The Dice of the Gods

Chapter I

' Still o'er these scenes my mem'ry wakes, And fondly broods with miser care ! Time but th' impression stronger makes, As streams their channels deeper wear.' Burns. It was half-past eleven, and Langton Goss still sat brooding over the empty grate in his little room off Oxford Street. The sun had risen above the roofs of the houses opposite, and was peering between the gables into one of the dingy corners of the room which it lighted up ; otherwise it was very gloomy. Considering that it was so near one of the main arteries of the city, it was quiet enough ; but it had very few recommendations besides. The furniture was old and scanty. There was one easy chair, and that Langton occupied ; the others were stiff and straight-backed, and A creaked as one sat on them. The table was oval in shape, with a pillar and claw support, which was supposed to keep it steady, but with indifferent success.

It groaned horribly under the slightest pressure, and had an un pleasant knack of tipping up at most inoppor tune times. In one corner of the room was a little round bracket, covered with dingy mac rame work, clinging like a bird's nest to the wall ; in another a small bookshelf on which reposed, in comical juxtaposition, Her Benny, Sands ord and Merton, Austins Jurisprudence, and half-a-dozen calfskin-covered volumes. The sides and edges of the mantelpiece were chipped and scratched, and had evidently made the ac quaintance of more than one pair of boots — an unmistakable sign of bachelor chambers. On the narrow mantelboard stood a few cheap ornaments, flanked with a pair of lustres, whose prisms made a melancholy and futile effort to catch and reflect back the rays of the sun, which, however, never ventured nearer than the corner in which the bracket hung.

The chief ornament of the walls was a 'Vanity Fair ' cartoon of a red-faced judge in ermine and black robes, who looked down with a self satisfied leer from above the dowdily-draped pier-glass ; the only other mural decorations were a pair of singlesticks crossed, and a well-stocked pipe-rack. The room was typical of a bachelor's chambers, devoid of any pretence to beauty and almost equally devoid of any claim to comfort. Out of the same materials a good housewife with a little skilful manipulation, a few delicate touches here and there, would have rubbed down all the angularities of the apartment, and left behind a little of the mysterious perfume which lingers near whatever she has touched. But the only female presence Langton's rooms had known for many a long day was that of his landlady, and the only perfume she left behind, the reekings of the kitchen.

This morning Langton's thoughts had travelled far beyond the confines of his room, and that they were of an engrossing nature was evident from the fact that his breakfast, which was on the table near him, was still untouched. The Times, with its ruffled pages outstretched, lay beside him on the carpet whither he had flung it more than an hour before, and there it rested as silent and solemn and helpless as its owner. Fate had struck him with her heavy hand, and he lay inert beneath the blow. It was sudden and unexpected, and it had dazed him. Beneath his window there was the sound of hurrying feet, and in the distance the dull monotonous hum of the traffic like the cease less droning of some mighty machine. London had been astir for hours, but Langton was un conscious of it all. At length he pulled himself together and looked up at the tiny clock on the mantelpiece, the hands of which pointed to half-past one, as they had done for the last five years.

For a moment he forgot the imposture, and it gave him a start. He pulled out his watch to verify the time, but in taking his eyes off the clock they fell on a cabinet photograph which was propped up beside it. He paused with the watch in his hand, and then, without looking at it, returned it to his pocket and rose and reached down the portrait and feasted his eyes upon it long and earnestly. For no banquet is so rich as when the eye feeds on the delicious sweets of vision ; it satisfies a craving which it does not sicken. It was the picture of a beautiful young girl in light summer costume, wearing a sun-bonnet thrown back on her head. The unschooled hair strayed from beneath it across her forehead, imparting to the picture a soups on of unconven tionally and abandon. It was something more to Langton than a mere artistic study.

He looked into the eyes and read the soul behind them. Under their quiet influence his features relaxed into a smile, but a smile out of which all the gladness had gone — a movement rich only in barrenness. It was thus that he had known Gertrude Paget two years before, when the charms of blushing girlhood were beginning to blossom into the flower of womanhood. Strange emotions arose within him, and a long train of thought wras fired. He had known her from childhood, and he remembered the delight with which she always ran to greet him in those early years which now seemed so distant. She had no brothers or sisters, and he willingly supplied their place. Although he was several years her senior he was fascinated by her pre cocious ways and smart sayings, and was flattered by being made the recipient of her childish confidences.

