It was quite true. They were caught like rats in a trap, and Ann’s heart sank. She had lived long enough to know that there are always a certain number of censorious people sufficiently ungenerous and narrow-minded to make mischief out of any awkward happening, no matter how innocently it may have occurred.
“Can’t you think of any way out, Tony?” she said at last. “I—I don’t seem to know what to do.” She looked round her vaguely, feeling confused and unnerved by the awkwardness of their predicament.
“There’s not a châlet within reach, or I’d go off there for the night,” answered Tony, adding with a twinkle in his eyes: “And although I might, of course, sleep outside, if you preferred—on the top of the Roche d’Or, for instance!—I’m afraid it wouldn’t help matters much, as my frozen corpse would require about as much explaining away as the fact that we’ve stayed the night here.”
He had never felt less like joking, but he was rewarded by seeing a faint smile relax the strained expression on her face.
“Don’t worry, Ann,” he pursued, tucking a friendly arm into hers. “No one need ever know. But I could kick myself for landing you into this mess. It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t gone fooling about at the top of that ravine and come to grief we should be buzzing comfortably homeward in the train.”
“You did it for me,” cried Ann quickly. Now that the first shock of realisation was over she was recovering her usual cheery outlook on things. “You mustn’t blame yourself. It’s no one’s fault. It’s just—”
“The cussedness of things,” vouchsafed Tony, as she paused.
“Yes, Just that. Well”—she gave her shoulders a slight shrug as though she were shaking off a burden—“we may as well make the best of things. At least we shall see the sunset up here. It’s supposed to be rather wonderful, isn’t it?”
“I believe the sunrise is the special thing to see. You’ll have to get up early to-morrow, ma’am.” He paused a moment, then went on with frank admiration: “Ann, you’re a real little sport! There isn’t one girl in twenty would have taken this business as well as you have. They’d have been demanding my head on a charger.”
“It wouldn’t be any use making a fuss about a pure accident,” she returned philosophically. “Let’s just enjoy it—the sunset and the moonrise and everything else. Oh! I do hope they’ll give us a decent dinner! You did us out of our tea by tumbling over the precipice—don’t make a habit of it, please, Tony!—and I’m simply starving.”
He nodded.
“I’ll go and order some grub—and book rooms.” He paused uncertainly. “By the way, I’ll have to enter our names in the hotel register, I suppose?”
“Our names?” Ann flushed nervously. “Oh, you can’t—I mean—”
“Don’t worry,” he said soothingly. “I shan’t enter us under our own names, of course. What do you say to Smith—nice, inoffensive sort of name, don’t you think? ‘G. Smith and sister’—I think that’ll meet the necessities of the case.”
Ann giggled suddenly.
“It’s all rather funny if it wasn’t so—so—”
“Improper,” supplied Tony obligingly.
“Call it unconventional,” she supplemented. “It sounds better. And now do go and order some food for ‘G. Smith and sister.’ Sister is literally starving.”
Half an hour later they were light-heartedly demolishing an excellent dinner, and the manager of the Hotel de Loup was congratulating himself upon the acquisition of two unexpected guests during the slack season. Afterwards they made another pilgrimage up to the Roche d’Or to watch the sunset.
When they had reached the top, Ann stood quietly at Tony’s side, not speaking. The wonderful beauty of the scene enthralled her, and words would have seemed almost a profanation, breaking across the deep, stirless silence which wrapped them round. Away to their right the golden disc of the sun was sinking royally westward, bathing the mountains in a flood of lambent light, and piercing the darkening blue of the sky with quivering shafts of scarlet and orange and saffron. Across the snow-fields shimmered a translucent rosy glow, so that they seemed no longer bleak and desolate, but lay spread like an unfurled banner of glory betwixt the great peaks which sentinelled them round. Presently the sun dipped below the rim of the horizon, and the splendour faded swiftly. It was as if some one had suddenly closed the doors of an opened heaven, shutting away the brief vision of its radiance.
In the faint, chill light of the risen moon, Ann turned to go, still in silence. She felt awed by the beauty of it all. For the time being she had forgotten the untoward circumstances which had brought her here, forgotten even Tony, except that she was vaguely conscious he was beside her, another human being, sharing with her the deep, eternal quiet of the mountains and the flaming glory of the setting sun. Then his arm slipped through hers, as they began the steep descent, and at the boyish, friendly touch of it, she came back to earth.
“Oh, Tony, I’m almost glad we missed the last train,” she said softly, “It’s been so wonderful.”
“Yes, it’s been wonderful,” he assented, and there was a queer, excited note in his voice. “It’s been wonderful to be up here with you—right away from the rest of the world.”
Instinctively she drew a little away from him.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” she said hastily.
“Wouldn’t what?” He linked his arm in hers more firmly. “Help you down this hill? You might trip if I didn’t. It’s a very rough track”—blandly.
Inwardly Ann admitted to a feeling of helplessness. Tony eluded reproof with a skill that was altogether baffling. Now, as usual, having said what he wanted to say, he retreated behind a fence of raillery.
“You know quite well I didn’t mean that,” she said indignantly.
“What did you mean, then? That I’m not to make love to you?”
“It isn’t fair of you,” she urged. “Not now—here.”
“No, I suppose it isn’t,” he acknowledged equably. “But I’m going to do it, all the same. Probably I’ll never get you to myself again—alone on the top of the world. But I’ll promise you one thing”—his voice deepened to a sudden gravity. “This is going to be the last time I make love to you. If you say ‘no’ to me now, I shall accept it, and it will be ‘no’ for always.”
Ann’s heart beat a little more quickly.
“Tony—” she began protestingly.
“No. Hear me out. I know what’s the matter. You don’t trust me. You’re afraid, if you marry me, that I’ll let you down—as my father let my mother down. But I won’t! I swear it.” He stood still and, slipping his arm from under hers, took both her hands in his and held them tightly. “If you’ll marry me, Ann, I promise you that I’ll give up gambling—every form of it—from this day forth.”
“You couldn’t!” she broke in hastily.
“I could do anything—for you,” he answered simply. “Because I love you.”
There was something very touching in the boyish declaration. Ann looked up and saw his face in the moonlight, white and rather stern. It made her think of the face of some young knight of bygone days taking a sacred vow before he set forth to seek and find the Holy Grail.
