"Therefore, in proposing it as a stake for this game at baccarat, I really propose less than one hair of your head, because the hair is a something, and the soul is a nothing! Come! Will you risk that non-existent quant.i.ty for the chance of winning a thousand pounds?"

The Viscount drained off the last drop of brandy, and turned upon us, his eyes flushing mingled derision and defiance.

"Done!" he exclaimed; whereupon the party sat down.

The game was brief,--and in its rapid excitement, almost breathless. Six or seven minutes sufficed, and Lucio rose, the winner. He smiled as he pointed to the counter which had represented Viscount Lynton's last stake.

"I have won!" he said quietly. "But you owe me nothing, my dear Viscount, inasmuch as you risked--Nothing! We played this game simply for fun. If souls had any existence of course I should claim yours;--I wonder what I should do with it by the way!" He laughed good-humouredly.

"What nonsense, isn't it!--and how thankful we ought to be that we live in advanced days like the present, when such silly superst.i.tions are being swept aside by the march of progress and pure Reason! Good-night!

Tempest and I will give you, your full revenge to-morrow,--the luck is sure to change by then, and you will probably have the victory.

Again--good-night!"

He held out his hand,--there was a peculiar melting tenderness in his brilliant dark eyes,--an impressive kindness in his manner. Something--I could not tell what--held us all for the moment spellbound as if by enchantment, and several of the players at other tables, hearing of the eccentric stake that had been wagered and lost, looked over at us curiously from a distance. Viscount Lynton, however, professed himself immensely diverted, and shook Lucio's proffered hand heartily.

"You are an awfully good fellow!" he said, speaking a little thickly and hurriedly--"And I a.s.sure you seriously if I had a soul I should be very glad to part with it for a thousand pounds at the present moment. The soul wouldn't be an atom of use to me and the thousand pounds would. But I feel convinced I shall win to-morrow!"

"I am equally sure you will!" returned Lucio affably, "In the meantime, you will not find my friend here, Geoffrey Tempest, a hard creditor,--he can afford to wait. But in the case of the lost soul,"--here he paused, looking straight into the young man's eyes,--"of course _I_ cannot afford to wait!"

The Viscount smiled vaguely at this pleasantry, and almost immediately afterwards left the club. As soon as the door had closed behind him, several of the gamesters exchanged sententious nods and glances.

"Ruined!" said one of them in a _sotto-voce_.

"His gambling debts are more than he can ever pay"--added another--"And I hear he has lost a clear fifty thousand on the turf."

These remarks were made indifferently, as though one should talk of the weather,--no sympathy was expressed,--no pity wasted. Every gambler there was selfish to the core, and as I studied their hardened faces, a thrill of honest indignation moved me,--indignation mingled with shame.

I was not yet altogether callous or cruel-hearted, though as I look back upon those days which now resemble a wild vision rather than a reality, I know that I was becoming more and more of a brutal egoist with every hour I lived. Still I was so far then from being utterly vile, that I inwardly resolved to write to Viscount Lynton that very evening, and tell him to consider his debt to me cancelled, as I should refuse to claim it. While this thought was pa.s.sing through my mind, I met Lucio's gaze fixed steadily upon me. He smiled,--and presently signed to me to accompany him. In a few minutes we had left the club, and were out in the cold night air under a heaven of frostily sparkling stars. Standing still for a moment, my companion laid his hand on my shoulder.

"Tempest, if you are going to be kind-hearted or sympathetic to undeserving rascals, I shall have to part company with you!" he said, with a curious mixture of satire and seriousness in his voice--"I see by the expression of your face that you are meditating some silly disinterested action of pure generosity. Now you might just as well flop down on these paving stones and begin saying prayers in public. You want to let Lynton off his debt,--you are a fool for your pains. He is a born scoundrel,--and has never seen his way to being anything else,--why should you compa.s.sionate him? From the time he first went to college till now, he has been doing nothing but live a life of degraded sensuality,--he is a worthless rake, less to be respected than an honest dog!"

"Yet some one loves him I daresay!" I said.

"Some one loves him!" echoed Lucio with inimitable disdain--"Bah! Three ballet girls live on him if that is what you mean. His mother loved him,--but she is dead,--he broke her heart. He is no good I tell you,--let him pay his debt in full, even to the soul he staked so lightly. If I were the devil now, and had just won the strange game we played to-night, I suppose according to priestly tradition, I should be piling up the fire for Lynton in high glee,--but being what I am, I say let the man alone to make his own destiny,--let things take their course,--and as he chose to risk everything, so let him pay everything."

We were by this time walking slowly into Pall Mall,--I was on the point of making some reply, when catching sight of a man's figure on the opposite side of the way, not far from the Marlborough Club, I uttered an involuntary exclamation.

"Why there he is!" I said--"there is Viscount Lynton!"

Lucio's hand closed tightly on my arm.

"You don't want to speak to him now, surely!"

"No. But I wonder where he's going? He walks rather unsteadily."

"Drunk, most probably!"

And Lucio's face presented the same relentless expression of scorn I had so often seen and marvelled at.

We paused a moment, watching the Viscount strolling aimlessly up and down in front of the clubs,--till all at once he seemed to come to a sudden resolution, and stopping short, he shouted,

"Hansom!"

