The Guests Of Hercules Part 7

His father, Duca di Rienzi, had a strain of stern asceticism in his nature, and even the impulsive, warm-hearted American mother could not wholly redeem from gloom the cold palace in Rome and the dark fourteenth century castle at Monte Della Robbia. Each of these natures had given something to Vanno, and the differences were so strongly marked that his elder brother had said, "to know Vanno was like knowing two men of entirely opposite characters, each struggling for mastery over the other." But even in his asceticism he was ardent. Whatever he did, he did with pa.s.sion and fervour, which he could laugh at as if from a distance sometimes, but could not change. And his ideas of the right life for women were not unlike the ideas of eastern men. Women should be guarded, kept apart from all that was evil or even unpleasant. So the lovely American mother had been guarded, somewhat against her will, by the Duke, and she had died while she was still young. She had never talked to Vanno of women's life and girls' life in her own country, for she had gone to the unseen land while he was still a boy. If she had stayed, perhaps he would not have had to go to the desert for comfort, when he at twenty loved a woman of twenty-eight, who flirted with him until he was half mad, and then married an American millionaire.

The table nearest Mary was not engaged, for it was too early in the evening for a crowd in the Paris restaurant. Vanno signified to a waiter his desire for this table, and was taken to it. He sat down facing Mary, and pretended to study the menu. He hardly knew what he ordered. A waiter was bringing the girl a small bottle of champagne, in an ice-pail. The man cut the wires, and extracted the cork neatly, but with a slight popping sound. Mary started a little, and glancing up at the waiter smiled at him gayly, with a dimple in each cheek. Her big hat was placed jauntily on one side, and the deep blue velvet brim, with the gauzy gold of the soft crown, was extremely striking on the silver-gold waves of her hair. In her wonderful dress, which showed a good deal of white neck, she looked so fas.h.i.+onably sophisticated that Vanno feared the start she gave at the popping of the cork might be affected. He gazed across at her with mingled disapproval and admiration which gave singular intensity to his deep-set, romantic eyes as Mary met them.

She was in a mood to be delighted with everything that happened, and it seemed a charming happening that the handsome young man from Ma.r.s.eilles should have chanced to come to this hotel. It did not occur to her that his coming might not be an accident, and she was pleased to see him again.

Her bringing up, in all that concerned her treatment of men, had been neglected; rather, it had not been given at all. As a schoolgirl she had never met any men except a few mild youths when visiting Lady MacMillan, and then she had never seen them alone. She had thought herself a child, and had behaved as a child, in those days. Then had come her years as a postulant and as a novice. Men had ceased to exist as influences in her life. It had not been necessary to teach her what to do when in their society, for it had seemed improbable that she ever would be. When, at the last moment, she had decided that after all she "had not the vocation," there had been little or no time to prepare her for the world. And she had come out of the convent with no social wisdom except the wisdom of kindness and courtesy to all fellow-beings.

Man was decidedly a fellow-being, and Mary, to whom he was interesting because entirely new, was inclined to be very kind to him, especially when he had the handsome, almost tragic dark face of a Romeo or a young Dante, and eyes like wells of ink into which diamonds had fallen.

She was feeling childishly pleased with herself in her new dress, for she loved beautiful things, and knew next to nothing of suitability, provided the colours were right. By day, one had blouses and skirts, and high-necked frocks. At night, if one were in the world, one wore low gowns. She had learned this from Peter and other girls at school, and also from Lady MacMillan. When there were entertainments at the convent for the pupils, as there were several times each year, the girls put on their prettiest clothes. They had low-necked gowns for the dances, at which their partners were, of course, invariably girls, and they said that, when they "came out," they would have their dresses cut lower and made more fas.h.i.+onably. Of this, the sisters quite approved for their girls, whom they trusted never to do, never to wear, anything immodest.

At Lady MacMillan's, Mary had worn simple evening dress, before she resolved to become a nun; and in London even Aunt Sara and Elinor, with their thin necks, had considered it necessary to display more than their collarbones each night at dinner.

Mary, having little money in her schoolgirl days, had never owned anything very pretty, and now she thought it right and pleasant to make up for lost time. The "Madame" of the shop in the Galerie Charles Trois had earnestly recommended this gown and this hat for dinner and the Casino; therefore Mary was sure that her costume must be as suitable as it was beautiful, and that she was quite "in the picture," in this magnificent room. She admired the lovely, perfumed ladies with wonderful complexions and clothes, at neighbouring tables, and was thankful that she looked not too unlike them. She hoped that she might become acquainted with at least one or two of the prettiest before long, because it must be pleasant to make friends in hotels with other people who were alone like one's self. Peter also had admired the lovely ladies with wonderful complexions and clothes who chose to live in the best hotels at Monte Carlo; but she admired them in a different way, with a kind of fearful fascination. And she had never talked of them to Mary.

