Sir Brook Fossbrooke Volume I Part 36

"Houghton has nothing to say to it; _he_ hasn't won twenty pounds from me," said Sewell, fiercely.

"Whatever you like, then," said Cave, in a tone in which it was easy to see irritation was with difficulty kept under, and the game began.

The game began in deep silence. The restrained temper of the players and the heavy sum together impressed them, and not a word was dropped. The cards fell upon the table with a clear, sharp sound, and the clink of the counters resounded through the room, the only noises there.

As they played, the company from the billiard-room poured in and drew around the whist-table, at first noisily enough; but seeing the deep preoccupation of the players, their steadfast looks, their intense eagerness, made more striking by their silence, they gradually lowered their voices, and at last only spoke in whispers and rarely.

The first game of the rubber had been contested trick by trick, but ended by Cave winning it. The second game was won by Sewell, and the third opened with his deal.

As he dealt the cards, a murmur ran through the bystanders that the stake was something considerable, and the interest increased in consequence. A few trifling bets were laid on the issue, and one of the group, in a voice slightly raised above the rest, said, "I'll back Sewell for a pony."

"I beg you will not, sir," said Sewell, turning fiercely round. "I'm in bad luck already, and I don't want to be swamped altogether. There, sir, your interference has made me misdeal," cried he, pa.s.sionately, as he flung the cards on the table.

Not a word was said as Cave began his deal. It was too plain to every one that Sewell's temper was becoming beyond control, and that a word or a look might bring the gravest consequences.

"What cards!" said Cave, as he spread his hand on the table: "four honors and nine trumps." Sewell stared at them, moved his fingers through them to separate and examine them, and then, turning his head round, he looked behind. It was his wife was standing at the back of his chair, calm, pale, and collected. "By Heaven!" cried he, savagely, "I knew who was there as well as if I saw her. The moment Cave spread out his cards, I 'd have taken my oath that _she_ was standing over me."

She moved hastily away at the ruffianly speech, and a low murmur of indignant anger filled the room. Cave and Houghton quitted the table, and mingled with the others; but Sewell sat still, tearing up the cards one by one, with a quiet, methodical persistence that betrayed no pa.s.sion. "There!" said he, as he threw the last fragment from him, "you shall never bring good or bad luck to any one more." With the ease of one to whom such paroxysms were not un-frequent, he joined in the conversation of a group of young men, and with a familiar jocularity soon set them at their ease towards him; and then, drawing his arm within Cave's, he led him apart, and said: "I 'll go over to the Barrack to-morrow and breakfast with you. I have just thought of how I can settle this little debt."

"Oh, don't distress yourself about that," said Cave. "I beg you will not let it give you a moment's uneasiness."

"Good fellow!" said Sewell, clapping him on the shoulder; "but I have the means of doing it without inconvenience, as I 'll show you to-morrow. Don't go yet; don't let your fellows go. We are going to have a broil, or a devilled biscuit, or something." He walked over and rang the bell, and then hastily pa.s.sed on into a smaller room, where his wife was sitting on a sofa, an old doctor of the regiment seated at her side.

"I won't interrupt the consultation," said Sewell, "but I have just one word to say." He leaned over the back of the sofa, and whispered in her ear, "Your friend Trafford is become an eldest son. He is at the Bilton Hotel, Dublin; write and ask him here. Say I have some c.o.c.k-shooting,--there are harriers in the neighborhood. Are you listening to me, Madam?" said he, in a harsh hissing voice, for she had half turned away her head, and her face had a.s.sumed an expression of sickened disgust. She nodded, but did not speak. "Tell him that I've spoken to Cave--he'll make his leave all right--that I 'll do my best to make the place pleasant to him, and that--in fact, I needn't toy to teach you to write a sweet note. You understand me, eh?"

"Oh, perfectly," said she, rising; and a livid paleness now spread over her face, and even her lips were bloodless.

"I was too abrupt with my news. I ought to have been more considerate; I ought to have known it might overcome you," said he, with a sneering bitterness. "Doctor, you 'll have to give Mrs. Se well some cordial, some restorative,--that's the name for it. She was overcome by some tidings I brought her. Even pleasant news will startle us occasionally.

As the French comedy has it, _La joie fait peur_;" and with a listless, easy air, he sauntered away into another room.

