Sir Jasper Carew Part 58

The hour at length arrived; the carriage that was to convey me stood at the door; and as I took a look at myself, full dressed and powdered, in the gla.s.s, I remember that my sensations vibrated between the exulting vanity and pride of a gallant about to set out for a fete, and the terrors of a criminal on his way to the block. My head grew more and more confused as I drove along. At moments I thought that all was a dream, and I tried to arouse and wake myself; then I fancied that it was the past was fict.i.tious,--that my poverty, my want, and my hardship were all imaginary; that my real condition was one of rank and affluence.

I examined the rich lace of my ruffles, the sparkling splendor of my sword-knot, and said, "Surely these are not the signs of squalid misery and want." I called to mind my impressions of the world, my memories of life and society, and asked, "Can these be the sentiments of a miserable outcast?" a.s.suredly, my poor brain was sorely tried to reconcile these strong contradictions; nor do I yet understand how I obtained sufficient mastery over my emotions to present myself at the house of my entertainer.

"What name, sir?" said the obsequious servant, who, with noiseless footsteps, had preceded me to the drawing-room door.

"What name shall I announce, sir?" said he a second time, as, overwhelmed with confusion, I still stood speechless before him. Till that very moment all thought on the subject had escaped me, and I utterly forgot that I was actually without a designation in the world.

In all my shame and misery it had been a kind of consolation to me that the name of my father had never been degraded, and that whatever might have been my portion of worldly hardship, the once-honored appellation had not shared in it. To a.s.sume it at this instant was too perilous.

Another day, one short night, would again reduce me to the same ignominious station; and I should have thus, by a momentary rashness, compromised the greatest secret of my heart. A third time did he ask the same question; and as I stood uncertain and overwhelmed, a quiet foot was heard ascending the stairs, a handsome, bright-looking man came forward, the door was flung open at his approach, and the servant called out, "Mr. Sheridan." I followed quickly, and the door closed behind us.

Hastily pa.s.sing from Sheridan, O'Kelly came forward to me and shook me cordially by the hand. Thanking me politely for my punctuality, he welcomed me with all the semblance of old friendship.

"Colonel Conway and Payne you are already acquainted with," said he; "but your long absence from England excuses you for not knowing my other friends. This is Mr. Sheridan,"--we bowed,--"Mr. Malcomb, Captain Seymour, Sir George Begley," and so on, with two or three more. He made a rapid tour of the party, holding me by the arm as he went, till he approached a chair where a young and very handsome man sat, laughing immoderately at some story another at his side was whispering to him.

"What the devil am I to call you?" said O'Kelley to me in my ear. "Tell me quickly."

Before I could stammer out my own sense of confusion, the person seated in the arm-chair called out,--

"By Jove! O'Kelly must hear that. Tell him, Wynd-ham." But as suddenly stopping, he said, "A friend of yours, O'Kelly?"

"Yes, your Royal Highness, a very old and valued friend, whom I have not seen since our school-days. He has been vagabondizing over the whole earth, fighting side by side with I know not how many of your Royal Highness's enemies; and, having made his fortune, has come back to lose it here amongst us, as the only suitable reparation in his power for all his past misconduct."

"With such excellent intentions, he could not have fallen into better hands than yours, O'Kelly," said the Prince, laughing; "and I wish all the fellows we have been subsidizing these ten years no worse than to be your antagonists at piquet." Then, addressing me, he said, "An Irishman, I presume?"

"Yes, your Royal Highness," said I, bowing deeply.

"He started as an something, or Mac somebody," said O'Kelly, interrupting; "but having been Don'd in Spain, 'Strissemoed' in Italy, and almost guillotined in France for calling himself Monsieur, he has come back to us without any designation that he dares to call his own."

"That is exactly what happened to a very well known character in the reign of Charles I.," said Conway, "who called himself by the t.i.tle of his last conquest in the fair s.e.x, saying, 'When I take a reputation, I accept all the reproach of the name.'"

"There was another authority," said Sheridan,--"a fellow who called himself the King of the Beggars, who styled himself each day after the man who gave him most, and died inheriting the name of Bamfield Moore Carew."

"Carew will do admirably for my friend here, then," said O'Kelly, "and we 'll call him so henceforth."

It may be imagined with what a strange rush of emotion I accepted this designation, and laughingly joined in the caprice of the hour. I saw enough to convince me that all around received O'Kelly's story as a mere piece of jest, and that none had any suspicion of my real condition save himself and his two friends. This conviction served to set me much at my ease, and I went down to dinner with far less of constraint than might have been supposed for one in my situation.

I will not disguise the fact that I thought for the first half-hour that every eye was on me, that whatever I did or said was the subject of general remark, and that my manner as I ate, and my tone as I spoke, were all watched and scrutinized. Gradually, however, I grew to perceive that I attracted no more notice than others about me, and that, to all purposes, I was admitted to a perfect equality with the rest.

Conversation ranged freely over a wide field. Politics of every state of Europe, the leading public characters and statesmen, their opinions and habits, the modes of life abroad, literature and the drama, were all discussed, if not always with great knowledge, still with the ready smartness of practised talkers. Anecdotes and incidents of various kinds were narrated, quips and sharp replies abounded; and amidst much cleverness and agreeability, a truly good-humored, convivial spirit leavened the whole ma.s.s, and made up a most pleasant party.

