Gallegher and Other Stories Part 10

He turned away, rubbing his hand across his forehead. He wished so much that this woman would leave him by himself.

"Ah, but, sir," cried the girl, desperately, and touching his coat, "you who are so fortunate, and so rich, and of the great world, you cannot feel what this is to me. To have my own little shop and to be free, and not to slave, and sew, and sew until my back and fingers burn with the pain. Speak to him, sir; ah, speak to him! It is so easy a thing to do, and he will listen to you."

The Goodwood Plunger turned again abruptly. "Where is he?" he said.

"Point him out to me."

The woman ran ahead, with a murmur of grat.i.tude, to the open door and pointed to where her husband was standing leaning over and placing some money on one of the tables. He was a handsome young Frenchman, as _bourgeois_ as his wife, and now terribly alive and excited. In the self-contained air of the place and in contrast with the silence of the great hall he seemed even more conspicuously out of place. The Plunger touched him on the arm, and the Frenchman shoved the hand off impatiently and without looking around. The Plunger touched him again and forced him to turn toward him.

"Well!" said the Frenchman, quickly. "Well?"

"Madame, your wife," said Cecil, with the grave politeness of an old man, "has done me the honor to take me into her confidence. She tells me that you have won a great deal of money; that you could put it to good use at home, and so save yourselves much drudgery and debt, and all that sort of trouble. You are quite right if you say it is no concern of mine. It is not. But really, you know there is a great deal of sense in what she wants, and you have apparently already won a large sum."

The Frenchman was visibly surprised at this approach. He paused for a second or two in some doubt, and even awe, for the disinherited one carried the mark of a personage of consideration and of one whose position is secure. Then he gave a short, unmirthful laugh.

"You are most kind, sir," he said with mock politeness and with an impatient shrug. "But madame, my wife, has not done well to interest a stranger in this affair, which, as you say, concerns you not."

He turned to the table again with a defiant swagger of independence and placed two rolls of money upon the cloth, casting at the same moment a childish look of displeasure at his wife. "You see," said the Plunger, with a deprecatory turning out of his hands. But there was so much grief on the girl's face that he turned again to the gambler and touched his arm. He could not tell why he was so interested in these two. He had witnessed many such scenes before, and they had not affected him in any way except to make him move out of hearing. But the same dumb numbness in his head, which made so many things seem possible that should have been terrible even to think upon, made him stubborn and unreasonable over this. He felt intuitively--it could not be said that he thought--that the woman was right and the man wrong, and so he grasped him again by the arm, and said sharply this time:

"Come away! Do you hear? You are acting foolishly."

But even as he spoke the red won, and the Frenchman with a boyish gurgle of pleasure raked in his winnings with his two hands, and then turned with a happy, triumphant laugh to his wife. It is not easy to convince a man that he is making a fool of himself when he is winning some hundred francs every two minutes. His silent arguments to the contrary are difficult to answer. But the Plunger did not regard this in the least.

"Do you hear me?" he said in the same stubborn tone and with much the same manner with which he would have spoken to a groom. "Come away."

Again the Frenchman tossed off his hand, this time with an execration, and again he placed the rolls of gold coin on the red; and again the red won.

"My G.o.d!" cried the girl, running her fingers over the rolls on the table, "he has won half of the 20,000 francs. Oh, sir, stop him, stop him!" she cried. "Take him away."

"Do you hear me!" cried the Plunger, excited to a degree of utter self-forgetfulness, and carried beyond himself; "you've got to come with me."

"Take away your hand," whispered the young Frenchman, fiercely. "See, I shall win it all; in one grand _coup_ I shall win it all. I shall win five years' pay in one moment."

He swept all of the money forward on the red and threw himself over the table to see the wheel.

"Wait, confound you!" whispered the Plunger, excitedly. "If you will risk it, risk it with some reason. You can't play all that money; they won't take it. Six thousand francs is the limit, unless," he ran on quickly, "you divide the 12,000 francs among the three of us. You understand, 6,000 francs is all that any one person can play; but if you give 4,000 to me, and 4,000 to your wife, and keep 4,000 yourself, we can each chance it. You can back the red if you like, your wife shall put her money on the numbers coming up below eighteen, and I will back the odd. In that way you stand to win 24,000 francs if our combination wins, and you lose less than if you simply back the color. Do you understand?"

"No!" cried the Frenchman, reaching for the piles of money which the Plunger had divided rapidly into three parts, "on the red; all on the red!"

"Good heavens, man!" cried the Plunger, bitterly. "I may not know much, but you should allow me to understand this dirty business." He caught the Frenchman by the wrists, and the young man, more impressed with the strange look in the boy's face than by his physical force, stood still, while the ball rolled and rolled, and clicked merrily, and stopped, and balanced, and then settled into the "seven."

"Red, odd, and below," the croupier droned mechanically.

"Ah! you see; what did I tell you?" said the Plunger, with sudden calmness. "You have won more than your 20,000 francs; you are proprietors--I congratulate you!"

"Ah, my G.o.d!" cried the Frenchman, in a frenzy of delight, "I will double it."

He reached toward the fresh piles of coin as if he meant to sweep them back again, but the Plunger put himself in his way and with a quick movement caught up the rolls of money and dropped them into the skirt of the woman, which she raised like an ap.r.o.n to receive her treasure.

"Now," said young Harringford, determinedly, "you come with me." The Frenchman tried to argue and resist, but the Plunger pushed him on with the silent stubbornness of a drunken man. He handed the woman into a carriage at the door, shoved her husband in beside her, and while the man drove to the address she gave him, he told the Frenchman, with an air of a chief of police, that he must leave Monte Carlo at once, that very night.

