Here the appearance of Sam, the house-servant, with a large salver containing a pitcher, a sugar-bowl, a decanter, tumblers, and several bottles, put a stop to the Colonel’s eloquence, and drew him away as the loadstone draws the needle.
Onslow came near to Ratcliff, looked him in the face contemptuously, and turned away without acknowledging the acquaintance. After him reappeared Ripper and Mrs. Gentry, arm-in-arm, the lady with her hands clasped girlishly, and her shoulder pressed closely up against that of the auctioneer. It was evident she was going, going, if not already gone. Ripper put up his eye-glass, and, carelessly nodding, remarked, “Such is life, Ratcliff!” (Ratcliff! The beggar presumed to call him Ratcliff!) The couple passed on, the lady exclaiming so that the observation should not be lost on the ears for which it was intended,—“I always said he would be come up with!”
Semmes now happening to pass by, Ratcliff, deeply agitated, but affecting equanimity, said: “How is it, Semmes? Are you going to help me out of this miserable scrape?”
“Our relations must end here, Mr. Ratcliff,” replied the lawyer.
“So much the better,” said Ratcliff; “it will spare my standing the swindle you call professional charges on your books.”
“Don’t be under a misapprehension, my poor friend,” returned Semmes. “I have laid an attachment on your deposits in the Lafayette Bank. They will just satisfy my claim.”
And taking a pinch of snuff the lawyer walked unconcernedly away. “O that I had my revolver here!” thought Ratcliff, with an inward groan.
But here was Madame Josephine. Here was at leastonefriend left to him. Of her attachment, under any change of fortune, he felt assured. Her own means, not insignificant, might now suffice for the rehabilitation of his affairs. Shedrew near, her face radiant with the satisfaction she had felt in the recovery of Clara. She drew near, and Ratcliff caught her eye, and rising and putting out his hands, as if for an embrace, murmured, in a confidential whisper, “Josephine, dearest, come to me!”
She frowned indignantly, threw back her arm with one scornful and repelling sweep, and simply ejaculating, “No more!” moved away from him, and took the proffered arm of the trustee of her funds, the venerable Winslow.
The party now passed away from Ratcliff, and out of the two rooms; most of them going down-stairs to the carriages that waited in the street to bear them to the St. Charles Hotel, over whose cupola the Stars and Stripes were gloriously fluttering in the starlight.
Ratcliff found himself alone with the ever-watchful bloodhound. Suddenly a whistle was heard, and Victor started up and trotted down-stairs. Ratcliff rose to quit the apartment. All at once the stalwart negro, lately his slave, in uniform, and bearing a musket, with the old flag, stood before him.
“Follow me,” said the man, with the dignity of a true soldier.
“Where to?”
“To the lock-up, to wait General Butler’s orders.”
On a pallet of straw that night Ratcliff had an opportunity of revolving in solitude the events of the day. In the miscarriage of his schemes, in the downfall of his hopes, and in the humbling of his pride, he experienced a hell worse than the imagination of the theologian ever conceived. What pangs can equal those of the merciless tyrant when he tumbles into the place of his victims and has to endure, in unstinted measure, the stripes and indignities he has been wont to inflict so unsparingly on others!