Part 9

"We are the first," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "Ah! here comes Franklin—"

He stopped abruptly. With Franklin was the Countess. It was an awkward moment. Elizabeth displayed less graciousness than she might have done. The Countess, as a woman of the world, retained the honors.

Last of all came Mr. Quin. With him was a small dark man, neatly dressed, whose face seemed familiar to Mr. Satterthwaite. A moment later he recognized him. It was the croupier who earlier in the evening had made such a lamentable mistake.

"Let me introduce you to the company, M. Pierre Vaucher," said Mr. Quin.

The little man seemed confused. Mr. Quin performed the necessary introductions easily and lightly. Supper was brought—an excellent supper. Wine came—very excellent wine. Some of the frigidity went out of the atmosphere. The Countess was very silent, so was Elizabeth. Franklin Rudge became talkative. He told various stories—not humorous stories, but serious ones. And quietly and assiduously Mr. Quin passed round the wine.

"I'll tell you—and this is a true story—about a man who made good," said Franklin Rudge impressively. He had shown no lack of appreciation of the champagne.

He told his story—perhaps at somewhat unnecessary length. It was, like many true stories, greatly inferior to fiction.

As he uttered the last word, Pierre Vaucher, opposite him, seemed to wake up. He also had done justice to the champagne. He leaned forward across the table.

"I, too, will tell you a story," he said thickly. "But mine is the story of a man who did not make good. It is the story of a man who went, not up, but down the hill. And, like yours, it is a true story."

"Pray tell it to us, monsieur," said Mr. Satterthwaite courteously.

Pierre Vaucher leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. "It is in Paris that the story begins. There was a man there, a working jeweler. He was young and lighthearted and industrious in his profession. They said there was a future before him. A good marriage was already arranged for him, the bride not too bad-looking, the dowry most satisfactory. And then, what would you think? One morning he sees a girl. Such a miserable little wisp of a girl, Messieurs. Beautiful? Yes, perhaps, if she were not half-starved. But anyway, for this young man, she has a magic that he cannot resist. She has been struggling to find work, she is virtuous—or at least that is what she tells him. I do not know if it was true."

The Countess's voice came suddenly out of the semi-darkness. "Why should it not be true? There are many like that."

"Well, as I say, the young man believed her. And he married her—an act of folly! His family would have no more to say to him. He had outraged their feelings. He married—I will call her Jeanne—it was a good action. He told her so. He felt that she should be very grateful to him. He had sacrificed much for her sake."

"A charming beginning for the poor girl," observed the Countess sarcastically.

"He loved her, yes, but from the beginning she maddened him. She had moods—tantrums—she would be cold to him one day, passionate the next. At last he saw the truth. She had never loved him. She had married him so as to keep body and soul together. That truth hurt him, it hurt him horribly, but he tried his utmost to let nothing appear on the surface. And he still felt he deserved gratitude and obedience to his wishes. They quarreled. She reproached him—Mon Dieu, what did she not reproach him with?

"You can see the next step, can you not? The thing that was bound to come. She left him. For two years he was alone, working in his little shop with no news of her. He had one friend—absinthe. The business did not prosper so well.

"And then one day he came into the shop to find her sitting there. She was beautifully dressed. She had rings on her hands. He stood considering her. His heart was beating—but beating! He was at a loss what to do. He would have liked to have beaten her, to have clasped her in his arms, to have thrown her down on the floor and trampled on her, to have thrown himself at her feet. He did none of these things. He took up his pincers and went on with his work. 'Madame desires?' he asked formally.

"That upset her. She did not look for that, see you. 'Pierre,' she said, 'I have come back.' He laid aside his pincers and looked at her. 'You wish to be forgiven?' he said. 'You want me to take you back? You are sincerely repentant?' 'Do you want me back?' she murmured. Oh! very softly she said it.

"He knew she was laying a trap for him. He longed to seize her in his arms, but he was too clever for that. He pretended indifference.

"'I am a Christian man,' he said. 'I try to do what the Church directs.' 'Ah!' he thought, 'I will humble her, humble her to her knees.'

"But Jeanne, that is what I will call her, flung back her head and laughed. Evil laughter it was. 'I mock myself at you, little Pierre,' she said. 'Look at these rich clothes, these rings and bracelets. I came to show myself to you. I thought I would make you take me in your arms and when you did so, then—then I would spit in your face and tell you how I hated you!'

"And on that she went out of the shop. Can you believe, Messieurs, that a woman could be as evil as all that—to come back only to torment him?"

"No," said the Countess. "I would not believe it, and any man who was not a fool would not believe it either. But all men are blind fools."

Pierre Vaucher took no notice of her. He went on: "And so that young man of whom I tell you sank lower and lower. He drank more absinthe. The little shop was sold over his head. He became of the dregs, of the gutter. Then came the war. Ah! it was good, the war. It took that man out of the gutter and taught him to be a brute beast no longer. It drilled him—and sobered him. He endured cold and pain and the fear of death—but he did not die, and when the war ended, he was a man again.

"It was then, Messieurs, that he came South. His lungs had been affected; they said he must find work in the South. I will not weary you with all the things he did. Suffice it to say that he ended up as a croupier, and there—there in the Casino one evening, he saw again—the woman who had ruined his life. She did not recognize him, but he recognized her. She appeared to be rich and to lack for nothing—but, Messieurs, the eyes of a croupier are sharp. There came an evening when she placed her last stake in the world on the table. Ask me not how I know—I do know—one feels these things. Others might not believe. She still had rich clothes—why not pawn them, one would say? But to do that—pah! your credit is gone at once. Her jewels? Ah, no! Was I not a jeweler in my time? Long ago the real jewels have gone. The pearls of a King sold one by one, and replaced with false. And meantime one must eat and pay one's hotel bill. Yes, and the rich men—well, they have seen one about for many years. Bah! they say—she is over fifty! A younger chicken for my money."

A long shuddering sigh came out of the windows where the Countess leaned back.

"Yes. It was a great moment, that. Two nights I have watched her. Lose, lose, and lose again. And now the end. She puts all on one number. Beside her, an English milord stakes the maximum also—on the next number. The ball rolls; the moment has come; she has lost.

"Her eyes meet mine. What do I do? I jeopardize my place in the Casino. I rob the English milord. 'A Madame,' I say, and pay over the money."

"Ah!" There was a crash as the Countess sprang to her feet and leaned across the table, sweeping her glass onto the floor. "Why?" she cried. "That's what I want to know, why did you do it?"

There was a long pause, a pause that seemed interminable, and still those two facing each other across the table looked and looked. It was like a duel.

A mean little smile crept across Pierre Vaucher's face. He raised his hands. "Madame," he said. "There is such a thing as pity."

"Ah!"

She sank down again. "I see."

She was calm, smiling, herself again.

"An interesting story, Monsieur Vaucher, is it not? Permit me to give you a light for your cigarette."

She deftly rolled up a spill, lighted it at the candle, and held it toward him. He leaned forward till the flame caught the tip of the cigarette he held between his lips.

Then she rose unexpectedly to her feet. "And now I must leave you all. Please—I need no one to escort me."

Before one could realize it, she was gone. Mr. Satterthwaite would have hurried out after her, but he was arrested by a startled oath from the Frenchman.

"A thousand thunders!"

He was staring at the half-burned spill which the Countess had dropped on the table. He unrolled it.

"Mon Dieu!" he muttered. "A fifty-thousand-franc banknote. You understand? Her winnings tonight. All that she has in the world. And she lighted my cigarette with it! Because she was too proud to accept—pity. Ah! proud, she was always proud as the Devil. She is unique—wonderful."

He sprang up from his seat and darted out. Mr. Satterthwaite and Mr. Quin had also risen. The waiter approached Franklin Rudge.

"La note, Monsieur," he observed unemotionally.

Mr. Quin rescued it from him quickly.

"I feel kind of lonesome, Elizabeth," remarked Franklin Rudge. "These foreigners—they beat the band! I don't understand them. What's it all mean, anyhow?"

He looked across at her. "Gee, it's good to look at anything so hundred percent American as you." His voice took on the plaintive note of a small child. "These foreigners are so odd."

They thanked Mr. Quin and went out into the night together. Mr. Quin picked up his change and smiled across at Mr. Satterthwaite, who was preening himself like a contented bird.

"Well," said the latter. "That's all gone off splendidly. Our pair of lovebirds will be all right now."

"Which ones?" asked Mr. Quin.

"Oh," said Mr. Satterthwaite, taken aback, "Oh! yes, well, I suppose you are right, allowing for the Latin point of view and all that—"

He looked dubious.

