A LOSS AT BRIDGE

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XL, Issue 10, 7 March 1908, Page 52

A LOSS AT BRIDGE

The Story of Its Consequences

By

HARRIET B. SPOFFORD

W’ i <6 HEN Miss Melcher rose from the w 1 I bridge table, if any one had B/a/ looked at her it would have f f been seen that all her beautiful bloom was gone. She was ■white and pinched, and there were blue surfaces around her lips. The little locks about her low and lovely brow were curling in the dampness that had started there. Trembling, she steadied herself with her hand on the back of a chair; the grasp made her nails scarlet. The voice of Mrs Plumtree, however, helped her to regain self-possession—the low, monotonous voice, insistent as the drum of a partridge. “Yes, in all”—she was fumbling for the tablets swinging from her waist by the chain of peridots, which she was wont to show as the concrete essence of one morning’s winnings, and looking for various memoranda there—“in all, let me see—yesterday morning last night, this evening—hm, Inn, hm, four and five are pine—yes, ten thousand and fifty to a dot.” “Ten thousand and fifty,” said Constance Melcher quietly, her still lips moving with difficulty. “We have been plunging.” “Well, not more than usual in this house. And then it isn’t all at once, you know. But you’ve had an awful run of ill luck. Never mind, revenge is sweet, and sure to come.” “All in good time,” said Constance lightly, looking about her and down the long room, yet half surprised at the sound of her voice. “I suppose you will wait till I send up to town for my little box? It was so stupid of me to leave it behind, with my cheque book and my pearls ” “Why, no,” said Mrs Plumtree; “not if you can arrange it otherwise. I'm going on to the Saltiers’ to-morrow, and like to make a clean slate before I go. You had some good winnings last week.” “Oh, last week! ” “Ah, I see. Bad luck again. Well. It’s a long lane that has no turning. And then a girl, my dear, that’s engaged to marry one of the sons of this house—well, a nephew, then,” as Constance raised her eyebrows, “ought to be able to arrange matters. I shall have to ask you to think it over. I have been accus- • tomed to playing only with those who pay on the spot. I should dislike relying on a memorandum of it—that is apt to make so much talk.” A distinct threat. And Mrs Plumtree knew that Constance Melcher would not wish any talk of the matter to reach the ears of the family into which she was to marry. She might have seen the girl shudder if she had not been busy with her figures just at the moment. “All right, then,” said Mrs Plumtree. “I will see you to-morrow morning. Perhaps you can run up to town and cash a cheque before twelve? To tell the truth, 1 don’t care for cheques when they can be avoided. They’re not exactly the thing to negotiate at the bride table, tell-tales as they are. And I make a point of paying my losses out of my winnings. The idea of your forgetting your pearls coming down here. Are they fine?” “Much too fine for me to wear just yet.” “Oh, 1 don’t know. Young girls can always wear pearls.” “These are so large; a long string. They were iny mother’s and her mother’s before her, when pearl? were not things of great price.” . , “Lucky girl. W*'ll. not pefore twelve, then. 1 am strch alate rier; and Mathilde will Ire packing. Rut not much later. Very well, then.” “Very well,” said Constance moving away. She was cold as death. Borno

