she had lost. It was a pitiable, pathetic struggle, full of desperate
hope. Starting with ten francs, she sought to win back the two thousand
needed to buy the shop with Jeanne. She kept her room at the pension,
but gave up taking her meals there. Instead she had a cup of coffee and
a roll in a cheap café in the Condamine. She would do without sleep,
she told herself; she would be shabby and shiver with cold ... but she
would win back that money!
Every morning she took her place among that weird and shabby mob of
women who storm the Casino doors at opening time, and scramble for
places at the tables, hoping to sell them in the afternoon to some
prosperous player. The Casino, which had been the cause of their ruin,
lets them thus eke out a miserable existence. Threadbare creatures with
vulturish faces, they hang over the tables, quick-clawed to clutch up
the stakes of the unwary.
Margot was glad of every opportunity to make a little money by selling
her place. It meant the price of a square meal: spaghetti, and salad
and cheese, in a cheap Italian restaurant in Beausoleil. Otherwise,
when an increasing dizziness warned her that she had not yet broken
her fast, she had to seek a quiet corner of the gardens, and lunch on
a bit of chocolate and some bread. Then she would hurry back to the
Casino, fearful that in her absence a chance had come up to make a few
francs.
It was a weary, anxious existence. Sometimes indeed she got down to
her last five francs before a sudden turn of luck exalted her again to
the heights of hope. The effect on her nerves was terrible. Her nights
became haunted. Roulette wheels whirled before her closed eyes and she
often dreamed of a mighty one that turned into a great whirlpool, in
which she and all the other players were spinning around helplessly.
And always, just as she was being sucked down into the vortex, she
awoke.
2.
One evening as she sat in a corner of the gardens, silent and absorbed,
a man approached her. He was dark and weedy, and his eyebrows
twitched up and down continually. She recognized him as one of her
fellow-lodgers at the pension, and she had heard him addressed as
Monsieur Martel. After looking sharply at her, he took a seat by her
side.
“Had any luck lately?” he asked with that freemasonry of gamblers that
permits of a promiscuous conversation.
Silently she shook her head.
He lighted a cigarette. “It’s a cruel game,” he observed. “God help
the poor pikers who haven’t enough capital to defend themselves. I had
a hard fight to-day. I was obliged to play a martingale up to five
thousand francs, all to win a wretched louis. But I got out all right.
I imagine you have not been very successful yourself lately. I have
seen you losing.”
She nodded. He drew comfortably nearer.
“Well, that’s too bad. By the way, if I can be of any help to you, give
you any advice.... I have a considerable knowledge of the game....”
She laughed bitterly. “I, too, Monsieur, have a considerable knowledge
of the game. But there ... that is all the capital I have in the world,
ten francs.”
She held out two white chips in her shabby, gloved hand. He noted the
smallness of the hand, and the glimpse of milk-white wrist between the
glove and the threadbare jacket. He drew nearer still.
“Ah! it’s hopeless,” he said, “when one gets down so low. Why not let
me make you a loan? I shall never miss it. You can repay me out of your
winnings. Let me lend you a trifle, say five hundred.”
She looked at him steadily for a moment. “But I have no security to
give you,” she said at last.
He laughed easily. “Oh, that doesn’t matter. Of course, we are speaking
as one Monte Carloite to another. We understand each other. If I am
nice to you, you will be nice to me. My room at the pension is number
fourteen. If you come down and see me this evening I have no doubt we
can arrange matters.”
She rose. In the shadow he could not see the loathing in her eyes.
These men ... they were all alike. Beasts! She left him without a word.
He waited in his room that night, wondering if she would come. She did
not. He went off to the Casino laughing comfortably. Life was a great
game.
“If it isn’t to-night,” he said to himself, “it will be to-morrow or
the day after. A little more hunger, a little more despair. I have but
to wait. She will come to me. If she doesn’t, what matter? There are
lots of others.”
