Arthur O'Leary Part 42

Of her suite, they were animated by different motives. Some were young enough to be in love with any woman who, a great deal older than themselves, would deign to notice them. The n.o.ble lord, who accompanied her always, was a ruined baron, whose own wife had deserted him for another; he had left his character and his fortune at Doncaster and Epsom; and having been horsewhipped as a defaulter, and outlawed for debt, was of course in no condition to face his acquaintances in England. Still he was a lord--there was no denying that; Debrett and Burke had chronicled his baptism, and the eighth baron from Hugo de Colbrooke, who carried the helmet of his sovereign at Agincourt, was unquestionably of the best blood of the peerage. Like your true white feather, he wore a most _farouche_ exterior; his moustaches seemed to bristle with pugnacity, and the expression of his eye was indescribably martial; he walked as if he was stepping out the ground, and in his salute he a.s.sumed the cold politeness with which a second takes off his hat to the opposite princ.i.p.al in a duel; even his valet seemed to favour the illusion, as he ostentatiously employed himself cleaning his master's pistols, and arranging the locks, as though there was no knowing at what moment of the day he might not be unexpectedly called to shoot somebody.

This n.o.ble lord, I say, was a part of the household. Sir Marmaduke finding his society rather agreeable, and the lady regarding him as the cork-jacket on which she was to swim into the ocean of fas.h.i.+on at some remote period or other of her existence.

As for the Honourable Jack Smallbranes, who was he not in love with-- or rather who was not in love with him? Poor fellow! he was born, in his own estimation, to be the destroyer of all domestic peace; he was created to be the ruin to all female happiness. Such a destiny might well have filled any one with sadness and depression; most men would have grieved over a lot which condemned them to be the origin of suffering. Not so, Jack; he felt he couldn't help it--that it was no affair of his if he were the best-looking fellow in the world. The thing was so palpable; women ought to take care of themselves; he sailed under no false flag. No, there he was, the most irresistible, well-dressed, and handsomest fellow to be met with; and if they didn't escape--or, to use his own expression, 'cut their lucky' in time--the fault was all their own. If queens smiled and archd.u.c.h.esses looked kind upon him, let kings and archdukes look to it. He took no unfair or underhand advantages; he made no secret attacks, no dark advances--he carried every fortress by a.s.sault, and in noonday. Some malicious people-- the world abounds in such--used to say that Jack's gallantries were something like Falstaff's deeds of prowess, and that his victims were all 'in buckram.' But who could believe it? Did not victory sit on his very brow; were not his looks the signs of conquest; and, better than all, who that ever knew him had not the a.s.surance from his own lips?

With what a happy mixture of nonchalance and self-satisfaction would he make these confessions! How admirably blended was the sense of triumph with the consciousness of its ease! How he would shake his ambrosial curls, and throw himself into a pose of elegance, as though to say, ''Twas thus I did it; ain't I a sad dog?'

Well, if these conquests were illusions, they were certainly the pleasantest ever a man indulged in. They consoled him at heart for the loss of fortune, country, and position; they were his recompense for all the lost glories of Crockford's and the 'Clarendon.' Never was there such a picture of perfect tranquillity and unclouded happiness. Oh, let moralists talk as they will about the serenity of mind derivable alone from a pure conscience, the peaceful nature that flows from a source of true honour, and then look abroad upon the world and count the hundreds whose hairs are never tinged with grey, whose cheeks show no wrinkles, whose elastic steps suffer no touch of age, and whose ready smile and cheerful laugh are the ever-present signs of their contentment--let them look on these, and reflect that of such are nine-tenths of those who figure in lists of outlawry, whose bills do but make the stamps they are written on of no value, whose creditors are legion and whose credit is at zero, and say which seem the happier. To see them one would opine that there must be some secret good in cheating a coachmaker, or some hidden virtue in tricking a jeweller; that hotel-keepers are a natural enemy to mankind, and that a tailor has not a right even to a decimal fraction of honesty. Never was Epicurean philosophy like theirs; they have a fine liberal sense of the blackguardisms that a man may commit, and yet not forfeit his position in society. They know the precise condition in life when he may practise dishonesty; and they also see when he must be circ.u.mspect. They have one rule for the city and another for the club; and, better than all, they have stored their minds with sage maxims and wise reflections, which, like the philosophers of old, they adduce on every suitable occasion; and many a wounded spirit has been consoled by that beautiful sentiment, so frequent in their mouths, of--

