I WAS shocked this
morning when I saw in my newspaper a paragraph announcing his sudden death. I
do not say that the shock was very disagreeable. One reads a newspaper for the
sake of news. Had I never met James Pethel, belike I should never have heard of
him: and my knowledge of his death, coincident with my knowledge that he had
existed, would have meant nothing at all to me. If you learn suddenly that one
of your friends is dead, you are wholly distressed. If the death is that of a
mere acquaintance whom you have recently seen, you are disconcerted, pricked is
your sense of mortality; but you do find great solace in telling other people
that you met "the poor fellow" only the other day, and that he was
"so full of life and spirits," and that you remember he
said--whatever you may remember of his sayings. If the death is that of a mere
acquaintance whom you have not seen for years, you are touched so lightly as to
find solace enough in even such faded reminiscence as is yours to offer. Seven
years have passed since the day when last I saw James Pethel, and that day was
the morrow of my first meeting with him.
I had formed the habit
of spending August in Dieppe. The place was then less overrun by trippers than
it is now. Some pleasant English people shared it with some pleasant French
people. We used rather to resent the race-week--the third week of the month--as
an intrusion on our privacy. We sneered as we read in the Paris edition of
"The New York Herald" the names of the intruders, though by some of
these we were secretly impressed. We disliked the nightly crush in the
baccarat-room of the casino, and the croupiers' obvious excitement at the high
play. I made a point of avoiding that room during that week, for the special
reason that the sight of serious, habitual gamblers has always filled me with a
depression bordering on disgust. Most of the men, by some subtle stress of
their ruling passion, have grown so monstrously fat, and most of the women so
harrowingly thin. The rest of the women seem to be marked out for apoplexy, and
the rest of the men to be wasting away. One feels that anything thrown at them
would be either embedded or shattered, and looks vainly among them for one
person furnished with a normal amount of flesh. Monsters they are, all of them,
to the eye, though I believe that many of them have excellent moral qualities
in private life; but just as in an American town one goes sooner or later--goes
against one's finer judgment, but somehow goes--into the dime-museum, so year
by year, in Dieppe's race-week, there would be always one evening when I
drifted into the baccarat-room. It was on such an evening that I first saw the
man whose memory I here celebrate. My gaze was held by him for the very reason
that he would have passed unnoticed elsewhere. He was conspicuous not in virtue
of the mere fact that he was taking the bank at the principal table, but
because there was nothing at all odd about him.
He alone, among his
fellow-players, looked as if he were not to die before the year was out. Of him
alone I said to myself that he was destined to die normally at a ripe old age.
Next day, certainly, I would not have made this prediction, would not have
"given" him the seven years that were still in store for him, nor the
comparatively normal death that has been his. But now, as I stood opposite to
him, behind the croupier, I was refreshed by my sense of his wholesome
durability. Everything about him, except the amount of money he had been
winning, seemed moderate. Just as he was neither fat nor thin, so had his face
neither that extreme pallor nor that extreme redness which belongs to the faces
of seasoned gamblers: it was just a clear pink. And his eyes had neither the
unnatural brightness nor the unnatural dullness of the eyes about him: they
were ordinarily clear eyes, of an ordinary gray. His very age was moderate: a
putative thirty-six, not more. ("Not less," I would have said in
those days.) He assumed no air of nonchalance. He did not deal out the cards as
though they bored him, but he had no look of grim concentration. I noticed that
the removal of his cigar from his mouth made never the least difference to his
face, for he kept his lips pursed out as steadily as ever when he was not
smoking. And this constant pursing of his lips seemed to denote just a pensive
interest.
His bank was nearly
done now; there were only a few cards left. Opposite to him was a welter of
party-colored counters that the croupier had not yet had time to sort out and
add to the rouleaux already made; there were also a fair accumulation of notes
and several little stacks of gold--in all, not less than five-hundred pounds,
certainly. Happy banker! How easily had he won in a few minutes more than I,
with utmost pains, could win in many months! I wished I were he. His lucre
seemed to insult me personally. I disliked him, and yet I hoped he would not
take another bank. I hoped he would have the good sense to pocket his winnings
and go home. Deliberately to risk the loss of all those riches would intensify
the insult to me.