He bent down to her.
“Ann, darling,” he said gently. “I love you so much. Won’t you marry me?”
She felt her heart contract. He had asked her many times before—sometimes half jestingly, sometimes with a sudden imperious passion that would fain have swept everything before it. But this was different. There was a gravity, an earnestness in his speech which she could not lightly brush aside. Alone here, under the wide sky, with only God’s open spaces round them, it seemed to her as though his question and her answer to it must partake of the same solemnness as vows exchanged within the hallowed walls of a sanctuary.
She wished intensely that she could give him the answer he desired. And, beyond that, she felt the urge of Virginia’s trust in her. Here was her chance. At a word from her he was willing to renounce the one thing for which he craved—the thing that had wrecked his father’s life, and which might some day wreck his own. Ought she to say that word—promise to marry him, even though she had no love to give him? Her mind seemed to be going round and round in a maze of uncertainty and doubt.
And then suddenly the remembrance of what Lady Susan had said rushed over her: “A woman may throw her whole life’s happiness into the scales, and still fail to turn the balance. Without love—the love that can forgive seventy times seven, and then not be tired—she’ll certainly fail.”
The words steadied her. “Without love—” and she had no love to give Tony. Not the love that a woman should bring to the man she will call husband. Out of the turmoil of her mind this one thought emerged clear and irrefutable. And in that moment, for good or ill, her decision was taken.
“Tony.” She spoke very gently, sore at heart for the pain she knew she must inflict. “I must say no, dear. If I loved you, I’d say yes very gladly. But I don’t love you—not like that.”
“And you won’t marry me?”
“No, I can’t marry you.”
“Then that’s finished.” He spoke brusquely. “I shan’t ask you again, so you needn’t worry. Come along, we’ll get back to the hotel. If we’re going to watch the sunrise to-morrow, we’d better turn in early. And this air makes one confoundedly sleepy. I believe I could sleep the clock round.”
His abrupt return to the commonplace left her feeling confused and disconcerted. It almost seemed as though she must have dreamed the brief conversation which had just taken place. It was incredible that a man could ask you to marry him, promise to forswear a deadly vice that was born in his blood, and then—almost in the same breath, as it were—casually vouchsafe the information that he “could sleep the clock round”!
He had linked his arm in hers again, and was piloting her skilfully down the uneven pathway. She stole a glance at his face. But she could learn nothing whatever from his expression. Apparently he was solely concerned with the matter of conducting her back to the hotel in safety.
They parted in the hall at the foot of the stairs.
“I hope you’ll sleep all right,” said Tony, smiling down at her. “I’m afraid you’ll find it a bit of a picnic, though, without any of the ‘comforts of home’!”
He had hardly finished speaking when the hotel door swung open, and a man came striding in from outside. As he paused on the threshold to pull off the heavy coat he was wearing, he shot a casual glance in the direction of the two people standing together by the staircase. Then, his gaze concentrating suddenly, he stared at Tony with an odd intentness.
“Good-night, Tony.” Ann’s voice travelled softly to his ears, and at the sound of it the man transferred his gaze from Tony’s face to hers. He himself remained standing unobserved in the curtained shadow of the entry, and, when Ann had gone upstairs, Tony passed him on the way to his own room on the ground floor without noticing his presence.
The man’s glance followed him speculatively. Strolling across to the bureau, he opened the visitors’ book, flicking over the leaves till he came to the current page. He ran his fingers down the list of names, pausing abruptly at the last inscription: “G. Smith and sister.” Followed the illuminating word, “London.”
With a brief, ironical smile he closed the book. Then he, too, took his way to bed, and presently the Hotel de Loup was wrapped in the profound stillness of night.
The sun poured down on to the balcony, and even though the gaily striped sun-blind had long since been lowered the heat was intense. But in the clear, dry atmosphere of Switzerland it could never be too hot to please Ann—she was a veritable sun-worshipper—and she lay back on a wicker chaise-longue, basking contentedly in the golden warmth while she awaited Lady Susan’s return from Evian. From below came the drowsy crooning of the lake, as the water lapped idly against the stones that edged it—a lake of a blue so deep as to be almost sapphire.
Ann’s eyes rested affectionately on the scene. She had grown to love Lac Léman and the mountains amid which it lay. Opposite her, on the far side of the water, the beautiful Savoy range sloped upwards from the shore, brooding maternally above the villages which fringed the borders of the lake, while to her left the snow-capped Dents du Midi, almost dazzling in the brilliant sunshine, guarded the gracious valley of the Rhone.
It was very calm, and peaceful, and sunshiny. Here at Montricheux one could easily imagine oneself shut away for ever from all that was hard and difficult and sordid—enclosed within a charmed circle of enchanted mountains where life slipped effortlessly on from day to day. This morning Ann felt peculiarly aware of the peaceful atmosphere prevailing. It struck her how smoothly and easily the last few months had passed. To-day seemed typical of all the days which had preceded it. A little work—quite pleasant work, for Lady Susan—a measure of play, sunshine, the keen joy of beautiful surroundings—these things had made up six months of a strangely tranquil existence.
And now, as she sat communing with herself, she was conscious of a queer foreboding that this unruffled period of her life had run its course and was drawing to an end. Almost, it seemed to her, she could hear a low rustle amongst the winds of life—the faint, muttering stir which presages a storm.
Only once before had she experienced a similar sensation of foreboding, a few weeks prior to the death of her father and the subsequent discovery that she and Robin were left practically penniless. She had felt then as though a definite epoch in her life was approaching its close, and something new and difficult impending. And, in that instance, her premonition had been only too accurately fulfilled.
She tried to shake off the odd feeling of presentiment which obsessed her. But it persisted, and it was a real relief when at last the opening of a door and the sound of voices in the hall heralded Lady Susan’s return. Unpleasant premonitions and such-like ghostly visitants were prone to melt away in her cheery, optimistic presence like dew before the sun, and Ann hastened out of the room to welcome her back.
But at sight of the little group of people in the hall she paused in dismay. Sir Philip and his chauffeur were supporting Lady Susan on either side, while Marie, the excitable femme de chambre, was wringing her hands and pouring out a voluble torrent of commiseration.
