For the first term Hugh slid comfortably down a well oiled groove of
routine. He went to the movies regularly, wrote as regularly to Cynthia
and thought about her even more, read enormous quantities of poetry,
"bulled" with his friends, attended all the athletic contests, played
cards occasionally, and received his daily liquor from Vinton. He no
longer protested when Vinton offered him a drink; he accepted it as a
matter of course, and he had almost completely forgotten that "smoking
wasn't good for a runner." He had just about decided that he wasn't a
runner, anyway.
One evening in early spring he met George Winsor as he was crossing the
campus.
"Hello, George. Where are you going?"
"Over to Ted Alien's room. Big poker party to-night. Don't you want to
sit in?"
"You told me last week that you had sworn off poker. How come you're
playing again so soon?" Hugh strolled lazily along with Winsor.
"Not poker, Hugh--craps. I've sworn off craps for good, and maybe I'll
swear off poker after to-night. I'm nearly a hundred berries to the good
right now, and I can afford to play if I want to."
"I'm a little ahead myself," said Hugh. "I don't play very often,
though, except in the house when the fellows insist. I can't shoot craps
at all, and I get tired of cards after a couple of hours."
"I'm a damn fool to play," Winsor asserted positively, "a plain damn
fool, I oughtn't to waste my time at it, but I'm a regular fiend for the
game. I get a great kick out of it. How's to sit in with us? There's
only going to be half a dozen fellows. Two-bit limit."
"Yeah, it'll start with a two-bit limit, but after an hour deuces'll be
wild all over the place and the sky will be the limit. I've sat in those
games before."
Winsor laughed. "Guess you're right, but what's the odds? Better shoot a
few hands."
"Well, all-right, but I can't stay later than eleven. I've got a quiz in
eccy to-morrow, and I've got to bone up on it some time to-night."
"I've got that quiz, too. I'll leave with you at eleven."
Winsor and Hugh entered the dormitory and climbed the stairs. Allen's
door was open, and several undergraduates were lolling around the room,
smoking and chatting. They welcomed the new-comers with shouts of "Hi,
Hugh," and "Hi, George."
Allen had a large round table in the center of his study, and the boys
soon had it cleared for action. Allen tossed the cards upon the table,
produced several ash-trays, and then carefully locked the door.
"Keep an ear open for Mac," he admonished his friends; "He's warned me
twice now," "Mac" was the night-watchman, and he had a way of dropping
in unexpectedly on gambling parties. "Here are the chips. You count 'em
out, George. Two-bit limit."
The boys drew up chairs to the table, lighted cigarettes or pipes, and
began the game. Hugh had been right; the "two-bit limit" was soon
lifted, and Allen urged his guests to go as far as they liked.
There were ugly rumors about Allen around the campus. He was good
looking, belonged to a fraternity in high standing, wore excellent
clothes, and did fairly well in his studies; but the rumors persisted.
There were students who insisted that he hadn't the conscience of a
snake, and a good many of them hinted that no honest man ever had such
consistently good luck at cards and dice.
The other boys soon got heated and talkative, but Allen said little
besides announcing his bids. His blue eyes remained coldly
expressionless whether he won or lost the hand; his crisp, curly brown
hair remained neatly combed and untouched by a nervous hand; his lips
parted occasionally in a quiet smile: he was the perfect gambler, never
excited, always in absolute control of himself.
Hugh marveled at the control as the evening wore on. He was excited,
and, try as he would, he could not keep his excitement from showing.
Luck, however, was with him; by ten o'clock he was seventy-five dollars
ahead, and most of it was Allen's money.
Hugh passed by three hands in succession, unwilling to take any chances.
He had decided to "play close," never betting unless he held something
worth putting his money on.
Allen dealt the fourth hand. "Ante up," he said quietly. The five other
men followed his lead in tossing chips into the center of the table. He
looked at his hand. "Two blue ones if you want to stay in." Winsor and
two of the men threw down their cards, but Hugh and a lad named Mandel
each shoved two blue chips into the pot.
Hugh had three queens and an ace. "One card," he said to Allen. Allen
tossed him the card, and Hugh's heart leaped when he saw that it was an
ace.
