The Gambler
them, again before long, without knowing what I was doing.
In fact, I cannot have been in possession of all my faculties, for I
can remember the croupiers correcting my play more than once, owing to
my having made mistakes of the gravest order. My brows were damp with
sweat, and my hands were shaking. Also, Poles came around me to proffer
their services, but I heeded none of them. Nor did my luck fail me now.
Suddenly, there arose around me a loud din of talking and laughter.
“Bravo, bravo!” was the general shout, and some people even clapped
their hands. I had raked in thirty thousand florins, and again the bank
had had to close for the night!
“Go away now, go away now,” a voice whispered to me on my right. The
person who had spoken to me was a certain Jew of Frankfurt—a man who
had been standing beside me the whole while, and occasionally helping
me in my play.
“Yes, for God’s sake go,” whispered a second voice in my left ear.
Glancing around, I perceived that the second voice had come from a
modestly, plainly dressed lady of rather less than thirty—a woman whose
face, though pale and sickly-looking, bore also very evident traces of
former beauty. At the moment, I was stuffing the crumpled bank-notes
into my pockets and collecting all the gold that was left on the table.
Seizing up my last note for five hundred gülden, I contrived to
insinuate it, unperceived, into the hand of the pale lady. An
overpowering impulse had made me do so, and I remember how her thin
little fingers pressed mine in token of her lively gratitude. The whole
affair was the work of a moment.
Then, collecting my belongings, I crossed to where trente et quarante
was being played—a game which could boast of a more aristocratic
public, and was played with cards instead of with a wheel. At this
diversion the bank made itself responsible for a hundred thousand
thalers as the limit, but the highest stake allowable was, as in
roulette, four thousand florins. Although I knew nothing of the
game—and I scarcely knew the stakes, except those on black and red—I
joined the ring of players, while the rest of the crowd massed itself
around me. At this distance of time I cannot remember whether I ever
gave a thought to Polina; I seemed only to be conscious of a vague
pleasure in seizing and raking in the bank-notes which kept massing
themselves in a pile before me.
But, as ever, fortune seemed to be at my back. As though of set
purpose, there came to my aid a circumstance which not infrequently
repeats itself in gaming. The circumstance is that not infrequently
luck attaches itself to, say, the red, and does not leave it for a
space of say, ten, or even fifteen, rounds in succession. Three days
ago I had heard that, during the previous week there had been a run of
twenty-two coups on the red—an occurrence never before known at
roulette—so that men spoke of it with astonishment. Naturally enough,
many deserted the red after a dozen rounds, and practically no one
could now be found to stake upon it. Yet upon the black also—the
antithesis of the red—no experienced gambler would stake anything, for
the reason that every practised player knows the meaning of “capricious
fortune.” That is to say, after the sixteenth (or so) success of the
red, one would think that the seventeenth coup would inevitably fall
upon the black; wherefore, novices would be apt to back the latter in
the seventeenth round, and even to double or treble their stakes upon
it—only, in the end, to lose.
Yet some whim or other led me, on remarking that the red had come up
consecutively for seven times, to attach myself to that colour.
Probably this was mostly due to self-conceit, for I wanted to astonish
the bystanders with the riskiness of my play. Also, I remember that—oh,
strange sensation!—I suddenly, and without any challenge from my own
presumption, became obsessed with a _desire_ to take risks. If the
spirit has passed through a great many sensations, possibly it can no
longer be sated with them, but grows more excited, and demands more
sensations, and stronger and stronger ones, until at length it falls
exhausted. Certainly, if the rules of the game had permitted even of my
staking fifty thousand florins at a time, I should have staked them.
All of a sudden I heard exclamations arising that the whole thing was a
marvel, since the red was turning up for the fourteenth time!
“Monsieur a gagné cent mille florins,” a voice exclaimed beside me.
I awoke to my senses. What? I had won a hundred thousand florins? If
so, what more did I need to win? I grasped the banknotes, stuffed them
into my pockets, raked in the gold without counting it, and started to
leave the Casino. As I passed through the salons people smiled to see
my bulging pockets and unsteady gait, for the weight which I was
carrying must have amounted to half a pood! Several hands I saw
stretched out in my direction, and as I passed I filled them with all
the money that I could grasp in my own. At length two Jews stopped me
near the exit.
“You are a bold young fellow,” one said, “but mind you depart early
tomorrow—as early as you can—for if you do not you will lose everything
that you have won.”
But I did not heed them. The Avenue was so dark that it was barely
possible to distinguish one’s hand before one’s face, while the
distance to the hotel was half a verst or so; but I feared neither
pickpockets nor highwaymen. Indeed, never since my boyhood have I done
that. Also, I cannot remember what I thought about on the way. I only
felt a sort of fearful pleasure—the pleasure of success, of conquest,
of power (how can I best express it?). Likewise, before me there
flitted the image of Polina; and I kept remembering, and reminding
myself, that it was to _her_ I was going, that it was in _her_ presence
I should soon be standing, that it was _she_ to whom I should soon be
able to relate and show everything. Scarcely once did I recall what she
had lately said to me, or the reason why I had left her, or all those
varied sensations which I had been experiencing a bare hour and a half
ago. No, those sensations seemed to be things of the past, to be things
which had righted themselves and grown old, to be things concerning
which we needed to trouble ourselves no longer, since, for us, life was
about to begin anew. Yet I had just reached the end of the Avenue when
there _did_ come upon me a fear of being robbed or murdered. With each
step the fear increased until, in my terror, I almost started to run.
