The giant's strength

Front matter

THE

GIANTS STRENGTH

BASIL KING

Chapter I

AS it was the entr'acte of the opera the lobby of iV the Casino was filled with a gay and noisy cosmopolitan crowd. All the more, therefore, was it a proof of the celebrity to which Paul TrafFord had attained that his entry caused a distinct and general thrill of curiosity. A man who was reckoned the richest in the world could not be other than an object of supreme interest to people whose first cry was money. The fact that he had arrived at Monte Carlo the day before had been as much a topic of conversation as if he had been King Edward or the Czar. Now that he appeared and was recognized, princes, duchesses, and adventurers instinctively fell back a little, making way for him and his party to pass on. Here and there some one claimed the privilege of his acquaintance, and bowed before his nod as before a pope's benediction. Those who followed in his train were besieged with greetings. Mr. and Mrs. George TrafFord were actually cut olF from the procession and made prisoners of war. The

I

Duke of Wiltshire only maintained his position at Miss TrafFord's side by being rude to people, and turning his back on them.

As for Paula herself, she passed on, between her father and the man she had almost promised to marry, unmoved by the stir she created. She was aware of it, but she was used to it. Having been so constantly her father's companion during the last four years, she had come to take public attention as a matter of course. At first the interest she inspired had been impersonal — the interest inseparable from one whom the American press called "the greatest heiress on earth." Her fortune was compared with that of the Queen of Holland, and of the daughters of the Rothschild and Rockefeller families, but that was all. Now, however, at twenty-two, she was emerging from the golden mist that had surrounded her, and was assuming personality. The flowering of her beauty had done something towards this. People had found it superfluous that a girl with so much money should have a complexion like rose-petals floating in milk. They resented the fact that her figure had needless grace, and her face an expression of appeal which there was no resisting. Rumors of marriage sprang up wherever she appeared. The girl knew these things without taking actual account of them, or letting them form part of her daily consciousness. At this minute she could ignore the fact that her looks were being criticised and her income appraised, in gazing about her, with amusement, at the novelty of the scene.

** We're now in one of those spots of No-man's-land," said the Duke of Wiltshire, as they entered the first saloon, "which modern civilization likes to set apart as cities of refuge from the rule of caste and conventionality."

Paula turned her soft eyes slowly towards him. They were blue eyes with black lashes — the Celtic eyes inherited from her father's mother — the eyes in which faith is mingled with superstition, in which self-devotion has a dash of insincerity, and in which laughter never wholly hides the mist of tears. Between the brows there was a tiny, perpendicular furrow, like that of a person endeavoring to see through the rights and wrongs of things, and conscientiously trying to be sure. It was this puzzled, inquiring look that the Duke of Wiltshire specially loved in her. It gave him an opportunity for the kind of explanatory work in which he excelled in the House of Lords.

"Haven't you noticed," he went on, in answer to Paula's unspoken interrogation, "that in all the great capitals of the world — London, Paris, and New York, for instance — there are two or three expensive restaurants and luxurious hotels, where on crossing the very threshold one steps outside all the limitations of nationality, moral prejudice, and class distinction ?"

"That's very true," Paul TrafFord said, in corroboration.

He hked to listen to Wiltshire's reflections on subjects that he himself had never thought about. "He's always widening your mind in some direction where you never looked before," he remarked, now and then, to Paula. The girl was glad to believe it. It was one more attraction of mind, where physical charms were so lacking; it was one more explanation of her willingness to marry him. She liked him. "No one could help liking him," she often told herself; and yet as they moved slowly along amid the crowd, with so many eyes upon them, she regretted the fact that he was shorter than herself, and that he had this air of hopeless mediocrity. The men of her own family were all equipped for command. Her father, who had been a New England farmer's son, and himself a farmer's boy, overtopped most men by a head, and was undeniably handsome. Even her cousin George, who was big and lumbering, had something dominating about him. It seemed strange to her, therefore, that this English duke, the head of the illustrious house of Holroyd, the descendant of a line whose good looks had helped to make Holbein, Vandyck, and Reynolds famous, should have been sent into the world by the great capricious Mother with the seal of the commonplace indelibly set upon him. She could not stifle in herself the knowledge that she was sorry for this; and yet as her glance took in once more the details of his dull-blue eyes, his stubby, sandy beard, and the stocky figure that defied the reformatory arts of the most expensive tailors in London, she was conscious, too, of a throb of pity, of almost tender pity, that he to whom so much had been given should have to contend with such obvious disadvantages.

