The King's Men Part 30

The plank was down and waiting for them when they came to the ca.n.a.l.

They crossed, and Geoffrey and Featherstone pulled in the plank and set off for the next. There were nine ca.n.a.ls to be bridged in this way.

The slowness of Sydney caused the loss of many precious minutes. At every trench they had to wait for the poor old fellow. When they came to the seventh ca.n.a.l, he stood on the prison side when all had crossed, and refused to move.

"G.o.d speed you, my dear friends," he said, with quivering voice. "I cannot go any farther. You will all be lost if I attempt it. I cannot run any more--nor could I even walk the distance you have to go."

"Oh, Sydney, come!" cried Geoffrey, with painful impatience.

"Dear Sydney, do not leave us," pleaded the Duke.

But Sydney did not move; he only waved a good-by with his hand. He could not speak.

Without a word, Featherstone recrossed, seized Sydney in his arms, and carried him bodily over. Geoffrey pulled in the plank alone, and started for the eighth ca.n.a.l.

Mr. Sydney did not speak; and now he seemed even to gain new strength and speed. He kept up bravely, and even crossed the next ca.n.a.l ahead of the Duke. There now remained but one more.

"Fifty minutes gone," said Geoffrey in a low voice as Featherstone ran over the plank. "That bell rings at ten minutes to six."

"Bravo, Duke!" cried Featherstone, as the old man stepped from the plank. "Come, Sydney."

But Sydney did not come. Instead, when he came up to the ca.n.a.l, he bent down, seized the plank, and pitched it into the deep trench which ran rapidly and carried it off toward the marsh.

"Now go; and G.o.d bless you all!" cried Sydney, and he turned back and went toward the prison.

There was no possibility of undoing Sydney's sacrificial work.

"No use waiting," cried Geoffrey. "In seven minutes we shall be missed.

G.o.d bless you, dear Sydney!"

The brave old fellow heard their loving words, but he would not turn or speak, fearing they might delay. He walked on to the ca.n.a.l before him, and then he turned and saw them drawing toward the top of the hill. Then he broke down and sobbed. But his tears were not of grief, but of joy.

Next moment the fugitives heard the alarm bell clanging at the prison.

They did not look behind, but Sydney looked, and saw the lower gates open and a crowd of warders rushing down the hill shouting. They had seen the escaped prisoners just as they reached the top of the hill.

Sydney's heart failed him when he saw the speed with which the pursuit crossed the marsh. The light bridges of the ca.n.a.ls were easily opened and swung round, and in as many minutes half the ca.n.a.ls were crossed.

Just then a light of genius entered Sydney's brain, and he turned and ran and shouted in his excitement as loudly as any officer of them all.

The gout was forgotten. The years fell from him like cobwebs. He was a youth of twenty rushing for a football.

Straight toward the ninth and last ca.n.a.l he dashed, where his friends had crossed beside the locked bridge. He was panting like a hunted wolf when he reached the spot and sank down where the bridge was locked to the bank.

By this time the warders were at the eighth ca.n.a.l, howling like demons at sight of Sydney. They howled louder when they overtook him and found what he had done.

Mr. Sydney had filled the padlock of the bridge with small stones, and he stood aside with a grave face, looking at the warders as they tried to open it. When they understood the daring trick, one brutal fellow rushed at Sydney and struck him heavily on the face.

The old man reeled from the blow, and then recovering himself, turned from the ruffian and looked with disgust and surprise, not at him but at his crowd of fellow-warders.

"Stop that!" shouted one of them to Sydney's a.s.sailant. "That's no criminal; and this is no criminal's trick."

There was no crossing this last ca.n.a.l without a bridge or a plank, for the further side was a brick wall considerably higher than the nearer, designed to prevent escape.

By the time the warders had cleared the lock from Sydney's obstructions, his three friends in Mr. Windsor's carriage, driven by Reynolds, were miles on their way toward that gentleman's steam yacht, which awaited them in the harbor of Torquay.

CHAPTER XVI.

MRS. CAREY'S HUSBAND.

