CHAPTER FIVE
THE GAMBLER’S PROGRESS
1.
IN two weeks Margot was able to limp about; and, as nothing more was said about her departure, she quietly reassumed her household duties. Hugh was happy. He was free to gamble. Morning, afternoon and evening he was at the Casino. He invented fantastic systems and enthusiastically tried them out, or like a hawk hovered over a table watching for a likely chance. A picker-up of unconsidered trifles, he called himself. He was patient, prudent, intelligent. He believed in the calculation of chances; and, best of all, he had an intuition that was reasonably reliable. He loved the game, but most of all he loved to turn out his pockets in the morning, and to hand Margot a fistful of money with the remark: “There! that’s for the house. By Gad! it’s a great thing to live on the fat of the land at the cost of the Casino.”
One day while doing her marketing the girl was stopped by a tall dark man. She stared a moment. She could scarcely believe her eyes: Florent Garnier. How changed! He was stout, prosperous-looking, even pompous. He had a fancy waistcoat, with a heavy gold chain, a broad-brimmed Borsolino, and a diamond pin sparkling in a rather loud tie. Yes, he was a big, handsome, important-looking man.
“Ha! ha! You are surprised, my little Margot,” he laughed. “I’m altered, am I not? When you saw me last, I was the lean Parisian workman. You remember I was thrown into prison. That rascal Popol,—he croaked in Laboisiniere. Black smallpox. Good job! I’d have killed him when I got out. Well, soon after that, my uncle, a big contractor in Lyons, died leaving me everything. I’m a rich man now.”
“Then you’re not a socialist any more?”
“Bon sang! No! How can I be? I’m a patron. Socialists don’t believe in patrons. No one remains a socialist after he has acquired a little property. It changes one’s ideas entirely. Socialism is for those who have nothing and don’t see any prospect of having anything, except by grabbing from those who have. We’re all on the grab, the Socialist as much as every one else. Oh, I know them. The leaders are exploiters of the proletariat. Socialism is only a stepping stone to political power.”
They were in the market place, close by the rock of Monaco. Margot had a filet of vegetables on her arm, a shawl on her head. As he talked Florent gesticulated, a big diamond ring flashing on his brown hand.
“Yes,” he went on, “socialism is based on a wrong conception of human nature. It believes that if you scratch the man, you find the saint; whereas what you really find is the savage. Human nature is selfish and nothing will ever change it. Socialism believes in the unselfishness of human nature. That’s its fundamental error. Then again, it’s contrary to justice. It believes in paying all workers equally. The good worker is to receive the same wage as the poor. That is unjust. Yet the moment you begin paying one man more than another you institute capitalism.... But there! Come, let us sit at that café under the arches and talk of yourself. What are you doing? Not married, I hope.”
“No, I’m housekeeper to an English gentleman.”