by Ellen Wood
It would not have done Tod much harm — for he had his head on his shoulders the right way — but for the gambling. It is a strong word to use; but the play grew into nothing less. Had the Squire said to us, Take care you don’t learn to gamble up in London, Tod would have resented it as much as if he had been warned not to go and hang himself, feeling certain that there was no more chance of one than the other. But gambling, like some other things — drinking for instance — steals upon you by degrees, too imperceptibly to alarm you. The Pells and Crayton and other fellows that they knew went in for cards and billiards wholesale. Tod was asked at first to take a quiet hand with them; or just play for the tables — and he thought no more of complying than if the girls had pressed him to make one at the round game of Old Maid, or to while away a wet afternoon at bagatelle.
There was no regularity in Mrs. Pell’s household: there was no more outward observance of religion than if we’d lived in Heathendom. It was so different from Tod’s last London visit, when he was at the Whitneys’. There you had to be at the breakfast-table to the moment — half-past eight; and to be in at bedtime, unless engaged out with friends. Sir John read a chapter of the Bible morning and night, and then, pushing the spectacles lower on his old red nose, he’d look over them at us and tell us simply to be good boys and girls. Here you might come down at any hour, from nine or ten, to eleven or twelve, and ring for fresh breakfast to be supplied. As to staying out at night, that was quite ad libitum; a man-servant sat up till morning to open the door.
I was initiated less into the card-playing than Tod, and never once was asked to make one at pool, probably because it was taken for granted that I had less money to stake. Which was true. Tod had not much, for the matter of that: and it never struck me to think he was losing wholesale.
I got home one night at twelve, having been dining at Miss Deveen’s and going to a concert with her afterwards. Tod was not in, and I sat up in our room, writing to Mr. Brandon, which I had put off doing until I felt ashamed. Tod came in as I was folding the letter. It was hot weather, and he stretched himself out at the open window.
“Are you going to stop there all night, Tod?” I asked by-and-by. “It’s one o’clock.”
“I may as well stop here, for all the sleep I shall get in bed,” was his answer, as he brought his head in. “I’m in an awful mess, Johnny.”
“What kind of mess?”
“Debt.”
“Debt! What for?”
“Card-playing,” answered Tod, shortly. “And betting at pool.”
“Why do you play?”
“I’ll be shot if I would ever have touched one of their cards, or their billiard balls either, had I known what was to come of it. Let me once get out of this hole, and neither Gusty Pell nor Crayton shall ever draw me in again. I’ll promise them that.”
“How much is it?”
“That I owe? Twenty-five pounds.”
“Twenty-five — what?” I cried, starting up.
“Don’t wake up the next room, Johnny. Twenty-five pounds. And not a stiver in my pocket to go on with. I owe it to Crayton.”
Sitting on the edge of his bed, he told me how the thing had crept upon him. At first they only played for shillings; one night Crayton suddenly changed the stakes to sovereigns. The other fellows playing took it as a matter of course, and Tod did not like to make a fuss, and get up ——
“I should, Tod,” I interrupted.
“I dare say you would,” he retorted. “I didn’t. But I honestly told them that if I lost much, my purse would not stand it. Oh that need not trouble you, they said. When we rose, that night, I owed Crayton nineteen pounds.”
“They must be systematic gamblers!”
“No, not that. Gentlemen who play high. Since then I have played, hoping to redeem my losses — they tell me I shall be sure to do it. But the redemption has not come yet, for it is twenty-five pounds now.”
“Tod,” I said, after a pause, “it would about kill the Pater.”
“It would awfully vex him. And that’s what is doing the mischief, you see, Johnny. I can’t write home for the money without telling him what I want it for; he’d never give it me unless I said: and I can’t cut our visit short to the Pells and leave Crayton in debt.”
“But — what’s to be done, Tod?”
“Nothing until I get some luck, and win enough back to pay him.”
“You may get deeper into the mire.”
“Yes — there’s that chance.”
“It will never do to go on playing.”
“Will you tell me what else I am to do? I must continue to play: or pay.”
