Part 3 (1/2)

A few minutes later the Commandant found himself seated opposite Mr.

Fossell, with Miss Gabriel and Mr. Rogers for opponents--Miss Gabriel on his left. He prepared to enjoy himself, for whist meant silence, and he could have chosen no better partner than Mr. Fossell, who played a sound game, and with a perfectly inscrutable face.

”Dear me!” said Miss Gabriel, in the act of picking up her cards, ”it seems as if this had happened a great many times before! What do you say, Mr. Fossell, to staking half-a-crown on the rubber, just to enliven the game? You don't object on principle, I know, to playing for money.”

”No, indeed, ma'am,” answered Mr. Fossell. ”I am content if the others are willing--not that for me the pleasure of playing against you needs any such--er--advent.i.tious stimulus.”

Miss Gabriel appealed to Mr. Rogers.

Mr. Rogers thought it would be great fun. ”Come along, Vigoureux,” he almost shouted, ”you can't refuse a lady's challenge!”

What could the poor Commandant do? Almost before he knew he had nodded, though with a set face, and by the nod committed himself. He felt his few coins burning in his breeches' pocket against his thigh, as if they warned him.

But, after all, Fossell was an excellent player. With the smallest luck, he and Fossell ought to be more than a match for a pair of whom, if one (Miss Gabriel) was wily, the other played a game not usually distinguishable from b.u.mble-puppy.

They won the first game easily.

They had almost won the second when a devastating seven trumps in Mr.

Rogers's hand (which he played atrociously) saw their opponents almost level--the score eight-seven. In the next hand, Miss Gabriel--for this was old-fas.h.i.+oned long whist--held all four honours, and took the game.

The Commandant looked at Mr. Fossell. But a financier is not disturbed by the risk of half-a-crown.

Only half-a-crown!--but for the Commandant a week between this half-a-crown and another.

He wondered what Fossell would say--Fossell, sitting there, so imperturbable, with his s.h.i.+ny bald head--if he knew.

”Game _and_!” announced Mr. Rogers.

By this time the players at the second table, aware of the half-a-crown at stake, were listening in a state of suppressed excitement--suppressed because the Vicar, being deaf, had not overheard Miss Gabriel's challenge, and the others feared that he might disapprove of playing for money.

The Vicar, who played against Mr. and Mrs. Pope, with Mrs. Fossell for partner, had a habit of soliloquising over his hand on any subject that occurred to him. The rest of the table deferred to this habit, out of respect or because by experience they knew it to be incurable, since only by conscious effort could he hear any voice but his own.

By such an effort, holding his hand to his ear, he had listened to Miss Gabriel's anecdote about Colonel Bartlemy; smiling the while because he had heard it many times before and knew it to be a good one; innocently unaware that it covered any caustic subintention. It had started him on a train of reminiscence which he pursued at the card-table (good man) for twenty-five minutes, recalling himself to the cards with a faint shock of surprise whenever it became his turn to play, as one who would protest--”What, again? And so soon?”

”Yes, indeed,” the Vicar's voice struck in across the strained silence, ”there is an old story that Oliver Cromwell left behind him, in garrison here, a company of the Bedfords.h.i.+re Regiment, and that in time they were completely forgotten. (Let me see. Spades are trumps, I believe.... 'Clubs'? Your pardon Mrs. Fossell, but I remember it was a black suit.) Yes, and seeing no prospect of recall they married in time with our Island women, and that”--here the Vicar gathered up a trick which belonged to his opponents--”is, by some, alleged to be the reason why the Islanders use a purer English than is spoken on the mainland.

Ah, quite so; yes, I played the ten--then it was your ace, Mrs. Pope? I congratulate you, ma'am.”

The Commandant, overhearing, could not forbear a glance at Miss Gabriel. It conveyed no resentment, scarcely even a reproach; it turned rather, as by dumb instinct, upon the author of the wound, and asked perplexedly:--”What have I done to you, that you treat me thus?” I have no doubt that Miss Gabriel caught the glance. She did not answer it; but her grey eyes glinted beneath their lids as she bent them upon the cards Mr. Fossell was dealing in his usual deliberate way--glinted as though with a spark of flint struck out by steel.

”The story may be apocryphal,” pursued the Vicar, addressing deaf ears around the other table; ”though, for my part, I incline to think there may be a substratum----”

Mr. Fossell turned up the queen of hearts. The Commandant held ace, ten, and two small trumps, with a strong hand in diamonds, which Mr.

Rogers, by a blundering lead, enabled him to establish early. Actual honours were ”easy”; but by exhausting trumps at the first opportunity, he scored three by tricks. The next hand gave their opponents three points--two by honours, and the trick. Three all.

The Vicar was heard to observe that, on the whole, intermarriage among the Islanders had not produced the disastrous effects usually predicted of it; and that, therefore, an infusion of fresh blood, at some date more or less remote, might reasonably be conjectured, even though incapable of proof.

The Vicar, as he said this, looked across at Mrs. Fossell interrogatively. He was really expecting her to lead trumps, but she mistook him to be asking her a.s.sent to his theory. To keep the ball rolling, she opined that what had happened once need not necessarily happen again, especially in these days when locomotion was making such strides. She hazarded this in the lowest key; but it happened in just that momentary hush upon which the faintest remark falls resonantly.

The Commandant heard it across the room as he waited for Mr. Rogers to cut the cards; and the Vicar, by a freak of hearing, picked it up at once.

”My dear lady,” he demanded, ”are you talking of progenitiveness!”