The Complete Short Stories (28 page)

“‘Just wait while I put five francs on number eight,' said the aunt, and in another moment her money was lying on the table. The horses commenced to move round; it was a slow race this time, and number eight crept up at the finish like some crafty demon and placed his nose just a fraction in front of number three, who had seemed to be winning easily. Recourse had to be had to measurement, and the number eight was proclaimed the winner. The aunt picked up thirty-five francs. After that the Brimley Bomefields would have had to have used concerted force to get her away from the tables. When Roger appeared on the scene she was fifty-two francs to the good; her nieces were hovering forlornly in the background, like chickens that have been hatched out by a duck and are despairingly watching their parent disporting herself in a dangerous and uncongenial element. The supper-party which Roger insisted on standing that night in honour of his aunt and the three Miss Brimley Bomefields was remarkable for the unrestrained gaiety of two of the participants and the funereal mirthlessness of the remaining guests.

“‘I do not think,' Christine confided afterwards to a friend, who re-confided it to Bertie van Tahn, ‘that I shall ever be able to touch
pâté de foie gras
again. It would bring back memories of that awful evening.'

“For the next two or three days the nieces made plans for returning to England or moving on to some other resort where there was no casino. The aunt was busy making a system for winning at
petits chevaux
. Number eight, her first love, had been running rather unkindly for her, and a series of plunges on number five had turned out even worse.

“‘Do you know, I dropped over seven hundred francs at the tables this afternoon,' she announced cheerfully at dinner on the fourth evening of their visit.

“‘Aunt! Twenty-eight pounds! And you were losing last night too.'

“‘Oh, I shall get it all back,' she said optimistically; ‘but not here. These silly little horses are no good. I shall go somewhere where one can play comfortably at roulette. You needn't look so shocked. I've always felt that, given the opportunity, I should be an inveterate gambler, and now you darlings have put the opportunity in my way. I must drink your very good healths. Waiter, a bottle of
Pontet Canet
. Ah, it's number seven on the wine list; I shall plunge on number seven tonight. It won four times running this afternoon when I was backing that silly number five.'

“Number seven was not in a winning mood that evening. The Brimley Bomefields, tired of watching disaster from a distance, drew near to the table where their aunt was now an honoured habituée, and gazed mournfully at the successive victories of one and five and eight and four, which swept ‘good money' out of the purse of seven's obstinate backer. The day's losses totalled something very near two thousand francs.

“‘You incorrigible gamblers,' said Roger chaffingly to them, when he found them at the tables.

“‘We are not gambling,' said Christine freezingly; ‘we are looking on.'

“‘I
don't
think,' said Roger knowingly; ‘of course you're a syndicate and aunt is putting the stakes on for all of you. Any one can tell by your looks when the wrong horse wins that you've got a stake on.'

“Aunt and nephew had supper alone that night, or at least they
would have if Bertie hadn't joined them; all the Brimley Bome-fields had headaches.

“The aunt carried them all off to Dieppe the next day and set cheerily about the task of winning back some of her losses. Her luck was variable; in fact, she had some fair streaks of good fortune, just enough to keep her thoroughly amused with her new distraction; but on the whole she was a loser. The Brimley Bome-fields had a collective attack of nervous prostration on the day when she sold out a quantity of shares in Argentine rails. ‘Nothing will ever bring that money back,' they remarked lugubriously to one another.

