The Man Upstairs and Other Stories
priest flicks a red india-rubber ball into a polished oaken bowl, at
the bottom of which are holes, each bearing a number up to nine. The
ball swings round and round like a planet, slows down, stumbles among
the holes, rests for a moment in the one which you have backed, then
hops into the next one, and you lose. If ever there was a pastime
calculated to place young Adam Cupid in the background, this is it.
To the _boule_ tables that night fled George with his hopeless
passion. From the instant when he read the fatal words in the paper he
had recognized its hopelessness. All other obstacles he had been
prepared to overcome, but a title--no. He had no illusions as to his
place in the social scale. The Lady Julias of this world did not marry
insurance clerks, even if their late mother's cousin had left them a
thousand pounds. That day-dream was definitely ended. It was a thing of
the past--all over except the heartache.
By way of a preliminary sip of the waters of Lethe, before beginning
the full draught, he placed a franc on number seven and lost. Another
franc on six suffered the same fate. He threw a five-franc cart-wheel
recklessly on evens. It won.
It was enough. Thrusting his hat on the back of his head and wedging
himself firmly against the table, he settled down to make a night of
it.
There is nothing like _boule_ for absorbing the mind. It was some
time before George became aware that a hand was prodding him in the
ribs. He turned, irritated. Immediately behind him, filling the
landscape, were two stout Frenchmen. But, even as he searched his brain
for words that would convey to them in their native tongue his
disapproval of this jostling, he perceived that they, though stout and
in a general way offensive, were in this particular respect guiltless.
The prodding hand belonged to somebody invisible behind them. It was
small and gloved, a woman's hand. It held a five-franc piece.
Then in a gap, caused by a movement in the crowd, he saw the face of
Lady Julia Waveney.
She smiled at him.
'On eight, please, would you mind?' he heard her say, and then the
crowd shifted again and she disappeared, leaving him holding the coin,
his mind in a whirl.
The game of _boule_ demands undivided attention from its devotees.
To play with a mind full of other matters is a mistake. This mistake
George made. Hardly conscious of what he was doing, he flung the coin
on the board. She had asked him to place it on eight, and he thought
that he had placed it on eight. That, in reality, blinded by emotion,
he had placed it on three was a fact which came home to him neither
then nor later.
Consequently, when the ball ceased to roll and a sepulchral voice
croaked the news that eight was the winning number, he fixed on the
croupier a gaze that began by being joyful and expectant and ended, the
croupier remaining entirely unresponsive, by being wrathful.
He leaned towards him.
'Monsieur,' he said. _'Moi! J'ai jete cinq francs sur huit!'_
The croupier was a man with a pointed moustache and an air of having
seen all the sorrow and wickedness that there had ever been in the
world. He twisted the former and permitted a faint smile to deepen the
melancholy of the latter, but he did not speak.
George moved to his side. The two stout Frenchmen had strolled off,
leaving elbow-room behind them.
He tapped the croupier on the shoulder.
'I say,' he said. 'What's the game? _J'ai jete cinq francs sur
huit,_ I tell you, _moi!_'
A forgotten idiom from the days of boyhood and French exercises came to
him.
'_Moi qui parle_,' he added.
'_Messieurs, faites vos jeux_,' crooned the croupier, in a
detached manner.
To the normal George, as to most Englishmen of his age, the one
cardinal rule in life was at all costs to avoid rendering himself
conspicuous in public. Than George normal, no violet that ever hid
itself in a mossy bank could have had a greater distaste for scenes.
But tonight he was not normal. Roville and its colour had wrought a
sort of fever in his brain. _Boule_ had increased it. And love had
caused it to rage. If this had been entirely his own affair it is
probable that the croupier's frigid calm would have quelled him and he
would have retired, fermenting but baffled. But it was not his own
affair. He was fighting the cause of the only girl in the world. She
had trusted him. Could he fail her? No, he was dashed if he could. He
would show her what he was made of. His heart swelled within him. A
thrill permeated his entire being, starting at his head and running out
at his heels. He felt tremendous--a sort of blend of Oliver Cromwell, a
Berserk warrior, and Sir Galahad.
'Monsieur,' he said again. 'Hi! What about it?'
This time the croupier did speak.
'_C'est fini_,' he said; and print cannot convey the pensive scorn
of his voice. It stung George, in his exalted mood, like a blow.
Finished, was it? All right, now he would show them. They had asked for
it, and now they should get it. How much did it come to? Five francs
the stake had been, and you got seven times your stake. And you got
your stake back. He was nearly forgetting that. Forty francs in all,
then. Two of those gold what-d'you-call'ems, in fact. Very well, then.
He leaned forward quickly across the croupier, snatched the lid off the
gold tray, and removed two louis.
It is a remarkable fact in life that the scenes which we have rehearsed
in our minds never happen as we have pictured them happening. In the
present case, for instance, it had been George's intention to handle
the subsequent stages of this little dispute with an easy dignity. He
had proposed, the money obtained, to hand it over to its rightful
owner, raise his hat, and retire with an air, a gallant champion of the
oppressed. It was probably about one-sixteenth of a second after his
hand had closed on the coins that he realized in the most vivid manner
that these were not the lines on which the incident was to develop,
and, with all his heart, he congratulated himself on having discarded
those brown boots in favour of a worn but roomy pair of gent's Oxfords.
