BANG!
The world seemed to have stopped at home that night, and in the large
room--a thing Sophia had never known before--there was no one playing.
The croupiers were all at their posts, some of them idly spinning the
wheels, or dealing right and left for imaginary trente et quarante; but
the visitors, perhaps only twenty in all, were lounging by the open
windows, silently watching the gathering of the storm. Due south, and
far over the sea, a terrific thunderstorm was going on; to the west, a
separate and distinct display winked and grumbled. Both storms were
certainly moving nearer; it was as if the elements were banded together
for the destruction of Monte Carlo, and the whole world seemed to be
waiting, finger on lip, for an imminent judgment. The air was windless,
but every few minutes a sudden gust swept rattling and hissing across
the garden, some outlying feeler, cast down like a grappling-iron from a
balloon, of the fearful tumult that was raging fathoms overhead. In such
a way seaweed and ooze feel the suck of a swell above, stir and wave
madly through the translucent water, and are still again.
Close to the window near where they entered the large room a very tall
figure of a man lounged against the wall, his face averted. Over it--no
uncommon sight--was tied a black domino, for the more finished gamblers
of that day--gamblers, that is, of the first water, who cultivated
style--often concealed their faces in this way, for fear that some
ungovernable seizure of the muscles might declare their emotion.
Princess Sophia had often talked this curious custom over with Blanche.
‘It is a ridiculous invention,’ she said, ‘for the involuntary and
ungovernable spasms of emotion are betrayed, not by the face, but by the
hands. I, as you know, have had some experience of the table, and though
no one--this sounds hardly modest, but it is true--can conceal their
excitement better than I, I cannot always check little sudden movements
of the fingers. The muscles of my face I have in perfect control. There
is no difficulty. It is a mask; but if you watch my third and fourth
fingers, you will see them, if I am more than usually interested in the
game, make little movements which I simply cannot control. It is hardly
a movement, it is more a vibration; and to conceal this, as you have
noticed, I sometimes wear dark gloves at the tables.’
They passed on into their private room, where Pierre--he always left
Rhodopé with the Princess--was awaiting them. Even he seemed touched by
the weather, and his bow lacked briskness, and his moustache looked
limp.
‘Pierre, Pierre, this will never do!’ cried Sophia. ‘We are all like old
rags in this weather, and we need more players. Let us have all the
windows open; we shall soon have to shut them. Yet in the other
room--no, no one is playing. Whom can we get? Is not the lightning
amazing!’
‘There are some good players there, your Royal Highness, though no one
is playing yet,’ said Pierre--‘a tall man, for instance, in a black
domino.’
‘Yes, I saw him,’ said the Princess. ‘He even bowed to me as I came in,
which is impertinent of a stranger.’
‘He bowed to the Queen of Monte Carlo, madam,’ said Pierre, brisking up
a little, for Sophia always stimulated him, ‘not to the Princess of
Rhodopé.’
The Princess laughed.
‘But he wears a domino,’ she said; ‘he must be a bad gambler if he
cannot control his face.’
‘Watch his hands, madam,’ returned Pierre; ‘they are as if of ice.’
‘Then, why does he wear a domino?’
‘Perhaps to conceal some deformity, poor gentleman!’ said Pierre, ‘or
perhaps he has the dance of St. Vitus. Your Royal Highness will find he
plays well.’
‘Ask him to come in, then,’ she said, ‘and ask three others; we are
short to-night.’
Pierre hurried into the other room to do her bidding, and a moment
afterwards returned with the desired number. It was considered a sort
of brevet rank among card-players to join the Princess’s table, and her
requests were always eagerly obeyed. Last of the four came the Black
Domino, and as the Princess bowed to him, ‘Your Royal Highness will be
so kind as to excuse my domino,’ he said; ‘it is a practice of mine to
wear it.’
‘And gloves?’ asked the Princess, with interest.
‘No, madam; I have my hands under control,’ he replied.
‘That is odd,’ said she. ‘My face I have under control, you shall see,
but occasionally I have to wear gloves.’
Princess Aline was not gifted by nature with the best of temper, and for
the first hour she had certainly the worst of luck. Eight times she
betted limit stakes on the second half-dozen--no mean form of play--and
seven times she lost. The limit was one hundred napoleons, and the seven
rolls were expensive. At the end of the seventh she lost her temper as
well as her stake, and in a spasm of irony quite ineffectual against
inanimate objects she laid two sous with much asperity on the same
half-dozen, although the lowest stake was understood to be a napoleon;
but her bet was addressed, not to the company, but to the offending
marble. This time, of course, she won, and in a fit of rage she hurled
the innocuous penny-piece which Pierre had hastily fished out of his
pocket on to the floor.
The Black Domino, who was seated next her, pushed back his chair, and
picked it up for her.
