CHAPTER XXV.

THE OLD GOOSE FINDS A YOUNG GANDER.



We will suppose some months to have elapsed in this manner—months, to me, of prolonged torture and suspicion. Circumstanees, like petty billows of the sea, kept chafing upon the low places of my heart, keeping alive the feverish irritation which had already done so much toward destroying my peace, and overthrowing the guardian outposts of my pride and honor. How long the strife was to bo continued before the ocean-torrents should be let in—before the wild passions should quite overwhelm my reason—was a subject of doubt, but not the less a subject of present and of exceeding fear. In these matters, I need not say that there was substantially very little change in the character of events that marked the progress of my domestic life. William Edgerton still continued the course which he had so unwittingly begun. He still sought every opportunity to see my wife, and, if possible, to see her alone. He avoided me as much as possible; seldom came to the office; absolutely gave up his business altogether; and, when we met, though his words and manner were solicitously kind, there was a close restraint upon the latter, a hesitancy about the former, a timid apprehensiveness in his eye, and a generally-shown reluctance to approach me, which I could not but see, and could not but perceive, at the same time, that he endeavored with ineffectual effort to conceal. He was evidently conscious that he was doing wrong. It was equally clear to me that he lacked the manly courage to do right. What was all this to end in? The question became momently more and more serious. Suppose that he possessed no sort of influence over my wife! Even suppose his advances to stop where they were at present—his course already, so far, was a humiliating indignity, allowing that it became perceptible to the eyes of others. That revelation once made, there could be no more proper forbearance on the part of the husband. The customs of our society, the tone of public opinion—nay, outraged humanity itself—demanded then the interposition of the avenger. And that revelation was at hand.

Meanwhile, the keenest eyes of suspicion could behold nothing in the conduct of Julia which was not entirely unexceptionable. If William Edgerton was still persevering in his pursuit, Julia seemed insensible to his endeavors. Of course, they met frequently when it was not in my power to see them. It was my error to suppose that they met more frequently still—that he saw her invariably in his morning visits to the studio, which was not often the case—and, when they did meet, that she derived quite as much satisfaction from the interview as himself. Of their meetings, except at night, when I was engaged in my miserable watch upon them, I could say nothing. Failing to note anything evil at such periods, my jealous imagination jumped to the conclusion that this was because my espionage was suspected, and that their interviews at other periods were distinguished by less prudence and reserve. And yet, could I have reasoned rightly at this period, I must have seen that, if such were the case, there would have been no such display of EMPRESSMENT as William Edgerton made at these evening visits. Did he expend his ardor in the day, did he apprehend my scrutiny at night, he would surely have suppressed the eagerness of his glance—the profound, all-forgetting adoration which marked his whole air, gaze, and manner. Nor should I have been so wretchedly blind to what was the obvious feeling of discontent and disquiet in her bosom. Never did evenings seem to pass with more downright dullness to any one party in the world. If Edgerton spoke to her, which he did not frequently, his address was marked by a trepidation and hesitancy akin to fear—a manner which certainly indicated anything but a foregone conclusion between them; while her answers, on the other hand, were singularly cold, merely replying, and calculated invariably to discourage everything like a protracted conversation. What was said by Edgerton was sufficiently harmless—nor harmless merely. It was most commonly mere ordinary commonplace, the feeble effort of one who feels the necessity of speech, yet dares not speak the voluminous passions which alone could furnish him with energetic and manly utterance. Had the scales not been abundantly thick and callous above my eyes, how easily might these clandestine scrutinies have brought me back equally to happiness and my senses! But though I thus beheld the parties, and saw the truth as I now relate it, there was always then some little trifling circumstance that would rise up, congenial to suspicion, and cloud my conclusions, and throw me back upon old doubts and cruel jealousies. Edgerton's tone may, at moments, have been more faltering and more tender than usual; Julia's glance might sometimes encounter his, and then they both might seem to fall, in mutual confusion, to the ground. Perhaps she sung some little ditty at his instance—some ditty that she had often sung for me. Nay, at his departure, she might have attended him to the entrance, and he may have taken her hand and retained his grasp upon it rather longer than was absolutely necessary for his farewell. How was I to know the degree of pressure which he gave to the hand within his own? That single grasp, not unfrequently, undid all the better impressions of a whole evening consumed in these unworthy scrutinies. I will not seek further to account for or to defend this unhappy weakness. Has not the great poet of humanity said—

"Trifles, light as air, Are, to the jealous, confirmations strong As proofs Of Holy Writ"?

Medical men tell us of a predisposing condition of the system for the inception of epidemic. It needs, after this, but the smallest atmospheric changes, and the contagion spreads, and blackens, and taints the entire body of society, even unto death. The history of the moral constitution is not unanalogous to this. The disease, the damning doubt, once in the mind, and the rest is easy. It may sleep and be silent for a season, for years, unprovoked by stimulating circumstances; but let the moral atmosphere once receive its color from the suddenly-passing cloud, and the dark spot dilates within the heart, grows active, and rapidly sends its poisonous and poisoning tendrils through all the avenues of mind. Its bitter secretions in my soul affected all the objects of my sight, even as the jaundiced man lives only in a saffron element. Perhaps no course of conduct on the part of my wife could have seemed to me entirely innocent. Certainly none could have been entirely satisfactory, or have seemed entirely proper. Even her words, when she spoke to me alone, were of a kind to feed my prevailing passion. Yet, regarded under just moods, they should have been the most conclusive, not simply of her innocence, but of the devotedness of her heart to the requisitions of her duty. Her love and her sense of right seemed harmoniously to keep together. Gentlest reproaches eluded me for leaving her, when she sought for none but myself. Sweetest endearments encountered my return, and fondest entreaties would have delayed the hour of my departure. Her earnestness, when she implored me not to leave her so frequently at night, almost reached intensity, and had a meaning, equally expressive of her delicacy and apprehensions, which I was unhappily too slow to understand.

Six months had probably elapsed from the time of Mr. Clifford's death, when, returning from my office one day, who should I encounter in my wife's company but her mother? Of this good lady I had been permitted to see but precious little since my marriage. Not that she had kept aloof from our dwelling entirely. Julia had always conceived it a duty to seek her mother at frequent periods without regarding the ill treament which she received; and the latter, becoming gradually reconciled to what she could no longer prevent, had at length so far put on the garments of Christian charity as to make a visit to her daughter in return. Of course, though I did not encourage it, I objected nothing to this renewed intercourse; which continued to increase until, as in the present instance, I sometimes encountered this good lady on my return from my office. On these occasions I treated her with becoming respect, though without familiarity. I inquired after her health, expressed myself pleased to see her, and joined my wife in requesting her to stay to dinner. Until now, she usually declined to do so; and her manner to myself hitherto was that of a spoiled child indulging in his sulks. But, this day, to my great consternation, she was all smies and good humor.

A change so sudden portended danger. I looked to my wife, whose grave countenance afforded me no explanation. I looked to the lady herself, my own countenance no doubt sufficiently expressive of the wonder which I felt, but there was little to be read in that quarter which could give me any clue to the mystery. Yet she chattered like a magpie; her conversation running on certain styles of dress, various purchases of silks, and satins, and other stuffs, which she had been buying—a budget of which, I afterward discovered, she had brought with her, in order to display to her daughter. Then she spoke of her teeth, newly filed and plugged, and grinned with frequent effort, that their improved condition might be made apparent. Her chatter was peculiarly that of a flippant and conceited girl-child of sixteen, whose head has been turned by premature bringing out, and the tuition of some vain, silly, wriggling mother. I could see, by my wife's looks, that there was a cause for all this, and waited, with considerable apprehension, for the moment when we should be alone, in order to receive from her an explanation. But little of Mrs. Clifford's conversation was addressed to me, though that little was evidently meant to be particularly civil. But, a little before she took her departure, which was soon after dinner, she asked me with some abruptness, though with a considerable smirk of meaning in her face, if I "knew a Mr. Patrick Delaney." I frankly admitted that I had not this pleasure; and with a still more significant smirk, ending in a very affected simper, meant to be very pleasant, she informed me, as she took her leave, that Julia would make me wiser. I looked to Julia when she was gone, and, with some chagrin, and with few words, she unravelled the difficulty. Her mother—the old fool—was about to be married, and to a Mr. Patrick Delaney, an Irish gentleman, fresh from the green island, who had only been some eighteen months in America.

"You seem annoyed by this affair, Julia; but how does it affect you?"

"Oh, such a match can not turn out well. This Mr. Delaney is a young man, only twenty-five, and what can he see in mother to induce him to marry her? It can only be for the little pittance of property which she possesses."

I shrugged my shoulders while replying:—

"There must be some consideration in every marriage-contract."

"Ah! but, Edward, what sort of a man can it be to whom money is the consideration for marrying a woman old enough to be his mother?"

"And so little money, too. But, Julia, perhaps he marries her as a mother. He is a modest youth, who knows his juvenility, and seeks becoming guardianship. But the thing does not concern us at all."

