The Return of the Prodigal Part 34

"Well--if he can leave you--here----?"

"Why, he's here somewhere, looking for Mr. Bingham-Booker. He's routing about in those queer saloons and places."

"And you?"

"I'm keeping my eye on the Casino. It's my fault he got away. You can't always tell when it's best to give him his head and when it isn't. I ought to have let him have that whiskey and soda. Do you see either of them?"

He looked round. "I think," he said, "I see Mr. Tarbuck."

She followed his gaze. Not five yards from them, planted on the pavement as if he grew there, was Mr. Tarbuck. His large back was turned to them with an expression at once ostentatious and discreet.

Thesiger had the idea that it had been there for some considerable time, probably ever since his own appearance. Mr. Tarbuck's back said plainly that, though Mr. Tarbuck neither looked nor listened, that he would scorn the action, yet he was there, at his friend's service if she wanted him.

"I'm afraid," said Roma Lennox, "he hasn't found him."

"He doesn't seem to be looking."

(He didn't.)

"Oh, I fancy," said she, "he's just squinting round."

"Can I do anything?"

"Why, yes, you could sit here and watch the Casino while I go and speak to Mr. Tarbuck."

She went and spoke to him. Thesiger saw how affectionately the large man bent his head to her.

She returned to Thesiger, and Mr. Tarbuck (whom she had evidently released from sentry-go) stalked across the Place toward the American Bar.

"He is not in the Casino," she said.

"Have you tried the American Bar?"

"Of course; we've tried all of them."

"I say, I want to help you. Can't I?"

She shook her head.

"If I stayed on in the hotel, could I be of any use?"

"You're not going to stay."

"Why shouldn't I? I've nothing else to do."

"Oh, haven't you? What _you_ have to do is to take that one-forty-four train to Nice, to-morrow afternoon."

"It's no good," he muttered gloomily. "I'm done for. You've made me see that plain enough."

"All I made you see was why she turned you down. And now that you do see----"

"What difference does it make, my seeing it?"

"Why, all the difference. Do you think I'd have taken all this trouble if it wasn't for that--to have you go right away and make it up with her?"

"And with you--can I ever make it up?"

"Don't you worry."

She rose. "I suppose appearances were against me; but----"

She held him for a moment with her eyes that measured him; then, as if she had done all that she wanted with him, she gave him back to himself, the finer for her handling.

"It wasn't for appearances you really cared."

THE WRACKHAM MEMOIRS

I

The publishers told you he behaved badly, did they? They didn't know the truth about the "Wrackham Memoirs."

You may well wonder how Grevill Burton got mixed up with them, how he ever could have known Charles Wrackham.

Well, he did know him, pretty intimately, too, but it was through Antigone, and because of Antigone, and for Antigone's adorable sake.

We never called her anything but Antigone, though Angelette was the name that Wrackham, with that peculiar shortsightedness of his, had given to the splendid creature.

Why Antigone? You'll see why.

No, I don't mean that Wrackham murdered his father and married his mother; but he wouldn't have stuck at either if it could have helped him to his literary ambition. And every time he sat down to write a book he must have been disgusting to the immortal G.o.ds. And Antigone protected him.

She was the only living child he'd had, or, as Burton once savagely said, was ever likely to have. And I can tell you that if poor Wrackham's other works had been one half as fine as Antigone it would have been glory enough for Burton to have edited him. For he _did_ edit him.

They met first, if you'll believe it, at Ford Lankester's funeral.

I'd gone to Chenies early with young Furnival, who was "doing" the funeral for his paper, and with Burton, who knew the Lankesters, as I did, slightly. I'd had a horrible misgiving that I should see Wrackham there; and there he was, in the intense mourning of that black cloak and slouch hat he used to wear. The cloak was a fine thing as far as it went, and with a few more inches he really might have carried it off; but those few more inches were just what had been denied him. Still, you couldn't miss him or mistake him. He was exactly like his portraits in the papers; you know the haggard, bilious face that would have been handsome if he'd given it a chance; the dark, straggling, and struggling beard, the tempestuous, disheveled look he had, and the immortal Att.i.tude. He was standing in it under a yew tree looking down into Lankester's grave. It was a small white chamber about two feet square--enough for his ashes. The earth at the top of it was edged with branches of pine and laurel.

Furnival said afterward you could see what poor Wrackham was thinking of. _He_ would have pine branches. Pine would be appropriate for the stormy Child of Nature that he was. And laurel--there would have to be lots of laurel. He was at the height of his great vogue, the brief popular fury for him that was absurd then and seems still more absurd to-day, now that we can measure him. He takes no room, no room at all, even in the popular imagination; less room than Lankester's ashes took--or his own, for that matter.

Yes, I know it's sad in all conscience. But Furnival seemed to think it funny then, for he called my attention to him. I mustn't miss him, he said.

Perhaps I might have thought it funny too if it hadn't been for Antigone. I was not prepared for Antigone. I hadn't realized her.

She was there beside her father, not looking into the grave, but looking at him as if she knew what he was thinking and found it, as we find it now, pathetic. But unbearably pathetic.

Somehow there seemed nothing incongruous in _her_ being there. No, I can't tell you what she was like to look at, except that she was like a great sacred, sacrificial figure; she might have come there to pray, or to offer something, or to pour out a libation. She was tall and grave, and gave the effect of something white and golden.

In her black gown and against the yew trees she literally shone.