Michael, fascinated by the simple way in which this woman announced her extraordinary desire, imitated the tone of her voice.
"Very well; I shall tell this horrid gentleman not to bother you; to forget you."
And he laughed like a child, without paying any attentionto the fact that his own interests were at stake. The only thing he thought of was the expression on the face of his solemn agent when he received such an order.
"I always thought you were kind and generous," she said. "Thanks, Michael! At times I have had a discussion with the 'General' about you, to convince her that you are a big hearted man."
"Oh, so Doña Clorinda is an enemy of mine? Why I've never seen her!"
"She's an extraordinary woman. In her eyes, every man who has a good time, and doesn't do wonderful things, is displeasing to her. Only yesterday we quarreled for good. Let's not talk about her. I have something more to ask of you."
More? The Prince looked at her in astonishment, but Alicia hastened to add that what she wanted was some advice.
War had upset their modes of life with amazing rapidity. Social values were reversed: the fortunes that seemed most solid were crumbling.
"Things will change, surely? It's impossible for this to last."
"Yes it is impossible," he said gravely.
Both of them seemed to be living in another world, surrounded by the senseless visions of a nightmare. To think that they would have to worry of money, after it had been, up to that time, a natural part of their existence, much as sunlight, air, or water is for every one! To think that they should find themselves obliged to pursue it in its flight through unknown ways! No, it wasn't logical; surely a passing whim of destiny. Their lives would again be the same as before, with the regularity of the laws of nature, which seem to swerve at times, but finally return to their orderly predestined course.
Being harder pressed, and having suffered economichardships for a longer time, it was impossible for her to adopt the serenity with which Lubimoff accepted his momentary ruin.
"Things will change, that's certain; but in the meantime, how can I live? You have just freed me from a moral burden by forgetting about this debt. I thank you. But I must work, I want to earn some money! What is your advice?"
He was astounded. What work could Alicia do? Her question was laughable. But there she was, gravely facing him, convinced of her determination to work, and expecting illuminating counsel, as though her fate depended on him.
Fortunately Alicia herself, unable to bear the silence, began to explain her own ideas on the subject. The topsy-turvy state of things at the present time justified the wildest plans. A great lady might adopt means of support which some years previously would have caused a scandal. She knew a number of Russian ladies in Nice who used to give wonderful parties in their drawing rooms before the war, and who at present, having been reduced to poverty, were devising schemes to earn their living in their own way. One was going to open a millinery shop, and count on her former friendships to form a circle of customers. Another had changed her villa on the Promenade des Anglais into a boarding house. She would admit only people of distinction. Allied officers, from Colonels up. She intended to treat her boarders like visitors, with all the courtesy of a great lady receiving her guests; save that from now on every day in the week would be her reception day.
"What do you think of my turning my villa into a boarding house? Could you help me with a little money to renew the furniture, and buy whatever is lacking?Nothing but aristocratic guests; generals, and retired ambassadors who come here in quest of sunlight."
The Prince replied with a burst of laughter.
"Why, you're crazy. They would all make love to you. In a few weeks your establishment would be a regular inferno."
Alicia, considering his observation quite accurate, did not insist any further. The Russian lady in Nice was old and terrible looking compared with her. Besides, she thought it perfectly natural and logical that her guests should become enamored of her.
The "General" had suggested another plan to her. She might open a tea-room in Monte Carlo, a very elegant one. The attraction of seeing her at the counter would draw people. For this she would not need a financial backer.
Once more Lubimoff burst out laughing.
"The Duchess de Delille's tea-room! That would be delightful; but once people's curiosity had been satisfied the only customers you would have would be those who were interested in your charms. No; that's not business."
She gave a look of somewhat comic dismay; what was she to do? A lady who is anxious for work can find no occupation in a world controlled and monopolized by men. She had nothing to fall back on except gambling. It was an exciting pleasure which made her forget her worries, and at the same time gave her hope. Each day with gambling she opened a window to fortune, in case it should deign to remember her. Who knows but what some time it might fold its golden wings and alight on a Casino table, and allow Alicia's slender hands to caress it, like a tame eagle!
"In the first few months of the war," she continued, "Ididn't feel the need of anything to distract my mind; the reality of what was happening was enough. What anguish I went through! But one gets used to everything; the deepest emotions get monotonous if they are too long drawn out. One can't live forever with one's nerves at a high tension. And this war is so long, and so tiresome! I might have had recourse to philanthropic work to take my mind off my troubles; go into a hospital, and take care of the wounded. But I've never been clever at such things, and I don't want to make a nuisance of myself and be a hindrance, out of pure vanity, like a great many other women. Besides, we are in the habit of giving orders, and always coming first, and no matter how deeply we may feel the spirit of sacrifice, we finally leave, unable to endure finding ourselves ordered about by more skillful and useful women, who have previously been our inferiors. Take Clorinda for instance; she was a nurse the first two years; she was one of the prettiest and most interesting with her white dress and her little blue cape. She is attracted by everything great; heroism, sacrifices, etc., but she finally quarreled with her superiors and gave up her fine rôle."
In gesture and facial expression Alicia seemed to be pitying her own uselessness.
"What could I do? I was reduced to worse and worse straits. In Paris my creditors were right at my heels, constantly bothering me; that's why I came to Monte Carlo, and gambled to forget, and to make a living. There is love, an old Academician, a friend of mine, said to me, with a selfish motive to be the first to make advantage of his advice. Just imagine: real passionate love, wholehearted love, as the only solution for the sorrows of life, and at such a time! Oh, if only I could! But I feel I'm old, two thousand years old. You are younger, but youcan count your life in centuries too. Love, for such as you and me!"
At first Lubimoff smiled at the tone of irony and disenchantment in which she spoke. Yes, they were very old. The great remedies, useful for the majority of people, had no effect on them. They, as it were, had become insensible from satiety and weariness. Suddenly the Prince was moved by an indiscreet desire. He decided to take advantage of the opportunity to ask her a question that had often occurred to him.
"Indeed," he said with masculine frankness, as though talking with a comrade, "you still believe in love? They told me about a boy, almost a child, whom you used to take everywhere before the war. Really, we are beginning to get old," he added with a smile, "and feel we need the contact of youth. Was he your lover? Is he the reason for your worries?"
At these questions, the Duchess paled, and seemed to hesitate. Then she made an effort to speak. It was evident that she was eager to be sincere. But her pallor was followed by a wave of crimson. Twice she tried to say something, and finally, mastering her desire to talk, she forced a mischievous smile.
"Let's not talk about that. We each have a right to our secrets," she said.
And to keep the Prince from relapsing into his curiosity, she went on talking about gambling. But he was absorbed in his thoughts, and was not listening to her. He had hit the nail on the head; that young stripling was her lover, and she was suffering on his account. Perhaps he was wounded, or a prisoner. That was the great obstacle which stood in the way of her trip; which was keeping her pinned down in Europe, in the superstitious belief that we can ward off dangers better if we remainclose at hand. And she seemed very much in love! Here the Prince gave vent to a series of mental exclamations.
"Forty years old, with a past that would fill a book! To feel such a powerful, such a youthful passion! Still to believe in love!"