"She is my mother, Edward."

"True; but still I do not see that the matter should concern us. You do not apprehend that Mr. Patrick Delaney will seek to exercise the authority of a father over either of us?"

"No! but I fear she will repent."

"Why should that be a subject of fear which should be a subject of gratulation? For my part, I hope she may repent. We are told she can not be saved else."

Julia was silent. I continued:—

"But what brings her here, and makes her so suddenly affable with me? That is certainly a matter which looks threatening. Does she explain this to you, Julia?"

"Not otherwise than by declaring she is sorry for former differences."

"Ah, indeed! but her sorrow comes too late, and I very much suspect has some motive. What more? the shaft is not yet shot."

"You guess rightly; she invites us to the wedding, and insists that we must come, as a proof that we harbor no malice."

"Is that all?"

"All, I believe."

"She is more considerate than I expected. Well, you promised her?"

"No; I told her I could say nothing without consulting you."

"And would you wish to go, Julia?"

"Oh, surely, dear husband."

"We will both go, then."

A week afterward the affair took place, and we were among the spectators.



CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE HEART-FIEND FINDS AN ECHO FROM THE FIEND WITHOUT.



And a spectacle it was! Mrs. Clifford, about to become Mrs. Delaney, was determined that the change in her situation should be distinguished by becoming eclat. Always a silly woman, fond of extravagance and show, she prepared to celebrate an occasion of the greatest folly in a style of greater extravagance than ever. She accordingly collected as many of her former numerous acquaintances as were still willing to appear within a circle in which wealth was no longer to be found. Her house was small, but, as has been elsewhere stated in this narrative, she had made it smaller by stuffing it with the massive and costly furniture which had been less out of place in her former splendid mansion, and had there much better accorded with her fortunes. She now still further stuffed it with her guests. Of course, many of those present, came only to make merry at her expense. Her husband was almost entirely unknown to any of them; and it was enough to settle his pretensions in every mind, that, in the vigor of his youth, a really fine-looking, well-made person of twenty-five, he was about to connect himself, in marriage, with a haggard old woman of fifty, whose personal charms, never very great, were nearly all gone; and whose mind and manners, the grace of youth being no more, were so very deficient in all those qualities which might commend one to a husband. So far as externals went, Mr. Delaney was a very proper man. He behaved with sufficient decorum, and unexpected modesty; and went through the ordeal as composedly as if the occurrence had been frequently before familiar; as indeed we shall discover in the sequel, was certainly the case. But this does not concern us now.

Three rooms were thrown open to the company. We had refreshments in abundance and great variety, and at a certain hour, we were astounded by the clamor of tamborine and fiddle giving due notice to the dancers. Among my few social accomplishments, this of dancing had never been included. Naturally, I should, perhaps, be considered an awkward man. I was conscious of this awkwardness at all times when not excited by action or some earnest motive. I was incapable of that graceful loitering, that flexibleness of mind and body, which excludes the idea of intensity, of every sort, and which constitutes one of the great essentials for success in a ball-room. It was in this very respect that my FRIEND, William Edgerton, may be said to have excelled most young men of our acquaintance. He was what, in common speech, is called an accomplished man. Of very graceful person, without much earnestness of character, he had acquired a certain fastidiousness of taste on the subjects of costume and manners, which, without Brummellizing, he yet carried to an extent which betrayed a considerable degree of mental feebleness. This somewhat assimilated him to the fashionable dandy. He walked with an air equally graceful, noble, and unaffected. He was never on stilts, yet he was always EN REGLE. He had as little maurias, honte as maurais ton. In short, whatever might have been his deficiencies, he was confessedly a very neat specimen of the fine gentleman in its most commendable social sense.

William Edgerton was among the guests of Mrs. Clifford. There had been no previous intimacy between the Edgerton and Clifford families, yet he had been specially invited. Mrs. C. could have had but a single motive for inviting him—so I thought—that of making her evening a jam. She had just that ambition of the lady of small fashion, who regards the number rather than the quality of her guests, and would prefer a saloon full of Esquimaux or Kanzas, and would partake of their sea-blubber, rather than lose the triumph of making more noise than her rival neighbors, the Sprigginses or Wigginses.

William Edgerton did not seek me; but, when I left the side of my wife to pay my respects to some ladies at the opposite end of the room, he approached her. A keen pang that rendered me unconscious of everything I was saying—nay, even of the persons to whom I was addressing myself—shot through my heart, as I beheld him crossing the floor to the place that I had left. Involuntarily, the gracefulness of his person and carriage provoked in my mind a contrast most unfavorable to me, between him and myself. It was no satisfaction to me at that time to reflect that I was less graceful only because I was more earnest, more sincere. This is usually the case, and is reasonably accounted for. Intensity and great earnestness of character, are wholly inconsistent with a nice attention to forms, carriage, demeanor. But what does a lady care for such distinction? Does she even suspect it? Not often. If she could only fancy for a moment that the well-made but awkward man who traverses the room before her, carried in his breast a soul of such ardency and volume that it subjected his very motion arbitrarily to its own excitements, its own convulsions; that the very awkwardness which offended her was the result of the most deep and passionate feelings—feelings which, like the buried flame in the mountain, are continually boiling up for utterance—convulsing the prison-house which retained them—shaking the solid earth with their pent throes, that will not always be pent! Ah! these things do not move ladies' fancies. There are very few endowed with that thoughtful pride which disdains surfaces. Julia Clifford was one of these few! But I little knew it then.

The approach of William Edgerton to my wife was a signal for my torture all that evening. From that moment my mind was wandering. I knew little what I said, or looked, or did. My chat with those around me became, on a sudden, bald and disjointed; and when I beheld the pair, both nobly formed—he tall, graceful, manly—she, beautiful and bending as a lily—a purity beaming, amid all their brightness, from her eyes—a purity which, I had taught myself to believe, was no longer in her heart—when I beheld them advance into the floor, conspicuous over all the rest, in most eyes, as they certainly were in mine—I can not describe—you may conjecture—the cold, fainting sickness which overcame my soul. I could have lain myself down upon the lone, midnight rocks, and surrendered myself to solitude and storm for ever.

They entered the stately measures of the Spanish dance But the grace of movement which won the murmuring applause of all around me, only increased the agony of my afflictions. I saw their linked arms—the compliant, willing movements of their mutual forms—and dark were the images of guilt and hateful suspicion which entered my brain and grew to vivid forms, in action before me. I fancied the fierce, passionate yearnings in the heart of Edgerton; I trembled when I conjectured what fancies filled the heart of Julia. I can not linger over the torturing influence of those moments—moments which seemed ages! Enough that I was maddened with the delirium, now almost as its height, which had been for months preying upon my brain like some corroding serpent.

The dance closed. Edgerton conducted her to a seat and placed himself beside her. I kept aloof. I watched them from a distance; and in sustaining this watch, I was compelled to recall my senses with a stern degree of resolution which should save my feelings from the detection of those inquisitive glances which I fancied were all around me. If I was weakest among men, in the disease which destroyed my peace, Heaven knows I was among the strongest of men in concealing its expression at the very moment when every pulsation of my heart was an especial agony. I affected indifference, threw myself into the midst of a group of such people as talk of their neighbor's bonnets or breeches, the rise of stocks, or the fall of rain; and how Mrs. Jenkins has set up her carriage, and Mr. Higgins has been compelled to set down, and to sell out his. Interesting details, perhaps, without which the nine in ten might as well be tongueless or tongue-tied for ever. This stuff I had to hear, and requite in like currency, while my brain was boiling, and dim, but terrible images of strife, and storm, and agony, were rushing through it with howling and hisses. There I sat, thus seemingly engaged, but with an eye ever glancing covertly to the two, who, at that moment, absorbed every thought of my mind, every feeling of my heart, and filled them both with the bitterest commotion. The glances of their mutual eyes, the expression of lip and check, I watched with the keenest analysis of suspicion. In Julia, I saw sweetness mixed with a delicate reserve. She seemed to speak but little. Her eyes wandered from her companion—frequently to where I sat—-but I gave myself due credit, at such moments, for the ability with which I conducted my own espionage. My inference—equally unjust and unnatural—that her timid glances to my-self denoted in her bosom a consciousness of wrong—seemed to me the most natural and inevitable inference. And when I noted the ardency of Edgerton's gaze, his close, unrelaxing attentions, the seeming forgetfulness of all around which he manifested, I hurried to the conclusion that his words were of a character to suit his looks, and betray in more emphatic utterance, the passion which they also betrayed.

The signal, after a short respite, devoted to fruits, ices, &C., was made for the dancers, and William Edgerton rose. I noted his bow to my wife, saw that he spoke, and necessarily concluded, that he again solicited her to dance. Her lips moved—she bowed slightly—and he again took his seat beside her. I inferred from this that she declined to dance a second time. She was certainly more prudent than himself. I assigned to prudence—to policy—on her part, what might well have been placed to a nobler motive. I went further.

