Over the coffee he proposed their going back to the Casino to gamble; but she refused. “Father gambles; that’s enough for one family. I mean to keep what I’ve got,” she said; and in her hardening eyes and narrowed lips he detected the reflection of the lean years at Crampton, and at Dakin, where she had gone (so his family had told him) as saleswoman in a dry-goods’ shop. Those days had once been a tormenting mystery; but now he only pitied her for the background of dark memories overshadowing her brilliant present.
He had told her he would not go with her to Mrs. Glaisher’s, and had been secretly gratified by her pout of disappointment. “I think you might.”
“No; I don’t like those people. And anyway, I’ve got to stop off at Nice tonight.”
Her eyes grew curious. “I wonder what you’ve got to do at Nice?”
Half-laughing, he confessed his reason, telling her what he could of Chris Churley’s story without betraying the secret of the boy’s escapade. “His family are worried; they don’t know where he is. The other day some friend of theirs said he’d seen him at Nice, in a nightclub; so they asked me if I’d hunt him up.”
“Well, that’s funny — ”
“I know; but they’re poor, and sick — at least his mother’s sick — and he’s all they’ve got.”
“I don’t see how you can find him, rummaging round Nice without an address.”
“Neither do I; but I’ll have to try.”
She sat with lowered lids, meditating. “Tell me again what his name is.”
“Chris Churley.”
“That’s it. I heard Alders talking about him yesterday.”
“Alders?”
“Mrs. Glaisher’s secretary. He always knows about everybody.”
“A little man who looks like a freckle?”
“Well — I guess so,” she said hesitatingly, as if analogies were unfamiliar to her.
“Come to think of it, Alders is sure to be Mrs. Glaisher’s secretary. It’s absolutely predestined. You’re certain you heard him mention Chris Churley?”
She still hesitated, and he recalled that she had never had a good memory for anything that did not directly concern herself, or hold out some possible advantage. “Well, it was something like Churley. But I hear so many names. Is he a newspaper man? There was some fellow I heard Alders talking about, who wanted to get introduced to Gratz Blemer, and write about him; Alders was going to fix it up.” Vance laughed, and she added: “Do you think that’s it?”
“Sounds like it,” he said, picturing to himself the bewilderment of Blemer, who was used to “straight” interviewing, under the cross~fire of Chris’s literary confidences.
They strolled back toward Monte Carlo. The distance was not great, and Miss Delaney had declared that she would like to walk; but she hailed the first taxi. “I guess I’m through with walking — as long as there’s money enough left to go on wheels,” she said; and Vance thought of her struggling four times a day on her bicycle through the frozen ruts or the bottomless mud between Euphoria and Crampton. He understood why the aspirations of the newly rich were so often what Halo would have called vulgar.
He was still resolved not to go to Mrs. Glaisher’s, but he finally agreed to join Miss Delaney at her hotel, and motor with her as far as Nice; and she promised to telephone him if Alders knew where Chris Churley was to be found.
Vance went to the gambling rooms, risked a small sum, and carried away enough to pay for his outing. He was too much engrossed in the thought of Floss Delaney to lose his head over the game; but before leaving he made the round of the rooms, and assured himself that, for the moment, Chris was not in them.
When he came out he remembered that on arriving he had left his suit-case at the station. Oh, well, he thought, Floss was sure not to be on time; he could easily run down the hill and be back before she was ready to start. But when he returned to the hotel the hall porter, after an inspection of the lounge, and a consultation with the concierge, announced that Miss Delaney had gone.
Vance felt a moment of vexation. It was only half-past seven. Had she left no message? Not as far as the porter knew. Vance repeated the enquiry at the desk. He thought he detected a faint smile on the face of the gold-braided functionaries. How many times a day must that question be put to them! “Oh, well — .” He was relieved to find that after all he didn’t much care, though a twinge of vanity shot through his affected indifference.
On the threshold he was detained by a page-boy with a visiting~card. “The concierge thinks perhaps this is for you.”
On the back of the card, in an untidily pencilled scrawl, Vance read: “Tell him to come after us.” He guessed this cryptic scribble to be Floss’s way of ordering the concierge to send him in pursuit of her; but, as he had declined to go, the message had no particular point. He laughed, and absently turned the card over. On the back was engraved: Duca di Spartivento.
