himself with an idea that it obeyed his will, this wonderful, dizzying,
maddening wheel, with its circle of helpless victims. But there were
moments when he felt himself more at the mercy of the wheel than any
wretched gambler of them all. As he stood, with his curiously rigid
countenance, performing his monotonous functions in the peculiar silence
which characterizes the group around a gaming table, he sometimes felt
himself in the tangible grasp of Fate; as if the figures surrounding the
table had been but pictures on his brain, and he, the puppet
impersonating Fate to them, the real and only victim of chance. At such
times he could get free from this imaginary bondage only by a deliberate
summoning up of those facts of his previous existence which alone seemed
convincingly real. They marshalled themselves readily enough at his
bidding, those ruthless invaders of an easy, indolent life;--penury and
disgrace, wounded pride and disappointed love, and, bringing up the
rear, that firm yet futile resolve of his to go to the devil. Dabney
Dirke, with his tragic intensity, had often been the occasion of humor
in other men, but it is safe to say that his own mind had never been
crossed by a single gleam of that illumining, revivifying flame. For
that reason he took his fate and himself more seriously, Heaven help
him!--than even his peculiar ill-fortune warranted.
At the time of his father's failure and disgrace he had been the
accepted suitor of a girl whom he idealized and adored, and in his
extremity she had failed him. She had weakly done as she was bid, and
broken faith with him. It was on this occasion that he laid upon himself
the burdensome task of which mention has been made.
"Frances," he had said, with the solemnity of a Capuchin friar taking
his vows; "Frances, if you cast me off I shall go to the devil!"
Frances was very sorry, and very reproachful, and withal, not a little
nattered by this evidence of her negative influence; but she gave him
her blessing and let him go, whither he would; and he, with the
inconsequent obstinacy of his nature, carried with him a perfectly
unimpaired ideal of her, sustained by her tearful assurance that she
should always love him and pray for him. Even when he heard within the
year that she was about to make a brilliant marriage with a titled
Frenchman whom she had met at Newport, he persisted in thinking of her
as the victim, not of her own inconstancy, but of parental sternness. He
sometimes saw her pretty face quite distinctly before his eyes, as he
looked out across the swiftly spinning wheel, into the smoke-hung
barroom,--the pretty face with the tearful eyes and the quivering lip of
shallow feeling, the sincerity of which nothing could have made him
doubt,--and somehow that pictured face had always the look of loving and
praying for him.
There was a certain little ring, bearing a design of a four-leaved
clover done in diamonds, a trinket of her girlhood days, which she used
to let him wear "for luck." He had it on his little finger the day his
father was sentenced. Its potency might fairly have been questioned
after that, yet when she took it back he felt as if the act must have a
blighting influence upon his destinies, quite apart from the broken
engagement which it marked.
He had accepted for the nonce a place at the foot of the ladder in a
bankers' and brokers' office which was offered him by one of the
partners, an old friend of his father's. He held the place for some
months, and, being quite devoid of ambition, he soon came to loathe the
daily grind. Through that, as through, the later vicissitudes of his
career, his mind clung, with a curious, mechanical persistency, to that
troublesome vow which he had made.
The difficulty lay in his entire constitutional lack of vicious
tendencies. He had no taste for drink and none for bad company; highway
robbery was played out, and the modern substitutes for it were too
ignoble to be thought of. Had that not been the case his perplexities
might have found an easy solution, for more than one golden opportunity
offered for bald, barefaced breach of trust. One day in particular, he
found himself in the street with thirty thousand dollars in his
trousers' pocket. This not unprecedented situation derived its special
significance from the fact that the day was the one fixed for Frances
Lester's marriage. As Dirke walked up the street he saw, in fact, the
carriages drawn up before Trinity Church, and he knew that the ceremony
was going forward. He was struck with the dramatic possibilities of the
moment. Were he to decamp on the spot, he might be in time to get into
the morning papers, and Frances would know with what _eclat_ he had
celebrated her wedding day. He raised his hand to signal a cab, but the
driver did not see him, and ten minutes later the money had gone to
swell his employers' bank-account. He had often questioned what would
have been his next step, supposing that particular cab-driver had had
his wits about him and seen the signal. He was loath to admit that he
would merely have been at the expense of driving the few blocks to the
same destination which he had reached more economically on foot!
