The Gambler: A Novel

by Katherine Cecil Thurston

The sight that met his eyes was one of infinite beauty. The delicacy—the poetry—the subtle, unnameable charm that lie in the hollow of Nature's hand were over land and sky and sea; the warmth and wealth of summer stretched before him, but summer mellowed and softened by a golden autumnal haze.

There are more inspiring countries than Ireland—countries more richly dowered in vegetation; countries more radiant in atmosphere and brilliant in colouring: but there is no land where the Hand of the Maker is more poignantly felt; where the mystic spirit of creation—the wonderful, tender, pathetic sense of the Beginning—has been so strangely preserved. As Milbanke stood at the open window, his eyes travelled without interruption over the wide green fields—neither lawn nor meadow—that spread from the house to the shore, owning no boundary wall beyond the low, shelving rocks of red sandstone that rose a natural barrier against the encroachments of the tide. And from the fields his gaze wandered onward, drawn irresistibly and inevitably to the sea itself—the watchful, tyrannical guardian of the silent land.

It lay before him like a tremendous glassy lake, stretching in one untroubled sweep from Orristown to the point, three miles away, where the purple headland of Carrigmore completed the semicircle of the bay. The silence, the majesty of that sweep of water was indescribable. From the rim of yellow sand, which the indolent waves were lapping, to the misted horizon, not one sign of human life marred the smoothness of its surface. Across the bay at Carrigmore a few spirals of smoke rose from the cluster of pink and white cottages lying under the shadow of the Round Tower; on the long, sandy strand a couple of bare-legged boys were leisurely raking up the sea-weed that the waves had left, and slowly piling it on a waiting donkey butt; but the sea itself was undisturbed. It lay as it might have lain on the first day of completed creation—mystical, sublime, untouched.

Milbanke was no poet, yet the scene impressed him. The extraordinary sense of an inimitable and impenetrable peace before which man and man's mere transitory concerns are dwarfed, if not entirely eliminated, touched him vaguely. It was with a tinge of something bordering upon reluctance that he at last drew his eyes from the picture and began to dress.

But once freed from the spell of the ocean, his mind reverted to the other interests that lay closer at hand. He found himself wondering how his entertainers would appear on a second inspection; whether, like his room, they would take on a more commonplace semblance with the advent of daylight. The touch of irrepressible and human curiosity that the speculation aroused gave a spur to the business of dressing; and it was well under the twenty minutes usually devoted to his neat and careful toilet when he found himself crossing the corridor and descending the stairs.

He encountered no one as he passed through the hall; and catching a fresh suggestion of sunshine through the door that stood hospitably open, he paused for an instant to take a cursory glance at the gravelled sweep that terminated the drive, and the grassy slope surmounted by a fringe of beeches that formed the outlook from the front of the house. Then he turned quickly, and, recrossing the hall, passed into the dining-room.

None of the household had yet appeared, but here also the daylight had worked changes.

The curtains were drawn back, permitting the view of fields and sea, that he had already studied from his bedroom, to break uninterruptedly through the three lofty windows. The effect was one of extreme airiness and light; and it was quite a minute before his gaze turned to the darker side of the room, where the portrait of the famous Anthony Asshlin hung above the fire.

Realising that he was alone in the big room, he crossed to the table where breakfast was already laid—the remains of the enormous ham rising from an untidy paper frill to defy the attacks of the largest appetite. In the brilliance of the light, the fineness of the table linen and its state of dilapidation were both accentuated, as was the genuine beauty and intrinsic value of the badly kept silver.

But Milbanke had no time to absorb these details, for instantly he reached the table his eye was caught by a folded slip of paper lying by his place. With a touch of surprise he stooped forward and picked it up; then a wave of annoyance, almost of guilt, succeeded the surprise as he realised that it was a cheque made out in Asshlin's straggling handwriting for his losses of the night before.