The Guests Of Hercules Part 12

I'm in luck to-night. Won't you three be my guests at Ciro's?"

"You are always in luck nowadays," sighed Madame d'Ambre. A shadow seemed to pa.s.s over the stolid face of the man, but she did not see it.

"Naturally we accept the kind invitation, is it not so, dear Mademoiselle?"

"I must be at Ciro's anyhow, about midnight," said Carleton, "for Schuyler asked me to meet him there for a Welsh rabbit after the opera.

But I'll be delighted to go over and sit with you till he comes." He had the pleasant drawl of a Southerner.

"Oh, you're very, very kind," stammered Mary. "But I"--she hesitated, and glanced appealingly at Madame d'Ambre--"I think it's rather late, and I shall have to go home."

"Home?" echoed Hannaford, questioningly.

"My hotel," she explained.

As Madame d'Ambre drew her friend aside for a murmur of advice, the two men looked at each other, Carleton puzzled, Hannaford with raised eyebrows. "I think they're both charming," the American remarked in a low voice. "That little Madame d'Ambre isn't nearly as pretty as Miss Grant, but she's fetching, and looks a bit down on her luck, as if she'd had trouble."

"Perhaps she has," said Hannaford.

"But, dear Mademoiselle," Madeleine was pleading at a little distance, "why won't you go to supper? Do! It would be so pleasant. I have so little happiness; and this would at least give me an hour of distraction."

"You can go without me," said Mary. "Captain Hannaford is your friend, isn't he?"

"Ah, I see! The sight of the poor afflicted man disgusts you. If you refuse, he will know why. It will be ungracious--cruel."

"Don't say that," Mary implored, much distressed. "I wouldn't hurt his feelings for the world. It's true I _can't_ bear to look at him, though he hasn't a bad face. But it isn't only that. I could try to get over it. The other reason is, I never met him or Mr. Carleton before, and--and I don't know anything about society, or what is done; but I have a sort of feeling----"

"Mais mon Dieu!" murmured Madame d'Ambre. "Quelle pet.i.te sotte! No matter. It is a pretty pose, and suits you well. I am the last to find fault with it. Yet listen. These gentlemen are distinguished. Captain Hannaford is an English officer who has been of a courage incredible. He can wear many medals if he chooses. Now he is very sad, despite his luck in the Casino. He needs cheering. And this young Monsieur Carleton, the American, I have read of him in the papers. He is widely known as a man who flies, and these airmen are of a n.o.bility of character! I am your chaperon. What more do you ask? I am the widow of a naval officer. Do you not owe me something for the good turn I have done you to-night?"

"Yes, indeed, I owe you a great deal," Mary admitted.

It was quite certain that what Madame d'Ambre considered as owing to her would be paid.

Prince Vanno saw the four leaving the Casino together, Mary and Carleton walking behind the other two. He had met both the Englishman and the American in Egypt once or twice, and had not thought of them since. Now he would forget neither. The story about Hannaford and his retirement from the army, Vanno knew. He had heard nothing of Carleton except what was to his credit, but somehow this fact made it no less unpleasant for Vanno that the aeronaut should be talking with Mary. He did not believe they had met before to-night.

The Galerie Charles Trois was brilliantly lighted, and supper was beginning behind immense gla.s.s windows at Ciro's and the glittering white and gold restaurant of the Metropole. At Ciro's there had been a dinner in honour of two celebrated airmen, and the decorations remained.

There were suspended monoplanes and biplanes made of flowers, and when the great Ciro himself saw Carleton, he came forward, inviting the young man to take a window-table.

Carleton explained that he was only a guest; but this made no difference. Except the King of Sweden's table, and that of the Grand Duke Cyril, Mr. Carleton and his friends must have the best.

"My dear friend," said Hannaford, as they sat down, letting his eyes dwell on Madame d'Ambre's costume, "it's lucky for us that we are with a celebrity, or the fatted calf would not have been prepared for us. No use disguising the truth: you and I are a little the worse for wear.

Only with you, the damage is temporary. Put you into a new frock and hat, and you'll revive like a flower in fresh water. Nothing can revive me. You see, I look facts in the face."

