Play started. They did not start playing cards at once. First of all they gaily laid their stakes at roulette. Laura was banker and imitated the professional croupiers’ cry: “Faites vos jeux! Rien ne va plus!”
Laura always had phenomenally good luck, and all laid their stakes as if it were a tribute due to the hostess. Then they began to play whist or bridge, which had just become fashionable, in order to pass on to écarté or vingt-et-un later on.
Stellan from the very beginning appropriated the well-primed Manne. It was interesting to see the two friends together at the card table. Manne was no gambler. He threw down his stakes with reckless optimism and with a boyish challenge to Fate. And he swore a little in evident surprise each time he did not win. Stellan on the contrary was a born gambler, at once cold and passionate. Nobody who saw him at cards could fail to see that this was his great vice. His excitement showed itself in a slight pallor in his smooth, distinguished features, from which everything else seemed to slip away as from a polished metal. A blue vein pulsed in his hard clear forehead. He spoke shortly and sharply, and unconsciously raised his voice as if he had been surrounded by deaf people. Forgetfulness, slowness, or bad play drew forth his biting irony. He himself had an astounding memory for cards and a keen sense of observation. He took the game as seriously as if it were a science, and he jealously guarded it as a precious joy which a gentleman should know how to invest with a certain cult. He impressed you at one and the same time as an expert and custodian of chance. Thus he developed in his friends a real devotion to play which concealed from weaker heads among them its dangerously exciting and undermining viciousness.
During the course of years the stakes had grown bigger and bigger. They started now where formerly they had ended. Stellan won, but never enough. So it was today again. It was usually not difficult to pluck poor Manne. But just now he had had a little spell of absurd good luck, which had decreased Stellan’s winnings. And Stellan had to have cash. He then made a plunge, drove up the stakes, doubled five times!—ten times!! One after another the bids fell. Before Manne could turn around Stellan held in his hand three thousand-crown notes and a cheque for five thousand.
Levy had already finished playing bridge. He never played anything else. Now he was standing by their table looking on at the final spasms.
“What’s this, Kolsnäs is not entailed?” he suddenly asked in an indifferent tone. It seemed as if he had not understood himself the impertinence of the question.
Stellan expected a scene, but Manne was not his usual self tonight.
“Oh no,” he muttered, “it is waiting for God’s chosen people.”
“Why not just as well only for propertied people,” Stellan cut in.
Manne rose. He suddenly looked sober and slapped Stellan on the back.