What Dread Hand? by Elizabeth Gill

Author:Elizabeth Gill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2017-01-06T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIV

ROUGE ET NOIR

Life seemed to Julia to hang fire. What was the matter with her, she asked herself irritably, staring out of her bedroom window at the blue sunlit sea? Here she was, in Monte Carlo, for the first time in her life: Monte Carlo, which she had always imagined as an amusingly vulgar place where the last generation but one had spent its money on gambling, champagne, and patchouli-scented chorus-girls in frilly drawers; Monte Carlo, which she had always longed to visit if only in order to taste for herself an atmosphere of late Victorian indiscretion. And now here she was, sitting in an hotel bedroom after lunch, feeling terribly alone and dull. The whole trouble really was, that while lying in bed that morning she had received a note from Benvenuto, saying he had gone off in the Bugatti for a day or two, and that she was to have a good rest. Rest, she felt, was the last thing she wanted; with Benvenuto gone and Rourke still mysteriously vanished, the adventures she had anticipated seemed, more than ever, elusively round the corner. Certainly, she said to herself, she would like an adventure—but it must be in the proper company. Almost she felt like being a Tigress as a relief from the rather melancholy presences of Uncle Edward and Aunt Agatha, with whom she had spent the morning.

Coming to a sudden decision she jumped to her feet, shaking off the afternoon languor and her depression with it; Benvenuto might go off with his mystery story hidden in his brain like a pearl in a very selfish oyster—at least she could go out and find an adventure of her own. She went to her wardrobe.

Black organdie, she decided, and pearls, besides being becoming to her hair and skin, would accord well with Monte Carlo. She would be an adventuress to-day, not a jeune fille. She dressed quickly, excitedly, as though she were keeping an appointment, and laughed rather ruefully at the completed picture as she paused at a mirror before leaving her room. “You certainly don’t look,” she said to herself, “as though you were going to have tea all alone.”

Outside, the streets had been freshly watered, and there was a hot smell of geraniums, roses, and damp earth from the florist’s at the corner. Julia strolled through the gardens which led to the Casino; under the trees there were patches of shade, and men were spraying the highly artificial-looking grass with hose-pipes. So far, she thought, the setting was perfect for the Monte Carlo of her imagination, for the gardens were like nothing so much as a backcloth of the Folies Bergères. Outside the railings stood a line of fiacres, gaily painted horse-drawn carriages with tasselled awnings; they were charming, she thought, they reminded her of ham sleeves and flower-strewn hats and, for some reason, of the first sewing-machines. She crossed the road to the Café de Paris, sat down at a table facing the Casino, and ordered a drink.

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