Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  “I am Mr. Morrice Buckler,” said I, “and I would have a word with my cousin, Lord Elmscott.”

  The old man shook his head dolefully.

  “Nay, sir,” he replied in a thin, quavering voice, “you do ill to seek him here. At White’s perchance you may light on him, or at Wood’s, in Pall Mall — I know not. But never in his own house while there is a pack of cards abroad.”

  I waited not to hear the rest of his complaint, but dashed down the steps and set off westwards at a run. I crossed a lonely and noisome plain which I have since heard is named the pest-field, for that many of the sufferers in the late plague are buried there, and came out at the top of St. James’ Street. There a stranger pointed out to me White’s coffeehouse.

  “Is Lord Elmscott within?” I asked of an attendant as I entered.

  For reply he looked me over coolly from head to foot.

  “And what may be your business with Lord Elmscott?” he asked, with a sneer.

  In truth I must have cut but a sorry figure in his eyes, for I was all dusty and begrimed with my five days’ travel. But I thought not of that at the time.

  “Tell him,” said I, “that his cousin, Morrice Buckler, is here, and must needs speak with him.” Whereupon the man’s look changed to one of pure astonishment. “Be quick, fellow,” I cried, stamping my foot; and with a humble “I crave your pardon,” he hurried off upon the message. A door stood at the far end of the room, and through this he entered, leaving it ajar. In a moment I heard my cousin’s voice, loud and boisterous:

  “Show him in! ‘Od’s wounds, he may change my luck.”

  With that I followed him. ’Twas a strange sight to me. The room was small, and the floor so thickly littered with cards that it needed the feel of your foot to assure you it was carpeted. A number of gallants in a great disorder of dress stood about a little table whereat were seated a youth barely, I should guess, out of his teens, his face pale, but very indifferent and composed, and over against him my cousin. Elmscott’s black peruke was all awry, his cheeks flushed, and his eyes bloodshot and staring.

  “Morrice,” he cried, “what brings you here in this plight? I believe the fellow took you for a bailiff, and, on my life,” he added, surveying me, “I have not the impudence to blame him.” Thereupon he addressed himself to the company. “This, gentlemen,” says he, “is my cousin, Mr. Morrice Buckler, a very worthy — bookworm.”

  They all laughed as though there was some wit in the ill-mannered sally; but I had no time to spare for taking heed of their foolishness.

  “You can do me a service,” I said eagerly.

  “You give me news,” Elmscott laughed. “’Tis a strange service that I can render. Well, what may it be?”

  “I need money for one thing, and — —” A roar of laughter broke in upon my words.

  “Money!” cries Elmscott. “Lord, that any one should come to me for money!” and he leaned back in his chair laughing as heartily as the best of them. “Why, Morrice, it’s all gone — all gone into the devil’s whirlpool. Howbeit,” he went on, growing suddenly serious, “I will make a bargain with you. Stand by my side here. I have it in my mind that you will bring me luck. Stand by my side, and in return, if I win, I will lend you what help I may.”

  “Nay, cousin,” said I, “my business will not wait.”

  “Nor mine,” he replied, “nor mine. Stand by me! I shall not be long. My last stake’s on the table.”

  He seized hold of my arm as he spoke with something of prayer in his eyes, and reluctantly I consented. In truth, I knew not what else to do. ’Twas plain he was in no mood to hearken to my request, even if he had the means to grant it.

  “That’s right, lad!” he bawled, and then to the servant: “Brandy! Brandy, d’ye hear! And a great deal of it! Now, gentlemen, you will see. Mr. Buckler is a student of Leyden. ’Tis full time that some good luck should come to us from Holland.”

  And he turned him again to the table. His pleasantry was received with an uproarious merriment, which methought it hardly merited. But I have noted since that round a gaming-table, so tense is the spirit which it engenders, the poorest jest takes the currency of wit.

  I was at first perplexed by the difference of the stakes. Before my cousin lay a pair of diamond buckles, but no gold, not so much as a single guinea-piece. All that there was of that metal lay in scattered heaps beside his opponent.

