Chapter 18

They turned to walk along the terrace-front of the Casino, facing toward Italy, and away from the harbour half girdled by the Rock of Hercules. They could not see the yacht, but the great illuminated shape rode in Mary's thoughts as it rode on the water. She knew that in coming back along this way she would have to see the harbour, and _White Lady_ blazing with light, pulsing with music. Just yet she could not bear that, and when they came near the eastern end of the terrace she said that she would sit down on one of the seats.

The moonlight had seemed exquisite as an angel's blessing when she looked out between the flags and rose branches, drinking in the words "I love you," as a flower drinks in dew. Now the pale radiance on the mountains was to Mary's eyes wicked, wicked as a white witch fallen from her broomstick. All the world was wicked in its weary pallor; and the dark windows of far-off, moon-bleached villas were like staring eyeballs in gigantic skulls.

She had not meant to talk, but suddenly the fire within her flamed into words. "What have I done--what do I do--that could make people think I am--not good?--make them think they have a right to insult me?"

"Nobody has a right to think that," Hannaford answered, quietly as always. "If any man has insulted you, tell me, and I'll make him sorry."

"I--there is nothing to tell," she stammered, frightened back into reticence. "It's only--an idea that came into my head because of--something I can't explain. But, oh, do be honest with me, Captain Hannaford, if you are my friend, for I can never ask any one else, and I can never ask you again. It's just asking _itself_ now, this question, for I want an answer so much. Is there anything very different about me, and the way I behave, from other girls or women--those who try to be good and nice, I mean?"

It was a strange appeal, and went to the man's heart. If Mary had puzzled him once, and if at first he had thought cynically of her, as he thought of most pretty women he met, love had washed away those thoughts many days ago: and in this moment when she turned to him for help he wondered how it was that he had ever been puzzled. He saw clearly now into the heart of the mystery, and it was a heart of pure rose and gold, like the heart of an altar fire.

"Wait a minute," he said, "before I answer that, and let me ask _you_ a question. Did you ever hear the story or see the play of Galatea?"

"No. Not that I remember. What has it to do with me?"

"I'll tell you about her, and then maybe you'll see. The story is that a Greek sculptor made a beautiful statue which he worshipped so desperately that the gods turned it into a living girl. Well, you can imagine just how much that girl knew about life, can't you? She looked grown up, and was dressed like other young women of her day, but any kitten with its eyes open was better equipped for business than she, for kittens have claws and Galatea hadn't. Naturally she made some queer mistakes, and because a rather beastly world was slow to understand perfect innocence--the pre-serpentine innocence of Eve, so to speak--a lot of injustice was done to the poor little statue come alive. Some of the people wouldn't believe that she'd ever been a statue at all."

"I see!" exclaimed Mary, sharply. Then she was silent for a moment, thinking; but at last she put a sudden question: "What happened to Galatea?"

"Oh, the poor girl was so disgusted with the world that she went back to being a statue again eventually. I think myself it was rather weak of her, and that if she'd waited a bit she might have done better."

"I'm not sure," Mary said, slowly. "To-night I feel as if there was _nothing_ better--than going back and being a statue."

"You won't feel like that to-morrow. The sun brings courage. I know--by experience. You think, Miss Grant, for some reason or other--I don't even want you to tell me what, unless it would do you good to tell--that you're down in the depths. But you're not. You never can be. Where you are it will always be light, really."

"What makes you believe I am good, if others don't believe it?" She turned on him with the question, the moon carving her features in marble purity, as if Galatea were already freezing again into the coldness of a statue. The whole effect of her, in the long white cloak with its hood pulled over the shining hair, was spiritual and unearthly. Hannaford would have given his life for her, happily, just then.

"I don't know what others believe," he said. "I have seen for a long time now, almost since the first, that you were a very innocent sort of girl enjoying yourself in a new way, and losing your head over it a little. Perhaps because I've been down in the depths we talked about, and look on life differently from what I did before, I may have clearer sight. I don't know what you did or were until you came here, but I've realized to-night all of a sudden that you are absolutely a child. There is no worldly knowledge in you. You're what I said. You're Galatea."