wine-cup stood on a console near by. She poured and drank it before anyone could spring to serve her; for, as a rule, every one sprang to serve this beautiful young creature. She waited a moment, thinking whether or not she would go to her room. But what help was there in her room ? There might be some help among these people, although how or why she knew not. There was only one thing to be done, it suddenly flashed over her; she hated to do it, but there seemed to be no choice. Through the lifted curtains she saw the fire low upon the library hearth; she would go in there and compose herself and think it over, if she could slip away. But as she was carrying out her intention Mack was beside her. “In trouble?” he said, looking at her face, every line of which he could interpret. And before she fairly knew what she was saying the whole story had been told. “My God!” he said, half aghast. “It can’t be possible! And we might as well cry for the moon.” “Oh, I know it!” she exclaimed. “It its terrible. Oh, it has all been wrong—the way of life—the pace. I shall never touch a card again as long as I live!” “Rather late,” said Mack. “Oh, you mustn’t, you mustn’t blame me altogether! I didn’t know; I had no idea we were playing for such stakes—” “I don’t blame you, my darling!”, he said, looking about him in an unconcerned manner, that none might guess the seriousness of the situation. “I am distressed by your distress. We must think of some way out of it. If my uncle were not so strict about our accounting—he plays bridge till he is blue himself, and so does Aunt Sophy; but he won’t let Roderick or me turn a card. We will have to think of some way out ourselves. ” “Oh, I have! But that distresses me, too. I hate to do it. But there’s no other way. I can’t be brought to open shame here, in this house, by that woman. It is horrible that I have been so insane, going on and on. And nowwell, I must. Oh, you see I don’t belong to this kind of life!” “You belong to a better kind. We’re a godless set. Since my uncle made his big money my aunt thinks of her guests as the more vicious, the more smart. I wonder if so much money isn’t a curse—they used to be so different. I never should have urged Aunt Sophy to ask you here. And for Roderick to fall in love with!” “Oh, Roderick!” The impatient motion of her head told how inconsequential was any thought of Roderick, heir although he was to great fortunes. They sat down on a bench in the deep doorway; their outlines in the semishadow seemed to melt into those of the tapestry behind them. Only Roderick, from across the room, saw the light fall upon the graceful head and the look of trouble on the lovely face. “It isn’t possible that she cares for Mack,” he thought. “A clerk in my father’s bank. If he were only out of the way a man might have a chance!” “It is hard,” Mack was saying, “to be among these people my aunt and uncle have got about them and feel your salvation is their bagatelle.” “Oh, yes,” sighed Constance. “There's my uncle himself—the man who has bought that waste land of him for the big dam brought him ten thousand dollars in bills this morning,” he beard Constance draw her breathh sharply; “twenty five hundred-dollar bills ho said it was. They’re men who don’t have cheque books, but draw their money from their savings bank, you know, and then they had changed their smaller bills for big uniform ones at the County Bank —the dam company reclaims so many

acres of marsh that it gives every one of the men building it a good piece of grass land. And my uncle took the roll and tossed it into the drawer of his desk as he might have tossed an old letter—” “Which drawer?” “The one that doesn’t lock, the upper one; it happened to be half-open. I laughed and said, ‘You used to lock the drawer- where you kept our sweetmeats, Uncle James,’ and he said, ‘The sweetmeats stood for more, you know.’ By George, it’s cruel to have so much money and to care so little about it!” They rose after a little, going on, and standing for a moment before the fire in the library. “Well,” said Constance, “I shall manage it. Only I had meant to do so differently.” And then—there was no one to see them for that one precious moment—and leaving him she went out by the other door and up to her room. It was an hour or so afterward, when all the house was still, that Mack, who had been up late having sat in a blue mood with his cigar, heard a sound in the hall of some one fumbling, half stumbling. He had, as it happened, not quite closed his door, but as he instinctively sprang to it, he saw Constance, who. from excess of caution, had lost her footing on the stair, flitting by. “I went down for my handkerchief and my memorandum that I forgot,” she whispered, as she saw him; and he remembered that he had picked them up from the rug and laid them on the shelf in the library. In a moment she had waved her hand to him and disappeared into her own room. It was early the next morning that, if anyone in that house of late hours had chanced to be up and looking, a veiled and cloaked figure could have been seen hurrying down the avenue, taking the direction of a trolley that led to the station, in season for the first train, the fast night express. And some three hours afterward Roderick met Constance strolling up the garden path, her veil thrown back, her cloak over her arm, with such a colour on her cheek, such a lustre in her eyes, that his heart beat in his temples with the sight of her. She had been on a stroll, and she had not noticed how time was passing, she said, as she walked along with him, her hands full of early saxifrage and green leaves. “I never can resist them,” she said in half excuse for having them. “I know I ought to ‘love the wild rose and leave it on its stem,’ but I do love to get the downy baby things into my own hands.” “You might have given me a chance to gather them with you and share the guilt.” “Oh, ‘you were sleeping on your pillows,’ ” she sang brightly, and ran in light-footed, pausing a moment like a dazzling apparition, he thought, in the dark old doorway. It was a different sort of apparition there, a half-hour afterward, coming down to the carriage which was ready to take her on her way to the Saltiers’. “So, Mrs Plumtree, you are going off with your gains,” said Roderick, jestingly, helping the well-nourished lady in her sidewise attempts at the carriage door. “In good five-hundred-dollar bills!” she said, lifting her gold-mounted bag and patting it good-naturedly; and Roderick, who had meant only a jest, and was lather more straight-laced than the rest of the set at Somerby Oaks, had a queer sensation in thinking of his father’s house as a more place of gaming tables. “Well,” said Constance, as she met Mack, with a bright look. “It is my own fault. But I hope I’ve seen the last of Mrs Plumtree as long as I live! Her name will always give me a cold shiver. She’s off my mind, though, thank hea-

