Читать книгу The Giant's Strength - Basil King - Страница 4

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On the outer ring of spectators around the table in the centre of the room, they paused to look on.

"Faites vos jeux, messieurs," the croupier was saying, in a voice nasally mechanical.

Paula's eyes were instantly attracted to the game. The sight of large sums of money to be lost and won appealed, by some hereditary instinct, to her imagination. She looked at the players facing her, and saw them enriched or impoverished with dramatic suddenness. She was sure the girl in a bright-red hat, with a wide-meshed blue veil making unnatural tints on powder and rouge, would end her days in want. The gray-bearded old man, carefully placing a five-franc piece en carré, would have his homeward fare paid by the authorities. The purse-lipped woman, in shabby widow's weeds, working an elaborate system all over the tableau, would win a lot of money. The good-looking young man, smilingly throwing down the maximum stake en plein, would be ruined and would shoot himself.

"Rien ne va plus," the croupier cried again, and the players drew back their hands to await the result of Fate.

"Your father has been called away to be presented to the Grand-Duke Dmitri," Wiltshire whispered to Paula, but she only nodded to signify that she had heard.

When the croupier turned the wheel and threw the ball she felt her heart-strings tighten. In the whirling thing before her the blindest and most obscure forces of the universe seemed visibly at work. Destiny was staked on a chance that kept beyond all foresight and eluded all calculation. It was strange, daring, and exciting. She wondered how the girl in the red hat could gaze indifferently about her while the wheel spun round. She wondered how the young man could turn with a jesting remark to the companion standing behind him. She wondered still more at the effect upon them all when the rotations of the wheel began to slacken speed, when the ball clicked and tapped and staggered, whirling round and round in a slow, wild, drunken way, till it fell, at last, as if exhausted, into the decisive number. The widow saw her system swept away, and without a shadow of expression on her stony face began to work out a new one. The girl in the red hat put down another louis on the exact spot whence the last had disappeared. The old man replaced his five-franc piece by one of ten. The young man who had played en plein received the value of his stake thirty-five times over.

"Faites vos jeux, messieurs," the croupier called again. He was a stout man of fifty, swarthy and commonplace, but Paula could not help investing him with some of the inexorable power of the Parcæ.

"You seem interested," the Duke whispered, behind her.

"It's tremendous," she returned, over her shoulder. "It's awful. It's as if one had got to the very springs of all happenings, as if one were in touch with the power that has made the world and flung us, haphazard, on to it."

"Wiltshire," said her father, slipping into the crowd, beside them, "the Grand-Duke wants to meet you. Paula, dear, you can wait for us here a minute. We sha'n't be long."

"Very well, papa, dear. I shall be all right."

She was not sorry to have them go, for it enabled her to give herself up to the spectacle of the game. The wheel was twirled again and again, always with variations on the same result. It gave her a thrill to see the croupier rake the gold and silver in, with a sort of lavish indifference to its value. There was something superb, too, in the careless ease with which he pushed about to the successful players the various multiplications of their stakes. As each winner picked up his gains she regretted that she had not put down a louis just where he had put his. She wondered what would happen if she did. She wondered whether the obscure, blind power that was throwing destinies about would have anything in store for her.

"If I knew how, I'd do it," she said to herself, looking up and down the table to see exactly what the others did.

Just then a man across the table threw down a ten-franc piece on pair. She had seen him do it several times in succession, and on each occasion he had lost. It was an easy conclusion that if pair lost impair would win. It was the simplest form of the game, and before she realized what she was about her own ten francs were down. The wheel spun and slackened speed; the ball clicked and staggered and stopped. She held her breath, with her eyes fixed upon her stake.

"If he rakes it in," she thought, "I shall know I've lost."

But no! From the ends of the table the sure, relentless hand swept up the gold and silver into one central pile. Here and there a few isolated stakes were left, her own among the number. A minute later she found two gold coins where she had put down one.

She picked them up timidly, and looked across at the young man. Pair had lost again, and she felt sorry for him. He was not in evening dress, and she guessed, from slight indications, that he was poor. Her first thought was that it was a pity for him to waste his money; her second, that the stake she had won was practically that which he had lost. At the idea the tiny furrow deepened for an instant between her brows, and the gold piece clinched in her hand seemed to burn through her glove. She had a confused, mistaken notion that she had taken the money from him, that if she had not played he might have won.

"I oughtn't to have done it," she said to herself, half turning to go away. But the young man threw down another ten-franc piece on pair. It was an opportunity, she thought, for him to recover the money she had taken from him. It was not likely that she would win again, and her loss must of necessity be his gain. Once more she put her stake down on impair, and, with eyes fixed on it, awaited the result.

Again the croupier raked the gold and silver in, and the young man's stake went with the rest. This time the very coin he had forfeited was pushed across the table to her. She picked it up and slipped it into her glove, looking over at him to see what he would do. If he stopped she would stop, if he went on she would give him the chance to win his money back. She was sure it was his money, and she felt some humiliation in going home with twenty francs that belonged to a passing stranger. Unconsciously to herself her interest was the more sincere because of the fact that he was tall and good-looking. "Certainly a gentleman," she commented, "and with such a striking face."

For an instant he seemed to hesitate; then his bit of gold fell on pair. A second later Paula's fell on impair. The result was the same as before; it was so the next time and the next. On the sixth spin pair won and impair lost, but with the seventh impair's run of luck began again. Paula felt herself growing desperate. The palm of her left-hand glove seemed bursting with gold, but in honor towards the poor young man she could not stop till he did. She did not reason that he could win back his money from the bank; she thought it must be from her. Of one thing she was glad: he had not noticed her at all or glanced in her direction. She could, therefore, look at him, with her money in her hand, ready to throw her stake when he threw his.

