For a while the sun of his happiness declined and the shadow of his
danger rested upon Hugh. But presently it was noontide again, and, after
the manner of men, he forgot the danger. The months passed and grew into
years, and a wonderful joy came into Irene’s sky and lit, with a new
worship, her love for Hugh. But Minna lived in the gloom of a disastrous
life.
Three years had passed.
Her high-heeled shoes came down with a click upon the tiled floor of
the loggia at every swing forward of her American rocking-chair. As Mrs.
Delamere’s nerves had been tried of late, she rose, after some wincing,
and prepared to enter the drawing-room. Three years’ chaperonage of Minna
had brought their wear and tear upon the system; and Minna’s character
had decidedly not softened. They had, however, remained excellent
friends, and had formed a cold, cynical attachment to each other. The
pulling up of a carriage in the court-yard below drew Mrs. Delamere to
the balustrade.
“If you are really going to Monte Carlo, you had better make haste, or
you will miss the 10.55. There is the carriage.”
Minna stopped her rocking, and lay back in the chair in a lazy attitude.
“I wish I hadn’t told Boissy I would come.”
“So do I. He’s a bit of a cad. It won’t do you any good to placard
yourself about with him.”
“Because he tells improper stories?”
“On a fortnight’s acquaintance,” said Mrs. Delamere.
“Well, he’s the only man I have met who can tell you them without making
you feel bound to blush. Blushing is a nuisance. In fact everything in
the world is a nuisance. I wish I were out of it.”
“You would scarcely find your way to a better one,” remarked the elder
lady suavely.
“Who knows?” said Minna. “This is pretty bad. Here all the virtuous are
deadly dull and despise me. All those who seek me out and amuse me are
vicious and vulgar. I hate the sight of Boissy.”
“Don’t you think you had better spend a quiet day here, for a
change--send a telegram to Boissy?”
“Oh, lord! I should go crazy if I sat here doing nothing all day. It is
punishment for my sins, I suppose.”
“Do as you like, my dear,” said Mrs. Delamere. “Only, if you go, keep
your wits about you.”
“I can command the services of better looking animals than Boissy, if I
want to compromise myself,” retorted Minna. “He looks as if he came
out of the Bon Marché. But he’ll give me the best _déjeuner_ in Monte
Carlo.”
“It is getting late, Mademoiselle,” said Justine, appearing on the
loggia with an anxious face. Minna rose sighing, and followed the maid
indoors. A short while afterwards, Mrs. Delamere saw her charge, attired
in a daffodil-yellow dress and a showy straw hat, a wilderness of bows
and flowers, drive off buttoning her long gloves.
“She is overdoing it,” she murmured to herself, as she kissed the tips of
her fingers to Minna. “She will be wearing her diamonds in the daytime
next. I’m glad I’m not a disappointed Jewess.”
The Vicomte de Boissy, a short young man, with a small curled black
moustache, a bad mouth, and somewhat dissipated eyes, dressed in a
striped flannel suit and carrying a gold-knobbed malacca, met Minna as
she alighted on the platform of the pretty little Monte Carlo station.
He welcomed her with many compliments. She was ravishing. He scarcely
dared hope she would do him the honour--even after her note had arrived.
When he saw her descend from the railway carriage, he was dazzled. Minna
looked at him with a little curl of disdain. Mrs. Delamere was right.
He was a bit of a cad. And among such had her lot fallen. A tall, clean,
high-bred Englishman passed her by. He reminded her of Hugh.
“Women are fools, aren’t they, M. de Boissy?” she said, as they emerged
from the lift, and were walking across the square, bright with shops and
cafés, towards the great white casino. “But I suppose you settled that
for yourself at the age of ten.”
“_Ma foi_, Mademoiselle,” he replied, “there is no folly in being
gracious to the most humble of your admirers.”
“Oh! I wasn’t at all thinking of my coming to lunch with you to-day. You
need not flatter yourself.”
He pleaded for mercy, adroitly turned the conversation, touched upon
the scandalous chronicle of the place and made her laugh. They strolled
through the building to the gardens. The weather was a perfect Riviera
March, the grounds gay with bright dresses. Now and then an acquaintance
passed, generally masculine and foreign, and bowed low to her. At which
times her companion drew himself up and put on airs of importance, which
Minna’s half-closed eyes were shrewd to notice. At last she grew weary
of walking. She asked him sharply whether they were ever going to lunch.
He overwhelmed her with apologies, conducted her back through the casino
and across the square to the Hôtel de Paris, where he had reserved a
table. There, amid the popping of champagne corks, the cosmopolitan
chatter, the sparkle of the scene, and the _grivois_ wit of her host,
Minna threw off her sarcastic mood and jested recklessly. She was only
capable of enjoyment now, when she had a little champagne in her head.
It was natural that he should make love to her, with all the vulgarity
of a cheap conqueror. Minna was used to the game. It pleased her to
practise her arts of seduction. She knew that the caressing languor of
her voice intoxicated the listener. He was the latest of innumerable
wayfarers to whom she had held out the charmed cup. That she despised
him added cynical zest. Besides, her own blood was stirred. A wanton
woman does not turn men to swine for the mere fun of seeing them pigs.
