Part 18 (1/2)
”She got a bigger dose than she bargained for,” he exclaimed.
”I am sorry,” she said. ”It was quite an accident. But did you see her eyes? She glared as if she could kill me.”
”Yes,” he replied. ”She looked half mad. However, she'll never be able to recognise you again.”
Liane was silent. The light of joy and happiness had suddenly died out of her fair countenance. She seemed to possess some vague recollection of a similar pair of dark, flas.h.i.+ng eyes. A face--a strange ghost of the past--came for an instant before her eyes; a thought flashed through her mind and held her appalled. She shuddered, pale as death behind her mask of gauze. Next instant, however, she laughed aloud at her fear.
No, she a.s.sured herself, it could not be. It was only some faint resemblance, rendered the more vivid because it had come before her amid that reckless gaiety.
Then she smiled at Zertho again happily as before, and they ordered fresh wine, and waited until the cannon thundered from the heights above and the streets grew orderly, ere they started to walk home along the Promenade.
They had, however, been too far off the woman to overhear the strange ominous words she uttered when, with an evil glint in her eyes, she turned from them abruptly with a fierce imprecation upon her lips, her cheeks beneath the velvet mask blanched with suppressed anger.
”No, I am not mistaken,” she had muttered in French, with a dry laugh between her set teeth. ”When I met you dancing in the Place de la Prefecture I thought I recognised you, Liane Brooker. I followed, and threw at you in order to obtain a good view of your pretty face in which innocence is so well portrayed. Strange that we should meet again purely by accident; strange, too, that you should cover me with dust and fling your scoop into my face as though in defiance. Little do you dream how near I am to you, or of the ghastly nature of the revelation which I shall ere long disclose. Then the smiles which enchant your admirers will turn to tears, your merry laughter to blank despair, and your well-feigned innocence and purity to ignominy and shame.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
MONTE CARLO.
Carnival's reign was ended. Pierrot, clown and columbine, hand in hand, had watched the flames consume him, and had danced around the dying embers. His palace had been torn down, the decorations in his honour had disappeared, the colours red and rose were no longer exhibited in the shop windows, for Nice had a.s.sumed her normal aspect of aristocratic dignity.
One afternoon a week afterwards, Liane reluctantly accompanied her father and Zertho to Monte Carlo.
When at luncheon the visit had been suggested by the Prince, she at once announced her intention of staying at home. Truth to tell, those great gaming-rooms with their wildly excited throngs possessed for her too many painful memories. At length, however, after much persuasion, she was induced to dress and accompany them.
She chose a white costume, with a large white hat relieved by violets, and a narrow belt of violet satin to match--a plain, fresh-looking gown which suited her beauty admirably, and within an hour they had ascended the steps of the great white Casino with its handsome facade, and entered the long bureau to exchange their visiting-cards for one of the pink cards of admission. The clerk at the counter, whose duty it is to examine the dress of the visitors and their cards, at once recognising the party, shook hands heartily with Brooker and the Prince, expressing pleasure at seeing them again.
”Yes, we've returned, you see,” the Captain answered jocularly. ”Always back to Monte Carlo, you know.”
”Well, I wish messieurs all good fortune,” laughed the stout, round-faced man, ”and also mademoiselle, of course,” he added, bowing, his face beaming with good humour, as instead of writing out formal admission cards he handed them three of the special white tickets issued by the Administration of the Cercle to its well-known habitues.
A gay cosmopolitan crowd in Paris-made gowns and well-cut suits, with bulky purses in their hands, struggled behind, eager to obtain tickets, therefore they at once deposited their sticks and sunshade, and pa.s.sing across the great atrium, thronged with well-dressed people, approached the long polished doors guarded by attendants in bright livery of blue and gold. Here again one of the men wished the Captain ”Good day,” the door opened, and they found themselves once more, after many months, inside the lofty well-remembered rooms where so many fortunes had been lost and won.
Down the vista from the entrance could be seen room after room, resplendent in gilt decorations, polished floors, ceiling of ornamental gla.s.s, and many beautiful paintings by Feyen, Perrin, and Jundt; each room filled with eager, anxious gamblers crowding around the oblong roulette-tables. The continual hum of voices, the jingle of coin, the rustle of notes, the click of the roulette-ball, and the monotonous cries of the croupiers combined to produce a veritable Babel of noise, while the heat on that bright sunny March afternoon seemed overpowering.
