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Pride of Jennico

[218] <h2 class="p4">CHAPTER V</h2> Narrative of an Episode at White’s continued It was over a dish of devilled kidneys and a couple of bottles of Burgundy that—pressed by the eager curiosity of his English friends, no less than by the interest M. de Ville-Rouge continued to profess in his concerns with all Teutonic earnestness—Basil Jennico began to narrate his misadventures in the same tone of ironical resentment with which he had already alluded to them. “It began at Farringdon Dane,” he said, “on the little property in Suffolk which my mother has placed at my disposal. ’Twas some six weeks gone, walking through the wood at sundown, I was shot at from behind a tree. The charge passed within an inch of my face, to embed itself in a sapling behind me. I was, according to my wont—an evil habit—deeply absorbed in thought, and was alone; consequently, although I searched the copse from end to end, I could find no trace of my well-wisher. That was number one. I gave very little heed to the occurrence at first,[219] believing it to be some poacher’s trick, or maybe the unwitting act of what you call in your country, Chevalier, a Sunday sportsman, who mistook my brown beaver for the hide of a nobler quarry. But the next attempt gave me more serious food for reflection. This time I was shot at while sitting reading in my study at night, when all the household had retired. It was close weather, and I had drawn the curtains and opened the windows. The bullet again whizzed by my ear, and this time shattered the lamp beside me. No doubt the total darkness which ensued saved me from a second and better aim.” “You are a fortunate young man,” said the Chevalier gravely. “Do you think so, Chevalier?” answered Jennico, with a smile which all the bitterness of his thoughts could not altogether rob of sweetness. “I do not think any one need envy my fate. Well, gentlemen, you can conceive the uproar which ensued upon the event I have just described. The best efforts of myself, my servants, and my dogs failed, however, to track the fugitive, although the marks of what seemed a very neat pair of shoes were imprinted on my mother’s most choice flowerbeds. After this adventure I received a couple more of such tokens of good-will in the country.[220] Once I was shot at crossing a ford in full daylight, and my poor nag was struck; this time I did catch a glimpse of the scoundrel, but he was mounted too, and poor Bess, though she did her utmost, fell dead after the first twenty strides in pursuit. Thereupon my mother grew so morbidly nervous, and the mystery resisting all our attempts at elucidation, I gave way to her entreaties and returned to London, where she deemed I would find myself in greater safety.” “And has your friend followed you up here?” exclaimed Sir John, forgetting his supper in his interest. “By George, this is a good story!” “I was stopped on the road by a highwayman,” answered Mr. Jennico quietly. “Nothing unusual in that, you will say; but there was something a little out of the common nevertheless in the fact that he fired his pistol at me without the formality of bidding me stand and deliver; which formality, I believe, is according to the etiquette of the road. I am glad to tell you that I think we left our mark on the gentleman this time, for as he rode away he bent over his saddle, we thought, like one who will not ride very far. But, faith! the brood is not extirpated, and the worthy folk who display such an interest in me, finding hot lead so unsuccessful, have now taken to cold steel.” [221] Sir John Beddoes damned his immortal soul with great fervour. “Pray, sir,” remarked Mr. Carew with an insinuating smile, “may not the identity of the murderer be of easier solution than you deem? Are there no heirs to your money?” “I might pretend to misunderstand you, Mr. Carew,” said Basil, flushing, “although your meaning is plain. Permit me to say, however, that I fail to find a point to the jest.” “‘Twas hardly likely you would find humour in a point so inconveniently aimed against yourself,” answered Carew airily. “But ’tis a rarity, Jennico, to find a man ready to take up the cudgels for his heirs and successors. Nevertheless, I crave your pardon, the more so because I am fain to know what befell you to-night.” “To-night was an ill night to choose for so evil an attempt,” said the Chevalier, rousing himself from a fit of musing and looking reflectively round upon the fog, which hung ever closer even in the warm and well-lit room. “It was the very night for their purpose, my dear Chevalier,” returned the young man with artificial gaiety. “Faith, it was like to have succeeded with them, and I make sure mine enemy, whoever he may be, is pluming himself even now[222] upon the world well rid of my cumbersome existence. I was on foot, too, and what with the darkness and emptiness of the streets I was, I may say, delivered into their hands. But they are sad bunglers. One of my pretty fellows in Moravia would have done such a job for me, were I in the way to require it, as cleanly and with as little ado as you pick your first pheasant in October, Jack. And yet it may be that I am providentially preserved—preserved for a better fate.” Here he tossed off his glass as if to a silent toast. “But why on foot, my dear Jennico? On foot—fie, fie, and in this weather! What could you expect?” cried Carew with a shiver of horror. “If you were not so fond of interruption, Mr. Carew,” said the Chevalier with a sinister smile, “perhaps we might sooner get to the end of Mr. Jennico’s story. We are all eagerness to hear about this last miraculous preservation.” “I hardly know myself how I come to be alive! I could get no sedan, my dear Carew, and that was just the rub. What with Lady Bedford’s card-party and the fog, there was not one to be had within a mile, and I had given my stablemen a holiday. I sent my servant upon the quest for a chair, but got tired of waiting, mindful of my appointment with my friend and neighbour here,[223] and so it was that I set forth, as I said, on foot and alone. The mist was none so thick but that I could find my way, and I was pursuing it at a round pace when, opposite Devonshire House, some fellow bearing a link crossed from over the road, came straight upon me without a word, raised his torch, and peered intently into my face. I halted, but before I could demand the meaning of his insolence down went his fire-brand fizzing into the mud, out came his sword, and I was struck with such extreme violence that, in the very attempt to recover my balance, I fell backwards all my length upon the pavement, skewered like a chicken, and carrying the skewer with me. Some gentlemen happened to reach the spot at that moment, there was a cry for the watch, but the rogue had made good