‘I think this slipped from the hand of your Serene Highness,’ he said
gravely, and with such suavity and seriousness of tone that none thought
to laugh.
The Princess meantime, as she so often was accustomed to do when
beginning a night’s play, trifled and coquetted with Luck, to see in
what mood the goddess was, as some _gourmet_ who is ordering his dinner
will sit over the choice of dishes with an olive or a glass of bitters,
testing the quality and leanings of his appetite. She bet a napoleon or
two on a single number once or twice, and lost; she bet on a few
half-dozens, and lost also; she even bet occasionally on the colour, but
Luck seemed to have turned its back on her. These insignificant
triflings gave her time to observe the Black Domino, and before long her
candour told her that Luck had been right to leave her. If she was, as
Pierre said, the Queen of Monte Carlo, here indeed was the King. The
domino, of course, concealed his face; but, even as Pierre had said, his
hands might have been of ice. He seemed to stake nothing lower than the
limit, and he never staked on more than a half-dozen. Once, when he had
bet on a single number, she noticed he had just lit a match for his
cigarette, and his hand was half raised, the elbow off the table, when
the marble, as sometimes happens, after some few wild dashes backwards
and forwards, began to slow down very suddenly. Watching it, he forgot
to light his cigarette, and though his arm was unsupported, she saw his
white fingers cut like a cameo across his black coat, and the edge
never wavered. She grew so interested in watching him that more than
once she forgot to stake on a roll, to the extreme amazement of all
present, including herself.
After an hour or two Pierre went to get his supper, and in the momentary
pause before the new croupier took his place she leaned forward across
the table.
‘Let me have the honour of complimenting you on your play,’ she said to
the Black Domino; ‘it is perfection, and I have seen a good deal of
play.’
The man bowed.
‘Praise from the Princess Sophia is praise indeed,’ he said. ‘You see,
your Royal Highness, I make it a rule never to get up a loser; that
gives one a certain calmness. One only has to play long enough.’
She laughed.
‘A good rule,’ she said. ‘Your methods are the same as my own. It will
come to a duel between us.’
‘That shall be as your Royal Highness pleases,’ he said.
Prince Victor was of that imbecile type of gambler which is usually
known as the prudent; in other words, after having lost a specified sum,
he closed his performances for the evening. This consummation he usually
attained after about three hours’ hesitating and inglorious adventure;
but this evening his rate of progress was somewhat more advanced, and he
rose from the table shortly before midnight. On the stroke of the clock,
without warning, the two battalions of storm burst overhead; a wicked
flicker of lightning zigzagged across the darkness close outside the
room where they were playing, and simultaneously, it seemed, a crack of
thunder so appalling burst above them that even the Princess, who seldom
showed emotion, half rose from her seat with a little cry of fright.
Princess Aline buried her face in her hands; Pierre, who had returned
from his supper, cried ‘Mon Dieu!’ in a trembling voice and crossed
himself; the Black Domino alone remained perfectly unmoved.
‘Your Royal Highness should recollect,’ he said to Sophia, ‘that when
one has heard the thunder it is proof-positive that one has not been
struck by the lightning. I am quite sure we all heard the thunder.
Personally, I am deafened; my ears sing. I see no has staked on this
roll.’
Shortly after one Princess Aline got up rather hastily from the table.
She said something in a loud, angry tone; but her words, luckily
perhaps, were drowned by a prodigious explosion overhead. Outside the
rain was falling like a shower of lead, and now and then a lightning
flash crossing the black square of the windows would turn the water into
a deluge of prismatic colour. Already the air was cooler, but the
chariots of God still drove backwards and forwards over their very
heads. As Aline left the table, the Black Domino asked for a
whisky-and-soda, and Princess Sophia put on her gloves; for her hands
trembled perceptibly, and her little finger made strange twitching
movements. The Black Domino must already have made a fortune, and
Princess Sophia thought with dismay that her Civil list would not be
paid till September, and she was not very good at economizing.
On the retirement of Aline and Victor, the Princess had sent out for two
others to take their places; but when at three o’clock Blanche also
rose, she sent in vain for another. Play had ceased in the large room,
and there was positively no one there. Half an hour afterwards two
others got up, and the Princess, looking round the table, saw that
weariness sat on all faces.
She rose at once.
‘Do not let me detain you, ladies and gentlemen, if any of you wish to
go,’ she said. ‘I am infinitely obliged to you for your charming
company. The storm, I think, is passing over; you can get to your hotels
without a drenching. Good-night--I wish you all a very good-night.’
A sigh of relief went round the room--for it was not etiquette to leave
the Princess’s table, except for her intimates, till she herself
suggested it--and all rose. The Black Domino, however, lingered.
‘Am I to understand that your Royal Highness is willing to go on playing
with any who wish to remain?’ he asked.
Sophia flushed with delight.
