‘Your Royal Highness,‘Little did I think when we had the honour so short a time ago of welcoming your Royal Highness to Eton that it would be my painful duty to write this letter to you. Your son, Prince Leonard, was found last week to have visited the Windsor races, where he was seen smoking and talking to a successful jockey, whose equestrian skill, so it appeared, had been the means of winning your son a considerable sum of money. This offence could not, of course, be passed over, and it was my duty to visit it on him in the most severe manner—in short, I gave him a flogging. But he refused, apparently, to take the warning to heart, and yesterday evening his housemaster, going into his room, found him, with several other boys, engaged in a game of roulette. This was more particularly heinous, since I well remember how warmly your Royal Highness urged on us not to allow roulette in the school. I therefore beg to advise your Royal Highness to remove Prince Leonard at once from Eton, to save him the disgrace, which must otherwise be inevitable, of being expelled. The roulette-board I send to you to-day by parcel post. I must add that Prince Leonard was most anxious to have it understood that he had persuaded the others to play, in spite of their unwillingness.’
‘Your Royal Highness,
‘Little did I think when we had the honour so short a time ago of welcoming your Royal Highness to Eton that it would be my painful duty to write this letter to you. Your son, Prince Leonard, was found last week to have visited the Windsor races, where he was seen smoking and talking to a successful jockey, whose equestrian skill, so it appeared, had been the means of winning your son a considerable sum of money. This offence could not, of course, be passed over, and it was my duty to visit it on him in the most severe manner—in short, I gave him a flogging. But he refused, apparently, to take the warning to heart, and yesterday evening his housemaster, going into his room, found him, with several other boys, engaged in a game of roulette. This was more particularly heinous, since I well remember how warmly your Royal Highness urged on us not to allow roulette in the school. I therefore beg to advise your Royal Highness to remove Prince Leonard at once from Eton, to save him the disgrace, which must otherwise be inevitable, of being expelled. The roulette-board I send to you to-day by parcel post. I must add that Prince Leonard was most anxious to have it understood that he had persuaded the others to play, in spite of their unwillingness.’
Sophia did as she was advised, and instantly telegraphed to the headmaster, saying that she intended to remove her son at once from Eton. She was exceedingly annoyed at what had occurred, and felt quite angry with Leonard. She had expressly desired him not to play roulette; it was very tiresome to be disobeyed like this. She had hoped that he would have learned obedience at school. As for his removal from Eton, it was most inconvenient; she was at her wits’ end to know what to do with him. It would hardly be possible, at his age, to send him to Harrow; besides, she believed that Harrow boys always fought with Eton boys, and wore swallow-tail coats in the morning, which would never do. That the headmaster of Harrow would not be infinitely delighted at his entering there did not for a moment occur to her.
Her annoyance was very materially increased by the arrival of the roulette-board. It was a villainous piece of construction, faulty in carpentering, odiously coloured with the crudest and most violent tints; and it contained two zeros. She had, as the reader will have gathered, no moral objection at all to gambling, but her horror of not doing the thing properly was vital and ineradicable. In a fit of anger she smashed it into bits and threw the pieces on to the fire.
Later in the day Leonard arrived, completely himself.
‘How could you be so stupid and disobedient!’ cried the Princess. ‘And, Leonard, to play with that roulette-board is a disgrace.’
Leonard looked up in surprise.
‘How have you seen it? Where is it?’ he asked.
‘It is at present in ash in the grate, and its finer particles are contributing to the London fog,’ said the Princess, with some asperity. ‘In fact, I threw it into the fire. The headmaster sent it me.’
‘I thought we might have had a game together this evening,’ said Leonard, seating himself. ‘What was the good of burning it? Besides, it was mine. Oh, mother’—and his handsome face flushed with a sudden fresh eagerness—‘you never saw such a run of luck as I had last night! I staked three times on thirteen, and won twice!’
‘On thirteen! Good gracious,’ cried the Princess, ‘it is madness, Leonard! No wonder your housemaster came in and discovered you. Dear me, I remember horrifying your poor foolish father so much at Monte Carlo by backing single numbers. He had a system. Thank Heaven, you did not get caught playing on a system! The disgrace would have been double. I am spared that.’
Sophia pulled herself up sharp, for she was aware that her instinct had taken the reins from the serious spirit with which she had intended to handle Leonard. The little homily she had prepared had merged into the never-ending discussion on the subject of number thirteen.
‘But I am very much shocked and distressed at all this, Leonard,’ she went on. ‘You have ruinedand cut short your school career, and disgraced your name.’
Leonard’s eyes began to twinkle.
‘How about Madame Tussaud’s?’ he asked. ‘I am not the first.’
‘That is beside the point,’ said Sophia, and when the boy laughed outright: ‘At any rate, it is no good talking of that. Oh, but it was very funny! Well, Leonard, I do not mean to send you to the other public school—what is it called?—Harrow. Also, I do not intend you to come and live idly at Rhodopé.’
‘No, that would be rather too slow after England,’ remarked Leonard.
‘Well, what do you want to do? Can’t you suggest anything?’ asked the Princess, with some impatience.
‘I should like to stay in England, or travel, perhaps. Yes; why shouldn’t I travel?’
‘I think that is the best thing you could do,’ said the Princess, ‘and I am glad you suggested it. But I shall have to get you a tutor; it will be a great expense. I suppose you will go round the world. We will go to some agent to-morrow—I suppose there are agents for such things—and see how they are done.’
As usual, the Princess put her purpose into effect without loss of time. She advertised for a travelling tutor, and for three days made the life of Thomas Cook and Sons but a parody of existence. She went to the docks, and inspected large numbers of oceanliners, and at length fixed upon a vessel of the Peninsular and Oriental line, which would take him as far as Egypt. There he would spend a few weeks, go on to India, thence to Australia, and back over America. She had a personal interview with the captain of the vessel, and insisted on all the games provided for the use of passengers being turned out, so that she might assure herself that no game of hazard was played on board. But as the entire stock of entertainment consisted of some inglorious little rope-rings, which were to be thrown into buckets, she felt no further anxiety on this score. It puzzled her to understand how people could find amusement in this, but the captain assured her that they did.
She saw Leonard off on a drizzly November morning. He was to be away at the least for two years, and she parted from him with some emotion. But the conviction that she was doing the wisest thing for him was a large consolation. To let him go back to Rhodopé with all his inherited instincts of gambling would be a dangerous experiment, for she was firm in her resolve that he should prove a good and useful man, a ruler who might be able to grapple with the insidious gambling disease which had spread so direfully through the country, for she felt herself unable, morally incapable, of dealing with it. Personally, she could not face the idea of Amandos shorn of its club, and how should she, the priestess of the goddess, recant? She was determined to give Leonard the best chance possible.He should live on vessels where only rings were provided for entertainment, and when he landed he should shoot animals, and see mosques and wigwams, and other tedious and exotic objects.
