Life was not running on oiled wheels at the Villa Bella Vista.
A spirit of discontent, a feeling that they had been lured to the house
under false pretences, grew among Lady Dauntrey's visitors and was
expressed stealthily, a word here, a word there, and sullen looks behind
the backs of host and hostess. Even on the first day disappointment
began to wriggle from guest to guest, like a little cold, sharp-nosed
snake, leaving its clammy trail wherever it passed.
In the first place the villa, which had been described glowingly by Lady
Dauntrey to the Collises and Dodo Wardropp, was not what she had painted
it. Indeed, as Dodo remarked to Miss Collis, it was not what any one had
painted it, at least within the memory of man. Once it had been a rich
gold colour, but many seasons of neglect had tarnished the gold to a
freckled brown, which even the flowering creepers that should have
cloaked it seemed to dislike. In depression they had shed most of their
leaves; and bare serpent-branches, which might be purple with wistaria
in the late spring long after everybody had gone to the north, coiled
dismally over the fanlike roof of dirty glass that sheltered a
blistered front door. Inside, a faint odour of mouldiness hung in the
air of the rooms, which had been shut up unoccupied for a long time. The
ugly drab curtains in the drawing-room smelled of the moth-powder in
which they had been wrapped through the summer heat. The imitation lace
drapery underneath them had been torn and not mended. Bits of thick
brown paper pasted over the windows during the hot months still stuck to
the glass. The furniture was heavy, not old but middle-aged, lacking the
charm of antiquity, and in the worst French taste. The pictures were
banal; and there was no garden. More painful than all, the house was in
the Condamine; and Dodo, when she had spent a few days at "Monte" on her
way to England from Australia, had been told that "nobody who was
anybody lived down in the Condamine: only the 'cheap people' went
there." And Dodo did not consider herself a cheap person. She was paying
high to be the guest of a "lady of title": she wanted her money's worth,
and soon began to fear that there was doubt of getting it.
Servants had been engaged in advance for Lady Dauntrey by the agent who
had let the house. There were too few; and it needed but the first
night's dinner to prove that the cook was third rate, though Lady
Dauntrey carefully referred to him as the _chef_. In addition to this
person, occasionally seen flitting about in a dingy white cap, there was
a man to wait at table and open the door--a man, Dodo said, with the
face of a sulky codfish; and a hawk-nosed, hollow-cheeked woman to "do
the rooms" and act as maid to the ladies, none of the three having
brought a maid of her own. Their hostess had said she could not put up
her guests' servants, but they might "count upon a first-rate maid in
the house." They reminded each other of this promise, the day after
their arrival, and grumbled. Secundina had as much as she could do to
keep the rooms in order; and the only other service she was able to give
the visitors was to recount gruesome stories of the villa while she made
their beds or took a top layer of dust off their dressing-tables.
According to her, the Bella Vista was the cheapest furnished house to
let in the principality, because years ago a murder had been committed
in it. A woman had been killed for the sake of her jewels by the
tenants, a husband and wife. They had kept her body in a trunk for days,
and had attempted to get out of France with it, but had been arrested on
their way to Italy. Nobody who was superstitious would live in the
house, and so it was not often let. Secundina did not know where the
murder had taken place, but believed it was in the dining-room, and that
the trunk had been kept in the cellar.
It was Dodo to whom the tale was told, and she repeated it to Mrs.
Collis and her daughter, the three having forgotten their slight
differences in making common, secret cause against the Dauntreys, or,
rather, against Lady Dauntrey; for they were inclined to like and be
sorry for her husband, pitying him because misfortune or weakness had
brought him to the pass of marrying such a woman. "You could make a
whole macadamized road out of her heart," remarked Mrs. Collis.