Michael looked at her with an expression that was almost one of hatred. Her passion for the boy annoyed him, without his being able to tell just why; perhaps because of the indignation which is always aroused by people who cling to some harmful lie, accepting it as truth and consolation. Whatever the cause, her conduct annoyed him.
This sudden feeling of hostility towards Alicia finally caused him to pay attention once more to what she was saying.
"If only I had as much money as I had before, when your mother was still alive, and we used to live in Monte Carlo! But at that time I didn't know as much as I know to-day about gambling. I used to play just for excitement, just to enjoy the sensation of losing, which, as a matter of fact, didn't affect me very deeply. I used only chips for a thousand francs in betting. I thought it was beneath me so much as to touch any others; and besides, I never risked them one at a time. I always staked them in a row."
"How much have you lost?"
She shrugged her shoulders, and pursed her lips disdainfully.
"Who could possibly know? I've been coming here for twelve years or more. Even the people in the Casino wouldn't be able to calculate what I've given them. In those days, I never used to keep any track of it myself. When I needed money I telegraphed to Paris. Besides, I had your mother; and I had my own, who usually gavein to my requests, in the end. I wouldn't like to know how much I've lost: it would make me furious. It must be millions."
The smile of commiseration with which Michael listened to her, seemed to make her bolder.
"But at that time I didn't know how to play! Now I must win, and I play in a different way. What I need is capital. If I only had a working capital!"
This last expression changed his smile into frank laughter. "A working capital!" The Duchess would go on talking seriously about her "work." She lamented the slenderness of her means. Some thirty thousand francs was all the capital she had at her disposal. At times it dwindled in alarming fashion: the thirty thousand often shrunk to a single digit. Then the ciphers would reappear, and the product of her "work" expand, gradually rising above the thirty thousand; but this amount seemed to be the fatal number for Alicia, for soon after reaching it her winnings would always fall to their usual level.
"Last night I was lucky; I succeeded in winning fourteen thousand francs. But last week was bad. Sum total, I'm still at thirty thousand: impossible to get any farther. And I don't run any chances, I'm afraid, and don't take advantage of the good runs of luck I do have. I ought to go on doubling, and doubling. I'm afraid of losing it all on a single stake. If I only had a working capital! If I were to go into the Casino some afternoon with a hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand francs! That's the way to master luck. I ought to play big stakes. Imagine me, betting a hundred, and even as low as twenty franc chips, like a retired money lender! That's the reason fortune doesn't notice me, and passes by on the other side."
The Prince shook his head. He refused to help her with her follies. Wasn't it better to keep those thousands of francs, instead of losing them in no time, as would happen when she was least expecting it?
"You're not a gambler, I know," she said. "You have never felt attracted to that sort of pleasure. That's why you don't realize the mysterious power of the game, and give advice about something you don't understand. If I were to give up playing, I would feel my poverty at once; then I would be really poor. While you play, you always have money in your hands; you win, and lose, but you never lack the necessities of life. And if you lose everything you can still get what you need to start in again. I don't know how it is, but a gambler always has plenty of money. A single coin puts him on his feet again in five minutes. It's the poor man who doesn't play who goes around with empty pockets, without hope or means of improving his situation."
Michael continued his mimicry of protest. That was all an old story to him; it was the way Spadoni, and even Castro, talked, but with a certain added fanaticism, characteristic of women, who, mystics in money matters, are always inclined to believe in presentiments and mysterious influences.
"Don't count on my helping you to gamble. Besides, I'm poor. At the present moment the Colonel must have less cash in the strong box than you. I'm almost tempted to ask you to loan me your thirty thousand francs."
They both laughed at the idea of this loan. And she had come as a debtor to ask his aid!
"I don't know what I can do for you; it's impossible for me to tell just what my situation is; but I'll do what I can. Let's have hope: one must be patient. These times can't last."
"No; they can't last."
Again the thought of the ridiculousness of their beingpoor so unexpectedly, came over them. But was it logical to think that the world would go on in the same normal fashion after such radical divergences from the natural order?
They felt drawn together in the solidarity of misfortune; they suddenly met, like brother and sister, fallen at the foot of a mountain peak, on the heights of which they had previously avoided each other, rudely clashing in uncontrollable hostility.
At present Michael had a feeling of being attracted to her, for a reason that was absolutely novel. Since his youth he had hated the daughter of Doña Mercedes, for her pride, and for the air of overwhelming superiority which she maintained even in those moments of love when nearly every woman freely humbles herself to take shelter in a man's arms like a happy slave. She could give herself only with a manner of haughty condescension, as a haughty alms, much as a goddess might come to a poor mortal.
And now, seeing her come to him thus simply, to entreat his aid, without the rancor of humiliated pride, hiding her fear with friendly merriment, desirous of forgetting the past, he felt all his old antipathy melt away.
He had always been a protector, a lover in the oriental fashion, incapable of caring for any women except those of his harem, who owed everything to his munificence, from their slippers to the plumes in their turbans, from the jewels that adorned their breasts, to the sweetmeats they ate, the pipes they smoked, and the musical instruments which accompanied their songs. Alicia did not interest him as a woman; neither she nor any other! But he felt the sympathy of comradeship in seeing her in need of his protection; somewhat the same feeling that he had towards Castro, the Colonel, and the other occupants of Villa Sirena. He even thought to himself that misfortunewas acceptable, so long as it tended to make people show their real character once more. This Alicia, so odious to him in early youth, might finally turn out to be quite a good friend, now that she found herself freed from the influence of vanity and of her bad bringing up.
"You have done enough just in receiving me here," she continued. "I know the limitation of my rights: I'm in hostile territory. This is the house of 'The Enemies of Women.'"
The Prince pretended not to hear her. Somebody had been talking; perhaps it was Castro, who could never keep anything from Doña Clorinda.
They walked through the gardens. Alicia stopped suddenly in front of a little piece of cultivated ground, where a few vegetables were beginning to spring from the soil.
"This is where you work? I know you amuse yourself working in your garden, just as other Russian princes do by making shoes."
So she knew this too? Oh, that tattle-tale rogue of a Castro!
In the Greek garden, one of the marble benches supported by four winged Victories attracted her attention, causing her to stop for a moment with a pensive expression on her face.
"Do you remember the old man on the bench near the Trojan wall?" she suddenly said.
Michael did not know how to answer her question; but after a few moments he remembered, as though her fixed stare communicated to him the vision of that night in which he had brutally left her.
"How you laughed at me! What a fool I must have seemed! Yes: I was unbearable. I was Venus; I was the center of the world; everything in existence, people and things, had been created for my special benefit. I felt it was my mission to make the world endure my whims,and that the world ought to thank me on its knees for paying any attention to it. What can you expect! It was youth, and the childish pride of our Springtime, which imagines itself eternal. And afterwards! If I were to tell you all the disillusionments, and all the sorrows that I experienced, even back in the days when I didn't have to worry about money! Winter sweeps away all our fancies of Maytime!"
"But you're not an old woman yet!" Michael exclaimed. "You still inspire romantic love in young men. You're fooling yourself or trying to make fun of me. There are still lots of men who, when they see you, would...."
"Perhaps," she replied, "but you, my dear, are not one of them. Confess it; I've never pleased you."
