If Sinners Entice Thee
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Gradually they fought their way back to the Place Massena, and found it a scene of brilliant colour, but the fight had now become so general that the very heavens seemed obscured by the confetti, which, on striking, crumbled into dense clouds of fine, white dust. The fanfares of the Chasseurs Alpins were sounding, the great effigy of the King was slowly moving across towards the leafy public garden, and the colossal figure of an ingenue was sailing along with the crowd with folded arms, perfectly pleased with herself and the Carnival world in general. Everyone here wore the wire mask and domino, even the vendors of confetti being compelled to assume grilles to protect their sun-tanned faces from their own wares.
The Carnival contagion had now spread to even the puppets and musicians themselves; for these left their lofty perches on the cars where they had been observed by all during the processions, and descending to earth, whirled among that motley crowd of dancers and of forms gigantic, gay and grotesque.
Although conflict and retaliation were the order of the day, and disorder the spirit supreme, to the credit of Nice and her crowds be it said that on such a day, when so many liberties were possible, were so few taken. The Mayor had caused a precautionary notice to be posted up, prohibiting any confetti being thrown at the police, gendarmes, or musicians, but even the gendarmes, usually an awe-inspiring, spick and span body, when threatened in fun, would reply, “Fire away, your bullets don’t hurt,” and laughing defiance, would receive volley upon volley of the dusty pellets upon their dark uniforms without flinching, and laugh back defiantly.
Clowns, punchinelli, pierrots, furies, devils and ladies in dominoes fought with one another till every street in the neighbourhood of the Avenue de la Gare was swept from end to end by a hail of confetti, and Zertho and Liane trudged on through the thick dust into which it was every moment being trodden. Long “serpentines” of coloured paper, flung now and then, wrapped themselves about the lamp-posts and hung from windows and from the tall eucalypti, while from some of the houses the more enterprising showered upon the crowd thousands of small, advertising hand-bills. Those who, growing weary of the fight as the sun declined, sought shelter in the cafés, were quickly disillusioned, for from time to time disconcerting showers of pellets would sweep in at the open door, often falling into the bocks, mazagrans, and sirops, so that those who had had previous experience of Carnival ways sat with their wire vizors still down and their hands carefully covering their glasses.
On Confetti Day Carnival penetrates everywhere. In the streets, in the shops, in the churches, in the houses, the small pellets seem to enter by unknown means. They find their way down one’s neck into one’s boots, while ladies get their hats and hair filled with them and drop them wherever they tread. Confetti Day, apart from its interest and amusement as a brilliant spectacle, is the more remarkable because so many hundreds of human beings, prone to “envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness,” begin, continue and end the fun, in such glorious good humour. Everywhere the battle raged fiercely, yet it was all in boisterous mirth, and laughter loud and sincere rang out alike from victor and from vanquished. Mirth ran riot, and disorder was everywhere, but spite was never shown.
Time after time, a storm of confetti swept about Liane and her escort, as together they passed along the colonnade, pelting and being pelted by every masker they met, until the dust came into her face through the grille, and the hood and trimming of her domino was full of grey pellets.
“You are tired and hot,” Zertho exclaimed at last. “This dust makes one thirsty. Let us try and get to the Café de la Victoire.”
To accomplish this, they were compelled to cross the broad place through the very thickest of the fray. Nevertheless, undaunted, with scoops ever in the sacks slung at their sides, they pressed forward, half-choked by the cross-fire of confetti through which they were passing. Liane’s conical felt hat was dinted and almost white, and her domino sadly soiled and tumbled, still with cheeks aglow by the exciting conflict, she went on, taking her own part valiantly. The wire masks did not completely disguise their wearers. Numbers of men and women she met she recognised, and where the recognition was mutual, the battle raged long and furiously, accompanied by screams of uproarious laughter.