One did not talk to Sister Rose of such things.

Mary was glad that the Dante young man (she began to call him thus, for his profile really was like the poet's, and after all too stern for Romeo) could see her in this dress and hat, after having a sight of her first in the tweed, which she had now grown to detest. It really did seem as if he remembered, for he looked at her with a straight look, almost as if he were asking a grave, important question. She was afraid that he must be unhappy, for certainly his eyes were tragic, if they were not reproachful; and of course they couldn't be reproachful, as he didn't know her, and had nothing to be reproachful about.

The waiter who served her was a charming person, with delightful manners, almost like those of the Frenchman who had been kind to her on the way to Paris. He recommended things on the menu, which turned out to be exquisite. They were the most expensive, also, but Mary did not know that. It seemed quite odd that one should have to pay for food at all, for always it had appeared to come as a matter of course, like the air one breathed. When he advised her sympathetically to try a little champagne, refreshed with ice, she would have been grieved to hurt his feelings by refusing, even if she had not rather wanted to know what champagne was like. People in books drank it when they wished to be merry and enjoy themselves, and it made their eyes bright and their cheeks red. Mary had had the chance of reading very few novels, but she recalled this bit of useful knowledge concerning champagne.

She tasted it, and found it nice, deliciously cold and sparkling. No wonder it made the eyes bright! But after all, she could not drink much, though it seemed a shame to waste anything so good. "You can have the rest," she said to the waiter, when she had finished her first gla.s.s. He was surprised, for most ladies, he noticed, could finish two or three gla.s.ses, or even more.

Again the man with the profile of a young Dante was looking at her with the grave, anxious look that puzzled her. She met his eyes for the third or fourth time, and was so sorry for his apparent unhappiness where every one else seemed merry, that she half smiled, very sweetly and gently, as one would smile at a gloomy child.

The man did not return her kindness. An angry flash lit his eyes, and he looked extremely haughty and unapproachable, no longer a lonely figure needing sympathy, but a high personage. Mary lowered her lashes, abashed; and when she did this Vanno, who was on the point of hating her because she was not the white angel he had thought, doubted again, and was more bewildered than ever. Her friendly smile had been sweet, and he, who was here only because of her, had quenched its light! He regretted pa.s.sionately his own ungraciousness, no matter what the girl might be. And she looked so young, her eyes so full of sea and heaven!

On what errand had she come alone to this place? He determined that he would know, and soon.

VII

Mary ordered coffee in the hall, because something of her delight in the gay restaurant had been crushed out by Vanno's snub. She was no longer at peace under his eyes, and wished to avoid meeting them again, so it was pleasanter to go away. But even in the hall she could not forget him, as she had forgotten him after Ma.r.s.eilles. When he too came out from the restaurant, not long after, she saw him, though he was at a distance, saw him without even turning her eyes; and she thought how tall he was, and how much a man, although slender to the point of leanness. He sat on a sofa in the hall, and ordered coffee. Mary knew, though she did not look at him again, and interested herself instead in other people.

All those who came from dinner, except the Prince, drank their coffee and went out. Some went by the front door, taking the direction of the Casino. Others disappeared into an unknown part of the hotel; and so many chose this way, that Mary inquired of a pa.s.sing waiter where they were all going. "To the Casino, Mademoiselle, by the underground pa.s.sage, to avoid the night air," the servant answered.

To the Casino. Everybody was going to the Casino. It was time that Mary should go to the Casino, too. She had brought down her new white cloak with the swansdown collar, and asked a liveried man to put it aside for her while she dined. Now she claimed it again, and having no fear of the "night air," walked out into the azure flood which had overflowed the fantastic fairyland like deep, blue water. The gardens lay drowned in this translucent, magic sea, and the coolness of the sunset hour had been mysteriously followed by a balmy warmth, like the temperature of a summer night in England.

There were as many people in the _Place_ as there had been in the afternoon, and all those who were not sitting on garden seats looking at the Casino were walking toward the Casino, or just coming out of the Casino. The eyes of the big, horned animal were blazing with light, and glared in the blue dusk with the hard, bright stare of the gold eyes in a peac.o.c.k's tail. Windows of the Riviera Palace on the hill above were like orange-coloured lanterns hung against an indigo curtain; and in the _Place_ itself bunches of vivid yellow lights, in globes like illuminated fruit set on tall lamp posts, lit the foreground of the strange picture with unnatural brilliance. Gra.s.s and trees were a vivid, a.r.s.enical green, almost vicious yet beautiful, and the flowers gleamed like resting b.u.t.terflies. The summer warmth of the air had a curiously tonic and exciting quality. It seemed to have gathered into its breath the sea's salt, the luscious sweetness of heavy white datura bells dangling among dark leaves in the gardens, an aromatic tang of pepper trees and eucalyptus, and a vague, haunting perfume of women's hair and laces. These mingling odours, suggested to the senses rather than apprehended by them, mounted to Mary's brain, and set her heartstrings quivering with unknown emotions sweet as pleasure and keen as pain.

