MAY EXPOSTULATES.
That evening the Wainwarings and the Blydenburgs dined at the house in
the Parc Monceau. The Blydenburgs had long since deserted Biarritz, but
the return journey had been broken at Luchon, and in that resort the
days had passed them by like chapters in a stupid fairy tale.
They were now on their way home; the pleasures of the Continent had
begun to pall, and during the dinner, Mr. Blydenburg took occasion to
express his opinion on the superiority of American institutions over
those of all other lands, an opinion to which he lent additional weight
by repeating from time to time that New York was quite good enough for
him.
There were no other guests. Shortly before ten the Wainwarings left,
and as Blydenburg was preparing to take his daughter back to the hotel,
Mr. Incoul said that he would be on the boulevard later, and did he
care to have him he would take him to the club, a proposition to which
Blydenburg at once agreed.
“Harmon,” said Maida, when they were alone, “are you to be away long?”
During dinner she had said but little. Latterly she had complained of
sleeplessness, and to banish the insomnia a physician had recommended
the usual bromide of potassium. As she spoke, Mr. Incoul noticed that
she was pale.
“Possibly not,” he answered.
She had been standing before the hearth, her bare arm resting on the
velvet of the mantel, and her eyes following the flicker of the burning
logs--but now she turned to him.
“Do you remember our pact?” she asked.
He looked at her but said nothing. She moved across the room to where
he stood; one hand just touched his sleeve, the other she raised to his
shoulder and rested it there for a second’s space. Her eyes sought his
own, her head was thrown back a little, from her hair came the perfume
of distant oases, her lips were moist and her neck was like a jasmine.
“Harmon,” she continued in a tone as low as were she speaking to
herself, “we have come into our own.”
And then the caress passed from his sleeve, her hand fell from his
shoulder, she glided from him with the motion of a swan.
“Come to me when you return,” she added. Her face had lost its pallor,
it was flushed, but her voice was brave.
Yet soon, when the door closed behind him, her courage faltered. In the
eyes of him whose name she bore and to whom for the first time she had
made offer of her love, she had seen no answering affection--merely a
look which a man might give who wins a long-contested game of chess.
But presently she reassured herself. If at the avowal her husband had
seemed triumphant, in very truth what was he else? She turned to a
mirror that separated the windows and gazed at her own reflection.
Perhaps he did think the winning a triumph. Many another would have
thought so, too. She was entirely in white; her arms and neck were
unjeweled. “I look like a bride,” she told herself, and then, with
the helplessness of regret, she remembered that brides wear orange
blossoms, but she had none.
The idler in Paris is apt to find Sunday evenings dull. There are many
houses open, it is true, but not infrequently the idler is disinclined
to receptions, and as to the theatres, it is _bourgeois_ to visit
them. There is, therefore, little left save the clubs, and on this
particular Sunday evening, when Mr. Incoul and Blydenburg entered the
Capucines, they found it tolerably filled.
A lackey in silk knee breeches and livery of pale blue came to take
their coats. It was not, however, until Blydenburg had been helped off
with his that he noticed that Mr. Incoul had preferred to keep his own
on.
The two men then passed out of the vestibule into a room in which was
a large table littered with papers, and from there into another room
where a man whom Mr. Incoul recognized as De la Dèche was dozing on a
lounge, and finally a room was reached in which most of the members had
assembled.
“It reminds me of a hotel,” said Blydenburg.
“It is,” his friend answered shortly. He seemed preoccupied as were he
looking for some one or something; and presently, as they approached a
green table about which a crowd was grouped, Blydenburg pulled him by
the sleeve.
“That’s young Leigh dealing,” he exclaimed.
To this Mr. Incoul made no reply. He put his hand in a lower outside
pocket of his overcoat and assured himself that a little package which
he had placed there had not become disarranged.
On hearing his name, Lenox looked up from his task. A Frenchman who had
just entered the room nodded affably to him and asked if he were lucky
that evening.
“Lucky!” cried some one who had caught the question, “I should say so.
His luck is something insolent; he struck a match a moment ago and _it
lit_.”
The whole room roared. French matches are like French cigars in this,
there is nothing viler. It is just possible that the parental republic
has views of its own as to the injuriousness of smoking, and seeks to
discourage it as it would a vice. But this is as it may be. Every one
laughed and Lenox with the others. Mr. Incoul caught his eye and bowed
to him across the table. Blydenburg had already smiled and bowed in the
friendliest way. He did not quite care to see Mrs. Manhattan’s brother
dealing at baccarat, but after all, when one is at Rome--
“Do you care to play?” Mr. Incoul asked.
“Humph! I might go a louis or two for a flyer.”
They had both been standing behind the croupier, but Mr. Incoul then
left his companion, and passing around the table stopped at a chair
which was directly on Lenox’s left. In this chair a man was seated, and
before him was a small pile of gold. As the cards were dealt the gold
diminished, and when it dwindled utterly and at last disappeared, the
man rose from his seat and Mr. Incoul dropped in it.