‘_Mon cher inconnu_,’ she cried, ‘you are inimitable! But what game
shall we play? It will have to be a game for two. I will cut you through
fifty packs.’
‘I would as soon play old maid, begging your Royal Highness’s pardon,’
observed the Black Domino with some heat.
‘Bezique?’ suggested Sophia.
‘Surely that is more a game for Ash Wednesdays, your Royal Highness,’
said he.
‘Suggest, then,’ she said; ‘only I will not play trente et quarante. No
doubt I am unreasonable, but it bores me; and I entirely refuse to be
bored. After all, roulette is the only game worth playing; but we can’t
play roulette with two.’
‘I think it might be managed,’ said the Black Domino, ‘if the bank will
stand aside and let us fight it out.’
‘How do you propose to manage it?’ she asked.
‘In this way. One of us--say whichever of us won the last roll--stakes
on a number, or on six numbers, or a dozen, or on the colour. The other
then stakes, but may not stake on more numbers than the first has staked
on. Thus, if your Royal Highness stakes on a dozen, I may stake on a
dozen or anything less than a dozen. In the same way, if I, staking
first, back colour merely, your Royal Highness may stake on colour, on
the dozen, on anything down to one number. If I, again, stake on one
number, your Royal Highness must stake on one. Thus, if you stake on one
number to my dozen and win, I pay you twelve times your stake. If we
both stake on a dozen and you win, I pay you your stake only. It will
not be roulette, but it should not be tedious.’
Sophia turned to Pierre.
‘Will it make a game?’ she asked.
Pierre wiped an excited dew from his forehead.
‘I would my father were alive to see it!’ he exclaimed piously. ‘Madam,
it is the greatest gamble conceivable! Heaven will not be found to hold
such a gamble.’
‘That is probably the case,’ said Sophia dryly.
They sat down again, and at the Princess’s request the Black Domino spun
a coin.
‘Heads!’ she cried; and it was heads.
Sophia intended to begin gently till she saw the run of the game, and
staked five napoleons on red.
‘Black,’ replied her opponent, and lost.
Sophia hesitated.
‘Red,’ she said--‘limit. I think this will make an amusing game.’
‘On number thirteen, limit,’ replied this remarkable young man.
Sophia held her breath. Hardened gambler as she was, she always let
thirteen severely alone, and she heard her pulse hammering in her throat
as the ball clicked and flew off at tangents. Long before it stopped she
had a presentiment what would happen, and when it paused, ran on again,
slowed and died, dropping into thirteen, she was not surprised.
‘I congratulate you,’ she said with entire truth, and handed him sixteen
times the limit stake.
For the next half-hour after this the play was only moderately
sensational. They staked on dozens and half-dozens, occasionally even on
colour, and the Black Domino continued to make a handsome income. About
four o’clock he yawned slightly, and it being Sophia’s turn to stake,
when she backed a colour, he wearily laid down the limit stake of a
hundred napoleons on number twenty.
‘My age,’ he said.
‘Indeed!’ remarked Sophia. ‘You look older;’ and her voice vibrated with
suppressed emotion.
The ball slowed down. Again he had won on a single number to her
sixteen.
At this she grew a little reckless; but do what she would, her own
recklessness seemed to fade into a pallid system by his; the fire of her
play dwindled like a candle in sunlight before his extraordinary
hazards, and yet his hands might have been hands of ice.
Only once again before the pale face of the dawn began to peer in at the
eastern window did they pause, and that when Pierre rose to walk up and
down the room, for he was cramped with sitting. Then for the first and
only time in her life the Princess showed herself inquisitive.
‘I should be honoured by knowing your name,’ she said.
‘With your Royal Highness’s permission I will keep it to myself till we
have finished,’ he replied. ‘But I have on my side a question. Shall we,
with your Royal Highness’s permission, place no limit on the stakes?
These hundred napoleon stakes are getting a little tedious, are they
not? We are used to them, and when one gets used to a thing it is better
to change it.’
Now, most men when they have won a fortune would absolutely refuse to
raise the stakes, and the Princess raised her hands in amazement. Never
had her wildest imaginations pictured a gambler so magnificent as this.
What a king, she thought, he would have made! He was royal--a man out of
sight of the run of humanity, as kings should be. None but she could so
well have appreciated his extraordinary self-control, none could have so
estimated his scale.
‘My limit shall only be that of which I am possessed,’ she said. ‘I have
still six thousand napoleons to lose, but I am afraid I have no more.’
The black Domino separated from his pile of winnings sixty rouleaux of a
hundred napoleons.
‘The night is already gone,’ he said. ‘I will stake on red.’
‘And I on black,’ said the Princess; and her little finger twitched like
the indicator of a telegraph.
The ball slowed down, and she rose.
