The conversation forever returned to Spa and Baden-Baden, and many wagers were made upon the amount of money which Risque would gain—first day—second day—first week, and so forth.
At last they resolved to send to Lees' chamber for the roulette-board, and pass the evening in experiment. They drew Jacks for the party who should fetch it, and Freckle, always unfortunate, was pronounced the man. He went cheerfully, thinking it quite an honor to serve the Colony in any capacity—for Freckle, representing a disaffected State, had fallen under suspicion of lukewarm loyalty, and was most anxious to clear up any such imputation.
His head was full of odd remembrances as he crossed the Place St. Sulpice: his plain old father at the old border home, close and hard-handed, who went afield with his own negroes, and made his sons take the plough-handles, and marched them all before him every Sunday to the plank church, and led the singing himself with an ancient tuning-fork, and took up the collection in a black velvet bag fastened to a pole.
He had foreseen the war, and sent his son abroad to avoid it. He had given Freckle sufficient money to travel for five years, and told him in the same sentence to guard his farthings and say his prayers. Freckle could see the old man now, with a tear poised on his tangled eyelashes, asking a farewell benediction from the front portico, upon himself departing, while every woolly-head was uncovered, and the whole assembled "property" had groaned "Amen" together.
That was patriarchal life; what was this? Freckle thought this much finer and higher. He had not asked himself if it was better. He was rather ashamed of his father now, and anxious to be a dashing gentleman, like Plade or Pisgah.
Why did he play whist so badly? How chanced it that, having dwelt eighteen months in Paris, he could speak no French? His only grisette had both robbed him and been false to him. He knew that the Colony tolerated him, merely. Was he indeed verdant, as they had said—obtuse, stupid, lacking wit?
After all, he repeated to himself, what had the Colony done for him? He had not now twenty francs to his name, and was a thousand francs in debt; he had essayed to study medicine, but balked at the first lesson. Yet, though these suggestions, rather than convictions, occurred to him, they stirred no latent ambition. If he had ever known one high resolution, the Southern Colony had pulled it up, and sown the place with salt.
So he reached Master Lees' tenement; it was a long ascent, and toward the last stages perilous; the stairs had a fashion of curving round unexpectedly and bending against jambs and blank walls. He was quite out of breath when he staggered against Lees' door and burst it open.
The light fell almost glaringly upon the bare, contracted chamber; for this was next to the sky and close up to the clouds, and the window looked toward the west, where the sun, sinking majestically, was throwing its brightest smiles upon Paris, as it bade adieu.
And there, upon his tossed, neglected bed, in the full blaze of the sunset, his sharp, sallow jaws dropped upon his neck, his cheeks colorless and concave, his great eyes open wide and his hair unsmoothed, Master Lees lay dead, with the roulette table upon his breast!