CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I

BEFORE the dessert stage was reached that evening at dinner, the orchestra in the big chandelier-hung room adjoining the restaurant began to beat out the plaintive rhythm of a fox trot; and here and there among the tables spoons beat time above pink and yellow ices and the light glinted upon sheeny shingled heads that swayed unconsciously to the compelling rhythm. One by one the tables emptied, and the solitary couple gliding over the polished parquet in the adjoining room were soon joined by many others.

Out of doors the stars were beginning to shimmer in the dusk above the mountains: indoors the lights flooded down upon the bright frocks of the dancers and were reflected from the polished brown panelling of the walls. There were three long windows from floor to ceiling, each covered by heavy blue plush curtains with a gold braided pelmet across the top. Young Cecil stood by the centre one, talking with a bored proprietary air to a striking-looking girl to whom he had paid marked but peculiarly off-hand attention ever since her arrival in the hotel that morning. She had sleek, short flaxen hair, brushed back like a boy’s, and she wore a scarlet frock.

Before Pagan’s eyes, however, as he glided beneath the brilliant crystal electroliers with Clare in his arms, there floated persistently the picture of Vigers, disfigured and forlorn in his bizarre dug-out on the mountain. Clare gave a little low peal of amusement as she glided past her brother and his colourful companion.

“Cecil is deliciously young, isn’t he!” she laughed. “He is terribly attracted by that pretty little scarlet minx. He has been following her round ever since she arrived, but neither she nor we are supposed to know. Hence his bored look of male superiority and his off-hand cave-man manner.”

Pagan nodded. “Yes, he is rather like a young eastern potentate chatting with one of his female slaves.”

“It is really rather clever of him if he only knew it,” smiled Clare. “Girls at that age sometimes find that sort of treatment attractive.”

“Only at that age?” asked Pagan innocently.

She tilted her head and cocked an eye at him suspiciously. “At twenty a girl takes a man, more or less at his own valuation,” she retorted. “At thirty she makes her own valuation of him.”

“I see,” answered Pagan with a whimsical smile. “And of course that valuation is never as high as his!”

She shook her head cheerfully. “No; not in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, though in the thousandth usually for no apparent reason, it is far higher.”

“And then?” he asked.

She shrugged her pretty shoulders. “Then she marries him or else makes a fool of herself.”

He laughed. “Then women, after they have reached years of discretion, are not really illogical—only once in a thousand times!”

She nodded her head. “Um-m.”

“Now I understand the meaning of divine illogically,” he smiled. “That thousandth time.”

The music slowed to an end, and they walked into the cooler lounge and sat upon a sofa by the great staircase.

“You have been very solemn all the evening,” she said presently.

“Have I?” he answered.

She nodded. “I have been solemn too, inside,” she said. “I cannot get the thought of that poor lonely, disfigured man out of my head.”

“Nor can I,” he admitted.

She sipped the little cup of coffee that had been brought to her. “I am so glad he seemed pleased with our little present.”

“He seemed very pleased,” answered Pagan. “Which reminds me that I must not forget to send up the spare battery when it arrives.”

“It came just before dinner,” she told him. “And I asked Griffin to take it up to Kleber.”

“Oh did you; thanks very much,” he said.

“Poor lonely man,” she murmured softly.

Pagan stirred his coffee absently and regarded the slowly revolving spoon with a frown. “Do you,” he asked without looking up, “do you think he is right in the course he has chosen?”

“You mean—to cut himself off from the world for the sake of others?”

Pagan nodded.

She stared at her cup with a little frown of concentration. “It is rather splendid, don’t you think?”

He did not answer, and she glanced at him quickly. “You do not admire that kind of self-sacrifice?” There was a tinge of disappointment in her tone.

He answered without looking up. “On the contrary, I should like to think that I would have the grit to do the same if I were in his place.”

She stared at her foot in silence. “I think you would,” she said slowly at last.

He thanked her with a far-away little smile. “You think then that he has chosen rightly, both from his own point of view and from that of his friends?” he persisted presently.

“You mean of course chiefly—the girl?”

He nodded his head. “Yes.” And then he added in a low voice, “Suppose you were in her place.”

She tilted her cup and regarded the dregs at the bottom. “It is always so much easier to decide theoretically what is best,” she murmured. “The personal element complicates things terribly, don’t you think?”

“It does,” he agreed solemnly. “But still, tell me: I would like to know—if you were in her place?”

