CHELWYN left Timothy with something to think about. Who was Madame Serpilot, this old lady who had such an interest in Mary travelling alone? And why, oh! why had she left Paris for Monte Carlo at the fag end of the season? For he and Mary had privately decided between them that London and Paris should only be stopping places on the route to the Riviera. Why should Madame Serpilot have changed her plans at the same time? There was something more than a coincidence in this. At lunch-time he had Mary to herself, her chaperon having a headache. “Mary,” he said, “can you tell me why we changed our plans on the boat and decided to go straight on to Monte Carlo instead of staying in Paris?”
“Yes,” she said readily. “Don’t you remember my telling you about those beautiful books of views that I saw on the ship?”
“Where did you see them?” asked Timothy.
“I found them in my cabin one day. I think the steward must have left them,” she said. “They were most wonderful productions, full of coloured prints and photographs—didn’t I tell you about them?”
“I remember,” said Timothy slowly. “Found them in your cabin, eh? Well, nobody left any beautiful or attractive pictures of Monte Carlo in my berth, but I think that won’t stop me going on to Monte Carlo.”
It was an opportunity she had been seeking for a week and she seized it.
“I want to ask you something, Timothy,” she said. “Mrs. Renfrew told me the other day that they call you ‘Take A Chance’ Anderson. Why is that, Timothy?”
“Because I take a chance, I suppose,” he smiled. “I’ve been taking chances all my life.”
“You’re not a gambler, Timothy, are you?” she asked gravely. “I know you bet and play cards, but men do that for amusement, and somehow it is all right. But when men start out to make a living, and actually make a living, by games of chance, they somehow belong to another life and another people.”
He was silent.
“You’re just too good to go that way, Timothy,” she went on. “There are lots of chances that a man can take in this world, in matching his brains, his strength and his skill against other men, and when he wins his stake is safe. He doesn’t lose it the next day or the next month, and he’s picking winners all the time, Timothy.”
His first inclination was to be nettled. She was wounding the tender skin of his vanity, and he was startled to discover how tender a skin that was. All that she said was true and less than true. She could not guess how far his mind and inclination were from commonplace labour and how very little work came into the calculations of his future. He looked upon a job as a thing not to be held and developed into something better, but as a stopgap between two successful chances. He was almost shocked when this truth came home to him. The girl was nervous, and painfully anxious not to hurt him, and yet well aware that she was rubbing a sore place.
“Timothy, for your sake, as well as for mine, for you’re a friend of mine, I want to be proud of you, to see you past this present phase of life. Mrs. Renfrew speaks of you as a gambler, and says your name, even at your age, is well known as one who would rather bet than buy. That isn’t true, Timothy, is it?”
She put her hand on his and looked into his face. He did not meet her eyes.
“I think that is true, Mary,” he said steadily. “How it comes to be true, I don’t quite know. I suppose I have drifted a little over the line, and I’m grateful to you for pulling me up. Oh, no, I don’t regret the past—it has all been useful—and I have made good on chances, but I see there are other chances that a man can take than putting his money on the pace of a horse or backing against zero. Maybe, when I get back to London I’ll settle down into a respectable citizen and keep hens or something.”
He was speaking seriously, though at first she thought he was being sarcastic.
“And you won’t gamble again?” she asked.
He hesitated to reply.
“That isn’t fair,” she said quickly. “I mean it isn’t fair of me to ask you. It is almost cruel,” she smiled, “to let you go to Monte Carlo and ask you not to put money on the tables. But promise me, Timothy, that when I tell you to stop playing, you will stop.”
“Here’s my hand on it,” said Timothy, brightening up already at the prospect of being allowed to gamble at all. “Hereafter——” He raised his hand solemnly. “By the way,” he asked, “do you know a lady named Madame Serpilot?”
She shook her head.
“No, I do not,” she said. “I have never heard the name.”
“You have no relations or friends in France?”
“None,” she replied immediately.
“What made you go to France at all?” he asked. “When I heard from you, Mary, you talked about taking a holiday in Madeira before setting up house in Bath, and the first thing I knew of your intention to go abroad again was the letter you sent me just before I started for Madeira.”
“I wanted to go a year ago, after Sir John’s death,” she said; “then Mrs. Renfrew couldn’t take the trip—one of her younger children had measles.”
“Has that woman children?” asked Timothy in an awed voice.
“Don’t be absurd. Of course she has children. It was she who decided on making the trip. She writes little articles in the Bath County Herald—a local paper—on the care of children and all that sort of thing. She’s not really a journalist, she is literary.”
“I know,” said Timothy, “sometimes they write poetry, sometimes recipes for ice cream—‘take three cups of flour, a pint of cream in which an egg has been boiled and a pinch of vanilla’——”
The girl smiled. Evidently Timothy had hit upon the particular brand of journalism to which Mrs. Renfrew was addicted.
“Well,” said the girl, “there was to have been a sort of Mothers’ Welfare Meeting in Paris next week—an International affair—and when we were in Madeira she received an invitation to attend with a free return ticket—wasn’t that splendid?”
“Splendid,” said Timothy absently. “Naturally you thought it was an excellent opportunity to go also.”
The girl nodded.
“And now you have arrived here you find that the Mothers’ Welfare Meeting has been postponed for ten years?”
She looked at him, startled.
“How did you know that the meeting had been postponed?” she asked.
“Oh, I guessed it,” he said airily, “such things have happened before.”
“The truth is,” said the girl, “nobody knows anything about this meeting, and the letter which Mrs. Renfrew sent to the Mothers’ Welfare Society in Paris was waiting for us when we arrived at the Carlton. It had been returned—‘Addressee Unknown.’ Mrs. R............