He had returned in time to stand among the crowd on the sidewalk and see
the bridal party issue from the church. When bride and bridegroom
crossed the narrow space between the awning and the carriage door, Dirke
had his first opportunity of seeing the Count de Lys. He could not but
perceive that the man was the possessor of a high-bred, handsome face,
but perhaps it was, under the circumstances, not altogether surprising
that he found the handsome face detestable. The mere sight of the black
moustache and imperial which the Frenchman wore so jauntily was enough
to make the unhappy broker's clerk forswear all kindred ornaments to the
end of his days.
A broker's clerk he did not long remain, however. He was too restless
for that, too much at odds with the particular sort of life his
situation forced him into. Within a month of the day on which he had
proved himself so signally unfitted for the _role_ of rascal, he had
thrown up his position and cut himself loose from all his old moorings.
It was in a spirit of fantastic knight-errantry that he turned his face
westward, a spirit that gave him no rest until, at the end of many
months, he finally dropped anchor in the riotous little harbor of Lame
Gulch. This turbulent haven seemed to promise every facility for the
shipwreck on which he had so perversely set his heart, and he was
content to wait there for whatever storm or collision should bring
matters to a crisis. Perhaps the mere steady under-tow would suck him
down to destruction. The under-tow is not inconsiderable among the
seething currents of life in a two-year-old mining-camp.
Dirke had not been long in the camp, before his indefeasible air of
integrity and respectability had attracted the attention of no less a
personage than the proprietor of the roulette wheel, who invited him to
run the wheel on a salary. It was now some three months since he had
entered upon this vocation, and it had, on the whole, been a
disappointment to him. He had accepted the position with an idea that he
should be playing the sinister _role_ of tempter, that he should feel
himself at last acting a very evil part. To his surprise and chagrin he
found that he was conscious of no moral relation whatever with the
victims of the wheel. It was not he who enticed them; it was not he who
impoverished them. On the contrary, given his contract with the "bank,"
he was doing his duty as simply and scrupulously here as in the Wall
Street office, performing a certain function for certain pay,
accountable to an employer now as hitherto. And, indeed, when he
reflected upon the glimpses of Wall Street methods he had got, and upon
the incalculable turns of the Wall Street wheel, whirling its creatures
into opulence or penury as capriciously as the roulette wheel itself, he
could not but feel that he was serving the same master now as
heretofore, and to very much the same ends. And now, as heretofore, he
had no reassuring sense of being on the downward path.
He used to amuse himself during the day,--for his time was his own from
dawn to dark,--in trying to work out the law of averages, following out
the hints he gathered from the working of the wheel. He had always had a
taste for mathematics, having rather "gone in" for that branch at
college. Fleeting visions of becoming an astronomer had visited him
from time to time; but the paralysis of wealth had deterred him while he
was yet ostensible master of his own fate, and now the same inherent
weakness of character which had made him a slave to wealth, made him a
slave to poverty, and he regarded whatever latent ambition he had ever
cherished as a dead issue. His mind sometimes recurred to those
neglected promptings of happier days, as he went forth under the stars
after hours, and cleared his brain by a walk in the pure night air. It
was his habit to make for the hills outside the camp, and his solitary
wanderings were much cheered by the light of those heavenly lamps. At
this high altitude they had a peculiar brilliance that seemed to give
them a nearer, more urgent significance than elsewhere. He felt that it
was inconsistent in him to look at the stars and to inquire into the law
of averages. It would be more in character, he told himself,--that is,
more in the character he aspired to--if he were to embrace the
exceptional advantages Lame Gulch offered for doing something
disreputable. Yet the stars shone down, undaunted and serene, upon the
squalid camp, and into the bewildered soul of Dabney Dirke, so
fantastically pledged to do violence to its own nature. Sometimes they
twinkled shrewdly, comprehendingly; sometimes they glowed with a steady
splendor that seemed to dominate the world. There were nights when the
separate stars were blended, to his apprehension, in one great symphony
of meaning; again certain ones stood out among the others, individual
and apart. There was Jupiter up there. He did not look as if he were
revolving with lightning speed about the sun, and the moons revolving
about him were not even visible. That was the kind of roulette wheel a
man might really take an interest in! And while he dallied with the
stars and with those higher promptings which their radiance symbolized,
he yet clung persistently to the purely artificial bonds he had put upon
himself.
