The Gambler Part 93

Clodagh took the cards from him, and stood very still, fingering them nervously. At any other time, the thought of playing with cards that belonged to the dead would have filled her with repugnance; but to-night all ordinary standards had been lost--all the world was chaos.

She was like one who is slipping down into a bottomless abyss, and stretches desperate hands towards any straw that might offer respite.

She never changed her position while the table was being cleared; her only sign of emotion still being shown by the spasmodic way in which she pa.s.sed the cards between her fingers. When at last the cloth had been removed and the candles replaced, she came quickly across the room and stood looking down upon her cousin.

She still mechanically shuffled the cards; but her glance, as it rested on a.s.shlin, was unconscious and absorbed, seeing only its own mental pictures.

"What shall we play, Larry? What game can two people play?"

a.s.shlin looked up.

"Piquet," he said, "or euchre."

She nodded.

"Euchre! Yes, euchre!" She drew a chair up to the table and sat down.

"What stakes?"

a.s.shlin looked uncertain.

"You say!" he suggested a little diffidently.

She gave a nervous start, as a fresh gale shook the windows.

"Thirty shillings a game? Twenty shillings a game?"

For an instant he looked at her amazed; but seeing the unconsciousness of her expression, his breeding forbade him to offer any objection.

With a reckless excitement he had never before had opportunity to feel, he leant back in his chair, and taking up the gla.s.s Burke had set beside him, poured out some port and drank it.

"Thirty shillings a game!" he said magnificently.

Clodagh did not seem to hear; certainly she saw nothing of his scruple and his yielding. Her own thoughts rode and spurred her, pressing her forward in a wild, panic-stricken search for oblivion.

"Come, Larry! Play!--play! I feel"--she paused and laughed hysterically--"I feel that, if I were a man to-night, I should drink all the port in that bottle! I want to forget everything. Play!--play!"

a.s.shlin picked up the cards that she had laid upon the table. He could not understand her in this new mood; but he was satisfied not to understand her. He felt stimulated--lifted above himself--as he had never been before.

For two hours they played, with luck evenly balanced; then a.s.shlin made a reluctant attempt to draw out his watch.

"Did you hear that?" he said, as the wind roared up from the sea like an invading army. "I ought to be getting home. She'll be worrying about me."

He spoke firmly enough, but his eyes wandered back to the cards.

Clodagh rose, and, crossing to the sideboard, poured some water into a gla.s.s and drank it.

"No! no!" she said eagerly. "It's quite early. It's only eleven. She won't expect you yet."

He put his watch back into his pocket; Clodagh returned to her place at the table; and the play went on.

By twelve o'clock a change had come in their positions. Fortune was no longer impartial; and Clodagh stood the winner by several games. Again a.s.shlin made a movement towards departure. His face was flushed now, and a look of alarm had begun to mingle with his excitement.

"I--I ought to be going now, Clo," he said a little huskily.

Clodagh gave a sharp laugh. At last it seemed to her that she was drowning thought--holding at bay the black sense of loss and agony that threatened to inundate her soul. She threw up her head, and her eyes challenged her cousin's.

"You are a coward if you go now, Larry! You are afraid to take your revenge!"

He coloured like a girl, and gave a half-angry, half-embarra.s.sed laugh.

"Don't say that, Clo!"

"Then will you play?"

"I--I oughtn't to."

Again Clodagh laughed--a laugh so nervous and high-pitched that it rang almost harshly across the room.

"Then you're not an a.s.shlin!"

"Am I not?" He tilted his chair forward, and leaned upon the table.

"Let's see! Come along! I'm game for anything after that!"

There was a new note in his voice--a fiery note, that seemed to challenge fate and throw reason to the winds.

It stirred some latent power in Clodagh's brain. A faint colour crossed the pallor of her face; she half rose from her seat.

"Shall we 'play like the devil,' as father used to say?"

a.s.shlin threw up his head. It was as if flint and steel had struck--the spark followed inevitably.

"Yes!" he cried; "we'll play like the devil!"

At one o'clock they rose from the table. Clodagh's face was white again; but a.s.shlin's was deeply flushed; and as he stood up, confronting his cousin, it almost seemed that he had drunk more than the two gla.s.ses of port to which the bottle testified.

"I must go now, Clo," he said. "May I ring for Burke to get me a lantern?"

Clodagh took a step forward.

"Stay the night, Larry? You can have father's room."

He shook his head and crossed to the fireplace.

"I owe you forty pounds," he said in an unsteady voice. "I'll leave thirty here"--he drew out the notes he had shown her at Carrigmore, and laid them under the clock on the mantelpiece--"the other ten I'll--I'll give you to-morrow."

But Clodagh scarcely heard.

"Do stay! Oh, do stay!"