“Veronique at last could bear it no longer, and went home; you see, it had been her idea to bring the aunt on this disastrous expedition, and though the others did not cast the fact verbally in her face, there was a certain lurking reproach in their eyes which was harder to meet than actual upbraidings. The other two remained behind, forlornly mounting guard over their aunt until such time as the waning of the Dieppe season should at last turn her in the direction of home and safety. They made anxious calculations as to how little ‘good money' might, with reasonable luck, be squandered in the meantime. Here, however, their reckoning went far astray; the close of the Dieppe season merely turned their aunt's thoughts in search of some other convenient gambling resort. ‘Show a cat the way to the dairy—' I forget how the proverb goes on, but it summed up the situation as far as the Brimley Bomefields' aunt was concerned. She had been introduced to unexplored pleasures, and found them greatly to her liking, and she was in no hurry to forgo the fruits of her newly acquired knowledge. You see, for the first time in her life the old thing was thoroughly enjoying herself; she was losing money, but she had plenty of fun and excitement over the process, and she had enough left to do very comfortably on. Indeed, she was only just learning to understand the art of doing oneself well. She was a popular hostess, and in return her fellow-gamblers were always ready to entertain her to dinners and suppers when their luck was in. Her nieces, who still remained in attendance on her, with the pathetic unwillingness of a crew to leave a foundering treasure ship which might yet be steered into port, found little pleasure in these Bohemian festivities; to see ‘good money' lavished on good living for the entertainment of a nondescript circle of acquaintances who were not likely to be in
any way socially useful to them, did not attune them to a spirit of revelry. They contrived, whenever possible, to excuse themselves from participation in their aunt's deplored gaieties; the Brimley Bomefield headaches became famous.

“And one day the nieces came to the conclusion that, as they would have expressed it, ‘no useful purpose would be served' by their continued attendance on a relative who had so thoroughly emancipated herself from the sheltering protection of their wings. The aunt bore the announcement of their departure with a cheerfulness that was almost disconcerting.

“‘It's time you went home and had those headaches seen to by a specialist,' was her comment on the situation.

“The homeward journey of the Brimley Bomefields was a veritable retreat from Moscow, and what made it the more bitter was the fact that the Moscow, in this case, was not overwhelmed with fire and ashes, but merely extravagantly over-illuminated.

“From mutual friends and acquaintances they sometimes get glimpses of their prodigal relative, who has settled down into a confirmed gambling maniac, living on such salvage of income as obliging moneylenders have left at her disposal.

“So you need not be surprised,” concluded Clovis, “if they do wear a depressed look in public.”

“Which is Veronique?” asked the Baroness.

“The most depressed-looking of the three,” said Clovis.

“I
WANT
you to help me in getting up a dramatic entertainment of some sort,” said the Baroness to Clovis. “You see, there's been an election petition down here, and a member unseated and no end of bitterness and ill-feeling, and the County is socially divided against itself. I thought a play of some kind would be an excellent opportunity for bringing people together again, and giving them something to think of besides tiresome political squabbles.”

The Baroness was evidently ambitious of reproducing beneath her own roof the pacifying effects traditionally ascribed to the celebrated Reel of Tullochgorum.

“We might do something on the lines of Greek tragedy,” said
Clovis, after due reflection; “the Return of Agamemnon, for instance.”

The Baroness frowned.

“It sounds rather reminiscent of an election result, doesn't it?”

“It wasn't that sort of return,” explained Clovis; “it was a homecoming.”

“I thought you said it was a tragedy.”

“Well, it was. He was killed in his bathroom, you know.”

“Oh, now I know the story, of course. Do you want me to take the part of Charlotte Corday?”

“That's a different story and a different century,” said Clovis; “the dramatic unities forbid one to lay a scene in more than one century at a time. The killing in this case has to be done by Clytemnestra.”

“Rather a pretty name. I'll do that part. I suppose you want to be Aga—whatever his name is?”

“Dear no. Agamemnon was the father of grown-up children, and probably wore a beard and looked prematurely aged. I shall be his charioteer or bath-attendant, or something decorative of that kind. We must do everything in the Sumurun manner, you know.”

“I don't know,” said the Baroness; “at least, I should know better if you would explain exactly what you mean by the Sumurun manner.”

Clovis obliged: “Weird music, and exotic skippings and flying leaps, and lots of drapery and undrapery. Particularly undrapery.”

“I think I told you the County are coming. The County won't stand anything very Greek.”

“You can get over any objection by calling it Hygiene, or limb-culture, or something of that sort. After all, every one exposes their insides to the public gaze and sympathy nowadays, so why not one's outside?”