Poor Dabney Dirke! If he had possessed the saving grace of humor he
could not have dedicated the golden years of youth to anything so
hopelessly chimerical and absurd. He would have perceived that he was
enacting the part of an inverted Don Quixote; a character grotesque
enough when planted on its own erratic legs, but hopelessly ridiculous
when made to stand on its head and defy its windmills up-side-down. As
it was, he continued to take himself seriously, and to argue with
himself on every concession made to a nature at bottom sound and
well-inclined, if not well-balanced; and he was still standing at his
incongruous post, performing its duties with dogged industry, when
something happened which created a commotion within him. The man who had
married Frances Lester came to Lame Gulch and gravitated, as every guest
of the _Mountain Lion_ is sure to do, for the passing moment at least,
to the barroom of the house. The count was a member of a French
syndicate engaged in the erection of a "stamp-mill" at Lame Gulch, and
he was making a flying trip from the East with one of his compatriots,
to take a look at the property. He was a man of medium height whose
nationality and rank were equally unmistakable, and his air of
distinction attracted no little attention upon his entrance. Dirke,
however, did not see him. There was a throng of men about the wheel, and
the "boss" was regarding their movements with the perfunctory attention
which his duties required, when a hand, whiter than the others, was
thrust forward. As it placed a silver dollar on the board a flash of
diamonds caught Dirke's eye, and he recognized the "lucky ring" he had
once worn. It was a closer fit for the little finger of the present
wearer than it had been for his own. There was little need of further
investigation to establish the identity of the new-comer.
The wheel went round and the ball dropped in the stranger's favor. Dirke
glanced at him as he pocketed his winnings. The handsome face
antagonized him even more strongly than it had six months ago.
M. de Lys did not play again immediately. He watched the wheel with a
quiet intentness, as if he were establishing some subtle, occult
influence over it. Then the white hand was quietly extended, and a gold
piece glittered where it had touched. Again the ball declared itself in
favor of the Frenchman.
He played at intervals for more than an hour, with unvarying success.
Eager, inexperienced boys rashly staked and often lost; laborers with
haggard faces saw their earnings swept away; but the count, always calm
and deliberate, won,--won repeatedly, invariably. He rarely risked more
than ten dollars on a single turn; he never placed his money on a
number. He played red or black, and the ball followed his color as the
needle follows the magnet. Dirke began to dread the sight of that white
hand; the gleam of the diamonds seemed to pierce and pain him like sharp
steel.
An hour had passed and Dirke estimated that de Lys must have won several
hundred dollars. Other men had begun to choose his color, and the "bank"
was feeling the drain. Yet the machine itself was not more unconcerned
than the "boss" appeared, as he paid out the money lost, and set the
wheel spinning to new issues. Black, red,--red, black; so the ball fell,
but always in favor of the white hand with the flashing brilliants. The
group about the table was becoming excited; Dirke knew very well that if
the thing went on much longer the "bank" would have to close down.
There was a moment's pause, while all waited to follow the stranger's
lead. Then the white hand reached forward and placed four five-dollar
gold pieces upon the red. A dozen gnarled and grimy hands swarmed like a
flock of dingy birds above the board, and each one laid its coin upon
the red. Round went the wheel; the ball sped swiftly in its groove. Then
the speed slackened, the ball seemed to hesitate and waver like a
sentient thing making choice; there was the light click of the drop; the
"bank" had won.
After that the white hand played with varying luck, sometimes winning,
sometimes losing. The other players began staking on their own account
again. And then, some time after midnight, de Lys began losing, as
persistently, as uninterruptedly as he had won. He played as
deliberately as before, with a something more of calculating intentness,
but the charm was broken; the wheel seemed to whirl with an intelligent
revolt. Just as surely as the white hand placed a coin upon the black,
the red had it; just as certainly as the diamonds flashed above the red,
the ball found its way into the black. The handsome face grew slightly
strained and eager--so slightly that the change would have escaped the
ordinary observer. For the first time Dirke found a satisfaction in the
contemplation of those high-bred features. Silver, gold,
banknotes,--each and all were swept into the coffers of the "bank." His
losses must already exceed his winnings, Dirke thought. The thought
animated him with a malignant joy. For the first time he felt an
interest in the fall of the ball; for the first time too, he felt the
evil in his nature vibrate into life.
