The Essential Writings of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes
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Название: The Essential Writings of Marie Belloc Lowndes
Автор: Marie Belloc Lowndes
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 9788027243488
isbn:
Anna laughed good-humouredly.
"I see what you mean," she said. "You think it is a case of 'the pot calling the kettle black.' How excellent are your English proverbs, dear Sylvia! But no, it is quite different. Take me. I have an income, and choose to spend it in gambling. I might prefer to have a big house, or perhaps I should say a small house, for I am not a very rich woman. But no, I like play, and I am free to spend my money as I like. The Comte de Virieu is very differently situated! He is, so I've been told, a clever, cultivated man. He ought to be working—doing something for his country's good. And then he is so disagreeable! He makes no friends, no acquaintances. He always looks as if he was doing something of which he was ashamed. He never appears gay or satisfied, not even when he is winning—"
"He does not look as cross as Monsieur Wachner," said Sylvia, smiling.
"Monsieur Wachner is like me," said Anna calmly. "He probably made a fortune in business, and now he and his wife enjoy risking a little money at play. Why should they not?"
"Madame Wachner told me to-day all about their poor friend who was drowned," said Sylvia irrelevantly.
"Ah, yes, that was a sad affair! They were very foolish to become so intimate with him. Why, they actually had him staying with them at the time! You see, they had a villa close to the lake-side. And this young Russian, it appears, was very fond of boating. It was a mysterious affair, because, oddly enough, he had not been out in the town, or even to the Casino, for four days before the accident happened. There was a notion among some people that he had committed suicide, but that, I fancy, was not so. He had won a large sum of money. Some thought the gold weighed down his body in the water—. But that is absurd. It must have been the weeds."
"Madame Wachner told me that quite a lot of money was found in his room," said Sylvia quickly.
"No, that is not true. About four hundred francs were found in his bed-room. That was all. I fancy the police made themselves rather unpleasant to Monsieur Wachner. The Russian Embassy made inquiries, and it seemed so odd to the French authorities that the poor fellow could not be identified. They found no passport, no papers of any sort—"
"Have you a passport?" asked Sylvia. "Madame Wachner asked me if I had one. But I've never even seen a passport!"
"No," said Anna, "I have not got a passport now. I once had one, but I lost it. One does not require such a thing in a civilised country! But a Russian must always have a passport, it is an absolute law in Russia. And the disappearance of that young man's passport was certainly strange—in fact, the whole affair was mysterious."
"It must have been terrible for Monsieur and Madame Wachner," said Sylvia thoughtfully.
"Oh yes, very disagreeable indeed! Luckily he is entirely absorbed in his absurd systems, and she is a very cheerful woman."
"Yes, indeed she is!" Sylvia could not help smiling. "I am glad we have got to know them, Anna. It is rather mournful when one knows no one at all in a place of this kind."
And Anna agreed, indifferently.
Chapter X
And then there began a series of long cloudless days for Sylvia Bailey. For the first time she felt as if she was seeing life, and such seeing was very pleasant to her.
Not in her wildest dreams, during the placid days of her girlhood and brief married life, had she conceived of so interesting and so exhilarating an existence as that which she was now leading! And this was perhaps owing in a measure to the fact that there is, if one may so express it, a spice of naughtiness in life as led at Lacville.
In a mild, a very mild, way Sylvia Bailey had fallen a victim to the Goddess of Play. She soon learned to look forward to the hours she and Anna Wolsky spent each day at the baccarat tables. But, unlike Anna, Sylvia was never tempted to risk a greater sum on that dangerous green cloth than she could comfortably afford to lose, and perhaps just because this was so, on the whole she won money rather than lost it.
A certain change had come over the relations of the two women. They still met daily, if only at the Casino, and they occasionally took a walk or a drive together, but Madame Wolsky—and Sylvia Bailey felt uneasy and growing concern that it was so—now lived for play, and play alone.
Absorbed in the simple yet fateful turns of the game, Anna would remain silent for hours, immersed in calculations, and scarcely aware of what went on round her. She and Monsieur Wachner—"L'Ami Fritz," as even Sylvia had fallen into the way of calling him—seemed scarcely alive unless they were standing or sitting round a baccarat table, putting down or taking up the shining gold pieces which they treated as carelessly as if they were counters.
But it was not the easy, idle, purposeless life she was now leading that brought the pretty English widow that strange, unacknowledged feeling of entire content with life.
What made existence at Lacville so exciting and so exceptionally interesting to Sylvia Bailey was her friendship with Comte Paul de Virieu.
There is in every woman a passion for romance, and in Sylvia this passion had been baulked, not satisfied, by her first marriage.
Bill Chester loved her well and deeply, but he was her lawyer and trustee as well as her lover. He had an honest, straightforward nature, and when with her something always prompted Chester to act the part of candid friend, and the part of candid friend fits in very ill with that of lover. To take but one example of how ill his honesty of purpose served him in the matter, Sylvia had never really forgiven him the "fuss" he had made about her string of pearls.
But with the Comte de Virieu she never quite knew what to be at, and mystery is the food of romance.
At the Villa du Lac the two were almost inseparable, and yet so intelligently and quietly did the Count arrange their frequent meetings—their long walks and talks in the large deserted garden, their pleasant morning saunters through the little town—that no one, or so Sylvia believed, was aware of any special intimacy between them.
Sometimes, as they paced up and down the flower-bordered paths of the old kitchen-garden, or when, tired of walking, they made their way into the orangery and sat down on the circular stone bench by the fountain, Sylvia would remember, deep in her heart, the first time Count Paul had brought her there; and how she had been a little frightened, not perhaps altogether unpleasantly so, by his proximity!
She had feared—but she was now deeply ashamed of having entertained such a thought—that he might suddenly begin making violent love to her, that he might perhaps try to kiss her! Were not all Frenchmen of his type rather gay dogs?
But nothing—nothing of the sort had ever been within measurable distance of happening. On the contrary, he always treated her with scrupulous respect, and he never—and this sometimes piqued Sylvia—made love to her, or attempted to flirt with her. Instead, he talked to her in that intimate, that confiding fashion which a woman finds so attractive in a man when she has reason to believe his confidences are made to her alone.
When Bill Chester asked her not to do something she desired to do, Sylvia felt annoyed and impatient, but when Count Paul, as she had fallen into the way of calling him, made no secret of his wish that she should give up play, Sylvia felt touched and pleased that he should care.
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