BOOK ONE The Story of Margot (continued 2)

It happened one day that, when she went to the Rooms in the afternoon, she staked as usual a louis on the second and another on the third dozen, after having watched the wheel for awhile. The number eleven came up. Now according to her system she should have called her day a loss and gone home. But on this particular afternoon her mood was mutinous. She determined to try again. She re-staked in the same fashion, and the eleven repeated. She was furious with herself for being so weak and foolish. It would take her four days to regain her losses. It was too tedious, too discouraging. Well, it could not be helped now. She walked to the door, but just as she reached it she hesitated. Her irritation grew. No, she would not let them beat her. Going back to the table she fumbled in her bag and drew forth two notes of a hundred francs each. She handed them to the croupier.

“Second and third dozen, please.”

She was strangely calm now, but she could not bear to see the ball spin. She turned and went to another table, pretending to watch the play there. She forbade herself to look back, then when she heard the ball drop, she glanced round. The croupiers were cleaning up the tables, but the rake swung clear of the hundred francs she had put on the middle dozen. She had won.

Again she snatched victory from defeat. She had retrieved her losses and had a louis to boot. But strange to say she felt no elation. She had been reckless and risked two hundred francs. It must not happen again, she told herself.

It was soon evident that if her average wins were three out of four, with a stake of two louis, and she made only one coup, her gains would only aggregate five francs a day. That would never do. After much reflection and analysis of her figures, she decided to play with placques of a hundred francs each. In this way she would gain a hundred francs every four days; and even, if she allowed five francs for a possible zero every time she played, she would still make her louis a day. This was the plan she finally adopted. Her system, in short, was to play only a flat stake, never a progression. She played only one coup a day, stopping if she lost, and took two fictitious losses before actually playing on the table. She played a hundred francs on the second, and a hundred francs on the third dozen after an exhausted run of the first dozen. She put five francs on zero.

It was very much like hard work, and needed both patience and judgment, but it was possible for her to go on playing this system for six months without mishap, and in the end just about even up.

3.

One day as she was eating a hurried luncheon she noticed a young man reading by the window. His hair was ash blonde, brushed glossily back, his face thin, sensitive, and browned by the sun. When he smiled at Terese, the waitress, his teeth were milk-white, and very regular. His eyes should have been blue, but were of a dark, velvety brown. An extraordinary good-looking boy, she thought, with an air of refinement, of race. He looked up and caught her eye; immediately she looked down.

She had seen him before, she fancied, but where? Then she remembered the young man who had stared at her in the train. It was strange she should meet him again.

She saw him often afterwards in the gardens, walking hatless, with his head held high. He never went to the Casino, and seemed very gay and happy. It was easy to see he was well off, and had not a care in the world. Once he passed her as she was on her way to her room, but shyness came over her and she did not glance at him. He looked so proud; he must be at least the son of an English lord. Why then should she, daughter of a French head-waiter and an English bar-maid, be even on bowing terms with him?

Then something happened that quite drove him out of her thoughts. For ten days she had been playing her system without even a loss, gaining nearly a thousand francs. Her winnings so far had more than paid her modest expenses. When she entered the Casino on Christmas morning she had four bills of a thousand francs each in her bag. She had also a letter from Jeanne. Jeanne knew of such a nice little shop on the Boulevard Raspail. It would be empty by the January term and, if Margot was willing, they would each put in two thousand francs and take it. Jeanne wanted an answer at once. Margot was very happy. She would tell Jeanne to take the shop, and she herself would return to Paris shortly after the beginning of the new year. She was sorry to think of leaving Monte Carlo, and to give up roulette; the keen shifts and stresses of the game intrigued her and she loved that moment of emotion just before the ball dropped. Then the thought came to her: Why not experience a moment of more intense emotion than she had ever known? She had a thousand francs of the bank’s money that she did not absolutely need. Why not risk it? If she could win with bills of a hundred, why not with notes of a thousand? She watched the table until the opportunity came. She placed five hundred francs on the second dozen, and five hundred on the third, then with an air of unconcern fell to regarding one of the pictures on the wall. It was a painting of Watteau-like delicacy, representing autumn; falling leaves, gallants and ladies of the court....

