The Gambler.

by Katherine Cecil Thurston.

_PART I_

CHAPTER I

An eight-mile drive over rain-washed Irish roads in the quick-falling dust of autumn is an experience trying to the patience, even to the temper, of the average Saxon. Yet James Milbanke made neither comment nor objection as mile after mile of roadway spun away like a ribbon behind him, as the mud rose in showers from the wheels of the old-fashioned trap in which he sat, and the half-trained mare between the shafts swerved now to the right, now to the left--her nervous glance caught by the spectral shapes of the blackthorn hedges or the motionless forms of the wayside donkeys, lying asleep in the ditches.

Perhaps this stoicism was the outcome of an innate power to endure; perhaps it was a merely negative quality, ill.u.s.trating the lack of that doubtful blessing, imagination. But whatever its origin, it stood him in good stead as he covered the long stretch of flat country that links the south-eastern seaport of Muskeere with the remote fishing village of Carrigmore and its outlying district of Orristown.

His outlook upon Ireland, like his outlook upon life, was untinged by humour. He had seen no ground for amus.e.m.e.nt in the fact that he had been the only pa.s.senger to alight from the train at the Muskeere terminus, and consequently no ground for loneliness in the sight of the solitary vehicle, dimly silhouetted against the murky sky, that had awaited his coming. The ludicrous points of the scene: the primitive railway station with its insufficient flickering lights, its little knot of inquisitive idlers, its one porter--slovenly, amiable, incorrigibly lazy--all contributing the unconscious background to his own neat, conventional, totally alien personality, had left him untouched.

The only individual to whom the picture had made its appeal had been the solitary porter. As he relieved Milbanke of his valise and rug on the step of the first-cla.s.s carriage, an undeniable twinkle had gleamed in his eyes.

"Fine, soft night, sir," he had volunteered. "Tim Burke is outside for you."

For a second Milbanke had stared at him in a mixture of doubt and displeasure. A month's pilgrimage to the ancient Celtic landmarks had left him, as it has left many a Saxon before him, unlearned in that most interesting and most inscrutable of all survivals--the Celt himself. He had surveyed the face of the porter cautiously and half distrustfully; then he had made a guarded reply.

"I am certainly expecting a--a conveyance," he had admitted. "But I have never heard of Tim Burke."

"Why, thin Tim has heard of _you_!" the other had replied with unruffled suavity. "Isn't it the English gintlemen that's goin' to stop wid Mr.

a.s.shlin over at Orristown that you are? Sure, Tim told me all about you; an' I knew you the minute I sat eyes on you--let alone there was no wan else in the train."

Without more ado he had hoisted Milbanke's belongings to his shoulder, and lounged out of the station.

"Here you are, Tim, man!" he had exclaimed as he deposited the articles one after another under the seat of the trap with a lofty disregard of their owner. "'Tis a soft night an' a long road you have before you! Is it cold the mare is?" He had paused to eye the impatient young animal before him, with the Irishman's unfailing appreciation of horse-flesh.

Here Milbanke, feeling that some veiled reproof had been suggested, had broken in upon the monologue.

"I hope I haven't injured the horse by the delay," he had said hastily.

"The train was exactly twenty-two minutes behind its time."

Then for the first time the old coachman had bent down from his lofty position.

"An', sure, what harm if it was, sir?" he had exclaimed, voicing the hospitality due to his master's guest. "What hurry is there at all--so long as it brought you safe?"

"True for you, Tim!" the porter had interjected softly; and seizing Milbanke's arm, he had swung him into the trap, precisely as he had swung the luggage a few seconds previously.

"Thank you, sir!" he had murmured a moment later. "Good-night to you!

Good-night, Tim! Safe road!" And, drawing back, he had looked on with admiration while Burke had gathered up the reins and the mare had plunged forward into the misty, sea-scented night.

That had been Milbanke's first introduction into the district where he proposed to spend a week with a man he had not seen for nearly thirty years.

As the trap moved forward, leaving the straggling town with its scattered lights far behind, his thoughts--temporarily distracted by the incidents of his arrival--reverted to the channel in which they had run during the greater part of the day. Again his mind returned to the period of his college career when, as a quiet student, he had been drawn by the subtle attraction of contrast into a friendship with Denis a.s.shlin--the young Irishman whose spirit, whose enthusiasms, whose exuberant joy in life had shone in such vivid colours beside his own neutral-tinted personality. His thoughts pa.s.sed methodically from those eager, early days to the more sober ones that had followed a.s.shlin's recall to Ireland, and thence onward over the succeeding tale of years.

