Part 10

Mrs. Hazard is a very charming and interesting woman; she is affectionately attached to her husband—a good, amiable, honest man, who denies her nothing; she is the mother of some sweet little children, and the mistress of an elegant household. She entertains a good deal of very congenial society, and every one agrees that she is an admirable hostess, her manners being engaging, and her powers of conversation decidedly above the average, with one specially remarkable quality, the power of concentration. Indeed, Mrs. Hazard has apparently all the domestic and worldly advantages generally regarded as conducive to a woman’s happiness; yet she is never content. She is a confirmed gambler, and her life is one of continuous restlessness. The passion for play dominates all her finer feelings, and every other interest becomes subordinate when the excitement of gambling takes possession of her nature.

She is no avaricious person, who is lured to the gaming table by the greed of gain, but she goes there to drain excitement to the dregs, as drunkard’s drink brandy. She sets little value on money in the ordinary way, for her husband is in easy circumstances, and can give her all that she can reasonably require for her expenditure, and she spends it freely and with little heed. But money which she stakes upon the turn of a card, the cast of a die, the chances of roulette, or the speed of a race-horse, she hoards like a miser, gathering and seeking to increase her winnings with the avarice of a usurer. She gambles for gambling’s sake, and the money is part of the game. It is the excitement of risk and suspense that she craves for, and while she is under its spell she concentrates every intellectual and emotional faculty upon it. Hence, of course, Monte Carlo is her Mecca, and her pilgrimages thither are frequent.

Mrs. Hazard does not take her children with her when she goes to the Riviera. She leaves them at home with her husband, who cannot often absent himself from the City, and, when he does, prefers salubrious Eastbourne to seductive Monte Carlo. He hates gambling of all kinds, he never plays cards or bets, and he rigorously avoids speculating on the Stock Exchange, although he is frequently told a “good thing” by his friends who are “in the swim.” That his wife is a gambler, therefore, is a bitter grief to him, and he watches her craving for excitement with uneasiness, but, beyond an occasional persuasive protest, he never reproaches her. He thinks she will tire of it, but it has become part of her nature—it will never be eradicated—nor does her husband quite know how far the passion for play has absorbed her, or to what extent she indulges it. As a matter of fact, it has become so necessary to her, that when she cannot manage to go to Monte Carlo, she runs over to convenient Boulogne for a day or two, and there she spends her entire time at the Casino, at the _Petits Chevaux_, and only leaves the green table to go into the baccarat room beyond, where she varies her gambling excitement. She is generally a lucky player, but even when she loses she is just as intense in her pursuit of the nervous tension of suspense while the horses are going round, or the cards are being dealt. That is what feeds her craving, not the gaining of gold, but the pulsating sense of risk and the ecstasy of expectation.

Sometimes she takes her family during the summer months to Boulogne, since her husband can run over there every now and then, when he can tear himself from the calls of business, and his longing to see his wife and children will not be gainsaid. But does he find her playing with their little ones on the sands? No, she kisses them in the morning, and bids the nurse and governess look carefully after them, and let them enjoy themselves, and she sees no more of them that day, unless, perhaps, when she returns to the hotel to change her dress for the evening. Nevertheless, she is intensely fond of her children, and if one should have ever so slight an ailment she will be beside herself with anxiety, send for the doctor two or three times a day, and never leave the child’s bedside, while she will lavish caresses upon her. But so long as the children are well and enjoying themselves on the seashore or in the gardens, she gives no heed to them during the day, her mind being absorbed by the question whether the nine will turn up at baccarat, or else whether the horse she has put her money on will be a winning one. It is not as exciting at Boulogne as at Monte Carlo, but it is a substitute, and it helps to keep up that feverish heat her nature needs to sustain it.

It is at Monte Carlo, however, that Mrs. Hazard really feels the full expansive joy of living. There she breathes excitement in the air, there she vents the full passion of her nature. The gaming tables at Monte Carlo appear to her the proper sphere of her life. The wonderful blue skies of the Riviera, the exquisite colour of the scenery, the beautiful exuberance of the flowers, the light and gaiety of the careless life, the variety of character and nationality that is lured to the sunny, seductive South—all this has little meaning for her except as an adjunct to the passionate pleasure of play. That draws her to Monte Carlo with the irresistible force of a magnet. When she first arrives she perceives that the sky is blue, but afterwards it might be yellow or red for all she would know from ocular observation. She knows that the gaming table is green; but for the sky and the flowers she simply feels that they are beautiful, for she is intoxicated with the atmosphere of the place. All else but the tables is a kind of sensation in a dream—the tables alone are distinct and tangible. She is sensibly conscious that the rest exists, but she gives no thought to it. If, as she dresses herself in the morning, she looks out of the windows at the beautiful “blue deep” of the sky, it is only with a sense of gladness that another day of delicious excitement has dawned, and her thoughts are not concerned with the beauty of the earth and the sky in that land of sunshine and flowers, but with the chances of the table, the hazards of a “system,” and the calculation of gains and losses.

