XI

The first question Mary asked on coming downstairs in the morning was,

"At what hour does the Casino open?"

Ten o'clock, she was told.

It was not yet nine. A long time to wait!

Most people at the Paris breakfasted in their rooms, but never in her

life had Mary eaten breakfast in her bedroom. She went to last night's

table in the great glass window of the restaurant, and was hardly sure

whether she felt relieved or disappointed not to see the young man with

the Dante profile. She did not now think him in the least like Romeo.

From the window, to her surprise, she saw a crowd collecting in front of

the Casino, whose doors were still closed.

"What is the matter?" she asked, almost alarmed, lest there had been an

accident.

"It is the early ones waiting for the doors to open," her waiter

explained. He brought her a poached egg on toast, but a superlative egg,

poached and adorned according to the conception of a French _chef_. The

air with which the silver cover was taken off and the dish shown to Mary

made her feel there was nothing she could do to show her appreciation,

without disappointing the man, unless she bent down and kissed the egg

passionately. Her smile seemed inadequate, and she ate with a worried

fear of seeming ungrateful, especially as she was impelled to hurry,

lest those people in front of the Casino should take all the places at

the tables. She wanted to sit down to gamble, for the strenuous game she

had played last night, with many stakes, would be impossible when

stretching over people's heads.

By half-past nine she was in the crowd, all her money, with the

exception of two hundred pounds she had put by, crushed into her big

beaded hand-bag. She remembered how at Aberdeen the night she went to

the theatre people stood like this, patiently waiting for the pit-door

to open. What did she not remember about that, her first and only visit

to a theatre?

At last the Casino doors yawned, as if they disliked waking up. The

procession rolled toward them, like a determined and vigorous python.

Mary was carried ahead with the rush. She had forgotten that she ought

to have renewed her ticket, but fortunately she was not asked for it;

and as she had come without a wrap, there was nothing to turn her aside

from the rooms.

Once across the threshold of the big Salle Schmidt, the struggle began.

It was not only the young and agile who raced each other to the tables.

Men who looked as if they might have pulled one foot from the grave in

order to reach the Casino, hobbled wildly across the slippery floor.

Fat elderly ladies waddled with indomitable speed, like women tied up in

bags for an obstacle race; and an invalid gentleman, a famous player,

with his attendant--the first to get in--was swept along in a small bath

chair ahead of the crowd, an expression of fierce exhilaration on a

gaunt face white as bleached bone. But the young and healthy gamblers

had an advantage, especially those with long legs.

Only yesterday Mary would have let herself be passed by every one,

rather than push into a place which somebody else wanted. Now, however,

the gambler's fever was in her. Whatever happened, she must get a seat

at the table where she had played last night. To do so was the most

important thing on earth. Slender and tall and long-limbed, she ran like

a young Diana; though not since she had become Sister Rose had she ever

been undignified enough to run. Straight as an arrow she aimed for the

table she wanted, and convulsively seized the back of the last unclaimed

chair. It was grasped at the same instant by a young man of rather

distinguished appearance, who would in other circumstances no doubt have

yielded place to a woman, especially a young and pretty girl. But he too

had the gambler's fever. He struggled with Mary for the chair, and would

have secured it by superior strength if she had not dropped limply into

it as he drew it out for himself.

"Well done!" muttered a woman already settled in a neighbouring seat.

"That's one of the Pretenders to the throne of Portugal."

Instead of being overawed, Mary found herself laughing in the joy of her

triumph. "He can't have this throne, anyhow," she panted, out of breath.

Then she noticed that Lord Dauntrey was with her defeated rival. He had

secured a chair, but getting up, gave it to the royal personage, who was

his paying guest at the Villa Bella Vista. Lord Dauntrey had not seen,

or had not recognized, Mary. He appeared to be more alive than he had

been before, almost a different man. Though his features were stonily

calm as the features of a mask, Mary felt that he was intensely excited,

and completely absorbed in the game about to begin. He had a notebook

over which his sleek brown head and Dom Ferdinand de Trevanna's short

black curls were bent eagerly. It was evident that they had some plan of

play which they were working out together.

It was just as thrilling, Mary thought, to be in the Casino by day as by

night, and even more interesting now, because she knew how to play,

instead of having to depend upon Madame d'Ambre. She had feared that her

too solicitous friend might be lying in wait for her this morning, but

she need have had no anxiety. Madeleine never appeared before noon.

Perhaps she might have made a superhuman effort had there been

reasonable hope of anything to gain. But Madame d'Ambre had learned to

read faces: and Mary's had told her that for a time there was nothing

more to expect. She would be comfortably lazy while her money held out.