“Rien ne va plus.”

Would the ball never drop? She heard it knocking about among the diamond-shaped brass projections. Then silence, and ... zero.

Oh, what a fool she had been! For the first time in weeks she had forgotten to cover zero. And for the first time in weeks she had encountered it. She hated the calm croupier who raked in her thousand francs. There was something so ruthless, so inexorable in the way he did it. A dull rage filled her. She seemed to be impelled by something stronger than herself. She took from her bag a second note of a thousand francs and played it as before. No, she would not stake on zero. The chances of it repeating were a thousand to one.... Zero! again!

It could not be possible! As she saw another thousand swept away she felt physically sick. She sat down on a lounge, dazed, stunned. The impassive croupiers seemed suddenly to become mocking satyrs, the great guilded hall, pitiless, cruel. She watched a little hunch-backed croupier spin the wheel by its brass handle; he flipped the ivory sphere in the other direction in a careless, casual manner. The girl started up. It was as if she were an automaton, moved by some force outside of her will. Taking a third thousand franc bill from her bag, she staked it in the same way as before. No use to stake on zero this time. The chance of its coming up a third time was a million to one. She saw the ball go scuttling among the brass knobs; she heard a great murmur from the gazing crowd; all eyes turned admiringly to the little hunchback who tried to look as if he had done it on purpose.... ZERO!

She walked away. A bitter recklessness had seized her. She took out her remaining thousand franc bill. She would risk it anywhere, anyhow. A red haired man was coming in at the door. That was an inspiration. She would play on the red and leave it for a paroli. She went over to the nearest croupier and handed him her bill.

“Rouge, please.”

But the croupier misunderstood. He put the bill on black, looking at her for approval. After all, what did it matter? Let it remain on black. She nodded and black it was. Once more the ball whizzed dizzily round and dropped into its slot. Rouge.

She had lost. In less than four minutes she had lost four thousand francs. She pulled down her veil and walked out of the gambling rooms. Her legs were weak under her and she felt faint. She sat down on a bench in the atrium. It could not be true! She must have dreamt it. She opened her hand-bag of shabby black leather and searched feverishly. All she found was about thirty francs.

She was broke.

CHAPTER SIX DERELICT

1.

THEN began the great struggle of Margot Leblanc to regain the money she had lost. It was a pitiable, pathetic struggle, full of desperate hope. Starting with ten francs, she sought to win back the two thousand needed to buy the shop with Jeanne. She kept her room at the pension, but gave up taking her meals there. Instead she had a cup of coffee and a roll in a cheap café in the Condamine. She would do without sleep, she told herself; she would be shabby and shiver with cold ... but she would win back that money!

Every morning she took her place among that weird and shabby mob of women who storm the Casino doors at opening time, and scramble for places at the tables, hoping to sell them in the afternoon to some prosperous player. The Casino, which had been the cause of their ruin, lets them thus eke out a miserable existence. Threadbare creatures with vulturish faces, they hang over the tables, quick-clawed to clutch up the stakes of the unwary.

Margot was glad of every opportunity to make a little money by selling her place. It meant the price of a square meal: spaghetti, and salad and cheese, in a cheap Italian restaurant in Beausoleil. Otherwise, when an increasing dizziness warned her that she had not yet broken her fast, she had to seek a quiet corner of the gardens, and lunch on a bit of chocolate and some bread. Then she would hurry back to the Casino, fearful that in her absence a chance had come up to make a few francs.

It was a weary, anxious existence. Sometimes indeed she got down to her last five francs before a sudden turn of luck exalted her again to the heights of hope. The effect on her nerves was terrible. Her nights became haunted. Roulette wheels whirled before her closed eyes and she often dreamed of a mighty one that turned into a great whirlpool, in which she and all the other players were spinning around helplessly. And always, just as she was being sucked down into the vortex, she awoke.

2.

