Part 12 (2/2)
In the course of the evening's play at the tables, Larssen was struck with her increasing animation and gaiety. The heavy, listless look had left her eyes, and they now glittered with life and fire. When they left the tables to stroll by the milk-white terraces of the Casino, there was a flush in her cheeks and iridescence in her speech very different from a couple of hours before.
A spirit of caustic, impish brilliance was in her. She turned it upon the people they had rubbed shoulders with at the tables; upon the people walking past them on the terraces; even upon her husband:
”Clifford is a 90 per cent. success. There are men who can never achieve full success in any field whatever. They climb up to 70, 80, 90 per cent., and then the grade is too steep for them.”
”They stick.”
”Or run backwards downhill. I'm a pa.s.senger in a car of that kind. Near to the top, but not reaching it. So I get out to walk on myself.”
”There are mighty few men who have the 100 per cent. in them.”
”Tell me this, Mr Larssen. Did you know you were a 100 per cent. man when you started your business life, or did you come to realize it gradually?”
”I knew it from the first,” replied the s.h.i.+powner steadily. ”Knew it when I was a mere kiddy. Set myself apart from the other boys. Told myself I was to be their master. Made myself master. Fought for it.
Fought every boy who wouldn't acknowledge it.... When I went to sea as cabin-boy on the ”Mary R.” of Gloucester, the men on the trawler tried to ”lick me into shape,” as they called it. They didn't know what they were up against. I used those men as whet-stones--used them to kick fear out of myself. You notice that I limp a little? That's a legacy from the days of the 'Mary R.'”
Olive looked at him with open admiration. ”That's epic!” she exclaimed.
”How far are you going to climb?”
Larssen had never revealed to any man or woman--save only to his wife--the great ultimate purpose of his life. He did not tell it to Olive. She was to be used as a p.a.w.n in the great game, just as he was using Sir Francis and the dead Clifford Matheson. It came upon him that she was now a widow. He would fan her open admiration so as to make use of it when she awoke to the fact of her widowhood.
So he answered: ”How far I climb depends on the help of my best friends.
I don't hide that. When my dear wife was with me, she was an inspiration to me. No man can drive his car to the summit without a woman to spur him on.”
”Did marriage change you much?”
”Strengthened me. Bolted me to my foundations.... But here I'm monopolizing the conversation with talk about myself. Let's switch. What are _your_ ambitions?”
Olive laughed--a laugh with a bitter taste in it. ”I wanted to help a man to drive his car to the summit, and the car has stuck. I could inspire, but my inspiring goes to waste. I'm an engine racing without a shaft to take up its energy. Clifford is developing scruples. I don't know where he caught them. I can't stand sick people. That's my temperament--I must have energy and action around me.”
”I understand that. Felt it myself at times,” he answered sympathetically.
Without apparent reason her thoughts skipped to a woman who had sat near them at the roulette table. ”Wasn't she the image of a disappointed vulture? I mean the woman in green. Swooping down from a distance to gorge herself with a tasty feast, and then finding a man with a rake to chase her off. I chuckled to myself as I watched her. Do men and women look to you like animals? They do to me. Monte Carlo's a Zoo, only the animals aren't caged.”
”That's right! You're an extraordinarily keen observer, Mrs Matheson.”
Sir Francis Letchmere approached them beamingly from the direction of the Casino. He had won money at _trente-et-quarante_, and was feeling very pleased with his own judgment and powers of intellect generally.
”Leave him to me,” whispered Olive to Larssen. ”I'll see that my father gets busy on the Hudson Bay Scheme. But on one condition.”
”What's that?”
”That you stay on at Monte for a few days. I don't want to be left here alone. I hate being alone.”
”I'm due back in London. Urgent business matters.”
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