Confessions Of Con Cregan Part 61

To encourage his frankness on the subject of my country, I affected to know nothing, or next to nothing, of England; and gradually he grew to be more communicative, and at last spoke with an unguarded freedom which soon opened to me a clew of his real history.

It was one day as we walked the deck together that, after discussing the tastes and pursuits of the wealthy English, he began to talk of their pa.s.sion for sport, and especially horse-racing. The character of this national pastime he appeared to understand perfectly, not as a mere foreigner who had witnessed a Derby or a Doncaster, but as one conversant with the traditions of the turf or the private life of the jockey and the trainer.

I saw that he colored all his descriptions with a tint meant to excite an interest within me for these sports. He drew a picture of an "Ascot meeting," wherein were a.s.sembled all the ingredients that could excite the curiosity and gratify the ambition of a wealthy, high-spirited youth; and he dilated with enthusiasm upon his own first impressions of these scenes, mingled with half-regrets of how many of his once friends had quitted the "Turf" since he last saw it!

He spoke familiarly of those whose names I had often read in newspapers as the great leaders of the "sporting world," and affected to have known them all on terms of intimacy and friendship. Even had the theme been less attractive to me, I would have encouraged it for other reasons, a strange glimmering suspicion ever haunting my mind that I had heard of the worthy Chevalier before, and under another t.i.tle; and so completely had this idea gained possession of me that I could think of nothing else.

At length, after we had been some weeks at sea, the welcome cry of "Land!" was given from the mast-head; but as the weather was hazy and thick, we were compelled to shorten sail, and made comparatively little way through the water; so that at nightfall we saw that another day must elapse ere we touched mother earth again.

The Chevalier and the Captain both dined with me; the latter, however, soon repaired to the deck, leaving us in _tete-a-tete_. It was in all likelihood the last evening we should ever pa.s.s together, and I felt a most eager longing to ascertain the truth of my vague suspicions. Chance gave me the opportunity. We had been playing cards, and luck--contrary to custom, and in part owing to my always shuffling the cards _after_ my adversary--had deserted _him_ and taken _my_ side. At first this seemed to amuse him, and he merely complimented me upon my fortune, and smiled blandly at my success. After a while, however, his continued losses began to irritate him, and I could see that his habitual command of temper was yielding to a peevish, captious spirit he had never exhibited previously.

"Shall we double our stake?" said he, after a long run of ill-luck.

"If _you_ prefer it, of course," said I. And we played on, but ever with the same result.

"Come," cried he, at last, "I 'll wager fifty Napoleons on this game."

The bet was made, and he lost it! With the like fortune he played on and on, till at last, as day was dawning, he had not only lost all that he had won from me during the voyage, but a considerable sum besides, and for which he gave me his check upon a well-known banker at Paris.

"Shall I tell you your fortune, Monsieur le Comte?" said he, in a tone of bitterness that almost startled me.

"With all my heart," said I, laughing. "Are you skilful as a necromancer?"

"I can at least decipher what the cards indicate," said he. "There is no great skill in reading, where the print is legible." With these words, he shuffled the cards, dividing them into two or three packets; the first card of each he turned on the face. "Let me premise, Count," said he, "before I begin, that you will not take anything in bad part which I may reveal to you, otherwise I'll be silent. You are free to believe, or not to believe, what I tell you; but you cannot reasonably be angry if unpleasant discoveries await you."

"Go on fearlessly," said I; "I'll not promise implicit faith in everything, but I 'll pledge myself to keep my temper."

He began at once drawing forth every third card of each heap, and disposing them in a circle, side by side. When they were so arranged, he bent over, as if to study them, concealing his eyes from me by his hand; but at the same time, as I could perceive, keenly watching my face between his fingers. "There is some great mistake here," said he at length, in a voice of irritation. "I have drawn the cards wrong, somehow; it must be so, since the interpretation is clear as print. What an absurd blunder, too!" and he seemed as if about to dash the cards up in a heap, from a sense of angry disappointment.

