The Daltons Volume II Part 39

In accordance with the popular superst.i.tion of the play-table, Dalton's luck was an overmatch for all the skill of more accomplished gamblers; knowing nothing whatever of the game, only aware when he had won or lost, by seeing that his stake had doubled or disappeared, he was an immense winner. Night after night the same fortune attended him, and so unerringly seemed all his calculations made, that the very caprices of his play looked like well-studied and deep combinations. If many of the bystanders were disposed to this opinion, the "bankers" thought otherwise; they knew that,-in the end, the hour of retribution must come, and, through all their losses, not only observed every mark of courteous deference towards him, but by many a bland smile and many a polite gesture seemed to intimate the pleasure they felt in his good fortune. This was all that was wanting to fill up the measure of Dalton's delight.

"There isn't a bit of envy or bad feeling about them chaps," he would often say; "whether I carry away forty Naps, or four hundred of a night, they 're just as civil. Faix! he knew many a born gentleman might take a lesson from them."

So long as he continued to win, Dalton felt comparatively little interest in play, beyond the notice his presence and his large stakes were sure to excite. As a game it possessed no hold upon him; and when he had changed his heaps of glittering gold for notes, he arose to leave the table, and to forget all that had occurred there as matters of no possible interest to remember.

Such was no longer the case when fortune turned. Then, and for the first time, the gambler's pa.s.sion awoke in his heart, and the sting of defeat sent its pangs through him. The prying, searching looks of the by-standers, too, were a dreadful ordeal; for all were curious to see how he bore his losses, and Dalton was no accomplished gamester who could lose with all the impa.s.sive gravity of seeming indifference. Still less was he gifted with that philosophy of the play-table that teaches a timely retreat before adverse fortune. He knew nothing of those sage maxims by which the regular gambler controls his temper and regulates his conduct; nor had he learned the art by which good and sterling qualities, the gifts of n.o.ble natures, can be brought into the service of a low and degrading vice! Dalton, it must be owned, was what is called "a bad loser,"--that is, he lost his temper with his money; and the more steadily luck seemed against him the more determinedly did he "back his fortune." Now doubling, now trebling his stake, he lost considerable sums; till at last, as the hand of the clock stood within a few minutes of the closing hour, he emptied the remainder of his bag upon the table, and, without counting, set it all upon a card.

"Rouge perd et couleur!" cried the banker, and raked in the glittering heap; and, amid a murmur of half-compa.s.sionate astonishment, Peter arose from the table. Mrs. Ricketts and her suite were all in the ball-room, but Dalton only remembered them when he had gained the open air. The terrible shock of his reverse had overwhelmed all his faculties, and almost stunned him to unconsciousness. At last he bethought him of his guests; but it was some time before he could summon sufficient composure of look to go in search of them. He had been so accustomed--to use his own phrase--"to ride the winner," that he did n't know how to face the company as a beaten man. He thought of all the glances of impertinent pity his presence would call forth, and imagined the buzz of remark and comment every line of his features would give rise to. Poor Peter!--little knew he that such signs of sympathy are never given to the very saddest of misfortunes, and that, in such a society, no one wastes a thought upon his neighbor's reverses, except when they serve as a guide to himself.

He did, indeed, overhear from time to time little broken sentences like these: "The old fellow with the white moustache has had a squeeze 'to-night.'" "He caught it heavy and thick." "Must have lost close on a thousand Naps." "Bank walked into him;" and so on,----comments as free from any tone of sympathy as the proudest heart could possibly have asked for. But even these were easier to bear than the little playful cajoleries of Mrs. Ricketts on his supposed successes.

Knowing him to be a frequent winner, and hearing from Scroope the large sums he occasionally carried away, she invariably accosted him with some little jesting rebuke on his "dreadful luck"--that "wicked good fortune"--that would follow him in everything and everywhere.

Purvis had been a close spectator of all that went on this unlucky evening, and was actually occupied with his pencil in calculating the losses when Peter entered the room.

"He had above eighteen or twenty bank-notes of a th-thousand francs,"

cried he, "when he be-be-began the evening. They are all gone now. He played at least a dozen 'rouleaux' of fifty Naps.; and as to the bag, I can m-make no guess how m-m-much it held."

"I 'll tell you then, sir," said Peter, good-humoredly, as he just overheard the last remark. "The bag held three hundred and eighty Napoleons; and as you 're pretty correct in the other items, you 'll not be far from the mark by adding about fifty or sixty Naps, for little bets here and there."

"What coolness, what stoical indifference!" whispered Mrs. Ricketts to Martha, but loud enough for Dalton to hear. "That is so perfectly Irish; they can be as impetuous as the Italian, and possess all the self-restraint and impa.s.sive bearing of the Indian warrior."

"But w-w-why did you go on, when luck was a-a-gainst you?"

"Who told me it was against me till I lost all my money?" cried Dalton.

