Part 12

"My little housekeeper," explained the curé. "She comes to me for a few hours every day, to keep me fed and tidy; and she brings my meals here to the arbour when the weather is fine; for I never tire of the view, and it gives me an appetite that nothing else does."

"I see now why your letters have always been so happy," Vanno said, "and why, when it was offered, you refused promotion in order to stay here."

"Oh, yes, I am very happy, thank Heaven, and I do my best to make others so. God loves mirth. Dulness is of the devil! I love the place and the people, and the people love me, I trust," the curé answered, with a bright and curiously spiritual smile which transfigured the sunburned face. "You have no idea, my Principino, of the thousand interests we have here in this little mountain village. Once it was of great importance. An English king came in the fourteenth century to visit the Lascaris family at the castle. Those down below hardly know of its existence, even those who come back year after year, but Roquebrune and my garden are world enough for me. Is breakfast ready, Mademoiselle Luciola? Thanks; we will begin as soon as you have brought things to lay another place. Is that not a good name for the wee body--Firefly? Oh, but you should see our fireflies here in May, when the Riviera is supposed to be wiped off the map, not existent till winter. And the glow-worms. I have three in my garden. No garden is complete without at least one glow-worm. I had to beg my first from a neighbour."

"I should like to live up here, and be your neighbour, and cultivate glow-worms," said Vanno, as his host guided him along a narrow path which led between flower-beds to the arbour.

"Why not?" cried the priest, enraptured. "You could buy beautiful land, a plateau of orange trees and olives, carpeted with violets--the petite campagne I spoke of. You could build a villa, small enough to shut up and put to sleep when you tired of it. We would be your caretakers, the old Mademoiselle and I."

"Would you have me live in my villa alone?" Vanno smiled.

The curé looked merrily sly. "Why not with a bride?" he ventured. "Why not follow your brother Angelo's example?"

"I must see his bride first, to judge whether his example is worth following. We haven't met yet."

"Ah," exclaimed the priest, "that reminds me of rather a strange thing! There came a lady here--but I will tell you, Principino, while we lunch."

Beaming with pleasure in his hospitality, the curé ushered his guest into the arbour, which, like a seabird's nest, almost overhung the cliff. Under shelter of the thick old grapevine and a pink cataract of roses, a common deal table was spread with coarse but spotless damask. In a green saucer of peasant ware, one huge pink rose floated in water. The effect was more charming than any bouquet. There was nothing to eat but brown bread with creamy cheese, and grapes of a curious colour like amber and amethysts melted and run together; yet to Vanno it seemed a feast.

The curé explained that the grapes had been grown on this arbour, and that he had them to eat and to give away, all winter. When the porcelain doll of a woman came back, she brought a bottle of home-made wine for Vanno, and some little sponge cakes. But when the Prince said that in England such cakes were named "lady fingers," the curé laughed gayly, and pretended to be horrified. This brought him back to his story, which, in the excitement of helping his guest to food, he had almost forgotten.

"I was going to tell you," he went on, "of a strange thing, and a lady unknown to me, who called here. She was from England, I should say."

Vanno's heart gave a quick throb. "Could it be possible?" he wondered, "Was she young and beautiful?" he asked aloud. But the answer dashed his rather childish hope.

"Not beautiful, and not a girl, but young still. 'Striking' would be the word to express her. And her age, about thirty."

Vanno lost interest. "Why was it so strange that she should call?" he inquired. "People must find their way here sometimes; even those who haven't you for a friend."

"Yes, sometimes; and I am glad to see them. This was strange only because the lady knew that I was a friend of your family. She came because of that, and put a great many questions; but she refused to tell her name. She said it was not necessary to mention it."

Interest came back again in a degree. "What was she like?" the Prince wanted to know.

The curé thought for a moment, and answered slowly. "I can see her still," he said, "because there was something different about her from any one else I ever saw. As she came toward me in the _Place_, where you and I met, she looked like a statue moving, her face was so white, and her eyes seemed to be white, too, like the eyes of a statue. But when she drew nearer, I saw that they were a pale, whitish blue, rimmed with thin lines of black. There was very little colour in her lips or in her light brown hair, and she had on a gray hat and travelling dress."

"Idina Bland!" Vanno exclaimed.

"You recognize the lady from my description?"