  Lord Elmscott dealt the hands — the game was écarté — and the other nodded his request for cards. Looking over my cousin’s shoulder I could see that he held but one trump, the ten, and a tierce to the king in another suit. For a little he remained without answering, glancing indecisively from his cards to the face of his player. At last, with a touch of defiance in his voice:

  “No!” he said. “Tis no hand to play on, but I’ll trust to chance.”

  “As you will,” nodded the other, and he led directly into Elmscott’s suit. Every one leaned eagerly forward, but each trick fell to my cousin, and he obtained the vole.

  “There! I told you,” he cries.

  His opponent said never a word, but carelessly pushed a tinkling pile of coins across the table. And so the play went on; at the finish of each game a stream of gold drifted over to Lord Elmscott. It seemed that he could not lose. If he played the eight, his companion would follow with the seven.

  “He hath the devil at his back now,” said one of the bystanders.

  “Pardon me!” replied my cousin very politely. “You insult Mr. Buckler. I am merely fortified with the learning of Leyden;” and he straightway marked the king. After a time the room fell to utter silence, even Elmscott stopped his outbursts. A strange fascination caught and enmeshed us all; we strained forward, holding our breaths as we watched the hands, though each man, I think, was certain what the end would be. For myself, I honestly struggled against this devilish enchantment, but to little purpose. The flutter of the cards made my heart leap. I sought to picture to myself the long dark road I had to traverse, and Julian in his prison at the end of it. I saw nothing but the faces of the players, Elmscott’s flushed and purple, his opponent’s growing paler and paler, while his eyes seemed to retreat into his head and the pupils of them to burn like points of fire. I loaded myself with reproaches and abuse, but the words ran through my head in a meaningless sequence, and were tuned to a clink of gold.

  And then an odd fancy came over me. In the midst of the yellow heap, ever increasing, on our side of the table, lay the pair of diamond buckles. I could see rays of an infinite variety of colours spirting out like little jets of flame, as the light caught the stones, and I felt a queer conviction that Elmscott’s luck was in some way bound up with them. So strongly did the whim possess me that I lifted them from the table to test my thought. For so long as took the players to play two games, I held the buckles in my hands; and both games my cousin lost. I replaced them on the table, and he began to win once more with the old regularity, the heaps dwindling there and growing here, until at length all the money lay silted at my cousin’s hand. You might have believed that a spell had been suddenly lifted from the company. Faces relaxed and softened, eyes lost their keen light, feet shuffled in a new freedom, and the heavy silence was torn by a Babel of voices. Strangely enough, all joined with Elmscott in attributing his change of fortune to my presence. Snuff-boxes were opened and their contents pressed upon me, and I think that I might have dined at no cost of myself for a full twelve months had I accepted the invitations I received. But the cessation of the play had waked me to my own necessities, and I turned to my cousin.

  “Now,” said I, but I got no further, for he exclaimed:

  “Not yet, Morrice! There’s my house in Monmouth Square.”

  “Your house?” I repeated.

  “There’s the manor of Silverdale.”

  “You have not lost that?” I cried.

  “Every brick of it,” says he.

  “Then,” says I in a quick passion, “you must win them back as best you may. I�
�ll bide no longer.”

  “Nay, lad!” he entreated, laying hold of my sleeve. “You cannot mean that. See, when you came in, I had but these poor buckles left. They were all my fortune. Stay but for a little. For if you go you take all my luck with you. ‘Am deadly sure of it.”

  “I have stayed too long as it is” I replied, and wrenched myself free from his grasp.

  “Well, take what money you need! But you are no more than a stone,” he whimpered.

  “The philosopher’s stone, then,” said I, and I caught up a couple of handsfull of gold and turned on my heel. But with a sudden cry I stopped. For as I turned, I glanced across the table to his opponent, and I saw his face change all in a moment to a strangely grey and livid colour. And to make the sight yet more ghastly, he still sat bolt upright in his chair, without a gesture, without a motion, a figure of marble, save that his eyes still burned steadily beneath his brows.

  “Great God!” I cried. “He is dying.”