Clare stared at her cup with a little frown of concentration. “Of course,” she said reflectively, “she does not know he is alive, and the early bitterness of her grief must have worn off a little. But if I were in her place and I were given the choice of having him alive and so ghastly disfigured or just—dead; I—I don’t know.” She cupped her chin in her hand and frowned at the little pointed toe of her shoe. “I—I almost think I would have him dead and at peace.”

Pagan nodded his head slowly. “And … and supposing the girl suddenly discovered he was alive—what then?”

“Yes: I have been thinking of that all the time,” she answered slowly.

“What then?” repeated Pagan solemnly after a pause.

She smoothed her frock upon her knee absently. “In a novel of course one would marry him and try to compensate him for his infirmity. But, in real life I—I wonder.” She gazed again at her shoe. “Is his poor face very horrible?” she asked in a low voice.

Pagan nodded his head slowly. “Terrible.”

She nodded her head sadly. “We say it is not the face that we love,” she went on almost as though she were talking to herself. “And that is true: it is not the face, but the whole man. And yet how much of the whole man the face really is! All the little tricks of eye and expression. Without those it is hardly the same person, is it? Without arms or without legs it is the same person that we loved before, even dearer now perhaps because of the pathetic helplessness; but without the dear face… . And yet it is the same person really—inside. It must be—unless such a terrible change affects not only the outside, but the whole man. It might; I believe it would in a case like this where a man has lived for years alone with his thoughts.”

“That was what Baron said,” murmured Pagan.

She nodded. “I wonder. Our characters certainly affect our faces, but it does not follow necessarily that the opposite is true. Poor man!”

“Poor girl,” murmured Pagan gently.

“Yes, poor girl,” she repeated. “I wonder what she would do. She might love him so much that she would see only the man that she had known and not the poor wretch that he had become. Pray heaven that she would. Otherwise it would be terrible for her and for him. Pray heaven that she may never have to make the choice.”

“Amen,” said Pagan.

They sat in silence for some moments, occupied with their own thoughts.

Presently Pagan passed a hand wearily across his forehead. “It’s all wrong,” he burst out suddenly. “It’s all wrong. He should be either dead or else alive and well and married to her. It’s all so hopelessly unfair.

“Other men will want to marry her—and although he, poor fellow, is out of the running, he at least has had the satisfaction of knowing that she loved him. Whereas the other fellow, if he knew, would feel a skunk to push his claim.” He thrust his hands into his pockets and frowned at the little crumpled red cigar band in the big palm pot beside him. “Why is it that life is so complicated?” he complained. “Why is there never a straightforward issue? Why are there always nagging details that dull the edge of enjoyment? We ourselves complicate it too. We hesitate and delay among tabus and inhibitions as though life went on for ever and the sun always shone.” He looked up at the ceiling and quoted with a sigh of exasperation. “Thus is the native hue of resolution sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought. Why can’t we go straight for what we want and enjoy it without regret and without remorse?” he demanded savagely. “Surely the war is not so old that we have forgotten that we can count only upon this very moment. What is not said now may be forever left unsaid.” He pulled his hands from his pockets and turned impulsively towards her. His face was puckered with the intensity of his feelings. “I love you, Clare,” he murmured earnestly, “I love you, dear. Say, ‘I love you, Charles, and one day soon if life still goes on I will be your wife’—or else say, ‘I can never love you,’ and let me go away and take what else there is left to me in life.”

There came a long silence. In the dance room the orchestra was throbbing another fox trot.

She raised her eyes to his slowly. “Charles, dear,” she said gently, “you said you were content to wait—you said that time was on your side. Why are you different to-night?”

He raised his head defiantly as though he were awaiting the attack of unseen foes, but his eyes were fixed abstractedly upon the curtained doorway past which the dancers were gliding. “Do you remember that atmosphere of the old war years when it seemed that a shadow stood always just behind one? That atmosphere of constant flux and uncertainty!”

She nodded her head and murmured in a low voice, “I remember.”

“I feel it to-night. I feel as I felt then—that the future must take care of itself. It is too uncertain. There may be no to-morrow, but there is to-day. Eat, drink and be merry; to-morrow we die, who knows! I’m greedy of life; I am greedy of the moment. This moment—the only moment we know for certain we shall ever have.” He turned his head and looked at her. His face seemed lean and drawn, but his eyes were very bright and alive. “Just say, ‘I love you.’ It shall not bind you beyond the moment. To-morrow you shall go your way if you wish. To-morrow shall take care of itself. But then whatever it brings, joy or sorrow, life or death, I shall have had this moment. Say it; oh say it—if you can with truth.”

