Chapter IV

The unpleasant sensation of moving in the dark remained with Milbanke while Asshlin, still noisily excited, arranged the stakes, cut for the deal, and, having won the cut, distributed the cards. By nature he was lethargic and placid; by habit he was precise, methodical, and commonplace. The advent into this new atmosphere, with its inexplicable suggestions and volcanic outbursts, left him distressed and ill at ease. He was the type of man who, in every relation of life, likes to know exactly where he stands. Having once satisfied himself upon that point, he was usually content to follow the routine of existence without trouble to those around him; but until it was fully defined, he was a prey to a vague uneasiness.

So absorbed was he by the trend of his own speculations, that for the first five games he gave but small consideration to the play. Then, however, his host jogged his attention with no uncertain hand.

Pausing in the shuffling of the cards, he glanced across the table.

"You're playing like an old woman, James. Are your wits wool-gathering, that you've let me win every blessed game?"

Milbanke looked up. "Forgive me," he said hastily--"forgive me. I was thinking----"

"--Thinking that a broken-down devil of an Irishman isn't high enough game to fly at?" Asshlin laughed. "Well, I'll put some life into you. I'll double the stakes. What do you say to that?"

He leant back in his chair, balancing the pack of cards in his hands.

Milbanke, with suddenly awakened observation, saw that his eyes glittered with excitement and that his lips were set.

"Double the stakes?" he echoed doubtfully. "Oh, certainly if you think it will improve the game. For myself I rarely play for money! I always think that the cards----"

"--Are sufficient in themselves, I suppose?" Asshlin laughed. "Don't you believe it, James? Or if you do, I'll teach you better. Come along! In for a penny, in for a pound! Are you agreeable?"

For a moment Milbanke was thoughtful; then he became conscious of the other's impatient glance.

"Why--why certainly," he said. "Anything you like!"

"Spoken like a man!" Asshlin impulsively threw down the cards, and then gathered them up again. "I see the embalming process isn't completed yet. The antiquarians have left a shred or two of frail humanity in you. Well, we'll have it out. We'll put an edge on it. Come along!" He leant forward, the reckless brightness deepening in his eyes.

But Milbanke hesitated.

"Hadn't we better settle up the first score and start afresh?" he said. "How do we stand?"

He put his hand into his pocket. But the other waived the point.

"Is it paying at this hour of the night?" he cried. "Give me a pencil, and I'll jot down our difference, if you're conscientious. But the balance will be on the other side before the candles are burned out. The devil forgot to bring luck to the Asshlins since poor Anthony went below. But come along, man!--come along! Here's to the youth of us!"

He drained his glass; and turned again to the business of the cards.

During the next half-dozen games neither spoke. With deep absorption, Asshlin followed the run of the cards. Once or twice an exclamation escaped him; once or twice he paused to replenish Milbanke's glass or his own; but in every other respect he had eyes and thoughts for nothing but the business in hand. Milbanke, on the contrary--gambler neither by instinct nor training--was infinitely more interested in his opponent than in the play.

As he watched Asshlin, a score of recollections rose to his mind--recollections that time and advancing age had all but effaced. He recalled the numberless occasions upon which the Irishman, in the exuberance of youth, had sat over a gaming-table until the daylight had streamed in across the scattered cards, the heaped-up cigar-ashes and the emptied glasses; he reviewed the rare occasions on which his cajoleries had drawn him from his own mild pursuits to be a sharer in these prolonged revels; and with the memory came the thought of the headache, the sick sense of weariness that had invariably lain in wait for him the following morning. A wondering admiration for Asshlin had always held a place in these jaded after-sensations--a species of hero-worship for one who could turn into bed at four in the morning and emerge at nine with all the vigour and vitality of the most virtuous sleeper. He had never fully realised that to men of Asshlin's stamp dissipation, excitement, and action are potent stimulants, calling forth all the superfluous nervous energy that by nature they possess. While the tide of life runs high about such men, they are borne forward, buoyed up by their own capacity for living and enjoying. To them, existence at high pressure is a glorious, exalted state, exempt from satiety or fatigue; it is the quieter phases of existence--the phases that to ordinary men mean rest, peace, domestic tranquillity and domestic interests--that these exuberant, ardent human beings have cause to dread.

An hour went by, and still the idea of a past, curiously reflected and curiously contradicted, absorbed Milbanke's perceptions. Then gradually but decisively it was borne in upon his mind that his absorption was blunting his common sense. He was playing execrably.

It has been said that he was no gambler; but neither was he a fool. With something of a shock he realised that he stood a loser to the extent of seven or eight pounds. With the realisation he sat straighter in his chair. It was not that he grudged the money. He was generous--and could afford generosity. It was rather that that admirable quality which urges the Englishman to play a losing game was stirred within him.

"By Jove, Denis!" he said. "I must look to my laurels! I used to play a better game than this."