Oswald Carey's father had just died and left him a great fortune made upon the Stock Exchange when the son met his wife for the first time at the country-house of his father's old partner and his then executor--Benjamin Bugbee. "Young Croesus," as he was then familiarly called, fell head over heels in love with the beautiful daughter of the penniless and disestablished clergyman, and during the short s.p.a.ce of his courtship and honeymoon he forgot the one thing which had previously absorbed his life--the gaming-table. If his wife had been a good woman, or if she had loved him, he might have stayed his hand from baccarat.

But Eleanor had married him simply because he was rich and good-natured and she was ambitious and poor; and after their marriage she plunged into the gayest of fashionable society.

At first Carey yawned in the anterooms of b.a.l.l.s, waiting for his beautiful wife, but after a while he tired of this; and, letting her go into the world alone, he betook himself to the Turf and Jockey Club, where the play ran very high, for there adventurers and gamesters of all nations congregated--the rich Russian met his great rival wheat-grower of America, and the price of great farms changed hands at poker or at baccarat. The hawks who infested the club, eager for the quarry, speedily settled upon such a plump pigeon as Carey, and while his wife wore his diamonds at gay b.a.l.l.s, night after night, he sat over the green cloth, throwing away his youth and his fortune to the harpies. It began to be whispered in a few years that "Young Croesus," the beauty's husband, was cleaned out. The hawks found his I. O. U.'s were unredeemed, and his gorgeous establishment in Mayfair was closed. By some influence Carey succeeded in getting an appointment as a clerk in the Stamp and Sealing Wax Office, while his wife went on in her career as a "beauty."

At the office Carey matched for half-crowns with his fellow-clerks, read the sporting news, and busied himself in computations, in connection with his "system" by which he should infallibly win at cards. Little by little his system absorbed the wrecks left to him of his fortune; and he had nothing to live upon but his salary and the money which his wife allowed him.

At last his habits lost him his place under government.

He had borrowed money from every man in the office, and was in the habit of drinking brandy and soda during hours, and of smoking upon the big leather sofa until the janitor, at dark, shook him to his senses. After this he spent all his time at the Turf and Jockey, for he still kept his name at this unsavory inst.i.tution; he led much the same life there as at the government office, save that the club servants let him sleep on the sofa until morning if he chose, and he earned no pay while he slumbered.

As a counterbalance, the brandy and soda was cheaper and better than that which had been sent to him from the public house opposite to the Stamp and Sealing Wax, and he had all his time to devote to his system, while in the office he had occasionally a little writing to do.

Mrs. Carey had been living in her husband's lodging for three weeks after her interview with the King, in the night before Aldershot. All the world was wild over the attempted revolution, the trial of the state prisoners and the escape of the King to France--all the world but Oswald Carey, who gave no thought to what pa.s.sed on around him; he made deep calculations upon his "system" at the club between his draughts of "B.

and S.," and played with other wrecked gamesters, until he lost his ready money, for his "system" worked to a charm conversely--his opponents infallibly won. Early in the morning he would stumble home to his lodgings cursing his luck.

On the morning of his wife's departure to join the King in France, she had informed him, as he sat at the breakfast-table, holding his aching head in one hand, that she was going to Paris to buy some new gowns, and that she would not be back for some time, but that during her absence her bankers would pay him $100 every week. He begged for more money, but his request was refused, and his wife coldly shook hands with him, and retired to her room to superintend her maid's packing. Oswald believed her story, and, finding that he could eat no breakfast, put on his top coat and crawled to the Turf and Jockey for a "pick-me-up." Fortified by this, he made up his mind that, since his "system" had failed because he had had always too small a capital to work with, he would allow his allowance to roll up at the bank for three weeks before he began play again.

Meanwhile he resolved to keep sober, and he spent his time trying to perfect his "system" and watching the other players at the club. His burning ambition was to win back his fortune from the sharpers who had fleeced him. He cursed himself all the while for his folly in playing before he had learned the game. He knew the game now well enough, he flattered himself; all day long he pondered on the combinations, and at night myriads of cards floated through his head. He dreamed that he held the bank, and that his old adversaries sat with pale faces opposite to him aghast at their losses.