“Be quiet, Marie!” ordered Lady Susan in her brisk voice. “The end of the world hasn’t come just because I’ve sprained my ankle! Go and get some bandages and hot water instead of squawking like a scared fowl.”
Ann hurried forward anxiously, but Lady Susan nodded reassurance.
“Don’t be alarmed, my dear. It’s nothing serious. I slipped on the gangway, coming off the steamer, and turned my ankle. That’s all.”
“And quite enough, too!” fumed Sir Philip, as, assisted by the chauffeur, he lifted her with infinite care on to a couch. “Now, then, you clumsy fool!” This to the unfortunate chauffeur, who had released his hold a moment too soon, jarring the injured foot.
The man fled, pursued by his master’s maledictions, and a few minutes later, hot water and bandages being forthcoming, Ann busied herself in tending the rapidly swelling ankle.
“What about a doctor? Don’t you think you’d better have one?” asked Sir Philip, fussing helplessly round and feeling as inadequate as most men in similar circumstances. “You may have broken a small bone or something,” he added with concern.
“Doctor? Fiddlesticks!” returned Lady Susan. “Ann’s all the doctor I want. There’s quite a professional touch about that bandage”—extending her foot for him to see. “Thank goodness, most of our girls know how to give first aid nowadays! Now, run along, Philip, and look after that harum-scarum nephew of yours. I know you’re aching to make sure he hasn’t got into mischief during your absence,” she added with a touch of malice.
Sir Philip demurred a little, but finally went away, promising to look in again in the evening. But when evening came Lady Susan had retired to bed, feeling far too ill to receive visitors.
It was not until after Sir Philip’s departure that she would allow herself to admit that she was suffering acutely, and then she lay back against her cushions, looking so white and exhausted that Ann was thoroughly alarmed and despatched Marie in search of the doctor, who promptly prescribed rest and quiet. By the following morning Lady Susan found herself too stiff even to wish to move. She had tripped and fallen suddenly, without being able to save herself at all, and she was more bruised and shaken than she or any one else had suspected.
For the next few days, therefore, she was relegated to the role of invalid. She was suffering a good deal of pain, and in the circumstances Ann felt disinclined to worry her with an account of the predicament in which she and Tony had found themselves during her absence at Evian. So that when Lady Susan asked her how she had amused herself that day, she merely vouchsafed that she had gone up to the Dents de Loup and stayed the night there in order to see the sunrise. Afterwards, it seemed simpler to let it rest at that, rather than enter into fresh explanations. The whole incident had come to assume much smaller proportions in retrospect, and the fact that she and Tony had not encountered any other visitors at the hotel had served to reassure her considerably.
By the end of a week Lady Susan was sufficiently convalescent to hobble about with the aid of a stick, and when Tony called with a huge sheaf of flowers for the invalid, and the news that there was a particularly good programme of music to be given at the Kursaal that evening, she insisted that Ann should go with him to hear it. Ann protested, but Lady Susan swept her objections aside.
“My dear, you’ve been dancing attendance on a fidgety old cripple long enough. Go along with Tony and squander your francs at boule, and drink café mélange or ice-cream soda, or whatever indigestible drinks the Kursaal management provides, and listen to this ‘perfectly ripping programme.’” She shot a quizzical glance at Tony. “And you can tell that crabbed old uncle of yours to come to the villa and keep me amused in the meantime.”
And, since there was never any combating Lady Susan’s decisions, matters were arranged accordingly.
It was unusually gay at the Kursaal that evening. The announcement of a special programme had drawn a large audience, and the terrace was crowded with people sitting at small, painted iron tables and partaking of various kinds of refreshment while they listened to the orchestra. Festoons of coloured lights sparkled like jewels in the dusk, and from the twilit shadows of the gardens below came answering gleams of red and orange, where Chinese lanterns spangled the foliage of the trees. Beyond the gardens lay the sleeping lake, and faint little airs wafted coolly upward from its surface, tempering the heat of the evening.
Ann looked round her with interested eyes while Tony gave his order to a waitress. She thoroughly enjoyed an evening at the Kursaal. Until she had joined Lady Susan at Villa Mon Rêve, she had never been out of England—for, though Archibald Lovell had been fond of wandering on the Continent himself, no suggestion had ever emanated from him that his daughter might like to wander with him—and the essentially un-English atmosphere of the casino still held for her the attraction of novelty. It was all so gay, so full of light and movement, and of that peculiar charm of the open air which makes an irresistible appeal to English people, condemned as they are by the exigencies of climate to take their pleasures betwixt four walls throughout the greater portion of the year.
“It interests me frightfully, watching people,” observed Ann. “Quite a lot of the people here are really enjoying the music—and quite a lot are simply marking time till the tables are open and they can go and play boule.”
Tony nodded.
“The sheep and the goats,” he replied. “Count me among the latter. But boule’s a rotten poor game,” discontentedly. “Give me roulette—every time. One has the chance to win something worth while at that.”
“And a chance to lose equally as much,” retorted Ann.
She flushed a little. This was the first occasion on which Tony had referred to the subject of gambling since the day they had gone up to the Dents de Loup together. She wondered if he had spoken deliberately, intending to remind her of the fact that, since she had refused to marry him, he was perfectly free to gamble if he chose. Yet he had spoken so casually, apparently quite without arrière pensée that it almost appeared as though the memory of that day upon the mountain had been wiped out of his mind. He seemed unconscious of any gêne in the situation. During Lady Susan’s brief illness he had been in and out of the villa exactly as usual, bringing flowers, running errands, cheering them all up with his infectious good humour—spontaneously willing to do anything and everything that might help to tide over a difficult time.
Now and again there flashed into Ann’s mind the recollection of those few moments on the moonlit hill-side, when Tony’s gravely steadfast face and proffered vow had made her think of him as some young knight of old, and she would ask herself whether she had done right or wrong in refusing him. But, for the most part, the episode seemed to her to be invested with a curious sense of unreality, an impression which was fostered by the apparently unforced naturalness of Tony’s demeanour. And now she felt rather as though he were asserting his independence, his freedom to gamble.
“Lose?” He picked up her words. “You’ve got to be prepared to lose—at everything. The whole of life’s a bit of a gamble, don’t you think?”
