CHAPTER VI
Within a stone’s throw of the royal Palace, under its usurious eye, as it were, stood the Palazzo di Citta, the headquarters of the Banco del Regio Lotto. There, every alternate Saturday at noon, the drawing of the numbers took place, and the impoverishment of a few thousand King’s subjects, guilty of nothing but fatuity, was decided by lot.
It was a recurrently mad time, whose agitation was transmitted to remotest parishes all over the country—only with this distinction: the Piémontais, watching the central game, was held hostage to its excitement; the poor Savoyard, ruined out of sight, cursed himself for a blockhead victim to fraud, and, with the common inconsistency, vowed hatred against a Government which could thus rob him of his mite.
That was inevitable. Gambling in cold blood can only breed usurers where it succeeds, and desperadoes where it fails. The Turinois possessed the glitter of the table. It was not he who was to fail the Monarchy in the dark days to come.
He was as fevered, as voluble, as gesticulatory, as seething in his numbers on this particular occasion of the drawing, as he had been any time since M. D’Aubonne first brought his damnable invention of the lottery-wheel from France some fifty years earlier. His cheek was as glowing, his heart as fluttering with a sense of novelty, as if he had never before seen a hundred or two of butterflies broken on the wheel. Even Dr Bonito, standing amidst the pack with a young friend, felt the infection of the occasion, and bit his blue lips with that sort of agonised transport which makes men under the lash set their teeth in whatsoever they encounter.
He had had that vanity of his qualities, the old grey rat, to hold by an independence even to the last capacity of the gutter for yielding him one. The stars, the cards (a greasy pack), the astrolabe and divining rod, had procured him thence, latterly, an obscene living. In taking it, he had had at least the justification of his own superstition. If he sold immortal truths at a halfpenny apiece, it was only because necessity obliged him. They had all the value of genuineness in his eyes, and to “fake” antiques would only discredit him with the gods, upon whom was his ultimate reliance. What he had borrowed from Louis-Marie had been a loan to conviction—a last ounce of metal needed to insure his winged feet to the Perseus of his destiny. That he fully believed. Beyond it—it was a fact—he had not asked, nor accepted, a farthing from the young man.
But superstition, as a one-devil possession, prevails only through its plausibility. Let its dupe once be disillusioned, and all the moral obliquities, out of which it had shaped its pretence, confess themselves the owners of the mansion. The maggots which devour a dead faith were bred in it living. Superstition, cast down, becomes the prey of what it had entertained. Dr Bonito, a Rosicrucian by conviction, had never perhaps been really dangerous until the stars came to prove themselves impostors. And then he delivered himself wholly to corruption.
In the meanwhile, bond-slave to his faith, foreseeing nothing so little as the imminent disruption of that faith’s particles, or articles, he cherished for the moment no particular thought of rascality towards anyone. He may even have felt a little cold thaw of emotion towards the human souls about him, as towards beings predestined to witness in him alone, conversant with the hieroglyphics of fate, that apotheosis which they all desired vainly for themselves. Smugly self-conscious of his frowsy coat and broken shoes, he likened himself to Elijah, on the banks of the Jordan, awaiting, an unconsidered prophet, the descent of the fiery chariot. His eyes travelled incessantly, feverishly, from his companion—poor Louis-Marie, the dull, apathetic soul—to the steps of the Town-hall, on which was displayed—under guard, but for all to see—the wheel of Fortune.
Suddenly a sound went over the vast throng, like a sweep of wind over a bed of rushes, bowing all heads in a single direction. It wailed, and passed, and died, and was succeeded by an intense hush. The wheel was seen to turn—and stop. Bonito clutched his voucher, holding it under his nose for identification.
The number, large and white, cynosure of a thousand eyes, went up on a black board—61.
A thin wheeze, such as strains itself from lungs winded by a blow, came from him. Then he gasped, and, twitching in all his features, nudged his companion, and set his finger on the card—61, sure enough. The sigh, the wail, rose again over the throng, and died down—11. Bonito, for all his faith, was shaking as if palsied as his finger travelled to the number. Even Louis-Marie, standing staring in his place, felt in his veins a sluggish thrill of excitement. Again the wheel turned, and again the card duplicated its record—81; and then once more it revolved and disgorged a single number—9, and the quatern was accomplished.
