Harry drives up to his own door. It was but a few yards, and those poor horses have been beating the pavement all this while in the rain. Mr. Gumbo is engaged at the door in conversation with a countrified-looking lass, who trips off with a curtsey. Mr. Gumbo is always engaged with some pretty maid or other.
“Gumbo, has Mr. Sampson been here?” asks Gumbo's master from his driving-seat.
“No, sar. Mr. Sampson have not been here!” answers Mr. Warrington's gentleman. Harry bids him to go upstairs and bring down a letter addressed to Mr. Sampson.
“Addressed to Mr. Sampson? Oh yes, sir,” says Mr. Gumbo, who can't read.
“A sealed letter, stupid! on the mantelpiece, in the glass!” says Harry; and Gumbo leisurely retires to fetch that document. As soon as Harry has it, he turns his horses' heads towards St. James's Street, and the two gentlemen, still yawning out of the window at White's, behold the Fortunate Youth, in an instant, back again.
As they passed out of the little tea-room where he and Lord Castlewood had had their piquet together, Mr. Warrington had seen that several gentlemen had entered the play-room, and that there was a bank there. Some were already steadily at work, and had their gaming jackets on: they kept such coats at the club, which they put on when they had a mind to sit down to a regular night's play.
Mr. Warrington goes to the clerk's desk, pays his account of the previous night, and, sitting down at the table, calls for fresh counters. This has been decidedly an unlucky week with the Fortunate Youth, and to-night is no more fortunate than previous nights have been. He calls for more counters, and more presently. He is a little pale and silent, though very easy and polite when talked to. But he cannot win.
At last he gets up. “Hang it! stay and mend your luck!” says Lord March, who is sitting by his side with a heap of counters before him, green and white. “Take a hundred of mine, and go on!”
“I have had enough for to-night, my lord,” says Harry, and rises and goes away, and eats a broiled bone in the coffee-room, and walks back to his lodgings some time about midnight. A man after a great catastrophe commonly sleeps pretty well. It is the waking in the morning which is sometimes queer and unpleasant. Last night you proposed to Miss Brown: you quarrelled over your cups with Captain Jones, and valorously pulled his nose: you played at cards with Colonel Robinson, and gave him—oh, how many I O U's! These thoughts, with a fine headache, assail you in the morning watches. What a dreary, dreary gulf between to-day and yesterday! It seems as if you are years older. Can't you leap back over that chasm again, and is it not possible that Yesterday is but a dream? There you are, in bed. No daylight in at the windows yet. Pull your nightcap over your eyes, the blankets over your nose, and sleep away Yesterday. Psha, man, it was but a dream! Oh no, no! The sleep won't come. The watchman bawls some hour—what hour? Harry minds him that he has got the repeating watch under his pillow which he had bought for Hester. Ting, ting, ting! the repeating watch sings out six times in the darkness, with a little supplementary performance indicating the half-hour. Poor dear little Hester!—so bright, so gay, so innocent! he would have liked her to have that watch. What will Maria say? (Oh, that old Maria! what a bore she is beginning to be! he thinks.) What will Madam Esmond at home say when she hears that he has lost every shilling of his ready money—of his patrimony? All his winnings, and five thousand pounds besides, in three nights. Castlewood could not have played him false? No. My lord knows piquet better than Harry does, but he would not deal unfairly with his own flesh and blood. No, no. Harry is glad his kinsman, who wanted the money, has got it. And for not one more shilling than he possessed, would he play. It was when he counted up his losses at the gaming-table, and found they would cover all the remainder of his patrimony, that he passed the box and left the table. But, O cursed bad company! O extravagance and folly! O humiliation and remorse! “Will my mother at home forgive me?” thinks the young prodigal. “Oh, that I were there, and had never left it!”
The dreary London dawn peeps at length through shutters and curtains. The housemaid enters to light his honour's fire and admit the dun morning into his windows. Her Mr. Gumbo presently follows, who warms his master's dressing-gown and sets out his shaving-plate and linen. Then arrives the hairdresser to curl and powder his honour, whilst he reads his morning's letters; and at breakfast-time comes that inevitable Parson Sampson, with eager looks and servile smiles, to wait on his patron. The parson would have returned yesterday according to mutual agreement, but some jolly fellows kept him to dinner at the St. Alban's, and, faith, they made a night of it.