“Up in one of the arbitration rooms, maybe,” added O'Rear-don, to show he perfectly comprehended his instructions.
“But whether I come to the office or not, I shall expect you every morning at the Priory, to report to me whatever I ought to know,—who has called,—what rumors are afloat; and mind you tell everything as it reaches you. If you put on any embroidery of your own, I 'll detect it at once, and out you go, Master O'Reardon, notwithstanding all your long services and all your loyalty.”
“Practical, upon my conscience,—always practical,” said the fellow, with a grin of keen approval.
“One caution more; I'm a tolerably good friend to the man who serves me faithfully. When things go well, I reward liberally; but if a fellow doubles on me, if he plays me false, I 'll back myself to be the worst enemy he ever met with. That's practical, isn't it?”
“It is indeed, sir,—nothing more so.”
“I'll expect you to begin your visits on Thursday, then. Don't come to the hall-door, but pass round by the end of the house and into the little garden. I 'll leave the gate open, and you 'll find my room easily. It opens on the garden. Be with me by eleven.”
Colonel Sewell was not more than just to himself when he affirmed that he read men very quickly. As the practised cashier never hesitates about the genuineness of a note, but detects the forgery at a glance, this man had an instinctive appreciation of a scoundrel. Who knows if there be not some magnetic affinity between such natures, that saves them the process of thought and reason? He was right in the present case. O'Reardon was the very man he wanted. The fellow liked the life of a spy and an informer. To track, trace, connect this with that, and seek out the missing link which gave connection to the chain, had for him the fascination of a game, and until now his qualities had never been fairly appreciated. It was with pride too that he showed his patron that his gifts could be more widely exercised than within the narrow limits of an antechamber; for he brought him the name of the man who wrote in “The Starlight” the last abusive article on the Chief Baron, and had date and place for the visit of the same man to the under-secretary, Mr. Cholmondely Balfour. He gave him the latest news of the Curragh, and how Faunus had cut his frog in a training gallop, and that it was totally impossible he could be “placed” for his race. There were various delicate little scandals in the life of society too, which, however piquant to Sewell's ears, would have no interest for us; while of the sums lost at play, and the costly devices to raise the payments, even Sewell himself was amazed at the accuracy and extent of his information.
Mr. O'Reardon was one of a small knot of choice spirits who met every night and exchanged notes. Doubtless each had certain “reserves” which he kept strictly to himself; but otherwise they dealt very frankly and loyally with each other, well aware that it was only on such a foundation their system could be built; and the training-groom, and the butler, and the club-waiter, the office messenger, and the penny-postman became very active and potent agents in that strange drama we call life.
Now, though Mr. O'Reardon had presented himself each morning with due punctuality at the little garden, in which he was wont to make his report while Sewell smoked his morning cigar, for some days back the Colonel had not appeared. He had gone down to the country to a pigeon-match, from which he returned vexed and disappointed. He had shot badly, lost his money, lost his time, and lost his temper,—even to the extent of quarrelling with a young fellow whom he had long been speculating on “rooking,” and from whom he had now parted on terms that excluded further acquaintance.
Although it was a lovely morning, and the garden looking its very brightest and best,—the birds singing sweetly on the trees, and the air balmy with the jasmine and the sweet-brier,—Sewell strolled out upon the velvety sward in anything but a mood of kindred enjoyment. His bills were flying about on all sides, renewals upon renewals swelling up to formidable sums, for which he had not made any provision. Though his residence at the Priory, and his confident assurance to his creditors that the old Judge had made him his heir, obtained a certain credit for him, there were “small-minded scoundrels,” as he called them, who would n't wait for their fifty per cent. In his desperation to stave off the demands he could not satisfy, he had been driven to very ruinous expedients. He sold timber off the lawn without the old Judge's knowledge, and only hesitated about forging Sir William's name through the conviction that the document to which he would have to append it would itself suggest suspicion of the fraud. His increasing necessities had so far impaired his temper that men began to decline to play with him. Nobody was sure of him, and this cause augmented the difficulties of his position. Formerly his two or three hours at the club before dinner, or his evening at mess, were certain to keep him in current cash. He could hold out his handful of sovereigns, and offer to bet them in that reckless carelessness which, amongst very young men, is accepted as something akin to generosity. Now his supply was almost stopped, not to say that he found, what many have found, the rising generation endowed with an amount of acuteness that formerly none attained to without sore experiences and sharp lessons.