"Seven o'clock, by Jove!" cried Beecher, as he gave her his hand to cross the stepping-stones. "What a fuss he 'll make about our keeping the dinner back!"

[Illustration: 284]

"I have eaten all the caviare and the pickles, and nearly finished a bottle of Madeira, waiting for you," said Grog; "so, no dressing, but come in at once."

"Oh, dearest Lizzy!" cried Beecher, as they gained the porch, "just one word,--only one word,--to make me the happiest fellow in the world or the most miserable." But Lizzy sprang up the stairs, and was in her room almost ere his words were uttered.

"If I had bad but another moment," muttered Beecher to himself, "just one moment more, I'd have shown her that I meant to turn over a new leaf,--that I was n't going to lead the life I have done. I 'd have told her--though, I suppose, old Grog would murder me if he knew it--of our grand martingale, and how we mean to smash the bank at Baden. No deception about that,--no 'cross' there. She can't bring up grooms and jockeys and stable-helpers against me now. It will all be done amongst ourselves,--a family party, and no mistake!"

All things considered, Annesley Beecher, it was just as well for you that you had not that "one moment" you wished for.

CHAPTER XXIV. A DEAD HEAT

Some eight or ten days have elapsed since the scene we have Just recorded,--not one of whose incidents are we about to relate,--and we are still at Holbach. As happens so frequently in the working of a mathematical question, proofs are assumed without going over the demonstrations; so, in real life,--certain postulates being granted,--we arrive at conclusions which we regard as inevitable.

We are at Holbach, but no longer strolling along its leaf-strewn alleys, or watching the laughing eddies of its circling river,--we are within doors. The scene is a small, most comfortably furnished chamber of the little inn, where an ample supper is laid out on a sideboard, a card-table occupying the centre of the room, at which two players are seated, their somewhat "charged" expressions and disordered dress indicating a prolonged combat,--a fact in part corroborated by the streak of pinkish dawn that has pierced between the shutters, and now blends with the sickly glare of the candles. Several packs of cards litter the floor around them, thrown there in that superstitious passion only gamblers understand, and a decanter and some glasses stand on the table beside the players, who are no others than our acquaintances Grog Davis and Paul Classon.

There is a vulgar but not unwise adage that tells us "dogs do not eat dogs," and the maxim has a peculiar application to gamblers. All sorts and manners of men love to measure their strength with each other,--swordsmen, swimmers, pedestrians, even hard drinking used to have its duels of rivalry,--gamblers never. Such an employment of their skill would seem to their eyes about as absurd as that of a sportsman who would turn his barrel against his companion instead of the cock-pheasant before him. Their "game" is of another order. How, then, explain the curious fact we have mentioned? There are rivalries that last life-long; there are duels that go on from year to year of existence, and even to the last leave the question of superiority undetermined. The game of piquet formed such between these two men. At every chance meeting in life,--no matter how long the interval or how brief the passage might be,--they recurred to the old-vexed question, which fortune seemed to find a pleasure in never deciding definitively.

The fact that each had his own separate theory of the game, would have given an interest to the encounter; but besides there was now another circumstance whose import neither were likely to undervalue. Davis had just paid over to Paul Classon the sum of two hundred napoleons,--the price of a secret service he was about to perform,--and the sight of that glowing heap of fresh gold--for there it lay on the corner of the table--had so stimulated the acquisitiveness of Grog's nature that he could not resist the temptation to try and regain them. The certainty that when he should have won them it would only be to restore them to the loser, for whose expenses on a long Journey they were destined, detracted nothing from this desire on his part A more unprofitable debtor than Holy Paul could not be imagined. His very name in a schedule would reflect discredit on the bankruptcy! But there lay the shining pieces, fresh from the mint and glittering, and the appeal they made was to an instinct, not to reason. Was it with the knowledge of this fact that Paul had left them there instead of putting them up in his pocket?

Had he calculated in his own subtle brain that temptations are least resistible when they are most tangible? There was that in his reverence's look which seemed to say as much, and the thoughtless wantonness of his action as his fingers fiddled with the gold may not have been entirely without a purpose. They had talked together, and discussed some knotty matters of business, having concluded which, Davis proposed cards.

[Illustration: 290]

"Our old combat, I suppose?" said Paul, laughing. "Well, I 'm always ready."

And down they sat, hour after hour finding them still in the same hard straggle, fortune swinging with its pendulous stroke from side to side, as though to elicit the workings of hope and fear in each alternately.

