Read Ebook: The Coil of Carne by Oxenham John

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Ebook has 1806 lines and 65694 words, and 37 pages

with all the headlong vehemence of his nature.

He had never dreamed there were so many good fellows in the world, such multitudes of pretty girls, such endless excitements of so many different kinds. Life was good; and Jack, deep in his studies at Chatham, And Charles Eager, busy among his simple folk up north, alike wagged their heads doubtfully over the hasty scrawls which reached them from time to time with exuberant but sketchy accounts of his doings, always winding up with promises of fuller details which never arrived.

Gracie enjoyed his enjoyment of life to the full, and wept with amusement over his attempts at description of the people he met, and never suffered any slightest feeling of loss in him, for he wound up every letter to her with the statement that, on his honour, he had not yet met a girl who could hold a candle to her, and that he did not believe there was one in the whole world, and that if there was he had no wish to meet her, and so he remained--hers most devotedly, hers most gratefully, hers only, hers till death, and so on, and so on--Jim.

As to Sir Denzil, who received a dutiful letter now and again and got all Eager's news in addition, he only smiled over all these carryings-on, and said the lad must have his fling, and it sounded all very tame and flat compared with the doings of his young days. And If the boy came a cropper in money matters he would be inclined to look upon it as the clearest indication they had yet had as to his birth, for there never had been a genuine Carron who had not made the money fly when he got the chance. None of which subversive doctrine did Eager transmit to the exuberant one in London, lest it should but serve to grease the wheels and quicken the pace towards catastrophe; and he earnestly begged, and solemnly warned, Sir Denzil to keep his deplorable sentiments to himself, lest worse should come of it.

And to Charles Eager, deeply as he detested the thought of war, it seemed that, from the purely personal point of view, as regarded Jim and his fellows in like case, a taste of the strenuous life of camp and field would be more wholesome than this frivolous whirl of London.

Jim, in his joyous flights, met many a strange adventure.

He had gone one night with some of his fellows--Charlie Denham, second lieutenant in his own regiment, and some others--to a house in St. James's Street, where Chance still flourished vigorously in spite of Act 8 & 9 Vict. c. 109, and stood watching the play, with his eyes nearly falling out of his head at the magnitude and apparent recklessness of it all.

It was a curious room--the walls hung with heavy draperies, no sign of a window anywhere about it; and it had a feeling and atmosphere of its own, one to which fresh air and sweetness and the light of day were entirely foreign. It was furnished with many easy chairs and couches, and softly illuminated by shaded gas pendants which threw a brilliant light on to the tables, but left all beyond in tempered twilight.

The entrance too had struck Jim as still more remarkable. A small, mean door in a narrow side-street yielded silently to the Open Sesame of certain signal-taps and revealed a very narrow circular staircase, apparently in the wall of the house. At every fifteen or twenty steps upwards was another stout door, which opened only to the prearranged signal, and there were three such doors before they arrived at first a cloak-room, then a richly appointed buffet, and finally the gaming-room.

If the descent to hell is proverbially easy, the ascent to this particular antechamber was rendered as difficult as possible, to any except the initiated, and he was presently to learn the reason why.

There was a solid group round each of the tables, and some of the players occasionally gave vent to their feelings in an exultant exclamation--more frequently in a muttered objurgation; but for the most part gain or loss was accepted with equal equanimity, and Jim wondered vaguely as to the depths of the purses that could lose hundreds of guineas on the chance of the moment, and could go on losing, and still show no sign.

His wonder and attention settled presently on the most prominent player at the table, an outstanding figure by reason of his striking personal appearance and the size and steady persistence of his stakes.

He might have been any age from sixty to eighty; looking at him again, Jim was not sure but what he might be a hundred. His hair was quite white, but being trimmed rather short carried with it no impression of venerableness. The face below was equally colourless, without seam or wrinkle, perfectly shaped, like a beautiful white cameo and almost as immobile. His eyes were dark and still keen. At the moment they were intent upon the game and Jim watched him fascinated.

He was playing evidently on some system of his own and following it out with deepest interest, though nothing but his eyes betrayed it.

His slim white hand quietly placed note after note on certain numbers, and replaced them with ever-increasing amounts as time after time the croupier raked them away. Now and again a few came fluttering back, but for the most part they tumbled into the bank with the rest. But, whether they came or went, not a muscle moved in the beautiful white face, and the stakes went on increasing with mathematical precision.

Many of the others had stopped their spasmodic punting in order to give their whole attention to his play. Their occasional guineas had come to savour of impudence alongside this formidable campaign.

Jim watched breathlessly, with a tightening of the chest, though the outcome was nothing to him, and wondered how long it could go on. The man must be made of money. He knew too little of the game to follow it with understanding, but he watched the calm white face with intensest interest, and out of the corners of his eyes saw the slim white hand quietly dropping small fortunes up and down the table and replacing them with larger ones as they disappeared.

Then a murmur from the onlookers told him of some change in the tun of luck, but the white face showed no sign. And suddenly the group round the table began to disintegrate.

"What is it?" jerked Jim to his neighbour.

