Monsieur Jules de Maurienne gambled, and, like most rich men who
do, he generally won more than he lost. He did not gamble for the
sake of winning money, however, for he was a gentleman and avarice
was not among his faults, though he was not extravagant in his way
of living, and knew very nearly to a penny what he spent from month
to month. What he enjoyed was the excitement of fearing that he
was going to lose, as he occasionally did, though with no serious
damage to his fortune. Some people do daring things when there is a
good reason for doing them, and they are like cats at bay; others
are incapable of physical fear and never believe in danger, and
they are likely healthy puppies; but one meets men now and then who
fully realise every risk, and take a real pleasure in trying how
far they can go without breaking their necks. None of the lower
animals will do this; it is a characteristic of the born gambler.
De Maurienne did not play much in drawing-rooms or at the clubs.
The stakes were rarely high enough to give him an emotion, and
the sensation of winning much from friends who could not always
afford to lose made him uncomfortable. He therefore frequented one
of those quiet little establishments in the neighbourhood of the
Piazza di Spagna where baccara, roulette, and rouge et noir go on
from three in the afternoon till three in the morning, or later.
He was far too refined in his taste for pleasure to waste a whole
evening at such a place, and he frequented it at odd moments late
in the afternoon. A man is rarely missed at that hour, and if he
occasionally finds an acquaintance in a gambling den, the encounter
is not mentioned afterwards, any more than those who meet there
would think of calling each other by their names. For the society
in the haunts of vice is extremely mixed, to say the least of it,
though the owners of the establishments take infinite trouble to
make it select.
Teresa Crescenzi had not succeeded in marrying de Maurienne during
the summer, though they had gone together all the way from Rome
to Paris in his big motor car, and nobody happened to remember
who had made up the party. On some points the Italians and the
French never seem to understand each other. Monsieur de Maurienne
appeared to think it quite unnecessary to marry Donna Teresa
Crescenzi, whereas she was equally convinced that marriage was
indispensable. With the arguments and stratagems used on each side
this story is not concerned; it is a cowardly thing to spy upon a
lady’s secret doings, and the novelist should sometimes imitate
Falstaff in judging discretion to be the better part of valour. He
may, however, remind his forgetful readers that when Teresa met
Maria Montalto in a quiet street and said that she had been to
confession, she was wilfully misstating a fact.
It came to pass, towards Christmas, that she noticed how often her
friend disappeared late in the afternoon. It is easier and more
amusing to make a long story short than to make a short story long.
Here, therefore, are the facts in the case. She expected to meet
de Maurienne somewhere at tea, but he did not come; the next time
she saw him she asked where he had been, and he named the house of
another friend. Tactful inquiry soon ascertained that he had not
been there either. The same thing happened three times within ten
days, and Teresa made up her mind that there was another woman in
the case. Being anxious not to lose time, which, at her age, still
had some value, and having no scruples of any sort, she employed a
private detective, who ran the truant de Maurienne to earth on the
third day at the door of a gambling den in Via Belsiana. It is odd
that all detectives should know just where such wicked places are,
whereas the police can hardly ever find them. Why do the police not
employ the detectives, as other people do? But these things are a
mystery.
Teresa was so much relieved that she gave her informant a
handsome present; for, like many people who have nothing, she
often gave lavishly; and having noted the address of the gambling
establishment and the hour at which de Maurienne had twice been
seen entering it, she completed the detective’s work by watching
the door herself. With a veil and a quiet-looking frock she could
walk in the almost deserted street without attracting attention,
and her bearing was not calculated to invite enterprise on the part
of any stray dandy who might pass that way. Indeed, only one man
made the mistake of speaking to her.
She only wanted to be sure that de Maurienne really went to that
house on the days when he could not be found anywhere else; when
she was certain of this her jealousy sank peacefully to rest. She
knew that he would never ruin himself. As for the likelihood of
being recognised by him, she was indifferent to that. She would
have told him that she had been to confession, and would have asked
him to find her a cab.
