Chapter Thirty-Eight
When it became clear the Earl was both drunk and broke, his friends tried to persuade him to go home.
“Try again tomorrow, old chap,” said one of them. “You’re bound to have better luck. A fellow can’t go on losing and losing. It’s against the laws of nature.”
Doncaster only heard the last part of this speech. “Thass right!” he said, “can’t go on losing and losing.”
He summoned over a waiter. “Here, you! Tell shomeone to go to Doncaster House and get my valet to bring me the bag in my top drawer. He’ll know wissh one.”
Then he turned to his fellow players. “Shorry! Tem’pry embarrashment, don’t y’ know. Be all right in a minute. Go on! Go on!”
As it was still quite early, they weren’t ready to go their ways, they continued without the Earl until a thin, cowed individual, with the unmistakable stamp of a gentleman’s valet, arrived with a brown velvet bag.
“I believe this is what you asked for, my lord,” he said. “But I don’t think…”
“Don’t pay you t’ think!” The Earl, who had continued to drink during his wait, cut him off, “Get losht! Thish is a gen’lmen’s club. Not for the likesh of you!”
“But sir…,” began the valet again.
“Be off I said!” roared the Earl. “Shay another word and I’ll turn you off!”
The valet bowed, turned on his heel and left.
“Now,” said the Earl, “deal me in, you fellows. I’ll sh… show you shome winning!”
He plunged his hand into the velvet bag and pulled out a heavy chain bearing a large cross encrusted with what looked like rubies. He plunked it down on the three of spades. “Thish got to be worth shomething.”
“I say,” said one of the players. “That’s an old piece. Looks Elizabethan.”
“Prob’ly” returned the Earl. “One of me anshestors did a shervice to the Virgin Queen.” He sniggered unpleasantly.
“Are you sure you want to wager it?” asked one of the others. “It would be a pity to lose it.”
“Not going to lose,” slurred Doncaster.
But the next card out of the box was the five of hearts. The winner scooped up his winnings, including the cross. He held it up and the rubies winked in the candlelight. “Very nice,” he said, before dropping it into his pocket.
And so it went on. A pair of pearl earrings, a parure of necklace, bracelet and tiara of surpassing ugliness but encrusted with a myriad of different color stones, a ring with a huge green carbuncle, probably an emerald, and finally a brooch in the shape of a star with a large blue stone in the center.
When this last piece finally went into someone’s pocket, the Earl mumbled, “The wife ushed to wear that on Open Daysh. Shaved it for last. Only thing I liked.”
Then he stumbled from the table without a word to his card partners. He was done for, and they knew it.
He got his cloak, hat and cane from the porter, who saw the state he was in and said, “Shall I call you a hackney, my lord?”
“No. Walk”, he replied tersely. He wasn’t too drunk to know he hadn’t a penny piece in his pocket to pay a hackney.
He staggered outside and the cold air smote him in the face.
Doncaster House was only about a fifteen minute walk away, and the cold sobered him up enough to enable him to walk without tripping over his own feet or falling down.
The only thought in his head was that he had to get money somehow.
He couldn’t even remember why exactly, but he knew he needed it.
Then he suddenly recalled Bushnell’s words about his brother.
Andrew had money. All he had to do was go and get it.
He knew Bushnell lived somewhere near Winchester, because they’d once discussed the relative merits of that city and Wisbech.
His brother must live nearby. He didn’t need to wait to get the direction from Parsons in the morning.
He would leave right now. Tonight. If he took Apollo, he’d get there in no time.
When he arrived home, the butler gave him a letter. “This arrived for you earlier, my lord,” he said.
The Earl took it, but instead of looking at it, stuffed it in the pocket of his cloak.
“I’m leaving for Winshester,” he told the startled butler, who, having waited for his master to come in, was getting ready to lock up the house.
“What? Now, my lord?” he asked, incredulous.
“Yes. Have ’em shaddle up Apollo.”
“But sir, wouldn’t it be better to wait until morning? It’s a long ride in the dark and…”
“Goddam it! Do as I shay! He’d better be ready by the time I’ve put on my riding gear, or elsh…”
The butler knew it was no good arguing with the Earl when he was in his cups, or at any other time, for that matter, so he sent a yawning footman to the mews to tell them to get the horse ready.
Half an hour later, the Earl of Doncaster came downstairs in his riding gear, wearing the same cloak, which he’d flung on without thinking about it.
Soon he was galloping though the streets of London towards the Winchester Road.
Once he left the city streets behind, it was eerie, with a full moon casting a silvery sheen on everyday things, so that they looked quite unlike themselves.
The Earl was oblivious to the scene. His mind was fixated on the money he was going to get from his brother.
He would have done well to remember that Apollo, fine animal though he was, startled easily, for as they came around a bend in the road that ran beside a pond, the moon shone full on the still body of water in front of it.
It frightened the big horse, startled by a glow he had never seen before.
He reared up and threw his rider, who was completely unprepared, clean off.
The Earl flew onto the verge at the side of the road and hit his head on a rock hidden in the stiff, silvery grass.
He died instantly. He might have looked like a man sleeping, except for the blood that flowed from his head, spreading into a black pool that not even the light of the moon could transform into a thing of beauty.
His body was discovered the following morning by a farm laborer, who went through his pockets and found, not the coins he had hoped for, but a letter.
He couldn’t read it, but the farmer he took it to, could.
It was from Parsons, telling his lordship he would do himself the honor of waiting on him at eleven the following morning to discuss what they were going to do with the most pressing of his lordship’s bills.