From the overcoat pocket, in which he had previously felt, he drew out
a number of thousand-franc notes; they were all unfolded, and under
them was a little package. The notes, with the package beneath them,
were placed by Mr. Incoul where the pile of gold had stood. One of the
notes he then threw out in the semicircle. A man seated next to him
received the cards which Lenox dealt.
“I give,” Lenox called in French.
“Card,” the man answered.
It was a face card that he received.
“Six,” Lenox announced.
Mr. Incoul’s neighbor could boast of nothing. The next cards that were
dealt on that end of the table went to a man beyond. Mr. Incoul knew
that did that man not hold higher cards than the banker the cards in
the succeeding deal would come to him.
He took a handful of notes and reached them awkwardly enough across the
space from which Lenox dealt; for one second his hand rested on the
talion, then he said, “_À cheval._” Which, being interpreted, means
half on one side and half on the other. The croupier took the notes,
and placed them in the proper position. “Nine,” Lenox called; he had
won at both ends of the table.
The croupier drew in the stakes with his rake. “Gentlemen,” he droned,
“make your game.”
Mr. Incoul pushed out five thousand francs. The next cards on the left
were dealt to him.
“Nine,” Lenox called again.
And then a very singular thing happened. The croupier leaned forward to
draw in Mr. Incoul’s money, but just as the rake touched the notes, Mr.
Incoul drew them away.
“_Monsieur!_” exclaimed the croupier.
The eyes of every one were upon him. He pushed his chair back, and
stood up, holding in his hand the two cards which had been dealt him,
then throwing them down on the table, he said very quietly, but in a
voice that was perfectly distinct, “These cards are marked.”
A moment before the silence had indeed been great, but during the
moment that followed Mr. Incoul’s announcement, it was so intensified
that it could be felt. Then abruptly words leapt from the mouths
of the players and bystanders. The croupier turned, protesting his
innocence of any complicity. There may have been some who listened, but
if there were any such, they were few; the entire room was sonorous
with loud voices; the hubbub was so great that it woke De la Dèche; he
came in at one door rubbing his eyes; at another a crowd of lackeys,
startled at the uproar, had suddenly assembled. And by the chair which
he had pushed from him and which had fallen backwards to the ground,
Mr. Incoul stood, motionless, looking down at Lenox Leigh.
In the abruptness of the accusation Lenox had not immediately
understood that it was directed against him, but when he looked into
the inimical faces that fronted and surrounded him, when he heard the
anger of the voices, when he saw hands stretched for the cards which he
dealt, and impatient eyes examining their texture, and when at last,
though the entire scene was compassed in the fraction of a minute, when
he heard an epithet and saw that he was regarded as a Greek, he knew
that the worst that could be had been done.
He turned, still sitting, and looked his accuser in the face, and in
it he read a message which to all of those present was to him alone
intelligible. He bowed his head. In a vision like to that which is
said to visit the last moments of a drowning man, he saw it all: the
reason of Maida’s unexplained departure, the coupling of Mirette with
a servant, and this supreme reproach made credible by the commonest of
tricks, the application of a cataplasm, a new deck of cards on those
already in use. It was vengeance indeed.
He sprang from his seat. He was a handsome fellow and the pallor of his
face made his dark hair seem darker and his dark eyes more brilliant.
“It is a plot,” he cried. He might as well have asked alms of statues.
The cards had been examined, the _maquillage_ was evident. “Put him
out!” a hundred voices were shouting; “_à la porte!_”
Suddenly the shouting subsided and ceased. Lenox craned his neck to
discover who his possible defender might be, and caught a glimpse of De
la Dèche, brushing with one finger some ashes from his coat sleeve, and
looking about him with an indolent, deprecatory air.
“Gentlemen,” he heard him say, “the committee will act in the matter;
meanwhile, for the honor of the club, I beg you will not increase the
scandal.”
He turned to Lenox and said, with perfect courtesy, “Sir, do me the
favor to step this way.”
Through the parting crowd Lenox followed the duke. In crossing the
room he looked about him. On his way he passed the Frenchman who had
addressed him five minutes before. The man turned aside. He passed
other acquaintances. They all seemed suddenly smitten by the disease
known as _Noli me tangere_. In the doorway was May. Of him he felt
almost sure, but the brute drew back. “Really,” he said, “I must
exp-postulate.”
“Expostulate and be damned,” Lenox gnashed at him. “I am as innocent as
you are.”
In an outer room, where he presently found himself, De La Dèche stood
lighting a cigar; that difficult operation terminated, he said, slowly,
with that rise and fall of the voice which is peculiar to the Parisian
when he wishes to appear impressive:
“You had better go now, and if you will permit me to offer you a bit
of advice, I would recommend you to send a resignation to any clubs of
which you may happen to be a member.”
He touched a bell; a lackey appeared.
“Maxime, get this gentleman’s coat and see him to the door.”