Mary's seat was near the spinner, one of the croupiers who had seen her

sensational wins twelve hours ago. He smiled recognition. "Take zero

again, and the neighbours," he mumbled cautiously. "I'll try and make

you win."

Mary wanted to know what "neighbours" meant, and was told hastily that

they were the numbers lying nearest to zero on the wheel.

"But I feel as if twenty-four would come," she objected.

"Very well, if Mademoiselle prefers twenty-four, I will see what I can

do," replied the obliging croupier, like most of his fellow-spinners

wishing to give the impression that he could control the ball.

Twenty-four did not respond to his efforts, but twenty-two was the first

number spun, and as Mary had staked maximums on everything surrounding

her number, she won heavily. Throughout the whole morning luck still

favoured her. She lost sometimes, and her wins were not as sensational

as those of last night, but they made people stare and talk, and added

so many notes to the troublesome contents of her bag that, to the

amusement of everybody, when the time came to go she stuffed gold and

paper into the long gloves she had taken off while playing. Both gloves

were full and bulged out in queer protuberances, like Christmas

stockings. But this was not until nearly two o'clock, when Mary had

grown so hungry that she could no longer concentrate her thoughts upon

the game. Meanwhile, different relays of croupiers and inspectors had

come and gone, and the crowd round the table had changed. Very few

remained of the players who had raced for chairs at the opening hour.

Many had lost and taken themselves off, discouraged; others had a habit

of darting from table to table "for luck"; some had won as much as they

wanted to win, and departed quietly as a man goes home from his office.

But among the few faithful ones were Lord Dauntrey and his royal friend,

who was stared at a good deal, and evidently recognized. By this time

Lord Dauntrey had noticed Mary, his attention being attracted to her by

Dom Ferdinand, but as he had not been introduced to the girl in the

train, he did not bow. The excitement had died from his face, leaving it

gray as the ashes in a burnt-out fire, and his cheeks looked curiously

loose on the bones, as if his muscles had fallen away underneath. Mary

had not taken time to watch his game, but she saw that most of the

silver and gold once neatly piled in front of the two players had

disappeared, and she was afraid that they had lost a good deal. It

seemed unnecessary and almost stupid to her that people should lose. She

did not see why every one could not play as she did.

As she reluctantly rose to go away, driven by hunger, she had to pass

close to Dom Ferdinand and Lord Dauntrey. There was no crowd round the

chairs, as the morning throng had thinned for _déjeuner_, and she heard

Lord Dauntrey say: "I assure you, Monseigneur, it never went as badly as

this on my roulette at home. You saw the records. But nobody can win at

every séance. Don't be discouraged. I'm confident my system's

unbreakable in the end."

It was half-past two when Mary began luncheon, and she had to finish in

a hurry when Schuyler and Carleton called for her with the motor-car.

She was sorry that she had promised to look at anything so irrelevant as

an aeroplane, and felt nervously irritable because she could not at once

go back to her game. She could almost hear the Casino calling her in a

musical, golden voice: "I have something nice to give you. Why don't you

come and take it?" But it was interesting to tell the two men about her

luck of the morning. Each detail of the play was so fascinating to her

that she would hardly have believed it possible for the story to bore

any one else. She did not ask a single question about the remarkable

hydro-aeroplane in which Carleton was to compete for an important prize

next week; nor did she see the pitying smile the men exchanged while she

entertained them with an exact account of how she had staked, what she

had lost, and what she had won. "Poor child!" the look said. But neither

man blamed the girl for her selfish absorption. Both understood the

phase very well, and it was not long since Carleton had lived it down,

thanks to some friendly brutality on Jim's part. As for Schuyler, though

he never played at the Casino, it was because he had played too often

when a younger man, in America. Roulette and trente et quarante bored

him now, though the great game in Wall Street still had power over his

nerves, when he was in the thick of it. One reason that he avoided

society at Monte Carlo and invited few people to his house was because

the constant babble about the "Rooms" and the "tables" exhausted his

vitality, making him feel, as he said, "like a field-mouse in a vacuum."

Sometimes it had seemed to him that, if once again he heard any one say,

"Oh, if only I had played on seventeen!" he would be forced to strike

the offender, or rush away in self-defence.

Already Mary's eyes were losing the starlike clearness of their delight

in all things novel or beautiful. They looked mistily introspective, as

if they were studying some combination going on in the brain behind

them; and when she could not talk about roulette she relapsed at once

into absent-mindedness. But even her absorbed interest in the new

pursuit was not proof against the hydro-aeroplane lurking in its hangar.

It looked wonderful, yet she could not believe that it was able really

to rise out of the water into air.

