Lilian Part 15

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 pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mstances was indeed ent.i.tled 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. n.o.body 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 pa.s.sed! 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.

V

In the Hills

When she at length returned to Felix and, squeezing through the outer rings of gladiators against chance, touched him delicately on the shoulder, he faced her with a bright youthful smile, and without any surprise--it was plain to her that he had recognized her from the light touch of her finger.

"Do you want me to stop?"

She nodded.

He gathered his counters together and rose with alacrity.

"You came in the nick of time," he said. "But, of course, you would!

I've been playing wild and I've made a thousand francs into rather more than six thousand. It was the very moment to flee from the wrath that was coming. Let's run, run, to the change-desk before I change my mind and decide to begin to lose. That's the only insurance--getting rid of the counters, because when you've got rid of 'em you're too ashamed with yourself to get more."

He was quite uplifted, so gaily preoccupied with his achievement that he noticed nothing strange in her mien. She was glad that he noticed nothing; and yet also she was sorry; she would have liked him, after a single glance at her, to have said in his curt, quiet, a.s.sured manner: "What's wrong?"

She kept thinking, but not of Felix: "He must be very fickle and capricious. I'm certain he was making love to _her_. He happens to see me and off he runs after me! He can't be any good, with his debts and things. I was right to give him the bird. But he's terribly nice, and I don't care. I don't know what on earth's the matter with me. I think I must be a bit mad, and always was. If I wasn't, should I be here?"

Transiently she viewed herself as, for example, Gertie Jackson would have viewed her. And then she saw another and a worse self and viewed that other self as Lilian the staid and constant friend of Felix would naturally view such an abandoned girl. She was afraid of and disgusted by the possibilities discovered in the depths of her own mind.

At the desk the dancing girl whom Felix had indicated as inhabiting their hotel hurried up pa.s.sionately and forestalled them. She threw down two green counters, as it were in anger.

"Can I play with _that_!" she exclaimed in c.o.c.kney English.

The changer handed her two hundred-franc notes, which she crumpled in her hand.

"I must find a hundred thousand francs from somewhere!" she cried, departing. She was talking to herself. As she moved away a stout, oldish man with a thick lower lip, pearl studs in his s.h.i.+rt-front, and a gleaming white waistcoat, joined her, and they disappeared together.

Lilian stared after her in amazement. Felix's winnings suddenly seemed very insignificant. Still when he received six fine fresh thousand-franc notes, besides some small notes, in exchange for valueless discs, and handed to her one of the fine fresh notes--"That's for saving me from myself!"--she was impressed anew. A palace of magic, the baccarat rooms! The real thing, gambling!

"What do you want to do now?" he asked. "Dance? No? Well, I'll do anything you like, anything, the most absurd thing. Is that talking?"