Part 73 (1/2)
”And break 'em,” said Mrs. Bonner.
”And keep 'em this time,” cried out Strong. ”He must keep them. If you could have seen how he wept, ma'am! 'Oh, Strong,' he said to me, 'it's not for myself I feel now: it's for my boy--it's for the best woman in England, whom I have treated basely--I know I have.' He didn't intend to bet upon this race, ma'am--indeed he didn't. He was cheated into it: all the ring was taken in. He thought he might make the bet quite safely, without the least risk. And it will be a lesson to him for all his life long. To see a man cry--oh, it's dreadful.”
”He don't think much of making my dear missus cry,” said Mrs.
Bonner--”poor dear soul!--look if he does, Captain.”
”If you've the soul of a man, Clavering,” Strong said to his princ.i.p.al, when he recounted this scene to him, ”you'll keep your promise this time: and, so help me Heaven! if you break word with her, I'll turn against you, and tell all.”
”What all?” cried Mr. Francis, to whom his amba.s.sador brought the news back at Short's Hotel, where Strong found the Baronet crying and drinking curacoa.
”Psha! Do you suppose I am a fool?” burst out Strong. ”Do you suppose I could have lived so long in the world, Frank Clavering, without having my eyes about me? You know I have but to speak and you are a beggar to-morrow. And I am not the only man who knows your secret.”
”Who else does?” gasped Clavering.
”Old Pendennis does, or I am very much mistaken. He recognised the man the first night he saw him, when he came drunk into your house.”
”He knows it, does he?” shrieked out Clavering. ”d.a.m.n him--kill him.”
”You'd like to kill us all, wouldn't you, old boy?” said Strong, with a sneer, puffing his cigar.
The Baronet dashed his weak hand against his forehead; perhaps the other had interpreted his wish rightly. ”Oh, Strong!” he cried, ”if I dared, I'd put an end to myself, for I'm the d-----est miserable dog in all England. It's that that makes me so wild and reckless. It's that which makes me take to drink” (and he drank, with a trembling hand, a b.u.mper of his fortifier--the curacoa), ”and to live about with these thieves. I know they're thieves, every one of 'em, d----d thieves. And--and how can I help it?--and I didn't know it, you know--and, by Gad, I'm innocent--and until I saw the d----d scoundrel first, I knew no more about it than the dead--and I'll fly, and I'll go abroad out of the reach of the confounded h.e.l.ls, and I'll bury myself in a forest, by Gad!
and hang myself up to a tree--and, oh--I'm the most miserable beggar in all England!” And so with more tears, shrieks, and curses, the impotent wretch vented his grief and deplored his unhappy fate; and, in the midst of groans and despair and blasphemy, vowed his miserable repentance.
The honoured proverb which declares that to be an ill wind which blows good to n.o.body, was verified in the case of Sir Francis Clavering, and another of the occupants of Mr. Strong's chambers in Shepherd's Inn. The man was ”good,” by a lucky hap, with whom Colonel Altamont made his bet; and on the settling day of the Derby--as Captain Clinker, who was appointed to settle Sir Francis Clavering's book for him (for Lady Clavering by the advice of Major Pendennis, would not allow the Baronet to liquidate his own money transactions), paid over the notes to the Baronet's many creditors--Colonel Altamont had the satisfaction of receiving the odds of thirty to one in fifties, which he had taken against the winning horse of the day.
Numbers of the Colonel's friends were present on the occasion to congratulate him on his luck--all Altamont's own set, and the gents who met in the private parlour of the convivial Wheeler, my host of the Harlequin's Head, came to witness their comrade's good fortune, and would have liked, with a generous sympathy for success, to share in it.
”Now was the time,” Tom Driver had suggested to the Colonel, ”to have up the specie s.h.i.+p that was sunk in the Gulf of Mexico, with the three hundred and eighty thousand dollars on board, besides bars and doubloons.” ”The Tredyddlums were very low--to be bought for an old song--never was such an opportunity for buying shares,” Mr. Keightley insinuated; and Jack Holt pressed forward his tobacco-smuggling scheme, the audacity of which pleased the Colonel more than any other of the speculations proposed to him. Then of the Harlequin's Head boys: there was Jack Rackstraw, who knew of a pair of horses which the Colonel must buy; Tom Fleet, whose satirical paper, The Swell, wanted but two hundred pounds of capital to be worth a thousand a year to any man--”with such a power and influence, Colonel, you rogue, and the entree of the green-rooms in London,” Tom urged; whilst little Moss Abiams entreated the Colonel not to listen to these absurd fellows with their humbugging speculations, but to invest his money in some good bills which Moss could get for him, and which would return him fifty per cent as safe as the Bank of England.
