Читать книгу Prodigals of Monte Carlo - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 9

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Two overwhelmed and speechless young people were seated a few mornings later upon the Bougainvillæa-wreathed balcony of a small but very wonderful villa overlooking the bay of Monaco. In front of each was the inimitably arranged French petit déjeuner, with a bowl of roses in the centre of the table; below them spread the bluest and most glittering sea in the world, the soft outline of Cap Martin on one side and the picturesque harbour of Monaco on the other. To their half-starved senses flowers and trees and even the stone and wood smelt of the sunshine. Words had long ago failed them. Violet sipped orange juice after her coffee with an air of blissful content. Robert, as he dealt more seriously with his breakfast, was unable to refrain from an occasional staccato exclamation of wonder. The first word of envy which crept into the palace of their ecstasy came naturally enough from him.

“What in God’s name can any one have done in this world to deserve to own a place like this?” he demanded suddenly.

“What have we done,” she murmured, “to deserve even a few weeks of it.—Hush!”

Hargrave came through the French windows of one of the ground-floor rooms and strolled towards them. They watched his leisurely approach rather as though he were a god, Robert envying his well-cut clothes, his carefully chosen linen and tie, his complete command of externals, Violet studying him with a new curiosity, no longer as the client of a manicure parlour but as a human being, a person whose air of distinction, whose continual reserves, and whose kindly tact when confronted with Robert’s not infrequent gaucheries, were beginning not only to intrigue, but to inspire her with something which was almost devotion.

“Well, young people,” he greeted them pleasantly, “you spent a comfortable night, I hope.”

“Rather!” Robert exclaimed. “To wake up in a place like this, after London, too, takes one’s breath away.”

“I have never seen anything so beautiful as my room,” Violet murmured, with subdued but eager enthusiasm.

Hargrave seated himself carelessly upon the grey balustrade opposite and lit a cigarette.

“I want you two young people to understand,” he said, “that you are now off on your own, as it were. As a rule, I entertain friends at this villa, but this year I have no one else coming, so you will have the place practically to yourselves. You can get up at what time you like, lunch in or lunch out, as you please, dine here or not, as it suits you. Madame Martelle, the housekeeper, speaks English and is always at your disposition. She will tell you the hours for meals; occasionally I may be in—not very often. In any case, don’t worry about me.”

They listened in silence. It was all too wonderful. Hargrave knocked the ash from his cigarette.

“The weekly allowance I spoke of will be on your tables every Saturday morning. If you need more, come to me.”

“More!” Violet gasped. “How could one possibly spend so much?”

“You may change your ideas,” he observed, a little drily. “People sometimes do in this part of the world. You have a little margin for gambling. I shouldn’t do much about that, though, if I were you. Play a little, of course, but merely to pass the time.”

“But, Sir Hargrave,” Violet expostulated, “I haven’t spent half the money you gave me in London.”

“You’ll spend it here quite easily,” he assured her. “In Monte Carlo, the first need of a woman’s life is frocks, and the second hats. I want you, for once, to gratify both desires.”

She looked at him with a suddenly intense light in her beautiful eyes. There was something questioning in them, a faint shadow of something that was almost resentment.

“What are we to you?” she demanded suddenly. “Objects of some curious experiment? I shall begin to believe in that book, after all.”

He answered her almost kindly; the slight formality had left his tone.

“You are doing me a favour,” he explained, “by allowing me to gratify a whim. Before we part, I may perhaps satisfy your curiosity a little more completely. At present, will you be kind enough to regard it as one of the conditions of our bargain that you accept without qualm or demur.—Is there anything more I can tell you about the place? You are members of the Salles Privées and the Sporting Club, you have a list of the operas, and I have already told you the best restaurants. There is a car here at your disposal at any moment. The man simply waits for your orders. He knows the country for miles around and you will find guidebooks in plenty in the study. There is nothing else you would like to ask me?”

“You have left nothing to be asked,” Violet replied. “But—you speak as though we should never see you.”