ven, with all her ill-gotten gains. Oh, no; I don’t say that she didn't play fair enough.” “You mean you’ve paid her?” exclaimed Mack. “Yes. What is it we were saying last night? In good five-hundred-dollar bills!” “By Jove! And I was meaning to see to it myself. My uncle has it here, you know. I was speaking to him Halloo! What’s that?” “That” was a roaring from the library —Mr Somerby’s voice, never a very low one, raised now in a loud and hoarse outcry. Roderick sprang past them to the room. It happened that people had separated; there was no one else in the adjoining* drawing-rooms except Mrs Somerby herself, who was hurrying to her husband with a motion like the fluttering of wings. “My aunt is always sailing over Uncle Roy’s troubled waters like the dove with the olive branch,” said Mack as he and Constance followed. “Mack! Where are you ?” his uncle was exclaiming as he came in. “Meßoy, you saw me put a roll of money into this drawer “Oh, yes, sir,” said Mack quietly. “Oh, yes, sir! Well, where is it? You were the only one in the room at the time. Where is it, 1 say?” “My dear uncle, how should I know ?” “How shouldn’t you know? You are the only person who knew that money was put in that place. Now I have a use for it. I’ve lost half as much this morning at bridge, cursed luck! I look for it. I find it gone!” The great room was dim with its many shadows for all the brilliance of the outside morning* but as Roderick thrust one of the heavy curtains aside, a burst of sunshine came in. and passing across the tall jar of red roses, the long beam overlaid Constance and made her for an instant as red as the roses. She moved away quickly to Mrs Somerby’s side, seeing the little lady’s agitation, for one never knew to what these outbursts would lead, and Mr Somerby stood at his writing-table bristling like an angry lion. “I find it gone!” he roared again. “You have been playing bridge, too! And not a half hour ago you were telling me you had particular need of this very sum of money, and I told you so had I! I would have given it to you, though. By George, 1 would have given it to you presently, but, by heavens, you thought best to help yourself to it!” Mack's face grew deadly white; with anger, it seemed at first. Then he saw Constance gazing at him from the other side of the room, her eyes wide with horror, with alarm. He must think quickly. No, there was nothing else for it. He half turned on his heel, and then, with a smothered cry, Constance had tottered and toppled and fallen over on the floor unconscious. “You can clear out from here!” thundered Mr Somerby, forgeting all decency in his wrath. “Get along with what you have in your pocket—twenty five-hun-dred-dollar bills! There shall be no scandal in my household. But never let me hear from you again, for an ungrateful wretch! Herb! Don’t dare touch that innocent creature whom just the thought of your gilt has half destroyed. Out with you! Out with you!” But Mack stod there motionless while they were bringing restorative to Constance. And then they were bringing her out—and her eyes rested on him as if they did not see him —and all was over. He went to his room, lay there for an hour of agony, then put his things together, sent them on before to the station, and walked out of the house. A man accustomed to all the luxuries and the pleasures of life, with no pro-

