“How d’ye do, everybody? Whom are you and O’Sully rooking to-night, Volney? Oh, I see—Montagu. Beg pardon,” said Craven coolly.
Volney looked past the man with a wooden face that did not even recognize the fellow as a blot on the landscape. There was bad blood between the two men, destined to end in a tragedy. Sir James had been in the high graces of Frederick Prince of Wales until the younger and more polished Volney had ousted him. On the part of the coarse and burly Craven, there was enduring hatred toward his easy and elegant rival, who paid back his malice with a serene contempt. Noted duellist as Craven was, Sir Robert did not give a pinch of snuff for his rage.
The talk veered to the new fashion of spangled skirts, and Walpole vowed that Lady Coventry’s new dress was covered with spangles big as a shilling.
“ ’Twill be convenient for Coventry. She’ll be change for a guinea,” suggested Selwyn gloomily, his solemn face unlighted by the vestige of a smile.
So they jested, even when the play was deepest and while long-inherited family manors passed out of the hands of their owners. The recent French victory at Fontenoy still rankled in the heart of every Englishman. Within, the country seethed with an undercurrent of unrest and dissatisfaction. It was said that there were those who boasted quietly among themselves over their wine that the sun would yet rise some day on a Stuart England, that there were desperate men still willing to risk their lives in blind loyalty or in the gambler’s spirit for the race of Kings that had been discarded for its unworthiness. But the cut of his Mechlin lace ruffles was more to the Macaroni than his country’s future. He made his jest with the same aplomb at births and weddings and deaths.
Each fresh minute of play found me parted from some heirloom treasured by Montagus long since dust. In another half hour Montagu Grange was stripped of timber bare as the Row itself. Once, between games, I strolled uneasily down the room, and passing the long looking glass scarce recognized the haggard face that looked out at me. Still I played on, dogged and wretched, not knowing how to withdraw myself from these elegant dandies who were used to win or lose a fortune at a sitting with imperturbable face.
Lord Balmerino gave me a chance. He clapped a hand on my shoulder and said in his brusque kindly way—
“Enough, lad! You have dropped eight thou’ to-night. Let the old family pictures still hang on the walls.”
I looked up, flushed and excited, yet still sane enough to know his advice was good. In the strong sallow face of Major James Wolfe I read the same word. I knew the young soldier slightly and liked him with a great respect, though I could not know that this grave brilliant-eyed young man was later to become England’s greatest soldier and hero. I had even pushed back my chair to rise from the table when the cool gibing voice of Volney cut in.
“The eighth wonder of the world; Lord Balmerino in a new rôle—adviser to young men of fashion who incline to enjoy life. Are you by any chance thinking of becoming a ranting preacher, my Lord?”
“I bid him do as I say and not as I have done. To point my case I cite myself as an evil example of too deep play.”
“Indeed, my Lord! Faith, I fancied you had in mind even deeper play for the future. A vastly interesting game, this of politics. You stake your head that you can turn a king and zounds! you play the deuce instead.”
Balmerino looked at him blackly out of a face cut in frowning marble, but Volney leaned back carelessly in his chair and his insolent eyes never flickered.
As I say, I sat swithering ’twixt will and will-not.
“Better come, Kenneth! The luck is against you to-night,” urged Balmerino, his face relaxing as he turned to me.
Major Wolfe said nothing, but his face too invited me.
“Yes, better go back to school and be birched,” sneered Volney.
And at that I flung back into my seat with a curse, resolute to show him I was as good a man as he. My grim-faced guardian angel washed his hands of me with a Scotch proverb.
“He that will to Cupar maun to Cupar. The lad will have to gang his ain gate,” I heard him tell Wolfe as they strolled away.
Still the luck held against me. Before I rose from the table two hours later I wrote out notes for a total so large that I knew the Grange must be mortgaged to the roof to satisfy it.
Volney lolled in his chair and hid a yawn behind tapering pink finger-nails. “ ’Slife, you had a cursed run of the ivories to-night, Kenn! When are you for your revenge? Shall we say to-morrow? Egad, I’m ready to sleep round the clock. Who’ll take a seat in my coach? I’m for home.”
I pushed into the night with a burning fever in my blood, and the waves of damp mist which enveloped London and beat upon me, gathering great drops of moisture on my cloak, did not suffice to cool the fire that burnt me up. The black dog Care hung heavy on my shoulders. I knew now what I had done. Fool that I was, I had mortgaged not only my own heritage but also the lives of my young brother Charles and my sister Cloe. Our father had died of apoplexy without a will, and a large part of his personal property had come to me with the entailed estate. The provision for the other two had been of the slightest, and now by this one wild night of play I had put it out of my power to take care of them. I had better clap a pistol to my head and be done with it.
Even while the thought was in my mind a hand out of the night fell on my shoulder from behind. I turned with a start, and found myself face to face with the Scotchman Balmerino.
“Whither away, Kenneth?” he asked.
I laughed bitterly. “What does it matter? A broken gambler—a ruined dicer—What is there left for him?”
The Scotch Lord linked an arm through mine. I had liefer have been alone, but I could scarce tell him so. He had been a friend of my father and had done his best to save me from my folly.
“There is much left. All is not lost. I have a word to say to your father’s son.”
“What use!” I cried rudely. “You would lock the stable after the horse is stolen.”
“Say rather that I would put you in the way of getting another horse,” he answered gravely.
So gravely that I looked at him twice before I answered:
“And I would be blithe to find a way, for split me! as things look now I must either pistol myself or take to the road and pistol others,” I told him gloomily.
“There are worse things than to lose one’s wealth——”
“I hear you say it, but begad! I do not know them,” I answered with a touch of anger at his calmness.
“——When the way is open to regain all one has lost and more,” he finished, unheeding my interruption.
“Well, this way you speak of,” I cried impatiently. “Where is it?”
He looked at me searchingly, as one who would know the inmost secrets of my soul. Under a guttering street light he stopped me and read my face line by line. I dare swear he found there a recklessness to match his own and perhaps some trace of the loyalty for which he looked. Presently he said, as the paving stones echoed to our tread:—
“You have your father’s face, Kenn. I mind him a lad just like you when we went out together in the ’15 for the King. Those were great days—great days. I wonder——”
His unfinished sentence tailed out into a meditative silence. His voice and eyes told of a mind reminiscent of the past and perhaps dreamful of the future. Yet awhile, and he snatched himself back into the present.
“Six hours ago I should not have proposed this desperate remedy for your ills. You had a stake in the country then, but now you are as poor in this world’s gear as Arthur Elphinstone himself. When one has naught but life at stake he will take