Part 8

Pierre Vaucher took no notice of her. He went on: "And so that young man of whom I tell you sank lower and lower. He drank more absinthe. The little shop was sold over his head. He became of the dregs, of the gutter. Then came the war. Ah! it was good, the war. It took that man out of the gutter and taught him to be a brute beast no longer. It drilled him--and sobered him. He endured cold and pain and the fear of death--but he did not die, and when the war ended, he was a man again.

"It was then, Messieurs, that he came South. His lungs had been affected; they said he must find work in the South. I will not weary you with all the things he did. Suffice it to say that he ended up as a croupier, and there--there in the Casino one evening, he saw again--the woman who had ruined his life. She did not recognize him, but he recognized her. She appeared to be rich and to lack for nothing--but, Messieurs, the eyes of a croupier are sharp. There came an evening when she placed her last stake in the world on the table. Ask me not how I know--I do know--one feels these things. Others might not believe. She still had rich clothes--why not pawn them, one would say? But to do that--pah! your credit is gone at once. Her jewels? Ah, no! Was I not a jeweler in my time? Long ago the real jewels have gone. The pearls of a King sold one by one, and replaced with false. And meantime one must eat and pay one's hotel bill. Yes, and the rich men--well, they have seen one about for many years. Bah! they say--she is over fifty! A younger chicken for my money."

A long shuddering sigh came out of the windows where the Countess leaned back.

"Yes. It was a great moment, that. Two nights I have watched her. Lose, lose, and lose again. And now the end. She puts all on one number. Beside her, an English milord stakes the maximum also--on the next number. The ball rolls; the moment has come; she has lost.

"Her eyes meet mine. What do I do? I jeopardize my place in the Casino. I rob the English milord. '_A Madame_,' I say, and pay over the money."

"Ah!" There was a crash as the Countess sprang to her feet and leaned across the table, sweeping her glass onto the floor. "Why?" she cried. "That's what I want to know, _why_ did you do it?"

There was a long pause, a pause that seemed interminable, and still those two facing each other across the table looked and looked. It was like a duel.

A mean little smile crept across Pierre Vaucher's face. He raised his hands. "Madame," he said. "There is such a thing as pity."

"Ah!"

She sank down again. "I see."

She was calm, smiling, herself again.

"An interesting story, Monsieur Vaucher, is it not? Permit me to give you a light for your cigarette."

She deftly rolled up a spill, lighted it at the candle, and held it toward him. He leaned forward till the flame caught the tip of the cigarette he held between his lips.

Then she rose unexpectedly to her feet. "And now I must leave you all. Please--I need no one to escort me."

Before one could realize it, she was gone. Mr. Satterthwaite would have hurried out after her, but he was arrested by a startled oath from the Frenchman.

"_A thousand thunders!_"

He was staring at the half-burned spill which the Countess had dropped on the table. He unrolled it.

"_Mon Dieu!_" he muttered. "A fifty-thousand-franc banknote. You understand? Her winnings tonight. All that she has in the world. And she lighted my cigarette with it! Because she was too proud to accept--pity. Ah! proud, she was always proud as the Devil. She is unique--wonderful."

He sprang up from his seat and darted out. Mr. Satterthwaite and Mr. Quin had also risen. The waiter approached Franklin Rudge.

"_La note, Monsieur_," he observed unemotionally.

Mr. Quin rescued it from him quickly.

"I feel kind of lonesome, Elizabeth," remarked Franklin Rudge. "These foreigners--they beat the band! I don't understand them. What's it all mean, anyhow?"

He looked across at her. "Gee, it's good to look at anything so hundred percent American as you." His voice took on the plaintive note of a small child. "These foreigners are so _odd_."

They thanked Mr. Quin and went out into the night together. Mr. Quin picked up his change and smiled across at Mr. Satterthwaite, who was preening himself like a contented bird.

"Well," said the latter. "That's all gone off splendidly. Our pair of lovebirds will be all right now."

"Which ones?" asked Mr. Quin.

"Oh," said Mr. Satterthwaite, taken aback, "Oh! yes, well, I suppose you are right, allowing for the Latin point of view and all that--"

He looked dubious.

Mr. Quin smiled, and a stained-glass panel behind him invested him for just a moment in a motley garment of colored light.