"_You_ see this, without any telling," she cried. "And yet----" She bit her lip and kept back the words that would have rushed out, to shame her. But he knew with the unerring knowledge of one who loves, that she had nearly added: "And yet the one man who ought to understand me, does not. It is only you."

It was a bitter knowledge, but he faced it, hating the other man, who had hurt and did not deserve her. But he did not guess that the man was Prince Vanno Della Robbia. He had not heard Vanno almost commanding Mary to dance with him, and had not seen them go up on the bridge together. Hannaford was not even aware that they knew each other. The man in his mind was Dick Carleton, or possibly the Maharajah of Indorwana, whom some women found strangely attractive.

"I should like to be the one to make all others see--any fools or brutes who don't," he said.

"I don't want anybody _made_ to see."

"Of course you don't. Well, there isn't one anywhere about worthy to think of you at all--not a man Jack of us--including me."

"And yet," Mary said, almost pitifully, "I have _liked_ men to think about me! It's been so new, and interesting. What harm have men done me, that I should avoid them, just because they are men? Are they all so much worse than women, I wonder? Oughtn't we to be nice and sweet to them? It would seem so ungrateful to be cold, because they are so very, very kind to us. At least, that is what I felt till now--I mean till quite lately. Men interested me, because they seemed rather mysterious, so different from us; and I wanted to find out what they were really like, for I've been with women all my life. I wish now--that is, I hope I haven't behaved in ways to make people misunderstand?"

"Only fools, as I said before."

"But--what have I done to make the fools misunderstand? You must tell me!"

"Nothing serious. Only--well, you have gone about with a queer lot sometimes."

"Men or women?"

"Madame d'Ambre, for instance."

"Yes; but I haven't talked to her for a long time now."

"You've talked to others like her, and--worse."

"Would you have me be cruel? If some of the poor, pretty creatures here aren't quite what they ought to be, because they've been badly brought up or unfortunate, would you think it right and womanly not to answer when they speak, or to turn one's back on them, or slam the Casino door in their faces, as some cross-looking people do? Wouldn't that drive them to being worse?"

It was difficult to answer this question with due regard to the laws of God and man, and at the same time give Galatea a lesson in social decorum. "I suppose," he said slowly, "you'll just have to follow your star."

"I don't see any star now worth following. Oh, Captain Hannaford, I was so happy! It was such a beautiful, lovely world till to-night! Now I feel as if joy and luck were both gone."

"Does it comfort you a little to know that here's one man who'd do anything for you?" he asked. "There never was such a friend as I'll try to be, if you'll have me."

"Thank you," Mary answered. "I shall be very glad of your friendship. I shall feel and remember it wherever I go."

"Wherever you go? You mean----"

"Yes. I think I must go away--go on to Italy."

"If somebody has hurt you, don't go yet," Hannaford urged. "It would look as if--well, as if you felt too much. Don't you see?"

"I shouldn't like to give that impression," she said, almost primly. Then, with a change of tone, "But I can't--I won't stay at the hotel where I am. To-night at her house Lady Dauntrey invited me to come and stay there. I was asked before, to Christmas dinner. I could accept, I suppose?"

"Hm!" Hannaford grumbled, frowning. But he thought quickly, and it seemed to him that perhaps even Lady Dauntrey's chaperonage might be better than none. There was nothing against the woman, as far as he knew, except that she whitewashed her face and had strange eyes. The rich Mrs. Ernstein, who was staying at the Villa Bella Vista, was undoubtedly--even dully--respectable, if common. Neither was there any real harm in Miss Wardropp; and poor Dauntrey did not seem to be a bad fellow at heart.

"It's not ideal there, I'm afraid," Hannaford said at last, "but for lack of a better refuge it might do."

Mary felt suddenly as if some very little thing far down in herself was struggling blindly to escape, as a fly struggles to escape when a glass tumbler has been shut over it on a table. She drew in a long, deep breath.