She had engaged for him a tutor who inspired her with confidence. He had a lofty, commanding forehead, with high, knobby temples and a pedantic and instructive manner. He kept accounts in a book, and money in a purse. She herself had tried to teach him picquet, and was delighted to observe that he seemed almost incapable of understanding the ordinary value of cards, though he was said to be a fine classical scholar. He said he thought games of chance were irrational amusements, and though in sheer loyalty she was bound to attempt to convince him they were not, she was delighted to find that she failed egregiously. And next day Sophia saw the s.s.Valettastart from Tilbury, bearing Prince Leonard, his tutor, and the little rope-rings out into the siren-haunted mists of the mouth of the Thames.
A fewdays afterwards Princess Sophia herself started on her return to Rhodopé. TheFelatrunewas to meet her at Monte Carlo, but she crossed France overland. Her original scheme had been to go by sea all the way, but this saving of time caused by crossing the Continent gave her a balance of eight days, which she proposed to spend on the Riviera, where she lost a good deal of money.
Even in the few months of her absence, the change which had come over her mountain kingdom was startling. The crowd of foreign visitors, chiefly English, had never been so great, nor the season so brilliant. November in Rhodopé is the month of months, clear, cool, and bracing, with a sun of heavenly purity, and a wind justfrappéwith the snows which have fallen on the higher ranges of the Balkan. The air has a sparkle as if of frost in it, a translucent brightness which in the North we associate with the white rime of autumn mornings. To the Princess, fresh from the damp gray of England, and the tawdry theatrical brilliance of the Riviera,her home seemed an enchanted place, and for once she was glad to get back.
The club had pushed the limits of its gardens and kiosques up the slopes of the hills behind Amandos; bandstands and boulevards were loud with the orchestra and gay with colour. Even Monte Carlo seemed to her empty and depopulated in comparison. But the place was changed in other ways. The discipline of the army was relaxed; a Bill had been introduced in the House, and passed without opposition, which abolished conscription, and though the people were as picturesque as ever, they were infinitely more idle. The demands for provisions and wines consequent on the ever-increasing hosts of foreigners who flocked to the town had made living easier than ever. A man could work two days a week where he had worked six a few years ago, and yet find his earnings undiminished. It had been necessary to limit the number of members of the club, and in consequence a hundred other gaming-houses had been started, and deep into the hours of the night shepherds and sailors watched the roulette-marbles, which rolled as unceasingly as the stars of heaven.
Sophia was almost frightened at the success of the era she had inaugurated, and she was truly shocked at the deterioration which counterbalanced the increased prosperity. She had still, even in her forty-first year, a strong love of keen eyes and fit limbs; her admiration for a fine rider still warred with her respect for a bold player, and she saw toher dismay that a nation of gamblers tends to lose its grip of the saddle. The Life Guards were a mockery of horsemen; they were growing pale and fat, and when they received her on the quay of Mavromáti, she was horrified to observe that they were sleepy-eyed and unerect—a regiment of putty soldiers. She herself, who could still, as in the days when Petros came a-courting, watch the tide of gold ebbing and flowing on the green tables for hour after hour when she should have been asleep, without suffering for it next morning, saw that if the common folk sat up at roulette all night, their parade on the following day lost its briskness. But her regret passed; the town was full of amusing people, and she had a series of house-parties with her from November until the New Year fêtes were over. She was well entertained, and as she was one of those to whom boredom is a pain more exquisite than earache, she found that so long as it was entirely absent, her mind was distracted from the consideration of the deteriorated physique of her people.
Leonard’s letters also were full of consolation. They were so crammed with excruciating facts about mosques and minarets that Sophia was wholly incapable of reading them, and put the interminable sheets into her desk, gratefully feeling that her experiment was brimming with success. His tutor, she was informed, had fallen ill of typhoid at Cairo, and Leonard was purposing to spend a month up the Nile while he was recovering, a trip which hetold her was well likely to repay a visit. The pyramids of Sakkarah which he had just seen were magnificent beyond description. As she knew, the Great Step Pyramid was there, a magnificent structure of the Sixth Dynasty, while closer at hand were the great pyramids of Gizeh, the tombs of Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus, or Menkau, as he was more properly called. Archæologists were disagreed as to the date of the Sphinx; for himself, he was inclined to side with Mariette ... and Sophia murmured, ‘Dear boy!’ and read no further, merely glancing at the last of the sixteen sides he had written her, which contained an account of a usaptiu figure he had just purchased from a dealer, which he had every reason to believe was genuine, and not imported from Manchester for the ignorant tourist.
His next letter gave a most exhaustive historical account of the temple of Karnak, and a description of the tombs of the kings, which he urged his mother to see. In a few days she could get across to Port Said, and a week afterwards they would be standing together lost in wonder at the monuments of the Pharaohs. It was a liberal education, he said, to visit Egypt; already in a few weeks he had learned more than his three years at Eton had taught him. As a series, indeed, the letters really resembled pages of a guide-book, so conscientious were they and so unreadable. The next letter, after an interval of some six weeks, was merely dated s.s.Ammon; but it described the holy city of Benares, where there is a golden statue of Buddhatwenty-five feet tall, the alligators in the Hooghly, and the methods of the manufacturing of filigree work. This was all as it should be, and Sophia’s belief in her experiment became a creed with her. It no longer an experiment; it was an assured success.
The spring passed into summer, and summer into autumn, and still Sophia was deluged with floods of categorical information. Leonard had been away a year, and the tutor, having successfully battled with typhoid in Egypt, had unfortunately fallen a victim to yellow fever in the West Indies. Leonard duly reported this to his mother, but declined altogether to have another tutor. While the first lived he had continually been tied in one place by his ailments, and he proposed to do the rest of his journeying alone. He was now in Boston, U.S.A., where there was a remarkably fine statue of George Washington; his mother would doubtless recollect that this eminent statesman (one of the brightest men the Western continent had ever produced) was notably truthful. In fact, the story of his childhood, etc. He was now going an excursion among some Indian tribes, and he hoped in his next to give some account of wigwams, Yosemite, and squaws.
Sophia could not understand it. Was the boy going to grow up a pedant? She almost preferred that he should be a gambler.
The Princess left Rhodopé that year in November, twelve months after Leonard’s departure. Hersoi-disantvisits to her relatives were unusually protracted, for the tables constantly backed her luck, and it was already May, the almond blossoms were over and the House was sitting, when she returned to Amandos. She was beginning to get very stout, but she found consolation for this in the advice of her doctor, who recommended her a month at Carlsbad in the summer. That month lengthened itself to six weeks, and on her arrival in Rhodopé again in the autumn her neglect of her duties became more edifying than ever. For one reason or another the visitors to the capital were much diminished in this year; the death of her aunt, the Princess Olga, had thrown the Court into mourning for a month, and time hung terribly on her hands.
