Sword and Gown | Page 8

A hoarse, hollow voice--very measured and slow, as if
carefully disciplined to repress groans--yet every now and then there
will come a modulation, that shows how rich and cheery it might have
been when trolling a chanson à boire--how clear and sonorous when,
over the stamping of hoofs and the rattle of scabbards, it rang out the
one word "Charge!"--how winning and musical when whispering into a
small, pink ear laid against his lips lovingly.
The Vicomte de Châteaumesnil cares for but one thing on earth
now--play, as deep as he can make or find it. It is not a pastime, or a
distraction, or an occasional fever-fit, but the sole interest of his
existence. A fearfully unworthy and unsatisfactory one, you will say.
Granted; but try and realize his condition.
He is not forty yet. All the passions of mature manhood were alive
within him; not one desire or impulse had been tamed by natural or
even premature decay at the time he was struck down, and cut off from
every object and aim of his former life, when it was too late to form or
turn to others. Imagine how eagerly his strong fiery nature must have
grasped at some of these--how it must have appreciated the alternations
of glory, pleasure, and peril--all worse than blanks now. You dare not
speak to him of woman's love. Worse than all other torments of the
Titan's bed of pain, would be wild dreams of impossible Oceanides!
Remember that his only change of scene is from one of the waters of
Marah to another, according to his own or his physician's fancy about
mineral springs. Remember, too, that the cleverest or the most sanguine
of them all have only ventured to promise an abatement of his agonies:
of their cessation they say no word; nor can they even prophesy that the
end will come quickly. He is not allowed to read much, even if his taste
lay that way, which it does not; for a literary Chasseur d'Afrique is such

a whim as Nature never yet indulged herself in. So perhaps he caught at
the only resource that could have saved him from worse things; under
which, I presume, is to be included the temptation to take laudanum in
proportions by no means prescribed or sanctioned by the Faculty.
Every day about noon his servant helped him into the card-room at the
club, and settled him at his own table, where, with the two hours respite
of dinner, he sat till midnight, ready to give battle to all comers at all
weapons, just as the Knights of Lyonnesse used to keep a bridge or a
pass while achieving their vows. It is needless to say that the changes
of good or bad luck affected him not at all. Few men of his stamp
indulge in the weakness of railing at Fortune, which is the privilege and
consolation of the roturier. Neither was he ever heard to reproach a
partner, or become bitter against an adversary. He seemed to take a
pleasure in disappointing those who were always expecting from him
some savage outbreak of temper: they judged from his appearance, and
had some grounds for their anticipations; for, winning or losing, that
strange look, half-weary, half-defiant, never was off his face. But, with
Armand de Châteaumesnil, the grand seigneur had not been merged in
the soldier: the brusquerie of the camp had not overlaid the manner of
the courtly school in which he and all his race had been trained; the
school of those who would stab their enemy to the heart with sarcasm
or innuendo, but scorned to stun him with blatant abuse--of those who
would never have dreamt of listening to a woman with covered head,
though they might be deaf as the nether millstone to her entreaties or
her tears. It was with the Revolution that the rapier went out, and the
savate came in.
Very few men came up to his standard of play; for he was hard to
please in style as well as in stakes. Keene did fully; and this, with a
certain similarity of tastes, accounted for his liking the latter so well.
He had little regard to throw away, and was chary of it in proportion.
On the other hand, Royston treated the invalid with an amount of
deference very unusual with him, in whom the bump of Veneration was
probably represented by a cavity.
The two were still talking on the terrace, when a man passed them, who

lifted his hat slightly, and then sighed audibly, looking upward with an
ostentatious contrition, as though he apologized to heaven for such a
bowing-down to Rimmon. This was the Rev. James Fullarton, British
chaplain at Dorade. A difficult and anomalous position--in which the
unlucky divine, in