He had taught her to ride, to play cricket and to row, and many a scrape had they got into together. Those were delightful days which would never return but which would always live fresh in his memory. The companionships of youth are often put an end to by the exigencies of later years, but the memory of them is enduring, for they are the memories of unworn hearts. The close friendship which had sprung up between them received its first check when Langton went to Cambridge and could only see her at long intervals, but they continued as ofood friends as ever. He smiled as he remem bered the interest she took in his studies, and how they had pretended to read Plato together during one long vacation. What a delightful farce it was ! On one occasion she found him using a crib, and he fell lamentably in her estimation.

She told him it was like doing sums in arithmetic and surreptitiously turning over the leaves to the end of the book to see what the answers were. Once she had asked him very ingenuously what Platonic love meant, and he had explained it to her, and added, in order to illustrate his meaning, ' Our love for each other is Platonic' Then she had turned to him and said impul sively, 'Yes, you dear old boy, and I do love you so much ' ; which caused him to wonder if his explanation had been at fault. It took him years longer to learn that his love for her was more than Platonic. He knew it now. He had known it ever since one evening, two years ago, when with the suddenness of a flash of lightning their own hearts stood revealed to them. He had then been at the bar nearly two years, and she had returned home after a year's study at Girton.

They had wandered through the gardens of her father's country house in Berkshire, and exchanged confidences as they had often done, but the cup of innocence which they drank together in the days of their boy hood and girlhood had been drugged with an intoxicant, and neither of them knew it. At length he found her hand within his. A thrill of rapture which he had never felt before passed through his frame and communicated itself to hers. Nearer and nearer he drew her to him, and as if spellbound she offered no re sistance. The meeting of their lips a moment after set fire to the torch of love, and it was no momentary passion in his breast at least. He knew the whole incident was a mistake, a fatal mistake, but he would not have undone it for the world. The memory of that soft em brace and that first lover's kiss was burnt into his soul as fixedly as Calais was engraven on the heart of Queen Mary.

She had given him one word of rebuke, so sweet and gentle that it served to fan the flame still more. Then she had left him. In the impulse of the moment, when passion held undisputed sway, he would have declared his love, but she denied him the opportunity. When he met her again the following day she blushed and avoided him. The first fires of passion having subsided, reason stepped in, and he had argued the matter out like he would have argued a dry question of law. He was in love. It required no argument to convince him of that ; but was it fair to Gertrude to ask her to tie herself to a man who had no prospects in his profession, and, with the exception of a small private income which would barely keep the wolf from the door, no means of supporting a wife? He had little doubt what her answer would have been, but he was of too honourable a nature to put himself as a stumbling-block in her way, and he knew that if she loved him as fervently as he loved her she would not need any conventional tie to bind her.

He resolved to throw himself heart and soul into his profession, and when the first streaks of the approaching dawn of success appeared on the horizon he would ask her to be his wife. Crass idiot, as he now thought himself, could he expect a girl of Gertrude's charms to remain long without admirers ! Possibly she had altogether misconstrued his silence and his long absence. The strategics of military science are child's play compared with the strategics of love ; and the moves are as varied as in a game of chess. For the last two years he had been playing the game blindfolded. Now — when it was too late — the bandage had been taken from his eyes, and he found himself checkmated. The rosy visions he had con jured up had been dissipated like a cloud of smoke before a gust of wind. He took up the Times once more and read aloud, the better to assure himself that he was not dreaming, — 'On the 2d inst., at the Parish Church, Great Hampton, Berks, Charles Drew, of Bartley Manor, Glebeshire, to Gertrude, only daughter of the late Sir R. H. Paget, Bart., of The Grange, Little Hampton, and Upper Brook Street, London.' He tossed the paper aside, and took up the portrait and kissed it again and again. ' No ! ' he said to himself, ' I have no right to do even that. She is not mine and never can be. Never!' And with the word on his lips he tore the portrait into twenty pieces and tossed them into the empty grate.

Chapter II

' Another soul was living in the air And swaying it to true deliverance.' Stkadivarius. ' Tie up that brief, Gathorne, and let us take a turn in the gardens — anywhere — so long as we get out of the oppressive atmosphere of these chambers, which smell of musty old parchment and fusty old law. I am not in the mood for work this afternoon, and I want to infuse into you my lackadaisical humour.' ' You are becoming most incorrigibly lazy,' said Edward Gathorne with a smile, as he gathered up his papers into a bundle and tied them together neatly with a piece of red tape. ' You will never settle down to steady work in London, Langton. You were bred in the country, and as the long vacation draws near you pine for green fields, and rippling streams. It is only we cockneys who thrive on London smoke.' ' Life in London,' said Langton, ' is not life.

