“‘Leave me, Monsieur le Colonel,’ says she, shaking me off, ‘my father was a General of the Grand Army. A soldier should know how to pay all his debts of honour.’
“What could I do? Everybody was against me. Caroline said I had lost the money: though I didn’t remember a syllable about the business. I had taken Deuceace’s money too; but then it was because he offered it to me you know, and that’s a different thing. Every one of these chaps was a man of fashion and honour; and the Marky and the Countess of the first families in France. And, by Jove, sir, rather than offend her, I paid the money up five hundred and sixty gold Napoleons, by Jove: besides three hundred which I lost when I had my revenge.
“And I can’t tell you at this minute whether I was done or not,” concluded the Colonel, musing. “Sometimes I think I was: but then Caroline was so fond of me. That woman would never have seen me done: never, I’m sure she wouldn’t: at least, if she would, I’m deceived in woman.”
Any further revelations of his past life which Altamont might have been disposed to confide to his honest comrade the Chevalier, were interrupted by a knocking at the outer door of their chambers; which, when opened by Grady the servant, admitted no less a person than Sir Francis Clavering into the presence of the two worthies.
“The Governor, by Jove,” cried Strong, regarding the arrival of his patron with surprise. “What’s brought you here?” growled Altamont, looking sternly from under his heavy eyebrows at the Baronet. “It’s no good, I warrant.” And indeed, good very seldom brought Sir Francis Clavering into that or any other place.
Whenever he came into Shepherd’s Inn it was money that brought the unlucky baronet into those precincts; and there was commonly a gentleman of the money-dealing world in waiting for him at Strong’s chambers, or at Campion’s below; and a question of bills to negotiate or to renew. Clavering was a man who had never looked his debts fairly in the face, familiar as he had been with them all his life; as long as he could renew a bill, his mind was easy regarding it; and he would sign almost anything for to-morrow, provided to-day could be left unmolested. He was a man whom scarcely any amount of fortune could have benefited permanently, and who was made to be ruined, to cheat small tradesmen, to be the victim of astuter sharpers: to be niggardly and reckless, and as destitute of honesty as the people who cheated him, and a dupe, chiefly because he was too mean to be a successful knave. He had told more lies in his time, and undergone more baseness of stratagem in order to stave off a small debt, or to swindle a poor creditor, than would have sufficed to make a fortune for a braver rogue. He was abject and a shuffler in the very height of his prosperity. Had he been a Crown Prince—he could not have been more weak, useless, dissolute or ungrateful. He could not move through life except leaning on the arm of somebody: and yet he never had an agent but he mistrusted him; and marred any plans which might be arranged for his benefit, and secretly acting against the people whom he employed. Strong knew Clavering and judged him quite correctly. It was not as friends that this pair met: but the Chevalier worked for his principal, as he would when in the army have pursued a harassing march, or undergone his part in the danger and privations of a siege; because it was his duty, and because he had agreed to it. “What is it he wants?” thought the officers of the Shepherd’s Inn garrison when the Baronet came among them.
His pale face expressed extreme anger and irritation. “So sir,” he said, addressing Altamont, “you’ve been at your old tricks.”
“Which of ’um?” asked Altamont, with a sneer.
“You have been at the Rouge et Noir: you were there last night,” cried the Baronet.
“How do you know,—were you there?” the other said. “I was at the Club but it wasn’t on the colours I played,—ask the Captain,—I’ve been telling him of it. It was with the bones. It was at hazard, Sir Francis, upon my word and honour it was;” and he looked at the Baronet with a knowing humorous mock humility, which only seemed to make the other more angry.