“My dear boy, I can ask the County to a Greek play, or to a costume play, but to a Greek-costume play, never. It doesn't do to let the dramatic instinct carry one too far; one must consider one's environment. When one lives among greyhounds one should avoid giving life-like imitations of a rabbit, unless one wants one's head snapped off. Remember, I've got this place on a seven years' lease. And then,” continued the Baroness, “as to skippings and flying leaps; I must ask Emily Dushford to take a part. She's a dear good
thing, and will do anything she's told, or try to; but can you imagine her doing a flying leap under any circumstances?”

“She can be Cassandra, and she need only take flying leaps into the future, in a metaphorical sense.”

“Cassandra; rather a pretty name. What kind of character is she?”

“She was a sort of advance-agent for calamities. To know her was to know the worst. Fortunately for the gaiety of the age she lived in, no one took her very seriously. Still, it must have been fairly galling to have her turning up after every catastrophe with a conscious air of ‘perhaps another time you'll believe what I say.'”

“I should have wanted to kill her.”

“As Clytemnestra I believe you gratify that very natural wish.”

“Then it has a happy ending, in spite of it being a tragedy?”

“Well, hardly,” said Clovis; “you see, the satisfaction of putting a violent end to Cassandra must have been considerably damped by the fact that she had foretold what was going to happen to her. She probably dies with an intensely irritating ‘what-did-I-tell-you' smile on her lips. By the way, of course all the killing will be done in the Sumurun manner.”

“Please explain again,” said the Baroness, taking out a notebook and pencil.

“Little and often, you know, instead of one sweeping blow. You see, you are at your own home, so there's no need to hurry over the murdering as though it were some disagreeable but necessary duty.”

“And what sort of end do I have? I mean, what curtain do I get?”

“I suppose you rush into your lover's arms. That is where one of the flying leaps will come in.”

The getting-up and rehearsing of the play seemed likely to cause, in a restricted area, nearly as much heart-burning and ill-feeling as the election petition. Clovis, as adapter and stage-manager, insisted, as far as he was able, on the charioteer being quite the most prominent character in the play, and his panther-skin tunic caused almost as much trouble and discussion as Clytemnestra's spasmodic succession of lovers, who broke down on probation with alarming uniformity. When the cast was at length fixed beyond hope of reprieve matters went scarcely more smoothly. Clovis and the Baroness rather overdid the Sumurun manner, while the rest of the company could hardly be said to attempt it at all. As for Cassandra, who was expected to improvise her own prophecies,
she appeared to be as incapable of taking flying leaps into futurity as of executing more than a severely plantigrade walk across the stage.

“Woe! Trojans, woe to Troy!” was the most inspired remark she could produce after several hours of conscientious study of all the available authorities.

“It's no earthly use foretelling the fall of Troy,” expostulated Clovis, “because Troy has fallen before the action of the play begins. And you mustn't say too much about your own impending doom either, because that will give things away too much to the audience.”

After several minutes of painful brain-searching, Cassandra smiled reassuringly.

“I know. I'll predict a long and happy reign for George the Fifth.”

“My dear girl,” protested Clovis, “have you reflected that Cassandra specialized in foretelling calamities?”

There was another prolonged pause and another triumphant issue.

“I know. I'll foretell a most disastrous season for the foxhounds.”

“On no account,” entreated Clovis; “do remember that all Cassandra's predictions came true. The M.F.H. and the Hunt Secretary are both awfully superstitious, and they are both going to be present.”

Cassandra retreated hastily to her bedroom to bathe her eyes before appearing at tea.

The Baroness and Clovis were by this time scarcely on speaking terms. Each sincerely wished their respective rôle to be the pivot round which the entire production should revolve, and each lost no opportunity for furthering the cause they had at heart. As fast as Clovis introduced some effective bit of business for the charioteer (and he introduced a great many), the Baroness would remorselessly cut it out, or more often dovetail it into her own part, while Clovis retaliated in a similar fashion whenever possible. The climax came when Clytemnestra annexed some highly complimentary lines, which were to have been addressed to the charioteer by a bevy of admiring Greek damsels, and put them into the mouth of her lover. Clovis stood by in apparent unconcern while the words: