The Cock and Anchor Part 20

"But, Major O'Leary," said he, despairingly, "will you engage--can you pledge yourself that no mischief shall follow from my withdrawing as you say? not that I would care to avoid a duel when occasion required; but no one likes to unnecessarily risk himself. Will you indeed prevent all unpleasantness?"

"Did I pledge my soul and honour that I would?" inquired the major sternly.

"Well, I am satisfied. I do agree," replied his lords.h.i.+p. "But is there any occasion for me to remove _to-night_?"

"Every occasion," replied the major, coolly. "You must come directly with me, and write the letter--and this evening, before supper, you must leave Morley Court. And, above all things, just remember this, let there be no trickery or treachery in this matter. So sure as I see the smallest symptom of anything of the kind, I will bring about such another piece of work as has not been for many a long day. Am I fully understood?"

"Perfectly--perfectly, my dear sir," replied the n.o.bleman. "Clearly understood. And believe me, Major, when I say that nothing but the fact that I myself, for private reasons, am not unwilling to break the matter off, could have induced me to co-operate with you in this business. Believe me, sir, otherwise I should have fought until one or other of us had fallen to rise no more."

"To be sure you would, my lord," rejoined the major, with edifying gravity. "And in the meantime your lords.h.i.+p will much oblige me by walking up to the house. There's pen and paper in Sir Richard's study; and between us we can compose something worthy of the occasion. Now, my lord, if you please."

Thus, side by side, walked the two elderly gentlemen, like the very best friends, towards the old house. And shrewd indeed would have been that observer who could have gathered from the manner of either (whatever their flushed faces and somewhat ruffled exterior might have told), as with formal courtesy they threaded the trim arbours together, that but a few minutes before each had sought the other's life.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE h.e.l.l--GORDON CHANCEY--LUCK--FRENZY AND A RESOLUTION.

The night which followed this day found young Henry Ashwoode, his purse replenished with bank-notes, that day advanced by Craven, to the amount of one thousand pounds, once more engaged in the delirious prosecution of his favourite pursuit--gaming. In the neighbourhood of the theatre, in that narrow street now known as Smock Alley, there stood in those days a kind of coffee-house, rather of the better sort. From the public-room, in which actors, politicians, officers, and occasionally a member of parliament, or madcap Irish peer, chatted, lounged, and sipped their sack or coffee--the initiated, or, in short, any man with a good coat on his back and a few pounds in his pocket, on exchanging a brief whisper with a singularly sleek-looking gentleman, who sate in the prospective of the background, might find his way through a small, baize-covered door in the back of the chamber, and through a lobby or two, and thence upstairs into a suite of rooms, decently hung with gilded leather, and well lighted with a profusion of wax candles, where hazard and cards were played for stakes unlimited, except by the fortunes and the credit of those who gamed. The ceaseless clang of the dice-box and rattle of the dice upon the table, and the clamorous challenging and taking of the odds upon the throwing, accompanied by the ferocious blasphemies of desperate losers, who, with clenched hands and distracted gestures, poured, unheeded, their frantic railings and imprecations, as they, in unpitied agony, withdrew from the fatal table; and now and then the scarcely less hideous interruptions of brutal quarrels, accusations, and recriminations among the excited and half-drunken gamblers, were the sounds which greeted the ear of him who ascended toward this unhallowed scene. The rooms were crowded--the atmosphere hot and stifling, and the company in birth and pretensions, if not in outward attire, to the full as mixed and various as the degrees of fortune, which scattered riches and ruin promiscuously among them. In the midst of all this riotous uproar, several persons sate and played at cards as if (as, perhaps, was really the case), perfectly unconscious of the ceaseless hubbub going on around them. Here you might see in one place the hare-brained young squire, scarcely three months launched upon the road to ruin, snoring in drunken slumber, in his deep-cus.h.i.+oned chair, with his cravat untied, and waistcoat loosened, and his last cup of mulled sack upset upon the table beside him, and streaming upon his velvet breeches and silken hose--while his lightly-won bank notes, stuffed into the loose coat pocket, and peeping temptingly from the aperture, invited the fingers of the first _chevalier d'industrie_ who wished to help himself. In another place you might behold two sharpers fulfilling the conditions of their partners.h.i.+p, by wheedling a half-tipsy simpleton into a quiet game of ombre. And again, elsewhere you might descry some bully captain, whose occupation having ended with the Irish wars, indemnified himself as best he might by such contributions as he could manage to levy from the young and reckless in such haunts as this, busily and energetically engaged in brow-beating a timid greenhorn, who has the presumption to fancy that he has won something from the captain, which the captain has forgotten to pay. In another place you may see, unheeded and unheeding, the wretch who has played and lost his last stake; with white, unmeaning face and idiotic grin, glaring upon the floor, thought and feeling palsied, something worse, and more appalling than a maniac.