One evening in April he appeared at the club and changed his acc.u.mulated dollars into chips. Fortune favored him that evening; his perfected "system" worked the right way. He walked home early the next morning, exhilarated and happy, with his pockets stuffed with bank-notes. He smoothed out and counted the crumpled bills when he arrived at his lodgings, and found that his pile had grown to $10,000, and for some days his dreams of success were fulfilled, and he was "c.o.c.k of the walk"

at the Turf and Jockey. He ordered champagne recklessly at dinner for the other men, though he drank little himself.

He even wrote a little note to his wife in Paris, inclosing a thousand-dollar bank-note to buy some bonnets and a gown.

"Nell will be surprised," he had said to himself, as he slipped the notes into the envelope. "By gad, when I get all my money back, I shall cut all this, and we will go to America on a ranch. Poor Nell! I haven't treated her right. I fear I have made a dreadful mess of it all."

He went to the gaming-table that evening with a light heart, and with other thoughts than his "system" in his mind--thoughts which had not been his for years.

It happened that a young Oxford undergraduate was at the table, and the young fellow had drank freely and had consumed a great deal of the "Golden Boy," as he affectionately termed the club champagne. As a consequence of these libations and of his utter ignorance of the game, he played recklessly, and won from the beginning, although he was surrounded by the most astute players in England. Poor Carey's cherished "system" was powerless against the boy's absurd play and tremendous run of luck, and his pile of chips melted away like snow in April, until he had not a dollar left. He rushed down to the office of the club to get the letter to his wife which he had put in the box, but the mail had been sent away. He succeeded in borrowing $50 upon his watch from the club steward, and returned to the table. But it was of no use; this soon followed the rest of his money. There were but two rules at the Turf and Jockey--"no I. O. U.'s were allowed at the card-table, and no one was permitted, under pain of expulsion from the club, to borrow or lend money." Carey had no alternative but to sit by the gaming-table and watch the play. He slept at the club on the sofa that night, and looked on at the play all the next day, drinking brandy all the while. The Oxford boy had left the club late in the night before, carrying most of the ready money of the establishment with him, and the broken gamblers played for but small stakes. The excitement of his losses and the constant draughts of brandy had made Carey wild and nervous. He paced to and fro in the billiard-room, racking his fuddled brain to find out a way for getting at ready money. His friends had long since ceased lending to him; his wife had repeatedly told him that she would not supply him with money to gamble with. Finally he remembered that she had told him that she had called upon the President to induce that wise ruler to restore him to his place in the Stamp and Sealing Wax. If he could only get that task, he would in a few weeks, with his hundred dollars' allowance a week and his salary, have a considerable sum to give his system another chance, taking care to avoid tipsy greenhorns this time. He felt too rickety to face the President until he had drank several more gla.s.ses of brandy. This done, he hailed a cab and drove straight to Buckingham Palace. Immediately he sent in his name by the policeman; he was shown into the President's private room, where the ruler of England was seated at a large desk looking over a heap of official papers. The President looked sharply and inquiringly at him.

"Mr. Oswald Carey?" he inquired, looking at the card which he held between his thumb and forefinger.

"Yes, sir," stammered Carey, who felt his hand shaking violently as he leaned against the President's desk. "I have come to shee about my reshtoration to Samp and Stealing-Wax Office--I beg pardon, I mean Steal and Sampling-Wax Office." He twirled the waxed end of his mustache with a trembling hand, and looked uneasily at the President, feeling that he had taken more brandy than was necessary to settle his nerves.

The President said nothing, but smiled a little scornfully. Nothing gave Bagshaw such keen delight as to see a gentleman, even such a wreck of a gentleman as Carey, in a base position.

"Mrs. Carey spoke to you about it some t-time ago, I be-believe,"

stammered Carey, who was sorry that he had come there by this time. "I was a useful public servant."