"If the first reverse was to make a man feel beat, it would be a very cowardly world, Mr. Purvis."

"Intensely Iris.h.!.+" sighed Mrs. Ricketts.

"Well, maybe it is," broke in Peter, who was not in a mood to accept anything in a complimentary sense. "Irish it may be; and as you remarked a minute ago, we're little better than savages--"

"Oh, Mr. Dalton,----dear Mr. Dalton!"

"No matter; I'm not angry, ma'am. The newspapers says as bad,--ay, worse, every day of the week. But what I 'm observing is, that the man that could teach me how to keep my money could never have taught me how to win it You know the old proverb about the 'faint heart, 'Mr. Purvis?"

"Yes; but I----I----I don't want a f-f-fair lady!"

"Faix! I believe you're right there, my little chap," said Peter, laughing heartily, and at once recovering all his wonted good-humor at the sound of his own mellow-toned mirth; and in this pleasant mood he gave an arm to each of his fair companions, and led them into the supper-room. There was an ostentatious desire for display in the order Dalton gave that evening to the waiter. It seemed as if he wished to appear perfectly indifferent about his losses. The table was covered with a costly profusion that attracted general notice. Wines of the rarest and most precious vintages stood on the sideboard. Dalton did the honors with even more than his accustomed gayety. There was a stimulant in that place at the head of the table; there was some magical influence in the duty of host that never failed with him. The sense of sway and power that ambitious minds feel in high and pre-eminent stations were all his, as he sat at the top of his board; and it must be owned that with many faults of manner, and many shortcomings on the score of taste, yet Peter did the honors of his table well and gracefully.

Certain is it Mrs. Ricketts and her friends thought so. Zoe was in perfect ecstasies at the readiness of his repartees and the endless variety of his anecdotes. He reminded her at once of Sheridan and "poor dear Mirabeau," and various other "beaux esprits" she used to live with.

Martha listened to him with sincere pleasure. Purvis grew very tipsy in the process of his admiration, and the old General, suddenly brought back to life and memory under the influence of champagne, thought him so like Jack Trevor, of the Engineers, that he blubbered out, "I think I 'm listening to Jack. It's poor Trevor over again."

Was it any wonder if in such intoxications Peter forgot all his late reverses, nor ever remembered them till he had wished his company good-night, and found himself alone in his own chamber? Pecuniary difficulties were no new thing to Dalton, and it would not have interfered with his pleasant dreams that night had the question been one of those ordinary demands which he well knew how to resist or evade by many a legal sleight and many an illegal artifice; but here was a debt of honor. He had given his name, three or four times during the evening, for large sums, lost on the very instant they were borrowed. These must be repaid on the next day; but how, he knew not. How he "stood" in Abel Kraus's books he had not the remotest idea. It might be with a balance, or it might be with a deficit All he really knew was that he had latterly drawn largely, and spent freely; and as Abel always smiled and seemed satisfied, Peter concluded that his affairs needed no surer or safer evidences of prosperity. To have examined ledgers and day-books with such palpable proofs of solvency would have been, in his eyes, an act of as great absurdity as that of a man who would not believe in the suns.h.i.+ne till he had first consulted the thermometer.

"I must see Abel early to-morrow. Abel will set it all right," were the conclusions to which he always came back; and if not very clearly evident how, why, or by what means, still he was quite satisfied that honest Kraus would extricate him from every difficulty. "The devil go with it for black and red," said he, as he lay down in his bed. "I 'd have plenty of cash in my pocket for everything this night, if it was n't for that same table; and an ugly game it is as ever a man played.

Shuffle and cut; faites your 'jeu'; thirty-four--thirty-three; red wins--black loses; there's the whole of it; sorrow more on 't except the sad heart that comes afterwards!" These last words he uttered with a deep sigh, and then turned his face to the pillow.

He pa.s.sed a restless, feverish night; the sleep being more hara.s.sing than even his waking moments, disturbed, as it was, by thoughts of all he had lately gone through. All the tremendous excitement of the play-table, heightened by the effect of wine, made up a wild chaotic confusion in his brain, that was almost madness. He awoke repeatedly, too, eager for daylight, and the time to call upon honest Abel. At these times he would pace his room up and down, framing the speeches by which he meant to open the interview. Kraus was familiar with his usual "pleas." With Ireland and her stereotyped distresses he was thoroughly conversant. Famine, fever, potato-rot, poor-rates, emigration, and eviction were themes he could have almost discussed himself; but all he recognized in them was an urgent demand for money, and an occasion for driving the very hardest of bargains. The Russian remittances had been less regular of late; so at least Abel averred, for Dalton neither knew nor tried to know any details. The dates were frequently inconvenient, and the places of payment oftentimes remote. Still, Abel was civil,--nay, almost cordial; and what can any man ask for more than a smile from his banker!