"I assure you it does, though, and it can run on land, too," said

Carleton, eagerly. "Surely you must have read of Glenn Curtiss and his

_Triad_, that made such a sensation in America? You can ask Jim. He saw

my first successful experiment in the Hudson River six weeks ago."

"And one or two unsuccessful ones, too," laughed Jim. "But I really

think, Miss Grant, that Carleton's got his pet dragon into pretty good

training now, both as a land and water and air animal. I shouldn't

wonder if we'd see something worth seeing nest week at Nice?--and it

will be new on this coast, for there've been no hydro-aeroplanes tried

here before."

"Next week?" echoed Mary. "Shan't I see anything now? I thought Mr.

Carleton meant to go up in the air to-day."

"I hadn't thought of it, but I will if you like. That is, I'll try,"

said Carleton, modestly.

"I--oh, how I should love to go with you!" Mary exclaimed. "Can you

carry people?"

"One passenger at a time, yes. You wouldn't really like it, would you?"

he asked, flushing under the compliment of her trust in him, and

admiring her pluck. "You don't mean that you'd go up with me?"

"I would if you'd take me." Her eyes were shining once more. "It would

be--like all one's most marvellous dreams come true."

"You wouldn't be afraid?"

"Oh, no, not with you."

This was delicious flattery. Carleton promptly fell in love with Mary.

Not to have done so would have been base ingratitude. No woman had ever

paid him so great a compliment. He had thought her bewilderingly pretty

before. Now she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

"You're the bravest girl on earth!" he exclaimed, ardently.

"Better leave her on earth, then," Schuyler said dryly. "We need brave

women."

"There's no danger," Carleton protested with indignation. "Do you think

I'd take her, if I thought there were?"

"Not if you thought there were. And I don't say there is. But Miss

Grant's here without her people----"

"I have no people," Mary cut him short. "Because you can't count aunts,

can you, especially if they dislike you very much?"

Both men laughed.

"I must be your passenger," she said. "Now I've seen the

hydro-aeroplane, I shan't eat or sleep till I've been up in it."

Carleton looked at his host. "You know, at worst she could only get a

wetting if I kept over the sea," he said. "And very likely the _Flying

Fish_ will be cranky and refuse to rise."

"Here's hoping!" mumbled Schuyler. He did not define the exact nature of

his hope, but offered no further objections.

Mary, seeing that she was to have her wish, was anxious to start at

once, and almost surprised at herself for her own courage. But Carleton

explained that she could not "make an ascent," as he laconically called

it, dressed as she was. She must have a small, close fitting hat, and a

veil to tie it firmly down, also a heavy wrap. He had an oilskin coat

which he could lend her, to put over it. Mary was not, however, to be

turned from her desire by small obstacles. She had no very thick coat,

but knew where to buy a lovely moleskin, very long, down to her feet.

She could secure it and be ready in ten minutes if Mr. Schuyler would

send her up the hill in his car. Permission was granted and she went

spinning off with the chauffeur, both Schuyler and Carleton awaiting her

return at the hangar, down on the beach by the harbour.

The "ten minutes" prolonged themselves to twenty, and while they were

slowly passing, three men who had been on the Rock, writing their names

in the visitors' book at the palace, came strolling down the long flight

of paved steps to the harbour. One of these was Captain Hannaford. The

other Englishman was also an officer, Major Norwood, who had known

Hannaford long ago. And the third member of the party was the Maharajah

of Indorwana, an extremely troublesome young Indian royalty who was

"seeing Europe" under the guardianship of his reluctant bear leader,

Norwood. Since the pair had landed at Marseilles, three weeks ago,

Norwood had passed scarcely a peaceful moment by night or day. His

authority over his charge was officially absolute; but in practise it

could only be enforced by violence, which the unfortunate officer had

not yet brought himself to exert. If he did not wish the Maharajah (who

was twenty and had never before been out of his native land) to fall

into some new mischief every hour, he was obliged to find for the youth

a ceaseless succession of amusements. Monte Carlo was to have been but

the affair of a day. The Maharajah, however, had decided differently. He

liked the place, and firmly refused to move. The two had now been

staying for a week at the Metropole, and Major Norwood had telegraphed

to the India Office in London for instructions.