“No,” she answered steadily. “I don’t. Life’s what you make it.”
The soft, slate-coloured eyes regarded her oddly.
“Yours will be, I dare say. Mine will be regulated by Uncle Philip, presumably.” His mouth twitched in a brief sneer. “It rather strikes me we make each other’s lives.” Then, as though trying to turn the conversation into a more impersonal channel: “Rum crowd here to-night, isn’t it? See that woman sitting on your left? She looks as though she hadn’t two sous to rub together, yet she’s been losing at least five hundred francs each night this week. She covers the table with five-franc notes and loses consistently.”
So Tony himself must have been playing at the tables every night! Ann made no comment, but glanced in the direction of the woman indicated. She was rather a striking-looking woman, no longer young, with a clever, mobile mouth, and a pair of dark, tragic-looking eyes that appeared all the darker by contrast with her powder-white hair. She was of foreign nationality—Russian, probably, Ann reflected, with those high cheek-bones of hers and that subtle grace of movement. But she was atrociously dressed. Crammed down on to her beautiful white hair was a mannish-looking soft felt hat that had seen its best days long ago, and the coat and skirt she was wearing, though unmistakably of good cut, were old and shabby. In her hand she held an open note-case, eagerly counting over the Swiss notes it contained, while every now and again she lifted her sombre, tragic eyes and cast a hungry glance towards the room where boule was played, the doors of which were not yet open.
“She might be an exiled Russian princess,” commented Ann, observing a certain regal turn of the head which wore the battered mannish hat.
Tony nodded.
“That’s just what she is. She used to play a lot at Monte before the war. Now she can’t afford to go there. So she lives here and plays every night—on the proceeds of any odd jewellery she can still sell.”
Ann regarded her commiseratingly. The woman seemed to her a pathetically tragic figure—a sidelight on the many tragedies hidden among that cosmopolitan crowd on the terrace. Then her straying glance shifted to a man seated alone at the next table to the Russian’s, apparently absorbed in a newspaper. Tony followed the direction of her eyes.
“That chap plays bridge at the club sometimes,” he vouchsafed. “I don’t know who he is—never spoken to him. Foreigner, too, I should imagine. He’s so swarthy.”
Ann bestowed a second glance on the man in question. He was wearing evening kit, and at first sight the brown-skinned face above the white of his collar, taken in conjunction with dark hair and very strongly-marked brows, seemed to premise the correctness of Tony’s surmise. Suddenly the man lifted his bent head, and over the top of the newspaper Arm found herself looking into a pair of unmistakably grey eyes—grey as steel. They were very direct eyes, with a certain brooding discontent in their depths which looked as though it might flame out into sudden scorn with very little provocation.
She dropped her glance in some confusion. She felt rather as though she had been caught looking over her neighbour’s garden wall. There had been an ironical glint in the regard which the grey eyes had levelled at her that suggested their owner might have overheard Tony’s frank comment. Under cover of a fortissimo finale on the part of the orchestra she leant forward and spoke in a low voice:
“He’s as English as you are, Tony. No one but an Englishman ever had grey eyes like that.”
But Tony’s interest had evaporated. The band’s final burst of enthusiasm heralded the finish of the first part of the programme and the consequent opening of the tables for boule. With a hurried “Come along, quick,” he jumped up and, with Ann beside him, was first in the van of the throng which was hastening into the rooms to play. In a few moments the gaily-lit terrace was practically deserted, and an eager-faced crowd pressed up against the green-clothed tables, each individual eager to secure a good place.
For a little while Ann contented herself with watching.
“Faites vos jeux, messieurs. Messieurs, faites vos jeux.”
The ball spun round, and the croupier’s monotone sounded warningly above the whispering of notes and the clink of coin.
“Le jeu est fait.” It reminded Ann of the vicar intoning at the little church she had attended in the old Lovell Court days. Only there were no responses! Everybody was engrossed in watching the ball as it dodged in and out amongst the numbers, hesitating maddeningly, then starting gaily off on a fresh tack as though guided by some invisible spirit of malice.
“Rien ne va plus!”
Like the crack of doom came the last gabbled utterance, and the croupier’s rake descended sharply on a claw-like hand which was attempting to insinuate a coin on to the cloth “after hours,” so to speak.
“Cinq!” An announcement which, five being the equivalent of the zero in roulette, was followed by the hungry rake’s sweeping everything into the coffers of the bank except the five-franc note which Tony had staked on the number cinq.
He gathered up his winnings, and, turning excitedly to Ann, demanded why she wasn’t playing.
“Follow me,” he told her. “I’m going to win to-night. I feel it in my bones.”
His eyes were brilliant under their absurd long lashes, and the smile he gave her was the confident smile of a conqueror. Ann caught the infection and began to play, staking where he staked, as he had suggested. Now and then she ventured a little flutter of her own and tried some other number, but usually her modest franc lay side by side with Tony’s lordly five-franc note.
Evidently Tony’s bones had the right prophetic instinct, for after every coup the croupier pushed across to him a small pile of notes and silver. Ann’s own eyes were sparkling now. It was not that she really cared much about her actual winnings. She was staking too lightly for that to matter. But it entertained her enormously to win—to beat the bank as embodied in the person of the croupier, who reminded her of nothing so much as of an extremely active spider waiting in a corner of his web to pounce on an adventurous fly. Each time the ball dropped into the number she had backed, a little thrill of sheer, gleeful enjoyment ran through her.
Now and again, in spite of her absorption in her own and Tony’s play, she was conscious of a muscular brown hand on her right that reached out to place a fresh stake on the table—never to gather up any winnings. Its owner must be losing heavily. He was betting, not only on single numbers, but putting the maximum on certain combinations and groups of numbers. And every time the long-handled rake whisked his stakes away from him.
Ann glanced sideways to see who was the unlucky player, and once more she met the same ironical grey eyes which she had last encountered over the top of a newspaper. The man who was losing so persistently was her Englishman.
