Yes! Little by little, avidly, yet as it were unwillingly, he remembered—sitting on his prayer-book, out of the sun, under the flowering tangled trees.
He had been twenty-six, just after he went into the family bank—he recollected—such a very sucking partner. A neglected cold had given him the first of those bronchial attacks of which he was now reaping the aftermath. Those were the days when, in the chill of a London winter, he would, dandy-like, wear thin underclothes and no overcoat. Still coughing at Easter, he had taken three weeks off and a ticket to Mentone. A cousin of his was engaged to a Russian girl whose family had a villa there, and he had pitched his tent in a little hotel almost next door. The Russians of that day were the Russians of the Turgenev novels, which Agatha had made him read. A simple, trilingual family of gentlefolk, the Rostakovs—father, mother, and two daughters. What was it they had called him—Philip Philipovitch? Monsieur Rostakov with his beard, his witty French stories, imperfectly understood by young Trevillian, his zest for food and drink, his thick lips, and, as they said, his easy morals—quite a dog in his way! And Madame, née Princesse Nogárin (a Tartar strain in her, his cousin said), ‘spirituelle,’ somewhat worn out by Monsieur Rostakov and her belief in the transmigration of souls. And Varvara, the eldest daughter, the one engaged; only seventeen, with deep-grey, truthful eyes, a broad, grave face, dark hair, and a candour, by George! which had almost frightened him. And the little one, Katrina, blue-eyed, snub-nosed, fair-haired, with laughing lips, yet very serious too; charming little creature, whose death from typhoid three years later had given him quite a shock. Delightful family, seen through the mists of time. And now in all the world you couldn’t find a Russian family like that. Gone! Vanished from the face of the earth! Their estates had been—ah!—somewhere in South Russia, and a house near Yalta. Cosmopolitan, yet very Russian, with their samovar and their zakouskas—a word he had never learned to spell—and Rostakov’s little glasses of white vodka, and those caviare sandwiches that the girls and he used to take on their picnics to Gorbio and Castellar and Belle Enda, riding donkeys, and chaperoned by that amiable young German lady, their governess.... Germans in those days—how different they were! How different the whole of life! The girls riding in their wide skirts, under parasols, the air unspoiled by the fumes of petrol, the carriages with their jangling-belled little horses and bright harness; priests in black; soldiers in bright trousers and yellow shakoes; and beggars—plenty. The girls would gather wild flowers and press them afterwards; and in the evening Varvara would look at him with her grave eyes and ask him whether he believed in a future life. He had no beliefs to speak of then, if he remembered rightly; they had come with increasing income, family, and business responsibilities. It had always seemed to hurt her that he thought of sport and dress, and not of his soul. The Russians in those days seemed so tremendously concerned about the soul—an excellent thing, of course, but not what one talked of. Still, that first fortnight had been quite idyllic. He remembered one Sunday afternoon—queer how such a little thing could stay in the mind!—on the beach near Cap Martin flicking sand off his boots with his handkerchief and Varvara saying: “And then to your face again, Philip Philipovitch?” She was always saying things which made him feel uncomfortable. And in the little letter which Katrina wrote him a year later, with blue forget-me-nots all about the paper, she had reminded him of how he had blushed. Charming young girls—simple—no such nowadays! The dew was off. They had thought Monte Carlo a vulgar place. What would they think of it now, by Jove! Even Rostakov only went there on the quiet—a viveur that fellow, who would always be living a double life. Trevillian recollected how, under the spell of that idyllic atmosphere, and afraid of Varvara’s eyes, he himself had put off from day to day his visit to the celebrated haunt, until one evening when Madame Rostakov had migraine and the girls were at a party he had sauntered to the station and embarked on a Monte Carlo train. How clearly it came back to him—the winding path up through the Gardens, a beautiful still evening, scented and warm, the Casino orchestra playing the Love music from ‘Faust,’ the one opera that he knew well. The darkness, strange with exotic foliage, glimmering with golden lamps—none of this glaring white electric light—had deeply impressed him, who, for all his youthful dandyism, had Puritanism in his blood and training. It was like going up to—well, not precisely heaven. And in his white beard old Trevillian uttered a slight cackle. Anyway, he had entered ‘the rooms’ with a beating heart. He had no money to throw away in those days; by Jove, no! His father had kept him strictly to an allowance of four hundred a year, and his partnership was still in the apprentice stage. He had only some ten or twenty pounds to spare. But to go back to England and have his fellows say, “What? Monte Carlo, and never played?” was not to be thought of.
