CHAPTER X
THE TRIUMPH OF SIR ROBERT LLWELLYN
IN the large, open fireplaces of the Sheridan Club dining-room, logs of pine and cedar wood gave out a regular and well-diffused warmth. Outside, the snow was still falling, and beyond the long windows, covered with their crimson curtains, the yellow air was full of soft and silent movement.
The extreme comfort of the lofty, panelled dining-room was accentuated a hundred-fold, to those entering it, by the chilly experience of the streets.
The electric lights burnt steadily in their silk shades, the gleams falling upon the elaborate table furniture in a thousand points of dancing light.
At one of the tables, laid for two people. Sir Robert Llwellyn was sitting. He was in evening dress, and his massive face was closely scrutinising a printed list propped up against a wine-glass before him. His expression was interested and intent. By his side was a sheet of the club note-paper, and from time to time he jotted down something upon it with a slender gold pencil.
The great archaeologist was ordering dinner for himself and a guest with much thought and care.
Crême d'asperge à la Reine
in his neat writing, the letters distinct from one another — almost like an inscription in Uncial Greek character, one might have fancied.
Turbot à l'Amiral promised well; the plump, powerful fingers wrote it down.
Poulardes du Mans rôties with petits pois á la Française with a salade Niçoise to follow; that would be excellent! Then just a little suprème de pêches, à la Montreuil, which is quite the best kind of suprème, then some Parmesan before the coffee.
"Quite a simple dinner, Painter," he said to the steward of the room, — the famous "small dining-room" with its alcoves and discreet corners, — "simple but good. Of course you will tell Maurice that it is for me. I want him to do quite his best. If you will send this list off to the kitchens with a message, we will go into the wines together."
They went carefully into the wines.
"Remember that we shall want the large liqueur glasses," he said, "with the Tuileries brandy. In fact, I think I'll take a little now, as an apéritif."
The man bowed confidentially and went away. He returned with a long bottle of curious shape with an imperial crown blown in the glass. It was some of the famous brandy which had been lately found bricked up in a cellar close to the Place Carrousel, and was worth its weight in gold.
On the tray stood one of the curious liqueur glasses lately introduced into the club by Sir Robert. It was the shape of a port-wine glass, but enormously large, capable of holding a pint or more, and made of glass as thin as tissue paper and fragile as straw. The steward poured a very little of the brandy into the great glass and twirled it round rapidly by the stem. This was the most epicurean device for bringing out the bouquet of the liqueur.
Llwellyn sipped the precious liquid with an air of the most intense enjoyment. His face glowed with enthusiasm.
"Wonderful, wonderful!" he said in a hushed voice. "There, take it away and bring me an olive. Then I will go down-stairs and wait for my friend in the smoking-room. You will serve the soup at five minutes past eight."
He got up from the table and moved silently over the heavy carpet to the door.
It was about seven o'clock. At eight Constantine Schuabe was coming to the Sheridan Club to dine.
Sir Robert sat in the smoking-room with a tiny cigarette of South American tobacco, wrapped in maize leaf and tied round the centre with a tiny cord of green silk. His face expressed nothing but the most absolute repose. His correspondence with life was at that moment as complete as the most perfect health and discriminating luxury could make it.
He stretched out his feet to the blaze and idly watched the reflection in the points of his shining boots.
The room was quite silent now. A few men sat about reading the evening papers, and there was a subdued hum of talk from a table where two men were playing a casual game of chess, in which neither of them seemed much interested. A large clock upon the oak mantel-shelf ticked with muffled and soothing regularity.
Llwellyn picked up a sixpenny illustrated paper, devoted to amusements and the lighter side of life, and lazily opened it.
His eye fell upon a double-page article interspersed with photographs of actors and actresses. The article was a summing-up of the year's events on the lighter stage by an accepted expert in such matters. He read as follows:
"The six Trocadero girls whom I remember in Paris recently billed as 'The Cocktails,' never forget that grace is more important in dancing than mere agility. They are youthful looking, pretty and supple, and their manœuvres are cunningly devised. The diseuse of the troupe, Mdlle. Nepinasse, sings the Parisian success, Viens Poupoule, with considerable 'go' and swing. But in hearing her at the 'Gloucester' the other night I could not help regretting the disappearance of brilliant Gertrude Hunt from the boards where she was so great an attraction. Poupoule or its English equivalent, is just the type of song, with its attendant descriptive dance, in which that gay little lady was seen at her best. In losing her, the musical-comedy stage has lost a player whose peculiar individuality will not easily be replaced. Gertrude Hunt stood quite alone among her sisters of the Profession. Who will readily forget the pert insouciance, the little trick of the gloved hands, the mellow calling voice? It has been announced that this popular favourite has disappeared for ever from the stage. But there is a distinct mystery about the sudden eclipse of this star, and one which conjecture and inquiry has utterly failed to solve. Well, I, in common with thousands of others, can only sigh and regret it. Yet I should like to think that these lines would meet her eye, and she may know that I am only voicing the wishes of the public when I call to her to come back and delight our eyes and ears as before."