"Yes. What you say about her eyes is unmistakable. She's a distant cousin of ours--on our mother's side: Irish, from the north of Ireland; but she has lived a good deal in America with my mother's brother and sister. She has no nearer relatives than ourselves, and for three winters she was in Rome--oh, long after you went away. I thought she was in America now. I wonder----" He broke off abruptly, and his face was troubled. "What questions did she ask you?" he went on. "Were they about--my brother?"

"Yes. She wished to know if I could tell her just when he was expected with his bride, and what would be their address when they arrived. I had the impression from something she said that she had heard about me from you."

"I don't remember," said Vanno. "I may have mentioned to her that we had a friend, a curé near Monte Carlo. She has a singularly good memory. She never forgets--or forgives," he added, half under his breath. "When did she come here?"

"The day before yesterday it was, Principino."

"Did she say whether she was staying in the neighbourhood?"

"No, she said nothing about herself, except that she had known your family well for years."

"And about Angelo--what?"

"Nothing, except the questions. She wanted me to tell her whether I had ever met or heard anything of his bride."

"I suppose you didn't give her much satisfaction?"

"Not much, my Principino. I could not, if I would. But I did say that I believed they were expected in ten days or a fortnight. I hope I was not indiscreet?"

"Not at all. Only--but it doesn't matter."

"Then, if it doesn't matter, let us turn to a subject nearer our hearts. The favour you wished to ask? Which you may consider granted."

After all, it was not quite as easy to explain as Vanno had thought, in his moments of exaltation on the mountain. But he was still determined to carry out his plan.

"You know, Father, when I was a little boy I used to talk with you about what I should do when I grew up, and how I should never fall in love with any girl, no matter how beautiful, unless she had eyes like my favourite stars? How you used to laugh about those 'eyes like stars!' Yesterday I saw a girl in a train at Marseilles. I got into the train, meaning to follow her, no matter how far. It was not like me to do that."

"Pardon me. I think it was," chuckled the curé. "You would always act on impulse, you man of fire--and ice."

"Well, she got off at Monte Carlo, where I myself wanted to stop. I thought that was great luck, at first. I turned over in my mind ways of making her acquaintance. I believed it would be hard to do, but I meant to do it. Now, I'm not sure--not sure of anything about her. I'm not even sure whether I want to know her or not. The favour I have to ask is, that you help me to judge--and help her, if you have to judge harshly."

"I?"

"Yes, you, Father. If she needs help, I'm not the one to help her. But you could do it." And Vanno plunged deeper into explanations, warming with his story and forgetting his first shy stiffness.

As he talked, the curé's gaze dwelt on him affectionately, appreciatively. He admired the clear look and its fire of noble purity, not often seen, he feared, on the face of a young man brought up to believe the world at his feet. He admired the dark eyes, profound as the African nights they had loved. He noted the rich brown of the swarthy young face, clear as the profile on old Roman coins, and thought, as he had thought before, that Murillo would have liked to paint that colouring. He approved his Prince's way of speaking, when he lost self-consciousness and his gestures became free and winged. "How his mother would have loved him as he is now, if she had lived," the priest thought, remembering the warm-hearted Irish-American girl, whose impulses had been held down by the sombre asceticism of her husband, which increased with years. No wonder Prince Vanno was his father's favourite! Angelo had written that the duke disapproved his marriage, but that Vanno when he had met the bride would "somehow make it all come right." It would be a terrible thing if this younger son should fall in love with the wrong woman; but it was too early yet to begin preachings and warnings. The curé's kind heart gave him great tact.

"I am to go downstairs and look at this lady, then?" he said.

"Downstairs?"

"Only my expression for going down _there_. I always say that I live upstairs, here at Roquebrune. And I like the upstairs life best."

"Well, you must come down and dine with me, anyhow. Then you will see her, and tell me what you think."

The curé broke into a laugh, like a boy's. "Me dine at your Hôtel de Paris, my son? That is a funny thought. You're inconsistent. If you think it unsuitable for a lady alone, what about me, a poor country priest from the mountains?"

"You wouldn't be alone. And you're a man. Besides, it's a good object. When you've seen her, you must make acquaintance with her somehow. _I_ won't do it. Not while I doubt her."

"Hm! My Principino, you don't know what you are asking me. I am a priest."

"That's why I ask you. She's--I'll tell you, Father, if she goes on winning money, you can write to beg for your poor. Then, if she's charitable, she'll give, and come up to see your church."

"And you think the rest is simple! Well, for your sake I will do what I can."

"Will you dine with me to-night?"

