Collected Works of Frances Trollope

by Frances Milton Trollope

  But the argument which decided the question was the reduced state of Whitlaw’s finances.

  “How, in God’s name,” he muttered with closed teeth as he proceeded at an accelerated pace on his return to the town, “ how am I to do business on a large scale with this pitiful cash in my pocket for a capital? — No. — I must begin with this fellow anyhow, whatever I may do with him after.”

  Nothing that had hitherto passed between them had given any hint to Whitlaw whether this personage, whom he now greatly desired to see, made part of the establishment he had visited yesterday, or was, like himself, only a visitor there. In either case, it was there only he could seek him, and thither he accordingly repaired.

  It was still early; the field of combat was however swept and prepared for action, — the windows were duly opened to ventilate the chamber, the blinds skilfully arranged to give equal shade and equal light to all parts of the table, the marker was in his place, and everything ready to begin the labours of the day. But though two or three sporting-looking characters were already in the room, and one of them beguiling the tedious moments of expectation by practising cannons and hazards that to ordinary eyes appeared impossible, no business was as yet going forward.

  The entrance of Whitlaw occasioned some sensation. He still wore the sort of youthful, curious, stranger-seeming look he had assumed the day before, and one of the loungers addressed him civilly with —

  “Would you like to play a game, sir?”

  It is said that a man may serve a good apprenticeship at Natchez for any trade practised at New Orleans, and Whitlaw proved the truth of this by answering —

  “No, sir, thank ye, not now, because I’ve got business to do with one as I expect to meet here.”

  In no country of the world do hawks willingly set about picking out hawks’ eyes; and our hero had no more inclination to make a trial of skill with this man, than he would with Whitlaw had he known him.

  Having looked at every individual present, and satisfied himself that the person he sought was not among them, Whitlaw left the room and descended the stairs; but ere he reached the door of the house, the clumsy player appeared issuing from a side door into the passage. Their eyes met, and the stranger stepped forward to meet him.

  “So! Good day, sir. Would you like a glass this morning? If you’d please to walk this way, I expect we might be convenient for a few minutes’ talk.”

  Whitlaw nodded in token of assent, and followed him in silence to a small room at the back of the building. It appeared expressly fitted up for tête-à-tête consultations like the present; for it held one little table, on which were placed two glasses, and a decanter of whisky between them, flanked by two chairs and a spittoon.

  “You came over that chap handsome yesterday,” said Whitlaw’s new acquaintance, seating himself on one of the chairs and pointing out the other to him. “’Tis seldom as I’m caught, but I’ll be d — d if I didn’t take you for a green one.”

  “You weren’t that slow neither, at last,” replied Whitlaw, laughing. “I expect you caught me out as soon as I handled the tools?”

  “Did I? — I calculate so. But ’tis few would have been so fine as you was over my play. There’s lots of first-rate hands, that if they hadn’t known me, would have watched me play that game, and never stumped me as you did.”

  These mutual compliments naturally paved the way for very confidential conversation, in which there was much more frankness and sincere avowal of principles and practice than are often found between such slight acquaintance. At length, the New Orleans professor, whose name was Crabshawly, expressed himself thus:

  “I told you plump yesterday, Mr. Whitlaw,” (for, among other unreserved avowals, they had mutually communicated their names,) “that I was willing to enter partnership with you, and I don’t see no reason to draw back now. Only, as you swept stakes so clear yesterday, you may guess maybe, that you don’t want no help from nobody; but bide a spell at New Orlines, and you’ll see that won’t go safe and smooth for a long run.”

  “I have no doubt that you speak correct, Mr. Crabshawly,” replied Whitlaw. “I’ve done business enough myself, in a small way, up the country, to be up to that. But I should have thought that you had got hands enough in New Orlines, without looking out so sharp for newcomers.”

