How the Game was Played
“WELL, we may breathe awhile,” said Kingsley, as we found ourselves once
more in the pure air, and under the blue sky of midnight. “We have got
through an ugly task with tolerable success. You stood by me like a man,
Clifford. I need not tell you how much I thank you.”
“I heartily rejoice that you are through with it, Kingsley; but I am not
so sure that we can deliberately approve of everything that we may have
been required by the circumstances of the case to do.”
“What! you did not relish the playing? I respect your scruples, but
it does not follow that it must become a habit. You played to enable a
friend to get back from a knave what he lost as a fool, and to punish
the knavery that he could not well hope to reform. I do not see,
considering the amount of possible good which we have done, that the
evil is wholly inexcusable.”
“Perhaps not; but this heap of money which I have in my bosom--should
you have taken it?”
“And why not? Whose should it be, if not mine?”
“You took with you but one hundred dollars. I should say you have more
than a thousand here.”
“I trust I have,” said he coolly. “What of that? I won it fairly, and he
played fairly, until the last moment when everything was at stake.
His false dice were then called in--and would you have me yield to his
roguery what had been the fruits of a fair conflict? No! no! friend of
mine! no! no! all these things did I consider well before I took you
with me to-night. I have been meditating this business for a week, from
the moment when a friendly fellow hinted to me that I was the victim of
knavery.”
“But that wallet of money, Kingsley? You assured me that you were
pennyless.”
“All! that wallet bedevilled Mr. Latour Cleveland, as it seems to have
bedevilled you. There, by the starlight, look at the contents of this
precious wallet, and see how much further your eyes can pierce into the
mystery of my proceedings.'”
He handed me the wallet, which I opened. To my great surprise, I found
it stuffed with old shreds of newspaper, bits of rag, even cotton, but
not a cent of money.
“There! ara you satisfied? You shall have that wallet, with all its
precious contents, as a keepsake from me. It will remind you of a
strange scene. It will have a history for you when you are old, which
you will tell with a chuckle to your children.”
“Children!” I involuntarily murmured, while my voice trembled, and a
tear started to my eye. That one word recalled me back, at once, to
home, to my particular woes--to all that I could have wished banished
for ever, even in the unwholesome stews and steams of a gaming-house.
But Kingsley did not suffer me to muse over my own afflictions. He did
not seem to hear the murmuring exclamation of my lips. He continued:--
“I have no mysteries from you, and you need, as well as deserve, an
explanation. All shall be made clear to you. The reason of this wallet,
and another matter which staggered you quite as much--my audacious bet
of a cool hundred--your own disconsolate hundred--as a first stake! I
have no doubt you thought me mad when you heard me.”
I confessed as much. He laughed.
“As I tell you, I had studied my game beforehand, even in its smallest
details. By this time, I knew something of the play of most gamblers,
and of Mr. Latour Cleveland, in particular. These people do not risk
themselves for trifles. They play fairly enough when the temptation is
small. They cheat only when the issues are great. I am speaking now
of gamesters on the big figure, not of the petty chapmen who rule over
their pennies and watch the exit of a Mexican, with the feelings of one
who sees the last wave of a friend's handkerchief going upon the high
seas. My big wallet and my hundred dollar bet, were parts of the same
system. The heavy stake at the beginning led to the inference that I
had corresponding resources. My big wallet lying by me, conveniently
and ostentatiously, confirmed this impression. The cunning gambler was
willing that I should win awhile. His policy was to encourage me; to
persuade me on and on, by gradual stimulants, till all was at stake.
Well! I knew this. All was at stake finally, and I had then to call into
requisition all the moral strength of which I was capable, so that eye
and lip and temper should not fail me at those moments when I would need
the address and agency of all.
“The task has been an irksome one; the trial absolutely painful. But I
should have been ashamed, once commencing the undertaking, not to have
succeeded. He, too, was not impregnable. I found out his particular
weakness. He was a vain man; vain of his bearing, which he deemed
aristocratic; his person, which he considered very fine. I played with
these vanities. Failing to excite him on the subject of the game, I made
HIMSELF my subject. I chattered with him freely; so as to prompt him
to fancy that I was praising his style, air, appearance; anon, by some
queer jibe, making him half suspicious that I was quizzing him. My
frequent laughter, judiciously disposed, helped this effect; and, to a
certain extent, I succeeded. He became nervous, and was excited, though
you may not have seen it. I saw it in the change of his complexion,
which became suddenly quite bilious. I found, too, that he could only
speak with some effort, when, if you remember, before we began to play,
his tongue, though deliberate, worked pat enough. I felt my power over
him momently increase; and I sometimes won where he did not wish it. I
do verily believe that he ceased to see the very marks which he himself
had made upon the cards. Nervous agitation, on most persons, produces a
degree of blindness quite as certainly as it affects the speech.