The night before, he had been dragged by his charge to three dances at

open-all-night restaurants, where professionals entertained the

audience. The Maharajah had insisted on learning to dance, his

instructress being an attractive Russian girl; then, as the fun grew

furious, he had forgotten his eastern dignity, and pirouetted for a

wager, with a valuable jar containing a palm. This jar he had promptly

broken, and had not been conciliatory to the proprietor. At five o'clock

he had driven his own car--bought at Marseilles--to Nice, full to

overflowing with his late partners. There had been a slight accident,

and to console the girls for their fright the Maharajah had divided all

his ready money among them. Since then he had had one fight with a

German, whom he had jostled, and who had called him a black man. Major

Norwood had been obliged to use the most nerve-racking exertions to keep

his princeling out of a French prison. Slightly subdued, the Maharajah

had consented to call at the palace at Monaco, to walk through the

beautiful gardens on the Rock with Hannaford, and to visit the Fish

Museum; but there was a yearning for new excitements in his dangerous

dark eyes, and Norwood had been thankful to see Carleton the airman

standing on the beach by his hangar. The two Americans were introduced

to the Indian royalty, and Carleton, not too eagerly, had just begun to

explain the features of his _Flying Fish_, when the big blue car brought

Miss Grant back.

At sight of Mary in a newly bought motor-bonnet, the Maharajah's eyes

lit up. He had seen her the night before at the Casino, and had started

the applause after her first sensational win. Now he asked to be

introduced, and Major Norwood's weary heart sank. Judging from the

expression of the plump olive face, this was going to be another case of

infatuation, and already there had been one on the ship, and one at

Cannes, both of which had necessitated the most delicate diplomacy. The

Maharajah was passionately fond of jewels, and had brought with him from

home some of the finest in his collection, which he intended to wear in

London. But on board ship he had given an emerald worth five hundred

pounds to the pretty young wife of an old Indian judge, who could not

resist accepting it; and at Cannes he had bestowed a diamond aigrette on

a second-rate actress. Major Norwood had tried to get these valuables

back, in vain; and now felt symptoms of heart failure whenever his

charge looked at a beautiful woman.

The Maharajah had an extraordinarily winning manner, however, almost

like that of a dignified child, and his way of speaking English was

engaging. Mary had never seen an East Indian before, and was much

interested to meet one. She gave him her prettiest smiles and looks,

while the other men stood round her, each secretly annoyed to see her

treating a "black fellow" as if he were the equal of a European.

"I'm hanged if I'll stand on ceremony with the chap, if he is some kind

of potentate," Carleton grumbled; and, interrupting the conversation,

asked Mary if she were of the same mind about being his passenger for a

flight.

"Of course!" she answered. But Carleton had not yet stepped into the

hangar when Prince Vanno Della Robbia passed on foot, going to the

palace on the Rock.

He had returned to his hotel after lunching with the curé, had dressed

and, as he was told there might be a small revolution in progress at

Monaco--something worth seeing--he had started out to walk.

The revolution of Monegasques demanding the vote seemed after all not to

be taking place that day; but if Vanno missed the miniature warlike

demonstration he had been promised, at least his walk was not

uneventful. Noticing a group round Carleton's hangar on the beach, he

drew nearer, and to his astonishment saw Mary in a long coat of

moleskin, and a little red motor-bonnet, surrounded by five men, one of

them the somewhat notorious Maharajah of Indorwana. Vanno retreated

hastily, and went on toward the steps which led up to the Rock of

Monaco; but he had not gone far when a combination of sounds stopped

him: the whirr of a propeller and the throb of an engine. Carleton was

evidently on the point of trying his machine, the curious invention

which could be used, it was said, on land as well as in air and on the

water.

Vanno looked back, and saw a biplane on wheels, fitted with a kind of

float. It was moving out of the hangar, down an inclined plane that

bridged the beach as far as the water's edge. In the aviator's seat sat

Dick, and behind him the red motor-bonnet was decorative as a flower.

She was going with Carleton! Vanno had hardly time to realize that he

had seen her, before the hydro-aeroplane ran, rather than plunged, into

the water. It ploughed deeply and almost painfully for the first moment,

sending up a great spout of foam like an immense plume of spun glass;

but as Carleton increased the speed daringly, his _Flying Fish_ rose

higher on the little waves, the float barely skimming the surface of the

water. The aviator tilted the control, as if to watch the action, and

suddenly, to the amazement of all the spectators, what had been an

unusual looking double-decked motor-boat sprang out of the harbour into

the air. It rose gracefully and gradually to a height of perhaps four

hundred feet, flying as if it aimed straight for the far-distant

pearl-cluster of Bordighera, on the Italian coast.

Vanno had an extraordinary sensation, as if his heart stopped beating,

and as if at the same time an iron band across his chest stopped the

expansion of his lungs. It was such a sensation as a man might have in

the moment of death, and it was so unlike anything he had ever felt

before that, for a few seconds of physical agony, he asked himself

dazedly what was the matter. Then, suddenly, he knew that he was

afraid--afraid for the girl. And he hated Carleton for risking her life.