"He's broken the bank. Wish I had half his nerve and luck and about a quarter of his money."

"Who is he?"

"Don't you know? Lord Deseret. Gad, he must have taken ten thousand pounds to-night!"

"Come along, Carron," said one of his friends. "All the fun's over, but it was jolly well worth seeing."

And as Jim turned he found himself face to face with Lord Deseret, who stood quietly tapping one hand with a bundle of bank-notes, folded lengthwise as though they were so many pipe-spills.

"Carron?" he said gently. "Which of you is Carron?"

"I am Jim Carron, sir--at your service." And the keen kindly eyes dwelt pleasantly on him and seemed to go right through him.

"Well, you see, there are two of us, sir, and we are both Denzil, so we are also Jack and Jim to prevent mistakes."

"Two of you, are there?"--with a slight knitting of the smooth white brow, on which all the wildest fluctuations of the tables had not produced the faintest ripple of emotion. "Two of you, eh? And which of you is Lady Susan Sandys's boy? Which is to be Carron of Carne when the time comes?"

"Ah, now! that is more that I can tell you, sir. We are a pair of unfortunate twins, and no one knows which is the elder."

"Twins, eh?" And even to Jim's unpractised eye there was a look of surprise on the calm white face. "That is somewhat awkward for the succession, isn't it? Which is the better man?"

"Oh--Jack, miles away. He's got a head on him. He's at Chatham in the Engineers. I'm in the Hussars."

"There may be work even for the Hussars before long. There certainly will be for the Engineers. You're all looking forward to it, I suppose?"

"Very much so, sir. You think there's no doubt about it?"

"None, I fear, my boy. It will bring loss to many, gain to a few, but the gain rarely equals the loss. Do you play?" he asked abruptly.

"Very little. It's all quite new to me. I've hardly found my feet yet."

"This kind of thing," he said, flipping the bank-notes, "is all very well if you can afford it. Take my advice and keep clear of it."

Jim laughed, as much as to say, "Your example and your good fortune belie your words, sir."

"I can afford it, you see," said Lord Deseret, in reply to the boy's unspoken thought. "When you are as old as I am, and if you have wasted your life as I have," he said impressively, "you may come to play as the only excitement left to you. But I hope you will have more sense and make better use of your time. Will you come and see me?"

"I would very much like to, sir, if I may."

"You are occupied in the mornings, of course." And he pulled out a gold pencil-case and scribbled an address on the back of the outermost bank-note, and handed it to Jim. "Any afternoon about five, you will find me at home."

"Put it in your pocket, my boy. You will find some use for it, unless things are very much changed since my young days. Your father's son--and your grandfather's grandson for the matter of that--need feel no compunction about accepting a trifling present from so old a friend of theirs. You cannot in any case put it to a worse use than I would. I shall look for you, then, within a day or two." And with a final admonitory tap of the sheaf of notes and a kindly nod, he left Jim standing in a vast amazement.

Lord Deseret had gone out by the door leading to the buffet and staircase. He was back on the instant with his hat and cloak on, just as a sharp whistle from some concealed tube behind the hangings cleft the air, and, in the sudden silence that befell, Jim heard the sound of thunderous blows from the lower regions.

Lord Deseret looked quickly round and beckoned to him.

"The police," he said quietly. "Get your things and keep close to me. It would never do for you to be caught here. There is plenty of time. Those doors will keep them busy for a good quarter of an hour or more. Now, Stepan!" And a burly man, who had suddenly appeared, pulled back the heavy curtains from a corner and opened a narrow slit of a door, and they passed through to another staircase, which led up and up until, through a trap-door, they came out on to the roof. They passed on over many roofs, with little ladders leading up and down over the party-walls, and finally down through another trap, and so through a public-house into a distant street.

"A thing we are always subject to," said Lord Deseret gently, "and so we provide for it. Don't forget to come and see me. Good night!"

"You're in luck's way, old man," said his friend Denham. "Deseret is a man worth knowing. Let's go and have something to eat." And they all went over to Merlin's and had a tremendous supper, for which they allowed Jim to pay because he was in luck's way and had made the acquaintance of Lord Deseret.

And many such supper-bills would have made but a very trifling hole in Lord Deseret's bank-note.

Perhaps it was that heavy supper, and its concomitants, that tended to fog Jim's recollection of something in his talk with Lord Deseret which had struck a jarring note in his brain at the time, and had suggested itself to him as odd and a thing to be most decidedly looked into when opportunity offered.

The feeling of it was with him next day, but he could not get back to the fact or the words which had given rise to it. Something the old man had said had caused him a momentary surprise and discomfort, and then had come the abiding surprise, from which the momentary discomfort had worn off, of that enormous bank-note, and after that the hasty exit over the roofs and the tumultuous supper at Merlin's, with much merriment and wine and smoke. It was not easy to get back through all that fog to the actual words of a casual conversation.

But there certainly was something. What, in Heaven's name, was it, that it should haunt him in this fashion?

And then, as he did his best for the tenth time, in his thick-headed, blundering way, to cover the ground again step by step, it suddenly flashed upon him.

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