months,inside the lofty well-remembered rooms where so many fortunes had beenlost and won.
Down the vista from the entrance could be seen room after room,resplendent in gilt decorations, polished floors, ceiling of ornamentalglass, and many beautiful paintings by Feyen, Perrin, and Jundt; eachroom filled with eager, anxious gamblers crowding around the oblongroulette-tables. The continual hum of voices, the jingle of coin, therustle of notes, the click of the roulette-ball, and the monotonouscries 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 nothingfor the world outside, too absorbed were they in the chance of the redor the black. The sun was excluded by blinds closely drawn, and thelong windows were all curtained in black or blue muslin, with handsomepatterns worked thereon, so that those walking upon the terrace by theblue 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 itever retains, the combined smell of perspiration and perfume.
From the moment Liane placed foot upon the polished floor she regrettedthat she had come. With that well-remembered scene before her athousand bitter memories instantly surged through her brain. She hatedherself. Around her as they approached the first table in the Moorishroom were the same types of people that she knew, alas! too well; theflora of the Riviera, the world in which she had for years beencompelled to live. Among those sitting around were men, weary andhaggard-eyed, with those three deep lines across the brow which habitualgamblers so quickly develop, and heavy-eyed women who had concealedtheir paleness beneath their rouge. Of this class of frenzied humanity,she reflected, she herself was. There had been a time not long ago whenshe, too, had sat at the table prompting her father, sometimes flingingon coin or notes for him, dragging in his winnings with the little ebonyrake, or keeping an account in her tiny memorandum book of the variousnumbers as they turned up, so as to assist him in his speculations.
Unlike these _declasse_ women, she hated play. The life was to herdetestable. She had, it was true, moved in their world, but, thanks toher father's care, she had retained her goodness and purity, and hadnever been of it. Well she knew the terrible tension each spin of thatlittle ivory roulette-ball caused among that eager crowd, an anxietywhich furrowed the brows, which caused the hands to tremble, and sappedall youth and gaiety and life. She, although young and fair, hadwitnessed life there in its every aspect. She had herself experiencedthe terrible frenzy of excitement; she had felt the desperation ofabject despair. She had seen dozens, nay hundreds, come there rich andrespected, to depart broken and ruined; she had witnessed more than onewoman grow so desperate over her losses that she had fainted at thetable, and once beside her at that very table there had sat a man,young, good-looking, and well-dressed, who lost and lost, and continuedto lose throughout the long, hot day, until with a low imprecation he atlength threw down his last hundred-franc note on the "impair." He lost,then rose unsteadily from the table, while half-a-dozen others struggledto obtain his place. An hour later she had risen and gone into thegarden to obtain air, but scarcely had she walked a dozen yards when twoattendants passed her by, carrying her fellow-gambler's lifeless form.He had shot himself.
This tragic incident, by no means uncommon, though so frequently hushedup, had so unnerved her that for many weeks her father could not induceher to enter the Casino, but gradually, because with a gambler's beliefin talismans, he declared that when she accompanied him Fortune wasalways on his side, she again went with him, to spend long, anxious,breathless hours in the crowded place, where bright, happy girls stakedtheir five-franc pieces, just for the purpose of saying they had doneso, and rubbed shoulders with the most notorious of the _demi-monde_;and where honest men, professional gamesters, blackmailers andsouteneurs all placed themselves on equal footing before thegreen-covered shrine of their fickle goddess.
Monte Carlo resembles nothing. It is at the same time a paradise and ahell, of hope and despair, of golden dreams and of hideous nightmares; aplace without laws, either physical or moral. Its surroundings aredelightful, nestling below the high bare Tete de Chien and the Mont dela Justice, with the picturesque little town of Monaco perched upon itsbold prominent rock to the right, the green slopes of Cap Martin juttingout into the sea on the left, and away far in the distance, yet clearlydefined, the purple Alps of Italy, while beyond the white-balustradedterrace is a broad open expanse of clear blue sea. The centre ofelegance and corruption, of beauty and deformity, of wealth and vice, ofrefinement 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 withflowers and shady with palms; the cafes overflow with visitors, waltzmusic sounds by night and day, and from noon till the early hours thereis life and movement everywhere. The game fascinates, and the climateacts upon the organism of all who go there. The exquisitely beautifulsurroundings of the Casino exert a deleterious influence. They arealluringly pleasant. Life seems so gay, happy and free amid that whirlof voluptuousness, where vice is disguised in a form _tout a faitcharmante_, its banal influence so imperceptible, that the man whoventures into the Principality determined not to risk a single louisupon the _tapis-vert_ in almost every case finds himself overwhelmed bythat involuntary indolence which creeps upon all like an infernalintoxication, drawn irresistibly to the tables, and too often to hisruin. The daily life in Monaco presents a surprising picture of morals;a truly extraordinary Paradise of the marvellous and the diabolical, ofthe sublime and the terrible, of fair dreams and of hideous realities._Et le fruit defendu dont se nourrit la masse a d'autant plus de saveurque le joli petit serpent auquel on doit sa decouverte a toutes lesallures mignonnes d'un demon tentateur extremement seduisant_.
To Erle Brooker, whose sole vice was that of gambling, the monotonousinvitation of the croupiers, and the jingle of louis as they were tossedcarelessly over to the winners, were as the sound of the hounds to theold hunter, or the bugle to the retired soldier. All the old longingfor excitement and the hope for a run of luck came again upon him, andalthough he had vowed he would never again play he soon felt his pulsequicken and his good resolutions fading away. As, accompanied by Zerthoand Liane, he moved on from table to table, watching the play andcriticising it with the air of one with wide experience, the desire forrisking a few louis came irresistibly upon him. He remembered thatbefore leaving Nice he had placed ten one-hundred-franc notes in hispocket. It was a sum small enough, in all conscience, to risk. Herecollected the time when, with Zertho standing behind him taking chargeof his winnings, he had won a hundred times that amount between mid-dayand midnight.
Of all that gay crowd Liane looked the prettiest and smartest. As shecast a rapid glance around the various tables, many of the men and womenshe recognised as professional fellow-gamblers, each with their littlepiles of silver, gold and notes. One or two, well-dressed and moreprosperous, had, she knew, at one time been down to their very lastfranc. The two men also singled out old acquaintances, men who passedtheir days in these crowded rooms, nodded to them and remarked upon thesudden prosperity of some and the unusual seediness of others.
They were standing together closely watching the roulette at one of thecentre tables. People were crowding four deep around it, but mostly thestakes were five-franc pieces, the minimum allowed.
"By Jove!" Zertho exclaimed at last, turning to the Captain. "See whata 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 interestedin the game.
Next moment the ball was sent spinning around outside the revolving discof black and red; the croupier with sphinx-like countenance uttered hismonotonous cry, "_Rien ne va plus_!" and after breathless silence therattle told that the ivory had fallen.
Brooker's prophecy provedcorrect. The black had gained.
"Going to risk anything?" inquired Zertho, with a smile.
"No," interrupted Liane earnestly. "Dad will not. He has alreadypromised me."
The Captain, his hand trembling in his pocket, turned to his daughterwith a smile.
"Surely you won't deprive him of winning a few louis?" Zerthoexclaimed. "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 toyou, unless with your permission."
Already the people, eager to tempt Fortune, were placing their money onthe yellow lines upon the table, and while they spoke Zertho tossed acouple of louis upon the simple chance of the black. The game was made,black won, and he received back his stake with two