The Guests Of Hercules Part 28

The "gambler's blood," of which she had been warned by her father, warmed to the excitement of the game. She craved this excitement, and felt lost without it, now that the interest of Prince Vanno's distant presence in her life was gone. Still, she could not bring herself to refuse an offer which seemed meant in kindness. She gave Lord Dauntrey one thousand louis, the smallest capital, he explained, necessary to exploit his system with five-franc pieces at roulette. He a.s.sured her that with pleasure he would add this money to the same sum of his own, and play for her as well as himself, the syndicate he had originally formed being now dissolved. Dodo hinted that operations had been stopped because the whole capital was lost, but Lord Dauntrey had already mentioned to Mary that a few slight reverses had frightened the "shareholders." This cowardice, he said, had so disgusted him that he had given back the capital to each one intact, and politely refused to play any longer for the syndicate. A position of such responsibility was only possible if he were upheld by the confidence of all concerned.

Otherwise, he preferred to gamble only for himself, or for a personal friend or two who trusted him.

Each night, after Mary placed her thousand louis in his hands, Lord Dauntrey gave her five hundred francs. This was as high a percentage, he made clear to her, as could be got out of the capital except at a risk of heavy losses, and he "did not care to run big risks for a woman." On a thousand louis, Lord Dauntrey explained, five hundred francs profit nightly represented 900 per cent. a year, which was of course enormous; and regarded thus, her risk was an investment, not a speculation.

When some of Lady Dauntrey's bright particular stars left her firmament (as they did leave occasionally with the quick flight of comets) she hastened to fill the vacancies with any small luminaries available. The Villa Bella Vista remained full, even when Mrs. Ernstein went suddenly to Cannes, where "villa life" might be considered even more aristocratic than at "Monte"; and Dom Ferdinand took himself and his ally out of danger's way when Dodo refused to understand that only flirtation, not marriage, was possible with a "commoner." The price of Dauntrey hospitality had, however, fallen. Those who could be attracted by the bait of their barren t.i.tle had now to be looked for low in the social scale: and it was difficult to get eligible _partis_ with whom to dazzle heiresses. The slender Austrian count, whom Dodo scornfully p.r.o.nounced a "don't count," vanished mysteriously soon after Mary's arrival. He did not even say goodbye; and Dodo, who vowed that she had often heard him groaning behind the thin part.i.tion which divided her room from his, went whispering about the house that he had committed suicide in the Casino gardens.

"Why not?" she argued almost convulsively, when Mary protested that surely such a dreadful thing could not have been kept secret. "Would the Dauntreys tell, if they knew? No, of course they'd hush it up, and get rid of anything he'd left--in one way or another. Not that there was much to get rid of, for the Mont de Piete was a kind of home from home for the Count. He used to run back and forth between there and the Casino, like a distracted rabbit: p.a.w.n his watch; play with the money; win; race back and get his watch; lose again; and so on a dozen times a day, till he was stripped of jewellery down to his studs and collar b.u.t.tons. It all came from his obstinacy in believing that the croupiers at trente et quarante were signalling to him whether it was going to be _inverse_ or _couleur_, when they were really only licking their thumbs to deal the cards better! _I_ say, if you must have a fetish, have a reasonable one, like playing for neighbours of zero at roulette. But that silly boy thought himself too smart for roulette, and he wouldn't take any advice, so this is what comes of it. I feel in my bones that _his_ are in the suicide's cemetery this minute. Has n.o.body told you that there are no inquests of coroners here in this princ.i.p.ality? And a jolly good thing, too! Why make the rest of us gloomy by putting nasty details in the papers, when we've come here to enjoy ourselves? _They_ don't ask people to gamble, they merely make it nice for 'em if they're determined to, and anyhow it's honest gambling. They don't want you to play if you can't afford it and are going to be an idiot, because they hate rows and scandal. It's all for _our_ benefit! If a man's cad enough to blow his brains out at the tables, all over a lady's dress, he is whisked away so quick n.o.body has time to realize what's up before a gla.s.s door in the wall has opened with a spring and shut again as if nothing had happened. Not a croupier stops spinning. I call it magnificent. But it does make you feel a bit creepy when anybody you've known disappears into s.p.a.ce!"