THE WORLD'S END

Mr. Satterthwaite had come to Corsica because of the Duchess. It was out of his beat. On the Riviera he was sure of his comforts, and to be comfortable meant a lot to Mr. Satterthwaite. But though he liked his comfort, he also liked a Duchess. In his way, a harmless, gentlemanly, old-fashioned way, Mr. Satterthwaite was a snob. He liked the best people. And the Duchess of Leith was a very authentic Duchess. She was the daughter of a duke as well as the wife of one.

For the rest, she was rather a shabby-looking old lady, a good deal given to black bead trimmings on her clothes. She had quantities of diamonds in old-fashioned settings, and she wore them as her mother before her had worn them: pinned all over her indiscriminately. Someone had suggested once that the Duchess stood in the middle of the room while her maid flung brooches at her haphazard. She subscribed generously to charities, and looked well after her tenants and dependents, but was extremely mean over small sums. She cadged lifts from her friends, and did her shopping in bargain basements.

The Duchess was seized with a whim for Corsica. Cannes bored her, and she had had a bitter argument with the hotel proprietor over the price of her rooms.

"And you shall go with me, Satterthwaite," she said firmly. "We needn't be afraid of scandal at our time of life."

Mr. Satterthwaite was delicately flattered. No one had ever mentioned scandal in connection with him before. He was far too insignificant. Scandal--and a Duchess--delicious.

"Picturesque, you know," said the Duchess. "Brigands--all that sort of thing. And extremely cheap, so I've heard. Manuelli was positively impudent this morning. These hotel proprietors need putting in their place. They can't expect to get the best people if they go on like this. I told him so plainly."

"I believe," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "that one can fly over quite comfortably. From Antibes."

"They probably charge you a pretty penny for it," said the Duchess sharply. "Find out, will you?"

"Certainly, Duchess."

Mr. Satterthwaite was still in a flutter of gratification, despite the fact that his role was clearly to be that of a glorified courier.

When she learned the price of a passage by _avion_, the Duchess turned it down promptly. "They needn't think I'm going to pay a ridiculous sum like that to go in one of their nasty dangerous things."

So they went by boat, and Mr. Satterthwaite endured ten hours of acute discomfort. To begin with, as the boat sailed at seven, he took it for granted that there would be dinner on board. But there was no dinner. The boat was small and the sea was rough. Mr. Satterthwaite was decanted at Ajaccio in the early hours of the morning more dead than alive.

The Duchess, on the contrary, was perfectly fresh. She never minded discomfort, if she could feel she was saving money. She waxed enthusiastic over the scene on the quay, with the palm trees and the rising sun. The whole population seemed to have turned out to watch the arrival of the boat, and the launching of the gangway was attended with excited cries and directions.

"That maid of mine has been sick all night," said the Duchess. "The girl's a perfect fool."

Mr. Satterthwaite smiled in a pallid fashion.

"A waste of good food, I call it," continued the Duchess robustly.

"Did she get any food?" asked Mr. Satterthwaite enviously.

"I happened to bring some biscuits and a stick of chocolate on board with me," said the Duchess. "When I found there was no dinner to be got, I gave the lot to her. The lower classes always make such a fuss about going without their meals."

With a cry of triumph the launching of the gangway was accomplished. A musical comedy chorus of brigands rushed aboard and wrested hand luggage from the passengers by main force.

"Come on, Satterthwaite," said the Duchess. "I want a hot bath and some coffee."

So did Mr. Satterthwaite. He was not wholly successful, however. They were received at the hotel by a bowing manager and were shown to their rooms. The Duchess's had a bathroom attached. Mr. Satterthwaite, however, was directed to a bath that appeared to be situated in somebody else's bedroom. To expect the water to be hot at that hour in the morning was, perhaps, unreasonable. Later he drank intensely black coffee, served in a pot without a lid. The shutters and the window of his room had been flung open, and the crisp morning air came in fragrantly. A day of dazzling blue and green.

The waiter waved his hand with a flourish to call attention to the view. "_Ajaccio_," he said solemnly. "_Le plus beau port du monde!_"

And he departed abruptly.

Looking out over the deep blue of the bay, with the snow mountains beyond, Mr. Satterthwaite was almost inclined to agree with him. He finished his coffee, and lying down on the bed, fell fast asleep.

At _déjeuner_ the Duchess was in great spirits.

"This is just what will be good for you, Satterthwaite," she said. "Get you out of all those fussy little old-maidish ways of yours." She swept a lorgnette around the room. "Upon my word, there's Naomi Carlton-Smith."

