There was an interval of silence, broken only by the rattling of the ice in Collingwood's glass.
Our host was a man of about forty-eight. His hair was white, but his face was youthful and amazingly handsome; and I knew many a woman who envied Mrs. Chadwick, even as many a man envied the colonel. I never saw a handsomer pair, or a pair so wrapt up in each other. I shall let the colonel tell his own story, which needs no embellishments from me.
In the spring of 1887 I packed up and took passage for England. The slump in Wall Street the preceding winter had left me with only seven thousand in cash, and this estate heavily mortgaged. The only way I could save the seven thousand and what remained of the property was to get away from the Street.
I made my sister a short visit. I had been one of the ushers at her wedding, and her husband, Lord Rexford, thought I was a jolly good lad because I was the only sober man at the bachelor dinner at the Richmond. This was due to a little invention of my own which I acquired at Harvard in my college days: putting plenty of olive oil on my salad. I played golf over his lordship's course, fished and hunted over his really fine preserves; and in return told him not to invest in Southern Pacific till the following year.
It was my misfortune to run into Jack Smeed in London. He was a classmate of mine, and one of the best fellows that ever lived. But he was the most splendid spendthrift I ever came across. He showed me Paris as few foreigners have seen it.
At that time he was a famous war correspondent, art critic and poet. He inveigled me and my seven thousand to Dieppe. It was still summer. One night we visited a gambling casino. I had gambled in stocks, but had never played straight gambling, thinking it too tame a sport for a speculator. Tame! I smile these days when I think of my adventure; but heaven knows I did not smile then.
Very well. Smeed aroused the latent gambler's blood in my veins, and I began to play.
"Never play a system," said Smeed one night, after having won something like ten thousand francs. "Systems make gambling a vice. Take your chance on any old number, if it's roulette. If you are lucky you will win, no matter where you play. Systems and suicides were born of the same mother."
A week later he received one of those historic telegrams, calling him to some African outbreak, or Indian, I can't recall which. At any rate, it left me alone in Dieppe. I had been passably fortunate at roulette; that is to say, I invariably won back what I lost. I believe I had about five thousand of the original seven. Dieppe is very enticing in the summer: the bands, the hotels, the handsome women, the military and the sea.