So interested had I become in the conversation about me that I did not perceive how, by degrees, I had been drawn on to talk on a variety of subjects which travel had made me familiar with, and to speak of persons of mark and station whom I had met and known. Still less did I remark that I was submitted to a species of examination as to my veracity, and that I was asked for dates, and times, and place, in a manner that might have startled one more susceptible. Warmed with what I may dare to call my success, and heated with wine, I grew bolder; I stigmatized as gross ignorance and folly the policy of the English Government in maintaining a war for what no success could ever bring back again,--the prestige of loyalty, and the respect once tendered to n.o.bility.

I know not into what excesses my enthusiasm may have carried me. Enough when I say that I encountered the most brilliant talkers without fear, and entered the list with all that the day possessed of conversational power, without any sense of faint-heartedness. On such questions as the military system of France, the division of parties in that country, the probable issue to which the struggle pointed, I was, indeed, better informed than my neighbors; but when they came to discuss the financial condition of the French, and what it had been in the late reigns, I at once recalled all my conversations with Law, with every detail of whose system I was perfectly familiar.

Of the anecdotes of that time--a most amusing ill.u.s.tration of society as it then existed--I remembered many; and I had the good fortune to see that the Prince listened with evident pleasure to my recitals; and, at last, it was in the very transport of success I found myself ascending the stairs to the drawing-room, while O'Kelly whispered in my ear,--

"Splendidly done, by Jove! The Prince is going to invite you to Carlton House."

After coffee was served, the party sat down to play of various kinds,--dice, cards, and backgammon. At the Prince's whist-table there was a vacant place, and I was invited to take it. I had twenty guineas in gold in my pocket. They were my all in the world; but had they been as many millions, I would not have scrupled to risk them at such a moment. There was a strange, almost insane spirit that seemed to whisper to me that nothing could be too bold to adventure--no flight too high--no contrast with my real condition too striking to attempt! They who have braved danger and death to ascend some great glacier, the whole object the one triumphant moment on which they behold the blaze of sunrise, may form some conception of the maddening ecstasy of my sensations.

"Do you play at whist? If so, come and join us," said the Prince.

"Take my purse," whispered O'Kelly, endeavoring to slip it into my hand as he spoke.

I accepted the invitation; and, without taking any notice of O'Kelly's offer, took my place at the table.

"We play low stakes, too low, perhaps, for you," said his Royal Highness,--"mere guinea points; but there's Canthorpe, and Sedley, and two or three more, will indulge you in any wager you fancy."

"Fifty on the rubber, if you like, sir," said Colonel Canthorpe, a tall, soldier-like man, who stood with his back to the fire.

"If my friend O'Kelly will be my banker for to-night, I shall take your offer."

Without the slightest hesitation, O'Kelly replied, "To be sure, my boy!"

and the game began.

My mastery at the game was soon apparent; and the Prince complimented me by saying,--

"I wish we could discover in what you are deficient; for up to this we have certainly not hit upon it."

It needed not all this flattery to make me feel almost mad with excitement. I remember little of that scene; but still there is one trait of it fast graven on my memory, to hold its place there forever.

It was this: that while I betted largely, and lost freely considerable sums, O'Kelly, who had become the security for my debts, never winced for a moment, nor showed the slightest mark of discomfiture or uneasiness. My demand, in the first instance, was suggested by the not over generous motive of making him pay the penalty he had incurred by having invited me. He has called me his friend before the world, thought I, and if he means this for a cruel jest, it shall at least cost him dearly. In a sort of savage ferocity, I fed myself with thinking of the tortures with which I should afflict him, in return for all the agony and suffering I had myself gone through. He also shall know what it is to act a lie, said I to myself; and with this hateful resolve I sat down to play. His ready acceptance of my proposition, his gentleman-like ease and calm, his actual indifference as I lost, and lost heavily, soon staggered all my reasonings, and routed all my theory. And when at last the Prince, complimenting me on my skill, deplored the ill-luck that more than balanced it, O'Kelly said, gayly,--

"Depend on 't, you'll have better fortune after supper. Come and have a gla.s.s of champagne."

I was now impatient until we were again at the card-table.

All my former intentions were reversed, and I would have given my right hand to have been able to repay my debt to him ere I said "Good night."

Perhaps he read what was pa.s.sing within me; I almost suspect that he construed aright the restless anxiety that now beset me; for he whispered, as we went back to the drawing-room,--

"You are evidently out of luck. Wait for your revenge on another evening."

"Now or never," said I. And so was it in reality. I had secretly determined within myself to try and win back O'Kelly's losses, and if I failed, at once to stand forward and declare myself in my real character. No false shame, no real dread of the ignominy to which I should expose myself should prevent me; and with an oath to my own heart I ratified this compact.

Again we took our places; the stakes were now doubled; and all the excitement of mind was added to the gambler's infatuation. Colonel Canthorpe, who had been for some minutes occupied with his note-book, at last tore out the leaf he had been writing on, and handed it to me, saying,--

"Is that correct?"

The figures were six hundred and fifty,--the amount of my loss.

I simply nodded an a.s.sent, and said,--

"We go on, I suppose?"

"We 'll double, if you prefer it," said he.

"What says my banker?" said I.

"He says, 'Credit unlimited,'" cried O'Kelly, gayly.

"Egad! I wish mine would say as much," said the Prince, laughing, as he cut the cards for me to deal.