As she went slowly down the hotel steps to walk across the _Place_ her eyes held a new expression. When she had first told herself that she could not stay at the convent, they had asked, looking toward the world, "What is life?" Now they said, "I have begun to live, and I will go on, on, no matter where, because I must know what life means."

Her cheeks were burning still from the first champagne she had ever tasted, and the sweet air cooled them pleasantly. Seeing a number of people on benches opposite the Casino, she decided to sit down for a few minutes before going in. None of these benches was empty, but one was unoccupied save for a young man and a girl, who sat at one end. Mary rather timidly took the other corner, but the couple, after giving her a long stare, returned to their conversation as if she were no more than a shadow.

"This is the last, last straw!" the man grumbled, in English. "I thought there was one missing."

"They never forget to add it to the rest," said the girl.

"Not they," he echoed. "And I wasn't doing so badly at one time. I've a mind to apply for the _viatique_."

"I shouldn't have the courage."

"Oh, I should. I'd like to get something out of them. I hate the Riviera, anyhow. There's too much scenery all over the place. No rest for the eye."

"But supposing you change your mind, and want come back and try your luck? You couldn't, if you'd taken the _viatique_."

"Yes I could--when I'd paid it back. It's supposed to be a loan, you know, which you have to repay before you're allowed to play again."

"Oh, I didn't know!"

A group of young men walked past, laughing. "Never saw such a run of luck," said one. "Seventeen on red and I was on it from the first.

Glorious place, Monte! Let's drink its health!"

They turned, stared with interest at Mary, and pa.s.sed on, lowering their voices. She caught the words "something new," but there was no sense in them for her ears. She saw the Dauntreys hurrying to the Casino, with Mrs. Collis and her daughter, and Dodo Wardropp. Two men were with them, both young, and one rather distinguished looking. All were too deeply absorbed in themselves and each other to notice her. The ladies were charmingly dressed, and so were most of the women who pa.s.sed, all going quickly like the figures of a cinematograph; but some were of the strangest possible types. Mary said to herself that they must be infinitely more interesting in their own secret selves than lookers on could ever know. The hidden realities in all these pa.s.sionately egotistic selves came to her as she sat watching, in attractive or repellent flashes of light. Then she lost the secret again, and they became mere puppets in a moving show. The only real thing was the Casino, and she began to study the large bright face of it.

Although Mary had never travelled till now, she knew something of architecture from beautiful pictures of ancient Greece and Rome, and Egypt, and of the world's n.o.blest cathedrals, which decorated the schoolroom walls at St. Ursula's-of-the-Lake. This building, it seemed to her, was of no recognized type of architecture. It was neither cla.s.sic nor Gothic: not Renaissance, Egyptian, nor Moorish. It gave the impression of being a mere fantastic creation of a gay and irresponsible brain. If a confectioner accustomed to work in coloured sugars were to dream of a superlative masterpiece, his exalted fancy might take some such shape as this.

The irregular, cream-coloured facade was broken up into many separate parts by pillars and frenzied ornaments of plaster, and there had been addition after addition, stretching away long and low to the left. A row of large windows, discreetly veiled so that no shadows could be cast from within, glowed with warm yellow light. Their refusal to betray any hint of what pa.s.sed on the other side suggested a hidden crowd busy with some exciting, secret pleasure. Along the cornice of the newer portions at the left of the original Casino were perched bronze youths with golden wings, their hands holding aloft bunches of golden flowers.

Two towers meretriciously mosaiced with coloured tiles balanced the centre of the higher and middle building, and a portico of iron and gla.s.s, ornate yet ba.n.a.l as the architecture of a railway station, protected the carpeted steps and the three large doors which were grouped closely together, doors through which people constantly pa.s.sed in and out like bees at the entrance to a hive. In the pensive sweetness of the semi-tropical night, this fantastic erection in plaster and gilding and coloured ornaments seemed an outrage, a taunt, a purposeful affront; and yet--the very violence of the contrast, its outrageousness, gave it a kind of obsessing charm.

