Vanno Della Robbia less deliberately yet with more ardour had thrown
himself into the same experiment. He thought that Mary's anger against
him might have one good result: in making her wish to leave the table
where he had come to sit. She could scarcely fall upon worse luck
elsewhere, and perhaps she might give up play for the evening if she
went away from this unlucky corner. If a wish of his could be granted by
fate, she would never play again. Yet, desiring this with all the force
that was in him, he began nevertheless to gamble, for the first time
since coming to Monte Carlo. No conscientious scruple had held him back
hitherto; but the game had not appealed to him. He disliked the
crowding, the sordidness and vulgarity which, to his mind, attended it;
and it seemed to him that public gambling was an unintelligent, greedy
vice.
His idea in putting on money now was merely to "pay for his place,"
whence he did not mean to move as long as Mary stayed. Many other men
would be ready to snatch the chair the instant he abandoned it,
therefore he had no right to usurp the Casino's property without
payment. He had no small money with him, and to avoid the trouble of
changing notes with a croupier, he staked a hundred francs on red, the
colour of the number which Lord Dauntrey had just advised Mary to
choose.
As if she fully realized that her luck had failed her to-night, for
several spins she had been guided entirely by Lord Dauntrey. He was
directing her play according to his system, to which his faith still
desperately clung, though he now admitted to his friends that his own
capital was not big enough to test it fairly. His game was upon numbers,
columns, and dozens, all at the same time, increasing the stakes, as he
said, "with the bank's money," or, in other words, after a win. It was
therefore a loss following directly upon a win which was the worst enemy
of the system, and occasionally there came a long run of exactly this
alternation: win, loss, win, loss, win, loss. It happened so to-night,
greatly to his annoyance, as he hoped to interest Miss Grant in his
method. Dom Ferdinand was sulkily waiting for more remittances, and
amusing himself meanwhile by throwing about a few louis here and there,
undirected by his friend Lord Dauntrey. The Marquis de Casablanca had
stopped play entirely, perhaps in the hope of setting his patron a wise
example. The Collises had never been useful. Dodo Wardropp liked to
gamble "on her own," and Mrs. Ernstein, though rich, was a coward when
it came to risking her money at the tables. Others in the house made
themselves as irritating to Lord Dauntrey in their selfish obstinacy as
Dodo; and all his hopes centred upon Mary. She was a lamb whom his wife
had cleverly caught in the bushes, a lamb with golden fleece. He would
have liked above all things to help her win this first night; but
curiously enough she lost monotonously, no matter what game she tried,
unless Prince Giovanni Della Robbia pushed money on to some chance where
her stake happened to lie. Then and then only she won; so that if she
inclined to superstition (as did most women at the tables) she would
believe that not Lord Dauntrey but the Roman "brought her luck."
Nevertheless she seemed vexed rather than pleased when the Prince (whom
Dauntrey knew by sight and name) fixed upon a chance where she had
staked. Presently, though she won four times running when this occurred,
she kept back her money until the last, staking only just before the
croupier's "Rien ne va plus," to prevent Della Robbia from following her
lead. At last, she got up impatiently. "I am tired!" she said, in a
voice that trembled slightly. "I hardly know what I'm doing."
Mary did not pick up the money--comparatively little--which was the
remnant of her losses, and Dauntrey asked sympathetically if she would
like him to play for her, according to the plan they had begun to follow
out.
"Yes, if you please," she replied, seeming to attach no importance to
her answer or to the small pile of gold and notes, all that remained of
a hundred thousand francs with which she had begun the evening.
Without another glance at the table, or a flicker of the lashes at
Vanno, she turned away; and after a whispered word or two in Lord
Dauntrey's ear, Eve went with her, in the direction of the Salle
Schmidt.
Vanno had an immediate impulse to rise, but common sense forbade. Mary
had so unmistakably shown her dislike of his presence, and the
association of his play with hers, that it was impossible for him to
follow her. Though he detested Lady Dauntrey, in his heart he preferred
her to a man as a companion for Mary, even a man like Dick Carleton;
and for the moment the jealousy he could not control was at rest. Seeing
that Lord Dauntrey's weary eyes were fixed upon him, he continued to
play, as if he had not noticed Mary's going. By and by the game began to
absorb him in a way he would not have believed possible. He became
excited, with an odd, tense excitement which had an almost fierce joy in
it. Never before had he felt an emotion exactly like this, except once,
when in India he and a friend had lain in wait for a man-eating tiger,
in the night, at the tiger's drinking place. Dimly it amused him to
compare this sensation with the other; and it surprised him, too, that
he should feel as he felt now; for gambling had always seemed to him not
only greedy and sordid and vulgar, but a stupid way of passing the time,
unworthy a man or woman of sense and breeding.
