When Vance came down the next morning none of Mrs. Glaisher’s other guests were visible. Even Alders, no doubt engrossed in secretarial business, did not show himself; but the night before, when Vance had questioned him about Chris Churley, he had said instantly: “Ah, you know Chris? So much the better. I was going to ask if you wouldn’t give him an interview — for an article in the ‘Windmill’, you know.”
Vance laughed. “Yes, I do know; and I gave him the interview a good many weeks ago.”
Alders wrinkled his brows deprecatingly. “Ah — there it is! No results, I suppose? A genius — certainly a touch of genius, eh? But can’t be pinned down. He begged me to get him a chance to see Gratz Blemer, and though Blemer’s shy of publicity at present (or SHE is, rather) I did persuade them that ‘The Rush Hour’ ought to be written about in the ‘Windmill’, and Chris spent an afternoon on the yacht — enjoying it immensely, by the way; but as for the article, nothing came of it. Blemer keeps on asking me when he’s to see the copy; and what can I answer, when I can’t even get hold of Churley?”
“Ah — you can’t get hold of him?”
“Vanished — like an absconding cashier. Some fellow saw him playing in the baccarat room at Monte Carlo; but I’ve looked in two or three times without finding him. And of course I don’t know his address. I daresay, though, he’ll bob up when he hears you’re here.”
Vance had good reasons for not thinking so; but there seemed nothing to do but to prosecute his search at Monte Carlo, since it was there that Chris had last been seen. A confidential enquiry at the police-station might possibly give some result; but in a big city like Nice the boy would be harder to trace.
Vance was still dizzy with the translation from Oubli-sur-Mer to the Villa Mirifique. Floss Delaney, unreal as the setting in which he had found her, seemed the crowning improbability of the adventure. But the villa, at any rate, was substantial. The morning sun, robbing it of its magic, merely turned it into an expensive-looking house from which splendour and poetry had fled. As he paced the terrace above the over-ornamented gardens Vance asked himself if he should have the same disillusionment when he saw Miss Delaney again. On the very spot where he now paused to light his cigarette he had stood beside her the night before while the moon turned her bare arms to amber. He had promised to meet her, with the rest of the party, that evening at Monte Carlo; they were to dine, he didn’t remember where, with the fat pale man he had taken for the Duke of Spartivento, and who turned out to be somebody infinitely more important, an oil or railway king, Alders explained.
Vance had had only a short exchange of words with Alders when the party broke up, for the secretary had to hurry away to arrange for the morrow. Alders had undergone a curious transformation. In spite of all that the best tailoring could do he was as mothlike and furtive as ever; but under his apologetic manner Vance felt a new assurance, perhaps founded on financial security. Alders’s literary earnings, he explained to Vance (who wondered by what they were produced), had become too precarious; in these uncertain times his publishers would give him no promise regarding the big book he had long been planning (Vance would remember?) on Ignatius Loyola . . . no, on El Greco; and his own small income having unfortunately diminished, he had accepted the post of secretary to Mrs. Glaisher rather than become a burden on his friends. He added that his wide range of acquaintances enabled him to be of some service to his employer, who, like the illustrious women of the Renaissance (“there’s something of the Sforzas about her, I always think,”) wanted to know every one eminent in rank or talent, and had shown herself very appreciative of his guidance. “Of course,” Alders explained, in the same tone of timid fastidiousness in which Vance had heard him dilate on the Valencian primitives, or the capitals of Santo Domingo de Silos — “of course it’s easy, even for women of Mrs. Glaisher’s discernment, to be taken in by the flashy adventurers who are always trying to force their way into rich people’s houses; and I do my best to protect her. As you see, the set she has about her would be distinguished anywhere . . . Sir Felix Oster (the stout pale man on her left at dinner; a Napoleonic head, I often say) — Sir Felix very seldom troubles himself to go to other people’s houses. We’re all dining with him tonight, at the new restaurant up at La Turbie; and as for my old friend, the Duke of Spartivento — he was tremendously excited at meeting you, my dear Weston — told me he’d heard all about your books; well, in the Duke’s case,” Alders summed up with his faint sketch of a smile, “I begin to think that in introducing him here I may have done him an even bigger service than I have his hostess.” Alders laid his hands together with the devotional gesture Vance had seen him make in the presence of works of art. “An Italian Duke and a grandee of Spain . . . all I can say is, the prize is worthy of the effort.”
