Chapter XIV

"We are children of splendour and flame,
Of shuddering also and tears."
WILLIAM WATSON.

In the week of shifting scenes that followed, Nevil Sinclair saw many things with new eyes. For love--the true, other regarding love that lasts--is an adjusting glass, the most delicate and infallible given to man.

The two hours' drive, through Nice and on along the Dantesque magnificence of the Grand Corniche road, with the peacock-breasted sea flashing a thousand feet below, set him yearning for the presence of his beloved, for her young, untarnished delight in it all. Not so Monte Carlo, where the world, the flesh, and the devil stalk naked and unashamed; where clean sea-breezes and life-giving sunshine seem tainted with the greed of gold, the feverish pursuit of pleasures, artificial and meretricious, that satiate, without satisfying, creatures designed for better things. Even to think of Lilamani in such an atmosphere seemed desecration; and Sinclair privately cursed de Lisle for dragging him straight out of Paradise into this glorified human dust-bin, where men and women of all nations and temperaments scrabbled shamelessly for notes and gold. A man in love is apt to resent the intrusion of ugly realities; and, in his present mood, Sinclair marvelled how he could ever have found the place amusing, even as a panorama of varied, if distasteful, life.

They spent Saturday evening in the heart of the dust-bin--the great Casino; passing from room to room, hot and heavy-laden with mingled odours of orris-root and patchouli; from table to table, where silent intent men and women massed three and four deep, automatically set down and received doles of silver, paper or gold; their movements regulated by the reiterate cry of the croupiers: "_Faites vos jeux, messieurs. Faites vos jeux!_"

Anxiously they scanned the close-packed rows of faces, frivolous or haggard, tense or stoical, according to the player's race, temperament, or immediate run of luck; themselves staking here a five-franc, there a ten-franc piece, and winning, most often, because they cared little for the game. It needed some grit on Nevil's part not to desert his purposeful, great-hearted friend for the more cheerful distraction of the theatre, or the divine serenity of stars and sea faintly silvered by a moon nearing the full. But he had promised to help; and for over an hour they pursued the needle through the mazes of that unsavoury hay-stack.

No sign of de Lisle.

"Come out of this soul-destroying temple of lust, my son," Broome said at last, taking Sinclair by the arm. Then--as the heavy swing doors fell to behind them, and a whiff of cool night air gave them delicate greeting: "Phew-ew! But it's a pestilential atmosphere, offensive to the nostrils of sense and spirit. Tempts a man to endorse the fool who said in his heart 'There is no God.' And we must go again to-morrow evening--if it is the Lord's Day."

Sinclair sighed. "Yes, worst luck. I suppose I'm a fool not to find it amusing. But I don't."

"Sorry, Nevil. But if you'd seen that poor plucky woman at Antibes, agonizing over her boy, you'd not grudge a couple of days spent in her service. And a man's not half a man if he can't look in the face of sin and pain without his muscles turning to jelly and his blood to gall. You young fellows of a hyper-civilized age need reminding, at times, that there is such a thing as wholesome brutality--and an unwholesome delicacy. Now come on, to the Hotel de Paris, and I'll stand you a champagne supper to take the taste out."

Sunday was a nightmare of fruitless, unremitting search. Casino, gendarmerie, likely hotels were ransacked for a husband--lost, stolen, or strayed: without avail.

"Give it up, man. You've done enough," Sinclair urged, as they commanded _chocolat_ and _patisserie_, preparatory to a fresh start.

"Have I?" quoth Broome, carefully choosing a sugared cake.

The man had the persistence of natures born to succeed. More or less Southern in temperament, he was emphatically British in his refusal to accept defeat: and an hour later they ran their quarry to earth, in a fourth-floor bedroom of a second-rate Pension. But his wife--who knew de Lisle too tragically well--had been justified of her forebodings.

It was the shell of that which had once been a man that lay stiff, dishevelled, and unshorn upon the neat white coverlet: the glazed eyes half-open, the lean hands clenched, as in impotent defiance of the Power that made and broke so poor a creature on the wheel of things. The untidy dressing-table was littered with brushes, razor, a half-empty coffee-cup, the unpaid hotel bill, and scraps of paper, covered with hieroglyphic proofs of the infallible system that had driven him to his death.

Broome closed the unseeing eyes, and slipped a hand under the gaping shirt.

"Not long gone," he mused aloud. "Poison, most likely. Not a word to his wife, I'll swear!" he added between his teeth; while Nevil, with a sick sensation, compact of pity and disgust, went over to the window that looked down into a narrow street, and away across a forest of chimney-stacks to a gleaming line of sea.