She indicated a girl sitting by herself at a table in the window, a round-shouldered girl who slouched as she sat. Her dress appeared to be made of some kind of brown sacking. She had black hair, untidily bobbed.

"An artist?" asked Mr. Satterthwaite.

He was always good at placing people.

"Quite right," said the Duchess. "Calls herself one, anyway. I knew she was mooching around in some queer quarter of the globe. Poor as a church mouse, proud as Lucifer, and a bee in her bonnet like all the Carlton-Smiths. Her mother was my first cousin."

"She's one of the Knowlton lot then?"

The Duchess nodded.

"Been her own worst enemy," she volunteered. "Clever girl too. Mixed herself up with a most undesirable young man. One of that Chelsea crowd. Wrote plays or poems or something unhealthy. Nobody took 'em, of course. Then he stole somebody's jewels and got caught out. I forget what they gave him. Five years, I think. But you must remember? It was last winter."

"Last winter I was in Egypt," explained Mr. Satterthwaite. "I had flu very badly the end of January, and the doctors insisted on Egypt afterward. I missed a lot."

His voice rang with a note of real regret.

"That girl seems to me to be moping," said the Duchess, raising her lorgnette once more. "I can't allow that."

On her way out, she stopped by Miss Carlton-Smith's table and tapped the girl on the shoulder. "Well, Naomi, you don't seem to remember me?"

Naomi rose rather unwillingly to her feet. "Yes, I do, Duchess. I saw you come in. I thought it quite likely you mightn't recognize me."

She drawled the words lazily, with a complete indifference of manner.

"When you've finished your lunch, come and talk to me on the terrace," ordered the Duchess.

"Very well."

Naomi yawned.

"Shocking manners," said the Duchess to Mr. Satterthwaite, as she resumed her progress. "All the Carlton-Smiths have."

They had their coffee outside in the sunshine. They had been there about six minutes when Naomi Carlton-Smith lounged out from the hotel and joined them. She let herself fall slackly onto a chair with her legs stretched out ungracefully in front of her.

An odd face, with its jutting chin and deep-set gray eyes. A clever, unhappy face--a face that only just missed being beautiful.

"Well, Naomi," said the Duchess briskly. "And what are you doing with yourself?"

"Oh! I dunno. Just marking time."

"Been painting?"

"A bit."

"Show me your things."

Naomi grinned. She was not cowed by the autocrat. She was amused. She went into the hotel and came out again with a portfolio.

"You won't like 'em, Duchess," she said warningly. "Say what you like. You won't hurt my feelings."

Mr. Satterthwaite moved his chair a little nearer. He was interested. In another minute he was more interested still. The Duchess was frankly unsympathetic.

"I can't even see which way up the things ought to be," she complained. "Good gracious, child, there was never a sky that color--or a sea either."

"That's the way I see 'em," said Naomi placidly.

"Ugh!" said the Duchess, inspecting another. "This gives me the creeps."

"It's meant to," said Naomi. "You're paying me a compliment without knowing it."

It was a queer vorticist study of prickly pear--just recognizable as such. Gray-green with splodges of violent color where the fruit glittered like jewels. A swirling mass of evil, fleshy--festering. Mr. Satterthwaite shuddered and turned his head aside.

He found Naomi looking at him and nodding her head in comprehension.

"I know," she said. "But it _is_ beastly."

The Duchess cleared her throat. "It seems quite easy to be an artist nowadays," she observed witheringly. "There's no attempt to copy things. You just shovel on some paint--I don't know what with, not a brush, I'm sure--"

"Palette knife," interposed Naomi, smiling broadly once more.

"A good deal at a time," continued the Duchess. "In lumps. And there you are! Everyone says, 'How clever.' Well, I've no patience with that sort of thing. Give me--"

"A nice picture of a dog and a horse, by Edward Landseer."

"And why not?" demanded the Duchess. "What's wrong with Landseer?"

"Nothing," said Naomi. "He's all right. And you're all right. The tops of things are always nice and shiny and smooth. I respect you, Duchess; you've got force; you've met life fair and square and you've come out on top. But the people who are underneath see the under side of things. And that's interesting in a way."

The Duchess stared at her. "I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about," she declared.