"It would serve her right if we all marched out of this loathsome den in
a body," said Dodo, emphatically, when they had met to talk things over
in the Collises' room. "She's a selfish cat and thinks of nobody but
herself. She won't even let the men come near us girls if she can help
it, though you and I both know perfectly well, Miss Collis, that she
hinted about the most wonderful chances of great marriages, nothing
lower than an earl at meanest. Not that you and I need look for
husbands. But that isn't the point; for anyhow, she has no business to
snap them out of our mouths. Now, she's jealous if Dom Ferdinand or the
Marquis de Casablanca so much as looks at one of us. And she's given us
the worst rooms, so she can take in other poor deluded creatures and get
more money out of them. And there isn't enough to eat. And all the eggs
and fish have had a past. And Secundina says there are black beetles as
large as chestnuts in the kitchen. Still----"
"Still," echoed Miss Collis, "Monseigneur's awfully interesting, and
it's fun being in the same house with him; though I'm afraid he's
selfish too, or he wouldn't calmly keep on his front room, when he can't
help knowing we're stuffed into back ones without any view. Of course he
_is_ a royalty, so perhaps he has his dignity to think of. But I know
an American man wouldn't do such a thing, not even if he were a
President."
"The Marquis is nice, too," said Mrs. Collis. "Lord Dauntrey tells me
his family's one of the oldest in the 'Almanach de Gotha,' whatever
_that_ is. And Monseigneur and he are both great friends of the
Dauntreys."
"Only of Lord Dauntrey," Dodo corrected her.
"Well, anyhow, they're likely to stay a while in this house, for
whatever there is of the best, they get. And they're playing Lord
Dauntrey's system with him at the Casino."
"And losing!"
"Yes. But Dom Ferdinand seems to have plenty of money."
"Secundina says the _chef_ told her it was well known that Monseigneur
hasn't a sou of his own, but borrows of people who believe in his Cause.
Then he comes here and gambles with what he gets. According to the cook,
he's a well-known figure at Monte Carlo, and sometimes calls out when
he's playing in the Rooms, 'There's my cousin's head on that gold piece.
It ought to be mine.'"
"His is a mighty good-looking head, anyhow," remarked Miss Collis
thoughtfully. She herself was not rich, but her stepfather, a Chicago
merchant, was enormously wealthy, and she was wondering whether, to give
her a chance of possible queenhood, David Collis might not open his
heart and his purse.
Dodo was at the same time asking herself what would be the smallest sum
Dom Ferdinand would consider worth looking at with a wife. Also she
contemplated the idea of impressing him with the belief that she was a
great heiress, until too late for him to change his mind in honour. But
first he must fix his mind upon her. She would have been glad to create
distrust of him in the hearts of Lottie Collis and her mother; and while
they remained at the Bella Vista in Dom Ferdinand's society Dodo decided
not to be frightened away by a few inconveniences. Nor did she wish the
story of that long-ago murder to reach his ears. Dom Ferdinand had
publicly announced that he was horribly superstitious, and perhaps he
would not stay if he knew what had happened in the dining-room. He would
think it brought bad luck to live in such a house, even if he could bear
the idea of a ghost; for he talked of little else than what one ought to
do in order to attract luck.
After a few days at Monte Carlo Lord Dauntrey began to find
acquaintances, people he had known long ago in England before he was
swallowed up in darkest Africa, or those he had met at hotels since his
marriage--hotels chosen by Lady Dauntrey for the purpose of making
useful friends. He had a certain wistful, weary charm of manner that was
somehow likable and aroused sympathy, especially in women, though it was
evident that he made no conscious effort to please.
There was a vague, floating rumour of some old, more than half-forgotten
scandal about him: an accident, giving the wrong drug when he was
studying medicine as a very young man; a death; a sad story hushed up; a
prudent disappearance from Europe, urged by annoyed aristocratic
relatives who had little money to speed his departure, but gave what
they could; professional failure in South Africa; some gambling-trouble
in Johannesburg, and a vanishing again into the unknown. Nevertheless
his title was an old one. Men of his race had loomed great in dim
historic days, and though during the last two centuries no Dauntrey had
done anything notable except lose money, sell land, go bankrupt, figure
in divorce cases or card scandals, and marry actresses, they had never
in their degeneration lost that charm which, in Charles II's day, had
won from a pretty Duchess the nickname of the "darling Dauntreys."