And the sweet, peaceful moonlight resting over the place, cut by the dark shadows of the tall, straight palms and the eucalyptus-trees—does its gentle enchantment fall upon her soul after the excitements of the day? No, it only whispers fresh awakenings of the gambling fever in her, as she mentally recapitulates all the incidents of the day’s play. But you must see her at the tables! There she sits, a picturesque figure in the midst of a motley, _bizarre_ group of gamblers gathered around the table, all eager and intense, most of them maintaining a deliberate coolness, but all linked by a common passion, the chance of gain. She was at the doors of the Casino before noon, so as to secure her seat, waiting amid a crowd which comprised some of the gambling scum of Monte Carlo as well as illustrious members of our own nobility. Then as she went in, she made straight for the cloak-room, that she might leave her wrap there and get a numbered ticket in exchange. She was very eager about this, reading the number excitedly, for Mrs. Hazard, like most gamblers, is superstitious, and her present superstition is to place her stakes upon the numbers on the roulette table corresponding with those on her cloak-ticket. She feels that her luck to-day depends upon this, just as on another day, perhaps, she will only play when a certain _croupier_ is officiating, believing that he alone will bring her good fortune.

Mrs. Hazard is a plunger, and she generally commences operations with about fifty louis, so that her winnings are proportionately large, and the stake is substantial enough to make the excitement keen. Once she has placed her pieces, nothing else has any interest for her. She gives herself up, body and soul, to the play. She knows nothing that goes on around her. She takes no cognisance of the heartburnings, the awful anxieties, or the intense pleasures that may reveal themselves in the faces of other players. She only notices the _croupier_ and the table. Some hopeless young man might have just lost the last penny of his inheritance, and, unable to face ruin might be leaving her side with despair on his face and desolation in his heart, to seek the shameful death of the suicide. Another might have squandered a fortune he held in trust for others—perhaps helpless children—and, having swerved from the path of honesty, be doomed henceforth to a life of fraud and degrading adventure. A wretched wife and mother might have played her last stake, and thus lost her only chance of redeeming her wrecked fortune and her husband’s credit, except at the price of her honour; and these unhappy creatures might go their hopeless ways, as others, sanguine or desperate, come and fill their places; but Mrs. Hazard does not heed them. They have no existence for her, though at any other time her heart would bleed for them, and she would talk of them with deep womanly sympathy; now she only watches the numbers, and the little roulette ball, and her gold pieces.

All the time she is playing, people come and go, and crowd around—people of all kinds, and of every nationality, the Russian prince, the English “milord,” the French _déclassée_, the German baron, the American millionaire, and the Italian tenor; but they might all be dummies for the notice she takes of them—and yet Mrs. Hazard is really fond of studying character and types. A famous and beautiful English actress stands perhaps just opposite to her, one who is proverbially lucky at the tables, and a crowd of onlookers gather round merely to watch her play, finding her infinitely more interesting when all her sensibilities are actually involved in the chances of the roulette, than when simulating the passions of a dramatic heroine. But though Mrs. Hazard is devoted to the pleasures of the theatre, and generally evinces the greatest interest in the personalities of the stage, she now remains quite unconcerned as to the proximity of this distinguished artist, whose very costume even would at any other time be an object of lively interest to her. While the gaming fever is upon her she is as one under a spell. She is as separate from her normal self as the opium-eater when the drug is working upon him.

But it is not only at the foreign gambling-tables that Mrs. Hazard finds vent for her speculative spirit. Unknown to her husband—who, by the way, is never permitted to know what sums she really wins or loses, for his steady-going business mind would be simply appalled at them—she watches the money market with a close and keen interest, and increases or diminishes her winnings at play by means of “flutters” on the Stock Exchange. On one occasion she nearly came to financial and domestic grief over these transactions, for she had been playing heavily, and an unexpected crisis found her at settling-day with a balance on the wrong side, greater than she was able to meet. She dared not go to her husband for help; her luck at cards and on the racecourse was at the time persistently against her—she is an inveterate poker-player and backer of horses—and she was obliged to enlist the assistance of a handsome and wealthy young man of her acquaintance.

The confidential notes that passed between them, and their unexplained private meetings, at length aroused the suspicions of her husband, and their conjugal relations were for a time exceedingly strained, and I doubt if these two have ever been quite as completely trustful since. One or two lucky wins at Epsom, and a few good nights at poker at friends’ houses helped to put her on her financial feet again, and the suspense and excitement of this experience afforded intense gratification to her gambler’s spirit, but her husband still feels, I think, that he was never told all the truth about her confidential friendship with that seductive young man. He must often wonder, too, how much his wife really wins after those long sittings at the card-tables, but as he always protests against her winning money from their friends, he must be conscious that she keeps a good deal from his knowledge. At all events, her bank pass-book is a sealed book to him.

Mrs. Hazard is very keen about horse-racing. She was bred in Yorkshire, and loves horses, and knows the Stud-book almost by heart. She studies the Racing Calendar, and follows the careers of the racers with almost professional interest. A racecourse to her is an Elysium, and among her social set are many racing men, who give her “tips,” while their wives invite her to accompany them to Sandown, Ascot, Kempton, and Epsom. Her husband takes no interest in this kind of thing, but he does not hinder her going, and she carefully omits to tell him the result of her day’s betting.

And, after all, why should she tell him? It would only annoy him, and the excitement of the racing is over. She _must_ bet and gamble, or life would be mere stagnation to her. The rearing of children, the display of the domestic affections, the shallow pleasures of Society, and the charms of culture, are not alone sufficient to satisfy the cravings of her nature, though they may be for many women. She can enjoy all these, but she must have in addition the intoxicating delights of chance and risk.

_A SINGER—AND HER MOTHER_

Miss Euterpe Diatone is a concert-singer of average talent and popularity, if you will take my word for it; but if you prefer to accept her own version of the matter, you will learn that her genius excites the jealousy of the entire musical profession, also that if the public could only get their rights and the complete satisfaction of their musical desires, they would never hear any woman sing other than Miss Euterpe Diatone. But the concert-agents and the _entrepreneurs_ are, as she will tell you, so venal and obtuse, and so easily influenced by the jealousy of the other vocalists, who cotton to them, and bribe them, maybe—who knows? Anyhow, Miss Diatone can tell you of numbers of instances where other singers, of less ability and fame than herself, have had engagements which ought to have been offered to her; and she knows for a fact that the concert-givers cut their own throats by this policy, for friends of her own actually stayed away from those concerts, only because she was not engaged to sing.

Of course all this is conveyed in a tone of becoming modesty, and if you want confirmation of these blatant facts, you have but to ask Miss Diatone’s mother, Madame Brown-Smith. Though, if you value my advice in any particular, you will be content with the daughter’s statement, for Madame Brown-Smith has always much to say on the subject of her daughter; and beautiful as motherly devotion undoubtedly is, the professional enthusiasm of the vocalist’s mother is apt to become a little oppressive. She is a veritable touter, regarding her daughter’s voice as the commercial traveller looks upon the article of his trade, and “pushing” it accordingly. As you listen to her depreciating every vocalist in turn, and telling you how Euterpe was encored so many times at such a concert, whereas every other performer “finished without a hand,” and how Euterpe was paid so much by such a publisher for singing a certain song, which is really such rubbish you have wondered how any one could have had the impertinence even to print it, you begin almost to wonder whether music is a “divine art” after all, and not a trade on a par with the selling of patent pills, soap, or grey shirtings. Truly the modern singer—and her mother—are terrible disillusioners.

When we think of all that music is, and all it means, its magic influence, its mighty power, and when we reflect that, through its medium, as the rhythmic expression of all unspoken emotion, the singer or the player may soothe a single heart or move a multitude, awaken a soul to love or rouse a nation to patriotism, what can we say of the musician who, with this splendid gift of song, merely turns it to sordid account? And yet singers must live. That is the difficulty, for in these days art must suffer that artists may prosper.

Miss Diatone is not one to starve for the sake of art, nor is her mother one to let her, for Madame Brown-Smith has something personal to say in the matter. Did she not pay for her daughter’s musical education out of the slender means her husband left her, and is it not fair that she should now enjoy the profits? But if her daughter studied the interests of art before popularity, the profits would be slight indeed. The fact is, it pays to sing commonplace songs, and the “royalty system” therefore provides an important portion of Miss Diatone’s income. Moreover, Miss Diatone urges that she must sing what the public want to hear, and when she sings songs of the pretty-pretty order now in vogue, she is vociferously encored. Moreover, she receives a fee from the publishers of the song as well as from the concert-giver, whereas, if she were to sing any really artistic song, which, of course, she will pretend she would much prefer doing, her audience would, she believes, be sure to find it “above their heads” and would applaud her faintly, and the publishers would not find it worth while to give her a “royalty.” The encore and the “royalty” seem indeed to be the goals of the modern concert-singers’ ambition, and for these they will sell their artistic souls.