"I'll leave the Hôtel de Paris to-morrow," she said, as if to settle the matter with herself once and for all. "And I'll go and stay at Lady Dauntrey's."

Almost unconsciously her eyes were fixed upon the old hill town of Roquebrune, asleep under the square height of its ruined castle, which the moon streaked with silver. All the little firefly lights of the village had died out except one, which still shone "like a good deed in a naughty world."

"It is perhaps the curé's light," Mary thought; and told herself that as he was a friend of the Prince, she would never dare to go and see him now.

XVIII

Vanno stood without moving for some minutes, when Mary had gone. She had forbidden him to follow, but it was not her command which held him back. It was the command laid upon him by himself. In a light merciless as the crude glare of electricity he saw himself standing stricken, a fool who had done an unforgivable thing, a clumsy and brutal wretch who had broken a crystal vase in a sanctuary. For the blinding light showed him a new image of Mary, even as she had suddenly revealed herself to Hannaford: a perfectly innocent creature whose ways were strange as a dryad's way would be strange if transplanted from her forests into the most sophisticated colony in Europe.

Something in Vanno which knew, because it felt, had always pronounced her guiltless; but all of him that was modern and worldly had told him to distrust her. Now he was like a judge who has condemned a prisoner on circumstantial evidence, to find out the victim's innocence after the execution.

Standing there on the bridge, the dance-music troubled the current of his thoughts, rising to the surface of his mind, though he heard it without listening, like the teasing bubbles of a spring through deep water. Though he tried, he could not fully analyze his own feelings; yet he was sharply conscious of those two conflicting sides of his nature which Angelo saw, and he could almost hear them arguing together. The part of him that was aristocrat and ascetic excused itself, asking what he could have done, better than he had done? Had he not broken his resolve for a good motive and for the girl's sake, not his own? Had he begged anything of her for himself? Ought she not to have understood that though he loved her, he could not ask her to be his wife unless or until she could prove herself worthy--not of him--but of a name and of traditions honoured in history? Ought she not to have trusted him, and seen that he was resisting temptation, not yielding to it, when he implored her to take his help and friendship?

Already Angelo had disappointed their father, by marrying a girl of whom no one knew anything except her beauty and talent as an artist. Marie Gaunt had come to Rome to paint the portrait of a fashionable woman; had been "taken up" by other _mondaines_; and Angelo, meeting her at a dinner, had fallen in love with and followed her to Dresden, where she lived and had made her reputation as an artist. In spite of the Duke's objections they had married; and Vanno, who was his father's favourite, surely owed some duty to the old man who loved him. At worst, Marie Gaunt the artist had in no way laid herself open to gossip. According to what friends had written from Rome, she was more than discreet, demure as a Puritan maiden, and the elderly chaperon who travelled with her was a dragon of virtue. With this girl whom Vanno had met at Monte Carlo it was different. She was not discreet. Whatever else she might be, she was not Puritan. She was gossiped about on all sides, and gayly fed the fire of gossip by appearing in startling dresses, by doing startling things, and picking up extraordinary acquaintances. Even as far away as Mentone and Nice she was talked about. Two women had started some story about her travelling to Paris with a French artist; and the man himself, who had arrived since, had made a fool of himself at the Casino, and apparently tried to blackmail her. She was said to have given him money. No love, no matter how great, could justify Prince Giovanni Della Robbia in making such a girl his wife while uncertain of the truth which underlay her amazing eccentricities, and the gossip which followed her everywhere, like a dog that barked at her heels.

This was what one side of him protested anxiously to the other side, which in turn raged against it and its cold plausibilities. The side which was all passion and romance and high chivalry lashed its enemy with contempt, and evil epithets of which the hardest to bear was "prig." For no man can endure being thought a prig, even by himself.

