Read Ebook: James Pethel by Beerbohm Max Sir

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Ebook has 112 lines and 10930 words, and 3 pages

My sympathy lagged, and I stuck to the point of my inquiry.

"Meanwhile," I suggested, "and all the more because you aren't merely a rich man, but also an active taker of big risks, how can these tiny little baccarat risks give you so much emotion?"

"There you rather have me," he laughed. "I've often wondered at that myself. I suppose," he puzzled it out, "I do a good lot of make-believe. While I'm playing a game like this game to-night, I IMAGINE the stakes are huge. And I IMAGINE I haven't another penny in the world."

"Ah, so that with you it's always a life-and-death affair?"

He looked away.

"Oh, no, I don't say that."

"Stupid phrase," I admitted. "But"--there was yet one point I would put to him--"if you have extraordinary luck always--"

"There's no such thing as luck."

"No, strictly, I suppose, there isn't. But if in point of fact you always do win, then--well, surely, perfect luck driveth out fear."

"Who ever said I always won?" he asked sharply.

I waved my hands and said, "Oh, you have the reputation, you know, for extraordinary luck."

"That isn't the same thing as always winning. Besides, I HAVEN'T extraordinary luck, never HAVE had. Good heavens!" he exclaimed, "if I thought I had any more chance of winning than of losing, I'd--I'd--"

"Never again set foot in that baccarat-room to-night," I soothingly suggested.

"Oh, baccarat be blowed! I wasn't thinking of baccarat. I was thinking of--oh, lots of things; baccarat included, yes."

"What things?" I ventured to ask.

"What things?" He pushed back his chair. "Look here," he said with a laugh, "don't pretend I haven't been boring your head off with all this talk about myself. You've been too patient. I'm off. Shall I see you to-morrow? Perhaps you'd lunch with us to-morrow? It would be a great pleasure for my wife. We're at the Grand Hotel."

I said I should be most happy, and called the waiter; at sight of whom my friend said he had talked himself thirsty, and asked for another glass of water. He mentioned that he had brought his car over with him: his little daughter was very keen on motoring, and they were all three starting the day after to-morrow on a little tour through France. Afterward they were going on to Switzerland "for some climbing." Did I care about motoring? If so, we might go for a spin after luncheon, to Rouen or somewhere. He drank his glass of water, and, linking a friendly arm in mine, passed out with me into the corridor. He asked what I was writing now, and said that he looked to me to "do something big one of these days," and that he was sure I had it in me. This remark, though of course I pretended to be pleased by it, irritated me very much. It was destined, as you shall see, to irritate me very much more in recollection.

Yet I was glad he had asked me to luncheon--glad because I liked him and glad because I dislike mysteries. Though you may think me very dense for not having thoroughly understood Pethel in the course of my first meeting with him, the fact is that I was only aware, and that dimly, of something more in him than he had cared to reveal--some veil behind which perhaps lurked his right to the title so airily bestowed on him by Grierson. I assured myself, as I walked home, that if veil there was, I should to-morrow find an eyelet. But one's intuition when it is off duty seems always a much more powerful engine than it does on active service; and next day, at sight of Pethel awaiting me outside his hotel, I became less confident. His, thought I, was a face which, for all its animation, would tell nothing--nothing, at any rate, that mattered. It expressed well enough that he was pleased to see me; but for the rest I was reminded that it had a sort of frank inscrutability. Besides, it was at all points so very usual a face--a face that couldn't , even if it had leave to, betray connection with a "great character." It was a strong face, certainly; but so are yours and mine.

This did not square with my preconception of her. Slave that I am to traditional imagery, I had figured her as "flaunting," as golden-haired, as haughty to most men, but with a provocative smile across the shoulder for some. Nor, indeed, did her husband's words save me the suspicion that my eyes deceived me when anon I was presented to a very pale, small lady whose hair was rather white than gray. And the "little daughter!" This prodigy's hair was as yet "down," but looked as if it might be up at any moment: she was nearly as tall as her father, whom she very much resembled in face and figure and heartiness of hand-shake. Only after a rapid mental calculation could I account for her.