fession, heart-broken, filled with intolerable pain and shame and wrath has but little part in life. Mcßoy Bomerby disappeared, disappeared as completely as if he had never been born. But on the east side a man whose face had become half hidden by his beard, whose dark eyes were full of an unspeakable sorrow, whose dark hair fell over his face in matted locks, like that of many of the people about him, was fast drinking himself to death by means of the slight rewards for reading and writing the letters of those foreign folk who could not read or write their own. His room was under the roof; his store of provisions was a paper bag of biscuit. Occasionally he went down for a meal in some catch penny place, but invariably met some one worse off than himself and went back to his crackers. The street arabs knew him for a kindly person; and even the pickpockets respected his handkerchiefs, whose fine cambric bespoke downfall. His waking hours were misery; his sleep was haunted by hideous dreams. He cried out sometimes with wild cries in his loneliness and despair; and then he remembered his fate and his powerlessness, and drank again. Occasionally there were periods of illness and prostration, to which at length curiosity brought some woman of the wretched house, whose better nature rose to light under the stress of her pity till she nursed him back to his undesired life. He wondered at the vitality which resisted all his ails and ills; and he did his best or worst again to overcome it. There was nothing for him in life—why not death, then? Thinking of him as they did, there was no one who must not be glad to know he had dropped into the great gulf. But back in the house of Somerby Oaks life went on all to a different measure. Roderick, shocked by his cousin’s silent confession of guilt, did not feel it necessary to go after him in order to reclaim him or to hinder his continuing in nefarious ways. On the contrary, he would fulfil all his duty by refraining from mentioning his name, and thereby also helping the girl to whom he had plighted his troth to forget him and his broken faith; and meanwhile to urge his mother to keep her at Somerby Oaks as her companion, which she did—poor companionship as the lady found it —and then to surround her with his tenderest care. At first Constance was dazed by what had happened. She neither ate nor slept; the long black lashes were seldom lifted from the gloom of those great blue eyes; the rich colour forsook the cheek, the dimples never deepened; no smile curved the exquisite corners of the mouth. She seemed to be conscious of but one desire, when after a while she showed a desire for anything, and that was met by what seemed to the elder Somerby an insane attendance to her church duties. “I - should think,” he said to his wife, "that she was trying to rid herself of some sin or stain ” ‘‘Of poor Mcßoy’s sin,” said the gentle aunt, who loved the boy she had reared. “Never mention his name!” cried Mr Somerby. Very often Roderick went to church with Constance now. There were few gay people to hinder in these days at the Oaks. Sometimes he went with her on the charitable visits she had undertaken, and bent his very straight back under very low lintels. He thought in his heart that sooner or later her love could not but turn from the reprobate to a man of such marked and irreproachable uprightness as himself. She accepted all his graciousness with an equal graciousness; but it was iey. Yet, for all that, his steady faith in himself did not allow him to lose hope. They were walking home one morning from the place of a poor woman who lay dying. Constance had been up with her all night, and Roderick had come for her an hour or two after daybreak. A serene remembrance of sunrise splendour still lingered in the sky; hedges and shrubs, tall grass and wayside walls, were drenched and sparkling with dew; wild roses had opened all along the paths and were shedding their fragranee on the wind that curled about them fresh as if it had just blown out of Eden. “A heavenly morning,” said Roderick. “One feels as if everything were newly made on such a morning. It is like the beginning of a new life.” “Oh!” sighed Constance, her voice low with her fatigue; "x wish it were!” “Dear,” he said, “we can make it so. Come to me and be my wife, and we will begin life over; and new interests, new hopes, will make it perfect. Dear, I love you so!” A moment he thought she wavered,

