The Chink in the Armour Part 12

"What a curious place to send a child to!" exclaimed Sylvia.

"Ah, but Lacville was extremely different from what it is now, Madame.

True, there was the lake, where Parisians used to come out each Sunday afternoon to fish and boat in a humble way, and there were a few villas built round the lake. But you must remember that in those prehistoric days there was no Casino! It is the Casino which has transformed Lacville into what we now see."

"Then we have reason to bless the Casino!" cried Sylvia, gaily.

They had now left behind them the wide lawn immediately behind the Villa du Lac, and were walking by a long, high wall. The Count pushed open a narrow door set in an arch in the wall, and Sylvia walked through into one of the largest and most delightful kitchen-gardens she had ever seen.

It was brilliant with colour and scent; the more homely summer flowers filled the borders, while, at each place where four paths met, a round, stone-rimmed basin, filled with water to the brim, gave a sense of pleasant coolness.

The farther end of the walled garden was bounded by a stone orangery, a building dating from the eighteenth century, and full of the stately grace of a vanished epoch.

"What a delightful place!" Sylvia exclaimed. "But this garden must cost M. Polperro a great deal of money to keep up--"

The Comte de Virieu laughed.

"Far from it! Our clever host hires out his _potager_ to a firm of market gardeners, part of the bargain being that they allow him to have as much fruit and vegetables as he requires throughout the year. Why, the _potager_ of the Villa du Lac supplies the whole of Lacville with fruit and flowers! When I was a child I thought this part of the garden paradise, and I spent here my happiest hours."

"It must be very odd for you to come back and stay in the Villa now that it is an hotel."

"At first it seemed very strange," he answered gravely. "But now I have become quite used to the feeling."

They walked on for awhile along one of the narrow flower-bordered paths.

"Would you care to go into the orangery?" he said. "There is not much to see there now, for all the orange-trees are out of doors. Still, it is a quaint, pretty old building."

The orangery of the Villa du Lac was an example of that at once artificial and graceful eighteenth-century architecture which, perhaps because of its mingled formality and delicacy, made so distinguished and attractive a setting to feminine beauty. It remained, the only survival of the dependencies of a chateau sacked and burned in the Great Revolution, more than half a century before the Villa du Lac was built.

The high doors were wide open, and Sylvia walked in. Though all the pot-plants and half-hardy shrubs were sunning themselves in the open-air, the orangery did not look bare, for every inch of the inside walls had been utilised for growing grapes and peaches.

There was a fountain set in the centre of the stone floor, and near the fountain was a circular seat.

"Let us sit down," said Paul de Virieu suddenly. But when Sylvia Bailey sat down he did not come and sit by her, instead he so placed himself that he looked across at her slender, rounded figure, and happy smiling face.

"Are you thinking of staying long at Lacville, Madame?" he asked abruptly.

"I don't know," she answered hesitatingly. "It will depend on my friend Madame Wolsky's plans. If we both like it, I daresay we shall stay three or four weeks."

There fell what seemed to Sylvia a long silence between them. The Frenchman was gazing at her with a puzzled, thoughtful look.

Suddenly he got up, and after taking a turn up and down the orangery, he came and stood before her.

"Mrs. Bailey!" he exclaimed. "Will you permit me to be rather impertinent?"

Sylvia reddened violently. The question took her utterly by surprise. But the Comte de Virieu's next words at once relieved, and yes, it must be admitted, chagrined her.

"I ask you, Madame, to leave Lacville! I ask permission to tell you frankly and plainly that it is not a place to which you ought to have been brought."

He spoke with great emphasis.

Sylvia looked up at him. She was bewildered, and though not exactly offended, rather hurt.

"But why?" she asked plaintively. "Why should I not stay at Lacville?"

"Oh, well, there can be no harm in your staying on a few days if you are desirous of doing so. But Lacville is not a place where I should care for my own sister to come and stay." He went on, speaking much quicker--"Indeed, I will say more! I will tell you that Lacville may seem a paradise to you, but that it is a paradise full of snakes."

