The Vision of Desire Part 9

Unpleasant premonitions and such-like ghostly visitants were p.r.o.ne to melt away in her cheery, optimistic presence like dew before the sun, and Ann hastened out of the room to welcome her back.

But at sight of the little group of people in the hall she paused in dismay. Sir Philip and his chauffeur were supporting Lady Susan on either side, while Marie, the excitable _femme de chambre_, was wringing her hands and pouring out a voluble torrent of commiseration.

"Be quiet, Marie!" ordered Lady Susan in her brisk voice. "The end of the world hasn't come just because I've sprained my ankle! Go and get some bandages and hot water instead of squawking like a scared fowl."

Ann hurried forward anxiously, but Lady Susan nodded rea.s.surance.

"Don't be alarmed, my dear. It's nothing serious. I slipped on the gangway, coming off the steamer, and turned my ankle. That's all."

"And quite enough, too!" fumed Sir Philip, as, a.s.sisted by the chauffeur, he lifted her with infinite care on to a couch. "Now, then, you clumsy fool!" This to the unfortunate chauffeur, who had released his hold a moment too soon, jarring the injured foot.

The man fled, pursued by his master's maledictions, and a few minutes later, hot water and bandages being forthcoming, Ann busied herself in tending the rapidly swelling ankle.

"What about a doctor? Don't you think you'd better have one?" asked Sir Philip, fussing helplessly round and feeling as inadequate as most men in similar circ.u.mstances. "You may have broken a small bone or something," he added with concern.

"Doctor? Fiddlesticks!" returned Lady Susan. "Ann's all the doctor I want.

There's quite a professional touch about that bandage"--extending her foot for him to see. "Thank goodness, most of our girls know how to give first aid nowadays! Now, run along, Philip, and look after that harum-scarum nephew of yours. I know you're aching to make sure he hasn't got into mischief during your absence," she added with a touch of malice.

Sir Philip demurred a little, but finally went away, promising to look in again in the evening. But when evening came Lady Susan had retired to bed, feeling far too ill to receive visitors.

It was not until after Sir Philip's departure that she would allow herself to admit that she was suffering acutely, and then she lay back against her cushions, looking so white and exhausted that Ann was thoroughly alarmed and despatched Marie in search of the doctor, who promptly prescribed rest and quiet. By the following morning Lady Susan found herself too stiff even to wish to move. She had tripped and fallen suddenly, without being able to save herself at all, and she was more bruised and shaken than she or any one else had suspected.

For the next few days, therefore, she was relegated to the role of invalid.

She was suffering a good deal of pain, and in the circ.u.mstances Ann felt disinclined to worry her with an account of the predicament in which she and Tony had found themselves during her absence at Evian. So that when Lady Susan asked her how she had amused herself that day, she merely vouchsafed that she had gone up to the Dents de Loup and stayed the night there in order to see the sunrise. Afterwards, it seemed simpler to let it rest at that, rather than enter into fresh explanations. The whole incident had come to a.s.sume much smaller proportions in retrospect, and the fact that she and Tony had not encountered any other visitors at the hotel had served to rea.s.sure her considerably.

By the end of a week Lady Susan was sufficiently convalescent to hobble about with the aid of a stick, and when Tony called with a huge sheaf of flowers for the invalid, and the news that there was a particularly good programme of music to be given at the Kursaal that evening, she insisted that Ann should go with him to hear it. Ann protested, but Lady Susan swept her objections aside.

"My dear, you've been dancing attendance on a fidgety old cripple long enough. Go along with Tony and squander your francs at boule, and drink _cafe melange_ or ice-cream soda, or whatever indigestible drinks the Kursaal management provides, and listen to this 'perfectly ripping programme.'" She shot a quizzical glance at Tony. "And you can tell that crabbed old uncle of yours to come to the villa and keep me amused in the meantime."

And, since there was never any combating Lady Susan's decisions, matters were arranged accordingly.

It was unusually gay at the Kursaal that evening. The announcement of a special programme had drawn a large audience, and the terrace was crowded with people sitting at small, painted iron tables and partaking of various kinds of refreshment while they listened to the orchestra. Festoons of coloured lights sparkled like jewels in the dusk, and from the twilit shadows of the gardens below came answering gleams of red and orange, where Chinese lanterns spangled the foliage of the trees. Beyond the gardens lay the sleeping lake, and faint little airs wafted coolly upward from its surface, tempering the heat of the evening.

Ann looked round her with interested eyes while Tony gave his order to a waitress. She thoroughly enjoyed an evening at the Kursaal. Until she had joined Lady Susan at Villa Mon Reve, she had never been out of England--for, though Archibald Lovell had been fond of wandering on the Continent himself, no suggestion had ever emanated from him that his daughter might like to wander with him--and the essentially un-English atmosphere of the casino still held for her the attraction of novelty. It was all so gay, so full of light and movement, and of that peculiar charm of the open air which makes an irresistible appeal to English people, condemned as they are by the exigencies of climate to take their pleasures betwixt four walls throughout the greater portion of the year.

"It interests me frightfully, watching people," observed Ann. "Quite a lot of the people here are really enjoying the music--and quite a lot are simply marking time till the tables are open and they can go and play boule."

Tony nodded.

"The sheep and the goats," he replied. "Count me among the latter. But boule's a rotten poor game," discontentedly. "Give me roulette--every time.

One has the chance to win something worth while at that."

"And a chance to lose equally as much," retorted Ann.