"You, who said that her soul was meant for yours, and the next moment distrusted it!" he reproached himself in bitterness. "What a fool--what a hypocrite! If you've known her since the beginning of things, you should have known by instinct what she was, down under the surface frivolities and foolishnesses, mistakes any untaught girl might make."

This Vanno, who was all man and not prince, said that no punishment could be too severe for one who doubts where he loves. He saw himself justly punished now, by learning Mary's truth through her noble indignation. Because he had waited for this proof he acknowledged that he had sinned beyond most women's pardon; yet he meant to win hers. He cared more for her than before, and determined that he would never give her up; yet all the while that other, worldly Vanno, who was prince as well as man, held stiffly back. How could one whose small knowledge of women good and bad came mostly through hearsay be sure of a woman?

His one boyish venture in love he saw now had been in shallow water; but it had not tended to strengthen his faith in the innate nobility of women. On the contrary, it had shown him that a woman who seemed sweet and loving could be hard and calculating, even mercenary. Innocence being a charming pose, why should it not be adopted by the cleverest actresses, professional sirens, specialists in enchantment, who wished to be admired by all men, even men for whom they cared nothing? How could he tell even now that this girl was not a clever actress who judged him well and planned to lead him on?

So he asked himself questions, and answered in rage, only to begin again, fiercely breaking down one set of arguments and building up another.

It was the arrival of Dodo Wardropp with Dom Ferdinand on the bridge which drove him away and out of himself sufficiently to bid his host and hostess good-night.

When the motor launch had taken him ashore, the impulse was very strong in him to go up to Roquebrune and tell the curé what had happened. He knew that his friend kept a light burning all night in a window, and he could see it, as Mary had seen it, sending out its message for any who needed help. Yet what good could come of talking to one who had never met the girl? Fate had kept the two apart, for some reason, and Vanno could but consult his own heart. Its counsel was to write to Mary, explaining all those things that she had not let him explain in words.

This matter of explanation seemed easier than it proved. Letter after letter had to be torn up before Vanno was able to express on paper anything at all which she might understand, which might soften her to forgiveness. Even then he was dissatisfied; but something had to stand, something had to go. "Write me at least one line," he ended, "if only to say that you know I did not mean to insult you, in the way you thought when you left me."

Mary was still "Miss M. Grant" to him, and so he addressed his letter. Dawn had put the stars to sleep when he sealed the envelope, and he had to wait for a reasonable hour before sending to her room; but he did not go to bed, or try to sleep.

"Christmas!" he said to himself, aloud. "The day of peace on earth and good will toward men. If she remembers, can she refuse to forgive me?"

At half-past eight he thought it might be taken for granted that she was awake. "Don't ask for an answer," he told the young waiter to whom he gave his sealed envelope, and the lace scarf which Mary had left in his hands. "Say only that you're not sure whether there is an answer or not, and you will wait to see."

Vanno had hoped the servant might be away a long time, as delay would mean that Mary was taking time to think, and writing a reply. But in less than ten minutes the man was at the door again.

"The lady was in, and when I gave her the scarf and letter, asked me who had sent them," was the report. "I told her it was his Highness the Roman Prince, staying in the hotel. Then she said, 'This scarf is mine, but the letter must have been sent by mistake, as I do not know his Highness.' So I have brought it back, as the lady desired. I hope I have done right?"

"Quite right, thank you," Vanno returned mechanically, and took his own letter. His ears tingled as though Mary's little fingers had boxed them. If she had but known, she was more than revenged upon him for the snub which had clouded her first dinner in the restaurant of the Hôtel de Paris.

For a moment Vanno was intensely angry, because she had dared to humiliate him in the eyes of a servant; but by and by, when his ears stopped tingling, he told himself that he deserved even this. He respected her all the more, and no longer feared that she might be a clever actress trying to lead him on. A woman who wished to attract a man would not use so sharp a weapon.

Still, Vanno had no thought of giving up. If she would not read his explanation she must hear it, and justify him in one way, even if she would not forgive. He hoped to see her at luncheon time, but she did not come into the restaurant. Again, at dinner she was absent. A merry little Christmas party of four sat at her table: an English duke and duchess, a great Russian dancer, a general of world-wide fame.