‘I would play with you till the Day of Judgment,’ she said, ‘but
positively I have not a penny till my Civil List is paid in September.’
‘Your Royal Highness has Rhodopé,’ said he.
‘True; and what shall be your stake?’
‘The revenues of Rhodopé, paid year by year to you and your heirs for
ever.’
‘They are large, and “for ever” is a long time.’
‘And I am rich. Also I have luck. I will stake on the first half of the
board.’
‘And I on the second,’ said the Princess; but her voice was a whisper.
Pierre’s hand so trembled that he could scarce set the wheel in motion,
and the Princess’s foot beat an electric dynamo on the thick Persian rug
underneath the table. The spin was a long one, but at last the ball
began to slow down; it crept through one to sixteen, crawled through
sixteen to thirty-two, wavered over zero, and settled into number one.
They rose together.
‘A pleasant jest,’ said the Princess rather tremulously, ‘to end a
memorable evening.’
‘I never jest when I am gambling,’ said the Black Domino. Then he drew
himself up and removed his domino. ‘Is it possible you do not recognise
me, mother?’ he said.
The Princess’s hands made a sudden quick movement together.
‘Oh, Leonard! Leonard!’ she cried; ‘when you ought to have been among
the wigwams! How tiresome of you!’
‘Even so, but I preferred, like you, to be at Monte Carlo. I have been
here two months, and I have played every day since I saw you last. The
rest of my time was occupied in copying pages out of guidebooks.’
Sophia could not restrain herself. She threw her arms round his neck and
embraced him, kissing him on both cheeks.
‘But you are magnificent!’ she cried. ‘I never thought the world
contained so splendid a man! And how you have grown! I left you a
little boy, now you look a man of twenty.’
‘I am nearly twenty-one,’ he said.
‘Yes, you must be. How time flies! Leonard, how can you keep your hands
still? You shall teach me.’
‘It is practice, and natural predisposition to keep quiet at the
tables,’ he said. ‘I inherited the second from you, dear mother, and I
have had a good deal of the other on my own account.’
Pierre--and he should have been given a medal for the act--had seen that
this was no interview for him to witness, and, as the others had
forgotten his presence, he went softly and discreetly out of the room.
For a moment there was silence. Then Leonard said:
‘I wonder if you realize what you have done, mother.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You have staked Rhodopé and lost it.’
The Princess sat down heavily in a chair. Her emotion dazed her.
‘Leonard, you can never do it,’ she said. ‘My poor boy, you would die in
a month at Rhodopé. You would beggar the principality in a night, and a
week after you would be dead of boredom. No, it is too great a
sacrifice! I will not accept it. To-morrow I shall go back to Rhodopé. I
will banish myself there, and never play again. I have perfection, and
that is you, and I am content. I have seen my ideal. Besides, I am a
beggar.’
‘I insist on your paying me your debt,’ said Leonard. ‘You have
abdicated. I am Hereditary Prince of Rhodopé. You shall come to Rhodopé
to-morrow, and say farewell to your people; but after that you shall not
come to Rhodopé again, and I think you will not care to. I have played
my last stake. I shut up every gambling-house in the principality,
otherwise we shall be the mock of Europe; and I will not be Prince of a
country that is one roulette-board.’
The Princess sprang up.
‘You mean it, Leonard?’ she said. ‘You will do what I have been unable
to do? You will save Rhodopé? Oh, but you cannot--you cannot! Think what
you are: how young; how many glorious nights of play may lie before
you!’
‘I am going to do as I said,’ he replied.
The Princess embraced him again.
‘And I shall never see Rhodopé any more,’ she cried. ‘Oh, merciful
heavens! how happy I am! But I will go with you and say farewell, and
then I will come back to Monte Carlo for ever and ever. I will wear a
lace cap at Rhodopé, and shed real tears. I will invoke all kinds of
blessings and that sort of thing on everybody. The poor Princess
abdicates because of the burden of State; she leaves the burden on the
shoulders of her dear son. The laws of dramatic propriety make me go to
Rhodopé once more. Oh, Leonard, although I was determined that you
should shake off this fatal habit of gambling, I thought but poorly of
you when I imagined you were taking an interest in mosques and wigwams;
but they answered their purpose, you naughty boy! Those letters you
wrote me the acme of absurdity. You shall tell me all your adventures
to-morrow. Come! let us get home; it is day.’
EPILOGUE.
It was my fortune, two years ago, while drifting about the Continent, to
be passing through the Riviera on my way to Greece, and, happening to
spend a night at that very pretty place Monte Carlo, it was not unnatural
that I went to take a look--no more--at the tables. After that it was
easier of demonstration than the first proposition of Euclid that I laid
a few francs on a half-dozen of numbers, and, oddly enough, I won. Just
as the marble slowed down, though I was too intent on it to raise my
eyes, I saw that a little stir of attentive movement was going about the
room, and after receiving my stake with a studied negligence--the right
pose, so I am told, at tables--I looked up. Close beside me was standing
a very large lady, with four of the most magnificent ropes of pearls I
have ever seen round her neck. She smiled affably, and with a most
charming graciousness.
