MRS. CAREY'S HUSBAND.
Oswald Carey's father had just died and left him a great fortune made
upon the Stock Exchange when the son met his wife for the first time at
the country-house of his father's old partner and his then
executor--Benjamin Bugbee. "Young Croesus," as he was then familiarly
called, fell head over heels in love with the beautiful daughter of the
penniless and disestablished clergyman, and during the short space of
his courtship and honeymoon he forgot the one thing which had previously
absorbed his life--the gaming-table. If his wife had been a good woman,
or if she had loved him, he might have stayed his hand from baccarat.
But Eleanor had married him simply because he was rich and good-natured
and she was ambitious and poor; and after their marriage she plunged
into the gayest of fashionable society.
At first Carey yawned in the anterooms of balls, waiting for his
beautiful wife, but after a while he tired of this; and, letting her go
into the world alone, he betook himself to the Turf and Jockey Club,
where the play ran very high, for there adventurers and gamesters of all
nations congregated--the rich Russian met his great rival wheat-grower
of America, and the price of great farms changed hands at poker or at
baccarat. The hawks who infested the club, eager for the quarry,
speedily settled upon such a plump pigeon as Carey, and while his wife
wore his diamonds at gay balls, night after night, he sat over the green
cloth, throwing away his youth and his fortune to the harpies. It began
to be whispered in a few years that "Young Croesus," the beauty's
husband, was cleaned out. The hawks found his I. O. U.'s were
unredeemed, and his gorgeous establishment in Mayfair was closed. By
some influence Carey succeeded in getting an appointment as a clerk in
the Stamp and Sealing Wax Office, while his wife went on in her career
as a "beauty."
At the office Carey matched for half-crowns with his fellow-clerks, read
the sporting news, and busied himself in computations, in connection
with his "system" by which he should infallibly win at cards. Little by
little his system absorbed the wrecks left to him of his fortune; and he
had nothing to live upon but his salary and the money which his wife
allowed him.
At last his habits lost him his place under government.
He had borrowed money from every man in the office, and was in the habit
of drinking brandy and soda during hours, and of smoking upon the big
leather sofa until the janitor, at dark, shook him to his senses. After
this he spent all his time at the Turf and Jockey, for he still kept his
name at this unsavory institution; he led much the same life there as at
the government office, save that the club servants let him sleep on the
sofa until morning if he chose, and he earned no pay while he slumbered.
As a counterbalance, the brandy and soda was cheaper and better than
that which had been sent to him from the public house opposite to the
Stamp and Sealing Wax, and he had all his time to devote to his system,
while in the office he had occasionally a little writing to do.
Mrs. Carey had been living in her husband's lodging for three weeks
after her interview with the King, in the night before Aldershot. All
the world was wild over the attempted revolution, the trial of the state
prisoners and the escape of the King to France--all the world but Oswald
Carey, who gave no thought to what passed on around him; he made deep
calculations upon his "system" at the club between his draughts of "B.
and S.," and played with other wrecked gamesters, until he lost his
ready money, for his "system" worked to a charm conversely--his
opponents infallibly won. Early in the morning he would stumble home to
his lodgings cursing his luck.
On the morning of his wife's departure to join the King in France, she
had informed him, as he sat at the breakfast-table, holding his aching
head in one hand, that she was going to Paris to buy some new gowns, and
that she would not be back for some time, but that during her absence
her bankers would pay him $100 every week. He begged for more money, but
his request was refused, and his wife coldly shook hands with him, and
retired to her room to superintend her maid's packing. Oswald believed
her story, and, finding that he could eat no breakfast, put on his top
coat and crawled to the Turf and Jockey for a "pick-me-up." Fortified by
this, he made up his mind that, since his "system" had failed because he
had had always too small a capital to work with, he would allow his
allowance to roll up at the bank for three weeks before he began play
again.
Meanwhile he resolved to keep sober, and he spent his time trying to
perfect his "system" and watching the other players at the club. His
burning ambition was to win back his fortune from the sharpers who had
fleeced him. He cursed himself all the while for his folly in playing
before he had learned the game. He knew the game now well enough, he
flattered himself; all day long he pondered on the combinations, and at
night myriads of cards floated through his head. He dreamed that he held
the bank, and that his old adversaries sat with pale faces opposite to
him aghast at their losses.