"I must warn you, she's in a great rage this morning," said her father. "Do try to soothe her." She blushed, laughed, and bade her father not be so silly. I asked her the cause of her great rage. She said:

"He only means I was disappointed. And he was just as disappointed as I was. WEREN'T you, now, Father?"

"I suppose they meant well, Peggy," he laughed.

"They were QUITE right," said Mrs. Pethel, evidently not for the first time.

"They," as I presently learned, were the authorities of the bathing-establishment. Pethel had promised his daughter he would take her for a swim; but on their arrival at the bathing-cabins they were ruthlessly told that bathing was defendu a cause du mauvais temps. This embargo was our theme as we sat down to luncheon. Miss Peggy was of opinion that the French were cowards. I pleaded for them that even in English watering-places bathing was forbidden when the sea was VERY rough. She did not admit that the sea was very rough to-day. Besides, she appealed to me, where was the fun of swimming in absolutely calm water? I dared not say that this was the only sort of water I liked to swim in.

"They were QUITE right," said Mrs. Pethel again.

"Yes, but, darling Mother, you can't swim. Father and I are both splendid swimmers."

To gloss over the mother's disability, I looked brightly at Pethel, as though in ardent recognition of his prowess among waves. With a movement of his head he indicated his daughter--indicated that there was no one like her in the whole world. I beamed agreement. Indeed, I did think her rather nice. If one liked the father , one couldn't help liking the daughter, the two were so absurdly alike. Whenever he was looking at her , the effect, if you cared to be fantastic, was that of a very vain man before a mirror. It might have occurred to me that, if there was any mystery in him, I could solve it through her. But, in point of fact, I had forgotten all about that possible mystery. The amateur detective was lost in the sympathetic observer of a father's love. That Pethel did love his daughter I have never doubted. One passion is not less true because another predominates. No one who ever saw that father with that daughter could doubt that he loved her intensely. And this intensity gages for me the strength of what else was in him.

Mrs. Pethel's love, though less explicit, was not less evidently profound. But the maternal instinct is less attractive to an onlooker, because he takes it more for granted than the paternal. What endeared poor Mrs. Pethel to me was--well, the inevitability of the epithet I give her. She seemed, poor thing, so essentially out of it; and by "it" is meant the glowing mutual affinity of husband and child. Not that she didn't, in her little way, assert herself during the meal. But she did so, I thought, with the knowledge that she didn't count, and never would count. I wondered how it was that she had, in that Cambridge bar-room long ago, counted for Pethel to the extent of matrimony. But from any such room she seemed so utterly remote that she might well be in all respects now an utterly changed woman. She did preeminently look as if much had by some means been taken out of her, with no compensatory process of putting in. Pethel looked so very young for his age, whereas she would have had to be really old to look young for hers. I pitied her as one might a governess with two charges who were hopelessly out of hand. But a governess, I reflected, can always give notice. Love tied poor Mrs. Pethel fast to her present situation.

As the three of them were to start next day on their tour through France, and as the four of us were to make a tour to Rouen this afternoon, the talk was much about motoring, a theme which Miss Peggy's enthusiasm made almost tolerable. I said to Mrs. Pethel, with more good-will than truth, that I supposed she was "very keen on it." She replied that she was.

"But, darling Mother, you aren't. I believe you hate it. You're ALWAYS asking father to go slower. And what IS the fun of just crawling along?"

"Oh, come, Peggy, we never crawl!" said her father.

"No, indeed," said her mother in a tone of which Pethel laughingly said it would put me off coming out with them this afternoon. I said, with an expert air to reassure Mrs. Pethel, that it wasn't fast driving, but only bad driving, that was a danger.

"There, Mother!" cried Peggy. "Isn't that what we're always telling you?"

I felt that they were always either telling Mrs. Pethel something or, as in the matter of that intended bath, not telling her something. It seemed to me possible that Peggy advised her father about his "investments." I wondered whether they had yet told Mrs. Pethel of their intention to go on to Switzerland for some climbing.