3.
Some days later she sat in her room staring at her face in the cheap
mirror. There were dark circles around her weary eyes. Her cheeks were
thinned to pathetic hollows, her mouth drooped with despair and defeat.
The Casino had beaten her. She was sick, weak, nervously unstrung. Try
as she would she could not get back her old healthy view of life; that
was the worst of it. Gambling had poisoned the very blood in her veins.
She had no money to take her back to Paris, even if she were willing to
go, and she felt she would rather die than write and ask for help. Then
to take up the burden of labour again, the life of struggle without
hope and with misery to crown it all, ... Ah! she knew it so well. She
had seen too many of her comrades fight and fall. Must she too work
as they worked, until her strength was exhausted and she perished in
poverty?
There was death, of course! Only last week a young girl, after pawning
all her trinkets, shot herself under the railway bridge. She would do
better than that; she had some little white powders.
Then there was the compromise. Why not? Who under the circumstances
would dare to tell her that death was better than dishonour? And yet
... she hated to think of doing it. She preferred to steal. Funny,
wasn’t it? Her sense of morality was curious. She would rather be a
thief than a harlot.
But she had no chance to be a thief. It would have to be the other
thing. Rising she put rouge on her ghastly cheeks then rubbed it off
again. No, not just yet! She would ask the young man for the five
hundred francs. If he demanded the _quid pro quo_ she would beg him to
wait until to-morrow. Then she would go to the Casino and risk all.
If she won she would return him his money, and say she had changed her
mind. If she lost ... well, there was the white powder....
She would ask him at once. How dark and silent the house was. Room
fourteen was on the floor below. Softly she crept down the shabby
stairs. She had to put on her cloak; she shivered so.
That was his door. She hesitated, inclined to turn back. Perhaps he
had gone out. Her heart was beating horribly and the hand she put out
trembled. She knocked. There was no answer. Softly she tried the handle
of the door.
END OF BOOK ONE
BOOK TWO
_The Story of Hugh_
CHAPTER ONE
THE UNHAPPIEST LAD IN LONDON
1.
THE woman he used to call aunty kept a rooming house on Balmoral
Circus, and the boy’s earliest memories were of domestic drudgery. He
cleaned boots until nearly midnight, smudging with grimy knuckles his
sleepy eyes. He slept in a cupboard at the rear of the hall, along with
dirty brushes, smelly dusters and lymphatic cock-roaches. As he grew
taller he learned to make beds and to take care of the rooms. Aunty
nagged at him continually and he had to dodge occasional blows.
She was an unwieldy woman with a tart tongue and tight varnished hair.
Every afternoon she would put on a battered bonnet and go forth for
what she called “a breff of fresh air.” She would return about five,
smelling of gin and very affable. He preferred her cuffs to her kisses.
Uncle would come home at a quarter past six. He was a French-cleaner,
a monosyllabic man who loved his pipe. One evening he broke his stoic
silence.
“Missis, it’s time that boy ’ad some schoolin’.”
“Schoolin’! the ideer! And tell me ’oo’s goin’ to do the work of this
’ouse while he’s wastin’ ’is time over a lot o’ useless ’istry an’
jography?”
“I tell you, missis, he’s got to have some eddication. He’s goin’ on
for nine now and knows next to nothin’.”
“Well, you know wot it means. It means payin’ some lazy slut of a
’ouse-maid sixteen bob a month.”
“Well, and why can’t you pay it out of that five ’undred pounds ’is
mother gave you to look after ’im?”
“’Eaven ’ear the man! And ’aven’t I looked after ’im? ’Aven’t I earned
all she gave me? ’Aven’t I bin a second muvver to ’im? Didn’t I nurse
’er like a sister, and ’er dyin’ of consumption? There ain’t many ’as
would ’ave done wot I did.”