One evening in April he appeared at the club and changed his accumulated
dollars into chips. Fortune favored him that evening; his perfected
"system" worked the right way. He walked home early the next morning,
exhilarated and happy, with his pockets stuffed with bank-notes. He
smoothed out and counted the crumpled bills when he arrived at his
lodgings, and found that his pile had grown to $10,000, and for some
days his dreams of success were fulfilled, and he was "cock of the walk"
at the Turf and Jockey. He ordered champagne recklessly at dinner for
the other men, though he drank little himself.
He even wrote a little note to his wife in Paris, inclosing a
thousand-dollar bank-note to buy some bonnets and a gown.
"Nell will be surprised," he had said to himself, as he slipped the
notes into the envelope. "By gad, when I get all my money back, I shall
cut all this, and we will go to America on a ranch. Poor Nell! I haven't
treated her right. I fear I have made a dreadful mess of it all."
He went to the gaming-table that evening with a light heart, and with
other thoughts than his "system" in his mind--thoughts which had not
been his for years.
It happened that a young Oxford undergraduate was at the table, and the
young fellow had drank freely and had consumed a great deal of the
"Golden Boy," as he affectionately termed the club champagne. As a
consequence of these libations and of his utter ignorance of the game,
he played recklessly, and won from the beginning, although he was
surrounded by the most astute players in England. Poor Carey's cherished
"system" was powerless against the boy's absurd play and tremendous run
of luck, and his pile of chips melted away like snow in April, until he
had not a dollar left. He rushed down to the office of the club to get
the letter to his wife which he had put in the box, but the mail had
been sent away. He succeeded in borrowing $50 upon his watch from the
club steward, and returned to the table. But it was of no use; this soon
followed the rest of his money. There were but two rules at the Turf and
Jockey--"no I. O. U.'s were allowed at the card-table, and no one was
permitted, under pain of expulsion from the club, to borrow or lend
money." Carey had no alternative but to sit by the gaming-table and
watch the play. He slept at the club on the sofa that night, and looked
on at the play all the next day, drinking brandy all the while. The
Oxford boy had left the club late in the night before, carrying most of
the ready money of the establishment with him, and the broken gamblers
played for but small stakes. The excitement of his losses and the
constant draughts of brandy had made Carey wild and nervous. He paced to
and fro in the billiard-room, racking his fuddled brain to find out a
way for getting at ready money. His friends had long since ceased
lending to him; his wife had repeatedly told him that she would not
supply him with money to gamble with. Finally he remembered that she
had told him that she had called upon the President to induce that wise
ruler to restore him to his place in the Stamp and Sealing Wax. If he
could only get that task, he would in a few weeks, with his hundred
dollars' allowance a week and his salary, have a considerable sum to
give his system another chance, taking care to avoid tipsy greenhorns
this time. He felt too rickety to face the President until he had drank
several more glasses of brandy. This done, he hailed a cab and drove
straight to Buckingham Palace. Immediately he sent in his name by the
policeman; he was shown into the President's private room, where the
ruler of England was seated at a large desk looking over a heap of
official papers. The President looked sharply and inquiringly at him.
"Mr. Oswald Carey?" he inquired, looking at the card which he held
between his thumb and forefinger.
"Yes, sir," stammered Carey, who felt his hand shaking violently as he
leaned against the President's desk. "I have come to shee about my
reshtoration to Samp and Stealing-Wax Office--I beg pardon, I mean Steal
and Sampling-Wax Office." He twirled the waxed end of his mustache with
a trembling hand, and looked uneasily at the President, feeling that he
had taken more brandy than was necessary to settle his nerves.
The President said nothing, but smiled a little scornfully. Nothing gave
Bagshaw such keen delight as to see a gentleman, even such a wreck of a
gentleman as Carey, in a base position.
"Mrs. Carey spoke to you about it some t-time ago, I be-believe,"
stammered Carey, who was sorry that he had come there by this time. "I
was a useful public servant."
The President smiled grimly.
"We are under great obligations to Mrs. Oswald Carey," he said, "and I
shall see that you are restored to your position, only you must not be
so obstinate about your assessments in the future, as there is no
Legitimate party now, thanks to your beautiful wife."
"Thanks to my beautiful wife! What do you mean, sir?" blurted Carey,
staggering over toward the President and resting upon his two hands on
the desk. "Thanks to my beautiful wife!"