Of his secretiveness for his wife's sake I had a touching little instance after luncheon. We had adjourned to have coffee in front of the hotel. The car was already in attendance, and Peggy had darted off to make her daily inspection of it. Pethel had given me a cigar, and his wife presently noticed that he himself was not smoking. He explained to her that he thought he had smoked too much lately, and that he was going to "knock it off" for a while. I would not have smiled if he had met my eye, but his avoidance of it made me quite sure that he really had been "thinking over" what I had said last night about nicotine and its possibly deleterious action on the gambling thrill.

"Nobody has so much strength of character as he has," she said.

"Nonsense!" he laughed. "I'm the weakest of men."

"Yes," she said quietly; "that's true, too, James."

Again he laughed, but he flushed. I saw that Mrs. Pethel also had faintly flushed, and I became horribly aware of following suit. In the sudden glow and silence created by Mrs. Pethel's paradox, I was grateful to the daughter for bouncing back among us, and asking how soon we should be ready to start.

Pethel looked at his wife, who looked at me and rather strangely asked if I was sure I wanted to go with them. I protested that of course I did. Pethel asked her if SHE really wanted to come.

"You see, dear, there was the run yesterday from Calais. And to-morrow you'll be on the road again, and all the days after."

"Yes," said Peggy; "I'm SURE you'd much rather stay at home, darling Mother, and have a good rest."

"Shall we go and put on our things, Peggy?" replied Mrs. Pethel, rising from her chair. She asked her husband whether he was taking the chauffeur with him. He said he thought not.

"Oh, hurrah!" cried Peggy. "Then I can be on the front seat!"

"No, dear," said her mother. "I am sure Mr. Beerbohms would like to be on the front seat."

"You'd like to be with mother, wouldn't you?" the girl appealed. I replied with all possible emphasis that I should like to be with Mrs. Pethel. But presently, when the mother and daughter reappeared in the guise of motorists, it became clear that my aspiration had been set aside. "I am to be with mother," said Peggy.

I was inwardly glad that Mrs. Pethel could, after all, assert herself to some purpose. Had I thought she disliked me, I should have been hurt; but I was sure her desire that I should not sit with her was due merely to a belief that, in case of accident, a person on the front seat was less safe than a person behind. And of course I did not expect her to prefer my life to her daughter's. Poor lady! My heart was with her. As the car glided along the sea-front and then under the Norman archway, through the town, and past the environs, I wished that her husband inspired in her as much confidence as he did in me. For me the sight of his clear, firm profile was an assurance in itself. From time to time I looked round to nod and smile cheerfully at his wife. She always returned the nod, but left the smile to be returned by the daughter.

Pethel, like the good driver he was, did not talk; just drove. But as we came out on to the Rouen road he did say that in France he always rather missed the British police-traps. "Not," he added, "that I've ever fallen into one. But the chance that a policeman MAY at any moment dart out, and land you in a bit of a scrape does rather add to the excitement, don't you think?" Though I answered in the tone of one to whom the chance of a police-trap is the very salt of life, I did not inwardly like the spirit of his remark. However, I dismissed it from my mind. The sun was shining, and the wind had dropped: it was an ideal day for motoring, and the Norman landscape had never looked lovelier to me in its width of sober and silvery grace.