He did not seek to hold her gaze, but bent his own immediately upon the table again. She stole another glance at him. He was very brown, but she could see now that he was naturally fair-skinned, although tanned by the sun. A small scar, high up on the left cheek-bone, showed like a white line against the tan. Probably he had lived abroad in a hot climate, she reflected; that deep bronze was never the achievement of an elusive northern sun. It emphasised the penetrating quality of his eyes, giving them a curious brilliance. Ann had been conscious of a little shock each time she had encountered them. She was inclined to set his actual age at thirty-six or seven, though his face might have been that of a man of forty. But there was a suggestion of something still boyish about it, notwithstanding the rather stern-set features and bitter-looking mouth. She felt as though the bitterness revealed in his expression did not rightly belong to the man’s nature. It was in essence alien—something that life had added to him.
“Faites vos jeux, messieurs; messieurs, faites vos jeux.”
The croupier’s droning voice recalled her sharply from her thoughts.
“Which is it to be this time, Tony?” she asked, smiling.
“Seven and impair,” he replied tersely. And in due course the seven turned up.
Their run of luck was continuing without a break, and plenty of amused and interested glances were cast at the young couple of successful players. They were taking it all so easily, with a careless, light-hearted enjoyment that was rather refreshing to turn to after a glimpse of some of the furtive, vulture-like faces gathered round the tables. Meanwhile, the grey-eyed Englishman continued to lose with the same persistency as his young compatriots were winning. Apparently he was playing on a system, for, in spite of his want of success, he continued steadily backing certain definite combinations. He showed neither impatience or annoyance when he lost. His face remained perfectly impassive, and Ann had a feeling that he would play precisely as steadily, remain as grimly unmoved, if the stakes were a hundred times as high as those permitted at the Kursaal. She could imagine him staking his whole fortune, losing it, and then walking out of the rooms as coolly composed as he had entered them.
Once more the ball slithered into the number she had backed, and she opened a small silken bag, that already bulged with her evening’s gains, and added the winnings of the last coup. At the same moment, some one pressing from behind jolted her arm, and the bag fell with a little thud, its contents spilling out on the floor. Tony, engrossed in the play, failed to notice the mishap and went on staking, but the Englishman, apparently quite unconcerned as to the chances he might be missing, stooped at once and collected the bag and its scattered contents.
“I think I’ve rescued everything,” he said, as he handed it to her. “But you’d better count it over and make certain.”
“Oh, no, I won’t count it. It’s sure to be all right. Thank you so much.” Ann spoke rather breathlessly. For some reason or other she felt unaccountably nervous.
The man smiled.
“You’ve become such a Croesus to-night that I suppose an odd franc or two doesn’t matter?” he suggested.
“I have been lucky, haven’t I?” she acknowledged frankly. “It’s been such fun.” Then, with friendly sympathy: “I’m afraid you’ve lost, though?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m used to losing,” he replied indifferently.
Somehow, Ann felt as though he were not thinking only of his losses at the tables. That note of bitterness in his voice sprang from some deeper undercurrent.
“I’m so sorry,” she said simply.
“I never expect to win,” he returned curtly. “If you expect nothing, you’re never disappointed. Pray don’t waste your sympathy.”
The rudeness of the speech took her aback. Yet, sensing in its very churlishness the sting of some old hurt, she answered him quietly, though with heightened colour:
“If you expect nothing, you’ll get nothing. That’s one of the rules of the road.”
He checked himself in the act of turning away, and regarded her with a mixture of contempt and amusement, much as one might smile at the utterances of a child.
“Don’t you think we get mostly what we’re looking for?” she went on courageously. “If you expect good things, they’ll come to you, and if you’re expecting bad things, they’ll come, too.”
He gave a short laugh.
“The doctrine of faith! I’m afraid I’ve outgrown it—many years ago.”
“Faites vos jeux, messieurs,” intoned the croupier.
The Englishman tossed a coin on to number nine. Ann followed the circlings of the ball with a curious tense anxiety. She wished desperately that the nine would turn up.
“Numéro un!”
With a feeling akin to revolt she watched those who had staked on number one grab up their winnings, while the croupier raked in the Englishman’s solitary bid for fortune.
“You see?” The bitter grey eyes mocked her. “Quite symbolical, wasn’t it?”
With a slight bow he moved away from the table and passed quickly out of the room.
Ann felt disinclined to play any further. She watched Tony win, then lose once, then win again several times in succession. He was flushed and there was a look of triumph on his face.
“Haven’t you finished yet, Tony?” she asked at last “I’m ready to go home when you are.”
“Go home? When I’m winning?” he expostulated. “Rather not!” Then, catching sight of her face, “Hello! You look tired. Are you, Ann?”
She nodded.
“Yes, I think I am a little.”
Tony held a five-franc note in his hand, ready for staking. Without the least sign of disappointment he stuffed it back into his pocket.
“Then we’ll go home,” he said. And somewhat to the amazement of the people nearest him, who had been watching his phenomenal run of luck, he made a way for Ann through the crowd and followed her out of the room.
“That was nice of you, Tony,” she said gratefully, as they started to walk home through the deserted streets.
He threw her a quick, enigmatic smile.
“I’ve an obliging disposition. Haven’t you found that out yet?”
Ann laughed.
“It’s becoming quite noticeable,” she retorted. “Tony, you nearly broke the bank to-night, I should think.”
“Broke the bank! At five francs a time!” He kicked a pebble viciously into the roadway. “It was confounded bad luck to get a run like that with such a rotten limit. With an equal run at Monte I’d have made a fortune. Oh, damn!”
They walked on in silence for a while. There was no moon. The lake lay dark and mysterious, pricked here and there with the swaying orange light of a fishing-boat. High up, like a ring of planets brooding above the town, the great arc of the Caux Palace lights blazed through the starlit dusk.
Tony reverted to the evening’s play.
“You didn’t do badly, either,” he said, challengingly. “You weren’t bored to-night, were you?”
An odd little smile crossed her face.
“No, I wasn’t bored,” she answered quietly.
An air of suppressed excitement prevailed over Montricheux. It was the day when the pretty lakeside town celebrated the Fête des Narcisses, and from the smallest street urchin, grabbing a bunch of narcissi in his grubby little hand and trying to induce the good-natured foreigner to purchase his wares, to the usually stolid hôteliers, vying with each other as to which of their caravanserais should blaze out into the most arresting scheme of decoration on the great occasion, the whole population was aquiver with an almost child-like sense of anticipation and delight. There was to be a procession of decorated cars and carriages, a battle of flowers, and attractions innumerable during the course of the day, followed in the evening by a Venetian fête on the waters of the bay.