He reviewed his own calm, if somewhat lonely, manhood; his aimless delving first into one branch of learning, then into another; his gradually dawning interest in the study of archaeology--an interest that, fostered by ample leisure and ample means, had become the temperate and well-ordered pa.s.sion of his life. The retrospect was pleasant. There is always an agreeable sensation to a man of Milbanke's temperament in looking back upon unruffled times. He became oblivious of the ruts in the road and of the mare's erratic movements as he traced the course of events to the point where, two months before, the discovery of a dozen gold platters and as many drinking vessels, embedded in a bog in the County Tyrone, had turned the eyes of the archaeological world upon Ireland; and he, with other students of antiquity, had been bitten with the desire to see the unique and priceless objects for himself.

The journey to Tyrone had been a pleasant experience; and it was there, under the mild exaltation of the genuine find, that it had suddenly been suggested to his mind that certain ancient ruins, including a remarkable specimen of the Irish round tower, were to be found on the south-east coast not three miles from the property of his old college friend.

Whether it was the archaeological instinct to resurrect the past, or the merely human wish to re-live his own small portion of it, that had prompted him to write to a.s.shlin must remain an open question. It is sufficient that the letter was written and dispatched and that the answer came in hot haste.

It had reached him in the form of a telegram running as follows: "Come at once, and stay for a year. Stagnating to death in this isolation.

a.s.shlin." An hour later another, and a more voluminous message, had followed, in which--as if by an after-thought--he had been given the necessary directions as to the means of reaching Orristown.

It was at the point where his musings reached a.s.shlin's telegrams that he awakened from his reverie and looked about him. For the first time a personal interest in the country through which he was pa.s.sing stirred him. He realised that the salt sting of the sea had again begun to mingle with the night mist, and judged thereby that the road had again emerged upon the coast. He noticed that the hedges had become spa.r.s.er; that wherever a tree loomed out of the dusk it bore the mark of the sea gales in a certain grotesqueness of shape.

This was the isolation of which a.s.shlin had spoken!

With an impulse extremely uncommon to him, he turned in his seat and addressed the silent old coachman beside him.

"Has your master altered much in thirty years?" he asked.

There was silence for a while. Old Burke, with the deliberation of his cla.s.s, liked to weigh his words before giving them utterance.

"Is it Mister Dinis changed?" he repeated at last. Then almost immediately he corrected himself. "Sure, 'tis Mister a.s.shlin I ought to be sayin', sir. But the ould name slips out. Though the poor master is gone these twenty-nine year--the Lord have mercy on him!--I can niver git it into me head that 'tis to Mister Dinis we ought to be lookin'."

More than once during his brief stay in Ireland, Milbanke had been confronted with this annihilation of time in the Irish mind, and Burke's statement aroused no surprise.

"Has he changed?" he asked again in his dry, precise voice.

Burke was silent while the mare pulled hard on the reins. And having regained his mastery over her, he looked down on his companion.

"Is it changed?" he said. "Sure, why wouldn't he be changed? With the father gone--an' the wife gone--an' the children growin' up. Sure 'tis changed we all are, an' goin' down the hill fast--G.o.d help us!"

Milbanke glanced up sharply.

"Children?" he said. "Children?"

Burke turned in his seat.

"Sure 'tisn't to have the ould stock die out you'd be wantin'?" he said. "You'd travel the round of the county before you'd see the like of Mister Dinis's children--though 'tis girls they are."

"Girls?" Milbanke's mind was disturbed by the thought of children.

Denis a.s.shlin with children! The idea was incongruous.

"Two of 'em!" said Burke laconically.

"Dear me!--dear me! And yet I suppose it's only natural. How old are they?"

Burke flicked the mare lightly, and the trap lurched forward.

"Miss Clodagh is turned fifteen," he said, "and the youngster is goin'

on ten. 'Twas ten year back, come next December, that she was born.

Sure I remimber it well. An' six weeks after, Mister Dinis was followin' her poor mother to the churchyard beyant in Carrigmore. The Lord keep us all! 'Twas she was the nice, quiet creature, and Miss Nance is the livin' stamp of her. But G.o.d bless us, 'tis Miss Clodagh that's her father's child." He added this last remark with a force that at the time conveyed nothing, though it was destined to recur later to Milbanke's mind.