It is velocity.' Then, linking his arm in his friend's, the two young barristers sauntered down to the Temple Gardens. ' You are right, Gathorne,' said Langton, with a touch of melancholy in his voice which the other did not fail to notice, ' I am becom ing a dreamer. I wish I had your ambition and your capacity for work. I believe I had once ; but you were born under a lucky star, whilst I — ' A shrug of the shoulders completed the sentence. ' We are all children of fortune,' he continued, ' but she is a fickle mother. She smiles on some and frowns on others. A parent should have no favourites ! ' ' You malign her, Langton. Fortune has something to answer for, but not one half of what is imputed to her. You remember the old adage, " He accuseth Neptune unjustly who incurs shipwreck a second time." ' ' That is what successful men always say.

They think it is a reflection on their own abilities to have it said that Fortune had any thing to do with their success. But what do we see in everyday life ? A doctor gives medicine to a patient and he gets well, thanks to Nature rather than the doctor ; or a lawyer wins a case which he couldn't lose and his fortune is made, whilst better men starve for want of oppor tunity.' 'Opportunity comes to every man, and it is only the fool or the laggard who does not seize it. Missed opportunities are the milestones on the road to failure.' ' Opportunities often do not present them selves until too late, when care and anxiety have sapped the springs of life.' ' We must make them ourselves, then. Foreigners say that we English have only one letter in our alphabet — the letter " I." It is perfectly true.

It is the good opinion we have of our own abilities, and the cool way we have of pushing ourselves forward, that has made England what she is to-day.' Langton looked up and smiled sadly. ' Why are you so down in the mouth ? ' con tinued Gathorne more sympathetically. ' You are becoming quite a pessimist.' ' I have had bad news. I will tell you about it some day — but not now,' he answered de jectedly. ' You want cheering up ; something to turn your thoughts into another groove. Lio-ht opera or comedy is the best tonic you can take. Come and dine with me to-nissht and we will go to the Savoy together.' ' No,' said Langton, ' it would only irritate me more. I have been trying another remedy. This morning I felt in a humour to sympathise, or I thought I did, and I went to see a poor fellow whose troubles are ten times worse than my own.

But it was only sympathy for my self I was craving for, and I came away more low - spirited than ever. Theorise as much as you like ; here's a practical refutation of your logic. You remember Hartley, of Caius? He is dying, poor fellow, in an attic off Bloomsbury just at the time when his name is on everybody's lips and his fame is assured. He told me he had been in want of the barest necessities of life for years ; but he was too proud to let his friends know. His writings brought him in the scantiest subsistence, but he felt the spark of genius burning within him and he believed that sooner or later his opportunity would come. During the last eighteen months he has been writing The Arch Fiend which he has nursed with the tenderness a mother bestows on her first-born. When it was finished it went the round of the publishers and was returned to him unaccepted.

As a last resource, he sold everything he possessed and scraped together sufficient to publish it himself. He waited in anxious expectation for the verdict of the press, and read the scathing criticisms which greeted the first appearance of the book. It was a cruel blow. The priva tions of the last three or four years had sown the seeds of consumption, and his sensitive, worked-out frame gave way under the nervous strain. The public have since recognised what the critics did not — its true worth — and The Arch Fiend, as you know, is the book of the year. Hartley's opportunity has come, but come too late. Poor fellow, he broke a blood vessel on Tuesday, and the doctor says he cannot live the week out.' There was a silence between them for a few moments. Then Gathorne said very gently, — ' No wonder you are depressed.

Poor Hartley, he had so much of promise, and to think that this is the end of it all ! ' There was another and a longer silence. At length Gathorne put his hand tenderly on Langton's shoulder and said, — 'What is your bad news? Perhaps I can help you! We have had very few secrets from one another during all these years.' Langton hesitated. ' No,' he answered, ' you would not under stand it. Edward,' he continued after a moment's pause, ' has it not struck you lately that we are drifting apart from one another — you and I — and the rift will go on widening and widening. Hitherto we have always run in double harness. We went up to Cambridge at the same time, were bracketed equal in our Tripos, were called to the bar together, are members of the same Inn and share the same chambers. Now we are breaking the traces that have kept us together so long.