The Prince decided not to confess anything, and changed the conversation. These allusions to the past annoyed him. Alicia irritated him, every time she attempted to revive her charms as a siren of men.
They wandered about for more than half an hour on the various garden terraces. From time to time, in passing a clearing in the shrubbery, Michael cast a stealthy glance in the direction of the villa. No one was at the windows; but he himself felt an inner agitation at this visit. He was sure they were spying on him. Atilio, from behind the window curtains, was undoubtedly following their promenade among the trees. Perhaps Spadoni, who had spent the night at Villa Sirena, was jumping out of bed, and losing two hours of sleep, in order to contemplate this surprising spectacle. Even Novoa might have stopped reading to look in the direction of the garden.
Alicia herself noticed the fact that no one was visible, neither guest nor servants. She and the Prince seemed to be walking through an enchanted park.
As they went in the direction of the gate they met DonMarcos, who was hurriedly coming out of the gardener's lodge.
The Duchess held out her hand to Michael, who kissed it ceremoniously.
"I hope we are to see each other again in the Casino."
He shook his head. The gaming rooms bored him: he had no idea of going there.
"I would have liked to meet you there. I'm sure you would bring me luck."
For a moment she seemed undecided. She had no thought of returning to Villa Sirena, where there was no one but men: she was convinced that she was a nuisance there.
"Come and see me to-morrow. The Colonel knows where I live. Come, and we'll have a laugh at the way the Duchess de Delille is living. It's rather interesting."
She went over to the livery carriage which was waiting for her outside the gate. Before getting in she turned to urge him, in a tone of playful threat:
"If you don't come, you'll never see me again. I shall think you want to break with me, that you think I'm a bore, and don't like me. I shall expect you."
As the carriage drove off, she waved farewell.
"It was about time!" Michael exclaimed, on finding himself alone.
It had been a visit of an hour and a half. It had kept him continuously at a nervous tension, weighing his words, and avoiding too great an expression of friendliness, giving advice without any interest whatsoever, and leaving the past in silence. He preferred the confidence and lack of restraint of the conversations with his comrades.
On thinking of the latter, his feeling of annoyance returned. How Castro would smile, when he sat down at the table! He could hear his voice already saying ironically:"No women!" And the first to appear had made him as sheepishly obedient as a prior breaking the rule of the monastery to receive a Queen.
This worry caused him to speak to the Colonel, who was walking along at his side in silence, accompanying him from the gate to the house. Where was Castro?
"In the library with Lord Lewis. His Lordship arrived while Your Highness was in the garden. He has come to lunch."
He was a nice Englishman! He had taken it into his head of his own accord to choose this day, after so many futile invitations! While that Englishman was present, Castro would talk of nothing but gaming. And Michael went in search of Lewis.
The latter was the son of the great historian, whose country had rewarded him with the title of lord. But this title was only to be inherited by the oldest son of the family, and no one but Toledo, who always exaggerated the importance of his friends, called the second sonLordLewis. He had been in Monte Carlo for twenty-five years, and the old employees in the Casino, seeing his bald head sadly bowed above the gaming tables, recalled the gentleman of former times, elegant, gay, and vigorous. He had come to the Riviera, on one of his Byronic "pilgrimages," and there he had remained, not caring to see any more of the world. The passion for gambling was the one inexhaustible pleasure for this man who had tried them all, and who was bored by the majority.
The real Lord Lewis, a solemn person, who maintained the prestige of the family name, had several children, and had served his country in various high positions in the Colonies. As for the Colonel's "Lord," he was gradually losing all his former connections, and becoming a mere Monte Carlo gambler.
"Twenty-five years!" he had remarked with sadness one day to the Prince. "And I shall never be able to do anything else! It's too late now to get a fresh start. My life is ended, and they will bury me here, I'm sure; all that I inherited from my father, and all that several old aunts left me will remain here. There have been times, when I saw things as they are, and undertook to run away. But when I'm at a distance, I feel violently indignant. I remember that I've dropped more than a million here, I think that I ought not to resign myself to the loss, and in order to recover it, I come back at once to play, and lose again. I shall go on doing like that until I die. Besides, there's the castle...."
Michael was acquainted with the castle. It was on a peak of the Maritime Alps, in sight of Monte Carlo, near the village of La Turbie and the remains of the Trophy of Augustus which marks the ancient Roman road.
During his first years of life on the Riviera, the aristocratic Lewis had bought for a few thousand francs the ruins of a lordly stronghold that possessed the romantic tradition of having witnessed wars with the Counts of Provence, and scenes of family violence and murder. The son of the Historian, fonder of sport than of literature, considered it a matter of filial homage to reconstruct within sight of the Mediterranean a castle such as his father had described in telling the legends of his country. Part of his fortune had gone into this. The rest had been devoted to gambling. "With what I win," he used to say to himself, "I shall finish the castle." And since he imagined he would win fabulous sums, he started the reconstruction on a gigantic scale, directing it himself, according to the architectural fancies he had studied out from the drawings of Gustave Doré. The castle had remained half built, standing thus for manyyears. On the one side that was completed, the walls displayed huge gloomy-looking windows with stained glass. On the side opposite, the timber of the scaffolding was rotting; the unfinished walls stood there meeting at right angles, and the wind and rain entered the future drawing rooms, for lack of a fourth wall to shut them off. They were open to the view like a stage setting.
Whenever Lord Lewis' friends did not meet him in Monte Carlo it was because he was out of money, and was staying in his castle, sadly contemplating all that remained to be done. He lived in one of the wings that was most nearly completed, and passed the lonely hours in fighting with his peasant neighbors, the market people, and with every one in the district in fact, who considered it a duty to annoy him and exploit him in every possible way.
Whenever a remittance of a thousand or two thousand pounds sterling arrived from England, he proudly descended from his mountain to the Castle. He had a great aim in life, and he felt he must accomplish it. This time he was going to triumph! And when, after exciting fluctuations—his capital sometimes increasing, as though his hopes were about to be realized—he finally lost everything, Lewis would return to his refuge on the heights, and to his hermit's life, in hopes of new remittances, which were less frequent and more difficult to get each time.
The Prince had visited him once, in this new yet crumbling stronghold, to invite him on a long voyage on his yacht. But Lewis refused. He must continue his duel with the Casino to get back his money; he was under obligation to finish his undertaking.
The war had awakened him for a few weeks from the grip of his wild dream. His brother had died a few weeks before; but countless young nephews still remained.They had given up their comforts and pleasures in high society to offer their lives. Some of them, who were in the navy, had embarked on small vessels, torpedo-boats and submarines, seeking the greatest dangers; others entered the army as officers. A niece of his even, delicate in health, had been decorated on the firing line, for her sacrifices as a nurse.
"And I, miserable selfish man that I am," he said, in talking with the Colonel at the Casino, "go on being a mere Monte Carlo gambler. I ought to be out there, where the men are, but I can't.... I can't! My days are over; I'm a corpse that eats and sleeps just to go on gambling. Add to that the fact that some of my relatives, older than I am, are in the army!"