"Where is the lady who usually sits opposite?" he asked of his waiter, draining his voice of all expression. "Is she away for Christmas?"

"She is away altogether," answered the waiter. "She left before luncheon."

"Left altogether--left before luncheon!" Vanno echoed, almost stupidly, forgetting to appear indifferent.

"I believe she is still in Monte Carlo," the man went on, delighted to give information. "I do not know where, but I can no doubt find out for your Highness."

"No, thanks, I won't trouble you," Vanno replied hurriedly. He would not learn her whereabouts from a servant, but would find out for himself. Where could she be? To whom could she have gone? The uncertainty was unbearable. If it were true that she was still in Monte Carlo, she would probably be in the Casino this evening. Vanno had not gone there often, after the first night or two, for he hated to see Mary in the Rooms alone, playing a game which attracted crowds, and caused people of all sorts to talk about her. Now, however, he finished his dinner quickly, and went immediately to the Casino.

It was just nine o'clock, and though it was Christmas the crowd was as great as ever, even greater than he had seen it before. Vanno walked through the Salle Schmidt, where Mary usually played, stopping at each table long enough to make sure that she was not there. Then he passed on into the newer rooms lit by those hanging lights which Mary had thought like diamond necklaces of giantesses. The three life-size figures of the eccentric yet decorative picture, nicknamed "The Disgraces," seemed to follow him mockingly with langorous eyes, whispering to each other, "Here comes a fool who does not understand women."

Mary was not playing at any of the tables in these rooms; but there was hope still. The Sporting Club had now opened for the season, and it was more fashionable at night even than the Casino. Vanno had walked through once or twice, after midnight when the Casino had shut, and found there a scene of great beauty and animation: the prettiest women in Monte Carlo, wearing wonderful dresses and jewels, and famous men of nearly all the countries of the world, princes and politicians, great soldiers and grave judges, and even one or two travelling kings. It was very likely that Miss Grant would have gone on to the Sporting Club, after dinner with friends on Christmas Day.

He went across the road and a little down the hill, where the white clubhouse owned by the Casino blazed with light. But as he reached it, Dick Carleton dashed through the door, began running down the steps, and almost cannoned into him.

"Beg pardon, Prince," he exclaimed. "I've just been told that a friend of mine's losing like the dickens, in the _Cercle Privé_, and I'm going to dart across and take out my subscription. I've never done it yet. But it will be worth the hundred francs to stop her, if I can."

"Is it Miss Grant?" Vanno did not deliberately put the question, but heard himself asking it.

"Why, yes it is," Carleton admitted. "Have you been in--have you seen her?"

"No. But I felt somehow that you were speaking of Miss Grant."

"I thought you scarcely knew her," Dick caught him up, jealously.

"You are right. I--scarcely know her. But one has intuitions sometimes. I must have had one then. So--she is losing? I heard she had wonderful luck."

"She has had, up till now. Seemed as if she couldn't lose. Christmas night, too! Isn't it a shame?" And Dick was off, hatless, in evening dress without an overcoat. Vanno stood still in front of the Sporting Club for a moment, watching the slim boyish figure go striding up the hill. A liveried porter, seeing the Prince at the foot of the steps, obsequiously opened the door, but Vanno made a sign that he did not wish to enter. As soon as Dick had disappeared, Vanno followed him.

As he went seldom to the Casino, he had not taken a subscription to the newest rooms, or _Cercle Privé_, where the price of admission is a hundred francs. These rooms are for ardent gamblers who dislike playing in a crowd, and Vanno, who had not felt inclined to play at all, scarcely remembered their existence. Now he bought a ticket, however, and having written his name upon it, followed Carleton at a little distance, to a door at the far end of the trente et quarante rooms. His heart was beating heavily, for in a few minutes he would perhaps know to whom Mary had gone when she left the Hôtel de Paris.

XIX