"Messieurs, la
banque est aux enchères." There was some brisk bidding while the croupier
tore open and shuffled two new packs. But it was as I feared: the gentleman
whom I resented kept his place.
"Messieurs, la
banque est faite. Quinze-mille francs à la banque. Messieurs, les cartes
passent. Messieurs, les cartes passent."
Turning to go, I
encountered a friend, one of the race-weekers, but in a sense a friend.
"Going to
play?" I asked.
"Not while Jimmy
Pethel's taking the bank," he answered, with a laugh.
"Is that the man's
name?"
"Yes. Don't you
know him? I thought every one knew old Jimmy Pethel."
I asked what there was
so wonderful about "old Jimmy Pethel" that every one should be
supposed to know him.
"Oh, he's a great
character. Has extraordinary luck--always."
I do not think my friend
was versed in the pretty theory that good luck is the subconscious wisdom of
them who in previous incarnations have been consciously wise. He was a member
of the stock exchange, and I smiled as at a certain quaintness in his remark. I
asked in what ways besides luck the "great character" was manifested.
Oh, well, Pethel had made a huge "scoop" on the stock exchange when
he was only twenty-three, and very soon had doubled that and doubled it again;
then retired. He wasn't more than thirty-five now, And then? Oh, well, he was a
regular all-round sportsman; had gone after big game all over the world and had
a good many narrow shaves. Great steeple-chaser, too. Rather settled down now.
Lived in Leicestershire mostly. Had a big place there. Hunted five times a
week. Still did an occasional flutter, though. Cleared eighty-thousand in
Mexicans last February. Wife had been a barmaid at Cambridge; married her when
he was nineteen. Thing seemed to have turned out quite well. Altogether, a
great character.
Possibly, thought I.
But my cursory friend, accustomed to quick transactions and to things accepted
"on the nod," had not proved his case to my slower, more literary
intelligence. It was to him, though, that I owed, some minutes later, a chance
of testing his opinion. At the cry of "Messieurs, la banque est aux enchères,"
we looked round and saw that the subject of our talk was preparing to rise from
his place. "Now one can punt," said Grierson (this was my friend's
name), and turned to the bureau at which counters are for sale. "If old
Jimmy Pethel punts," he added, "I shall just follow his luck."
But this lode-star was not to be. While my friend was buying his counters, and
I was wondering whether I, too, could buy some, Pethel himself came up to the
bureau. With his lips no longer pursed, he had lost his air of gravity, and
looked younger. Behind him was an attendant bearing a big wooden bowl--that
plain, but romantic, bowl supplied by the establishment to a banker whose gains
are too great to be pocketed. He and Grierson greeted each other. He said he
had arrived in Dieppe this afternoon, was here for a day or two. We were
introduced. He spoke to me with empressement, saying he was a "very great
admirer" of my work. I no longer disliked him. Grierson, armed with counters,
had now darted away to secure a place that had just been vacated. Pethel, with
a wave of his hand toward the tables, said:
"I suppose you
never condescend to this sort of thing."
"Well--" I
smiled indulgently.
"Awful waste of
time," he admitted.
I glanced down at the
splendid mess of counters and gold and notes that were now becoming, under the
swift fingers of the little man at the bureau, an orderly array. I did not say
aloud that it pleased me to be, and to be seen, talking on terms of equality to
a man who had won so much. I did not say how wonderful it seemed to me that he,
whom I had watched just now with awe and with aversion, had all the while been
a great admirer of my work. I did but say, again indulgently, that I supposed
baccarat to be as good a way of wasting time as another.
"Ah, but you
despise us all the same." He added that he always envied men who had
resources within themselves. I laughed lightly, to imply that it was very
pleasant to have such resources, but that I didn't want to boast. And, indeed,
I had never felt humbler, flimsier, than when the little man at the bureau,
naming a fabulous sum, asked its owner whether he would take the main part in
notes of mille francs, cinq-mille, dix-mille--quoi? Had it been mine, I should
have asked to have it all in five-franc pieces. Pethel took it in the most
compendious form, and crumpled it into his pocket. I asked if he were going to
play any more to-night.
