An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (77 page)

Mistral knew what that inflexible quality of determination in Emilie’s voice meant.

She sighed.

She knew it was no use asking her to change her mind.

‘Aunt Emilie,’ she said after a long pause, ‘there is something I want to ask you.’

‘What is it?’

‘Why was I christened Mistral? I have often wondered and have often meant to ask you.’

‘Your mother chose the name. She chose it because she hated the wind that blows here along the shore.’

‘Because she hated it?’ Mistral echoed. ‘Then my mother came here? She knew Monte Carlo?’

‘Yes, your mother came here,’ Emilie said grimly, ‘but she did not know Monte Carlo. It was not built nineteen years ago.’

‘Nineteen years ago,’ Mistral repeated. ‘Then she was here just before I was born. Oh, Aunt Emilie, how exciting! Did she love it? Perhaps that is why it seems so beautiful and wonderful to me, because my mother liked it when she was here.’

‘I have not said your Mother liked it,’ Emilie replied. ‘When she told me what your name was to be, she said, “It will be a girl and I want her to be called Mistral. That terrible wind, I can hear it still. Yes, call her Mistral”.’

‘Why did she say that?’ Mistral asked, ‘and if she said it before I was born, how was she certain that I would be a girl? I might have been a boy.’

She seemed very sure that you would be a girl,’ Emilie said briefly.

Even as she spoke, she could see Alice’s haunted eyes. They had worn the same look when she had chosen the name Mistral as when she had said to Emilie,

‘You are not to tell him! Swear on the Bible that you will never tell him that I am to have a child.’

She could hear Alice’s voice, almost hysterical with fear. She could see her face, white and haunted, and she had promised because at that moment there was nothing she would not have done to soothe her distress. But afterwards how bitterly she had regretted, not once but many times, that promise which had been given on the Bible.

Even towards the very end, when Alice’s life was fading away and the Doctor had given her up, for there was nothing more that he could do, Alice had whispered,

‘Promise you will not tell him about Mistral?’

Emilie had knelt sobbing at the side of the bed. She had promised, but later, when Alice had gone and they had carried her slender, wasted body away to the Churchyard, Emilie would have given everything she had in the world to retract that promise.

She had wanted to leave there and then for Monaco, to confront the Grand Duke with his crime, to call him a murderer, to show him the motherless Mistral, to know the satisfaction of denouncing him as a seducer and a betrayer.

But she had kept her promise, partly because of her religious convictions, partly because of her love for Alice, and partly because she was innately superstitious. Emilie knew she could never break that vow given on three separate occasions, but she had vowed vengeance, vowed it by all that she held sacred, and by the very memory of Alice herself.

One day, somehow, she would make the Grand Duke suffer as he had made Alice suffer and indirectly herself as well.

During the long nights when she had fought for the life of Mistral, when she had walked the screaming child up and down the kitchen almost from dusk to dawn, Emilie had found time to think, and gradually, as she thought, a plan formed within her mind, a plan which would take long years to put into operation, which would require endless scheming and plotting.

But as her hatred and her desire for vengeance grew, as it intensified, day by day, week by week, year by year, until its tentacles were so firmly fixed within her that she could no longer escape from them or indeed live without them, so was she certain that one day all that she dreamt of would be fulfilled and her vengeance assured.

And now at last, after eighteen years, the curtain was rising on the first act, the Prelude in which Mistral had grown to womanhood was finished. Looking at her, Emilie was satisfied. She was lovely – lovely enough for the part she had to play in this drama.

And then, as she looked at Mistral, the girl’s eyes, clear and unclouded, were raised to hers, and for a moment she bore such a look of Alice that Emilie felt something contract within her heart.

It was Alice who looked at her, Alice who was worried and whose lips trembled a little.

‘Please, Aunt Emilie, please, please explain things a little bit to me. It is all rather frightening, this secrecy.’

But even as Mistral pleaded, she knew it was hopeless.

Her aunt’s eyes seemed to soften and then abruptly Emilie turned her head away and walked across the room to the fireplace.

Mistral did not know that it was her very simplicity which had defeated her. Emilie had known at that moment that she could not possibly put into words what she had in mind.