  “Natural enough you should think that, Mr. Whitlaw; and in honest truth, and without flattery, I must tell you that it don’t chance over often that a new-comer would suit as a partner. But I’ll be frank at once and tell you what it is. You see it most part happens that gentlemen of the profession are known, more or less, to the sporting gentry in and about the town, and then they grows shy, and though they’d most times sooner lose than not play, they won’t go it boldly, and one must be at it sometimes a mortal long spell at a time before one makes a day’s work; so that a fresh man that knows his tools, and understands how to look new, is worth money. You don’t play that bad neither, I can tell you, for one that’s not bred at New Orlines.”

  “I never play for what I can’t make, you see, Mr. Crabshawly; and that’s a mastership over one’s-self that I expect many haven’t got, and so I count my game surer than most men’s, especially for the bets as runs upon the strokes; but I’ve no manner of objection to go shares with an understanding man like yourself, who may beat me a game or two before them as may like to try their chance after. I expect there must be company by this: shall we go?”

  “No, no, Mr. Whitlaw; the New Orlines men of fashion bean’t never early of a morning. There’s no money worth winning there as yet, I’ll answer for it; and besides, we must make our understanding more perfect, I expect, before we commences regular together. Do you undertake to give me half of all you win, if I give my time, experience, and talents, to poke the gudgeons into your net? I expect that’s the question put fair, Mr. Whitlaw: and now, sir, for your answer.”

  Whitlaw paused for a minute or two, and then said bluntly: “I’ll tell you fairly, Mr. Crabshawly, that I think I ought to try a spell before I do agree to that. You saw what I made yesterday; and wouldn’t it go a little against the grain, d’ye think, to have to pay over the half of that to another?”

  “And how much of that, young man, did you bag, only for my speaking that word about the notes? I f you’ve a mind to try, why try, that’s all I say; but if it don’t answer, you mustn’t be after expecting I’ll be ready to offer the same terms after your newness is gone off.”

  Whitlaw felt quite aware that it would be far better to have Crabshawly for a friend than an enemy; but ere he finally accepted his proposal, he deemed it judicious to appear a little longer in doubt. While stretching out his legs and rubbing his chin in order to make this doubt appear, the idea struck him, that as law and justice could not help him to recover what he had lost, it was possible that knavery might; so turning to his companion with the air of a man who had at length decided a difficult question, he said, “Well then, hear me, Mr. Crabshawly, and patiently, and I expect we shall come to an understanding. I am willing to agree to your terms: you shall have the half of all I make upstairs, provided you are always there when I want you, and always ready to play into my hands as your head and mine together can best contrive; and provided too that you find out, and will show up for me, all the best chaps in the place for me to hook-on to, and bring ’em here.”

  “Agreed!” replied Crabshawly, “’tis a match; and I can do that last job for you first-rate, for there arn’t a man that’s got a hundred dollars to lose but what I knows him. And now, let’s just scratch a bit of an agreement between us, to make all clear on both sides.”

  “Devil a bit of that, my friend, I promise you!” returned Whitlaw sharply. “There’s a saying, you know— ‘Honour among....’ and we must one and both trust to that or nothing: but as for signing and sealing, that’s what I don’t deal in.”

  It is probable that the wisdom manifested by the young man in this very decided answer raised his character as “an understanding chap”
so high in the estimation of his new associate as to atone for the bluntness of the refusal; for he exhibited no resentment whatever, and only replied with a wink and a nod, “Very well; Whitlaw: I expect we be pretty nearly up to one another.”

  “I expect we be, Crabshawly,” was the rejoinder, and the affair was settled.

  Crabshawly now rose, saying, “Well, now we may mount if you please: but we’re neither friends nor acquaintance upstairs, remember.”

  “Thank ye for nothing, my friend,” replied Whitlaw; “that’s taking me for green with a vengeance! But stop one moment, will you, while I jest ask you a word about two strutting fellows that I dined with at Mrs. Bennet’s boarding-house yesterday. I expect they might turn out good for something, if I could scrape acquaintance with ’em. One’s called General Holingsworth, and the other Major Tomlinson.”

