Part 3

He looked away.

"Oh, no, I don't say that."

"Stupid phrase," I admitted. "But"--there was yet one point I would put to him--"if you have extraordinary luck always--"

"There's no such thing as luck."

"No, strictly, I suppose, there isn't. But if in point of fact you always do win, then--well, surely, perfect luck driveth out fear."

"Who ever said I always won?" he asked sharply.

I waved my hands and said, "Oh, you have the reputation, you know, for extraordinary luck."

"That isn't the same thing as always winning. Besides, I HAVEN'T extraordinary luck, 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 I was. WEREN'T you, now, Father?"

"I suppose they meant well, Peggy," he laughed.

"They were QUITE right," said Mrs. Pethel, evidently not for the first time.

"They," as I presently learned, were the authorities of the bathing-establishment. Pethel had promised his daughter he would take her for a swim; but on their arrival at the bathing-cabins they were ruthlessly told that bathing was defendu a cause du mauvais temps. This embargo was our theme as we sat down to luncheon. Miss Peggy was of opinion that the French were cowards. I pleaded for them that even in English watering-places bathing was forbidden when the sea was VERY rough. She did not admit that the sea was very rough to-day. Besides, she appealed to me, where was the fun of swimming in absolutely calm water? I dared not say that this was the only sort of water I liked to swim in.

"They were QUITE right," said Mrs. Pethel again.

"Yes, but, darling Mother, you can't swim. Father and I are both splendid swimmers."

To gloss over the mother's disability, I looked brightly at Pethel, as though in ardent recognition of his prowess among waves. With a movement of his head he indicated his daughter--indicated that there was no one like her in the whole world. I beamed agreement. Indeed, I did think her rather nice. If one liked the father (and I liked Pethel all the more in that capacity), one couldn't help liking the daughter, the two were so absurdly alike. Whenever he was looking at her (and it was seldom that he looked away from her), the effect, if you cared to be fantastic, was that of a very vain man before a mirror. It might have occurred to me that, if there was any mystery in him, I could solve it through her. But, in point of fact, I had forgotten all about that possible mystery. The amateur detective was lost in the sympathetic observer of a father's love. That Pethel did love his daughter I have never doubted. One passion is not less true because another predominates. No one who ever saw that father with that daughter could doubt that he loved her intensely. And this intensity gages for me the strength of what else was in him.

Mrs. Pethel's love, though less explicit, was not less evidently profound. But the maternal instinct is less attractive to an onlooker, because he takes it more for granted than the paternal. What endeared poor Mrs. Pethel to me was--well, the inevitability of the epithet I give her. She seemed, poor thing, so essentially out of it; and by "it" is meant the glowing mutual affinity of husband and child. Not that she didn't, in her little way, assert herself during the meal. But she did so, I thought, with the knowledge that she didn't count, and never would count. I wondered how it was that she had, in that Cambridge bar-room long ago, counted for Pethel to the extent of matrimony. But from any such room she seemed so utterly remote that she might well be in all respects now an utterly changed woman. She did preeminently look as if much had by some means been taken out of her, with no compensatory process of putting in. Pethel looked so very young for his age, whereas she would have had to be really old to look young for hers. I pitied her as one might a governess with two charges who were hopelessly out of hand. But a governess, I reflected, can always give notice. Love tied poor Mrs. Pethel fast to her present situation.

As the three of them were to start next day on their tour through France, and as the four of us were to make a tour to Rouen this afternoon, the talk was much about motoring, a theme which Miss Peggy's enthusiasm made almost tolerable. I said to Mrs. Pethel, with more good-will than truth, that I supposed she was "very keen on it." She replied that she was.

"But, darling Mother, you aren't. I believe you hate it. You're ALWAYS asking father to go slower. And what IS the fun of just crawling along?"

"Oh, come, Peggy, we never crawl!" said her father.