Mr. Quin smiled, and a stained-glass panel behind him invested him for just a moment in a motley garment of colored light.

THE WORLD'S END

Mr. Satterthwaite had come to Corsica because of the Duchess. It was out of his beat. On the Riviera he was sure of his comforts, and to be comfortable meant a lot to Mr. Satterthwaite. But though he liked his comfort, he also liked a Duchess. In his way, a harmless, gentlemanly, old-fashioned way, Mr. Satterthwaite was a snob. He liked the best people. And the Duchess of Leith was a very authentic Duchess. She was the daughter of a duke as well as the wife of one.

For the rest, she was rather a shabby-looking old lady, a good deal given to black bead trimmings on her clothes. She had quantities of diamonds in old-fashioned settings, and she wore them as her mother before her had worn them: pinned all over her indiscriminately. Someone had suggested once that the Duchess stood in the middle of the room while her maid flung brooches at her haphazard. She subscribed generously to charities, and looked well after her tenants and dependents, but was extremely mean over small sums. She cadged lifts from her friends, and did her shopping in bargain basements.

The Duchess was seized with a whim for Corsica. Cannes bored her, and she had had a bitter argument with the hotel proprietor over the price of her rooms.

"And you shall go with me, Satterthwaite," she said firmly. "We needn't be afraid of scandal at our time of life."

Mr. Satterthwaite was delicately flattered. No one had ever mentioned scandal in connection with him before. He was far too insignificant. Scandal—and a Duchess—delicious.

"Picturesque, you know," said the Duchess. "Brigands—all that sort of thing. And extremely cheap, so I've heard. Manuelli was positively impudent this morning. These hotel proprietors need putting in their place. They can't expect to get the best people if they go on like this. I told him so plainly."

"I believe," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "that one can fly over quite comfortably. From Antibes."

"They probably charge you a pretty penny for it," said the Duchess sharply. "Find out, will you?"

"Certainly, Duchess."

Mr. Satterthwaite was still in a flutter of gratification, despite the fact that his role was clearly to be that of a glorified courier.

When she learned the price of a passage by avion, the Duchess turned it down promptly. "They needn't think I'm going to pay a ridiculous sum like that to go in one of their nasty dangerous things."

So they went by boat, and Mr. Satterthwaite endured ten hours of acute discomfort. To begin with, as the boat sailed at seven, he took it for granted that there would be dinner on board. But there was no dinner. The boat was small and the sea was rough. Mr. Satterthwaite was decanted at Ajaccio in the early hours of the morning more dead than alive.

The Duchess, on the contrary, was perfectly fresh. She never minded discomfort, if she could feel she was saving money. She waxed enthusiastic over the scene on the quay, with the palm trees and the rising sun. The whole population seemed to have turned out to watch the arrival of the boat, and the launching of the gangway was attended with excited cries and directions.

"That maid of mine has been sick all night," said the Duchess. "The girl's a perfect fool."

Mr. Satterthwaite smiled in a pallid fashion.

"A waste of good food, I call it," continued the Duchess robustly.

"Did she get any food?" asked Mr. Satterthwaite enviously.

"I happened to bring some biscuits and a stick of chocolate on board with me," said the Duchess. "When I found there was no dinner to be got, I gave the lot to her. The lower classes always make such a fuss about going without their meals."

With a cry of triumph the launching of the gangway was accomplished. A musical comedy chorus of brigands rushed aboard and wrested hand luggage from the passengers by main force.

"Come on, Satterthwaite," said the Duchess. "I want a hot bath and some coffee."

So did Mr. Satterthwaite. He was not wholly successful, however. They were received at the hotel by a bowing manager and were shown to their rooms. The Duchess's had a bathroom attached. Mr. Satterthwaite, however, was directed to a bath that appeared to be situated in somebody else's bedroom. To expect the water to be hot at that hour in the morning was, perhaps, unreasonable. Later he drank intensely black coffee, served in a pot without a lid. The shutters and the window of his room had been flung open, and the crisp morning air came in fragrantly. A day of dazzling blue and green.

The waiter waved his hand with a flourish to call attention to the view. "Ajaccio," he said solemnly. "Le plus beau port du monde!"

And he departed abruptly.

Looking out over the deep blue of the bay, with the snow mountains beyond, Mr. Satterthwaite was almost inclined to agree with him. He finished his coffee, and lying down on the bed, fell fast asleep.