** YouVe only got to look about you," Wiltshire went on, with the enthusiasm of a man airing his own ideas, "to see that Monte Carlo is the great city of refuge of our time. To people whose outward appearance warrants the green ticket of admission, the reign of liberty, equality, and fraternity has set in as nearly as possible on earth. Look there!" he continued. "That's the Grand -Duke Dmitri standing on tiptoe to look over the shoulder of Aarons, the money-lender, one of the greatest rascals unhung. That pretty English girl, asking Aarons to place her stake for her, wouldn't touch him anywhere else with the end of her parasol. In every direction you can see the same flinging together of odd contrasts — the same suspension of the rules that govern organized society elsewhere."

Paula listened and smiled, but said nothing in response, gazing about her to verify his observations for herself.

Against a background of tawdry splendor the great ladies of all worlds combined to produce an effect of elegance. There was a place for Aspasia and Madame de Stael alike. So, too, with the men; great lords, great bankers, and great adventurers met and mingled with the unprejudiced freedom of souls in the future state. Among the seated players the card-sharper elbowed the countess, and the fashionably dressed young man of the world jostled the faded grandmother in rusty crape. It was clear to Paula that in the Temple of Chance there was no respect of persons, and that the worshippers loved to have it so. In this heated atmosphere and under these glaring lights, it was as if a complex civilization suddenly resolved itself into its constituent elements, and men and women went back to the primitive, predatory instincts that time and experience had taught them to conceal.

Chapter II

ON the outer ring of spectators around the table in the centre of the room, they paused to look on. " Faites vos jeux, messieurs,^' the croupier was saying, in a voice nasally mechanical.

Paula's eyes were instantly attracted to the game. The sight of large sums of money to be lost and won appealed, by some hereditary instinct, to her imagination. She looked at the players facing her, and saw them enriched or impoverished with dramatic suddenness. She was sure the girl in a bright-red hat, with a wide - meshed blue veil making unnatural tints on powder and rouge, would end her days in want. The gray-bearded old man, carefully placing a five-franc piece en carre, would have his homeward fare paid by the authorities. The purse-lipped woman, in shabby widow's weeds, working an elaborate system all over the tableau, would win a lot of money. The good-looking young man, smilingly throwing down the maximum stake en plein, would be ruined and would shoot himself.

** Rien ne va plus" the croupier cried again, and the players drew back their hands to await the result of Fate.

"Your father has been called away to be presented to the Grand-Duke Dmitri," Wiltshire whispered to Paula, but she only nodded to signify that she had heard.

When the croupier turned the wheel and threw the ball she felt her heart-strings tighten. In the whirling thing before her the blindest and most obscure forces of the universe seemed visibly at work. Destiny was staked on a chance that kept beyond all foresight and eluded all calculation. It was strange, daring, and exciting. She wondered how the girl in the red hat could gaze indifferently about her while the wheel spun round. She wondered how the young man could turn with a jesting remark to the companion standing behind him. She wondered still more at the effect upon them all when the rotations of the wheel began to slacken speed, when the ball clicked and tapped and staggered, whirling round and round in a slow, wild, drunken way, till it fell, at last, as if exhausted, into the decisive number. The widow saw her system swept away, and without a shadow of expression on her stony face began to work out a new one. The girl in the red hat put down another louis on the exact spot whence the last had disappeared. The old man replaced his five-franc piece by one of ten. The young man who had played en plein received the value of his stake thirty-five times over.

" Faites vos jeux, messieurs/* the croupier called again. He was a stout man of fifty, swarthy and commonplace, but Paula could not help investing him with some of the inexorable power of the Parcae.

"You seem interested," the Duke whispered, behind her.

"It's tremendous," she returned, over her shoulder. "It's awful. It's as if one had got to the very springs of all happenings, as if one were in touch with the power that has made the world and flung us, haphazard, on to it."

"Wiltshire," said her father, slipping into the crowd, beside them, "the Grand -Duke wants to meet you. Paula, dear, you can wait for us here a minute. We sha'n't be long."

"Very well, papa, dear. I shall be all right."

She was not sorry to have them go, for it enabled her to give herself up to the spectacle of the game. The wheel was twirled again and again, always with variations on the same result. It gave her a thrill to see the croupier rake the gold and silver in, with a sort of lavish indifference to its value. There was something superb, too, in the careless ease with which he pushed about to the successful players the various multiplications of their stakes. As each winner picked up his gains she regretted that she had not put down a louis just where he had put his. She wondered what would happen if she did. She wondered whether the obscure, blind power that was throwing destinies about would have anything in store for her.