"Do you suppose I don't know?" he said. "Do you fancy I speak without knowledge? I've seen them come here rich and go away paupers. But you shall not; you shall keep what you have and spite them." He sent the woman up to her room to pack while he expostulated with and browbeat the excited bridegroom in the carriage. When she returned with the bag packed, and so heavy with the gold that the servants could hardly lift it up beside the driver, he ordered the coachman to go down the hill to the station.

"The train for Paris leaves at midnight," he said, "and you will be there by morning. Then you must close your bargain with this old Carbut, and never return here again."

The Frenchman had turned during the ride from an angry, indignant prisoner to a joyful madman, and was now tearfully and effusively humble in his pet.i.tions for pardon and in his thanks. Their benefactor, as they were pleased to call him, hurried them into the waiting train and ran to purchase their tickets for them.

"Now," he said, as the guard locked the door of the compartment, "you are alone, and no one can get in, and you cannot get out. Go back to your home, to your new home, and never come to this wretched place again. Promise me--you understand?--never again!"

They promised with effusive reiteration. They embraced each other like children, and the man, pulling off his hat, called upon the good Lord to thank the gentleman.

"You will be in Paris, will you not?" said the woman, in an ecstasy of pleasure, "and you will come to see us in our own shop, will you not?

Ah! we should be so greatly honored, sir, if you would visit us; if you would come to the home you have given us. You have helped us so greatly, sir," she said; "and may Heaven bless you!"

She caught up his gloved hand as it rested on the door and kissed it until he s.n.a.t.c.hed it away in great embarra.s.sment and flushing like a girl. Her husband drew her toward him, and the young bride sat at his side with her face close to his and wept tears of pleasure and of excitement.

"Ah, look, sir!" said the young man, joyfully; "look how happy you have made us. You have made us happy for the rest of our lives."

The train moved out with a quick, heavy rush, and the car-wheels took up the young stranger's last words and seemed to say, "You have made us happy--made us happy for the rest of our lives."

It had all come about so rapidly that the Plunger had had no time to consider or to weigh his motives, and all that seemed real to him now, as he stood alone on the platform of the dark, deserted station, were the words of the man echoing and re-echoing like the refrain of the song. And then there came to him suddenly, and with all the force of a gambler's superst.i.tion, the thought that the words were the same as those which his father had used in his letter, "you can make us happy for the rest of our lives."

"Ah," he said, with a quick gasp of doubt, "if I could! If I made those poor fools happy, mayn't I live to be something to him, and to her? O G.o.d!" he cried, but so gently that one at his elbow could not have heard him, "if I could, if I could!"

He tossed up his hands, and drew them down again and clenched them in front of him, and raised his tired, hot eyes to the calm purple sky with its millions of moving stars. "Help me!" he whispered fiercely, "help me." And as he lowered his head the queer numb feeling seemed to go, and a calm came over his nerves and left him in peace. He did not know what it might be, nor did he dare to question the change which had come to him, but turned and slowly mounted the hill, with the awe and fear still upon him of one who had pa.s.sed beyond himself for one brief moment into another world. When he reached his room he found his servant bending with an anxious face over a letter which he tore up guiltily as his master entered. "You were writing to my father," said Cecil, gently, "were you not? Well, you need not finish your letter; we are going home.

"I am going away from this place, Walters," he said as he pulled off his coat and threw himself heavily on the bed. "I will take the first train that leaves here, and I will sleep a little while you put up my things.

The first train, you understand--within an hour, if it leaves that soon." His head sank back on the pillows heavily, as though he had come in from a long, weary walk, and his eyes closed and his arms fell easily at his side. The servant stood frightened and yet happy, with the tears running down his cheeks, for he loved his master dearly.

"We are going home, Walters," the Plunger whispered drowsily. "We are going home; home to England and Harringford and the governor--and we are going to be happy for all the rest of our lives." He paused a moment, and Walters bent forward over the bed and held his breath to listen.

"For he came to me," murmured the boy, as though he was speaking in his sleep, "when I was yet a great way off--while I was yet a great way off, and ran to meet me--"

His voice sank until it died away into silence, and a few hours later, when Walters came to wake him, he found his master sleeping like a child and smiling in his sleep.

THE CYNICAL MISS CATHERWAIGHT

Miss Catherwaight's collection of orders and decorations and medals was her chief offence in the eyes of those of her dear friends who thought her clever but cynical.

All of them were willing to admit that she was clever, but some of them said she was clever only to be unkind.

Young Van Bibber had said that if Miss Catherwaight did not like dances and days and teas, she had only to stop going to them instead of making unpleasant remarks about those who did. So many people repeated this that young Van Bibber believed finally that he had said something good, and was somewhat pleased in consequence, as he was not much given to that sort of thing.

Mrs. Catherwaight, while she was alive, lived solely for society, and, so some people said, not only lived but died for it. She certainly did go about a great deal, and she used to carry her husband away from his library every night of every season and left him standing in the doorways of drawing-rooms, outwardly courteous and distinguished looking, but inwardly somnolent and unhappy. She was a born and trained social leader, and her daughter's coming out was to have been the greatest effort of her life. She regarded it as an event in the dear child's lifetime second only in importance to her birth; equally important with her probable marriage and of much more poignant interest than her possible death. But the great effort proved too much for the mother, and she died, fondly remembered by her peers and tenderly referred to by a great many people who could not even show a card for her Thursdays. Her husband and her daughter were not going out, of necessity, for more than a year after her death, and then felt no inclination to begin over again, but lived very much together and showed themselves only occasionally.