But those sitting around the tables, or standing behind, cared nothing for the world outside, too absorbed were they in the chance of the red or the black. The sun was excluded by blinds closely drawn, and the long windows were all curtained in black or blue muslin, with handsome patterns worked thereon, so that those walking upon the terrace by the blue sunlit sea could obtain no glimpse of what was going on within.
The place was close, and there was about it that faint odour which it ever retains, the combined smell of perspiration and perfume.
From the moment Liane placed foot upon the polished floor she regretted that she had come. With that well-remembered scene before her a thousand bitter memories instantly surged through her brain. She hated herself. Around her as they approached the first table in the Moorish room were the same types of people that she knew, alas! too well; the flora of the Riviera, the world in which she had for years been compelled to live. Among those sitting around were men, weary and haggard-eyed, with those three deep lines across the brow which habitual gamblers so quickly develop, and heavy-eyed women who had concealed their paleness beneath their rouge. Of this cla.s.s of frenzied humanity, she reflected, she herself was. There had been a time not long ago when she, too, had sat at the table prompting her father, sometimes flinging on coin or notes for him, dragging in his winnings with the little ebony rake, or keeping an account in her tiny memorandum book of the various numbers as they turned up, so as to a.s.sist him in his speculations.
Unlike these _decla.s.se_ women, she hated play. The life was to her detestable. She had, it was true, moved in their world, but, thanks to her father's care, she had retained her goodness and purity, and had never been of it. Well she knew the terrible tension each spin of that little ivory roulette-ball caused among that eager crowd, an anxiety which furrowed the brows, which caused the hands to tremble, and sapped all youth and gaiety and life. She, although young and fair, had witnessed life there in its every aspect. She had herself experienced the terrible frenzy of excitement; she had felt the desperation of abject despair. She had seen dozens, nay hundreds, come there rich and respected, to depart broken and ruined; she had witnessed more than one woman grow so desperate over her losses that she had fainted at the table, and once beside her at that very table there had sat a man, young, good-looking, and well-dressed, who lost and lost, and continued to lose throughout the long, hot day, until with a low imprecation he at length threw down his last hundred-franc note on the ”impair.” He lost, then rose unsteadily from the table, while half-a-dozen others struggled to obtain his place. An hour later she had risen and gone into the garden to obtain air, but scarcely had she walked a dozen yards when two attendants pa.s.sed her by, carrying her fellow-gambler's lifeless form.
He had shot himself.
This tragic incident, by no means uncommon, though so frequently hushed up, had so unnerved her that for many weeks her father could not induce her to enter the Casino, but gradually, because with a gambler's belief in talismans, he declared that when she accompanied him Fortune was always on his side, she again went with him, to spend long, anxious, breathless hours in the crowded place, where bright, happy girls staked their five-franc pieces, just for the purpose of saying they had done so, and rubbed shoulders with the most notorious of the _demi-monde_; and where honest men, professional gamesters, blackmailers and souteneurs all placed themselves on equal footing before the green-covered shrine of their fickle G.o.ddess.
Monte Carlo resembles nothing. It is at the same time a paradise and a h.e.l.l, of hope and despair, of golden dreams and of hideous nightmares; a place without laws, either physical or moral. Its surroundings are delightful, nestling below the high bare Tete de Chien and the Mont de la Justice, with the picturesque little town of Monaco perched upon its bold prominent rock to the right, the green slopes of Cap Martin jutting out into the sea on the left, and away far in the distance, yet clearly defined, the purple Alps of Italy, while beyond the white-bal.u.s.traded terrace is a broad open expanse of clear blue sea. The centre of elegance and corruption, of beauty and deformity, of wealth and vice, of refinement and sin, it is in itself unique.
On every hand, within and without the little place, the view is superb.
In the fine square before the Casino the gardens are brilliant with flowers and shady with palms; the cafes overflow with visitors, waltz music sounds by night and day, and from noon till the early hours there is life and movement everywhere. The game fascinates, and the climate acts upon the organism of all who go there. The exquisitely beautiful surroundings of the Casino exert a deleterious influence. They are alluringly pleasant. Life seems so gay, happy and free amid that whirl of voluptuousness, where vice is disguised in a form _tout a fait charmante_, its ba.n.a.l influence so imperceptible, that the man who ventures into the Princ.i.p.ality determined not to risk a single louis upon the _tapis-vert_ in almost every case finds himself overwhelmed by that involuntary indolence which creeps upon all like an infernal intoxication, drawn irresistibly to the tables, and too often to his ruin. The daily life in Monaco presents a surprising picture of morals; a truly extraordinary Paradise of the marvellous and the diabolical, of the sublime and the terrible, of fair dreams and of hideous realities.