AS the door clanged behind his visitors, Rockarvon roused himself.
“Send the Marchesa here and order the carriage.”
She loomed into his presence, pale, with remote eyes and hands that
teased eternally the thin, gold chain.
“You can go now, Laura,” said the earl. “Donchet will give you your
money. I can’t send you home, as I need the carriage. Good afternoon.
I’ll let you know when I want you again.”
She bobbed her head submissively and faded from sight. Her employer,
carried by his faithful negroes to his dressing-room, was arrayed
for driving. In a short while, wrapped in furs and wearing a black
felt hat, wide-brimmed and pulled low over his eyes, he was tucked
in the corner of his brougham. The sun had vanished behind layers of
cold, grey cloud; a sulky wind gathered the dust and rubbish from
the roads and flung them listlessly against the housefronts; behind
steamy windows the café lights began to gleam. Along the Boulevard St.
Germain, Rockarvon’s brougham on its rubber tyres rolled stealthily;
then took a side street to the right, another to the left, threaded the
noisy chaos of the Rue de Rennes and again mounted. The earl shrank
into the cushions and shivered. He felt the wheels stumble over unequal
paving; saw as they passed slowly by the window, the dirty, plaster
housefronts; the small cafés; the cavernous mouths of fuel shops, that
mark poor quarters of the town. The road began to fall rapidly. Through
the tangle of old streets and crumbling rookeries that lie to the south
eastward of the Lycée Henri IV, the brougham picked its way. At last
it drew up at the _porte cochère_ of what once had been a fine
_hôtel_. The footman opened the door and helped his master to the
ground. Thus supported, Rockarvon climbed the steps and made his way
into the flagged hall that led from the street into an inner court. A
door on the right, pushed open by the footman, admitted the callers
to what had the appearance of a curio-shop. From behind a chest of
drawers, piled high with books, and glass, and miscellaneous oddments,
rose a small Jew, bald and spectacled. He greeted his visitor with
the pliable servility of his kind. Rockarvon, deposited in a chair,
dismissed his servant.
“I shan’t be very long,” he said in French. “Tell Jacques to walk the
horses to the Place and back.” Then, turning to the dealer gave him
belated greeting. “Have you the book?” he asked.
The little man spread apologetic hands.
“Alas, milord, it has not come. I wrote to my brother most urgently.
But the postal authorities have been watchful lately. Perhaps he is
taking precautions. He will not want to get into trouble, milord, and
the price was very low for such a rarity.”
“Don’t be a fool, Léon! The price was more than plenty. And it’s been
paid. When I pay, I like to have my purchase. What are you doing to
hasten matters?”
“I wrote to my brother, milord,” repeated the little Jew plaintively.
“It is two days to Brescia. The castle where the book lies is many
kilometres from the city. And it is but a short week since I wrote.”
Rockarvon waved away these serviceable excuses.
“If you are playing any game with me, my friend, you will be sorry for
it. Mark that. I know a good deal about your precious business, Léon.
More than most people. See to it that the book reaches me four days
from now. You must send some one for it, if necessary. And now have
you anything else to show me, to compensate me for my disappointment?”
With a look of conspiratorial salacity, the dealer raised a dirty
forefinger. “Ah! That reminds me. I have something. Something to
_show_ you, milord; to _sell_ you, alas, no, for they are
as good as sold. But very curious, very curious indeed. Never in my
experience have I seen anything of the kind. You will be interested,
milord, of that I am sure....”
While he spoke, he was rummaging among the litter of packages, boxes,
pictures and tousled textiles that strewed a table in the corner of the
shop. Rockarvon, paying no heed to the wheedling murmur that rose above
the clatter of search, let his keen eyes stray about the room. They
fell on a dirty blotting-pad and dust-caked inkstand that occupied a
small clean space on a bureau flap to the left of the stove. This was
Léon’s desk, his counting-house, his board-room. From where Rockarvon
sat, the blotter was easily visible and, on the blotter, an envelope.
More from vanity in the exercise of his powers of long sight than from
idle curiosity, the earl read the superscription. With a quickening
of interest he re-read it. “Mrs. Rowena Plethern,” he read. “Morvane,
Sawley, Gloucestershire, Angleterre.” Then he turned toward the dealer
who, holding in his hand a small cardboard box, was shuffling his way
across the room again.
“I have found them, milord. Now, look at them, look at the beautiful
things and tell me if they are not unique!”