CHAPTER XXIX. SEWELL VISITS CAVE

Punctual to his appointment, Sewell appeared at breakfast the next morning with Colonel Cave. Of all the ill-humor and bad conduct of the night before, not a trace now was to be seen. He was easy, courteous, and affable. He even made a half-jesting apology for his late display of bad temper; attributing it to an attack of coming gout. "So long as the malady," said he, "is in a state of menace, one's nerves become so fine-strung that there is no name for the irritability; but when once a good honest seizure has taken place, a man recovers himself, and stands up to his suffering manfully and well.

"To-day, for instance," said he, pointing to a shoe divided by long incisions, "I have got my enemy fixed, and I let him do his worst."

The breakfast proceeded pleasantly; Cave was in admiration of his guest's agreeability; for he talked away, not so much of things as of people. He had in a high degree that-man-of-the-world gift of knowing something about every one. No name could turn up of which he could not tell you something the owner of it had said or done, and these "scratch"

biographies are often very amusing, particularly when struck off with the readiness of a practised talker.

It was not, then, merely that Sewell obliterated every memory of the evening before, but he made Cave forget the actual object for which he had come that morning. Projects, besides, for future pleasure did Sewell throw out, like a man who had both the leisure, the means, and the taste for enjoyment. There was some capital shooting he had just taken; his neighbor, an old squire, had never cared for it, and let him have it "for a song." They were going to get up hack races, too, in the Park,--"half-a-dozen hurdles and a double ditch to tumble over," as he said, "will amuse our garrison fellows,--and my wife has some theatrical intentions--if you will condescend to help her."

Sewell talked with that blended munificence and s.h.i.+ftiness, which seems a specialty with a certain order of men. Nothing was too costly to be done, and yet everything must be accomplished with a dexterity that was almost a dodge. The men of this gift are great scene-painters. They dash you off a view--be it a wood or a rich interior, a terraced garden or an Alpine hut--in a few loose touches. Ay! and they "smudge" them out again before criticism has had time to deal with them. "By the way," cried he, suddenly, stopping in the full swing of some description of a possible regatta, "I was half forgetting what brought me here this morning. I am in your debt, Cave."

He stopped as though his speech needed some rejoinder, and Cave grew very red and very uneasy--tried to say something--anything--but could not. The fact was, that, like a man who had never in all his life adventured on high play or risked a stake that could possibly be of importance to him, he felt pretty much the same amount of distress at having won as he would have felt at having lost. He well knew that if by any mischance he had incurred such a loss as a thousand pounds, it would have been a most serious embarra.s.sment--by what right, then, had he won it? Now, although feelings of this sort were about the very last to find entrance into Sewell's heart, he well knew that there were men who were liable to them, just as there were people who were exposed to plague or yellow fever, and other maladies from which he lived remote. It was, then, with a sort of selfish delight that he saw Cave's awkward hesitating manner, and read the marks of the shame that was overwhelming him.

"A heavy sum too," said Sewell, jauntily; "we went the whole 'pot' on that last rubber."

"I wish I could forget it--I mean," muttered Cave, "I wish we could both forget it."

"I have not the least objection to that," said Sewell gayly; "only let it first be paid."

"Well, but--what I meant was--what I wanted to say, or rather, what I hoped--was--in plain words, Sewell," burst he out, like a man to whom desperation gave courage,--"in plain words, I never intended to play such stakes as we played last night,--I never have--I never will again."

"Not to give me my revenge?" said Sewell, laughing.

"No, not for anything. I don't know what I 'd have done--I don't know what would have become of me--if I had lost; and I pledge you my honor, I think the next worst thing is to have won."

"Do you, by George!"

"I do, upon my sacred word of honor. My first thoughts on waking this morning were more wretched than they have been for any day in the last twenty years of life, for I was thoroughly ashamed of myself."

"You 'll not find many men afflicted with your malady, Cave; and, at all events, it's not contagious."

"I know nothing about that," said Cave, half irritably; "I never was a play man, and have little pretension to understand their feelings."

"They have n't got any," said Sewell, as he lit his cigar.

"Perhaps not; so much the worse for them. I can only say, if the misery of losing be only proportionate to the shame of winning, I don't envy a gambler. Such an example, too, to exhibit to my young officers! It was too bad--too bad."