Each and all of these worthies came round the Colonel with their various blandishments; but he had courage enough to resist them, and to b.u.t.ton up his notes in the pocket of his coat, and go home to Strong, and ”sport” the outer door of the chambers. Honest Strong had given his fellow-lodger good advice about all his acquaintances; and though, when pressed, he did not mind frankly taking twenty pounds himself out of the Colonel's winnings, Strong was a great deal too upright to let others cheat him.
He was not a bad fellow when in good fortune, this Altamont. He ordered a smart livery for Grady, and made poor old Costigan shed tears of quickly dried grat.i.tude by giving him a five-pound note after a snug dinner at the Back Kitchen, and he bought a green shawl for Mrs. Bolton, and a yellow one for f.a.n.n.y: the most brilliant ”sacrifices” of a Regent Street haberdasher's window. And a short time after this, upon her birthday, which happened in the month of June, Miss Amory received from ”a friend” a parcel containing an enormous bra.s.s inlaid writing-desk, in which there was a set of amethysts, the most hideous eyes ever looked upon,--a musical snuff-box, and two Keepsakes of the year before last, and accompanied with a couple of gown pieces of the most astounding colours, the receipt of which goods made the Sylphide laugh and wonder immoderately. Now it is a fact that Colonel Altamont had made a purchase of cigars and French silks from some duffers in Fleet Street about this period; and he was found by Strong in the open Auction Room in Cheapside, having invested some money in two desks, several pairs of richly-plated candlesticks, a dinner epergne, and a bagatelle-board. The dinner epergne remained at chambers, and figured at the banquets there, which the Colonel gave pretty freely. It seemed beautiful in his eyes, until Jack Holt said it looked as if it had been taken ”in a bill.” And Jack Holt certainly knew.
The dinners were pretty frequent at chambers, and Sir Francis Clavering condescended to partake of them constantly. His own house was shut up: the successor of Mirobolant, who had sent in his bills so prematurely, was dismissed by the indignant Lady Clavering: the luxuriance of the establishment was greatly pruned and reduced. One of the large footmen was cas.h.i.+ered, upon which the other gave warning, not liking to serve without his mate, or in a family where on'y one footman was kep'.
General and severe economical reforms were practised by the Begum in her whole household, in consequence of the extravagance of which her graceless husband had been guilty. The Major, as her ladys.h.i.+p's friend; Strong, on the part of poor Clavering; her ladys.h.i.+p's lawyer, and the honest Begum herself, executed these reforms with prompt.i.tude and severity. After paying the Baronet's debts, the settlement of which occasioned considerable public scandal, and caused the Baronet to sink even lower in the world's estimation than he had been before, Lady Clavering quitted London for Tunbridge Wells in high dudgeon, refusing to see her reprobate husband, whom n.o.body pitied. Clavering remained in London patiently, by no means anxious to meet his wife's just indignation, and sneaked in and out of the House of Commons, whence he and Captain Raff and Mr. Marker would go to have a game at billiards and a cigar or showed in the sporting public-houses; or might be seen lurking about Lincoln's Inn and his lawyers', where the princ.i.p.als kept him for hours waiting, and the clerks winked at each other, as he sate in their office. No wonder that he relished the dinners at Shepherd's Inn, and was perfectly resigned there: resigned? he was so happy nowhere else; he was wretched amongst his equals, who scorned him--but here he was the chief guest at the table, where they continually addressed him with ”Yes, Sir Francis” and ”No, Sir Francis,” where he told his wretched jokes, and where he quavered his dreary little French song, after Strong had sung his Jovial chorus, and honest Costigan had piped his Irish ditties. Such a jolly menage as Strong's, with Grady's Irish-stew, and the Chevalier's brew of punch after dinner, would have been welcome to many a better man than Clavering, the solitude of whose great house at home frightened him, where he was attended only by the old woman who kept the house, and his valet who sneered at him.
