Gex

“ Concerning the observations relating to the free zones of Haute-Savoie and the Gex district, the French Government have the honour to observe that the provisions of the last paragraph of Article 435 are so clear that their purport cannot be misapprehended, especially where it implies that no other Power but France and Switzerland will in future be interested in that question. ”

“ CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH THE TRACK OF DESPUJOL Having decided to still remain in Madrid I deemed it advisable to engage the services of a private inquiry agent to watch the movements of De Gex and Suzor, who still remained at the Ritz. The mystery-man, living under an assumed name, never went out in the daytime, though Suzor often went forth, paying visits to certain banks and commercial offices in connexion with the proposed new railway. ”

“ Upon the writing-table lay a number of letters, and upon the red blotting-pad was a big wad of Treasury notes, under an elastic band, cast aside heedlessly, as rich men often do.
As I sat there awaiting my host’s return, I recollected how, in the previous year, I had seen in the pictorial press photographs of the handsome Mrs. De Gex attired in jersey and breeches, with knitted cap and big woollen scarf, lying upon her stomach on a sleigh on the Cresta run. ”

“ Gex, are you a man or a woman?”
Gex, for the moment, was fairly startled out of himself, and, perhaps for the first time in years, he threw back his head and laughed heartily.
“Bon! bon! ’Tis good; ’tis vairy good. Vhy, my leetle lady, sometime I don’t know myself; ’cause, you see, I have to be both the man and the voman; but vhy in the vorld did you just ask me such a funny question?”
“Because, Mr. Gex,” replied Lady Jane, very gravely, “I’ve thought about it often. Because—men don’t sew, and wear aprons,—and—women [Pg 99] don’t wear trousers ”

“ Stopping at a barricaded intersection, where trees had fallen under bombing, where heaps of rubble smoked, the radio announced the official take-over of Gex.
They were radio-ordered to park with other machines under trees fringing a town garden: roses and shell holes, benches and crushed benches, paths that stopped suddenly: a small bronze figure was still upright under branches: the three men crawled from their cab and sat on a low stone wall, faces black, clothes grease-caked, bloody.
Zinc showed Dennison a gashed hand. ”

“ Before madame sent her out, she gave Lady Jane instructions in the most imperative manner. “She must never on any account speak of Good Children Street, of Madelon or Pepsie, of the d’Hautreves, of Gex, or the Paichoux, or of any one she had ever known there. She must not talk with people, and, above all, she must never tell her name, nor where she lived. She must only sing and hold out her hand. Sometimes she might cry if she wanted to, but she must never laugh.” ”

“ RAYMOND ASSURED HER."
"YOU MAY BELIEVE THAT I WOULD DO EVERYTHING A MAN CAN," RAYMOND ASSURED HER."
He spoke so earnestly that she was surprised into a blush.
He referred enthusiastically to Mlle. Léonie when he and Puivert were in the train together on the way to Gex.
"A very beautiful creature!" he said. "But for a young girl her face is too sad."
"Ah! You should have known her before this affair," answered the other. "Full of vivacity, blooming and smiling as Hebe. Well, we can do little for her but trust to time." ”

“ Children were so unreliable. One would think they had forgotten everything and did not see nor hear; then, suddenly, they would drop some word that would lead to wonderful revelations.
Lady Jane was an intelligent, thoughtful child, and such people as the d’Hautreves could find out many things from her. Then she congratulated herself that she had been clever enough to get her away from Mam’selle Diane, and the Paichoux, too. And that cunning little hunchback, Pepsie; and old Gex—he was a sly old villain, and no doubt her enemy, for all he was so affable and polite. ”

“ Zinc yelled.
"Okay."
Fred Landel was inside, in the driver's seat, warming the motor: the cab was jammed with wounded, some standing, leaning against walls, some on the floor, huddled against each other.
"Where do we go?" Dennison asked Landel, mouth to his ear.
"You drive!" said Landel. "We go to Gex ... I have the map ... I know the route ... take a long look at those red lines; let's pull out of this goddamn place ... lights out ... we leave the wounded at a Red Cross station ... (he jabbed the map with his forefinger) ... I'll let you know ... sit down ... check the dials ... ”