His first sensation in ‘the rooms’ was disappointing. The decorations were florid, the people foreign, queer, ugly! For some time he stood still listening to the chink of rake against coin, and the nasal twang of the croupiers’ voices. Then he had gone up to a table to watch the game, which he had never played. That, at all events, was the same as now; that and the expression on the gamblers’ faces—the sharp, blind, crab-like absorption like no other human expression. And what a lot of old women! A nervous excitement had crept into his brain while he stood there, an itch into his fingers. But he was shy. All these people played with such deadly calm, seemed so utterly familiar with it all. At last he had reached over the shoulder of a dark-haired woman sitting in front of him, put down a five-franc piece, and called out the word ‘Vingt.’ A rake shovelled it forward on to the number with an indifferent click. The ball rolled. “Quatorze, rouge pair et manque.” His five-franc piece was raked away. But he, Philip Trevillian, had gambled at Monte Carlo, and at once he had seemed to see Varvara’s eyes with something of amusement in their candour, and to hear her voice: “But to gamble! How silly, Philip Philipovitch!” Then the man sitting to his left got up, and he had slipped down into the empty chair. Once seated, he knew that he must play. So he pushed another five-franc piece on to black and received its counterpart. Now he was quits; and, continuing that simple stake with varying success, he began taking in the faces of his neighbours. On his left he had an old Englishman in evening dress, ruddy, with chubby lips, who played in gold pieces and seemed winning rather heavily. Opposite, in a fabulous shawl, a bird-like old woman, with a hook nose, and a man who looked like a Greek bandit in a frock-coat. To his right was the dark-haired woman over whose shoulder he had leaned. An agreeable perfume, as of jasmine blossoms, floated from her. She had some tablets and six or seven gold pieces before her, but seemed to have stopped playing. Out of the tail of his eye Trevillian scrutinised her profile. She was by far the most attractive woman he had seen in here. And he felt suddenly uninterested in the fate of his five-franc pieces. Under the thin, dark brows, a little drawn down, he could see that her eyes were dark and velvety. Her face was rather pointed, delicate, faintly powdered in the foreign fashion. She wore a low dress, but with a black lace scarf thrown over her gleaming shoulders, and something that glimmered in her dark hair. She was not English, but what he could not tell. He won twice running on black, left his stake untouched, and was conscious that she pushed one of her own gold pieces on to black. Again black won. Again he left his stake, and she hers. To be linked with her by that following of his luck was agreeable to young Trevillian. The devil might care—he would leave his winnings down. Again and again, till he had won eight times on black, he left his stake, and his neighbour followed suit. A pile of gold was mounting in front of each of them. The eyes of the hawk-like old woman opposite, like those of a crustacean in some book of natural history, seemed pushed out from her face; a little hard smile on her thin lips seemed saying, ‘Wait; it will all go back!’ The jasmine perfume from his neighbour grew stronger, as though disengaged by increasing emotion; he could see her white neck heave under its black lace. She reached her hand out as though to gather in her winnings. In bravado Trevillian sat unmoving. Her eyes slid round to his; she withdrew her hand. The little ball rolled. Black! He heard her sigh of relief. She touched his arm. “Retirez!” she whispered, “Retirez, monsieur!” and, sweeping in her winnings, she got up. Trevillian hesitated just a moment, then with the thought, ‘If I stay I lose sight of her,’ he, too, reached out, and, gathering in his pile, left the table. Starting with a five-franc piece, in nine successful coups he had won just over a hundred pounds. His neighbour, who had started with a louis, in seven coups—he calculated rapidly—must have won the same. “Seize, rouge pair et manque!” Just in time! Elated, Trevillian turned away. There was the graceful figure of his dark neighbour threading the throng, and without deliberate intention, yet longing not to lose sight of her, he followed. A check in her progress brought him so close, however, that he was at infinite pains to seem unconscious. She turned and saw him. “Ah! Merci, monsieur! I tank you moch.” “It’s for me to thank you!” he stammered. The dark lady smiled. “I have the instinct,” she said in her broken English, “for others, not for myself. I am unlucky. It is the first time you play, sare? I tought so. Do not play again. Give me that promise; it will make me ’appy.”
Her eyes were looking into his. Never in his life had he seen anything so fascinating as her face with its slightly teasing smile, her figure in the lacy black dress swinging out Spanish fashion from the hips, and the scarf flung about her shoulders. He had made the speech then which afterwards seemed to him so foreign.
“Charmed to promise anything that will make you happy, madame.”
She clasped her hands like a pleased child.
“That is a bargain; now I have repaid you.”
“May I find your carriage?”
“I am walkin’, monsieur.”