The Story-Teller.

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume X, Issue 963, 25 November 1891, Page 4

The Story-Teller.

NO 32.

Thb morning mail was m. Taming over my letters, I paused at one directed m a Bt range scratchy woman's hard. The postmark was NapoUa. i opened it curiously and read it through. Read it for yourself, you will see why 1 left my breakfast untouched, and the res. * of my correspondence unopened. Grand Hotel, Naples. Dea. ] want to r xplain to yon my sudden departure from England. As a rule men keep their madnesses to tliemselvs. I will be an exception, as y<iu know, my instincts are those of a confirmed gambler. I believe m one god, the go t of chance, and m Inck, his i raphe*. Bitherto my offerings and sacrifices have been irsuffoent to appease him and he Las treated me with h arked malevohnce, but I feel sure that the solutic n of his mystery lie. m the square and its two diagonals, with payments of which figure we number our dwelling houses, page our books, and count our wealth to-day — only I cannot discov- r it. And I am convinced that the life of eveiyone of us is bound up m one numerical term, and that the successful man is he, and he on'y, to whom the god of chance has vouchsafed, with his knowledge or without his knowledge, the figures of his number, and who, consciously or unconsciously, regnlat. s his life by the powprs of it— but I have sought for mine m vain. Not long ago I conceived the idea, wherefore or where from I cannot tell, that my number was thiitj-two, and m eve r y circumstance of life into which figures could be intro doced I made it my fetish, but up till now it has only piov d a feu follet, 1 bought No. 82 m lotteries, but never won ; I only dealt with trn-esn en who lived et Ko. 82 m their, streets, but reaped no advantage ; I turned to page 82 m all the new books, but found no Bath Kol ; I sought for a girl whose initials were C. 8., the third and second letters of the alphabet, forced myself to fall iv love with her, but she married a man whose figures were invested ; I tried to discover the cypher of my life by taking every thirty-second letter m Shakespeare's plays. I bought thirty two editions, from the editio prineeps to the edition of Bowdler, and by counting now m one, now m another, and by modifying the spelling, I connected a string of words m which must lie concealed the pryptogram of my deßtiny. But I had no Daniel to inteteret. My philoso pher's stone wouldn't tarn even into br< a 1 I was growing poorer, madder every day. I determined to travel, realised all the property I could, and started for Naples with some £4.000 m notes on an Orient steamer, having, needless to say, secure, berth No. 32. " On londing I drove straight to the Grand Hotel aad asked at the office if I could have room No 32 ? The cb-rk stared, and said it was a sitting-room aad engaged. Could I have No. 64 ? No, that was also engaged. No. 128 ? That was vacant, but very high up ; he could give me a much better room lower down, but I could have that if specially desired. I took it. I unpacked, changed and found my allotted place at the table d'hote. On my right sat one of the loveliest worn* n I have ever seen. Her large dark ey« s, when she turned to scrutinise me as a new comer, seemed to question my soul and demand a sympathetic reply. She was a splendid woman, sitting upright half a head taller than the rest of us. A model for a sculptor, not a painter. Her wonder-fully-fitting dress, a dead pearl gray. Her only ornament, a large ruby forming the head of a gold serpent twisted four times round her wrist. She began conversing m French with a little dapper decore man opposite, then m Italian with his Uu-t.rto- typed neighbour, then m German with the man on her light, with a head all money-making squareness at the back, of philosophical spectacles and baard m front. Presently she turned and asked me for the salt m English. The ice was broken, We conversed during the rest of dinner on a variety of topics, travel, destiny, men and books, Naples and Warsaw, where I found she lived. Afterwards we sat together among the oleanders m the square, cool, marble j paved hall over our coffee listening to I the band. Even ' O bella Napoli' seemed to become fresh and new under the spell of her society and the richness j of her conversation fascinated me. As she rose at ten to say goodnight, she held out her hand, and as I detained it a moment, the snake bracelet slipped round as if alive. ' Yon like afternoon tea yon English, will you come to-morrow at, say, halfpast fonr. My salon is No 32. ' I accepted with pleasure and then went out and leant on the balcony outside the smoking-room looking over the sea. No 82 at last, my number is going to turn up I thought. How love ly the night is when a new love has illumined it. For a long time I stood there watch ing the red zig-zag of lava on the cone of Vesuvius. Suddenly the wind changed and swept the smoke between it and the moon, and the red became like unto the red of a ruby. Madame --did not appear at dinner, but I shall see her again later. I have been to tea. She has contrived with a woman's subtle skill to convert the bare hotel saloon No §2 into a veritable boudoir. * (Continutd m our next Urn-)