At déjeuner the Duchess was in great spirits.

"This is just what will be good for you, Satterthwaite," she said. "Get you out of all those fussy little old-maidish ways of yours." She swept a lorgnette around the room. "Upon my word, there's Naomi Carlton-Smith."

She indicated a girl sitting by herself at a table in the window, a round-shouldered girl who slouched as she sat. Her dress appeared to be made of some kind of brown sacking. She had black hair, untidily bobbed.

"An artist?" asked Mr. Satterthwaite.

He was always good at placing people.

"Quite right," said the Duchess. "Calls herself one, anyway. I knew she was mooching around in some queer quarter of the globe. Poor as a church mouse, proud as Lucifer, and a bee in her bonnet like all the Carlton-Smiths. Her mother was my first cousin."

"She's one of the Knowlton lot then?"

The Duchess nodded.

"Been her own worst enemy," she volunteered. "Clever girl too. Mixed herself up with a most undesirable young man. One of that Chelsea crowd. Wrote plays or poems or something unhealthy. Nobody took 'em, of course. Then he stole somebody's jewels and got caught out. I forget what they gave him. Five years, I think. But you must remember? It was last winter."

"Last winter I was in Egypt," explained Mr. Satterthwaite. "I had flu very badly the end of January, and the doctors insisted on Egypt afterward. I missed a lot."

His voice rang with a note of real regret.

"That girl seems to me to be moping," said the Duchess, raising her lorgnette once more. "I can't allow that."

On her way out, she stopped by Miss Carlton-Smith's table and tapped the girl on the shoulder. "Well, Naomi, you don't seem to remember me?"

Naomi rose rather unwillingly to her feet. "Yes, I do, Duchess. I saw you come in. I thought it quite likely you mightn't recognize me."

She drawled the words lazily, with a complete indifference of manner.

"When you've finished your lunch, come and talk to me on the terrace," ordered the Duchess.

"Very well."

Naomi yawned.

"Shocking manners," said the Duchess to Mr. Satterthwaite, as she resumed her progress. "All the Carlton-Smiths have."

They had their coffee outside in the sunshine. They had been there about six minutes when Naomi Carlton-Smith lounged out from the hotel and joined them. She let herself fall slackly onto a chair with her legs stretched out ungracefully in front of her.

An odd face, with its jutting chin and deep-set gray eyes. A clever, unhappy face—a face that only just missed being beautiful.

"Well, Naomi," said the Duchess briskly. "And what are you doing with yourself?"

"Oh! I dunno. Just marking time."

"Been painting?"

"A bit."

"Show me your things."

Naomi grinned. She was not cowed by the autocrat. She was amused. She went into the hotel and came out again with a portfolio.

"You won't like 'em, Duchess," she said warningly. "Say what you like. You won't hurt my feelings."

Mr. Satterthwaite moved his chair a little nearer. He was interested. In another minute he was more interested still. The Duchess was frankly unsympathetic.

"I can't even see which way up the things ought to be," she complained. "Good gracious, child, there was never a sky that color—or a sea either."

"That's the way I see 'em," said Naomi placidly.

"Ugh!" said the Duchess, inspecting another. "This gives me the creeps."

"It's meant to," said Naomi. "You're paying me a compliment without knowing it."

It was a queer vorticist study of prickly pear—just recognizable as such. Gray-green with splodges of violent color where the fruit glittered like jewels. A swirling mass of evil, fleshy—festering. Mr. Satterthwaite shuddered and turned his head aside.

He found Naomi looking at him and nodding her head in comprehension.

"I know," she said. "But it is beastly."

The Duchess cleared her throat. "It seems quite easy to be an artist nowadays," she observed witheringly. "There's no attempt to copy things. You just shovel on some paint—I don't know what with, not a brush, I'm sure—"

"Palette knife," interposed Naomi, smiling broadly once more.

"A good deal at a time," continued the Duchess. "In lumps. And there you are! Everyone says, 'How clever.' Well, I've no patience with that sort of thing. Give me—"

"A nice picture of a dog and a horse, by Edward Landseer."

"And why not?" demanded the Duchess. "What's wrong with Landseer?"

"Nothing," said Naomi. "He's all right. And you're all right. The tops of things are always nice and shiny and smooth. I respect you, Duchess; you've got force; you've met life fair and square and you've come out on top. But the people who are underneath see the under side of things. And that's interesting in a way."