But in the course of several half-hours spent in this way in Via
Belsiana, about dusk, she saw a surprising number of men enter the
modest door, and now and then she recognised an acquaintance. She
also saw a few come out, who must have gone there early in the
afternoon. It was one of these who made the mistake of speaking to
her as he met her, half a dozen steps from the threshold. She held
her head in the air and quickened her pace, and he did not try to
follow her; but she had seen his face clearly, and remembered it
afterwards, and thought he must have been a foreigner, for he was
fair, with a fresh complexion, and wore grey clothes that had not
an Italian look.
She made her annual round of visits before Christmas, as Romans
generally do, and, like a sensible woman, she did not merely leave
cards everywhere without so much as asking whether people were in;
on the contrary, she was conscientious, and tried to find them at
home.
It was quite natural that she should call on the Countess of
Montalto, but when she did, she was told that Maria was out. This
might happen to anybody, of course, so she wrote a line on her
card to say that she would come again very soon, and drove away.
Two days later she asked for Maria again. Her Excellency was out.
This also might happen, with no intention. Three days after that
she stopped a third time at the entrance of the palace. The tall
porter lifted his black cocked hat with imperturbable serenity and
respect. Her Excellency was not at home.
Then Teresa began to suspect something, and took a card with the
intention of writing a few words to ask when Maria would see her;
and while she was hesitating about the phrase, which the porter
would certainly read before sending it upstairs, she sat in her
little hired phaeton and unconsciously looked in under the great
archway, past the porter, who was waiting at her elbow. Just at
that moment she saw a man coming towards her from within, a fair
man with a fresh complexion, dressed in grey. He glanced at her
and lifted his hat a little, and the porter moved to let him pass,
because the carriage was very near the pillars that stood on each
side of the entrance. Teresa was not above asking questions of a
servant when she was curious.
‘Who was that?’ she inquired, looking down and beginning to write
on her card while she spoke. ‘I know his face, but I cannot
remember his name.’
‘He is the steward of Montalto, Excellency, Signor Schmidt.’
‘Of course!’ exclaimed Teresa as if she now remembered perfectly.
She finished writing, gave the porter the card, and drove away,
meditating on the fact that the steward of Montalto frequented a
gambling den in Via Belsiana and spoke to ladies in the street. It
also annoyed her to think that Monsieur de Maurienne had doubtless
often played at the same table with such people, and had possibly
won money from Signor Schmidt. Teresa was more sensitive on some
points than on others.
Maria did not answer her written message. On the second day Teresa
received a note in a large, stiff handwriting, unfamiliar to her.
Montalto had written himself, in very cold and formal terms, to
request her not to put herself to the inconvenience of asking for
the Countess again.
Nothing could have been plainer, and Teresa flushed angrily.
‘That is what one gets for defending one’s friends!’ she cried, in
a rage.
But she remembered quite well that in her anxiety to defend Maria
she had said a number of extremely disagreeable things about
Montalto’s mother, which were also quite untrue. Some careful
relation had doubtless repeated her observations to him, and now he
refused to let her enter his house. She wondered rather flippantly
what would happen if everything she had said in her life were
repeated to the wrong people, and the idea was so amusing that
she laughed at it. But she bore Montalto a lasting grudge from
that day, and it pleased her to reflect that his steward spent
spare hours in a gambling den and would probably rob him in the
end. She would take great care to keep the secret, lest some one
should warn him in time, but she would also do her best to meet
Maria in some friend’s house, and would tell her what she thought
of her behaviour. She felt the humiliation of having had her name
sent down to the porter’s lodge as that of a person for whom the
Countess was never at home. Such a thing had never happened to her
before.
She was Maria’s enemy now, as she had once been her defender, when
it had suited her to take the side of frailty, which may bend
without being quite broken, against that columnar social virtue
which may possibly break but never bends at all. Teresa’s enmity
was not likely to be very dangerous, however, for she was, on the
whole, a good-natured gossip, and might at any time be in need of a
good word for herself in the dangerous game she was playing.
She reflected with rather unnecessary bitterness on her position as
a defenceless widow, and felt quite sure that if she were Madame
de Maurienne, Montalto would not have the courage to insult her
husband by refusing to receive her.