It was during this enforced absence from the club, in obedience to etiquette, but meaningless to her—for her aunt was one of the most sour-tempered women God ever made, and mourning for her death was of a farcical nature—that the Princess, in an excess of ennui, began those practices which have been censured so severely, and which even the indulgent historian must stigmatize as undignified. Night after night she would steal out from one of the private doors of the palace, and, disguised as well as might be like a widow, with a pair of spectacles, a bombazine jacket, and a thick veil, make her way to one of the numerous gaming-houses which held out their signs in every street in Amandos. For fear she should be recognised, she dared not go to herown club, where it would be certain she would meet someone she knew, and who knew her well enough to pierce her somewhat transparent disguise; and for the same reason she would not go to any of the houses frequented by the upper class of her people. Instead, she would skulk along unfrequented thoroughfares and narrow streets until she came to some sorry restaurant, over which there would be a low, dingy room, ill ventilated, and thick with the acrid fumes of inferior tobacco, and there she would play perhaps for hours, in stakes limited to ten or twelve francs. In this she would do violence to her better nature, for often the roulette-boards were as pitiable as that which had so roused her anger against Leonard, thus showing that they were contraband, and not supplied by the Government monopoly; but gambling had become a necessity to her, and she would have played with any wretch, however depraved, on any board, however infamous. The pathos of the situation lay in the fact that she was constantly recognised, but her loyal people, sympathizing with her in being deprived of her games at the club, owing to this meaningless etiquette, never gave a sign that they knew her. Certainly, also, there was a curious attraction to her in the very squalor of the surroundings. To be elbowed by hairy sailors, to be smothered in musk by the wives of smaller tradesmen, excited her by its strange incongruity. Lombroso, so she told herself, would certainly have diagnosed her practices as belonging to one who showed the early stages ofegalo-megalomania, or some such mental deformation, but, as she also told herself, nothing could matter less than what Lombroso said.
At other times she would even dine at the restaurants below, with a secret gusto for the abominable food, and the sort of joy a miser must feel, to know that in the palace her French chef was in the middle of his inimitable alchemy, changing for her the raw material of his craft into an artist’s dream. The daily risk of detection she ran at the hands of her own servants even amused her, and she liked to see the blank, masklike wonder of their faces when she told them that she would have dinner at a quarter to eleven, little knowing that they were perfectly aware what she was going to do in the interval. To her, gambling had become as imperative as a dipsomaniac’s cravings, and the death of her sour aunt made it a necessity to her to indulge her passion, as she thought, secretly. It interested her also to find how much the secrecy and squalor of these adventures resembled those of her remote cousin the Empress Catherine of Russia. How strange a thing is heredity!
But the month of mourning passed, and she resumed her seat in the club. Letters from Leonard still reached her, but she scarcely read them; and though she loved the lad, and no sight would have been so welcome to her as his face, yet she determined to keep him abroad as long as possible. He had been away two years, and he would now be just twenty. He should come back to Amandos to celebrate his twenty-first birthday, but if she had her way, not a day before that.
Again the winter passed, again the seemingly interminable tedium of business was suspended on the last day of December; again she thanked her Ministers for their services to the country during the past year; and as soon as the New Year festivities were over, she was off on the newFelatrune, a yacht she had built with her winnings of the past twelve months, for Monte Carlo. There her presence had become so regular and assiduous, that the urbane manager had named one of the new rooms the Princess’s Salon. She had a beautiful villa on the hills above the town, which was generally full of guests; and while she was there this room was reserved, unless she sent a message that she would not play that day, for herself and her friends, but such days were few. It was built at an angle of the Casino, and a little private lawn stretched down in front of it to a terrace overlooking the sea. Crocuses, narcissi and daffodils were sown all over the grass, and in the early spring it used to look like a foreground of one of Fra Angelico’s pictures. Inside the room was divinely appointed, but less like Fra Angelico’s pictures. It was walled with crimson satin, and had a moulded gilt arabesque along the top; the floor was of parqueted oak, with thick Persian rugs; on the mantelpiece was a bronze doré clock by Vernier, which told the hours unceasingly. On the right of the croupier’s place the Empress’s chair of walnut wood, withlittle Sèvres plaques let into the arms; on the back was inlaid her monogram underneath her crown.
The party with her was often enough to fill the room, for her house was usually full of the orthodox; but when there was a place or so vacant, the Princess would often stroll round the public rooms, and if she saw there an acquaintance who played well, that is, high and with the calmness of conviction, she would invite him to join her table. As a rule her party would meet at her room for an hour or two before dinner, adjourn again till half-past nine or so, and then continue the game till two or three in the morning. Sometimes, when the roulette proved more than usually exciting, and luck adorably capricious, it would be prolonged to a later hour; and as the nights got shorter, it was no rare thing for them to see morning break in thin lines of red on the eastern horizon, and the dim dark change to an ethereal gray before they left the Casino for the Princess’s villa.
For many weeks Sophia had had no word of any kind from Leonard, but as his last letter had that he was going to shoot bears (Ursa major) in the Rockies, she concluded, with all the enviable calm of a mind which never knew anxiety, that whereUrsa majoris plentiful, there also postal arrangements are correspondingly scarce. Thus his continued silence was scarcely noticeable to her, and, at any rate, she was so happily constituted that no fear that bears had devoured him ever occurred toher. When he came back from shooting bears, no doubt he would write to her.
The month of April this year had been peculiarly seasonable; the lucid atmosphere of summer had come, but not its heats; the freshness of spring remained, but its armoury of squalls was spent, and seldom in her life had the Princess enjoyed a more delectable score of days. Her Ministers at Rhodopé, she was pleased to observe, at length entirely understood her, and the completeness with which they indulged her intolerance of State affairs was worthy of the Regency of Petros. She was still, as in the days of her girlhood, a fervent lover of the sea, and no morning failed to see her scudding up and down the coast in her little cutter, and with the same regularity an hour before her déjeuner she would be put ashore opposite her little tent on the beach, and have a long swim before luncheon. No watering-place bather was she; her bathing was no affair of a ducking of the head, a few random strokes, and a bubbling cry. With a boat a hundred yards behind her, she would swim out not less than half a mile from shore, rest a little, floating with arms out-stretched in the rocking cradle of the waves, and then head back for the shore. This exercise and the bracing water kept her young, and while those only half her age would find but a rotten world welcoming them to their lunch, after watching the dawn from the little red room, hers was a brisk step, a feeling of slight well-earned fatigue, a joyous elasticity of spirit, and the appetite of a youth.She drank wine but sparingly, and in spite of her increasing stoutness, she was still a woman to whom the eyes of men were drawn as steel to the magnet, and none bore her years with half so good a grace as she.
But the early days of May brought straight the balance of imperfection of this world and its weather. A stifling sirocco blew day after day out of the south, bringing with it, you would have said, all the scorching of the Libyan Desert and all the moisture of the sea it passed over. For five days it blew without intermission, and on the morning of the fifth the heat was rendered doubly intolerable by a great bank of ominous clouds which spread eastwards over the sky at right angles to the current of the wind. These were fat and fleecy, like blankets, and like blanketed fever patients were those that stifled beneath them. Princess Sophia alone was a shining exception to the rest of the limp world; she had much enjoyed her buffeting with a gray and angry sea, and she received her guests who collected in the drawing-room before lunch with all her vivacious cordiality. Princess Aline of Luxemburg was one of these, Prince Victor of Strelitz another; the rest were mainly English, and all were gamblers of the most honourable order.