Asshlin's only answer was a laugh--a laugh from which all the bitterness had dropped away, leaving a buoyant ring of absorption and delight. Under the stimulus of excitement, he had altered. He was exalted, lifted above the petty discontent, the pessimism, the despondency that tainted his empty days.

And so for nearly two hours they played steadily; then Milbanke paused and drew out his watch.

"I don't know what sort of hours you keep in Ireland," he hazarded; "but it's nearly twelve o'clock."

Asshlin had paused to snuff one of the candles that had begun to gutter. At the other's words, he glanced up in undisguised surprise.

"Hours?" he repeated. "Why, any--or none at all. You don't know the glory of having something to sit up for." He paused for a second in a sort of ecstasy. "You don't know it; you can't know it! You have never felt the abomination of desolation."

He laughed feverishly and gathered up the cards afresh.

"Come, James! Your deal!"

And in this manner the night wore on. In the early stages of their play Asshlin's luck stuck to him determinately; but by degrees his opponent's more cautious and level play began to tell, and their positions were gradually reversed. By one o'clock Milbanke had made good his losses and even stood with some trifling amount to his advantage. Here again he had mildly suggested a cessation; but Asshlin, more intoxicated by bad than he had been by good fortune, had demanded his revenge, and called loudly through the quiet house for more candles and more wine.

But with the fresh round of play, the luck remained unaltered. Milbanke continued to win.

With a sleepy face, but no expression of surprise, Burke responded to his master's call, replenishing the light and setting the port upon the table. But the players scarcely noticed his entrance or departure. Asshlin was playing with desperate recklessness; and Milbanke, without intent or consciousness, was slowly falling under the influence of his companion's excitement. As minute succeeded minute and Asshlin sat rigid in his seat--cutting, dealing, marking the result of each game upon a strip of paper--the elder man became more and more the satellite of thirty years ago, less and less the placid archaeologist for whom the follies of the present lie overshadowed by the past.

He forgot the long journey of the afternoon, the peculiar incidents of his arrival. A slight flush rose to his usually bloodless cheeks; he found himself watching the run of the cards with a species of reflected eagerness, roused to an unaccustomed elation when the advantage fell to him.

At three o'clock they played the last round. And it was only then--when the last card had been thrown on the table, and he had risen stiff from long sitting, the winner of something like twenty pounds--that he realised how completely he had been dominated by this resurrected influence; dominated to the exclusion of personal prejudice and even personal comfort. So strong was this impression of past influences that he was roused to no surprise when, glancing at his companion, he saw him temporarily rejuvenated--his expression alert, his whole face vivified by the night's excitement.

Again a touch of the old sympathy arose within him. The reckless, cynical man before him was momentarily effaced; the bright personality of long ago seemed to fill the room.

"Good-night, Denis!" he said gently, holding out his hand.

Asshlin caught it enthusiastically.

"Good-night, James!--good-night! And once more a thousand welcomes and a thousand thanks. You have been a drop of water in the desert to a parching man. Good-night, and pleasant dreams to you! I'll reckon up my losses in the morning and write you a cheque. Good-night!"

Milbanke responded to the pressure of his fingers.

"Don't trouble about the money," he said. "Any time will do--any time. But you're turning in yourself? We'll be upstairs together?"

But Asshlin shook his head.

"Not yet," he said. "Not after this. I'll take a turn across the fields and have a look at the night on the water. I feel too much awake to be smothered by sheets and blankets. It isn't often we feel life here--and the sensation is glorious."

He drew up his tall, powerful figure and stretched out his arms. Then almost at once he let them fall to his sides.

"But what moonshine this is to you, you prosaic Saxon!" he exclaimed. "Let me light you to bed."

He laughed quickly; and, picking up one of the massive candlesticks, moved towards the door.

For an instant Milbanke lingered in the dining-room, grown dimmer with the departing lights; then, hearing his name in his host's voice, he hurried after him into the hall.

Asshlin was standing at the foot of the stairs, the glowing candles held aloft. Above him, the high ceiling loomed shadowy and indistinct; behind him, the dark wainscoted wall threw his figure into bold relief.

It would have demanded but a slight stretch of fancy to picture him as his satin-coated great-grandfather grown to a dissipated maturity, as he stood there, the master spirit in this house of fallen greatness. As Milbanke reached his side, he laughed once more, precisely as Anthony Asshlin might have laughed, standing at the foot of the same staircase nearly a hundred years ago. The taint of heredity seemed to wrap him round--to gleam in his unnaturally bright eyes, to reverberate in his voice.

"Up with you, James!" he cried. "I needn't put your hand on the banister, like I have to do with some of my guests. You never yet drank a swerve into your steps. Well, I don't blame you for it. It's men like you that keep heaven a going concern, while poor devils like me are paving the lower regions. Good-night to you!"

With a fresh laugh he thrust the great candlestick into the other's hand and turned on his heel.

