The Usurper

CHAPTER III-1

CHAPTER IIII

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coming to his irrevocable decision to see no more of Lady Alicia, Jasper Vellacot had not reckoned with rheumatic gout. That so prosaic a malady should be a factor in his romantic destiny (save that perhaps eventual crippledom might place him beyond the pale of romance altogether) never entered into his calculations. But when a man sets up to be a law unto himself, and disregards trivial things,—de minimis non curat,—the trivial things are apt to assert themselves.

The rheumatic gout was slight. He had been troubled with it before and had freed himself from symptoms. But this year it had returned. His doctor prescribed baths, and mentioned Aix-les-Bains. Jasper suggested Harrogate. It would be nearer to London. He could run up when his affairs needed his presence; could transact his business so easily. The doctor ordained an absolute holiday. Jasper still stuck to Harrogate, the doctor to Aix. Cudby supported the doctor, quoted the inefficacy of the waters of Abana and Pharpar, scolded, implored, cajoled, and at last prevailed. One August morning he saw his patron off at Charing Cross, and returned to Gower Street to have a peaceful time with his Shakespearean commentators.

So Jasper, accepting the inevitable, went to Aix-les-Bains to cure himself of his rheumatic gout. He put himself under the care of a specialist, began his prescribed course of douches, and for a time enjoyed the change exceedingly. The little town, all hotels and gardens, nestling by the side of its fairy lake in an amphitheatre of mountains, full of sunshine and idleness, gay with laughter and colour, seemed to knead the weariness from his heart just as his shampooer at the Établissement des Bains kneaded out the rheumatism from his limbs. Always modest in his personal expenditure, and somewhat morbidly shrinking from luxuriousness of life, he put up at one of the less expensive hotels, made friends with his American neighbours at the dinner-table, and enjoyed the pleasures of simple companionship.

Now at Aix-les-Bains the whole of its afternoon and evening life is concentrated in its two casinos, the Grand Cercle and the Villa des Fleurs. Each stands in its own pretty grounds, and the grounds adjoin. When you sit and sip your coffee on the terrace of the Cercle, you can watch the fireworks in the gardens of the Villa. When you have won money at the baccarat tables of the Villa, you can run round in two minutes and lose it at the Cercle; which is most convenient. Or when you are tired of the indoor afternoon concert at the Cercle, you can stroll across to the Villa and find a crowd of women in cool dresses and men in flannels, talking and reading under the shade of the great lime-trees, while waiters move about with glasses in which ice tinkles deliciously and straws stand invitingly, and while an orchestra in the kiosque at the further end discourses lively music. With characteristic twinges of self-reproach for leading this existence of frivolous peace, Jasper surrendered himself, as we have said, to the inevitable. He went on excursions in the little old paddle steamers about the lake. He dozed in the Villa grounds. He took three English children and their grandmother for drives about the country, while their mother went off to gamble. He found unexpected entertainment in fireworks. He wandered amusedly around the baccarat tables, and grew as fascinated as a child with the eternally gyrating little horses in the outer hall of the Cercle. For a week things went happily.

On the eighth evening he stood in the gaming-room of the Villa watching some high play at one of the four tables. The heat was great, the air charged with over-scented femininity. A discreet murmur of talk filled the room, and above it rose the monotonous cries of the croupiers. Each table had its crowd, but the throng around the table where Jasper stood was three or four deep. The spectacle half amused, half saddened him. This horrible greed of money moved his pity. Here were those who came to Aix mainly for the gambling,—well-known London money-lenders, keepers of gaming-hells in Belgium and Mexico, elderly women in cotton blouses and with untidy hair; there were many who had come for the treatment, looking as though they had rheumatism in their bodies and gout in their souls. There were American millionaires, cool, white-bearded, urbane; American women, elaborately costumed, tapping their hundred-franc plaques nervously with the sharp points of their pink, manicured nails. There was the ubiquitous cosmopolitan Hebrew of dark and devious finance, bald-headed, hook-beaked, with great moustache helped out by whisker, with hard, evil goggle-eyes, in irreproachable dinner-jacket, with a hothouse flower in his button-hole, a diamond in his shirt-front and diamonds on his hands. There were Parisian demi-mondaines stretching out over-jewelled fingers through the rows of players to receive the red louis counters handed up from the green cloth. There were fresh, laughing English girls in simple frocks taking their innocent fill of the excitement; there were clean-limbed Englishmen; pretty Frenchwomen grown for the moment hawk-eyed, as the chances of the game wavered.

“You don’t play, Monsieur?” said a girl in broken English to Vellacot.

“No,” he replied simply. “I am afraid.”

“Of what?” she laughed.

“Of winning.”

The girl raised her eyebrows, turned away, and reached hastily over the crowd in order to stake a louis on the hand.

“You are nothing if not original, Mr. Vellacot,” said a voice by his side.

He turned, with a great leap of his heart. There stood Lady Alicia, smiling serenely, a little teasing shadow hovering over her lips.