Suddenly, as I issued from the Avenue, there burst upon me the lights
of the hotel, sparkling with a myriad lamps! Yes, thanks be to God, I
had reached home!
Running up to my room, I flung open the door of it. Polina was still on
the sofa, with a lighted candle in front of her, and her hands clasped.
As I entered she stared at me in astonishment (for, at the moment, I
must have presented a strange spectacle). All I did, however, was to
halt before her, and fling upon the table my burden of wealth.
XV
I remember, too, how, without moving from her place, or changing her
attitude, she gazed into my face.
“I have won two hundred thousand francs!” cried I as I pulled out my
last sheaf of bank-notes. The pile of paper currency occupied the whole
table. I could not withdraw my eyes from it. Consequently, for a moment
or two Polina escaped my mind. Then I set myself to arrange the pile in
order, and to sort the notes, and to mass the gold in a separate heap.
That done, I left everything where it lay, and proceeded to pace the
room with rapid strides as I lost myself in thought. Then I darted to
the table once more, and began to recount the money; until all of a
sudden, as though I had remembered something, I rushed to the door, and
closed and double-locked it. Finally I came to a meditative halt before
my little trunk.
“Shall I put the money there until tomorrow?” I asked, turning sharply
round to Polina as the recollection of her returned to me.
She was still in her old place—still making not a sound. Yet her eyes
had followed every one of my movements. Somehow in her face there was a
strange expression—an expression which I did not like. I think that I
shall not be wrong if I say that it indicated sheer hatred.
Impulsively I approached her.
“Polina,” I said, “here are twenty-five thousand florins—fifty thousand
francs, or more. Take them, and tomorrow throw them in De Griers’
face.”
She returned no answer.
“Or, if you should prefer,” I continued, “let me take them to him
myself tomorrow—yes, early tomorrow morning. Shall I?”
Then all at once she burst out laughing, and laughed for a long while.
With astonishment and a feeling of offence I gazed at her. Her laughter
was too like the derisive merriment which she had so often indulged in
of late—merriment which had broken forth always at the time of my most
passionate explanations. At length she ceased, and frowned at me from
under her eyebrows.
“I am _not_ going to take your money,” she said contemptuously.
“Why not?” I cried. “Why not, Polina?”
“Because I am not in the habit of receiving money for nothing.”
“But I am offering it to you as a _friend_. In the same way I would
offer you my very life.”
Upon this she threw me a long, questioning glance, as though she were
seeking to probe me to the depths.
“You are giving too much for me,” she remarked with a smile. “The
beloved of De Griers is not worth fifty thousand francs.”
“Oh Polina, how can you speak so?” I exclaimed reproachfully. “Am _I_
De Griers?”
“You?” she cried with her eyes suddenly flashing. “Why, I _hate_ you!
Yes, yes, I _hate_ you! I love you no more than I do De Griers.”
Then she buried her face in her hands, and relapsed into hysterics. I
darted to her side. Somehow I had an intuition of something having
happened to her which had nothing to do with myself. She was like a
person temporarily insane.
“Buy me, would you, would you? Would you buy me for fifty thousand
francs as De Griers did?” she gasped between her convulsive sobs.
I clasped her in my arms, kissed her hands and feet, and fell upon my
knees before her.
Presently the hysterical fit passed away, and, laying her hands upon my
shoulders, she gazed for a while into my face, as though trying to read
it—something I said to her, but it was clear that she did not hear it.
Her face looked so dark and despondent that I began to fear for her
reason. At length she drew me towards herself—a trustful smile playing
over her features; and then, as suddenly, she pushed me away again as
she eyed me dimly.
Finally she threw herself upon me in an embrace.
“You love me?” she said. “_Do_ you?—you who were willing even to
quarrel with the Baron at my bidding?”
Then she laughed—laughed as though something dear, but laughable, had
recurred to her memory. Yes, she laughed and wept at the same time.
What was I to do? I was like a man in a fever. I remember that she
began to say something to me—though _what_ I do not know, since she
spoke with a feverish lisp, as though she were trying to tell me
something very quickly. At intervals, too, she would break off into the
smile which I was beginning to dread. “No, no!” she kept repeating.
“_You_ are my dear one; _you_ are the man I trust.” Again she laid her
hands upon my shoulders, and again she gazed at me as she reiterated:
“You love me, you love me? Will you _always_ love me?” I could not take
my eyes off her. Never before had I seen her in this mood of humility
and affection. True, the mood was the outcome of hysteria; but—! All of
a sudden she noticed my ardent gaze, and smiled slightly. The next
moment, for no apparent reason, she began to talk of Astley.
She continued talking and talking about him, but I could not make out