An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (92 page)

‘Yes, of course,’ Violet said.

Cheveron, always Cheveron! She could feel it there, grasping out towards Robert, holding him firmly, tenaciously, drawing him away from her, entwining itself around him with tentacles that she could never break.

She must have given a little sob, for suddenly Robert turned from the windows and walked into the room.

‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I must not let my feelings bore you. Would you like to go for a drive or visit the Casino?’

She thought that the politeness in his voice and the courtesy of his expression were harder to bear than if he had reproached her. Indeed she would rather he had cursed her for having enticed him to Monte Carlo when he might have been at Cheveron than that he should speak to her like this. But she knew this was not the moment for a scene, not the moment for reproaches of any sort.

‘Let us go to the Casino,’ she said. ‘I have a feeling that I might be lucky. I dreamt that I saw seven birds last night. They had long tails, they might have been pheasants.’

Even as she said the words she wished them unsaid, for she knew that pheasants would remind Robert once again of Hathaway. Quickly she went on,

‘Seven is always my lucky number anyway, and I shall back it to the limit. Are you feeling rich?’

‘Rich enough for that,’ Robert answered again in that considerate, polite voice which she hated.

‘I will go and get ready,’ Violet said. ‘I shall not be long. We might find someone amusing at the Casino and ask them to dine with us tonight. Have you seen Arthur today?’

Robert shook his head.

‘No, I have seen no one,’ he said, ‘except little
Mademoiselle Fântóme. I
saw her walking by the shore with her maid. A stray dog had followed her and she was throwing sticks for him.’

Violet realised that Robert was making an effort, as she had done, to speak of other things than Cheveron.

‘She is very lovely – the little ghost,’ Violet said. ‘Was she wearing grey?’

‘Of course! Does she ever wear anything else?’

‘I wonder if she is in mourning or if it is just a clever stunt to attract attention.’

‘If she was in mourning, surely her aunt would be in black.’ Sir Robert said quickly, as if he had considered the matter before and knew the answer.

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ Violet said. ‘I don’t trust that woman.’

‘Whom? The aunt?’

‘Yes, there is something sinister and unpleasant about her. Besides, she bullies her niece.’

‘How do you know?’ Violet asked in surprise.

‘I – I guessed,’ Sir Robert replied, but not convincingly, and Violet looked at him curiously.

‘Have you ever spoken to the girl?’ she asked.

She did not know why she asked the question. There was just something strange in the way Robert was speaking of her. There was a little pause before he replied, then he said quietly,

‘No, I haven’t spoken to her.’

Surprisingly Violet felt relieved. It was so ridiculous that she could not for a moment acknowledge the feeling even to herself.

‘If we are going to the Casino, we had better go,’ she said. ‘I won’t he more than five minutes, I promise you.’

She went from the room, shutting the door behind her. When she had gone, Sir Robert walked again to the window and stood looking out. He wondered why he had lied about Mistral, then knew that it was his instinctive desire to protect their acquaintance from chattering tongues, even Violet’s. He had only to say that they had met for Violet to ask him a dozen questions, for everyone in Monte Carlo was avid with curiosity about Mistral and her aunt.

What was the mystery? He wondered. There were all sorts of explanations, but none of them particularly plausible. But one thing was obvious, that if
Madame Secret,
whoever she might be, had desired to arouse public curiosity and attention, she had more than succeeded.

Mistral’s beauty, her clothes, her pearls, the way she was allowed to speak to no one save the Prince, were all the subject of continuous and unceasing comment.

Prince Nikolai said openly that, while he was honoured by their acquaintance, he knew as little as anyone else who the two women were or where they had come from. But of one thing Sir Robert was quite sure. There was nothing scheming or crafty about Mistral. Sometimes he would meet her eyes across the Casino and think there was an appeal for help in them.

At those times he longed to comfort her, to take her away from those glittering rooms to the quietness of the garden where they could talk together. There was something wistful and lost about her. She was only a child and he knew without being told that she was often unhappy and still more often afraid.

