by Grant Allen
Exquisite lines! He looked across to Cap Martin and understood them all. Then his own verses on his first Italian tour came back with a burst of similarity to his memory. In his exultation and unnatural excitement he had the audacity to compare them with Tennyson’s own. Why might not he, too, build at last that mansion he had talked about long, long ago, on the summit of Parnassus?
I found it not, where solemn Alps and gray Draw purple glories from the new-born day; Nor where huge somber pines loom overhanging Niagara’s rainbow spray.
Nor in loud psalms whose palpitating strain Thrills the vast dome of Buonarotti’s fane:
On canvas quick with Guido’s earnest passion, Or Titian’s statelier vein.
Tennyson indeed! Who prates about Tennyson? Were not his own sonorous round-mouthed verses worth every bit as much as many Tennyson s? He repeated them over lovingly to himself. The familiar ring intoxicated his soul. He was a poet too. He would yet make a fortune, for himself and for Elsie!
Echoes, echoes, mere echoes all of them! But to Hugh Massinger, in his parental blindness, quite as good and true as their inspired originals. So the minor poet forever deceives himself.
Guido, to be sure, he now knew to be feeble. He’d outlived Guido, and reached Botticelli. Not that the one preference was any profounder or truer at bottom than the other; but fashion had changed, and he himself had changed with it. He wrote those verses long, long ago. In those days Guido was not yet exploded. He wished he could find now some good dissyllabic early Italian name (with the accent on the first) that would suit modern taste and take the place in the verse of that too tell-tale Guido.
For Elsie was alive, and he must be a poet still. He must build up a fortune for himself and for Elsie.
Somebody touched his elbow as he sat there. He looked up, not without some passing tinge of annoyance. What a bore to be discovered! He didn’t want to be disturbed or recognized just then at Monte Carlo and with Winifred lying dead on her bed at San Remo!
It was a desultory London club acquaintance a member of the Savage and with him was the man who had come with Hugh in the train from Mentone.
“Hullo, Massinger,” the desultory Savage observed complacently: “who’d have ever thought of meeting you here. Down in the South for the winter, or on a visit? Come for pleasure, or is your wife with you? Whitestrand too much for you in a foggy English November, eh?”
Hugh made up his mind at once to his course of action: he would not say a single word about Winifred. “On a visit,” he answered, with some slight embarrassment. “I expect to stop only a week or two.” As a matter of fact, it was not his intention to remain very long after Winifred’s funeral. He was in haste, as things stood, to return t to England and Elsie. “I came over with your friend from Mentone this morning, Lock.”
“And he took you for a maniac, my dear boy,” the other answered with a quiet smile. “I’ve duly explained to him that you are not mad, most noble Massinger; you’re only a poet. The terms, though nearly, are not quite synonymous.” Then he added in French: “Let me introduce you now to one another. M. le Lieutenant Fedor Raffalevsky, of the Russian navy.”
M. Raffalevsky bowed politely. “I fear, Monsieur,” he said, with a courtly smile, “I caused you some slight surprise and discomfort by my peculiar demeanor in the train this morning. To tell you the truth, your attitude discomposed me. I was coming to Monte Carlo to join in the play, and I carried no less a sum for the purpose than three hundred thousand francs about my body. Not knowing I had to deal with a person of honor, I felt somewhat nervous, you may readily conceive, as to your muttered remarks and apparent abstraction. Figure to yourself my situation. So much money makes one naturally fanciful! Monsieur, I trust, will have the goodness to forgive me.”
“To say the truth,” Hugh answered frankly, “I was so much absorbed in my own thoughts that I scarcely noticed any little hesitation you may have happened to express in your looks and manner. Three hundred thousand francs is no doubt a very large sum. Why, it’s twelve thousand pounds sterling isn’t it, Lock? You mean to try your luck, then, en gros, Monsieur?”
The Russian smiled. “For once,” he answered, nodding his head good-humoredly. “I have a system, I believe; an infallible system. I’m a mathematician myself by taste and habit. I’ve invented a plan for tricking fortune the only safe one ever yet discovered.”