The present viscount was the last and perhaps the least of his race;
yet, because of his name and the lingering charm--like the sad perfume
of _pot-pourri_ clinging to a broken jar--he would have been given the
prodigal's welcome at Monte Carlo (that agreeable pound for lost
reputations) but for one drawback. The stumbling block was the woman he
had made Lady Dauntrey.
In the permanent English colony on the Riviera, with its jewelled
sprinkling of American millionaires and its glittering fringe of foreign
notables, there are a few charming women upon whom depends the fate of
newcomers. These great ladies turned down their thumbs when with
experienced eyes they looked upon Lord Dauntrey's wife, when their
trained ears heard her voice, with its curiously foreign, slightly rough
accent.
Nobody wanted or intended to turn an uncompromising back upon her. Lord
Dauntrey and she could be invited to big entertainments--the mid-season
"squashes" which wiped off boring obligations, paid compliments quickly
and easily, and pleased the outer circles of acquaintanceship. But for
intimate things, little luncheons and little dinners to the elect, she
would not "do"; which was a pity--because as a bachelor Lord Dauntrey
might have been furbished up and made to do quite well. As things stood,
the best that could happen to the pair, if they were found to play
bridge well, was to be asked to the bridge parties of the great; while
for other entertainments they would have to depend on outsiders to whom
a title was a title, no matter how tarnished or how tattered.
As Rose Winter had said to Carleton, "Who _isn't_ Who, if they can play
bridge?" But it had been important for Lady Dauntrey's plans not to be
received on sufferance. She had meant and expected to be some one in
particular. In the South African past of which people here knew nothing,
but began to gossip much, it had been her dream to marry a man who could
lead her at once to the drawing-room floor of society, and she saw no
reason in herself why she should not be a shining light there. She knew
that she was handsome, and fascinating to men, and while using her gifts
as best she could, always she had burned with an almost fierce desire
to make more of them, to be a beauty and a social star, like those women
of whom she read in the "society columns" of month-old London papers,
women not half as attractive as she. She had felt in herself the
qualities necessary for success in a different world from any she had
known; and because, during a period when she was a touring actress she
had played the parts of great ladies, she had told herself confidently
that she would know without any other teaching how great ladies should
talk, behave, and dress.
"Who _was_ she?" people asked each other, of course, when she and her
husband appeared at Monte Carlo in the beginning of the season, and Lord
Dauntrey began quietly, unobtrusively, to remind old acquaintances of
his own or of his dead uncle's (the last viscount's) existence. Nobody
could answer that question; but "_What_ was she?" seemed simpler of
solution as a puzzle, at least in a negative way; for certainly she was
not a lady. And one or two Americans who had lived in the South of their
own country insisted that she had a "touch of the tar brush." She
confessed to having passed some years in South Africa, "in the country a
good deal of the time." And something was said by gossips who did not
know much, about a first husband who had been "a doctor in some
God-forsaken hole." Perhaps that was true, people told each other; and
if so, it explained how she and Dauntrey had met; because it was
generally understood that he had been, or tried to be, a doctor in
South Africa. Thus the story went round that he had been her late
husband's assistant, and had married her when she was free.
Even the first ten days in Monte Carlo showed Lady Dauntrey that her
brilliant scheme for the season was doomed to failure: and that heart of
hers, out of which Mrs. Collis said a whole macadamized road might be
made, grew sick with disappointment and anxiety.
She had married Dauntrey--almost forced him to marry her, in fact, by
fanning the dying embers of his chivalry--because she expected through
him to realize her ambitions. Under this motive lay another--an almost
savage love, not unlike the love for an Apache of the female of his
kind. Only, Dauntrey was not an Apache at heart, and Eve Ruthven was.