‘You call it a terrible day, Aline!’ cried the Princess. ‘My dear, what do you know of the day? It may be delightful, for all you know. If I had stayed in my bedroom as long as you, Ishould be dead by now. You slept, or tried to sleep, till eleven.’
‘How do you know that?’ asked Princess Aline.
‘How? Because I was in the cutter—a very rough sea this morning—and it so happened that my opera-glass was on the house. I saw a blind go up; I knew it was the blind of your room. I looked at the time, and it was eleven. Oh, why was I not a detective? What a series of simple and acute deductions!’
‘Do you consider it a pleasant day, Sophia?’ asked her cousin, Prince Victor.
‘Dear Victor, to me every day is a pleasant day, except in Rhodopé. How is it possible to be more happy than I am? I have an admirable digestion. Yes; is lunch ready? Let us come in. I have luck at the cards. I slept for six hours like a tired child, as Shelley says. I have swum a mile. I had no letters to worry me this morning, and my nation has no history. Happy is the Princess whose nation has no history!’
‘The club, is not that history?’ asked Lady Blanche, who was of the party.
‘A chapter only—a paragraph only. It cannot make history alone, and positively nothing else has happened in Rhodopé for thirty years.’
‘Something nearly happened once,’ remarked Blanche.
‘Yes, dear Blanche, and you proved yourself my best and only friend, and my worst enemy. Oh, I am not ungrateful; you know that. But think: ifonly I had been deposed eighteen years ago, what garnered happiness had been mine by now!’
The Princess’s admirable English, as usual, provoked a laugh, but she scarcely paused to join in it herself.
‘Only think: for eighteen years I should have been a free woman—one of those happy individuals whose luncheon-parties and whose tea-parties are not recorded in the daily papers! Great Heaven! to be recorded in the daily papers makes the happiness of some women. Yes, Blanche, but for you I should have been one who does as she chooses. What nonsense is that which we are told of free-will! For my class there is no such thing. We do not wish or want or desire to go to lunch with the Mayor, yet we go. On the other hand, Mayors are inevitable. What is supposed to happen when free-will is opposed to that which is inevitable? Does no one know? How ignorant!’
‘Be truthful, Sophia,’ said Princess Aline, ‘and tell me when last you went to lunch with an inevitable Mayor.’
‘You are getting personal, Aline,’ said the other.
‘We will draw our conclusions, then.’
‘Dear Aline, draw what you like; the principle is the same. If I have not been to lunch with a Mayor for as long as you choose to suppose, I have vanquished the inevitable. If any of you had been in my place, you would have lunched with the Mayor once every week-day, and twice on Sundays.’
‘A day of rest,’ observed Blanche.
‘Yes, you would have slept afterwards,’ said Sophia. ‘Ouf! but it is hot. The house is abominable on a day like this.’
After lunch they broke up again, Princess Aline announcing without shame that she intended to lie on her bed and sleep, if possible, till tea. Prince Victor, less honest, took a large chair in the veranda, and pretended to read; but before long the book fell heavily to the ground, and he snored without restraint. The others, with the exception of Sophia and Blanche, said they were going to write letters, and the Princess laughed at them.
‘Aline is the only honest one of you all,’ she said, ‘and Blanche and I are the only people awake. Blanche, I ordered the horses for half-past two; we will leave these shameless people. The view from the hills under this great pall of cloud will be magnificent. See how near and distinct everything has become! The wind has gone down; we shall have thunder. I always win when it thunders.’
As Sophia had said, the wind had ceased, and the air hung as heavy as a pall over the mountain-side. The noise of the sea filled the air, but the waves no longer broke; a great thunderous, oily swell swept up to the shore, and poured its volumes of water ponderously on the beach. Far out to sea an ocean-going steamer was ploughing its way eastwards, and as the swell caught and lifted her, they could see now the whole deck slanted perilously towards them, and now she would be but a black line in the trough of the sea. Overhead a mottled floor of cloud obscured the sky, so lowering that it seemed almost within a stone’s-throw. The olive-trees on the slope were unruffled by wind, and the very leaves of the trees hung drooping as if sleeping uneasily. The horses were as if tired by a long gallop, though they had not been out of the stables except for exercising, and went heavily. Their riders alone seemed unaffected by the weather, and their talk turned, as was not uncommon, on the tables.
‘There seem to be rather fewer people here than usual,’ said the Princess. ‘A few years ago May was always crowded.’
‘And now Amandos is crowded,’ remarked Lady Blanche.
‘Yes. How delightful not to be at Amandos! Blanche, I have sometimes wondered—usually on Sunday evenings—whether it was really a good thing for Rhodopé when I started the club. Of course, the wealth of the country is enormously increased, but after all, has one not sacrificed something else—the spirit of the land, the spirit of the mountains, and the great out-of-doors?’
‘If you think so, restore it.’
‘I cannot,’ said Sophia—‘I simply cannot; Rhodopé without the tables would be impossible to me. Oh, Blanche, why did you save my throne? I almost wish I had received a polite note from Petros saying that the Assembly had dethroned my House. Yet it was a great stroke, and I have seldom been so excited as I was during that sledge-drive up from Mavromáti, when we did not knowif we should be in time. Dear me, how splendidly punctual I was on that day! What a thunderstorm we had in Corfu when I set out! The day was not unlike this afternoon.’
Blanche laughed.
‘Abdicate, then,’ she said. ‘Send for Prince Leonard to seat himself on your throne.’
‘Ah, if he would only come! But I think he would be no better than I. He was expelled from Eton, or rather I withdrew him, as you know, for playing roulette.’
‘Do you think his travels may not have cured him?’ asked Lady Blanche.
‘How can one cure a passion? It is incurable. You may repress it, but it is always there. True, I hope it is so much repressed that it will not break out. Perhaps you may even call it cured. But what self-respecting young man would banish himself to Rhodopé, especially one who has the instinct for play, if there was no club?’
‘When will he be back?’ asked Blanche.
‘I don’t know. I have not heard from him for weeks. He was to shoot bears, I think he said. It seems hardly worth while to go to America to do that. Look how magnificent the view is! It was worth our while to come.’
They got back about five o’clock, and after tea drove down to the Casino. The rooms were very empty, and a restless, unsettled atmosphere was abroad. Over the sea from time to time came blinks of remote lightning, and rumblings of thunder, likethe sound of a gong very far away. Even roulette somehow seemed monotonous, in such poor spirits were the Princess’s guests, and it was a relief to her when dinner-time came, for there was no such tonic to the mind as dinner.
As they dined, the storm moved nearer, and while they drank their coffee on the terrace, they watched a continuous play of violet-coloured lightning southwards over the sea, and the noise of the thunder began to overscore the hoarse voice of the swell on the beach below. A few drops of rain, warm and large, splashed down on the terrace like sudden frogs, and the tension of the atmosphere grew unbearable. Even Sophia felt it.