  “I know ’em, I know ’em, considerable well,” replied Crabshawly. “Money they’ve got to lose, that’s a fact, and play of an kinds comes as natural to ’em both as to a kitten; but I dubiate if they arn’t over much in our own line to be worth much. I don’t mean they’re that professional neither; but they’re up to a thing or two, I promise ye.”

  “I expect so,” said poor Whitlaw, with a sigh, which, if he had not checked it in time, might have been mistaken for a groan. The information he had received, however, pleased him well; and eager as his new comrade was becoming for an immediate trial of their joint skill, Whitlaw told him he could not set-to for an hour or so, as he had just recollected business that must be attended to first.

  CHAPTER XII.

  THE decided and violent accusation which Whitlaw had only a few hours before brought against General Holingsworth and Major Tomlinson before the magistrate, and still more perhaps the attack he hall made upon them through the ears of their gentle landlady the preceding evening, would to anyone but himself have appeared to present an insuperable obstacle to his cultivating any further acquaintance with these two gentlemen. But he trusted to his genius to overcome this, as well as all minor difficulties that might intervene to prevent the execution of a plan which he confidently hoped would both redeem and revenge his loss.

  Whitlaw entertained not the slightest doubt that these two red-whiskered gentlemen were the thieves who had robbed him; and he certainly had very good reasons for coming to this conclusion.

  He well remembered having pressed his precious pocket-book against his heart, when preparing to enjoy himself in his favourite after-dinner attitude, after all the party except these two individuals had retired; he remembered feeling it, and even giving it a little push downward into the securest corner of the recess that held it, and it was according to his judgment impossible to doubt that his companions and no other were the abductors of his treasure.

  Full of this persuasion, his first care on re-entering Mrs. Bennet’s mansion was to request permission to speak to her.

  She obeyed his summons with but short delay; but though the expression of her “fair round face” varied but slightly from that eternal sweetness with which “her gentlemen” were always received, still the acute eye of Whitlaw descried something in her soft grey eye, that, like the grain in the blue expanse of heaven so threatening to the mariner, seemed to foretell a coming storm.

  Had he been less sure that he possessed the power to quell it, this might have alarmed him more. As it was, he approached her with his best smile, and said —

  “I hope you will forgive me, my good lady, for the foolish blunder I made last night; — I really feel ashamed to think of it: but you always look so kind and so meek-tempered, Mrs. Bennet, that I trust you will not only forgive me yourself, but make my apology to the two gentlemen concerned, for what I was mad enough to say about them.”

  All trace of anger disappeared from the sooth face of Mrs. Bennet as these words greeted her ear, and with one of her prettiest smiles she said —

  “Indeed, sir, I am very glad to hear you speak so; I was quite sure it must be some mistake. I hope you have found your money, sir?”

  “No, Mrs. Bennet, I have not found my money, but I have found what was next best — I have found out where I lost it. I am afraid, madam, you won’t think the better of me when I tell you that I was silly enough to go to a billiard-table for half an hour before dinner yesterday — and I won, I am amost ashamed to say it, a matter of twenty dollars. Well, Mrs. Bennet, I took out my pocket-book, ma’am, that my father gave me, with the money that I was to pay away for him — that is to say, part of it, for by good luck the largest sum I’ve got to pay was in my trunk; but I was fool enough, ma’am, to take out my pocket-book to put my winnings in, and down I laid it for a minute or two— ’twas but a minute or two, Mrs. Bennet — upon the corner of the table, while I was counting out some silver change to make it square with the gentleman that paid me. When this was done, I took the pocket-book up again, but for certain never thought of looking into it. Well, this morning, after I had made such a fool of myself as to go to the magistrate, down yonder, about my foolish suspicions of these gentlemen, I went again to the billiard-table, hoping to win a little more towards making up my heavy loss; but while I was waiting for the table, an old gentleman said to me—’ Wasn’t you the gentleman,’ says he, ‘as put your pocket-book down for a minute yesterday?’ — and I thought for a minute, and answered, ‘Yes, that’s a fact.’ Upon which he said, ‘And have you looked at it since, sir?’ and I said, ‘Yes, indeed, and all my money is gone.’