By the side of the paragraph there was a photograph of Gertrude Hunt. He stared at it, his mind busy with memories and evil longing. The bold, handsome face, the great eyes, looked him full in the face. Never had any woman been able to hold him as this one. She had become part of his life. In his mad passion for the dancer he had risked everything, until his whole career had depended upon the good-will of Constantine Schuabe. There had been no greater pleasure than to satisfy her wishes, however tasteless, however vulgar. And then, hastening back to her side with a fortune for her (the second he had poured into the white grasping hands), he had found her with the severe young priest. A power which he was unable to understand had risen up as a bar to his enormous egoism. She had gone, utterly disappeared, vanished as a shadow vanishes at the moving of a light.
And all his resources, all those of the theatre people with whom she had been so long associated, had utterly failed to trace her.
The Church had swallowed her up in its mystery and gloom. She was lost to him for ever. And the fierce longing to be with her once more burnt within him like the unhallowed flame upon the altar of an idol.
As he regarded the chaos into which the Church was plunged he would laugh to himself in horrid glee. His indifference to all forms of religious congregations had gone. He felt an active and bitter hatred now hardly less than that of Schuabe himself. And all the concentrated hatred and incalculable malice that his poisoned brain distilled was focussed and directed upon the young curate who had been the means and instrument of his discomfiture. He had begun to plan schemes of swift revenge, laughing at himself sometimes for the crude melodrama of his thoughts.
As a waiter with his powdered hair and white silk stockings showed Schuabe into the smoking-room, the Jew saw with surprise the flushed and agitated face of his host, so unlike its usual sensual serenity. He wondered what had arisen to disturb Llwellyn, and he made up his mind that he would know it before the evening was over.
Schuabe, on his part, seemed depressed and in poor spirits. There was a restlessness, quite foreign to his usual composure, which appeared in little nervous tricks of his fingers. He toyed with his wine-glass and did poor justice to the careful dinner.
"Everything is going on very well," Llwellyn said. "My book is nearly finished, and the American rights were sold yesterday. The Council of the Free Churches have appointed Dr. Barker to write a counterblast. Who could have foreseen the stir and tumult in the world? Everything is toppling over in the religious world. I have read of your triumphal progress in the North — this asparagus soup is excellent."
"I don't feel very much inclined to talk of these things to-night," said Schuabe. "To tell the truth, my nerves are a little out of order, and I have been doing too much. I've got in that ridiculous state in which one is constantly apprehending some sinister event. Everything has gone well, and yet I'm like this. It is foolish. How humiliating a thought it is, Llwellyn, that even intellects like yours and mine are entirely dependent upon the secretions of the liver!"
He smiled rather grimly, and the disturbance of the regular repose and immobility of his face showed depths of weary unhappiness which betrayed the tumult within.
He recovered himself quickly, anxious, it seemed, to betray his thoughts no further.
"You seemed upset when I came into the club," he said. "You ought to be happy enough. Debts all gone, fifty thousand in the bank, reputation higher than ever, and all the world listening to everything you've got to say." He smiled rather bitterly, as Llwellyn raised a glass of champagne to his lips.
"Exactly," said Llwellyn. "I've got everything I wanted a few months ago, and one of the principal inducements for wanting it has gone."
"Oh! you mean that girl?" answered Schuabe, contemptuously. "Well, buy another. They are for sale in all the theatres, you know."
"It's all very well to sneer like that," replied Llwellyn. "It's nothing to me that you're about as cold-blooded as a fish, but you needn't sneer at a man who is not. Because you enjoy yourself by means of asceticism you have no more virtue than I have. I am fond of this one girl; she has become necessary to my life. I spent thousands on her, and then this abominable young parson takes her away —" He ground his teeth savagely, his face became purple, he was unable to finish his sentence.
Curiously enough Schuabe seemed to be in sympathy with his host's rage. A deadly and vindictive expression crept into his eyes, which were nevertheless more glittering and cold than before.
"Gortre has come back to London. He has been here nearly a week," said Schuabe, quickly.
The other started. "You know his movements then? What has he to do with you?"
"More than, perhaps, you think. Llwellyn, that young man is dangerous!"
"He's done me all the harm he can already. There is nothing else he can do, unless he elopes with Lady Llwellyn, an event which I should view with singular equanimity."
"At any rate, I take sufficient interest in that person's movements to have them reported to me daily."
"Why on earth — ?"
"Simply because he guesses, or will guess, at the truth about the Damascus Gate sepulchre!"
Llwellyn grew utterly white. When he spoke it was with several preliminary moistenings of the lips.
"But what proof can he have?"
"Don't be alarmed, Llwellyn. We are perfectly safe in every way. Only the man is an enemy of mine, and even small enemies are obnoxious. He won't disturb either of us for long."