Rubbing his hands in gluttonous complacency, he stood back to watch
the effect of his merchandise upon his noble client. Rockarvon took
from the box a pack of cards. They were all illustrated, even the
number-cards being expressed with varied pictorial ingenuity. At the
first glance, the observer’s eye brightened. Carefully he went through
the pack, from the first to the last, examining each in detail, saying
no word. Then he replaced them in their box and looked lazily at the
expectant Jew.
“They are something quite new to me,” he said. “I like them. What is
the price?”
Léon’s hands waved agitatedly above his head.
“But, milord, I told you! I cannot sell them to you! I have offered
them to a client who will certainly buy them. My clients trust me to
watch their specialties. It would harm----”
“Whatever your client is paying, I will double,” interrupted the earl.
“Do you accept?”
Torn between fear, avarice and business sense, the antiquarian Hebrew
wrung his hands once more.
“Cursed unfortunate that I am, milord, to displease you twice in one
short quarter of an hour! But I dare not disappoint my client. I write;
I have a reply--virtually an order for the cards--and a request for the
price; I write the price. The client will come for them, will come all
the way on purpose to fetch them!”
“All the way?” cut in Rockarvon. “All what way?”
“I did not mean----” began Léon hastily.
“Yes you did, man, you said _and you meant_ all the way. You are
selling these abroad. Tell me to what country.”
For a moment the natural secretiveness of the shopkeeper battled with
the awe in which Léon held his inquisitor. At last, subdued by the
menacing gleam of those compelling eyes, he yielded.
“They are going to England, milord.”
“England?” queried Rockarvon. “I only know of two people in England who
would buy such things as those.”
“Yes?” murmured the dealer.
“Only two,” repeated Rockarvon thoughtfully. “One is Sir Laurence
Clitheroe. He lives in London. The other is a lady, Mrs. ----. Dear me,
I forget the name. What is the name, Léon? Surely you know it?”
“No, milord,” said the Jew obstinately. “I do not know whom you mean.”
Rockarvon changed the subject; asked to see some engravings; talked at
length and at random on collecting themes. The little dealer, who had
something of the true artistry of his race under the unsavoury crust of
his disreputable peddling, warmed to the discussion. At last:
“You are a remarkable man, Léon,” said the earl kindly. “I don’t think
there is an antiquarian subject or an antiquarian authority in the
whole world you do not know something of.”
Smirkingly the Hebrew ancient disclaimed abnormal _expertise_.
“Milord is too kind. But my business brings me into touch with many
things and many people. That is what interests me. Human nature is
alike in every country and I make it my trade to serve human nature.”
“By the way,” observed Rockarvon, as though an idea had freshly crossed
his mind. “Perhaps you can help me. I want to get into touch with an
English lady, a collector who wrote some notes in an English artistic
paper on a subject that I happen to know something of. But I have
lost the magazine and cannot recall the name. It was something like
“Plender.” Do you know anyone with such a name?”
The recent compliments of his distinguished client had driven all
memory of their earlier conversation from Léon’s head. Also he felt a
desire still further to ingratiate himself with this threatful lord,
who had commended his talents and his knowledge.
“Was the name ‘Plethern,’ milord?”
Rockarvon considered, as though in uncertainty.
“Plethern--Plethern--it might have been. Tell me something about this
Plethern. Perhaps that will remind me....”
“There is a Mrs. Plethern who does some business with me. She has a
great collection----” He broke off. The earl caught him up sharply.
“A collection of what, Léon?”
The little Jew saw that he had gone too far to retreat.
“Of playing cards, milord.”
The earl nodded contentedly.
“I thought so, my friend. Now listen to me. When is this Mrs. Plethern
coming for her cards? I ask because I am particularly anxious to make
her acquaintance. I do not want to seize her pretty cards from her,
Léon. Set your mind at rest on that score. Rarities should always
go where is already a nucleus of their kind; that is the essence of
collecting altruism. I have no cards and I will not at this late hour
start looking for them. But I want to meet your Mrs. Plethern. You
will arrange it, Léon? You will let me know when she is coming? If you
contrive a pleasant acquaintance between us, I will not forget it.
Well?”
Relieved at a request so reasonable, and too experienced to wonder why,
for a simple introduction between clients, he should receive monetary
reward, the dealer eagerly undertook to do what was required of him.