‘Something is going to happen,’ she cried, as they entered the Casino doors—‘something is going to happen fit for the lightning to look at and the thunder to listen to. I am excited! I am delightfully excited!’
Theworld seemed to have stopped at home that night, and in the large room—a thing Sophia had never known before—there was no one playing. The croupiers were all at their posts, some of them idly spinning the wheels, or dealing right and left for imaginary trente et quarante; but the visitors, perhaps only twenty in all, were lounging by the open windows, silently watching the gathering of the storm. Due south, and far over the sea, a terrific thunderstorm was going on; to the west, a separate and distinct display winked and grumbled. Both storms were certainly moving nearer; it was as if the elements were banded together for the destruction of Monte Carlo, and the whole world seemed to be waiting, finger on lip, for an imminent judgment. The air was windless, but every few minutes a sudden gust swept rattling and hissing across the garden, some outlying feeler, cast down like a grappling-iron from a balloon, of the fearful tumult that was raging fathoms overhead. In such a way seaweed and ooze feel the suck of a swellabove, stir and wave madly through the translucent water, and are still again.
Close to the window near where they entered the large room a very tall figure of a man lounged against the wall, his face averted. Over it—no uncommon sight—was tied a black domino, for the more finished gamblers of that day—gamblers, that is, of the first water, who cultivated style—often concealed their faces in this way, for fear that some ungovernable seizure of the muscles might declare their emotion. Princess Sophia had often talked this curious custom over with Blanche.
‘It is a ridiculous invention,’ she said, ‘for the involuntary and ungovernable spasms of emotion are betrayed, not by the face, but by the hands. I, as you know, have had some experience of the table, and though no one—this sounds hardly modest, but it is true—can conceal their excitement better than I, I cannot always check little sudden movements of the fingers. The muscles of my face I have in perfect control. There is no difficulty. It is a mask; but if you watch my third and fourth fingers, you will see them, if I am more than usually interested in the game, make little movements which I simply cannot control. It is hardly a movement, it is more a vibration; and to conceal this, as you have noticed, I sometimes wear dark gloves at the tables.’
They passed on into their private room, where Pierre—he always left Rhodopé with the Princess—was awaiting them. Even he seemed touched bythe weather, and his bow lacked briskness, and his moustache looked limp.
‘Pierre, Pierre, this will never do!’ cried Sophia. ‘We are all like old rags in this weather, and we need more players. Let us have all the windows open; we shall soon have to shut them. Yet in the other room—no, no one is playing. Whom can we get? Is not the lightning amazing!’
‘There are some good players there, your Royal Highness, though no one is playing yet,’ said Pierre—‘a tall man, for instance, in a black domino.’
‘Yes, I saw him,’ said the Princess. ‘He even bowed to me as I came in, which is impertinent of a stranger.’
‘He bowed to the Queen of Monte Carlo, madam,’ said Pierre, brisking up a little, for Sophia always stimulated him, ‘not to the Princess of Rhodopé.’
The Princess laughed.
‘But he wears a domino,’ she said; ‘he must be a bad gambler if he cannot control his face.’
‘Watch his hands, madam,’ returned Pierre; ‘they are as if of ice.’
‘Then, why does he wear a domino?’
‘Perhaps to conceal some deformity, poor gentleman!’ said Pierre, ‘or perhaps he has the dance of St. Vitus. Your Royal Highness will find he plays well.’
‘Ask him to come in, then,’ she said, ‘and ask three others; we are short to-night.’
Pierre hurried into the other room to do her bidding, and a moment afterwards returned withthe desired number. It was considered a sort of brevet rank among card-players to join the Princess’s table, and her requests were always eagerly obeyed. Last of the four came the Black Domino, and as the Princess bowed to him, ‘Your Royal Highness will be so kind as to excuse my domino,’ he said; ‘it is a practice of mine to wear it.’
‘And gloves?’ asked the Princess, with interest.
‘No, madam; I have my hands under control,’ he replied.
‘That is odd,’ said she. ‘My face I have under control, you shall see, but occasionally I have to wear gloves.’
Princess Aline was not gifted by nature with the best of temper, and for the first hour she had certainly the worst of luck. Eight times she betted limit stakes on the second half-dozen—no mean form of play—and seven times she lost. The limit was one hundred napoleons, and the seven rolls were expensive. At the end of the seventh she lost her temper as well as her stake, and in a spasm of irony quite ineffectual against inanimate objects she laid two sous with much asperity on the same half-dozen, although the lowest stake was understood to be a napoleon; but her bet was addressed, not to the company, but to the offending marble. This time, of course, she won, and in a fit of rage she hurled the innocuous penny-piece which Pierre had hastily fished out of his pocket on to the floor.
The Black Domino, who was seated next her, pushed back his chair, and picked it up for her.
‘I think this slipped from the hand of your Serene Highness,’ he said gravely, and with such suavity and seriousness of tone that none thought to laugh.
The Princess meantime, as she so often was accustomed to do when beginning a night’s play, trifled and coquetted with Luck, to see in what mood the goddess was, as somegourmetwho is ordering his dinner will sit over the choice of dishes with an olive or a glass of bitters, testing the quality and leanings of his appetite. She bet a napoleon or two on a single number once or twice, and lost; she bet on a few half-dozens, and lost also; she even bet occasionally on the colour, but Luck seemed to have turned its back on her. These insignificant triflings gave her time to observe the Black Domino, and before long her candour told her that Luck had been right to leave her. If she was, as Pierre said, the Queen of Monte Carlo, here indeed was the King. The domino, of course, concealed his face; but, even as Pierre had said, his hands might have been of ice. He seemed to stake nothing lower than the limit, and he never staked on more than a half-dozen. Once, when he had bet on a single number, she noticed he had just lit a match for his cigarette, and his hand was half raised, the elbow off the table, when the marble, as sometimes happens, after some few wild dashes backwards and forwards, began to slow down very suddenly. Watching it, he forgot to light his cigarette, and though his arm was unsupported, she saw his white fingers cut like a cameo across his black coat, and the edge neverwavered. She grew so interested in watching him that more than once she forgot to stake on a roll, to the extreme amazement of all present, including herself.
After an hour or two Pierre went to get his supper, and in the momentary pause before the new croupier took his place she leaned forward across the table.
‘Let me have the honour of complimenting you on your play,’ she said to the Black Domino; ‘it is perfection, and I have seen a good deal of play.’
The man bowed.
‘Praise from the Princess Sophia is praise indeed,’ he said. ‘You see, your Royal Highness, I make it a rule never to get up a loser; that gives one a certain calmness. One only has to play long enough.’
She laughed.
‘A good rule,’ she said. ‘Your methods are the same as my own. It will come to a duel between us.’
‘That shall be as your Royal Highness pleases,’ he said.