Eve, of course, was not her real name. She had been Emma Cotton until
she went on the stage twenty years ago, at sixteen; but she was the type
of woman who admires and takes the name of Eve. And Mrs. Ruthven she had
been as wife and widow after the theatrical career had been abandoned in
disaster. Something in her nature would have yearned toward Dauntrey if
he had had nothing to recommend him to her ambition; but she would have
resisted her own inclination for a penniless man without a title.
What money there was between them had been saved in one way or other by
her; but, as Dodo Wardropp surmised, there was far less than Mrs.
Ruthven had persuaded Lord Dauntrey to believe. At first she had worked
upon the overmastering passion of his nature, where most other loves and
desires were burnt out or broken down: the passion for gambling. He had
told her about the roulette system which he had invented, a wonderful
system, in practising which with a roulette watch or a toy wheel, he had
managed to get through dreadful years of banishment, without dying of
boredom. She had encouraged him to hope that with her money they would
have enough capital to play the system successfully at Monte Carlo, and
win fortune in a way which for long had been the dream of his life, as
hers had been to become a personage in "real society."
With five thousand pounds, Lord Dauntrey was confident that he could win
through the worst possible slide the system was likely to experience,
playing with louis stakes. Mrs. Ruthven mentioned that she had eight
thousand pounds. After he had asked her to marry him, and she had said
yes, and told everybody she knew, about the engagement--including
newspaper men in Johannesburg--Dauntrey discovered that the figure she
had mentioned was in hundreds, not thousands. But she sobbed out a
passionate confession, saying she had lied because she loved him: and
they could still go to Monte Carlo, with a plan she had, and try the
system with five-franc pieces instead of louis.
It was a long time since any one had loved Dauntrey. He was lonely, and
hated to hurt a woman. Besides, five-franc pieces were better than
nothing, and he was sick to death of South Africa.
They had got through the spring and summer in England partly on their
wits, partly through impressing landlords and travelling nonentities
with their social importance, and partly through their successes at
bridge. For they both played bridge extremely well, too well, it had
once or twice been said of Lord Dauntrey in South Africa.
Lady Dauntrey's "plan" was to get together as many paying guests as
possible, enlist their interest in the "system," or, if they could not
be persuaded into that, to earn for herself something even better than
board-money, by introducing rich girls to men of title. She had not
doubted her opportunities for thrusting her female pigeons into society,
or of getting hold of young foreign aristocrats, perhaps even
Englishmen, who were "out for dollars," as her girls would be out for
dukes--or the next best thing after dukes. And she had begun well.
The house she had secured was cheap; and she brought with her from
England three women who would alone pay more than enough to keep it up.
Her husband's friend, Dom Ferdinand de Trevanna, and his faithful
follower, the Marquis de Casablanca, had fulfilled a promise to meet
them at Monte Carlo on the day after their arrival at the villa. Several
other guests were expected--the young widow of a rich stockbroker; two
Jewish heiresses who still called themselves girls; an elderly,
impecunious English earl; an Austrian count who had failed to find a
wife in England, and a naval lieutenant who was heir to an impoverished
baronetcy: a set of people sure to be congenial, because each wanted
something which another could give. Everything ought to have been
satisfactory, even from Dauntrey's point of view, for he had interested
all the men in his system, and what money they could spare would be put
into it; he would play for the "syndicate"; or if the men preferred
gambling themselves, they must give him something for the system which
he was prepared to teach.
When she arrived at Monte Carlo on a beautiful day of sunshine, which
seemed a good omen, Eve Dauntrey believed that at last luck had turned
for her. She thought that the thing she had longed for, year after year,
was coming at last; and she was proud of the plan she had made, proud of
the way in which she had worked it out. But the moment she entered the
villa in the Condamine, her spirits were damped almost as if, by some
monkey-trick, a jug of cold water had been upset on her head as the door
opened to let her in. She felt the same depression fall upon the minds
of the others, as shadows can be seen to move and grow long at sunset.