Well, you saw the condition of our funds when you re-appeared. I had
determined to bring the business to a close. I had marked the dice,
actually before his face, while we took a spell of rest over a bottle
of porter. I had scratched them quietly with a pin which I carried in
my sleeve for that purpose, while he busied himself with a fidgety
shuffling of the cards. My leg, thrown over one angle of the table,
partly covered my operations, and I worked upon the dice in my lap. You
may suppose the etching was bad enough, doing precious little credit to
the art of engraving in our country. But the thing was thoroughly done,
for I had worked myself into a rigorous sort of philosophic desperation
which made me as cool as a cucumber. To seem to empty the contents of
the wallet into my lap was my next object, and this I succeeded in,
without his suspecting that my movement was a sham only. The purse thus
made up, I emphatically told him was all I had--this was the truth--and
then came the crisis. His trick was to be employed now or never. It
was employed, but he had become so nervous, that I caught a sufficient
glimpse of his proceedings. I saw the slight o'hand movement which
he attempted, and--you know the rest. I regard the money as honestly
mine--so far as good morals may recognise the honesty of getting money
by gambling;--and thinking so, my dear Clifford, I have no scruple in
begging you to share it with me. It is only fit that you, who furnished
all the capital--you see I say nothing of the wallet which should,
however, be priceless in our eyes--should derive at least a moiety of
the profit. It is quite as much yours as mine. I beg you so to consider
it.”
I need not say, however, that I positively refused to accept this offer.
I would take nothing but the hundred which I had lent him, and placed
the handkerchief with all its contents into his hands.
“And now, Clifford, I must leave you. You have yet to learn another of
my secrets. I take the rail-car at daylight in the morning. I am off
for Alabama; and considering my Texan and Mexican projects, I leave you,
perhaps, for ever.”
“So soon?”
“Yes, everything is ready. There need be no delay. I have no wife nor
children to cumber me. My trunks are already packed; my resolve made;
my last business transacted I have some lands in Alabama which I mean to
sell. This done, I am off for the great field of performance, south and
southwest. You shall hear of me, perhaps may wish to hear FROM me. Here
is my address, meanwhile, in Alabama. I shall advise you of my further
progress, and shall esteem highly a friendly scrawl from you. If you
write, do not fail to tell me what you may hear of Mr. Latour Cleveland,
and how he got down from the muck-heap. Write me all about it, Clifford,
and whatever else you can about our fools and knaves, for though I leave
them without a tear, yet, d--n 'em, I keep 'em in my memory, if it's
only for the sake of the old city whom they bedevil.”
Enough of our dialogue that night. Kingsley was a fellow of every
excellent and some very noble qualities. We did not sympathize in sundry
respects, but I parted from him with regret; not altogether satisfied,
however, that there were not some defects in that reasoning by which he
justified our proceedings with the gamblers. I turned from him with a
sad, sick heart. In his absence the whole feeling of my domestic doubts
and difficulties rushed back upon me freshly and with redoubled force.
“Children!” I murmured mournfully, as I recalled one of his remarks;
“children! children! these, indeed, were blessings; but if we only had
love, truth, peace. If that damning doubt were not there!--that wild
fear, that fatal, soul-petrifying suspicion!”
I groaned audibly as I traversed the streets, and it seemed as if the
pavements groaned hollowly in answer beneath my hurrying footsteps. In
a moment more I had absolutely forgotten the recent strife, the strange
scene, the accents of my friend; for but that one.
“Children! children! These might bind her to me; might secure her erring
affections; might win her to love the father, when he himself might
possess no other power to tempt her to love. Ah! why has Providence
denied me the blessing of a child?”
Alas! it was not probable that Julia should ever have children. This was
the conviction of our physician. Her health and constitution seemed
to forbid the hope; and the gloomy despair under which I suffered was
increased by this reflection. Yet, even at that moment, while thus I
mused and murmured, my poor wife had been unexpectedly and prematurely
delivered of an infant son--a tiny creature, in whom life was but a
passing gleam, as of the imperfect moonlight, and of whom death took
possession in the very instant of its birth.