the young duke had accepted the invitation of the baron de berg-hem for tomorrow, and accordingly, himself, lords castlefort and dice, and temple grace assembled in brunswick terrace at the usual hour. the dinner was studiously plain, and very little wine was drunk; yet everything was perfect. tom cogit stepped in to carve in his usual silent manner. he always came in and went out of a room without anyone observing him. he winked familiarly to temple grace, but scarcely presumed to bow to the duke. he was very busy about the wine, and dressed the wild fowl in a manner quite unparalleled. tom cogit was the man for a sauce for a brown bird. what a mystery he made of it! cayenne and burgundy and limes were ingredients, but there was a magic in the incantation with which he alone was acquainted. he took particular care to send a most perfect portion to the young duke, and he did this, as he paid all attentions to influential strangers, with the most marked consciousness of the sufferance which permitted his presence: never addressing his grace, but audibly whispering to the servant, ‘take this to the duke;’ or asking the attendant, ‘whether his grace would try the hermitage?’
after dinner, with the exception of cogit, who was busied in compounding some wonderful liquid for the future refreshment, they sat down to écarté. without having exchanged a word upon the subject, there seemed a general understanding among all the parties that to-night was to be a pitched battle, and they began at once, briskly. yet, in spite of their universal determination, midnight arrived without anything decisive. another hour passed over, and then tom cogit kept touching the baron’s elbow and whispering in a voice which everybody could understand. all this meant that supper was ready. it was brought into the room.
gaming has one advantage, it gives you an appetite; that is to say, so long as you have a chance remaining. the duke had thousands; for at present his resources were unimpaired, and he was exhausted by the constant attention and anxiety of five hours. he passed over the delicacies and went to the side-table, and began cutting himself some cold roast beef. tom cogit ran up, not to his grace, but to the baron, to announce the shocking fact that the duke of st. james was enduring great trouble; and then the baron asked his grace to permit mr. cogit to serve him. our hero devoured — we use the word advisedly, as fools say in the house of commons — he devoured the roast beef, and rejecting the hermitage with disgust, asked for porter.
they set to again fresh as eagles. at six o’clock accounts were so complicated that they stopped to make up their books. each played with his memoranda and pencil at his side. nothing fatal had yet happened. the duke owed lord dice about five thousand pounds, and temple grace owed him as many hundreds. lord castlefort also was his debtor to the tune of seven hundred and fifty, and the baron was in his books, but slightly. every half-hour they had a new pack of cards, and threw the used one on the floor. all this time tom cogit did nothing but snuff the candles, stir the fire, bring them a new pack, and occasionally make a tumbler for them. at eight o’clock the duke’s situation was worsened. the run was greatly against him, and perhaps his losses were doubled. he pulled up again the next hour or two; but nevertheless, at ten o’clock, owed everyone something. no one offered to give over; and everyone, perhaps, felt that his object was not obtained. they made their toilets and went down-stairs to breakfast. in the meantime the shutters were opened, the room aired, and in less than an hour they were at it again.
they played till dinner-time without intermission; and though the duke made some desperate efforts, and some successful ones, his losses were, nevertheless, trebled. yet he ate an excellent dinner and was not at all depressed; because the more he lost, the more his courage and his resources seemed to expand. at first he had limited himself to ten thousand; after breakfast it was to have been twenty thousand; then thirty thousand was the ultimatum; and now he dismissed all thoughts of limits from his mind, and was determined to risk or gain everything.
at midnight, he had lost forty-eight thousand pounds. affairs now began to be serious. his supper was not so hearty. while the rest were eating, he walked about the room, and began to limit his ambition to recovery, and not to gain. when you play to win back, the fun is over: there is nothing to recompense you for your bodily tortures and your degraded feelings; and the very best result that can happen, while it has no charms, seems to your cowed mind impossible.
on they played, and the duke lost more. his mind was jaded. he floundered, he made desperate efforts, but plunged deeper in the slough. feeling that, to regain his ground, each card must tell, he acted on each as if it must win, and the consequences of this insanity (for a gamester at such a crisis is really insane) were, that his losses were prodigious.