Boissy was in the slough of delight. His bad little face coarsened, his
lips grew thick, his cheeks puffed up towards his eyes; he suggested
a satyr debased by a civilised ancestry. In his mind, he was already
bragging about his conquest to his friends.
“I wish I had dared entertain you in a private room,” he said, leaning
over the table.
“You would have sacrificed a great deal of gratification,” replied
Minna.
“How? We should have been alone.”
“You would not have satisfied your vanity,” said Minna. “You know that
very well.”
He protested. He was burning with adoration. She was cruel, like all her
countrywomen.
“You have had enough good fortune for one day, I consider,” she said.
“Ah, then, can I hope?”
“That’s a thing forbidden to no one,” she replied, looking at him
through her eyelashes.
They had sat long over the meal. She expressed a desire for the outer
air, and they strolled again together through the wonderful gardens.
Behind them rose the great white palace of the casino, its marble
balustrades and stairs and cupolas gleaming amidst the gorgeous
vegetation. In front, the cobalt-blue Mediterranean meeting afar off the
violet sky. On the left swept the fair Italian coast. On the right rose
the black crag of Monaco, with its palace guarding the russet roofs of
the little old town. Beneath them, terrace after terrace of greensward
bedded with riotous profusion of flowers, broken by white parapets and
flights of stairs. The scent of exotic flowers hung sensuously on the
warm air.
“It is intoxicating like wine, or your beauty,” said Boissy.
Minna shrugged her shoulders and glanced idly round.
“It’s a pretty place. But one gets tired of it, as of most things.
What’s the time?”
“Half-past two,” he replied, consulting his watch.
Mrs. Delamere would be there by half-past four. Then she could dismiss
Boissy, of whom she was growing weary.
“Shall we sit down? One talks better.”
He indicated a sheltered seat behind some great aloes, and led her
thither. Minna commanded him to amuse her.
“I am too much in love.”
“Then tell me the history of your last grand passion.”
“I have only had one in my life.”
He began to plead. Somehow the charm of enticing him had palled. He was
such a vulgar little creature. She had heard all he had to say scores of
times. She craved originality. The sublime conceit of the man, who was
growing earnestly amorous, moved her disdain. Unscrupulous and conscious
of degradation as she was, she nevertheless set a great value on
herself. So she found entertainment in scathing ridicule. At last he
lost his temper, threw his arms roughly round her and kissed her. She
struggled from him, revolted, and struck him with all her might in the
face. The brutality of the debased Gaul was aroused. The crimson mark
flared across a livid cheek. Mad with rage he seized her wrists.
“Hallo!” said a sudden voice. “Drop that!”
A great, huge-limbed Englishman, dressed in loose tweeds and a
discoloured straw hat, stood before them. Boissy rose to his feet and
struck an attitude. “Monsieur--” he began.
But the new-comer took no notice of him. Instead, he looked with an air
of startled recognition at Minna, and then lifted his hat.
“Miss Hart, I believe.”
The surprise was great. She regarded him for some moments rather
bewildered. He seemed to have dropped from the sky.
“Mr. Merriam!”
She collected herself quickly, rose, extended her hand. “I am so glad
to see you again,” she said, with an air of sincerity warranted by the
occasion.
“Can I be of any service to you?”
“Oh, no, thanks,” she replied lightly. And turning to Boissy, who stood
by fuming, “I have the pleasure of thanking you for a most agreeable
afternoon.”
With a bow she dismissed him. He saluted with as good a grace as he
could, including Gerard in his salute. But Gerard kept his hands in his
pockets and watched him move away.
“What the deuce was he trying to do?” he asked.
“Make love to me, I suppose.”
“Somewhat fiercely!”
“I had just struck him across the face.”
“Are those the habits of these parts?”
“Oh, no. We are tame as a rule. I had just been lunching with him in the
most civilised way.”
“Perhaps I intruded,” said Gerard.
“By no means. You came just in time, like the hero in a melodrama, to
save maiden innocence from the clutches of the villain.”
“May I enjoy the hero’s privilege of consolation?”
“Within moderate limits,” she said. “I shall not be taking you from your
friends?”
“Oh, no. I don’t expect my friend, Mrs. Delamere, who lives with me,
till half-past four. Till then I am a waif. Shall we sit? Or, no. Let us
find a place somewhere else.”
They walked together to the terrace below, and sat down facing the
blue glory of the sea. On their way thither, she began to explain her
presence in Monte Carlo. Nice had been her winter quarters for over
three years. Her little villa was charming. If Mr. Merriam happened
to be in Nice and would call at the Casa Benedetta, Mrs. Delamere and
herself would be delighted to see him. Minna used her chaperon freely as
a stalking horse of respectability.
“I shall be glad to come,” said Gerard, with an appreciative glance at
his companion. “I only landed in Europe yesterday, after a long absence,
so I haven’t found my bearings yet.”
“Where have you been?”
