Chapter IX: Ruin

In one of the low gambling houses, in Leicester-square, Cecil sat, as in a dream, risking the fruits of his crime. His brain whirled round, and his heart beat every time the door opened, for he could not drive away the fear that his forgery had been detected, and that they were coming to arrest him.

He had dishonoured himself to play this new game which Frank had explained to him, and now that the crime was committed he could not profit by it!

Such a game required, above all others, consummate coolness, and self-mastery; Cecil was more agitated, his brain was more confused than ever it had been, and he played utterly at random. It would be difficult to conceive greater torture than that which he endured, for he won without satisfaction, and lost with agony; his brain was not so confused but that he had a distinct perception of his situation, and of the necessity for playing every _coup_ as if for life; but at the same time his brain was so drugged with horror and despair, that his will seemed paralyzed, and he was forced, as by an unseen hand, into the ruin which he saw yawning before him.

While the cards were dealt with mechanical precision by the impassive dealer, and Cecil's crime-furnished gold was passing away before his eyes, visions of his happy youth, of his early days of marriage, and healthy activity, floated before his mind; and he, the gambler, on the edge of that dark gulph which gaped before him, turned back his thoughts to those sunny days when his soul was stainless, and his life was full of love and hope, of activity and happiness; it was like a small wild flower on a mass of loosening rock, which the next gust of wind will quite unloosen, and tumble thundering into the ravine.

He thought of his mother, and of her dying injunctions, and her words of blessing fell upon his ear, just as the dealer in his passionless voice proclaimed,--

"Black wins."

And a heap of gold was swept away before him.

For hours did this tortured gamester play, becoming gradually inured to the pain he suffered, and deadened to the whispers of his conscience.

It was now eleven o'clock. The room was full of players. A succession of new faces replaced those who one by one fell off, contented with their winnings, or, and this was by far the most frequent case, desperate from their losses. But Cecil never moved. He called for wine occasionally, but nothing interrupted his play.

His last three sovereigns were staked upon the black: his life was on the hazard of that one deal. Even the old players, accustomed to every species of intense emotion, could not keep their eyes off Cecil, as with parted lips, straining eyes, and purple face, he watched the rapid progress of the game. Intensely they felt the moment was supreme.

He lost!

With a burst of uncontrollable despair, he snatched the rake from the hand of the croupier, who had just swept away his money, and with both hands snapped it in two; a murmur followed this act of violence, which only seemed preparatory to something worse; but he glared round upon the players with such a look of mad fury that they were awe-stricken.

Instead of any further violence, however, he broke out into a wild hysterical laugh, which made their blood run cold, and staggered out of the house.

In that moment which had preceded his wild laugh, a vision of his young wife and child destitute,--starving,--thinned with want and sickness, had appeared to him, and, as in a flash, revealed to him the hideous extent of his ruin.

Beggared, dishonoured, stained with a profitless crime, nought remained for him but death; and in death he resolved to still the throbbing of his agony.

As he stumbled into Leicester Square, he ran up against one of those unfortunate women, who, flaunting in satin and faded frippery, make the streets hideous after sunset.

"Now then, my dear, are you going to rush into my arms without an invitation?

'Was ever woman in this humour wooed?
Was ever woman in this humour won?'"

The fumes of bad wine poisoned the breath of the speaker, but the tones struck so strangely upon Cecil's ears, that they arrested him even on the path of death.

He seized her by the wrist, and dragged her under a lamp-post. As the light fell upon both their faces, and he recognised in the wretched woman arrayed in the garb of shame, the Hester Mason whom he had known so prosperous and ambitious--and, as she recognised in the emaciated haggard wreck before her, the only man she had ever loved, he gasped with inexpressible emotion, she wept with intense shame.

Not a word passed between them. With a suffocating sense of bitter humiliation, she wrested herself from his grasp, and darted down Cranbourne Alley. He put his hand to his brow, as if to repress its throbbing, and slowly walked on.