“We are not likely to meet often,” he admitted. “I have a large circle of friends here—of both sorts,” he added, with a grim little smile. “During the last few years I have rather avoided the gayer side of life out in these parts. It makes considerable demands upon one’s health and time. Upon this occasion, having reached years of discretion, I am inclined to experiment with myself.”

She looked at him a little wistfully. Her half-formed thoughts, however, were untranslatable into words. He stood up and pointed downwards.

“You will find a bathing hut at the foot of the garden,” he said. “I don’t recommend it yet. I had a plunge myself this morning but it was on the cold side.—I wish you what every one wishes each other in Monte Carlo—the pleasure that is there if you know how to accept it.”

He turned away with a little nod, gracious enough but perfunctory. His absence left Robert perfectly content—rather more at his ease, in fact; Violet, vaguely regretful.

“I say, that fellow’s a topper!” Robert declared. “I’m not going to worry my head about why he’s doing all this. The only thing I was afraid of was——”

“Was what?” Violet asked, turning and facing him coolly.

“Well, you know what these chaps are,” he went on half apologetically, “and I know what you girls have to put up with in a job like yours. I couldn’t help having a sort of idea at the back of my mind that he was trying rather a clever stunt. You’re jolly good-looking, you know, Violet.”

“If I am,” she observed indifferently, “I think you’ll admit that Sir Hargrave doesn’t seem to notice it.”

“He certainly doesn’t,” Robert agreed, almost too readily. “He has the air of looking through both of us when he’s talking. I told you it was only an idea of mine, and it’s gone already. I don’t believe he even knows the colour of your eyes.—Let’s go and explore. I want to try that roulette game.”

She rose to her feet and stepped a little forward, basking for a moment in the full glare of the streaming sunshine. Already there seemed to be a new quality in her beatific expression, a sense of worship almost in her wonderful eyes which glorified content.

“I’ll be ready in ten minutes,” she promised. “I must see which of my new hats goes best with this frock.”

They strolled out together like two children and made their way to the Place de Casino. Violet indulged in a little grimace as her companion made his way unfalteringly towards the main entrance of the building itself.

“If you don’t mind, Robert, I won’t come in just yet,” she decided. “I can’t bear to leave this sunshine.”

“Where shall I find you?” he asked.

“On the Terrace. If you are longer than an hour, I may be looking at the shops.”

So, on that first morning, Monte Carlo swallowed them up, accepting each as they went their separate ways with the sphinxlike indifference of a presiding, inevitable genius. Violet wandered happily upon the Terrace and through the gardens, finally climbing the hill to the Boulevard des Moulins. Apart from the panoramic beauty of the background, the place itself seemed to breathe joy to her; the clean, well-ordered streets, the bright magasins, the pleasant faces of the passers-by. Here, all the struggle for existence seemed to have become suspended. Shopkeepers offered their wares as though selling were a pastime. They pleaded charmingly for Mademoiselle’s custom, but if they failed there was none of that querulous, almost soured discontent to which Violet had become accustomed.

“Mademoiselle would perhaps try on the hat another day.”

“Mademoiselle would give them another opportunity to show their frocks.”

“Mademoiselle was very gracious—good day.”

It seemed to be the same everywhere. Violet found herself almost smiling back at some of the people whom she passed in the street, from sheer happiness. Even the rather too close regard of the men to which she had become accustomed seemed to her here to lack any note of insolence. There were delicate but unspoken suggestions from more than one of the well-groomed young loungers whom she passed that they would find pleasure in making her acquaintance, but on the other hand, the gaucheries of the boulevardiers of Regent Street seemed nonexistent. There was only one cloud to disturb her happiness. After nearly two hours of wandering, she had found her way up some steps to a little street where a famous bar was situated. At one of the tables Hargrave, who had just ascended from the tennis courts, was seated alone, fingering his racquet. He rose to his feet and accosted her as she passed.

“Alone?”

She nodded in delighted anticipation.

“Robert has gone to the Casino. Fancy wasting a morning like this indoors. I have been finding my way around.”