I couldn’t tell him; I didn’t know. Fifty of the hardest problems in Euclid were nothing to this. Tod sat down in his shirt-sleeves.
“Get one of the Pells to let you have the money, Tod. A loan of twenty or thirty pounds can be nothing to them.”
“It’s no good, Johnny. Gusty is cleaned out. As to Fabian, he never has any spare cash, what with one expensive habit and another. Oh, I shall win it back again: perhaps to-morrow. Luck must turn.”
Tod said no more. But what particularly struck me was this: that, to win money from a guest in that way, and he a young fellow not of age, whose pocket-money they knew to be limited, was not at all consistent with the idea of their being “gentlemen.”
The next evening we were in a well-known billiard-room. Fabian Pell, Crayton, and Tod were at pool. It had been a levee day, or something of that sort, and Fabian was in full regimentals. Tod was losing, as usual. He was no match for those practised players.
“I wish you would get me a glass of water, Johnny,” he said.
So I got it. In turning back after taking the glass from his hand, who should I see on the high bench against the wall, sitting just where I had been sitting a minute before, but my guardian and trustee, Mr. Brandon. Could it be he? Old Brandon in London! and in a billiard-room.
“It is never you, sir! Here!”
“Yes, it is I, Johnny Ludlow,” he said in his squeaky voice. “As to being here, I suppose I have as much right to be here as you have: perhaps rather more. I should like to ask what brings you here.”
“I came in with those three,” I said, pointing towards the board.
He screwed up his little eyes, and looked. “Who are they?” he asked. “Who’s the fellow in scarlet?” For he did not happen to know these two younger Pells by sight.
“That’s Fabian Pell, sir. The one standing with his hands in his pockets, near Joseph Todhetley, is the Honourable Mr. Crayton.”
“Who’s the Honourable Mr. Crayton?”
“I think his father is the Earl of Lackland.”
“Oh, ah; one of Lackland’s sons, is he? There’s six or eight sons, of them, Johnny Ludlow, and not a silver coin amongst the lot. Lackland never had much, but what little it was he lost at horse-racing. The sons live by their wits, I’ve heard: lords’ sons have not much work in them. The Honourable Mr. Crayton, eh! Your two friends had better take care of themselves.”
The thought of how Tod had “taken care” of himself flashed into my mind. I wouldn’t have old Brandon know it for the world.
“I posted a letter to you to-day, sir. I did not know you were from home.”
“What was it about?”
“Nothing particular, sir. Only I had not written since we were in London.”
“How long are you going to stay here, Johnny Ludlow?”
“About another week, I suppose.”
“I mean here. In this disreputable room.”
“Disreputable, sir!”
“Yes, Johnny Ludlow, disreputable. Disreputable for all young men, especially for a very young one like you. I wonder what your father would have said to it!”
“I, at least, sir, am doing no harm in it.”
“Yes, you are, Johnny. You are suffering your eyes and mind to grow familiar with these things. So, their game is over, is it!”
I turned round. They had finished, and w
ere leaving. In looking for me, Tod saw Mr. Brandon. He came up to shake hands with him, and told me they were going.
“Come in and see me to-morrow morning, Johnny Ludlow,” said Mr. Brandon, in a tone of command. “Eleven o’clock.”
“Yes, sir. Where are you staying?”
“The Tavistock; Covent Garden.”
“Johnny, what the mischief brings him here?” whispered Tod, as we went downstairs.
“I don’t know. I thought it must be his ghost at first.”
From the billiard-rooms we went on to Gusty’s chambers, and found him at home with some friends. He served out wine, with cold brandy-and-water for Crayton — who despised anything less. They sat down to cards — loo. Tod did not play. Complaining of a racking headache, he sat apart in a corner. I stood in another, for all the chairs were occupied. Altogether the party seemed to want life, and broke up soon.
“Was it an excuse to avoid playing, Tod?” I asked, as we walked home.
“Was what an excuse?”
“Your headache.”