'Go ahead! for what's the odds so long as you 're happy?'

Such, my reader, was the clique in which, strangely enough, I now found myself; and were it not that such characters abound in every part of the Continent, that they swarm at spas and infest whole cities, I would scruple to introduce you to such company. It is as well, however, that you should be put on your guard against them, and that any amus.e.m.e.nt you may derive from the study of eccentricity should not be tarnished with the recollection of your being imposed upon.

There happened, on the day I speak of, to be a man of some rank at table, with whom I had a slight, a very slight acquaintance; but in pa.s.sing from the room he caught my eye, came over and conversed with me for a few minutes. From that moment Lady Lonsdall's manners underwent a great change in my regard. Not only did she venture to look at me without expressing any air of supercilious disdain, but even vouchsafed the ghost of a smile; and, as we rose from table, I overheard her ask the Honourable Jack for my name. I could not hear the first part of his reply, but the last was couched in that very cla.s.sic slang, expressive of my unknown condition--

'I take it, he hain't got no friends!'

Notwithstanding this Foundling-hospital sentence, Sir Marmaduke was instructed to invite me to take coffee--an honour which, having declined, we separated, as do people who are to speak when next they meet.

Meditating on the unjust impression foreigners must conceive of England and the English by the unhappy specimens we 'grind for exportation,' I sat alone at a little table in the park. It was a sad subject, and it led me further than I wished or knew of. I thought I could trace much of the animosity of foreign journals to English policy in their mistaken notions of national character, and could well conceive how dubiously they must receive our claim to being high-spirited and honourable, when their own experiences would incline to a different conclusion; for, after all, the Fleet Prison, however fas.h.i.+onable its inmates, would scarcely be a flattering specimen of England, nor do I think Horsemonger Lane ought to be taken as a fair sample of the country. It is vain to a.s.sure foreigners that these people are not known nor received at home, neither held in credit nor estimation; their conclusive reply is, 'How is it, then, that they are admitted to the tables of your amba.s.sadors, and presented at our courts? Is it possible you would dare to introduce to our sovereigns those whom you could not present to your own?' This answer is a fatal one. The fact is so; the most rigid censor of morals leaves his conscience at the s.h.i.+p Hotel at Dover; he has no room for it on a voyage, or perhaps he thinks it might be detained by a revenue-officer. Whatever the cause, he will know at Baden--ay, and walk with--the man he would cut in Bond Street, and drive with the party at Brussels he would pa.s.s to-morrow if he met in Hyde Park.

This 'sliding scale' of morality has great disadvantages; none greater than the injury it inflicts on national character, and the occasion it offers for our disparagement at the hands of other people. It is in vain that liberal and enlightened measures mark our government, or that philanthropy and humanity distinguish our inst.i.tutions, we only get credit for hypocrisy so long as we throw a mantle over our t.i.tled swindlers and dishonourable defaulters. If Napoleon found little difficulty in making the sobriquet of 'La Perfide Albion' popular in France, we owe it much more to the degraded characters of our refugee English than to any justice in the charge against the nation. In a word, I have never met a foreigner commonly fair in his estimate of English character, who had not travelled in England; and I never met one unjust in all that regarded national good faith, honesty, and uprightness, who had visited our sh.o.r.es. The immunity from arrest would seem to suggest to our runaways an immunity from all the ties of good conduct and character of our countrymen, who, under that strange delusion of the 'immorality of France,' seem to think that a change of behaviour should be adopted in conformity with foreign usage; and as they put on less clothing, so they might dispense with a little virtue also.