At the age of fifty-four, the consciousness of his moral decay, and his continual losses, had embittered his nature. Besides, the evenings that luck was against him he kept going out to the Casino bar, seeking inspiration in one whisky after another gulped down in haste. Heavy set, with square shoulders, a small head, deep blue eyes and a red mustache streaked with gray, he reminded Atilio somewhat of a wild boar, perhaps because of his aggressiveness and gruffness when he was in a bad humor. He gambled with his head sunk between his shoulders, his strong hands resting on the green baize, without looking at any one, and without allowing any one to talk to him, since it disturbed his calculations. The days when things were going wrong, and he was having arguments in regard to some doubtful play, with the employees or with those who were sitting near him at the tables, Lewis's outburst of rage broke the discreet calm of the gaming rooms. He insulted the croupiers, inviting them to step outside on the Square, while his biceps swelled like a prize fighter's. It was necessary to call one of theprincipal directors to pacify him with all the paternal considerations which a steady patron deserved.
This man, who in his youth had believed in neither God nor devil, lived a constant prey to superstitions which were Castro's delight. He detested strange faces, feeling certain that they exercised on him an evil influence. It was enough that he should see one across the green table, or behind his seat, to cause him to begin to growl in an undertone, until finally he would get up and go out to the bar, with the idea that a whisky taken in time would change his luck. His intimate friend, the only one who could live with him for several days in succession, was a French count, older than Lewis, and who was simply called by his title, as though he were nameless, or as though he were just naturally "The Count." The latter never gambled, but he was ever so wise, in spite of the fact that many people considered him insane! One day, thirty years ago, he had stepped out of his house in Paris, saying that he was going out to buy some tobacco, and he had not yet returned. His wife had died without seeing him, and his children, and countless grand-children, who had been born and had grown up during his absence, were anxious that he should never finish making his purchase.
While Lewis played, the Count, seated on a divan, quietly read some book, without paying any attention to the curiosity of the public, which stared at his long white hair brushed back, his enormous wild-looking mustache, his round green eyes, gleaming with phosphorescence like those of a night hawk. Castro's curiosity was aroused by the Count's books. They were always new volumes of the sort that are never seen in any book store, and are published by obscure unknown firms; conscientious treatises on the nectars and ambrosiasof modern life—opium, cocaine, morphine, and ether—formulas by which one can enter into direct communication with the mysterious powers—spirits, hobgoblins, and familiar demons—old books of magic brought to light by up-to-date sorcerers.
He never deigned to give his friend advice as to gambling; his thoughts were on higher things; but Lewis felt surer whenever he raised his eyes and saw him, by chance, reading in a corner. As long as he was there, he always won, or at least he did not lose much. His presence was enough to conjure the evil power of the infinite number of enemies which the Englishman felt were surrounding the table. Besides, he was aware of the object which the Count was fondling secretly with one hand, while he went on reading.
After he had had the misfortune to lose for several days in succession, Lewis would come to him, entreatingly:
"Count, my dear Count, if you would please lend me your Satan's rosary!"
The learned personage would look up, doubtful and hesitating. But since it was his best friend who asked for it, he would hand the rosary over, which meant that one of his hands would be left without anything to do. It was a rosary like any other, with large red beads and black ones to mark off the tens. The chief thing about it was the group of objects which hung in place of the missing cross: an ivory elephant picked up by the Count in India, an authentic coin of the Emperor Constantine found in the excavations at Anatolia, and another charm which even Lewis could scarcely look upon without a sense of revulsion.
Ill luck was vanquished. At times Lewis had lost while he was secretly telling the beads of the diabolical rosary under the table; but he always lost less than whenhe was deprived of the marvelous talisman. He only cared to remember how one afternoon, aided by the obscene sacrilegious thing so highly prized he had succeeded in winning eighty thousand francs.
If he stopped winning it was the Count's fault. He was as fickle as a coquette. He would suddenly disappear, repeating the same unexplainable flight that had amazed his family. He never left Lewis to go and buy tobacco; but if any of the books he bought told about some narcotic used in Asia to enable one to see the future, or about a gypsy woman in Granada who could kill people by merely wishing and saying a few words, then off he would go, accepting as gospel truth the saying of some anonymous writer who had never been out of Paris. He never lacked money for these mysterious trips: doubtless his family was interested in keeping him at a distance. He might be three months or five years in reappearing. At last the rumor would reach Lewis that his friend was living in Nice or Cannes, and he would then write him frequently, inviting him to come over to Monte Carlo. He even used to go after him and the Count would allow himself to be brought back with his mysterious books and his prodigious rosary, without ever saying a word about what discoveries he had made on his trips.
On seeing Lewis, after a year's absence, the Prince was obliged to conceal his surprise. Nothing save the clear, quiet, gentle eyes, recalled the vanished freshness of the athletic and elegant gentleman. He had grown thin in an alarming manner, with the emaciation of illness. His skull seemed to have shrunk, and across his baldness strayed the few scattered ashen locks that still remained.
A remark made by the Colonel came to his mind. Toledo had made a study of the decadence of gamblers.It was when they reached the last limits of depression and despair that they began to stoop, to shrivel up, and become wrinkled. Lewis' hat was getting too big for him; each day it sat farther down on his head until it rested on his ears. His shirt collar was also getting larger, as though it were making room for his sorrowing heart to take flight.
During the lunch, Lewis, Castro and Spadoni kept up the conversation. They talked about gambling and the Casino, but no one dared ask the Englishman if he had been winning. He had a superstitious fear of this question, as if it brought misfortune. On the other hand, he talked about other people's good luck, and the great stakes that had been won in a night. He kept in his mind all that he had been told, and all that he had imagined he had seen during twenty-five years of life at Monte Carlo. An American had gone away with a million; an Englishman had won ten thousand pounds sterling with fivelouisthat he had borrowed. Thus he went on talking about the wonders that had happened in the Casino. And after that could there still be people to assert that all, absolutely all, of the gamblers, lose in the end?
With eyes that glistened with astonishment and greed, the pianist listened to the tales of the "Dean of the Gamblers." Castro was more skeptical. He had heard of these extraordinary winnings, and of many others, but had never witnessed a single one of them, although he had been coming to Monte Carlo for a good many years. It was true that he had seen as much as five hundred thousand francs won in a single night. But the next day things had changed, and the winner had lost all his gains, and all the money he had brought, into the bargain, finally being obliged to ask for the customary viaticum in order to be able to return to his country.
"I think," he said, "all these stories are invented by the advertising department of the Casino. They tell me they have engaged a popular novelist, whose business it is to start a story like that every week, in order to encourage the gamblers."
The Prince smiled at this invention of his friend, but Lewis would not listen to jokes on such a serious subject, and asserted that he had witnessed everything that he related. He was lying unconsciously in making this statement. In reality he had seen the same things as Atilio: people who won to lose later on; but he felt the need of the supernatural and was inclined to believe everything in advance. He had the soul of a fanatic, who, when told of a miracle, affirms a few days later with sincerity: "I saw it with my own eyes."
Every now and then the Prince would eye Castro, expecting to surprise some ironic glance, something which would reveal his impressions in regard to the visit he had received that morning. Lewis' presence seemed to have obliterated all memory of anything unrelated to gambling.
When the luncheon was over they talked in the hall, over their coffee, about those who played for big stakes in the private rooms. The names of some of them were spoken of with respect, as though they were masters, worthy of admiration.