What he had dreaded was insistence on Rockarvon’s part that the playing
cards be withdrawn from their virtual purchaser. Only the irritation of
the earl at being kept waiting for the book he coveted had tempted the
cautious Léon to the unusual course of showing one client goods really
the property of another. He had repented his rashness--until this
startling moment when it seemed that he had unwittingly done himself a
good turn after all. Rubbing his hands, he purred over his involuntary
acumen.
As he drove home, Rockarvon was no less satisfied with his
afternoon’s achievement. Certainly fortune was with him, thus to
discover a Plethern whose tastes were of a kind to suggest at least
broad-mindedness. Who ‘Mrs. Rowena Plethern’ was, he had no idea.
His memories of the Rockarvon-Morvane law-suit were vague at best
and even during its continuance no women had figured among his known
adversaries. But this Rowena Plethern lived at Morvane; collected
playing cards of an unusual type; was due in Paris shortly. The earl
was not the man to let slip opportunities. It was more than possible
that something might be made of broad-minded Mrs. Plethern. He had a
score to pay against Morvane, whose master had insulted him. Never
would he forgive that cool, contemptuous scrutiny, the scornful words:
“_You_ want to marry Viola!” Surely the lady-expert in erotica
came providentially within his reach. Rockarvon stirred pleasurably
among his furs. He had hopes beyond those of mere revenge; hopes of
another kind. Closing his eyes, he called to his mind’s vision the
white shapeliness of Viola, her movements lithe and balanced as a boy’s.
§ 2
When, to her campanile, came an offer from the ingenious Léon of a
unique pack of hand-painted playing cards--Italian, eighteenth century
and very curious--Mrs. Plethern felt the true thrill of the collector.
With all her unholy preference for salacity, she was a genuine amateur
of cards, knew her subject thoroughly and spared no pains to add
rarities to her already numerous examples. The opportunity of securing
a pack so desirable as, reading between the cautious lines of Léon’s
letter, she believed this one to be, was too precious to be lost. By
return of post she wrote, buying the cards in principle, asking for
particulars of price and adding a note to the effect that she would
come herself to fetch the treasures, once the negotiation was concluded.
A journey of the kind, though rare with her, was not so rare as she
pretended publicly. The lengthy absences from home of her eldest
son had in the past made trips to London and abroad easy of secret
practice. Wherefore Bathsheba, ordered to pack her mistress’ luggage
and her own for a brief stay in Paris, felt surprise as little as
she did pleasure, being of a temperament that reacted only to the
distasteful, and that was usually the unexpected.
It was the twentieth of December when they left Victoria. Three o’clock
on the afternoon of the twenty-first found them in Léon’s shop. By
half-past three transaction and incidental compliments were over, the
cards were in Mrs. Plethern’s bag, the money neatly folded in the
dealer’s wallet. As the old lady rose to go, the shop door opened and a
tall, limp figure, supported on a servant’s arm, crawled into the room.
Léon bustled forward.
“Good afternoon, milord. I hope you are bearing the winter cold
fairly well? Madame Plethern,” turning to his earlier customer, “I
congratulate myself on the good fortune of this encounter. This
gentleman, who honours me seldom enough, alas!----”
Rockarvon interrupted. His voice was singularly ingratiating.
“Madame, I am charmed!” He bowed. “If you will forgive me, I will sit.
I am not strong and standing tires me. You may go, Jean.” The servant
left the shop and during the pause incidental to his going the earl,
carefully but unobtrusively, studied the features of his so promising
acquaintance. He saw a pale face, large-featured, secret-eyed. He saw
pale hair, flecked with white, under the conventional, black bonnet of
old ladyhood. With the closing of the door after the departing Jean, he
spoke again:
“I must explain, madame. Léon here, from whom occasionally I have made
purchases for my collections, showed me a week or two ago some very
curious playing cards. I was delighted with them; indeed--and Léon will
confirm it!--I almost coveted them myself. But the good man is loyal
to his clients; he refused even to speak of parting with them. I am an
old acquaintance and I think a good customer--am I right, Léon?”--the
delighted Hebrew bowed and scraped--“and eventually, knowing my
interest in the obscure but fascinating department of the arts to which
these cards belong, he told me for whom they were destined. Further,
that their owner would shortly come to Paris and take them home with
her. It is to _my_ importunity, madame--the importunity of a
collector--that you must ascribe my intrusion. May I hope for pardon?”
