that I should attend her in her rooms. "She is in a bad
humour," added Potapitch.
The time was half-past three.
"My mistress was unable to sleep," explained Potapitch; "so,
after tossing about for a while, she suddenly rose, called
for her chair, and sent me to look for you. She is now in the
verandah."
"Quelle megere!" exclaimed De Griers.
True enough, I found Madame in the hotel verandah -much put
about at my delay, for she had been unable to contain herself
until four o'clock.
"Lift me up," she cried to the bearers, and once more we set
out for the roulette-salons.
XII
The Grandmother was in an impatient, irritable frame of mind.
Without doubt the roulette had turned her head, for she
appeared to be indifferent to everything else, and, in
general, seemed much distraught. For instance, she asked me no
questions about objects en route, except that, when a
sumptuous barouche passed us and raised a cloud of dust, she
lifted her hand for a moment, and inquired, " What was that? "
Yet even then she did not appear to hear my reply, although at
times her abstraction was interrupted by sallies and fits of
sharp, impatient fidgeting. Again, when I pointed out to her
the Baron and Baroness Burmergelm walking to the Casino, she
merely looked at them in an absent-minded sort of way, and
said with complete indifference, "Ah!" Then, turning
sharply to Potapitch and Martha, who were walking behind us,
she rapped out:
"Why have YOU attached yourselves to the party? We are not
going to take you with us every time. Go home at once." Then,
when the servants had pulled hasty bows and departed, she
added to me: "You are all the escort I need."
At the Casino the Grandmother seemed to be expected, for no
time was lost in procuring her former place beside the
croupier. It is my opinion that though croupiers seem such
ordinary, humdrum officials--men who care nothing whether the
bank wins or loses--they are, in reality, anything but
indifferent to the bank's losing, and are given instructions
to attract players, and to keep a watch over the bank's
interests; as also, that for such services, these officials are
awarded prizes and premiums. At all events, the croupiers of
Roulettenberg seemed to look upon the Grandmother as their
lawful prey-- whereafter there befell what our party had
foretold.
It happened thus:
As soon as ever we arrived the Grandmother ordered me to stake
twelve ten-gulden pieces in succession upon zero. Once,
twice, and thrice I did so, yet zero never turned up.
"Stake again," said the old lady with an impatient nudge of my
elbow, and I obeyed.
"How many times have we lost? " she inquired--actually
grinding her teeth in her excitement.
"We have lost 144 ten-gulden pieces," I replied. "I tell you,
Madame, that zero may not turn up until nightfall."
"Never mind," she interrupted. "Keep on staking upon zero,
and also stake a thousand gulden upon rouge. Here is a
banknote with which to do so."
The red turned up, but zero missed again, and we only got our
thousand gulden back.
"But you see, you see " whispered the old lady. "We have now
recovered almost all that we staked. Try zero again. Let us do
so another ten times, and then leave off."
By the fifth round, however, the Grandmother was weary of the
scheme.
"To the devil with that zero!" she exclaimed. Stake four
thousand gulden upon the red."
"But, Madame, that will be so much to venture!" I
remonstrated. "Suppose the red should not turn up?" The
Grandmother almost struck me in her excitement. Her agitation
was rapidly making her quarrelsome. Consequently, there was
nothing for it but to stake the whole four thousand gulden as
she had directed.
The wheel revolved while the Grandmother sat as bolt upright,
and with as proud and quiet a mien, as though she had not the
least doubt of winning.
"Zero!" cried the croupier.
At first the old lady failed to understand the situation; but,
as soon as she saw the croupier raking in her four thousand
gulden, together with everything else that happened to be
lying on the table, and recognised that the zero which had
been so long turning up, and on which we had lost nearly two
hundred ten-gulden pieces, had at length, as though of set
purpose, made a sudden reappearance--why, the poor old lady
fell to cursing it, and to throwing herself about, and wailing
and gesticulating at the company at large. Indeed, some
people in our vicinity actually burst out laughing.
"To think that that accursed zero should have turned up NOW!"
she sobbed. "The accursed, accursed thing! And, it is all
YOUR fault," she added, rounding upon me in a frenzy. "It
was you who persuaded me to cease staking upon it."
"But, Madame, I only explained the game to you. How am I to
answer for every mischance which may occur in it?"
"You and your mischances!" she whispered threateningly.
"Go! Away at once!"
"Farewell, then, Madame." And I turned to depart.
"No-- stay," she put in hastily. "Where are you going to? Why
should you leave me? You fool! No, no... stay here. It is I who
was the fool. Tell me what I ought to do."
"I cannot take it upon myself to advise you, for you will only
blame me if I do so. Play at your own discretion. Say exactly
what you wish staked, and I will stake it."
"Very well. Stake another four thousand gulden upon the red.
Take this banknote to do it with. I have still got twenty
thousand roubles in actual cash."
"But," I whispered, "such a quantity of money--"
"Never mind. I cannot rest until I have won back my losses.
Stake!"
I staked, and we lost.