She knew that the Collises and Dodo Wardropp were going to be
dissatisfied, and that they would talk against the house and their
accommodation in it, behind her back, saying that she had deliberately
deceived them.
Still, there were Dom Ferdinand and Casablanca. There was no deceit
where they were concerned. They wanted to meet girls with money, and
Dodo and Lottie wanted to meet men of title. There ought to be no danger
that any members of this party would leave solely because the cooking
was poor and the rooms badly furnished; and it was really Eve's wish to
throw the four together, so that they need not miss certain things which
lacked in her promised programme. But she had counted without herself.
It was not in her to surrender any men who might be near, to other
women, even when surrendering them would be to her advantage. In her
heart she despised Lottie Collis and Dodo Wardropp, and she had to try
her own weapons against theirs. She could not help this, and did it
almost unconsciously.
Throughout her whole life since she was fifteen she had lived by and
sometimes fallen by the fascination she had for men; not all men, but
many, and most of those whose type appealed to her. She could never
resist testing its power, even now when she loved the man she had
married, and would ruthlessly have sacrificed any other for him. She
tried it upon Dom Ferdinand and the Marquis de Casablanca. They
struggled, because they wished to make an impression upon the two girls
in the house; but they could not hold out against the allurement of the
primitive woman in Lady Dauntrey, and though they paid the girls
compliments and went about with them docilely, they looked at Eve. And
the girls saw not only the looks, but the weapons which Lady Dauntrey
used to win the men for herself, when she ought to have been furthering
her guests' interests. They began to hate her, and soon realized that
she would not be able to introduce them to the "best set" at Monte
Carlo, as she had promised. Still they stayed on, hoping a little, for
other people were expected to join the house party, and there was a
chance yet of something better. Besides, they found a small and bitter
pleasure in seeing the disappointment and humiliation of the woman who
had been so sure of herself, and had, by the force of her own strong
personality, made them sure of her. Dodo and the Collises, travelling
out of their own country for the first time, had not--as they
acknowledged to each other now--"known the difference in foreigners." It
was only by the light in other women's eyes--women of good birth and
breeding--that they began to see Lady Dauntrey as she was, common, bold,
not a lady, one whom ladies would not care to receive.
Dodo also was common, and knew herself to be "nobody" at home, but she
had thought that she might "go down in England," if she could have the
right introductions. Now she saw that her money was being wasted at the
start; for though the Dauntreys attracted a certain set round them,
instinctively she, as well as the Collises, felt that it was not the
right set.
Even when, after ten days of Monte Carlo, the Villa Bella Vista was full
of the Dauntreys' paying guests, a cold sense of insecurity and trouble
to come, which would be worse by and by than the bitter disappointment
of the present, lay heavy upon Eve's heart. Her ménage was
uncomfortable, and people were threatening to go. Every day nearly she
had a "scene" with some one, a guest or a servant, or both. Mrs. Collis
had burst into tears at a luncheon in honour of a rich Jewish
money-lender, because she thought herself insulted. She had been given a
kitchen dish-towel instead of a napkin, and had spoiled the party by
complaining of it. The stupid creature! As if some one were not obliged
to put up with the thing, since there were not enough napkins to go
round for so many! Lady Dauntrey had explained that she could not take
the dish-towel herself, as Monseigneur was on her right hand, Mr.
Holbein on her left. But even the fact that Lord Dauntrey contented
himself with a dust cloth did not appease Mrs. Collis, who said it was
only the last feather on the top of other grievances. And Dodo was
furious because, whenever Lady Dauntrey entertained, the servants were
so busy that she had to make her own bed, or see it lie tumbled just as
she had got out of it, until evening. Eve's violent temper had got the
better of her then, and she had flung her true opinion of Miss Wardropp
into the pretty painted face. "Persons who've never had anything decent
at home always complain more than any one else in other people's
houses," she had said; and Dodo had retorted with compliments of the
same kind.
