Vivian Grey Part 40

"Rouge-et-noir," suggested the Chevalier, in a careless tone, as if he had no taste for the amus.e.m.e.nt.

"There is not enough, is there?" asked St. George.

"Oh! two are enough, you know; one deals, much more four."

"Well, I don't care; rouge-et-noir then, let us have rouge-et-noir. Von Konigstein, what say you to rouge-et-noir? De Boeffleurs says we can play it here very well. Come, Grey."

"Oh! rouge-et-noir, rouge-et-noir," said the Baron; "have not you both had rouge-et-noir enough? Am I not to be allowed one holiday? Well, anything to please you; so rouge-et-noir, if it must be so."

"If all wish it, I have no objection," said Vivian.

"Well, then, let us sit down; Ernstorff has, I dare say, another pack of cards, and St. George will be dealer; I know he likes that ceremony."

"No, no; I appoint the Chevalier."

"Very well," said De Boeffleurs, "the plan will be for two to bank against the table; the table to play on the same colour by joint agreement. You can join me, Von Konigstein, and pay or receive with me, from Mr. St. George and Grey."

"I will bank with you, if you like, Chevalier," said Vivian.

"Oh! certainly; that is if you like. But perhaps the Baron is more used to banking; you perhaps don't understand it."

"Perfectly; it appears to me to be very simple."

"No, don't you bank, Grey," said St. George. "I want you to play with me against the Chevalier and the Baron; I like your luck."

"Luck is very capricious, remember."

"Oh, no, I like your luck; don't bank."

"Be it so."

Playing commenced. An hour elapsed, and the situation of none of the parties was materially different from what it had been when they began the game. Vivian proposed leaving off; but Mr. St. George avowed that he felt very fortunate, and that he had a presentiment that he should win.

Another hour elapsed, and he had lost considerably. Eleven o'clock: Vivian's luck had also deserted him. Mr. St. George was losing desperately. Midnight: Vivian had lost back half his gains on the season. St. George still more desperate, all his coolness had deserted him. He had persisted obstinately against a run on the red; then floundered and got entangled in a seesaw, which alone cost him a thousand.

Ernstorff now brought in refreshments; and for a moment they ceased playing. The Baron opened a bottle of champagne; and St. George and the Chevalier were stretching their legs and composing their minds in very different ways, the first in walking rapidly up and down the room, and the other by lying very quietly at his full length on the sofa; Vivian was employed in building houses with the cards.

"Grey," said the Chevalier de Boeffleurs, "I cannot imagine why you do not for a moment try to forget the cards: that is the only way to win.

Never sit musing over the table."

But Grey was not to be persuaded to give up building his paG.o.da: which, now many stories high, like a more celebrated but scarcely more substantial structure, fell with a crash. Vivian collected the scattered cards into two divisions.

"Now!" said the Baron, seating himself, "for St. George's revenge."

The Chevalier and the greatest sufferer took their places.

"Is Ernstorff coming in again, Baron?" asked Vivian.

"No! I think not."

"Let us be sure; it is disagreeable to be disturbed at this time of night."

"Lock the door, then," said St. George.

"A very good plan," said Vivian; and he locked it accordingly.

"Now, gentlemen," said Vivian, rising from the table, and putting both packs of cards into his pocket; "now, gentlemen, I have another game to play." The Chevalier started on his chair, the Baron turned pale, but both were silent. "Mr. St. George," continued Vivian, "I think that you owe the Chevalier de Boeffleurs about four thousand Napoleons, and to Baron von Konigstein something more than half that sum. I have to inform you that it is unnecessary for you to satisfy the claims of either of these gentlemen, which are founded neither in law nor in honour."

"Mr. Grey, what am I to understand?" asked the quiet Chevalier de Boeffleurs, with the air of a wolf and the voice of a lion.

"Understand, sir!" answered Vivian, sternly, "that I am not one who will be bullied by a blackleg."

"Grey! good G.o.d! what do you mean?" asked the Baron.

"That which it is my duty, not my pleasure, to explain, Baron von Konigstein."

"If you mean to insinuate," burst forth the Chevalier.

"I mean to insinuate nothing. I leave insinuations and innuendoes to chevaliers d'industrie. I mean to prove everything."

Mr. St. George did not speak, but seemed as utterly astounded and overwhelmed as Baron von Konigstein himself, who, with his arm leaning on the table, his hands clasped, and the forefinger of his right hand playing convulsively on his left, was pale as death, and did not even breathe.

"Gentlemen," said Vivian, "I shall not detain you long, though I have much to say that is to the purpose. I am perfectly cool, and, believe me, perfectly resolute. Let me recommend to you all the same temperament; it may be better for you. Rest a.s.sured, that if you flatter yourselves that I am one to be pigeoned and then bullied, you are mistaken. In one word, I am aware of everything that has been arranged for the reception of Mr. St. George and myself this evening. Your marked cards are in my pocket, and can only be obtained by you with my life.

Here are two of us against two; we are equally matched in number, and I, gentlemen, am armed. If I were not, you would not dare to go to extremities. Is it not, then, the wisest course to be temperate, my friends?"

"This is some vile conspiracy of your own, fellow," said De Boeffleurs: "marked cards, indeed! a pretty tale, forsooth! The Ministers of a first-rate Power playing with marked cards! The story will gain credit, and on the faith of whom? An adventurer that no one knows, who, having failed this night in his usual tricks, and lost money which he cannot pay, takes advantage of the marked cards, which he has not succeeded in introducing, and pretends, forsooth, that they are those which he has stolen from our table; our own cards being, previously to his accusation, concealed in a secret pocket."

