The Gambler
“No, Mr. Astley. After all that has been said I—”
“_Take care_ of them!” repeated my friend. “I am certain you are still
a gentleman, and therefore I give you the money as one gentleman may
give money to another. Also, if I could be certain that you would leave
both Homburg and the gaming-tables, and return to your own country, I
would give you a thousand pounds down to start life afresh; but, I give
you ten louis d’or instead of a thousand pounds for the reason that at
the present time a thousand pounds and ten louis d’or will be all the
same to you—you will lose the one as readily as you will the other.
Take the money, therefore, and good-bye.”
“Yes, I _will_ take it if at the same time you will embrace me.”
“With pleasure.”
So we parted—on terms of sincere affection.
But he was wrong. If _I_ was hard and undiscerning as regards Polina
and De Griers, _he_ was hard and undiscerning as regards Russian people
generally. Of myself I say nothing. Yet—yet words are only words. I
need to _act_. Above all things I need to think of Switzerland.
Tomorrow, tomorrow—Ah, but if only I could set things right tomorrow,
and be born again, and rise again from the dead! But no—I cannot. Yet I
must show her what I can do. Even if she should do no more than learn
that I can still play the man, it would be worth it. Today it is too
late, but _tomorrow_. Yet I have a presentiment that things can never
be otherwise. I have got fifteen louis d’or in my possession, although
I began with fifteen gülden. If I were to play carefully at the
start—But no, no! Surely I am not such a fool as that? Yet _why_ should
I not rise from the dead? I should require at first but to go
cautiously and patiently and the rest would follow. I should require
but to put a check upon my nature for one hour, and my fortunes would
be changed entirely. Yes, my nature is my weak point. I have only to
remember what happened to me some months ago at Roulettenberg, before
my final ruin. What a notable instance that was of my capacity for
resolution! On the occasion in question I had lost
everything—everything; yet, just as I was leaving the Casino, I heard
another gülden give a rattle in my pocket! “Perhaps I shall need it for
a meal,” I thought to myself; but a hundred paces further on, I changed
my mind, and returned. That gülden I staked upon manque—and there _is_
something in the feeling that, though one is alone, and in a foreign
land, and far from one’s own home and friends, and ignorant of whence
one’s next meal is to come, one is nevertheless staking one’s very last
coin! Well, I won the stake, and in twenty minutes had left the Casino
with a hundred and seventy gülden in my pocket! That is a fact, and it
shows what a last remaining gülden can do.... But what if my heart had
failed me, or I had shrunk from making up my mind? ...
No; tomorrow all shall be ended!