"Yes."
If he had known what he was saying he would rather have called upon the river to carry him to its lowest depths and count him in the death-roll of its damned. But none of us can foresee the future. We must all bow before the Unknown.
VIII
The engagement on the Riviera was completely successful and Oscar covered himself with honor, but when the opera season came to an end he declined all offers to come back.
Finsen was there. Under cover of professional and fraternal interest he had made frequent visits to Oscar and Helga during the course of the season, and at the close of it he was staying at the same hotel. Oscar was nervous, fretful, and unhappy. The secret gnawing anxiety which had oppressed him in London had returned with redoubled force.
Helga's love of the gaiety and grandeur of the life of the Riviera was only too evident, and Finsen set himself to feed it. He fed it by every art and resource of a full purse and an open hand. Races, regattas, fêtes, flowers--he gave her everything that was being enjoyed by other women living in abundance. Oscar protested, but she laughed at his protests or tried to coax him out of his jealousy. Her caresses and endearments were beginning to fail of their old effect. In spite of himself he was beginning to feel a certain contempt for her, and at some moments even a sort of hatred which tore his heart to pieces.
For his own part Oscar hated the life of the Riviera. What nature had done for the place was good, but what man had done was bad. The soft air, the blue sky, the deep blue sea, the smiling gardens, the flowers, the oleanders, the orange groves, the scent of the resin and then the still nights and the nightingale--could anything be more enchanting? Yet this paradise of nature, this God-blest corner of the earth was degraded by every gross desire that was at war with beauty and art and genius and the everlasting laws of life.
But Oscar's hatred of the Riviera was due to a cause more personal than his moral revolt--a poignant memory of the past. In the Casino which stood in the middle of the gardens, beyond the brilliant hall and the noisy orchestra, there was an inner room, guarded by keen-eyed door-keepers and watched by spies, where men and women sat about a green-topped table in a dusky and clammy silence; and at the end of that room, in the darkest part of it there was an alcove, almost covered by palms, where two persons could sit unseen. Helga and he had once sat there, and she had pleaded with him to do something that his soul shrank from, and he had done it. "Why not?" she had said. "He will never hear of it, and it will only be a matter of form. My luck must change, it must, and then we will pay back this money and everything will be wiped out. Do, Oscar, for me, please!"
From fear of reviving this memory Oscar had avoided the Casino during his present visit. That was easy enough to do while the opera season lasted, but when it was over, and his work no longer wanted him, it was hard to see Helga go off with Finsen night after night, and to wander round the Casino like an uneasy spirit that could find no rest while they were inside of it. The jealousy that was rankling in his breast could not bear that ordeal long and when Helga said, "What nonsense! You needn't play--why should you?" he followed her into the gambling-house.
He saw the usual sights there, and found the usual company gathered about the tables--all middle-class whatever their rank and station--the middle-class financier, the middle-class millionaire, the middle-class baron, the middle-class peer, the middle-class duchess smoking her cigarettes, and then the prostitute in her feathers and the black-leg in his diamonds, as well as reputable men and virtuous women, for the gambling-house knows no distinctions of means or morality or intellect and is the high court of the devil's democracy.