The Enemies of Women Part 31

"I'm alone. Valeria went away immediately after lunch. She goes around like a crazy woman on account of that scientist you have at your house.

They must have made an engagement somewhere. All she talks about is Spain, because the women there marry without dowries. As for 'the General,' don't talk to me about her: I don't want to hear her name; she is dead--dead forever, as far as I am concerned! And I'm so bored all by myself; I think of things that make me weep; I go out, and my feet take me here without my realizing it."

Then she added with a graceful entreaty:

"Take me somewhere, wherever you feel like. Let's go a long ways from here. Where can we go?"

The Prince showed the same hesitation. They continually moved in the same circle, from their houses to the center of Monte Carlo, the Casino, and seemed lost if they tried to go any farther. The war had done away with private automobiles; to go on an excursion it was necessary to get a permit in advance. One could find nothing save carriages drawn by feeble horses, rejected by the Army.

"Suppose we go to Monaco?" Alicia proposed.

Monaco was in sight, on the other side of the harbor; a street car ran from there to Monte Carlo every twenty minutes, and nevertheless she made this proposal as though speaking of some remote country.

They had both spent some twenty years there, continually seeing the rock which bore on its crest the old city of the Princes; but, as though those places were painted on a back drop in the theater, it had never entered their heads to go that far. Alicia vaguely recalled a visit to the Palace of the Sovereign and another to the Museum of Oceanography, without being able to formulate her impressions. Lubimoff also from his automobile had seen the garden, the old houses, and a large square, the one day that he had visited the Prince of Monaco in his old castle.

They decided on the trip with the glee of school children, and when the d.u.c.h.ess went to call a cab, Michael showed a certain hesitation as he searched through various pockets.

He had no money. He had dropped it all in the roulette, absolutely all.

At the hotel he had asked them to charge his lunch, handing over his last few francs to the waiter as a tip.

Alicia greeted his worried look with bursts of laughter. Lubimoff unable to pay a cabman! Monte Carlo was the only place where you could see things like that.

"Poor boy, I'll pay. You can deduct it from the twenty thousand I owe you. No; not that, no; it will be a gift. You have given women so much money, let me be the first to pay a bill for you. What a luxury! I 'keeping' Prince Lubimoff."

They had gotten into the carriage, which was beginning to descend the slope toward La Condamine harbor.

"How people stare at us!" said Alicia. "They will think I am carrying you off by force. The d.u.c.h.ess de Delille, ruined, seduces a multi-millionaire Prince to make him her lover and get money out of him ... and they don't know that I am the one that is paying! Come laugh a little. Are you annoyed that I should pay? Don't you think it is amusing?"

She talked of her lack of foresight and her folly with a certain pride, as though it were something which placed her above people of regular habits. The evening before she had been afraid of not having enough money left to buy food for the next day. But Valeria had spent the morning making valuable discoveries in the closets! Bank notes lost among the clothes, Casino chips forgotten among the books, and even a thousand franc bill used to wrap up an old cake of soap.

She suddenly stopped enumerating these finds.

"Look! Look!"

They were beside the harbor. She pointed out a lady who was walking along the sh.o.r.e, among the tall rose-bay bushes trimmed in the shape of trees. It was Clorinda. A gentleman who seemed to be waiting for her rose from the bench, and came forward to meet her. They both recognized Atilio Castro, and observed how he and "the General" greeted each other, and how they continued their promenade together, so absorbed in mutual contemplation, that they did not notice the carriage.

Michael smiled slightly. Himself there, beside Alicia, who was causing him to commit every sort of folly; and the other man waiting there for Dona Clorinda's arrival with all the emotion of a youth! Poor enemies of women!

"Don't talk to me about her!" Alicia exclaimed in a rage, in spite of the fact that her companion had said nothing. "I hate her.... Think of poor Martinez forgotten. She quarrels with me to get him, takes him away from me, and then comes in search of Castro, while the other unhappy fellow is wandering about Monte Carlo. What a woman! She has done me so much harm! She is to blame for everything."

And as the Prince looked at her with a questioning air she explained her complaints with a tone of conviction. Her losses which had been so rapid and so complete, could not be explained logically. She had won for two weeks, and in a few hours had lost everything. How could that be? The evening before, as she was leaving the Casino, a respectable friend, an Italian Marchioness, a former dancer, who was very wise in matters of luck, and who had been gambling for the last thirty years in Monte Carlo, had revealed to her the cruel truth: "d.u.c.h.ess, there is some one who hates you; an envious friend who comes to your house and has cast an evil spell over you. That is the only way to explain what has happened.

You must drive out the evil luck, turning it back on the person who gave it to you.

"So you see it couldn't be clearer: an envious friend who comes to my house--Clorinda; it can't be any one else. And no later than to-morrow I am going to drive away my bad luck, in the way the Marchioness recommended. Other gamblers follow her advice and are very successful."

It was the Three Wise Kings who possessed the power of undoing evil spells. It was necessary to cleanse away the rooms which "the General"

had entered by burning in a small pan gold, incense and myrrh, the three presents of the monarchs who had come from afar. She had no gold; it was inaccessible on account of the war; but, according to the Witch-Marchioness, it would be the same if she burned wheat.

"And at the same time recite a prayer in Italian, a very pretty entreaty to the Three Kings, that sounds like a song, that says--that says----"

Unable to remember it, she opened her hand bag. She kept the prayer in her coin purse, written in lead pencil on one of the cards furnished by the Casino to keep track of bets. Michael looked at the contents of the purse with the curiosity always inspired by every object belonging to a woman who interests a man. Beside the mussed handkerchief he saw a little leather case, and hanging from it a gambler's fetish, a hand with the index and little finger extended like horns, to ward off bad luck.

