The Merivale banks

“Louie,” he began, “do you remember asking me once if I were a gambler?”

“Yes, father.”

“And I told you I was not?”

“Yes, father.”

“It was true at that time, for I had quit it, and was trying to be respectable; but I had been one in the worst sense of the word.”

Louie tightened her grasp on his hands as he continued:

“It began away back—was born in me, I think, for my father had it—a love for gambling, I mean, and a desire to live luxuriously. The first time I tried it was at Monte Carlo, where I went with my father when only eighteen. They will not let a young man into the play rooms unless he is twenty-one, but I was tall and looked old for my years, and an unscrupulous friend got me in somehow, and I nearly lost my head in the good luck which came to me. Why, within a week I gained a thousand dollars and I left the place with the love of gaming boiling in my veins so hotly that it has never cooled. I feel it yet, and do believe I should try it again if I had the chance. It is a disease, and you have no idea how it works like madness in the brain when once it has a foothold there. I was always thinking about it and planning how to make something for nothing, and my father encouraged me and laughingly called me his mascot. I was always betting and generally won. Then I began to try my luck with cards and was known as the most successful player in the set with which I was associated. For me to play was to win as a rule. I had no particular method. I simply won, and felt so sure of it that I think the assurance helped me to keep my nerves steady and my head cool, or else it was his Satanic Majesty who, some said, stood by my side and helped me. This went on until after I was married and you were born, and your mother never suspected it so well did I cover my tracks and so great was her faith in me. But it is a long road which never turns, and in Denver I began to lose as much as I gained. You remember we were sometimes poor and again had plenty of money and you thought it was the hard times which affected my business.”

“Yes, and, oh, father,” Louie gasped, remembering the story Nancy Sharp had told her; “Is it true that you had a room there where young men and old, too, met at night and played for money! The Smith family who have moved here from Denver have told it and I have said it was a lie. Tell me it is!”

“I wish to Heaven I could!” her father replied, great drops of sweat beginning to gather upon his face. “It is true. I had a room fitted up with everything to make it attractive, for cards and games of all kinds. It was first-class in every way as to order and appearance, and books and magazines for those who cared to read were there, and men and boys frequented it night after night, sometimes losing, sometimes gaining, while I looked on unconcernedly at the harm I was doing, but excitedly, like the war horse rushing into battle. I had fits of conscience, which shook me like an ague, and I would close the room and swear to myself never to open it again. But the disease was greater than I could conquer. It mastered me and I went back to my old ways. I was a gambler of the worst type, while passing for a high-souled, honorable gentleman; popular with everybody, I believe. But if that were all, my dying pillow would not be as full of thorns as it is now, nor would the faces of those I have lead to ruin confront me as they do. There is a blacker sin on my soul than gambling. I am a murderer!”

“Oh, father!” Louie cried, starting back from him in horror, and trying to withdraw her hand.

“Don’t let go, Louie,” he said, holding fast to her. “I shall sink to perdition, if you do. I never killed a man the way you think. I was the means of his death, and this is how it was:

“When we came to Merivale I had firmly resolved to reform and earn my living honestly. But life was monotonous, and I longed for the flesh pots I had left behind. I would try once more, I thought and then renounce gambling forever. I felt sure of winning and I wanted to raise you and your mother to a better position than we occupied in White’s Row.

“You remember I went to Butte after we had lived there awhile. I used to go there sometimes from Denver when my funds were low. It was my field, where I reaped a golden harvest from the miners, for I was an expert at the kind of play for money common among them. I was not known there by my right name. I was Tom Crary, the professional gambler, and I played for high stakes, and to win. On my last visit I met a young man from Washington with piles of money, and no end of conceit as to his methods of play. He had been successful a few times, and, inflated with pride, challenged me to a trial of skill, telling me I must keep my eyes open if I played with him. He was from the East where the people were up to the times. He said a good deal more in the same strain and evidently looked upon us all as a species of heathendom. It was easy to take his measure, while something about him attracted me. He was different from most of the men with whom I had dealt, and I felt a strange unwillingness to play with him. But he insisted, and at the first sitting I let him win a few hundreds, and said I was too tired to go on. I knew he would come for me again, and he did the next night, more conceited than ever and ready to stake any amount I pleased to name.

“Something prompted me to try to dissuade him from playing. I might as well have talked to the wind. I was afraid, he said, with a sneer which decided me, and we sat down, with a number of men around us whose faces I see so often in my dreams, just as I see his, flushed and eager at first, then anxious and pale, but still determined as the game went on, and I won almost continually. I meant business this time, and gave him no quarter until he was nearly cleaned out for that night, and I was the richer by thousands.

“He was not, however, discouraged. His luck would turn, he said, and if it didn’t he could stand it, and the next night he came for me again, with the same result. Still, he did not lose his courage, and the third night found us again sitting face to face with something in his expression which reminded me of a young Englishman I once saw at Monte Carlo, playing desperately, while the sweat stood in great drops on his forehead and around his mouth. The next morning he was found dead behind a clump of shrubbery in the grounds of the Casino, and was buried in a suicide’s grave. My opponent was like him, young, handsome and determined, and his face grew whiter and the sweat drops larger as the night went on, and my pile increased while his lessened, until he declared himself ruined and arose from the table.

“I pitied him, he was so young and fair, so like a boy, and I offered to return half I had won from him. He repulsed me with angry hauteur, and left the room, saying he was not a sneak, or whining coward; but there was a look in his eyes I did not like, and it haunted me all night, making me resolve to find him the next morning and insist upon his taking back more than half I had gained. But when morning came and I inquired for him, he was dead, with a bullet in his brain. His body was sent to his friends, and I made a vow never to gamble that way again, and I never have, nor have I been able to forget that boyish face whose dead eyes, half-open, seemed to look at me so reproachfully.

“His money was a curse to me, but I tried to make you and poor mother happy with it. I built this house, and opened a bank and passed for a highly respectable man. But the demon of gain by gambling was with me still. I told you once of my career in the bank which ended in ruin. I cannot rehearse it again. I am getting tired and nearing the end. Something has been sapping my life for a long time, and when the crisis came, and took my good name away, I went down with it and shall never rise again, nor do I wish to. I could not face a people with whom I have stood so high. I am dying; and, when I am gone, what will you and your mother do? Is there anything between you and Herbert White?”

“No, nothing,” Louie answered, in a whisper.

She could not at once speak aloud, for she was seeing the face of the dead boy, whose half-open eyes had looked reproach at her father as hers had looked at times while listening to his story. She had once said that if she knew their money came by gambling she would smash the furniture and burn the house. She did know it now, but she must keep silent and never let even her mother know what she knew of her father’s past.

He had not told her the name of the young man, and she did not ask him. She didn’t care, her heart was so full of pain and humiliation at what she had heard. It was worse than she supposed, and she was glad that everything was over between herself and Herbert. It must have been ended now. She could never marry any one, knowing what she did. Her life work must be to make some amends by paying the creditors in Merivale.

When her father asked again, “What will you do when I am gone?” she cried, “Oh, father, you must not die, and leave mother and me alone! I have promised to pay all you owe, and I can do it.”

“How?” he asked, and she replied by telling him what had passed between herself and Miss Percy.

“Percy,” he repeated, sitting up in bed with a strength he had not shown in days. “You mean the lady who was at the Whites’ a year ago, and wanted to take you abroad?”

“Yes, father,” she answered; and, with a laugh which made Louie’s blood curdle, it was so unnatural, Mr. Grey fell back upon his pillow, whispering words she could not understand.

The next moment he was shivering with a frightful chill, from which he never fully rallied.