Weird Tales Volume II Part 13

"He raised her up and strained her to his heart with painful pa.s.sionate intensity, saying in a hoa.r.s.e voice, 'Angela, my dear sweet Angela! It can't be helped now, indeed it must be so; I must go on with it, for I can't let it alone. But to-morrow--to-morrow all your troubles shall be over, for by the Eternal Destiny that rules over us I swear that to-day shall be the last time I will play. Quiet yourself, my dear good child--go and sleep--dream of happy days to come, of a better life that is in store for you; that will bring good-luck.' Herewith he kissed his wife and hurried off before she could stop him.

"Two _tailles_, and the Chevalier had lost all--all. He stood beside the Colonel, staring upon the faro-table in moody senselessness.

"'Are you not punting any more, Chevalier?' said the Colonel, shuffling the cards for a new _taille_, 'I have lost all,' replied the Chevalier, forcing himself with an effort to be calm.

"'Have you really nothing left?' asked the Colonel at the next _taille_.

"'I am a beggar,' cried the Chevalier, his voice trembling with rage and mortification; and he continued to stare fiercely upon the table without observing that the players were gaining more and more advantages over the banker.

"The Colonel went on playing quietly. But whilst shuffling the cards for the following _taille_, he said in a low voice, without looking at the Chevalier, 'But you have a beautiful wife.'

"'What do you mean by that?' burst out the Chevalier angrily. The Colonel drew his cards without making any answer.

"'Ten thousand ducats or--Angela!' said the Colonel, half turning round whilst the cards were being cut.

"'You are mad!' exclaimed the Chevalier, who now began to observe on coming more to himself that the Colonel continually lost and lost again.

"'Twenty thousand ducats against Angela!' said the Colonel in a low voice, pausing for a moment in his shuffling of the cards.

"The Chevalier did not reply. The Colonel went on playing, and almost all the cards fell to the players' side.

"'Taken!' whispered the Chevalier in the Colonel's ear, as the new _taille_ began, and he pushed the queen on the table.

"In the next draw the queen had lost. The Chevalier drew back from the table, grinding his teeth, and in despair stood leaning in a window, his face deathly pale.

"Play was over. 'Well, and what's to be done now?' were the Colonel's mocking words as he stepped up to the Chevalier.

"'Ah!' cried the Chevalier, quite beside himself, 'you have made me a beggar, but you must be insane to imagine that you could win my wife.

Are we on the islands? is my wife a slave, exposed as a mere _thing_ to the brutal arbitrariness of a reprobate man, that he may trade with her, gamble with her? But it is true! You would have had to pay twenty thousand ducats if the queen had won, and so I have lost all right to raise a protest if my wife is willing to leave me to follow you. Come along with me, and despair when you see how my wife will repel you with detestation when you propose to her that she shall follow you as your shameless mistress.'

"'You will be the one to despair,' replied the Colonel, with a mocking, scornful laugh; 'you will be the one to despair, Chevalier, when Angela turns with abhorrence from you--you, the abandoned sinner, who have made her life miserable--and flies into my arms in rapture and delight; you will be the one to despair when you learn that we have been united by the blessing of the Church, and that our dearest wishes are crowned with happiness. You call me insane. Ho! ho! All I wanted to win was the right to claim her, for of Angela herself I am sure. Ho! ho! Chevalier, let me inform you that your wife loves _me_--_me_, with unspeakable love: let me inform you that I am that Duvernet, the neighbour's son, who was brought up along with Angela, bound to her by ties of the most ardent affection--he whom you drove away by means of your diabolical devices. Ah! it was not until I had to go away to the wars that Angela became conscious to herself of what I was to her; I know all. It was too late. The Spirit of Evil suggested to me the idea that I might ruin you in play, and so I took to gambling--followed you to Genoa,--and now I have succeeded. Away now to your wife.'