At Alders’s words a pang shot through Vance. What was the prize, and whose was to be the effort? Instantly he imagined that he had seen Alders’s Duke watching Floss Delaney between his narrowed lids. And what was it that Lady Pevensey had said about the Duke’s carrying Floss off for a cruise with the Gratz Blemers? A wave of jealousy buzzed in Vance’s ears. Jealousy could outlive love, then, cling to it like a beast of prey to a carcase for which it no longer hungered? He had never loved Floss, in the sense in which he now understood loving; and he imagined that his fugitive passion had long since turned to loathing. Yet that night, while he tossed between the scented sheets of Mrs. Glaisher’s guest-room, he could not shake off the torment. Floss Delaney — she was less than nothing to him! But the idea that other men coveted her made his flesh burn though his heart was cold . . . Why subject himself to further misery? What had he and she to do with each other? If he had not pledged himself to find Chris Churley he would have jumped into the first train for Oubli. Instead, when he had taken leave of Floss he had agreed to dine the next night with Alders’s railway king in order to have another chance of meeting her. In the morning light, after coffee, and a stroll on Mrs. Glaisher’s terrace, the situation seemed less lurid. He decided that if he spent the day hunting for Chris he had the right to an amusing evening, and that there was no reason why Floss’s presence should prevent his taking it. She was only one pretty woman among the many at Mrs. Glaisher’s; it was long since he had been among the flower-maidens, and now that the chance had come why should he fly from them?
He took the first train to Nice and went to the Préfecture de Police. Chris’s name was unknown there, but Vance’s description was noted down, and the sergeant said that they might have some information the next day. Vance continued his journey to Monte Carlo, where he made the same enquiries; then he decided that, the lunch hour being at hand, his best chance of finding Chris was to look for him in the fashionable restaurants. If he had carried away any winnings he was pretty sure to be spending them where caviar and new asparagus were to be had; if not, to be enjoying these delicacies at the expense of others. Vance went first to the restaurant which Floss had pointed out as the most sought after.
It was so full that the guests, overflowing onto the terrace, sat wedged under bright awnings and umbrellas; but Vance scanned the crowd in vain for a dark face with a mop of orange-coloured hair. He was about to seek out a more modest ordinary for himself when an elderly gentleman in smartly-cut homespun and a carefully assorted tie began to wave the carte du jour in his direction.
This gentleman, before whom head-waiter and sommelier were obsequiously drawn up, had a sallow complexion, weak handsome features and tremulous lids above eyes of the same gray as his thinnish hair and moustache. He might have been a long-since~retired American diplomatist, or the gentlemanly man in a bank who explains to flustered ladies why they mustn’t draw a cheque when there’s nothing to draw against. He looked either part to perfection, and Vance was wavering between the two when he heard himself hailed in a slow southern drawl. “Why, for the Lord’s sake, if it isn’t young Weston! Come right over here, my son, and let’s open a bottle of wine to celebrate our escape from Crampton!”
It was Harrison Delaney, looking up at him with the same slow ironic twinkle that was like the reflection of his voice. Vance saw him lounging in the dreary room of the little house at Crampton, between his whisky-bottle, his dog-eared copy of Pope, and the ledger which lack of use had kept immaculate. As a real~estate agent Delaney had been Euphoria’s most famous failure. Lorin Weston used to say that if there hadn’t been any other way for him to lose his money he’d have dug a hole in the ground and buried it — that is, if he’d ever had the guts to dig. By the time Vance was meeting Floss down the lane her father had long since abandoned the struggle, and Euphoria remembered him only when there was a distinguished stranger to be received or an oration to be delivered. Then, shaved, pomaded and tall-hatted for the occasion, Delaney was drawn from his obscurity by a community dimly conscious that, freely as it applied the title, he was in reality its only gentleman. After all, a man who quoted Pope and Horace the way Lorin Weston quoted prices on the Stock Exchange did give his home town a sort of proprietary satisfaction; and when a fortune suddenly fell into Delaney’s lap the people who were not envious of him said: “Well, he’ll know how to spend it anyhow.”
Apparently he did; at any rate in a way to impress some of the most eminent head-waiters in Europe. In the act of discussing the relative merits of oeufs aux truffes blanches and demoiselles de Caen he paused and waved Vance to the seat facing him. “Here, waiter — where’s that wine card? You choose for yourself, young fellow. My palate’s too burnt out by whisky to be much good in selecting Bordeaux or Burgundies. But champagne, now — what, no champagne? Well, this fellow here recommends a white Musigny — what’d you say the year was, waiter?”
