“Mesdames et Messieurs: J’ai, tu as, il a, nous avons,”—with a magnificent gesture, “vous avez.” The French members of the company were not equal to his pronunciation and were under the impression that he was still talking English. They were profoundly impressed with his deference and grace, and accorded his preamble a round of applause. The Americans did their utmost to persuade him to be seated, but their uproar was mistaken by the others for enthusiasm, and the applause grew louder than ever. “Subway” held up his hand for silence, and his manner suggested that he was about to utter some peculiarly important thought. He waited until a pin fall could have been heard before he went on.
“Maitre corbeau sur un arbre perché—” he finished the speech as he was being carried bodily from the room by DeMille and Bragdon. The Frenchmen then imagined that Smith’s remarks had been insulting, and his friends had silenced him on that account. A riot seemed imminent when Monty succeeded in restoring silence, and with a few tactful remarks about Franklin and Lafayette quieted the excited guests.
The evening ended with fireworks and a dance in the open air—a dance that grew gay under the masks. The wheels had been well oiled and there was no visible failure of the carnival spirit. To Brewster it seemed a mad game, and he found it less easy to play a part behind the foolish mask than he expected. His own friends seemed to elude him, and the coquetries of the village damsels had merely a fleeting charm. He was standing apart to watch the glimmering crowd when he was startled by a smothered cry. Turning to investigate, he discovered a little red domino, unmistakably frightened, and trying to release herself from a too ardent Punchinello. Monty’s arrival prevented him from tearing off the girl’s mask and gave him an entirely new conception of the strenuous life. He arose fuming and sputtering, but he was taken in hand by the crowd and whirled from one to another in whimsical mockery. Meanwhile Monty, unconscious that his mask had dropped during the encounter, was astonished to feel the little hand of the red domino on his arm and to hear a voice not at all unfamiliar in his ear:
“Monty, you are a dear. I love you for that. You looked like a Greek athlete. Do you know—it was foolish—but I really was frightened.”
“Child, how could it have happened?” he whispered, leading her away. “Fancy my little Peggy with no one to look after her. What a beast I was to trust you to Pettingill. I might have known the chump would have been knocked out by all this color.” He stopped to look down at her and a light came into his eyes. “Little Peggy in the great world,” he smiled; “you are not fit. You need—well, you need—just me.”
But Mrs. Valentine had seen him as he stood revealed, and came up in search of Peggy. It was almost morning, she told her, and quite time to go back to the hotel and sleep. So in Bragdon’s charge they wandered off, a bit reluctantly, a bit lingeringly.
It was not until Monty was summoned to rescue “Reggie” Vanderpool from the stern arm of the law that he discovered the identity of Punchinello. Manifestly he had not been in a condition to recognize his assailant, and a subsequent disagreement had driven the first out of his head. The poor boy was sadly bruised about the face and his arrest had probably saved him from worse punishment.
“I told you I couldn’t wear a mask,” he explained ruefully as Monty led him home. “But how could I know that he could hear me all the time?”
The day after the carnival Brewster drove his guests over to Monte Carlo. He meant to stay only long enough to try his luck at the tables and lose enough to make up for the days at sea when his purse was necessarily idle. Swearengen Jones was forgotten, and soon after his arrival he began to plunge. At first he lost heavily, and it was with difficulty that he concealed his joy. Peggy Gray was watching him, and in whispers implored him to stop, but Mrs. Dan excitedly urged him to continue until the luck changed. To the girl’s chagrin it was the more reckless advice that he followed. In so desperate a situation he felt that he could not stop. But his luck turned too soon.
“I can’t afford to give up,” he said, miserably, to himself, after a time. “I’m already a winner by five thousand dollars, and I must at least get rid of that.”
Brewster became the center of interest to those who were not playing and people marveled at his luck. They quite misunderstood his eagerness and the flushed, anxious look with which he followed each spin of the wheel. He had chosen a seat beside an English duchess whose practice it was to appropriate the winnings of the more inexperienced players, and he was aware that many of his gold pieces were being deliberately stolen. Here he thought was at least a helping hand, and he was on the point of moving his stack toward her side when DeMille interfered. He had watched the duchess, and had called the croupier’s attention to her neat little method. But that austere individual silenced him by saying in surprise, “Mais c’est madame la duchesse, que voulez-vous?”
Not to be downed so easily, DeMille watched the