‘Please continue,’ she said; ‘you have yet time to stake on this roll.’
I at once guessed who this great jewelled lady was, and in some
confusion of mind laid a napoleon at haphazard on the board.
The instant after the croupier set the wheel going, and I was struck
with consternation, though not naturally superstitious, to observe that
the number I had chosen to back was thirteen.
In the room there was dead silence, and looking up, I saw the Princess’s
eyes glued to the table. This, as I soon observed, was a habit with that
remarkable woman. The play of others she would watch as if her last
franc was at stake; when she played herself, it was as if she staked a
sixpence. Round and round went the marble, clicking and whirring; it
slowed down, and I had won.
‘My dear young man,’ said the Princess, ‘I shall be delighted to know
your name, and to receive you in my little private room to-night; I have
a small party with me.’
I willingly made the Princess the present of my name, but regretted that
circumstances over which I had no control made it absolutely impossible
for me to play for the stakes she was accustomed to risk. She scarcely
seemed to hear what I said.
‘Come,’ she said; ‘we will begin at once. I only want one extra
to-night, as we are a houseful.’
Now, by nature I am a profound loyalist, and hold heads which are
crowned, or have once been crowned, in a fervour of respect. To refuse
to obey a royal command seemed to me a thing undreamed of, but to play
with the Princess was dipped in an equal impossibility. As we entered
the Princess’s room, again I explained the meanness of my position. She
looked at me compassionately.
‘How much are you prepared to lose?’ she asked. ‘I mean, till you had
lost what sum, would you have remained in the Casino?’
I told her the meagre total.
‘Well, come and lose it with me,’ she said, ‘instead of in there. My
room is far more comfortable, and you may smoke, of course.’
Now I disapprove of gambling, especially for those who, like myself,
cannot afford it. I had been caught, like Dr. Jekyll, tampering with my
conscience, and Nemesis, in the person of the Princess, had come swift
and stout. I resigned myself, I dare to hope, with a fair grace, and
after the Princess had mentioned my name vaguely to a host of royalties,
laying little stress on it, but much stress on the fact that she had
seen me win on a single number, and that thirteen, we sat down. The
situation reminded me of the ‘Rose and the Ring.’ The room was full of
royalty, and my impression was that I was the only uncrowned head
present. I felt myself the apotheosis of obscurity.
However, there was no help for it, and feeling that I had better curtail
the evening as much as possible, but maintain the reputation of
recklessness, I proceeded to stake on single numbers, or on two or three
at a time, never backing more than six. Whether it was that the Goddess
of Luck was fairly astounded by the sudden recantation of an apostate,
or whether the powers that be wished to make up to me the missing of a
train the day before, I do not know, but the fact remains that I simply
could not lose. Pierre’s eyes were bright with admiration, and soon from
handing me my stake with a ‘Monsieur,’ he gave me rank as ‘votre
altesse.’
The clock by Vernier on the bracket seemed to me never to stop striking.
Hardly had one hour died in the air than the next was on the chime. I
was lost to the nimble passing of the time, and I remember but little of
the next few hours, except that the heap of gold by me grew like Alice
when she ate the mushroom. Hardly a word was exchanged by anyone, but I
recollect, just as the clock struck twelve, looking at my hands. For the
moment I thought I had an ague. I was sitting next the Princess, and she
too observed them.
‘There, there!’ she said, as if soothing a child, ‘it may happen to any
of us. Your face is all right. But send for a pair of gloves, if you
have none with you. What is your size? A large eight, I should say.
Pierre, procure some gloves--large eight--for this gentleman. Send one
of my footmen. I often wear gloves myself, and I think I shall put them
on now. I am a little excited. We are having a charming evening!’
One o’clock struck, and we adjourned for supper. As we rose I suddenly
realized that the excitement had made me ravenous, though till then I
had not been conscious of the slightest hunger. The experience, I
believe, is a common one.
We supped in one of the restaurants in the Casino, and I was assailed
with questions. Why had I not been seen here before? or was it that I
played at other tables only? What was the largest sum I had ever won?
and what did I really _entre amis_--(was not that gratifying!)--think
about number thirteen? It was in vain that I pleaded I was no gambler,
that I had no ideas whatever about the number thirteen, except that when
thirteen sat down to dinner they usually all lived for more than a year
afterwards. I was listened to with polite incredulity. I had not known
that crowned heads were so slow of belief. Princess Sophia, I think,
alone credited me with speaking the truth, for she said (and
subsequently explained what she meant):
‘At first I thought that you were like poor Petros, when he said that he
was but a beginner at bezique, but I think I was wrong.’