“ MR. GEX AT THE DOOR OF HIS SHOP
All day long he sat on his small wooden chair behind the shelf across his window, on which was laid in neat piles oranges, apples, sweet potatoes, onions, cabbages, and even the odorous garlic; they were always sound and clean, and for that reason, even if he did not give lagniappe to small customers, he had a fair trade in the neighborhood. And he was very neat and industrious. When he was not engaged in preparing his vegetables, he was always tinkering at something of interest to himself; he could mend china and glass, clocks and jewelry, shoes and shirts ”

“ I said.
“Then I wish the pair of you the good fortune of arresting the assassin Despujol,” he said as we shook hands and parted.
I drove at once to Hambledon’s hotel, where I found that he had just retired to bed. As he stood in his pyjamas, surprised at my unexpected visit at that hour, I told him what I had arranged.
“Then I will remain here and watch De Gex’s departure,” he said.
“Yes. But be very careful of yourself,” I urged. “Keep your revolver handy, for you never know when an attack may be made upon you. ”

“ Geoffrey followed the drift of her remark.
‘And Gaston?’ he asked with point. ‘How about his opinion? We cannot look at a single small morsel of our lot, forgetting the rest. If there is one thing Gaston admires more than another in a woman, it is the whiteness and delicacy of her hand.’
‘All the same, Geff, I hate to live without work, common household work that makes the hands rough and red. ”

“ With Chaos for a grandfather, and Erebus and Nox for parents, I’ve just as good blood in my veins as anybody in Hades. The Noxes are a mighty fine family, not as bright as the Days, but older; and we’re poor—that’s it, poor—and it’s money makes caste these days. ”

“ Geff put himself through a little exercise of moral arithmetic; the result required being the precise sum of dislike which a man of his age could feel towards a scoffing girl of seventeen, a girl with eyes like Marjorie’s, silken black hair, and exquisite hands. It was not, perhaps, so large an amount as one might have looked for. ‘An Æsculapius,’ observed the Reverend Andros. ‘You know the parable, Mr. Arbuthnot? Two stalwart men, Nature and Disease, are fighting. A third man, the Doctor, seizes his club and rushes into the melée, sometimes hitting Disease and sometimes Nature. ”

“ We have a score of big examples—Byron, if you choose, at their head—to show how men of shipwrecked lives can give the world the best of their genius.’
‘When you come to genius,’ said Geff, grimly truthful, ‘we are off our lines. We are talking of common men, not of giants. For a man of your calibre, Gaston, to forfeit his domestic happiness is to forfeit all. In losing Dinah, whatever her folly in proposing the Quixotic scheme, you would lose your right hand. Up to this time, even with a good and beautiful and long-suffering woman at your side, your backslidings have been many. ”

“ With no other weapons than his fists and his Plato, Geff rushed to the fore. In those early days he had neither the weight nor the staying power which on many a well-contested football field have since made his name a terror to the foe and a tower of strength to All England. He had, however, the force born of will, of brain, of [Pg 5] generous impulse. Ere twenty seconds had sped Plato, with all the Platonic philosophy, went to the winds, and the biggest, brawniest of the roughs, stoutly gripped about the neck-cloth region, gave tokens of surrender. ”

“ Nyx, the daughter of Chaos, being the personification of Night, was, according to the poetic ideas of the Greeks, considered to be the mother of everything mysterious and inexplicable, such as death, sleep, dreams, &c. She became united to Erebus, and their children were Aether and Hemera (Air and Daylight) , evidently a simile of the poets, to indicate that darkness always precedes light.
Nyx inhabited a palace in the dark regions of the lower world, and is represented as a beautiful woman, seated in a chariot, drawn by two black horses. ”

“ You have had perfect happiness, Gaston—there is the truth! You have had such a lot as does not fall to one man in a million, and you have grown careless of it.’
Geoffrey’s voice was set in a lower key than usual. Glancing round at him, Gaston surprised an expression on the strong features, a glow in the dark eyes that he remembered. Not wholly unlike this did Geff look on the late June evening when he came, four years ago, to his rooms in Jesus, and congratulated him, Gaston, on his engagement to Dinah Thurston. ”

“ Thorne’s eyes offered Geoffrey a glance of tentative sympathy.
‘Different men come to the same end by different roads,’ said Gaston. ‘Your greatest English authority on culture declares that any man with a dash of genius is the born elevator of others. I believe myself to have a dash—a thin streak, rather—of genius. I believe myself to be a born elevator, but it must be in my own way.’
‘And that is?’ asked Geoffrey.
‘Well, remembering the atmosphere of Barnwell and Chesterton, the scene of our early labours, one feels sure that the geraniums must have choked for want of air. ”