Prince Victor was of that imbecile type of gambler which is usually known as the prudent; in other words, after having lost a specified sum, he closed his performances for the evening. This consummation he usually attained after about three hours’ hesitating and inglorious adventure; but this evening his rate of progress was somewhat more advanced, and he rose from the table shortly before midnight. On the stroke of the clock, without warning, the two battalions of storm burst overhead; a wicked flickerof lightning zigzagged across the darkness close outside the room where they were playing, and simultaneously, it seemed, a crack of thunder so appalling burst above them that even the Princess, who seldom showed emotion, half rose from her seat with a little cry of fright. Princess Aline buried her face in her hands; Pierre, who had returned from his supper, cried ‘Mon Dieu!’ in a trembling voice and crossed himself; the Black Domino alone remained perfectly unmoved.
‘Your Royal Highness should recollect,’ he said to Sophia, ‘that when one has heard the thunder it is proof-positive that one has not been struck by the lightning. I am quite sure we all heard the thunder. Personally, I am deafened; my ears sing. I see no has staked on this roll.’
Shortly after one Princess Aline got up rather hastily from the table. She said something in a loud, angry tone; but her words, luckily perhaps, were drowned by a prodigious explosion overhead. Outside the rain was falling like a shower of lead, and now and then a lightning flash crossing the black square of the windows would turn the water into a deluge of prismatic colour. Already the air was cooler, but the chariots of God still drove backwards and forwards over their very heads. As Aline left the table, the Black Domino asked for a whisky-and-soda, and Princess Sophia put on her gloves; for her hands trembled perceptibly, and her little finger made strange twitching movements. The Black Domino must already have made a fortune, and Princess Sophia thought with dismay that her Civil list would not be paid till September, and she was not very good at economizing.
On the retirement of Aline and Victor, the Princess had sent out for two others to take their places; but when at three o’clock Blanche also rose, she sent in vain for another. Play had ceased in the large room, and there was positively no one there. Half an hour afterwards two others got up, and the Princess, looking round the table, saw that weariness sat on all faces.
She rose at once.
‘Do not let me detain you, ladies and gentlemen, if any of you wish to go,’ she said. ‘I am infinitely obliged to you for your charming company. The storm, I think, is passing over; you can get to your hotels without a drenching. Good-night—I wish you all a very good-night.’
A sigh of relief went round the room—for it was not etiquette to leave the Princess’s table, except for her intimates, till she herself suggested it—and all rose. The Black Domino, however, lingered.
‘Am I to understand that your Royal Highness is willing to go on playing with any who wish to remain?’ he asked.
Sophia flushed with delight.
‘Mon cher inconnu,’ she cried, ‘you are inimitable! But what game shall we play? It will have to be a game for two. I will cut you through fifty packs.’
‘I would as soon play old maid, begging yourRoyal Highness’s pardon,’ observed the Black Domino with some heat.
‘Bezique?’ suggested Sophia.
‘Surely that is more a game for Ash Wednesdays, your Royal Highness,’ said he.
‘Suggest, then,’ she said; ‘only I will not play trente et quarante. No doubt I am unreasonable, but it bores me; and I entirely refuse to be bored. After all, roulette is the only game worth playing; but we can’t play roulette with two.’
‘I think it might be managed,’ said the Black Domino, ‘if the bank will stand aside and let us fight it out.’
‘How do you propose to manage it?’ she asked.
‘In this way. One of us—say whichever of us won the last roll—stakes on a number, or on six numbers, or a dozen, or on the colour. The other then stakes, but may not stake on more numbers than the first has staked on. Thus, if your Royal Highness stakes on a dozen, I may stake on a dozen or anything less than a dozen. In the same way, if I, staking first, back colour merely, your Royal Highness may stake on colour, on the dozen, on anything down to one number. If I, again, stake on one number, your Royal Highness must stake on one. Thus, if you stake on one number to my dozen and win, I pay you twelve times your stake. If we both stake on a dozen and you win, I pay you your stake only. It will not be roulette, but it should not be tedious.’
Sophia turned to Pierre.
‘Will it make a game?’ she asked.
Pierre wiped an excited dew from his forehead.
‘I would my father were alive to see it!’ he exclaimed piously. ‘Madam, it is the greatest gamble conceivable! Heaven will not be found to hold such a gamble.’
‘That is probably the case,’ said Sophia dryly.
They sat down again, and at the Princess’s request the Black Domino spun a coin.
‘Heads!’ she cried; and it was heads.
Sophia intended to begin gently till she saw the run of the game, and staked five napoleons on red.
‘Black,’ replied her opponent, and lost.
Sophia hesitated.
‘Red,’ she said—‘limit. I think this will make an amusing game.’
‘On number thirteen, limit,’ replied this remarkable young man.
Sophia held her breath. Hardened gambler as she was, she always let thirteen severely alone, and she heard her pulse hammering in her throat as the ball clicked and flew off at tangents. Long before it stopped she had a presentiment what would happen, and when it paused, ran on again, slowed and died, dropping into thirteen, she was not surprised.
‘I congratulate you,’ she said with entire truth, and handed him sixteen times the limit stake.
For the next half-hour after this the play was only moderately sensational. They staked on dozens and half-dozens, occasionally even on colour, and the Black Domino continued to make a handsomeincome. About four o’clock he yawned slightly, and it being Sophia’s turn to stake, when she backed a colour, he wearily laid down the limit stake of a hundred napoleons on number twenty.
‘My age,’ he said.
‘Indeed!’ remarked Sophia. ‘You look older;’ and her voice vibrated with suppressed emotion.
The ball slowed down. Again he had won on a single number to her sixteen.
At this she grew a little reckless; but do what she would, her own recklessness seemed to fade into a pallid system by his; the fire of her play dwindled like a candle in sunlight before his extraordinary hazards, and yet his hands might have been hands of ice.
Only once again before the pale face of the dawn began to peer in at the eastern window did they pause, and that when Pierre rose to walk up and down the room, for he was cramped with sitting. Then for the first and only time in her life the Princess showed herself inquisitive.
‘I should be honoured by knowing your name,’ she said.
‘With your Royal Highness’s permission I will keep it to myself till we have finished,’ he replied. ‘But I have on my side a question. Shall we, with your Royal Highness’s permission, place no limit on the stakes? These hundred napoleon stakes are getting a little tedious, are they not? We are used to them, and when one gets used to a thing it is better to change it.’
Now, most men when they have won a fortune would absolutely refuse to raise the stakes, and the Princess raised her hands in amazement. Never had her wildest imaginations pictured a gambler so magnificent as this. What a king, she thought, he would have made! He was royal—a man out of sight of the run of humanity, as kings should be. None but she could so well have appreciated his extraordinary self-control, none could have so estimated his scale.
‘My limit shall only be that of which I am possessed,’ she said. ‘I have still six thousand napoleons to lose, but I am afraid I have no more.’
The black Domino separated from his pile of winnings sixty rouleaux of a hundred napoleons.
‘The night is already gone,’ he said. ‘I will stake on red.’
‘And I on black,’ said the Princess; and her little finger twitched like the indicator of a telegraph.
The ball slowed down, and she rose.
‘I would play with you till the Day of Judgment,’ she said, ‘but positively I have not a penny till my Civil List is paid in September.’
‘Your Royal Highness has Rhodopé,’ said he.