At last they managed to reach the opposite side of the Place. The tables in the colonnade before the popular café were crowded with maskers who were endeavouring to get rid of the dust from their throats, notwithstanding the showers of pellets which continually swept upon them. The sun was sinking in a blaze of gold behind Antibes, the clock over the Casino marked a quarter to five; in fifteen minutes the cannon of the château would boom forth the signal for hostilities to cease, the musicians and puppets would mount upon the cars and move away, the maskers would remove their wire protectors, and order would reign once more.
Zertho and Liane had secured a table upon the pavement near the door, the interior of the café being suffocatingly crowded, and sipping their wine, were laughing over the desperate tussle of the afternoon, now and then retaliating when any passer-by directly assailed them. Suddenly a woman, looking tall in a domino of dark rose and wearing a half-mask of black velvet which completely disguised her features, flung, in passing, a large handful of confetti which struck Liane full upon the mask.
In an instant she raised her scoop, and with a gleeful laugh, sent a heavy shower into her unknown opponent’s face. Like many other women, her assailant had apparently become separated from her escort in the fierce fighting, and the fact that she preferred a velvet mask to one of wire showed her to be not a little courageous. But Liane’s well-directed confetti must have struck her sharply upon the chin, which remained uncovered, for it caused her to wince.
She halted, and standing in full view of the pair as if surveying them deliberately, next second directed another scoopful at them. Both Zertho and Liane, divining her intention, raised their hands to cover their masks, and as they did so the hail of pellets descended, many of them falling into their glasses.
“There,” cried Liane, laughing gaily. “It’s really too bad, she’s spoilt our wine.”
In a moment, however, Zertho, who had been preparing for this second onslaught, flung scoopful after scoopful at the intrepid woman, and several of those sitting at the tables around at once joined in repelling the fair masker’s attack. Yet, nothing daunted, although smothered in confetti from a dozen different hands, she continued the conflict with the pair she had at first attacked, until Liane, in her eagerness to annihilate this woman who had so suddenly opened such a persistent and vigorous fire upon them, turned suddenly with her tin scoop filled to overflowing. With a loud laugh she flung it, but by accident the scoop itself slipped from her fingers, and struck the masker sharply upon the shoulder.
In an instant Liane, with a cry of regret, rose from her seat and rushed out into the roadway to apologise, but the unknown woman with a stiff bow, her dark eyes flashing angrily through the holes in her mask, turned away and walked quickly along the Rue Massena. Liane stooped, snatched up her scoop, and returned to where Zertho sat heartily laughing, those sitting around joining in a chorus of hilarity at the incident.
“She got a bigger dose than she bargained for,” he exclaimed.
“I am sorry,” she said. “It was quite an accident. But did you see her eyes? She glared as if she could kill me.”
“Yes,” he replied. “She looked half mad. However, she’ll never be able to recognise you again.”
Liane was silent. The light of joy and happiness had suddenly died out of her fair countenance. She seemed to possess some vague recollection of a similar pair of dark, flashing eyes. A face – a strange ghost of the past – came for an instant before her eyes; a thought flashed through her mind and held her appalled. She shuddered, pale as death behind her mask of gauze. Next instant, however, she laughed aloud at her fear. No, she assured herself, it could not be. It was only some faint resemblance, rendered the more vivid because it had come before her amid that reckless gaiety.
Then she smiled at Zertho again happily as before, and they ordered fresh wine, and waited until the cannon thundered from the heights above and the streets grew orderly, ere they started to walk home along the Promenade.
They had, however, been too far off the woman to overhear the strange ominous words she uttered when, with an evil glint in her eyes, she turned from them abruptly with a fierce imprecation upon her lips, her cheeks beneath the velvet mask blanched with suppressed anger.
“No, I am not mistaken,” she had muttered in French, with a dry laugh between her set teeth. “When I met you dancing in the Place de la Préfecture I thought I recognised you, Liane Brooker. I followed, and threw at you in order to obtain a good view of your pretty face in which innocence is so well portrayed. Strange that we should meet again purely by accident; strange, too, that you should cover me with dust and fling your scoop into my face as though in defiance. Little do you dream how near I am to you, or of the ghastly nature of the revelation which I shall ere long disclose. Then the smiles which enchant your admirers will turn to tears, your merry laughter to blank despair, and your well-feigned innocence and purity to ignominy and shame.”