You are recog nised everywhere as a coming man, whilst the legal world scarcely knows of my existence. Perhaps it is my fault that I have failed. I am not jealous of your success, God knows, but I am despondent of my own ! Briefs came to your hand immediately you were called without any seeking, whilst I have had to keep my hand in with an hour or two's devilling for you every morning. You have often repeated to me that old heterodoxy, " Everything comes to him who waits." What a mockery it is ! I am wasting the best years of my life in waiting, and nothing comes. Tell me candidly, Edward, have I thrown any opportunities away ? ' 'You are too sensitive, too thin-skinned,' said Gathorne. ' The pachydermatous animal gets through life best. If we had the nostril of the sleuth-hound, the eye of the eagle, or could hear the wren's heart beat, life would be a succession of disturbances.

Our comfort lies in our non-perception and our dulness. You are over - punctilious for a successful lawyer ; you once had an opportunity which a less conscientious man would have snatched at. You remember the Bunthorne case ? ' ' Yes, and I refused the brief because I had only one night to get up the voluminous evidence. I could not even read through the brief in the time, much less master it.' 'Quite so,' said Gathorne, 'what of that? You could have read through the evidence of your chief witness and have trusted to Providence or your leader for the rest.' 'And do we take our twenty or thirty guineas for that?' he asked, with a bitter smile. ' Yes ; if clients will deliver their briefs at the eleventh hour — and in five cases out of six they do — they must be satisfied with the preparation we can cram into the twelfth hour.

Langton, my boy,' he went on, 'you never appear to have recognised the fact that our clients make their own cases. We only appear in a representative capacity, and so long as we do not identify ourselves with our client's misdoings, but only strive to show that the facts do or do not, as the case may be, amount to legal guilt, we do nothing which is in conflict with the highest code of honour.' They had wandered round the gardens and had been threading the numerous courts and passages of which the Temple is composed, and now found themselves opposite their own chambers. Gathorne's clerk, who was in the porch, at once approached them, and address ing his master, said, — ' Mr Woolmer has called to see you, sir. Charteris v. Charteris is the second case in to-morrow's list, and you have to defend Dykes at the Old Bailey, too, sir.' ' Awkward, isn't it ? ' exclaimed Gathorne, turning to his friend. ' Come along, we must see what can be done.' Mr John Woolmer, the eminent London solicitor, rose as Gathorne entered his chambers, and cordially shook him by the hand.

Ten minutes later Langton was sent for. ' It won't do for you to be away when Charteris v. Charteris is called on,' Mr B Woolmer was saying as Langton entered the room. 'You have advised on every step in the action, and know all the details of the case. You have a splendid leader in Gaskyn, but he is a very busy man and one cannot always depend on him. We must, of course, do our best for Dykes, but it is a hopeless case. The cleverest advocate in the country could not get him off except by a fluke, but as long as the fate of the prisoner is left in the hands of twelve intelligent men to decide, there is always a chance of acquittal.' Then, turning to Langton, he continued, ' We want you to help us out of a difficulty, Mr Goss, if you will do so. Mr Gathorne cannot be in two places at once, and he suggests that you should hold the brief in Regina v. Dykes at the Old Bailey to-morrow ; and if it is called on before Mr Gathorne can get away from the law courts, I wish you would be prepared to conduct the defence, and make the best you can of it.

We have several good witnesses as to character, and you may be able to get something out in cross-examination of the wit nesses for the prosecution. They are as bad as Dykes every bit, but he is made the scape goat for the pack. Unfortunately his mouth is closed, so that everything depends on your cross-examination. Get him off with six months and his friends will be satisfied.' Langton hesitated for a moment, but a look from Gathorne decided him. ' I will do what I can,' he said. ' Now,' said Gathorne, when Mr Woolmer had left the room, ' you have an opportunity of which half the barristers in London would be envious. If you can win the case — and in spite of what Woolmer says there is a chance, a good chance — you will have mounted the first rung of the ladder of Fame. It is worth a thousand a year to get in Woolmer's good books.' When Langton emerged from his chambers an hour afterwards, he had quite regained his wonted cheerfulness.

He sat up until the small hours of the following morning diligently conning the pages of his brief, and ruminating on the line his cross-examination should take. At length he gathered his papers together and tied them up with a sigh of relief. Every fact was at his fingers' ends, and he felt that he could do full justice to the case. Late the following afternoon Langton walked into the room in which Gathorne was sitting, and threw his papers on the table. Gathorne glanced at the brief. It was en dorsed in Langton's handwriting, ' Verdict, guilty. Seven years P. S.' 'It is the first and last brief I shall ever hold,' said Langton, as he threw himself into a chair and wiped the perspiration from his brow. He left London the same night.