"So-and-so knows how to play," was the one comment.
The amusing part of it for Michael was the fact that Lewis also figured among the masters "who knew how to play," and every one of them lost, like those who were "ignorant." Their one merit rested on their ability to put off the hour of final ruin, and prolong the annihilating emotion, growing old like prisoners in the shadow of the rocky cliffs of the Principality.
The Prince looked at Castro once more, as at a cleverenemy who is hiding his thoughts. He ventured to ask a question.
"And how does my relative, the Duchess de Delille, play?"
Atilio looked at him, with not so much as a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, surprised at the interest shown by the Prince. But before he could reply, Lewis broke in with an answer. The latter hated women, especially at the gaming tables. They were only a nuisance, interrupting the calculations of the men, with their nervous looks and gestures.
"She plays like an idiot," he said brutally. "She plays like any woman.... The money she's lost like a fool!"
Castro intervened as though desiring the conversation to go no further.
"How about the Count?" he asked Lewis. "Where is he? The Colonel is very much interested in him."
Don Marcos gave an exclamation of surprise and reproach. He had formed his own opinion of that person a long time ago. He was a crazy man! He would never forget the brief dialogue they had had one afternoon in the Casino, after Atilio had introduced them. On learning Toledo's nationality he had launched into a great eulogy of Spain. Oh, Spain! What an interesting language it had! And when the Colonel was about to thank him for his extreme politeness, he was dumbfounded by the following remark, that took away his breath:
"Because, as you probably know, Spanish is the preferred language of the devil, after Latin. The most powerful charms are written in Spanish. What wonderful necromancers in Toledo! What learned sorcerers in Salamanca!"
The old soldier who had fought for the Most Catholicking was always greatly disturbed when he thought of the Count and his rosary. For this reason when Lewis declared that he had no idea of the whereabouts of his friend, he solemnly replied:
"I know where he is: in a mad house."
Suddenly the roar of a train was heard passing Villa Sirena, accompanied by shouts and whistling. They were more Englishmen on their way to Italy.
This caused them to take up the subject of the war. Lewis, who had imbibed freely at the table, was overcome at once with an intense sadness, the talk of gambling having reminded him of the worthlessness of his life. His intoxication was of the solemn, melancholy kind.
"Two of my nephews died in the Jutland naval battle. Six of my brother's sons were killed in France, in a single afternoon: they belonged to the same battalion. They were all young, spirited, and anxious to do something. I'm the only man left in the family; I'm the worthless one, the old man, good for nothing. It's terrible!"
No one said anything, realizing the shame and despair of this man, who seemed to be weeping over the ruins of his aimless existence. Novoa nodded slightly, as though approving of his words.
"My family is extinct. And there were so many young men in it! Life is strange. Time goes by without anything extraordinary happening, and then all of a sudden the hours are like months, the days like years, and in a few minutes things take place that usually require centuries. All dead! None left but my niece Mary, the nurse. She is here; her superiors ordered her away almost by force, to take a rest and recuperate. But, anxious to resume her service, she got away to Menton and Nice, where there are wounded men. If at leastshe would only marry! But it can't be: she will die like the rest. And I shall remain alone, and be a lord, the third Lord Lewis; Lord Lewis the Historian, Lord Lewis the Colonel Governor, and Lord Lewis the Wastrel...."
At this point they all stopped him in affectionate protest. The misfortune of his family had been extraordinary, but he ought not to torture himself like that.
"If you don't mind, Prince," said the Englishman, changing the conversation, "some day I shall bring my niece to let her see your gardens. She is so fond of such things! She is the only one of the family to inherit my father's spirit."
After saying that, Lewis showed signs of desiring to go. It was necessary for him to forget, and he knew where oblivion was waiting for him. For a gambler like him, it was no more possible to sit still than it would be for a drunkard who is thinking of a bar with its rows of glasses. Castro and Spadoni exchanged several glances with him.
"What do you say to dropping in at the Casino?" one of them proposed.
And all three disappeared.
The Colonel also left, and the Prince spent the remainder of the afternoon talking with Novoa, walking about the gardens, and looking at the sunset. Finally, he sat down in the hall under a tall rose-shaded floor lamp, to read.
Castro returned alone, long before the dinner hour. He was sad; he whistled occasionally. His smile was a savage grin. It had been a bad afternoon. He had lost everything! The next day he would have to ask his relative for a fresh loan in order to return to his "work."
Once more Michael felt compelled to talk to him about the call he had received that morning. It was better tohave a frank explanation and avoid ironical allusions.
"Yes, I saw her," Castro said. "I watched you from a window while you were walking through the gardens."
The Prince looked at him, astonished at his brevity. Was that all he had to say? At present he felt he would have preferred his joking.
"What of it if she did come?" at last he said brusquely. "That's natural; poor woman! I warn you that you've begun the conquest of an enemy."
He had met "the General" in the Casino. She and Alicia had just had another reconciliation, and to seal their renewed friendship with a fresh burst of confidence, the Duchess Delille had related her interview with the Prince.
"Doña Clorinda used to be unable to stand you. She considered you a frivolous fellow, a worthless loafer. But now she praises you to the skies, because of your cancelling that enormous debt, and proposing to help the Duchess. She says you are like a knight of old times, and that you are big hearted."
Michael shrugged his shoulders. A lot he cared what Doña Clorinda thought! This exasperated Castro.
"Why shouldn't your relatives come here?" he said sharply. "You're getting bored living just among men all the time. You don't believe it, but it's true. It's the same with all of us. One has to talk with a woman from time to time, even if it's only out of friendship. What you claimed when you came from Paris is impossible."
"Perhaps you think I'm going to fall in love with Alicia?"
And the Prince laughed for a long time, as though never tiring of seeing the funny side of such an absurd supposition.
"You'll find that out later on," Castro replied. "All I have to say is that we can't live much longer as enemiesof women. Look at the Colonel: he's your 'Chamberlain,' your Aide, the man who obeys you blindly. Well, even he is deserting you. Just notice: whenever he can, he spends his time in the Porter's lodge. He has to talk to the gardener's daughter, a little brat he used to see crawling around on all fours, but who is sixteen now, and not bad looking. She worked in a millinery shop in Monte Carlo, but follows the styles like a young society girl. The Colonel keeps her provided with high-heeled shoes, short skirts, tams, and smart hats, and buys her imitation amber beads. That's how he spends all the money you allow him to take for his services. Sometimes he follows her at a distance in the street, admiring her seductive outline and her ankles, much in evidence, and always in silk-stockings. He patiently cultivates his garden; and smiles like a fool when he thinks of his future harvest."
ONESunday, as he got out of bed, the Prince felt like singing. Perhaps he was unconsciously following the example of some birds, which, deceived by the Spring-like warmth of a midwinter's day, had been warbling in the eaves of Villa Sirena since sunrise.
He looked out of his bedroom window. The Mediterranean, without a single sail, stretched away in far-off undulations, to where it met the sky. The gulls were wheeling in circles, continually drooping into the water, folding their wings, and letting themselves be carried along by the waves. The sandy depths, stirred by the swells, gave the blue sea a lighter shade, which attained, along the shore, an opalescent hue, like that of absinthe. Around the promontory, white luminous foam was constantly being churned among the projecting rocks of the reefs.