She flushed a little. This was the first occasion on which Tony had referred to the subject of gambling since the day they had gone up to the Dents de Loup together. She wondered if he had spoken deliberately, intending to remind her of the fact that, since she had refused to marry him, he was perfectly free to gamble if he chose. Yet he had spoken so casually, apparently quite without _arriere pensee_ that it almost appeared as though the memory of that day upon the mountain had been wiped out of his mind. He seemed unconscious of any _gene_ in the situation. During Lady Susan's brief illness he had been in and out of the villa exactly as usual, bringing flowers, running errands, cheering them all up with his infectious good humour--spontaneously willing to do anything and everything that might help to tide over a difficult time.

Now and again there flashed into Ann's mind the recollection of those few moments on the moonlit hill-side, when Tony's gravely steadfast face and proffered vow had made her think of him as some young knight of old, and she would ask herself whether she had done right or wrong in refusing him.

But, for the most part, the episode seemed to her to be invested with a curious sense of unreality, an impression which was fostered by the apparently unforced naturalness of Tony's demeanour. And now she felt rather as though he were a.s.serting his independence, his freedom to gamble.

"Lose?" He picked up her words. "You've got to be _prepared_ to lose--at everything. The whole of life's a bit of a gamble, don't you think?"

"No," she answered steadily. "I don't. Life's what you make it."

The soft, slate-coloured eyes regarded her oddly.

"Yours will be, I dare say. Mine will be regulated by Uncle Philip, presumably." His mouth twitched in a brief sneer. "It rather strikes me we make each other's lives." Then, as though trying to turn the conversation into a more impersonal channel: "Rum crowd here to-night, isn't it? See that woman sitting on your left? She looks as though she hadn't two sous to rub together, yet she's been losing at least five hundred francs each night this week. She covers the table with five-franc notes and loses consistently."

So Tony himself must have been playing at the tables every night! Ann made no comment, but glanced in the direction of the woman indicated. She was rather a striking-looking woman, no longer young, with a clever, mobile mouth, and a pair of dark, tragic-looking eyes that appeared all the darker by contrast with her powder-white hair. She was of foreign nationality--Russian, probably, Ann reflected, with those high cheek-bones of hers and that subtle grace of movement. But she was atrociously dressed.

Crammed down on to her beautiful white hair was a mannish-looking soft felt hat that had seen its best days long ago, and the coat and skirt she was wearing, though unmistakably of good cut, were old and shabby. In her hand she held an open note-case, eagerly counting over the Swiss notes it contained, while every now and again she lifted her sombre, tragic eyes and cast a hungry glance towards the room where boule was played, the doors of which were not yet open.

"She might be an exiled Russian princess," commented Ann, observing a certain regal turn of the head which wore the battered mannish hat.

Tony nodded.

"That's just what she is. She used to play a lot at Monte before the war.

Now she can't afford to go there. So she lives here and plays every night--on the proceeds of any odd jewellery she can still sell."

Ann regarded her commiseratingly. The woman seemed to her a pathetically tragic figure--a sidelight on the many tragedies hidden among that cosmopolitan crowd on the terrace. Then her straying glance shifted to a man seated alone at the next table to the Russian's, apparently absorbed in a newspaper. Tony followed the direction of her eyes.

"That chap plays bridge at the club sometimes," he vouchsafed. "I don't know who he is--never spoken to him. Foreigner, too, I should imagine. He's so swarthy."

Ann bestowed a second glance on the man in question. He was wearing evening kit, and at first sight the brown-skinned face above the white of his collar, taken in conjunction with dark hair and very strongly-marked brows, seemed to premise the correctness of Tony's surmise. Suddenly the man lifted his bent head, and over the top of the newspaper Arm found herself looking into a pair of unmistakably grey eyes--grey as steel. They were very direct eyes, with a certain brooding discontent in their depths which looked as though it might flame out into sudden scorn with very little provocation.

She dropped her glance in some confusion. She felt rather as though she had been caught looking over her neighbour's garden wall. There had been an ironical glint in the regard which the grey eyes had levelled at her that suggested their owner might have overheard Tony's frank comment. Under cover of a fortissimo finale on the part of the orchestra she leant forward and spoke in a low voice:

"He's as English as you are, Tony. No one but an Englishman ever had grey eyes like that."

But Tony's interest had evaporated. The band's final burst of enthusiasm heralded the finish of the first part of the programme and the consequent opening of the tables for boule. With a hurried "Come along, quick," he jumped up and, with Ann beside him, was first in the van of the throng which was hastening into the rooms to play. In a few moments the gaily-lit terrace was practically deserted, and an eager-faced crowd pressed up against the green-clothed tables, each individual eager to secure a good place.

For a little while Ann contented herself with watching.

_"Faites vos jeux, messieurs. Messieurs, faites vos jeux."_

The ball spun round, and the croupier's monotone sounded warningly above the whispering of notes and the clink of coin.

_"Le jeu est fait."_ It reminded Ann of the vicar intoning at the little church she had attended in the old Lovell Court days. Only there were no responses! Everybody was engrossed in watching the ball as it dodged in and out amongst the numbers, hesitating maddeningly, then starting gaily off on a fresh tack as though guided by some invisible spirit of malice.

_"Rien ne va plus!"_

Like the crack of doom came the last gabbled utterance, and the croupier's rake descended sharply on a claw-like hand which was attempting to insinuate a coin on to the cloth "after hours," so to speak.

_"Cinq!"_ An announcement which, five being the equivalent of the zero in roulette, was followed by the hungry rake's sweeping everything into the coffers of the bank except the five-franc note which Tony had staked on the number _cinq_.

He gathered up his winnings, and, turning excitedly to Ann, demanded why she wasn't playing.

"Follow me," he told her. "I'm going to win to-night. I feel it in my bones."