Halo had been so moved by the sight of the ailing woman and the angry ineffectual old man, left alone in that dismal house to heap each other with recriminations, that she communicated her emotion to Vance; and when he proposed going to look for Chris she welcomed the suggestion. “The boy haunts me. To do anything so dishonest he must be in a bad way; and I feel as if we ought to do what we can.”
“Oh, he never meant to be dishonest. When he got to Toulon he probably saw a train starting for Nice, and was tempted by the idea of a night’s fun.”
“A night’s fun! But it’s a month since he went away, and it was only a day or two ago that Mrs. Churley’s friend saw him.”
“Well, it’s pretty smart of him to have made the money last as long as that,” Vance rejoined with a laugh; but in reality he too felt a vague pang at the thought of the irresponsible boy caught in that sordid whirlpool.
In the train his reflexions grew less emotional. It was obviously none of his business to find and reclaim Chris, even supposing the latter had deliberately deceived them, and used Vance’s money to offer himself a few weeks’ amusement; but there was something so droll in this act of defiance that Vance, in spite of his pity for the parents, was amused at the idea of being confronted with the son.
He was also acutely interested in the prospect of seeing for the first time the pleasure-seeking end of the Riviera. The contrast between Oubli-sur-Mer and the succession of white cities reflected in azure waters emphasized the narrowness and monotony of the life he had been leading. Slipping past towering palace hotels, and villas girt with lawns and pergolas, he recalled the mouldy blistered fronts of the pink house and the Pension Britannique; when, at the stations, flower-girls thrust up great sheaves of freesias and carnations, he saw the handful of wizened anemones bargained for by Miss Plummet at the market, and brought home to her invalid sister; and the motors pouring along wide dustless roads to inviting distances evoked the lurching omnibus crowded with garlicky peasants which, through clouds of suffocating dust, carried Oubli-sur-Mer to Toulon or Marseilles. A few hours earlier the quiet of Oubli had seemed a spiritual necessity; but already the new scenes were working their old spell.
These alternations of mood, which he had once ascribed to instability of aim, no longer troubled him. He knew now that they were only the play of the world of images on his creative faculty, and that his fundamental self remained unchanged under such shifting impulses. By the time the train reached Nice he was so lost in the visionary architecture of his inner world that the other had become invisible. He gazed at the big station packed with gaily dressed people and busy flower-sellers without remembering that it was there he should have got out; and now the guard was crying “Monte Carlo”, and above the station glittered the minarets and palms of the Casino.
“Well — why not?” Vance thought. Chris was as likely to be at Monte Carlo as at Nice; it was not probable that he would restrict his pleasure-seeking to one spot. Vance picked up his suit-case and jumped out. . .
Past sloping turf, palms imprisoned in bright blue or glaring magenta cinerarias, borders of hyacinths and banks of glossy shrubs, he climbed gaily to the polychrome confusion of the Casino. Stretching up from it to a stern mountain-background were villas and restaurants, and café-terraces where brightly dressed people sipped cocktails under orange-and-white umbrellas. Nearer by were tall hotels with awninged and flowered balconies; rows of taxis and private motors between the lawns and flower-beds before the Casino; young men in tennis flannels and young women in brilliant sports~suits, and strollers lounging along the balustraded walks. Among half-tropical trees a band played a gipsy tune of de Falla’s, and children with lovely flying hair raced ahead of nurses in long blue veils, who gossiped on the benches or languidly pursued their charges.
Halo would have called it a super-railway poster. She always spoke scornfully of the place, resenting such profanation of the gray mountain giants above it. In certain moods Vance might have agreed; but today the novelty and brightness struck his fancy, and the trimness of lawns, flowers, houses, satisfied his need of order and harmony. Everything wore the fairy glitter of a travelling circus to a small child in a country town, and the people who passed him looked as unreal, as privileged and condescending, as the spangled athletes of his infancy. He sat down on a bench and watched them.