The Prince heard voices above him. Castro and Spadoni were talking from window to window. The mysterious call of the early morning beauty had caused them to jump out of bed. They were admiring the sky, which did not have a trace of mist to dim the brightness of its farthest reaches. The mountains stood out in extraordinary relief: they seemed larger and nearer. Above Cap-Martin, the Italian Alps descended to the sea, their outlying buttress, at the water's edge, white with the frontier towns: Vintimiglia and Bordighera.
Through some freak of the atmosphere, a dense, elongated cloud, like a snow-covered island, was floating directlyoverhead in the clear sky. Its whiteness seemed to radiate an inner light.
"I recognize it," Atilio said with a tone of conviction to the musician, who did not seem to tire of looking at it. "I have seen it often. When the day turns out too bright, the Directors of the Casino are afraid that the patrons may be bored by so much sunlight, and the vast expanse of azure: blue sea and blue sky. 'Have the big cloud brought out,' they order over the telephone. You must have noticed that that cloud always appears from behind the mountains. That's where the Casino has its storehouses. They don't neglect details here when it comes to entertaining their patrons."
Michael heard two exclamations: one of surprise and the other of indignation. Next he heard the sound of a window suddenly closed. The pianist, not in a mood for joking at so early an hour, was going back to bed, to sleep until lunch time.
The Prince hurried through his toilet. He felt the need of getting out and going somewhere, as though his gardens seemed too small for him. In the distance the bells of Monte Carlo were ringing, and still farther off those of Monaco were replying; and the merry pealing of the chimes caused the clear brittle air to vibrate like a crystal glass.
He went down stairs slowly, trying not to make any noise, and when he reached the gate he breathed freely. He had not met any of his companions, not even the Colonel. As though attracted by the Sunday morning atmosphere of gaiety which, as the afternoon wears on, changes to tiresome ennui, he decided to walk to the city alone.
Outside the gate, a girl was waiting for the street car. She was very young; but her feet slanted at a sharp angle on her high-heeled shoes. Her skirt, falling scarcely belowher knees, showed her well-rounded calves. The finely woven stockings revealed the whiteness of her flesh. Prominent against the salmon colored silk sweater, was a necklace of large imitation amber beads. Her hair, cut short just below the ears, fell smoothly from underneath a jaunty velvet tam o'shanter of graceful line. The air of profound respect with which she spoke to him made him recognize her. It was the gardener's daughter. But at the same time she looked at him in a sly way with ill-concealed curiosity, as though her eyes made a distinction between the master and the man whom women adored and of whom she had heard so many things.
The Prince went on, after speaking to her as he would have to a young lady of his own social rank. He was gay that morning, and he laughed inwardly as he thought how later on that little bundle of mischief and ambition would keep men busy. Then he thought of Don Marcos, and what Atilio had told him. Poor Colonel! Imagine a person, at his age, trying to tame a young wildcat!
He walked lightly, with a springy step, in the direction of Monte Carlo. He passed the villas and the gardens as though contact with the ground had given his step fresh vigor, and as though the Spring-like air had abrogated to some extent the laws of gravity.
When he reached the city he stopped in front of the steps of San Carlos Church. Through the door he could see the twinkling tapers, smell the odor of flowers, and hear the droning of the organ, and the voices of young girls singing. He felt like a boy once more, buoyant and fresh as the morning, and had an impulse to follow the various families, in their Sunday best, who were ascending the steps. He was a Catholic through his father, a member of the Greek church through his mother, and nothing by his own inclination. Suddenly he felt a certainrepugnance for the cave-like darkness, laden with perfumes, and dotted with lights. So he went on, breathing the open air with delight.
"Oh, your Ladyship! Good morning!"
A long, thin female hand shook his with masculine vigor. The brass buttons of her khaki colored uniform, like that of an English soldier, were gleaming in the sun. The uniform, instead of being completed by breeches, ended in a short skirt and tan leather leggings.
It was Lewis's niece. She had spent two afternoons at Villa Sirena rambling about the gardens. Once more Michael observed her unhealthy emaciation, which was beginning to take on the miserable appearance of consumption. Her Sam Brown belt buried itself in her blouse, as though failing to meet the resistance of a body underneath the cloth. The face under the visor of the military cap was as sharp as a knife. Her skin, drawn and lined in spite of her youth, showed all the bones and hollows. It was impossible to judge her age: she might have been twenty-five, or she might have been sixty. Only the eyes had retained their freshness; eyes that still kept the guilelessness of adolescence, and looked one squarely in the face with the serene confidence of a virgin sure of her strength.
She had gone through the horrors of war, as through a flame that dries up and parches everything it touches, and in the end converts it to dust. She was like a mummy, burned by the fire of the blazing towns that she had seen, and shaken by the tears and moans of thousands of human beings. "Think what those ears have heard!" Michael said to himself. And he understood the sad expression of the pale mouth which hung wearily between two drooping furrows. "And think what those eyes have seen!" he continued mentally. But theeyes did not care to remember and smiled at him, happy in the present moment.
She had just come out of a large hotel converted into a hospital, and was waiting for the street car to go to Menton. More wounded soldiers had arrived there, and owing to the scarcity of nurses the doctors had been obliged to accept her services. For the present they would not bother her any more with solicitude about her health! As she thought of the hard work that lay before her, of the long night watches, and the fight with death to save so many lives, she was filled with joy. She was anxious, as though she were going to a celebration to take the short trip as soon as possible, and seeing the car coming, she shook hands with the Prince again, with a firm grip.
"I shall go on abusing your permission. Next time I shall pillage your gardens even worse. Flowers ... lots of flowers! If you would only see the joy they give the poor fellows when you put them beside the beds! Some of the doctors are vexed; they think it is silly. But all I say is: as long as we have to die, why not die with a little poetry, with something around us to remind us of the beauty we are losing. It doesn't hurt any one."
Lubimoff went on his way, but his heart was less light. This woman, fighting death so generously and so manfully, seemed to have torn away the rosy veil that had made his eyes rejoice.
Everything was the same, but of a darker hue, as though he were looking at the landscape through smoked glasses. He noticed things which he had not observed until then. The large hotels had been converted into hospitals. Their porches and large balconies were filled with men basking in the sun; men whose heads were white balls, bound with bandages that left only the eyes and mouth visible; half finished men, as it were, lacking aleg or an arm, like a sculptor's rough models. Others were lying motionless, with both legs amputated, like corpses in a dissecting room, but still breathing.
On the sidewalks he met soldiers of various nations: French, English, Serbian, officers, and a few Russians, who reminded him of the former importance his country had had in the war. Every variety of uniform worn by the various armies of the French Republic passed before his eyes: the horizon blue of the home troops, the mustard color of the soldiers from Morocco, the yellow fatigue caps of the Foreign Legion, and the red fez of the Algerians and the negro Sharpshooters.