"Two cards, Ted," Mandel requested, nervously crushing his cigarette in
an ash-tray. He picked up the cards one at a time, lifting each slowly
by one corner, and peeking at it as if he were afraid that a sudden full
view would blast him to eternity. His face did not change expression as
he added the cards to the three that he held in his hand.
"I'm sitting pretty," Allen remarked casually, picking up the five
cards that he had laid down before he dealt.
The betting began, Hugh nervous, openly excited, Mandel stonily calm,
Allen completely at ease. At first the bets were for a dollar, but they
gradually rose to five. Mandel threw down his cards.
"Fight it out," he said morosely. "I've thrown away twenty-five bucks,
and I'll be damned if I'm going to throw away any more to see your
four-flushes."
Allen lifted a pile of chips and let them fall lightly, clicking a rapid
staccato. "It'll cost you ten dollars to see my hand, Hugh," he said
quietly.
"It'll cost you twenty if you want to see mine," Hugh responded, tossing
the equivalent to thirty dollars into the pot. He watched Allen eagerly,
but Allen's face remained quite impassive as he raised Hugh another ten.
The four boys who weren't playing leaned forward, pipes or cigarettes in
their mouths, their stomachs pressed against the table, their eyes
narrowed and excited. The air was a stench of stale smoke; the silence
between bets was electric.
The betting continued, Hugh sure that Allen was bluffing, but Allen
never failed to raise him ten dollars on every bet. Finally Hugh had a
hundred dollars in the pot and dared not risk more on his hand.
"I think you're bluffing, goddamn it," he said, his voice shrill and
nervous. "I'll call you. Show your stinkin' hand."
"Oh, not so stinkin'," Allen replied lightly. "I've got four of a kind,
all of 'em kings. Let's see your three deuces."
He tossed down his hand, and Hugh slumped in his chair at the sight of
the four kings. He shoved the pile of chips toward Allen. "Take the pot,
damn you. Of all the bastard luck. Look!" He slapped down his cards
angrily. "A full house, queens up. Christ!" He burst into a flood of
obscenity, the other boys listening sympathetically, all except Allen
who was carefully stacking the chips.
In a few minutes Hugh's anger died. He remembered that he was only about
twenty-five dollars behind and that he had an hour in which to recover
them. His face became set and hard; his hands lost their jerky
eagerness. He played carefully, never daring to enter a big pot, never
betting for more than his hands were worth.
As the bets grew larger, the room grew quieter. Every one was smoking
constantly; the air was heavy with smoke, and the stench grew more and
more foul. Outside of a soft, "I raise you twenty," or, even, "Fifty
bucks if you want to see my hand," a muttered oath or a request to buy
chips, there was hardly a word said. The excitement was so intense that
it hurt; the expletives smelled of the docks.
At times there was more than five hundred dollars in a pot, and five
times out of seven when the pot was big, Allen won it. Win or lose, he
continued cool and calm, at times smoking a pipe, other times puffing
nonchalantly at a cigarette.
The acrid smoke cut Hugh's eyes; they smarted and pained, but he
continued to light cigarette after cigarette, drawing the smoke deep
into his lungs, hardly aware of the fact that they hurt.
He won and lost, won and lost, but gradually he won back the twenty-five
dollars and a little more. The college clock struck eleven. He knew that
he ought to go, but he wondered if he could quit with honor when he was
ahead.
"I ought to go," he said hesitatingly. "I told George when I said that
I'd sit in that I'd have to leave at eleven. I've got an eccy quiz
to-morrow that I've got to study for."
"Oh, don't leave now," one of the men said excitedly. "Why, hell, man,
the game's just getting warm."
"I know," Hugh agreed, "and I hate like hell to quit, but I've really
got to beat it. Besides, the stakes are too big for me. I can't afford a
game like this."
"You can afford it as well as I can," Mandel said irritably. "I'm over
two hundred berries in the hole right now, and you can goddamn well bet
that I'm not going to leave until I get them back."
"Well, I'm a hundred and fifty to the bad," Winsor announced miserably,
"but I've got to go. If I don't hit that eccy, I'm going to be out of
luck." He shoved back his chair. "I hate like hell to leave; but I
promised Hugh that I'd leave with him at eleven, and I've got to do it."
Allen had been quite indifferent when Hugh said that he was leaving.