For a moment there was a pause and a silence of utter astonishment,
while the minds of those who had witnessed the affair adjusted
themselves to the marvel, and then the world became full of starting
eyes, yelling throats, and clutching hands. From all over the casino
fresh units swarmed like bees to swell the crowd at the centre of
things. Promenaders ceased to promenade, waiters to wait. Elderly
gentlemen sprang on to tables.
But in that momentary pause George had got off the mark. The table at
which he had been standing was the one nearest to the door, and he had
been on the door side of it. As the first eyes began to start, the
first throats to yell, and the first hands to clutch, he was passing
the counter of the money-changer. He charged the swing-door at full
speed, and, true to its mission, it swung. He had a vague glimpse from
the corner of his eye of the hat-and-cloak counter, and then he was in
the square with the cold night breeze blowing on his forehead and the
stars winking down from the blue sky.
A paper-seller on the pavement, ever the man of business, stepped
forward and offered him the Paris edition of the _Daily Mail_,
and, being in the direct line of transit, shot swiftly into the road
and fell into a heap, while George, shaken but going well, turned off
to the left, where there seemed to be rather more darkness than
anywhere else.
And then the casino disgorged the pursuers.
To George, looking hastily over his shoulder, there seemed a thousand
of them. The square rang with their cries. He could not understand
them, but gathered that they were uncomplimentary. At any rate, they
stimulated a little man in evening dress strolling along the pavement
towards him, to become suddenly animated and to leap from side to side
with outstretched arms.
Panic makes Harlequin three-quarters of us all. For one who had never
played Rugby football George handled the situation well. He drew the
defence with a feint to the left, then, swerving to the right, shot
past into the friendly darkness. From behind came the ringing of feet
and an evergrowing din.
It is one of the few compensations a fugitive pursued by a crowd enjoys
that, while he has space for his manoeuvres, those who pursue are
hampered by their numbers. In the little regiment that pounded at his
heels it is probable that there were many faster runners than George.
On the other hand, there were many slower, and in the early stages of
the chase these impeded their swifter brethren. At the end of the first
half-minute, therefore, George, not sparing himself, had drawn well
ahead, and for the first time found leisure for connected thought.
His brain became preternaturally alert, so that when, rounding a
corner, he perceived entering the main road from a side-street in front
of him a small knot of pedestrians, he did not waver, but was seized
with a keen spasm of presence of mind. Without pausing in his stride,
he pointed excitedly before him, and at the same moment shouted the
words, '_La! La! Vite! Vite!_'
His stock of French was small, but it ran to that, and for his purpose
it was ample. The French temperament is not stolid. When the French
temperament sees a man running rapidly and pointing into the middle
distance and hears him shouting, '_La! La! Vite! Vite!_' it does
not stop to make formal inquiries. It sprints like a mustang. It did so
now, with the happy result that a moment later George was racing down
the road, the centre and recognized leader of an enthusiastic band of
six, which, in the next twenty yards, swelled to eleven.
Five minutes later, in a wine-shop near the harbour, he was sipping the
first glass of a bottle of cheap but comforting _vin ordinaire_
while he explained to the interested proprietor, by means of a mixture
of English, broken French, and gestures that he had been helping to
chase a thief, but had been forced by fatigue to retire prematurely for
refreshment. The proprietor gathered, however, that he had every
confidence in the zeal of his still active colleagues.
It is convincing evidence of the extent to which love had triumphed
over prudence in George's soul that the advisability of lying hid in
his hotel on the following day did not even cross his mind. Immediately
after breakfast, or what passed for it at Roville, he set out for the
Hotel Cercle de la Mediterranee to hand over the two louis to their
owner.
Lady Julia, he was informed on arrival, was out. The porter, politely
genial, advised monsieur to seek her on the Promenade des Etrangers.
She was there, on the same seat where she had left the book.
'Good morning,' he said.
She had not seen him coming, and she started at his voice. The flush
was back on her face as she turned to him. There was a look of
astonishment in the grey eyes.
He held out the two louis.
'I couldn't give them to you last night,' he said.
A horrible idea seized him. It had not occurred to him before.
'I say,' he stammered--'I say, I hope you don't think I had run off
with your winnings for good! The croupier wouldn't give them up, you
know, so I had to grab them and run. They came to exactly two louis.
You put on five francs, you know, and you get seven times your stake.
I--'
An elderly lady seated on the bench, who had loomed from behind a
parasol towards the middle of these remarks, broke abruptly into
speech.
'Who is this young man?'
George looked at her, startled. He had hardly been aware of her
presence till now. Rapidly he diagnosed her as a mother--or aunt. She
looked more like an aunt. Of course, it must seem odd to her, his
charging in like this, a perfect stranger, and beginning to chat with