"Don"t count on my helping you to gamble. Besides, I"m poor. At the present moment the Colonel must have less cash in the strong box than you. I"m almost tempted to ask you to loan me your thirty thousand francs."
They both laughed at the idea of this loan. And she had come as a debtor to ask his aid!
"I don"t know what I can do for you; it"s impossible for me to tell just what my situation is; but I"ll do what I can. Let"s have hope: one must be patient. These times can"t last."
"No; they can"t last."
Again the thought of the ridiculousness of their being poor so unexpectedly, came over them. But was it logical to think that the world would go on in the same normal fashion after such radical divergences from the natural order?
They felt drawn together in the solidarity of misfortune; they suddenly met, like brother and sister, fallen at the foot of a mountain peak, on the heights of which they had previously avoided each other, rudely clashing in uncontrollable hostility.
At present Michael had a feeling of being attracted to her, for a reason that was absolutely novel. Since his youth he had hated the daughter of Dona Mercedes, for her pride, and for the air of overwhelming superiority which she maintained even in those moments of love when nearly every woman freely humbles herself to take shelter in a man"s arms like a happy slave. She could give herself only with a manner of haughty condescension, as a haughty alms, much as a G.o.ddess might come to a poor mortal.
And now, seeing her come to him thus simply, to entreat his aid, without the rancor of humiliated pride, hiding her fear with friendly merriment, desirous of forgetting the past, he felt all his old antipathy melt away.
He had always been a protector, a lover in the oriental fashion, incapable of caring for any women except those of his harem, who owed everything to his munificence, from their slippers to the plumes in their turbans, from the jewels that adorned their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, to the sweetmeats they ate, the pipes they smoked, and the musical instruments which accompanied their songs. Alicia did not interest him as a woman; neither she nor any other! But he felt the sympathy of comradeship in seeing her in need of his protection; somewhat the same feeling that he had towards Castro, the Colonel, and the other occupants of Villa Sirena. He even thought to himself that misfortune was acceptable, so long as it tended to make people show their real character once more.
This Alicia, so odious to him in early youth, might finally turn out to be quite a good friend, now that she found herself freed from the influence of vanity and of her bad bringing up.
"You have done enough just in receiving me here," she continued. "I know the limitation of my rights: I"m in hostile territory. This is the house of "The Enemies of Women.""
The Prince pretended not to hear her. Somebody had been talking; perhaps it was Castro, who could never keep anything from Dona Clorinda.
They walked through the gardens. Alicia stopped suddenly in front of a little piece of cultivated ground, where a few vegetables were beginning to spring from the soil.
"This is where you work? I know you amuse yourself working in your garden, just as other Russian princes do by making shoes."
So she knew this too? Oh, that tattle-tale rogue of a Castro!
In the Greek garden, one of the marble benches supported by four winged Victories attracted her attention, causing her to stop for a moment with a pensive expression on her face.
"Do you remember the old man on the bench near the Trojan wall?" she suddenly said.
Michael did not know how to answer her question; but after a few moments he remembered, as though her fixed stare communicated to him the vision of that night in which he had brutally left her.
"How you laughed at me! What a fool I must have seemed! Yes: I was unbearable. I was Venus; I was the center of the world; everything in existence, people and things, had been created for my special benefit. I felt it was my mission to make the world endure my whims, and that the world ought to thank me on its knees for paying any attention to it.
What can you expect! It was youth, and the childish pride of our Springtime, which imagines itself eternal. And afterwards! If I were to tell you all the disillusionments, and all the sorrows that I experienced, even back in the days when I didn"t have to worry about money! Winter sweeps away all our fancies of Maytime!"
"But you"re not an old woman yet!" Michael exclaimed. "You still inspire romantic love in young men. You"re fooling yourself or trying to make fun of me. There are still lots of men who, when they see you, would...."
"Perhaps," she replied, "but you, my dear, are not one of them. Confess it; I"ve never pleased you."
The Prince decided not to confess anything, and changed the conversation. These allusions to the past annoyed him. Alicia irritated him, every time she attempted to revive her charms as a siren of men.
They wandered about for more than half an hour on the various garden terraces. From time to time, in pa.s.sing a clearing in the shrubbery, Michael cast a stealthy glance in the direction of the villa. No one was at the windows; but he himself felt an inner agitation at this visit. He was sure they were spying on him. Atilio, from behind the window curtains, was undoubtedly following their promenade among the trees.
Perhaps Spadoni, who had spent the night at Villa Sirena, was jumping out of bed, and losing two hours of sleep, in order to contemplate this surprising spectacle. Even Novoa might have stopped reading to look in the direction of the garden.
Alicia herself noticed the fact that no one was visible, neither guest nor servants. She and the Prince seemed to be walking through an enchanted park.
As they went in the direction of the gate they met Don Marcos, who was hurriedly coming out of the gardener"s lodge.
The d.u.c.h.ess held out her hand to Michael, who kissed it ceremoniously.
"I hope we are to see each other again in the Casino."
He shook his head. The gaming rooms bored him: he had no idea of going there.
"I would have liked to meet you there. I"m sure you would bring me luck."
For a moment she seemed undecided. She had no thought of returning to Villa Sirena, where there was no one but men: she was convinced that she was a nuisance there.