“ Then she seated herself before her embroidery frame. But recollections of Lord Rex Basire, of the effaced stitches, of Gaston’s commentaries on her ‘patience,’ made the thought of work repugnant to her. If she could only read, she thought! Not after her dull, country pattern, repeating [Pg 205] each word to herself as a child cons his task ere he can take in its meaning. If she could read for pleasure, as she had watched Geoffrey read—quickly, easily, with hearty human interest, like one bent on receiving counsel from some well-beloved friend!
A book of Geff’s lay on the mantelshelf. ”

“ On the way Gyges fell in love with Tudo, who complained to Sadyattes of his conduct. Forewarned that the king intended to punish him with death, Gyges assassinated Sadyattes in the night and seized the throne with the help of Arselis of Mylasa, the captain of the Carian bodyguard, whom he had won over to his cause. Civil war ensued, which was finally ended by an appeal to the oracle of Delphi and the confirmation of the right of Gyges to the crown by the Delphian god. Further to secure his title he married Tudo. Many legends were told among the Greeks about his rise to power. ”

“ A′jax the name of two Greek heroes in the Trojan war, and the synonym of a fiery and impetuous warrior: Ajax, the son of Telamon of Sparta, one of the bravest of the Greeks, who, on the death of Achilles, contended with Ulysses for his arms, but was defeated, in consequence of which he lost his reason and put an end to his life; and Ajax, the son of Oïleus, swift of foot, like Achilles, who suffered shipwreck on his homeward voyage, as a judgment for an outrage he perpetrated on the person of Cassandra in the temple of Athena in Troy. ”

“ Nyssia made a sign for Gyges to come forth from his retreat; and laying her finger upon the breast of the victim, she directed upon her accomplice a look so humid, so lustrous, so weighty with languishment, so replete with intoxicating promise, that Gyges, maddened and fascinated, sprang from his hiding-place like the tiger from the summit of the rock where it has been couching, traversed the chamber at a bound, and plunged the Bactrian poniard up to the very hilt in the heart of the descendant of Hercules. The chastity of Nyssia was avenged, and the dream of Gyges accomplished. ”

“ Geff watched the Reverend Andros with admiration. A man so richly vitalised that he could smoke an after-dinner cigar, declaim Greek verse for his own pleasure at eighty—a man who had so proved himself superior to the common shocks and reverses of human life—should be one worth knowing, even though his fine moral equipoise must perforce be studied in the murky and dubious atmosphere engendered by a girl’s temper.
[Pg 61]
Tintajeux Manoir with its weather-bleached walls, its courtly, faded drawing-room, its half lights, its rose scents, had already laid hold of Geoffrey’s imagination. ”

“ Jupiter loves you both; and ye are both mighty warriors. That we all know right well. But now the night bids you cease, and it is well to heed its bidding.”
Then said Ajax, “Nay, Idæus, but it is for Hector to speak, for he called the bravest of the Greeks to battle. And as he wills it, so will I.”
And Hector said, “O Ajax, the gods have given thee stature and strength and skill, nor is there any better warrior among the Greeks. ”

“ Can we wonder at the pagan notion that the gods must needs hold their sides for laughter when they gaze down on the ever-twisted plot of our little lives? Geoffrey and Dinah were within a hundred feet of Miller’s house. Five minutes more and Geff must have been lifted—this time into quite other than a Fool’s Paradise, when, abruptly, a new actor, jauntily floating in cobweb Indian silk, gleaming under a scarlet sunshade, with eight-buttoned gloves, with airs, with graces innumerable, made her entrance upon the scene. ”

“ Queer how you can recognize a snake, no matter how far off! That’s Ferd, the dwarf; and if I was near enough to touch him I couldn’t keep my fingers off his dirty throat, nohow, till I’d choked the life out of him! Ugh! When I think––– But I mustn’t think. I must just get up and jog on till I see a prettier sight than that. If I can spy the hunchback at one mile off I can see my little captain’s bonny head at ten. Home, old ‘Forty-niner’! Home’s the word!”
As if the thought of Jessica had put new strength into his body Ephraim again shouldered his pack and started forward ”