Three turns of the wheel had taken place with no appearance of the white
hand upon the board. "Busted," had been the laconic comment of a
by-stander. Dirke glanced at the count and their eyes met. The gambler
was fingering the "lucky ring." As he caught Dirke's eye he drew the
ring from his finger.
"What will you place against that?" he asked, handing it over to the
boss. His English was careful and correct, yet as Gallic as his face
itself.
Dirke examined the ring judicially, wondering, the while, that it did
not burn his fingers. The moment in which he last held it thus was far
more vivid to his consciousness than the present instant and the present
scene.
"Twenty-five dollars," he said, in his most official tone, as he
returned the ring to its owner.
The wheel spun, the ring glittered on the red. The count leaned slightly
forward. Dirke watched only the wheel. He had a wild notion that the
result was life or death to him, yet why, he could not tell. Then the
wheel slackened, the ball hesitated, paused, dropped. Black had won!
M. de Lys turned on his heel and left the table. An hour later the room
was empty and the lights were out.
When Dirke passed through the office of the _Mountain Lion_ and stepped
out on the veranda, the night was far spent, but the deep June sky was
still spangled with stars. He stood for an instant at the top of the
steps, hardly aware of the delicious wash of the night air on his face,
which yet he paused to enjoy. There was a foot-fall close at hand and a
voice.
"M. le croupier?" the voice queried.
He turned sharp about. The Frenchman stood there with his hat raised, a
gentleman to the finger-tips. Involuntarily Dirke lifted his own hat,
and lifted it after the manner of a gentleman. The manner was not lost
upon the Frenchman.
"Monsieur," said the latter, courteously; "I had the misfortune to lose
a ring this evening. I shall redeem it on the morrow, when I can command
my resources."
The "boss" looked him full in the face. They could not distinguish one
another's features in the starlight, yet the two personalities were as
plainly in evidence as could have been the case in the broad light of
day.
"No, you won't!" Dirke retorted, coolly, planting his hat firmly on his
head again. He was angry with himself for having removed it.
"May I ask Monsieur why not?"
"Because the ring is sold!"
The Frenchman started visibly.
"And the purchaser? Would you have the courtesy to indicate to me the
purchaser?"
"No!"
The rudely spoken monosyllable put an abrupt period to the conversation.
Dirke passed down the steps and along the deserted street. As he paced
the length of the board sidewalk, which helped itself over the ups and
downs of the ungraded thoroughfare by means of short, erratic flights of
steps at certain points, he distinctly heard footsteps following. They
sounded plainly on the plank walk, and he did not for a moment doubt
whose they were. His hands were in his coat-pockets. On the little
finger of his left hand was the ring.
He paused, opposite the brightly lighted windows of the last saloon in
the row. The town ended there, the street lapsing into a rough and
trackless barren. Here he waited for the Frenchman to come up with him.
He watched his progress with a curious interest, noting how the figure
was at one moment lost in the shadow, only to emerge, the next instant,
into the full light that streamed from some nocturnal haunt. As he came
up with Dirke, the electric light over the entrance to the saloon shone
full upon them both.
Dirke waited for him to speak. Again he raised his hat, but this time
Dirke was on his guard and was not to be betrayed into any concession
to courtesy. There was a slight shrug of the shoulders as the Frenchman
replaced his hat. He spoke, however, in a conciliatory tone:
"It is a fine evening," he observed. "I have followed your example. I go
for a walk."
"You have followed me, you mean," said Dirke, bluntly. "I heard you
behind me."
Then, moved by a sudden impulse to precipitate matters, he drew his left
hand from his pocket. The diamonds flashed in the light.
M. de Lys's eyes flashed in response. With all his unabated elegance, he
had something the look of a tiger ready to spring upon his prey. But he
held himself in check.
"Monsieur!" he cried, and there was a savage note in his voice, which
Dirke would not have credited him with. "Monsieur! If you decline to
permit me to pay for that ring to-morrow, I am ready to _fight_ for it
to-night!" He pronounced the word "_fight_" with a peculiar, hissing
emphasis.