The difficulty of his education, however, was solved by the
second-floor back, Miss Pingley, who undertook to give him lessons for
two hours every day. She was the cousin of a clergyman and excessively
genteel, so that his manners improved under her care.
Once he began to read his imagination was awakened. More than ever
he hated the sordid life around him. He began to think seriously of
running away, and would no doubt have done so, had not Uncle again
intervened. One evening the silent man laid down his pipe.
“I’ve got a job for the boy, Missis. He begins work on Monday.”
“Wot!”
“I say get a gel for the work. That lad’s goin’ into business on
Monday.”
“Well, I never!”
“Yes, Gummage and Meek, the cheese people. You ’ear, Hugh?”
“Yes, Uncle. Thank you, Uncle.”
Aunty began to make a fuss, but Uncle promptly told her to shut up. As
for the boy the thought of getting away from dust pans and slop pails
was like heaven to him; so the following Monday, with beating heart, he
presented himself at the office of Gummage and Meek.
2.
Mr. Ainger, the cashier, sat on his high stool, and looked down at a
slim lad, twisting a shabby cap. Mr. Ainger was a tall man of about
fifty, his hair grey, his face fine and distinguished. It was said that
in his spare time he wrote.
“Well, my boy,” he said kindly, “what do you call yourself?”
“Hugh Kildair.”
The gaze of Mr. Ainger became interested. He noted the dark eyes that
contrasted so effectively with the light wavy hair, the sensitive
features, the fine face stamped with race. Centuries of selection, he
thought, had gone to the making of that face.
“A romantic name. So, my boy, you are making a start with us. I don’t
know that it’s what you would choose if you had any say in the matter.
Probably, you’d rather have been a corsair or a cowboy. I know I would
at your age. However, very few of us are lucky enough to do the things
we’d like to do. Life’s a rotten muddle, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, my young friend, I do not know if the horizon of your ambition
is bounded by cheese, if it inspires you with passion, with enthusiasm.
Still you might have made a worse choice. You might have been in oils
and varnishes, for instance, or soap. Imagine handling those compared
with that exquisite ivory curd--transmuted by bovine magic from the dew
and daisies of the field. I tell you there’s romance in cheese; there’s
even poetry. I’m sure a most charming book could be written about it.
Pardon me, but you’re not by any chance thinking of writing a book
about cheese, are you?”
“No, sir.”
“Glad to hear it. Now I think of it I might as well do it myself,--a
whimsical Belloc-sort of book with glimpses of many lands. But there.
Let us return to the subject of your future. All I can say is: Do your
best; we’ll do the rest. Now go; and believe me, our discriminating
gaze is upon you.”
In the years that followed, although he saw little of Mr. Ainger, he
was conscious of a protective and sympathetic eye. As for the work he
did not dislike it. It was pleasant in the cool gloom of the warehouse
where cheeses of all shapes and colours made strange lights and
shadows. He had more liberty too, than he would have had in the office.
He was able to make pen and ink sketches of his companions in his spare
moments. At the end of every month he handed over his pay to Aunty who
returned him a trifle for pocket-money.
At the beginning of his fifth year his salary was raised to fifty
pounds. On the day he received his first instalment he did not return
to Balmoral Circus. Instead he went to a small room in Hammersmith,
carrying his few belongings in a cricket bag. He then wrote to Aunty,
saying he was “on his own,” and he would never see her again.
At last, at last he was free.
3.
How hard that first winter was! Fifty pounds went much further in those
days than it does now, but even then he had to go without many needful
things. An overcoat, for one. You can picture him a tall, thin pale
youth, with a woollen comforter and a shabby suit far too small for
him. He was often cold and hungry. A cough bothered him.
One day Mr. Ainger came down to see him.
“Hullo, young man. You haven’t written that book yet?”
“No, sir.”