"Come and see me to-morrow. The Colonel knows where I live. Come, and we"ll have a laugh at the way the d.u.c.h.ess de Delille is living. It"s rather interesting."
She went over to the livery carriage which was waiting for her outside the gate. Before getting in she turned to urge him, in a tone of playful threat:
"If you don"t come, you"ll never see me again. I shall think you want to break with me, that you think I"m a bore, and don"t like me. I shall expect you."
As the carriage drove off, she waved farewell.
"It was about time!" Michael exclaimed, on finding himself alone.
It had been a visit of an hour and a half. It had kept him continuously at a nervous tension, weighing his words, and avoiding too great an expression of friendliness, giving advice without any interest whatsoever, and leaving the past in silence. He preferred the confidence and lack of restraint of the conversations with his comrades.
On thinking of the latter, his feeling of annoyance returned. How Castro would smile, when he sat down at the table! He could hear his voice already saying ironically: "No women!" And the first to appear had made him as sheepishly obedient as a prior breaking the rule of the monastery to receive a Queen.
This worry caused him to speak to the Colonel, who was walking along at his side in silence, accompanying him from the gate to the house. Where was Castro?
"In the library with Lord Lewis. His Lordship arrived while Your Highness was in the garden. He has come to lunch."
He was a nice Englishman! He had taken it into his head of his own accord to choose this day, after so many futile invitations! While that Englishman was present, Castro would talk of nothing but gaming. And Michael went in search of Lewis.
The latter was the son of the great historian, whose country had rewarded him with the t.i.tle of lord. But this t.i.tle was only to be inherited by the oldest son of the family, and no one but Toledo, who always exaggerated the importance of his friends, called the second son _Lord_ Lewis. He had been in Monte Carlo for twenty-five years, and the old employees in the Casino, seeing his bald head sadly bowed above the gaming tables, recalled the gentleman of former times, elegant, gay, and vigorous. He had come to the Riviera, on one of his Byronic "pilgrimages," and there he had remained, not caring to see any more of the world. The pa.s.sion for gambling was the one inexhaustible pleasure for this man who had tried them all, and who was bored by the majority.
The real Lord Lewis, a solemn person, who maintained the prestige of the family name, had several children, and had served his country in various high positions in the Colonies. As for the Colonel"s "Lord," he was gradually losing all his former connections, and becoming a mere Monte Carlo gambler.
"Twenty-five years!" he had remarked with sadness one day to the Prince.
"And I shall never be able to do anything else! It"s too late now to get a fresh start. My life is ended, and they will bury me here, I"m sure; all that I inherited from my father, and all that several old aunts left me will remain here. There have been times, when I saw things as they are, and undertook to run away. But when I"m at a distance, I feel violently indignant. I remember that I"ve dropped more than a million here, I think that I ought not to resign myself to the loss, and in order to recover it, I come back at once to play, and lose again. I shall go on doing like that until I die. Besides, there"s the castle...."
Michael was acquainted with the castle. It was on a peak of the Maritime Alps, in sight of Monte Carlo, near the village of La Turbie and the remains of the Trophy of Augustus which marks the ancient Roman road.
During his first years of life on the Riviera, the aristocratic Lewis had bought for a few thousand francs the ruins of a lordly stronghold that possessed the romantic tradition of having witnessed wars with the Counts of Provence, and scenes of family violence and murder. The son of the Historian, fonder of sport than of literature, considered it a matter of filial homage to reconstruct within sight of the Mediterranean a castle such as his father had described in telling the legends of his country. Part of his fortune had gone into this. The rest had been devoted to gambling. "With what I win," he used to say to himself, "I shall finish the castle." And since he imagined he would win fabulous sums, he started the reconstruction on a gigantic scale, directing it himself, according to the architectural fancies he had studied out from the drawings of Gustave Dore. The castle had remained half built, standing thus for many years. On the one side that was completed, the walls displayed huge gloomy-looking windows with stained gla.s.s. On the side opposite, the timber of the scaffolding was rotting; the unfinished walls stood there meeting at right angles, and the wind and rain entered the future drawing rooms, for lack of a fourth wall to shut them off.
They were open to the view like a stage setting.
Whenever Lord Lewis" friends did not meet him in Monte Carlo it was because he was out of money, and was staying in his castle, sadly contemplating all that remained to be done. He lived in one of the wings that was most nearly completed, and pa.s.sed the lonely hours in fighting with his peasant neighbors, the market people, and with every one in the district in fact, who considered it a duty to annoy him and exploit him in every possible way.
Whenever a remittance of a thousand or two thousand pounds sterling arrived from England, he proudly descended from his mountain to the Castle. He had a great aim in life, and he felt he must accomplish it.
This time he was going to triumph! And when, after exciting fluctuations--his capital sometimes increasing, as though his hopes were about to be realized--he finally lost everything, Lewis would return to his refuge on the heights, and to his hermit"s life, in hopes of new remittances, which were less frequent and more difficult to get each time.
The Prince had visited him once, in this new yet crumbling stronghold, to invite him on a long voyage on his yacht. But Lewis refused. He must continue his duel with the Casino to get back his money; he was under obligation to finish his undertaking.