Every muscle in the pale, wasted face of the ruined, dying gamester quivered with fruitless agony; he opened his mouth to speak, but could not; he gasped and sobbed, and then, clutching his lank hands over his eyes and forehead as though he would fain have crushed his head to pieces, he uttered one low cry of anguish, more despairing and appalling than the loudest shriek of horror, and pa.s.sed from the room unnoticed.
"Jeffries, can you lend me fifty or a hundred pounds till to-morrow?"
said young Ashwoode, addressing a middle-aged fop who had just reeled in from an adjoining room.
"_Cuss_ me, Ashwoode, if the thing is a possibility," replied he, with a hiccough; "I have just been fairly cleaned out by Snarley and two or three others--not one guinea left--confound them all. I"ve this moment had to beg a crown to pay my chair and link-boy home; but Chancey is here; I saw him not an hour ago in his old corner."
"So he is, egad--thank you," and Ashwoode was instantly by the monied man"s side. "Chancey, I want a hundred and fifty--quickly, man, are you awake?" and so saying, he shook the lawyer roughly by the shoulder.
"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" exclaimed he, in his usual low, sleepy voice, "it"s Mr. Ashwoode, it is indeed--dear me, dear me; and can I oblige you, Mr. Ashwoode?"
"Yes; don"t I tell you I want a hundred and fifty--or stay, two hundred," said Ashwoode, impatiently. "I"ll pay you in a week or less--say to-morrow if you please it."
"Whatever sum you like, Mr. Ashwoode," rejoined he--"whatever sum or whatever date you please; I declare to G.o.d I"m uncommonly glad to do it. Oh, dear, but them dice _is_ unruly. Two hundred, you say, and a--a _week_ we"ll say, not to be pressing. Well, well, this money has luck in it, maybe. That"s a long lane that has no turn--fortune changes sides when it"s least expected. Your name here, Mr. Ashwoode."
The name was signed, the notes taken, and Ashwoode once more at the table; but alack-a-day! fortune was for once steady, and frowned with consistent obdurateness upon Henry Ashwoode. Five minutes had hardly pa.s.sed, when the two hundred pounds had made themselves wings and followed the larger sums which he had already lost. Again he had recourse to Chancey: again he found that gentleman smooth, gracious, and obliging as he could have wished. Still his luck was adverse: as fast as he drew the notes from his pocket, they were caught and whirled away in the eddy of ruin. Once more from the accommodating barrister he drew a larger sum,--still with a like result. So large and frequent were his drafts, that Chancey was obliged to go away and replenish his exhausted treasury; and still again and again, with a terrible monotony of disaster, young Ashwoode continued to lose.
At length the grey, cold light of morning streamed drearily through the c.h.i.n.ks of the window-shutters into the hot chamber of destruction and debauchery. The sounds of daily business began to make themselves heard from the streets. The wax lights were flaring in the sockets. The floor strewn with packs of cards, broken gla.s.ses, and plates, and fragments of fowls and bread, and a thousand other disgusting indications of recent riot and debauchery which need not to be mentioned. Soiled and jaded, with bloodshot eyes and haggard faces, the gamblers slunk, one by one, in spiritless exhaustion, from the scene of their distracting orgies, to rest the brain and refresh the body as best they might.
With a stunning and indistinct sense of disaster and ruin; a vague, fevered, dreamy remembrance of overwhelming calamity: a stupefying, haunting consciousness that all the clatter, and roaring, and stifling heat, and jostling, and angry words, and smooth, civil speeches of the night past, had been, somehow or other, to him fraught with fearful and tremendous agony, and delirium, and ruin--Ashwoode stalked into the street, and mechanically proceeded to the inn where his horse was stabled.
The ostler saw, by the haggard, vacant stare with which Ashwoode returned his salutation, that something had gone wrong, and, as he held the stirrup for him, he arrived at the conclusion that the young gentleman must have gotten at least a dozen duels upon his hands, to be settled, one and all, before breakfast.
The young man dashed the spurs into the high-mettled horse, and traversing the streets at a perilous speed, without well thinking or knowing whitherward he was proceeding, he found himself at length among the wild lanes and brushwood of the Royal Park, and was recalled to himself by finding his horse rearing and floundering up to his sides in a slough. Having extricated the animal, he dismounted, threw his hat beside him, and, kneeling down, bathed his head and face again and again in the water of a little brook, which ran in many a devious winding through the tangled briars and thorns. The cold, refreshing ablution, a.s.sisted by the sharp air of the morning, soon brought him to his recollection.