“Until lately in South Africa. Hunting and gold mining. Then I satisfied
a schoolboy craze to see Madagascar. I don’t want to see it again. Was
down with fever most of the time, and took the first Messageries steamer
to Marseilles. Then I thought I would put in a week or two here, before
facing the wretched English spring.”
“So you’ve been gold-mining,” said Minna.
“Yes. Pretty successfully. Came in just before the boom.”
“Made a fortune?”
“I’ve cleared a tidy bit.”
“And you’ve come here to dispose of some of it?”
“At the tables? Not much. I am not that sort.”
“I am afraid I am,” said Minna, with a little sigh.
“Do you win or lose?” he asked.
“Last year I lost £6,000. This year I am winning. That’s one reason why
I live in these parts. The tables are a necessity to me. Monte Carlo,
Aix-les-Bains, Ostend. That’s my usual round.”
“Don’t you get rather sick of it?”
Minna looked mournfully out to sea, and clasped her hands in her lap.
A pathetic attitude, somewhat out of harmony with the daffodil toilette
and the unblushing hat.
“Pleasures would be tolerable were it not that one has to live so as to
enjoy them,” she said, after a pause.
“You have come by your pessimism early in life,” he observed.
“I’ve not had much to encourage optimism, as you may be aware, Mr.
Merriam.”
“You had a bad bout, of course. So did we all,” said Gerard. “But you
have had time to recover.”
“What are you going to do with your money?” she asked.
“Oh--I don’t know. Buy an estate in my own county--Norfolk--and settle
down to squiredom. Breed stock and preserve pheasants and that sort of
thing.”
“Will you be glad to get back?”
“I suppose so. Every one is, in a way. Wouldn’t you?”
“I loathe England and all that it contains too much,” she said with
bitterness. “And I can’t understand your wanting to return, either.”
The first allusion to past events was followed by a short silence,
during which each took mental stock of the other. The circumstances
in which they had met had led naturally to a false assumption of
friendliness. Now each was abruptly reminded of the very distant
acquaintance that had existed between them, and of the strange part
each had played in the other’s life. Minna’s expansion had been due to
gratitude to him for having effectually rid her of Boissy, and to the
novelty of talking to a big, lumbering Englishman.
Realising, however, who he was, she shrank within herself. A queer cold
touch, which she could not explain, pressed around her heart. She had
felt it before. Once, on the night, three years ago, when she had seen
Hugh and Irene at the Haymarket Theatre. She moved slightly away from
him with a sense of dislike. And yet his blunt, indifferent manner of
speech pricked her vanity. He had thrown an admiring glance neither upon
herself nor her costume. He should pay her some kind of homage whether
she disliked him or not.
“It’s funny my tumbling upon you like that,” he remarked at last.
“We generally choose dramatic moments for our interviews,” said Minna
cynically.
“Yes, by Jove. The last one seems a long time ago, doesn’t it?”
“Not to me,” said Minna. “But then, you see, I haven’t been
gold-hunting at the ends of the earth. I’ve been living rapidly round a
roulette-board. I suppose you know that the mystery of my poor father’s
death was cleared up.”
“I saw it in the Cape papers. I was very glad.”
There was another pause. Minna broke its discomfort by a casual allusion
to the beauties of Monte Carlo.
“You have nothing like this in South Africa,” she said.
“I wish we had,” he replied. “If things were always as jolly as this, I
should never want to get out of Europe.”
He stretched himself out in a comfortable attitude, and looked
contentedly at his companion. The talk drifted into generalities. Minna
whetted upon him her satiric knife, a process which he found himself
to be enjoying. The Jew money-lender’s daughter, the rather common and
silly little girl, whom he once despised, appeared to him in a totally
new light. She had developed into a beautiful woman, with a cynical
knowledge of the world and an alluring shamelessness of speech. Her
manner was that of the insolently luxurious demi-mondaine; her great
wealth transferred her to the sphere of the unassailed. In this dual,
interfused light, she appeared a woman well worth the study of an idle
afternoon. She was certainly a change from the fair frailties of South
Africa. The puffs and frills and ribbons of the daring daffodil costume
struck an elementary note of sex. He began to forget that she had mopped
and mowed at him like an imbecile when they had last been face to face.
She was a new acquaintance. He found himself losing the brusqueness of
his earlier words, and dropping into the tone of deference her languid
beauty seemed to command. When she arose, in the intention of going to
meet Mrs. Delamere’s train, and held out her hand for farewell, he
offered his escort to the railway station, with the air of a man begging
for a favour. Minna was amused, somewhat interested; the originality of
the situation gave a fillip to her mood. She assented graciously, and
they proceeded through the casino grounds.
They arrived at the station a minute or two before the train. Mrs.
Delamere stepped out on to the platform. Minna with a strange man at her
heels was by no means an unusual sight. But when Minna introduced him as
her old friend, Mr. Merriam, she arched her eyebrows involuntarily, and
glanced at the girl, in whose eyes gleamed a spark of mockery.
“What has become of M. de Boissy?” she asked on their way to the casino.
“Oh, Mr. Merriam told him to go and play,” laughed Minna.