A Disciple of Chance CHAPTER I OUTSIDE WHITE'S CHOCOLATE-HOUSE But here among us the chief trade is To expose their faults with saucy railings. -A Muse in Livery.-DODSLEY. "Two o'clock and a fine morning," called the watchman. For hours London had lain in almost unbroken obscurity. The lanterns, which the grudging citizens had suspended before their houses, had long since guttered out. Here and there amidst this gloom was etched the orangecoloured oblong of a lighted window; but for the most part the tortuous streets, dusky even in daylight, were steeped in pitchy darkness. To this darkness the scene before White's chocolatehouse struck a note of sharp contrast. There the torches of the waiting linkboys cast a glare of shifting light, and the brilliance, flooding through the chocolate-house windows, struck long slants of yellow upon the thatch of straw spread over the way. The footmen had extinguished their flambeaux and withdrawn to a neighbouring taphouse. The less fortunate coachmen, who dared not leave their boxes, nodded, and the drooping horses slept upon their feet. Before the chocolate-house, and for a hundred feet to right and left of it, straw was spread, to deaden the sound of passing vehicles. A slim man, in a livery of apricot and gold, left the house whence issued the babble of his fellow-lackeys' voices, and advanced with mincing steps to the side of a great gilt coach. "Wake up, Hawkins," he cried, "your snores fair split my ears. Faith, I wonder, if you must sleep, that you cannot manage it more genteelly." Hawkins started into life all on the defensive, and it was only by an agile leap, which put all his affectations to flight, that the footman avoided a blow from his whipstock. Gad's life!" he exclaimed. "This is the most scurvy ingratitude, when I have brought you a tankard of hot perry." "Humph!" said Hawkins, with a long-drawn breath, "I dreamt I made a pass at a highwayman on Hounslow Heath. Hadst thee been but three inches wider in the chest, thee'd have had a smart one. Hand it up, mon." Hawkins took the battered tankard and drank off its contents without pausing. Langley," he said, as he drew the back of his hand across his lips, "there are times when I see the making of a man in thee." Langley dangled the returned tankard lightly from a finger-tip. "La," he answered, "I would I could say I saw the making of a pretty fellow in you, but you smack overmuch of the stables." "The stables, quotha," cried Hawkins scornfully. Give me a horse any day to those in there.' He jerked an indignant thumb in the direction of the lighted chocolate-house windows. "If it's beasts you want, give me horses, not monkeys." Langley lifted up his hands. "I protest I am shocked to death, Hawkins. You're fresh from Worcestershire. It's like his lordship might forget your family's long service if he heard that." Marry," came huskily from the box, "I've seen his lordship riding to hounds like the best gentleman of them all. No one could take his six-barred gate better than he. Now see for yourself, man. Will you look there! Straw strewn in the street as if for a lady for her lyingin. No one respects a gentleman as can carry his six bottles more than I; but all these frills and frother-this keeping an honest man out of his bed until 'tis clear morning, and four-footed creatures standing for twelve hours on end! It ain't human! it ain't like the Gowers, that it ain't!" The sky was brightening perceptibly, revealing the vast army of chimneys against the grey, and bringing out a ghostly gleam of apricot in Langley's livery, as he stood behind the posts that guarded the footway from the muddy road without. He tossed back the fancied ruffles at his wrists with a gesture he had often studied in the fragment of mirror that served him in his dark quarters. "Fore Gad, Hawkins," he protested, "you had best unsay that. A gallant, merry-hearted gentleman is his lordship, despite his quips and his whimsies. I'm glad to serve him and I don't blush to confess I've learned much from the set of his waistcoats. I'd back him at swordplay against any blood in the realm. And, la, it would break the heart of you to see him in the park of a morning. His manage of his cane is an inspiration, and his conduct of his snuff-box puts the ladies in a flutter." Hawkins growled scornfully in his throat. "I've a black bitch at home as can walk on her hind legs and curtsey like a lady, but I fancy her best as a ratter. Let me see his lordship at it 'cross country with the hounds in full cry, and that be worthy of his blood, say I." At this instant a louder shout of laughter than usual floated out from the chocolate-house. The outburst was followed by an exclamation, a cross-fire of voices and a renewed clatter of dice. The watchman, sauntering past with his rattle, stopped to question. "What madness is within?" he asked, his voice wheezing through his upturned collar, and his breath showing mistily. Hawkins, from his perch above the hammercloth, rolled a savage eye at him. "No madness, mon," he answered. "Tis his lordship's pleasure to be merry, and a good way 'tis, and we'll hear no guttural question it." None but he might depreciate a Gower. CHAPTER II HAZARD Come, come, leave business to idlers and wisdom to fools: wit be my faculty and pleasure my occupation; and let Father Time shake his glass! -CONGREVE. A SOUND of many voices arose within the chocolate-house. It was the hour of the morning when even the polished beaux of the eighteenth century became careless of the come and go of conversation; when latent egotism revealed itself, and human nature grew indifferent to its smiling mask. The wax candles had burned low, been snuffed, replaced and burned low again. The air was stifling, heavy with the reek of steaming punch, and crossed by varying odours wafted far, amid the float of powder from scented wigs-amber, patchouli, bergamot and the insistent perfume of musk. Much of the light was absorbed by the dark, unreflecting panelling of the room, but still the scene was bright with a motley of colour from tamboured and tinselled waistcoats, brocade and velvet gold-laced coats, falling full from two buttons at the back, wide spreading and buckramed, their set the test of sartorial art. These gentlemen had not removed their coats for the greater freedom of their gaming-jackets, which they always kept at the club for their convenience. They were guests of the Earl of Yerington, whose whim it was to receive them there, though his own home stood but a long stone's throw away. Yet perhaps they all played with greater relish untrammelled by any sense of more intimate |