The whole character of the a.s.sembly bespoke the recklessness and the selfishness of its ingredients. There was, too, among them a certain coa.r.s.e and revolting disregard and defiance of the etiquettes and conventional decencies of social life. More than half the men were either drunk or tipsy; some had thrown off their coats and others wore their hats; altogether the company had more the appearance of a band of reckless rioters in a public street, than of an a.s.sembly of persons professing to be gentlemen, and congregated in a drawing-room.

By the fireplace in the first and by far the largest and most crowded of the three drawing-rooms, there sate a person whose appearance was somewhat remarkable. He was an ill-made fellow, with long, lank, limber legs and arms, and an habitual lazy stoop. His face was sallow; his mouth, heavy and sensual, was continually moistened with the brandy and water which stood beside him upon a small spider-table, placed there for his especial use. His eyes were long-cut, and seldom more than half open, and carrying in their sleepy glitter a singular expression of treachery and brute cunning. He wore his own lank and grizzled hair, instead of a peruke, and sate before the fire with a drowsy inattention to all that was pa.s.sing in the room; and, except for the occasional twinkle of his eye as it glanced from the corner of his half-closed lids, he might have been believed to have been actually asleep. His att.i.tude was lounging and listless, and all his movements so languid and heavy, that they seemed to be rather those of a somnambulist than of a waking man. His dress had little pretension, and less neatness; it was a suit of threadbare, mulberry-coloured cloth, with steel b.u.t.tons, and evidently but little acquainted with the clothes-brush. His linen was soiled and crumpled, his shoes ill-cleaned, his beard had enjoyed at least two days' undisturbed growth; and the dingy hue of his face and hands bespoke altogether the extremest negligence and slovenliness of person.

This slovenly and ungainly being, who sate apparently unconscious of the existence of any other earthly thing than the fire on which he gazed, and the grog which from time to time he lazily sipped, was Gordon Chancey, Esquire, of Skycopper Court, Whitefriar Street, in the city of Dublin, barrister-at-law--a gentleman who had never been known to do any professional business, but who managed, nevertheless, to live, and to possess, somehow or other, the command of very considerable sums of money, which he most advantageously invested by discounting, at exorbitant interest, short bills and promissory notes in such places as that in which he now sate--one of his favourite resorts, by the way. At intervals of from five to ten minutes he slowly drew from the vast pocket of his clumsy coat a bulky pocket-book, and sleepily conned over certain memoranda with which its leaves were charged--then having looked into its well-lined receptacles, to satisfy himself that no miracle of legerdemain had abstracted the treasure on which his heart was set, he once more fastened the buckle of the leathern budget, and deposited it again in his pocket. This procedure, and his attentions to the spirits and water, which from time to time he swallowed, succeeded one another with a monotonous regularity altogether undisturbed by the uproarious scene which surrounded him.

As the night wore apace, and fortune played her wildest pranks, many an applicant--some successfully, and some in vain--sought Chancey's succour.

"Come, my fine fellow, tip me a cool hundred," exclaimed a fas.h.i.+onably-dressed young man, flushed with the combined excitement of wine and the dice, and tapping Chancey on the back impatiently with his knuckles--"this moment--will you, and be d----"

"Oh, dear me, dear me, Captain Markham," drawled the barrister in a low, drowsy tone, as he turned sleepily toward the speaker, "have you lost the other hundred so soon? Oh, dear!--oh, dear!"

"Never you mind, old fox. Sh.e.l.l out, if you're going to do it,"

rejoined the applicant. "What is it to you?"

"Oh, dear me, dear me!" murmured Chancey, as he languidly drew the pocket-book from his pocket. "When shall I make it payable? To-morrow?"

"D----n to-morrow," replied the captain. "I'll sleep all to-morrow.

Won't a fortnight do, you harpy?"

"Well, well--sign--sign it here," said the usurer, handing the paper, with a pen, to the young gentleman, and indicating with his finger the spot where the name was to be written.

The _roue_ wrote his name without ever reading the paper; and Chancey carefully deposited it in his book.

