The Gem Collector Part 16

"_What_ exactly is repicquing?" he asked, as Spennie paused.

"It's like this," said Spennie, returning to his lecture.

"Yes, I see now," said the neophyte.

They began playing. Spennie, as was only to be expected in a contest between teacher and student, won the first two hands. Wesson won the next.

"I've got the hang of it all right, now," he said complacently. "It's a simple sort of game. Make it more exciting, don't you think, if we played for something?"

"All right," said Spennie slowly, "if you like."

He would not have suggested it himself, but after all, hang it, if the man simply _asked_ for it--It was not his fault if the winning of a hand should have given the fellow the impression that he knew all that there was to be known about picquet. Of course, picquet was a game where skill was practically bound to win. But--After all, Wesson had plenty of money. He could afford it.

"All right," said Spennie again. "How much?"

"Something fairly moderate. Ten bob a hundred?"

There is no doubt that Spennie ought at this suggestion to have corrected the novice's notion that ten s.h.i.+llings a hundred was fairly moderate. He knew that it was possible for a poor player to lose four hundred points in a twenty-minute game, and usual for him to lose two hundred. But he let the thing go.

"Very well," he said.

Twenty minutes later, Mr. Wesson was looking somewhat ruefully at the score sheet. "I owe you eighteen s.h.i.+llings," he said. "Shall I pay you, now, or shall we settle up in a lump after we've finished?"

"What about stopping now?" said Spennie. "It's quite fine out."

"No, let's go on. I've nothing to do till dinner, and I'm sure you haven't."

Spennie's conscience made one last effort. "You'd much better stop, you know, Wesson, really," he said. "You can lose a frightful lot at this game."

"My dear Spennie," said Wesson stiffly, "I can look after myself, thanks. Of course, if you think you are risking too much, by all means--"

"Oh, if _you_ don't mind," said Spennie, outraged, "I'm only too frightfully pleased. Only, remember I warned you."

"I'll bear it in mind. By the way, before we start, care to make it a sovereign a hundred?"

Spennie could not afford to play picquet for a sovereign a hundred, or anything like it; but after his adversary's innuendo it was impossible for a young gentleman of spirit to admit the humiliating fact. He nodded.

"It's about time, I fancy," said Mr. Wesson, looking at his watch an hour later, "that we were going in to dress for dinner."

Spennie made no reply. He was wrapped in thought.

"Let's see, that's twenty pounds you owe me, isn't it?" continued Mr.

Wesson. "No hurry, of course. Any time you like. Shocking bad luck you had."

They went out into the rose garden.

"Jolly everything smells after the rain," said Mr. Wesson. "Freshened everything up."

Spennie did not appear to have noticed it. He seemed to be thinking of something else. His air was pensive and abstracted.

CHAPTER XIII.

The emotions of a man who has just proposed and been accepted are complex and overwhelming. A certain stunned sensation is perhaps predominant. Blended with this is relief, the relief of a general who has brought a difficult campaign to a successful end, or of a member of a forlorn hope who finds that the danger is over, and he is still alive. To this must be added a newly born sense of magnificence, of finding oneself to be, without having known it, the devil of a fellow.

We have dimly suspected, perhaps, from time to time that we were something rather out of the ordinary run of men, but there has always been a haunting fear that this view was to be attributed to a personal bias in our own favor. When, however, our suspicion is suddenly confirmed by the only judge for whose opinion we have the least respect, our bosom heaves with complacency, and the world has nothing more to offer.

With some accepted suitors there is an alloy of apprehension in the metal of their happiness; and the strain of an engagement sometimes brings with it even a faint shadow of regret. "She makes me buy new clothes," one swain, in the third quarter of his engagement, was overheard to moan to a friend. "Two new ties only yesterday." He seemed to be debating within himself whether human nature could stand the strain.

But, whatever tragedies may cloud the end of the period, its beginning at least is bathed in suns.h.i.+ne. Jimmy, regarding his lathered face in the gla.s.s as he dressed for dinner that night, called himself the luckiest man on earth, and wondered if he were worthy of such happiness. Thinking it over, he came to the conclusion that he was not, but that all the same he meant to have it.

No doubt distressed him. It might have occurred to him that the relations between Mr. McEachern and himself offered a very serious bar to his prospects; but in his present frame of mind he declined to consider the existence of the ex-constable at all. In a world that contained Molly there was no room for other people. They were not in the picture. They did not exist.

There are men in the world who, through long custom, can find themselves engaged without any particular whirl of emotion. King Solomon probably belonged to this cla.s.s; and even Henry the Eighth must have become a trifle blase in time. But to the average man, the novice, the fact of being accepted seems to divide existence into two definite parts, before and after. A sensitive conscience goads some into compiling a full and unexpurgated autobiography, the edition limited to one copy, which is presented to the lady most interested.

Some men find a melancholy pleasure in these confessions. They like to draw the girl of their affections aside and have a long, cozy chat about what scoundrels they were before they met her.

But, after all, the past is past and cannot be altered, and it is to be supposed that, whatever we may have done in that checkered period, we intend to behave ourselves for the future. So, why harp on it?

Jimmy acted upon this plan. Many men in his place, no doubt, would have steered the conversation skillfully to the subject of the eighth commandment, and then said: "Talking about stealing, did I ever tell you that I was a burglar myself for about six years?" Jimmy was reticent. All that was over, he told himself. He had given it up. He had buried the past. Why exhume it? It did not occur to him to confess his New York crimes to Molly any more than to tell her that, when seven, he had been caned for stealing jam.

These things had happened to a man of the name of Jimmy Pitt, it was true. But it was not the Jimmy Pitt who had proposed to Molly in the canoe on the lake.

The vapid and irreflective reader may jump to the conclusion that Jimmy was a casuist, and ought to have been ashamed of himself.

He will be perfectly right.

On the other hand, one excuse may urged in his favor. His casuistry imposed upon himself.

To Jimmy, shaving, there entered, in the furtive manner habitual to that unreclaimed buccaneer, Spike Mullins.

"Say, Mr. Chames," he said.

"Well," said Jimmy, "and how goes the world with young Lord Fitz Mullins? Spike, have you ever been best man?"

"On your way! What's that?"

"Best man at a wedding. Chap who stands by the bridegroom with a hand on the scruff of his neck to see that he goes through with it. Fellow who looks after everything, crowds the crisp banknotes onto the clergyman after the ceremony, and then goes off and marries the first bridesmaid, and lives happily ever after."

"I ain't got no use for gettin' married, Mr. Chames."

"Spike, the misogynist! You wait, Spike. Some day love will awake in your heart, and you'll start writing poetry."

"I'se not dat kind of mug, Mr. Chames," protested Spike. "Dere _was_ a goil, dough. Only I was never her steady. And she married one of de odder boys."