"'In the midst of life!'" Vanno quoted. "But it is not a bad sign for us or for any one. And even if we were superstitious, we saw the wedding last."
XXX
Vanno's "surprise" for Mary was a beautiful piece of land which he wanted to buy for her, in order to have a home where they might come sometimes, and spend a few weeks alone together in the country where they had first met and loved each other.
The ground that he had set his heart upon was close to the curé's garden, and it belonged to Achille Gonzales. Already, at Vanno's request, the curé had interviewed both Achille and the older Gonzales. An appointment had been made for three o'clock, and the curé was to have introduced the two rich peasants, father and son, to the Prince; but owing to the procession which Vanno and Mary had seen, he was not able to keep his engagement. And rather strangely, Mary's host had been prevented by much the same reason, from accepting Vanno's invitation to meet him "on the land" a little later. He too had a funeral service that day, but a very different funeral, and one which oppressed "St. George" Winter with a peculiar sadness. Death, as a rule, did not seem sad to him; but he had a horror of the habit of gambling, which appeared to his eyes like an incubus on a man's life, a dead albatross hung round the neck to rot. And this man who had died and was to be buried in the cemetery at Monaco had been a gambler for thirty years. He and his faded wife had existed rather than lived in a third-class hotel, where they kept on the same rooms year after year, never going away in the summer unless, if exceptionally prosperous, to spend a few of the hottest weeks in the mountains. Their tiny rooms were given them at a cheap rate because the man brought clients to the hotel, "amateurs" who wished to learn his great system, the system to whose perfecting he had devoted thirty years. He had advertised himself, and almost believed in himself, as "le roi de la roulette," who for payment of two louis would impart to any one the secret of unlimited wealth. Ignoring failure, pursuing success, his own tiny fortune, his wife's youth, had gone. And as his body went to the grave the whole record of his life—thousands of roulette cards in neat packets, innumerable notebooks containing the great secret—lay waiting for the dustman. The man's wife in preparing to leave Monte Carlo forever had turned all his treasures out of the trunks where through years they had accumulated, and had them flung into a huge dust bin kept for the waste things of the hotel kitchen. This George Winter knew, for the woman had boasted bitterly of the last revenge she meant to take. "'Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.' Let all be swept away and forgotten," she had said; and the words haunted the chaplain, mourning through his brain like the voice of the tideless sea that moaned ceaselessly under his study window.
He longed to go back to Rose and be cheered by her into hopefulness, to have her assure him in her warm, loving way that he was doing some good in this strange place of brilliant gayety and black tragedy; that his work was not all in vain, though so often he likened it to the task of Sisyphus. But he found Dick Carleton with Rose, and their faces told him that there was no hope of comfort.
"Oh, St. George, poor Captain Hannaford is dead!" were Rose's first words as her husband came into the drawing-room. Then she was sorry that she had flung the news at him so abruptly, for just too late she read in his eyes the wistful need of consolation.
"Dead!" he echoed, almost stupidly. He had liked Hannaford, and had often invited him to play chess in the evenings, hoping with unconquerable optimism to "wean him from the Casino." The quiet man, with his black patches, his calm manner and slow smile as unreadable as the eyes of the Sphinx, had seemed to George Winter a curiously tragic yet mysteriously attractive figure. "Hannaford dead!" he repeated slowly.
"I only just heard," Dick explained. "I was down at my hangar tinkering with the Flying Fish, for, you know, I'm taking her to Cannes to-morrow. Poor Hannaford's hotel isn't far away, and he used to stroll over and talk to me sometimes. The manager knew that, and sent a boy to ask me to come in at once. He didn't say what the matter was, except that something had happened to Hannaford. It seems that lately he's been in the habit of sleeping through the whole morning, giving orders that he wasn't to be disturbed till he rang. So when there were no signs of him to-day at lunch time nobody worried. It was only when two o'clock came and he hadn't stirred that the valet de chambre began to think it queer. They have glass transoms over the doors, and they could see his room was dark. I expect they listened at the keyhole; anyhow, the landlord was consulted at last, and when they'd knocked and called without getting any answer, at last they opened the door. Luckily nobody was about at that time of day—every one out of doors or in the Casino, so there was no scene. Hannaford was lying as if asleep in bed, but stone cold; and the doctor they sent for said he must have been dead for hours. In his hand was a volume of Omar Khayyam, with a faded white rose for a book marker. There was a bottle half full of veronal tabloids on the table by the bedside; and he was known to be in the habit of taking veronal, as he was a bad sleeper. One hopes it was simply—an overdose, taken accidentally."
"Why should any one suspect the contrary?" Winter asked, his kind voice sharpened by distress.