By the time the warders had cleared the lock from Sydney's obstructions, his three friends in Mr. Windsor's carriage, driven by Reynolds, were miles on their way toward that gentleman's steam yacht, which awaited them in the harbor of Torquay.
CHAPTER XVI.
MRS. CAREY'S HUSBAND.
Oswald Carey's father had just died and left him a great fortune made upon the Stock Exchange when the son met his wife for the first time at the country-house of his father's old partner and his then executor—Benjamin Bugbee. "Young Crœsus," as he was then familiarly called, fell head over heels in love with the beautiful daughter of the penniless and disestablished clergyman, and during the short space of his courtship and honeymoon he forgot the one thing which had previously absorbed his life—the gaming-table. If his wife had been a good woman, or if she had loved him, he might have stayed his hand from baccarat. But Eleanor had married him simply because he was rich and good-natured and she was ambitious and poor; and after their marriage she plunged into the gayest of fashionable society.
At first Carey yawned in the anterooms of balls, waiting for his beautiful wife, but after a while he tired of this; and, letting her go into the world alone, he betook himself to the Turf and Jockey Club, where the play ran very high, for there adventurers and gamesters of all nations congregated—the rich Russian met his great rival wheat-grower of America, and the price of great farms changed hands at poker or at baccarat. The hawks who infested the club, eager for the quarry, speedily settled upon such a plump pigeon as Carey, and while his wife wore his diamonds at gay balls, night after night, he sat over the green cloth, throwing away his youth and his fortune to the harpies. It began to be whispered in a few years that "Young Crœsus," the beauty's husband, was cleaned out. The hawks found his I. O. U.'s were unredeemed, and his gorgeous establishment in Mayfair was closed. By some influence Carey succeeded in getting an appointment as a clerk in the Stamp and Sealing Wax Office, while his wife went on in her career as a "beauty."
At the office Carey matched for half-crowns with his fellow-clerks, read the sporting news, and busied himself in computations, in connection with his "system" by which he should infallibly win at cards. Little by little his system absorbed the wrecks left to him of his fortune; and he had nothing to live upon but his salary and the money which his wife allowed him.
At last his habits lost him his place under government.
He had borrowed money from every man in the office, and was in the habit of drinking brandy and soda during hours, and of smoking upon the big leather sofa until the janitor, at dark, shook him to his senses. After this he spent all his time at the Turf and Jockey, for he still kept his name at this unsavory institution; he led much the same life there as at the government office, save that the club servants let him sleep on the sofa until morning if he chose, and he earned no pay while he slumbered. As a counterbalance, the brandy and soda was cheaper and better than that which had been sent to him from the public house opposite to the Stamp and Sealing Wax, and he had all his time to devote to his system, while in the office he had occasionally a little writing to do.