‘You must trust me,’ Emilie said, and her voice was hard. ‘Besides, for the moment there is nothing to explain. Tonight we dine downstairs. You will wear grey chiffon with the pleated frills. I have learned from the Manager that there is to be a Gala dinner tonight. The whole of Monte Carlo will be here. You will see all the celebrities and afterwards we will go across to the Concert Room at the Casino.’

Mistral clasped her hands together.

‘Shall we see people gambling, Aunt Emilio?’

‘We will watch the tables,’ Emilie said. ‘It is an interesting sight if only for the satisfaction of watching other people make fools of themselves.’

‘Is it wrong to gamble?’ Mistral asked.

‘Wrong?’ Emilie repeated the word with an inflection of interrogation. ‘I see nothing wrong in doing what interests or amuses one. People who tell you that gambling is wrong are usually characterless and so weak that they cannot prevent themselves from pouring away at the tables money they can ill afford. No, why should you think it wrong?’

‘I only wondered,’ Mistral answered. ‘A Nun at the Convent told me that, although gambling had brought great prosperity to Monaco and the poor of the Principality had benefited by it, she felt that it was wrong as it encouraged the lust for money.’

‘A narrow creed from a narrow woman walled up in seclusion,’ Emilie sneered. ‘You will be wise not to take your sense of values from Nuns, Mistral.’

‘I have had little opportunity of doing anything else until now,’ Mistral replied quietly.

Her reply was not impertinent, it was just a statement of fact, but for the moment Emilie looked startled.

‘You are right,’ she said. ‘I had forgotten how long you have been there. It is true that you know nothing of the world, I must not forget that.’

‘Why did you never let me come back to the farm?’ Mistral asked.

‘Because I had left the farm myself,’ Emilie replied. ‘I wanted you to be brought up a lady like your mother.

The farm was rough and, when my grandfather died, there was not enough money to keep it together unless I had slaved there day after day, year after year, until it killed me. I wanted to pay for your education, Mistral. I wanted a proper life for myself, and so, when you went to the Convent, I went to Paris.’

‘To Paris!’ Mistral ejaculated. ‘And you were happy, Aunt Emilie?’

‘I worked very hard, Mistral, and I suppose in my own way I was content. I had an object in view and at least I was getting nearer to it.’

Mistral rose from the table and walked across the room to her aunt. Emilie was taller than she was. She raised her lovely oval face to the older woman’s and said in a very low voice,

‘Aunt Emilie, you do like having me with you now, don’t you?’

It was the cry of a child for comfort, it was the yearning for love of someone who has never known love, but Emilie, who would have understood the same appeal eighteen years earlier in Alice’s voice, was deaf to it in Mistral’s.

‘Of course, Mistral,’ she said frigidly. ‘I am very glad to have you and I am sure we shall enjoy ourselves together. Now, call Jeanne, for I have some instructions to give her.’

She did not notice the disappointment in the girl’s face, did not see the sudden pain in those dark violet eyes and the soft droop of her lips.

Obediently Mistral went from the room to call Jeanne.

4

‘I think everyone in Monte Carlo is here tonight,’ Lady Violet Featherstone remarked, looking round the big dining room of the
Hôtel
de Paris
where the tables were filling up so quickly that the appearance of each newcomer in the doorway seemed to provide another dilemma for the
Maitre d’ Hôtel.

‘Alfonse was telling me that this is the best season they have ever known,’ Lord Drayton remarked from the other side of the table. ‘As the gross profits last year were six million francs that is no
façon de parler.
We should have bought come shares five or six years ago.’

Sir Robert smiled.

‘It is too late now!’

‘For you, Robert, that is not a tragedy,’ Lord Drayton remarked. ‘What would you do with any more money?’

‘I can answer that question,’ Lady Violet said. ‘He would spend it on me, of course.’

‘And what better excuse for being extravagant?’ Lord Drayton replied with somewhat ponderous gallantry.

Sir Robert took the menu from an attentive waiter.

‘Well, what are we going to eat? Violet, will you start with caviar or oysters?’

‘You order the dinner, Robert,’ she answered. ‘I want to watch the people, they always amuse me.’