Dalton was quite at ease upon one point,--Kraus was sure to know nothing of his late losses at play; in fact, out of his little den wherein he sat he seemed to be aware of nothing in the whole wide world. A small "slip," which arrived each morning from Frankfort, told him the current exchanges of the day. The faces of his clients revealed all the rest But Dalton was greatly deceived on this point There was not the slightest incident of Baden with which he was not familiar, nor any occurrence in its life of dissipation on which he was uninformed. His knowledge was not the offspring of any taste for scandal, or any liking for the secret gossiping of society. No; his was a purely practical and professional information. The archduke who had lost so heavily at "roulette" would need a loan on the morrow; the count who was about to elope with the marchioness must have bills on Paris; the colonel who had shot the baron in a duel could n't escape over the frontier without money. In a word, every vice and iniquity seemed the tributaries of his trade; and whether to consummate their wickedness or escape its penalty, men must first come to Abel Kraus.

To see him crouching behind his little desk, poring over the scattered fragments of dirty papers, which were his only books, you would never have suspected that he had a thought above the mystic calculations before him. Watch him more narrowly, however, and you will perceive that not a figure can cross the street and approach his door without meeting a shrewd, quick glance from those dark eyes; while a faint muttering sound betrays his detection of the visitor's object.

Long, then, before Dalton swaggered up to the moneychanger's den, Abel knew every circ.u.mstance of the previous night, and had actually before him, on his desk, a correct account of all the sums he had lost at play.

Abel was not unprepared for such tidings. Dalton was precisely the man to rush headlong into play the moment fortune turned with him, and the pang of defeat was added to the bitterness of a loss; Abel only wondered that the reverse had not come earlier. And so he mumbled below his breath, as with his hat set jauntily on one side, and his hands stuck carelessly beneath his coat-tails, Dalton came forward.

Peter had so far "got up" his air of easy indifference as to whistle a tune; but, somehow, as he drew nearer to the door, the sounds waxed fainter and fainter, and, before he had crossed the threshold, bad sunk away into the cadence of a heavy sigh. Abel never looked up as the other entered, but, affecting the deepest preoccupation, went on with his figures.

"Morrow, Abel," said Dalton, as he threw himself into a chair, and, removing his hat, began to wipe his forehead with his handkerchief.

"This is a murdering hot day. It's not ten yet, and the sun's roasting!"

"Fine weather for de harvest, Herr von Dalton, but a leetle rain do no harm."

"Faix! I think not; neither to man nor beast."

Abel grinned at the brawny throat and ma.s.sive proportions that seemed so unequal to sustain the heat, but said nothing.

"How's the exchange, Abel?" said Peter; "how's the exchange?"

Now, in justice to our worthy friend Dalton, we must own that he put this question without having the very remotest idea of its meaning. An inscription from the tomb of the Pharaohs would have been to the full as intelligible to him as an abstract from the "City Article." He asked it as certain "charming women" inquire about the compa.s.s on board s.h.i.+p,--something, in fact, suitable to the time and place, and proper to be done on like occasions.

"De exchange is very uncertain; de market is up and down," said Abel, dryly.

"That's bad," said Dalton, gravely,----"that's very bad!"

"De Mongolian loan is de reason," rejoined Abel.

Dalton gave a grunt, that might mean a.s.sent or displeasure with that view of the case, but did not trust himself with more.

"Dey will not take de scrip at eighty-two, and I tink dey are right."

"Faix! I don't doubt but that they are!" chimed in Peter.

"Dey are right, if all be true we hear of de security. It is de mines of de State dat are hypotheked,--how you call it,--what you say, 'hypotheked'?"

Dalton was completely puzzled now, and could only scratch his ear,--his invariable symptom of utter discomfiture.

"Tis no matter," cried Abel, with a grating, harsh laugh. "Dey promise, and no pay; and dat is very bad--ha! ha! ha!"

Now Dalton joined in the laugh, but with as ill a grace as needs be.

"Dey promise, and dey no pay, Herr von Dalton!" repeated the Jew, with another laugh, as though he could not tear himself away from so excellent a jest. "Dey borrow, dat dey may make explorations--how you call dem--wit oder men's money. If dey de win, well! if dey lose--bah!

dey are bankrupt!"

Now, all these allusions were of the most provoking character to poor Dalton, who could not help feeling a very different sympathy for the Mongolians from that expressed by Abel Kraus. "Who knows what difficulties they are in?--maybe they'd pay it if they could," muttered he, as he slapped his boot with his cane, and fell into a musing fit.

"Dey shall not have one kreutzer of my moneys; I can tell dem dat!" said Kraus, as he b.u.t.toned up the keys of his strong-box, as though suiting the action to his words.

"Don't put up the keys so soon, Abel!" said Dalton, with an effort at a laugh. "I want to see the inside of that little iron trunk there."