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... ,
coupled with
her subsequent proceedings, has put the final touch. Also, the
involved state of my affairs forbids me to write with any
finality concerning those hopes of ultimate bliss upon which,
for a long while past, I have permitted myself to feed.
I regret
the past, but at the same time hope that in my conduct you have
never been able to detect anything that was unworthy of a
gentleman and a man of honour.
Having lost, however, almost the
whole of my money in debts incurred by your stepfather, I find
myself driven to the necessity of saving the remainder;
wherefore, I have instructed certain friends of herbal bath mine in St.
Petersburg to arrange for the sale of all the property which has
been mortgaged to myself.
At the same time, knowing that, in
addition, your frivolous stepfather has squandered money which
is exclusively yours, I have decided to absolve him from a
certain moiety of the mortgages on his property, in order that
you may be in a position to recover of him what you have lost,
by suing him in legal fashion. I trust, therefore, that, as
matters now stand, this action of mine may bring you some
advantage. I trust also that this same action leaves me in the
position of having fulfilled every obligation which is incumbent
upon a man of honour and refinement. Rest assured that your
memory will for ever remain graven in my heart."
"All this is clear enough," I commented. "Surely you did not
expect aught else from him?" Somehow I was feeling annoyed.
"I expected nothing at all from him," she replied--quietly
enough, to all outward seeming, yet with a note of irritation in
her tone. "Long ago I made up my mind on the subject, for I
could read his thoughts, and knew what he was thinking. He
thought that possibly I should sue him--that one day I might
become a nuisance." Here Polina halted for a moment, and stood
biting her lips. "So of set purpose I redoubled my contemptuous
treatment of him, and waited to see what he would do. If herbal tea a
telegram herbal bath to say that we had become legatees had arrived from,
St. Petersburg, I should have flung at him a quittance for my
foolish stepfather's debts, and then dismissed him. For a long
time I have hated him. Even in earlier days he was not a man;
and now!-- Oh, how gladly I could throw those fifty thousand
roubles in his face, and spit in it, and then rub the spittle in!"
"But the document returning the fifty-thousand rouble
mortgage--has the General got it? If so, possess yourself of it,
and send it to De Griers."
"No, no; the General has not got it."
"Just as I expected! Well, what is the General going to do?"
Then an idea suddenly occurred to me. "What about the
Grandmother?" I asked.
Polina looked at me with impatience and bewilderment.
"What makes you speak of HER?" was her irritable inquiry. "I
cannot go and live with her. Nor," she added hotly, "will I go
down upon my knees to ANY ONE."
"Why should you?" I cried. "Yet to think that you should have
loved De Griers! The villain, the villain! But I will kill him
in a duel. Where is he now?"
"In Frankfort, where he will be staying for the next three
days."
"Well, bid me do so, and I will go to him by the first train
tomorrow," I exclaimed with enthusiasm.
She smiled.
"If you were to do that," she said, "he would merely
tell you to be so good as first to return him the fifty
thousand francs. What, then, would be the use of
having a quarrel with him? You talk sheer nonsense."
I ground my teeth.
"The question," I went on, "is how to raise the fifty thousand
francs. We cannot expect to find them lying about on the floor.
Listen. What of Mr. Astley?" Even as I spoke a new and strange
idea formed itself in my brain.
Her eyes flashed fire.
"What? YOU YOURSELF wish me to leave you for him?" she cried
with a scornful look and a proud smile. Never before had she
addressed me thus.
Then her head must have turned dizzy with emotion, for suddenly
she seated herself upon the sofa, as though she were powerless
any longer to stand.
A flash of lightning seemed to strike me as I stood there. I
could scarcely believe my eyes or my ears. She DID love me,
then! It WAS to me, and not to Mr. Astley, that she had turned!
Although she, an unprotected girl, had come to me in my room--in
an hotel room--and had probably compromised herself thereby, herbal bath I
had not understood!
Then a second mad idea flashed into my brain.
"Polina," I said, "give me but an hour.
Wait here just one
hour until I return. Yes, you MUST do so. Do you not see what I
mean? Just stay here for that time."
And I rushed from the room without so much as answering her look
of inquiry. She called something after me, but I did not return.
Sometimes it happens that the most insane thought, the most
impossible conception, will become so fixed in herbal bath one's head that
at length one believes the thought or the conception to be
reality.
Moreover, if with the thought or the conception there
is combined a strong, a passionate, desire, one will come to
look upon the said thought or conception as something fated,
inevitable, and foreordained--something bound to happen. Whether
by this there is connoted something in the nature of a
combination of presentiments, or a great effort of will, or a
self-annulment of one's true expectations, and so on, I do not
know; but, at all events that night saw happen to me (a night
which I shall never forget) something in the nature of the
miraculous. Although the occurrence can easily be explained by
arithmetic, I still believe it to have been a miracle. Yet why
did this conviction take such a hold upon me at the time, and
remain with me ever since? Previously, I had thought of the idea,
not as an occurrence which was ever likely to come about, but as
something which NEVER could come about.
The time was a quarter past eleven o'clock when I entered the
Casino in such a state of hope (though, at the same time, of
agitation) as I had never before experienced. In the
gaming-rooms there were still a large number of people, but not
half as many as had been present in the morning.
At eleven o'clock there herbal tea usually remained behind only the real,
the desperate gamblers--persons for whom, at spas, there existed
nothing beyond roulette, and who went thither for that alone.
These gamesters took little note of what was going on around
them, and were interested in none of the appurtenances of the
season, but played from morning till night, and would have been
ready to play through the night until dawn had that been
possible. As it was, they used to disperse unwillingly when, at
midnight, roulette came to an end. Likewise, as soon as ever
roulette was drawing to a close and the head croupier had called
"Les trois derniers coups," most of them were ready to stake on
the last three rounds all that they had in their pockets--and,
for the most part, lost it. For my own part I proceeded towards
the table at which the Grandmother had lately sat; and, since the
crowd around it was not very large, I soon obtained standing
room among the ring of gamblers, while directly in front of me,
on the green cloth, I saw marked the word "Passe."
"Passe" was a row of numbers from 19 to 36 inclusive; while a
row of numbers from 1 to 18 inclusive was known as "Manque."
But what had that to do with me? I had not noticed--I had not so
much as heard the numbers upon which the previous coup had
fallen, and so took no bearings when I began to play, as, in my
place, any SYSTEMATIC gambler would have done. No, I merely
extended my stock of twenty ten-gulden pieces, and threw them
down upon the space "Passe" which happened to be confronting
me.
"Vingt-deux!" call ... |