It was not surprising that Lady Violet, used as she was to the glittering society at Monte Carlo, should feel interested in what she saw around her tonight. The Gala dinner at the
Hôtel de Paris
had been arranged as a compliment to a celebrated Italian opera singer who was to appear for the first time in the Concert Room at the Casino.

But any excuse served for a Gala evening, and because this was indeed the most brilliant and successful winter season the Principality had ever known, there seemed to be packed into those few acres of land all the wealth, beauty and aristocracy of Europe.

There were German Barons and their wives, eager to forget their country’s recent war with France, their lineage dating back into antiquity, their pockets bulging with gold.

There were Grand Dukes from Russia, handsome, aristocratic and incredibly wealthy, who by their very appearance seemed to give an air of distinction to the gambling rooms and the cafés.

There were also visitors from England, men and women bearing ancient and honourable names, who stared curiously at the cosmopolitan crowd which thronged around them and who managed in some subtle way of their own to remain reserved and aloof however gay and congenial the atmosphere.

There were Rajahs from India, Sultans from Turkey, Señors from Spain, Beys from Algeria, the most elegant and
distingué
of the French
beau monde,
and a sprinkling of Americans – big, badly dressed men with their elegant, over dressed wives, who seemed a little ill at ease, but whose fortunes were fabulous.

Besides these were artists, professional gamblers, crooks, parasites and the hangers on who appear wherever there is a game of chance, and likely pickings.

And last, but not least, there were women, women of all nationalities, creeds, classes arid types of beauty – every one of them outstanding, every one of them worth a second, third or fourth glance, and every one of them adding something to the gaiety and beauty of the place by their very presence.

Lady Violet, looking round the dining room, thought she had never seen a more splendid array of jewellery. There were diamond tiaras which glittered and shone as if they were royal crowns, there were necklaces of emeralds and rubies and sapphires, ropes of pearls, pendants of aquamarines and amethysts, bracelets of turquoises and opals, brooches, earrings, lockets, diadems – all resplendent with precious gems, each a silent witness to a woman’s beauty. Lady Violet gave a little sigh.

‘I thought my emeralds were quite an adequate decoration until I came here this evening.’

Lord Drayton glanced at the necklace around her throat and at the long emerald ear rings which dangled from her small ears.

‘Yours are very fine stones,’ he said.

‘But insignificant beside those the Princess is wearing.’

He glanced across the room. A Polish Princess was literally blazing with emeralds, they crowned her head, encircled her neck, glittered on her wrists and fingers and almost covered the bodice of her low cut gown.

‘It is certainly difficult to compete with the Ossinpof collection,’ Sir Robert said, ‘but I daresay Her Highness would give them all to you if you could exchange ages at the same time.’

It was palpably true. The Princess was over fifty and doing her best to pretend that she was a mere twenty-five. She was rouged, dyed and corseted until she could hardly breathe, and the emeralds must have been little consolation for a youth which slipped away from her year by year.

Lady Violet in contrast at thirty-six was in the full bloom of her good looks. She had never been a great beauty, but she had something of more value – charm and an attraction which drew men to her and made them lose both their heads and their hearts if she so much as smiled at them. She had always been fêted and courted from the moment she had made her début into Society, and it was entirely due to a disinterested and self-centred mother that she had been allowed to marry one of the first men who proposed to her, because she wished to escape the confining boredom of her home life.

As a child Lady Violet had longed to live fully. Life for her in later years meant one continuous whirl of thrills, excitements and sensations.

Brought up in the wilds of Lincolnshire, for the Duke and Duchess believed in keeping their family in the country while they enjoyed themselves in London, Violet rebelled against the monotony of dull governesses and even duller lessons and against the selfishness of her parents, who thought that children were fortunate if they had three good meals a day and a bed to sleep in and were entitled to no other consideration.

But being a rebel was disconcertingly ineffective until at eighteen Violet was taken to London for her first Season and was presented at Court. Up till that date she had met few men, and in welcome contrast to the local Parson, who was nearly eighty, and the local M.F.H., who was married with six children, Eric Featherstone seemed a veritable Don Juan.