The big man gave a sigh of relief. "Well, you manage as you think best," he said. "Confound him! He deserves all he gets — let's change the subject. It's a little too Adelphi-like to be amusing."
"I am going to hear Pachmann in the St. James's Hall. Will you come?"
Llwellyn considered a moment. "No, I don't think I will. I'm going out to a supper-party in St. John's Wood later — Charlie Fitzgerald's, the lessee of the Piccadilly. I shall go home and read a novel quietly. To tell the truth, I feel rather depressed, too. Everything seems going too well, doesn't it?"
Schuabe's voice shook a little as he replied shortly.
For a brief moment the veil was raised. Each saw the other with eyes full of the fear that was lurking within them.
For weeks they had been at cross purposes, simulating a courage and indifference they did not feel.
Now each knew the truth.
They knew that the burden of their terrible secret was beginning to press and enclose them with its awful weight. Each had imagined the other free from his own terror, that terror that lifts up its head in times of night and silence, the dread Incubus that murders sleep.
The two men went out of the club together without speaking. Their hearts were beating like drums within them; it was the beginning of the agony.
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Llwellyn, his coat exchanged for a smoking jacket, lay back in a leather chair in his library. Since his return from Palestine he had transferred most of his belongings to a small flat in New Bond Street. He hardly ever visited his wife now. The flat in Bloomsbury Court Mansions had been given up when Gertrude Hunt had gone.
In New Bond Street Sir Robert lived alone. A house-keeper in the basement of the buildings looked after his rooms and his valet slept above.
The new pied à terre was furnished with great luxury. It was not the garish luxury and vulgar splendour of Bloomsbury Court — that had been the dancer's taste. Here Llwellyn had gathered round him all that could make life pleasant, and his own taste had seen to everything.
As he sat alone, slightly recovered from the nervous shock of the dinner, but in an utter depression of spirits, his thoughts once more went back to his lost mistress.
It was in times like these that he needed her most. She would distract him, amuse him, where a less vulgar, more intellectual woman would have increased his boredom.
He sighed heavily, pitying himself, utterly unconscious of his degradation. The books upon the shelves, learned and weighty monographs in all languages, his own brilliant contributions to historical science among them, had no power to help him. He sighed for his rowdy Circe.
The electric bell of the flat rang sharply outside in the passage. His man was out, and he rose to answer it himself.
A friend probably had looked him up for a drink and smoke. He was glad; he wanted companionship, easy, genial companionship, not that pale devil Schuabe, with his dreary talk and everlasting reminder.
He went out into the passage and opened the front door. A woman stood there.
She moved, and the light from the hall shone on her face.
The eyes were brilliant, the lips were half parted.
It was Gertrude Hunt.
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They were sitting on each side of the fire.
Grertrude was pale, but her dark beauty blazed at him.
She was smoking a cigarette, just as in the old time.
A little table with a caraffe of brandy and bottles of seltzer in a silver stand stood between them.
Llwellyn's face was one large circle of pleasure and content. His eyes gleamed with an evil triumph as he looked at the girl.
"Good Heavens!" he cried, "why, Gertie, it's almost worth while losing you to have you back again like this. It's just exactly as it used to be, only better; yes, better! So you got tired of it all, and you've come back. What a little fool you were ever to go away, dear!"
"Yes, I got tired of it," she repeated, but in a curiously strained voice.
He was too exhilarated to notice the strange manner of her reply.
"Well, I've got any amount of ready cash now," he said joyously. "You can have anything you like now that you've given up the confounded parsons and become sensible again."
She seemed to make an effort to throw off something that oppressed her.
"Now, Bob," she said, "don't talk about it. I've been a little fool, but that's over. What a lot you've got to tell me! What did you do all the time you were away? Where did you raise the 'oof from? Tell me everything. Let's be as we were before. No more secrets!"
He seemed to hesitate for a moment.
She saw that, and stood up. "Come and kiss me. Bob," she said. He went to her with unsteady footsteps, as if he were intoxicated by the fury of his passion.
"Tell me everything, Bob," she whispered into his ear.
The man surrendered himself to her, utterly, absolutely.
"Gertie," he said, "I'll tell you the queerest story you ever heard."
He laughed wildly.
"I've tricked the whole world by Jove! cleared fifty thousand pounds, and made fools of the whole world."
She laughed, a shrill, high treble.
"Dear old Bob," she cried; "clever old Bob, you're the best of them all! What have you done this time? Tell me all about it."
"By God, I will," he cried. "I'll tell you the whole story, little girl." His voice was utterly changed.
"Yes, everything!" she repeated fiercely.
Her body shook violently as she spoke.
The man thought it was in response to his caresses.
And the face which looked out over the man's shoulder, and had lately been as the face of Delilah, was be come as the face of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite.
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"No more secrets, Bob?"
"No more secrets, Gertie; but how pale you look! Take some brandy, little girl. Now, I'm going to make you laugh! Listen!"