These be unpleasant reflections, Arthur, and I fear the coffee or the maraschino must have been amiss; in any case, away with them, and now for a stroll in the Cursaal!

CHAPTER XXIV. THE GAMBLING-ROOM

Englishmen keep their solemnity and respectful deportment for a church; foreigners reserve theirs for a gambling-table. Never was I more struck than by the decorous stillness and well-bred quietness of the room in which the highest play went forward. All the animation of French character, all the bluntness of German, all the impetuosity of the Italian or the violent rashness of the Russian, were calmed down and subdued beneath the influence of the great pa.s.sion; and it seemed as though the Devil would not accept the homage of his votaries if not rendered with the well-bred manners of true gentlemen. It was not enough that men should be ruined--they should be ruined with easy propriety and thorough good-breeding. Whatever their hearts might feel, their faces should express no discomfiture; though their head should ache and their hand should tremble, the lip must be taught to say 'rouge' or 'noir'

without any emotion.

I do not scruple to own that all this decorum was more dreadful than any scene of wild violence or excitement The forced calmness, the pent-up pa.s.sion, might be kept from any outbreak of words; but no training could completely subdue the emotions which speak by the bloodshot eye, the quivering cheek, the livid lip.

No man's heart is consecrated so entirely to one pa.s.sion as a gambler's.

Hope with him usurps the place of every other feeling. Hope, however rude the shocks it meets from disappointment, however beaten and baffled, is still there; the flame may waste down to a few embers, but a single spark may live amid the ashes, yet it is enough to kindle up into a blaze before the breath of fortune. At first he lives but for moments like these; all his agonies, all his sufferings, all the torturings of a mind verging on despair are repaid by such brief intervals of luck. Yet each reverse of fate is telling on him heavily; the many disappointments to his wishes are sapping by degrees his confidence in fortune. His hope is dashed with fear; and now commences within him that struggle which is the most fearful man's nature can endure. The fickleness of chance, the waywardness of fortune, fill his mind with doubts and hesitations.

Sceptical on the sources of his great pa.s.sion, he becomes a doubter on every subject; he has seen his confidence so often at fault that he trusts nothing, and at last the ruling feature of his character is suspicion. When this rules paramount, he is a perfect gambler; from that moment he has done with the world and all its pleasures and pursuits; life offers to him no path of ambition, no goal to stimulate his energies. With a mock stoicism he affects to be superior to the race which other men are running, and laughs at the collisions of party and the contests of politics. Society, art, literature, love itself, have no attractions for him then; all excitements are feeble compared with the alternations of the gamingtable; and the chances of fortune in real life are too tame and too tedious for the impatience of a gambler.

I have no intention of winding up these few remarks by any moral episode of a gambler's life, though my memory could supply me with more than one such--when the baneful pa.s.sion became the ruin, not of a thoughtless, giddy youth, inexperienced and untried, but of one who had already won golden opinions from the world, and stood high in the ranks which lead to honour and distinction. These stories have, unhappily, a sameness which mars the force of their lesson; they are listened to like the refrain of an old song, and from their frequency are disregarded. No; I trust in the fact that education and the tastes that flow from it are the best safeguards against a contagion of a heartless, soulless pa.s.sion, and would rather warn my young countrymen at this place against the individuals than the system.

'Am I in your way, sir?' said a short, somewhat overdressed man, with red whiskers, as he made room for me to approach the play-table, with a politeness quite remarkable--'am I in your way, sir?'

'Not in the least; I beg you 'll not stir.'

'Pray take my seat; I request you will.'

'By no means, sir; I never play. I was merely looking on.'

'Nor I either--or at least very rarely,' said he, rising with the air of a man who felt no pleasure in what was going forward. 'You don't happen to know that young gentleman in the light-blue frock and white vest yonder?'

