Mr. Charles Lovely walked back with Mr. Antony Clare to the _Blue Boar_,
and joined Mr. Francis Vernon in the Coffee Room.
The latter noticed that Clare frowned slightly when he saw him, and
explained, almost apologetically, that he had moved thither from his
lodgings in the Crescent. Charles was delighted and immediately proposed
a game of hazard.
"You'll play, Tony?" he said eagerly.
"Not I," his friend answered. "I'm too sleepy, for 'tis confoundedly
fatiguing to be on such polite behaviour for so long."
"That's true indeed," cried Charles, "and therefore we need recreation
the more." With this he gave a tug at the bell-pull of flowery chintz,
and presently Mr. Daish who had sent the waiters to bed, came yawning to
answer the summons.
"Daish, bring two bottles of Burgundy like the fine fellow and good
landlord that you are."
"Yes, Mr. Lovely, certainly, your honour, but I hope your honour will be
careful with the bottles; it would be a terrible thing for the house if
the watch was murdered as they nearly was twice over last week," said
Mr. Daish, crumpling into obsequiousness at the impudence of his
request, and retreating sidelong from the room.
Mr. Clare, seeing that it was useless to argue Charles out of his
determination, took a seat by the fire.
"Egad," said Lovely, "what a jealous dog it is, he won't play, but can't
bear to go to bed." Clare gave the fire a meditative poke.
"What shall it be, Mr. Vernon? Ecarte?"
"With pleasure."
"Or picket?"
"As you will."
"Why, then, picket, and if we find we grow too sleepy to count our
sequences, we shall, at any rate, not be too sleepy to trickle dice out
of a box, eh?"
Charles turned with these words to take some unbroken paquets of playing
cards from a small mahogany cabinet hanging against the wall. The
picture presented was a friendly one as the two men seated themselves at
the card table. The fire was burning brightly and rosy shadows flickered
over the ceiling. The curtains were close drawn and the ample flowers of
their pattern seemed to retain somehow the warmth and the light. By the
side of the grate sat Tony in a high grandfather's chair. He had taken
off his wig and was staring meditatively at the crisp curls, as it
reposed on his knee. The buckles of his shoes spat tiny glints of
flame--red, blue and green. Presently he leaned across to a small
bookshelf and took down some dry inn volume, but the print danced in the
fire-light and very soon he was dozing peacefully, while his wig slipped
to the ground and became a pleasant couch for a large tabby cat to purr
away comfortable hours.
At the table sat Vernon and Lovely face to face, and the green baize
made a prim battlefield for the debonair antagonists. It was a
meadow-fight viewed from towering Olympus. Here was pasture profitable
enough to some: to others barren as the unharvested sea. No crescent
moon lighted it, no sun parched the fresh greenery whose four tall
candles flickered only to chamber tempests, storms of tapestry, keyhole
zephyrs. At either end were ranged round guineas in wicked little heaps,
and along the borders stood serried packs of cards, shorn of their
meaner numbers as becomes the apparelled duel of picket. These had been
flung contemptuously on to the floor and the survivors lay face
downwards on the table with a new and alluring slimness. Their backs
were so innocent--mere festoons of flowers and bouquets of rosebuds;
yet their very innocence only served to enhance the red and black
determination of their faces. How the royal cards reflected in their
appearance the temper of their courts. How sombre-suited went the Queen
of Spades, how pensive seemed her consort, while the savage Ace was hung
with garlands of mourning and sable flowers of Proserpine. The Queen of
Diamonds looked harassed; the Knave had a lean eye and the King himself
seemed peaked and careworn. The Club Court was a swarthy and more brutal
counterpart of the gay Hearts, and the gay Hearts, with ripe dewy
mouths, had yet a certain sly sensuality that bred distrust.
Then the tournament began. The stacked guineas sprawled in golden
disarray and dwindled and swelled and tinkled to the tune of the game.