"Impossible. I cannot leave the village for so much as an hour for the present. I am shepherd of a mountain flock, remember, and my first duty is to them. At any moment I may have a summons to one who is dying. A black sheep he has been perhaps, but all the more should he be washed white at the last. And I must hold myself ready to give him the extreme unction when I am sent for, if it be now or not till next week."

Vanno had set his heart upon his plan, and could hardly bear to have it indefinitely postponed; but he had learned through old experience that his good friend was not one to be persuaded from duty.

"You'll let me know the moment you're free, in any case," he urged.

"That very moment. But, meanwhile, something may happen that will help you to judge the lady for yourself--something definite."

"I should have judged her already, if it weren't for her eyes," Vanno said, with a sigh. "They have a look as if she'd just seen heaven! I can hardly tell you how, but they are different from all other women's eyes. They send out a ray of light, like an arrow to your heart."

"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed the priest.

"Don't laugh, Father. It's true, or I wouldn't have felt about her as I did from the first moment we looked at each other. She's beautiful, but I assure you it wasn't her beauty that made me follow her. It was something more mysterious than that. I swear to you, it was as if her eyes said to me, 'Why, here you are at last, you whom I've known since the beginning of things. I am the one you've waited for all your life.'"

"All your life! Twenty-seven years, is it not?"

"Twenty-nine this month, Father. I'm not a boy, and I've cared very much only for one woman. I wasn't twenty then, and it's partly her fault that it's hard for me to believe in others."

"That's scarcely fair to the others. One woman isn't all womanhood."

"Ah, it's odd you should have said that, for the thought in my mind has been that this girl--this girl who has a child's face, I tell you, Father--seems somehow to represent womanhood, the woman of all time: the type, you know, that no man can resist. There's a kind of divine softness about her which calls to all there is in one of manhood--or romance. I can't describe it."

"You have made me understand," the curé answered quietly. "And you have made me--for your sake--want to find out as soon as I possibly can what truth is under all this sweetness."

XI

The first question Mary asked on coming downstairs in the morning was, "At what hour does the Casino open?"

Ten o'clock, she was told.

It was not yet nine. A long time to wait!

Most people at the Paris breakfasted in their rooms, but never in her life had Mary eaten breakfast in her bedroom. She went to last night's table in the great glass window of the restaurant, and was hardly sure whether she felt relieved or disappointed not to see the young man with the Dante profile. She did not now think him in the least like Romeo.

From the window, to her surprise, she saw a crowd collecting in front of the Casino, whose doors were still closed.

"What is the matter?" she asked, almost alarmed, lest there had been an accident.

"It is the early ones waiting for the doors to open," her waiter explained. He brought her a poached egg on toast, but a superlative egg, poached and adorned according to the conception of a French _chef_. The air with which the silver cover was taken off and the dish shown to Mary made her feel there was nothing she could do to show her appreciation, without disappointing the man, unless she bent down and kissed the egg passionately. Her smile seemed inadequate, and she ate with a worried fear of seeming ungrateful, especially as she was impelled to hurry, lest those people in front of the Casino should take all the places at the tables. She wanted to sit down to gamble, for the strenuous game she had played last night, with many stakes, would be impossible when stretching over people's heads.

By half-past nine she was in the crowd, all her money, with the exception of two hundred pounds she had put by, crushed into her big beaded hand-bag. She remembered how at Aberdeen the night she went to the theatre people stood like this, patiently waiting for the pit-door to open. What did she not remember about that, her first and only visit to a theatre?

At last the Casino doors yawned, as if they disliked waking up. The procession rolled toward them, like a determined and vigorous python. Mary was carried ahead with the rush. She had forgotten that she ought to have renewed her ticket, but fortunately she was not asked for it; and as she had come without a wrap, there was nothing to turn her aside from the rooms.

Once across the threshold of the big Salle Schmidt, the struggle began. It was not only the young and agile who raced each other to the tables. Men who looked as if they might have pulled one foot from the grave in order to reach the Casino, hobbled wildly across the slippery floor. Fat elderly ladies waddled with indomitable speed, like women tied up in bags for an obstacle race; and an invalid gentleman, a famous player, with his attendant--the first to get in--was swept along in a small bath chair ahead of the crowd, an expression of fierce exhilaration on a gaunt face white as bleached bone. But the young and healthy gamblers had an advantage, especially those with long legs.