use of his heels and the fog, and was out of sight and hearing in a moment.” “Verdammt villain!” cried M. de Ville-Rouge, whose brow had grown ever blacker during this account. “Say, my amiable friend, did you not get even a lunge at him?” “Lunge, man! I was skewered, I tell you; I could not even draw! His sword—’twas as sharp as a razor, a fine sword, I have had it brought to my chambers—had gone clean through innumerable[224] folds of cloak and cape, back and front, only to graze my ribs after all. It was bent double by the fall, and it took the strength of the watchman and the two gentlemen to draw it out again. By George! they thought I was spitted beyond hope.” “A foul affair altogether,” murmured Carew absently; but the sorry jest was lost in the strident tones of the Chevalier, who now anxiously plied Basil as to the surgeon’s opinion of the wound, and expressed himself relieved beyond measure by the reply. At this juncture Sir John Beddoes, who had drunk enough to inflame his gambler’s ardour to boisterous pitch, began to clamour for his promised revenge, and the whole party once more adjourned to the card-room. In his heart, Basil Jennico would have been genuinely glad to be unsuccessful at the hazard that night; partly from a good-natured dislike to be the cause of the foolish young man’s complete ruin, partly from a more personal feeling of superstition. But the luck ran as persistently in his favour as ever. Carew, with drawn tablets, began loudly to back the winner, challenging all his acquaintance to wager against him. But although the high play[225] and Sir John’s increasing excitement and restlessness, as well as the extraordinary good fortune which cleaved to Jennico, soon attracted a circle of watchers, men were chary of courting what seemed certain loss, and Carew found his easy gains not likely further to accrue. Suddenly the Chevalier, who, with his cheek resting upon his hand, had seemed plunged in deep reflection ever since they had left the supper-room, rose, and with an air of geniality which sat awkwardly enough upon him, cried out to the surprise of all—for he had not been wont to back any player in the club: “And there is really no one to side with my good friend Beddoes to-night? Why then, Mr. Carew, I will be the man. Thunder-weather, Beddoes,” clapping him on the shoulder—“I believe the luck will turn yet; so brave a heart must needs force fortune! What shall it be, Mr. Carew? Something substantial to encourage our friend.” Jennico looked down at the pile of vouchers which lay at his elbow. It amounted already to a terrible sum. Then he looked across at the boy’s face, drawn, almost haggard in spite of its youth and chubbiness, and sighed impatiently. He could not advise the fool to go home to bed;[226] yet for himself he was heartily sick of these winnings. The dice were thrown again, Sir John’s hand trembling like a leaf; and again Basil won, and again vouchers were added to the heap. M. de Ville-Rouge threw a dark glance at the winner as he stepped up to Carew to settle his own debt. “You should not have backed me,” said Sir John ruefully, lifting his eyes from the contemplation of the paper that meant for him another step towards ruin. “The devil’s in it; I will play no more to-night!” “Nay, then,” cried the Chevalier, “by your leave I will take your place. I for one am no such believer in the continuance of Mr. Jennico’s good luck.” There was something harsh, almost offensive, in the tone of the last words, and Basil turned in surprise towards the speaker. “The Chevalier,” he said, “is very ready to risk his gold against me to-night.” “‘Tis so, sir,” returned the Chevalier, with such singular arrogance that the watchers looked at each other significantly, and Carew whispered to a young man behind his chair, “Faith, our foreign friend is a bad loser after all!” [227] Basil had flushed, but he made no reply, and contented himself with raising his eyebrows somewhat contemptuously, while he languidly pushed his own dice-box across the table towards his new opponent. “Come,” said the Chevalier, seizing it and shaking it fiercely, “I will not mince the stake. A hundred guineas on the main.” He threw, and the result of all his rattling being after all the lowest cast of the evening, there was an ill-suppressed titter round the table. Basil made no attempt to hide his smile as he lazily turned over his dice and threw just one higher. The German’s face had grown suffused with dark angry crimson; the veins of his throat and his temples began to swell. “Double or quits,” he cried huskily. He threw and lost; doubled his stake, threw and lost again. There was something about the scene that aroused the audience to more potent interest than the ordinary nightly repeated spectacle of loss and gain. The extraordinary passion displayed by the foreigner, not only in his inflamed countenance, but in the very motion of his hands, in the rigid tension of his whole body, presented a strange contrast to the languor of his opponent. It was,[228] moreover, a revelation in one who had been known hitherto as courteous and composed to formality. “It is to be hoped some one has a lancet,” said Carew, “for I believe the gentleman will have an apoplexy unless a little blood be let soon.” “I fear me,” answered his companion, “that there will be more blood let than you think for. Did you mark that look?” At the same instant the Chevalier flung down his box with such violence that the dice, rebounding, flew about the room, and gazed across at Basil with open hatred, as one glad to give vent at last to long-pent-up fury. “By Heaven, Mr. Jennico!” he cried, “were it not that I have been told how well you have qualified for this success, I should think there was more in such marvellous throwing of dice than met the eye. But your love affairs, I hear,—and I should have borne it in mind,—have been so disastrous, so more than usually disastrous,” here his voice broke into a sort of snarl, “as to afford sufficient explanation for the marvel.” There was a cold silence. Then Jennico rose, white as death. “If you know so much about me, sir,” he said[229] in tones that for all the anger that vibrated in them fell harmoniously upon the ear after the Chevalier’s savage outburst, “you should know too that there is a subject upon which I never allow any one to touch. Your first insinuation I pass over with the contempt it deserves, but as regards your observation on what you are pleased to call my love affairs, I can only consider it as an intentional insult. And this is my answer.” The German in his turn had sprung to his feet, but Basil Jennico leant across the table, and before he could guard himself struck him lightly but deliberately across the mouth. <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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