"The fiend himself must have been by my elbow last night," he muttered, as he stood bare-headed, in wild disorder, by the brook"s side. "I"ve lost before, and lost heavily too, but such a run, such an infernal string of ruinous losses. First, a thousand pounds gone--swallowed up in little more than an hour; and then the devil knows how much more--curse me, if I can remember _how_ much I borrowed. I am over head and ears in Chancey"s books. How shall I face my father? and how, in the fiend"s name, am I to meet my engagements? Craven will hand me no more of the money. Was I mad or drunk, to go on against such an accursed tide of bad luck?--what fury from h.e.l.l possessed me? I wish I had thrust my hand between the bars, and burnt it to the elbow, before I took the dice-box last night. What"s to be done?"--he paused-- "Yes--I _must_ do it--fate, destiny, circ.u.mstances drive me to it. I _will_ marry the woman; she can"t live very long--it"s not likely; and even if she does, what"s that to me?--the world is wide enough for us both, and once married, we need not plague one another much with our society. I must see Chancey about those d----d bills or notes: curse me, if I even know when they are payable. My brain swims like a sea.
Lady Stukely, Lady Stukely, you are a happy woman: it"s an ill wind that blows n.o.body good--I am resolved--my course is taken. First then for Morley Court, and next for the wealthy widow"s. I don"t half like the thing, but, d----n it, what other chance have I? Then away with hesitation, away with thought; fate has ordained it."
So saying, the young man donned his hat, caught the bridle of his well-trained steed, vaulted into the saddle, and was soon far on his way to Morley Court, where strange and startling tidings awaited his arrival.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE DEPARTURE OF THE PEER--THE BILLET AND THE SHATTERED MIRROR.
Never yet did day pa.s.s more disagreeably to mortal man than that whose early events we have recorded did to Lord Aspenly. His vanity and importance had suffered more mortification within the last few hours than he had ever before encountered in all the eight-and-sixty winters of his previous useful existence. And spite of the major"s a.s.surances to the contrary, he could not help feeling certain very unpleasant misgivings, as the evening approached, touching the consequences likely to follow to himself from his meditated retreat.
He resolved by the major"s advice to leave Morley Court without a formal leave-taking, or, in short, any explanatory interview whatever with Sir Richard. And for the purpose of taking his departure without obstruction or annoyance, he determined that the hour of his setting forth should be that at which the baronet was wont to retire for a time to his dressing-room, previously to appearing at supper. The note which was to announce his departure was written and sealed, and deposited in his waistcoat pocket. He felt that it supplied but a very meagre explanation of so decided a step as he was constrained to take; nevertheless it was the only explanation he had to offer. He well knew that its perusal would be followed by an explosion, and he not unwisely thought it best, under all the circ.u.mstances, to withdraw to a reasonable distance before springing the mine.
The evening closed ominously in storm and cloud; the wind was hourly rising, and distant mutterings of thunder bespoke a night of tempest.
Lord Aspenly had issued his orders with secrecy, and they were punctually obeyed. At the hour indicated, his own and his servant"s horses were at the door. Lord Aspenly was crossing the hall, cloaked, booted, and spurred for the road, when he encountered Emily Copland.
"Dear me, my lord, can it be possible--surely you are not going to leave us to-night?"
"Indeed, it is but too true, fair lady," rejoined his lordship, with a dolorous shrug. "An unlucky _contretemps_ requires my attendance in town; my precipitate flight," he continued, with an attempt at a playful smile, "is accounted for in this note, which perhaps you will kindly deliver to Sir Richard, when next you see him. I trust, Miss Copland, that fortune will often grant me the privilege of meeting you.
Be a.s.sured it is one which I prize above all others. Adieu."
His lordship gallantly kissed the hand which was extended to receive the note, and then, with his best bow, withdrew.
A few petulant questions, which bespoke his inward acerbity, he addressed to his servant--glanced with a very sour aspect at the lowering sky--clambered stiffly into the saddle, and then, desiring his attendant to follow him, rode down the avenue at a speed which seemed prompted by an instinctive dread of pursuit.
As the wind howled and the thunder rolled and rumbled nearer and nearer, Emily Copland could not but wonder more and more what urgent and peremptory cause could have induced the little peer to adopt this sudden resolution, and to carry it into effect upon such a night of storm. Surely that motive must be a strange and urgent one which would not brook the delay of a few hours, especially during the violence of such weather as the luxurious little n.o.bleman had perhaps never voluntarily encountered in the whole course of his life. Curiosity prompted her to deliver the note which she held in her hand at once; she therefore ran lightly upstairs, and rapidly threading all the intervening lobbies and rambling pa.s.sages, she knocked at her uncle"s door.