I do not know how it is, but as soon as the commercial aspect of the musical profession takes hold on the artist’s life, it seems to narrow the soul, to prevent that true _camaraderie_ which exists amongst all other artists than musicians, and to promote self-serving and jealousy. The struggle for existence in the musical world would too often appear to be opposed to magnanimity of mind and generosity of soul, for those who exhibit these qualities in their professional lives and in their art-work, are not, as a rule, among the prosperous. It is a small world, not the world of song, mark you, but the world of professional singers, and it is full of the littleness of small communities. Of course there are exceptions, but they only prove the rule.

Miss Diatone lives in the midst of this narrow world, with its warped personal interests and its jealousies, so opposed to the great world of art, which concerns itself with all humanity, but somehow she does not appear to realise that it is so. It has not yet been borne in upon her that the professionally musical community is not the centre of the universe, and that she is not the actual axis on which it turns. If such a knowledge were likely to come to her from any quarter, her mother would be in time to prevent it, for Madame Brown-Smith is her daughter’s Barnum. By the way, why she is called “Madame” Brown-Smith is a mystery, unless she considers that her daughter’s _status_ in the musical profession confers that distinction upon her as a right. There is often a good deal of mystification among musical artists on the subject of these prefixes. They would seem to regard the use of “Madame” as a sort of artistic degree, and many vocalists’ mothers, adopting it in place of plain “Mrs.,” appear to hold the title in trust for their daughters till they become too old to be styled “Miss” any longer.

Without any disrespect to mothers, for as a class I reverence them, I cannot help thinking how much pleasanter many vocalists I wot of would be if they had no mothers, or, rather, if they had not the mothers Providence has provided them withal. Now, Miss Euterpe Diatone would be quite a nice, companionable girl if it were not for that mother of hers. Of course, Diatone is only a pseudonym, adopted for professional purposes, but as Euterpe Brown-Smith—when her father was alive, and before her mother discovered that she was worth working as a means of income—she was unaffected, and quite popular among her school-friends, though somewhat inclining to personal vanity. Then she began to develop a singing voice of a quality beyond anything known in their social circle—Mr. Brown-Smith, by the way, travelled in something or other, and they lived at Peckham Rye—and the fullest musical resources of the local High School were called into requisition for the cultivation of her voice. Then she was sent to one of the academies of music, and became quite popular in the parlours of Peckham Rye and its vicinity. She was greatly in demand for penny readings, choral meetings, and social gatherings of all kinds; and, of course, with her went her mother, who shone with her accomplished daughter’s reflected light, posed as the mother of the local _prima donna_, and made social capital out of the position.

Now Mrs. Brown-Smith, as she was then called, always had an eye to business, and, when her husband died, she bethought her of Euterpe’s singing powers for support; so, by fanning her daughter’s vanity in every particular, she encouraged her to study hard and win scholarships, until at the students’ concert she attracted the notice of the professors, the press, and the concert-agents, and thereupon obtained her first professional engagement. She was a success with the public, and gradually her engagements became more frequent, and of a better and more lucrative class, until her name has now become familiar in concert-halls and drawing-rooms.

And now Miss Euterpe Diatone and her mother reside in a flat in the West-end, and give pleasant “afternoon teas,” and are seen in many places honoured of Society. Miss Diatone is really a bright and engaging girl in her way, and if she wears her profession perpetually on her sleeve, so to speak, perhaps she finds it consistent with her advancement. But though Miss Diatone be welcome in many drawing-rooms, both socially and professionally, the same can hardly always be said of her mother; yet poor Euterpe is in the same case with Mary who had a little lamb, for wherever Miss Diatone goes her mother is sure to go.

If they happen to be on a visit at a country house, and a driving party is being made up for the young folk, while the elderly ladies are to stay at home, Madame Brown-Smith disconcerts everybody by asking where she is to sit, and, of course, she takes the very seat which had been set apart for the belle of the party. Then Miss Diatone has quietly to apologise for “poor Ma, who does so love the country,” the while she is boiling with indignation that her mother has probably spoiled her chance of a future invitation. Yes, her mother is certainly a trial; but if Euterpe attempted to protest that people may invite a young singer without necessarily wanting her mother, Madame Brown-Smith would only accuse her of ingratitude and want of feeling. What then can she do? But they have frequent quarrels, owing to Miss Diatone’s egotism and her mother’s aggressiveness, which come into conflict.

The subject of young men is one perhaps most fruitful of quarrels. Euterpe Diatone, though she finds much pleasure and gratification in the applause of the public, and much profit to boot, is essentially a woman, and her vanity cries also for the satisfaction of personal conquest. Consequently there is no over-looking the fact that she is an unconscionable flirt of a kind that is very popular with men, while at the same time she always keeps an eye open to the chances of matrimony, and to the advancement of her popularity. She has a very taking manner with both men and women, but with men she will assume a sauciness that leads them to suppose they may be familiar. Then she will at once stand on her dignity, and command their personal respect, after which she will relapse again, and completely puzzle them.