Concerning Sally

by William John Hopkins

There was nothing unusual about the appearance of the house if we except the iron-studded door and its guardian. The negro, who was very large and very black, had resumed his seat upon a stool by the door. He glanced at Eugene without interest and immediately looked away again and seemed to resume his thoughts about nothing at all. Eugene glanced hastily about. The house might have served as a type of the modest dwellings of the older school. The doors from the lower hall were all shut and the rooms to which they led were empty, so far as he knew, or were used as storerooms, perhaps. Everything was very quiet and he and the gigantic negro might have been the only occupants of the house. Before him was the staircase and he roused himself and mounted to the floor above, walked a few steps along a hall exactly similar to the first, parted the heavy double hangings over a doorway, and entered.

He found himself in the front room of two which were connected by folding doors, which were now rolled back. The room in the rear was but dimly lighted, as no one seemed to be interested in the roulette table which stood there, although several men stood about the sideboard or were coming or going. The top of that sideboard held a large variety of bottles and anybody present was at liberty to help himself to whatever he preferred; but, although there was a good deal of drinking, there was no drunkenness. Drinking to excess was not conducive to success in play; and the men, most of them, seemed to be regular patrons of the place. Eugene's gaze wandered back toward the front of the house.

To his right, as he entered, was the centre of interest. Indeed, it seemed to be the only point of interest. The windows had heavy double hangings before them, which accounted for Sally's impression of the house. Directly before these windows and taking up almost the whole width of the room stood a large table. About this table were seated a dozen men or more, old, middle-aged, and young, every one of them so intent on the play that they noticed nothing else. About the seated men, in turn, were other men, two or three deep, equally intent, standing and carefully noting upon large cards which they held every card that the dealer exposed from the box before him. I regret that I am unable to explain more fully the mysteries of this system of scoring. In some way, which I do not understand, this method of keeping score was supposed to give some clue to the way in which the cards were running on that particular night and to aid each scorer in the development of his "system," which, as the merest tyro knows, will inevitably break the bank sooner or later;—usually later. The house supplied the score cards. They found the method a very satisfactory one.

By this time Eugene's heart had almost ceased its palpitation and he could look about with some approach to calmness at the group around the table. Curiously, he scanned the faces of the players. At the turn of the table, to the right of the dealer, sat an elderly man, perhaps nearing sixty, with a singularly peaceful countenance. He won or lost with the same indifference, only putting up a hand, now and then, to stroke his white mustache and glancing, sympathetically, Spencer thought, at the only really young men playing. There were two of them who were hardly more than boys, and this man seemed to be more interested in their play than in his own. At the dealer's left sat a man who might be anywhere from thirty-five to fifty, with a clean-shaven and handsome clean cut face. He looked as distinguished in his way as the elderly man of the white mustache and the peaceful countenance did in his. He smiled as quietly when he lost as when he won. Both men were very attractive and not the type of man you would expect to find in such a place. The other men there were not attractive. They were of no particular age and of no distinction whatever; the type of man that you pass on the street a hundred times a day without a second glance—if you have given the first. There was a perennial frown upon their foreheads and their lips were tightly closed and they were intent on nothing but their play. Altogether, the less said about those men, the better.

The first of the two young men mentioned was sitting at the turn of the table diagonally opposite the elderly man and nearest Eugene, so that his face was not visible. But his shoulders were expressive and he was beginning to fidget in his chair; and when, once or twice, he half turned his head Eugene could see the growing expression of disgust upon his face. As the young fellow looked more and more disgusted, the elderly man smiled the more and stroked his white mustache and gazed at him, to the neglect of his cards, and once in a while he glanced at the other young fellow.

That other young fellow, as we know, was Charlie Ladue. He sat directly opposite the dealer. His face was flushed with the excitement of play, to which he was giving all his attention. Eugene could not see his eyes, which never wandered from the straight line in front of him, from his cards to the dealer; but he could imagine the feverish brightness that shone from them. He wondered how the dealer liked the constant contemplation of that sight; how it pleased him that he could not look up without encountering those eyes of Charlie Ladue fixed upon him.

The dealer seemed to like it well enough; he seemed to like it uncommonly well. Spencer transferred his gaze from Charlie to the dealer. There was nothing interesting about Charlie—to him, at least; nothing sad in his present situation except as it concerned Sally. The dealer was different, and Eugene found himself fascinated in watching him.

It was impossible to guess his age. He might have been anywhere from forty to sixty and must have been a handsome man when he was young—whenever that was. He was a good-looking man yet, but there was something sinister about him. His face was deeply lined, but not with the lines of age or pain or of contentment or good nature. The lines in a man's face will tell their story of his life to him who can read them. Insensibly, they tell their story to him who cannot read them. Eugene could not; but he felt the story and was at once fascinated and repelled. He could not take his eyes off that dealer's face; and the longer he looked the more strongly he was impressed with a vague recollection. It might be only of a dream, or of a dim resemblance to some one that he knew. He had the curious sense, which comes to all of us on occasion, of having lived that very moment in some previous incarnation, perhaps of knowing exactly what was going to happen next. Not that anything in particular did happen. I would not willingly raise expectations which must be disappointed.

The dealer had always seemed to look at Charlie Ladue with interest; with as much interest as he ever showed in anything—much more, indeed, than he showed in anything or in anybody else. Charlie himself had noted that, and although he never spoke,—at least, Charlie had never heard him utter a word beyond what were absolutely necessary to his duties,—there was something compelling in his eye which always met Charlie's look as it was raised slowly from his cards, as if there were some mysterious bond of fellowship between them. Rarely he had smiled. But that was a mistake. It always made Charlie wish that he hadn't. Charlie had not noticed, perhaps, that it was always on the rare occasions when he won that the dealer had ventured upon that faint smile which was so disagreeable. When he lost, which happened more frequently,—very much more frequently,—the dealer expressed no emotion whatever, unless a slight compression of his thin lips could be called an expression of emotion.

There was a stir among the persons about the table; among those sitting and among those standing. The disgusted young fellow got up quickly and one of the scorers as quickly took the chair he had left. The boy breathed a deep sigh of relief as he passed close to Eugene.