Chapter 46
There was something so fantastic in Lily's appearance, thus bedecked, that Sylvia thought for a moment it was a feverish vision such as had haunted her brain at the beginning of the illness. Lily wore suspended from a fine chain round her neck a large diamond, one of those so-called blue diamonds of Brazil that in the moonlight seem like sapphires; her fingers flashed fire; a large brooch of rubies in the likeness of a b.u.t.terfly winked somberly from her black corsage.
Sylvia made her way through the press of gamblers and touched Lily's arm. So intent was she upon the tables that she brushed away the hand as if it had been a mosquito.
"Lily! Lily!" Sylvia called, sharply. "Where have you been? Where have you gone?"
At that moment the wheel stopped, and the croupier cried the number and the color in all their combinations. Sylvia was sure that he exchanged glances with Lily and that the gold piece upon the 33 on which he was paying had not been there before the wheel had stopped.
"Lily! Lily! Where have you been?" Sylvia called, again. Lily gathered in her winnings and turned round. It was curious how changed her eyes were; they seemed now merely like two more rich jewels that she was wearing.
"I'm sorry I've not been to see you," she said. "My dear, I've won nearly four thousand pounds."
"You have, have you?" Sylvia said. "Then the sooner you leave Brazil the better."
Lily threw a swift glance of alarm toward the croupier, a man of almost unnatural thinness, who, while he intoned the invitation to place the stakes, fixed his eyes upon her.
"I can't leave Brazil," she said, in a whisper. "I'm living with him."
"Living with a croupier?" Sylvia gasped.
"Hus.h.!.+ He belongs to quite a good family. He ruined himself. His name is Manuel Camacho. Don't talk to me any more, Sylvia. Go away. He's madly jealous. He wants to marry me."
"Like Hector, I suppose," Sylvia scoffed.
"Not a bit like Hector. He brings a priest every morning and says he'll kill me and himself and the priest, too, if I don't marry him. But I want to make more money, and then I will marry him. I must. I'm afraid of what he'll do if I refuse. Go away from me, Sylvia, go away. There'll be a fearful scene to-night if you will go on talking to me. Last night a man threw a flower into our carriage when we were driving home, and Manuel jumped out and beat him insensible with his cane. Go away."
Sylvia demanded where she was living, but Lily would not tell her, because she was afraid of what her lover might do.
"He doesn't even let me look out of the window. If I look out of the window he tears his clothes with rage and digs his finger-nails into the palms of his hands. He's very violent. Sometimes he shoots at the chandelier."
Sylvia began to laugh. There was something ridiculous in the notion of Lily's leading this kind of lion-tamer's existence. Suddenly the croupier with an angry movement swept a pile of money from the table.
"Go away, Sylvia, go away. I know he'll break out in a moment. That was meant for a warning."
Sylvia understood that it was hopeless to persist for the moment, and she made her way back to the cabaret. The girls were eager to know what she thought of Lily's protector.
_"Elle a de la veine, tu sais, la pet.i.te Lili. Elle l'a pris comme ca, et il l'aime a la folie. Et elle gagne! mon Dieu, comme elle gagne! Tout va pour elle. Tu sais, elle a des brillants merveilleux. ca fait riche, tu sais. Y'a pas de chic, mais il est jaloux! Il se porte comme un fou.
ca me raserait, tu sais, etre collee avec un homme pareil. Pourtant, elle est busineuse, la pet.i.te Lili! Elle ne lui donne pas un rond. Y'a pas de dos vert. Ah, non, elle est la vraie anglaise sans blague. Et le mec, dis, n'est-ce pas qu'il est maigre comme tout? On dirait un squelette."_
With all
"They say one must expect to be depressed after yellow fever," Sylvia rea.s.sured herself. "Perhaps this mood won't last, but, oh, the endlessness of it all! How even one's brush and comb seem weighed down by an interminable melancholy. As I look round me I can see nothing that doesn't strike me as hopelessly, drearily, appallingly superfluous. The very soap in its china dish looks wistful. How pathetic the life of a piece of soap is, when one stops to contemplate it. A slow and steady diminution. Oh, I must do something to shake off this intolerable heaviness!"
