An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (75 page)

‘Will you forget this? – and this? – and
this
?’ he asked, kissing her again and again. Yet even as he did so, even as he was incensed by jealousy sweeping over him in a red flood tide, he had been aware that she had roused him deliberately, and some logical part of his brain had chid him for being a fool, at allowing himself to play the part which was expected of him.

Now Sir Robert looked at Violet’s photograph. She was attractive, there was no denying that. The dark chestnut hair drawn back from her low forehead, the faint smile in her eyes, the enticing twist of her lips. She was not a beauty by classical standards and yet when she entered a room no one could ignore her presence. His Mother thought she was a bad woman, and yet was Violet really bad?

Sir Robert was surprised at the question. How had it ever come into his mind? He had never asked it before.

‘I suppose it must be the effect of that funny little girl I met in the gardens,’ he thought.

She had said that she was going to do penance for having done something of which her aunt would not approve. Penance for watching the dawn! He wondered what sort of penance she would do if she did something really wrong. One day he would ask her, and then he wondered if she could answer such a question. Her knowledge of what was wrong would be very limited. She would obviously be lamentably ignorant of the world, having been brought up by Nuns from the age of six.

Poor little thing! He wondered what life held for her in the future. It was unlikely that she would remain so innocent for long with a face like that. Well, at any rate it had nothing to do with him. He wondered now why he had asked her to come to him if she was in any trouble. If she took him at his word, it might be a difficult situation to explain to Violet. And yet even Violet had no right to question his actions yet. He had not asked her to marry him, but he had no doubt she would accept him if he did so.

Still his mother’s letter waited for him. Well, he was not going to open it now. He would pretend to himself that it had only arrived the following morning and he would read it at breakfast.

Almost as if she were in the room he heard a quiet voice say, ‘The Nuns would call that a prevarication.’

Quite suddenly Sir Robert felt annoyed.

Damn the girl with her conscience and her prayers, and damn the letter lying there, white and accusing. Why couldn’t his mother leave him alone? If he wished to go the devil, he would go his own way without so much weeping and wailing about it.

He was tired, he would go to bed. It was too late at night or too early in the morning, whichever way one liked to put it, for a man to be confronted with the ethics of good and evil, right and wrong.

Sir Robert crossed the room, walked into his bedroom and slammed the door behind him. The wind coming in from the open windows stirred the papers on the writing desk. The letter from Lady Stanford did not move. It lay in the centre of the desk, the sunshine enveloping it with a golden warmth.

3

Emilie glanced around the sitting room with an air of satisfaction. The breakfast laid on a spotless white cloth in the window was appetising and elegantly served. So far things had gone exactly as she had planned them and she felt the thrill that a General might feel when his troops have been successful in some carefully prepared manoeuvre.

She and Mistral had arrived at the
Hôtel
de Paris
the night before. They had travelled in what appeared to Emilie to be astonishing comfort on the railway which now connected Monaco with Nice. Inevitably she must compare every step of the journey with the one she had taken nineteen years earlier with Alice. Then they had travelled slowly and in much discomfort, and when finally they reached Nice, they had been confronted with the choice of an uncomfortable antediluvian vehicle, which carried eleven passengers daily between Nice and Monaco, or an extremely unsafe-looking steamer which put out to sea erratically and was known at times to lie in harbour for a week on end without attempting the journey.

They had chosen on that occasion to go by land and had been bumped for what seemed like four months rather than four hours over a half-finished road, being regaled as they went with tales of robbers and bandits who often found it well worthwhile to hold up the few carriages which dared the journey.

From the windows of the sitting room Emilie could look across the gardens of the Casino directly on to the sea. To the West she could see the harbour and beyond it the great rock of Monaco, its ancient Palace and Fortress still standing grimly sentinel as they had done for over 500 years. But Emilie was more interested in the view which she knew lay behind the hotel – a view of a town which had sprung up like a gaudily tinted mushroom, a brilliant, vivid place, rising roof upon roof up the hillside, white and glittering and seeming in its opulence and magnificence to be the result of some magical power from a wizard’s wand.