"She will not dance with him," said the busy fiend at my shoulder, "for the very reason that she prefers a quiet seat beside him. In the dance they mingle with others; they can not speak with so much ease and safety. Now she has him all to herself."

I dashed away, forgetful, gloomily, from the knot by which I had been encompassed. I passed into the adjoining room, which was connected by folding doors, with that I left. The crowd necessarily grouped itself around the dancers, and (sic) a window-jamb, I stood absolutely forgetting where I was alone among the many—with my eye stretching over the heads of the flying masses, to the remote spot where my wife still sat with Edgerton. I was aroused from my hateful dream by a slight touch upon my arm. I started with a painful sense of my own weakness—with a natural dread that the secret misery under which I labored was no longer a secret. I writhed under the conviction that the cold, the sneering, and the worthless, were making merry with my afflictions. I met the gaze of the bride—the mistress of ceremonies—my wife's mother Mrs. Delaney, late Clifford. I shuddered as I beheld her glance. I could not mistake the volume of meaning in her smile—that wretched smile of her thin, withered lips, brimful of malignant cunning, which said emphatically as such smile could say:—

"I see you on the rack; I know that you are writhing; and I enjoy your tortures."

I started, as if to leave her, with a look of fell defiance, roused, ready to burst forth into utterance, upon my own face. But she gently detained my arm.

"You are troubled."

"No."

"Ah! but you are. Stop awhile. You will feel better."

"Thank you; but I feel very well."

"No, no, you do not. You can not deceive me. I know where the shoe pinches; but what did you expect? Were you simple enough to imagine that a woman would be true to her husband, who was false to her own mother?"

"Fiend!" I muttered in her ear.

"Ha! ha! ha!" was the unmeasured response of the bel dame, loud enough for the whole house to hear. I darted from her grasp, which would have detained me still, made my way—how I know not—out of the house, and found myself almost gasping for breath, in the open air of the street.

She, at least, had been sagacious enough to find out my secret

OHAPTEB, XXVII

KINGSLEY.

THE fiendish suggestion of the mother, against the purity of her own child, almost divested me, for the moment, of my own rancor—almost deprived me of my suspicions! Could anything have been more thoroughly horrible and atrocious! It certainly betrayed how deep was the malignant hatred which she had ever borne to myself, and of which her daughter was now required to bear a portion. What a volume of human depravity was opened on my sight, by that single utterance of this wretched mother. Guilt and sin! ye are, indeed, the masters everywhere! How universal is your dominion! How ye rage—how ye riot among souls, and minds, and fancies—never utterly overthrown anywhere—busy always—everywhere—sovereign in how many hapless regions of the heart! Who is pure among men? Who can be sure of himself for a day—an hour? Precious few! None, certainly, who do not distrust their own strength with a humility only to be won from prayer—prayer coupled with moderate desires, and the presence of a constant thought, which teaches that time is a mere agent of eternity, and he who works for the one only, will not even be secure of peace during the period for which he works. Truly, he who lives not for the future is the very last who may reasonably hope to enjoy the blessings of the present.

But this was not the season, nor was mine the mood, for moral reflections of any sort. My secret was known! That was everything. When the conduct of William Edgerton had become such, as to awaken the notice of third persons, I was justified in exacting from him the heavy responsibility he had incurred. The vague, indistinct conviction had long floated before my mind, that I would be required to take his life. The period which was to render this task necessary, was that which had now arrived—when it had been seen by others—not interested like myself—that he had passed the bounds of propriety. Of course, I was arguing in a circle, from which I should have found it impossible to extricate myself. Thousands might have seen that I was jealous, without being able to see any just cause for my jealousy. It was, however, quite enough for a proud spirit like my own, that its secret fear should be revealed. It did not much matter, after this, whether my suspicions were, or were not causeless. It was enough that they were known—that busy, meddling women, and men about town, should distinguish me with a finger—should say: "His wife is very pretty and—very charitable!"

"Ha! ha! ha!"

I, too, could laugh, under such musings, and in the spirit of Mrs. Delaney—late Clifford.

"Ha! ha! ha!" The street echoed, beneath the windows of that reputable lady, with my involuntary, fiendish laughter. I stood there—and the music rang through my senses like the cries of exulting demons. She was there—of my wife the thoughts ran thus, she was there, whirling, perchance, in the mazes of that voluptuous dance, then recently become fashionable among us; his arm about her waist—her form inclining to his, as if seeking support and succor—and both of them forgetting all things but the mutual intoxication which swallowed up all things and thoughts in the absorbing sensuality of one! Or, perhaps, still apart, they sat to themselves—her ear fastened upon his lips—her consciousness given wholly to his discourse; and that discourse!—"Ha! ha! ha!"—I laughed again, as I hurried away from the spot, with gigantic strides, taking the direction which led to my own lonely dwelling.

All was stillness there, but there was no peace. I entered the piazza, threw myself into a chair, and gazed out upon the leaves and waters, trying to collect my scattered thoughts—trying to subdue my blood, that my thoughts might meet in deliberation upon the desolating prospect which was then spread before me. But I struggled for this in vain. But one thought was mine at that hour. But one fearful image gathered in completeness and strength before my mind; and that was one calculated to banish all others and baffle all their deliberations.

"The blood of William Edgerton must be shed, and by these hands! My disgrace is known! There is no help for it!"

I had repeatedly resolved this gloomy conviction in my mind. It was now to receive shape and substance. It was a thing no longer to be thought upon. It was a thing to be done! This necessity staggered me. The kindness of the father, the kindness and long true friendship of the son himself, how could I requite this after such a fashion? How penetrate the peaceful home of that fond family with an arm of such violence, as to tend their proudest offspring from the parental tree, and, perhaps, in destroying it, blight for ever the venerable trunk upon which it was borne? Let it not be fancied that these feelings were without effect. Let it not be supposed that I weakly, willingly, yielded to the conviction of this cruel necessity—that I determined, without a struggle, upon this seemingly necessary measure! Verily, I then, in that dreary house and hour, wrestled like a strong man with the unbidden prompter, who counselled me to the deed of blood. I wrestled with him as the desperate man, knowing the supernatural strength of his enemy, wrestles with a demon. The strife was a fearful one. I could not suppress my groans of agony; and the cold sweat gathered and stood upon my forehead in thick, clammy drops.

But the struggle was vain to effect my resolution. It had been too long present as a distinct image before my imagination. I had already become too familiar with its aspects. It had the look of a fate to my mind. I fancied myself—as probably most men will do, whose self-esteem is very active—the victim of a fate. My whole life tended to confirm this notion. I was chosen out from the beginning for a certain work, in which, my-self a victim, I was to carry out the designs of destiny in the ease of other victims. I had struggled long not to believe this—not to do this work. But the struggle was at last at an end. I was convinced, finally. I was ready for the work. I was resigned to my fate. But oh! how grateful once had one of these victims seemed in my eyes! How beautiful, and still how dear was the other!

I rose from my seat and struggle, with the air of one strengthened by thoughtful resolution for any act. Prayer could not have strengthened me more. I felt a singular degree of strength. I can well understand that of fanaticism from my own feelings. Nothing, in the shape of danger, could have deterred me from the deed. I positively had no remaining fear. But, how was it to be done? With this inquiry in my mind, still unanswered, I took a light, went into my study, and drew from my escritoir the few small weapons which I had in possession. These are soon named. One was a neat little dirk—broad in blade, double-edged, short—sufficient for all my purposes. I examined my pistols and loaded them—a small, neat pair, the present of Edgerton himself. This fact determined me not to use them. I restored them to the escritoir; put the dagger between the folds of my vest, and prepared to leave the house.

At this moment a heavy knocking was heard at the gate I resumed my seat in the piazza until the servant should report the nature of the interruption. He was followed in by my friend Kingsley.

"I am glad to find you home," said he abruptly, grasping my hand; "home, and not a-bed. The hour is late, I know, but the devil never keeps ordinary hours, and men, driven by his satanic majesty, have some excuse for following his example."

This exordium promised something unusual. The manner of Kingsley betrayed excitement. Nay, it was soon evident he had been taking a superfluous quantity of wine. His voice was thick, and he spoke excessively loud in order to be intelligible. There was something like a defying desperation in his tones, in the dare-devil swagger of his movement, and the almost iron pressure of his grasp upon my fingers. I subdued my own passions—nay, they were subdued—singularly so, by the resolution I had made before his entrance, and was able, therefore, to appear calm and smooth as summer water in his eyes.

"What's the matter?" I asked. "You seem excited. No evil, I trust?"

"Evil, indeed! Not much; but even if it were, I tell you Ned Clifford, I am just now in the mood to say, 'Evil be thou my good!' I have reason to say it; and, by the powers, it will not be said only. I will make evil my good after a fashion of my own; but how much good or now little evil, will be yet another question."