The simplest and most direct path to energy and action seemed to be an attempt to interview Camacho, and the following evening Sylvia tried to make Lily divulge her address; but she begged not to be disturbed, and Sylvia, seeing that she was utterly absorbed by the play, had to leave her.
"Either I am getting flaccid beyond belief," she said to herself, "or Lily has acquired an equally incredible determination. I think it's the latter. It just shows what pa.s.sion will do even for a Lily. All her life she has remained unmoved, until roulette reveals itself to her and she finds out what she was intended for. Of course I must leave her to her fierce skeleton; he represents the corollary to the pa.s.sion. Queer thing, the way she always wins. I'm sure they're cheating, somehow, the two of them. There's the final link. They'll go away presently to Europe, and Lily will enjoy the sweetest respectability that exists--the one that is founded on early indiscretion and dishonesty--a paradise preceded by the fall."
Sylvia waited by the entrance to the roulette-room on the next night until play was finished, watched Lily come out with Camacho, and saw them get into a carriage and drive away immediately. None of the attendants or the other croupiers knew where Camacho lived, or, if they knew, they refused to tell Sylvia. On the fourth evening, therefore, she waited in a carriage by the entrance and ordered her driver to follow the one in which Lily was. She found that Camacho's apartments were not so far from her own; the next morning she waited at the corner of the street until she saw him come out; then she rang the bell. The negress who opened the door shook her head at the notion of letting Sylvia enter, but the waiting in the sun had irritated her and she pushed past and ran up-stairs. The negress had left the upper door open, and Sylvia was able to enter the flat. Lily was in bed, playing with her jewels as if they were toys.
"Sylvia!" she cried, in alarm. "He'll kill you if he finds you here.
He's gone to fetch the priest. They'll be back in a moment. Go away."
Sylvia said she insisted on speaking to Camacho; she had some good advice to give him.
"But he's particularly jealous of you. The first evening you spoke to me... look!" Lily pointed to the ceiling, which was marked like a die with five holes. "He did that when he came home to show what he would do to you."
"Rubbis.h.!.+" said Sylvia. "He'll be like a lamb when we meet. If he hadn't fired at the ceiling I should have felt much more alarmed for the safety of my head."
"But, Sylvia," Lily entreated. "You don't know what he's like. Once, when he thought a man nudged me, he came home and tore all the towels to pieces with his teeth. The servant nearly cried when she saw the room in the morning. It was simply covered with bits of towel, and he swallowed one piece and nearly choked. You don't know what he's like. I can manage him, but n.o.body else could."
Here was a new Lily indeed, who dared to claim that she could manage somebody of whom Sylvia must be afraid. She challenged Lily to say when she had ever known her to flinch from an encounter with a man.
"But, my dear, Manuel isn't English. When he's in one of those rages he's not like a human being at all. You can't soothe him by arguing with him. You have to calm him without talking."
"What do you use? A red-hot poker?"
Lily became agitated at Sylvia's obstinacy, and, regardless of her jewels, which tinkled down into a heap on the floor, she jumped out of bed and implored her not to stay.
"I want to know one or two things before I go," Sylvia said, and was conscious of taking advantage of Lily's alarm to make her speak the truth, owing to the lack of time for the invention of lies.
"Do you love this man?"
"Yes, in a way I do."
"You could be happy married to him?"
"Yes, when I've won five thousand pounds."
"He cheats for you?"
Lily hesitated.
"Never mind," Sylvia went on. "I know he does."
"Oh, my dear," Lily murmured, biting her lip. "Then other people might notice. Never mind. I ought to finish to-night. The boat sails the day after to-morrow."
"And what about me?" Sylvia asked.
Lily looked shamefaced for a moment, but the natural optimism of the gambler quickly rea.s.serted itself.
"I thought you wouldn't like to break your contract."
"My contract," Sylvia repeated, bitterly. "What about---- Oh, but how foolish I am. You dear unimaginative creature!"
"I'm not at all unimaginative," Lily interposed, quickly. "One of the reasons why I want to leave Brazil is because the black people here make me nervous. That's why I left our flat. I didn't know what to do. I was so frightened. I think I'm very imaginative. You got ill. What was I to do?"
She asked this like an accusation, and Sylvia knew that it would be impossible to make her see any other point of view.
"Besides, it was your fault I started to gamble. I watched you on the boat."