Yet what could he do? He was powerless, as was everyone else, in the face of
Madame Secret’s
determination to speak to no one save the Prince. Many people had tried to rub up an acquaintance at the gaming tables. It was quite an easy thing to do as a rule, but any attempt at conversation was met with a stony silence on the part of
Madame Secret,
while anyone who spoke to Mistral in her presence was speedily and effectively vanquished.

He was perhaps the only person who had managed to talk with Mistral, and he had been careful to tell no one that he had been successful where everybody else had failed. She liked him and trusted him, he knew that. There had been undisguised pleasure both in her smile and in her greeting when he had drawn his horse up beside her on the sea shore that morning.

‘Where did you find your new acquaintance?’ he asked, referring to the dog which was bounding round her with yelps of delight.

‘He found me,’ she replied, ‘and now he will not leave me.’

‘I’m not surprised at that,’ Sir Robert remarked.

‘All the same, it will be difficult to convince him that I am not able to take him into the
Hôtel de Paris.
Can you see their faces of horror if he walked across their beautifully clean carpets with dirty feet?’

Mistral gave a little sigh.

‘I have always wanted to have a dog of my own.’

‘I would like to give you one,’ Sir Robert said.

‘May I?’

Mistral glanced up at him with a startled expression.

‘Of course not,’ she replied. ‘Aunt Emilie would never let me keep it.’

Sir Robert had swung himself down from his horse to stand beside her. The maid had withdrawn, he noticed, to a discreet distance and was looking out to sea.

‘Why are you so afraid of your aunt?’ he asked. ‘I don’t believe she is as ferocious as you make out. Let me come and call on her and I will tell her that at Cheveron I have a litter of highly bred spaniels. They are black and white and very affectionate. You shall have the pick of them all.’

‘How wonderful that would be!’ Mistral exclaimed. ‘I would love a spaniel, but it is quite, quite impossible. As to speaking to Aunt Emilie, I beg of you to do nothing of the sort. She would be very angry with me if she knew I was talking to you now – very angry indeed. And as it is, she seemed extremely strange yesterday and again this morning. I do not think she can be well. Everything I do is wrong, so, please, you must not make things worse for me.’

There was a touch of real panic in the young voice which made Sir Robert say quickly,

‘I would not do anything that you didn’t want me to do, but I wish I understood a little more.’

‘So do I,’ Mistral answered miserably. ‘If you only knew how I long to understood what it is all about, but – no one will tell me.’

‘But surely you have some other relations besides your aunt?’ Sir Robert suggested.

He saw an almost secretive look come over Mistral’s face.

‘No, there is no one,’ she said, ‘and I cannot discuss it. Please, Sir Robert, continue your ride.’

She looked round as if she would call Jeanne to her side. Sir Robert instinctively put out his hand to stop her. His fingers closed on her wrist, and her movement was arrested by the touch of his hand. She turned to look up into his eyes. Something magnetic passed between them, something which left them both breathless and spellbound. For the passing of a few seconds the world was lost and everything forgotten save themselves.

Then there was a sudden yap of the dog, the murmur of the waves at their feet, the screech of a seagull as it whirled overhead. Mistral’s eyes dropped before Sir Robert’s and he took his hand from her arm.

‘Do you ever come to the gardens early in the morning?’ he asked, more because he felt obliged to speak and break this strange, poignant silence than because he expected an answer. Mistral shook her head.

‘No, I go to the Chapel,’ she said in a low voice.

Sir Robert swung himself into the saddle. He gathered up the reins from the horse’s neck and looked down at Mistral. The sun was glinting on her golden hair. She raised her head suddenly and their eyes met once again.

Both were conscious at that moment of magnetism and of wonder, then without speaking Sir Robert raised his hat and rode away.

What had happened? Why had he felt like that? Even as Sir Robert asked himself the question, he heard Violet calling Him. She was ready. They must go to the Casino. He felt a great yawn of weariness and boredom welling up inside him. The sun was shining, it would be hot and stifling at the Casino.

He had a sudden longing for the breeze blowing along the sea shore or, better still, the wind blowing across the parkland at Cheveron.

‘Robert! Robert! I am ready!’

Violet was waiting. He turned from the window and crossed the room. As he did so, he thought that the grey of Mistral’s dress was just the colour of the mist which hung over the lake at Cheveron in the early morning.