"Could one not make facts pleasant to see, if one must look them in the face?" Mary ventured, gently.

"I'm sure you will make them so for Madame," said Hannaford.

"It is only those who are very happy, or very miserable, who can joke forever, as you do," said Madame d'Ambre. "I can understand you now, or I could, at my worst. But for the moment I have new life. I try to forget the future."

As they ate a delicious and well-chosen supper she revived, delicately, and regarded her misfortunes from a distance. "To think, if I had not met you all, and if I had kept my resolve," she said, "by now I should have found out the great secret."

As she spoke, a tall, thin man came to the table, and laid his hand on d.i.c.k Carleton's shoulder. So doing, he stood looking straight into Madame d'Ambre's face. She started a little, and blushed deeply. Blushes were a great stock-in-trade with Madame d'Ambre. They proved that, unlike Clotilde et Cie., she did not paint her face: that she was altogether a different order of being. But this blush was less successful than usual. It was a flush of annoyance, and showed that she was vexed.

The man was more American in type than Carleton, though indefinably so.

If a critic had been asked how he would know this person to be a New Yorker, even if met wrapped in bearskins at the North Pole, he might have been at a loss to explain. Nevertheless, the dark face with its twinkling, heavily black-lashed blue eyes, its short, wavy black hair turning gray at the temples, its prominent nose and chin, lips and jaws slightly aggressive in their firmness, was the distilled essence of New York. So were the strong, lean figure, and the nervous, virile hands.

"h.e.l.lo, Jim!" exclaimed Carleton, turning quickly at the touch on his shoulder. "I've only played with a dish or two. I was waiting for you, really." He got up, and rather shyly introduced the party to his host of the celebrated Stellamare.

"I have the pleasure of knowing this lady slightly, already," said Schuyler, still fixing Madeleine with his straight, disconcerting gaze.

"Madame d'Ambre?"

"I don't think we knew each other's name. I had the honour of doing a small--a very small--service for Madame, such a service as any man may be allowed to do for a lady at Monte Carlo."

If he laid an emphasis on the last two words, it was hardly strong enough to be noticed, unless by the person most concerned.

"Do sit down with us, and eat the Welsh rabbit Carleton has been talking about," said Hannaford. "This is my show. I shall be delighted, and I'm sure I speak for the ladies."

Madame d'Ambre murmured something, and Mary smiled a more than ordinarily friendly smile; for she knew that this was the distant cousin of whom she had heard from Peter, the "Jim" who, in Molly Maxwell's eyes, was an heroic figure. Peter never tired of telling anecdotes of Jim's wonderful feats of finance, his coolness and daring in times of black panic or perilous uncertainty in Wall Street, his scholarly attainments, of which he never spoke; his pa.s.sion for music and gardens, and other contradictory traits such as no one would have expected in a keen business man. Sometimes Mary had fancied that Peter was a little inclined to fall in love with Jim Schuyler, perhaps because he was one of the few men she knew who did not grovel at her feet. Now Mary looked at the man with intense interest, and could imagine a girl like Molly Maxwell making him her hero, in spite of the difference between their ages. Molly was not twenty-one. He must be thirty-eight or forty, and would have looked hard if it had not been for the blue eyes which might soften dangerously under certain influences.

Mary's first impulse on hearing his name was to cry out, "Why, your cousin Molly Maxwell is my best friend!" But something imperatively stopped her. Deep down under the excitement and pleasure of this adventure into which fate had plunged her, murmured a little voice, saying, "You ought not to have come to this place alone, when they all trusted you to go straight to Florence." And if she were doing wrong and meant to keep on doing wrong, she must not a.s.sociate herself with Saint Ursula-of-the-Lake, in the minds of people here. It would not be fair to the convent and Reverend Mother, not even fair to Aunt Sara and Elinor, who believed her to be journeying obediently toward Florence. Thinking thus, she determined to say nothing of her own life to those she might meet at Monte Carlo. Soon she would go away, and no real harm would have been done to any one. As for this supper, if she had lingering doubts that it was not quite "the thing" to have accepted, the name of Jim Schuyler chased them away like clouds before the sun. It was like being with an old friend to have Peter's cousin there; and d.i.c.k Carleton was staying with him. Mr. Carleton and Captain Hannaford were friends, and Mr. Schuyler evidently knew Madame d'Ambre, so everything had turned out delightfully. Also it was exciting to see how people who came in looked at her and whispered. She could not help knowing that they said, "There's the girl who won so much in the Casino that everybody rushed to her table and applauded."