After an interval of half an hour we went back to the tables. If I had
been lucky before, I was Luck incarnate now. The thing was absurd and
ridiculous. I won so regularly that it became almost monotonous. For
more than an hour I consistently played limit stakes, and still the
rouleaux of gold poured in. I had recovered my nerve, and did not again
put on the large eights, which fitted me exactly, and from opposite I
saw the Princess looking at me with a wistful air.
‘It reminds me so of a night I spent with poor Leonard,’ she said, half
to herself, as for the hundredth time her stake was swept away to join
my winnings.
We left the tables at half-past three, and though I had meant to stop at
Monte Carlo only one night more, I found it impossible to go. In fact, I
engaged myself to lunch at the Princess’s villa next day, and be of her
party again in the evening.
The details of the play during the next few evenings would be tedious to
relate. It will suffice to say that Luck turned her back on me, and
though she could not quite efface the result of her first favours, I am
still not in a position to play roulette for large sums. In fact, I have
only introduced this little episode to explain how it was that I became
acquainted with the Princess, who told me the afore-written history of
her life, and graciously suggested that I should make a little book of
it.
‘For, indeed,’ she said, ‘my adventures seem to me not uninteresting.
Perhaps that is only my egotism, but I do not think so. And as you are
going away to-morrow--to Greece, I think you said?--I will finish the
story of which I have told you a part, and mention what happened to
Leonard after that memorable night at Monte Carlo when I gambled for
Rhodopé and lost.’
She sighed.
‘Poor dear Leonard!’ she said; ‘that was his _tour de force_, his fine
moment. He never came near it again. It is sad to me to think what a
mess people make of their lives. Some are born to one thing, some to
another; he was certainly born to be a gambler, but an adverse fate,
like the seventh godmother in the fairy-tales, gave him a terrible
gift. She made him Prince of Rhodopé, and endowed him with a mania for
reformation. I call him Luther sometimes.’
‘But surely you can hardly regret what he has done!’ I said. ‘Has he not
made a power of Rhodopé?’
She shook her head sadly.
‘He has only done what any obstinate, stupid, and excellent man could
have done,’ she said. ‘I will not argue that it is a better thing to be
a gambler than a reformer, but when you are born a gambler, it is silly
to devote your life to reforming. Sometimes, when I think of the parable
of the ten talents, I wonder----’ She broke off. ‘Well, for my story,’
she said, after a pause. ‘It is very short--just the sequel of what I
have already told you--but English people, I think, like a story to be
finished up, and to know that the hero lives happily ever afterwards,
and it will do for a little epilogue. In this case, it is certainly true
that Leonard has lived happily ever afterwards, for, indeed, he is quite
content. He has married, as you know, and he has five children, none of
whom have ever a pack of cards, and they are all the pictures of health,
and go to bed at nine. My dear young man, think what that means. It is
horrible! The Education Department ought to see to it. But in Rhodopé,
unfortunately, I doubt whether even the Education Department know what
cards are now. Dear me, how things have changed! Poor Leonard!
‘Yet he is content,’ she went on. ‘He has a magnificent army, and I
really believe he will make a great power of Rhodopé. When the Turkish
Empire is broken up, you will see he will get a great slice. And the
people adore him. They think he is the wisest, most Christian, and most
enlightened of monarchs, and I am afraid that if Leonard lives long--and
he is sure to live long, because he always goes to bed at half-past ten,
and gets up at a quarter past seven--oh, that quarter past!--he may get
to believe it, too. That would be a great pity. Humility is the first
duty of a crowned head, and if the German Emp---- Well, I suppose I had
better not say that.’
‘Please do,’ said I.
She shook her head.
‘No, you must not put that into your book. Say I stopped just in time;
it will make people think how discreet I am, and, indeed, it is true.
But to return to Leonard. He shut up every gambling-house in Rhodopé; he
even stopped knuckle-bones. As I told you, he had a bonfire of all the
roulette-boards, and gradually he made Rhodopé what it is. He has a
passion for doing his duty--an acquired passion, I admit, but still a
passion. It is a very common passion nowadays, and you English have got
it worse than anyone. You are all too good, and in consequence, as a
nation, you are just a little dull.’
‘I don’t think that is the result of our goodness,’ I said, for, like
Stevenson, I hate cynicism like the devil.