I was interested, in spite of myself, by the vehemence and unusual seriousness of my companion's manner. It somewhat harmonized with my own temper, and in a measure beguiled me into a momentary heedlessness of my particular griefs. I urged him to a more frank statement of the things that troubled him.

"Can I serve you in anything?" was the inquiry which concluded my assurance that I was sufficiently his friend to sympathize with him in his afflictions.

"You can serve me, and I need your service. You can serve me in two respects; nay, if you do not, I know not which side to turn for service. In the first place, then, I wish a hundred dollars, and I wish it to-night. In the next place, I wish a companion—a man not easily scared, who will follow where I lead him, and take part in a 'knock down and drag out,' if it should become necessary, without asking the why and the wherefore."

"You shall have the money, Kingsley."

"Stay! Perhaps I may never pay it you again."

"I shall regret that, for I can ill afford to lose any such sum; but, even to know that would not prevent me from lending you in your need. It is enough that you are in want. You tell me you are."

"I am; but my wants are not such as a pure moralist, however strong might be his friendship, would be disposed to gratify. I shall stake that money on the roll of the dice."

"Impossible! You do not game!"

"True as a gospel! Hark you, Clifford, and save us the homily. I am a ruined man—ruined by the d—-d dice and the deceptive cards. I shall pay you back the hundred dollars, but I shall have precious little after that."

"But, surely, I was not misinformed. You were rich a few years ago."

"A few months! But the case is the same. I am poor now. My riches had wings. I am reduced to my tail-feathers; but I will flourish with these to the last. I have fallen among thieves. They have clipped my plumage—close! close! They have stripped me of everything, but some small matters which, when sold, will just suffice to get me horse or halter. Some dirty acres in Alabama, are all I absolutely have remaining of any real value. But there is one thing that I may have, if I stake boldly for it."

"You will only lose again. The hope of a gamester rises, in due degree, with the increasing lightness of his pockets."

"Do not mistake me. I hope nothing from your hundred dollars; indeed, fifty will answer. I propose to employ it only as a pretext. I expect to lose it, and lose it this very night. But it will give me an opportunity to ascertain what I have suspected—too late, indeed, to save myself—that I have been the victim of false dice and figured cards. You say you will let me have the money—will you go with me—Will you see me through?"

He extended his hand as he spoke, I grasped it. He shook it with a hearty feeling, while a bright smile almost, dissipated the cloud from his face.

"You are a man, Clifford; and now, would you believe it, our excellent, immaculate young friend, Mr. William Edgerton, refused me this money."

"Strange! Edgerton is not selfish—he is not mean! From THAT vice he is certainly free."

"By G-d, I don't know that! He refused me the money; refused to go with me. I saw him at eight o'clock, at his own room, where he was rigging himself out for some d—-d tea-drinking; told him my straits, my losses, my object and all; and what was his plea, think you? Why, he disapproved of gambling; couldn't think of lending me a sixpence for any such purpose; and, as for going into such a suspected quarter as a gambling-house—wouldn't do it for the world! Was there ever such a puritan—such a humbug!"

I did William Edgerton only justice in my reply;—

"I've no doubt, Kingsley, that such are his real principles. He would have lent you thrice the money, freely, had not your object been avowed."

"But what a devil sort of despotism is that! Can't a friend get drunk, or game, or swagger? may he not depart from the highway, and sidle into an alley, without souring his friend's temper and making him stingy? I don't understand it at all. I'm glad, at least, to find you are of another sort of stuff."

"Nay, Kingsley, I will lend you the money—go with you, as you desire; but, understand me, I do not, no more than Edgerton, approve of this gambling."

"Tut, tut! I don't want you to preach, though I could hear you with a devilish sight better temper than him. There's a hundred things that one's friend don't approve of, but shall he desert him for all that? Leave him to be plucked, and kicked, and abandoned; and, moralizing, with a grin over his fain, say, 'I told you. so!' No! no! Give me the fellow that'll stand by me—keep me out of evil, if he can, but stand by me, nevertheless, at all events; and not suffer me to be swallowed up at the last moment, when an outstretched finger might save!"

"But, am I to think, Kingsley, that my help can do this?"

"No! not exactly—it may—but if it does not, what then? I shall lose the money, but you shan't. But, truth to speak, Clifford, I do not propose to myself the recovery of what is lost. I know I have been the prey of sharpers. That is to say, I have every reason to believe so, and I have had a hint to that effect. I have a spice of the devil in me, accordingly—a mocking, mortifying devil, that jeers me with my d—-d simplicity; and I propose to go and let the swindlers know, in a way as little circuitous as possible, that I am not blind to the fact that they have made an ass of me. There will be some satisfaction, in that. I will write myself down an ass, for their benefit, only to enjoy the satisfaction of kicking a little like one. I invite you on a kicking expedition."

I felt for my dagger in my bosom, as I answered: "Very good! Have you weapons?"

"Hickory! You see! a moderate axe-handle, that'll make its sentiments understood You are warned; you see what you are to expect. I will not take you in. Are you ready for a scratch ?"

"Allons!" I replied indifferently. The truth is, my bosom was full of a recklessness of a far more sweeping character than his own. I was in the mood for strife. It promised only the more thoroughly to prepare me for the darker trial which was before me, and which my secret soul was meditating all the while with an intense and gloomy tenacity of purpose.



CHAPTER XXVIII.

MORALS OF ENTERPRISE.



I got him the money he required; and we were about to set forth, when he exclaimed abruptly:—

"Put money in thy own purse, Clifford. It may be necessary to practise a little ruse de guerre. In playing my game, it may be important that you should deem to play one also. You have no scruples to fling the dice or flirt the cards for the nonce."

"None! But I should like to know your plans. Tell me, in the first place, your precise object."

"Simply to detect certain knaves, and save certain fools. The knaves have ruined me, and I make no lamentations; but there are others in their clutches still, quite as ignorant as myself, who may be saved before they are stripped entirely. The object is not a bad one; for the rest, trust to me. I mean no harm; a little mischief only; and, at most, a tweak of one proboscis or more. There's risk, of a certainty, as there is in sucking an egg; but you are a man! Not like that d—d milksop, who gives up his friend as soon as he gets poor, and proffers him a sermon by way of telling him—precious information, truly—that he's in a fair way to the devil. The toss of a copper for such friendship."

The humor of Kingsley tallied somewhat with my own. It had in it a spice of recklessness which pleased me. Perhaps, too, it tended somewhat to relieve and qualify the intenseness of that excitement in my brain, which sometimes rose to such a pitch as led me to apprehend madness. That I was a monomaniac has been admitted, perhaps not a moment too soon for the author's candor. The sagacity of the reader made him independent of the admission.

"Your beggar," said he, somewhat abruptly, "has the only true feeling of independence. Absolutely, I never knew till now what it was to be thoroughly indifferent to what might come to-morrow. I positively care for nothing. I am the first prince Sans Souci. That shall be my title when I get among the Cumanches. I will have a code of laws and constitution to suit my particular humor, and my chief penalties shall be inflicted upon your fellows who grunt. A sigh shall incur a week's solitary confinement; a sour look, pillory; and for a groan, the hypochondriac shall lose his head! My prime minister shall be the fellow who can longest use his tongue without losing his temper; and the man who can laugh and jest shall always have his plate at my table. Good-humored people shall have peculiar privileges. It shall be a certificate in one's favor, entitling him to so many acres, that he takes the world kindly. Such a man shall have two wives, provided he can keep them peacefully in the same house. His daughters shall have dowries from government. The prince of Sans Souci will himself provide for them."

I made some answer, half jest, half earnest, in a mood of mocking bitterness, which, perhaps, more truly accorded with the temper of both of us. He did not perceive the bitterness, however.

"You jest, but mine is not altogether jest. Half-serious glimpses of what I tell you float certainly before my eyes. Such things may happen yet, and the southwest is the world in which you are yet to see many wondrous things. The time must come when Texas shall stretch to Mexico. These miserable slaves and reptiles—mongrel Spaniards and mongrel Indians—can not very long bedevil that great country. It must fall into other hands. It must be ours; and who, when that time comes, will carry into the field more thorough claims than mine. Master of myself, fearing nothing, caring for nothing; with a gallant steed that knows my voice, and answers with whinny and pricked ears to my encouragement; with a rifle that can clip a Mexican—dollar or man—at a hundred yards, and a heart that can defy the devil over his own dish, and with but one spoon between us—and who so likely to win his principality as myself? Look to see it, Clifford, I shall be a prince in Mexico; and when you hear of the prince Sans Souci be assured you know the man. Seek me then, and ask what you will. You have CARTE BLANCHE from this moment."

"I shall certainly keep it in mind, prince."

"Do so: laugh as you please; it is only becoming that you should laugh in the presence of Sans Souci; but do not laugh in token of irreverence. You must not be too skeptical. It does not follow because I am a dare-devil that I am a thoughtless one. I have been so, perhaps, but from this moment I go to work! I shall be fettered by fortune no longer. Thank Heaven, that is now done—gone—lost; I am free from its incumbrance! I feel myself a prince, indeed; a man, every inch of me. This night I devote as a fitting finish to my old lifeless existence.