Hugh shook his head almost mechanically. “All systems alike are equally bad,” he replied in a politely careless tone. Gambler as he had always been by nature, he had too much common-sense to believe in martingales. “The bank’s bound to beat you in the long run, you know. It has the deepest purse, and must win in the end, if you go on long enough.”
The Russian’s face wore a calm expression of superior wisdom. “I know better,” he answered quietly. “I’ve worked for years at the doctrine of chances. I’ve calculated the odds to ten places of decimals. If I hadn’t, do you think I’d risk three hundred thousand francs on the mere turn of a wretched roulette table?”
The doors of the Casino were now open, and players were beginning to crowd the gambling rooms. “Let’s go in and watch him,” Lock suggested in English. “There can be no particular harm in looking on. I’m not a player myself like you, Massinger; but I want to see whether this fellow really wins or loses. He believes in his own system most profoundly I observe. He’s a very nice chap, the Paymaster of the Russian Mediterranean squadron. I picked him up at the Cercle Nautique at Nice last week; and he and I have been going everywhere in my yacht ever since together.”
“All right,” Hugh answered, with the horrible new-born careless glee of his recent emancipation. “I don’t mind twopence what I do to-day. Vogue la galere! I’m game for anything, from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter.’ never suspected himself how true those casual words of the stock slang expression were soon to become. Pitchand-toss first, and afterward manslaughter.
They strolled round together to the front of the Casino, that stately building in the gaudiest Hausmanmzed Parisian style, planted plump down with grotesque incongruity beneath the lofty crags of the Maritime Alps, palace of sin faces a large and handsome open square, with greensward and fountains and parterres of flowers; and all around stand coquettish shops, laid temptingly out with bonnets and jewelry and aesthetic products, for people who win largely disburse freely, and many ladies hover about the grounds, with fashionable dresses and shady antecedents, by no means slow to share the good fortune of the lucky and all too generous hero of the day. Hugh mounted the entrance staircase with the rest of the crowd, and pushed through the swinging glass doors of the Casino. Within, they came upon the large and spacious vestibule, its roof supported by solid marble and porphyry pillars. Presentation of their cards secured them the right of entry to the salles de jeu, for everything is free at Monte Carlo except the tables. You may go in and out of the rooms as you please, and enjoy for nothing so long as you are not fool enough to play the use of two hundred “European newspapers, and the music of a theater, where a splendid band discourses hourly to all comers the enlivening strains of Strauss and of Gungl. But all that is the merest prelude. The play itself, which forms the solid core of the entire entertainment, takes place in the gambling saloons on the left of the Casino.
Furnished with their indispensable little ticket of introduction, the three newcomers entered the rooms, and took their place tentatively by one of the tables. The Russian, selecting a seat at once, addressed himself to the task like one well accustomed to systematic gambling. Hugh and his acquaintance Lock stood idly behind, to watch the outcome of his infallible method.
And all the time, alone at San Remo, Winifred’s body lay on the solitary bed of death, attended only at long intervals by the waiting-women and landlady of the shabby pension.
CHAPTER XLIV.
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, MAKE YOUR GAME!”
Though play had only just begun when Hugh and his companions entered the saloon, the rooms were already pretty well crowded with regular visitors, wh
o came early to secure their accustomed seats, and who leaned forward with big rolls of gold piled high in columns on the table before them, marking down with a dot on their tablets the winning numbers, and staking their twenty or thirty napoleons with mechanical calmness on every turn of that fallacious whirligig. Hugh had often heard or read sensational descriptions of the eagerness depicted upon every face, the anxious gaze, the rapt attention, the obvious fascination of the game for its votaries; but what struck him rather on the first blush of it all was the exact opposite: the stolid indifference with which men and women alike, inured to the varying chances of the board, lost or won a couple of dozen pounds or so on each jump of the pea, as though it were a matter of the supremest unconcern to them in their capacity of gamblers whether they or the bank happened to take up each particular little heap of money. They seemed, indeed, to be mostly rich and blase people, suffering from a chronic plethora of the purse, who could afford to throw away their gold like water, and who threw it away carelessly out of pure wantonness, for the sake of the small modicum of passing excitement yielded by the uncertainty to their jaded palates.