For a few moments she drew little patterns on her knee with her fingers. Then she raised her head and looked at him in silence. “Charles, dear,” she began at last, and stopped abruptly.

A shadow moved across her light-coloured frock and Baron’s voice broke in cheerfully.

“Hullo, here you are!” he cried. “I say, isn’t there an awful frowst in here to-night! Come out and get some fresh air. We might all go down to the little café by the station and have some coffee. What do you say?”

Pagan stirred and looked up. “We have just had some,” he murmured at last.

Baron threw a contemptuous glance at the two tiny cups on the glass-topped table beside them. “Oh yes, but that amount wouldn’t damp a thirsty canary,” he retorted. “Coffee in tall glasses, I mean, comme ça.”

II

They sauntered out into the night. It was dark beneath the trees of the avenue except where the electric road lights threw up the overhanging foliage in sharp cardboard relief like stage scenery. Ahead of them twinkled the little coloured lights of the outdoor café, and high up in the night sky, upon the invisible mountain side, lights twinkled here and there.

They passed through the open gate in the white palings which separated the café from the road. A wizened old man in a greasy blue beret moved slowly among the tables fiddling Tosselli’s Serenade. The lights from the coloured lamps among the leaves above revealed the absorbed expression of his face with bizarre changing patches of colour, and glinted upon his swiftly gliding bow. At a larger table beneath the spreading branches of two huge old gnarled trunks some half dozen youths, lavishly decked in tricolour ribbons, were celebrating with wine and song their calling up to perform the customary military service.

Baron led the way to some vacant seats under a tree. A child in a long pink pinafore removed an empty glass from the table, swabbed away a circular liquid stain and brought them coffee in tall glasses. Baron produced his cigarette case and offered it to Clare. It contained only two cigarettes, and she hesitated and looked at Pagan.

“Charles always sucks a foul pipe,” said Baron. “And I am going to get some more presently.” He held a match to her cigarette and lighted his own. Then he took a drink from his glass and rose. “If you are going to get some cigarettes, will you buy me some too?” asked Clare.

“Any particular brand?” he asked.

“The yellow packets please.”

“Those French things?”

She nodded.

“Depraved taste!” he remarked and strolled towards the species of coffee stall where the patron presided over the boxes of cigars, cigarettes, picture postcards and liqueurs.

Pagan pulled out his pipe and filled it slowly. Clare sipped her coffee and looked at the old man who was now fiddling at the young conscripts’ table. “He plays awfully well,” she said.

Pagan returned the pouch to his pocket. “He does; better than many a fellow who is drawing a huge salary in a dance band.”

Silence dropped like a curtain between them. A car glided up by the white palings and stopped. Pagan recognized it as Cecil’s. Griffin got out, and, with his hands in flaps of his breeches like an ostler, swaggered into the café. He met Baron returning with the cigarettes, and clicking his heels, greeted him with a quivering military salute.

“Friend Griffin, apparently, has sampled the local bock,” commented Pagan.

“He is given that way in moderation,” murmured Clare.

His voice, indeed, which carried clearly to where they sat, rather confirmed the impression. It seemed slightly more eager and hurried than the occasion demanded; and Baron’s voice in contrast sounded very quiet and unhurried.

“I took that there accumulator up to the histameny, sir,” said Griffin eagerly.

“Oh did you; thanks very much, Griffin,” answered Baron.

“Yes, I give it to the old Fritz myself, sir; but I left Mr. Cecil’s flashlamp there on the table.”

“Oh never mind,” said Baron. “I expect Mr. Cecil will forgive you. You can fetch it some other time.”

“But I did fetch it, sir; I went back,” went on Griffin hurriedly and excitedly, “and as I came up to the door, someone at the side of the house sings out, ‘Good night, Kleber,’ and it was the Captain’s voice, sir—Captain Vigers.’ Don’t you see, sir, that this here …” His high pitched eager voice suddenly sank and became inaudible. Baron had half turned his head for a fraction of a second and his elbow was bent as though his hand were raised towards his mouth.

Pagan stole a glance at Clare. Her face was very pale, and so still was she that she might have been mistaken for a wax figure were it not for the fluttering rise and fall of the lapels of her cloak. To Pagan, time seemed suddenly to have suspended its beat; but he was conscious that the sweet toned violin was still whispering the serenade. Five seconds had gone by, no more; yet they had seemed like hours. He must say something. He raised his head. “Yes, friend Griffin has done himself very well indeed,” he found himself saying. But his voice sounded to him foolish and trivial.