Mrs. Plethern had listened to this rhetorical address with heavy
immobility. As, however, she came to understand that this ornate
stranger was an art-collector; more, was an amateur of the same secret
abnormalities as she herself enjoyed; she warmed to the prospect of
congenial discussion of their mutual interests. The true collector,
if he finds a fellow-maniac with tastes that range conveniently with
his, asks for no voucher of character, hardly for name and standing,
but engages forthwith in technical reminiscence and exchange of
views. Rowena Plethern had this fine heedlessness of the collecting
brotherhood. As Rockarvon finished speaking, she smiled her queer,
crooked smile and answered:
“I am very pleased to meet a colleague. They are fine cards. Léon did
well to keep them for me. I shall remember it in his favour”--once more
the dealer shuffled with miserly delight--“also that he gave me the
chance of your acquaintance, sir.”
Rockarvon expressed his pleasure at the lady’s courtesy.
“You are for long in Paris, madame?”
“I had meant to stay over Christmas. There are one or two other matters
I would like to see about.”
“Then we could have a collectors’ talk some time? At my house, if you
would honour me? I have several interesting and--er--amusing things.
A number of engravings--Léon sold me some of them; they are curious
engravings, are they not, Léon?”
The Jew cast eyes to heaven. He doubted whether Petersburg with its
great collections, or the royal palace in Sofia could show such
curious, such extremely curious engravings as those in milord’s house.
“I am afraid,” continued the earl with his mirthless smile, “that I
have no playing cards! It is a _genre_ I have never studied. But
an art-lover finds interest in art of every kind. Permit me, madame, my
card....”
A shock indeed for Mrs. Plethern, an unexpected, cruel shock! “Earl of
Rockarvon!” That man of all ill-doers in an evil world! She did not
move; she held the card in her black-gloved hand and read and read
again those sudden, staggering words. What should she do? What could
she do, in the pass to which reckless love of strange antiquity had
lured her? And in the instant of perplexity there crept into her brain
a question. Was this acquaintance, seeking something else than mere
artistic interest? What did he want of her? She hesitated no longer.
She would visit him and read the enigmas of his mind and then, the
Devil willing, play her destined part. She acted admirably the pause of
ordinary surprise.
“You must excuse me,” she said. “I had no idea--how very curious----!”
Then with her usual, dull monotony of speech: “It would be interesting
to see your things. To-morrow evening----?”
He was weaving deft apologies for startling her.
“I assure you, Mrs. Plethern, nothing was farther from my mind. Indeed
I had for the moment forgotten our--what shall I say?--geographical
connection. My head was full of the enthusiasms of my hobby. To-morrow
evening will suit me admirably. If you will dine with me? At eight
o’clock?” He bowed with ceremony. “I appreciate your kindness, Mrs.
Plethern. You have a cab at the door, or may I drive you to your hotel?”
“Thank you. My cab is waiting. Good day, Lord Rockarvon. To-morrow
night at eight o’clock. Good day, Léon. You will keep me in mind?”
“But, of course, madame, of course! Anything that would suit madame’s
taste that comes into my hands....”
He trotted beside her to the door, helped her to her cab, shut her in
and hurried to his shop again, muttering with pleasure, twisting his
body into knots of gratified humility.
§ 3
In the collector’s cabinet, the most private of the many private rooms
in the earl’s Paris mansion, Rockarvon and Rowena Plethern played the
sorry game of allies that need but do not trust each other. About them,
leaning against the walls, littered on floor and table, jutting from
drawers and cupboards, were specimens of the evil products of evil
minds of every land and every date. The earl had concealed no treasure
of his _enfer privé_; the lady had recoiled from nothing, had
indeed licked her pale lips to see such miracles. And gradually they
had come to talk of the real purpose of their meeting.
“The girl pleases me,” he said at last, “and when things please me, I
am accustomed to have them. I am too old to change my habits.”
“You offered Rockarvon to my son?” the old lady queried.
He nodded.
“I suppose I am stupid,” she went on, “but the bait seems curious. It
invites rejection, such a proposal.”
“I am not so clumsy as you think me, Mrs. Plethern. Putting the matter
more exactly, I offered the girl a title and my absurd wilderness in
Gloucestershire. It remained for him to do the rest.”
“The rest?”
He was puzzled by her obtuseness. Seemingly there was an element she
did not realize. Perhaps a change of approach would make the matter
clear.
“Naturally,” he said, with a careless laugh, “I lay no stress on
regularity. I am not a marrying man. But the whim took me to try
conventional decency. It didn’t pay; it seldom does.”