"Hear me!" he continued; "you laugh again, Clifford—very good! Laugh on, but hear me. You shall hear more of me in time to come. I fancy I shall be a fellow of considerable importance, not in Texas simply, or in Mexico, but here—here in your own self-opinionated United States. Suppose a few things, and go along with me while I speak them. That Texas must stretch to Mexico I hold to be certain. A very few years will do that. It needs only thirty thousand more men from our southern and southwestern States, and the brave old English tongue shall arouse the best echoes in the city of Montezuma! That done, and floods of people pour in from all quarters. It needs nothing but a feeling of security and peace—a conviction that property will be tolerably safe, under a tolerably stable government—in other words, an Anglo-Saxon government—to tempt millions of discontented emigrants from all quarters of the world. Will this result have no results of its own, think you? Will the immense resources of Mexico and Texas, represented, as they then will be, by a stern, pressing, performing people, have no effect upon these states of yours? They will have the greatest; nay, they will become essential to balance your own federal weight, and keep you all in equilibrio. For look you, the first hubbub with Great Britain gives you Canada, at the expense of some of your coast-towns, a few millions of treasure, and the loss of fifty thousand men. A bad exchange for the south; for Canada will make six ponderous states, the policy and character of which will be New England all over. To balance this you will have your Florida territory, [Footnote: Florida, since admittied, but unhappily, as a single state.] of which two feeble states may be made. Not enough for your purposes. But the same war with England will render it necessary that your fleet should take possession of Cuba; which, after a civil apology to Spain for taking such a liberty with her possessions, and, perhaps, a few million by way of hush money, you carve into two more states, and, in this manner, try to bolster up your federal relations. How many of her West India islands Great Britain will be able to keep after such a war, is another problem, the solution of which will depend upon the relative strength of fleets and success of seamanship. These islands, which should of right be ours, and without which we can never be sure against any maritime power so great and so arrogant as England, once conquered by our arms, find their natural, moral, and social affinities in the southern states entirely; and, so far, contribute to strengthen you in your congressional conflicts. But these are not enough, for the simple reason that the population of states, purely agricultural, never makes that progress which is made in this respect by a commercial and manufacturing people. With the command of the gulf, the possession of an independent fleet by the Texans, the political characteristics of the states of Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, must undergo certain marked changes, which can only be neutralized by the adoption, on the part of these states, of a new policy corresponding with their change of interests. How far the cultivation of cotton by Texas will lead to its abandonment in Carolina and Georgia, is a question which the next ten years must solve. That they will be compelled to abandon it is inevitable, unless they can succeed in raising the article at six cents; a probability which no cotton-planter in either of these states will be willing to contemplate now for an instant. Meanwhile, Texas is spreading herself right and left. She conquers the Cumanches, subdues the native mongrel Mexicans. Her Hoestons and Lamars are succeeded by other and abler men, under whose control the evils of government, which followed the sway of such small animals as the Guerreros, and the Bolivars, the Bustamentes, and Sant' Annas, are very soon eradicated; and the country, the noblest that God ever gave to man in the hands of men, becomes a country!—a great and glorious country—stretching from the gulf to the Pacific, and providing the natural balance, which, in a few years, the southern state of this Union will inevitably need, by which alone your great confederacy will be kept together. You see, therefore, why I speed to Texas. Should I not, with my philosophy, my horse and my rifle—not to speak of stout heart and hand—reasonably aspire to the principality of Sans Souci? Laugh, if you please, but be not irreverent. You shall have carte blanche then if you will have a becoming faith now, on the word of a prince. I say it, It is written—Sans Souci." [Footnote: All these speculations were written in 1840-'41. I need not remark upon those which have since been verified.]

"Altissimo, excellentissimo, serenissimo!"

"Bravissimo, you improve; you will make a courtier—but mum now about my projects. We must suppress our dignities here. We are at the entrance of our hell!"

We had reached the door of a low habitation in a secluded street. The house was of wood—an ordinary hovel of two stories. A cluster of similar fabrics surrounded it, most of which I afterward discovered—though this fact could not be conjectured by an observer from the street—were connected by blind alleys, inner courts, and chambers and passages running along the ground floors. We stopped an instant, Kingsley having his hand upon the little iron knocker, a single black ring, that worked against an ordinary iron knob.

"Before I knock," said he, in a whisper, "before I knock, Clifford, let me say that if you have any reluctance—"

"None! none! knock!"

"You will meet with some dirty rascals, and you must not only meet them with seeming civility, but as if you shared in their tastes—sought the same objects only—the getting of money—the only object which alone is clearly comprehensible by their understanding."

"Go ahead! I will see you through."

"A word more! Get yourself in play at a different table from me. You will find rogues enough around, ready to relieve you of your Mexicans. Leave me to my particular enemy; you will soon see whose shield I touch—but keep an occasional eye upon us; and all that I ask farther at your hands, should you see us by the ears, is to keep other fingers from taking hold of mine."

A heavy stroke of the knocker, followed by three light ones and a second heavy stroke, produced us an answer from within. The door unclosed, and by the light of a dim lamp, I discovered before me, as a sort of warden, a little yellow, weather-beaten, skin-dried Frenchman, whom I had frequently before seen at a fruit-shop in another part of the city. He looked at me, however, without any sign of recognition—with a blank, dull, indifferent countenance; motioned us forward in silence, and reclosing the door, sunk into a chair immediately behind it. I followed my companion through a passage which was unfathomably dark, up a flight of stairs, which led us into a sort of refreshment room. Tables were spread, with decanters, glasses, and tumblers upon them, that appeared to be in continual use. In a recess, stood that evil convenience of most American establishments, whether on land or sea, a liquor bar; its shelves crowded with bottles, all of which seemed amply full, and ready to complete the overthrow of the victim, which the other appliances of such a dwelling must already have actively begun.

"Here you may take in the Dutch courage, Clifford, should you lack the native. This, I know, is not the case with you, and yet the novelty of one's situation frequently overcomes a sensitive mind like fear. Perhaps a julep may be of use."

"None for me. I need no farther stimulant than the mere sense of mouvement. I take fire, like a wheel, by my own progress."

"Pretty much the same case with myself. But I have been in the habit of drinking here, of late, and too deeply. To-night, however, as I said before, ends all these habits. If there is honey in the carcass, and strength from the sleep, there is wisdom from the folly, and virtue from the vice. There is a moral as well as a physical recoil, that most certainly follows the overcharge; and really, speaking according to my sincere conviction I never felt myself to be a better man, than just at this moment when I am about to do that which my own sense of morality fails altogether to justify. I do not know that I make you understand my feelings; I scarcely understand them myself; but of this sort they are, and I am really persuaded that I never felt in a better disposition to be a good man and a working man than just at the close of a career which has been equally profligate and idle."

I think my companion can be understood. There seems, in fact very little mystery in his moral progress. I understood him, but did not answer. I was not anxious to keep up the ball of conversation which he had begun with a spirit so mixed up of contradictions—so earnest yet so playful. A deep sense of shame unquestionably lurked beneath his levity; and yet I make no question that he felt in truth, and for the first time, that degree of mental hardihood of which he boasted.

He advanced through the refreshment-room, to a door which led to an apartment in an adjoining tenement. It was closed, but unfastened. The sound of voices, an occasional buzz, or a slight murmur, came to our ears from within; that of rattling dice and rolling balls was more regular and more intelligible. Kingsley laid his hand upon the latch, and looked round to me. His eye was kindled with a playful sort of malicious light. A smile of pleasant bitterness was on his lips. He said to me in a whisper:—

"Stake your money slowly. A Mexican is the lowest stake. Keep to that, and lose as little as possible. You will soon see me sufficiently busy, and I will endeavor to urge my labors forward, so as to make your purgatory a short one. I shall only wait till I feel myself cheated in the game, to begin that which I came for. See that I have fair play in THAT, MON AMI, and I care very little about the other."

He lifted the latch as he concluded, and I followed him into the apartment.



CHAPTER XXIX.

THE HELL.



The scene that opened upon us was, to me, a painfully interesting one. It was a mere hell, without any of those attractive adjuncts which, in a diseased state of popular refinement, such as exists in the fashionable atmospheres of London and Paris, provides it with decorations, and conceals its more discouraging and offensive externals. The charms of music, lovely women, gay lights, and superb drapery and furniture, were here entirely wanting. No other arts beyond the single passion for hazard, which exists, I am inclined to think, in a greater or less degree in every human breast, were here employed to beguile the young and unsuspecting mind into indulgence. The establishment into which I had fallen, seemed to presuppose an acquaintance, already formed, of the gamester with his fascinating vice. It was evidently no place to seduce the uninitiate. The passion must have been already awakened—the guardianship of the good angel lulled into indifference or slumber—before the young mind could be soon reconciled to the moral atmosphere of such a scene.