"Oh, later
on," he said. "I want to get a little sea air into my lungs
now." He asked, with a sort of breezy diffidence, if I would go with him.
I was glad to do so. It flashed across my mind that yonder on the terrace he
might suddenly blurt out: "I say, look here, don't think me awfully impertinent,
but this money's no earthly use to me. I do wish you'd accept it as a very
small return for all the pleasure your work has given me, and-- There, please!
Not another word!"--all with such candor, delicacy, and genuine zeal that
I should be unable to refuse. But I must not raise false hopes in my reader.
Nothing of the sort happened. Nothing of that sort ever does happen.
We were not long on the
terrace. It was not a night on which you could stroll and talk; there was a
wind against which you had to stagger, holding your hat on tightly, and
shouting such remarks as might occur to you. Against that wind acquaintance
could make no headway. Yet I see now that despite that wind, or, rather,
because of it, I ought already to have known Pethel a little better than I did
when we presently sat down together inside the café of the casino. There had
been a point in our walk, or our stagger, when we paused to lean over the
parapet, looking down at the black and driven sea. And Pethel had shouted that
it would be great fun to be out in a sailing-boat to-night, and that at one
time he had been very fond of sailing.
As we took our seats in
the café, he looked about him with boyish interest and pleasure; then squaring
his arms on the little table, he asked me what I would drink. I protested that
I was the host, a position which he, with the quick courtesy of the very rich,
yielded to me at once. I feared he would ask for champagne, and was gladdened
by his demand for water.
"Apollinaris, St.
Galmier, or what?" I asked. He preferred plain water. I ventured to warn
him that such water was never "safe" in these places. He said he had
often heard that, but would risk it. I remonstrated, but he was firm.
"Alors," I told the waiter, "pour Monsieur un verre de l'eau fraiche,
et pour moi un demi blonde."
Pethel asked me to tell
him who every one was. I told him no one was any one in particular, and
suggested that we should talk about ourselves.
"You mean,"
he laughed, "that you want to know who the devil I am?"
I assured him that I
had often heard of him. At this he was unaffectedly pleased.
"But," I
added, "it's always more interesting to hear a man talked about by
himself." And indeed, since he had not handed his winnings over to me, I
did hope he would at any rate give me some glimpses into that "great
character" of his. Full though his life had been, he seemed but like a
rather clever schoolboy out on a holiday. I wanted to know more.
"That beer looks
good," he admitted when the waiter came back. I asked him to change his
mind, but he shook his head, raised to his lips the tumbler of water that had
been placed before him, and meditatively drank a deep draft. "I
never," he then said, "touch alcohol of any sort." He looked
solemn; but all men do look solemn when they speak of their own habits, whether
positive or negative, and no matter how trivial; and so, though I had really no
warrant for not supposing him a reclaimed drunkard, I dared ask him for what
reason he abstained.
"When I say I
never touch alcohol," he said hastily, in a tone as of self-defense,
"I mean that I don't touch it often, or, at any rate--well, I never touch
it when I'm gambling, you know. It--it takes the edge off."
His tone did make me
suspicious. For a moment I wondered whether he had married the barmaid rather
for what she symbolized than for what in herself she was. But no, surely not;
he had been only nineteen years old. Nor in any way had he now, this steady,
brisk, clear-eyed fellow, the aspect of one who had since fallen.
"The edge off the
excitement?" I asked.
"Rather. Of course
that sort of excitement seems awfully stupid to you; but--no use denying it--I
do like a bit of a flutter, just occasionally, you know. And one has to be in
trim for it. Suppose a man sat down dead-drunk to a game of chance, what fun
would it be for him? None. And it's only a question of degree. Soothe yourself
ever so little with alcohol, and you don't get quite the full sensation of
gambling. You do lose just a little something of the proper tremors before a
coup, the proper throes during a coup, the proper thrill of joy or anguish
after a coup. You're bound to, you know," he added, purposely making this
bathos when he saw me smiling at the heights to which he had risen.