Miss Wardropp often wondered if Lady Dauntrey knew the history of the
Villa Bella Vista. She did know, the agent having felt obliged to
confess, lest later she might hear the story and try to get out of her
bargain on the strength of it. But he had eloquently explained that if
there were no drawback the house--being a large one with many
rooms--would have commanded twice the price at which he could offer it
to her ladyship. He had added that the murder, committed long ago, had
been almost forgotten by every one except old inhabitants; and as the
villa had been occupied by several tenants since its evil days, and
thoroughly redecorated, it need no longer have disagreeable associations
even for the most sensitive minds.
Lady Dauntrey's mind was not sensitive. She had hoped that her guests
would not hear the tale, and she had thought that she would not care
herself. Perhaps she would not have cared, if everything had gone as
well with her and her husband as they had expected, for then she would
have been cheerful, and could have laughed at superstition. But when the
people she wanted to know would not know her, when Dauntrey's system did
not work as it had worked on the toy roulette, when the servants stole,
or left without notice, and when the guests quarrelled and complained,
she began to feel that there was a curse upon the house. She fancied
that, if she had not taken it, but had run larger risks and chosen a
more expensive villa, perhaps things would have been better.
In spite of herself she thought a great deal about the man and the
woman who had done the murder. From the agent she had heard no details,
and though the case had made a great sensation at the time it happened,
years ago, she had been far away in South Africa, and had not given much
attention to it. Some sly hints of Secundina's, however, had shown her
that the servants knew, and she had not been able to resist asking
questions. Afterward she could not put out of her head Secundina's
description of the dreadful couple.
The man had been of good birth, the woman _bourgeoise_, but clever. They
had gambled and made money, eventually losing it again, and all their
capital besides. Then they had grown desperate, at their wits' end, and
they had killed a woman who trusted and thought of them as her friends.
At night, when Eve lay awake worrying, as she often did--especially when
Dauntrey had been losing--she seemed to see the two haggard faces
staring at her hopelessly, growing and taking shape in the darkness.
Worse than all, she seemed to understand something in their eyes which
they wished to make her understand. She wondered if, by any chance, the
room where she and her husband slept had been theirs, and if between
these walls they had talked over the murder before committing it. She
imagined how they had felt, how they had hated and rebelled against the
idea at first, then accepted it as the one thing left to do. The story
was that the woman had persuaded the man to consent, though he had
refused at first.
One day, after a worse quarrel than any that had gone before, Mrs.
Collis left with Lottie, packing up in a hurry, and driving off to a
hotel. This gave Lady Dauntrey an empty room; and already Dodo had twice
vowed that she too would go. Now, in all probability the Collises would
persuade her to join them; and perhaps an epidemic of departure would
sweep through the villa. Lord Dauntrey had suffered a serious setback;
and all the money received from the guests was needed to retrieve this
accident. Dom Ferdinand had lost so much that he could not pay at all
until a further remittance came to him; and as odd stories of the
household had leaked out through dissatisfied servants, several
tradesmen had begun to make themselves objectionable. Strangers are not
trusted in the shops at Monte Carlo, and the butcher threatened to send
no more meat to the Bella Vista unless he were paid what was owing.
This happened when the Dauntreys had been in their villa three weeks;
and that same afternoon at the Casino Lady Dauntrey spoke to Mary Grant.
It was then two days before Christmas.
Often she had looked at Mary and felt inclined to speak, but always
something had happened to prevent, or else Dodo or the Collises had been
near, and she had known that they would say to each other, "Look at the
woman making up to that girl now because she's winning such a lot. Any
one who's got money is good enough for her." But this time the
conversation came about easily, as though it were meant to be. She was
watching Mary's play, standing behind the next chair. Suddenly a man
occupying the chair got up and went away from the table. Instantly Lady
Dauntrey dropped into the vacant place, as if she had been waiting for
it.