"Come, come, sir," said the President, "be seated. You, of course, know
what I mean. Your wife never spoke to me about restoring you to your
office. She said that she would some time ask a favor of me in return
for the information which she gave me. You have come to claim that
return. I will keep my promise to her. However, if you do not leave
brandy alone, the office will not do you much good."
"Damn your office," cried Carey, who had been a gentleman and a man of
honor before the passion for gambling had seized upon him. Once he had
dreamed of a home, of children who should be proud to own him as their
father, and he still loved his wife. "What information did Mrs. Carey
give you?"
Carey's hands nervously clutched a heavy bronze inkstand, which lay on
the table in front of the President.
"The information which led to the suppression of the Royalist outbreak
at Aldershot. Mrs. Carey is a government spy and informer," answered
Bagshaw brutally. Then he tried to rise from his chair, for he saw a
threatening look in Carey's eye.
He was too late, for Carey, crying, "You lie, you hound!" lifted up the
heavy inkstand which his hands had been mechanically clutching, and
hurled it at the President's bald head.
The missile stunned the President and cut a great gash in his head, and
he fell senseless forward on the desk, a stream of mingled ink and blood
dripping from his forehead upon the papers.
Carey looked at him disdainfully for a moment, and laughed derisively.
The policeman at the door said nothing to him as he went out; there had
been no noise from the private room.
Then he walked a little hurriedly to his cab and told the cabman to
drive to the club.
On the way there he trembled violently with rage as he thought of what
the President had said to him of his wife, but chuckled when he thought
of the revenge which he had taken.
"He will wake up with a cursed headache," Carey said to himself, "and if
he wishes to arrest me, he can do it. Even the President cannot slander
a man's wife."
He was quite sober now, and had forgotten all about his "system." He
thought of his wife, and wondered if she was pleased at the little
present which he had sent to her in Paris; he thought of the days of his
early love for her, when she had seemed to him a goddess; and this
scoundrel had called her, his Eleanor, a spy, and asserted that he had
come to claim the reward of her treachery. At the club he noticed that
all the men whispered to each other and smiled. When he entered the
smoking-room a group were eagerly reading the latest news, which rolled
in over the "ticker" in the corner. He supposed that the other fellows
were making merry over his losses, and, with a hard laugh, he settled
into an easy-chair and lighted a cigar. It pleased him to think of the
President's bald head smeared with blood and ink. He felt himself more
of a man than he had for years. Just then a waiter brought him a letter
upon a tray. It was his letter to his wife in Paris, into which he had
slipped the bank-notes. Her bankers had returned it to him, and it was
marked "Not found." He thrust it into his pocket, and wondered where
Eleanor might be, and why he had not heard from her all this time. He
remembered now that she had been gone a long time; he had been so
absorbed in his play that he had not thought much about it before.
Looking up, he saw that the other men were all clustered around the
"ticker," and that one of them was reading a despatch, and the others
listened attentively, every now and then glancing over to him. He could
not imagine at first what they were after; then it occurred to him that
they were sending the news of his assault upon the President.
"What is it all about, you fellows?" he asked, walking over to them; "it
must be damned amusing!" The men scattered as he approached, and left
the "ticker" for his use, looking uneasily at him as he lifted the white
tape in his hand and read the despatch which had so much interested
them.
It was from Boston, U. S. A., telling of the arrival of the steamer with
King George the Fifth and Mrs. Oswald Carey on board. The despatch
darkly hinted that she had been the cause of the King's failure to meet
his adherents at Aldershot.
The room grew dark to Carey, and seemed to whir around him; the other
men saw his face grow deadly white and his lips close firmly. He did
not seem to notice them, but he pulled his hat over his eyes and
staggered from the room.
"God!" said one of the men. "I believe that Carey was the only man in
England who didn't know what a woman his wife was. What do you suppose
he will do?"
"Heaven knows," said a second. "But, I say, boys, let's have a drink."
Carey found in the office that there was time to catch the next mail
steamer from Liverpool for Boston if he rushed to the next train.
"The cursed scoundrel spoke the truth," he said to himself, "but I hope
that I have crushed his head, just the same; and now I shall be in
America in five days--and then--" He looked out at the landscape
whirling by the windows of the railway carriage and set his teeth.