It was wonderful, intoxicating, to be the heroine of such a place, to have experienced players envy her. She longed for to-morrow morning, so that she might go back to the same table at the Casino, and play on zero and twenty-four again. "I think I shall always make that my game, and go to the same table," she said to herself, with the unconscious egotism and vanity of a child.

"What was that I caught as I arrived, about 'finding out the great secret?'" Schuyler asked, when he sat down at a place made for him on Madame d'Ambre's right hand. Again he fixed his eyes on her, this time with polite interest. "I thought the words sounded familiar. I remember your saying something of the sort, I'm sure, the evening of our first meeting."

"I do not recall it, Monsieur," replied Madeleine.

"It was on the Casino terrace," he went on, reflectively. "I was walking there between the first and second acts of an opera, about a fortnight ago. We met, and you seemed depressed, Madame. It was then I was able to do you that small service."

"I did not think of it as a service," she said, bitterly.

"Ah, now the occasion has come back to you. What, not a service when a lady has a little bottle of poison stuck into her belt, and a man drinks it himself rather than she should keep her threat and swallow it!"

"It was not a threat. I would have drunk the poison and ended everything," she insisted.

"If I hadn't been so selfish and greedy as to take it out of your hand and sample it. Strange it did me no harm. I had a presentiment it wouldn't, somehow. But of course my system may be poison-proof. By the way, isn't that the same pretty little bottle I see now, tucked into your belt! And were you thinking of trying its effect again to-night, if these friends hadn't come in time to cheer you up, and so put off the evil day?"

"You are very cruel to make sport of my tragedy, Monsieur!" Madame d'Ambre exclaimed, her soft wistfulness flas.h.i.+ng into anger. "These sympathetic ones have saved me from myself by their generosity. They have made me happy. Why do you go out of your way to remind me of misery?"

Schuyler's blue eyes twinkled cynically, yet not unkindly. "I quite understand that you can be saved from yourself only by sufficient generosity, Madame," he said. "The question is, what is sufficient? Too much sometimes goes to the head. Far be it from me to upset your cup of happiness. But drink wisely, Madame, in little sips, not in great gulps.

It's better for the health--of all concerned. And the contents of your bottle will no doubt be just as efficacious another time."

"I know what you mean," she flung at him, viperishly. "You have heard of Mademoiselle's luck to-night. You think I mean to take advantage of her.

I would not----"

"Of course not, Madame. You, the widow of a naval officer! Have I accused you of anything?" Schuyler cut her short, with sudden gayety of manner. "I've heard of Mademoiselle's luck. She was pointed out to me by a man I know, as I came in, just before joining you. But as I'm aware that you're a good business woman, my idea is that the advantage you'll take won't amount to more than 5 per cent. More would be usury, and give Mademoiselle an unfavourable idea of Monte Carlo manners."

He spoke with deliberation, allotting each word its full value; and before Madame d'Ambre could leash her rage, he turned to Mary. "Talking of Monte Carlo manners," he took up the theme again, "you mustn't judge hastily. There isn't _one_ Monte Carlo. There are many. I don't suppose you ever saw a c.o.c.ktail of any sort, much less one called the 'rainbow?'

It's in several different coloured layers of liquid, each distinct from the other, as far as taste and appearance are concerned, though they blend together as you drink. It wouldn't do to sip the top layer, and say what the decoction was like, before you absorbed the whole--with discrimination. Well, that c.o.c.ktail's something like Monte Carlo. Only you begin the c.o.c.ktail at the top. In the Monte Carlo rainbow you sometimes begin at the bottom."