She did not really wish to play, though she liked gambling, for she had
been unlucky in the small game she had attempted, and had grown
cautious, anxious to keep what she had. But on a crowded night it is
almost obligatory to play if one has annexed a chair which many people
would like to have. Eve reluctantly took out two louis, the only coins
in her imitation gold bag. She was not near a croupier, and having seen
already that a few five-franc pieces lay among her neighbour's gold and
notes, she asked Mary with a pleasant smile if she would mind changing a
louis for her. "I'm not lucky, like you," she said, "so I'm afraid to
play with gold."
Mary pushed four five-franc pieces along the table, and would have been
only too glad not to accept the gold in exchange, but of course she
could not make a present of money to Lady Dauntrey. "I shall be
delighted," she said.
"You're sure you're not wanting your silver?" Eve inquired.
"Oh, no, thank you. I sometimes put five francs on zero _en plein_ to
protect half a stake on a simple chance," Mary explained, now thoroughly
conversant with every intricacy of the game that had been so kind to
her. "But zero's been up three times in half an hour, so I don't think I
shall bother with it again for a while. And, anyhow, I'm not playing for
a few minutes. Sometimes I feel as if I must wait for an inspiration."
"I wish I ever had one!" sighed Lady Dauntrey, hesitating over one of
her big silver coins. "Do tell me where to put this. You're so
wonderful, you might bring even me a stroke of luck."
"But I should be so distressed if I made you lose," Mary said, as
gravely as if the five-franc piece in question had been a _mille_ note.
"But--well--if it were mine, I rather think I should try ten. I've no
inspiration for myself this time; but I seem to see ten floating in the
air around you, and that's the way my inspirations come. I see numbers
or colours, and then I play on them."
"I'll try it!" Eve exclaimed. "But will you put the money on for me? I
want all your luck, and none of my own."
Mary pushed the five-franc piece on to the number 10, using a rake of
her own which Dick Carleton had given her. It was a glorified rake,
which he had ordered specially for her, made of ebony with the initials
"M. G." set into it in little sapphires, her favourite stones.
Ten came up, and Lady Dauntrey was enchanted. She even felt an impulse
of gratitude, and a superstitious conviction that this girl would be for
her a bringer of good fortune.
"I've so often watched your play, and wanted to tell you how much I
admired it," she said, "but I never quite had the courage."
Lady Dauntrey did not look like a woman who would lack courage for
anything she wished to do, but Mary saw no reason to disbelieve her
word, and indeed did not judge or criticise at all, except by instinct;
and people had only to look sad or complain of their ill luck to arouse
a sympathy stronger than any instinct against them.
"I think it's very nice of you to speak," she replied, politely. Both
murmured in subdued tones, in order not to annoy other players.
"I recognized you, of course, the first time I saw you in the Casino,"
Lady Dauntrey went on, "as the lovely girl who came south in the train
with us. We've all been longing to know you."
This was untrue. Anxious to propitiate Society as far as possible, Eve
had avoided recognizing Mary, who might be looked upon as a doubtful
person--a young girl, always strikingly dressed, living alone at a
fashionable and gay hotel, playing high at the Casino, and picking up
odd acquaintances. But now Lady Dauntrey was abandoning all hope that
Society might let her pass over its threshold, and she was willing to
defy it for the sake of money. This girl was at least a lady, which Dodo
was not, nor was Mrs. Ernstein, the stockbroker's widow. Eve thought it
would be a good thing if Miss Grant could be persuaded to come and stay
at the Villa Bella Vista in the room left vacant by the Collises. Mary
was rather flattered, but she now had an inspiration to play, and did
not want to go on talking. "I think ten will come up again, or else
eleven," she said, with the misty look in her eyes which was always
there at the Casino, or when her thoughts were intent on gambling. "I
shall play the two numbers _à cheval_."
