Most places have their characteristic odour. That of Mentone is garlic, with a suspicion of sewage; that of the Salle de Jeu is a fine blend of garlic, old clothes, musk, and money—especially paper money. The garlic is mostly contributed by hollow-eyed croupiers, who are in some measure responsible for the old clothes, an odour otherwise due to grave elderly persons, chiefly female, in garments of indescribable frumpishness and respectability, who form the staple of the afternoon congregation, and seem to contemplate life and its agreeable weaknesses from a standpoint of ferocious piety.
Surely they must have dropped into a prayer-meeting by mistake. Ermengarde looked round for the minister, after some seconds' contemplation of long green tables covered with coin and diagrams, and surrounded by treble and quadruple rows of staid and solemn faces, "all silent and all damned." This congregation was apparently listening with hushed reverence to spasmodic, low-muttered words of wisdom from a priestly person flavoured with garlic, who appeared to be consulting some oracle, or celebrating some religious rite, by turning a brass wheel in a basin sunk in the table, and surrounded by votive offerings in the shape of rolls and rolls of five-franc pieces and golden louis in glittering, provocative piles.
Besides these muttered spells in which, after long listening, she could only make out occasionally "ne va plus"—"rouge"—"treize"—"vingt-sept," the only sound was the perpetual clink of coins, which after every utterance began to dance from hand to hand and fly hither and thither, as if trying to evade the incessant pursuit of small wooden rakes and clutching hands sparkling with diamonds, grimed with long-established dirt, white and brown, yellow and black, red, skinny, and fat. Sometimes two hands clutched the same pile of coin, when there were hurried mutterings and looks of suppressed fury; anon a wooden rake smote an encroaching paw urgently from its golden prey, and there was silence.
On what principle the piles of gold and sheaves of fluttering notes before each worshipper by the little books of ritual they consulted so devoutly, were increased and diminished, was a mystery to the spectator, who saw nothing but a mystic and subtly woven dance of coins and notes crossing and recrossing over the morrice of the green table with rhythmic intermittance, dependent upon the dark utterance of him who turned the wheel. But little by little she gathered that coin placed in one way increased or diminished two-fold, in another five-fold, in another thirty-fold, and found herself handing louis and notes from those behind to the croupier for change, and gloating over the golden multitudes that came rolling to the calm worshippers. The thin man, easily tired and overcome by evil air, had been compassionately despatched to a café to wait for her; he had modestly owned to a weakness for staking a couple of louis now and again for pastime; this lowered him perceptibly in his companion's esteem.
But when he was gone and the glittering heaps had wrought their mesmerism, he was more leniently judged; and certain five-franc pieces in Mrs. Allonby's bag seemed to ask aloud to play a part in the morrice dance on the green; they even worked their way out, after a little, and insisted on planting themselves in certain squares, returning—she never knew how or why—with a partner apiece, and bringing a pleasant glow to their owner's cheek.
"You have never played before?" asked a genial English voice at her elbow. "Would you mind putting this across that corner for me for luck?"
She willingly placed the louis on the corner of the four spaces indicated, scarcely glancing at the player, who was sitting in the front row, with notebook and pencil, piles of coin and notes, all in most business-like array before him; but when he turned and looked up to bow his thanks, with a sudden sweet smile on his grave and anxious face, she recognized the Cyrano de Bergerac of the Carnival. She had been so intent on the morrice, and he so near below her, only the close-cropped head, bent over the pencilled calculations, visible, that she had not recognized him until he turned.
Even as he smiled, the anxious gravity returned to his white, drawn face, to study which she silently changed her position near a croupier. He turned quickly back, and once more riveted his eyes to the table, with a wolfish eagerness that destroyed the young debonnair beauty of his face, and drew lines of age and fatigue upon it. Then the wheel stopped, the brass ball clicked into a niche in the basin, and the player's face changed and his eyes glittered, as the louis came home with a whole troop rolling after them. On this he looked up with another smile and bow, that somehow made her sorry for him and wonder if he had a mother.
Just then a sickening smell of musk, and a pretty substantial push from a gorgeously clad shoulder, made her turn to find herself edged vigorously aside by the painted woman who had ridden down the ridge with him that first afternoon at Les Oliviers. Shrinking from the unholy contact, Ermengarde quickly gave place to her, and, passing behind the croupier to a gap between the heads of two short people, saw the countess bend down and accost the young man, who looked up, worried and impatient, but after some interchange of question and answer, reluctantly yielded his golden spoil to her greedy clutch, and turned again with knitted brows to his calculations and annotations, receiving in reward an unacknowledged pat on the shoulder from the diamond-covered hand, that looked like a glittering claw.
The five-franc pieces in the bag again became restive; everybody, including the woman of the bistred eyes, seemed to be winning. A vision of a gown—a plain white serge coat and skirt, simply but exquisitely cut, and only costing eighteen guineas—floated before Mrs. Allonby's mental gaze. Since seeing it in a shop in Mentone, she had sighed to think of the infrequency of guineas in a world like this, and of the desirability of white tailor-made raiment of exquisite cut for a woman like her. White was the most becoming wear, almost the only wear for this climate; and white serge, when one came to think of it, was the sole material absolutely fit for blazing sunshine and sharp air. The white serge that arrayed her at the moment would not be white much longer; it had already begun to leave off being white. Absurd to come to a place like this without proper clothes. Eighteen guineas was not very dear for such a cut as that; sheer folly to think of getting anything in a foreign winter resort at London or Paris prices. Considering the cost of carriage and customs and the profit of the Mentone shopkeeper, the thing was dirt cheap. Moreover, it was absolutely necessary. And here; threading the green mazes of the morrice-dance, were gold and silver coins in moving multitudes, only waiting to be raked in by the enterprising. Two of her five-franc pieces soon sat on the corner intersecting the four spaces so lucky to Cyrano, and with like result. Her heart began to play quick marches, and her eyes to lighten; she was undoubtedly a lucky person; she staked here and staked there, and the coins came rolling in till she felt a little dizzy, and scarcely knew that on one occasion a marauding claw clutched some of her lawful spoil.