The Guests Of Hercules Part 8

This was an anticlimax, after summoning courage for the plunge into battle; but Mary returned whence she had come, to take her place behind others who waited for tickets of admission. She listened intently to what pa.s.sed, so that she might know what to do; but it was disconcerting when her turn came, to be asked for a visiting-card. The lately emanc.i.p.ated Sister Rose possessed no such thing, and expected to be sent away defeated. Yet a path out of the difficulty was quickly found by the alert, frock-coated, black-necktied official behind the long desk. This charming young woman, beautifully and expensively dressed, was not one who deserved to be discouraged from entering the Casino. All she need do was to give her full name and nationality, also her place of residence.

Gladly she obeyed; and holding in her hand a _carte du jour_ on which she had written her own name, at last she had the right of entrance.

There was still one more mistake to make, however, and she promptly made it, attempting to pa.s.s through the right-hand swing-door. But no! It was for season-ticket holders. She must go to the left. The middle door was for those coming out. A fat man, hurrying brusquely in before her, let the swing-door slam in her face. "Le joueur n'a ni politesse, ni s.e.xe,"

was a proverb of the "Rooms" which Mary Grant had never heard, but would come to understand.

She was on the threshold of an enormous room, magnificently proportioned, hung with l.u.s.trous chandeliers, and divided by an archway into two sections. The farther part was much larger than that which she had entered, and more sumptuous in decoration; but the whole was flooded with a peculiar radiance which turned everything to gold. It was far mellower than the light of the atrium, or the splendid rooms of the hotel. It had actual colour like honey, or the pinky-golden skin of apricots. It was bright, yet the impression it made on the mind was of softness rather than brilliance; and the shining atmosphere of the room, instead of being clear, seemed charged with infinitesimal particles of floating gold, like motes in rays of sunshine. The tables, under darkly shaded, low-hanging lamps, gave the effect of sending a yellow smoke, like incense, up to the height of the great dazzling chandeliers. It was almost as if the hands of players in fingering gold pieces day after day, year after year for generations, had rubbed off minute flakes which hung like a golden haze in the air.

It appeared to Mary's eyes, taking in the whole and not dwelling upon details, that everything in the farther part of the vast domed room was of gold: different shades of gold; dark, old gold, the richer for being tarnished: bright, glittering, guinea gold: greenish gold, and gold of copper red.

No other colour could have been as appropriate here.

The air was not offensively dead, but it was langorously asleep. Many different perfumes haunted and weighed it down; but there was some underlying, distinctive odour which excited the nerves mysteriously, and sent the blood racing through the veins.

"It is the smell of money," Mary said to herself.

Just inside the entrance doors, on either side, was a large table round which people sat or stood. Those standing behind the chairs of the seated ones were at least two rows deep, crowded tightly together.

Beyond were many other tables, thronged even more densely; and ringed thus with closely packed figures, they were like islands on a shining golden sea, an archipelago of little islands, all of exactly the same size, and placed at equal distances.

Mary, hardly knowing what to expect from Peter's rather vague and disjointed descriptions, had dimly fancied clamour and confusion bursting upon eyes and ears on the instant of entering the gambling-rooms. But the silence of the place was as haunting and mystery-suggesting as the indefinable odour, and more thrilling to the imagination than the loudest noise.

She who had been Sister Rose was horrified to find herself thinking of a cathedral lighted for a midnight ma.s.s. Almost, she expected organ music to peal out.

Slowly she moved down the room, past the first tables, and, as she walked, the m.u.f.fled, characteristic sounds she began to hear seemed but to punctuate and emphasize the silence, like echoes in a cave: a faint rattle of rakes, like the rustle of leaves, and a delicate c.h.i.n.k-c.h.i.n.k of gold, like the chirping of young birds just awakened by dawn.

A voice at each table as she drew near or pa.s.sed made some announcement.

She caught the words distinctly yet not loudly p.r.o.nounced: "Faites vos jeux, messieurs.... Rien n'va plus. Onze, noir, impair et manque."

"_Onze_" was one of the numbers the French couple had decided to play.

Mary wondered if it had come at their bidding, and she wished intensely to see what was going on at the tables inside those close circles of women's hats and men's shoulders. But to see, meant to push. She was not bold enough to do that, and kept moving on observantly, hoping always to discover some island less populous than others.

