Chapter X: A Gentleman's Life

"Your days are tedious, your hours burdensome:
And wer't not for full suppers, midnight revels,
Dancing, wine, riotous meetings, which do drown
And bury quite in you all virtuous thoughts,
And on your eyelids hang so heavily
They have no power to look as high as heaven,
You'd sit and muse on nothing but despair."
DECKAR.

The next night and the next, Cecil played, and with varying fortunes, sometimes losing to the very last few pounds, at others rising to large gains. The end of the week found him a winner of some four hundred pounds.

He considered himself rich now, and looking on the gaming-table as a bank from which he could at any time draw largely, his first step was to move from Mrs. Tring's.

He took apartments in South Audley Street; furnished them with taste, and considerable luxury; engaged two servants, and began to live in a style more corresponding with his previous habits.

A run of luck in his favour having largely increased his resources, he started a cab; and boasted of one of the tiniest tigers in London; a strong square-built boy of fourteen, who did not look more than ten.

"Is this prudent, dearest?" said Blanche, when he proposed the cab. "Will our means ever permit it?"

"Yes, pet, it is genuine prudence. I am the rage just now; the dealers are all anxious I should paint them a picture. Moon has offered me a thousand guineas for one to engrave from. I have refused. I must have more. But to command more it is essential that I should appear rich; the richer I appear, the richer I shall be. A cab is, therefore, policy."

"You know best: but don't forget the little one that is to share our prosperity."

"Forget him, indeed! look here; I have bought him a coral; look at the gold bells! I saw it yesterday--it was a bargain, and I thought the opportunity should not be lost. Isn't it beautiful?"

"Beautiful! How thoughtful of you, dear one!"

"At the same time I saw a love of a watch. That, said I to myself, is just the thing for petkins--and behold!"

He held a gold breguet before her eyes.

"You dear, kind creature," she said, kissing him; "but I will not have you spend money on me in this way."

She did not remark the diamond studs in his shirt, nor the turquoise-headed cane which dangled from his wrist; she only thought of what he had spent upon a present for her.

Cecil was soon plunged into debt; but a man who has his cab, and is lavish in expense, easily finds enormous credit. He lived as if he had a certain income of two or three thousand a year. Brilliant dinners at the club, small but ruinous dinners at home, suppers, jewellery, cigars, gloves, and elegant trifles for his wife demanded no inconsiderable sums. Rouge et noir and credit supplied his wants. In spite of heavy losses, his luck at play was extraordinary, and was aided by his prudence in always retiring after gaining a certain sum.

The ordinary routine of his life, as it used to be at Mrs. Tring's, was now exchanged for one very unlike it in appearance, but to those who look beneath the surface very like it _au fond_.

He rose late; and sat in his dressing-gown and slippers, smoking cigars at two guineas the pound, turning over the leaves of a novel or new poem, chatting with Blanche, and listening to her plans for the education of their children. Impossible to be more charming than Cecil at such moments! He listened with unfeigned pleasure to her little schemes, threw in a graceful _bon mot_ here and there, drew her on his knee, and played with her golden hair, planned amusements for her, and taxed his ingenuity to discover what she would like to have bought.

About twelve, he dressed. No rubbing up of gloves--no oiling of boots now. His dress was a matter of study, and he stepped into his cab a perfect dandy.

Blanche, without inquiring, imagined he always went to his painting-rooms, but the club or Hester Mason's were his invariable resorts.

He had taken of late to calling frequently on Hester during the day. Not that he was in love with her, but she amused and flattered him. He saw pretty plainly that she regarded him with anything but indifferent feelings, and no man withstands that sort of flattery. He saw, moreover, that Sir Chetsom Chetsom was jealous, and what man is insensible to that compliment? He went, therefore, and was always amused.

Poor Hester had fallen seriously in love with him, and although his attentions to her were by no means explicit, yet she could not help fancying he had some love for her. Unfortunately he often brought his wife's name forward, and always spoke of her with an unostentatious respect and affection which cut Hester to the quick.

She who recognised no marriage tie; who thought that love, and love alone, was the only principle of union, was jealous and angry at this obstacle of a wife, and her tirades against marriage were not wholly unselfish. That Cecil loved her, she could not disbelieve--why, then, should he not tell her so?

