Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/128

 been only deceiving myself, and with a bitter disappointment I turned away. In an instant I was attracted by a sudden confusion and din of voices, all speaking together. There was Grainger standing up, his arms swinging, and gesticulating; his mouth pouring out angry French. Three croupiers were as vehemently expostulating, and pointing, and emphasising with their rakes. They have not paid him, he says. They have cheated—swindled him! The "gallery," as they call the people standing round, take different sides; and now steals up, as if from behind a tree, that methodist-looking inspector, whose skin is drawn so tight, and whose clothes are so brushed, by machinery I think. He quietly whispers Grainger, no one can learn what he says; but I see his head nodding like the bill of a sparrow. That man's soul, I suspect, is as tight as his skin and clothes. I suppose he is worth his six or seven hundred a year to the administration. What he says seems to awe Grainger—already the gamblers are impatient at all this tapage about a few wretched louis, when there are little hillocks of gold, metallic ant-hills, rising all over the table.

The croupier seizes the moment. The cards are being dealt, and after that there can be no more row. Here again Mephistopheles and his crew have such an advantage. For in analogous relations, the crowd is sure to take part with one of themselves, but no one here knows what the next coup may bring; and in that expectancy, selfishness grows impatient and sides with the bank. I admire the dexterity with which the meaner human passions are thus turned to profit, and every little broil composed.

I turn away not a little disgusted. Certainly the strangest and most dramatic of scenes, and not unprofitable to study. See here, for instance, a little dingy shop-woman, with her two children over yonder on the sofa, perhaps selling candles and tobacco; in her brown thread gloves she has her "little florin." The dull anxiety in her German face is surprising. Down goes the piece on "manque," and I see her look away as the ball spins round. Her heart, I am sure, almost stops. She hears, but does not see, the result. The smile of delight is exquisite—she tries again—again succeeds—and again succeeds. Now she is over at the sofa showing her three prizes lying in the brown thread gloves. How she had clutched at them over the shoulder of the genteel player sitting, and who shakes her off impatiently, and half gives an execration. He has forty louis before him; but she was afraid that if she was not prompt, he or some other greedy player would seize on her little treasure. Then she returns full of triumph, flushed with victory. She watches and waits a favourable opportunity; but Mephistopheles has seen her with one of his grins—she loses her first piece, a palpable agony flits across her face. She tries again. Zero! Her little piece is in prison; something like agony is in that dull face. The next turn it is gone, she is trying again, but will lose. Oh, if she had been only content to remain as she was! The very air must be dense with ejaculations of this sort wrung from a thousand disappointed hearts.

Over yonder I see the young girl sitting disconsolate, and with such a wistful look towards the table. She is waiting for him. He is playing—Mephistopheles needn't trouble himself about that business. It is in fair train of itself, and will move on to his wishes, of its own motion.

As I go out on the cool terrace some one touches my arm.

"I owe you a hearty apology," he said, "for my roughness. Once we begin there, we lose all restraint."

I answered coldly, "that it was no matter."

"But it is matter," he said angrily; "I gave you a right to speak to me, and I met you most unworthily. I had some excuse, for the interruption brought about the row that you saw. I suppose your well-meant caution cost me only ten louis; but say you are not angry."

There was something very winning in his manner, and I could not resist him.

"But I thought you were going to give this up?" I said. "You led me to hope I had some influence."

During our absence a strange metamorphosis had taken place in the gardens. They had become crammed, and below us was a dense mass of merry figures, but now all lit up. In the daytime I had noted trees dotted about that seemed like palm-trees with drooping branches. It was a rare "administration" device to line these with gas-pipes, and hang white globes over them, up and down. When they treat our poor human nature as they do, it is only, all of course, that they should deal with the glorious fruits of the earth in the same fashion. Gas and paint, and gilding, and gewgaws, these make up this sunlight, and grass greens, and variegated colours of nature. To the fresh breath of Heaven, they prefer the miasma of their crowded