Affairs of State Part 20

"What a shame that the tradition should be broken!"

"On the contrary, I bless the circ.u.mstance that shattered it. Do you know, Miss Rushford, I have never before realised what a tremendously lucky fellow I am? I must pour a libation to the G.o.d of chance!"

"It's a G.o.ddess, isn't it?" she asked, and regretted the question the next instant.

"You are right," he agreed, his eyes blazing. "A G.o.ddess! You have found the word. A G.o.ddess! And such a G.o.ddess!"

Fortunately, they had reached the end of the promenade, and as they paused at the bal.u.s.trade, Nell and Lord Vernon joined them, saving Susie from a situation which had slipped entirely beyond her control.

Evidently Nell, too, had been having her difficulties, for she telegraphed her sister a desire to change places. So, on the homeward journey, despite the very apparent unwillingness of the men, Sue walked beside the invalid chair and Nell accompanied the Prince; and while both seemed gay enough--even unnaturally gay, perhaps--I dare say they found that the situation had lost a certain interest; for every danger has its fascination, every hazard its piquancy.

"I am not sure," observed Susie, reflectively, as they went up the stair together, "that I approve of princes. They are too self-a.s.sured; they carry things with too high a hand. They are evidently too much accustomed to having their own way."

"It seems to be a characteristic of lords, also," said Nell, with a little sigh.

"What they need is a vigorous calling down. Well, that ought not to be so difficult!" and the dark eyes snapped ominously.

"Though, perhaps, it's hardly worth the trouble," suggested Nell.

"Perhaps not," a.s.sented her sister; but half an hour later she waylaid her father to give him her commands. "Dad," she said, "if the Prince of Markeld asks you for permission to call, you'll tell him he may. It's just one of these odious Old World customs."

"So I judged," smiled her father. "He seems a nice fellow, and so when he asked me ten minutes ago, I told him we'd be glad to see him."

"Did--did he mention any particular time?" faltered Sue.

"Why, yes, now I think of it, I believe he said something about this evening."

"Oh!" gasped Susie, and then closed her lips tightly together. "Well,"

she said to herself, as she turned away, "he hasn't lost any time, to be sure! I'm afraid he's worse than I thought!"

CHAPTER XII

Events of the Night

Life at Weet-sur-Mer, as at most other places of its cla.s.s, swung in a round prescribed by custom, as fixed and predestined as the courses of the stars. In the late morning occurred the promenade, taken as a brisk const.i.tutional by a few, but by the great majority as a languid stroll designed to create an appet.i.te for luncheon. That meal was followed by a period of torpor, then every one sought the beach--the high, the low; the rich, the poor; the dowdy and the well-dressed; the virgin in white and the cocotte in scarlet; the thin and the obese; the French, the Dutch, the Italian--yea, and the angular English, for Weet-sur-Mer attracted a crowd as hybrid as its name! There they amused themselves each after his own fas.h.i.+on, with dignity or abandon, as the case might be. They could not be said to mingle in the way that an American crowd would have done under like circ.u.mstances--the elements of society in an aristocratic country are as incapable of mingling as oil and water. The oil floated placidly on top, while the water disported itself contentedly beneath.

The oil, to preserve the simile, consisted, in the first place, of a number of self-important individuals stalking solemnly up and down, seemingly unconscious of the fact that they were not as solitary as Crusoe; and, in the second place, of certain solid, cohesive groups, presenting to the world a front as impenetrable and threatening as any Austrian phalanx, and guarding in their midst two or three young girls who must, at any hazard, be kept unspotted from the world. Strange to say, the girls appeared contented, even happy; the position seemed to them, no doubt, the normal one for them to occupy--and they could, of course, look forward with certainty to the opening of the prison door when a marriage should be arranged for them. They order this matter better in Europe; or, at least, differently, for there, as a discerning observer has pointed out, marriage means always that a woman is taken down from the shelf, while with us, alas, too often! that she is placed upon it, never to be removed!

To this cla.s.s, too, belonged certain obese women and emaciated men sitting, in couples, under the gay sunshades with which the beach was bright. The women were dressed always in gowns which, however ornate, were not quite new, not quite fresh, not quite clean; and the black coats of the men were a little s.h.i.+ny at the elbow, a little faded at the seams. But madame still took care to preserve such figure as unkind fate had left her; and monsieur still kept his moustaches waxed to a needle's point; and they sat there together, quite immovable, for hours at a time, staring drearily out toward the horizon, meditating, no doubt, over past glories, or arranging some coup by which their fortunes might be retrieved. Pride will slip from them gradually, as the years pa.s.s; madame will abandon her figure and monsieur his moustaches, and they will end their days miserably in some second- or third-rate pension--even, perhaps, the Maison Vauquer!

The water was more interesting, being at once more natural and lively.

With it there was no question of maintaining the equilibrium of its position; there was no need of air or artifice; there was none of that heartburning with which the latest Pontifical Princess smilingly swallows the insolence of the descendant (a la main gauche) of the Great Henri, happy to have been noticed, even though to be noticed meant inevitably to be snubbed. There was a freedom about the water, an honest vulgarity, a quality as of Rabelais, refres.h.i.+ngly in contrast with the hot-house manners and morals of the haute n.o.blesse. Madame need not hesitate to cross her legs, if she found that att.i.tude comfortable; monsieur could at once remove coat, waist-coat, collar, cuffs, if he found the weather warm.

Families whose size testified to their bourgeois respectability, lolled in happy promiscuity upon the sands; the children constructed forts or ca.n.a.ls, the women tore some neighbour's reputation to pieces, the men lay back lazily and smoked and kept an eye out for the bathers.