To his own amazement, the pleasure of the game was balm for the
heartache Mary had made him suffer. He did not forget her, or his
repentance, or the determination to right himself in her eyes; yet the
hot throb of his anxiety was soothed, as by an opiate. What he felt for
Mary was but a part of this keen emotion that flowed through him like a
tide.
He remembered the prophecy of his friend the astrologer, in the Libyan
desert, that his star in the ascendant would bring him good fortune this
month of December. Certainly he had not found luck in love. Perhaps it
was to come to him through gambling. He wondered if there could be any
possible connection between the stars and the actions of a man, or the
chances of a game like roulette. Though his studies of the stars had
been confined to astronomy, the romance in him, and the dreamer's love
of mystery, refused to shut the door on belief in another branch of the
same science. It was enormously interesting to think that perhaps the
stars, the planets, controlled this tiny sphere of ivory in its mad dash
round the revolving wheel. Since the whole universe was made up of
marvels almost beyond credence, who with certainty could say "no?"
Vanno was not rich. He had no more than thirty thousand francs a year,
left him by his mother, and had refused an extra allowance from the
Duke. It had been his pride to live within his income, all through his
travels, and despite his love of collecting rare books. His father had
given him his observatory at Monte Della Robbia, but nothing else of
importance. His invention was beginning to bring him in a little, but it
would never make a fortune; and he was not one who could afford a
"flutter" at Monte Carlo without counting the cost. To-night, however,
after winning some thousands of francs, it did not occur to him--as it
might if some other man in his circumstances had been concerned--that it
would be wise to stop. The spin of the wheel began to exert a
fascination over his mind, appealing to all that was adventurous in him.
Not once was he conscious of putting on a stake for the sake of the
money it might gain; not once did he hesitate from fear of loss. It was
the call of the unknown that lured him, the thrilling doubt as to where
the ball would stop.
The little dancing white thing, magical as a silver bullet, seemed a
miniature incarnation of destiny, spinning his fate. Always Vanno was
pricked by the desire to try again, and see if he could once more
foretell the result. There lay the poignant, the indescribable charm: in
not knowing.
He saw now that he had misjudged gamblers in believing them all to be
mercenary, at least at the moment of gambling. Some might be so, many
perhaps; but he began to realize that the chief appeal was to the
imaginative temperament, such as he knew his own, and guessed Mary's, to
be.
When his stake was larger than usual--larger a good deal than he could
afford in prudence--he revelled in the uncertainty of the event which he
intensely desired. And it dawned in his mind that this was the true
intoxication of the gambler, the delicious anguish of playing with the
unknown. It was a more dangerous intoxication than he had supposed it to
be, because more subtle, as the effect of cocaine or morphia is more
insidious than that of alcohol.
Like a hunter, he pursued the game until, to his great surprise, a
croupier announced, "Les trois derniers." It was almost impossible to
believe that he had sat at the table for hours.
By this time Vanno had abandoned all attempt to check his winnings and
losses. It was not until he had gathered up his money and counted it on
leaving the table that he knew he had lost not only his winnings, but
three thousand francs besides. The discovery filled him with a peculiar,
bitter annoyance, as if an alkaloid fluid ran through his veins: and
this not because of the loss, which was comparatively insignificant, but
because he had failed, because he had been ignominiously beaten by the
bank. He had had his luck, and had stupidly thrown it away, after the
manner of all those fools for whom he had felt a superior, pitying
contempt. Still, he was not sorry that he had played. His short
experience of roulette and the curious exhilaration the spin of the
wheel had given brought him nearer to understanding Mary than he had
ever come before, or could have come otherwise. Also, his combativeness
was roused. His nerves seemed to quiver, to bristle with an angry
determination to justify himself in his own eyes, and to have his
revenge upon the brutal power of the bank.
"I'll get it all back from them to-morrow," he thought, "and more
besides. I won't be beaten. And when I've done something worth doing,
I'll stop. That's the way to gamble."