“I am surprised. Assailed as you are by a dozen pungent odours do you
not realize that under the cork-trees of Corsica the goats browse on
the wild thyme in order that those shelves may be replenished with
green veined Roquefort; that cattle bells jingle in the high vivid
valleys of the Jura to make for us those grind-stone like masses of
cavernous Gruyère; sitting here are you not conscious of a rhythm
running through it all, of a dignity, even of an epic--cheese?”
“Well,” he went on, “I’ve come to hale you from all this source of
inspiration to a more sordid environment. There’s a spare stool in the
counting-house I think you might ornament.”
“I’ll be glad of a change, sir.”
“Good. By the way, where are you living?”
“Hammersmith, sir.”
“Ah, indeed, I have a cottage on the river. You must come and see me.”
A fortnight later he took Hugh to his little villa. It was the only
real home the lad had even seen, and was a revelation to him. Mrs.
Ainger was the first sweet woman he had ever met, and he immediately
worshipped her. There were two fine boys and a most fascinating library.
The Aingers had a great influence on Hugh’s development. Through them
he met a number of nice fellows and instinctively picked up their
manners. He played football, cricket, and tennis,--at which games he
was swift and graceful, but somewhat lacking in stamina. He studied
French, and Mr. Ainger was at great pains to see that he had a good
accent. But best of all, he was able to attend an art school in the
evenings and satisfy a growing passion for painting.
Then the war broke out. He went to France with the First Hundred
Thousand. In the wet and cold of the trenches he contracted pneumonia
and his recovery was slow. As soon as he was well again, he was
transferred to the transport service and drove a camion in the last
great struggle. When he was demobilized he returned to the office at a
comfortable salary.
Everything looked well now, everything but his health. He suffered from
a chronic cold and was nearly always tired.
Then one raw day in early Spring he saw a poor woman throw her child
over the Embankment.
“She was quite close to me,” he told Mr. Ainger afterwards, “so of
course I went in. It was instinctive. Any other chap would have done
the same.
“Well, I grabbed the kid and the kid grabbed me, and there I was
treading water desperately. But it was hard to keep afloat; and I
thought we must both go down. I remember I felt sorry for the little
beast. I didn’t care a hang for myself. Then just as I was about to
give up, they lifted us into a boat. There was a crowd and cheering,
but I was too sick to care. Some one took me home in a taxi and my
landlady put me to bed.”
The chill that resulted affected his lungs. All winter he had fits of
coughing that made him faint from sheer exhaustion. He awoke at night
bathed in cold sweat. In the morning he was ghastly, and rose only by
a dogged effort. One forenoon, after a hard fit of coughing Mr. Ainger
said to him:
“Cold doesn’t seem to improve.”
“No, sir.”
“By the way, ever had any lung trouble in your family?”
“Yes, sir. My mother, I’ve been told, died of it.”
“Look here, take the afternoon off and see our doctor.”
The doctor was a little bald, rosy man. He looked up at Hugh’s nigh six
feet of gaunt weariness.
“You’re not fit to be out, sir. Go home at once. I’ll see you there.”
So Hugh went to his bed, and remained in it all summer.
4.
One day in late October he lay on his bed staring drearily at the
soiled ceiling, and wondering if in all London there was a lad more
unhappy than he.
“A lunger,” he thought bitterly. “Rotten timber! A burden to myself and
others. Soon I must take up the fight again and I’m tired, tired. I
want to rest, do nothing for a year or two. Well, I won’t give in. I’ll
put up a good scrap yet. I’ll----”
Here a knock came at the door. It was the little doctor cheery and
twinkling.
“Hullo! How’s the health to-day?”
“Better, doctor; I’ll soon be able to go back to the office.”
The doctor laughed: “If you remain in London another six months you’ll
be a dead man.”
“What would you have me do?”
“Go away. Live in a warm climate. Egypt, Algeria, the Riviera.”
“And if I go away how long will I live?”
“Oh, probably sixty years.”