The passing faces were not all young or beautiful; the greater number were elderly, many ugly, some painful or even repulsive; but almost all wore the same hard glaze of prosperity. Vance tried to conjecture what the inner lives of such people could be; he pictured them ordering rare delicacies in restaurants, buying costly cigars and jewels in glittering shops, stepping in and out of deeply-cushioned motors, ogling young women or painted youths, as sex and inclination prompted. “Chris’s ideal,” he murmured. He decided to take a look at the gambling-rooms; but it was luncheon~time, and people were coming out of the Casino, descending the steps to their motors or the near-by restaurants. As he stood there he suddenly caught sight of Lorry Spear; and at the same instant Lorry recognized him.
“Hullo, Vance — you? Halo here? I suppose she’s a peg above all this. Sent you off on your own, has she? Very white of her. Not staying here, though? Of course not; nobody does. I’m over from Cannes with a party, to lunch on the Gratz Blemers’ yacht — the biggest of her kind, I believe. You knew Blemer had carried off Jet Pulsifer under Tarrant’s very nose? Sharp fellow, Blemer . . . they were secretly married two or three months ago. That accounts for Tarrant’s turning down the divorce, I suppose,” Lorry rattled on, his handsome uncertain eyes rambling from Vance’s face to search the passing throng. “I say, though — why not come off to the yacht with us? When I say ‘us,’ I mean Mrs. Glaisher and Imp Pevensey, with whom I’m staying at Cannes. Mrs. Glaisher has taken a villa there, and we’re working over the final arrangements for ‘Factories’; at least I hope we are,” Lorry added with a dubious grin. “With the super-rich you never can tell; at the last minute they’re so darned scared of being done. But if Imp Pevensey can get Mrs. Blemer to take an interest she’s sure that’ll excite Mrs. Glaisher, and make her take the final step. Almost all their philanthropy’s based on rivalry . . . Well, so much the better for us . . . See here, my boy, come along; they’ll jump at the chance of seeing you . . . Ah, there’s the very young woman I’m on the look out for!” he exclaimed, darting toward a motor which had stopped before an hotel facing the Casino.
It was wonderful how Lorry fitted into the scene. In Montparnasse he had been keen, restless, careless in dress and manner; here he wore the same glossy veneer as all the rest. The very cut of his hair and his clothes had been adapted to his setting, and as he slipped through the crowd about the hotel Vance was struck by his resemblance to the other young men strolling in and out of its portals.
He had been amused by Lorry’s invitation. He had no intention of joining Mrs. Glaisher’s party, but that Lorry should propose it after what had passed between them was too characteristic to surprise him. Lorry had obviously forgotten the Glaisher episode, though it had occurred under his own roof; on seeing Vance he had remembered only that the latter was a good fellow whose passing celebrity had once been useful to him, and might be again. As Vance waited on the curb he thought how jolly it would be to go and lunch at one of those little terrace-restaurants over the sea that he had marked down from the train. After that he would return to Nice, and devise a way of running down Chris.
“Look here, Vance; you will come?” Lorry, rejoining him, grasped his arm with a persuasive hand. “No? It’s a pity — the yacht’s a wonder. Not to speak of Blemer and Jet! As a novelist you oughtn’t to miss them . . . Well, so long . . . Oh, by the way; won’t you dine at Cannes tonight instead? At Mrs. Glaisher’s — Villa Mirifique. I’ve just been arranging with that young woman over there to meet us here on our way back from the yacht. She’s coming over to spend a day or two with Mrs. Glaisher, and I’m sure she’d be delighted to drive you to Cannes. Come along and I’ll introduce you.” Lorry, as he spoke, swept Vance across to the hotel door, where a young lady who stood with her back to them was giving an order to her chauffeur. The motor drove off, and she turned and faced them.
“Floss,” Lorry cried, “here’s a friend of mine, a celebrated novelist, who wants a lift to Mrs. Glaisher’s this evening. Of course you’ve heard of Vance Weston — and read ‘The Puritan in Spain’?”
The girl, who had been looking at Lorry, turned interrogativ............