Chapter III

They well might worship still, for never yet Was any thought or thing of beauty born Except with suffering.' — Epic of Hades. Who is there who has not at some period of his life experienced a blighted hope, or seen the little house of cards he was erecting so carefully fall to the ground ? It is part of the common lot of mankind. Few are the men who receive no checks. The road of life is a switchback, and sometimes the car will leave the rails in spite of the most skilful guiding. Those of us who are wise keep our heads and start again, hoping for better luck the next time ; others — for the world is not exclusively composed of philosophers — stand contemplat ing the wreck, and ruminating on their misfor tunes. The result is never satisfactory. As the appetite grows by what it feeds on, so despair is fed by contemplation, until the beautiful things of life are transformed into ogres ; the small become large, and the large infinite.

The day serves only as the seed ground of a further crop of anguish for the night. Every trifle is endowed with an un warranted importance, increasing in intensity until the mental vision becomes hopelessly pur blind. And we may struggle and fight against it as we will, but with what result? Man is the same in all ages, the same now as in the days of our first parents, with the larger commentary of life superadded. Our inborn nature has survived the decay of all things ; the good and evil in us still struggle with each other for the mastery ; the passions still prey upon our bodies and warp our minds. The progress of civilisation, with all its achieve ments, has not taught us to know and under stand ourselves better, nor has it made mental anguish one whit easier to bear than in the days of the patriarchs.

Langton had taken his defeat seriously to heart. His first night at Inglethorpe was one of unrest. In vain did he attempt to subdue his mind into the quiet calm of sleep ; each effort at forgetfulness only added new energy to the quickening and increasing crowd of images produced by the day's brooding. He tried to lull his mind into quiet by the ex pedient of picturing the world as a blank illimit able void, yet the light itself seemed to gather its rays to form on the horizon the image of her he loved. He rose early in the morning, and after a hasty breakfast took down from the rack a trusty stick, and struck off across the fields. Having walked some distance and feeling tired, he sat down upon a stile in a listless mood, and commenced to describe circles in the dust of the pathway ; these he filled with angles, right, acute and obtuse.

He then drew a straight line — that is, a line as straight as a thick stick and unsteady hand could make it. Then he paused to contemplate his work. He wondered in his abstract mood why the ends would never meet, that there could never be any companionship of extremities. This was a hardship that enlisted his sympathies. He thought the lot of this geometrical factor as hard and as hopeless as his own. Shortly before reaching Peplow, the snap of a dog arrested his attention, and looking be fore him he saw young Edgecombe, the squire's son, who had been the most inti mate companion of his youth. At Cambridge, Gathorne, Edgecombe and he had formed an almost inseparable trio, and they were now, and indeed had always been, near neighbours ; but this morning something prompted Langton to leave the path and take refuge behind a hedge until his friend had passed by.

He blushed at the undignified act he was doing ; it seemed so childish, so mean, but there were at work within him forces which he could not govern. Another will acting apart his own seemed to have taken possession of his body and was controlling it. Langton was not the man to shun either his enemy or his friend ; of the former he had no fears, towards the latter no ill-will. Nor did he like solitariness for the sake of being soli tary ; his nature was distinctly social, but there are times in the lives of all of us when com panionship becomes irksome, and geniality jars upon our senses. He was now within a quarter of a mile from the village. Fatigued with his walk, he lay down on a piece of rising ground in the park, with the pretty village of Peplow basking in the sun at his feet. He could take it all in at a glance, and it distracted his thoughts for a while.

There stood the little church, reached by an avenue of chestnuts, whose spreading arms made a vaulted passage beneath ; to the left was the village green, a small, un appropriated fragment of the common stock, which no one had dared to take to himself, and no sovereign had thought fit to bestow for doubtful services ; around it were little straw - thatched cottages dotted here and there, the whole forming a scene which was almost unique in its peaceful simplicity. Langton was aroused from his contemplation by the bells striking up a merry peal. Soon the villagers, in scattered groups, began to wend their way churchward. Across the green children skipped hand - inhand, occasionally dropping their books in their hurry. Presently, out of a thatched cottage, came an old couple, the white-haired old man supporting himself with his stick, while on his left arm reclined his aged wife.