"If I knew how, I'd do it," she said to herself, looking up and down the table to see exactly what the others did.

Just then a man across the table threw down a ten-franc piece on pair. She had seen him do it several times in succession, and on each occasion he had lost. It was an easy conclusion that if pair lost impair would win. It was the simplest form of the game, and before she realized what she was about her own ten francs were down. The wheel spun and slackened speed; the ball clicked and staggered and stopped. She held her breath, with her eyes fixed upon her stake.

"If he rakes it in," she thought, "I shall know Fve lost."

But no! From the ends of the table the sure, relentless hand swept up the gold and silver into one central pile. Here and there a few isolated stakes were left, her own among the number. A minute later she found two gold coins where she had put down one.

She picked them up timidly, and looked across at the young man. Pair had lost again, and she felt sorry for him. He was not in evening dress, and she guessed, from slight indications, that he was poor. Her first thought was that it was a pity for him to waste his money; her second, that the stake she had won was practically that which he had lost. At the idea the tiny furrow deepened for an instant between her brows, and the gold piece clinched in her hand seemed to burn through her glove. She had a confused, mistaken notion that she had taken the money from him, that if she had not played he might have won.

"I oughtn't to have done it," she said to herself, half turning to go away. But the young man threw down another ten-franc piece on pair. It was an opportunity, she thought, for him to recover the money she had taken from him. It was not Hkely that she would win again, and her loss must of necessity be his gain. Once more she put her stake down on impair, and, with eyes fixed on it, awaited the result.

Again the croupier raked the gold and silver in, and the young man's stake went with the rest. This time the very coin he had forfeited was pushed across the table to her. She picked it up and sHpped it into her glove, looking over at him to see what he would do. If he stopped she would stop; if he went on she would give him the chance to win his money back. She was sure it was his money, and she felt some humiliation in going home with twenty francs that belonged to a passing stranger. Unconsciously to herself her interest was the more sincere because of the fact that he was tall and good-looking. "Certainly a gentleman," she commented, "and with such a striking face."

For an instant he seemed to hesitate; then his bit of gold fell on pair. A second later Paula's fell on impair. The result was the same as before; it was so the next time and the next. On the sixth spin pair won and impair lost, but with the seventh impair s run of luck began again. Paula felt herself growing desperate. The palm of her left - hand glove seemed bursting with gold, but in honor towards the poor young man she could not stop till he did. She did not reason that he could win back his money from the bank; she thought it must be from her. Of one thing

II she was glad: he had not noticed her at all or glanced in her direction. She could, therefore, look at him, with her money in her hand, ready to throw her stake when he threw his.

The widow was elaborating a new arrangement of her system, taking coin after coin from a small black bag. The girl in the blue veil was playing with two louis instead of one, gesticulating her orders to the croupier as to where they should be placed. The lad who had put his stake en plein was now playing it a cheval.

Paula started and looked at the young man across the table. He had put nothing down. He had evidently lost all he could afford. What she had won she should be obliged to keep. The obscure powers of chance had been true to their reputation, and had given the luck to those who had no need of it.

Her hand, with the glove full of gold, fell heavily at her side. Perhaps the unfortunate man had lost everything he possessed and would be driven to take his life, as she understood ruined gamblers generally were. She had a wild thought of asking her father to go and beg him to take his money back, when the victim's eyes wandered, apparently by accident, in her direction. For a fraction of a second their glances met, but Paula felt herself coloring and turned away.

"Why— what!"

The broken exclamation came from the Duke of

Wiltshire, as he pushed his way through the crowd to take his place again at her side.

"Have you been crying? — or playing? — or what?" he demanded, when he was near enough to speak. For the first time in their acquaintance he assumed a tone of authority.

"I haven't been crying," she said, hurriedly. "I've been playing, and I've won a lot of money. I don't quite know what to do with it."

"So ho!" he laughed. "That's what you do when your father's back is turned!"

"I sha'n't do it again," she said, in some confusion, as she moved out of the ring immediately around the table. "You see it was this way. I played against that tall young man over there. Don't look now because he'll notice it. That is, whatever he did on one side of the table I did on the other, and he always lost and I always won. I'm so sorry. He didn't look as if he could afford to lose — and he didn't keep on."

"What young man do you mean ? I don't see him.'*

"He's tall, and well set-up, with a pointed brown beard and rather gleaming eyes. No; he's gone," she added, stealing a glance to where he had been standing. "Ah, there he is now, coming round the table. He's coming this way. Don't look; he'll know I've been speaking of him. Come away. There's papa. Let us go to him."