Hugh was obviously small money, and Allen had no time to waste on
chicken-feed, but Winsor was a different matter.
"You don't want to go, George, when you're in the hole. Better stick
around. Maybe you'll win it back. Your luck can't be bad all night."
"You're right," said Winsor, stretching mightily. "It can't be bad all
night, but I can't hang around all night to watch it change. You're
welcome to the hundred and fifty, Ted, but some night soon I'm coming
over and take it away from you."
Allen laughed. "Any time you say, George."
Hugh and Winsor settled their accounts, then stood up, aching and weary,
their muscles cramped from three hours of sitting and nervous tension.
They said brief good nights, unlocked the door--they heard Allen lock it
behind them--and left their disgruntled friends, glad to be out of the
noisome odor of the room.
"God, what luck!" Winsor exclaimed as they started down the hall. "I'm
off Allen for good. That boy wins big pots too regularly and always
loses the little ones. I bet he's a cold-deck artist or something."
"He's something all right," Hugh agreed. "Cripes, I feel dirty and
stinko. I feel as if I'd been in a den."
"You have been. Say, what's that?" They had almost traversed the length
of the long hall when Winsor stopped suddenly, taking Hugh by the arm. A
door was open, and they could hear somebody reading.
"What's what?" Hugh asked, a little startled by the suddenness of
Winsor's question.
"Listen. That poem, I've heard it somewhere before. What is it?"
Hugh listened a moment and then said: "Oh, that's the poem Prof Blake
read us the other day--you know, 'marpessa.' It's about the shepherd,
_Apollo_, and _Marpessa_. It's great stuff. Listen."
They remained standing in the deserted hall, the voice coming clearly to
them through the open doorway. "It's Freddy Fowler," Winsor whispered.
"He can sure read."
The reading stopped, and they heard Fowler say to some one, presumably
his room-mate: "This is the part that I like best. Get it," Then he read
_Idas's_ plea to _Marpessa_:
"'After such argument what can I plead?
Or what pale promise make? Yet since it is
In women to pity rather than to aspire,
A little I will speak. I love thee then
Not only for thy body packed with sweet
Of all this world, that cup of brimming June,
That jar of violet wine set in the air,
That palest rose sweet in the night of life;
Nor for that stirring bosom, all besieged
By drowsing lovers, or thy perilous hair;
Nor for that face that might indeed provoke
Invasion of old cities; no, nor all
Thy freshness stealing on me like strange sleep.'"
Winsor's hand tightened on Hugh's arm, and the two boys stood almost
rigid listening to the young voice, which was trembling with emotion,
rich with passion:
"'Not only for this do I love thee, but
Because Infinity upon thee broods;
And thou are full of whispers and of shadows.
Thou meanest what the sea has striven to say
So long, and yearned up the cliffs to tell;
Thou art what all the winds have uttered not,
What the still night suggesteth to the heart.
Thy voice is like to music heard ere birth,
Some spirit lute touched on a spirit sea;
Thy face remembered is from other worlds,
It has been died for, though I know not when,
It has been sung of, though I know not where.'"
"God," Winsor whispered, "that's beautiful."
"Hush. This is the best part."
"'It has the strangeness of the luring West,
And of sad sea-horizons; beside thee
I am aware of other times and lands,
Of birth far back, of lives in many stars.
O beauty lone and like a candle clear
In this dark country of the world! Thou art
My woe, my early light, my music dying.'"
Hugh and Winsor remained silent while the young voice went on reading
_Maressa's_ reply, her gentle refusal of the god and her proud
acceptance, of the mortal. Finally they heard the last words:
"When she had spoken, Idas with one cry
Held her, and there was silence; while the god
In anger disappeared. Then slowly they,
He looking downward, and she gazing up,
Into the evening green wandered away."
When the voice paused, the poem done, the two boys walked slowly down
the hall, down the steps, and out into the cool night air. Neither said
a Word until they were half-way across the campus. Then Winsor spoke
softly:
"God! Wasn't that beautiful?"
"Yes--beautiful." Hugh's voice was hardly more than a whisper.
"Beautiful.... It--it--oh, it makes me--kinda ashamed."
"Me, too. Poker when we can have that! We're awful fools, Hugh."
"Yes--awful fools."