‘Pardon me,’ said the Princess, with some asperity, ‘but I know it is. I
like people to be good, when being good comes natural to them; but the
continual effort to do one’s duty is paralyzing to other energies. You
get developed incompletely. Also, the continual doing of one’s duty
makes one all nose or all forehead, or something disproportionate. You
have not time to be gay. Good gracious! there is the dressing-gong! I
must go, so good-bye. I am sorry you cannot play with us to-night, but I
think you said you were engaged. I have written to Leonard to say you
will go to Amandos after your visit to Athens, and I have not told him
you play roulette, or he would refuse to see you. Good-bye, and a
prosperous voyage. If you should get away from your dinner early, you
will find us at the tables, I expect. A little roulette would be
pleasant, I think, for a change. The large eight gloves, which I see you
have left on the table, I shall keep by me. When the madness is on me,
and I want to stake on thirteen, they ought to bring me luck.’
THE END.
* * * * *
THE
NELSON LIBRARY OF COPYRIGHT NOVELS.
_Uniform with this Volume and Same Price._
_A Few Recent Volumes._
SIR GEORGE TRESSADY. Mrs. Humphry Ward. “Sir George Tressady” is
Mrs. Humphry Ward’s best romance of high politics. It is a story of
a young member who is gradually won to Democratic ideas by the
influence of a great lady--the “Marcella” of the earlier novel. It
is a powerful study of the development of a fine character. The
last chapters must remain as of the finest episodes in modern
fiction.
ROMANCE. Joseph Conrad and F. M. Hueffer. “Romance,” which Mr.
Joseph Conrad wrote in collaboration with Mr. F. M. Hueffer, is a
story of the Spanish Main, and of the strange adventures of the
young Kentish gentlemen among the old Spanish cities of the West.
The story does not belie its title, for the very soul of romance
breathes in every chapter.
LADY ROSE’S DAUGHTER. Mrs. H. Ward. In this remarkable novel Mrs.
Humphry Ward has worked the life story of the famous Mademoiselle
de Lespinasse into a modern setting. It is a study of modern
society and high politics, and against this glittering background
we have a very original and charming love story.
WAR OF THE CAROLINAS.-----Meredith Nicholson.
Mr. Meredith Nicholson has acquired a great reputation in America
by works like “The House of the Thousand Candles,” in which the
threads of romance are woven into the fabric of everyday life. The
present book is pure comedy. It is the story of two friends who
find themselves, unknown to each other, assisting on opposite sides
in a war between the two daughters of the Governors of the
Carolinas.
KATHARINE FRENSHAM.-----Miss Beatrice Harraden.
Miss Harraden, many years ago, made her reputation by “Ships that
Pass in the Night” as a delicate and subtle portrayer of human life
and an accomplished artist in feminine psychology. Without any
cheap emotional appeal she has an unequalled power of attracting
the attention and winning the affections of her readers. “Katharine
Frensham” is an admirable example of this gift, and all lovers of
sincere and delicate art will welcome it.
FIRST MEN IN THE MOON.-----H. G. Wells.
This is a good example of Mr. Wells’s scientific romance at its
best. It is a story of the first landing of mortals in the moon; of
the strange land they found there, the strange government, and the
strange people. It is a nightmare, but one without horror. Mr.
Wells’s imagination has created out of wild shapes and figments a
world which has got an uncanny reality of its own. The story grips
the reader in the first chapter and carries him swiftly to the end.
PROFESSOR ON THE CASE.-----Jacques Futrelle.
Mr. Jacques Futrelle has attained in America, by his detective
stories, something of the reputation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in
this country. He has created a figure as original and wonderful as
Sherlock Holmes. The Professor is a devotee of pure logic, and by
acting on the principle that two and two always make four, is able
to elucidate the most baffling mysteries.
LOVE AND THE SOUL HUNTERS. J. O. Hobbes.
The late Mrs. Craigie had a unique place among modern writers. She
combined a brilliant wit and a remarkable gift of epigram with the
mysticism of the spiritual life; a union of qualities of which we
find traces in Disraeli’s best novels, and “Love and the Soul
Hunters” is a typical example of her gifts.
SECRET OF THE LEAGUE.-----Ernest Bramah.
The publishers have much pleasure in presenting this brilliant
novel in a cheap form in the hope that it may secure a wide
popularity. It was first published some years ago under the title
of “What Might Have Been,” but the author has since considerably
revised and remodelled it. It is a study of the future of our
politics under a Socialistic régime. It tells how the middle and
upper classes were crushed under a dead weight of taxation; how a
great league was formed to combat the evil; and how victory was won
by a device which is at once ingenious and convincing. In the
French phrase it gives the reader furiously to think, and even
those who differ from the author’s forecast will delight in the
stirring narrative and the many passages of trenchant satire.
VALERIE UPTON.-----Miss A. D. Sedgwick.
This is a study of one type of the American young woman, who, with
the phrases of self-sacrifice and idealism always upon her lips, is
radically cold-hearted and selfish. It is a brilliant character
study, and the repellent figure of the daughter is relieved by the
gracious character of her mother--a character which is in many ways
one of the most subtle and attractive in modern fiction.
FARM OF THE DAGGER.-----Eden Phillpotts.
