavement, and the last faint pattering of rain before it stopped. Ivor did not move from his posture, his head fallen forward on the table between the glasses, his face in his hands, his shoulders slightly convulsed once, then rigid. The Anarchist looked at him with a sort of weary patience, but said nothing.

At last Ivor got up and went to the window, drawing the back of his hand across his eyes, and looked out on the drenched gardens, where orange-trees and palms were still quivering in the half-spent blast and the hail lay in great stones like lumps of sugar on the sunlit grass. Then he turned back, read the papers carefully, and silently asked for the pen and signed, his signature being duly attested by de Konski, who gave him one paper and kept the other.

"Now you are free," the Anarchist said, shutting up the pen and pocketing one paper.

"Yes, free," repeated Ivor, like a man in a dream.