Only yesterday Mary would have let herself be passed by every one, rather than push into a place which somebody else wanted. Now, however, the gambler's fever was in her. Whatever happened, she must get a seat at the table where she had played last night. To do so was the most important thing on earth. Slender and tall and long-limbed, she ran like a young Diana; though not since she had become Sister Rose had she ever been undignified enough to run. Straight as an arrow she aimed for the table she wanted, and convulsively seized the back of the last unclaimed chair. It was grasped at the same instant by a young man of rather distinguished appearance, who would in other circumstances no doubt have yielded place to a woman, especially a young and pretty girl. But he too had the gambler's fever. He struggled with Mary for the chair, and would have secured it by superior strength if she had not dropped limply into it as he drew it out for himself.

"Well done!" muttered a woman already settled in a neighbouring seat. "That's one of the Pretenders to the throne of Portugal."

Instead of being overawed, Mary found herself laughing in the joy of her triumph. "He can't have this throne, anyhow," she panted, out of breath.

Then she noticed that Lord Dauntrey was with her defeated rival. He had secured a chair, but getting up, gave it to the royal personage, who was his paying guest at the Villa Bella Vista. Lord Dauntrey had not seen, or had not recognized, Mary. He appeared to be more alive than he had been before, almost a different man. Though his features were stonily calm as the features of a mask, Mary felt that he was intensely excited, and completely absorbed in the game about to begin. He had a notebook over which his sleek brown head and Dom Ferdinand de Trevanna's short black curls were bent eagerly. It was evident that they had some plan of play which they were working out together.

It was just as thrilling, Mary thought, to be in the Casino by day as by night, and even more interesting now, because she knew how to play, instead of having to depend upon Madame d'Ambre. She had feared that her too solicitous friend might be lying in wait for her this morning, but she need have had no anxiety. Madeleine never appeared before noon. Perhaps she might have made a superhuman effort had there been reasonable hope of anything to gain. But Madame d'Ambre had learned to read faces: and Mary's had told her that for a time there was nothing more to expect. She would be comfortably lazy while her money held out.

Mary's seat was near the spinner, one of the croupiers who had seen her sensational wins twelve hours ago. He smiled recognition. "Take zero again, and the neighbours," he mumbled cautiously. "I'll try and make you win."

Mary wanted to know what "neighbours" meant, and was told hastily that they were the numbers lying nearest to zero on the wheel.

"But I feel as if twenty-four would come," she objected.

"Very well, if Mademoiselle prefers twenty-four, I will see what I can do," replied the obliging croupier, like most of his fellow-spinners wishing to give the impression that he could control the ball.

Twenty-four did not respond to his efforts, but twenty-two was the first number spun, and as Mary had staked maximums on everything surrounding her number, she won heavily. Throughout the whole morning luck still favoured her. She lost sometimes, and her wins were not as sensational as those of last night, but they made people stare and talk, and added so many notes to the troublesome contents of her bag that, to the amusement of everybody, when the time came to go she stuffed gold and paper into the long gloves she had taken off while playing. Both gloves were full and bulged out in queer protuberances, like Christmas stockings. But this was not until nearly two o'clock, when Mary had grown so hungry that she could no longer concentrate her thoughts upon the game. Meanwhile, different relays of croupiers and inspectors had come and gone, and the crowd round the table had changed. Very few remained of the players who had raced for chairs at the opening hour. Many had lost and taken themselves off, discouraged; others had a habit of darting from table to table "for luck"; some had won as much as they wanted to win, and departed quietly as a man goes home from his office. But among the few faithful ones were Lord Dauntrey and his royal friend, who was stared at a good deal, and evidently recognized. By this time Lord Dauntrey had noticed Mary, his attention being attracted to her by Dom Ferdinand, but as he had not been introduced to the girl in the train, he did not bow. The excitement had died from his face, leaving it gray as the ashes in a burnt-out fire, and his cheeks looked curiously loose on the bones, as if his muscles had fallen away underneath. Mary had not taken time to watch his game, but she saw that most of the silver and gold once neatly piled in front of the two players had disappeared, and she was afraid that they had lost a good deal. It seemed unnecessary and almost stupid to her that people should lose. She did not see why every one could not play as she did.

As she reluctantly rose to go away, driven by hunger, she had to pass close to Dom Ferdinand and Lord Dauntrey. There was no crowd round the chairs, as the morning throng had thinned for _déjeuner_, and she heard Lord Dauntrey say: "I assure you, Monseigneur, it never went as badly as this on my roulette at home. You saw the records. But nobody can win at every séance. Don't be discouraged. I'm confident my system's unbreakable in the end."