"Nay, nay," cried I, interposing. "Let us hear what they say, even though we may dispute the testimony."

"If it were less ridiculous it might be offensive," said he, smiling; "but being as it is, it is really good laughing-matter."

"I am quite impatient,--pray read on."

"Of course it is too absurd for anything but ridicule," said he, smiling, but, as I thought, with a most malicious expression. "You perceive here this four of clubs, which, as the first card we turn, a.s.sumes to indicate your commencement in life. Now, only fancy, Monsieur le Comte, what this most insolent little demon would insinuate. Really, I cannot continue. Well, well, be it so. This card would say that you were not only born without rank or t.i.tle, but actually in a condition of the very meanest and most humble poverty. Isn't that excellent?" said he, bursting out into a fit of immoderate laughter, in which the spiteful glance of his keen eyes seemed to pierce through and through me.

As for me, I laughed too; but what a laugh it was! Never was a burst of natural sorrow so poignant in suffering as that forced laugh, when, covered with shame, I sat there, beneath the sarcastic insolence of the wretch, who seemed to gloat over the tortures he was inflicting.

"I can scarcely expect that this opening will inspire you with much confidence in the oracle," said he; "the first step a falsehood, promises ill for the remainder of the journey."

"If not very veracious," said I, "it is at least very amusing. Pray continue."

"What would the old counts of your ancestry have said to such a profanation?" cried the Chevalier. "By Saint Denis, I would not have been the man to asperse their blood thus, in their old halls at Grenada!"

"_We_ live in a less haughty age," said I, affecting a smile of indifference, and motioning to him to proceed.

"What follows is the very commonest of that nonsense which is revealed in all lowly fortunes. You are, as usual, the victim of cold and hunger, suffering from dest.i.tution and want. Then there are indications of a bold spirit, ambitious and energetic, bursting out through all the gloom of your dark condition, and a small whispered word in your ear, tells you to hope!" While the Chevalier rattled out this "rodomontade" at a much greater length than I have time or patience to repeat, his eyes never quitted me, but seemed to sparkle with a fiend-like intelligence of what was pa.s.sing within me. As he concluded, he mixed up the cards together, merely muttering, half aloud, "adventures and escapes by land and sea. Abundance of hard luck, to be all compensated for one day, when wealth in all its richest profusion is showered upon you." Then, dashing the cards from him in affected anger, he said, "It is enough to make men despise themselves, the way in which they yield credence to such rank tomfoolery! but I a.s.sure you, Count, however contemptible the oracle has shown herself to-day, I have on more than one occasion been present at the most startling revelations,--not alone as regarded the past, but the future also."

"I can easily believe it, Chevalier," replied I, with a great effort to seem philosophically calm. "One must not reject everything that has not the stamp of reason upon it; and even what I have listened to to-day, absurd as it is, has not shaken my faith in the divination of the cards.

Perhaps this fancy of mine is the remnant of a childish superst.i.tion, which I owe in great part to my old nurse. She was a Moor by birth, and imbued with all the traditions and superst.i.tions of her own romantic land."

There was a most sneering expression on the Chevalier's face as I uttered these words. I paid no attention to it, however, but went on: "From the venerable dame I myself attained to some knowledge of 'destiny reading,' of which I remember once or twice in life to have afforded very singular proofs. _My_ skill, however, usually preferred unravelling the 'future' to the 'present.'"

"Speculation is always easier than recital," said the Chevalier, dryly.

"Very true," said I; "and in reading the past I have ever found how want of sufficient skill has prevented my giving to the great fact of a story the due and necessary connection; so that, indeed, I appear as if distinct events alone were revealed to me, without clew to what preceded or followed them. I see destiny as a traveller sees a landscape by fitful flashes of lightning at night, great tracts of country suddenly displayed in all the blaze of noonday, but lost to sight the next moment forever! Such humble powers as these are, I am well aware, unworthy to bear compet.i.tion with your more cultivated gifts; but if, with all their imperfections, you are disposed to accept their exercise, they are sincerely at your service."

