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- Author: R. M. Ballantyne
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The Count’s pile remained untouched, and a bright flush suffused his hitherto pale cheeks while the silver rain was falling on his square, but to the surprise of Lewis, he did not rake it towards him as did the others. He left the increased amount on exactly the same spot, merely drawing it gently together with his rake. As he did so the knotted haggard look returned to his once again bloodless brow and face. Not less precise and silent were his companions. The board again spun round; the inexorable pea fell; the raking and raining were repeated, and again the Count’s stake lay glittering before him. His eyes glittered even more brightly than the silver. Lewis concluded that he must have been brought down to desperate poverty, and meant to recover himself by desperate means, for he left the whole stake again on the same spot.
This time the pea fell into black. The colour was symbolic of the Count’s feelings, for next moment the silver heap was raked from before him, along with other heaps, as if nothing unusual had happened; and, in truth, nothing had. Wholesale ruin and robbery was the daily occupation there!
For a few seconds the Count gazed at the blank space before him with an expression of stony unbelief; then springing suddenly to his feet, he spurned his chair from him and rushed from the room. So quick was the movement, that he had reached the door and passed out before Lewis could stop him.
Springing after him with a feeling of great alarm, the youth dashed across the entrance-hall, but turned in the wrong direction. Being put right by a porter, he leaped through the doorway and looked for Antoine, who, he knew, must have seen the Count pass, but Antoine was not there.
As he quickly questioned one who stood near, he thought he saw a man running among the adjacent shrubbery. He could not be sure, the night being dark, but he promptly ran after him. On dashing round a turn in the gravel-walk, he found two men engaged in what appeared to be a deadly struggle. Suddenly the place was illumined by a red flash, a loud report followed, and one of the two fell.
“Ah! Monsieur,” exclaimed Antoine, as Lewis came forward, “aid me here; he is not hurt, I think.”
“Hurt! Do you mean that he tried to shoot himself?”
“He had not time to try, but I’m quite sure that he meant to,” said Antoine; “so I ran after him and caught his hand. The pistol exploded in the struggle.”
As the guide spoke, the Count rose slowly. The star-light was faint, but it sufficed to show that the stony look of despair was gone, and that the gentle expression, natural to him, had returned. He was deadly pale, and bowed his head as one overwhelmed with shame.
“Oh pardon, Monsieur!” exclaimed poor Antoine, as he thought of the roughness with which he had been compelled to treat him. “I did not mean to throw you.”
“You did not throw me, friend. I tripped and fell,” replied the Count, in a low, husky voice. “Mr Stoutley,” he added, turning to Lewis, “by what mischance you came here I know not but I trust that you were not—were not—present. I mean—do you know the cause of my conduct—this—”
He stopped abruptly.
“My dear sir,” said Lewis, in a low, kind voice, at the same time grasping the Count’s hand, and leading him aside, “I was in the rooms; I saw you there; but believe me when I assure you, that no feeling but that of sympathy can touch the heart of one who has been involved in the meshes of the same net.”
The Count’s manner changed instantly. He returned the grasp of the young man, and looked eagerly in his face, as he repeated—
“Has been involved! How, then, did you escape?”
“I’m not sure that I have escaped,” answered Lewis, sadly.
“Not sure! Oh, young man, make sure. Give no rest to your soul till you are quite sure. It is a dreadful net—terrible! When once wrapped tightly round one there is no escape—no escape. In this it resembles its sister passion—the love of strong drink.”
The Count spoke with such deep pathos, and in tones so utterly hopeless, that Lewis’s ready sympathies were touched, and he would have given anything to be able to comfort his friend, but never before having been called upon to act as a comforter, he felt sorely perplexed.
“Call it not a passion,” he said. “The love of gaming, as of drink, is a disease; and a disease may be cured—has been cured, even when desperate.”
The Count shook his head.
“You speak in ignorance, Mr Stoutley. You know nothing of the struggles I have made. It is impossible.”
“With God all things are possible,” replied Lewis, quoting, almost to his own surprise, a text of Scripture. “But forgive my delay,” he added; “I came here on purpose to look for you. Your daughter Nita is ill—not seriously ill, I believe,” he said, on observing the Count’s startled look, “but ill enough to warrant your being sent for.”
“I know—I know,” cried the Count, with a troubled look, as he passed his hand across his brow. “I might have expected it. She cannot sustain the misery I have brought on her. Oh! why was I prevented from freeing her from such a father. Is she very ill? Did she send for me? Did she tell you what I am?”
The excited manner and wild aspect of the gambler, more than the words, told of a mind almost, if not altogether, unhinged. Observing this with some anxiety, Lewis tried to soothe him. While leading him to an hotel, he explained the nature of Nita’s attack as well as he could, and said that she had not only refrained from saying anything about her father, but that she seemed excessively unwilling to reveal the name of the place to which he had gone, or to send for him.
