She was the landlord’s wife. Old Stein, as we called him, though he was not over forty, was a placid, easy-going German, who kept the hotel fairly up to the standard of the country, and I think a trifle above it, but he hadn’t energy enough, apparently, to make any strenuous effort to improve things. What was good enough for his boarders was good enough for him, and we were demoralised enough by the climate, or whatever it is that tends to the deterioration of mankind thereabout, to make no demand for unusual luxury. As far as we ever noticed, he had no remarkable affection for his wife, but seemed rather too indifferent to her very pronounced hunger for admiration.
She was a born flirt, but though she carried her flirtations with anybody who would flirt with her much nearer to the danger line than would be tolerated in a more strait-laced community, it was the general opinion among the boarders that there was no real evil in her and, moreover, that she was fully capable of taking care of herself in almost any emergency. So, though she would not have been recognised as respectable by any other married woman in town, a fact that troubled her not, she was considered all right by our set, and we looked upon her as a good fellow rather than as a woman bound by the ordinary rules of propriety. She was a German by descent, and Stein was German by birth, but Lena was perhaps too thoroughly Americanised in a poor school.
Naturally trouble came of it. We were accustomed, as the people in most small Western towns were accustomed some years ago, to receiving occasionally a visit from what we used to call a ‘cross-roads gambler’. These worthies are perhaps the least useful and most ‘ornery’ specimens of humanity to be found in North America. They are professionals without the skill or nerve they need to enable them to hold their own among other professionals. Knowing just enough to cheat, but not enough to cheat deftly, they travel about the country, usually alone, but sometimes in pairs, stopping in the smallest settlements for a day or a week at a time, looking for victims. No game is too small for them, though they will play heavily at times, but they manage to live on their little skill by worming their way into friendly games of poker, such as are played all over the country, but perhaps more openly in the West than in the East.
When Dick Bradley happened along our way and stopped over at our town, we had, though we did not realise it immediately, all the elements of a drama right at hand. It was not long before the drama was enacted, and perhaps it was just as well that we were not a little farther west, for there might have been considerable shooting in the last act. As it was we had a duel, but that was fought with the pasteboards instead of revolvers, and the difference was supposed to be settled by a freeze-out in the great American game.
Bradley was an ordinary cross-roads gambler, and nothing more. He was a little handsomer than the usual run of men, and he dressed rather better than custom demanded in that part of the country. Moreover, he had a free-and-easy way with him; it was a part of his stock in trade that was attractive to anybody, and I suppose especially so to a woman like Lena. At all events he hadn’t been with us twenty-four hours before there was a violent flirtation going on between the two. We all considered that natural enough, and supposing we knew the woman thoroughly well, we thought no harm of it at first. Stein took no notice of it apparently, and as it was a matter that concerned no one else so closely as it did him, none of us felt called on to say anything.
Somewhat to our surprise, however, Bradley stayed on for more than a week. It wasn’t his regular business that kept him, for though we played poker every night, as a matter of course, in the back room of the hotel, and though he got into the game, equally as a matter of course, he didn’t make enough out of it to make it an object to stay. There were some of us who understood the game and the ordinary tricks of crooked players as well as he did, and he was not long in finding out that he had to play square if he played at all. So, as we never played for big money, the prospect was a poor one for him. Still he stayed. After a few days we all, excepting Stein, began to see that he was staying entirely on Lena’s account. He was a bit cautious at first; more so than she was, but seeing that Stein made no objection to anything she did, but gave her a perfectly free foot, the gambler grew bolder and bolder, until there was no longer any possibility of remaining blind to the fact that a scandal impended. Some of us talked it over very quietly and carefully, but it was agreed that no one ought to interfere, since Stein did not see fit to do so.
We had begun to think that Stein was absolutely indifferent and to regard him with considerable contempt, when one evening he undeceived us, and gave us a great surprise by his manner of doing it. It was early in the evening, and, though we had gathered perhaps a dozen of us in the card room, we had not yet begun playing when Stein came in, and, after fidgeting around for a minute or two in a manner quite unlike his usual phlegmatic way, spoke suddenly to Bradley.
‘Look here, Bradley,’ he said in his broken English, ‘I must settle things with you. I have talked things over with my wife, Lena, already, and she says she will go away with you. If she goes this world is no good to me any more, and you and I must settle if she goes or if she stays. I would kill you, but it would be foolishness to try that, for I am not a fighting man and you always carry your gun. Now, what shall we do? Will you go away and leave me my Lena, or will she go with you?’
The poor German seemed not to understand in the least what an amazing sort of a speech this was. His voice trembled with his strong emotion, and there were tears in his eyes. The rest of us were struck dumb. I don’t know what the other fellows thought, but I know that there came to me a sort of hungry longing to organise a tar-and-feather party, with Dick Bradley as the principal guest. And, despite my contemptuous pity for the husband who showed so little manhood, I made up my mind that there was going to be fair play, anyhow.