Chapter Eleven
Monte Carlo
Carnival’s reign was ended. Pierrot, clown and columbine, hand in hand, had watched the flames consume him, and had danced around the dying embers. His palace had been torn down, the decorations in his honour had disappeared, the colours red and rose were no longer exhibited in the shop windows, for Nice had assumed her normal aspect of aristocratic dignity.
One afternoon a week afterwards, Liane reluctantly accompanied her father and Zertho to Monte Carlo.
When at luncheon the visit had been suggested by the Prince, she at once announced her intention of staying at home. Truth to tell, those great gaming-rooms with their wildly excited throngs possessed for her too many painful memories. At length, however, after much persuasion, she was induced to dress and accompany them.
She chose a white costume, with a large white hat relieved by violets, and a narrow belt of violet satin to match – a plain, fresh-looking gown which suited her beauty admirably, and within an hour they had ascended the steps of the great white Casino with its handsome façade, and entered the long bureau to exchange their visiting-cards for one of the pink cards of admission. The clerk at the counter, whose duty it is to examine the dress of the visitors and their cards, at once recognising the party, shook hands heartily with Brooker and the Prince, expressing pleasure at seeing them again.
“Yes, we’ve returned, you see,” the Captain answered jocularly. “Always back to Monte Carlo, you know.”
“Well, I wish messieurs all good fortune,” laughed the stout, round-faced man, “and also mademoiselle, of course,” he added, bowing, his face beaming with good humour, as instead of writing out formal admission cards he handed them three of the special white tickets issued by the Administration of the Cercle to its well-known habitués.
A gay cosmopolitan crowd in Paris-made gowns and well-cut suits, with bulky purses in their hands, struggled behind, eager to obtain tickets, therefore they at once deposited their sticks and sunshade, and passing across the great atrium, thronged with well-dressed people, approached the long polished doors guarded by attendants in bright livery of blue and gold. Here again one of the men wished the Captain “Good day,” the door opened, and they found themselves once more, after many months, inside the lofty well-remembered rooms where so many fortunes had been lost and won.
Down the vista from the entrance could be seen room after room, resplendent in gilt decorations, polished floors, ceiling of ornamental glass, and many beautiful paintings by Feyen, Perrin, and Jundt; each room filled with eager, anxious gamblers crowding around the oblong roulette-tables. The continual hum of voices, the jingle of coin, the rustle of notes, the click of the roulette-ball, and the monotonous cries of the croupiers combined to produce a veritable Babel of noise, while the heat on that bright sunny March afternoon seemed overpowering.
But those sitting around the tables, or standing behind, cared nothing for the world outside, too absorbed were they in the chance of the red or the black. The sun was excluded by blinds closely drawn, and the long windows were all curtained in black or blue muslin, with handsome patterns worked thereon, so that those walking upon the terrace by the blue sunlit sea could obtain no glimpse of what was going on within. The place was close, and there was about it that faint odour which it ever retains, the combined smell of perspiration and perfume.
From the moment Liane placed foot upon the polished floor she regretted that she had come. With that well-remembered scene before her a thousand bitter memories instantly surged through her brain. She hated herself. Around her as they approached the first table in the Moorish room were the same types of people that she knew, alas! too well; the flora of the Riviera, the world in which she had for years been compelled to live. Among those sitting around were men, weary and haggard-eyed, with those three deep lines across the brow which habitual gamblers so quickly develop, and heavy-eyed women who had concealed their paleness beneath their rouge. Of this class of frenzied humanity, she reflected, she herself was. There had been a time not long ago when she, too, had sat at the table prompting her father, sometimes flinging on coin or notes for him, dragging in his winnings with the little ebony rake, or keeping an account in her tiny memorandum book of the various numbers as they turned up, so as to assist him in his speculations.
