MOUNTJOY SCARBOROUGH GOES TO BUSTON.
Mr. Grey returned to London after staying but one night, having received
fresh instructions as to the will. The will was to be prepared at once,
and Mr. Barry was to bring it down for execution. "Shall I not inform
Augustus?" asked Mr. Grey.
But this did not suit with Mr. Scarborough's views of revenge. "I think
not. I would do by him whatever honesty requires; but I have never told
him that I mean to leave him anything. Of course he knows that he is to
have the estate. He is revelling in the future poverty of poor Mountjoy.
He turned him out of his house just now because Mountjoy would not obey
him by going to--Brazil. He would turn him out of this house if he could
because I won't at once go--to the devil. He is something overmasterful,
is Master Augustus, and a rub or two will do him good. I'd rather you
wouldn't tell him, if you please." Then Mr. Grey departed, without
making any promise, but he determined that he would be guided by the
squire's wishes. Augustus Scarborough was not of a nature to excite very
warmly the charity of any man.
Harry remained for two or three days' shooting with Mountjoy, and once
or twice he saw the squire again. "Merton and I have managed to concoct
that letter," said the squire. "I'm afraid your uncle will find it
rather long. Is he impatient of long letters?"
"He likes long sermons."
"If anybody will listen to his reading. I think you have a deal to
answer for yourself, when you could not make so small a sacrifice to the
man to whom you were to owe everything. But he ought to look for a wife
in consequence of that crime, and not falsely allege another. If, as I
fear, he finds the wife-plan troublesome, our letter may perhaps move
him, and Mountjoy is to go down and open his eyes. Mountjoy hasn't made
any difficulty about it."
"I shall be greatly distressed--" Harry begun.
"Not at all. He must go. I like to have my own way in these little
matters. He owes you as much reparation as that, and we shall be able to
see what members of the Scarborough family you would trust the most."
Harry, during the two days, shot some hares in company with Mountjoy,
but not a word more was said about the adventure in London. Nor was the
name of Florence Mountjoy ever mentioned between the two suitors. "I'm
going to Buston, you know," Mountjoy said once.
"So your father told me."
"What sort of a fellow shall I find your uncle?"
"He's a gentleman, but not very wise." No more was said between them on
that head, but Mountjoy spoke at great length about his own brother and
his father's will.
"My father is the most singular man you ever came across."
"I think he is."
"I am not going to say a good word for him. I wouldn't let him think
that I had said a good word for him. In order to save the property he
has maligned my mother, and has cheated me and the creditors most
horribly--most infernally. That's my conviction, though Grey thinks
otherwise. I can't forgive him,--and won't; and he knows it. But after
that he is going to do the best thing he can for me. And he has begun by
making me a decent allowance again as his son. But I'm to have that only
as long as I remain here at Tretton. Of course I have been fond of
cards."
"I suppose so."
"Not a doubt of it. But I haven't touched a card now for a month nearly.
And then he is going to leave me what property he has to leave. And he
and my brother have paid off those Jews among them. I'm not a bit
obliged to my brother. He's got some game of his own which I don't quite
clearly see, and my father is doing this for me simply to spite my
brother. He'd cut down every tree upon the place if Grey would allow it.
And yet, to give Augustus the property, my father has done this gross
injustice."
"I suppose the money-lenders would have had the best of it had he not."
"That's true. They would have had it all. They had measured every yard
of it, and had got my name down for the full value. Now they're paid."
"That's a comfort."
"Nothing's a comfort. I know that they're right, and that if I got the
money into my own hand it would be gone to-morrow. I should be off to
Monte Carlo like a shot; and, of course it would go after the other.
There is but one thing would redeem me."
"What's that?"
"Never mind. We won't talk of it." Then he was silent, but Harry
Annesley knew very well that he had alluded to Florence Mountjoy.
Then Harry went, and Mountjoy was left to the companionship of Mr.
Merton, and such pleasure as he could find in a daily visit to his
father. He was, at any rate, courteous in his manner to the old man, and
abstained from those irritating speeches which Augustus had always
chosen to make. He had on one occasion during this visit told his father
what he thought about him, but this the squire had taken quite as a
compliment.
"I believe, you know, that you've done a monstrous injustice to
everybody concerned."
"I rather like doing what you call injustices."
"You have set the law at defiance."
"Well, yes; I think I have done that."
"According to my belief, it's all untrue."
"You mean about your mother. I like you for that; I do, indeed. I like
you for sticking up for your poor mother. Well, now you shall have fifty
pounds a month,--say twelve pounds ten a week,--as long as you remain at
Tretton, and you may have whom you like here, as long as they bring no
cards with them. And if you want to hunt there are horses, and if they
ain't good enough you can get others. But if you go away from Tretton
there's an end of it. It will all be stopped the next day."
