The following morning I was sitting under the Noah's-ark trees, watching
the people pass and repass, when a man in a suit of white flannel,
carrying a light cane, and wearing a straw hat with a red band, and a
necktie to match, stopped a flower-girl immediately in front of me, and
affixed an additional dot of blood-color to his buttonhole.
In the glare of the daylight he was even more yellow than when under the
blaze of the gas-jets. His eyes were still glassy and brilliant, but the
rims showed red, as if for want of sleep, and beneath the lower lids lay
sunken half-circles of black. He moved with his wonted precision, but
without that extreme gravity of manner which had characterized him the
night of the game. Looked at as a mere passer-by, he would have impressed
you as a rather debonair, overdressed habitué, who was enjoying his
morning stroll under the trees, without other purpose in life than the
breathing of the cool air and enjoyment of the attendant exercise. His
spider-ship had doubtless seen me when he entered the walk,--I was still
an untrapped fly,--and had picked out this particular flower-girl beside
me as a safe anchorage for one end of his web. I turned away my head; but
it was too late.
"Monsieur did not play last night?" the croupier asked deferentially.
"No; I did not know the game." Then an idea struck me. "Sit down; I want
to talk to you." He touched the edge of his hat with one finger, opened a
gold cigarette-case studded with jewels, offered me its contents, and took
the seat beside me.
"Pardon the abruptness of the inquiry, but who was the woman in black?" I
asked.
He looked at me curiously.
"Ah, you mean madame with the bag?"
"Yes."
"She was once the Baroness Frontignac."
"Was once! What is she now?"
"Now? Ah, that is quite a story." He stopped, shut the gold case with a
click, and leaned forward, flicking the pebbles with the point of his
cane. "If madame had had a larger bag she might have broken the bank. Is
it not so?"
"You know her, then?" I persisted.
"Monsieur, men of my profession know everybody. Sooner or later they all
come to us--when they are young, and their francs have wings; when they
are gray-haired and cautious; when they are old and foolish."
"But she did not look like a gambler," I replied stiffly.
He smiled his old cynical, treacherous smile.
"Monsieur is pleased to be very pronounced in his language. A gambler!
Monsieur no doubt means to say that madame has not the appearance of being
under the intoxication of the play." Then with a positive tone, still
flicking the pebbles, "The baroness played for love."
"Of the cards?" I asked persistently. I was determined to drive the nail
to the head.
The croupier looked at me fixedly, shrugged his shoulders, laughed between
his teeth, a little, hissing laugh that sounded like escaping steam, and
said slowly:--
"No; of a man."
Then, noticing my increasing interest, "Monsieur would know something of
madame?"
He held up his hand, and began crooking one finger after another as he
recounted her history. These bent keys, it seemed, unlocked secrets as
well.
"Le voilà! the drama of Madame la Baronne! The play opens when she is
first a novice in the convent of Saint Ursula, devoted to good works and
the church. Next you find her a grand dame and rich, the wife of Baron
Alphonse de Frontignac, first secretary of legation at Vienna. Then a
mother with one child,--a boy, now six or seven years old, who is hardly
ever out of her arms." He stopped, toyed for a moment with his match-safe,
slipped it into his pocket, and said carelessly, "So much for Act I."
Then, after a pause during which he traced again little diagrams in the
gravel, he said suddenly:--
"Does this really interest you, monsieur?"
"Unquestionably."
"You know her, then?" This with a glance of suspicion as keen as it was
unexpected by me.
"Never saw her in my life before," I answered frankly, "and never shall
again. I leave for Paris to-day, and sail from Havre on Saturday."
He drew in the point of his cane, looked me all over with one of those
comprehensive sweeps of the eye, as if he would read my inmost thought,
and then, with an expression of confidence born doubtless of my evident
sincerity, continued:--
"In the next act Frontignac gets mixed up in some banking scandals,--he
would, like a fool, play roulette--baccarat was always his strong
game,--disappears from Vienna, is arrested at the frontier, escapes, and
is found the next morning under a brush-heap with a bullet through his
head. This ends the search. Two years later--this is now Act III.--Madame
la Baronne, without a sou to her name, is hard at work in the hospitals of
Metz. The child is pensioned out near by.
"Now comes the grand romance. An officer attached to the 13th
Cuirassiers--a regiment with not men enough left after Metz to muster a
company--is picked up for dead, with one arm torn off, and a sabre-slash
over his head, and brought to her ward. She nurses him back to life, inch
by inch, and in six months he joins his regiment. Now please follow the
plot. It is quite interesting. Is it not easy to see what will happen?
Tender and beautiful, young and brave! Vive le bel amour! It is the old
story, but it is also une affaire de coeur--la grande passion. In a few
months they are married, and he takes her to his home in Rouen. There he
listens to her entreaties, and resigns his commission.
"This was five years ago. To-day he is a broken-down man, starving on his
pension; a poor devil about the streets, instead of a general commanding a
department; and all for love of her. Some, of course, said it was the
sabre-cut; some that he could no longer hold his command, he was so badly
slashed. But it is as I tell you. You can see him here any day, sitting
under the trees, playing with the child, or along the lake front, leaning
on her arm."
Here the croupier rose from the bench, looked critically over his case of
cigarettes, selected one carefully, and began buttoning his coat as if to
go.
By this time I had determined to know the end. I felt that he had told me
the truth as far as he had gone; but I felt, also, that he had stopped at
the most critical point of her career. I saw, too, that he was familiar
with its details.
"Go on, please. Here, try a cigar." My interest in my heroine had even
made me courteous. My aversion to him, too, was wearing off. Perhaps,
after all, croupiers were no worse than other people. "Now, one thing
more. Why was she in your gambling-house?"
He lighted the cigar, touched his hat with his forefinger, and again
seated himself.
"Well, then, monsieur, as you will. I always trust you Americans. When you
lose, you pay; when you win, you keep your mouths shut. Besides,"--this
was spoken more to himself,--"you have never seen him, and never will. Le
voilà. One night,--this only a year ago, remember,--in one of the gardens
at Baden, a hand touched the baroness's shoulder.
"It was _Frontignac's_.
"The body under the brush-heap had been that of another man dressed in
Frontignac's clothes. The bullet-hole in his head was made by a ball from
Frontignac's pistol. Since then he had been hiding in exile.
"He threatened exposure. She pleaded for her boy and her crippled husband.
She could, of course, have handed him over to the nearest gendarme; but
that meant arrest, and arrest meant exposure. At their home in Vienna, let
me tell you, baccarat had been played nightly as a pastime for their
guests. So great was her luck that 'As lucky as the Baronne Frontignac'
was a byword. Frontignac's price was this: she must take his fifty louis
and play that stake at the Casino that night; when she brought him ten
thousand francs he would vanish.
"That night at Baden--I was dealing, and know--she won twelve thousand
francs in as many minutes. Here her slavery began. It will continue until
Frontignac is discovered and captured; then he will put a second bullet
into his own head. When I saw her enter my room I knew he had turned up
again. As she staggered out, one of my men shadowed her. I was right;
Frontignac was skulking in the garden."
All my disgust for the croupier returned in an instant. He was still the
same bloodless spider of the night before. I could hardly keep my hands
off him.
"And you permit this, and let this woman suffer these tortures, her life
made miserable by this scoundrel, when a word, even a look, from you would
send him out of the country and"--
"Softly, monsieur, softly. Why blame me? What business is it of mine. Do I
love the cripple? Have I robbed the bank and murdered my double? This is
not my game; it is Frontignac's. Would you have me kick over his chess
board?"