  ‘I thought so,’ said the old gentleman, walking away, ‘and let me advise you, young man, never again to put your pocketbook out of your hand at a billiard-table.’ So you see, Mrs. Bennet, the thing is as clear as light, and all I can do now is to beg pardon for my foolish suspicions. Will you tell all this to the gentlemen?-and do you think they will forgive me?”

  All this was said with an air of so much youthful simplicity, that the good lady not only promised to set everything right with her lodgers, but declared herself deeply concerned for the loss her new acquaintance had sustained; and assured him that the general and the major, far from resenting what had happened, would be the most likely men in the world to endeavour to help him if anything could be done for the recovery of his money or the punishment of the thief.

  “And when do you think I could see them, madam, to receive their forgiveness?” said Whitlaw.

  They mostly comes in to take a glass of wine and an oyster, sir, for their nooning, and it must be near upon the usual time.”

  “Where do they take it, Mrs. Bennet? — in the dining-parlour?”

  “Yes, sir, always. Be sure that the cloth is laid and everything ready by now. Will you be pleased to walk in there, sir, and see?”

  “Why, to tell you the truth, Mrs. Bennet, I would much rather see them by themselves first: I should not have the face to mention my folly before all the other boarders.”

  “Dear sir, pray don’t vex yourself any more about it. But there’s the general’s voice this minute, I’ll run and tell him; and if you’ll be pleased to bide here a spell, I’ll answer for bringing him to you, — and the major, too, ’tis likely, for they mostly goes and comes together.”

  Mrs. Bennet bustled out of the room, and in about ten minutes returned again, accompanied, as she had predicted, by both the whiskered gentlemen; and having shown them in, she discreetly retired again and shut the door.

  Few men so young as Whitlaw would have been able to go so steadily through the scene that followed as he did; but nature had gifted him with so decided a talent for dissimulation, that instead of pain or difficulty, it was really pleasure and sport to him.

  The general and the major listened to his apology, as well as to the simple and juvenile history which followed it, very attentively and very civilly. They both begged to assure him that they retained not the slightest feeling of resentment, that nothing could be so natural as the blunder he had made, and that they sincerely hoped he would be able eventually to discover the real perpetrator of this abominable act
ion.

  After all these fluent civilities had been spoken and listened to, the major, who had a pair of very keen grey eyes in his head, began with great politeness what Whitlaw knew well enough was a sort of cross-examination of the history he had just delivered.

  “I should hope, indeed,” he said, “that this discovery will not be very difficult; for if this old gentleman you mention saw some one take up your pocket-book, I suppose he would have no difficulty in identifying him.”

  “No, no, my dear sir,” said Whitlaw, shaking his head with the most innocent look in the world; “the old gentleman didn’t say that — I wish he had! No; I asked him if he saw anybody touch it, and he told me he had not; but that there were fingers in that room that could whip notes out of a pocketbook in no time — and sure enough he was right.”

  “What notes had you, sir, in your pocketbook when you laid it down?” continued the curious Major Tomlinson.

  “Exactly two thousand dollars, major.”

  “I think you said that you won twenty dollars: was that paid you in notes?”

  “Ay, there was the mischief! — When I left home, gentlemen, I had two thousand and twenty dollars exact in my pocket, without counting other money; one hundred and twenty in silver, and the rest in notes. Well, you see, I won twenty dollars from a man I played with — an uncommon stupid player he was, to be sure,” — (here the general winked his eye at the major, which Whitlaw perceived more plainly than the person for whom it was intended,) “uncommon stupid, and I beat him, you see, and he gave me a great bill of a hundred dollars — and I was to give him change of course — and I had, you see, to take out this great bag,” (drawing the canvass bag from his pocket,) “and to count out eighty silver dollars upon the table. It must have been while I was doing this, and it wasn’t long neither, that my notes were taken.”