There were always many scores of them, belonging princ.i.p.ally to that strange and tragic half-world which hangs suspended, like Mahomet's coffin, between earth and heaven, or, at least, between ma.s.s and cla.s.s, and which stretches out its tentacles and sucks nourishment from both.

These with a regularity almost religious, spent an hour of every day, weather permitting, splas.h.i.+ng in the gentle surf or posing on the beach in costumes more or less revealing, according to the contour of the wearer. The climax of the afternoon, the coup-de-theatre which all awaited, was the appearance of Mlle. Paul, late of the Varietes. This was such a masterpiece in its way that it is worth pausing a moment to describe.

Suddenly the door of her bathing-machine, which has been drawn just to the water's edge, is flung open, and she appears on the threshold, wrapped in a white sheet with a red border, producing a toga-like effect not ungraceful. She hesitates an instant, and casts a startled glance over the crowd of onlookers, then trips modestly down the steps. With a little frisson, she casts the sheet from her and stands revealed--well, perhaps not quite as Eve was to Adam, but so nearly so that the difference is scarcely worth remarking. She glances down at her shapely legs and then again at the entranced spectators.

"C'est convenable, j'espere hein?" she murmurs, and her bald-headed cicisbeo, who has taken possession of her sheet, hastens to a.s.sure her that all is well.

Whereupon, her doubts thus happily set at rest, she wades out to the diving-board, mounts it leisurely, stands poised for an instant at the outermost end, and then dives gracefully into the expectant billows.

This she does at intervals for perhaps an hour, the supreme instant for the onlookers being that in which her glowing body, s.h.i.+mmering white through its single clinging garment, is outlined in mid-air against the sky. But finally Mademoiselle grows weary and returns to her machine, where the gallant and attentive gentleman previously referred to patiently awaits her--deus ex machina in more senses than one! The other bathers gradually disappear and the crowd melts imperceptibly away. The show is over.

But though all this was no doubt sufficiently diverting, Weet-sur-Mer was never gloriously, aggressively awake until the sun went down. The diversions of the day depended wholly upon the weather--a dash of rain, a wind from the north, and, pouf! they were not thought of.

Not so the festivities of the night. Nothing short of an earthquake could interfere with them. It was for the night that most of the sojourners at Weet-sur-Mer existed; it was for them, in turn, that the place itself existed! With these worthies, the first serious business of the day was dressing for dinner. As darkness came, a stir of life thrilled through the place from end to end. Rows and cl.u.s.ters of electric lights, many-sized and many-coloured, flashed out at the Casino, in the hotels, along the Digue. Women donned their evening gowns, thankful for handsome shoulders; got out their diamonds, real and paste, their rouge, cosmetics, what not; prepared to go forth and conquer, to play the old, old game which, by the calm light of the morning, seems so flat and savourless! Oh, what would it be without wine and lights and jewels and soft gowns, without warmth and music and perfume, without the suggestive, sensual darkness closing it in!

At the Casino presently spins the wheel of fortune--named in very mockery!--and it is there that one may gaze unrebuked into the most alluring eyes, may see the reddest lips and whitest shoulders;--creme de la creme of all in that smaller room upstairs, arranged for those whose jaded appet.i.tes demand some extra tickling; where no wager may be laid for less than a hundred francs, and for as much more as you please, monsieur, madame, provided only that you have it with you! Too bad that the immortal soul has no longer a money value, or how many would ornament that crowded table in the course of an evening's play!

But there; let a single glimpse of this tawdry, perfumed, fevered h.e.l.l suffice us, even as it did Archibald Rushford on the first night of his stay at Weet-sur-Mer, and let us go out, as he did, into the pure night, and stand uncovered under the bright stars until the cool breeze from the ocean has washed us clean again, and turning our backs forever upon the Casino and its habitues, retrace our steps along the Digue to the Grand Hotel Royal.

In apartment A de luxe, a man with flushed face and rumpled hair was stamping nervously up and down. It required a second glance to recognise in him that usually well-groomed and self-possessed individual known as Lord Vernon. Two others were watching his movements with scarcely concealed anxiety--Collins leaning against the window with folded arms, Blake seated at a table with an open despatch-box before him.

"Hang it all, fellows," he was saying, "don't you see what a pickle it puts me in? I was a fool to fall in with the idea--I was actually silly enough to think it would be fun!"

"Of course," put in Collins, in his smoothest tone, "n.o.body could foresee the presence of this American Diana."

Vernon shot him a quick glance.

"Be mighty careful what you say, my friend," he warned him, "or I'll chuck the whole thing."

"Oh, you can't do that!" protested Blake. "You've got to carry it through! You can't back out now!"

"Can't I?" said Vernon, with a grim little laugh. "Don't be too certain!

Suppose she finds it out? Pretty figure I'll cut, won't I?"

"But how _can_ she find it out? In four or five days, you can tell her the whole story--you'll figure as a sort of hero of romance--"

"Yes--penny-dreadful romance--backstairs romance. The more I think of it, the less I like it. Diplomacy or no diplomacy, we're playing Markeld a dirty trick--that's the only expression that describes it. He's a nice fellow and we ought to treat him fairly."

Collins shrugged his shoulders as he turned away to the window and lighted a cigarette.

"You said something of the same sort yesterday, I believe," he remarked, negligently.

"Yes--and I meant it then" as I mean it now. Markeld has the right to expect decent treatment at our hands."

"Rather late in the day to take that ground," retorted Collins.

"Late or not, I do take it," answered Vernon, pausing an instant in his walk to emphasise the words.

"I see," said Collins, drily, "it's a sort of moral awakening--a quickening of conscience--the kind of thing we are all so proud of displaying. Pity it didn't come before we started for this place."