Georg did not scream. He shrank under the blows and glanced horrified at his mother. He did not understand. Oh, how the pretty rings hurt when she beat him. And just now she had smiled and kissed him. He did not understand. His little soul was full to the brim with strange and ghastly questions. …
The memory of this terrible contrast was to remain with him all his life.
Laura suddenly felt ashamed and stopped beating him. She felt a sort of gratitude that he did not scream, and she led him back to his bed as if nothing had happened.
“There, go to sleep now,” she said in a tone of indifference.
And then she went back with her most charming smile to her guests.
Play started. They did not start playing cards at once. First of all they gaily laid their stakes at roulette. Laura was banker and imitated the professional croupiers’ cry: “Faites vos jeux! Rien ne va plus!”
Laura always had phenomenally good luck, and all laid their stakes as if it were a tribute due to the hostess. Then they began to play whist or bridge, which had just become fashionable, in order to pass on to écarté or vingt-et-un later on.
Stellan from the very beginning appropriated the well-primed Manne. It was interesting to see the two friends together at the card table. Manne was no gambler. He threw down his stakes with reckless optimism and with a boyish challenge to Fate. And he swore a little in evident surprise each time he did not win. Stellan on the contrary was a born gambler, at once cold and passionate. Nobody who saw him at cards could fail to see that this was his great vice. His excitement showed itself in a slight pallor in his smooth, distinguished features, from which everything else seemed to slip away as from a polished metal. A blue vein pulsed in his hard clear forehead. He spoke shortly and sharply, and unconsciously raised his voice as if he had been surrounded by deaf people. Forgetfulness, slowness, or bad play drew forth his biting irony. He himself had an astounding memory for cards and a keen sense of observation. He took the game as seriously as if it were a science, and he jealously guarded it as a precious joy which a gentleman should know how to invest with a certain cult. He impressed you at one and the same time as an expert and custodian of chance. Thus he developed in his friends a real devotion to play which concealed from weaker heads among them its dangerously exciting and undermining viciousness.
During the course of years the stakes had grown bigger and bigger. They started now where formerly they had ended. Stellan won, but never enough. So it was today again. It was usually not difficult to pluck poor Manne. But just now he had had a little spell of absurd good luck, which had decreased Stellan’s winnings. And Stellan had to have cash. He then made a plunge, drove up the stakes, doubled five times!—ten times!! One after another the bids fell. Before Manne could turn around Stellan held in his hand three thousand-crown notes and a cheque for five thousand.
Levy had already finished playing bridge. He never played anything else. Now he was standing by their table looking on at the final spasms.
“What’s this, Kolsnäs is not entailed?” he suddenly asked in an indifferent tone. It seemed as if he had not understood himself the impertinence of the question.
Stellan expected a scene, but Manne was not his usual self tonight.
“Oh no,” he muttered, “it is waiting for God’s chosen people.”
“Why not just as well only for propertied people,” Stellan cut in.
Manne rose. He suddenly looked sober and slapped Stellan on the back.
“You are difficult tonight,” he said. “Now I must have a whiskey and soda.”
The art of losing gracefully never forsook him.
Stellan leant back in his chair and puffed hard at his torn cigarette. He felt his winnings like a cool shiver in his limbs.
Levy was still standing beside him with a pale smile:
“Shall we two play a little?”
“I am rather tired.”
Levy raised his voice so that he should be heard all over the room:
“Are you so anxious to keep your winnings?”
Stellan grew pale with anger and had a sharp answer ready, but then it struck him that he might just as well be engaged when Manne came back for his revenge. He forced himself to a polite gesture towards the empty chair and Levy sat down.
They continued with écarté and, against Stellan’s wish, the stakes were high. This was something so unusual for Levy that everybody gathered around them.
Now Stellan had no longer a sunburnt, cursing country youth opposite him. Over his cards he saw a pale immobile mask. It was the pallor of a race fifty generations removed from forest and field but for whom calculation is second nature. Yes, it seemed as if he had the very soul of money pitted against him. He felt all the time that his winnings were insecure and that he would inevitably lose.
Levy sat there with half-closed eyes as if half asleep, and in the end won from Stellan all that he had won and more into the bargain. He had seen that his opponent was not at ease, and that he had had to win that evening. And that is exactly the time when one is most likely to lose. Levy had only to wait till he had won enough in the ups and downs of the game. Then he proposed higher stakes than Stellan could afford. Then it was Stellan’s turn to rise from the table and take a whiskey and soda.
“How can you find anything in this miserable gambling?” Levy scornfully flung after him.
Then he kissed Laura’s hand and drove home with the thousand-crown notes and Manne’s I.O.U. in his pocketbook. …
It was late. All the guests except Stellan and Manne had already