I presently felt that this landscape was not, after all, doing itself full justice. Was it not rushing rather too quickly past? "James!" said a shrill, faint voice from behind, and gradually--"Oh, darling Mother, really!" protested another voice--the landscape slackened pace. But after a while, little by little, the landscape lost patience, forgot its good manners, and flew faster and faster than before. The road rushed furiously beneath us, like a river in spate. Avenues of poplars flashed past us, every tree of them on each side hissing and swishing angrily in the draft we made. Motors going Rouen-ward seemed to be past as quickly as motors that bore down on us. Hardly had I espied in the landscape ahead a chateau or other object of interest before I was craning my neck round for a final glimpse of it as it faded on the backward horizon. An endless uphill road was breasted and crested in a twinkling and transformed into a decline near the end of which our car leaped straight across to the opposite ascent, and--"James!" again, and again by degrees the laws of nature were reestablished, but again by degrees revoked. I did not doubt that speed in itself was no danger; but, when the road was about to make a sharp curve, why shouldn't Pethel, just as a matter of form, slow down slightly, and sound a note or two of the hooter? Suppose another car were--well, that was all right: the road was clear; but at the next turning, when our car neither slackened nor hooted and WAS for an instant full on the wrong side of the road, I had within me a contraction which lasted though all was well. Loath to betray fear, I hadn't turned my face to Pethel. Eyes front! And how about that wagon ahead, huge hay-wagon plodding with its back to us, seeming to occupy whole road? Surely Pethel would slacken, hoot. No. Imagine a needle threaded with one swift gesture from afar. Even so was it that we shot, between wagon and road's-edge, through; whereon, confronting us within a few yards--inches now, but we swerved--was a cart that incredibly we grazed not as we rushed on, on. Now indeed I had turned my eyes on Pethel's profile; and my eyes saw there that which stilled, with a greater emotion, all fear and wonder in me.

I think that for the first instant, oddly, what I felt was merely satisfaction, not hatred; for I all but asked him whether, by not smoking to-day, he had got a keener edge to his thrills. I understood him, and for an instant this sufficed me. Those pursed-out lips, so queerly different from the compressed lips of the normal motorist, and seeming, as elsewhere last night, to denote no more than pensive interest, had told me suddenly all that I needed to know about Pethel. Here, as there,--and, oh, ever so much better here than there!--he could gratify the passion that was in him. No need of any "make-believe" here. I remembered the queer look he had given when I asked if his gambling were always "a life-and-death affair." Here was the real thing, the authentic game, for the highest stakes. And here was I, a little extra stake tossed on to the board. He had vowed I had it in me to do "something big." Perhaps, though, there had been a touch of make-believe about that. I am afraid it was not before my thought about myself that my moral sense began to operate and my hatred of Pethel set in. Put it to my credit that I did see myself as a mere detail in his villainy. You deprecate the word "villainy"? Understand all, forgive all? No doubt. But between the acts of understanding and forgiving an interval may sometimes be condoned. Condone it in this instance. Even at the time I gave Pethel due credit for risking his own life, for having doubtless risked it--it and none other--again and again in the course of his adventurous life by field and flood. I was even rather touched by memory of his insistence last night on another glass of that water which just MIGHT give him typhoid; rather touched by memory of his unsaying that he "never" touched alcohol--he who, in point of fact, had to be ALWAYS gambling on something or other. I gave him due credit, too, for his devotion to his daughter. But his use of that devotion, his cold use of it to secure for himself the utmost thrill of hazard, did seem utterly abominable to me.

And it was even more for the mother than for the daughter that I was incensed. That daughter did not know him, did but innocently share his damnable love of chances; but that wife had for years known him at least as well as I knew him now. Here again I gave him credit for wishing, though he didn't love her, to spare her what he could. That he didn't love her I presumed from his indubitable willingness not to stake her in this afternoon's game. That he never had loved her--had taken her in his precocious youth simply as a gigantic chance against him, was likely enough. So much the more credit to him for such consideration as he showed her, though this was little enough. He could wish to save her from being a looker-on at his game, but he could--he couldn't not--go on playing. Assuredly she was right in deeming him at once the strongest and the weakest of men. "Rather a nervous woman!" I remembered an engraving that had hung in my room at Oxford, and in scores of other rooms there: a presentment by Sir Marcus Stone of a very pretty young person in a Gainsborough hat, seated beneath an ancestral elm, looking as though she were about to cry, and entitled "A Gambler's Wife." Mrs. Pethel was not like that. Of her there were no engravings for undergraduate hearts to melt at. But there was one man, certainly, whose compassion was very much at her service. How was he going to help her?

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