hesitated, looked at him in doubt, as if in another she might yield. “I love you so,” he repeated. “No, no,” she murmured then, looking far off into the horizon. “There is no new L.e for me. My life is ended.” “Rather it has not yet begun,” he said. "There is a life-time of happiness yet before you, if you will put out your hand to take it.” And he held toward her the stem of a wild rose he had stooped to pluck. But as he did so, at a passing breath of air all the petals fluttered off and fell to the ground. “You see what happiness would be with me,” she said drearily, looking at the rose. “And for my own part, I want nothing but forgetfulness, and am not sure that death can darken my memory thickly enough for me to lose my trouble Nothing seems of any consequence; nou.ing seems real since Mack could prove “So base.” “Oh, no; if you must think it, do not say it!” There was seldom now any gay company at the Oaks. At first the disturbance in their lives made the Somerbys wish to be alone; and later, if few were asked, none cared to come. The gloom of the place was infectious; and, although the outside world might conjecture, it never knew the reason why. Once in a while Mr. Somerby, the elder, went into town to his club or among Lis intimates for the game of bridge, for want of which he said he was perishing; but it was observed that he played with none of his old zest, and took his pleasure in it very sadly. But most of the time he found himself in a depression that, if it had come slowly, was almost as deep as Constance’s. He had loved Mcßoy; but he was angry with him. He resented the stain on his name, even though none saw it but those who would hide it. He deplored Constance’s unhappiness; but felt as if he himself were going down to a miserable grave—the grave that in old times he as completely ignored as possible. It was toward the end of the second year that one morning the house resounded with Mr. Somerby’s voice roaring again out of v.ie library; and his wife and son and Constance all ran to him from various directions. “Wife!” he roared. “Constance! Roderick! Here, here, come here!” And then the butler and footmen aiid parlourmaids ran too. Mr. Somerby thrust his hand behind him. “Clear out!” he cried to the last comers. “Clear out, every man Jack of you! When I want you, I will ring for you! ” “My dear! My dear!” remonstrated Mrs. Somerby. Mr. Somerby stood with his mouth open, as if violent words waited to be exploded, till they were alone again. Then he suddenly brought up his hand with a triumphant gesture. “What is c»xis?” he cried. “Look, look, I say! What do you think tnis is? It’s Mack’s innocence! It is my dear boy’s innocence! I pulled out that accursed drawer just now, and pulled too hard—I haven’t touched it since the day he left —and out it came with a jerk that nearly threw me down. It ought to have thrown me down! And ther, caught in it, caught on a loose screw-end that held and tore it, was this!” And he shook the roll of bills as a terrier shakes a rat. “Look at it!” he exclaimed. “Twenty five-hundred-dollar bills! And because of them, we've hounded my poor boy—to death, for aught I know!” “My God! My God! ” cried Constance, falling on her knees. “And I thought he had taken it. What punishment I deserve!” “He as good as said he had,” said Roderick sullenly. “Because—oh, I see it all now —now that it is too late! Because he thought I had. He knew I wanted such a sum. He had every reason to think—oh, he took the guilt on himself. Oh, my love, my love, where are you!” “That is our business to find out,” cried Mr. Somerby. “I was willing enough to lose him—the fool I was! But now I’ll have every detective in the country on his trail. Fool! Fool's no word "for it! Idiot! Why didn't I search that draw properly? Rascal, to think anyone of the name of Somerby could be guilty of a felony! Come, come, this is no time for tears or hysterics. We'll go up to the house in town. We’ll have a systematic search, the world over, if it takes half my fortune! I’ll right that boy, if he’s on the face of the earth to-day! Come, come, Constance child, pluck up your spirit! We’ll have him yet, Roderick; you're glad

your name and race are stainless, whether or no. Great heavens! What that poor boy must have suffered! And all through my damned idiocy’!” And the butler and footmen and parlour-maids never knew what had happened to take them as suddenly back to town, where they wished to be, as if they had sat on Camaralzaman's magic carpet. when a man has deliberately effaced himself, it is not easy, with all the machinery of law, to find him again; and it was not long before the false leads and futile hopes made tne seekers miserable. Soon it became an obsession with Mr. Somerby to find his nephew and repair the wrong to his brother’s child; and even Roderick had been overcome by the sense that he had acquiesced too readily in the wong. Every day or two Constance was called to hear the result of new efforts and failures, and made more wretched than before; for the years, instead of obliterating remembrances, served only to bite them in like strong acid. She tried all the more to lose herself in the only work she knew, here in the city as in the country, that of carrying succour to the sick and sorrowful, and never pausing to think that her youth was going and her bloom fading. Constance had opened the door at the top of the rickety flight of broken stairs, and was some steps inside the room, before she saw that, instead of its being a cu..d to whom she had been sent, it was a man lying in the grey blankets of the narrow, broken bed. She gave a hasty glance about the place before her gaze returned to his haggard face with the lever spot on either cheek, the eyes burning like bale-fires; and then, whetner it were telepathy’, whether it were the power that penetrates all disguises, not all the tangle of the beard hid from her the fact that the long search was ended. And then his head was on her breast, and she was sobbing broken exclamations over him. “She is dead,” he was murmuring. “She is a risen spirit. She has been forgiven. All in white. Oh, my love, my love, do you think to-day I did it?” “Mack, Mack, my darling! No one did it. The money was found just where your uncle put it—caught on some splinter or screw. Do you understand ? Daning, do you understand? He is looking for you in the four corners of the globe.” “What! ” he cried, suddenly sitting up straight in bed, his mind cleared of its films by the shock. “Then it was not you! My God, my God! Constance, you never can forgive me for doubting you! And I have thrown away my life, and the happiness of both our lives, for nothing!” “There is nothing to forgive, by’ you or by me. It breaks my heart to think of the sacrifice, the terrible sacrifice you made for me! Of all that you have suffered! All my days devoted to you cannot repay you!” “But it is all over between us. Of course it is ail over between us. You will not marry so weak a wretch, so feeble a fool as I!” “To-day,”’ she whispered. “To-day!”