'No, I never saw him before.'

'I 'm sorry for it,' said he in a whisper; 'he has just lost seventy thousand francs, and is going the readiest way to treble the sum by his play. I 'm certain he is English by his look and appearance, and it is a cruel thing, a very cruel thing, not to give him a word of caution here.'

The words, spoken with a tone of feeling, interested me much in the speaker, and already I was angry with myself for having conceived a dislike to his appearance and a prejudice against his style of dress.

'I see,' continued he, after a few seconds' pause--'I see you agree with me. Let us try if we can't find some one who may know him. If Wycherley is here--you know Sir Harry, I suppose?'

'I have not that honour.'

'Capital fellow--the best in the world. He's in the Blues, and always about Windsor or St. James's. He knows everybody; and if that young fellow be anybody, he's sure to know him. Ah, how d'ye do, my lord?'

continued he, with an easy nod, as Lord Colebrook pa.s.sed.

'Eh, Crotty, how goes it?' was the reply.

'You don't happen to know that gentleman yonder, my lord, do you?'

'Not I; who is he?'

'This gentleman and I were both anxious to learn who he is; he is losing a deal of money.'

'Eh, dropping his tin, is he? And you 'd rather save him, Crotty? All right and sportsmanlike,' said his lords.h.i.+p, with a knowing wink, and walked on.

'A very bad one, indeed, I fear,' said Crotty, looking after him; 'but I didn't think him so heartless as that. Let us take a turn, and look out for Wycherley.'

Now, although I neither knew Wycherley nor his friend Crotty, I felt it a case where one might transgress a little on etiquette, and probably save a young man--he didn't look twenty--from ruin; and so, without more ado, I accompanied my new acquaintance through the crowded salons, elbowing and pus.h.i.+ng along amid the hundreds that thronged there. Crotty seemed to know almost every one of a certain cla.s.s; and as he went, it was a perpetual 'Comment ca va,' prince, count, or baron; or, 'How d'ye do, my lord?' or, 'Eh, Sir Thomas, you here?' etc; when at length, at the side of a doorway leading into the supper-room, we came upon the Honourable Jack, with two ladies leaning upon his arms. One glance was enough; I saw they were the alderman's daughters. Sir Peter himself, at a little distance off, was giving directions to the waiter for supper.

'Eh, Crotty, what are you doing to-night?' said Jack, with a triumphant look at his fair companions; 'any mischief going forward, eh?'

'Nothing half so dangerous as your doings,' said Crotty, with a very arch smile; 'have you seen Wycherley? Is he here?'

'Can't possibly say,' yawned out Jack; then leaning over to me, he said in a whisper, 'Is the Princess Von Hohenstauvenof in the rooms?'

'I really don't know; I 'm quite a stranger.'

'By Jove, if she is,' said he, without paying any attention to my reply, 'I 'm floored, that's all. Lady Maude Beverley has caught me already. I wish you 'd keep the Deverington girls in talk, will you?'

'You forget, perhaps, I have no acquaintance here.'

'Oh yes, by Jove, so I did! Glorious fun you must have of it! What a pace I 'd go along if I wasn't known, eh! wouldn't I?'

'There's Wycherley--there he is,' said Crotty, taking me by the arm as he spoke, and leading me forward. 'Do me the favour to give me your name; I should like you to know Wycherley'--and scarcely had I p.r.o.nounced it, when I found myself exchanging greetings with a large, well-built, black-whiskered and moustached man of about forty. He was dressed in deep mourning, and looked in his manner and air very much the gentleman.

'Have you got up the party yet, Crotty?' said he, after our first salutations were over, and with a half-glance towards me.

'No, indeed,' said Crotty slowly; 'the fact is, I wasn't thinking of it.

There's a poor young fellow yonder losing very heavily, and I wanted to see if you knew him; it would be only fair to----'