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 shiftiness, 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 embarrassment--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 écarté 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 assure 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 assure you that I would infinitely rather this
paper remained in _your_ keeping than in _mine_. I'm a careless fellow
about documents,” 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.”
“Certainly; most willingly. I don't know that any one has a right to
question me on the matter.”
“I never said he had. I only warned you how people will talk, and how
necessary it is to be prepared to stifle a scandal even before it has
flared out.”
“It shall be cared for. I'll do exactly as you wish,” said Cave, who
was too much flurried to know what was asked of him, and to what he was
pledged.
“I'm glad this is off my mind,” said Sewell, with a long sigh of relief.
“I lay awake half the night thinking of it; for there are scores of
fellows who are not of your stamp, and who would be for submitting these
documents to their lawyer, and asking, Heaven knows, what this affair
related to. Now I tell you frankly, I 'd have given no explanations. He
who gave that bond is, as I know, a consummate rascal, and has robbed
me--that is, my wife--out of two-thirds of her fortune; but _my_ hands
are tied regarding him. I could n't touch him, except he should try to
take my life,--a thing, by the way, he is quite capable of. Old Dillon,
my wife's father, believed him to be the best and truest of men, and my
wife inherited this belief, even in the face of all the injuries he had
worked us. She went on saying, 'My father always said, “Trust Fossy:
there's at least one man in the world that will never deceive you.'””
“What was the name you said?” asked Cave, quickly.
“Oh, only a nickname. I don't want to mention his name. I have sealed up
the bond, with this superscription,--'Colonel Sewell's bond.' I did this
believing you would not question me farther; but if you desire to read
it over, I 'll break the envelope at once.”
“No, no; nothing of the kind. Leave it just as it is.”
“So that,” said Sewell, pursuing his former line of thought, “this man
not alone defrauded me, but he sowed dissension between me and my wife.
Her faith is shaken in him, I have no doubt, but she 'll not confess it.
Like a genuine woman, she will persist in asserting the convictions
she has long ceased to be held by, and quote this stupid letter of her
father in the face of every fact.
“I ought not to have got into these things,” said Sewell, as he walked
impatiently down the room. “These family bedevilments should be kept
from one's friends; but the murder is out now, and you can see how
I stand--and see besides, that if I am not always able to control my
temper, a friend might find an excuse for me.”
Cave gave a kindly nod of assent to this, not wishing, even by a word,
to increase the painful embarrassment of the scene.
“Heigh ho!” cried Sewell, throwing himself down in a chair, “there's one
care off my heart, at least! I can remember a time when a night's bad
luck would n't have cost me five minutes of annoyance; but nowadays
I have got it so hot and so heavy from fortune, I begin not to know
myself.” Then, with a sudden change of tone, he added: “When are you
coming out to us again? Shall we say Tuesday?”
“We are to be inspected on Tuesday. Trafford writes me that he is coming
over with General Halkett,--whom, by the way, he calls a Tartar,--and
says, 'If the Sewells are within hail, say a kind word to them on my
part.'”
“A good sort of fellow, Trafford,” said Sewell, carelessly.
“An excellent fellow,--no better living!”
“A very wide-awake one too,” said Sewell, with one eye closed, and a
look of intense cunning.
“I never thought so. It is, to my notion, to the want of that faculty he
owes every embarrassment he has ever suffered. He is unsuspecting to a
fault.”
“It's not the way _I_ read him; though, perhaps, I think as well of him
as _you_ do. I 'd say that for his years he is one of the very shrewdest
young fellows I ever met.”
“You astonish me! May I ask if you know him well?”
“Our acquaintance is not of very old date, but we saw a good deal of
each other at the Cape. We rode out frequently, dined, played, and
conversed freely together; and the impression he made upon me was that
every sharp lesson the world had given him he 'd pay back one day or
other with a compound interest.”
“I hope not,--I fervently hope not!” cried Cave. “I had rather hear
to-morrow that he had been duped and cheated out of half his fortune
than learn he had done one act that savored of the--the--” He stopped,
unable to finish, for he could not hit upon the word that might be
strong enough for his meaning, and yet not imply an offence.
“Say blackleg. Is n't that what you want? There's my wife's pony chaise.
I 'll get a seat back to the Nest. Goodbye, Cave. If Wednesday is open,
give it to us, and tell Trafford I'd be glad to see him.”
Cave sat down as the door closed after the other, and tried to recall
his thoughts to something like order. What manner of man was that who
had just left him? It was evidently a very mixed nature. Was it the good
or the evil that predominated? Was the unscrupulous tone he displayed
the result of a spirit of tolerance, or was it the easy indifference of
one who trusted nothing,--believed nothing?
Was it possible his estimate of Trafford could be correct? and
could this seemingly generous and open manner cover a nature cold,
calculating, and treacherous? No, no. _That_ he felt to be totally out
of the question.
He thought long and intently over the matter, but to no end; and as he
arose to deposit the papers left by Sewell in his writing-desk, he felt
as unsettled and undecided as when he started on the inquiry.