The widow was elaborating a new arrangement of her system, taking coin after coin from a small black bag. The girl in the blue veil was playing with two louis instead of one, gesticulating her orders to the croupier as to where they should be placed. The lad who had put his stake en plein was now playing it à cheval.

"Rien ne va plus!"

Paula started and looked at the young man across the table. He had put nothing down. He had evidently lost all he could afford. What she had won she should be obliged to keep. The obscure powers of chance had been true to their reputation, and had given the luck to those who had no need of it.

Her hand, with the glove full of gold, fell heavily at her side. Perhaps the unfortunate man had lost everything he possessed and would be driven to take his life, as she understood ruined gamblers generally were. She had a wild thought of asking her father to go and beg him to take his money back, when the victim's eyes wandered, apparently by accident, in her direction. For a fraction of a second their glances met, but Paula felt herself coloring and turned away.

"Why—what!"

The broken exclamation came from the Duke of Wiltshire, as he pushed his way through the crowd to take his place again at her side.

"Have you been crying?—or playing?—or what?" he demanded, when he was near enough to speak. For the first time in their acquaintance he assumed a tone of authority.

"I haven't been crying," she said, hurriedly. "I've been playing, and I've won a lot of money. I don't quite know what to do with it."

"So ho!" he laughed. "That's what you do when your father's back is turned!"

"I sha'n't do it again," she said, in some confusion, as she moved out of the ring immediately around the table. "You see it was this way. I played against that tall young man over there. Don't look now because he'll notice it. That is, whatever he did on one side of the table I did on the other, and he always lost and I always won. I'm so sorry. He didn't look as if he could afford to lose—and he didn't keep on."

"What young man do you mean? I don't see him."

"He's tall, and well set-up, with a pointed brown beard and rather gleaming eyes. No; he's gone," she added, stealing a glance to where he had been standing. "Ah, there he is now, coming round the table. He's coming this way. Don't look; he'll know I've been speaking of him. Come away. There's papa. Let us go to him."

But it was too late. The unknown young man and the Duke were already shaking hands, with the cordiality of long-standing friendship. Paula tried to slip out of her embarrassment by gliding round them and taking her place beside her father. He was talking to a knot of people she did not know, but she was near enough to him to be under his protection, while not so far from the Duke as to escape hearing some of the remarks between him and the stranger.

Through the hum of movement and conversation about her she caught a sympathetic barytone quality of voice. From the English precision of his enunciation and the American plaintiveness of his inflections, she guessed he was one of those fellow-countrymen of her own who have lived or studied abroad. The Duke catechised him freely, and he replied with the sort of detail one gives only to one's friends.

He had been working in Rome, and would have remained till after Easter, only that he had a couple of commissions for portraits in Paris. Oh yes; commissions did come in, but very slowly. Perhaps it would be different some day. Yes, his mother was quite accustomed to her blindness now, but so feeble that they might lose her at any minute. Marah was well, and, as usual, working hard. He was staying only a day or two at Monte Carlo, just to break the journey from Rome. He hoped to have something in the next Salon, though he had nothing ready yet. Perhaps if Lady Alice were passing through Paris, she would look in, and give him the benefit of her advice.

Then came the question Paula was afraid of. Would the Duke tell him who was the tall young lady, in a blue dress and black hat, who had spoken to him on turning away from the table? Of the reply she caught only the end of the sentence—"and you must know her."

She felt herself flushing with embarrassment, but as the Duke approached she knew the only dignified thing to do was to turn and greet him pleasantly.

"Miss Trafford," he said, with the awkward air he always had at such moments, "I want you to know a very old friend of ours, Mr. Roger Winship."

"Mr. Winship's face," she laughed, "is perfectly familiar to me. I've been watching him from the other side of the roulette-table for nearly half an hour."

"And you saw the ill-will of the gods against me," he returned, easily. "But I had the gratification of knowing that I couldn't lose unless you won. That was something."

"Haven't we met before?" she asked, with a hurried change of topic.

"No; never."

The quick decisiveness of tone as well as the curious gleam of his eyes, in speaking the brief words, were details she remembered afterwards.

"And yet," she persisted, "your name is very well known to me. I've heard it often."

"That isn't impossible," he admitted, with a forced smile, "though you must have been very young."

"I know I've heard of a Roger Winship," she continued, as if searching in her memory. "It must have been my father—"

"Probably," he interrupted; "but it was so long ago—"

"That it was your father's name and not yours that I've heard mentioned. Were you going to say that?"

"It was a long time ago," he repeated, the forced smile gone. "I don't suppose that either you or I—"

He hesitated, and Paula saw that it would be best to let the subject drop. The Duke broke in with a remark or two, and after a few further words Winship bade them good-evening and passed on.

"What am I to do with all this money?" Paula asked, when she and Wiltshire were alone again.

"You might give it in charity," he suggested.

"No; I wouldn't do that. I couldn't give in charity money to which I felt some one else had a prior claim. And," she pursued, with some hesitation, "I suppose I was right in fancying that he is poor?"

"Oh yes; he's poor enough. He's a portrait-painter, and still has his way to make. Alice got to know him and his sister when she took it into her head to study art in Paris. She brings them over every now and then to stay with us at Edenbridge, or, at least she did till the poor old lady grew too blind. I like this young fellow. He's full of ideas, and we've had some jolly talks together."

"I've heard your sister spoken of as a great authority on art. Does she think this Mr. Winship—?"

"She says she doesn't think—she knows. In ten years' time, she believes, he will have such a place as Sargent holds to-day."

"Then, what shall I do with the money?" Paula said again.

"What can you do but give it away or spend it?"

"I can keep it," she returned, thoughtfully. "I may find a way of getting him to take it back."