another morning came, and there they sat, ankle-deep in cards. no attempt at breakfast now, no affectation of making a toilet or airing the room. the atmosphere was hot, to be sure, but it well became such a hell. there they sat, in total, in positive forgetfulness of everything but the hot game they were hunting down. there was not a man in the room, except tom cogit, who could have told you the name of the town in which they were living. there they sat, almost breathless, watching every turn with the fell look in their cannibal eyes which showed their total inability to sympathise with their fellow-beings. all forms of society had been long forgotten. there was no snuff-box handed about now, for courtesy, admiration, or a pinch; no affectation of occasionally making a remark upon any other topic but the all-engrossing one. lord castlefort rested with his arms on the table: a false tooth had got unhinged. his lordship, who, at any other time, would have been most annoyed, coolly put it in his pocket. his cheeks had fallen, and he looked twenty years older. lord dice had torn off his cravat, and his hair hung down over his callous, bloodless cheeks, straight as silk. temple grace looked as if he were blighted by lightning; and his deep blue eyes gleamed like a hyaena’s. the baron was least changed. tom cogit, who smelt that the crisis was at hand, was as quiet as a bribed rat.
on they played till six o’clock in the evening, and then they agreed to desist till after dinner. lord dice threw himself on a sofa. lord castlefort breathed with difficulty. the rest walked about. while they were resting on their oars, the young duke roughly made up his accounts. he found that he was minus about one hundred thousand pounds.
immense as this loss was, he was more struck, more appalled, let us say, at the strangeness of the surrounding scene, than even by his own ruin. as he looked upon his fellow gamesters, he seemed, for the first time in his life, to gaze upon some of those hideous demons of whom he had read. he looked in the mirror at himself. a blight seemed to have fallen over his beauty, and his presence seemed accursed. he had pursued a dissipated, even more than a dissipated career. many were the nights that had been spent by him not on his couch; great had been the exhaustion that he had often experienced; haggard had sometimes even been the lustre of his youth. but when had been marked upon his brow this harrowing care? when had his features before been stamped with this anxiety, this anguish, this baffled desire, this strange unearthly scowl, which made him even tremble? what! was it possible? it could not be, that in time he was to be like those awful, those unearthly, those unhallowed things that were around him. he felt as if he had fallen from his state, as if he had dishonoured his ancestry, as if he had betrayed his trust. he felt a criminal. in the darkness of his meditations a flash burst from his lurid mind, a celestial light appeared to dissipate this thickening gloom, and his soul felt as if it were bathed with the softening radiancy. he thought of may dacre, he thought of everything that was pure, and holy, and beautiful, and luminous, and calm. it was the innate virtue of the man that made this appeal to his corrupted nature. his losses seemed nothing; his dukedom would be too slight a ransom for freedom from these ghouls, and for the breath of the sweet air.
he advanced to the baron, and expressed his desire to play no more. there was an immediate stir. all jumped up, and now the deed was done. cant, in spite of their exhaustion, assumed her reign. they begged him to have his revenge, were quite annoyed at the result, had no doubt he would recover if he proceeded. without noticing their remarks, he seated himself at the table, and wrote cheques for their respective amounts, tom cogit jumping up and bringing him the inkstand. lord castlefort, in the most affectionate manner, pocketed the draft; at the same time recommending the duke not to be in a hurry, but to send it when he was cool. lord dice received his with a bow, temple grace with a sigh, the baron with an avowal of his readiness always to give him his revenge.
the duke, though sick at heart, would not leave the room with any evidence of a broken spirit; and when lord castlefort again repeated, ‘pay us when we meet again,’ he said, ‘i think it very improbable that we shall meet again, my lord. i wished to know what gaming was. i had heard a great deal about it. it is not so very disgusting; but i am a young man, and cannot play tricks with my complexion.’
he reached his house. the bird was out. he gave orders for himself not to be disturbed, and he went to bed; but in vain he tried to sleep. what rack exceeds the torture of an excited brain and an exhausted body? his hands and feet were like ice, his brow like fire; his ears rung with supernatural roaring; a nausea had seized upon him, and death he would have welcomed. in vain, in vain he courted repose; in vain, in vain he had recourse to every expedient to wile himself to slumber. each minute he started from his pillow with some phrase which reminded him of his late fearful society. hour after hour moved on with its leaden pace; each hour he heard strike, and each hour seemed an age. each hour was only a signal to cast off some covering, or shift his position. it was, at length, morning. with a feeling that he should go mad if he remained any longer in bed, he rose, and paced his chamber. the air refreshed him. he threw himself on the floor; the cold crept over his senses, and he slept.