Unlike these déclassé women, she hated play. The life was to her detestable. She had, it was true, moved in their world, but, thanks to her father’s care, she had retained her goodness and purity, and had never been of it. Well she knew the terrible tension each spin of that little ivory roulette-ball caused among that eager crowd, an anxiety which furrowed the brows, which caused the hands to tremble, and sapped all youth and gaiety and life. She, although young and fair, had witnessed life there in its every aspect. She had herself experienced the terrible frenzy of excitement; she had felt the desperation of abject despair. She had seen dozens, nay hundreds, come there rich and respected, to depart broken and ruined; she had witnessed more than one woman grow so desperate over her losses that she had fainted at the table, and once beside her at that very table there had sat a man, young, good-looking, and well-dressed, who lost and lost, and continued to lose throughout the long, hot day, until with a low imprecation he at length threw down his last hundred-franc note on the “impair.” He lost, then rose unsteadily from the table, while half-a-dozen others struggled to obtain his place. An hour later she had risen and gone into the garden to obtain air, but scarcely had she walked a dozen yards when two attendants passed her by, carrying her fellow-gambler’s lifeless form. He had shot himself.
This tragic incident, by no means uncommon, though so frequently hushed up, had so unnerved her that for many weeks her father could not induce her to enter the Casino, but gradually, because with a gambler’s belief in talismans, he declared that when she accompanied him Fortune was always on his side, she again went with him, to spend long, anxious, breathless hours in the crowded place, where bright, happy girls staked their five-franc pieces, just for the purpose of saying they had done so, and rubbed shoulders with the most notorious of the demi-monde; and where honest men, professional gamesters, blackmailers and souteneurs all placed themselves on equal footing before the green-covered shrine of their fickle goddess.
Monte Carlo resembles nothing. It is at the same time a paradise and a hell, of hope and despair, of golden dreams and of hideous nightmares; a place without laws, either physical or moral. Its surroundings are delightful, nestling below the high bare Tête de Chien and the Mont de la Justice, with the picturesque little town of Monaco perched upon its bold prominent rock to the right, the green slopes of Cap Martin jutting out into the sea on the left, and away far in the distance, yet clearly defined, the purple Alps of Italy, while beyond the white-balustraded terrace is a broad open expanse of clear blue sea. The centre of elegance and corruption, of beauty and deformity, of wealth and vice, of refinement and sin, it is in itself unique.
On every hand, within and without the little place, the view is superb. In the fine square before the Casino the gardens are brilliant with flowers and shady with palms; the cafés overflow with visitors, waltz music sounds by night and day, and from noon till the early hours there is life and movement everywhere. The game fascinates, and the climate acts upon the organism of all who go there. The exquisitely beautiful surroundings of the Casino exert a deleterious influence. They are alluringly pleasant. Life seems so gay, happy and free amid that whirl of voluptuousness, where vice is disguised in a form tout à fait charmante, its banal influence so imperceptible, that the man who ventures into the Principality determined not to risk a single louis upon the tapis-vert in almost every case finds himself overwhelmed by that involuntary indolence which creeps upon all like an infernal intoxication, drawn irresistibly to the tables, and too often to his ruin. The daily life in Monaco presents a surprising picture of morals; a truly extraordinary Paradise of the marvellous and the diabolical, of the sublime and the terrible, of fair dreams and of hideous realities. Et le fruit défendu dont se nourrit la masse a d’autant plus de saveur que le joli petit serpent auquel on doit sa découverte a toutes les allures mignonnes d’un démon tentateur extrèmement séduisant.
To Erle Brooker, whose sole vice was that of gambling, the monotonous invitation of the croupiers, and the jingle of louis as they were tossed carelessly over to the winners, were as the sound of the hounds to the old hunter, or the bugle to the retired soldier. All the old longing for excitement and the hope for a run of luck came again upon him, and although he had vowed he would never again play he soon felt his pulse quicken and his good resolutions fading away. As, accompanied by Zertho and Liane, he moved on from table to table, watching the play and criticising it with the air of one with wide experience, the desire for risking a few louis came irresistibly upon him. He remembered that before leaving Nice he had placed ten one-hundred-franc notes in his pocket. It was a sum small enough, in all conscience, to risk. He recollected the time when, with Zertho standing behind him taking charge of his winnings, he had won a hundred times that amount between mid-day and midnight.