The apartment was low and dimly lighted. Groups of small tables intended for two persons were all around. In the centre of the floor were tables of larger size, which were surrounded by the followers of Pharo. Unoccupied tables, here and there, were sprinkled with cards and domino; while, as if to render the characteristics of the place complete, a vapor of smoke and a smell of beer assailed our senses as we entered.

There were not many persons present—I conjectured, at a glance, that there might be fifteen; but we heard occasional voices from an inner room, and a small door opening in the rear discovered a retreat like that we occupied, in the dim light of which I perceived moving faces and shadows, and Kingsley informed me that there were several rooms all similarly occupied with ours.

An examination of the persons around me, increased the unpleasant feelings which the place had inspired. With the exception of a few, the greater number were evidently superior to their employments. Several of them were young men like my companion—men not yet lost to sensibility, who looked up with some annoyance as they beheld Kingsley accompanied by a stranger. Two or three of the inmates were veteran gamesters. You could see THAT in their business-like nonchalance—their rigid muscles—the manner at once demure and familiar. They were evidently "habitues del l'enfer"—men to whom cards and dice were as absolutely necessary now, as brandy and tobacco to the drunkard. These men were always at play. Even the smallest interval found them still shuffling the cards, and looking up at every opening of the door, as if in hungering anticipation of the prey. At such periods alone might you behold any expression of anxiety in their faces. This disappeared entirely the moment that they were in possession of the victim. That imperturbable composure which distinguished them was singularly contrasted with the fidgety eagerness and nervous rapidity by which you could discover the latter; and I glanced over the operations of the two parties, as they were fairly shown in several sets about the room, with a renewed feeling of wonder how a man so truly clever and strong, in some things, as Kingsley, should allow himself to be drawn so deeply into such low snares; the tricks of which seemed so apparent, and the attractions of which, in the present instance, were obviously so inferior and low. I little knew by what inoffensive and gradual changes the human mind, having once commenced its downward progress, can hurry to the base; nor did I sufficiently allow for that love of hazard itself, in games of chance, which I have already expressed the opinion, is natural to the proper heart of man, belongs to a rational curiosity, and arises, most probably, from that highest property of his intellect, namely, the love of art and intellectual ingenuity. It would be very important to know this fact, since then, instead of the blind hostility which is entertained for sports of this description, by certain classes of moralists among us, we might so employ their ministry as to deprive them of their hurtfulness and make them permanently beneficial in the cause of good education.

Kingsley seemed to conjecture my thoughts. A smile of lofty significance expressing a feeling of mixed scorn and humility, rose upon his countenance—as if admitting his own feebleness, while insisting upon his recovered strength, A sentence which he uttered to me in a whisper, at this moment, was intended to convey some such meaning.

"It was only when thrown to the earth, Clifford, that the wrestler recovered his strength."

"That fable," I replied, "proves that he was no god, at least. Of the earth, earthy, he found strength only in his sphere. The moment he aspired above it the god crushed him. I doubt if Hercules could have derived any benefit from the same source."

"Ah! I am no Hercules, but you will also find that I am no Antaeus. I fall, but I rise again, and I am not crushed. This is peculiarly the source of HUMAN strength."

"Better not to fall."

"Ah! you are too late from Utopia. But—"

We were interrupted; a voice at my elbow—a soft, clear, insinuating voice addressed my companion:—

"Ah, Monsieur Kingsley, I rejoice to see you."

Kingsley gave me a single look, which said everything, as he turned to meet the new-comer. The latter continued:—

"Though worsted in that last encounter, you do not despair, I see."

"No! why should I?"

"True, why? Fortune baffles skill, but what of that? She is capricious. Her despotism is feminine; and in her empire, more certainly than any other, it may be said boldly, that, with change of day there is change of doom. It is not always rain."

"Perhaps not, but we may have such a long spell of it that everything is drowned. 'It's a long lane,' says the proverb, 'that has no turn;' but a man be done up long before he gets to the turning place."

The other replied by some of the usual commonplaces by which, in condescending language, the gamester provoked and stimulates his unconscious victim. Kingsley, however, had reached a period of experience which enabled him to estimate these phrases at their proper worth.

"You would encourage me," he said quietly, and in tones which, to the unnoteful ear, would have seemed natural enough, but which, knowing him as I did, were slightly sarcastic, and containing a deeper signification than they gave out: "but you are the better player. I am now convinced of that. Something there is in fortune, doubtless; my self-esteem makes me willing to admit that; and yet I do not deceive myself. You have been too much for me—you are!"

"The difference is trifling, very trifling, I suspect. A little more practice will soon reconcile that."

"Ha! ha! you forget the practice is to be paid for."

"True, but it is the base spirit only that scruples at the cost of its accomplishments."

"Surely, surely!"

"You are fresh for the encounter to-night?"

"Pleasantly put! Is the query meant for the player or his purse?"

"Good, very good! Why, truly, there is no necessary affinity between them."

"And yet the one without the other would scarcely be able to commend himself to so excellent an artist as Mr. Latour Cleveland. Clifford, let me introduce you to my ENEMY; Mr. Cleveland, my FRIEND."

In this manner was I introduced. Thus was I made acquainted with the particular individual whom it was the meditated purpose of Kingsley to expose. But, though thus marked in the language of his introduction, there was nothing in the tone or manner of my companion, at all calculated to alarm the suspicions of the other. On the contrary, there was a sort of reckless joviality in the air of ABANDON, with which he presented me and spoke. A natural curiosity moved me to examine Cleveland more closely. He was what we should call, in common speech, a very elegant young man. He was probably thirty or thirty-five years of age, tall, graceful, rather slenderish, and of particular nicety in his dress. All his clothes were disposed with the happiest precision. White kid-gloves covered his taper fingers. Withdrawn, a rich diamond blazed upon one hand, while a seal-ring, of official dimensions, with characters cut in lava, decorated the other. His movements betrayed the same nice method which distinguished the arrangement of his dress. His evolutions might all have been performed by trumpet signal, and to the sound of measured music. He was evidently one of those persons whose feelings are too little earnest, ever to affect their policy; too little warm ever to disparage the rigor of their customary play; one of those cold, nice men, who, without having a single passion at work to produce one condition of feeling higher than another, are yet the very ideals of the most narrow and concentrated selfishness. His face was thin, pale, and intelligent. His lips were thick, however—the eyes bright, like those of a snake, but side-looking, never direct, never upward, and always with a smiling shyness in their glance, in which a suspicious mind like my own would always find sufficient occasion for distrust.

Mr. Cleveland bestowed a single keen glance upon me while going through the ordeal of introduction. But his scrutiny labored under one disadvantage. His eyes did not encounter mine! One loses a great deal, if his object be the study of tuman nature, if he fails in this respect.

"Much pleasure in making your acquaintance, Mr. Clifford; I trust, however, you will find me no worse enemy than your friend has done."

"If he find YOU no worse, he will find himself no better. He will pay for his enmity, whatever its degree, as I have done, ancl be wiser, by reason of his losses."

"Ah! you think too much of your ill fortunes. That is bad. It takes from your confidence and so enfeebles your skill. You should think of it less seriously. Another cast, and the tables chinge. You will have your revenge."

"I WILL!" said Kingsley with some emphasis, and a gravity which the other did not see. He evidently heard the words only as he had been accustomed to hear them—from the lips of young gamesters who perpetually delude themselves with hopes based upon insane expectations. A benignant smile mantled the cheeks of the gamester.

"Ah, well! I am ready; but if you think me too much for you—"

He paused. The taunt was deliberately intended. It was the customary taunt of the gamester. On the minds of half the number of young men, it would have had the desired efiect—of goading vanity, and provoking the self-esteem of the conceited boy into a sort of desperation, when the powers of sense and caution become mostly suspended, and no unnecessary suspicion or watchfulness then interferes to increase the difficulty of plucking the pigeon. I read the smile on Kingsley's lip. It was brief, momentary, pleasantly contemptuous. Then, suddenly, as if he had newly recollected his policy, his countenance assumed a new expression—one more natural to the youth who has been depressed by losses, vexed at defeat, but flatters himself that the atonement is at hand. Perhaps, something of the latent purpose of his mind increased the intense bitterness in the manner and tones of my companion.

"Too much for me, Mr. Cleveland! No, no! You are willing, I see, to rob good fortune of some of her dues. You crow too soon. I have a shrewd presentiment that I shall be quite too much FOR YOU to-night."

A pleasant and well-satisfied smile of Cleveland answered the speaker.

"I like that," said he; "it proves two things, both of which please me. Your trifling losses have not hurt your fortunes. nor the adverse run of luck made you despond of better success hereafter. It is something of a guaranty in favor of one's performance that he is sure of himself. In such case he is equally sure of his opponent."