“Quite a difference. Well, doctor, I expect I’ll have to stick it out
here. You see, I’ve no money, no friends. Even now I’m living on the
charity of the firm. They’ve been awfully decent, but I can’t expect
them to go on much longer.”
“Have you no relatives?”
“None that I know of. I’m absolutely alone in the world.”
“Well, well! We’ll see about it. Surely something can be done. Don’t
get down-hearted. Everything will come out all right.”
The little doctor went away, and Hugh continued to stare at the soiled
ceiling. There came to him a desperate vision of palms and sunshine.
But that was not for him. He must stay in this raw bleak London and
perish as many a young chap had perished....
Next morning came another knock at the door. It was Mr. Ainger.
“Well, my lad, how are you feeling?”
“A little better. I hope I’ll soon be able to get back to my ledger.”
“Nonsense, my boy! You’ll never come back. You’re expected to hand in
your resignation. The doctor holds out no hope. You can’t go on drawing
on your salary indefinitely.”
Hugh swallowed hard. “No, that’s right. You’ve treated me square. I
can’t complain.”
“Complain, I should say not; look here....”
With that Mr. Ainger took from his pocket a sheaf of crisp Bank of
England notes and began to spread them out on the bed.
“Twelve of them. Ten pounds each. All yours. We collected sixty pounds
in the office and the firm doubled it. And now you’re going to eternal
sunshine, to blue skies, to a land where people are merry and sing the
whole day long. You’ve escaped the slimy clutch of commerce. Gad! I
envy you!”
“Do you really, sir?”
“Yes. I wanted to live in Italy, Greece, Spain; to roam, to be a
vagabond, to be free. But I married, had children, became a slave
chained to the oar. One thing though,--my boys will never be square
pegs in round holes. They’ll have the chance I never had.”
“Perhaps it’s not too late.”
“No, perhaps not. Perhaps some day I’ll join you down there. Perhaps
when I get things settled, I’ll live under those careless skies
where living is rapture. I’ll get back by own soul. I’ll write that
book, I’ve tried all my life to write. Perhaps ... it’s my dream, my
dream....”
Mr. Ainger turned abruptly and went out, leaving Hugh staring
incredulously at the counterpane of notes that covered his bed.
CHAPTER TWO
THE CALL OF THE BLOOD
1.
Pines packed the vast valley, climbing raggedly to the pale grey peaks.
Sometimes the mountains swooped down in gulch and butte of fantastic
beauty. The pines were pale green in the sunshine, the soil strangely
red. There was a curious dryness, a hard brilliance about it all.
As Hugh looked from the train window he had a feeling of home-coming.
It was as if his ancestors had lived in this land; as if in no other
could he thrive so well.
“I’m feeling heaps better,” he thought. “Only let me get six months
in these jolly old pine forests, living like a wood-cutter. The life
of nature, that’s what I need to make a new man of me. Ah! this is my
country. I’m here now; and here I’ll stay.”
Looking at that sky so invincibly blue, that soil so subjugated by the
sun, it seemed hard to believe that elsewhere there could be fog and
cold and sleet. Here the sunshine was of so conquering a quality, it
was difficult to think of sullen lands that could resist it.
Again Hugh felt that sense of familiarity: “I’m a son of the sun,” he
exulted; “a child of the sun-land.”
So absorbed was he that a rasping voice at his side almost startled him.
“The verdure here is profligate, ain’t it?”
The speaker was a rusty, creaky man smoking a rank cigar. He had a bony
nose, and a ragged moustache. He wore a dusty bowler hat and a coat
with a collar of hard-bitten musk-rat.
“The pines do seem to thrive,” said Hugh.
“Pines is very tendatious,” observed the shabby man. “Very saloobrious
too.”
“Indeed,” said Hugh. “Are you a health-seeker?”
“No, sir. Not ’ealth,--wealth. I’m a man with a system, I am. The
finest system on the Riviera.”
“I wish mine was. It’s rather dicky.”