“If your head were beating as mine is, Johnny, you wouldn’t call it an excuse. You’ll be a muff to the end of your days.”
“Well, I thought it might be that.”
“Did you! If I made up my mind not to play, I should tell it out straightforwardly: not put forth any shuffling ‘excuse.’”
“Any way, a headache’s better than losing your money.”
“Don’t bother.”
I got to the Tavistock at five minutes past eleven, and found Mr. Brandon reading the Times. He looked at me over the top of it, as if he were surprised.
“So you have come, Mr. Johnny!”
“Yes, sir. I turned up the wrong street and missed my way: it has made me a little late.”
“Oh, that’s the reason, is it,” said Mr. Brandon. “I thought perhaps a young man, who has been initiated into the ways of London life, might no longer consider it necessary to attend to the requests of his elders.”
“But would you think that of me, sir?”
Mr. Brandon put the newspaper on the table with a dash, and burst out with as much feeling as his weak voice would allow him.
“Johnny Ludlow, I’d rather have seen you come to sweep a crossing in this vile town, than to frequent one of its public billiard-rooms!”
“But I don’t frequent them, Mr. Brandon.”
“How many times have you been in?”
“Twice in the one where you saw me: once in another. Three times in all.”
“That’s three times too much. Have you played?”
“No, sir; there’s never any room for me.”
“Do you bet?”
“Oh no.”
“What do you go for, then?”
“I’ve only gone in with the others when I have been out with them.”
“Pell’s sons and the Honourable Mr. Crayton. Rather ostentatious of you, Johnny Ludlow, to hasten to tell me he was the ‘Honourable.’”
My face flushed. I had not said it in that light.
“One day at Pershore Fair, in a booth, the clown jumped on to the boards and introduced himself,” continued Mr. Brandon: “‘I’m the clown, ladies and gentlemen,’ said he. That’s the Honourable Mr. Crayton, say you. — And so you have gone in with Mr. Crayton and the Pells!”
“And with Joseph Todhetley.”
“Ay. And perhaps London will do him more harm than it will you; you’re not much better than a boy yet, hardly up to bad things. I wonder what possessed Joe’s father to let you two come up to stay with the Pells! I should have been above it in his place.”
“Above it? Why, Mr. Brandon, they live in ten times the style we do.”
“And spend twenty times as much over it. Who was thinking about style or cost, Mr. Johnny? Don’t you mistake Richard for Robert.”
He gave a flick to the newspaper, and stared me full in the face. I did not venture to speak.
“Johnny Ludlow, I don’t like your having been initiated into the iniquities of fast life — as met with in billiard-rooms, and similar places.”
“I have got no harm from them, sir.”
“Perhaps not. But you might have got it.”
I supposed I might: and thought of Tod and his losings.
“You have good principles, Johnny Ludlow, and you’ve a bit of sense in your head; and you have been taught to know that this world is not the end of things. Temptation is bad for the best, though. When I saw you in that place last night, looking on with eager eyes at the balls, listening to the betting, I wished I had never let your father make me your guardian.”
“I did not know my eyes or ears were so eager, sir. I don’t think they were.”
“Nonsense, boy: that goes as a matter of course. You have heard of gambling hells?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, a public billiard-room is not many degrees better. It is crowded with adventurers who live by their wits. Your needy ‘honourables,’ who’ve not a sixpence of their own in their purses, and your low-lived blackguards, who have sprung from the scum of the population, are equally at home there. These men, the lord’s son and the blackguard, must each make a living: whether by turf-betting, or dice, or cards, or pool — they must do it somehow. Is it a nice thing, pray, for you honest young fellows to frequent places where you must be their boon companions?”
“No, I don’t think it is.”
“Good, Johnny. Don’t you go into one again — and keep young Todhetley out if you can. It is no place, I say, for an honest man and a gentleman: you can’t touch pitch and not be defiled; neither can a youngster frequent these billiard-rooms and the company he meets in them, and come away unscathed. His name will get a mark against it. That’s not the worst: his soul may get a mark upon it; and never be able to throw it off again during life. You turn mountebank, and dance at wakes, Johnny, rather than turn public billiard player. There’s many an honest mountebank, dancing for the daily crust he puts into his mouth: I don’t believe you’d find one honest man amongst billiard sharpers.”