She remained silent, and the gentle sound of the fiddle seemed a fitting background.

Baron had parted from Griffin and was coming back to them. He sauntered up with studied nonchalance, but he must have noticed the extraordinary immobility of Clare, for he shot a swift glance from her to Pagan. He put the yellow packet of cigarettes on the table. “There are your pernicious gaspers,” he said cheerfully and sat down.

She took them mechanically without speaking. Pagan made another effort. “We thought Griffin seemed a little elevated to-night,” he said.

Baron took the hint. He nodded. “Yes; in the parlance of the vulgar, I think he had ‘had a couple’. ”

Clare spoke at last. “Dicky.” Her low, unhurried voice had a peculiarly clear-cut quality. “Dicky, is it true—what Griffin said?”

Baron avoided her eyes. “My dear Clare!” he laughed. “Griffin in his cups has a more wonderful imagination than he has when sober—which is saying a good deal.”

She turned from him as one turns from a babbling child. She looked at Pagan and laid a hand upon his arm. “You will not lie to me. Is it true?”

He raised his eyes and looked at her mutely. Her hand dropped from his sleeve.

“I knew it—I felt it,” she murmured.

The eyes of the two men met miserably. The wizened fiddler approached their table, stood fiddling for a moment and then passed on.

Clare suddenly raised her head. Her eyes were wild, and her voice had an unfamiliar ring of harshness. “You knew all the time and you did not tell me,” she cried. She swung round on Pagan almost scornfully. “I suppose one could not expect him to tell me; but you, Dicky, you might have told me.”

Baron did not flinch before her anger. He raised his head slowly and met her wild angry eyes. “Clare dear, we did not know till this afternoon,” he answered gently. “Charles’ first impulse was to tell you—to play the game, he said; but I persuaded him not to.”

Her haggard eyes came back to Pagan. “I am glad you wanted to play the game,” she cried.

“We talked it all over, Baron and I,” said Pagan miserably, “and we both agreed that it would—be kinder not to.”

She turned the little packet of cigarettes over and over and over in her lap. Suddenly she shot out her hands impulsively and touched Pagan’s arm and Baron’s. Her voice had lost its strange harshness. “I am sorry,” she said gently. “I know you did what you thought was best for me. You are both very kind. You must forgive me; it has been a shock.” And then suddenly she covered her face with her hands.

Baron stumbled quickly round the table. He put one hand gently on her shoulder and with the other grasped her wrists. “Clare, Clare,” he murmured soothingly.

She felt and found the hand that held her wrist and pressed it against her face. “Oh, Dicky, Dicky,” she cried shudderingly. “Beautiful, handsome Roger, all horribly maimed.”

Pagan looked on in silent misery.

Presently she put down her hands and raised her head.

Pagan stumbled to his feet. “Let me get you something,” he said. “A cognac.”

She shook her head and looked at him with a wan smile. “Thank you—but I am all right, really.”

“Sure?” asked Baron looking down at her.

“Yes—really.”

Baron picked up the packet of cigarettes which had fallen upon the ground. She thanked him with a tired little smile and put them in her bag. Then she pulled the high collar of her cloak about her throat. “Would you mind very much if we went back now,” she asked. “I—I would …”

“Of course,” agreed Pagan.

They walked slowly back up the long avenue to the hotel, Clare in the middle silent but with head erect, Pagan and Baron in embarrassed sympathetic silence on either side. Behind them the coloured lights of the café disappeared behind the intervening trees, and the quavering skirl of the violin sank to a distant murmur. Slowly they mounted the hotel steps and passed into the foyer. In the light of the warm-shaded lamps her face seemed less pale. She halted at the foot of the broad staircase and turned to them with a sad little smile.

“I think I will go to bed now,” she said. “You have been very sweet to me, both of you.” She smiled at them a little unsteadily. “Thank you.” She placed her hand upon the broad polished balustrade. “Good night.”

“Good night,” murmured Baron. Pagan looked at her in mute misery.

She mounted a step and paused. She turned her head and smiled at them bravely, and then she went slowly up the stairs.

When she had disappeared from view round the broad sweep of the staircase, the eyes of the two men met in an eloquent look. Baron pursed up his lips and nodded his head gloomily. Pagan stared abstractedly at the tall palm in its tub of hammered brass.

“And what is going to happen now!” he murmured at last.

“God only knows,” answered Baron, “but I would like to wring that damned fool Griffin’s neck,” he added with sudden vehemence.