‘True; and what shall be your stake?’
‘The revenues of Rhodopé, paid year by year to you and your heirs for ever.’
‘They are large, and “for ever” is a long time.’
‘And I am rich. Also I have luck. I will stake on the first half of the board.’
‘And I on the second,’ said the Princess; but her voice was a whisper.
Pierre’s hand so trembled that he could scarce set the wheel in motion, and the Princess’s foot beat an electric dynamo on the thick Persian rug underneath the table. The spin was a long one, but at last the ball began to slow down; it crept through one to sixteen, crawled through sixteen to thirty-two, wavered over zero, and settled into number one. They rose together.
‘A pleasant jest,’ said the Princess rather tremulously, ‘to end a memorable evening.’
‘I never jest when I am gambling,’ said the Black Domino. Then he drew himself up and removed his domino. ‘Is it possible you do not recognise me, mother?’ he said.
The Princess’s hands made a sudden quick movement together.
‘Oh, Leonard! Leonard!’ she cried; ‘when you ought to have been among the wigwams! How tiresome of you!’
‘Even so, but I preferred, like you, to be at Monte Carlo. I have been here two months, and I have played every day since I saw you last. The rest of my time was occupied in copying pages out of guidebooks.’
Sophia could not restrain herself. She threw her arms round his neck and embraced him, kissing him on both cheeks.
‘But you are magnificent!’ she cried. ‘I never thought the world contained so splendid a man!And how you have grown! I left you a little boy, now you look a man of twenty.’
‘I am nearly twenty-one,’ he said.
‘Yes, you must be. How time flies! Leonard, how can you keep your hands still? You shall teach me.’
‘It is practice, and natural predisposition to keep quiet at the tables,’ he said. ‘I inherited the second from you, dear mother, and I have had a good deal of the other on my own account.’
Pierre—and he should have been given a medal for the act—had seen that this was no interview for him to witness, and, as the others had forgotten his presence, he went softly and discreetly out of the room. For a moment there was silence. Then Leonard said:
‘I wonder if you realize what you have done, mother.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You have staked Rhodopé and lost it.’
The Princess sat down heavily in a chair. Her emotion dazed her.
‘Leonard, you can never do it,’ she said. ‘My poor boy, you would die in a month at Rhodopé. You would beggar the principality in a night, and a week after you would be dead of boredom. No, it is too great a sacrifice! I will not accept it. To-morrow I shall go back to Rhodopé. I will banish myself there, and never play again. I have perfection, and that is you, and I am content. I have seen my ideal. Besides, I am a beggar.’
‘I insist on your paying me your debt,’ said Leonard. ‘You have abdicated. I am Hereditary Prince of Rhodopé. You shall come to Rhodopé to-morrow, and say farewell to your people; but after that you shall not come to Rhodopé again, and I think you will not care to. I have played my last stake. I shut up every gambling-house in the principality, otherwise we shall be the mock of Europe; and I will not be Prince of a country that is one roulette-board.’
The Princess sprang up.
‘You mean it, Leonard?’ she said. ‘You will do what I have been unable to do? You will save Rhodopé? Oh, but you cannot—you cannot! Think what you are: how young; how many glorious nights of play may lie before you!’
‘I am going to do as I said,’ he replied.
The Princess embraced him again.
‘And I shall never see Rhodopé any more,’ she cried. ‘Oh, merciful heavens! how happy I am! But I will go with you and say farewell, and then I will come back to Monte Carlo for ever and ever. I will wear a lace cap at Rhodopé, and shed real tears. I will invoke all kinds of blessings and that sort of thing on everybody. The poor Princess abdicates because of the burden of State; she leaves the burden on the shoulders of her dear son. The laws of dramatic propriety make me go to Rhodopé once more. Oh, Leonard, although I was determined that you should shake off this fatal habit of gambling, I thought but poorly of you when Iimagined you were taking an interest in mosques and wigwams; but they answered their purpose, you naughty boy! Those letters you wrote me the acme of absurdity. You shall tell me all your adventures to-morrow. Come! let us get home; it is day.’
Itwas my fortune, two years ago, while drifting about the Continent, to be passing through the Riviera on my way to Greece, and, happening to spend a night at that very pretty place Monte Carlo, it was not unnatural that I went to take a look—no more—at the tables. After that it was easier of demonstration than the first proposition of Euclid that I laid a few francs on a half-dozen of numbers, and, oddly enough, I won. Just as the marble slowed down, though I was too intent on it to raise my eyes, I saw that a little stir of attentive movement was going about the room, and after receiving my stake with a studied negligence—the right pose, so I am told, at tables—I looked up. Close beside me was standing a very large lady, with four of the most magnificent ropes of pearls I have ever seen round her neck. She smiled affably, and with a most charming graciousness.
‘Please continue,’ she said; ‘you have yet time to stake on this roll.’
I at once guessed who this great jewelled lady was, and in some confusion of mind laid a napoleon at haphazard on the board.
The instant after the croupier set the wheelgoing, and I was struck with consternation, though not naturally superstitious, to observe that the number I had chosen to back was thirteen.
In the room there was dead silence, and looking up, I saw the Princess’s eyes glued to the table. This, as I soon observed, was a habit with that remarkable woman. The play of others she would watch as if her last franc was at stake; when she played herself, it was as if she staked a sixpence. Round and round went the marble, clicking and whirring; it slowed down, and I had won.
‘My dear young man,’ said the Princess, ‘I shall be delighted to know your name, and to receive you in my little private room to-night; I have a small party with me.’
I willingly made the Princess the present of my name, but regretted that circumstances over which I had no control made it absolutely impossible for me to play for the stakes she was accustomed to risk. She scarcely seemed to hear what I said.
‘Come,’ she said; ‘we will begin at once. I only want one extra to-night, as we are a houseful.’
Now, by nature I am a profound loyalist, and hold heads which are crowned, or have once been crowned, in a fervour of respect. To refuse to obey a royal command seemed to me a thing undreamed of, but to play with the Princess was dipped in an equal impossibility. As we entered the Princess’s room, again I explained the meanness of my position. She looked at me compassionately.
‘How much are you prepared to lose?’ she asked. ‘I mean, till you had lost what sum, would you have remained in the Casino?’
I told her the meagre total.
‘Well, come and lose it with me,’ she said, ‘instead of in there. My room is far more comfortable, and you may smoke, of course.’
Now I disapprove of gambling, especially for those who, like myself, cannot afford it. I had been caught, like Dr. Jekyll, tampering with my conscience, and Nemesis, in the person of the Princess, had come swift and stout. I resigned myself, I dare to hope, with a fair grace, and after the Princess had mentioned my name vaguely to a host of royalties, laying little stress on it, but much stress on the fact that she had seen me win on a single number, and that thirteen, we sat down. The situation reminded me of the ‘Rose and the Ring.’ The room was full of royalty, and my impression was that I was the only uncrowned head present. I felt myself the apotheosis of obscurity.