Each one was maimed. This sunny land, with its lovely views of sea and sky, seemed peopled with a race that had survived a cataclysm. Elegantly dressed officers, with handsome figures, limped along, cautiously dragging one leg, or else stepping gingerly on a foot so swathed in bandages that it was several times its natural size. Some of them were leaning on canes, bent over like old men. Men of athletic proportions trembled as they walked, as though their skeletons were rattling about in the hollow wrapper of their bodies wasted by consumption. Fingers were missing on hands; arms had been cut off until the shapeless stumps looked like fins. Under their pads of cotton, cheeks retained the gashes made by hand grenades, scars like those left by cancer; the horrible cavity of the nose, which had been torn away in some of the men, was hidden by a black tampon attached to the ears. The faces of others were covered by masks of bandages, leaving nothing visible save the eyes—sad eyes that seemed to look with fear to the day when they would have to grow accustomed to the horror of a face that a few months before had been youthful and now was like a vision in a nightmare. The bodies of some were intact, retaining their former strength and agility in all theirlimbs. Seen from behind they had kept all the vigor and suppleness of youth. But they walked abreast, holding tightly to one another's arms, their eyes lost in darkness, tapping the pavement with a stick which had taken the place of the vanished sword, and which would accompany them until the hour of their death.
And this procession of sadness and resignation, this grievous masquerade comforted by the joyousness of the morning, and feeling love of life once more renewed, was coming from the gardens. Others were going in the direction of the Casino and its terraces, passing among the Brazilian palm trees, with smooth, hollow trunks covered with elephant hide; among the cacti, held up by iron supports like a tangle of green reptiles bristling with thorns; among the prickly pears as high as trees; among the Himalayan fig trees, with towering trunks and wide spreading domes of branches which seemed to have been made to shelter the motionless meditation of the fakirs; among all the trees that come from tropical and temperate America, from China, Australia, Abyssinia, and South Africa. A tiny rivulet descended the slope in zig-zags through the openings in the green lawn, forming back waters among the bamboos and Japanese palms, until it flowed into a miniature lake, bordered with foliage, as tranquil, pleasing, and dainty as one of those centerpieces in which the water is represented by a mirror.
Michael stopped in the upper gardens to look at the Casino from a distance. He had never realized before the fussiness and bad taste of the architecture of this building, which was the heart of Monaco. If the "gingerbread monument"—as Castro called it—closed its doors, all Monte Carlo would be wrapped in a deathly stillness like the loneliness of those cities which in former centuries were ports, and now are sleepy and deserted, far from the sea, which has withdrawn. It was the workof the architect of the Paris Opera House, an ornate, gaudy, childish structure, of the color of soft butter, with multi-colored roofs, balconied turrets, niches with nameless statues, many tile friezes and gilded mosaics. At the corners there were green porcelain escutcheons, imitating roughly cut emeralds. The outstanding decorative motif of this building, famous throughout the world, was the imitation of gold and precious stones.
Owing to the prosperity of the establishment, they had added to the main body flanked with four towers, an extensive wing in which the best gaming rooms were located. Various green and yellow cupolas of different sizes revealed the existence of the latter, rising above the upper balustrade. On this balustrade a number of bronze angels or genii, entirely nude and with golden wings, had been set up. With black extended arms they were offering golden tributes, the significance of which no one had been able to guess. Other white or metal statues of half nude women were sheltered in the niches in the walls, and the names and significance of these were likewise a mystery.
Although the edifice was erected with the pretense of dazzling and charming with its gold and soft colors, those who went there paid scarcely any attention to its splendors.
"The ones who are arriving," Castro would say, "go in on the run; they want to get placed at the gaming tables as soon as possible. The ones who are coming out take a gloomy view of everything; and even though the Casino were as beautiful as the Parthenon, they would take it for a robber's cave."
The Prince looked to the right of the building, where a strip of blue sea was visible, with the hairy trunks and rounded tops of a few Japanese palms standing out against the blue. There at the entrance to the terracesalong the Mediterranean rose the only two monuments of the city, dedicated to the fame of two musicians from the simple fact that some of their works had been played for the first time in the theater of the Casino. Carved in marble, Berlioz and Massenet greeted with a vague stare in their sightless eyes the cosmopolitan crowd that came to the gambling house. "They are honorarycroupiers," Castro used to say.
"Massenet—that isn't so bad," thought Michael. "He was fortunate, he had money, and his gifts were recognized during his lifetime. But imagine Berlioz, who spent his years struggling against poverty and public indifference, standing guard after death over the Casino's millions!"
Next, he looked at the foreground, observing the open Square in front of the edifice. There was a round garden in the center. People called it the "cheese" and some even particularized and called it the "Camembert."
Around the garden rail and on the benches backing up to it, one could observe the living soul of Monte Carlo. Here people gathered, to exchange jokes and gossip, ask news from those who were coming out of the Casino, and comment on the good or bad fortune of the most celebrated gamblers.
In the immediate neighborhood, there were no business houses except jewelry stores, branches of the government pawn shop, and millinery shops. Women who played small stakes felt like satisfying their longing for an expensive hat on coming out of the Casino. Those who needed fresh capital to carry out their systems had only to take a few steps to pawn their valuables. In the show windows of the jewelry shops, pearl necklaces worth a million francs and emeralds worth three hundred thousand, were exhibited during the winter, waiting for a buyer; and in summer they were sent to the fashionablebathing resorts to continue being a mute and dazzling temptation. The jewelers, with Semitic profiles, were waiting behind their counters, more for sellers than buyers, and calmly offered a fourth of the price for a gem bought in that very shop the year before.
From a distance it was easy for the Prince to guess the character of the many people who at that early hour were sitting on the benches opposite the stairs leading up to the edifice. Here those condemned to misery by gambling, and accursed by fate, remained all day, suffering the most atrocious torment of living close to the door of the sanctuary without being able to enter. They had lost their last cent, and the directors of the establishment, who generously send ruined gamblers back to their respective countries, had handed over theviaticumto them for their return. But they had staked the money given to aid them and had lost; and since they were debtors to the Casino they could not reënter it until they had fulfilled their obligations. So there they remained, stranded in the Square for all time, with the false hope of getting some money. None of them had any idea of how or from what source. They mingled together there in the companionship of misery, watching for fellow-countrymen who were better off, to besiege them with requests for a loan; or else they spent their time discussing numbers and colors. Perhaps they would succeed in getting together a few francs after turning all their pockets inside out, and they might choose, as the emissary of their illusions, a comrade who was as poor as they, but who had not "taken the viaticum" and was free to enter.
Michael saw a crowd of people extending as far as the Japanese palm trees, near the Massenet monument. They had just arrived by various street cars from Nice. They were all hurrying, anxious to enter the motley edifice as soon as possible, as though fortune were expecting themin the gaming rooms and might leave at any moment, tired of waiting.
He looked at the clock above the façade. It was ten o'clock. The daily occupations were being resumed and the devotees who lived in Monte Carlo were likewise flocking there, and mingling with the people who had come from other places. They all mounted the marble steps, following the three stair-carpets held in place by brass rods that glistened in the sun.
"And to think that we're at war!" Michael thought. "And many of those who have gotten up early to make the trip, and those who live here, too, have sons or brothers or husbands, who at the present moment are fighting, and dying perhaps!"
Love of life, love of pleasure, and the vain hope of winning, worked like an anæsthetic, causing them all to rise above their worries and forget, so that they were able to live entirely in the present moment.