"The Chevalier was almost annihilated, like one upon whose head had fallen the most disastrous blows of fortune. Now he saw to the bottom of that mysterious secret, now he saw for the first time the full extent of the misfortune which he had brought upon poor Angela.

'Angela, my wife, shall decide,' he said hoa.r.s.ely, and followed the Colonel, who was hurrying off at full speed.

"On reaching the house the Colonel laid his hand upon the latch of Angela's chamber; but the Chevalier pushed him back, saying, 'My wife is asleep. Do you want to rouse her up out of her sweet sleep?'

"'Hm!' replied the Colonel. 'Has Angela ever enjoyed sweet sleep since you brought all this nameless misery upon her?' Again the Colonel attempted to enter the chamber; but the Chevalier threw himself at his feet and screamed, frantic with despair, 'Be merciful. Let me keep my wife; you have made me a beggar, but let me keep my wife.'

"'That's how old Vertua lay at your feet, you miscreant dead to all feeling, and could not move your stony heart; may Heaven's vengeance overtake you for it.' Thus spoke the Colonel; and he again strode towards Angela's chamber.

"The Chevalier sprang towards the door, tore it open, rushed to the bed in which his wife lay, and drew back the curtains, crying, 'Angela!

Angela!' Bending over her, he grasped her hand; but all at once he shook and trembled in mortal anguish and cried in a thundering voice, 'Look! look! you have won my wife's corpse.'

"Perfectly horrified, the Colonel approached the bed; no sign of life!--Angela was dead--dead.

"Then the Colonel doubled his fist and shook it heavenwards, and rushed out of the room uttering a fearful cry. Nothing more was ever heard of him."

This was the end of the stranger's tale; and the Baron was so shaken that before he could say anything the stranger had hastily risen from the seat and gone away.

A few days later the stranger was found in his room suffering from apoplexy of the nerves. He never opened his mouth up to the moment of his death, which ensued after the lapse of a few hours. His papers proved that, though he called himself Bauda.s.son simply, he was no less a person than the unhappy Chevalier Menars himself.

The Baron recognised it as a warning from Heaven, that Chevalier Menars had been led across his path to save him just as he was approaching the brink of the precipice; he vowed that he would withstand all the seductions of the gambler's deceptive luck.

Up till now he has faithfully kept his word.

FOOTNOTES TO "GAMBLER'S LUCK":

[Footnote 1: In faro the keeper of the bank plays against all the rest of the players (who are called _punters_). He has a full pack; they have but a single complete suit. The punters may stake what they please upon any card they please, except in so far as rules may have been made to the contrary by the banker. After the cards have been cut, the banker proceeds to take off the two top cards one after the other, placing the first at his right hand, and the second at his left, each with the face uppermost. Any punter who has staked a card which bears exactly the same number of "peeps" as the card turned up on the banker's right hand loses the stake to the latter; but if it bears the same number of "peeps" as the card on the banker's left, it is the banker who has to pay the punter a sum equal to the value of his stake.

The twenty-six drawings which a full pack allows the banker to make are called a _taille_.

This general sketch will help to make the text intelligible for the most part without going into minor technicalities of the game.]

[Footnote 2: The words "win," "lose," with which the banker places the two cards on the table, the first to his right for himself, the second on his left for the punter.]

[Footnote 3: The new _Louis d'or_ were worth somewhat less than the old coins of the time of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. (See note, p. 175.)]

[Footnote 4: The banker's a.s.sistants, who shuffle cards for him, change cheques, notes, and make themselves generally useful.]

[Footnote 5: Malmaison is a chateau and park situated about six miles W. of Paris. It once belonged to Richelieu; and there the Empress Josephine lived, and there she died on the 13th May, 1814.]

[Footnote 6: "_Va bout_" or "_Va banque_" meant a challenge to the bank to the full amount of the highest limit of play, and if the punter won he virtually broke the bank.]