“Is it meant for you, sir?” the page asked; and Vance, with a shrug, pocketed the card and went out.
The Duke of Spartivento! What faint memory-waves did those sonorous syllables set rippling? Granada — Alders? But of course! This trumpet of a name was that of the young Italian cousin — or nephew? — of the old Marquesa to whose tertulia Vance had gone with Alders. He remembered that the latter, the day he had come to bid Halo and Vance goodbye, had spoken with his deprecating smirk of being about to join his Spanish friends for a shooting party in their cousin’s honour, at the Marquesa’s castle in Estremadura . . . it was then that the splendid name had shot before him up like a rocket. “Or like a line from the ‘Song to David’,” he remembered thinking.
Floss’s having written her message on the back of that particular card seemed part of the fairy-tale enveloping him. Since his meeting with her, and their hour in the little restaurant, nothing that could happen seemed impossible, or even unlikely. Amusement conquered his vexation . . . it was all part of the fairy-tale. In the darkness already sparkling with lights, he stood wondering whether he should take the next train to Nice, or treat himself to a taxi out of his winnings. He decided on the taxi.
He was about to hail one when he felt another touch on his arm, and saw at his side a chauffeur in dark livery. “Are you the gentleman —?” Vance stared, and the chauffeur continued in fluent English: “Going to Cannes with Miss Delaney, sir? That’s right. Here’s her car. She’s gone on with the others; but she told me to wait and bring you.” He had his hand on the shining panel of the motor from which Vance had seen Floss descend that morning; and Vance obediently got in. Let the fairy-tale go on as long as it would. When he got to Nice he’d tell the fellow to drop him at some quiet hotel. . .
He had no notion which way they were going. From the train he had seen the road only in uncertain glimpses, climbing between garden walls or dropping to the sea; and now darkness made the scene strange. They ascended between illuminated houses; then the streets ceased, and he found himself high up, flashing past dark wooded heights and looking across a sea of verdure to the other sea below, its shore thrust forth in black headlands or ravelled into long sinuous inlets. The moon had not risen, but the evening star hung in the sky like a lesser moon, and the early constellations pushed upward, deepening the night. But only for a moment; almost at once they paled and vanished in the spreading of artificial lights that festooned the coast, crested the headlands, flowed in golden streamers across bays and harbours, and flashed and revolved from unseen lighthouses, binding the prone landscape in a net of fire.
Overhead rose a continuous cliff, wooded and sombre; below a continuous city sparkled and twisted. Vance hung over the scene entranced. He had no thought of places or distances; as the motor climbed, descended and rose again, he felt like a bird floating above the earth, like an errant Perseus swooping down to free this dark Andromeda from her jewelled chains. Visions and images pressed on him. They mingled with the actual scene, so that what his eyes saw, and what his fancy made of it, flowed into one miracle of night and fire. And now the motor had dropped to the shore again, and the sea, dim and unbound, swayed away into blackness. Vance longed to jump out and dash over the sands into that moving obscurity; but he felt that the incessant shifting of the scene was the very source of its magic, and leaned back satisfied.
Suddenly he was aware that the motor was manoeuvring at a sharp turn. They were out in the country again, or in a leafy suburb, with gate-ways and house-fronts seen through foliage. “See here — what about Nice?” he called to the chauffeur.
“Nice?” the latter echoed, busy with his backing; “this is the way up to Mrs. Glaisher’s. Damned bad corner — ”
“Oh, but it’s all a mistake. I meant to get out at Nice. Can’t you take me back there?”
“Back to Nice? You never said anything about Nice, sir.” The chauffeur turned his head reproachfully. “What time do you suppose it is? Nearly half-past nine; and I haven’t had no dinner yet. Have YOU?” His tone was respectful but aggrieved. “It’s here Miss Delaney said I was to bring you. . .” The motor rolled between illuminated gate-posts and along a drive to a white-pillared portico. “This way,” said a footman, who seemed to have been waiting for Vance from the beginning of time; and Vance followed his suit-case up a broad flight of marble steps. It was true — he had forgotten to tell the chauffeur that he wanted to get out at Nice.
In a hall paved with coloured marbles he saw, redoubled in tall mirrors, a tired parched-looking self in faded flannel suit and shabby hat. Other footmen appeared, eyei............