Surely that was just what François Blanc had been to Monte Carlo – a wizard, for he had created from a barren poverty stricken rock a veritable wonderland of wealth and luxury, gaiety and pleasure.

Emilie had not believed all that the newspapers had told her these past years. But now that her eyes had seen the revelation for herself, she was astonished. The hotel, too, exceeded anything she had expected, and when, with Mistral beside her and Jeanne following humbly behind, she had swept into the foyer and crossed the big hall, feeling her feet sink into the pile of the luxurious carpet, taking in with one quick glance the marble pillars, the glittering mirrors, the profusion of palms and flowers, she had for one moment felt half afraid of her own courage at daring to enter such a world.

And then something stronger than herself, some force within her drove her forward so that when she reached the reception desk she was able to act convincingly the little play she had already rehearsed in her mind.

‘A suite has been engaged for me,’ she said, ‘by my man of affairs,
Monsieur
Anjou.’

The clerk bowed.

‘It has indeed,
Madame
, and we have been expecting you. May I welcome you to the
Hôtel de Paris
and to Monte Carlo?’

The inclination of Emilie’s head was a model of condescension.

‘Everything is prepared,
Madame
,’ the clerk said. If you will be good enough to sign the register, I will have you escorted upstairs.’

Emilie picked up the big quill pen and turned towards the open, leather bound book which lay on the desk, then she hesitated, making sure that the clerk saw her hesitation. She glanced back at Jeanne who stood a little distance away holding in her hands a leather jewel case on which a coronet was prominently embossed.

‘It is a little – difficult,’ Emilie said at length. ‘My niece and I are here for a holiday. We wish to have a quiet time and would remain – incognito.’

‘I am sure your wishes will be respected,
Madame
,’ the clerk said, but there was the light of curiosity in his eyes.

‘Yes, incognito,’ Emilie repeated. ‘That is the right word.’ She dipped the pen in the ink and in a strong, bold hand wrote
‘Madame – ’.
Then again she hesitated until finally with a little laugh she added a name. ‘I am
Madame Secret,’
she said, ‘at least for my stay here in this charming holiday resort.’

‘It is as
Madame
wishes,’ the clerk said, but Emilie noticed that once again he glanced towards the jewel case with its embossed coronet in Jeanne’s hands.

But Emilie still hesitated.

‘My niece – ’ she said at last and wrote another name. Mistral glanced at what her aunt had written. The bold, large handwriting was easily decipherable. Emilie had written
Mademoiselle Fântóme.

The suite into which they were shown was delightful. It consisted of a large room for Emilie, a smaller one for Mistral, a sitting room with a balcony connecting the two. Emilie had instructed a lawyer in Paris to write for the best apartments that the hotel could command, and while he had obeyed her, giving no name but saying only that a client of his would be arriving in Monte Carlo on the 28th February, Emilie had not anticipated anything so comfortable from what she remembered as an untended, straggling orange grove.

It was late in the evening when they arrived and despite the disappointment in Mistral’s face she had insisted on dining upstairs.

‘I do not wish you to be seen until our trunks are unpacked,’ she said. ‘When we appear, we must be dressed in our best so that people will notice us.’

‘But, Aunt Emilie, I thought you said that you wished to be incognito?’ Mistral asked bewildered.

Emilie looked at her in a strange way, and then said abruptly ‘Do not ask so many questions, Mistral. I am tired. Tomorrow I will explain things to you – at least those which it is important for you to know, but tonight I shall retire early. I wish to be alone.’

‘But of course, Aunt Emilie, I understand,’ Mistral said. ‘You must be very tired after such a long journey. Indeed I am tired myself, but more with excitement than anything else. I cannot tell you how I long to see Monte Carlo and the Mediterranean. I wish it was not so dark.’

She went to the open, uncurtained window, staring out into the deep purple twilight. Emilie called her back almost irritably.