This general rush for the opening of the gaming hall disgusted the Prince and caused him to halt in his descent of the gentle slope of the gardens. It was repugnant to him to mix with the crowd that was loitering in the neighborhood of the Casino.
His desire to retrace his steps gave him an idea. "Supposing you go and surprise Alicia at her home? She would be so pleased!"
She had been at Villa Sirena twice since her first visit. A chance meeting in the street with the Prince, when she was walking along with her friend Clorinda, had served as a pretext for another visit to the refuge in their beautiful gardens of "the enemies of women." He found the "General" less hostile and dominating than he had imagined; but he could not understand Castro's passion for her. In spite of her beauty it seemed to him that he was talking to a man. They had been accompanied by Valeria,a young French girl, who had been a protégée of Alicia's, a traveling companion in the days of dazzling wealth, and who now accompanied her in poverty, out of gratitude and fidelity. Later the Duchess de Delille had returned alone a second time to consult him about various projects for her future, all of them lacking in common sense; and she had finally accepted a loan of a thousand francs. Luck was against her in gambling: she needed new "tools to work with." The capital that had irritated her so by never varying, never going much above thirty thousand, had finally heard her complaints, and dwindled with lightning rapidity, leaving merely a few remnants of its former self.
In spite of the Prince's loan the Duchess had complained.
"I'm always the one who is looking you up: you never deign to visit my house. How poor I really am!"
Remembering her humble protest, the Prince no longer hesitated. Turning his back on the Casino, he began to ascend the sloping streets in the direction of the frontier line separating Monte Carlo from Beausoleil; streets that displayed names recalling Spring: the Street of the Roses, of the Carnations, of the Violets, of the Orchids.
He entered a short avenue formed by a double row of garden fences. He caught a glimpse of the houses between the columns of palm trees, and the firm leaves of the large magnolias. As he went along he read the names of the small estates carved on little plaques of red marble, placed at the entrance to the grounds. "Villa Rosa", here it was. He pushed open the iron gate, which was ajar, without hearing the sound of a voice or the barking of a dog to greet his presence. He saw a small garden half deserted, overgrown with weeds at the foot of the untrimmed trees, and covering the space that had formerly been occupied by flower beds. The rest was morecarefully tended, but it was a vegetable garden with rectangles of kitchen stuffs intensively cultivated.
Lubimoff approached without meeting anyone. It occurred to him that the gardener must have been the man with the dog, whom he had met as he turned into the street.
Then he mounted the four steps at the entrance. Here too the door was half ajar, and upon pushing it all the way open, he found himself in a hallway with stairs leading to the upper story.
There was no one in sight. He tried the doors of the adjoining rooms and found them locked. There was not a sound. It was as though the house were deserted. But the silence was suddenly broken by a voice floating down the stairway. It was a faint voice, singing a slow, sad English air. The song was accompanied by a sound of dull blows, as though hands were beating and shaping up some large unresisting object.
Michael thought he recognized Alicia's voice. He coughed several times without result; he was not heard. He was about to call to let her know that he was there, but refrained, through a sudden impulse to play a little joke on her. Why shouldn't he surprise her by going up-stairs the one part of the house where she was now living, he thought? His hesitation vanished. Up-stairs he would go!
From the first landing he saw several doors, but only one was open; and it was from that one that the sounds of the song and the thumping were coming. A woman bending over a bed, was holding out her arms and vigorously shaking up a pillow. Instinctively she felt that some one was standing behind her, and turning around she gave an exclamation of surprise on seeing Michael in the doorway. The latter was no less surprised to recognize the woman as Alicia; an Alicia dressed in an elegantbut old négligée, with crumpled gloves on her hands, and a veil wrapped around her hair.
"You! It's you!" she exclaimed. "How you frightened me!"
Immediately she recovered her composure, and smiled at the Prince, as the latter tried to excuse himself. He had not met any one; the gate and the door had been open. She, in turn, now excused herself. It was Sunday; Valeria, her companion, had gone to Nice to take lunch with a family she knew; her maid and the gardener's wife were at mass; the old man had gone out a moment before to see some friends.
After these mutual explanations they both remained silent, looking at each other hesitatingly, not knowing what to say, but still smiling.
"You making your bed!" he remarked, just to say something.
"So you see. This is rather different from my bedroom in Paris. It is hardly the 'study' that I took you to either. Times have changed!"
Michael gravely nodded assent. Yes, times had changed.
"At any rate," she continued, "you must confess that there is a certain novelty in seeing the Duchess de Delille, madcap Alicia, making her bed."
The Prince nodded again. Indeed it was a novelty: something one could not see every day.
Alicia persisted in her explanations. It had not been at all hard for her to do housework. She cleaned her room herself, in order to save her elderly maid the extra bother. She did not want Valeria to help her. They were each keeping their own rooms in order, now that help was scarce. Besides, she herself sometimes went into the kitchen, and she would have liked to help thegardener cultivate the little garden, just for her own pleasure.
"We are living in war times; things are getting dearer every day, and as for me, I'm poor. We ought to return to the simple primitive life. But I don't dare work in the garden, on account of the neighbors. They watch you all the time from their windows. There is a Brazilian gentleman, even, who seems to have fallen in love with me."
She herself was proud of her industriousness. Who would ever have guessed such qualities some years before in the mistress of the luxurious residence on the Avenue du Bois, who was in the habit of getting up at three o'clock in the afternoon?
"I owe it all to mamma. She had me educated in a girls' school in England, when it was the fashion to substitute domestic work for the physical exercise of sports. I think it's called 'Corinthianism.' And I feel better than ever. In the old days I had to get up several mornings a week with Valeria and Clorinda and go to a tennis club and play until I was exhausted. Now, after taking care of my room and helping with the others I don't need any exercise. I'm doing poor man's gymnastics."
There was a long silence. Michael looked at the room; a woman's bedroom, still in disarray, with clothes lying on the arm chairs, giving out the perfume of a fastidious femininity. Through a narrow door he saw a corner of the adjoining bath room, where a wet spot had been left on the mosaic floor, from the morning bath. An odor of eau de cologne and tooth paste hung in the air. From several toilet jars, in disorder, vague scents of more precious essences were escaping. Mingling with the toilet articles and objects of intimate apparel, he could distinguish cards such as are given out to the patrons of the Casino, to mark their plays; some with red or blue marksin the columns, others pricked with a hat pin, for lack of a pencil. He observed larger cards, with a roulette wheel indicating the numbers and colors; and also many books of the sort sold by the stationers and at newspaper stands; illuminating treatises on "How to win without fail in all kinds of play." On the mantelpiece, half hidden by various fashion magazines, was a small roulette wheel, a real one, used undoubtedly in studying out and trying various theories. On the lamp stand beside the bed the latest copy of the Monte Carlo Review was lying open, with statistics of all the winning numbers during the past week at the various tables; interesting reading, with mysterious annotations which had kept Alicia up perhaps till dawn.
In the meantime she was dexterously causing to disappear everything which she considered prejudicial to her appearance since the surprise. When Michael looked at her again the old gloves had vanished from her hands and the veil was hidden somewhere. Her hair, now left free, was black and lustrous, a trifle coarse, perhaps, but it rose luxuriantly in large ringlets in disarray.