“I have eaten all the caviare and the pickles, and nearly finished a bottle of Madeira, waiting for you,” said Grog; “so, no dressing, but come in at once.”
“Oh, dearest Lizzy!” cried Beecher, as they gained the porch, “just one word,—only one word,—to make me the happiest fellow in the world or the most miserable.” But Lizzy sprang up the stairs, and was in her room almost ere his words were uttered.
“If I had bad but another moment,” muttered Beecher to himself, “just one moment more, I'd have shown her that I meant to turn over a new leaf,—that I was n't going to lead the life I have done. I 'd have told her—though, I suppose, old Grog would murder me if he knew it—of our grand martingale, and how we mean to smash the bank at Baden. No deception about that,—no 'cross' there. She can't bring up grooms and jockeys and stable-helpers against me now. It will all be done amongst ourselves,—a family party, and no mistake!”
All things considered, Annesley Beecher, it was just as well for you that you had not that “one moment” you wished for.
CHAPTER XXIV. A DEAD HEAT
Some eight or ten days have elapsed since the scene we have Just recorded,—not one of whose incidents are we about to relate,—and we are still at Holbach. As happens so frequently in the working of a mathematical question, proofs are assumed without going over the demonstrations; so, in real life,—certain postulates being granted,—we arrive at conclusions which we regard as inevitable.
We are at Holbach, but no longer strolling along its leaf-strewn alleys, or watching the laughing eddies of its circling river,—we are within doors. The scene is a small, most comfortably furnished chamber of the little inn, where an ample supper is laid out on a sideboard, a card-table occupying the centre of the room, at which two players are seated, their somewhat “charged” expressions and disordered dress indicating a prolonged combat,—a fact in part corroborated by the streak of pinkish dawn that has pierced between the shutters, and now blends with the sickly glare of the candles. Several packs of cards litter the floor around them, thrown there in that superstitious passion only gamblers understand, and a decanter and some glasses stand on the table beside the players, who are no others than our acquaintances Grog Davis and Paul Classon.
There is a vulgar but not unwise adage that tells us “dogs do not eat dogs,” and the maxim has a peculiar application to gamblers. All sorts and manners of men love to measure their strength with each other,—swordsmen, swimmers, pedestrians, even hard drinking used to have its duels of rivalry,—gamblers never. Such an employment of their skill would seem to their eyes about as absurd as that of a sportsman who would turn his barrel against his companion instead of the cock-pheasant before him. Their “game” is of another order. How, then, explain the curious fact we have mentioned? There are rivalries that last life-long; there are duels that go on from year to year of existence, and even to the last leave the question of superiority undetermined. The game of piquet formed such between these two men. At every chance meeting in life,—no matter how long the interval or how brief the passage might be,—they recurred to the old-vexed question, which fortune seemed to find a pleasure in never deciding definitively. The fact that each had his own separate theory of the game, would have given an interest to the encounter; but besides there was now another circumstance whose import neither were likely to undervalue. Davis had just paid over to Paul Classon the sum of two hundred napoleons,—the price of a secret service he was about to perform,—and the sight of that glowing heap of fresh gold—for there it lay on the corner of the table—had so stimulated the acquisitiveness of Grog's nature that he could not resist the temptation to try and regain them. The certainty that when he should have won them it would only be to restore them to the loser, for whose expenses on a long Journey they were destined, detracted nothing from this desire on his part A more unprofitable debtor than Holy Paul could not be imagined. His very name in a schedule would reflect discredit on the bankruptcy! But there lay the shining pieces, fresh from the mint and glittering, and the appeal they made was to an instinct, not to reason. Was it with the knowledge of this fact that Paul had left them there instead of putting them up in his pocket? Had he calculated in his own subtle brain that temptations are least resistible when they are most tangible? There was that in his reverence's look which seemed to say as much, and the thoughtless wantonness of his action as his fingers fiddled with the gold may not have been entirely without a purpose. They had talked together, and discussed some knotty matters of business, having concluded which, Davis proposed cards.