Bradley was fairly staggered. He flushed and stammered, and, I think, was for a moment about to say that he would go; but he pulled himself together, and seemed to remember that as a bad man he had a reputation to sustain. At length he said:
‘It’s pretty hard to tell what to do, Stein. I’d be willing to fight you for the woman if you wanted to do that, but, as you don’t, I suppose she’d better settle it herself.’
‘No,’ said the landlord. ‘She is foolish with you now, and she would have no sense about it. You and I will settle it now. And what will you do? Will you go away and leave us?’
Bradley looked around, as if to see what the crowd thought about it, and perceiving at a glance that our sympathies were all with the other man, he replied: ‘Well, if you won’t fight, supposing we settle it with the cards. I’ll play you a freeze-out, $1,000 against your wife. What do you say?’
‘I say no,’ said Stein again, and we began almost to respect him. ‘I will not play my wife against your money, but I will play you a freeze-out for $1,000, my money against yours, and if you lose, you will go away. And if I lose, I will go away, and she may do what she likes. Only you will play a square game.’
‘You bet, it’ll be a square game,’ said Jack Peters, the biggest man and the best card player in the party. ‘I don’t like your proposition, but that’s your business and not mine. But if you’re going to play, Stein, you may be perfectly sure that Bradley won’t try any cross-roads tricks in this freeze-out.’
Bradley seated himself at the card table and said: ‘Get out your cards.’ At the same time he pulled out his wad and counted off the thousand. Stein got the cards and chips, and, each man taking chips to represent his pile, the money was laid at one side. It did not seem like an even contest, for Stein was not a good player. I was delighted to notice, however, after they were fairly well going, that Stein was the cooler of the two. Bradley, I suppose, was a bit rattled by the consciousness that we were watching his play suspiciously.
Bradley tried at first to force the play, and once or twice caught Stein for considerable money, but the game went on for perhaps twenty minutes without anything like a decisive result. Suddenly, as Stein was about to cut the cards, Jack Peter
s exclaimed:
‘Shuffle ’em, Stein!’
‘Can’t Stein play his own game?’ asked Bradley.
‘I reckon he can,’ said Peters, ‘but in case the cards should happen to be stacked against him, and I found it out, there’d be a lynching right here in this town tonight. I don’t want that to happen, so I thought I’d make sure.’
It was an unfair trick, for Bradley had not stacked the cards. He hadn’t dared to. But Peters told me afterwards that he did it to ‘throw a scare’ into Bradley if he could. He succeeded, for the gambler lost his nerve when he looked around once more, while Stein remained as cool as before. He nodded and shuffled the cards and the game went on.
The end came suddenly. It was a flush against a full, and Stein held the full and swept the board. There was a moment’s silence, and then Bradley said with a short laugh:
‘Well, I’ve lost, and I’ll leave town on the morning train. That’ll do, I suppose, won’t it?’
‘Yes, that’ll do,’ said Stein, gravely. He had won in the outrageous contest, and I expected to see him greatly elated, but instead he seemed curiously depressed. And as the situation was decidedly embarrassing for all hands we went to bed uncommonly early that night, so that everybody was up in time next morning to see Bradley go on the early train as he had agreed to do.
‘Well, yes,’ said the grey-haired young-looking man, in answer to a question, ‘that is the end of the story, as far as the poker part of it goes. Of course there was this sequel. It was inevitable, I suppose. Lena followed Bradley a day or two afterwards, and Stein drank himself to death.’
The Upper Hand
by Grant Gillespie
Celia woke abruptly to the shrill sound of wailing.
She had endured a difficult home labour and had fallen into such an exhausted sleep that she’d momentarily forgotten about the birth. As she wearily lifted her baby to her breast, she became aware of two things: her husband was no longer in bed, and she could smell smoke. Surely even the feckless Frank couldn’t be burning leaves at this hour?
It was then she realised that the smoke was coming from inside the house.
Clutching her newborn, Celia rushed onto the landing. A fire was hungrily engulfing the stairwell. She flew from room to room and shook awake her five other children. After swiftly considering her options, she hauled open the dumb waiter, pulled out a pile of laundry, and bundled Bryony, her eldest, inside.
‘Be brave,’ she said, before the child could object. ‘I’m going to lower you to the kitchen. Bang once if it’s safe and keep banging if it isn’t.’
Then, using all her reserves of strength, Celia gradually let out the rope and operated the pulley. The moment the cage landed, a solitary ‘bang’ came echoing up the shaft, so she raised the wooden frame and slowly lowered down two more of her brood, then the next two. With no other alternative available, Celia – still clutching her baby – jumped out from the window, landing bruised – but miraculously not broken – on a bush of red-flowering rhododendrons that bordered the lawn.
It was while she was clambering painfully to her feet that she saw Frank running away down the street. She needed no further proof. Her weak-willed husband had attempted to wipe out his growing gambling debts and his growing family in one scorching sweep.
‘In this, as in everything,’ Celia murmured, ‘he has failed miserably.’
‘Don’t have my boy arrested. Think of me!’ her mother-in-law said, having employed every other plea for clemency. ‘You have your children for comfort,’ she told Celia with a slight pinch of her arm. ‘I, poor soul that I am, lost all Frank’s siblings in their first year . . . Oh, the good Lord giveth and he also taketh away . . .’