There was no help for it. The unreckoned rheumatic gout had its revenge. He must either pack up his things and escape from Aix at once, or he must put up with a course of Lady Alicia’s society. For Aix is really only one very big hotel where everybody meets everybody else a dozen times a day. Vaguely, dazedly, the alternatives passed through Jasper’s mind. All that he could do for the moment, however, was to apostrophise her by name in tones of astonishment.

“I come here for three or four weeks most years,” she explained calmly. “Not for myself, but for the sake of my aunt, Lady Luxmoore, who is a martyr to gout, poor dear! She lives with me, you know. When did you come?”

He answered the conventional question. They exchanged the commonplaces of opinions on the charms of Aix. Again he felt the curious restfulness of this woman even when she spoke stereotyped phrases. In his fancy her voice was like the murmur of many waters. He hated himself for listening enraptured. She was dressed in a pale rose-coloured gown, high to the neck, set off at the bosom with impalpable chiffon, and there were roses under her hat nestling against her adorable light brown hair. While they discussed the chances of baccarat, he wondered why on earth she had never married; breathed under his breath an impious wish that husband and children had come between him and those eternally kind hazel eyes. She explained her presence in the rooms that evening. She had been dining at the Villa with the Seagrims, Hertfordshire people, her neighbours, who were staying at her hotel, the Europe, next to the Villa. They were over there, on the opposite side of the table.

“So you don’t play because you are afraid to win!” she said at last. “You might lose. I don’t believe in such superstition.”

“I do,” he said.

“It would be interesting to try the experiment.”

“Whom could it possibly interest?”

“Me,” said Lady Alicia.

The banker at that moment retired; whether he had won or lost neither could say. The croupier was crying the auction of the bank.

“Why not take this bank?” asked Lady Alicia. “Do.”

The bank was going for five hundred louis. He cried six. The bank was adjudged to him. An American railroad magnate recognised him, and whispered to his neighbour that he was Jasper Vellacot the Australian millionaire. Like an electric flash the news went round the crowded table. The American called banco. The cards were dealt. Jasper won. A murmur went round. There were heavy stakes in the punt, the sum in the bank made up. Jasper won on both hands. The croupier with his flat spoon lifted all the stakes into the bank. The cards were dealt again. Jasper won again. He won six times running. An enormous sum was in the bank. The cosmopolitan Hebrew happened to hold the hand for his side of the table. He staked the maximum. There was breathless excitement as Vellacot looked at his cards and then threw down a nine, the winning number. He rose, gathered his winnings into the lacquered dish, and changed them for thousand-franc bank notes at the counter. He came up to Lady Alicia with a weary expression.

“Are you interested in any charities?” he asked her.

“Many. I am on the committee of the ‘Officers’ Widows Benevolent,’ for instance.”

“Then let me implore you use this for me as you think best,” he cried, thrusting the notes into her hand. “No, no—you must. It was you who made me play. I hate it. I am a sort of magnet for gold. You can’t understand how horrible it is. I should win on a million to one chance. It is more than a superstition; it is a doom. For Heaven’s sake, give it to your officers’ widows, Lady Alicia, or to whom you will.”

She had refused at first. But the man, speaking quickly in low tones, looked almost haggard in his earnestness.

“I accept—gratefully,” she replied, putting the notes in the rose-coloured satchel slung at her wrist.

“Will you come outside for a little?” he asked. “It is suffocating here.”

She assented, and they went out into the small garden at the back of the gaming-rooms and separated from them by a narrow terrace. The garden was deserted. The cane armchairs and tables gleamed in the starlight. From the terrace came the sound of women’s voices and laughter; through the open doorway beyond, a brilliant aperture of light and moving colour, came faintly the cries of the croupiers.

“I was wrong to have made you play,” said Lady Alicia, softly. “I never thought that these things could affect anyone so deeply. You must forgive an idle woman in a light mood for not checking her caprices. The atmosphere of that horrid room demoralises one. You do forgive me?”

What could he answer? Plenary absolution mumbled apologetically was given. As a matter of fact, he explained, his unvarying luck had got on his nerves. There was in it something uncanny, necromantic.

“Like the horrible luck of a man who has sold himself to the devil,” he said on a sudden impulse.

Lady Alicia shivered a little. She had lived all her life among well-to-do people; she herself had inherited an ample fortune. She had met millionaires upon whom the burden of wealth sat lightly, who took the most human interest in the making of money. There was Judge Blenkinson of Chicago, colossally rich,—he was standing even now at the doorway rattling his chips in his hand,—who was as delighted as a boy when he had won twenty francs. But she had never come across a man like Vellacot before; his point of view was original, brought into sight startling possibilities.

The sincerity of his tone touched her. The man was, in a certain sense, a pathetic figure. Lady Alicia knew that she passed among her friends for a sympathetic woman, and she took a delicate pleasure in acting up to her reputation. She was fond of sheltering the unfortunate under the white wing of her pity, glancing down graciously now and then to see how they did; to add this multi-millionaire with mediæval superstitions to the number was a temptation. She rested her chin on her ungloved hand and reflected before she spoke.

“I think I understand,” she said. “You feel that all this wealth coming to one individual is not in the kindly order of things—that it marks you as a man apart—separates you from your kind—sets some sort of brand upon you.”