Lord Burden, the dilapidated earl imported as a _parti_, was of opinion that the Austrian count had merely applied for the _viatique_; and being granted by the management a sum large enough to pay his fare and his food, had departed without caring to show his face again at the villa.

Others were inclined to agree with Dodo, especially the women, who were of the type that secretly enjoys mystery and horror, when unconnected with themselves. No one ever really knew, however (unless perhaps the Dauntreys), what had become of the youth with hair _en brosse_, and wasp waist so slim that the body seemed held together by a mere ligament. He was gone: that was all, and his small place in the household was more than filled by a German couple, an ex-officer with an adoring wife, both of whom spent half their days in bed, testing on a roulette watch various exciting systems which, now they had come from afar off, they lacked courage to play at the Casino. Their name was so intricate that Dodo Wardropp said it ought to be kept a secret. As n.o.body could p.r.o.nounce it, however, it amounted to that, in the end.

They did not stay long; and indeed, after the disappearance of the Austrian count, a microbe p.r.i.c.king people to departure seemed to multiply in the Villa Bella Vista. The sailor went suddenly, on receipt of a letter from the Admiralty, that prying inst.i.tution having learned and disapproved of the way in which he was spending his leave and his pay. Lord Burden followed Mrs. Ernstein to Cannes; and Dodo, who never ceased to want good value for her money, was bitterly dissatisfied with the unmarried men who remained.

The princ.i.p.al one had at first attracted not only Dodo but every other woman, with the exception of Mary. He spoke English well, yet appeared to be equally at home in all socially useful languages. He looked like a Russian, dressed like a Frenchman, claimed to have estates in Italy, copper mines in Spain, a shooting in Hungary, and told delightful anecdotes of his intimate friendship with most existing sovereigns. Not a king or queen of any standing but--according to him--came often to his "little place" in this country or that, and addressed him as "Dear Alfred." His manner, his voice, were so smooth that they oiled the creaking wheels of life at the villa; and his stories, told at the table, distracted guests' attention from the skeleton at the feast--a premature skeleton of a once muscular chicken, or a lamb that had seen its second childhood. Unfortunately, however, a journalist who knew everybody and everything in the world was brought in to luncheon by Lord Dauntrey one day, and recognized the favourite of the household as a famous Parisian furrier. He had supplied enough sable coat linings for kings and ermine cloaks for queens to give him food for a lifetime of authentic anecdotes. His acquaintance with royalties was genuine of its kind, but it was not of a kind that appealed to the paying guests at Lady Dauntrey's. Dodo turned a cold shoulder upon him, and for a day or two gave her attention to the only other man in the house who pluckily advertised himself as unmarried. He advertised himself also as a millionaire, and not without reason, though Lord Dauntrey had cleverly picked him up in the Casino. When he mentioned, however, that he was a Sydney man, Miss Wardropp ceased to talk at him across the table. This change of tactics her enemies attributed to fear that he "knew all about her at home." But she told Mary that he had such slept-on looking ears, he took away her appet.i.te; and one needed all the appet.i.te one could muster to worry through a meal at the Bella Vista. Besides, she believed that he had made his fortune by some awful stuff which kept hair from decaying or teeth from falling off, and it did one no good to be seen in the Casino with a creature like that. It was almost better to go about with a woman, though she did hate being reduced to walking with a female; it made a girl look so unsuccessful.

At length Dodo decided that, even for Mary's sake, she could no longer "stick it out" at the Bella Vista. She felt, she said, so wretched that she was "quite off her bonbons." The crisis came at luncheon and indirectly through the marmoset. Dodo paid well and regularly; therefore she was tacitly allowed certain privileges, not always approved by her fellow-guests. Diablette had been a standing cause of friction between Lady Dauntrey and the dog's mistress; but the marmoset, its successful rival in Dodo's affections, was grudgingly permitted whenever Lord Dauntrey had borrowed fifty francs or so, to select its own fruit from the dessert. Some people were even amused at seeing the tiny animal jump from Dodo's lap on to the table, and pick out the best grapes in an old-fashioned centre-piece. On the last fatal day, however, Lady Dauntrey's nerves had been rasped by the loss of her fifth cook. When the marmoset was taken suddenly and desperately ill in the bread plate, Eve flew into a rage, and high words pa.s.sed like rapier flashes between her and Miss Wardropp. Dodo attributed her pet's seizure to the fact that Dauntrey fruit was unfit even for a monkey's consumption, and Eve informed the whole company that Dodo was a disgusting Australian pig.