But beside the hand there hung another golden fetish, of such an unexpected, unheard of form, that Michael refused to believe what had pa.s.sed before his eyes like a rapid vision.

Alicia drew back, pus.h.i.+ng aside his inquisitive hand: "No, no!" And she closed the purse so rapidly that the silver rings almost caught his fingers. Blus.h.i.+ng and smiling, she held him off, giving him a sly look, and at the same time shrinking like a naughty child.

"It is a gift from the Marchioness. The best she knows, to bring luck.

Mine has gone. That is all you need to know. How curious you are!"

And while she pretended to be somewhat angry in order to avoid new explanations, Michael recalled the Rosary of Satan belonging to his friend Lewis and its strange ornaments.

The carriage began to ascend the slope towards Monaco. The s.h.i.+ps and the harbor seemed to sink with each turn of the wheel. Verdant shades cooled the road, within sight of the luminous sea and of the yellowish mountains, that were taking on a rosy color under the afternoon sun.

Michael explained to his companion the strange features of the promontory that serves as a base for old Monaco. On the Southern part, among the rocks covered with century plants and p.r.i.c.kly pear, the vegetation of the warm countries becomes acclimated with a facility that if one takes the lat.i.tude into account is truly extraordinary. On his visit to the palace of the Prince he had found in the warmer moats of the fortress, which are like natural hothouses, the same damp sticky heat that one finds in the forests of Equador, with their Brazilian palm trees that rise many yards in quest of light. On the other hand, without leaving the rock, one finds on the northern side, where there is little sunlight, ferns from the cold countries, vegetation from the Vosges Mountains, which got here no one knows how, and took root beside the Mediterranean.

Alicia, not wis.h.i.+ng to seem less informed, talked about the San Martino Gardens. She had not seen them, but she imagined that they were between the Museum of Oceanography and the Cathedral. Valeria had not been able to talk about anything else during the last few weeks, and described them as though they were the most interesting gardens in the world. She had seen them in good company, and this had exerted a strong influence on her powers of vision. It was doubtless Novoa who had revealed to her this Paradise.

"Supposing we were to meet them!" said Alicia, laughingly.

The carriage pa.s.sed between two little towers, capped with tiles, that marked the entrance to the walled enclosure of Monaco. The harbor lay far below, with its boats that seemed so tiny. On the other side of the sheet of water shone the cupolas of the Casino and the many Monte Carlo hotels, with their multi-colored facades, the windows of their balconies and belvideres. It was impossible to make out the people. Automobiles were gliding along like tiny insects on the slope that descended to La Condamine.

They followed the asphalt avenue, between two narrow dense gardens, leading to the Museum of Oceanography.

"Look at them!" said Alicia with an expression of triumph, as she nudged the Prince at the same time.

When the latter turned his head all he could see were two indistinct forms hiding in a side path.

"It is they, you may be sure," continued the d.u.c.h.ess, laughing. "They were walking in the middle of the avenue. Valeria is very quick; she turned when she heard the sound of a carriage, and recognized me immediately. She hurried the scientist away as though she were dragging him along."

She stopped laughing, and her features took on a look of sad solemnity.

"Happy pair! What dreams! We have all gone through the same thing. The worst of it is that we want to keep on going in quest of something further, when we ought to remain satisfied with what we have."

The Prince nodded, repeating briefly:

"Happy pair!"

His voice sounded like a _requiem_. These successive meetings had made him think of the end of the community of which he was the ridiculous head. First of all, Castro; then, Novoa. Even the Colonel at that very moment was walking up and down in front of a millinery shop waiting for the gardener's little girl. Spadoni was the only one left, but his loyalty counted for little. As far as the latter was concerned, nothing feminine existed except the roulette wheel.

The carriage stopped beyond the Museum of Oceanography, where the San Martino Garden began. Alicia paid the driver.

"We must economize," she said gravely. "We shall return on foot."

They followed a network of winding paths, ascending and descending the gulleys of the slope. The tiny plateaus had been converted into stone lookouts, from which the view embraced an immense expanse of sea.

Occasionally at dawn one could distinguish the distant profile of the Mountain of Corsica. Since the gardens were far above the Mediterranean, the horizon line was so high that one seemed to be looking upwards when viewing it. The pine trees rose in slender black colonnades and between the thin trunks one could see the dark Mediterranean suspended like a curtain. Only the murmuring tops of the sharp trees emerged in the diaphanous azure of the skies. Below the vegetation was composed of wild hardy plants breathing out strong odors, plants that were unaffected by the salty exhalations of the sea; p.r.i.c.kly pear, lobes of which were surmounted by red fruit; small century plants whose twisted blades intertwined like tentacles of green pulp.

Alicia admired this garden. According to her it was a maritime garden, in harmony with the nearby Museum and the landscape. The trunks of the trees seemed like the masts of s.h.i.+ps; the plants ama.s.sed at their feet had the radiating enveloping form of the monsters of the ocean depths.

Other vegetation of a foreign origin recalled images of warm countries, and of distant parts, filled with odors and swarming with crowds of yellow and copper-colored men. Through the straight trunks of the trees, one could see five schooners, motionless on the horizon with their sails hanging.

A train of smoke followed the evolutions of a slim torpedo boat steaming around the white, timid flock, like a watch dog.