Tony looked in at Villa Mon Rêve shortly after breakfast.
“Taking any part in the proceedings?” he inquired conversationally.
Ann shook her head.
“We’ve had the car decorated in honour of the occasion,” she replied. “But we’re not competing for any prize. I expect we shall just drive about the town.”
“Same here. Tour round, chucking flowers at unsuspecting people. It’s a bore that you and I can’t play about together,” moodily. “But we’ve got a female relative of Uncle Philip’s on our hands—a wealthy old cousin, name of ‘Great Expectations,’” with a cheerful grin. “So I’ve got to trot her round and do the devoted nephew stunt all day.”
“I hope you’ll do it nicely”—smiling.
“I shall hear of it from Uncle Philip if I don’t!”—grimly. “But you needn’t worry. I got all my best manners down from the top shelf this morning and gave ‘em a brush up.”
“Good boy.” Ann nodded approval.
“And by way of reward,” insinuated Tony, “you’ll come to the dance at the Gloria this evening, won’t you? I could come over and fetch you about ten o’clock, after this precious Venetian fête is over. I’d have liked to go on the lake, but Uncle Philip has ordained that we are to watch the proceedings from our balcony at the Gloria. After that, I should think ‘cousin’ will be sufficiently exhausted to contemplate the idea of retiring to bed like a Christian woman. She’s seventy-nine.”
“People fox-trot at seventy-nine nowadays,” suggested Ann mischievously. “Perhaps your duties won’t end at ten.” Then, seeing his face fall: “But I’ll come to the dance, if Lady Susan doesn’t happen to want me this evening.”
At that moment Lady Susan herself came into the room. She still limped a little, leaning on an ebony stick with a gold knob.
“Who’s taking my name in vain?” she asked, as she shook hands with Tony. “I’m sure to want you,” addressing Ann, “but I suppose I shall have to go without you if Tony wants you too.”
Ann explained about the dance, adding: “But of course I shan’t think of it if you’d rather I stayed at home.”
“Of course you will think of it,” contradicted Lady Susan with vigour. “I’d go myself if it wasn’t for this wretched ankle of mine, and then”—bubbling over—“Philip and I could tread a stately measure together. I can just see him doing it!” she added wickedly.
“That’s fixed, then,” said Tony. “So long. I’ll call for you about ten o’clock, Ann.”
After lunch Lady Susan and Ann drove off in the two-seater, Ann at the wheel and a great basket of flowers for ammunition purposes on the floor of the car. The streets were thronged with people, and from almost every window depended flags and coloured streamers, flapping gaily in the breeze. Cars hastened hither and thither; some, elaborately decorated, were evidently intended to compete for the prizes offered, whilst others, like that of Lady Susan, were only sufficiently embellished to permit of their taking part in the Battle of Flowers, in accordance with the official regulations issued for the occasion.
The judging of the cars took place in the wide Place du Marché, and immediately afterwards the firing-off of a small self-important cannon signalised the commencement of the battle. Carriages and cars passed and repassed, flowers were tossed from one to the other, whilst showers of confetti and coloured paper serpentins flew through the air.
Lady Susan apparently enjoyed the fun as much as any one, and was perfectly charmed when, as the two-seater glided past Sir Philip’s Rolls-Royce, he flung an exquisite spray of crimson roses into her lap, with a sprig of rosemary nestling amongst them.
“Romantic old dear!” she commented, laughing, as she retaliated with a tiny nosegay which Sir Philip caught neatly as it went sailing over his head. But her eyes were very soft as she turned to Ann. “The beauty of not being married is that you never lose your illusions. Always remember that, Ann, when you feel like commiserating the old maids of your acquaintance.”
“And are you bound to lose them if you marry?” queried Ann, steering her way deftly through the traffic and bringing the two-seater to a standstill as the stream of cars temporarily checked.
“No. But you run an excellent chance of it. Do you suppose if I’d married Sir Philip thirty years ago he’d be pelting me with roses now?”—enjoyably. “Of course not. It’d be the tradesmen’s books, most likely!”
“You wicked cynic!”
Lady Susan laid her hand impulsively on the girl’s arm.
“Not really, Ann,” she said hastily. “I know that if only a man remembers the roses, marriage may mean heaven on earth. But they so often forget”—a little wistfully. “And a woman does so hate to be taken for granted—regarded as a kind of standing dish!”
Came a regular barrage of flowers from a car to their right, and Ann, recognising a party of friends, returned them measure for measure. Meanwhile, unnoticed by her, the third-prize car had drawn alongside, intervening between herself and the car-load of friends. She had already raised her arm to speed a final rosebud on its way, and then, with a sudden shock of surprise, she recognised in one of the occupants of the prize car the Englishman with the grey eyes. He was sitting beside an extremely pretty woman and looking somewhat haughty and ill-tempered, as though the whole business of the fête bored him excessively.
She tried to check her action, but it was too late. The rosebud flew from her fingers, and the Englishman’s head being directly in her line of fire, the bud, sped with hearty goodwill, hit him straight on the nose. Ann smiled—she couldn’t help it. But there came no response, his expression remaining unaltered. He regarded her unsmilingly, without a hint of recognition in his eyes.
A hot flush stained her cheeks.
“Boor!” was her mental comment, and she let in the clutch viciously as the car in front of her moved forward.
Lady Susan laughed outright.
“I wonder who that handsome, sulky-looking individual is?” she said gaily. “He fairly froze you, Ann. I imagine he thinks you did it on purpose.”
Ann’s face burned more hotly. That was precisely the conclusion she had arrived at herself, and the idea filled her with helpless rage.
“He struck me as quite an unusual combination of good looks and bad temper,” pursued Lady Susan. “Evidently he doesn’t appreciate being pelted with roses.”
A sudden gurgle of laughter broke from Ann.
“It was rather a hard little bud,” she said vindictively. “I hope it hurt him.”
Lady Susan threw a swift glance at her.
“Do you know him? Have you met him before?” she asked.
“He was down at the Kursaal the other night—the night Tony and I had such good luck. I dropped my bag and he picked it up for me. That’s all.”