10

Chrissie opened her eyes and could not for a moment remember where she was. Then the softness of her bed, the silk spread which covered her and the sunshine coming through the Venetian blinds, which cast variegated patterns on the walls, told her clearly that she was still in Monte Carlo.

She had been dreaming that she was back in London, and for a moment after waking she still seemed to hear the shrill voices of dirty children playing outside in the street and smell the inevitable stink of stale cabbage and bad drains which seemed to impregnate the atmosphere of every lodging house.

No, she was still in Monte Carlo. She lay still, sensuously enjoying the unaccustomed luxury and comfort of her surroundings. Then her sensation of satisfaction was supplanted almost immediately by one of irritation. She remembered why she had come to lie down in the middle of the day. It was Stella’s fault – Stella, whose stupidity and foolishness had made her so angry that it had brought on one of the agonising headaches with which she was periodically attacked, especially after her feelings had burst the bounds of self-control.

Yes, Stella was to blame for her headache. It had been a bad one and only when she was almost blind and practically speechless did Chrissie give in and go to bed at what she called ‘the wrong time of day’.

She had slept and the headache was gone, but the cause of her irritation still remained. At times Chrissie would say and believe that Stella’s idiocy would drive her insane if she did not break a blood vessel in the meantime through sheer unbridled rage. But Stella would only smile and say she was sorry, and what, Chrissie asked in disgust, could anybody do with a person like that?

The row at luncheon time had started because Stella let slip the information that the Rajah had given her some money to gamble with at the Casino the evening before, and having lost part of it, she had given him back what was left.

‘How much?’ Chrissie had snapped across the table.

Stella looked uncomfortable.

‘Not much,’ she replied.

‘How much?’ Chrissie insisted.

‘I can’t remember, Stella answered.

‘You’re lying,’ Chrissie accused her. ‘You must have a pretty good idea. Was it fifty francs, a hundred, or more?’

Stella shook her head and went on eating the ice cream made in three different colours and flavours which had been served with fresh
fraises des bois
and whipped cream.

‘Answer me!’ Chrissie ordered.

‘I really don’t know how much it was,’ Stella prevaricated. ‘I had lost a great deal of what he gave me.’

‘And how much was that?’

‘A thousand francs.’

Chrissie gave an exclamation that was half a choke and brought her clenched fist down on the table, making the glasses ring.

‘You stupid, brainless fool!’ she cried. ‘A thousand francs and you actually gambled with it? Why didn’t you put it in your pocket and tell the Rajah you had lost it?’

‘It wouldn’t have been true for one thing,’ Stella answered mildly. Besides, he would have seen I was not playing.’

‘You could have put on a few francs,’ Chrissie conceded, ‘but it makes me see red to think that, having been so stupid as to gamble and to lose, you returned him what was left. Can’t you get into your thick head that we’ve got to save, that every franc we put aside will seem worth its weight in gold when we return to London?’

‘I’m sorry, Chrissie.’ Stella said quietly.

‘Sorry! That’s all you ever say,’ Chrissie shouted. ‘What’s the point of being sorry if you don’t try and do better next time? You had better get double out of the Rajah tonight to make up for it.’

Stella put down her spoon and pushed her plate away from her.

‘I can’t ask him for anything more. He was ever so kind about the pearls.’

‘And when are you going to get them?’ Chrissie enquired.

‘Well, if it comes to that, I don’t want them,’ Stella answered,

‘I spoke to the girl that owns them last night – “the Ghost” as they call her, and she was sweet. She talked to me, Chrissie, as if I was a friend, someone of her own world. I wouldn’t want to take her pearls from her – they belonged to her mother.’

It was then that Chrissie screamed and, screaming, rose from the table to stamp about the room raging and cursing until the native servant who had been waiting on them peeped round the doorway, uncertain of what was occurring.

It was some time before Stella was allowed to speak, but when she could hear her own voice, it was only to murmur that she was sorry and didn’t mean to upset Chrissie so much. but Chrissie was not to be appeased and raged on and on until finally physical pain brought her voice to a standstill.