She put on a maximum, Lady Dauntrey hastily placing a five-franc piece,
not on the _cheval_, but more timidly on the six numbers of which ten
and eleven were two. Mary lost and Eve won, for thirteen came up. The
same thing happened several times in succession. If Mary chose a number,
Lady Dauntrey included it in a _transversale simple_, or took the dozen
in which it was. Mary invariably lost, while she won. It was as if she
gave Mary bad luck, while Mary brought her good fortune, for never had
Mary so often lost, never had Eve won so often in succession.
At last all the money which Mary had brought with her was exhausted, and
Lady Dauntrey, who had raked in more than twenty louis, offered
laughingly to lend her something to go on with. But Mary thanked her and
refused, in spite of the tradition of the tables that borrowed money
brings back good luck.
"I'm rather tired, and my head aches a little," she said. "I think I'll
go home."
Eve rose also. "You call the Hôtel de Paris 'home?'" she asked.
"I begin to feel quite at home," Mary answered. "I've been there nearly
three weeks, and it seems longer."
They walked together out of the bright room of the large decorative
picture called jestingly "The Three Disgraces," on through the Salle
Schmidt, and so to the atrium. "If you don't mind," said Lady Dauntrey,
"I'll go with you as far as your hotel. There's a hat in a shop round
the corner I've been dying for. Now, thanks to the luck you've brought
me, I shall treat myself to it, as a kind of Christmas present. You
know, day after to-morrow will be Christmas. Surely you'll be rather
lonely in your 'home' then, or have you friends who are going to take
you away for the day?"
"No," Mary replied, as they went down the steps of the Casino. "No one
has mentioned Christmas. I suppose people don't think as much about
celebrating Christmas here, where it's almost like summer. Besides, I
have very few friends."
"Haven't you made a good many acquaintances?"
"Not many. Four or five. One lady has called--I think she is the wife of
the chaplain of the Church of England--but I was out, and I haven't
returned her visit yet. One seems to have so little time here! And the
curé of Roquebrune, the village on the hill, has been--twice. I was out
both times. I'm always out, I'm afraid. But that reminds me, I must send
him a Christmas present for his church."
"I should be delighted if you'd dine with us on Christmas night," said
Lady Dauntrey, cordially. "Do! At eight o'clock. We have such a merry
party with us--all young, or if not young they feel so, which is the
true Christmas spirit."
"You're very kind----" Mary began; but suspecting hesitation, Lady
Dauntrey broke in. "That's settled, then. I'm _so_ pleased! And would
you care to go to a dance on Christmas eve?--a rather wonderful dance it
will be, on board a big yacht in the harbour. You must have noticed
her--_White Lady_ her name is--and she belongs to Mr. Samuel Holbein,
the South African millionaire. You've heard of him, of course. His wife
and daughter are on board, and they've begged me to bring as many girls
to the dance as I can, for there'll be a lot of men. You know there are
heaps more young men about here than there are girls--so unusual except
at Monte Carlo."
"A dance on a yacht!" Mary echoed. The idea tempted her, though she
hardly felt friendly enough yet with Lady Dauntrey to accept two
invitations from her at once. "It sounds interesting."
"It will be. Do say yes. I shall love to chaperon you."
They were at the steps of the Hôtel de Paris.
"Then I say 'yes,'" answered Mary, "and thank you!"
In a few minutes it was all arranged. And Lady Dauntrey bade Miss Grant
goodbye, gayly, calling her a "mascotte." She turned the corner as if to
go to the shop of the hats. But there was no hat there which she
particularly wanted. She had merely sought an excuse to walk as far as
the Hôtel de Paris with Mary. When the girl had disappeared behind the
glass doors, Eve went back quickly to the Casino, where her husband was
playing. She could not bear to be long away from him when he was there.
It was agony not to know whether he had lost or won.