"Stake again, stake again--eight thousand at a stroke!"
"I cannot, Madame. The largest stake allowed is four thousand
gulden."
"Well, then; stake four thousand."
This time we won, and the Grandmother recovered herself a
little.
"You see, you see!" she exclaimed as she nudged me. "Stake
another four thousand."
I did so, and lost. Again, and yet again, we lost. "Madame,
your twelve thousand gulden are now gone," at length I
reported.
"I see they are," she replied with, as it were, the calmness
of despair. "I see they are," she muttered again as she
gazed straight in front of her, like a person lost in
thought. "Ah well, I do not mean to rest until I have staked
another four thousand."
"But you have no money with which to do it, Madame. In this
satchel I can see only a few five percent bonds and some
transfers--no actual cash."
"And in the purse?"
"A mere trifle."
"But there is a money-changer's office here, is th
ere not?
They told me I should be able to get any sort of paper
security changed! "
"Quite so; to any amount you please. But you will lose on the
transaction what would frighten even a Jew."
"Rubbish! I am DETERMINED to retrieve my losses. Take me
away, and call those fools of bearers."
I wheeled the chair out of the throng, and, the bearers making
their appearance, we left the Casino.
"Hurry, hurry!" commanded the Grandmother. "Show me the
nearest way to the money-changer's. Is it far?"
"A couple of steps, Madame."
At the turning from the square into the Avenue we came face to
face with the whole of our party--the General, De Griers, Mlle.
Blanche, and her mother. Only Polina and Mr. Astley were
absent.
"Well, well, well! " exclaimed the Grandmother. "But we have
no time to stop. What do you want? I can't talk to you here."
I dropped behind a little, and immediately was pounced upon by
De Griers.
"She has lost this morning's winnings," I whispered, "and
also twelve thousand gulden of her original money. At the
present moment we are going to get some bonds changed."
De Griers stamped his foot with vexation, and hastened to
communicate the tidings to the General. Meanwhile we
continued to wheel the old lady along.
"Stop her, stop her," whispered the General in consternation.
"You had better try and stop her yourself," I returned--also in
a whisper.
"My good mother," he said as he approached her, "--my good
mother, pray let, let--" (his voice was beginning to tremble
and sink) "--let us hire a carriage, and go for a drive. Near
here there is an enchanting view to be obtained. We-we-we were
just coming to invite you to go and see it."
"Begone with you and your views!" said the Grandmother
angrily as she waved him away.
"And there are trees there, and we could have tea under them,"
continued the General--now in utter despair.
"Nous boirons du lait, sur l'herbe fraiche," added De Griers
with the snarl almost of a wild beast.
"Du lait, de l'herbe fraiche"--the idyll, the ideal of the
Parisian bourgeois--his whole outlook upon "la nature et la
verite"!
"Have done with you and your milk!" cried the old lady. "Go
and stuff YOURSELF as much as you like, but my stomach simply
recoils from the idea. What are you stopping for? I have
nothing to say to you."
"Here we are, Madame," I announced. "Here is the
moneychanger's office."
I entered to get the securities changed, while the Grandmother
remained outside in the porch, and the rest waited at a
little distance, in doubt as to their best course of action.
At length the old lady turned such an angry stare upon them
that they departed along the road towards the Casino.
The process of changing involved complicated calculations
which soon necessitated my return to the Grandmother for
instructions.
"The thieves!" she exclaimed as she clapped her hands
together. "Never mind, though. Get the documents cashed--No;
send the banker out to me," she added as an afterthought.
"Would one of the clerks do, Madame?"
"Yes, one of the clerks. The thieves!"
The clerk consented to come out when he perceived that he was
being asked for by an old lady who was too infirm to walk;
after which the Grandmother began to upbraid him at length,
and with great vehemence, for his alleged usuriousness, and
to bargain with him in a mixture of Russian, French, and
German--I acting as interpreter. Meanwhile, the grave-faced
official eyed us both, and silently nodded his head. At the
Grandmother, in particular, he gazed with a curiosity which
almost bordered upon rudeness. At length, too, he smiled.
"Pray recollect yourself!" cried the old lady. "And may my
money choke you! Alexis Ivanovitch, tell him that we can
easily repair to someone else."
"The clerk says that others will give you even less than he."
Of what the ultimate calculations consisted I do not exactly
remember, but at all events they were alarming. Receiving
twelve thousand florins in gold, I took also the statement of
accounts, and carried it out to the Grandmother.
"Well, well," she said, "I am no accountant. Let us hurry
away, hurry away." And she waved the paper aside.
"Neither upon that accursed zero, however, nor upon that
equally accursed red do I mean to stake a cent," I muttered to
myself as I entered the Casino.
This time I did all I could to persuade the old lady to stake
as little as possible--saying that a turn would come in the
chances when she would be at liberty to stake more. But she
was so impatient that, though at first she agreed to do as I
suggested, nothing could stop her when once she had begun. By
way of prelude she won stakes of a hundred and two hundred
gulden.