”Yes, dammit,” said he to his friends in Shepherd's Inn, ”that fellow of mine, I must turn him away, only I owe him two years' wages, curse him, and can't ask my lady. He brings me my tea cold of a morning, with a dem'd leaden teaspoon, and he says my lady's sent all the plate to the banker's because it ain't safe.--Now ain't it hard that she won't trust me with a single teaspoon; ain't it ungentlemanlike, Altamont? You know my lady's of low birth--that is--I beg your pardon--hem--that is, it's most cruel of her not to show more confidence in me. And the very servants begin to laugh--the d.a.m.n scoundrels! I break every bone in their great hulking bodies, curse 'em, I will.--They don't answer my bell: and--and my man was at Vauxhall last night with one of my dress-s.h.i.+rts and my velvet waistcoat on, I know it was mine--the confounded impudent blackguard--and he went on dancing before my eyes confound him! I'm sure he'll live to be hanged--he deserves to be hanged--all those infernal rascals of valets.”
He was very kind to Altamont now: he listened to the Colonel's loud stories when Altamont described how--when he was working his way home once from New Zealand, where he had been on a whaling expedition--he and his comrades had been obliged to slink on board at night, to escape from their wives, by Jove--and how the poor devils put out in their canoes when they saw the s.h.i.+p under sail, and paddled madly after her: how he had been lost in the bush once for three months in New South Wales, when he was there once on a trading speculation: how he had seen Boney at Saint Helena, and been presented to him with the rest of the officers of the Indiaman of which he was a mate--to all these tales (and over his cups Altamont told many of them; and, it must be owned, lied and bragged a great deal) Sir Francis now listened with great attention; making a point of drinking wine with Altamont at dinner and of treating him with every distinction.
”Leave him alone, I know what he's a-coming to,” Altamont said, laughing to Strong, who remonstrated with him, ”and leave me alone; I know what I'm a-telling, very well. I was officer on board an Indiaman, so I was; I traded to New South Wales, so I did, in a s.h.i.+p of my own, and lost her. I became officer to the Nawaub, so I did; only me and my royal master have had a difference, Strong--that's it. Who's the better or the worse for what I tell? or knows anything about me? The other chap is dead--shot in the bush, and his body reckonised at Sydney. If I thought anybody would split, do you think I wouldn't wring his neck? I've done as good before now, Strong--I told you how I did for the overseer before I took leave--but in fair fight, I mean--in fair fight; or, rayther, he had the best of it. He had his gun and bay'net, and I had only an axe.
Fifty of 'em saw it--ay, and cheered me when I did it--and I'd do it again,--him, wouldn't I? I ain't afraid of anybody; and I'd have the life of the man who split upon me. That's my maxim, and pa.s.s me the liquor.--You wouldn't turn on a man. I know you. You're an honest feller, and will stand by a feller, and have looked death in the face like a man. But as for that lily-livered sneak--that poor lyin'
swindlin' cringin' cur of a Clavering--who stands in my shoes--stands in my shoes, hang him! I'll make him pull my boots off and clean 'em, I will. Ha, ha!” Here he burst out into a wild laugh, at which Strong got up and put away the brandy-bottle. The other still laughed good-humouredly. ”You're right, old boy,” he said; ”you always keep your head cool, you do--and when I begin to talk too much--I say, when I begin to pitch, I authorise you, and order you, and command you, to put away the rum-bottle.”
”Take my counsel, Altamont,” Strong said, gravely, ”and mind how you deal with that man. Don't make it too much his interest to get rid of you; or who knows what he may do?”
The event for which, with cynical enjoyment, Altamont had been on the look-out, came very speedily. One day, Strong being absent upon an errand for his princ.i.p.al, Sir Francis made his appearance in the chambers, and found the envoy of the Nawaub alone. He abused the world in general for being heartless and unkind to him: he abused his wife for being ungenerous to him; he abused Strong for being ungrateful--hundreds of pounds had he given Ned Strong--been his friend for life and kept him out of gaol, by Jove,--and now Ned was taking her ladys.h.i.+p's side against him and abetting her in her infernal unkind treatment of him.
”They've entered into a conspiracy to keep me penniless, Altamont,” the Baronet said: ”they don't give me as much pocket money as Frank has at school.”