Doctor Hathern's daughters

by Mary Jane Holmes

Carl had expected Madame to go when he did, but with a very pretty throwing up of her hands and a shrug of her shoulders she had exclaimed “Mon dieu, Monsieur, if all the world were as unsuspicious as you what a delight to live. But there are more vile English than those we met in Paris. Homburg is full of them, and I must be discreet. Should we go together they might talk, and I owe it to Felix’s memory to avoid the very appearance of anything like an understanding. You will go first, and I shall follow. There can be no harm in that.”

For the life of him Carl could see no harm in their traveling on the same train, while going purposely at different times looked as if there were something to conceal, and, so far as he was concerned, there was nothing. But he acquiesced and left her in Lucerne, promising to look at the inexpensive pension she named, and to engage a room for her if it were not too second-classy and he thought she could endure it. She hated pensions. She had staid in one or two after the Commune when the French aristocracy fled for their lives. She detested them then, but must get accustomed to them now in her changed circumstances, she said, and remembering this Carl found the inexpensive pension too second-classy to suit Madame, for whom rooms were engaged at the —— Hotel, which enjoyed the prestige of having the Princess Christian dine in its garden every night, accompanied occasionally by her brother the Prince of Wales. There was at first a pretense on Madame’s part of protesting that she must not take the rooms. She could not afford it, but Carl quieted her with another loan and the matter was finally amicably adjusted.

It was astonishing to Carl how many people Madame knew at Homburg. Friends of other and happier days, she said, as she presented them to him. Some of them had titles, some seemed very well-bred, while others were rather seedy, Carl thought. They all paid homage to Madame, who soon had a little court around her and forgot to weep for Felix as much as she had done. As an American Carl felt himself the equal of anyone, and still in his heart there was a kind of respect for rank and aristocracy which made him overlook any little idiosyncracies of manner and action in Madame’s friends. It was this same feeling which had drawn him more closely to Madame herself. He knew that Monsieur Felix’s family was good, and without saying it in so many words Madame had insinuated that hers was equally as good. If he had ever doubted this he believed it in Homburg, where she knew so many titled people, and he was not a little proud to be one of her set. Sam suspected them of being sharpers, especially after he found how much time they spent with cards in Madame’s private parlor. Carl was usually with them a looker-on at first. He had never played for money in his life, and for a few days his New England training and the memory of his mother restrained him. Then Julie persuaded him to take a hand with her just for once.

“The stakes are not very high and I nearly always win, and Count de Varré is ill to-night,” she said, and Carl sat down and won and gave his winnings to Madame.

Then he tried his hand again and won till Madame had quite a little sum at her command. Naturally social, Carl found Madame’s friends very agreeable and amusing, especially the ladies, one of whom was young and unmarried, while the other was a widow and a baroness and took snuff and talked loud and wore big diamonds. They all made much of Carl, whose fortune rumor, as usual, had doubled. Every night they played, sometimes in one private salon, sometimes in another,—and Carl frequently was one of the party. When he played with Madame he usually won, not very much,—but still won,—and when he played against her, he lost,—sometimes heavy sums, which made him shiver a little when next day he gave his cheque for the amount, and all the time Sam Slayton watched them as closely as if he had been a detective.

One night they met in Carl’s salon, Madame playing with Count de Varré and the old baroness with Carl, who lost, but kept on playing until Sam, who had persisted in staying in the room and at a little distance had been watching the game closely, suddenly exclaimed, as he caught Carl’s arm, and prevented him from putting down a certain card, “Great Jerusalem, don’t you know they are all in league and fleecing you? I learned a trick or two in the army, but never thought to see it practiced among decent people.”

Madame, the only one who understood Sam, nearly fainted, while the Count sprang to his feet, demanding angrily the cause of the disturbance and why this boor of a fellow was allowed with gentlemen, and what he had said.

“He said you were cheating at cards, and by George I believe he spoke the truth,” Carl answered, the mists suddenly clearing from his moral perceptions and showing him the danger he was in.

The scene which followed was rather lively, the Count denying the charge and hurling angry invectives against Sam, who, not comprehending a word, met them with Yankee coolness and indifference, but stood his ground manfully and showed how the cheating was done, while Madame protested that if there had been cheating she was not a party to it, and begged Carl to believe her, and became at last so violently hysterical that, whether he believed her or not, he made a pretense of doing so.

“It was as plain as the nose on your face,” Sam said in describing it to Carl. “I can’t say that Madame cheated, but the others did and gave information across the table in the most barefaced way. I told you they was sharpers.”