OF JEWELS, PLATE, HORSES, DOGS, AND FAMILY PICTURES--AND CONCERNING THE
APPOINTED HOUR.
In a state little, if at all, short of distraction, Sir Henry Ashwoode
threw himself from his horse at Morley Court. That resource which he
had calculated upon with absolute certainty had totally failed him; his
last stake had been played and lost, and ruin in its most hideous
aspect stared him in the face.
Spattered from heel to head with mud--for he had ridden at a reckless
speed--with a face pale as that of a corpse, and his dress all
disordered, he entered the great old parlour, and scarcely knowing what
he did, dashed the door to with violence and bolted it. His brain swam
so that the floor seemed to heave and rock like a sea; he cast his
laced hat and his splendid peruke (the envy and admiration of half the
_petit maîtres_ in Dublin) upon the ground, and stood in the centre of
the room, with his hands clutched upon the temples of his bare, shorn
head, and his teeth set, the breathing image of despair. From this
state he was roused by some one endeavouring to open the door.
"Who's there?" he shouted, springing backward and drawing his sword, as
if he expected a troop of constables to burst in.
Whoever the party may have been, the attempt was not repeated.
"What's the matter with me--am I mad?" said Ashwoode, after a terrible
pause, and hurling his sword to the far end of the room. "Lie there.
I've let the moment pass--I might have done it--cut the Gordian knot,
and there an end of all. What brought me here?"
He stared about the room, for the first time conscious where he stood.
"Damn these pictures," he muttered; "they're all alive--everything
moves towards me." He flung himself into a chair and clasped his
fingers over his eyes. "I can't breathe--the place is suffocating. Oh,
God! I shall go mad!" He threw open one of the windows and stood
gasping at it as if he stood at the mouth of a furnace.
"Everything is hot and strange and maddening--I can't endure
this--brain and heart are bursting--it is HELL."
In a state of excitement which nearly amounted to downright insanity,
he stood at the open window. It was long before this extravagant
agitation subsided so as to allow room for thought or remembrance. At
length he closed the window, and began to pace the room from end to end
with long and heavy steps. He stopped by a pier-table, on which stood a
china bowl full of flowers, and plunging his hands into it, dashed the
water over his head and face.
"Let me think--let me think," said he. "I was not wont to be thus
overcome by reverse. Surely I can master as much as will pay that
thrice-accursed bond, if I could but collect my thoughts--there must
yet be the means of meeting it. Let _that_ be but paid, and then,
welcome ruin in any other shape. Let me see. Ay, the furniture; then
the pictures--some of them valuable--_very_ valuable; then the horses
and the dogs; and then--ay, the plate. Why, to be sure--what have I
been dreaming of?--the plate will go half-way to satisfy it; and
then--what else? Let me see. The whole thing is six thousand four
hundred and fifty pounds--what more? Is there _nothing_ more to meet
it? The plate--the furniture--the pictures--ay, idiot that I am, why
did I not think of them an hour since?--my sister's jewels--why, it's
all settled--how the devil came it that I never thought of them before?
It's very well, however, as it is--for if I had, they would have gone
long ago. Come, come, I breathe again--I have gotten my neck out of the
hemp, at all events. I'll send in for Craven this moment. He likes a
bargain, and he shall have one--before to-morrow's sun goes down, that
d----d bond shall be ashes. Mary's jewels are valued at two thousand
pounds. Well, let him take them at one thousand five hundred; and the
pictures, plate, furniture, dogs, and horses for the rest--and he has a
bargain. These jewels have saved me--bribed the hangman. What care I
how or when I die, if I but avert that. Ten to one I blow my brains out
before another month. A short life and a merry one was ever the motto
of the Ashwoodes; and as the mirth is pretty well over with me, I begin
to think it time to retire. _Satis edisti, satis bipisti, satis
lusisti, tempus est tibi abire_--what am I raving about? There's
business to be done now--to it, then--to it like a man--while we _are_
alive let us _be_ alive."
Craven liked his bargain, and engaged that the money should be duly
handed at noon next day to Sir Henry Ashwoode, who forthwith bade the
worthy attorney good-night, and wrote the following brief note to
Gordon Chancey, Esq.:--
"SIR,
"I shall call upon you to-morrow at one of the clock, if the hour
suit you, upon particular business, and shall be much obliged by
your having a _certain security_ by you, which I shall then be
prepared to redeem.
"I remain, sir, your very obedient servant,
"HENRY ASHWOODE."
"So," said Sir Henry, with a half shudder, as he folded and sealed this
missive, "I shall, at all events, escape the halter. To-morrow night,
spite of wreck and ruin, I shall sleep soundly. God knows, I want rest.
Since I wrote that name, and gave that accursed bond out of my hands,
my whole existence, waking and sleeping, has been but one abhorred and
ghastly nightmare. I would gladly give a limb to have that d----d scrap
of parchment in my hand this moment; but patience, patience--one night
more--one night only--of fevered agony and hideous dreams--one last
night--and then--once more I am my own master--my character and safety
are again in my own hands--and may I die the death, if ever I risk them
again as I have done--one night more--would--_would_ to God it were
morning!"