Unseen from where Mary sat, the Mediterranean sighed upon its ancient rocks. A faint breath of the mysteriously perfumed air stirred the exotic palms over her head and made their fronds rub against each other gratingly, as if some secret signal were being carried on from one to another. Turning to right, to left, or to look behind her, dimly seen mountains soared toward a sky that deepened from asphodel to the dark indigo of a star-powdered zenith. Eastward in the distance ran a linked chain of lights along the high road that led to Italy; and a bright cl.u.s.ter like a knot of fireflies, pulsing on the breast of a mountain, marked the old hill-village of Roquebrune. Kindly enveloping nature was so sane and wholesome in her vast wisdom and stillness that the sugar-cake Casino and all its attendant artificialities struck into the brooding peace a shrill note of challenging incongruity. The little sparkling patch of light and colour that was Monte Carlo proclaimed that it was there for some extraordinary and powerful purpose, that its bizarre beauty was dedicated to exceptional uses; and it occurred to Mary that the temple of Chance must after all diverge from every rule of architecture in order to stamp its meaning on the mind. The feverish decorations began to express to her the fever of gambling, and even to create a desire for it. She felt this longing grow more insistent, like strains of exciting music that swelled louder and louder; and suddenly in the midst she seemed to hear Peter's voice saying, "What if it should be true, the thing your father was afraid of?"

What if it were true? How could she tell? In his last terrible letter he had reminded her that she had wild blood in her veins, and told her to "be careful."

She had thought when hearing Peter's descriptions of the Riviera that the gambling part of life there would interest her least of all, but already she was under the spell of the Casino. It drew her toward it, as if Fate sat hiding behind the veiled bright windows, just as Monte Carlo had called irresistibly, forcing her to get out of the train when she had meant to go on. She began to doubt her own nature, her own courage and strength of will. She thought of what was pa.s.sing on the other side of the cream-white walls as if it were a battle into which she was compelled to plunge, and she imagined that thus a young soldier might feel in a first engagement--tremulous, and almost sick with anxiety which was not quite fear.

Her heart beating fast, she jumped up, and crossing the road resolutely mounted the steps which were guarded by tall, fine men in blue livery.

Inside the doors which she had watched so long she found herself entering an outer lobby. Beyond was another, also kept by liveried men.

A room led off this, and Mary could see people leaving their wraps with attendants who stood behind counters. She parted with her cloak, and was given a metal disc bearing a number. Near by, a French couple, who looked like bride and groom, were examining their discs, and telling each other that it would be tempting Providence not to stake money on such numbers as _onze_ and _dix-sept_. At this, Mary glanced again at her bit of metal. Its number was 124. She remembered hearing from Peter that in the game of roulette it was a favourite "tip" to bet on the number representing your age. Peter spurned the idea as silly and childish; but Mary thought it might do to begin with, as she knew nothing better. Her age being twenty-four, she decided to adopt the French bride's suggestion, and bet on the last two numbers cut into her cloak-ticket.

Beyond the second lobby, she pa.s.sed into a vast pillared hall, where men and women, not all in evening dress, were strolling up and down, smoking and chatting, or sitting on leather-covered benches, to stare aimlessly at the promenaders, as if they were tired, or waiting for something to happen.

This hall puzzled Mary, for she had imagined that beyond the two lobbies she would pa.s.s directly into the gambling-rooms. Here were no tables such as Peter had described; and the fact that she must go still farther seemed to increase the mystery or secrecy of the place. Mary hesitated, not knowing which way to turn, for there were several doors under the high galleries that ran the whole length of the hall. This must be the atrium, where, Peter had said, the "guests of Hercules" were accustomed to make rendezvous. It was cool and cla.s.sic, a hall for reflection rather than excitement, as if it were intended for those who wished to plan a new way of playing, or to rest in, between games.

Suddenly a man in livery with a peaked cap threw open a door at the back and past the middle of the hall. From it instantly began to pour a stream of people in evening dress, and as they separated themselves from the tide, they divided into knots of twos and fours.

"Perhaps they gamble in groups, or batches," Mary thought, and her heart sank lest she, being alone, might not be allowed to play. She could not recall anything said by Peter about this; but she went timidly to the door, and asked the man in livery if this were the way "into the Casino."

"It is the way into the theatre," he informed her. "The first act of the opera is just over. Mademoiselle is a stranger then? Those people will go to the roulette and trente et quarante rooms to amuse themselves for half an hour till the beginning of the next act."

"It is the roulette I want, not the opera," Mary heard herself say, as if some one else were speaking.

"Ah, Mademoiselle has her ticket of admission?"

She showed him her _vestiaire_ ticket, and the servant of the Casino was too polite to smile, as he explained that something else was necessary before she would be allowed to enter the gambling-rooms. He pointed toward three swing-doors at the far end of the hall, to the left.

Through two of these, people were going into a room beyond. Through the middle one they were coming out into the atrium; and as the big doors swung rapidly back and forth there were glimpses on the other side of a vast s.p.a.ce full of rich yellow light.

"Those messieurs stationed there would stop Mademoiselle, seeing she was a stranger, and demand her ticket. It is better that she return to the bureau, a room opposite the _vestiaire_ where she has left her cloak."