One evening as she sat in a corner of the gardens, silent and absorbed, a man approached her. He was dark and weedy, and his eyebrows twitched up and down continually. She recognized him as one of her fellow-lodgers at the pension, and she had heard him addressed as Monsieur Martel. After looking sharply at her, he took a seat by her side.

“Had any luck lately?” he asked with that freemasonry of gamblers that permits of a promiscuous conversation.

Silently she shook her head.

He lighted a cigarette. “It’s a cruel game,” he observed. “God help the poor pikers who haven’t enough capital to defend themselves. I had a hard fight to-day. I was obliged to play a martingale up to five thousand francs, all to win a wretched louis. But I got out all right. I imagine you have not been very successful yourself lately. I have seen you losing.”

She nodded. He drew comfortably nearer.

“Well, that’s too bad. By the way, if I can be of any help to you, give you any advice.... I have a considerable knowledge of the game....”

She laughed bitterly. “I, too, Monsieur, have a considerable knowledge of the game. But there ... that is all the capital I have in the world, ten francs.”

She held out two white chips in her shabby, gloved hand. He noted the smallness of the hand, and the glimpse of milk-white wrist between the glove and the threadbare jacket. He drew nearer still.

“Ah! it’s hopeless,” he said, “when one gets down so low. Why not let me make you a loan? I shall never miss it. You can repay me out of your winnings. Let me lend you a trifle, say five hundred.”

She looked at him steadily for a moment. “But I have no security to give you,” she said at last.

He laughed easily. “Oh, that doesn’t matter. Of course, we are speaking as one Monte Carloite to another. We understand each other. If I am nice to you, you will be nice to me. My room at the pension is number fourteen. If you come down and see me this evening I have no doubt we can arrange matters.”

She rose. In the shadow he could not see the loathing in her eyes. These men ... they were all alike. Beasts! She left him without a word.

He waited in his room that night, wondering if she would come. She did not. He went off to the Casino laughing comfortably. Life was a great game.

“If it isn’t to-night,” he said to himself, “it will be to-morrow or the day after. A little more hunger, a little more despair. I have but to wait. She will come to me. If she doesn’t, what matter? There are lots of others.”

3.

Some days later she sat in her room staring at her face in the cheap mirror. There were dark circles around her weary eyes. Her cheeks were thinned to pathetic hollows, her mouth drooped with despair and defeat. The Casino had beaten her. She was sick, weak, nervously unstrung. Try as she would she could not get back her old healthy view of life; that was the worst of it. Gambling had poisoned the very blood in her veins.

She had no money to take her back to Paris, even if she were willing to go, and she felt she would rather die than write and ask for help. Then to take up the burden of labour again, the life of struggle without hope and with misery to crown it all, ... Ah! she knew it so well. She had seen too many of her comrades fight and fall. Must she too work as they worked, until her strength was exhausted and she perished in poverty?

There was death, of course! Only last week a young girl, after pawning all her trinkets, shot herself under the railway bridge. She would do better than that; she had some little white powders.

Then there was the compromise. Why not? Who under the circumstances would dare to tell her that death was better than dishonour? And yet ... she hated to think of doing it. She preferred to steal. Funny, wasn’t it? Her sense of morality was curious. She would rather be a thief than a harlot.

But she had no chance to be a thief. It would have to be the other thing. Rising she put rouge on her ghastly cheeks then rubbed it off again. No, not just yet! She would ask the young man for the five hundred francs. If he demanded the quid pro quo she would beg him to wait until to-morrow. Then she would go to the Casino and risk all. If she won she would return him his money, and say she had changed her mind. If she lost ... well, there was the white powder....

She would ask him at once. How dark and silent the house was. Room fourteen was on the floor below. Softly she crept down the shabby stairs. She had to put on her cloak; she shivered so.

That was his door. She hesitated, inclined to turn back. Perhaps he had gone out. Her heart was beating horribly and the hand she put out trembled. She knocked. There was no answer. Softly she tried the handle of the door.

END OF BOOK ONE