"And
to-night," I asked, remembering his prosaically pensive demeanor in taking
the bank, "were you feeling these throes and thrills to the utmost?"
He nodded.
"And you'll feel
them again to-night?"
"I hope so."
"I wonder you can
stay away."
"Oh, one gets a
bit deadened after an hour or so. One needs to be freshened up. So long as I
don't bore you--"
I laughed, and held out
my cigarette-case.
"I rather wonder
you smoke," I murmured, after giving him a light. "Nicotine's a sort
of drug. Doesn't it soothe you? Don't you lose just a little something of the
tremors and things?"
He looked at me
gravely.
"By Jove!" he
ejaculated, "I never thought of that. Perhaps you're right. 'Pon my word,
I must think that over."
I wondered whether he
were secretly laughing at me. Here was a man to whom--so I conceived, with an
effort of the imagination--the loss or gain of a few hundred pounds could
hardly matter. I told him I had spoken in jest. "To give up tobacco
might," I said, "intensify the pleasant agonies of a gambler staking
his little all. But in your case--well, I don't see where the pleasant agonies
come in."
"You mean because
I'm beastly rich?"
"Rich," I
amended.
"All depends on
what you call rich. Besides, I'm not the sort of fellow who's content with
three per cent. A couple of months ago--I tell you this in confidence--I risked
virtually all I had in an Argentine deal."
"And lost
it?"
"No; as a matter
of fact, I made rather a good thing out of it. I did rather well last February,
too. But there's no knowing the future. A few errors of judgment, a war here, a
revolution there, a big strike somewhere else, and--" He blew a jet of
smoke from his lips, and then looked at me as at one whom he could trust to
feel for him in a crash already come.
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 (by the news of whose
existence I felt idiotically surprised) 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 (so I then thought), even if it had leave to,
betray connection with a "great character." It was a strong face,
certainly; but so are yours and mine.
And very fresh it
looked, though, as he confessed, Pethel had sat up in "that beastly
baccarat-room" till five A.M. I asked, had he lost? Yes, he had lost
steadily for four hours (proudly he laid stress on this), but in the end--well,
he had won it all back "and a bit more." "By the way," he
murmured as we were about to enter the hall, "don't ever happen to mention
to my wife what I told you about that Argentine deal. She's always rather
nervous about--investments. I don't tell her about them. She's rather a nervous
woman altogether, I'm sorry to say."
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 défendu à 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 (and I liked Pethel all the more in that capacity), one couldn't
help liking the daughter, the two were so absurdly alike. Whenever he was
looking at her (and it was seldom that he looked away from 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 preëminently 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.
Mrs. Pethel saw the
smile that I could not repress. I explained that I was wishing I could knock
off tobacco, and envying her husband's strength of character. She smiled, too,
but wanly, with her eyes on him.
"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. Beerbohm [1] 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 (he did not wear motor-goggles) was an assurance in
itself. From time to time (for I, too, was ungoggled) 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 château 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 reëstablished, 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 (at thought of what
must have been if--) 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 (and abstemious) 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 (then
Mr.) 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?
I know not how many
hair's-breadth escapes we may have had while these thoughts passed through my
brain. I had closed my eyes. So preoccupied was I that but for the constant
rush of air against my face I might, for aught I knew, have been sitting
ensconced in an armchair at home. After a while I was aware that this rush had
abated; I opened my eyes to the old familiar streets of Rouen. We were to have
tea at theHôtel d'Angleterre. What was to be my line of action? Should I take
Pethel aside and say: "Swear to me, on your word of honor as a gentleman,
that you will never again touch the driving-gear, or whatever you call it, of a
motor-car. Otherwise, I shall expose you to the world. Meanwhile, we shall
return to Dieppe by train"? He might flush (for I knew him capable of
flushing) as he asked me to explain. And after? He would laugh in my face. He
would advise me not to go motoring any more. He might even warn me not to go
back to Dieppe in one of those dangerous railway-trains. He might even urge me
to wait until a nice Bath chair had been sent out for me from England.