Mr. Satterthwaite was still examining the sketches. He realized, as the Duchess could not, the perfection of technique behind them. He was startled and delighted. He looked up at the girl.

"Will you sell me one of these, Miss Carlton-Smith?" he asked.

"You can have any one you like for five guineas," said the girl indifferently.

Mr. Satterthwaite hesitated a minute or two and then he selected a study of prickly pear and aloe. In the foreground was a vivid blur of yellow mimosa; the scarlet of the aloe flower danced in and out of the picture, and inexorable, mathematically underlying the whole, was the oblong pattern of the prickly pear and the sword motif of the aloe.

He made a little bow to the girl.

"I am very happy to have secured this, and I think I have made a bargain. Some day, Miss Carlton-Smith, I shall be able to sell this sketch at a very good profit--if I want to!"

The girl leaned forward to see which one he had taken. He saw a new look come into her eyes. For the first time she was really aware of his existence, and there was respect in the quick glance she gave him.

"You have chosen the best," she said. "I--I am glad."

"Well, I suppose you know what you're doing," said the Duchess. "And I daresay you're right. I've heard that you're quite a connoisseur. But you can't tell me that all this new stuff is art, because it isn't. Still, we needn't go into that. Now I'm only going to be here a few days and I want to see something of the island. You've got a car, I suppose, Naomi?"

The girl nodded.

"Excellent," said the Duchess. "We'll make a trip somewhere tomorrow."

"It's only a two-seater."

"Nonsense, there's a dickey, I suppose, that will do for Mr. Satterthwaite?"

A shuddering sigh went through Mr. Satterthwaite. He had observed the Corsican roads that morning. Naomi was regarding him thoughtfully.

"I'm afraid my car will be no good to you," she said. "It's a terribly battered old bus. I bought it second-hand for a mere song. It will just get me up the hills--with coaxing. But I can't take passengers. There's quite a good garage, though, in the town. You can hire a car there."

"Hire a car," said the Duchess, scandalized. "What an idea. Who's that nice-looking man, rather yellow, who drove up in a four-seater just before lunch?"

"I expect you mean Mr. Tomlinson. He's a retired Indian judge."

"That accounts for the yellowness," said the Duchess. "I was afraid it might be jaundice. He seems quite a decent sort of man. I shall talk to him."

That evening, on coming down to dinner, Mr. Satterthwaite found the Duchess, resplendent in black beads and diamonds, talking earnestly to the owner of the four-seater car. She beckoned authoritatively.

"Come here, Mr. Satterthwaite. Mr. Tomlinson is telling me the most interesting things, and what do you think? He is actually going to take us on an expedition tomorrow in his car."

Mr. Satterthwaite regarded her with admiration.

"We must go in to dinner," said the Duchess. "Do come and sit at our table, Mr. Tomlinson, and then you can go on with what you were telling me."

"Quite a decent sort of man," the Duchess pronounced later.

"With quite a decent sort of car," retorted Mr. Satterthwaite.

"Naughty," said the Duchess, and gave him a resounding blow on the knuckles with the dingy black fan she always carried. Mr. Satterthwaite winced with pain.

"Naomi is coming too," said the Duchess. "In her car. That girl wants taking out of herself. She's very selfish. Not exactly self-centered, but totally indifferent to everyone and everything. Don't you agree?"

"I don't think that's possible," said Mr. Satterthwaite slowly. "I mean, everyone's interest must go _somewhere_. There are, of course, the people who revolve round themselves--but I agree with you, she's not one of that kind. She's totally uninterested in herself. And yet she's got a strong character--there must be _something_. I thought at first it was her art--but it isn't. I've never met anyone so detached from life. That's--dangerous."

"Dangerous? What do you mean?"

"Well, you see--it must be an obsession of some kind, and obsessions are always dangerous."

"Satterthwaite," said the Duchess, "don't be a fool. And listen to me. About tomorrow--"

Mr. Satterthwaite listened. It was very much his role in life.

They started early the following morning, taking their lunch with them. Naomi, who had been six months in the island, was to be the pioneer. Mr. Satterthwaite went over to her as she sat waiting to start.

"You are sure that--I can't come with you," he said wistfully.

She shook her head. "You'll be much more comfortable in the back of the other car. Nicely padded seats and all that. This is a regular old rattletrap. You'd leap in the air going over the bumps."

"And then of course the hills."