Ann spoke rather shortly, and for some time afterwards appeared to be completely absorbed in manoeuvring the two-seater through the streets. They did not encounter the Englishman’s car again, and eventually, after making a final circuit of the town, they returned to Mon Rêve.
In the evening Lady Susan complained of fatigue.
“I’ve not quite got over that fall of mine yet,” she acknowledged ruefully, when Ann suggested that perhaps she had been out driving too long in the hot sun. “Elderly ladies should refrain from tumbling about; it shakes them up too much. I should immensely like to go to bed, if you don’t mind watching the Venetian fête in solitary splendour. Do you?”
She emitted a sigh of satisfaction when Ann assured her that she did not.
“Then I shall just disappear to bed with a novel. It will entertain me far more than gazing at a lot of illuminated boats paddling about the lake.”
“I think I shall take our boat out, then,” said Ann. “I’d rather like to see it all at close quarters. It’s all new to me, you know.”
Lady Susan nodded. At different times they had spent a good many enjoyable hours together, pulling about on the lake, and she had complete confidence in Ann’s ability to manage a rowing-boat.
“Very well. Only don’t forget Tony is coming to take you to the dance at ten and tire yourself out.”
Ann laughed and shook her head, and when Lady Susan had departed to bed she threw a knitted coat over her evening frock and made her way out into the garden. It was a long, rambling garden, sheltered from the road by a high wall and, at its farthest end, skirting the lake itself. Here a small wooden landing-stage had been erected, and moored against it lay a light rowing-boat—the Rêve. With practised hands Ann untied the painter, affixed a light to the bows of the boat, dropped the sculls into the rowlocks, and rowed quietly out across the placid water.
One by one illuminated boats came creeping round the arm of the bay, each adding a fresh cluster of twinkling lights to the bobbing multitude already gathered there. Like a cloud of fireflies they seemed to dart and circle and hover above the dusky surface of the lake. Motor-launches flashed here and there, in and out amongst the slower craft, while from one of the lake steamers, decks and rigging outlined in quivering points of light, came the inspiriting strains of a band. Snatches of song drifted across the water, and now and again the melancholy long-drawn hoot of a syren pierced the air.
Gradually Ann drew abreast of the assembled craft, and leisurely pulled her way in and out amongst them. The decorated boats delighted her, some agleam with Chinese lanterns—giant glow-worms floating on the water, others with phantom sails of frail asparagus fern lit by swaying lights like dancing will-o’-the-wisps—dream-boats gliding slowly over a dreaming lake.
Presently she rested on her oars, watching the scene with the eager, vivid interest which was characteristic of her. So absorbed was she that she failed to notice that her own small skiff was getting rather dangerously hemmed in. To her right lay a biggish sailing vessel, blocking the view on that side, behind her a small fry of miscellaneous craft, packed together like a flotilla of Thames boats on a summer’s day awaiting the opening of the lock gates. Half unconsciously she heard the approaching chug-chug of an engine mingling with the sound of voices singing lustily—the hilarious chorus of a crew of roysterers who had been celebrating not wisely but too well.
... It all happened with appalling suddenness. One moment she was watching the fairy fleet that glittered on the lake, the next a hubbub of hoarse, warning shouts filled the air, the throb of an engine pulsed violently in her ears, and a motor-boat, overloaded by half-tipsy revellers and travelling too fast for safety, drove past the bows of the sailing vessel and veered drunkenly towards her. Instinctively she clutched at her oars. But they were useless, pinned to the sides of her boat by the press of others round it. Then, from almost immediately above her, it seemed, a terse voice—curiously familiar—rapped out a command.
“Stand up!”
Hardly knowing what she did, she obeyed, yielding blindly to the peremptory order. She felt her frail barque rock beneath her feet, then strong arms grasped her—strong as tempered steel—and lifted her clean up out of the lurching boat and over its side into another.
Almost before she had time to realise that she was safe, the motor-boat crashed, head on, into the empty Rêve, staving in her side so that in an instant she had filled with water, her gunwale level with the lake. Then, as though some ghoulish hand had clutched at her from the depths below, she sank suddenly out of sight.
Staring with horrified eyes at the swift and utter destruction of the Rêve, Ann shuddered uncontrollably. But for the unknown deliverer who had snatched her bodily from the doomed boat she herself would be struggling in that almost fathomless depth of water or, stunned by the savage drive of the motor-boat’s prow, sinking helplessly down to the bottom like a stone.
“Don’t be afraid. You’re all right.” Again that strangely familiar note in the reassuring voice.
Ann twisted round within the circle of the arms which held her and peered up at the face of their owner. A flickering gleam of light revealed a small white scar high up on the left cheek-bone.
“You!” she exclaimed under her breath. “Is it you?”
“Yes.” She could detect a note of amusement in the voice that came to her through the dusk. “Your creed has proved false, you see. I expected nothing—and here I am with an altogether charming adventure.”
“I shouldn’t describe it quite like that,” she answered ruefully.
“No? But then you’ve lost a boat, whereas I’ve gained a passenger. Our points of view are different.”
The arms which held her had not relaxed their hold, and she stirred restlessly, suddenly acutely conscious of their embrace. Instantly she felt herself released.
“Will you be all right?” came in a cool voice.
“Oh, yes—yes.” Ann stammered a little. “This is a very steady boat, isn’t it?”—wonderingly.
“It’s a motor-boat, that’s why.”
Now that the uproar occasioned by the accident had died away, she could hear the soft purring of an engine forward.
“Still, you’d better sit down,” resumed the Englishman. “The Bacchanalian gentlemen in the boat which ran you down are still blundering about, and may quite probably cannon into us. And you don’t want to take a second chance of being shot out into the lake.”
“Indeed I don’t.” She sat down hastily. “I—I don’t really know how to thank you,” she began haltingly, after a moment. Somehow she felt curiously shy and tongue-tied with this man.
“Then don’t try,” he replied ungraciously.
This was hardly encouraging, but Ann returned to the charge with determination.
“I must,” she said. “If it hadn’t been for you I should certainly have been drowned.”