Charles was winning. Five times he had made the grand Repique, five
times the gallant Pique, thrice Capote had taken captive twelve hostile
cards to be redeemed with rippling guineas. Ace, King, Queen, Knave, Ten
came in sequences as month succeeds to month. His hands were palaces for
the abode of many courtiers. They were picture galleries of the oldest
kings and queens in Europe. If he threw away Spades, he took up the red
Hearts for which he longed. If he discarded Diamonds, he gained a lusty
host of Clubs to serve his purpose.
At last Vernon, who had lost steadily for a pair of hours--six games at
an average price of thirty guineas a game--declared he would fight no
longer against his adversary's good fortune. "Moreover," he added, "so
much counting has set my brain in a whirl."
"As you will," said Charles, who would have liked to continue with
picket, but could not refuse to give his opponent an opportunity to
avenge himself at another game.
So they turned to Ecarte.
And now his fortune deserted him. Each time Vernon dealt he turned up a
King, and Charles began to dread their florid appearance, as some
ambitious minister dreads the veering of his master's favour. Those
kings who had hitherto been numbered in his hands in fours and threes,
those puppet kings, had won a new dignity from the only game which
accords them their rightful place at the head of the pack; each one had
acquired, it seemed, a personality that threatened him. Time after time
were his Jeux de Regle defeated by the most astonishing combinations of
ill luck.
So many times did those confounded monarchs affront him face upwards on
the serene baize that he began to suspect Vernon of being a sort of
gamester Warwick, a maker and unmaker of kings. Indeed, he went so far
as to watch his deals rather narrowly and, being unable to detect
anything amiss, became heartily ashamed of his suspicions.
It was now five o'clock of a chill morning; the fire had sunk into
ashes, and dawn would soon shoot her icy arrows into the slow-flying
bulk of night.
Clare was still asleep in the armchair, but presently the stealthy cold
waked him and he jumped up; the candles were guttering away; the
burgundy was drunk; the room smelt stale.
"Come to bed, Charles," he cried out.
Lovely, who had lost at Ecarte considerably more than he had won at
Picket, drew back the curtains for answer. The dawn was in the East.
He blew out the candles one after another, and in the unreal morning
twilight, the aftermath of smoke curled like an outworn pleasure into
extinction save of a foul odour.
"We have still a grey hour for the dice," said Charles.
"As you will," replied Vernon.
The dice boxes were brought out, and the ivory cubes began to dance;
strange fancies assailed Clare as he watched the gamesters; morbid
imaginations, caught from the chilly atmosphere, froze his reason, and
the rattle of the dice acquired a macabre significance. They clicked
like the hoofs of horses on an iron-bound road. Then they were the
castanets of a sinister dance. Soon they were the shaken ribs of Death,
the king of dancers, and at the end no more than a baby's rattle,
insistent, importunate, maddening.
Charles was winning again.
The various faces of the cubes took fantastick likenesses. _Two_ was a
patched beauty, leaden-eyed, pallid, pleasure-doomed. _Five_ was a
skewbald cat and _four_ a plum cake. Six was a ladder to some evil
house. _Three_ was a necklace of jet, _one_ a Pierrot's velvet eye.
Charles was still winning.
The irresponsibleness of the dice annoyed Clare. They tumbled and rolled
so gaily and it was mortifying to see a man enslaved by acrobats of
ivory. The bodies, too, with their absurd waists were like women whom
extravagant stays had driven to vomit sweetmeats.
Charles had won. The casement swung open in the sudden winds of dawn;
the room was tinted with the cold colours of sunrise. The three men
stumbled upstairs disdainful of the morning's gold. A guinea slipped
from Lovely's pocket and tinkled down to the foot of the stairs to
reward the little scullery-maid who was even now yawning on her pallet
upstairs.
A thrush tuned his melodies against the swift coming of spring, and the
purple leaf-buds welcomed the sun.
_Chapter the Eleventh_