Now she began to pick individuals out of the crowd. The number of types seemed countless. It was as if each country on earth had been called upon to contribute as many as it could spare of unusual and striking, even astonishing, specimens of humanity, on purpose to provide eccentric or ornamental features of this strange, world's variety show.

There were some lovely, and a few singularly beautiful, women from northern and southern lands. Peter had said that one could "tell Americans by their chins," which were firmer and more expressive of energy than other chins, and Englishwomen by their straight noses, which looked as if they had been handed down as precious heirlooms from aristocratic ancestresses. The mellow light gilded many such chins and such noses, and shone into soft dark eyes such as only the Latin races have. Mary fancied she could tell French from Italian women, Spanish from Austrian, Hungarian from Russian or German types. Almost invariably the pretty women and the good-looking men were well dressed. Only the plain and ugly ones seemed not to care for appearances. But there were more plain people than handsome ones; and dowdy forms strove jealously to hide the charming figures, as dark clouds swallow up shining stars.

All faces, however, no matter how beautiful or how repulsive, how old or how young, had a strange family likeness in their expression, it seemed to Mary; a tense eagerness, such as before her novitiate she had seen on the faces of Lady MacMillan's guests sometimes when they had settled down seriously to play bridge.

She had expected to see unhappy and wildly excited faces, because, Peter said, people often lost or won fortunes in these rooms in a single night; but no one in this moving crowd looked either very miserable or very radiant. They did not even appear to be greatly excited, yet most of them seemed absorbed, as if they listened for a sound which would mean something of vital importance; or else they had an air of fearing that they had missed the all-essential signal which might never come again.

It was not the "high season" yet, Mary's waiter at the Paris had said, and the "_vrai monde_" would not come in its greatest rush until after Christmas and the New Year; yet the Casino was filled with a throng of persons many of whom looked immensely rich and important, and none of whom, at worst, was shabby. Even those who were dowdy appeared well-to-do. Mary saw that it was not necessary to gamble in groups. Men and even women, all alone, pushed their way through the thick wall of hats and shoulders round the table, sometimes being lost altogether, or sometimes emerging again in three or four minutes to scurry across the shining expanse of floor to another table. By and by, when she began to feel calmer, Mary ventured near a table in the middle of the room, within full sight of doors which led to other rooms: a long vista straight ahead, where all the decorations seemed new and fresh, and a light white as silver streamed from hanging lamps like diamond pendants and necklaces for giantesses or G.o.ddesses of fortune. So different was the colour of this light from that of the first great _salle_, that a silver wall seemed built against a wall of gold.

Standing outside the circle at the table, new sounds in the silence struck Mary's ear, not emphasizing the heavy silence, as did the delicate c.h.i.n.king of coins and the announcements of roulette numbers, but jarring and ruffling its smooth surface: little sudden rustlings and squabblings, disputes between players in French or German, sharp and mean, yet insignificant as the quarrelling of a nestful of birds in the ample peace of a spreading beech tree.

Now and then there seemed a chance that Mary might find a place in the back row at a table, but some one else, also watching, invariably darted in ahead of her. Each time the hope came, her heart gave a bound, and the blood sang in her ears. She was astonished at her excitement, which seemed exaggerated beyond reason, and ridiculous, yet she could not conquer it; and the trembling that ran through her body made her knees feel very weak, after she had stood for perhaps half an hour. Looking round, she noticed that there were a good many brown leather-covered seats along the mirrored and gilded walls. Most of these were fully occupied by resting men and women, some very old and tired looking, others eagerly counting money, or jotting down notes in little books or on cards. As she looked, an extraordinary woman much bejewelled, with a face a century old under bright red hair, and a hat for a lovely young girl, jumped abruptly up from the seat nearest Mary, and almost ran to one of the tables, where she flung herself into the crowd, like a diver into a wave. Her place on the bench was left empty, and Mary took it, to follow the example of others and count her money while resting.

Sitting down, she had on one side a young and pretty woman in a charming dress and hat, more suitable for a past June than a present December, even a Riviera December. Her face, too, which she turned with a gaze of interest on Mary and her costume, was slightly, pathetically faded, like the petals of a white rose gathered while in bud and pressed between the pages of a book. She was like a charming wax doll which had lost its colour by being placed too near a warm fire.