One player in particular Hugh watched closely an austere-looking man with the air and carriage of a rural dean to detect if possible some trace of emotion in his eyes or muscles. He could observe none; the man’s features were rigid as if carved in stone. A slight twitching of the fingers from time to time perhaps faintly betrayed internal excitement; but that was all. The clear-cut face and thin lips moved no more than the busts of those Elizabethan Meyseys, hewn in marble or carved in wood, in the cold chancel at sand-swept Whitestrand.
Nevertheless, he remarked with surprise from the very first moment that even at that early hour of the morning, when the day’s work had hardly yet got well under way, the rooms, though large and lofty, were past all belief hot and close, doubtless from the strange number of feverish human hearts and lungs, all throbbing and panting their suppressed excitement, in that single Casino, and warming the air with their internal fires. He raised his eyes and glanced for a moment around the saloon. It was spacious and handsome, after its own gaudy fashion, richly decorated in the Mauresque style of the Spanish Alhambra, though with far less taste and harmony of color than in the restorations to which his eye had been long familiarized in London and Sydenham. At Monte Carlo, to say the truth, a certain subdued tinge of vulgar garishness just mars the native purity of the style into perfect accord with the nature and purposes of that temple of Mammon in his vilest avatar.
Hugh, however, for his part, had no scruples in the matter of gambling. He gazed up and down at the ten or twelve roulette tables that crowded the salles de jeu, with the utmost complacency. He liked to play, and it diverted him to watch it, especially when the man he meant to observe was the propounder of a new and infallible system. Infallible systems are always interesting: they collapse with a crash amusing to everybody except their propounder. He bent his eyes closely upon the hands of the Russian, who had now pulled out his roll of gold and silver, and was eagerly beginning to back his chosen numbers, doubtless with the blind and stupid confidence of the infatuated system-monger.
Raffalevsky, however, played a cautious opening. He started modestly with four five-franc pieces, distributed about on a distinct plan, and each of them staked on a separate number. The five-franc piece, in fact, is the minimum coin permitted to show its face on those aristocratic tables; and six thousand francs is the maximum sum which the bank allows any one player to hazard on a single twist of the roulette: between these extreme limits, all possible systems must needs confine themselves, so that the common martingale of doubling the stakes at each unsuccessful throw becomes here practically impossible. Raffalevsky’s play had been carefully calculated. Hugh, who was already well versed in the mysteries of roulette, could see at a glance that the Russian had really a method in his madness. He was working on strict mathematical principles. Sometimes he divided or decreased his stake; sometimes, at a bound, he trebled or quadrupled it. Sometimes he plunged on a single number; sometimes for several turns together he steadily backed either red or black, pair or impair. But on the whole, by hap or cunning, he really seemed to be winning rapidly. His sustained success made Hugh more anxious than ever to watch his play. It was clear he had invented a genuine system. Might it be after all, as he said, an infallible one?
If only Hugh could find it out! He must, he would marry Elsie. How grand to marry her, a rich man! He would love to lay at Elsie’s feet a fortune worthy of his beautiful Elsie.
Things were all changed now. He had something to live, to work, to gamble for! If only he could say to his recovered Elsie: “Take me, rich, famous, great take me, and Whitestrand, no longer sand-swept. I lay it all in your lap for your gracious acceptance these piles of gold these heaps of coins!” But he had nothing, nothing, save the few napoleons he carried about him. If he had but the Russian’s twelve thousand pounds now! he would play and win win a fortune at a stroke for his darling Elsie.
Fired with the thought, he watched Raffalevsky more closely than ever. In time, he began to perceive by degrees upon what principle the money was so regularly lost and won. It was a good principle, mathematically correct. Hugh worked it out hastily on the back of an envelope. Yes, in one hundred and twenty chances out of one hundred and thirty-seven, a man ought to win ten louis a turn, against seven lost, on an average reckoning. At last, Raffalevsky, after several good hazards, laid down five louis boldly upon 24. Hugh touched his shoulder with a gentle hand. “Wrong,” he murmured in French. “You make a mistake there. You abandon your principle. You ought to have backed 27 this time.”