“No one knows anything unfavourable about Count Horetzki,” said Lewis, in a gentle tone, “save his fellow-sinner, who now assures him of his sincere regard. As for Antoine Grennon, he is a wise, and can be a silent, man. No brother could be more tender of the feelings of others than he. Come, you will consent to be my guest to-night. You are unwell; I shall be your amateur physician. My treatment and a night of rest will put you all right, and to-morrow, by break of day, we will hie back to Chamouni over the Tête-Noire.”
A week passed away, during which Nita was confined to bed, and the Count waited on her with the most tender solicitude. As their meals were sent to their rooms, it was not necessary for the latter to appear in the salle-à -manger or the salon. He kept himself carefully out of sight, and intelligence of the invalid’s progress was carried to their friends by Susan Quick, who was allowed to remain as sick-nurse, and who rejoiced in filling that office to one so amiable and uncomplaining as Nita.
Of course, Lewis was almost irresistibly tempted to talk with Susan about her charge, but he felt the impropriety of such a proceeding, and refrained. Not so Gillie White. That sapient blue spider, sitting in his wonted chair, resplendent with brass buttons and brazen impudence, availed himself of every opportunity to perform an operation which he styled “pumping;” but Susan, although ready enough to converse freely on things in general, was judicious in regard to things particular. Whatever might have passed in the sick-room, the pumping only brought up such facts as that the Count was a splendid nurse as well as a loving father, and that he and his daughter were tenderly attached to each other.
“Well, Susan,” observed Gillie, with an approving nod, “I’m glad to hear wot you say, for it’s my b’lief that tender attachments is the right sort o’ thing. I’ve got one or two myself.”
“Indeed!” said Susan, “who for, I wonder?”
“W’y, for one,” replied the spider, “I’ve had a wery tender attachment to my mother ever since that blessed time w’en I was attached to her buzzum in the rampagin’ hunger of infancy. Then I’ve got another attachment—not quite so old, but wery strong, oh uncommon powerful—for a young lady named Susan Quick. D’you happen to know her?”
“Oh, Gillie, you’re a sad boy,” said Susan.
“Well, I make a pint never to contradict a ’ooman, believin’ it to be dangerous,” returned Gillie, “but I can’t say that I feel sad. I’m raither jolly than otherwise.”
A summons from the sick-room cut short the conversation.
During the week in question it had rained a good deal, compelling the visitors at Chamouni to pass the time in-doors with books, billiards, draughts, and chess. Towards the end of the week Lewis met the Count and discovered that he was absolutely destitute of funds—did not, in fact possess enough to defray the hotel expenses.
“Mother,” said Lewis, during a private audience in her bed-chamber the same evening, “I want twenty pounds from you.”
“Certainly, my boy; but why do you come to me? You know that Dr Lawrence has charge of and manages my money. How I wish there were no such thing as money, and no need for it!”
Mrs Stoutley finished her remark with her usual languid smile and pathetic sigh, but if her physician, Dr Tough, had been there, he would probably have noted that mountain-air had robbed the smile of half its languor, and the sigh of nearly all its pathos. There was something like seriousness, too, in the good lady’s eye. She had been impressed more than she chose to admit by the sudden death of Le Croix, whom she had frequently seen, and whose stalwart frame and grave countenance she had greatly admired. Besides this, one or two accidents had occurred since her arrival in the Swiss valley; for there never passes a season without the occurrence of accidents more or less serious in the Alps. On one occasion the news had been brought that a young lady, recently married, whose good looks had been the subject of remark more than once, was killed by falling rocks before her husband’s eyes. On another occasion the spirits of the tourists were clouded by the report that a guide had fallen into a crevasse, and, though not killed, was much injured. Mrs Stoutley chanced to meet the rescue-party returning slowly to the village, with the poor shattered frame of the fine young fellow on a stretcher. It is one thing to read of such events in the newspapers. It is another and a very different thing to be near or to witness them—to be in the actual presence of physical and mental agony. Antoine Grennon, too, had made a favourable impression on Mrs Stoutley; and when, in passing one day his extremely humble cottage, she was invited by Antoine’s exceedingly pretty wife to enter and partake of bread and milk largely impregnated with cream, which was handed to her by Antoine’s excessively sweet blue-eyed daughter, the lady who had hitherto spent her life among the bright ice-pinnacles of society, was forced to admit to Emma Gray that Dr Tough was right when he said there were some beautiful and precious stones to be found among the moraines of social life.
“I know that Lawrence keeps the purse,” said Lewis, “but I want your special permission to take this money, because I intend to give it away.”
“Twenty pounds is a pretty large gift, Lewis,” said his mother, raising her eyebrows. “Who is it that has touched the springs of your liberality? Not the family of poor Le Croix?”
“No; Le
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