Milbanke remained motionless, while Asshlin passed across the hall and opened the door, letting in a breath of fresh, damp air that set the candle-flames dancing; then, as the door closed again, he turned and put his hand on the banister.

It was with a feeling of unreality, mingled with the borrowed excitement still at work within him, that he began his ascent of the stairs. The natural fatigue consequent on the day's journey had been temporarily dispelled, and sleep seemed something distant and almost unattractive. As he mounted the creaking steps, moving cautiously out of consideration for the sleeping household, he found himself wishing incontinently that he had offered his company to his host in his stroll towards the sea.

As the desire came to him, he paused. He could still overtake Asshlin! He hesitated, glancing from the closed door of his bedroom to the hall lying below him in a well of shadow. Then suddenly he raised his head, attracted by a sound, subdued and yet distinct, that came to him through the silence of the house--the sound of light, hasty steps on an uncarpeted corridor.

In the wave of surprise that swept over him he forgot his recent excitement, his recent wish for action and fresh air. Lifting the candlestick above his head, he peered along the passage that stretched away beyond his own door. But the scrutiny was momentary. Almost at once he lowered the candles and drew back, as he recognised the figure of Clodagh coming towards him out of the gloom. She was wearing a flowing, old-fashioned dressing-gown of some flowered material; one strand of her brown hair had been loosened, and fell across her forehead, shadowing her eyes into something of the beauty they were yet to wear. And as Milbanke looked at her, he realised with a stirring of something like embarrassment, that a touch of promise, very gracious and infinitely feminine, had replaced the first, half-boyish impression that he had received of her.

But if he felt embarrassment, it was evident that she was conscious of none. As she came within a few yards of him she halted for an instant to assure herself of his identity; then, her mind satisfied, she stepped straight onward into the light of the six candles.

"Oh, I'm so glad!" she said quickly. "I was afraid for a minute that it was father. I've been waiting up for you," she added hastily. "I couldn't go to sleep till I'd seen you."

Milbanke was confused. Moved by an undefined impulse, he extinguished three of the six candles.

"Indeed!" he said. "But it's very late. You must--you must be tired."

He glanced uncertainly round the landing, as if seeking a chair to offer her. Then an idea struck him.

"Will you come downstairs?" he suggested. "The fire is still alight in the dining-room. You--you must be cold as well as tired."

He looked hesitatingly at her light gown.

But Clodagh shook her head.

"We mustn't go down," she said. "He might come in and find us--and then we'd have a row. He and I of course, I mean," she added politely.

Then, as if impatient of the preamble, she plunged into the subject she had at heart.

"Mr. Milbanke," she said, "will you promise me not to--not to, after to-night----?"

Milbanke's face looked blank.

"Not to what?" he asked.

"Oh, not to encourage him--not to play with him. He's ruining himself and ruining us all. Couldn't you guess it from dinner--from the quarrel we had? Oh, he's so terribly foolish!"

Her voice suddenly trembled.

But he was labouring under the shock her revelation had given him.

"Good heavens!" he stammered. "I had no idea--no idea of such a thing."

"No; I know you hadn't--I was sure you hadn't." Her voice thrilled with quick relief.

"No, no. Certainly not. But tell me about it. Dear me!--dear me! I had no idea of such a thing."

"Oh, it began ages ago--before mother died. Burke says 'twas the life--the quiet life after England. He came home, you know, when his father died, and he found the place in a bad way. He has never been rich enough to live out of the country, and he has never stopped fretting for the things that aren't here. But while mother lived he kept pretty good; 'twas after she died that he seemed not to care. First he got gloomy and sad, then he got reckless and terrible. People were frightened of him. His friends began to drop away."

She paused for a moment, glancing down into the hall to assure herself that all was quiet.

"It's been the same ever since. Sometimes he's gloomy and depressed, other times he's wild, like to-night. And when he's wild, he's mad for cards. Oh, you don't know what it's like! It's like being a drunkard--only different--and worse. When he's like that, he'd play with any one--for anything. Last week he had a dreadful man--a horse-dealer from Muskeere--staying here with him for three days. They played cards every night--played till three or four in the morning. Father lost all the ready money in the house, and nearly emptied the stables."

Milbanke stood before her horrified and absorbed. An understanding of many things, before obscure, had come to him while she was speaking; and with the knowledge, a sudden deep pity for this child of his old friend--a sudden sense of guilt at his own blindness, his own weakness.

"Miss Clodagh," he said quickly, in his stiff, formal voice. Then he paused, as she raised her hand with a sharp gesture of attention.

A heavy step sounded on the gravel outside the house. There was an instant's hesitation; then Clodagh leant forward with swift presence of mind and blew out the three remaining candles.

"You understand now?" she whispered.

"Yes," he murmured, below his breath. "Yes; I understand."

A moment later he heard her flit down the corridor, and heard Asshlin open the heavy outer door.