He dropped the paper in his heat. I picked it up.
“And that’s only one phase of their fast life, these billiard-rooms,” he continued. “There are other things: singing-halls, and cider cellars — and all sorts of places. You steer clear of the lot, Johnny. And warn Todhetley. He wants warning perhaps more than you do.”
“Tod has caught no harm, I think, except — —”
“Except what?” asked he sharply, as I paused.
“Except that I suppose it costs him money, sir.”
“Just so. A good thing too. If these seductions (as young fools call them) could be had without money, the world would soon be turned upside down. But as to harm, Johnny, once a young fellow gets to feel at home in these places, I don’t care how short his experience may be, he loses his self-respect. He does; and it takes time to get it back again. You and Joe had not been gone five minutes last night, with your ‘Honourable’ and the other fellow in scarlet, when there was a row in the room. Two men quarrelled about a bet; sides were taken by the spectators, and it came to blows. I have heard some reprobate language in my day, Johnny Ludlow, but I never heard such as I heard then. Had you been there, I’d have taken you by the back of the neck and pitched you out of the window, before your ears should have been tainted with it.”
“Did you go to the billiard-room, expecting to see me there, Mr. Brandon?” I asked. And the question put his temper up.
“Go to the billiard-room, expecting to see you there, Johnny Ludlow!” he retorted, his voice a small shrill pipe. “How dare you ask it? I’d as soon have expected to see the Bishop of London there, as you. I can tell you what, young man: had I known you were going to these places, I should pretty soon have stopped it. Yes, sir: you are not out of my hands yet. If I could not stop you personally, I’d stop every penny of your pocket-money.”
“We couldn’t think — I and Tod — what else you had gone for sir,” said I, in apology for having pu
t the question.
“I don’t suppose you could. I have a graceless relative, Johnny Ludlow; a sister’s son. He is going to the bad, fast, and she got me to come up and see what he was after. I could not find him; I have not found him yet; but I was told that he frequented those rooms, and I went there on speculation. Now you know. He came up to London nine months ago as pure-hearted a young fellow as you are: bad companions laid hold of him, and are doing their best to ruin him. I should not like to see you on the downward road, Johnny; and you shan’t enter on it if I can put a spoke in the wheel. Your father was my good friend.”
“There is no fear for me, Mr. Brandon.”
“Well, Johnny, I hope not. You be cautious, and come and dine with me this evening. And now will you promise me one thing: if you get into any trouble or difficulty at any time, whether it’s a money trouble, or what not, you come to me with it. Do you hear?”
“Yes, sir. I don’t know any one I would rather take it to.”
“I do not expect you to get into one willingly, mind. That’s not what I mean: but sometimes we fall into pits through other people. If ever you do, though it were years to come, bring the trouble to me.”
And I promised, and went, according to the invitation, to dine with him in the evening. He had found his nephew: a plain young medical student, with a thin voice like himself. Mr. Brandon dined off boiled scrag of mutton; I and the nephew had soup and fish and fowl and plum pudding.
After that evening I did not see anything more of old Brandon. Upon calling at the Tavistock they said he had left for the rest of the week, but would be back on the following Monday.
And it was on the following Monday that Tod’s affairs came to a climax.
We had had a regal entertainment. Fit for regal personages — as it seemed to us simple country people, inexperienced in London dinner giving. Mrs. Pell headed her table in green gauze, gold beetles in her hair, and a feathered-fan dangling. Mr. Pell, who had come to town for the party, faced her; the two girls, the two sons, and the guests were dispersed on either side. Eighteen of us in all. Crayton was there as large as life, and of the other people I did not know all the names. The dinner was given for some great gun who had to do with railway companies. He kept it waiting twenty minutes, and then loomed in with a glistening bald head, and a yellow rose in his coat: his wife, a very little woman in pink, on his arm.