There were always many scores of them, belonging principally to that strange and tragic half-world which hangs suspended, like Mahomet's coffin, between earth and heaven, or, at least, between mass and class, and which stretches out its tentacles and sucks nourishment from both. These with a regularity almost religious, spent an hour of every day, weather permitting, splashing in the gentle surf or posing on the beach in costumes more or less revealing, according to the contour of the wearer. The climax of the afternoon, the coup-de-théâtre which all awaited, was the appearance of Mlle. Paul, late of the Variétés. This was such a masterpiece in its way that it is worth pausing a moment to describe.
Suddenly the door of her bathing-machine, which has been drawn just to the water's edge, is flung open, and she appears on the threshold, wrapped in a white sheet with a red border, producing a toga-like effect not ungraceful. She hesitates an instant, and casts a startled glance over the crowd of onlookers, then trips modestly down the steps. With a little frisson, she casts the sheet from her and stands revealed—well, perhaps not quite as Eve was to Adam, but so nearly so that the difference is scarcely worth remarking. She glances down at her shapely legs and then again at the entranced spectators.
"C'est convenable, j'espère hein?" she murmurs, and her bald-headed cicisbeo, who has taken possession of her sheet, hastens to assure her that all is well.
Whereupon, her doubts thus happily set at rest, she wades out to the diving-board, mounts it leisurely, stands poised for an instant at the outermost end, and then dives gracefully into the expectant billows. This she does at intervals for perhaps an hour, the supreme instant for the onlookers being that in which her glowing body, shimmering white through its single clinging garment, is outlined in mid-air against the sky. But finally Mademoiselle grows weary and returns to her machine, where the gallant and attentive gentleman previously referred to patiently awaits her—deus ex machina in more senses than one! The other bathers gradually disappear and the crowd melts imperceptibly away. The show is over.
But though all this was no doubt sufficiently diverting, Weet-sur-Mer was never gloriously, aggressively awake until the sun went down. The diversions of the day depended wholly upon the weather—a dash of rain, a wind from the north, and, pouf! they were not thought of.
Not so the festivities of the night. Nothing short of an earthquake could interfere with them. It was for the night that most of the sojourners at Weet-sur-Mer existed; it was for them, in turn, that the place itself existed! With these worthies, the first serious business of the day was dressing for dinner. As darkness came, a stir of life thrilled through the place from end to end. Rows and clusters of electric lights, many-sized and many-coloured, flashed out at the Casino, in the hotels, along the Digue. Women donned their evening gowns, thankful for handsome shoulders; got out their diamonds, real and paste, their rouge, cosmetics, what not; prepared to go forth and conquer, to play the old, old game which, by the calm light of the morning, seems so flat and savourless! Oh, what would it be without wine and lights and jewels and soft gowns, without warmth and music and perfume, without the suggestive, sensual darkness closing it in!
At the Casino presently spins the wheel of fortune—named in very mockery!—and it is there that one may gaze unrebuked into the most alluring eyes, may see the reddest lips and whitest shoulders;—crème de la crème of all in that smaller room upstairs, arranged for those whose jaded appetites demand some extra tickling; where no wager may be laid for less than a hundred francs, and for as much more as you please, monsieur, madame, provided only that you have it with you! Too bad that the immortal soul has no longer a money value, or how many would ornament that crowded table in the course of an evening's play!
But there; let a single glimpse of this tawdry, perfumed, fevered hell suffice us, even as it did Archibald Rushford on the first night of his stay at Weet-sur-Mer, and let us go out, as he did, into the pure night, and stand uncovered under the bright stars until the cool breeze from the ocean has washed us clean again, and turning our backs forever upon the Casino and its habitués, retrace our steps along the Digue to the Grand Hôtel Royal.
In apartment A de luxe, a man with flushed face and rumpled hair was stamping nervously up and down. It required a second glance to recognise in him that usually well-groomed and self-possessed individual known as Lord Vernon. Two others were watching his movements with scarcely concealed anxiety—Collins leaning against the window with folded arms, Blake seated at a table with an open despatch-box before him.
"Hang it all, fellows," he was saying, "don't you see what a pickle it puts me in? I was a fool to fall in with the idea—I was actually silly enough to think it would be fun!"