“Stove-fairies and piano-mice,” said Christopher and smiled wearily towards the green room. “And little George?” He laughed with forced mirth, “he must be quite a little gentleman. I brought him a horse from Paris. It has an engine inside, you wind it up like a clock and then it runs. What wonders people invent nowadays!”
He began to speak of cities, countries ... of the French Emperor, the Paris Stock Exchange, the dresses of the Empress Eugénie. All the time he smoked one cigar after another; after a time weariness disappeared from his voice and his eyes became livelier. When he went downstairs he whistled. Anne heard it clearly but it did not reassure her.
Since his sister’s marriage Christopher had lived on the ground floor. He had adapted two rooms of the old office which had been empty since the business had dwindled.
Flowers stood on the chest of drawers in the deep vaulted room. He knew Anne had put them there. It was she who had put the lace mat on the night table. For an instant he felt happy at being home again and gave orders to the servant not to wake him in the morning; he wanted to sleep. Then he remembered that he had business on the morrow with his book-keeper. He had signed many bills in blank during his journey, so that Otto Füger might send him some money. He had lost incessantly at Baden-Baden and his stay in Paris had made a serious breach in his purse. To-morrow all that would have to be reckoned up. Hazy ignorance was comfortable, but the reckoning day was loathsome.
He wanted to chase away unpleasant thoughts. They were like wasps, returned to the attack, and stung him.
And the business? How had the various enterprises prospered while he had been away? The weekly reports were in his valise. He had never found time to read them through. It didn’t matter. He had studied the Stock Exchange in Paris. People got rich there in one day. All that was required was a cool head. One must not lose one’s nerve. How much money he had seen! How much!
He extinguished the candle. He lay on his back with open eyes. For a time his thoughts gave him a rest. The darkness was quite empty. How many things had passed through his darknesses! Ancient fairies and dwarfs. Sophie, his first love. Girls from the streets, actresses, women, beautiful grand ladies, cold and indifferent in day time, passionate and exacting at night. Enough. They interested him no more. The only thing that mattered to him now was money, the mighty mass of money which flows incessantly between the hands of men, like a great dominating river, from one end of the world to the other. One had only to dig a channel for the river and it would flow wherever one liked. He saw it on the Paris Stock Exchange. How much money....
The darkness of Christopher’s night was suddenly empty no more.
Money!... That was the whole secret.... And he began to long for it as he used to yearn in days gone by for women.