Dartmoor is as much Mr. Phillpotts’s own country by right of
conquest as the Scottish Borders were Sir Walter Scott’s, and
Exmoor the late Mr. R. D. Blackmore’s. The present tale deals with
the time of the American War and the early years of the nineteenth
century. It is the study of a feud between neighbours; a grim story
of passion, relieved by a charming love tale. The atmosphere of the
moors is wonderfully rendered, and the men and women of the tale
have borrowed from their environment a kind of spacious strength.
It is also a record of action and adventure, and combines the
merits of a novel of character with those of a fine romance.
EXPENSIVE MISS DU CANE.-----S. Macnaughtan.
This is a comedy of a country house in which a number of
present-day types appear, drawn with admirable insight and a touch
of kindly irony. There is tragedy in the tale, but tragedy of the
kind common in our modern world, which is unspoken and scarcely
realized. The heroine is singularly sympathetic and carefully
studied, and no reader will be able to avoid the spell of her
charm.
No. 5 JOHN STREET.-----Richard Whiteing.
This book, which first brought Mr. Whiteing into fame, is the most
realistic and powerful of modern studies of slum life.
CLEMENTINA.-----A. E. W. Mason.
The story of the romantic love match of the Old Pretender, the
father of Prince Charlie, and how the bride was stolen and carried
to Italy by the inimitable Captain Wogan. Mr. Mason is the true
successor of the late Mr. Seton Merriman, and no man living can
tell a better tale.
THE AMERICAN PRISONER.-----Eden Phillpotts.
A story of the great war with Napoleon. The scene is laid mainly in
Devon, and since “Lorna Doone” there has been no better picture of
the West Country and its people.
JOHN CHARITY.-----H. A. Vachell.
A story of California in the old days of the Spanish dominion.
LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET.-----Miss Braddon.
Miss Braddon’s first, best, and most powerful story--a story that
shares with “East Lynne” the distinction of being the most
widely-read novel of modern times.
HIS HONOR AND A LADY.-----Sara J. Duncan.
A story of high Indian politics, in which the great public servant,
who knows no master but his conscience, is contrasted with the
time-server, who succeeds where he fails, and steps into his shoes.
The character of the Lieutenant-Governor is one of the finest
modern studies of the best type of British administrator.
THE MAN FROM AMERICA.
Mrs. Henry de la Pasture.
This “sentimental comedy” tells of an old French vicomte who lives
in Devon, of his grandchildren, and of how the “man from America,”
the son of a former comrade, appears as a providence to save his
fortunes. Mrs. De la Pasture has few rivals in the delineation of
the little worries and tragedies of social life.
BY Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD.
MARCELLA.
At a time when Socialism is in the air, this novel should be read
with keen interest. Marcella is a beautiful, high-spirited girl who
leaves her own class to devote her life to the service of the poor.
THE MARRIAGE OF WILLIAM ASHE.
This book has been universally acknowledged to be one of the most
brilliant of modern social studies. The characters are in the main
drawn from real personages; and apart from the dramatic interest of
the story, much light is shed on certain aspects of modern
political life. Its place is with the books that do not die, and it
is the most attractive and brilliant of all Mrs. Ward’s novels.
ROBERT ELSMERE.
The famous book which is the parent of all modern theological
speculations. Comparable in sheer intellectual power to the best
work of George Eliot, and unquestionably the most notable work of
fiction that has been produced for years.
THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE.
OLD GORGON GRAHAM.-----G. H. Lorimer.
This is a pendant to the “Letters of a Self-Made Merchant,” which
may be taken as the gospel of the American business man, and which
has had an unprecedented success in the United States and in this
country.
THE HOSTS OF THE LORD.-----Flora Annie Steel.
Mrs. Steel, after Mr. Rudyard Kipling, is the greatest novelist of
India, and in this volume there is much of her best work. No writer
has shown more vividly the contrast between the civilized life of
the Anglo-Indian and the strange native world of ancient fears and
famine around him.
MOONFLEET.-----J. Meade Falkner.
The dead Mohunes of Moonfleet, the smugglers who invade their
vault, a secret cipher, and hidden treasure are amongst the
ingredients of as spirited, fine-flavoured, and fascinating a tale
as a man could wish to read.
WHITE FANG.-----Jack London.
The press says of “White Fang”:--“A masterpiece of its kind. It
rivals, if it does not surpass, the most magical feats of Mr.
Kipling’s genius.”--“A powerful and fascinating story.”--“A piece
of work showing really amazing power.”
OWD BOB.-----Alfred Ollivant.
This is the saga of a dog, fully equal to Jack London’s “White
Fang,” and unequalled since “Rab and His Friends.” It is “a fine
open-air, blood-stirring book, to be enjoyed by all to whom a dog
is dear.”
_And many other equally interesting works of fiction._