"Not to-night," Dirke rejoined quietly.
"And why not to-night, Monsieur, may I ask?"
"Because I am armed, and you are not."
At the word Dirke had drawn his right hand from his pocket; the barrel
of a pistol gleamed white between them.
The Frenchman recoiled. His face was not pleasant to look upon, yet his
antagonist would have been sorry to lose the sight of it.
Dirke stood, tall and slim and commanding, his face set in the
accustomed lines. No emotion whatever was to be seen there, not even
contempt for the man who shrank from sure death in such a cause. For
fully twenty seconds they faced each other in the glaring light of the
saloon, pent up passion visible in the one, invisible in the other. In
Dirke's face, and bearing, however, devoid as it was of any emotion, one
quality was but the more recognizable for that, and the count knew that
the man before him was available as an antagonist.
"Monsieur," he said, with strong self-control, "it is possible that you
do not understand--that you are not aware--that--Monsieur! The ring
which you are pleased to wear so--so--conspicuously is the property
of--The ring, Monsieur, is sacred to me!"
"Sacred!" Dirke repeated. "Sacred!" The word was an arraignment, not to
be overlooked.
"Monsieur!" the count cried.
"I was merely struck by your peculiar treatment of sacred things," Dirke
replied, his tone dropping to the level of absolute indifference. "It
is--unconventional, to say the least."
He lifted his hand and examined the ring with an air of newly aroused
interest. He wondered, half-contemptuously, at the man's self-control.
"Monsieur," he heard him say. "You are a gentleman; I perceive it
beneath the disguise of your vocation,--of your conduct. When I say to
you that the sight of that ring upon your finger compromises my
honor,--that it is an _insult_ to me,--you comprehend; is it not so?"
"Quite so," Dirke replied, with carefully studied offensiveness.
"Then, Monsieur, it will perhaps be possible at another time to correct
the inequality in point of arms to which you have called my attention."
The challenge was admirably delivered.
"I should think nothing could be simpler," Dirke rejoined, and he
deliberately put his pistol in his pocket.
They parted without more words, de Lys stumbling once as he made his way
along the uneven sidewalk, Dirke keeping on across the barren upland,
sure-footed and serene.
It had come at last, his great opportunity; all the evil in his nature
was roused at last; jealousy, vindictiveness, unscrupulousness. He
gloated over his own iniquity; every feature of it rejoiced him. He had
no moral right to that ring,--all the dearer his possession of it! This
man had never injured him;--the more delicious his hatred of him. The
Frenchman with his exasperating air of success was to him the insolent
embodiment of that which had been wrongfully wrested from him, Dabney
Dirke, who had as good a right to success as another. Some
philanthropists, made such by prosperity and ease, spent their lives in
trying to even things off by raising the condition of their
fellow-creatures to their own. Well, he had the same object to be
attained, by different means. He would even things off by grading to his
own level. Was not that a perfectly logical aim, given the circumstances
which induced it?
He lifted his hand and moved it to and fro, that he might catch the
gleam of the stones in the faint starlight. In the mere joy of seeing
the ring there upon his finger he almost forgot for the moment what its
significance was. It scarcely reminded him just then of the girl with
the tearful eyes, usually so present with him. Her face seemed to be
receding from his memory; the whole story of his life seemed to grow
dim and ill-defined. His mind was curiously elate with a sense of
achievement, a certainty that he was near the goal, that fulfilment was
at hand.
He was still pursuing his way up the hill, walking slowly, with bent
head, like a philosopher in revery, when he became aware that the day
was dawning. The stars were growing dim and vanishing one by one, in the
pale light which came like a veil across their radiance. A dull,
creeping regret invaded his mind. He had loved the stars, he could have
studied them with joy; under a happier fate he might have been high in
their counsels. As he watched their obliteration in the dawn of a day
deliberately dedicated to evil, a profound yearning for their pure
tranquil eternal light came upon him, and as Jupiter himself withdrew
into the impenetrable spaces, Dirke turned his eyes downward with a
long, shuddering sigh. His downcast gaze fell upon the poor earthly
brilliance of the diamonds.