The Russian looked back at him with an angry smile; so slight a scratch at once brought out the Tartar. “Back it yourself, then, Monsieur,” he said sullenly. “I make my own game. Pray, don’t interrupt me. If your calculations go so very deep, put your own money down, and try your luck against me. My principles, when I first discovered them, were not worked out on the back of an envelope.”
The gibe offended Hugh. In a second he saw that the fellow was wrong: he was misinterpreting the nature of his own disco very. He had neglected one obvious element of the problem. The error was mathematical: Hugh snapped at it mentally with his keen perception he had taken a first in mathematics at Oxford and noted at once that if the Russian pursued his present course for many turns together he was certain before long to go under hopelessly. For the space of one deep breath he hesitated and held back. What was the use of gambling with no capital to go upon? Then, more for the sake of proving himself right than of winning money, he dived into his pocket with a sudden resolution, and drawing forth five napoleons from his scanty purse, laid them without a word on 27, and awaited patiently the result of his action.
“The game is made,” the croupier called out as Hugh withdrew his hand. After that warning signal, no stakes can be further received or altered. Whir-r-r went the roulette. The pea spun round with whizzing speed. Hugh looked on, all eager, in a fever of suspense. He half regretted he had backed 27. He was sure to lose The chances, after all, were so enormous against him. Thirty-six to one! If you win it’s a fluke. What a fool he had been to run the risk of making himself look small in this gratuitous way before the cold eyes of that unfeeling Russian!
He knew he was right, of course: 27 was the system. But a sensible system never hangs upon a single throw. It depends upon a long calculation of chances. You must let one risk balance another. Raffalevsky had twelve thousand pounds to fall back upon. If he failed once, to him that didn’t matter: he could go on still and recoup himself in the end by means of the system. Only under such circumstances of a full purse can any method of gambling ever by any possibility be worth anything. Broken reeds at the best, even for a Rothschild, they must almost necessarily pierce the hand that leans upon them if it ventures to try them on a petty scrap of pocket capital. And Hugh’s capital was grotesquely scrappy for such a large venture he had only some seventy-five pounds about him.
How swift is thought, and how long a time it seemed before the pea jumped! He had reasoned out all this, and a thousandfold more, in his own mind with lightning speed while that foolish wheel was still whirling and spinning. If he won at all, it could only be by a rare stroke of fickle fortune. Thirty-six to one were the odds against him! And if he lost, he must either leave off at once, or else, in accordance with the terms of the system, stake ten louis next turn on 14, or nine louis on odd or even. At that rate, his poor little capital would soon be exhausted. How he longed for Raffalevsky’s twelve thousand to draw upon! He would feel so small if 27 lost. And if there was anything on earth that Hugh Massinger hated it was feeling small: the sense of ignominy, and its opposite, the feeling of personal dignity, were deeply rooted in the very base and core of his selfish nature.
At last the pea jumped. A breathless second! The croupier looked over at it and watched it fall. “Vingtsept,” he cried in his stereotyped tone. Hugh’s heart leaped up with a sudden wild bound. The fever of play had seized on him now. He had won at a stroke a hundred and seventy-five louis.
Here was a capital indeed upon which to begin. He would back his own system with this against Raffalevsky’s. Or rather, he would back Raffalevsky’s discovery, as rightly apprehended and worked out by himself, against Raffalevsky’s discovery as wrongly applied and distorted through an essential error of detail by its original inventor.
It was system pitted against system now. The croupier raked in the scattered gold heaped on the various cabalistic numbers, squares, and diamonds and amongst them, Raffalevsky’s five napoleons upon 24. Then he paid the lucky players their gains; counting out three thousand five hundred francs with practised ease, and handing them to Hugh, who was one among the principal winners by that particular turn. In two minutes more, the board was cleared; the wooden cue had hauled in all the bank’s receipts; the fortunate players had added their winnings to the heap before them; and all was ready for a further venture. “Messieurs et mesdames, faites le jeu,” the harsh voice of the croupier cried mechanically. The players laid down their stakes once more; the croupier waited the accustomed interval. “Le jeu est fait, rien ne va plus,” he cried at last; and the pea again went buzzing and whizzing. Hugh was backing his system this time on the regular rule: three louis on the left-hand row of numbers.