But, despite her mother-in-law’s protestations, Celia felt no inclination to encumber her homicidal husband’s passage to prison.
While she planned her next move, Celia and her children stayed with her sister, Ella. ‘We’re on our uppers,’ she told her. ‘How am I supposed to support them?’
‘Children don’t need riches,’ the childless Ella said, offering a rallying smile. ‘Time is all a child wants.’
‘Yes,’ Celia agreed, ‘but they want all of it.’
When the couple were first married, thanks to Celia’s inheritance, they were able to afford the assistance of several domestics. Now, thanks to Frank – whose fertility was not matched by his accomplishments – she had nothing.
‘I wouldn’t have minded his gambling,’ she told her sister, ‘if he’d been remotely accomplished, but what he lacked in skill, he made up for in sheer recklessness.’
‘It is a pity,’ Ella said, ‘that women aren’t afforded the opportunity to gamble. You would certainly have doubled your fortunes by now, what with your good luck and your cleverness.’
Celia wasn’t convinced. Had she been blessed with good luck she would never have met Frank; had she been clever, she would never have agreed to marry him.
She made fervent inquiries about employment, petitioning even her most casual acquaintances, but her endeavours were met with no success. Then a letter arrived from overseas from an estranged uncle on her father’s side, offering her a post in his Manhattan hotel.
‘I can provide room and board for yourself alone,’ he wrote, ‘not for your children, but, should you work hard and live frugally, you should be able to send funds home for their upkeep.’
He also enclosed a cheque for First Class passage. ‘As you are now using your maiden name – my family name – don’t think of travelling Second Class and pocketing the difference. You need to be seen as a lady even if you are to work as a secretary.’
‘Ella . . .’ Celia prompted, ‘you said that all children want is “time” and you have plenty of that, certainly enough to care for the two littlest. They’re no trouble . . .’ she fibbed. ‘No trouble at all.’
‘But I have my charity work!’
‘Charity begins at home,’ Celia reminded her, ‘and, it seems, I no longer have one.’
It was an argument impossible to refute.
Celia then approached two spinster sisters – old friends of the family – who lived on Pennard golf course, asking if they’d harbour her eldest boy, Harry, and his brother, Bert.
‘They can sing and dance for you in the evenings,’ she promised, having never once seen them do either. That deal struck, she only had three children left to unbosom. She took them to her mother-in-law’s and, when she opened the door, Celia bustled them in – without invitation – beckoning the driver to follow with their cases.
‘It would have been courteous,’ the old woman said, ‘to have—’
‘I’m leaving for New York,’ Celia interrupted.
Her mother-in-law eyed the luggage. ‘And taking away my grandchildren?’
‘Oh, no, they’re staying . . . with you,’ Celia told her.
‘But—’
‘Poor soul that you are, you lost three of your own, but now you’re recompensed with three more! It appears the Lord taketh away . . . but occasionally he giveth back.’
And, with that, she embraced her children, instructing them, without meaning it, to behave for their grandmother and, fighting back tears, fled down the steps to the waiting cab.
Though Celia was tempted to buy a Second Class ticket, or even Steerage, she followed her uncle’s instructions and booked First. Besides, she told herself, if labour lay behind her on this continent and labour lay ahead on the other, she could at least cross between the two in style.
Boarding in Southampton, she was struck by the ship’s splendour but, edging past her fellow passengers as they waved cheerful and tearful goodbyes to their loved ones, she was haunted by the absence of her own. She inhaled a deep breath of salt-sea air and, locating a steward, asked to be shown directly to her cabin.
When evening fell, Celia rallied herself and dressed for dinner. She selected an evening dress – that she hadn’t had the opportunity to wear in years – and added a few simple pieces of costume je
wellery, the only items that Frank hadn’t been able to pawn.
The cavernous dining room, which looked as if it had been carved out of wedding-cake icing, had a balcony at one end where an orchestra played. Celia found herself in the exalted company of the liner’s Commander, sporting a moustache that dominated his entire face; a thin-nosed man of the cloth; and a woman called Dorothea de Vere. Dorothea was also travelling alone, and Celia quickly decided that she was not only fiendishly bookish, but also witty and bold.
‘It seems,’ Dorothea whispered, ‘that our little gathering is divided neatly into two halves; we are the new world, and they,’ she said, nodding towards the men who were deep in a conversation about Catholicism, ‘are the very, very old.’ And Celia laughed appreciatively.
‘Did we miss something amusing?’ the priest asked, his head turning sharply like a heron’s.
‘Almost certainly,’ Dorothea told him with a seraphic smile.
The clergyman narrowed his eyes a fraction, then turned to the Commander to air his grievances concerning the smoking room.
‘In inclement weather like this, it is the only place where a gentleman may, with any satisfaction, indulge in smoking a cigar and—’
‘That doesn’t seem very fair,’ Dorothea interjected. ‘What about us gentlewomen? Where is our designated smoking room?’
He Played for His Wife and Other Stories Page 17