"Look to it, then, for I have just that sort of self-guaranty which makes me sure of mine. I shall play deeply, that I may make the most of my presentiments. Nay, to show you how confident I am, this night restores me all that I have lost, or leaves me nothing more to lose."

The eyes of the other brightened.

"That is said like a man. I thank you for your warning. Shall we begin?"

"Ready, ay, ready!" was the response of Kingsley, as he turned to one of the tables. Quietly laying down upon it the short, heavy stick which he carried, he threw off his gloves, and rubbed his hands earnestly together, laughing the while without restraint, as if possessed suddenly of some very pleasant and ludicrous fancy.

"They laugh who win," remarked Cleveland, with something of coldness in his manner.

"Ha! ha! ha!" was the only answer of Kingsley to this remark. The other continued—and I now clearly perceived that his purpose was provocation:—

"It is certainly a pleasure to win your money, Kingsley—you bear it with so much philosophy. Nay, it seems to give you pleasure, and thus lessens the pain I should otherwise feel in receiving the fruits of my superiority."

"Ha! ha! ha!" again repeated Kingsley. "Excuse me, Mr. Cleveland. I am reminded of your remark, 'They laugh who win.' I am laughing, as it were, anticipatively. I am so certain that I shall have my revenge to-night."

Cleveland looked at him for a moment with some curiosity, then called:—

"Philip!"

He was answered by a young mulatto—a tall, good-looking fellow, who approached with a mixed air of equal deference and self-esteem, plaited frills to a most immaculately white shirt-collar, a huge bulbous breastpin in his bosom, chains and seals, and all the usual equipments of Broadway dandyism. The fellow approached us with a smile; his eyes looking alternately to Cleveland and Kingsley, and, as I fancied, with no unequivocal sneer in their expression, as they settled on the latter. A significance of another kind appeared in the look of Cleveland as he addressed him.

"Get us the pictures, Philip—the latest cuts—and bring—ay, you may bring the ivories."

In a few moments, the preliminaries being despatched, the two were seated at a table, and a couple of packs of cards were laid beside them. Kingsley drew my attention to the cards. They were of a kind that my experience had never permitted me to see before. In place of ordinary kings and queens and knaves, these figures were represented in attitudes and costumes the most indecent—such as the prolific genius of Parisian bawdry alone could conceive and delineate. It seems to be a general opinion among rogues that knavery is never wholly triumphant unless the mind is thoroughly degraded; and for this reason it is, perhaps, that establishments devoted to purposes like the present, have, in most countries, for their invariable adjuncts, the brothel and the bar-room. If they are not in the immediate tenement, they are sufficiently nigh to make the work of moral prostitution comparatively easy, in all its ramifications, with the young and inconsiderate mind. Kingsley turned over the cards, and I could see that while affecting to show me the pictures he was himself subjecting the cards to a close inspection of another kind. This object was scarcely perceptible to myself, who knew his suspicions, and could naturally conjecture his policy. It did not excite the alarm of his antagonist.

The parties sat confronting each other. Kingsley drew forth a wallet, somewhat ostentatiously, which he laid down beside him. The sight of his wallet staggered me. By its bulk I should judge it to have held thousands; yet he had assured me that he had nothing beside, the one hundred dollars which he had procured from me. My surprise increased as I saw him open the wallet, and draw from one of its pockets the identical roll which I had put into his hands. The bulk of the pocket-book seeemed (sic) scarcely to be diminished. My suspicions were beginning to be roused. I began to think that he had told me a falsehood; but he looked up at this instant, and a bright manly smile on his deep purposeful countenance, reassured me. I felt that there was some policy in the business which was not for me then to fathom. The cards were cut. A box of dice was also in the hands of Cleveland.

"Spots or pictures?" said Cleveland.

"Pictures first, I suppose," said Kingsley, "till the blood gets up. The ivories then as the most rapid. But these pictures are really so tempting. A new supply, Philip!"

"Just received, sir," said the other.

"And how shall we begin?" demanded Cleveland, drawing a handful of bills, gold, and silver, from his pocket; "yellow, white, or brown?"

It was thus, I perceived, that gold, silver, and paper money, were described.

"Shall it be child's play, or—"

"Man's, man's!" replied Kingsley, with some impatience "I am for beginning with a cool hundred," and, to my consternation, he unfolded the roll he had of me, counted out the bills, refolded them and placed them in a saucer, where they were soon covered with a like sum by his antagonist. I was absolutely sickened, and stared aghast upon my reckless companion. He looked at me with a smile.

"To your own game, Clifford. You will find men enough for your money in either of the rooms. Should you run short, come to me."

Thus confidently did he speak; yet he had actually but the single hundred which he had so boldly staked on the first issue. I thought him lost; but he better knew his game than I. He also knew his man. The eyes of Cleveland were on the huge wallet in reserve, of which the "cool hundred" might naturally be considered a mere sample. I had not courage to wait for the result, but wandered off, with a feeling not unallied to terror, into an adjoining apartment.



CHAPTER XXX.

FALSE LUCK.



Though confounded with what I had seen of the proceedings of Kingsley, I was yet willing to promote, so far as I could, the purpose for which we came. I felt too, that, unless I played, that purpose, or my own, might reasonably incur suspicion. To rove through the several rooms of a gambling-house, surveying closely the proceedings of others, without partaking, in however slight a degree, in the common business of the establishment, was neither good policy nor good manners. Unless there to play, what business had I there? Accordingly I resolved to play. But of these games I knew nothing. It was necessary to choose among them, and, without a choice I turned to one of the tables where the genius of Roulette presided. A motley group, none of whom I knew, surrounded it. I placed my dollar upon one of the spots, red or black, I know not which, and saw it, in a moment after, spooned up with twenty others by the banker. I preferred this form of play to any other, for the simple reason that it did not task my own faculties, and left me free to bestow my glances on the proceedings of my friend. But I soon discovered that the contagion of play is irresistible; and so far from putting my stake down at intervals, and with philosophic indifference, I found myself, after a little while, breathlessly eager in the results. These, after the first few turns of the machine, had ceased to be unfavorable. I was confounded to discover myself winning. Instead of one I put down two Mexicans.

"Put down ten," said one of the bystanders, a dark, sulky-looking little yellow man, who seemed a veteran at these places. "You are in luck—make the most of it."

The master of the ceremonies scowled upon the speaker; and this determined me to obey his suggestions. I did so, and doubled the money; left my original stake and the winnings on the same spot, and doubled that also; and it was not long before, under this stimulus of success, and the novelty of my situation, I found myself as thoroughly anxious and intensely interested, as if I had gone to the place in compliance with a natural passion. I know not how long I had continued in this way, but I was still fortunate. I had doubled my stakes repeatedly, and my pockets were crammed with money.

"Stop now, if you are wise," whispered the same sulky-looking little man who had before urged me to go on more boldly, as he sidled along by me for this object; "never ride a good horse to death. There's a time to stop just as there's a time to push. You had better stop now. Stake another dollar and you lose all your winnings."

"Let the gentleman play his own game, Brinckoff. I don't see why you come here to spoil sport."

Such was the remark of the keeper of the table. He had overheard my counsellor. He felt his losses, and was angry. I saw that, and it determined me. I took the counsel of the stranger. I was the more willing to do so, as I reproached myself for my inattention to my friend. It was time to see what had been his progress, and I prepared to leave the theatre of my own success. Before doing so, I turned to my counsellor, and thus addressed him: "Your advice has made me win; I trust I will not offend a gentleman who has been so courteous, by requesting him to take my place upon a small capital."

I put twenty pieces into his hand.

"I am but a young beginner," I continued, "and I owe you for my first lesson."

"You are too good," he said, but his hand closed over the dollars. The keeper of the table renewed his murmurs of discontent as he saw me turn away.

"Ah! bah! Petit, what's the use to grumble?" demanded my representative. "Do you suppose I will give up my sport for yours? When would I get a sixpence to stake, if it were not that I was kind to young fellows just beginning? There; growl no more; the twenty Mexicans upon the red!"

The next minute my gratuity was swallowed up in the great spoon of the banker. I was near enough, to see the result. I placed another ten pieces in the hand of the unsuccessful gambler.

"Very good," said he; "very much obliged to you; but if you please, I will do no more to-night. It's not my lucky night. I've lost every set."

"As you please—when you please."

"You are a gentleman," he said; "the sooner you go home the better. A young beginner seldom wins in the small hours."

This was said in another whisper. I thanked him for his further suggestion, and turned away, leaving him to a side squabble with the banker, who finally concluded by telling him that he never wished to see him at his table.

"The more fool you, Petit," said Brinckoff; "for the youngster that wins comes back, and he does not always win. You finish him in the end as you finished me, and what more would you have?"

The rest, and there was much more, was inaudible to me. I hurried from the place somewhat ashamed of my success. I doubt whether I should have had the like feelings had I lost. As it was, never did possession seem more cumbrous than the mixed gold, paper, and silver, with which my pockets were burdened. I gladly thought of Kingsley, to avoid thinking of myself. It was certain, I fancied, that he had not lost, else how could he have continued to play? My anxiety hurried me into the room where I had left him.