‘Go and help Jeanne with the unpacking, child, and do not show yourself at the window.’

‘Yes, Aunt Emilie.’

But alone in the sitting room, Emilie herself crossed to the window and did just what she had forbidden Mistral to do. She stared out into the twilight trying to see what lay outside. She too was impatient that the night must pass before she could see more.

When their evening meal was finished, Emilie retired to her room, and when Jeanne came to her to help her to undress, asking her solicitously if she would like a glass of milk or a hot brick in her bed, she sent her away saying she wanted only to be left alone.

And when at last this wish was realised, Emilie laid on a chair a heavy despatch box. It was a big casket covered in purple leather and without the big gilt coronet which adorned her other luggage.

Nevertheless it was a distinguished piece of luggage and almost without realising it Emilie’s hand caressed the leather before she drew a key from her purse and turned it in the lock. The box was filled not with state papers for which it had been originally intended, but strangely enough with scrapbooks, made of brown paper such as were sold for children to stick transfers in and young ladies their valentines.

Slowly, with what appeared to be almost a tenderness, Emilie drew the books from the leather box. She chose one and opened it. It was filled with newspaper cuttings. There were six scrapbooks equally filled with cuttings dating back for eighteen years and all referring to one place and one person.

The authorities of Monte Carlo would have been interested if they could have seen Emilie’s scrap books, for they constituted in themselves an almost unique history of the rise of the town. At the beginning of the book the cuttings referred to events occurring at irregular intervals, sometimes two or three months elapsing between each one, and then they referred only to the Grand Duke Ivan of Russia.

As the years passed, the cuttings were more numerous.

François Blanc, the genius of Homburg, had been invited to set up a Casino in Monaco and a new name was to be chosen. The natives called it
‘Les Spelugues’,
but this was not considered suitable as it had an improper meaning, and finally it was decided that the Casino and the new town which was being built around it should be called Monte Carlo.

Now there was hardly a day when a fresh cutting had not been added to the book – cuttings describing the beauties and the importance of the new buildings, cuttings mentioning the amusements, galas, balls, fêtes, concerts and the games such as whist,
écarté, piquet, faro
, boston and reverse, as well as roulette and
trente-et-quarante,
which were being played in the Casino.

There were columns of print, paeans of praise from enthusiastic correspondents, and nearly every one of them mentioned the distinguished visitors who were to be found in this new and exciting playground of wealthy society. Princes – Montenegrin, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian – Rajahs, Maharajahs, Grand Dukes, Arch Dukes and swarms of lesser nobility, all received their comment, and there was a veritable fanfare of exaltation when two years earlier, in 1872, England’s Prince and Princess of Wales had visited the Principality. Although the whole list of names was included in Emilie’s book, there was only one name she sought amongst them, and each time he was mentioned she had underlined the printed word with a blue pencil.

It was easy to see at a glance from the blue pencil marks, which stood out clearly, how often this name occurred among those present at the Casino, among those attending the opening of the Opera Season, among those taking part in the pigeon shooting. Always the same name, always underlined in blue, ‘His Imperial Highness, the Grand Duke Ivan of Russia’.

In later years and especially in the last two or three years another name was invariably added to the first – His Imperial Highness, the Grand Duke Ivan of Russia and his son, His Serene Highness, Prince Nikolai.’

Slowly Emilie’s fingers turned the pages of the scrap books. Some of the earlier books were already well worn and a little ragged from the many times they had been read and handled. And yet to Emilie sitting alone in her bedroom at the
Hôtel
de Paris
it was as if she read her cuttings for the first time. For eighteen years she had waited for this moment.

It was after midnight when she raised her head and put the scrap books back in their leather-covered casket. But she did not feel tired, as any ordinary woman of nearly sixty might have felt tired at the end of such a long journey. Instead she felt as if she had an inexhaustible strength. Nothing and nobody could prevent her now from doing what she had set out to do.