Bonito looked up. His forehead was wet; his lips were dribbling and smiling in one.
“Quantum fati parva tabella vehit,” he said crookedly. “And there are those who mock at astrology!”
A roar, instant, overwhelming, heart-shaking, broke upon his words. It greeted the appearance on the board of the fifth and final figure—a zero!
The gods had laughed. All stakes were cancelled, and forfeit to the Government.
Dr Bonito stood quite still. The sweat dried from his forehead. Slowly his face seemed to turn into grinning stone. The surge of the crowd roared round him, like fierce water about a pile. He heeded nothing of it. He only grinned and grinned, until his grin became a blasphemy, a horror. Then he recognised that he must stir, speak, do something human, to cheat the hell to which his looks were claiming him. He was conscious of a rigor enchaining his flesh; his feet seemed locked in the jaws of a quicksand; a little, and he would be under.
At the crisis, the card in his hand caught his attention. Very stiffly, moving his arms mechanically, he tore it into halves, folded, quartered, requartered, and, at a wrench, divided and sent those fluttering piecemeal. The act spoke an inhuman grip. It had hardly been possible to him a minute earlier. But its madness rent the veil.
He twisted awry, and glared up at his companion. Louis-Marie remembered that night in the café. He recognised well enough what had happened. The calamity might have stirred him little on his own account, had it not been for this look in the ruined face turned to him. He shivered slightly.
“So much for the Taroc Mysteries!” whispered the doctor, “chaff of the gods! But I forgot that nought stood for the Fool.”
His tongue rustled on his palate like a dry scale.
“He hunts butterflies,” he said. “Why, you cursed owl, what are you staring at? Have you never seen him, with his net, on the cards? Nought is the Fool, I say, and I am nought—the butt of the gods. I’ll pay them!”
He took a frantic step or two, returned, seized his companion’s arm, and urged him from the press.
“Come,” he said hoarsely; “you lent me the means to it—I owe this to you—I’ll not let you go now.”
All his tolerance, it seemed, was turned to hatred. He regarded the young man as the instrument, however contemptible, of his undoing. The worse for the poor tool of Fortune! He would have to act whipping-boy to her ladyship. And serve the weak creature right for his flaccidity. He sneered horribly at him.
“Faith’s dead in me,” he snarled. “You’ll have to serve her turn.”
Quite stunned and helpless, Saint-Péray let him lead him whither he would. As they crossed into the Via Seminario, a royal carriage, making for the Palace, was brought to a stand against a gabbling stream of pedestrians, and stopped across their very path. They faced direct into a window of it; and there inside was Yolande.
Pale, agitated, her Dresden-shepherdess eyes glanced to and fro, and, all in an instant, caught that vision of other two, other four, fixed upon them.
We’ve heard of faces stricken into stone before some Gorgon apparition. Love’s severed head converts to softer stuff. His art is the plastic art, and answers to his dead hauntings in features stiffening into wax.
So seemed Yolande’s features in that moment. Her breath hung suspended on her lips, the colour in her cheeks. She had procured Love’s death, and thus was Love revenged upon her. Like a thing of wax she confronted the sweet cruelty of his eyes.
There sat a thin grey gentleman by her side, of a very refined and arrogant mien. The Chevalier de France had never encountered Louis, nor Louis him. Suddenly the former projected his head from the window, and demanded in haughty tones the reason of the delay.
“Monsignore,” said a postillion, “it is the Lottery.”
The Chevalier sacre’d.
“Does that concern a minister of State, puppy? Drive through the rabble.”
The carriage jerked forward, and rolled on its way. Saint-Péray stood motionless, following it with his eyes. A touch on his arm aroused him. Acrid, vicious, fearfully expressive, the face of Dr Bonito peered up into his.
“Monsieur,” whispered the Rosicrucian: “there goes Madame Saint-Péray.”
Louis-Marie gave a mortal start, and put his hand to his forehead.
“There is something weaving in my brain,” he muttered. “Look, look—shake it out! My God, it is an enormous spider!”