"Snakes?" repeated Sylvia slowly. "You mean, of course, human snakes?"

He bowed gravely.

"Every town where reigns the G.o.ddess of play attracts reptiles, Madame, as the sun attracts lizards! It is not the game that does so, or even the love of play in the G.o.ddess's victims; no, it is the love of gold!"

Sylvia noticed that he had grown curiously pale.

"Lacville as a gambling centre counts only next to Monte Carlo. But whereas many people go to Monte Carlo for health, and for various forms of amus.e.m.e.nt, people only come here in order to play, and to see others play. The Casino, which doubtless appears to you a bright, pretty place, has been the scene and the cause of many a tragedy. Do you know how Paris regards Lacville?" he asked searchingly.

"No--yes," Sylvia hesitated. "You see I never heard of Lacville till about a week ago." Innate honesty compelled her to add, "But I have heard that the Paris trades-people don't like Lacville."

"Let me tell you one thing," the Count spoke with extraordinary seriousness. "Every tradesman in Paris, without a single exception, has signed a pet.i.tion imploring the Government to suspend the Gambling Concession!"

"What an extraordinary thing!" exclaimed Sylvia, and she was surprised indeed.

"Pardon me, it is not at all extraordinary. A great deal of the money which would otherwise go into the pockets of these tradesmen goes now to enrich the anonymous shareholders of the Casino of Lacville! Of course, Paris hotel-keepers are not in quite the same position as are the other Parisian trades-people. Lacville does not do them much harm, for the place is so near Paris that foreigners, if they go there at all, generally go out for the day. Only the most confirmed gambler cares actually to _live_ at Lacville."

He looked significantly at Sylvia, and she felt a wave of hot colour break over her face.

"Yes, I know what you must be thinking, and it is, indeed, the shameful truth! I, Madame, have the misfortune to be that most miserable and most G.o.d-forsaken of living beings, a confirmed gambler."

The Count spoke in a tone of stifled pain, almost anger, and Sylvia gazed up at his stern, sad face with pity and concern filling her kind heart.

"I will tell you my story in a few words," he went on, and then he sat down by her, and began tracing with his stick imaginary patterns on the stone floor.

"I was destined for what I still regard as the most agreeable career in the world--that of diplomacy. You see how I speak English? Well, Madame, I speak German and Spanish equally well. And then, most unhappily for me, my beloved mother died, and I inherited from her a few thousand pounds.

I felt very miserable, and I happened to be at the moment idle. A friend persuaded me to go to Monte Carlo. That fortnight, Madame, changed my life--made me what the English call 'an idle good-for-nothing.' Can you wonder that I warn you against staying at Lacville?"

Sylvia was touched, as well as surprised, by his confidences. His words breathed sincerity, and the look of humiliation and pain on his face had deepened. He looked white and drawn.

"It is very kind of you to tell me this, and I am very much obliged to you for your warning," she said in a low tone.

But the Comte de Virieu went on as if he hardly heard her words.

"The lady with whom you first came to Lacville--I mean the Polish lady--is well known to me by sight. For the last three years I have seen her at Monte Carlo in the winter, and at Spa and Aix-les-Bains in the summer. Of course I was not at all surprised to see her turn up here, but I confess, Madame, that I was very much astonished to see with her a"--he hesitated a moment--"a young English lady. You would, perhaps, be offended if I were to tell you exactly what I felt when I saw you at the Casino!"

"I do not suppose I should be offended," said Sylvia softly.

"I felt, Madame, as if I saw a lily growing in a field of high, rank, evil-smelling--nay, perhaps I should say, poisonous--weeds."

"But I cannot go away now!" cried Sylvia. She was really impressed--very uncomfortably impressed--by his earnest words. "It would be most unkind to my friend, Madame Wolsky. Surely, it is possible to stay at Lacville, and even to play a little, without anything very terrible happening?" She looked at him coaxingly, anxiously, as a child might have done.