Meanwhile they drank freely, and from time to time arose to eat at the side-table in that hurried and greedy way that only gamblers eat, as though vexed at the hanger that called them from their game. They were both too great proficients in play to require that absorption of faculties inferior gamblers need. They could, and did, talk of everything that came uppermost, the terms of the game dropping through the conversation like the measured booming of great guns amid the clattering crash of musketry. Luck for some time had favored Holy Paul; and while he became blander, softer, and more benign of look, Grog grew fierce, his eyes fiery, and his words sharp and abrupt. Classon's polished courtesy chafed and irritated him, but he seemed determined to control his anger as far as he might, and not give his adversary the transient advantage of temper. Had spectators been admitted to the lists, the backers would have most probably taken the Churchman. His calm countenance, his mild, unexcited eye, his voice so composed and gentle, must have made Paul the favorite.

"We shall scarcely have time for another game, Kit,"--he'd have called him Grog, but that he was losing,--"I perceive the day is beginning to break."

"So am I, for the matter of that," said Davis, with a bitter laugh. "You have won--let me see--forty-six, and twenty-seven, and a hundred and twelve,--that was a 'thumper,'--and thirty-four, besides that loose cash there,--about two hundred and forty or fifty naps, Master Paul. A very pretty-night's work, and more profitable than preaching, I take it."

"Regarding the matter as a mere monetary question--"

"No gammon,--cut the cards," broke in Davis; "one game must finish us.

Now, shall we say double or quits?"

"If you really wish me to speak my candid mind, I 'd rather not."

"I thought as much," muttered Grog to himself; and then, in a louder voice, "What shall it be then.--one-hundred and fifty? Come, even if you should lose, you'll get up winner of a clean hundred."

"Would that it were at the expense of some one I love less!"

"Answer my question," said Davis, angrily. "Will you have a hundred and fifty on the last game,--yes or no?"

"Yes, of course, Kit, if you desire it."

"Cut again; there is a faced card," said Davis. And now he dealt with a slow deliberation that showed what an effort his forced composure was costing him.

Classon sat back in his chair watching the cards as they fell from the dealer's hand, but affecting in his half-closed eyes and folded arms the air of one deep in his own musings.

"I will say this, Davis," said he, at last, with the slow utterance that announces a well-matured thought, "you have managed the whole of this business with consummate skill; you have done it admirably."

"I believe I have," said Davis, with a sort of stern decision in his tone; "and there was more difficulty in the case than you are aware of."

"There must have been very considerable difficulty," rejoined Paul, slowly. "Even in the very little I have seen of him I can detect a man whose temperament must have presented the greatest embarrassments. He is proud, very proud, suspectful to any extent. I have five cards--forty-seven."

"Not good."

"Three queens."

"Four tens."

"So, then, my tierce in spades is not good, of course. I play one."

"Fifteen and five, twenty, and the tens ninety-four. The first honor I have scored this hour. The difficulty I allude to was with my daughter; she would n't have him."

"Not have him?--not accept a peer of the realm?"

"Who told her he was a peer? She only knows him as the Honorable Annesley Beecher."

"Even so. As the Honorable Annesley Beecher, he is a man of high connections,--related to some of the first people. A dub--play a club. I take it that such a man is a very high mark indeed."

"_She_ wasn't of your mind, that's clear," said Davis, abruptly; "nor do I believe it would have signified in the least to have told her that he _was_ a Lord."

"Romantic!" muttered Paul.

"No, not a bit."

"Loved another, perhaps."

"How should she? She never saw any other except a one-eyed Pole, that taught her music at that Belgian school, and a sort of hairy dwarf, that gave lessons in drawing! A hundred and seventeen. It's your deal."

"And he himself has no suspicion of his brother's death?" said Classon, as he gave out the cards.

"Not the slightest. He was trying to write a letter to him, to break the news of his marriage, only yesterday."

"Cleverly done,--most cleverly done," said Paul, in ecstasy. "If he had come to the knowledge, he might very possibly have refused _her_."

"I rather--suspect--not," said Grog, dwelling slowly on each word, while his countenance assumed an expression of fierce and terrible determination. "A lucky take in, that,--the queen of diamonds: it gives me seven cards. Refuse her! by Heaven, he'd have had a short experience of his peerage! Kings and knaves--six, and seven I play--twenty-three.

Piqued again, Holy Paul! No, no; he'd never have dared that."

Classon shook his head doubtingly.

"You might just as well tell me, Paul Classon, that you 'd refuse to marry them," said Davis, as he struck the table with his clenched fist, "and that I would bear it! I have a way of not being denied what I have determined on; that has done me good service in life. That blear-eyed boy--the Attache at the Legation in Frankfort--wanted to refuse me a passport for the Honorable Annesley Beecher and Mrs. Beecher, saying that, until the marriage, there was no such person. But I whispered a word to him across the table, and he gave it, and there it is now."