Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/367

Charles Dickens] send me out into the street raging, frantic, or to those woods yonder?—take care!"

"Oh, folly!" he said, "I want to do nothing so foolish. What object is it to me what you do? I do see the state you are in, and therefore, if I may give you a bit of advice, I would take care, I would, indeed. You are in a very ticklish way. Tell me honestly what you have lost. Two hundred, D'Eyncourt said."

"Something under that," I answered. "But it is all one."

"That is as you look at it," he answered. "The dock isn't one." I started at this ugly word. "I tell you what," he said eagerly, "this is a matter you can't get over in this way. You must do something, my friend, then, desperate or not; a man in your situation can't be nice. Halloo, Stopford—come from Zero?"

"I wish I had; I am running home for some cash. Why Zero hasn't been heard of since five o'clock. As I live, no."

"Now is the time," said Grainger, leaping up. "Come in all of us, or it will be too late."

Was this a call or an inspiration? I did not much care now. Yet I went in with them. There was a vast crowd stooping over; Grainger elbowed his way to the table. "Pas de Zéro encore?" he said familiarly to the croupier. The other answered gruffly, "No."

Every one was "piling on the agony," as a man called it, for it seemed certain that the overdue Zero must arrive, every moment. Here were ten, twenty, thirty louis on, and here were men increasing their stake every moment. There was the awful sense of contagion, which the mere looking on produces; it made me tremble with a sense that I was helpless and could not resist, and yet I was calm. Grainger had clutched my arm.

"Think of what I said; this is an ugly business, the rope and the dock, my friend. Here's a chance of a reprieve, and you're a fool if you don't try it. As well suffer for a sheep as for a lamb."

This coarse allusion embodied whatever was floating in my mind. He was only right to speak so, for I had, of course, forfeited all title to any but the plainest speaking. The strangest thing was the calm way in which I could look at, and measure the situation so accurately. He was right—a few louis more or less did not lessen or increase my crime. And even the man I had so basely injured would approve of my investing a trifle, as it were, to get him back what I had robbed him of. That is the correct word. In a moment I resolved to use five or seven louis for this purpose. I took out a hundred-franc note and presented it to be changed by the croupier, with the usually suspicious alacrity. He looked up at my face suspiciously, but this was only my suspicion. They look at every one's face to whom they pay their vile and deceptive courtesies. I wonder how I go through all this so calmly. But it will only be for a short time longer. And as I sit here, I vow to that Heaven I have so outraged, I meant well in this last stage of my villany. I put down my gold piece, and scarcely found room. I did not go through the hyprocrisy of a prayer. It disappeared, I put down again. "It must come this time," said Grainger. It flew away. A third, a fourth, a fifth—"D—n! d—v—sh!" I heard some such mutterings from Grainger, whose own silver had been going too. In these curses—I shall conceal nothing—I half joined. This devilish obstinacy, I would like to meet with obstinacy as fiendship. Then it for the first time struck me, even if this wonderful fortune occurred to me, what a beggarly return it would be—just thirty-five pieces, which would not near indemnify. A devilish obstinacy, I said again. I felt a sort of rage, and fury as devilish, and as I say an obstinacy, that would have made me put down everything, take a knife, gash my arm, let the blood stream out on their cursed board, if they wanted that! A soul's eternal fate—they would not care, for it is not to be made into money. They leave that to him whose business it is properly. . . . .. Every one round me is saying it must come up in three or four coups more. There are many damp brows round me, but mine is strangely cool. No sign of it; but they shall not beat me. They don't know whom they have to deal with; five this time, and five gone. The grey-headed croupier says he never recollects such a thing, but he will bet "it will arrive within ten minutes." Every one still piling. So shall I, by the Heaven above me. I am too far gone to draw back, and here are three hundred-franc notes—it is too slow changing them. Oh, vile, vile, wretches to have brought me to this, to have drawn me into these toils! The curse of the wretched and the ruined, of the widows and wives, and children that turn out wicked, follow you, and stifle you on your death-beds! May your gilded rooms and your painted roofs come tumbling on you in ruins; may your—but I must go on, and tell all calmly. It is no use counting the notes to