This was the last insult. Dodo shrilly "gave notice," while the marmoset was dying in her napkin. The meal ended in confusion; and Miss Wardropp went away that afternoon with the living Diablette, the dead monkey, two teddy bears, an umbrella-mosquito-net, and seven trunks.

"Ask that man for your money back!" she advised Mary on the doorstep. "I don't say go to _her_, for she'd only tell you some lie. 'Lie and let lie' is her motto. She's reduced lying to a fine art. But ask him for your capital, my dear, and watch his face when you do it. Compared to his wife he's a model, even if it's a model of all the vices."

Mary missed Dodo. Diablette had been an invincible and dangerous enemy to the blue frog from the Mentone china shop, poor, blase Hilda, who spent most of her time choking in flies a size too large for her, or trying helplessly to push them down her blue throat with a tiny turquoise hand. Dodo, however, had been a ray of brightness in the house: meretricious, garish brightness perhaps; still she had given a tinselline sparkle to the dull rooms when things were at their worst, and Lady Dauntrey clouded with sullen gloom.

When the newest and humblest guests of the Villa Bella Vista lost money beyond a certain limit, the bare thought of the Casino gave them mental indigestion. They then stayed safely at home, and infested the unaired drawing-room--pale people reading pink papers, and talking "system"; or flushed people playing bridge for small points, with the windows hermetically closed and their backs to the sunset. They quarrelled among themselves in a liverish way over cards and politics, and agreed only on the subject of such t.i.tled acquaintances as they had in common, all of whom seemed to be perfectly charming. But these heraldic conversations bored Mary even more intensely than the squabbles. There came a time when desperation got the upper hand of that prudence so earnestly recommended by Lord Dauntrey. She could not endure the long evenings in the villa, and felt that she must again tempt fortune at the Casino.

One night after dinner she broke to her host the news that she need no longer trouble him to win money for her. She would take back her own half of the capital he was using, and play the old game once more.

"If I have a few days' luck, I think the wisest thing to do next would be to go away," she went on, forcing herself to laugh quite gayly, as if there were n.o.body at Monte Carlo whom it would hurt her cruelly never to see again. "I've stayed on and on, when all the time I ought to have been somewhere else. And I've never had courage to write my--my friends at home what I've been doing. Just one more 'flutter,' and then--goodbye!"

Her thoughts flew afar, as she made this little set speech. She saw Vanno as he had looked that day, and on other days when she had deliberately cut him in the street, or in the Casino, though she knew he had been waiting in the hope that she would relent and let him speak.

His eyes haunted her everywhere. It seemed to her that they were very sad, and had lost that burning, vital light of the spirit which in contrast had made the personalities of other men dull as smouldering fires. Occasionally he was near her at the tables, for he played constantly now, recklessly and often disastrously according to Hannaford.

The word "goodbye" and its attendant thought of departure brought Vanno's image as clearly before Mary as if he had walked into the ugly drawing-room, where people were shuffling cards for bridge or putting on their wraps for the Casino. It was Vanno alone who was real for her, not the other figures; and she did not see the grayness that settled like a shadow on Lord Dauntrey's lined and sallow face.

"I'm awfully sorry, Miss Grant," he said, "but I can't give you back your money now, for the simple reason that I banked most of your capital and mine this afternoon. I felt rather seedy, and didn't mean to play seriously to-night. If only you'd spoken in time, it would have been all right enough. But now I'm afraid the best I can do for you, until to-morrow, will be a few hundred francs. My wife and I must see what we can sc.r.a.pe together."