On the other side was a very old man, gray as a ghost, who showed no sign of knowing that he had a new neighbour. Everything about him was gray: his thin, concave face, his expressionless eyes, his spa.r.s.e hair and straggling moustache, his clothes, and his hands, knotted on the back like the roots of trees. His grayness and the bleak remoteness of his air made him seem unreal as a spirit come back to haunt the scene of long-ago triumphs or defeats. Mary could almost have persuaded herself that he did not exist, and that the pale form and gla.s.sy eyes were visible to her alone.

She took her purse from a bag of gold and silver beads she had bought in the Galerie Charles Trois, and counted her money. She had a little more than five hundred francs, and wondered what could be done with that sum at roulette. Even the sound of tinkling gold and silver did not attract the dead gray eyes to Mary; but perhaps it broke some dreary dream, for the old man got up stiffly as if in protest, and walked away with the gait of an automaton.

"Heaven be praised!" murmured in French the weary white rose on Mary's other side; "he brings bad luck. But perhaps he will take it away with him."

Mary realized that her neighbour was speaking to her, and turned with a smile of encouragement, thankful to find some one who looked kind, and would perhaps tell her things.

The pretty woman went on, without waiting to be answered: "He is like a galvanized corpse; and indeed, he may be one, for he ought to have died long ago. Have you ever heard his story?"

"No," Mary said. "I have only just come here."

"For the first time?" The other's face brightened oddly.

"Yes, it is my first time."

"And you are alone?"

"Quite alone."

"Poor little one! But that will not be for long."

"I don't know yet how long I shall stay."

"Oh! I did not mean quite that. But let it pa.s.s. Shall I tell you the story of the old man? It will interest you, if you don't know Monte Carlo. Nothing is too strange to happen here. It is only ordinary things which never happen in this place, Mademoiselle."

"I have a friend who said something like that. Please tell me the story."

"I'll make it short, because you will wish to play, is it not? And if you like, I will teach you the game. That old ghost is an Englishman.

Some day he will come into money and a t.i.tle. Meanwhile he is supported by the Casino. Always, morning, noon and night, year in and year out, he is in these rooms; but he is not allowed to play. If he put one five-franc piece on the tables, biff! would go his pension. Twenty-five years it is since he came, they say. I have been here myself but three, and it is a lifetime! It spoils one for other things, somehow. He lost everything at the tables one night, all those years ago; so he crept down to a lonely place on the sh.o.r.e, and cutting his throat, at the same instant threw himself into the sea. But he could not die. The salt water brought him to life. He was found and nursed by a fisherman. When the Casino people heard what had happened they had pity for the unfortunate one. They are not without hearts, these messieurs! Ever since they have supported him. When he comes into his fortune, perhaps he will pay them--who knows? But in any case, he will disappear and be no more seen. We think he is a spy."

"A spy?" Mary repeated. "What would a spy do here?"

"My poor amateur! There are many. For one thing, they watch for thieves: people who claim the money of others as their own, at the tables. That is quite a way of living. Sometimes it goes very well. But it is a little dangerous. Do you want to play, Mademoiselle? You are sure to have luck on your first night. Even I used to have luck at first."

"Have you none now?" Mary asked, pityingly.

"Oh, I have no longer even the money to try my luck--to see whether it has come back. Yet once I won twenty thousand francs, all from one louis at trente et quarante, and at one seance. That was a night! a memory to live on. And at present it is well I have it to live on, as there is nothing else."

"Oh, how sad, how sad!" exclaimed Mary. "If only you would let me help you a little--in some way."

"You are very good, but of course I could not accept charity," said the pale rose, looking down at her faded lace and muslin finery. "Still, if I bring you luck at the game, and you win, I shall feel I have earned something, is it not?"

"Yes, indeed," Mary a.s.sured her, delighted with the simple solution.

"But it seems impossible to get near a table."

"It is not impossible," said the other, a gleam bright as the flash of a needle darting from her jade gray eyes. "Many of those people are only watching. They must give way to serious players. You will see! Shall it be trente et quarante or roulette? Roulette, you can tell by the name, is played with a wheel. Trente et quarante with cards--and for that you must go to another room, for all is roulette here. In the card game a louis is the smallest stake. At roulette it is five francs."

"I have only five hundred francs," Mary announced.

"Then I advise roulette. Besides, it is more amusing. Never can one tire of seeing the wheel go round, and wondering where the dear little white ball will come to rest."

"Yes, I feel I shall like roulette better," Mary decided.