"Come in, come in," cried the peevish voice of Sir Richard Ashwoode.
The girl entered the room. The Italian was at the toilet, arranging his master"s dressing-case, and the baronet himself in his night-gown and slippers, and with a pamphlet in his hand, reclined listlessly upon a sofa.
"Who is that?--who _is_ it?" inquired he in the same tone, without turning his eyes from the volume which he read.
"Per dina!" exclaimed the Neapolitan--"Mees Emily--she is vary seldom come here. You are wailcome, Mees Emily; weel you seet down?--there is chair. Sir Richard, it is Mees Emily."
"What does the young lady want?" inquired he, drily.
"I have gotten a note for you, uncle," replied she.
"Well, put it down?--put it there on the table, anywhere; I presume it will keep till morning," replied he, without removing his eyes from the pages.
"It is from Lord Aspenly," urged the girl.
"Eh! Lord Aspenly. How--give it to me," said the baronet, raising himself quickly and tossing the pamphlet aside. He broke the seal and read the note. Whatever its contents were, they produced upon the baronet an extraordinary effect; he started from the sofa with clenched hands and frantic gesture.
"Who--where--stop him, after him--he shall answer me--he shall!" cried, or rather shrieked, the baronet in the hoa.r.s.e, choking scream of fury.
"After him all--my sword, my horse. By ----, he"ll reckon with me this night."
Never did the human form more fearfully embody the pa.s.sions of h.e.l.l; he stood before them absolutely transformed. The quivering face was pale as ashes; the livid veins, like blue knotted cordage, protruded upon his forehead; the eye glared and rolled with the light of madness, and as he shook and raved there before them, no dream ever conjured up a spectacle more appalling; he spit upon the letter--he tore it into fragments, and with his gouty feet stamped it into the fire.
There was no extravagance of frenzy which he did not enact. He tossed his arms into the air, and dashed his clenched hands upon the table; he stamped, he stormed, he howled; and as with thick and furious utterance he volleyed forth his incoherent threats, mandates, and curses, the foam hung upon his blackened lips.
"I"ll bring him to the dust--to the earth. My very menials shall spurn him. Almighty, that he should dare--trickster--liar--that he should dare to practise upon _me_ this outrageous slight. Ay, ay--ay, ay--laugh, my lord--laugh on; but by the ---- ----, this shall bring you to your knees, ay, and to your grave; and you--_you_," thundered he, turning upon the awe-struck and terrified young lady, "you no doubt had _your_ share in this--ay, you have--you _have_--yes, I know you--you--you--hollow, lying ----, quit my house--out with you--turn her out--drive her out--away with her."
As the horrible figure advanced towards her, the girl by an effort roused herself from the dreadful fascination, and turning from him, fled swiftly downstairs, and fell fainting at the parlour door.
Sir Richard still strode through his chamber with the same frantic evidences of unabated fury; and the Italian--the only remaining spectator of the hideous scene--sate calmly in a chair by the toilet, with his legs crossed, and his countenance composed into a kind of sanctimonious placidity, which, however, spite of all his efforts, betrayed at the corners of the mouth, and in the twinkle of the eye, a certain enjoyment of the spectacle, which was not altogether consistent with the perfect affection which he professed for his master.
"Ay, ay, my lord," continued the baronet, madly, "laugh on--laugh while you may; but by the ---- ----, you shall gnash your teeth for this!"
"What coning, old gentleman is mi Lord Aspenly--ah! vary, vary," said the Italian, reflectively.
"You _shall_, my lord," continued Sir Richard, furiously. "Your disgrace shall be public--exemplary--the insult shall recoil upon, yourself--your punishment shall be memorable-public--tremendous."
"Mi Lord Aspenly and Sir Richard--both so coning," continued the Italian--"yees--yees--set one thief to catch the other."
The Neapolitan had, no doubt, bargained for the indulgence of his pleasant humour, as usual, free of cost; but he was mistaken. With the quickness of light, Sir Richard grasped a ma.s.sive gla.s.s decanter, full of water, and hurled it at the head of his valet. Luckily for that gentleman"s brains, it missed its object, and, alighting upon a huge mirror, it dashed it to fragments with a stunning crash. In the extremity of his fury, Sir Richard grasped a heavy metal inkstand, and just as the valet escaped through the private door of his room, hurled _it_, too, at his head. Two such escapes were quite enough for Signor Parucci on one evening; and not wishing to tempt his luck further, he ran nimbly down the stairs, leaped into his own room, and bolted and double-locked the door; and thence, as the night wore on, he still heard Sir Richard pacing up and down his chamber, and storming and raving in dreadful rivalry with the thunder and hurricane without.