I heard a voice (mine,
alas!) saying brightly, "Well, here we are!" I helped the ladies to
descend. Tea was ordered. Pethel refused that stimulant and had a glass of
water. I had a liqueur brandy. It was evident to me that tea meant much to Mrs.
Pethel. She looked stronger after her second cup, and younger after her third.
Still, it was my duty to help her if I could. While I talked and laughed, I did
not forget that. But what on earth was I to do? I am no hero. I hate to be
ridiculous. I am inveterately averse to any sort of fuss. Besides, how was I to
be sure that my own personal dread of the return journey hadn't something to do
with my intention of tackling Pethel? I rather thought it had. What this woman
would dare daily because she was a mother could not I dare once? I reminded
myself of this man's reputation for invariable luck. I reminded myself that he
was an extraordinarily skilful driver. To that skill and luck I would pin my
faith. What I seem to myself, do you ask of me? But I answered your question a
few lines back. Enough that my faith was rewarded: we did arrive safely in
Dieppe. I still marvel that we did.
That evening, in the
vestibule of the casino, Grierson came up to me.
"Seen Jimmy
Pethel?" he asked. "He was asking for you. Wants to see you
particularly. He's in the baccarat-room, punting, winning hand over fist, of
course. Said he'd seldom met a man he liked more than you. Great character,
what?"
One is always glad to
be liked, and I pleaded guilty to a moment's gratification at the announcement
that Pethel liked me. But I did not go and seek him in the baccarat-room. A
great character assuredly he was, but of a kind with which (I say it at the
risk of seeming priggish) I prefer not to associate.
Why he had particularly
wanted to see me was made clear in a note sent by him to my room early next
morning. He wondered if I could be induced to join them in their little tour.
He hoped I wouldn't think it great cheek, his asking me. He thought it might
rather amuse me to come. It would be a very great pleasure to his wife. He
hoped I wouldn't say no. Would I send a line by bearer? They would be starting
at three o'clock. He was mine sincerely.
It was not too late to
tackle him even now. Should I go round to his hotel? I hesitated and--well, I
told you at the outset that my last meeting with him was on the morrow of my
first. I forget what I wrote to him, but am sure that the excuse I made for
myself was a good and graceful one, and that I sent my kindest regards to Mrs.
Pethel. She had not (I am sure of that, too) authorized her husband to say she
would like me to come with them. Else would not the thought of her, the pity of
her, have haunted me, as it did for a very long time. I do not know whether she
is still alive. No mention is made of her in the obituary notice which awoke
these memories in me. This notice I will, however, transcribe, because it is,
for all its crudeness of phraseology, rather interesting both as an echo and as
an amplification. Its title is "Death of Wealthy Aviator," and its
text is:
Wide-spread regret will
be felt in Leicestershire at the tragic death of Mr. James Pethel, who had long
resided there and was very popular as an all-round sportsman. In recent years
he had been much interested in aviation, and had had a private aërodrome
erected on his property. Yesterday afternoon he fell down dead quite suddenly
as he was returning to his house, apparently in his usual health and spirits,
after descending from a short flight which despite a strong wind he had made on
a new type of aëroplane, and on which he was accompanied by his married
daughter and her infant son. It is not expected that an inquest will be
necessary, as his physician, Dr. Saunders, has certified death to be due to
heart-disease, from which, it appears, the deceased gentleman had been
suffering for many years. Dr. Saunders adds that he had repeatedly warned
deceased that any strain on the nervous system might prove fatal.
Thus--for I presume
that his ailment had its origin in his habits--James Pethel did not, despite
that merely pensive look of his, live his life with impunity. And by reason of
that life he died. As for the manner of his death, enough that he did die. Let
not our hearts be vexed that his great luck was with him to the end.
[1] The other names in this memoir are, for good reason, pseudonyms.