“More than a whim, Lord Rockarvon; an instinct for success, though you
may not have known it. You would not have caught your bird by the more
usual wiles. She is too clever.”
“I was concerned rather to catch the bird’s keeper. One does not rove
Europe stealing heiresses these degenerate days without some form of
sanction.”
“Heiresses!” The words came with enlightening venom. He caught a
glimpse of his companion’s mind. She had been very cautious, very
unrevealing, but there was no overlooking the bitterness of this
exclamation.
“Is there an entail on your son’s estate?” he asked, with the polite
curiosity of friendly interest.
She shook her head.
“For several reasons I prevented one.”
“Your sons--they are twins? I thought so. I have not the pleasure of
the younger’s acquaintance, but his name--in general--is familiar to
me. He must be a very clever man.”
(Insidious earl! How cunningly disposed, those half-lies! How skilfully
deciphered, the heavy features of his guest!)
“James is a wonderful man!” she said warmly, tricked into self-betrayal
by maternal love, as but a day ago she had been tricked by love of
playing cards. “He could do anything, be anything, if only----”
Rockarvon laid a sympathetic hand upon her arm.
“I understand,” he said softly. “You are to be pitied. How often chance
of birth baulks merit! The case is singularly hard when there are
twins. He has children, your younger son?”
Mrs. Plethern praised Christopher, lengthily, extravagantly. He heard
her out, then risked a throw.
“Until this girl came, the boy you speak of was the natural heir?”
She nodded. There was a brief silence.
“I will tell you now,” said Rockarvon, “why I made to your eldest son
the proposal I did. The information should be useful. You are perhaps
unaware that during recent years constant and ingenious attempts have
been made to induce me to sell my land in Gloucestershire. They came
from many different quarters, but I have clever lawyers and they traced
back the various _démarches_. All originated at Morvane. You see
the significance?”
“At Morvane! I----” she was still fogged; her mind brooded over James
and Christopher; Charles and his possible ambitions held as yet no
corner of that violent, tenacious brain.
“At Morvane,” he repeated slowly. “At Morvane. Come, Mrs. Plethern,
surely it is obvious?”
She raised her dull, shadowy eyes to his. Slowly she gripped the
fringes of his meaning.
“He wants Rockarvon----?” she mumbled.
“_Wants_ it! Mrs. Plethern, he craves for it as he craves for
nothing else! I know the type--they are land-mad. Let us respect them,
for in their way they are collectors like ourselves. Your son is
obstinately set upon my valley. It amused me to keep him dangling. It
even amused me to let it rot, as further provocation to his mania. Can
you imagine that one of your neighbours owns packs of valuable playing
cards; he does not care for them, uses them for nursery games, tears
and scatters them, but will not sell? Can you imagine that? How you
would hate him! How your covetousness would grow and deepen! Something
of the kind has been happening to your son during the last ten or
fifteen years. It tickled me. I like being hated. I kept him on the
string of his own greedy longing.”
While he was speaking, Mrs. Plethern leant forward with increasing
excitement. Charles had been nicely tortured; this man had fancies
after her own heart.
“You did well!” she broke in. “I like to see opportunities well used.”
He bowed.
“It was a diversion,” he said airily, “and I suppose I should have kept
it up, had I not thought of a more alluring one. When I saw that girl,
the idea came to me. Quid pro quo. I would release him from the ache of
his desires--for a consideration.”
She rubbed her hands with slow delight.
“The consideration being that he release you from the ache of yours!
Good--very good!”
“The fool chose to stand on his dignity. He also chose to be offensive.
So he lost the opportunity of Rockarvon. But I do not feel sure I have
lost _my_ opportunity”--a pause--“have I, Mrs. Plethern?”
Rising, she smoothed the black silk of her gown; taking a statuette
from the bureau at her side she turned it lovingly in her hands; set it
down again; walked the length of the room, brow wrinkled, eyes veiled
with thought. Then she turned to him.
“No,” she said slowly. “I think not; not necessarily.”
And she asked that Bathsheba be sent for from the servants’ quarters
and a carriage to drive her home. At parting she shook hands.
“I will think and write to you. Better if I could talk to you. Will you
be in London?”
“In such a cause, Mrs. Plethern, I will be anywhere. Let us say three
weeks from now, in London. I will send you an address.”
He kissed her hand. A negro conducted her downstairs and to the door.
She drove thoughtfully through midnight streets to her hotel.