James Pethel | Page 7

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