However, there was no help for it, and feeling that I had better curtail the evening as much as possible, but maintain the reputation of recklessness, I proceeded to stake on single numbers, or on two or three at a time, never backing more than six. Whether it was that the Goddess of Luck was fairly astounded by the sudden recantation of an apostate, or whether the powers that be wished to make up to me the missing of a train the day before, I do not know, but the fact remains that Isimply could not lose. Pierre’s eyes were bright with admiration, and soon from handing me my stake with a ‘Monsieur,’ he gave me rank as ‘votre altesse.’
The clock by Vernier on the bracket seemed to me never to stop striking. Hardly had one hour died in the air than the next was on the chime. I was lost to the nimble passing of the time, and I remember but little of the next few hours, except that the heap of gold by me grew like Alice when she ate the mushroom. Hardly a word was exchanged by anyone, but I recollect, just as the clock struck twelve, looking at my hands. For the moment I thought I had an ague. I was sitting next the Princess, and she too observed them.
‘There, there!’ she said, as if soothing a child, ‘it may happen to any of us. Your face is all right. But send for a pair of gloves, if you have none with you. What is your size? A large eight, I should say. Pierre, procure some gloves—large eight—for this gentleman. Send one of my footmen. I often wear gloves myself, and I think I shall put them on now. I am a little excited. We are having a charming evening!’
One o’clock struck, and we adjourned for supper. As we rose I suddenly realized that the excitement had made me ravenous, though till then I had not been conscious of the slightest hunger. The experience, I believe, is a common one.
We supped in one of the restaurants in the Casino,and I was assailed with questions. Why had I not been seen here before? or was it that I played at other tables only? What was the largest sum I had ever won? and what did I reallyentre amis—(was not that gratifying!)—think about number thirteen? It was in vain that I pleaded I was no gambler, that I had no ideas whatever about the number thirteen, except that when thirteen sat down to dinner they usually all lived for more than a year afterwards. I was listened to with polite incredulity. I had not known that crowned heads were so slow of belief. Princess Sophia, I think, alone credited me with speaking the truth, for she said (and subsequently explained what she meant):
‘At first I thought that you were like poor Petros, when he said that he was but a beginner at bezique, but I think I was wrong.’
After an interval of half an hour we went back to the tables. If I had been lucky before, I was Luck incarnate now. The thing was absurd and ridiculous. I won so regularly that it became almost monotonous. For more than an hour I consistently played limit stakes, and still the rouleaux of gold poured in. I had recovered my nerve, and did not again put on the large eights, which fitted me exactly, and from opposite I saw the Princess looking at me with a wistful air.
‘It reminds me so of a night I spent with poor Leonard,’ she said, half to herself, as for the hundredth time her stake was swept away to join my winnings.
We left the tables at half-past three, and though I had meant to stop at Monte Carlo only one night more, I found it impossible to go. In fact, I engaged myself to lunch at the Princess’s villa next day, and be of her party again in the evening.
The details of the play during the next few evenings would be tedious to relate. It will suffice to say that Luck turned her back on me, and though she could not quite efface the result of her first favours, I am still not in a position to play roulette for large sums. In fact, I have only introduced this little episode to explain how it was that I became acquainted with the Princess, who told me the afore-written history of her life, and graciously suggested that I should make a little book of it.
‘For, indeed,’ she said, ‘my adventures seem to me not uninteresting. Perhaps that is only my egotism, but I do not think so. And as you are going away to-morrow—to Greece, I think you said?—I will finish the story of which I have told you a part, and mention what happened to Leonard after that memorable night at Monte Carlo when I gambled for Rhodopé and lost.’
She sighed.
‘Poor dear Leonard!’ she said; ‘that was histour de force, his fine moment. He never came near it again. It is sad to me to think what a mess people make of their lives. Some are born to one thing, some to another; he was certainly born to be a gambler, but an adverse fate, like the seventh godmother in the fairy-tales, gave him a terriblegift. She made him Prince of Rhodopé, and endowed him with a mania for reformation. I call him Luther sometimes.’
‘But surely you can hardly regret what he has done!’ I said. ‘Has he not made a power of Rhodopé?’
She shook her head sadly.
‘He has only done what any obstinate, stupid, and excellent man could have done,’ she said. ‘I will not argue that it is a better thing to be a gambler than a reformer, but when you are born a gambler, it is silly to devote your life to reforming. Sometimes, when I think of the parable of the ten talents, I wonder——’ She broke off. ‘Well, for my story,’ she said, after a pause. ‘It is very short—just the sequel of what I have already told you—but English people, I think, like a story to be finished up, and to know that the hero lives happily ever afterwards, and it will do for a little epilogue. In this case, it is certainly true that Leonard has lived happily ever afterwards, for, indeed, he is quite content. He has married, as you know, and he has five children, none of whom have ever a pack of cards, and they are all the pictures of health, and go to bed at nine. My dear young man, think what that means. It is horrible! The Education Department ought to see to it. But in Rhodopé, unfortunately, I doubt whether even the Education Department know what cards are now. Dear me, how things have changed! Poor Leonard!
‘Yet he is content,’ she went on. ‘He has amagnificent army, and I really believe he will make a great power of Rhodopé. When the Turkish Empire is broken up, you will see he will get a great slice. And the people adore him. They think he is the wisest, most Christian, and most enlightened of monarchs, and I am afraid that if Leonard lives long—and he is sure to live long, because he always goes to bed at half-past ten, and gets up at a quarter past seven—oh, that quarter past!—he may get to believe it, too. That would be a great pity. Humility is the first duty of a crowned head, and if the German Emp—— Well, I suppose I had better not say that.’
‘Please do,’ said I.
She shook her head.
‘No, you must not put that into your book. Say I stopped just in time; it will make people think how discreet I am, and, indeed, it is true. But to return to Leonard. He shut up every gambling-house in Rhodopé; he even stopped knuckle-bones. As I told you, he had a bonfire of all the roulette-boards, and gradually he made Rhodopé what it is. He has a passion for doing his duty—an acquired passion, I admit, but still a passion. It is a very common passion nowadays, and you English have got it worse than anyone. You are all too good, and in consequence, as a nation, you are just a little dull.’
‘I don’t think that is the result of our goodness,’ I said, for, like Stevenson, I hate cynicism like the devil.
‘Pardon me,’ said the Princess, with some asperity, ‘but I know it is. I like people to be good, when being good comes natural to them; but the continual effort to do one’s duty is paralyzing to other energies. You get developed incompletely. Also, the continual doing of one’s duty makes one all nose or all forehead, or something disproportionate. You have not time to be gay. Good gracious! there is the dressing-gong! I must go, so good-bye. I am sorry you cannot play with us to-night, but I think you said you were engaged. I have written to Leonard to say you will go to Amandos after your visit to Athens, and I have not told him you play roulette, or he would refuse to see you. Good-bye, and a prosperous voyage. If you should get away from your dinner early, you will find us at the tables, I expect. A little roulette would be pleasant, I think, for a change. The large eight gloves, which I see you have left on the table, I shall keep by me. When the madness is on me, and I want to stake on thirteen, they ought to bring me luck.’