Nevertheless, he did make arrangements by which Mountjoy should proceed
to Buston, stopping two nights as he went to London. "There isn't a club
he can enter," said the squire, comforting himself, "nor a Jew that will
lend him a five-pound note."
Mountjoy had told the truth when he had said that nothing was a comfort.
Though it seemed to his father and to the people around him at Tretton
that he had everything that a man could want, he had, in fact,
nothing,--nothing to satisfy him. In the first place, he was quite alive
to the misery of that decision given by the world against him, which had
been of such comfort to his father. Not a club in London would admit
him. He had been proclaimed a defaulter after such a fashion that all
his clubs had sent to him for some explanation; and as he had given
none, and had not answered their letters, his name had been crossed out
in the books of them all. He knew himself to be a man disgraced, and
when he had fled from London he had gone under the conviction that he
would certainly never return. There were the pistol and bullet as his
last assured resource; but a certain amount of good-fortune had awaited
him,--enough to save him from having recourse to their aid. His brother
had supplied him with small sums of money, and from time to time a
morsel of good luck had enabled him to gamble, not to his heart's
content, but still in some manner so as to make his life bearable. But
now he was back in his own country, and he could gamble not at all, and
hardly even see those old companions with whom he had lived. It was not
only for the card-tables that he sighed, but for the companions of the
card-table. And though he knew that he had been scratched out from the
lists of all clubs as a dishonest man, he knew also, or thought that he
knew, that he had been as honest as the best of those companions. As
long as he could by any possibility raise money he had paid it away,
and by no false trick had he ever endeavored to get it back again.
Had a little time been allowed him all would have been paid; and all had
been paid. He knew that by the rules of such institutions time could not
be granted; but still he did not feel himself to have been a dishonest
man. Yet he had been so disgraced that he could hardly venture to walk
about the streets of London in the daylight. And then there came upon
him, when he found himself alone at Tretton, an irrepressible desire for
gambling. It was as though his throat were parched with an implacable
thirst. He walked about ever meditating certain fortunate turns of the
cards; and when he had worked himself up to some realization of his old
excitement he would remember that it was all a vain and empty bubble. He
had money in his pocket, and could rush up to London if he would, and if
he did so he could, no doubt, find some coarse hell at which he could
stake it till it would be all gone; but the gates of the A---- and the
B---- and the C---- would be closed against him; and he would then be
driven to feel that he had indeed fallen into the nethermost pit. Were
he once to play at such places as his mind painted to him he could never
play at any other; and yet when the day drew nigh on which he was to go
to London, on his way to Buston, he did bethink himself where these
places were to be found. His throat was parched, and the thirst upon him
was extreme. Cards were the weapons he had used. He had played ecarte,
piquet, whist, and baccarat, with an occasional night of some foolish
game such as cribbage or vingt-et-un. Though he had always lost, he had
always played with men who had played honestly. There is much that is,
in truth, dishonest even in honest play. A man who can keep himself
sober after dinner plays with one who flusters himself with drink. The
man with a trained memory plays with him who cannot remember a card. The
cool man plays with the impetuous; the man who can hold his tongue with
him who cannot but talk; the man whose practised face will tell no
secrets with him who loses a point every rubber by his uncontrolled
grimaces. And then there is the man who knows the game, and plays with
him who knows it not at all. Of course, the cool, the collected, the
thoughtful, the practised,--they who have given up their whole souls to
the study of cards,--will play at a great advantage, which in their
calculations they do not fail to recognize. See the man standing by and
watching the table, and leaving all the bets he can on A and B as against
C and D; and, however ignorant you may be, you will soon become sure
that A and B know the game, whereas C and D are simply infants. That is
all fair and acknowledged; but looking at it from a distance, as you lie
under your apple-trees in your orchard, far from the shout of "Two by
honors," you will come to doubt the honesty of making your income after
such a fashion.