Of all that gay crowd Liane looked the prettiest and smartest. As she cast a rapid glance around the various tables, many of the men and women she recognised as professional fellow-gamblers, each with their little piles of silver, gold and notes. One or two, well-dressed and more prosperous, had, she knew, at one time been down to their very last franc. The two men also singled out old acquaintances, men who passed their days in these crowded rooms, nodded to them and remarked upon the sudden prosperity of some and the unusual seediness of others.
They were standing together closely watching the roulette at one of the centre tables. People were crowding four deep around it, but mostly the stakes were five-franc pieces, the minimum allowed.
“By Jove!” Zertho exclaimed at last, turning to the Captain. “See what a run the red is having!”
“Fourteen times in succession, m’sieur,” observed a man at their elbow, consulting his card.
“It won’t again. Watch,” Brooker answered briefly, closely interested in the game.
Next moment the ball was sent spinning around outside the revolving disc of black and red; the croupier with sphinx-like countenance uttered his monotonous cry, “Rien ne va plus!” and after breathless silence the rattle told that the ivory had fallen. Brooker’s prophecy proved correct. The black had gained.
“Going to risk anything?” inquired Zertho, with a smile.
“No,” interrupted Liane earnestly. “Dad will not. He has already promised me.”
The Captain, his hand trembling in his pocket, turned to his daughter with a smile.
“Surely you won’t deprive him of winning a few louis?” Zertho exclaimed. “Be generous, just this once, dearest.”
Smiling, she turned to her father with a glance of inquiry.
“I have promised,” he observed quietly. “I do not break my pledge to you, unless with your permission.”
Already the people, eager to tempt Fortune, were placing their money on the yellow lines upon the table, and while they spoke Zertho tossed a couple of louis upon the simple chance of the black. The game was made, black won, and he received back his stake with two louis in addition.
The sight of Zertho winning stirred Erle Brooker’s blood. He had watched the run of the table sufficiently to know from experience that the chances were again in favour of the red, and with quick resolve he threw upon the scarlet diamond two notes for one hundred francs apiece.
Liane made a sudden movement to stay his hand, but too late. Then, with lips compressed she looked at him with bitter reproach, but uttered no word. The little ivory ball had already been launched on it way.
“Rien ne va plus!” cried the croupier an instant later, and the ball next second clicked into its socket.
Red won. The croupier tossed over to him two notes of the same value as those he had staked, and he took them up with an amused smile at his companions.
“Really, dad,” cried Liane, pouting prettily, “it is too bad of you to break your promise. I only came with you on one condition, namely, that you wouldn’t play.”
“Well, I’ve won ten louis, so no great harm has been done,” he answered.
“But there is harm,” she protested firmly. “When once you come to the tables you cannot, you know, leave until you’ve won, or lost everything. I thought you had, for my sake, given it up.”
They had drawn aside from the table, and were standing in the middle of the handsome room.
“This is only in fun, Liane,” Zertho assured her. “We are neither of us any longer professionals. Our day is over.”
“It is certainly not kind of you to invite my father to play like this,” she exclaimed, turning upon him resentfully. “I have already told you that I do not wish him to play.”
“I have not invited him,” Zertho declared with a laugh. “If he chooses to follow the run I cannot well prevent it.”
At that moment Brooker, who still kept his keen eyes riveted upon the table, heard the croupier’s voice, hesitated a moment, and taking two rapid steps forward tossed upon the red diamond the four notes he had just picked up.
Whirr-r! click! went the ball again, and the croupier’s announcement a few seconds later told him that he had won four hundred francs.
Liane, annoyed, flushed slightly, compressed her lips and turning from them with a gesture of anger walked straight out from the great gilded salons so hateful to her. As she passed, many turned and remarked how beautiful she was. She knew that the mania which had caused her father’s downfall had returned, that this double success would cause him to plunge still more deeply. Zertho smiled contemptuously at her fears, and neither men went after her to induce her to return.