  “It is the morning,” he said in a quiet voice, which had yet a very thrilling resonance, and it flashed across me with a singular uneasiness that this was the first time that he had spoken during all those hours.

  I turned towards the window, which was behind my cousin’s chair. Through a chink of the curtains a pale beam of twilight streamed full on to the youth’s face. So long as I had stood by Elmscott’s side, my back had intercepted it; but as I moved away I had uncovered the window, and it was the grey light streaming from it which had given to him a complexion of so deathly and ashen a colour. I flung the curtains apart, and the chill morning flooded the room. One shiver ran through the company like a breeze through a group of aspens, and it seemed to me that on the instant every one had grown old. The heavy gildings, the yellow glare of the candles, the gaudy hangings about the walls, seen in that pitiless light, appeared inexpressibly pretentious and vulgar; and the gentlemen with their leaden cheeks, their disordered perukes, and the soiled finery of their laces and ruffles, no more than the room’s fitting complement. A sickening qualm of disgust shot through me; the very air seemed to have grown acrid and stale; and yet, in spite of all I stayed — to my shame be it said, I stayed. However, I paid for the fault — ay, ten times over, in the years that were to come. For as I halted at the door to make my bow — my fingers were on the very handle — I perceived Lord Elmscott with one foot upon his chair, and the buckles in his hand. My presentiment came back to me with the conviction of a creed. I knew — I knew that if he failed to add those jewels to his stake, he would leave the coffeehouse as empty a beggar as when I entered it. I strode back across the room, took them from his hand, and laid them on the table. For a moment Elmscott stared at me in astonishment. Then I must think he read my superstition in my looks, for he said, clapping me on the back:

  “You will make a gambler yet, Morrice,” and he sat him down on his chair. I took my former stand beside him.

  “You will stay, Mr. Buckler?” asked his opponent.

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “Then,” he continued, in the same even voice, “I have a plan in my head which I fancy will best suit the purposes of the three of us. Lord Elmscott is naturally anxious to follow his luck; you, Mr. Buckler, have overstayed your time; and as for me — well, it is now Wednesday morning, and a damned dirty morning, too, if I may judge from the countenances of my friends. We have sat playing here since six by the clock on Monday night, and I am weary. My bed calls for me. I propose then that we settle the bout with two casts of the dice. On the first throw I will stake your house in Monmouth Square against the money you have before you. If I win there’s an end. If you win, I will set the manor of Silverdale against your London house and your previous stake.”

  A complete silence followed upon his words. Even Lord Elmscott was taken aback by the magnitude of the stakes. The youth’s proposal gained, moreover, on the mind by contrast with his tone of tired indifference. He seemed the least occupied of all that company.

  “I trust you will accept,” he continued, speaking to my cousin with courteous gentleness. “As I have said, I am very tired. Luck is on your side, and, if I may be permitted to add, the advantage of the stakes.”

  Elmscott glanced at me, paused for a second, and then, with a forced laugh:

  “Very well; so be it,” he said. The dice were brought; he rattled them vigorously, and flung them down.

  “Four!” cried one of the gentlemen.

  “Damn!” said my cousin, and he mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. His antagonist picked up the dice with inimitable nonchalance, barely shook them in the cup, and let them roll idly out on to the table.

  “Three!”

  Elmscott heaved a sigh of relief. The other stretched his arms above his head and yawned.

  “’Tis a noble house, your house in Monmouth Square,” he remarked.

  At the second throw, Elmscott discovered a most nervous anxiety. He held the cup so long in his hand that I feared he would lose the courage to complete the game. I felt, in truth, a personal shame at his indecision, and I gazed around with the full expectation of seeing a like feeling expressed upon the features of those who watched. But they wore one common look of strained expectancy. At last Elmscott threw.

  “Nine!” cried one, and a low murmur of voices buzzed for an instant and suddenly ceased as the other took up the dice.

  “Two!”

  Both players rose as with one motion. Elmscott tossed down his throat the brandy in his tumbler — it had stood by his side untasted since the early part of the night — and then turned to me with an almost hysterical outburst.

  “One moment.”