Such as it is, Mountjoy sighed for it bitterly,--sighed for it, but could
not see where it was to be found. He had a gentleman's horror of those
resorts in gin-shops, or kept by the disciples of gin-shops, where he
would surely be robbed,--which did not appal him,--but robbed in bad
company. Thinking of all this, he went up to London late in the
afternoon, and spent an uncomfortable evening in town. It was absolutely
innocent as regarded the doings of the night itself, but was terrible to
him. There was a slow drizzling rain; but not the less after dinner at
his hotel he started off to wander through the streets. With his
great-coat and his umbrella he was almost hidden; and as he passed
through Pall Mall, up St. James's Street, and along Piccadilly, he could
pause and look in at the accustomed door. He saw men entering whom he
knew, and knew that within five minutes they could be seated at their
tables. "I had an awfully heavy time of it last night," one said to
another as he went up the steps; and Mountjoy, as he heard the words,
envied the speaker. Then he passed back and went again a tour of all the
clubs. What had he done that he, like a poor Peri, should be unable to
enter the gates of all these paradises? He had now in his pocket fifty
pounds. Could he have been made absolutely certain that he would have
lost it, he would have gone into any paradise and have staked his money
with that certainty.
At last, having turned up Waterloo Place, he saw a man standing in the
door-way of one of these palaces, and he was aware at once that the man
had seen him. He was a man of such a nature that it would be impossible
that he should have seen a worse. He was a small, dry, good-looking
little fellow, with a carefully preserved mustache, and a head from the
top of which age was beginning to move the hair. He lived by cards, and
lived well. He was called Captain Vignolles, but it was only known of
him that he was a professional gambler. He probably never cheated. Men
who play at the clubs scarcely ever cheat,--there are so many with whom
they play sharp enough to discover them; and with the discovered gambler
all in this world is over. Captain Vignolles never cheated; but he found
that an obedience to those little rules which I have named above stood
him well in lieu of cheating. He was not known to have any particular
income, but he was known to live on the best of everything as far as
club life was concerned.
He immediately followed Mountjoy down into the street and greeted him.
"Captain Scarborough as I am a living man!"
"Well, Vignolles; how are you?"
"And so you have come back once more to the land of the living! I was
awfully sorry for you, and think that they treated you uncommon harshly.
As you've paid your money, of course they'll let you in again." In
answer to this, Mountjoy had very little to say: but the interview ended
by his accepting an invitation from Captain Vignolles to supper for the
following evening. If Captain Scarborough would come at eleven o'clock
Captain Vignolles would ask a few fellows to meet him, and they would
have--just a little rubber of whist. Mountjoy knew well the nature of
the man who asked him, and understood perfectly what would be the
result; but there thrilled through his bosom, as he accepted the
invitation, a sense of joy which he could himself hardly understand.
On the following morning Mountjoy was up, for him, very early, and
taking a return ticket went down to Buston. He had written to Mr.
Prosper, sending his compliments, and saying that he would do himself
the honor of calling at a certain hour.
At the hour named he drew up at Buston Hall in a fly from Buntingford
Station, and was told by Matthew, the old butler, that his master was at
home. If Captain Mountjoy would step into the drawing-room Mr. Prosper
should be informed. Mountjoy did as he was bidden, and after half an
hour he was joined by Mr. Prosper. "You have received a letter from my
father," he began by saying.
"A very long letter," said the Squire of Buston.
"I dare say; I did not see it, and have in fact very little to say as to
its contents. I do not know, indeed, what they were."
"The letter refers to my nephew, Mr. Henry Annesley."
"I suppose so. What I have to say refers to Mr. Henry Annesley also."
"You are kind,--very kind."
"I don't know about that; but I have come altogether at my father's
instance, and I think, indeed, that, in fairness, I ought to tell you
the truth as to what took place between me and your nephew."
"You are very good; but your father has already given me his
account,--and I suppose yours."
"I don't know what my father may have done, but I think that you ought
to desire to hear from my lips an account of the transaction. An untrue
account has been told to you."
"I have heard it all from your own brother."
"An untrue account has been told to you. I attacked your nephew."
"What made you do that?" asked the squire.
"That has nothing to do with it; but I did."
"I understood all that before."
"But you didn't understand that Mr. Annesley behaved perfectly well in
all that occurred."
"Did he tell a lie about it afterward?"
"My brother no doubt lured him on to make an untrue statement."
"A lie!"
"You may call it so if you will. If you think that Augustus was to have
it all his own way, I disagree with you altogether. In point of fact,
your nephew behaved through the whole of that matter as well as a man
could do. Practically, he told no lie at all. He did just what a man
ought to do, and anything that you have heard to the contrary is
calumnious and false. As I am told that you have been led by my
brother's statement to disinherit your nephew--"
"I have done nothing of the kind."
"I am very glad to hear it. He has not, at any rate, deserved it; and I
have felt it to be my duty to come and tell you."
Then Mountjoy retired, not without hospitality having been coldly
offered by Mr. Prosper, and went back to Buntingford and to London. Now
at last would come, he said to himself through the whole afternoon, now
at last would come a repetition of those joys for which his very soul
had sighed so eagerly.