The horrible sense of uncertainty, of unreality, that assails the young and imaginative in face of the one awful actuality, clutched at his throat. And while he wrestled with it, ashamed of his own weakness, Broome had collected the dead man's belongings, and rung for a waiter, who testified that Monsieur had been present at _déjeuner_. Then they went down, and out again, into the common, reassuring world of life, after Broome had interviewed the manager, written out a wire for Madame de Lisle, and made all needful arrangements for the morrow.

"Now then, Nevil, old man," said he, as they stepped forth into the street. "Back you come to the Casino; fork out your last night's winnings, and stake 'em for all you're worth." He held up a five-franc piece. "That's all I found in the poor chap's pockets: and, between us, we've got to swell it into a sum worth passing on to Madame and her boy. She's proud. But if we've honestly won the money, we knock that pedestal from under her brave feet. Monte Carlo's a devilish awkward place to die in; and if we mean to see Madame through, we must put up with delays. Come on, my son. Early dinner at the cafe. Then we'll back our streak of luck till it turns."

Two hours later they were backing it still; regardless of the pestilential, over-scented atmosphere that stirs the senses and lulls the brain; regardless of the thronging faces, that had so painfully absorbed their attention the night before; eye and brain concentrated upon the devil's own pastime--hallowed, momentarily, by the hidden motive that glorifies or debases every act of man.

Save for an inevitable failure or two they won steadily from first to last. Broome, in particular, played like a man inspired; and fell asleep, near midnight, on the justifiable conviction that the Lord's Day had not been ill spent after all.

Monday brought Madame de Lisle, pale, red-eyed, yet stoically composed. In her speechless amazement and gratitude, over their joint achievement, both men reaped full and sufficient reward for a day that neither would readily forget. On Tuesday Sinclair took possession of the motor and scoured the stark, stately heights above Mentone, while Broome did all that mortal man may do to smooth the ground under a proud and suffering woman's feet. But if Monte Carlo is an awkward place to die in, it is a still more awkward place to be buried in. The endless inquiries and formalities could neither be evaded, nor hurried. So it came about that Nevil's interminable week was more than half over before the blunt-nosed motor turned its back upon the sea, and sped, purring, up and up into the green heart of the hills.

Crowned and fulfilled with an all-pervading peace were the sun-kissed valleys and majestically unfolding heights of the Alpes Maritimes, after the fret and stir of Monte Carlo, where pain struck sharp on pleasure makes jangling music to sensitive ears. Here were no jarring contrasts; but on every hand, upon every tree-top, and in every cranny of rock, the secret music and laughter of life renewing itself with unwearied zest. Everywhere unseen forces yearned up towards the light: and Nevil, controlling with skilful hands the car, that throbbed under him like a live thing, felt his own pulses chiming in tune with the season that, in tree and bird and flower, is a festival of love made manifest.

Skirting the low spur where the brown, flat-topped houses of Cagnes huddled, in picturesque disorder, among gardens and vineyards more than half awake, they swept up and round to the far side of that noble valley, past the waterfall and rocky hamlet of La Tourelle, where they stayed to unpack their lunch-basket, to smoke and lounge among the rocks, while Nevil achieved a lightning sketch for his beloved.

Then down and down again into a sterner region of volcanic rock-walls, ochre, and red, and grey, towering higher with each mile of their descent, till they reached their Ultima Thule, the Gorge du Loup; a gorge as wild in nature as in name, where the Loup leaped in thunder, over rocks and stones, between glowing cliffs, at whose feet nestled terraced orange groves and fields of wild flowers, in all their new bravery of purple and yellow and white: the narrow dip spanned by great railway arches two hundred feet up.

Here, in the one little hotel overhanging the boisterous torrent, they spent the night; completing their pilgrimage by a "spin" through Grasse and Cannes, and on along the red, fantastic coast line of the Esterelles.

Here, too, before leaving, Nevil achieved a long explanatory letter to Sir George; denouncing himself, in his father's own phrase, for "a damned unsatisfactory son"; and justifying the denunciation by news of a picture, appraised of Martino; a picture that plainly indicated the one career in which he was like to attain distinction. He had decided, therefore, to stay abroad for the present, and devote himself to something better than spoiling of canvas. As for the election; surely none of them had really believed he would stand. They knew him for a duffer at politics. But he had hopes of proving that he could handle a brush to some purpose. And withal, he remained Sir George's most affectionate, if undutiful, son ...

A brief note of regret to Jane referred her to his father for details; and thereafter he vented his repressed impatience in a fervent plea to Sir Lakshman for a few lines of assurance, that should reach him at Valescure, and enable him, on the return journey, to ransack Cannes for a ring approximately worthy his Jewel of Delight.