  It was the youth who spoke, and his voice rang loud and strong. His weariness had slipped from him like a mask. He bent across the table and stretched out his arm, with his forefinger pointing at my cousin.

  “I will play you one more bout, Lord Elmscott. Against all that you have won back from me to-night — the money, your house, your estate — I will pit my docks in the city of Bristol. But I claim one condition,” and he glanced at me and paused.

  “If it affects my cousin’s presence — —” Elmscott began.

  “It does not,” the other interrupted. “’Tis a trivial condition — a whim of mine, a mere whim.”

  “What is it, then?” I asked, for in some unaccountable way I was much disquieted by his change of manner, and dreaded the event of his proposal.

  “That while your cousin throws you hold his buckles in your hands.”

  It were impossible to describe the effect which this extraordinary request produced. At any other time it would have seemed no more than laughable. But after these long hours of play we were all tinder to a spark of superstition. Nothing seemed too whimsical for belief. Luck had proved so tricksy a sprite that the most trivial object might well take its fancy and overset the balance of its favours. The fierce vehemence of the speaker, besides, breaking thus unexpectedly through a crust of equanimity, carried conviction past the porches of the ears. So each man hung upon Elmscott’s answer as upon the arbitrament of his own fortune.

  For myself, I took a quick step towards my cousin; but the youth shot a glance of such imperious menace at me that I stopped shamefaced like a faulty schoolboy. However, Elmscott caught my movement and, I think, the look which arrested me.

  “Not to-day,” he said, “if you will pardon me. I am over-tired myself, and would fain keep to our bargain.” Thereupon he came over to me. “Now, Morrice,” he exclaimed, “it is your turn. You have the money. What else d’ye lack? What else d’ye lack?”

  “I need the swiftest horse in your stables,” I replied.

  Elmscott burst into a laugh.

  “You shall have it — the swiftest horse in my stables. You shall e’en take it as a gift. Only I fear ‘twill leave your desires unsatisfied.” And he chuckled again.

  “Then,” I replied, with some severity, for in truth his merriment struck me as ill-conditioned, “then I shall take the liberty of leaving it
behind at the first post on the Bristol Road.”

  “The Bristol Road?” interposed the youth. “You journey to Bristol?”

  I merely bowed assent, for I was in no mood to disclose my purpose to that company, and caught up my hat; but he gently took my arm and drew me into the window.

  “Mr. Buckler,” he said, gazing at me the while with quiet eyes, “Fortune has brought us into an odd conjunction this night. I have so much of the gambler within me as to believe that she will repeat the trick, and I hope for my revenge.”

  He held out his hand courteously. I could not but take it. For a moment we stood with clasped hands, and I felt mine tremble within his.

  “Ah!” he said, smiling curiously, “you believe so, too.” And he made me a bow and turned back into the room.

  I remained where he left me, gazing blindly out of the window; for the shadow of a great trouble had fallen across my spirit. His words and the concise certainty of his tone had been the perfect voicing of my own forebodings. I did indeed believe that Fortune would some day pit us in a fresh antagonism; that somewhere in the future she had already set up the lists, and that clasp of the hands I felt to be our bond and surety that we would keep faith with her and answer to our names.

  “Morrice,” said Elmscott at my elbow, and I started like one waked from his sleep, “we’ll go saddle your horse.”

  And he laughed to himself again as though savouring a jest. He slipped an arm through mine and walked to the door.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “Marston, au revoir!” And with a twirl of his hat, he stepped into the outer room. His servant was sleeping upon a bench, and he woke him up and bade him fetch the money and follow home.

  The morning was cold, and we set off at a brisk pace towards Monmouth Square, Elmscott chatting loudly the while, with ever and again, I thought, a covert laugh at me.

  I only pressed on the harder. It was not merely that I was vexed by his quizzing demeanour; but the moment I was free from that tawdry hell, and began to breathe fresh air in place of the heavy reek of perfumes and wine, the fulness of my disloyalty rolled in upon my conscience, so that Elmscott’s idle talk made me sicken with repulsion; for he babbled ever about cards and dice and the feminine caprice of luck.