The Chevalier, I suspect, acceded to this proposal in the belief that it was an effort on my part to turn the topic from myself to _him_, for he neither seemed to believe in my skill, nor feel any interest in its exercise.

Affecting to follow implicitly the old Moorish woman's precepts, I prepared myself for my task by putting on a great mantle with a hood, which, when drawn forward, effectually concealed the wearer's face.

This was a precaution I took the better to study his face, while my own remained hid from view.

"You are certainly far more imposing as a prophet than I can pretend to be," said he, laughing, as he lighted a cigar, and lay back indolently to await my revelations. I made a great display of knowledge in shuffling and arranging the cards, the better to think over what I was about; and at last, disposing some dozen in certain mystic positions before me, I began.

"You startled _me_, Chevalier, by a discovery which only wanted truth to make it very remarkable. Let me now repay _you_ by another which I shrewdly suspect to be in the same condition. There are four cards now before me, whose meaning is most positive, and which distinctly a.s.sert that you, Chevalier de la Boutonerie, are no chevalier at all!"

"This is capital." said he, filling out a gla.s.s of wine and drinking it off with the most consummate coolness.

"And here," said I, not heeding his affected ease,--"here is another still stranger revelation, which says that you are not a Frenchman, but a native of a land which latterly has taken upon it to supply the rest of the world with adventurers,--in plain words, a Pole."

"It is true that my father, who held a command in the Imperial army, lived some years in that country," said he, hastily; "but I have yet to learn that he forfeited his nationality by so doing."

[Introduction: 507-158]

"I only know what the cards tell me," said I, spreading out a ma.s.s of them before me, and pretending to study them attentively; "and here is a complication which would need a cleverer expositor than I am. Of all the tangled webs ever I essayed to unravel, this is the knottiest. Why, really, Chevalier, yours must have been a life of more than ordinary vicissitude, or else my prophetic skill has suffered sadly from disuse."

"Judging from what you have just told me, I rather lean to the latter explanation," said he, swallowing down two gla.s.ses of wine with great rapidity.

"I suspect such to be the case, indeed," said I, "for otherwise I could scarcely have such difficulty in reading these mystic signs, once so familiar to me, and from which I can now only pick up a stray phrase here and there. Thus I see what implies a high diplomatic employment, and yet, immediately after, I perceive that this is either a mistake of mine, or the thing itself a cheat and a deception."

"It surely does not require divination to tell a diplomatic agent that he has served on a foreign mission," said the Chevalier, with a sneer.

"Perhaps not, but I see here vestiges of strange occurrences in which this fact is concerned. A fleeting picture pa.s.ses now before my eyes: I see a race-course, with its crowds of people and its throng of carriages, and the horses are led out to be saddled, and all is expectation and eagerness, and--what! This is most singular! the vision has pa.s.sed away, and I am looking at two figures who stand side by side in a richly furnished room, a man and a woman. _She_ is weeping, and _he_ consoling her. Stay! He lifts his head--the man is yourself, Chevalier!"

"Indeed!" said he; but this time the word was uttered in a faint voice, while a pallor that was almost lividness colored his dark features.

"She murmurs a name; I almost caught it," exclaimed I, as if carried away by the rapt excitement of prophecy. "Yes! I hear it now perfectly,--the name is Alexis!"

A fearful oath burst from the Chevalier, and with a bound lie sprung to his feet, and dashed his closed fists against his brow. "Away with your jugglery, have done with your miserable cheat, sir,--that can only terrify women and children. Speak out like a man: who are you, and what are you?"

"What means this outrage, sir? How have you forgotten yourself so far as to _use_ this language to _me?_" said I, throwing back the mantle and standing full before him.

"Let us have no more acting, sir, whether it be as prophet or bully,"

said he, sternly. "You affect to know _me_, who I am, and whence I have come. Make the game equal between us, or it may be worse for you."

"You threaten me, then," said I, calmly.

"I do," was the answer.