They sat together, he and Cleveland, as before. I observed that there was now an expression of anxiety—not intense, but obvious enough—upon the countenance of the latter. Philip, too, the mulatto, stood on one side, contemplating the proceedings with an air of grave doubt and uncertainty in his countenance. No such expression distinguished the face of Kingsley. Never did a light-hearted, indifferent, almost mocking spirit, shine out more clearly from any human visage. At times he chuckled as with inward satisfaction. Not unfrequently he laughed aloud, and his reckless "Ha! ha! ha!" had more than once reached and startled me in the midst of my own play, in the adjoining room. The opponents had discarded their "pictures," They were absolutely rolling dice for their stakes. I saw that the wallet of Kingsley lay untouched, and quite as full as ever, in the spot where he had first laid it down. A pile of money lay open beside him; the gold and silver pieces keeping down the paper. When he saw me approach, he laughed aloud, as he cried out:—

"Have they disburdened you, Clifford? Help yourself. I am punishing my enemy famously. I can spare it."

A green, sickly smile mantled the lips of Cleveland. He replied in low, soft tones, such as I could only partly hear; and, a moment after, he swept the stake before the two, to his own side of the table. The amount was large, but the features of Kingsley remained unaltered, while his laugh was renewed as heartily as if he really found pleasure in the loss.

"Ha! ha! ha! that is encouraging; but the end is not yet. The tug is yet to come!"

I now perceived that Kingsley took up his wallet with one hand while he spread his handkerchief on his lap with the other. Into this he drew the pile of money which he had loose before on his side of the table, and appeared to busy himself in counting into it the contents of the wallet. This he did with such adroitness, that, though I felt assured he had restored the wallet to his bosom with its bulk undiminished, yet I am equally certain that no such conclusion could have been reached by any other person. This done, he lifted the handkerchief, full as it was, and dashed it down upon the table.

"There! cover that, if you be a man!" was his speech of defiance.

"How much?" huskily demanded Cleveland.

"All!"

"Ah!"

"Yes, all. I know not the number of dollars, cents, or sixpences, but face it with your winnings: there need be no counting. It is loss of time. Stir the stuff with your fingers, and you will find it as good, and as much, as you have here to put against it. On that hangs my fate or yours. Mine for certain! I tell you, Mr. Cleveland, it is all!"

Cleveland lifted the ends of the handkerchief, as if weighing its contents; and then, without more scruple, flung into it a pile not unlike it in bulk and quality: a handful of mixed gold paper, and silver. Kingsley grasped the dice before him, and with a single shake dashed them out upon the table.

"Six, four, two," cried Philip with a degree of excitement which did not appear in either of the active opponents. Meanwhile my heart was in my mouth. I looked on Kingsley with a sentiment of wonder. Every muscle of his face was composed into the most quiet indifference. He saw my glance, and smilingly exclaimed:—

"I trust to my star, Clifford. Sans Souci—remember!"

No time was allowed for more. The moment was a breathless one. Cleveland had taken up the dice. His manner was that of the most singular deliberation. His eyes were cast down upon the table. His lips strongly closed together; and now it was that I could see the keen, piercing look which Kingsley addressed to every movement of the gambler. I watched him also. He did not immediately throw the dice, and I was conscious of some motion which he made with his hands before he did so. What that motion was, however, I could neither have said nor conceived. But I saw a grim smile, full of intelligence, suddenly pass over Kingsley's lips. The dice descended upon the table with a sound that absolutely made me tremble.

"Five, four, six!" cried Philip, loudly, with tones of evident exultation. I felt a sense like that of suffocation, which was unrelieved even by the seemingly unnatural laughter of my companion. He did laugh, but in a manner to render less strange and unnatural that in which he had before indulged. Even as he laughed he rose and possessed himself of the dice which the other had thrown down.

"The stakes are mine," cried Cleveland, extending his hand toward the handkerchief.

"No!" said Kingsley, with a voice of thunder, and as he spoke, he handed me the kerchief of money, which I grasped instantly, and thrust with some difficulty into my bosom. This was done instinctively; I really had no thoughts of what I was doing. Had I thought at all I should most probably have refused to receive it.

"How!" exclaimed Cleveland, his face becoming suddenly pale. "The cast is mine—fifteen to twelve!"

"Ay, scoundrel, but the game I played for is mine! As for the cast, you shall try another which you shall relish less. Do you see these?"

He showed the dice which he had gathered from the table. The gambler made an effort to snatch them from his hands.

"Try that again," said Kingsley, "and I lay this hickory over your pate, in a way that shall be a warning to it for ever."

By this time several persons from the neighboring tables and the adjoining rooms, hearing the language of strife, came rushing in. Kingsley beheld their approach without concern. There were several old gamblers among them, but the greater number were young ones.

"Gentlemen," said Kingsley, "I am very glad to see you. You come at a good time. I am about to expose a scoundrel to you."

"You shall answer for this, sir," stammered Cleveland, in equal rage and confusion.

"Answer, shall I? By Jupiter! but you shall answer too! And you shall have the privilege of a first answer, shall you?"

"Mr. Kingsley, what is the meaning of this?" was the demand of a tall, dark-featured man, who now made his appearance from an inner room, and whom I now learned, was, in fact, the proprietor of the establishment.

"Ah! Radcliffe—but before another word is wasted put your fingers into the left breeches pocket of that scoundrel there, and see what you will find."

Cleveland would have resisted. Kingsley spoke again to Radcliffe, and this time in stern language, which was evidently felt by the person to whom it was addressed.

"Radcliffe, your own credit—nay, safety—will depend upon your showing that you have no share in this rogue's practice. Search him, if you would not share his punishment."

The fellow was awed, and obeyed instantly. Himself, with three others, grappled with the culprit. He resisted strenuously, but in vain. He was searched, and from the pocket in question three dice were produced.

"Very good," said Kingsley; "now examine those dice, gentlemen, and see if you can detect one of my initials, the letter 'K,' which I scratched with a pin upon each of them."

The examination was made, and the letter was found, very small and very faint, it is true, but still legible, upon the ace square of each of the dice.

"Very good," continued Kingsley; "and now, gentlemen, with your leave—"

He opened his hand and displayed the three dice with which Cleveland had last thrown.

"Here you see the dice with which this worthy gentleman hoped to empty my pockets. These are they which he last threw upon the table. He counted handsomely by them! I threw, just before him, with those which you have in your hand. I had contrived to mark them previously, this very evening, in order that I might know them again. Why should he put them in his pocket, and throw with these? As this question is something important, I propose to answer it to your satisfaction as well as my own; and, for this reason, I came here, as you see, prepared to make discoveries."

He drew from his pocket, while he spoke, a small saddler's hammer and steel-awl. Fixing with the sharp point of the awl in the ace spot of the dice, he struck it a single but sudden blow with the hammer, split each of the dice in turn, and disclosed to the wondering, or seemingly wondering, eyes of all around, a little globe of lead in each, inclining to the lowest numeral, and necessarily determining the roll of the dice so as to leave the lightest section uppermost.

"Here, gentlemen," continued Kingsley, "you see by what process I have lost my money. But it is not in the dice alone. Look at these cards. Do you note this trace of the finger-nail, here, and there, and there—scarcely to be seen unless it is shown to you, but clear enough to the person that made it, and is prepared to look for it. Radcliffe, your fellow, Philip, has been concerned in this business. You must dismiss him, or your visiters will dismiss you. Neither myself nor my friends will visit you again—nay, more, I denounce you to the police. Am I understood?"

Radcliffe assented without scruple, evidently not so anxious for justice as for the safety of his establishment. But it appeared that there were others in the room not so well pleased with the result. A hubbub now took place, in which three or four fellows made a rush upon Kingsley—Cleveland urging and clamoring from the rear, though without betraying much real desire to get into the conflict.

But the assailants had miscalculated their forces. The youngsters in the establishment, regarding Kingsley's development as serving the common cause, were as soon at his side as myself. The scuffle was over in an instant. One burly ruffian was prostrated by a blow from Kingsley's club; I had my share in the prostration of a second, and some two others took to their heels, assisted in their progress by a smart application from every foot and fist that happened to be convenient enough for such a service.

But Cleveland alone remained. Why he had not shared the summary fate of the rest it would be difficult to say, unless it was because he had kept aloof from the active struggle to which he had egged them on. Perhaps, too, a better reason—he was reserved for some more distinguishing punishment. Why he had shown no disposition for flight himself, was answered as soon as Kingsley laid down his club, which he did with a laugh of exemplary good-nature the moment he had felled with it his first assailant. The flight of his allies left the path open between himself and Cleveland, and, suddenly darting upon him, the desperate gambler aimed a blow at his breast with a dirk which he had drawn that instant from his own. He exclaimed as he struck:—