“You are not disenchanted yet?” he asked, looking down at her with a smile.

“I never shall be,” she answered simply. “I suppose things could happen to make one unhappy, even here. I can hardly believe it, though.”

A breath of soft wind, very delicate and languorous, shook the tassels of the striped umbrellas. From the café, waiters were hurrying back and forth with trays full of cocktails, orangeades, and delectable drinks. Violet looked at them a little wistfully. Hargrave was still standing by her side, but he had not even asked her to sit down. A very wonderful car, with a footman on the box, drew up outside, and a woman, dark and pale, with big, curiously blue, almost violet eyes and a superb carriage, stepped out, followed immediately by a maid leading two little dogs.

“That is the most beautiful woman I have seen here yet,” Violet confided, under her breath. “Do you know who she is?”

He hesitated for a moment.

“The Princess Putralka, a Russian woman,” he told her. “She is coming to have her morning apéritif with me.”

Something about his tone affected her like a gesture of dismissal. She accepted it gaily enough, but with a curious sensation of disappointment.

“I must go and find Robert,” she said, as she turned away with a little farewell nod.

Hargrave had already moved forward to welcome his guest. As he raised her hand to his lips, she glanced at Violet, at first indifferently enough, then with an expression of unwilling admiration. Violet could almost hear her question, asked in rapid French, as she hurried off.

“Tell me at once who she is, dear friend. I am already jealous. She is the most beautiful young English girl I have ever seen. A protégée of yours? Yes?”

“She might be called so, I suppose,” Hargrave assented, as he held her chair, “a protégée of circumstances.”

The Princess leaned forward to look after Violet’s disappearing figure. Perhaps for a moment she envied its slim girlishness, its possibilities, which she was clever enough to understand. She herself was in her thirty-eighth year.

“Dressed by an artist,” she murmured, “she would be irresistible. But in you, dear Hargrave, I have much confidence. You are of that age in life when a man relies rather upon his taste than his enthusiasms. You prefer exotics to the flowers of youth. Is it not so?”

“Princess,” Hargrave replied, “you are a diviner of men.”

The Princess, who was very much in love with him, sighed gently as she looked at herself in the mirror of her vanity case.

“It is a useless gift,” she murmured.

“You think then that to understand leads nowhere?”

“I think,” she rejoined, “that men resent being understood. If one stumbles upon knowledge, it is best to keep it within. With you, dear Hargrave, I at least shall never make that fatal mistake, for I confess to you, as I confessed to myself this morning, I do not understand you.”

“I am flattered at the suggestion,” Hargrave declared, as he summoned a waiter, “but I am indeed a very simple person.”

He gave an order and held a match for the Princess’ cigarette.

“What you are inside, who can tell?” she went on, looking at him almost tenderly through the first faint cloud of smoke. “From all accounts, one would esteem you sometimes the most accomplished of philanderers.”

“Is that quite fair?” he complained good-naturedly.

“But what do I find?” she asked. “Our first season here we spent much time together. I had—shall I seem vain if I remind you of it?—many admirers. By degrees they fell away. One by one, I discarded them. A word here, a broken engagement there, and like men of the world, as they all were, they made their bows; but you, dear friend, I kept. Can you guess why? Ah, do not try. I will tell you. I kept you because you were the one who interested me most. It was in you, I thought, that I might find the companion for whom I had longed.”

A waiter interrupted them for a moment with the service of apéritifs.

“And then,” Hargrave reminded her, as soon as they were alone again, “Monsieur le Prince arrived.”

The faintest gesture of disgust escaped her.

“It was a blunder,” she admitted. “As a rule Henri would not have ventured to join me without my permission. The Grand Duke desired his presence, however, and he came. He created a situation, naturally, which one must accept here as elsewhere. You had no patience, and you left. You went back to that grey, sunless land of yours. To forget, perhaps?”

“Never that,” he assured her.

She moved a little uneasily in her place. Her eyes had been searching his face. She shivered a little, though the sunlight was warm.

“Then there is your protégée,” she murmured. “Our first meeting alone together this year, and I find you—the child is fond of you, perhaps?”