Naomi laughed. "Oh! I only said that to rescue you from the dickey. The Duchess could perfectly well afford to have hired a car. She's the meanest woman in England. All the same, the old thing is rather a sport, and I can't help liking her."

"Then I could come with you after all," said Mr. Satterthwaite, eagerly.

She looked at him curiously. "Why are you so anxious to come with me?"

"Can you ask?" Mr. Satterthwaite made his funny old-fashioned bow.

She smiled, but shook her head. "That isn't the reason," she said thoughtfully. "It's odd. But you can't come with me--not today."

"Another day, perhaps," suggested Mr. Satterthwaite politely.

"Oh! Another day!" She laughed suddenly, a very queer laugh, Mr. Satterthwaite thought. "Another day! Well, we'll see."

They started. They drove through the town, and then round the long curve of the bay, winding inland to cross a river and then back to the coast with its hundreds of little sandy coves. And then they began to climb. In and out, round nerve-shattering curves, upward, ever upward on the tortuous winding road. The blue bay was far below them and, on the other side of it, Ajaccio sparkled in the sun, white like a fairy city.

In and out, in and out, with a precipice first one side of them, then the other. Mr. Satterthwaite felt slightly giddy, he also felt slightly sick. The road was not very wide. And still they climbed.

It was cold now. The wind came to them straight off the snow peaks. Mr. Satterthwaite turned up his coat collar and buttoned it tightly under his chin.

It was very cold. Across the water Ajaccio was still bathed in sunlight, but up here thick gray clouds came drifting across the face of the sun. Mr. Satterthwaite ceased to admire the view. He yearned for a steam-heated hotel and a comfortable armchair.

Ahead of them Naomi's little two-seater drove steadily forward. Up, still up. They were on top of the world now. On either side of them were lower hills, hills sloping down to valleys. They looked straight across to the snow peaks. And the wind came tearing over them, sharp, like a knife.

Suddenly Naomi's car stopped, and she looked back.

"We've arrived," she said. "At the world's end. And I don't think it's an awfully good day for it."

They all got out. They had arrived in a tiny village, half a dozen stone cottages. An imposing name was printed in letters a foot high: _Coti Chiaveeri_.

Naomi shrugged her shoulders. "That's its official name, but I prefer to call it the world's end."

She walked on a few steps, and Mr. Satterthwaite joined her. They were beyond the houses now. The road stopped. As Naomi had said, this was the end, the back of beyond, the beginning of nowhere. Behind them the white ribbon of the road, in front of them--nothing. Only far, far below, the sea.

Mr. Satterthwaite drew a deep breath. "It's an extraordinary place. One feels that anything might happen here, that one might meet--anyone--"

He stopped, for just in front of them a man was sitting on a boulder, his face turned to the sea. They had not seen him till this moment, and his appearance had the suddenness of a conjuring trick. He might have sprung from the surrounding landscape.

"I wonder--" began Mr. Satterthwaite.

But at that minute the stranger turned, and Mr. Satterthwaite saw his face.

"Why, Mr. Quin! How extraordinary. Miss Carlton-Smith, I want to introduce my friend Mr. Quin to you. He's the most amazing fellow. You are, you know. You always turn up in the nick of time--"

He stopped, with the feeling that he had said something awkwardly significant, and yet for the life of him he could not think what it was.

Naomi had shaken hands with Mr. Quin in her usual abrupt style. "We're here for a picnic," she said. "And it seems to me we shall be pretty well frozen to the bone."

Mr. Satterthwaite shivered. "Perhaps," he said uncertainly. "We shall find a sheltered spot?"

"Which this isn't," agreed Naomi. "Still, it's worth seeing, isn't it?"

"Yes, indeed." Mr. Satterthwaite turned to Mr. Quin. "Miss Carlton-Smith calls this place the world's end. Rather a good name, eh?"

Mr. Quin nodded his head slowly several times. "Yes--a very suggestive name. I suppose one only comes once in one's life to a place like that--a place where one can't go on any longer."

"What do you mean?" asked Naomi sharply.

He turned to her. "Well, usually there's a choice, isn't there? To the right or to the left. Forward or back. Here--there's the road behind you, and in front of you--nothing."

Naomi stared at him. Suddenly she shivered and began to retrace her steps toward the others. The two men fell in beside her. Mr. Quin continued to talk, but his tone was now easily conversational.

"Is the small car yours, Miss Carlton-Smith?"

"Yes."