But it was too late. The unknown young man and the Duke were already shaking hands, with the cordiality of long-standing friendship. Paula tried to slip out of her embarrassment by gliding round them and taking her place beside her father. He was talking to a knot of people she did not know, but she was near enough to him to be under his protection, while not so far from the Duke as to escape hearing some of the remarks between him and the stranger.

Through the hum of movement and conversation about her she caught a sympathetic barytone quality of voice. From the English precision of his enunciation and the American plaintiveness of his inflections, she guessed he was one of those fellow-countrymen of her own who have lived or studied abroad. The Duke catechised him freely, and he replied with the sort of detail one gives only to one's friends.

He had been working in Rome, and would have remained till after Easter, only that he had a couple of . commissions for portraits in Paris. Oh yes; commissions did come in, but very slowly. Perhaps it would be different some day. Yes, his mother was quite accustomed to her blindness now, but so feeble that they might lose her at any minute. Marah was well, and, as usual, working hard. He was staying only a day or two at Monte Carlo, just to break the journey from Rome. He hoped to have something in the next Salon, though he had nothing ready yet. Perhaps if Lady Alice were passing through Paris, she would look in, and give him the benefit of her advice.

Then came the question Paula was afraid of. Would the Duke tell him who was the tall young lady, in a blue dress and black hat, who had spoken to him on turning away from the table ? Of the reply she caught only the end of the sentence — "and you must know her.'*

She felt herself flushing with embarrassment, but as the Duke approached she knew the only dignified thing to do was to turn and greet him pleasantly.

"Miss TrafFord," he said, with the awkward air he always had at such moments, "I want you to know a very old friend of ours, Mr. Roger Winship."

"Mr. Winship's face," she laughed, "is perfectly familiar to me. Fve been watching him from the other side of the roulette-table for nearly half an hour."

"And you saw the ill-will of the gods against me," he returned, easily. "But I had the gratification of knowing that I couldn't lose unless you won. That was something."

"Haven't we met before ?" she asked, with a hurried change of topic.

"No; never."

The quick decisiveness of tone as well as the curious gleam of his eyes, in speaking the brief words, were details she remembered afterwards.

"And yet," she persisted, "your name is very well known to me. Tve heard it often."

"That isn't impossible," he admitted, with a forced smile, "though you must have been very young."

"I know I've heard of a Roger Winship," she continued, as if searching in her memory. "It must have been my father — "

"Probably," he interrupted; "but it was so long

"That it was your father's name and not yours that I'Ve heard mentioned. Were you going to say

that r

"It was a long time ago," he repeated, the forced smile gone. "I don't suppose that either you or I—"

He hesitated, and Paula saw that it would be best to let the subject drop. The Duke broke in with a remark or two, and after a few further words Winship bade them good-evening and passed on.

"What am I to do with all this money ?" Paula asked, when she and Wiltshire were alone again.

"You might give it in charity," he suggested.

"No; I wouldn't do that. I couldn't give in charity money to which I felt some one else had a prior claim. And," she pursued, with some hesitation, "I suppose I was right in fancying that he is poor ?"

"Oh yes; he's poor enough. He's a portrait-painter, and still has his way to make. Alice got to know him and his sister when she took it into her head to study art in Paris. She brings them over every now and then to stay with us at Edenbridge, or, at least she did till the poor old lady grew too blind. I like this young fellow. He's full of ideas, and we've had some jolly talks together."

" I've heard your sister spoken of as a great authority on art. Does she think this Mr. Winship — ?"

"She says she doesn't think — she knows. In ten years' time, she believes, he will have such a place as Sargent holds to-day."

i6

"Then, what shall I do with the money?" Paula said again.

"What can you do but give it away or spend it?" "I can keep it," she returned, thoughtfully. "I may find a way of getting him to take it back."

CHAPTER III HAT connection have I with the name of Roger Winship ?"

"Oh, that dreadful man!" Mrs. TrafFord cried, with a little gasp. "I haven't heard of him for years."

" Do you mean old Roger Winship ?" George Trafford asked, yawning, as he slipped down lazily in his arm-chair and stretched his legs before the fire.

"I mean any Roger Winship," Paula replied. "Fve heard the name to-night, and I seem to have known it before."

"How on earth did it happen.?" came from Mrs. TrafFord.

"There was a young man at the Casino, rather an interesting-looking man, a friend of the Duke's. The Duke spoke to him and then introduced him to me. I'd noticed him before that."

"I'm surprised at the Duke. It's very queer the sort of people who seem to know one another nowadays."