“Oh, I wasn’t referrin’ to my corporationus system. It’s my system at
roulette. Allow me....”
He handed Hugh a rather soiled card on which was engraved:
+------------------------------------------------------------+
| PROFESSOR ROBERT BENDER, |
| ROULETTE EXPERT, |
| INVENTOR OF BENDER’S VOISIN SYSTEM |
| _Author of “How to live at the Cost of the Casino.”_ |
+------------------------------------------------------------+
“Yes,” supplemented the shabby man importantly. “You see before you one
of the greatest livin’ authorities on roulette. I’ve studied it now for
twenty years. They all consult old Bob. Many a gentleman I’ve ’elped to
fortune. ’Avin’ no capital myself, I’m obliged to let others ’ave the
benefit of my experience.”
“And your system?” queried Hugh politely.
“Well, sir, it’s based on the fact that the old croupiers ’ave a ’abit
of throwin’ the ball in a hotomatic way, so that they ’ave spells when
they throw into the same section of the wheel. Of course, it calls for
judgment and observation.”
“Luck, too, I should imagine.”
“Not so much. Luck is a thing we scientific roulette players try not to
recognize. We aim to beat chance by calculation.”
“Is it really true,” said Hugh, “that one can live at the cost of the
Casino?”
“Certainly. Thousands are doin’ it this very day. Why, I can go in any
time and make a couple of louis.”
“I wish I could.”
“So you can, sir, with a little experience. You’re goin’ to Monte?”
“No, Menton.”
“Ah, that’s a pity. Mentony’s too full of English, too deadly dull.
Monte’s a sporty little gem, the most beautiful spot on earth--and the
wickedest.”
“That sounds interesting.”
“Interestin’ ... I should say so. There’s no square mile on God’s globe
so packed with drama. There’s no theatre a patch on that Casino. You’d
better get off at Monte, sir, and let me put you on to my system.
Sixteen hundred francs capital is all you need, and I guarantees you a
daily profit of from twenty to eighty per cent.”
Hugh thought of the poor two thousand francs that was to last him for
six months.
“I’ll think over it. Meantime I’ve arranged to go to Menton.”
“Well, we’ll surely see you at the tables before long. By the way, sir,
you see that gentleman with the white spats? He’s a English gentleman,
a Mister Jarvie Tope. Very nice man, but he’s got a system that’s no
good. Don’t let him fool you with it.”
“Thank you,” said Hugh, “I’ll be careful.”
The pine-lands had given way to vinelands, the peaks to plains. The
vines pushed jagged forks through the red soil; the olive groves
wimpled in the wind. The goats and donkeys scarcely raised their heads
to gaze at the insolent train. Hugh was in such a deep reverie that he
did not notice the approach of Mr. Jarvie Tope.
Mr. Tope was a little rosy man, round and bland with waxed grey
moustaches. He was well groomed, and seemed on the most excellent terms
with life.
“Ha, ha!” he squeaked as he drew near to Hugh, “Old Bob Bender’s been
warning you against me, I could see it in his eye, the rascal. Told
you, no doubt, I’d try to put you on to my system. Couldn’t, if I
would. I’ve come over to play for a syndicate.”
“Indeed. What sort of a system is yours?”
“Well, it’s based on the idea that the same phenomenon cannot occur on
the same spot at the same moment to-day that it occurred at the same
spot on the same day last year. I have my phenomena carefully recorded
and when the times comes I bet on them. The probabilities are millions
in my favour.”
“There seems to be a lot of systems.”
“No end of ’em. We all think ours is the best and the other fellows’ no
good. With a bit of luck all are good, but you need a lot of capital to
defend yourself, and you must be content with a very moderate return.
And after all none are infallible. That’s what we’re all seeking, a
formula that’s infallible. So far no one has found it, but still we
seek and hope.... You see that old fellow at the end of the corridor?”
“The venerable old chap with the white beard?”