The answer I failed to catch. I was simply paralysed by terror. Should their way lay through the drawing-room! My clay, my tools were all lying there, and my unfinished model. Mr. Spencer was not an unkind man, but he was very drunk, and I had heard that whisky makes a brute of the most good-natured. He would trample on my work; perhaps he would destroy my tools and then hunt the house till he found me. I did not know what to expect; meantime, lights began to flame up; the room where I stood was no longer a safe refuge, and creeping like a cat, I began to move towards the closet door. Suddenly I made a dart for it; the two men, trampling heavily on the marble floor of the hall were coming my way. I could hear their rude talk—rude to me, though one of them called himself a gentleman. As the door of the room opened to admit them, I succeeded in shutting that of the closet into which I had flung myself,—or almost so. I did not dare to latch it, for they were already in the room and might hear me.
"This is the spot for us," came in Spencer's most jovial tones. "Big table, whisky handy, cards right here in my pocket. Wait, till I strike a light!"
But the lightning anticipated him. As he spoke, the walls which surrounded me, the walls which surrounded them, leapt into glaring view and I heard the second voice cry out:
"I don't like that! Let's wait till the storm is over. I can't play with such candles as those flaring about us."
"Damn it! you won't know what candles you are playing by when once you see the pile I've got ready for you. I'm in for a big bout. You have ten dollars and I have a thousand. I'll play you for that ten. If, in the meantime, you get my thousand, why, it'll be because you're the better man."
"I don't like it, I say. There, SEE!"
A flood of white light had engulfed the house. My closet, with its whitewashed walls flared about me like the mouth of a furnace.
"See, yourself!" came the careless retort, and with the words a gas-jet shot up, then two, then all that the room contained. "How's that? What's a flash more or less now!"
I heard no answer, only the slap of the cards as they were flung onto the table; then the clatter of a key as it was turned in some distant lock and the quick question:
"Rum, or whisky. Irish or Scotch?"
"Whisky and Irish."
"Good! but you'll drink it alone."
The bottles were brought forward and they sat down one on each side of the dusty mahogany table. The man facing me was Spencer, the other sat with his back my way, but I could now and then catch a glimpse of his profile as he started at some flash or lifted his head in terror of the thunder-claps.
"We'll play till the hands point to three," announced Spencer, taking out his watch and laying it down where both could see it. "Do you agree to that?—Unless I win and your funds go a-begging before the hour."
"I agree." The tone was harsh; it was almost smothered. The man was staring at the watch; there was a strange set look to his figure; a pausing as of thought—of sinister thought, I should now say; then I never stopped to characterise it; it was followed too quickly by a loud laugh and a sudden grab at the cards.
"You'll win! I feel it in my bones," came in encouraging tones from the rich man. "If you do"—here the storm lulled and his voice sank to an encouraging whisper—"you can buy the old tavern up the road. It's going for a song; and then we'll be neighbours and can play—play—"
Thunder!—a terrific peal. It shook the house; it shook my boyish heart, but it no longer had power to move the two gamesters. The fever of play had reached its height, and I heard nothing more from their lips, but such phrases as belong to the game. Why didn't I take advantage of their absorption to fly? The sill above my head was within easy reach, the sash was open and no sound that I could make would reach them in this hurly-burly of storm. Why then, with all this invitation to escape, did I remain crouched in my dark retreat with eyes fixed on the narrow crack before me which, under some impulse of movement in the walls about, had widened sufficiently for me to see all that I have related? I do not know, unless I was hypnotised by the glare of expression on those men's faces.
I remember that it was my first glimpse of the human countenance under the sway of wicked and absorbing passions. Hitherto my dreams had all been of beauty—of lovely shapes or noble figures cast in heroic mould. Henceforth, these ideal groups must visit my imagination mixed with the bulging eyes of greed and the contortions of hate masking their hideousness under false smiles or hiding them behind the motions of riotous jollity. I was horrified, I was sickened, and I was frightened to the very soul, but the fascination of the spectacle held me; I watched the men and I watched the play and soon I forgot the tempest also, or remembered it only when my small retreat flared into sudden whiteness, or some gust, heavier than the rest, toppled the bricks from the chimneys above us and sent them crashing down upon the rain-soaked roof.
The stranger was winning. I saw the heap of bills beside him grow and grow while that of his opponent dwindled. I saw the latter smile—smile softly at each toss of his losings across the board; but there was no mirth in his smile, nor was there any common satisfaction in the way the other's hand closed over his gains.
"He will have it all," I thought. "The Claymore Tavern will soon change owners;" and I was holding my breath over the final stake when suddenly the house gave a lurch, resettled, then lurched again. The tempest had become a hurricane, and with its first swoop a change took place in the stranger's luck.
The bills which had all gone one way began slowly to recross the board, first singly, then in handfuls. They fell within Spencer's grasp, and the smile with which he hailed their return was not the smile with which he had seen them go, but a steady grin such as I had beheld on the faces of sculptured demons. It frightened me, this smile. I could see nothing else; but, when at another crashing peal I ducked my head, I found on lifting it that my eyes sought instinctively the rigid back of the stranger instead of the open face of Spencer. The passion of the winner was nothing to that of the loser; and from this moment on, I saw but the one figure, and thrilled to the one hope—that an opportunity would soon come for me to see the face of the man whose back told such a tale of fury and suspense.
But it remained fixed on Spencer, and the cards. The roof might fall—he was past heeding. A bill or two only lay now at his elbow, and I could perceive the further stiffening of his already rigid muscles as he dealt out the cards. Suddenly hard upon a rattling peal which seemed to unite heaven and earth, I heard shouted out:
"Half-past two! The game stops at three."
"Damn your greedy eyes!" came back in a growl. Then all was still, fearfully still, both in the atmosphere outside and in that within, during which I caught sight of the stranger's hand moving slowly around to his back and returning as slowly forward, all under cover of the table-top and a stack of half-empty bottles.
I was inexperienced. I knew nothing of the habits or the ways of such men as these, but the alarm of innocence in the face of untold, unsuspected but intuitively felt evil, seized me at this stealthy movement, and I tried to rise,—tried to shriek,—but could not; for events rushed upon us quicker than I could speak or move.
"I can buy the Claymore Tavern, can I? Well, I'm going to," rang out into the air as the speaker leaped to his feet. "Take that, you cheat! And that! And that!" And the shots rang out—one, two, three!
Spencer was dead in his Folly. I had seen him rise, throw up his hands and then fall in a heap among the cards and glasses.
Silence! Not even Heaven spoke.