“Rather improbable,” he answered—as indifferently as though it really mattered very little whether she were or not. “With so many people close at hand, some one would have been sure to fish you out. You’d have got a wetting—and so would your unfortunate rescuer. That’s all. Still, I’m just as glad I saw what was going to happen. I prefer to keep a dry skin myself.”
“Oh! Then you would have jumped in after me?” asked Ann, with interest.
He sat down in the stern of the boat, his arm on the tiller, and regarded her contemplatively.
“I suppose so. A man has no choice when a woman chooses to go monkeying about in a boat and gets herself into difficulties.”
“‘Monkeying about in a boat!’” repeated Ann indignantly. “I suppose you’ll say next that I rammed my own boat and sank it!”
“You certainly put yourself in the way of danger,” he retorted. “Who in the name of Heaven allowed you to go out on the lake alone on a fête night like this? Isn’t there any one to look after you?”
“I look after myself,” she replied shortly. “I’m not a child.”
He laughed.
“Not much more, surely. How old are you? Seventeen? Eighteen?”
“Add four,” said Ann, “and you’ll be nearer it.”
“So much?” He fell silent. There had been genuine surprise in his voice. Perhaps he was recalling her as he had seen her at the Kursaal—boyishly slender, her eager, pointed face alight with gay enthusiasm and amusement.
One, two, three—nine strokes. The sound of a clock striking came wafted faintly across from the shore. Ann started up.
“I must get back!” she exclaimed. “I’d forgotten all about the time.”
A brief smile crossed the man’s dark face.
“So had I,” he said. And there was something in the quality of his voice which sent the colour flying up into her face.
“Why must you go back in such a hurry?” he resumed composedly. “One can watch the fête very well here.”
“I’m going to a dance—at the Gloria,” said Ann. “Some one—they are coming to fetch me, and if I’m not there—”
“‘They’ will be disappointed,” he finished for her, a veiled irony in his voice. “What time do your friends expect you?”
“At ten.”
“And it is now only nine. If you care to watch the fête a little longer, I can land you wherever you wish and you would still be in good time. I will guarantee your safety,” he added with a smile.
Ann hesitated. On the one hand she was thoroughly enjoying the water-fête as viewed from the security of the Englishman’s motor-boat, and the unconventionality of the circumstances added a spice of adventure to the situation. On the other, like every properly brought up young woman, she was quite aware of what would be Mrs. Grundy’s pronouncement on such a matter.
“You’ll stay?” said the Englishman.
It savoured more of a command than a question. Metaphorically Ann threw Mrs. Grundy overboard into the lake.
“Yes, I’ll stay,” she answered.
He accepted her decision without any outward sign of satisfaction, and she experienced a slight chill of disappointment. Perhaps, after all, he had only asked her to remain a little longer, not because he really desired the pleasure of her company, but merely in order that he might not be inconvenienced by the necessity of taking her back to Montricheux before he himself was ready to go. She had all the sensitiveness of youth and, once this idea had presented itself to her, she felt self-conscious and ill at ease, only anxious for the moment to arrive when she need no longer trespass on his hospitality.
And then, just as though some secret wireless had acquainted him of her discomfort, he held out his hand with a sudden smile that softened the harsh lines of his face extraordinarily.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “When you go to bed to-night you’ll be able to feel you’ve done your ‘kind deed’ for to-day.”
Half reluctantly, yet unable to do otherwise, Ann laid her hand in the one he held out to her. His strong fingers closed round it possessively and she was aware of a queer, breathless feeling of captivity. She drew her hand sharply away.
“Is it a ‘kind deed’?” she asked lightly, for the sake of saying something—anything—which should break the tension of the silence which had followed.
“Is it not? To bestow a charming half-hour of your companionship on the loneliest person in Montricheux? Oh, I think so.”
“You didn’t look at all lonely this afternoon,” flashed back Ann, remembering the pretty woman with whom she had seen him driving.
“At the Battle of Flowers, you mean? No.” He turned the conversation adroitly. “But I only won third prize, so I’m still in need of sympathy. Taking the third prize is rather my métier in life.”
“Perhaps it’s all you deserve,” she suggested unkindly. “Anyway, you’ve nothing to grumble at. We didn’t win anything. We weren’t elaborately enough decorated to compete.”
“Yet you looked as if you were enjoying it all,” he hazarded. “Did you?”
“Yes, of course I did. Didn’t you?”
“Not particularly—till some one threw me a rose.”
Ann decided to ignore the latter part of this speech.
“You’re such a confirmed cynic that I wonder you condescended to take part in anything go frivolous as the fête,” she observed.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“When in Rome—Besides, it reminded me of my young days.”
“You talk as if you were a close relation of Methuselah. You’re not so very old.”
“Am I not?” He paused a moment. “Old enough, at any rate, to have lost all my illusions.”
There was an undercurrent so bitter in the curtly uttered speech that Ann’s warm young sympathies responded involuntarily.
“I wish I could bring them back for you,” she said impulsively.
Through the flickering luminance of the lights rimming the boat’s gunwale he looked at her with an odd intensity.
“That’s just what I’m afraid of,” he said. “That you might bring them back. Fortunately, I’m leaving Montricheux to-morrow.”
Ann was silent. She was vibrantly conscious of the man’s strange, forceful personality. His brusque, hard speeches fell on her like so many blows, and yet behind them she felt as though there were something that appealed—something hurt and seeking to hide its hurt behind an armour of savage irony.
His voice, coolly indifferent once more, broke across her thoughts.
“Would you like to go back now?”
He spoke as though he were suddenly anxious to be rid of her as quickly as possible, and she assented hastily. His abrupt changes of mood disconcerted her. There seemed no accounting for what he might say next. He tossed a curt order to a man whom she could discern crouching forward near the engine.
“Bien, m’sieu,” came the answer, and presently the motor-boat was dexterously edging her way through the throng till she emerged into a clear space and purred briskly towards the shore.
Once more the Englishman’s hand closed firmly round Ann’s as he helped her out on to the little landing-stage.
“Good-bye,” she said, a trifle nervously. “And thank you so much for coming to my rescue.”
Still retaining her hand in his, he stared down at her with those queerly compelling eyes of his. She felt her breath coming and going unevenly. For a moment he hesitated, as though deliberating some point within himself. Then:
“Good-bye,” he said. And his voice was utterly expressionless. It held not even cordiality.