Somewhere in the kingdom of Monaco there is a hidden graveyard; none know where it is. And in that dishonoured plot lies hundreds of nameless ones, who have yielded up their all--happiness, honour, life--to the ebony basin."
Basil started. The words seemed to come strangely from the actual artificer of the wheel of fortune. Deschamps also looked curiously at the little man, whose face had suddenly gone grey and whose voice trembled. "But, monsieur," he said, in a hesitating voice.
The other made a gesture with his hand. "Yes, yes," he replied, "I well know what you would say--such words come strangely from me or from my brother. But, monsieur"--he tapped the rim of the bowl with a thin hand--"this is the very last of these engines of h.e.l.l that I or Charles will ever make!"
He paused, struggling with some deep emotion. "We had a nephew," he continued, "my brother and I; the only relative left to us in the world.
We loved him as if he had been a son. We saved, invested, and worked solely for him. We are rich, monsieur! Not only have our earnings been large, but we have saved, and invested our savings in safe rents. All, all was to have been his. Aristide was young, clever, and, backed by the fortune we could leave him, would have taken a high place in the world.
He had gone to Ma.r.s.eilles on business for us, entrusted with a considerable sum of money. Some friends took him to Monte Carlo--it was only three months ago. He lost this money of ours at the tables--lost it by means of one of the very wheels we had made--and in despair he killed himself, though G.o.d knows how gladly we would have forgiven him. We have now completed our last contract for the Administration. We have resigned our position, and for the future others shall make the wheels.
We will touch them no more."
"Never again," Charles Carnet echoed his brother, but he looked lovingly at the glittering thing upon the table nevertheless. "No one will make the wheels like us again," he said with a sigh.
The four men, oddly a.s.sorted as they were, gathered round the fire once more. There was but little conversation now. They gazed into the glowing heart of coals and wood-blocks, each busily occupied with his own troubled thoughts.
Basil Gregory, warmed and comfortable as he was in body, felt very low in spirits. One of those moments had come to him when life seems a spoilt and futile thing. The future stretched before him in imagination like some great Ess.e.x marshland at evening, when the colour fades out of everything, the leaden tides creep inwards from the sea, and the curlews pipe to each other with melancholy voices, like souls sick for love.
There was nothing, nothing! A dreary round of ill-paid mechanical duties, a long engagement which would probably never end in marriage, one of the most epoch-making inventions the world could ever know, locked up in his mind and that of his friend, Emile Deschamps.
Thus the thoughts of the poor Englishman, Basil Gregory, as he gazed into the rose-pink and amethyst heart of the fire.
The two old men were sadly remembering the recent loss of the bright-faced boy that had meant everything in their narrow, patient lives.
Sadness lay like a veil upon the faces of all three.
But Emile Deschamps" face was not sad. It was set and rigid. Not a feature of it moved. The brow was wrinkled and knotted with thoughts.
There was a fixed and smouldering fire in the eyes. Once Basil looked at his friend and wondered what intense and concentrated thought was burning and glowing in the great executive brain of the Southerner. Had he known, had an inkling of it reached him, he would have leapt to his feet in the wildest excitement he had ever known.
For, indeed, the fickle G.o.ddess of Chance was abroad this night, and had led their footsteps to this secluded workshop. Unseen, unfelt by any save only Emile Deschamps, she was hovering in the room where the wheels of her votaries were made.
About dawn a low wind arose and wailed around the quarter of the wood-turners. The deep mist vanished as grey light began to filter in through the gla.s.s roof of the workshop. With many thanks the two young men bade their hosts farewell, and went out into the chill morning air.
A pressing invitation to come again whenever they liked, piped in unison by Brother Charles and Brother Edouard, was the last sound they heard as their feet echoed up the deserted street towards the great main thoroughfares of Paris.
CHAPTER III
The next day was cold, but bright and sunny. From ten o"clock in the morning until _dejeuner_ at twelve o"clock, Ethel McMahon endeavoured to instil some rudimentary knowledge of English into the minds of the fifteen-year-old daughters of prosperous tradesmen of the Luxembourg district at the academy for young ladies of the Demoiselles de Custine-Seraphin, two elderly ladies in whom parsimony and the proprieties struggled for mastery.