The impudence of the fellow staggered even Vivian. As for Mr. St.

George, he stared like a wild man. Before Vivian could answer him the Baron had broken silence. It was with the greatest effort that he seemed to dig his words out of his breast.

"No, no; this is too much! It is all over! I am lost; but I will not add crime to crime. Your courage and your fortune have saved you, Mr. Grey, and your friend from the designs of villains. And you! wretch," said he, turning to De Boeffleurs, "sleep now in peace; at length you have undone me." He leant on the table, and buried his face in his hands.

"Chicken-hearted fool!" said the Chevalier; "is this the end of all your promises and all your pledges? But remember, sir! remember. I have no taste for scenes. Good night, gentlemen. Baron, I expect to hear from you."

"Stop, sir!" said Vivian; "no one leaves this room without my permission."

"I am at your service, sir, when you please," said the Chevalier.

"It is not my intention to detain you long, sir; far from it. I have every inclination to a.s.sist you in your last exit from this room; had I time, it should not be by the door. As it is, go! in the devil's name."

So saying he hurled the adventurous Frenchman half down the corridor.

"Baron von Konigstein," said Vivian, turning to the Baron, "you have proved yourself, by your conduct this evening, to be a better man than I imagined you. I confess that I thought you had been too much accustomed to such scenes to be sensible of the horror of detection."

"Never!" said the Baron, with emphasis, with energy. The firm voice and manner in which he p.r.o.nounced this single word wonderfully contrasted with his delivery when he had last spoke; but his voice immediately died away.

"'Tis all over! I have no wish to excite your pity, gentlemen, or to gain your silence, by practising upon your feelings. Be silent. I am not the less ruined, not the less disgraced, not the less utterly undone. Be silent; my honour, all the same, in four-and-twenty hours, has gone for ever. I have no motive, then, to deceive you. You must believe what I speak; even what _I_ speak, the most degraded of men. I say again, _never_, never, never, never, never was my honour before sullied, though guilty of a thousand follies. You see before you, gentlemen, the unhappy victim of circ.u.mstances; of circ.u.mstances which he has in vain struggled to control, to which he has at length fallen a victim. I am not pretending, for a moment, that my crimes are to be accounted for by an inexorable fate, and not to be expiated by my everlasting misery. No, no! I have been too weak to be virtuous: but I have been tried, tried most bitterly. I am the most unfortunate of men; I was not born to be a villain. Four years have pa.s.sed since I was banished from the country in which I was honoured, my prospects in life blasted, my peace of mind destroyed; and all because a crime was committed of any partic.i.p.ation in which I am as innocent as yourselves. Driven in despair to wander, I tried, in the wild dissipation of Naples, to forget my existence and my misery. I found my fate in the person of this vile Frenchman, who never since has quitted me. Even after two years of madness in that fatal place, my natural disposition rallied; I struggled to save myself; I quitted it. I was already involved to De Boeffleurs; I became still more so, in gaining from him the means of satisfying all claims against me.

Alas! I found I had sold myself to a devil, a very devil, with a heart like an adder's. Incapable of a stray generous sensation, he has looked upon mankind during his whole life with the eyes of a bully of a gaming-house. I still struggled to free myself from this man; and I indemnified him for his advances by procuring him a place in the mission to which, with the greatest difficulty and perseverance, I had at length obtained my appointment. In public life I yet hoped to forget my private misery. At Frankfort I felt that, though not happy, I might be calm. I determined never again even to run the risk of enduring the slavery of debt. I foreswore, with the most solemn oaths, the gaming table; and had it not been for the perpetual sight of De Boeffleurs, I might, perhaps, have felt at ease; though the remembrance of my blighted prospects, the eternal feeling that I experienced of being born for n.o.bler ends, was quite sufficient perpetually to embitter my existence. The second year of my Frankfort appointment I was tempted to this unhappy place. The unexpected sight of faces which I had known in England, though they called up the most painful a.s.sociations, strengthened me, nevertheless, in my resolution to be virtuous. My unexpected fortune at the Redoute, the first night, made me forget all my resolves, and has led to all this misery. I make my sad tale brief. I got involved at the New House: De Boeffleurs once more a.s.sisted me, though his terms were most severe.

Yet, yet again, I was mad enough, vile enough, to risk what I did not possess. I lost to Prince Salvinski and a Russian gentleman a considerable sum on the night before the fete. It is often the custom at the New House, as you know, among men who are acquainted, to pay and receive all losses which are considerable on the next night of meeting.

The fete gave me breathing time: it was not necessary to redeem my pledge till the fourth night. I rushed to De Boeffleurs; he refused to a.s.sist me, alleging his own losses and his previous advance. What was to be done? No possibility of making any arrangement with Salvinski. Had he won of me as others have done, an arrangement, though painful, would perhaps have been possible; but, by a singular fate, whenever I have chanced to be successful, it is of this man that I have won. De Boeffleurs, then, was the only chance. He was inexorable. I prayed to him; I promised him everything; I offered him any terms; in vain! At length, when he had worked me up to the last point of despair, he whispered hope. I listened; let me be quick! why finish? You know I fell!" The Baron again covered his face, and appeared perfectly overwhelmed.