She did not appreciate the distinction between flattered vanity and love; she did not understand that a man could find delight in her society, and be pleased at her evident partiality, while at the same time cherishing the image of his wife as something inalienable from his heart.

Cecil had no thought of being inconstant, yet he sought Hester's society with pleasure.

After spending an hour or so _tête-à-tête_ with her, he would drive down to the club, or into the Park; dine at the club, and spend his night at the Strangers', to which he had recently been admitted, and where he played fifty pound stakes with a recklessness which astonished most of the players, but which, on the whole, was attended with success. One night he carried off eight hundred pounds.

So large a sum in his possession betrayed to Blanche the source of his sudden prosperity. She had before been uneasy: doubts had crossed her mind; the abundance of money, coupled with his obvious idleness, looked very unlike an artist's gains, and now this eight hundred pounds threw a flash of light on the mystery.

"Cecil, dearest Cecil," she said timidly, "relieve me from my suspense--did you gain this money at play?"

He looked angrily at her, and, puffing forth a column of smoke, said,--

"How else should I gain it?"

She was silent. He continued to smoke fiercely for a minute or so, and then said, sneeringly,--

"Did you fancy money was to be gained by art? Did you imagine I was going to follow the example of all the other fools, and wear out my life in a miserable contest for a beggar's pittance? Painting would never support me; it is all very well for the mechanical fellows who make it a _trade_; I could never do _that_; and I have no inclination to starve--there is you to think of--and our child."

Blanche could not reply; every phrase was a stab in her heart; she saw ruin and dishonour scowling upon them, and felt their descent was not to be averted.

"I was born a gentleman, thank God!" he continued, throwing away the end of his cigar, and rising from the sofa as he spoke; "I was bred a gentleman, and, damme, I will live like a gentleman!"

With this very gentlemanly, honourable sentiment, he walked out of the room.

Relieved from the restraint of his presence, Blanche threw herself upon the sofa, and gave way to a paroxysm of grief. What a blow to her happiness was that fearful discovery! Her husband--her adored Cecil--a gambler! Men living in the world, and accustomed to mingle with those who play, cannot overcome their repugnance to a professed gambler; but what is their repugnance compared with the loathing felt by women, whose horror is unmitigated by familiarity? and what is the abstract horror of a woman, compared with the shuddering terror of a wife, who sees written before her in characters of fire the ineffaceable dishonour, the inevitable ruin of her husband and her children?

A gambler! her husband was a gambler! The luxuries with which she was surrounded were not the fruits of honest labour, but of dishonourable gaming; the trinkets which he had given her, and which she had held as precious tokens of his affection, were not purchased by his genius and energy, but were purchased from the misery of others; the gold he squandered with a lavish hand, was the gold whose loss carried perhaps despair and suicide into many a wretched family. The thought was torture. It turned all her trinkets into manacles. It made the costly furniture around her dark, grim, and reproachful.

Bitter, bitter were the scalding tears which gushed from her, as she brooded on this immeasureable horror! Terrible were the fears which assailed her as she thought of the end--the inevitable end of such a career!

All hope of happiness was now swept from out her life. Their love, which had been so trusting; their sympathy, which had been so perfect; her esteem, which had been so unsullied, where were they? Gone--irrecoverably gone!

In their poverty, how happy they had been! how contented with their lot! In the prospect of the future, made radiant with love--in the thoughts of their children, as sharers and promoters of that love--what blissful dreams had tinged with magic hues the far horizon of a life which blended with the distant life to come! And now, in one single moment, all those dreams were shattered, and the horizon darkened with thunder-clouds over a stormy sea.

You may have seen a graceful vine, heavy with clusters of the purple grape, trailed up against a garden wall; the rusty nail that fastens it, half falling from out the crumbling wall; and you have felt that the first gust of autumnal wind must tear it completely out, and hurl the poor drooping vine upon the ground.

That is an image of their life. By no stronger bond were they now separated from ruin: one turn of Fortune's capricious wheel, and they were lost.

Weep, weep, poor wretched girl! weep and prepare yourself for greater woe! The babe which now moves beneath your heart, in the dim newness of its being, whose birth was to have been the advent of such joy; what will it be born to? Weep, and prepare yourself for greater woe!