With many a sigh and shrug of disgust her demure charges had struggled with the intricacies of our language, had conjugated the verb "to love"
in unexpected fashions, had laboriously a.s.similated the information that "ze weadder is going to be ver" fin to-day," and so forth.
At twelve, together with her fellow-teachers, Mademoiselle Marie and Mademoiselle Augustine de Custine-Seraphin, Ethel had taken the second breakfast of thin soup, pallid mutton, and stale _tartines au confiture_. At one she was free--free till nine o"clock in the evening.
And as she came downstairs from her room dressed to go out, her face was so radiant and changed in expression that Mademoiselle Marie de Custine-Seraphin tossed her head as the girl pa.s.sed, and gave it as her undoubted opinion to her sister that _la jeune anglaise_ was certainly going to do more than spend a quiet afternoon and evening with her invalid mother.
"Figure to yourself, Augustine; her face was of the most beaming, her eye had sparkle, her cheeks were colour of rose. _Ca fait un amant, n"est-ce pas?_"
"_A la jeunesse, comme a la jeunesse,_" her sister replied with a shrug, and went on making up the account of Mademoiselle Hortense Dubois, the well-to-do butcher"s daughter who was leaving school that quarter.
Ethel McMahon hurried out of the quiet street in which the school was situated, walking towards the Luxembourg.
She was a typically Irish girl in feature, with those dark-blue eyes, like hot Venetian water, that hair black as a bog-oak root, that complexion of cream and roses that is hardly seen anywhere outside the Isle of Unrest. She was tall and walked with a swing, as she threaded her way among the _chic_ and mincing Parisiennes towards her mother"s tiny flat in the Rue Paczensky.
Dull as the girl"s life was, hard as she worked all day, her youth and vitality were stronger than the power of circ.u.mstances. Vivid and impulsive in all she did, a constant spring of hope welled up within her, and she was certain that sooner or later--she believed very soon--everything in her life would come right. Dear Basil would get some lucrative appointment, the great invention would be financed by some kindly millionaire who would appear in the nick of time. They would get married, her mother would be able to live in the far healthier air of the Alps, as the doctor had ordered. Day in and day out Ethel was convinced that all would be well, and whenever she saw her lover she comforted and inspirited him as if they were indeed husband and wife.
Mrs. McMahon"s flat of two rooms and a kitchen was high up in the great drab block of buildings, and, small as it was, the rent, as is the case with all flats in Paris, was proportionately high.
As she entered the hallway Ethel was handed a bundle of letters by the concierge. She did not examine them at the moment, but ran lightly up the stairs to the flat.
Mrs. McMahon was seated by the window of the sitting-room. A lace pillow with its pins and reels of thread was upon the table before her, and her thin hands were moving quickly and deftly over it hither and thither.
It was Mrs. McMahon"s specialty to copy old Valenciennes lace, which she did for a firm in the Rue de Rivoli. The labour was intense, the process wearingly long, but the few hundred francs earned during the year by this means helped to pay the rent.
She was a tall, faded woman. The hair, which had once been as black as her daughter"s, was now scanty and iron-grey. All the light had faded from the blue eyes, and she was painfully thin. She returned her daughter"s caresses without much animation, and sat back in her old-fashioned chair with her hands lying idly in her lap, gazing at the girl in a lack-l.u.s.tre way as she moved quickly about the room, taking off her hat and stole of cheap fur, giving a touch to the furniture here and there, and putting a little bunch of dark-red asters, which she had bought, into a vase upon the dining-table.
"Well, Ethel, I suppose you have no news? I hope those old cats"--Mrs.
McMahon was accustomed to refer to the Demoiselles de Custine-Seraphin in this way--"I hope those old cats have been behaving themselves better. I cannot think why you stay with them. Surely a girl with your knowledge of French as well as English, and with your appearance, could get something better to do. The salary they pay you is disgraceful."
Ethel shook her head brightly; this was an old ground of debate between herself and the querulous invalid. "My dear mother," she said, "I really cannot afford to wait for anything better to turn up. If I could, possibly I might get something better to do, but that would mean coming home for perhaps three or four months, and you know we cannot possibly afford that. While I am at the school, of course, I cannot go looking after another post. So I must make the best of it, that"s all."