[Footnote 7: The first silver ducat is believed to have been struck in 1140 by Roger II., Norman king of Sicily; and ducats have been struck constantly since the twelfth century, especially at Venice (see _Merchant of Venice_). They have varied considerably both in weight and fineness, and consequently in value, at different times and places. Ducats have been struck in both gold and silver. The early Venetian silver ducat was worth about five shillings. The name is said, according to one account, to have been derived from the last word of the Latin legend found on the earliest Venetian gold coins:--_Sit tibi, Christe, datus, quem tu regis, ducatus_ (duchy); according to another account it is taken from "_il ducato_," the name generally applied to the duchy of Apulia. (Note, page 98, Vol. I.)]

_MASTER JOHANNES WACHT._[1]

At the time when people in the beautiful and pleasant town of Bamberg lived, according to the well-known saying, well, _i.e._, under the crook, namely in the end of the previous century, there was also one inhabitant, a man belonging to the burgher cla.s.s, who might be called in every respect both singular and eminent His name was Johannes Wacht, and his trade was that of a carpenter.

Nature, in weighing and definitely determining her children's destinies, pursues her own dark inscrutable path; and all that is claimed by convenience, and by the opinions and considerations which prevail in man's narrow existence, as determining factors in settling the true tendency of every man's self. Nature regards as nothing more than the pert play of deluded children imagining themselves to be wise.

But short-sighted man often finds an insuperable irony in the contradiction between the conviction of his own mind and the mysterious ordering of this inscrutable Power, who first nourished and fed him at her maternal bosom and then deserted him; and this irony fills him with terror and awe, since it threatens to annihilate his own self.

The mother of Life does not choose for her favourites either the palaces of the great or the state-apartments of princes. And so she made our Johannes, who, as the kindly reader will soon learn, might be called one of her most richly endowed favourites, first see the light of the world on a wretched heap of straw, in the workshop of an impoverished master turner in Augsburg. His mother died of want and from suffering soon after the child's birth, and his father followed her after the lapse of a few months.

The town government had to take charge of the helpless boy; and when the Council's master carpenter, a well-to-do, respectable man, who found in the child's face, notwithstanding that it was pinched with hunger, certain traits which pleased him,--when he would not suffer the boy to be lodged in a public inst.i.tution, but took him into his own house, in order to bring him up along with his own children, then there dawned upon Johannes his first genial ray of sunshine, heralding a happier lot in the future.

In an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time the boy's frame developed, so that it was difficult to believe that the little insignificant creature in the cradle had really been the shapeless colourless chrysalis out of which this pretty, living, golden-locked boy had proceeded, like a beautiful b.u.t.terfly. But--what seemed of more importance--along with this pleasing grace of physical form the boy soon displayed such eminent intellectual faculties as astonished both his foster-father and his teachers. Johannes grew up in a workshop which sent forth some of the best and highest work that mechanical skill was able to produce, since the master carpenter to the Council was constantly engaged upon the most important buildings. No wonder, therefore, that the child's mind, which caught up everything with such keen clear perception, should be excited thereby, and should feel all his heart drawn towards a trade the deeper significance of which, in so far as it was concerned with the material creation of great and bold ideas, he dimly felt deep down in his soul. The joy that this bent of the orphan's mind occasioned his foster-father may well be conceived; and hence he felt persuaded to teach the boy all practical matters himself with great care and attention, and furthermore, when he had grown into a youth, to have him instructed by the cleverest masters in all the higher branches of knowledge connected with the trade, both theoretical and practical, such as, for instance, drawing, architecture, mechanics, &c.

Our Johannes was four and twenty years of age when the old master carpenter died; and even at that time his foster-son was a thoroughly experienced and skilful journeyman in all branches of his craft, whose equal could not be found far and near. At this period Johannes set out, along with his true and faithful comrade Engelbrecht, on the usual journeyman's[2] travels.

Herewith you know, indulgent reader, all that it is needful to know about the youth of our worthy Wacht; and it only remains to tell you in a few words how it was that he came to settle in Bamberg and how he became master there.