"There you are!" she said as she nudged me. "See what we
have won! Surely it would be worth our while to stake four
thousand instead of a hundred, for we might win another four
thousand, and then--! Oh, it was YOUR fault before--all your
fault!"
I felt greatly put out as I watched her play, but I decided to
hold my tongue, and to give her no more advice.
Suddenly De Griers appeared on the scene. It seemed that all
this while he and his companions had been standing beside us--
though I noticed that Mlle. Blanche had withdrawn a little
from the rest, and was engaged in flirting with the Prince.
Clearly the General was greatly put out at this. Indeed, he
was in a perfect agony of vexation. But Mlle. was careful
never to look his way, though he did his best to attract her
notice. Poor General! By turns his face blanched and reddened,
and he was trembling to such an extent that he could scarcely
follow the old lady's play. At length Mlle. and the Prince
took their departure, and the General followed them.
"Madame, Madame," sounded the honeyed accents of De Griers as
he leant over to whisper in the Grandmother's ear. "That
stake will never win. No, no, it is impossible," he added in
Russian with a writhe. "No, no!"
"But why not?" asked the Grandmother, turning round. "Show
me what I ought to do."
Instantly De Griers burst into a babble of French as he
advised, jumped about, declared that such and such chances
ought to be waited for, and started to make calculations of
figures. All this he addressed to me in my capacity as
translator--tapping the table the while with his finger, and
pointing hither and thither. At length he seized a pencil, and
began to reckon sums on paper until he had exhausted the
Grandmother's patience.
"Away with you!" she interrupted. "You talk sheer nonsense,
for, though you keep on saying 'Madame, Madame,' you haven't
the least notion what ought to
be done. Away with you, I say!"
"Mais, Madame," cooed De Griers--and straightway started
afresh with his fussy instructions.
"Stake just ONCE, as he advises," the Grandmother said to me,
"and then we shall see what we shall see. Of course, his
stake MIGHT win."
As a matter of fact, De Grier's one object was to distract the
old lady from staking large sums; wherefore, he now suggested
to her that she should stake upon certain numbers, singly and
in groups. Consequently, in accordance with his instructions, I
staked a ten-gulden piece upon several odd numbers in the
first twenty, and five ten-gulden pieces upon certain groups
of numbers-groups of from twelve to eighteen, and from
eighteen to twenty-four. The total staked amounted to 160
gulden.
The wheel revolved. "Zero!" cried the croupier.
We had lost it all!
"The fool!" cried the old lady as she turned upon De Griers.
"You infernal Frenchman, to think that you should advise!
Away with you! Though you fuss and fuss, you don't even know
what you're talking about."
Deeply offended, De Griers shrugged his shoulders, favoured
the Grandmother with a look of contempt, and departed. For
some time past he had been feeling ashamed of being seen in
such company, and this had proved the last straw.
An hour later we had lost everything in hand.
"Home!" cried the Grandmother.
Not until we had turned into the Avenue did she utter a word;
but from that point onwards, until we arrived at the hotel,
she kept venting exclamations of "What a fool I am! What a
silly old fool I am, to be sure!"
Arrived at the hotel, she called for tea, and then gave orders
for her luggage to be packed.
"We are off again," she announced.
"But whither, Madame?" inquired Martha.
"What business is that of YOURS? Let the cricket stick to
its hearth. [The Russian form of "Mind your own business."]
Potapitch, have everything packed, for we are returning to
Moscow at once. I have fooled away fifteen thousand roubles."
"Fifteen thousand roubles, good mistress? My God!" And
Potapitch spat upon his hands--probably to show that he was
ready to serve her in any way he could.
"Now then, you fool! At once you begin with your weeping and
wailing! Be quiet, and pack. Also, run downstairs, and get my
hotel bill."
"The next train leaves at 9:30, Madame," I interposed, with a
view to checking her agitation.
"And what is the time now?"
"Half-past eight."
"How vexing! But, never mind. Alexis Ivanovitch, I have not a
kopeck left; I have but these two bank notes. Please run to
the office and get them changed. Otherwise I shall have
nothing to travel with."
Departing on her errand, I returned half an hour later to find
the whole party gathered in her rooms. It appeared that the
news of her impending departure for Moscow had thrown the
conspirators into consternation even greater than her losses
had done. For, said they, even if her departure should save
her fortune, what will become of the General later? And who
is to repay De Griers? Clearly Mlle. Blanche would never
consent to wait until the Grandmother was dead, but would at
once elope with the Prince or someone else. So they had all
gathered together--endeavouring to calm and dissuade the
Grandmother. Only Polina was absent. For her pad the
Grandmother had nothing for the party but abuse.
"Away with you, you rascals!" she was shouting. "What have my
affairs to do with you? Why, in particular, do you"--here
she indicated De Griers--"come sneaking here with your goat's
beard? And what do YOU"--here she turned to Mlle. Blanche
"want of me? What are YOU finicking for?"
"Diantre!" muttered Mlle. under her breath, but her eyes
were flashing. Then all at once she burst into a laugh and
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