"I declare I don't understand this," said Sewell, carelessly; "when I commanded a battalion, I never imagined I was obliged to be a model to the subs or the junior captains." The tone of banter went, this time, to the quick; and Cave flushed a deep crimson, and said,--"I'm not sorry that my ideas of my duty are different; though, in the present case, I have failed to fulfil it."

"Well, well, there's nothing to grow angry about," said Sewell, laughing, "even though you won't give me my revenge. My present business is to book up;" and, as he spoke, he sat down at the table, and drew a roll of papers from his pocket and laid it before him.

"You distress me greatly by all this, Sewell," said Cave, whose agitation now almost overcame him. "Cannot we hit upon some way? can't we let it lie over? I mean,--is there no arrangement by which this cursed affair can be deferred? You understand me?"

"Not in the least. Such things are never deferred without loss of honor to the man in default. The stake that a man risks is supposed to be in his pocket, otherwise play becomes trade, and accepts all the vicissitudes of trade."

"It's the first time I ever heard them contrasted to the disparagement of honest industry."

"And I call billiards, tennis, whist, and ecarte honest industries, too, though I won't call them trades. There, there," said he, laughing at the other's look of displeasure, "don't be afraid; I am not going to preach these doctrines to your young officers, for whose morals you are so much concerned. Sit down here, and just listen to me for one moment."

Cave obeyed, but his face showed in every feature how reluctantly.

"I see, Cave," said Sewell, with a quiet smile,--"I see you want to do me a favor,--so you shall. I am obliged to own that I am an exception to the theory I have just now enunciated. I staked a thousand pounds, and I had _not_ the money in my pocket. Wait a moment,--don't interrupt me.

I had not the money in gold or bank-notes, but I had it here"--and he touched the papers before him--"in a form equally solvent, only that it required that he who won the money should be not a mere acquaintance, but a friend,--a friend to whom I could speak with freedom and in confidence. This," said he, "is a bond for twelve hundred pounds, given by my wife's guardian in satisfaction of a loan once made to him; he was a man of large fortune, which he squandered away recklessly, leaving but a small estate, which he could neither sell nor alienate. Upon this property this is a mortgage. As an old friend of my father-in-law,--a very unworthy one, by the way,--I could of course not press him for the interest, and, as you will see, it has never been paid; and there is now a balance of some hundred pounds additional against him. Of this I could not speak, for another reason,--we are not without the hope of inheriting something by him, and to allude to this matter would be ruinous. Keep this, then. I insist upon it. I declare to you, if you refuse, I will sell it to-morrow to the first moneylender I can find, and send you my debt in hard cash. I 've been a play-man all my life, but never a defaulter."

There was a tone of proud indignation in the way he spoke that awed Cave to silence; for in good truth he was treating of themes of which he knew nothing whatever: and of the sort of influences which swayed gamblers, of the rules that guided and the conventionalities that bound them, he was profoundly ignorant.

"You 'll not get your money, Cave," resumed Sewell, "till this old fellow dies; but you will be paid at last,--of that I can a.s.sure you.

Indeed, if by any turn of luck I was in funds myself, I 'd like to redeem it. All I ask is, therefore, that you 'll not dispose of it, but hold it over in your own possession till the day--and I hope it may be an early one--it will be payable."

Cave was in no humor to dispute anything. There was no condition to which he would not have acceded, so heartily ashamed and abashed was he by the position in which he found himself. What he really would have liked best, would have been to refuse the bond altogether, and say, Pay when you like, how you like, or, better still, not at all. This of course was not possible, and he accepted the terms proposed to him at once.

"It shall be all as you wish," said he, hurriedly. "I will do everything you desire; only let me a.s.sure you that I would infinitely rather this paper remained in _your_ keeping than in _mine_. I'm a careless fellow about doc.u.ments," added he, trying to put the matter on the lesser ground of a safe custody. "Well, well, say no more; you don't wish it, and that's enough."

"I must be able to say," said Sewell, gravely, "that I never lost over night what I had not paid the next morning; and I will even ask of you to corroborate me so far as this transaction goes. There were several of your fellows at my house last night; they saw what we played for, and that I was the loser. There will be--there always is--plenty of gossip about these things, and the first question is, 'Has he-booked up?' I'm sure it's not asking more than you are ready to do, to say that I paid my debt within twenty-four hours."