Jack Hinton: The Guardsman

A horrible curse broke from Burke as he fixed his staring eyeballs on the outspread cards, and counted over the numbers to himself.

‘You see, Burke,’ said De Vere.

‘Don’t speak to me, now, damn you!’ said the other, with clenched teeth.

De Vere pushed back his chair, and rising, moved through the crowd towards an open window. Burke sat with his head buried between his hands for some seconds, and then starting up at the banker s call, cried out —

‘Dix mille, noir!’

A kind of half-suppressed laugh ran round the table at seeing that he had no funds while he still offered to bet. He threw his eyes upon the board, and then as quickly turned them on the players. One by one his dark look was bent on them, as if to search out some victim for his hate; but all were hushed. Many as reckless as himself were there, many as utterly ruined, but not one so lost to hope.

‘Who laughed?’ said he in French, while the thick veins of his forehead stood out like cordage; and then, as none answered to his challenge, he rose slowly, still scowling with the malignity of a demon.

‘May I have your seat, monsieur?’ said a dapper little Frenchman, with a smile and a bow, as Burke moved away.

‘Yes, take it,’ said he, as lifting the strong chair with one hand he dashed it upon the floor, smashing it to pieces with a crash that shook the room.

The crowd, which made way for him to pass out, as speedily closed again around the table, where the work of ruin still went forward. Not a passing glance was turned from the board to look after the beggared gambler.

The horrible indifference the players had shown to the sufferings of this wretched man so thoroughly disgusted me that I could no longer bear even to look on the game. The passion of play had shown itself to me now in all its most repulsive form, and I turned with abhorrence from the table.

My mind agitated by a number of emotions, and my heart now swelling with triumphant vengeance, now filled with pity for the sake of him who had ruined my fortunes for ever, I sat in one of the small boxes I have mentioned, which, dimly lighted, had not yet been sought by any of the players to sup in. A closely drawn curtain separated the little place I occupied from the adjoining one, where from time to time I heard the clink of glasses and the noise of champagne corks. At first I supposed that some other solitary individual had established himself there to enjoy his winnings or brood over his losses, when at last I could hear the low muttering of voices, which ere long I recognised as belonging to Burke and De Vere.

Burke, who evidently from his tone and manner possessed the mastery over his companion, no longer employed the insulting accents I had witnessed at the table; on the contrary, he condescended to flatter – affected to be delighted with De Vere’s wit and sharpness, and more than once insinuated that with such an associate he cared little what tricks fortune played them, as, to use his own phrase, ‘they were sure to come round.’

De Vere’s voice, which I could only hear at rare intervals, told that he had drunk deeply, and that between wine and his losses a kind of reckless desperation had seized him, which gave to his manner and words a semblance of boldness which his real character lacked completely.

When I knew that Burke and De Vere were the persons near me, I rose to leave the spot; the fear of playing the eavesdropper forbade my remaining. But as I stood up, the mention of my name, uttered in a tone of vengeance by Burke, startled me, and I listened.

‘Yes,’ said he, striking his hand upon the table, and confirming his assertion with a horrible oath. ‘Yes; for him and through him my uncle left me a beggar. But already I have had my revenge; though it shan’t end there.’

‘You don’t mean to have him out again? Confound him, he’s a devilish good shot; winged you already – eh?’

Burke, unmindful of the interruption, continued —

‘It was I that told my uncle how this fellow was the nephew of the man who seduced his own wife. I worked upon the old man so that he left house and home, and wandered through the country, till mental irritation, acting on a broken frame, became fever, and then death.’

‘Died – eh? Glorious nephew you are, by Jove! What next?’

‘I’ll tell you. I forged a letter in his handwriting to Louisa, written as if on his death-bed, commanding as his last prayer that she should never see Hinton again; or if by any accident they should meet, that she should not recognise him nor know him.’

‘Devilish clever, that; egad, a better martingale than that you invented a while ago. I say, pass the wine! red fourteen times – wasn’t it fourteen? – and if it had not been for your cursed obstinacy I’d have backed the red. See, fifty naps! one hundred, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-four, or six – which is it? Oh, confounded stupidity!’

‘Come, come, Dudley! better luck another time. Louisa’s eyes must have been too kindly bent on you, or you ‘d have been more fortunate.’

‘Eh, you think she likes me? – Capital champagne that! – I always thought she did from the first. That’s what I call walking inside of Hinton. How he’ll look! Ha! ha! ha!’

‘Yes, how he’ll look!’ echoed Burke, endeavouring to join the laugh. ‘But now one thing is yet wanting.’

‘You mean those despatches,’ replied De Vere suddenly. ‘You always come back to that. Well, once for all, I say no!’

‘Just hear me, Dudley! Nothing is easier; nothing incurs less risk.’

‘Less risk! what do you mean? No risk for me to steal the papers of the embassy, and give them to you to hand over to that scoundrel at the head of the secret police? Devilish green I may be, but not so green as that, Master Burke!’

‘Guillemain will give us forty thousand francs. Forty thousand! with half that, and your luck, De Vere, we’ll break every bank in Paris. I know you don’t wish to marry Louisa.’

‘No; hang it, that’s always the wind-up. Keep that for the last throw, eh? – There’s heavy play there; see how silent they are.’

‘Ay; and with forty thousand francs we might join them,’ said Burke, as if musing; ‘and so safely it may be done.’

‘I say no!’ replied De Vere resolutely.

‘What do you fear? Is it me?’

‘No, not you! I believe you are true enough. Your own neck will be in the rope too; so you’ll say nothing. But I won’t do it! – pass the champagne! – there’s something so devilish blackguard in stealing a man’s papers.’

Burke started, as if the tones of his companion’s voice had stung him like an adder.

‘Have you thought over your present condition?’ said Burke firmly. ‘You have not a guinea left; your debts in Paris alone, to my knowledge, are above forty thousand francs!’

‘I’ll never pay a franc of them – damned swindlers and Jew money-lenders!’ was the cool reply.

‘Might not some scrupulous moralist hint there was something blackguard in that?’ said Burke, with slow and distinct articulation.

‘What!’ replied De Vere; ‘do you come here to tutor me – a low-bred horse-jockey, a spy? Take off your hands, sir, or I’ll alarm the room; let loose my collar!’

‘Come, come, my lord, we ‘re both in fault,’ said Burke, smothering his passion with a terrible effort; ‘we of all men must not quarrel. Play is to us the air we breathe, the light we live in. Give me your hand.’

‘Allow me to draw on my glove first,’ said De Vere, in a tone of incomparable insolence.

‘Champagne here!’ said Burke to the waiter as he passed, and for some minutes neither spoke.

The clock chimed a quarter to two, and Burke started to his feet.

‘I must be going,’ said he hastily; ‘I should have been at the Porte St. Martin by half-past one.’

‘Salute the Jacobite Club, de ma part,’ said De Vere, with an insulting laugh, ‘and tell them to cut everybody’s throat in Paris save old Lafitte’s; he has promised to do a bill for me in the morning.’

‘You ‘ll not need his kindness so soon,’ replied Burke, ‘if you are willing to take my advice. Forty thousand francs – ’

‘Would he make it sixty, think you?’

‘Sixty!’ said Burke, with animation; ‘I’m not sure, but shall I say for sixty you ‘ll do it?’

‘No, I don’t mean that; I was only anxious to know if these confounded rigmaroles I have to copy sometimes could possibly interest any one to that amount.’

Burke tried to laugh, but the hollow chuckle sounded like the gulping of a smothering man.