Mrs. TrafFord spoke with as much severity as a beaming content would permit. Handsome, dimpHng, and energetic, she was spending her middle-age in the serene satisfaction of seeing all her dreams fulfilled.

The daughter of a New England coal merchant, her

i8 modest fortune had been the foundation on which the colossal Coal Trust had been built up. It was to her credit to have married a poor man, certain that a great industrial empire awaited him. She had married for love, against the wishes of her family, but her love had been based on admiration. Her husband and she had passed through good years and evil years, had lived sparingly, had watched and planned and combined, and made their business march with the march of the country. She had seen him rise, with the swiftness and sureness of a Bonaparte, to the highest financial position, first in Vermont, then in New England, then in America, then in the world. Before he was sixty or she was fifty, TrafFord was a name to go with Rothschild. It was a name that meant not only the power of money, but the power of power — the success of those who threw in their destinies with it, and the ruin of those who opposed it.

During the years in which the great trust was being organized and maintained, the TrafFords had lived in an atmosphere of battle. There were suits in the law courts, appeals to supreme courts. State legislatures to be managed, Congress to be appeased, foreign trademarts to be invaded, and small competitors to be crushed out at home. It had been exciting, and often dramatic; but as middle-age drew on and most of the ends had been gained, it was pleasant to settle down and enjoy the hardly won laurels in peace. George TrafFord, whose late father, Andrew TrafFord, had shared the family elevation, was equal now to taking his uncle's place in everything but the supreme command. In the exercise of this office Paul TrafFord himself was never idle, hurrying now to one great capital, now to another, with but brief intervals to spend with his wife and daughter at home.

Home now meant Paris. The dust of conflict being still thick in New York, it was natural that Mrs. Trafford, at least, should prefer a place of abode where she could breathe more freely. It was not less natural that the enticements of fashion and fine weather, as well as the needs of Mrs. TrafFord's health, should draw them in winter to the Riviera. The coming of the George TrajfFords from America, as well as the possibility of Paula's engagement to the Duke of Wiltshire — a possibility which was only awaiting her final word to become a certainty — offered reasons for assembling something like a family party.

At the present minute they were spending the last desultory half-hour of the evening in Mrs. TrafFord's sitting-room, before parting for the night. Mr. Trafford had already gone to his apartment, and Mrs. George, beating back a yawn with the gloves she had just pulled off, was preparing to take her husband off to theirs. Paula, dressed as she came from the Casino, / sat by a window from which she had pulled the curtain back. Under the starlight, the sea gleamed duskily, reflecting here and there the lamps of the yachts anchored in the tiny bay. Lights, too, ran in a long, slanting line down the sea-wall to the Condamine, while more lights still punctured the dark mass of the town of Monaco, looming, high and ancient, against the sky.

"The Duke couldn't help introducing him to me," Paula explained, in answer to her mother's objections. "I was standing near, and he asked who I was. Besides, we'd noticed each other before that."

"Noticed each other?" Mrs. George queried, with just the glimmer of a smile.

"In the Casino at Monte Carlo," George TrafFord began, "strange ladies don't notice strange gentlemen unless — "

"It was this way," Paula hastened to say. "I'd won a lot of money from him — "

"You'd— what ?" Mrs. TrafFord gasped. "You don't mean to say you played in that dreadful place ?"

"I didn't play exactly. I just put down ten francs on a sort of square to see what would happen."

"Well ?"

"Well, he had ten francs on the corresponding square on the opposite side, and he lost and I won."

"That wasn't winning from him," George TrafFord corrected; "it was winning from the bank."

"It seemed like winning from him," Paula insisted.

"Was that all ?" the mother inquired, anxiously.

"No. We went on — six or seven times. He lost every time but one. I've brought home all this!"

She pulled off her glove and let the gold pieces slip from her palm on to the nearest table. They lay about separately, Uke stars. Mrs. TrafFord and Mrs. George both leaned forward to see; George TrafFord turned his head to look without changing his position.

"One — two — three/' Mrs. TrafFord counted — "fifty francs in all. Well, it isn't very much."

" It was a good deal to him, I fancy," Paula remarked. "The Duke admitted that he wasn't well off. Who is he, George ?"

" If he is old Roger Winship's son — " George Trafford began, lazily.

"He is," Paula interrupted; "or at least he hinted as much. He seemed to speak as if his family had had some connection with us."

"Did he say that?" Mrs. TrafFord asked, with a gleam of her old readiness for conflict.

"Not exactly," Paula explained. "He only wouldn't talk of it when I said I seemed to know his name. Who is he?"