He jumbled his words, as if in a hurry to get them all out, and laughed apologetically, staring Mary straight in the face, insistently, with his melancholy eyes. Something in them caught her attention, distracting it from the thought that was always forcing itself in front of others. She readily believed that he "felt seedy," for he looked extremely ill.

There were bags under the gray eyes, and his skin seemed loose on his face, almost like a glove on a hand for which it is too large. Mary was sorry for him, and protested that after all she did not care about playing that night. She would wait till to-morrow, and he must not mind what she had said. He appeared to be slightly relieved; but though he smiled, his eyes kept the dull gla.s.siness which gave them an unnatural effect.

Late that night Eve knocked at Mary's door. She had on a bright green dressing-gown, with a Chinese embroidery running over it of golden dragons and serpents. In her hand she carried a cheap silver-backed brush, and her long dark hair was undone. She looked strikingly handsome, but the thick black strands hanging down on either side of the white face recalled to Mary a picture in the library at Lady MacMillan's. It was a clever painting of the Medusa, level-eyed, with a red mouth like a wound, and dimly seen, pale glimmering features, between the lazy writhing of dark snakes. The thing had fascinated Mary in her impressionable schoolgirl days, but now she tried to huddle the idea quickly out of her head, for it seemed disloyal and even disgusting in connection with her hostess.

"I saw your light under the door," Lady Dauntrey said, "and I thought maybe you wouldn't mind my sitting with you for a bit. I do feel so beastly down on my luck, and you always cheer me up, you're so different from any of the others."

Mary had begun, for perhaps the twentieth time, a letter to Reverend Mother; but she was half glad of an excuse to put it away unfinished.

She too was in a wrapper, with her shining hair over her shoulders, but she suggested a St. Ursula rather than a Medusa. There was no comfortable chair in the room, but she drew the only one whose legs could be depended upon, in front of a dying wood fire for Lady Dauntrey.

Eve sat for a few moments brushing her hair in a lazy, aimless way, and staring at the red logs. "Perhaps," she said at last, "I shall have to cheer _you_ up, though, when you've heard what I've come for. Might as well out with it, I suppose! I know _I_ can't bear having had news 'broken' to me. My husband told you he was seedy, didn't he?--and hadn't meant to play, so he'd banked all the money. He hadn't the courage, poor chap, to tell you what really happened. He's simply sick over it, so I offered to see you. In a way, it was true, what he said. The bank _has_ got the money, only--it's the Casino bank. Dauntrey had an awful debacle to-day, the first time since he's been playing for you, and lost everything; not only your capital, of course, but his own too. It's your money he's so sick about, though. He could stand the loss of his own, though it's a blow, and I don't quite know what we shall do. But to lose yours! He's almost off his head. If it weren't for me, and my saying you'd forgive him, I believe he'd blow his brains out."

"Oh, don't speak of anything so horrible!" Mary cried. "Of course I forgive him."

"He's afraid you may think he has juggled away your money. When you asked him for it to-night he was already wondering how you'd take the loss; but your proposal coming suddenly like that bowled him over, and he made an excuse to put off the evil hour. What a weird coincidence you should have wanted your capital back the very day he'd lost the lot!

He's so sorry you didn't think of it yesterday; for then it would have been safe in your hands now, unless you'd lost it yourself, which I can't help thinking, my dear, you probably _would_, the way things were going with you before."

"I daresay I should have lost the money if he hadn't," said Mary kindly.

In her heart, she wished that she had been given the chance, as at least she would then have had some amus.e.m.e.nt, before the money was gone. And certainly it was an odd coincidence that the loss should have happened just before she had suggested playing for herself again. She could not help remembering Dodo's parting shot at the Dauntreys. She wished that the idea had not been put into her head; for though she would not believe that Lord Dauntrey had robbed her, she saw that it was a mistake to have lent him the capital--a mistake from his point of view, as well as her own. The money was gone; and even if there were something wrong in the way of its going, she could not prove the wrong. Nor did she wish to try. She wished to believe the story Lady Dauntrey had told, which might easily be true. Yet there would always remain the little crawling snake of doubt; and that was not fair to Lord Dauntrey.

"It's too, too bad, and we are both terribly upset," Eve went on heavily. "But it's the fortune of war, isn't it? And, thank goodness, you've got plenty left of what the Casino's given you, I hope, in spite of that awful Christmas night."