Mrs. McMahon coughed fretfully. "How horrified your poor dear father would have been," she said, "at the life you are leading now! It is my one consolation that Providence has spared him that!"
Ethel said nothing in answer, though she had her doubts upon the subject. The late Captain McMahon had retired from the Irish Guards soon after getting his company and marrying pretty Miss Persse of county Galway. There were not wanting those who said that his retirement was more or less compulsory owing to rather too p.r.o.nounced successes while holding the bank at baccarat or chemin de fer. Be that as it may, Ethel"s memory of her childhood in various more or less shady Continental resorts was by no means a pleasant one. Captain McMahon had been one of those people whose whole philosophy is summed up in the expression, "Hang it, the luck _must_ turn!" He had wooed fortune wherever a casino or gambling h.e.l.l was to be found upon the Continent of Europe; he had wooed her in vain; the luck never did turn.
However, it was doubtless owing to this persistent optimism inculcated by her father that Ethel herself was enabled to bear up against the drab monotony of her life. She also felt instinctively that "the luck must turn." As for Mrs. McMahon herself, while she affected a consistent despair and the gloomiest outlook upon the future, she secretly nourished the most extravagant hopes, and was as much a gambler in temperament as her husband had been in action. Only the most limited opportunities of exercising her pa.s.sion were given her, but of these she took advantage to the full.
"I cannot think," the elder lady went on, "what that lover of yours can be about. Oh, I have nothing to say against Basil," she said hurriedly, as she saw Ethel"s colour begin to rise, and her mouth to harden into mutiny. "Basil is a good fellow enough, and, of course, I know he is very clever at his electricity, and so on. He and that young Frenchman, Monsieur Deschamps, have no doubt got a fortune in their heads, as you are always telling me. All that I can say is that it seems likely to stay there. With your blood Ethel, for both the Persses and the McMahons rode straight for anything they wanted, I wonder at your choosing a boy like Basil, who seems to have no initiative, no dash. Ah, well! I suppose there are no soldiers of fortune nowadays. But, still, with your name and your appearance, I think you might have done better for yourself."
Ethel knew it was useless to answer anything to this. She let her mother run on until she was tired, and then began to make tea, with a little spirit kettle.
As she was doing this, she noticed the little pile of letters that the concierge had handed to her. The top one had not come by post, and was unstamped. Ethel knew the writing very well. It was that of the clerk who sent out demands and receipts for the rent at the office.
"Ah!" she said; "here is the receipt for the quarter"s rent." She had given her mother the money to pay it some time ago, and without thinking what she was doing, she opened the envelope.
Mrs. McMahon rose from her seat in considerable agitation. Her hands trembled a little, and a bright colour came into her wan face.
"Why, mother," Ethel said in alarm, "this is not a receipt at all! This is a letter from the office saying that the rent is much overdue, and pressing for immediate payment. I gave you the money!" The words died away from her lips as she saw the old lady, a picture of embarra.s.sment, standing before her.
"My dear," said Mrs. McMahon, in a shaking voice, "you really must allow me to manage the household finances in my own way. I am older and more experienced in life than you. I have temporarily--er--well, _invested_ the rent money in the hopes, in the almost certainty, that in a day or so I shall be repaid a hundred-fold."
Ethel sat down at the table with a deep sigh. "Oh, mother!" she said in a pleading voice, "how could you, how could you really? I suppose that it is one of those wretched lotteries again. I should not like to think how many precious francs have been simply thrown away in the last year or two. Hundreds and hundreds. It is simply madness to spend two or three hundred francs on a ticket for one of the wretched things when we have hardly money for the necessaries of life."
The old lady began to cry weakly. "I did it for the best, Ethel," she said. "I am sure I thought that my bad luck could not go on much longer.
I had such hopes this time."
Ethel saw her opportunity. While her mother was in this state of penitence she might perhaps make a lasting impression.
"Mother," she said, earnestly, "gambling nearly ruined my grandfather; it quite ruined father. We could not be much worse off than we are, but don"t throw away the last thing that keeps us from absolute starvation.