A silent-wheeled smart vehicle came bowling up immediately. Giving some order to the driver, he jumped in. The cab approached swiftly in our direction,--just as it pa.s.sed us the loud report of a pistol crashed on the silence.

"Good G.o.d!" I cried reeling back a step or two--"He has shot himself!"

The hansom stopped,--the driver sprang down,--club-porters, waiters, policemen and no end of people starting up from Heaven knows where, were on the scene on an instant,--I rushed forward to join the rapidly gathering throng, but before I could do so, Lucio's strong arm was thrown round me, and he dragged me by main force away.

"Keep cool, Geoffrey!" he said--"Do you want to be called up to identify? And betray the club and all its members? Not while I am here to prevent you! Check your mad impulses, my good fellow,--they will lead you into no end of difficulties. If the man's dead he's dead, and there's an end of it."

"Lucio! You have no heart!" I exclaimed, struggling violently to escape from his hold--"How can you stop to reason in such a case! Think of it!

_I_ am the cause of all the mischief!--it is my cursed luck at baccarat this evening that has been the final blow to the wretched young fellow's fortunes,--I am convinced of it!--I shall never forgive myself--"

"Upon my word, Geoffrey, your conscience is very tender!" he answered, holding my arm still more closely and hurrying me away despite myself--"You must try and toughen it a little if you want to be successful in life. Your 'cursed luck' you think, has caused Lynton's death? Surely it is a contradiction in terms to call luck 'cursed,'--and as for the Viscount, he did not need that last game at baccarat to emphasise his ruin. You are not to blame. And for the sake of the club, if for nothing else, I do not intend either you or myself to be mixed up in a case of suicide. The coroner's verdict always disposes of these incidents comfortably in two words--'Temporary insanity.'"

I shuddered. My soul sickened as I thought that within a few yards of us was the bleeding corpse of the man I had so lately seen alive and spoken with,--and notwithstanding Lucio's words I felt as if I had murdered him.

"'Temporary insanity'"--repeated Lucio again, as if speaking to himself--"all remorse, despair, outraged honour, wasted love, together with the scientific modern theory of Reasonable Nothingness--Life a Nothing, G.o.d a Nothing,--when these drive the distracted human unit to make of himself also a nothing, 'temporary insanity' covers up his plunge into the infinite with an untruthful pleasantness. However, after all, it is as Shakespeare says, a mad world!"

I made no answer. I was too overcome by my own miserable sensations. I walked along almost unconscious of movement, and as I stared bewilderedly up at the stars they danced before my sight like fireflies whirling in a mist of miasma. Presently a faint hope occurred to me.

"Perhaps," I said, "he has not really killed himself? It may be only an attempt?"

"He was a capital shot"--returned Lucio composedly,--"That was his one quality. He has no principles,--but he was a good marksman. I cannot imagine his missing aim."

"It is horrible! An hour ago alive, ... and now ... I tell you, Lucio, it is horrible!"

"What is? Death? It is not half so horrible as Life lived wrongly,"--he responded, with a gravity that impressed me in spite of my emotion and excitement--"Believe me, the mental sickness and confusion of a wilfully degraded existence are worse tortures than are contained in the priestly notions of h.e.l.l. Come come, Geoffrey, you take this matter too much to heart,--you are not to blame. If Lynton has given himself the 'happy dispatch' it is really the best thing he could do,--he was of no use to anybody, and he is well out of it. It is positively weak of you to attach importance to such a trifle. You are only at the beginning of your career----"

"Well, I hope that career will not lead me into any more such tragedies as the one enacted to-night,"--I said pa.s.sionately--"If it does, it will be entirely against my will!"

Lucio looked at me curiously.

"Nothing can happen to you against your will"--he replied; "I suppose you wish to imply that I am to blame for introducing you to the club? My good fellow, you need not have gone there unless you had chosen to do so! I did not bind and drag you there! You are upset and unnerved,--come into my room and take a gla.s.s of wine,--you will feel more of a man afterwards."

We had by this time reached the hotel, and I went with him pa.s.sively.

With equal pa.s.siveness I drank what he gave me, and stood, gla.s.s in hand, watching him with a kind of morbid fascination as he threw off his fur-lined overcoat and confronted me, his pale handsome face strangely set and stern, and his dark eyes glittering like cold steel.

"That last stake of Lynton's, ... to you--" I said falteringly--"His soul----"

"Which _he_ did not believe in, and which _you_ do not believe in!"

returned Lucio, regarding me fixedly. "Why do you now seem to tremble at a mere sentimental idea? If fantastic notions such as G.o.d, the Soul, and the Devil were real facts, there would perhaps be cause for trembling, but being only the brainsick imaginations of superst.i.tious mankind, there is nothing in them to awaken the slightest anxiety or fear."

"But you"--I began--"you say you believe in the soul?"

"I? I am brainsick!" and he laughed bitterly--"Have you not found that out yet? Much learning hath driven me mad, my friend! Science has led me into such deep wells of dark discovery, that it is no wonder if my senses sometimes reel,--and I believe--at such insane moments--in the Soul!"

I sighed heavily.

"I think I will go to bed," I answered. "I am tired out,--and absolutely miserable!"