"Oh, yes, I've got more, in Smith's Bank," said Mary. "I can draw some out to-morrow, and begin playing again. Tell Lord Dauntrey he mustn't mind as far as I'm concerned."

"I did tell him you'd be sporting, and that you were a good plucked one, but I couldn't console him. The truth is, _our_ part of the loss is pretty serious. The Casino didn't give us any of our capital, you know, and we aren't rich. We've lost an awful lot this season. Monte Carlo's been disastrous to us in every way."

"But I thought Lord Dauntrey had done well with his system?" Mary ventured.

"Oh, the system!" Eve caught herself up, quickly. "Yes, that was all right. Only we never made much, as he couldn't afford high stakes. But he's so good-natured and generous. He lent money to others to gamble with--I won't say _who_, though perhaps you can guess--and never got a penny back. And some of the people we've had staying here ran up big bills and skipped without paying them. We simply had to let them go, and make the best of it. Oh, dear Miss Grant--Mary--this is a bad time to ask a favour, I know, when my husband's just come a cropper with your money, as well as his own; but I was never one to beat about the bush.

And you're a regular brick. You're in luck, and we're out--down and out!

I wonder--_would_ you be inclined to lend us--say, a thousand pounds, just to tide over the few weeks till our dividends come? We'd give you good security, of course. We have shares in South African diamond mines."

"I think I might be able to do that," said Mary, who could not bear to see Lady Dauntrey humble herself to plead.

"How good you are!" Eve exclaimed. "You're a _real_ friend, the only one we've got. The rest are sharks, or cats. It--it won't run you down low to let us have a thousand?" She fixed her eyes sharply on Mary, under the shadow of her falling hair, which she brushed as if mechanically.

"Oh no, I'm sure I can manage it very well."

"And keep enough to go on playing with?"

"Yes. I don't quite know how much I have in the bank. I've given away a good deal here and there, I suppose, besides what I lost--and this now.

But there's sure to be plenty."

"Suppose, though, you go on losing? Of course I hope you won't. But there's that to think of. Still, I presume you needn't worry if the Casino should get back every penny they've given you? I hope you have ever and ever so much of your own. I think I heard you telling the Wardropp girl--wretched little beast!--that you had a big legacy left you?"

"I believe I did tell her so, in the train," said Mary. "I don't remember speaking of it since."

"I couldn't help overhearing what you said then. You were both talking at the top of your voices. Well, I'm glad for you. If you're wise, you'll put yourself out of temptation's way, and won't keep much beyond your winnings where you can lay hands on it."

"I came here with very little," Mary confessed. "You see, I'd meant to go on to Italy."

"And you were so lucky at first, that you've lived on your winnings, and have never had to write a cheque on your own bank in England or anywhere?"

"Not one!" laughed Mary. "Since I came into my money, I haven't drawn half a dozen cheques--except in the cheque-book I got at Smith's, after Mr. Shuyler and Mr. Carleton advised me to keep my winnings there."

"You fortunate girl! And think of all the lovely jewellery you've bought, too! Of course I'm glad for our sakes, that your friends advised you to store the best things in the bank, when you're not wearing them, for one never knows about one's servants; and there are such creatures as burglars. Still, I wonder you can bear having those heavenly things out of your sight. _I_ couldn't!"

"I've felt rather tired of my jewellery lately," said Mary. "I hardly know why. But I don't seem to take the pleasure in wearing it that I did at first, when it was new to me."

Lady Dauntrey rose from the creaky chair with a sigh, and a slight shiver. "You look too much like a saint for jewellery to suit you as well as it does other people--me for instance!" she said. "And you _are_ a saint. I don't know how to thank you enough. My poor boy will be grateful! Well, I must go. You ought to have more wood on your fire. But I suppose it's gone. Everything always is in this house, if it's anything one wants. If ever you're in trouble of your own, and need a couple of friends to stand by you, you've got us. Let's shake on it!"

She put out her hand and drew Mary toward her. If the girl had not shrunk away almost imperceptibly, she would have bent down and kissed her.