“A week ago,” he replied, “we were strangers. Your suggestion, dear Princess, is verging upon the absurd.”

“Am I no longer Stéphanie?”

“Dear Stéphanie, then,” he substituted. “I like it better.”

“And I,” she murmured. “Now tell me, my friend—we meet again—I, alas, a year older, yet inwardly the same. And you?”

His second’s hesitation amazed him. She was the one woman of later years whom he had admired whole-heartedly, the one woman of whom he had allowed himself often to think. She possessed all the qualities which had seemed to him admirable. She had taste, charm, the cachet of a great social position, and of her partiality for him she had made no secret. He had arranged his arrival in Monte Carlo to coincide with hers. Yet that question which should have brought so much gratification left him for an infinitesimal space of time unresponsive. That Violet’s little droop of the mouth as she had turned away with her brave farewell words could have had anything to do with it was an absurd thought, yet as he pictured her wandering alone down the hill, there was a faintly uneasy feeling, impossible of analysis, something that was almost a regret. The Princess moved her hand and the flash of the sunlight upon her emeralds brought him instantly back.

“Am I not here?” he said quietly. “The same day as last year, the same place.”

“And you bring with you the same heart?” she persisted.

“Stéphanie,” he said, and it was one of his rare moments of earnestness, “fortune has been kind to me in life. I have most of the things one craves. Only one gift others seem to possess—I not so completely. Last year, for the first time in my life, I wondered. If it were only for two, for three months, I would be happy to wonder again, because in life one misses something without love.

“One misses everything,” she murmured. “Believe that, dear Hargrave, and you are on the royal road. We try it together?”

The loungers had melted away. He raised her slim, ungloved fingers to his lips.

“You are even too good to me,” he whispered.

Outside the Casino, Robert came blinking into the almost overwhelming sunshine. He was a little irritated, for although he had played with great care he had lost most of the counters he had allowed himself.

“Monsieur has had the chance?”

He turned around to find standing by his side a pretty French girl whom he had noticed at the tables. The somewhat vivid touch of rouge upon her cheeks, and her full, becarmined lips, gave him almost a shock in the clear light, but her voice was attractive and her eyes delightful.

“If by ‘chance’ you mean luck,” he answered, a little diffidently, “no, I haven’t had any. I’ve lost.”

She was almost tenderly sympathetic.

“I, too,” she admitted. “Never mind. One must do something. Perhaps a glass of vermouth at the café.”

Robert hesitated, met the invitation of her eyes and yielded. They walked across, threading their way through the crowd of people, and seated themselves at one of the round tables.

“You order,” he begged; “I can’t speak French.”

“I give you lessons, yes?” she suggested.

He shook his head regretfully.

“I haven’t enough time here.”

“I teach you very quick,” she promised. “You give me my vermouth, and luncheon, and a louis for luck, and we begin now.”

He was not yet used to French money, but a louis seemed a great deal.

“Well, you might begin by telling me your name,” he proposed evasively.

“My name is Zélie Arnaud,” she confided. “I dance at the Café de France on the hill there, but of that one says nothing, or I should not get my ticket for the Casino. You will come and see me?”

“Of course,” he promised.—“Damn!” he added, under his breath, half rising to his feet and sitting down again, as he caught a glimpse of Violet’s surprised glance.

She hurried on and was almost at once out of sight in the crowd.

“What is it then that has happened?” his companion demanded.

“My sister,” he muttered.

The little Frenchwoman leaned back in her chair.

“Oh, la la!” she laughed. “What does that matter? Why look so serious? This is Monte Carlo, and your sister—she is not stupid, eh? Here all the world speak to all the world. If you talk a little with me, what does it matter? It is better for us both that we sit here together than alone. One enjoys company, and in Monte Carlo one must enjoy.”

The vermouth was brought. The orchestra in the distance began to play. Another breath of that wonderful breeze stirred the air around them pleasantly.

“You’re jolly well right, Mademoiselle,” Robert declared impulsively.