He felt a savage longing to do the young airman some bodily injury as a

punishment for what he, Vanno, was made to suffer.

The relief was so great when the _Flying Fish_ dropped slowly down and

settled again into the water that Vanno was slightly giddy with the rush

of blood through his veins. He watched the hydro-aeroplane turn and head

back for the mouth of Monaco harbour; and it seemed to him that he had

lived through years in a few minutes, as one can have a lifetime's

experience in one short dream. He sickened as he thought what would be

his feelings now if the machine had fallen and turned over, too far off

for any hope of rescue from land. If those "eyes like stars" had been

closed until eternity, with no hope that he could ever learn the secret

of the soul behind them, nothing the future might have to give could

make up for the loss. It was only when the _Flying Fish_ swam safely

into the harbour that Vanno remembered his irritation at seeing Mary

with all those men, the only woman among them. After what he had gone

through since then, this annoyance seemed a ridiculously small thing;

but no sooner was she on land again, received with acclamations from

her new friends and applause by the crowd which had quickly collected,

than Vanno felt the same tingling anger.

The girl was making herself notorious! At this rate she would be talked

of everywhere. Strangers would snapshot her as she passed. Her picture

would be for sale on one of those Monte Carlo postcards of celebrities

which were newly taken every day; she would be in the local English

illustrated newspaper. He walked off quickly, with his head down, so as

to lose himself in the crowd and not be seen by Mary or her companions.

She was pale as a drowned girl when Carleton and Hannaford helped her

out of the oilskin which had protected her new fur cloak; and never,

perhaps, had she been so beautiful. There was something unearthly about

her, as if she had seen a vision and the blinding light of it still

shone white upon her face. As he touched her, Hannaford felt a thrill as

of new life go through him. By his own wild recklessness he had spoilt

his career and put himself, so he believed, beyond the pale of any

woman's love. He had thought that he had trained himself not to care;

but in that instant, while Mary, dazed by her vision, almost hung in his

arms and Carleton's, he knew that he was as other men. He wondered why

last night she had meant no more to him than a pretty new face at Monte

Carlo, a rather amusing problem which would soon lose its abstruse

charm. It was like tearing out a live nerve to feel that she could think

of him only with disgust or maybe horror. Yet he knew that, now he had

seen her face with the wonderful light on it, he would have to try and

win something from her, if only pity. The idea came to him that she and

he, and these men with them, and Madeleine d'Ambre, and others who would

gather round the beautiful and lucky player, were figures being woven

into a web of tapestry together; that they were forced to group

themselves as the weaver of the web decreed. He saw his own figure woven

into an obscure and shadowy corner far from that of Mary, and, rebelling

against the choice of the weaver, wished to tear the tapestry in pieces.

But the next moment he was ready to smile at himself with the quiet,

cynical smile which had become familiar to all those who knew him.

"Nothing is tragic unless you think so," he said to himself. Yet he

could not put out of his mind the fancy of the web with figure after

figure being woven into it, against the background of sea and mountain.

It was not unlike the idea which had come to Peter in a half-waking

dream the night after Mary went away. And at the convent in the north of

Scotland the same thought still came back to Peter, though no news had

yet been received there from Monte Carlo.

"Were you afraid?" the Maharajah of Indorwana asked Mary, as the colour

slowly flowed back to her face.

"No," she said, dreamily, "not afraid. But it was like dying and going

to another world. When we were rushing through the water with the loud

noise of machinery in our ears, and the glassy screen of spray over our

heads, I lost my breath. I couldn't think clearly; but I supposed that

was all. I couldn't believe we should go up. But then came the spring,

and we were in the air, bounding higher--it was like something imagined

after death. And the rest was being in heaven, till we began to drop.

Then, just for a few seconds, it felt as if my body were falling and

leaving my soul poised up there in the sky. I shall never forget--never.

And when the time does come to die, I don't believe I shall mind now,

for I know it will be like that, with the wonder of it after the

shrinking is over."

Hannaford looked at her closely as she spoke. He was continually

thinking of death as a dark room, behind a shut door which he would

perhaps choose to open. He felt that he would like to talk to her some

day about what she really expected to find on the other side of the

door.

Nothing else was quite real to him in the scene, when everybody pressed

round Carleton, congratulating him on his machine and the exploit of

which the airman seemed to think little. It was not real when Schuyler

invited Hannaford and his two companions to crowd into the big car, and

be spun up the hill to Monte Carlo. He remembered the illumined look on

Mary's face (though it was gone now) and the faint ray of hope it had

sent into that secret place where his real self lived wearily.