"The money--the money--d----n you, will you never give it!" exclaimed the young man, actually stamping with impatience, as if every moment's absence from the hazard-table cost him a fortune. "Give--give--_give_ them."

He seized the notes, and without counting, stuffed them into his coat-pocket, and plunged in an instant again among the gamblers who crowded the table.

"Mr. Chancey--Mr. Chancey," said a slight young man, whose whole appearance betokened a far progress in the wasting of a mortal decline.

His face was pale as death itself, and glittering with the cold, clammy dew of weakness and excitement. The eye was bright, wild, and gla.s.sy; and the features of this attenuated face trembled and worked in the spasms of agonized anxiety and despair--with timid voice, and with the fearful earnestness of one pleading for his life--with knees half bent, and head stretched forward, while his thin fingers were clutched and knotted together in restless feverishness. He still repeated at intervals in low, supplicating accents--"Mr. Chancey--Mr. Chancey--can you spare a moment, sir--Mr. Chancey, good sir--Mr. Chancey."

For many minutes the worthy barrister gazed on apathetically into the fire, as if wholly unconscious that this piteous spectacle was by his side, and all but begging his attention.

"Mr. Chancey, good sir--Mr. Chancey, kind sir--only one moment--one word--Mr. Chancey."

This time the wretched young man advanced one of his trembling hands, and laid it hesitatingly upon Chancey's knee--the seat of mercy, as the ancients thought; but truly here it was otherwise. The hand was repulsed with insolent rudeness; and the wretched suppliant stood trembling in silence before the bill-discounter, who looked upon him with a scowl of brute ferocity, which the timid advances he had made could hardly have warranted.

"Well," growled Chancey, keeping his baleful eyes fixed not very encouragingly upon the poor young man.

"I have been unfortunate, sir--I have lost my last s.h.i.+lling--that is, the last I have about me at present."

"Well," repeated he.

"I might win it all back," continued the suppliant, becoming more voluble as he proceeded. "I might recover it _all_--it has often happened to me before. Oh, sir, it is possible--_certain_, if I had but a few pounds to play on."

"Ay, the old story," rejoined Chancey.

"Yes, sir, it is indeed--indeed it is, Mr. Chancey," said the young man, eagerly, catching at this improvement upon his first laconic address as an indication of some tendency to relent, and making, at the same time, a most woeful attempt to look pleasant--"it is, sir--the old story, indeed; but this time it will come out true--indeed it will.

Will you do one little note for me--a _little_ one--twenty pounds?"

"No, I won't," drawled Chancey, imitating with coa.r.s.e buffoonery the intonation of the request--"I won't do a _little_ one for you."

"Well, for ten pounds--for _ten_ only."

"No, nor for ten pence," rejoined Chancey, tranquilly.

"You may keep five out of it for the discount--for friends.h.i.+p--only let me have five--just _five_," urged the wasted gambler, with an agony of supplication.

"No, I won't; _just five_," replied the lawyer.

"I'll make it payable to-morrow," urged the suppliant.

"Maybe you'll be dead before that," drawled Chancey, with a sneer; "the life don't look very tough in you."

"Ah! Mr. Chancey, dear sir--good Mr. Chancey," said the young man, "you often told me you'd do me a friendly turn yet. Do not you remember it?--when I was able to lend you money. For G.o.d's sake, lend me five pounds now, or anything; I'll give you half my winnings. You'll save me from beggary--ah, sir, for old friends.h.i.+p."

Mr. Gordon Chancey seemed wondrously tickled by this appeal; he gazed sleepily at the fire while he raked the embers with the toe of his shoe, stuffed his hands deep into his breeches pockets, and indulged in a sort of lazy, comfortable laughter, which lasted for several minutes, until at length it subsided, leaving him again apparently unconscious of the presence of his pet.i.tioner. Emboldened by the condescension of his quondam friend, the young man made a piteous effort to join in the laughter--an attempt, however, which was speedily interrupted by the hollow cough of consumption. After a pause of a minute or two, during which Chancey seemed to have forgotten his existence, he once more addressed that gentleman,--

"Well, sir--well, Mr. Chancey?"

The barrister turned full upon him with an expression of face not to be mistaken, and in a tone just as unequivocal, he growled,--

"I'm d----d if I give you as much as a leaden penny. Be off; there's no _begging_ allowed here--away with you, you blackguard."

Having thus delivered himself, Chancey relapsed into his ordinary dreamy quiet.