tone Mrs. Pell spoke in, but it flashed across my mind that she was
looking at Tod as a possible husband for her daughter Constance. He was
not of an age to marry yet: but some women like to plot and plan these
things beforehand. I hated her for it: I did not care that Tod should
choose one of the Pells. Gusty made his appearance in the course of the
evening; and we fellows went out with him.
The Squire was right: it was fast life at the Pells', and no mistake.
I don't believe there was a thing that cost money but Fabian and Gusty
Pell and Crayton went in for it. Crayton was with them always. He seemed
to be the leader: the Pells followed him like sheep; Tod went with them.
I sometimes: but they did not always ask me to go. Billiards and cards
were the chief amusements; and there'd be theatres and singing-halls.
The names of some of the places would have made the Squire's hair stand
on end. One, a sort of private affair, that the Pells and Crayton said
it was a favour to gain admittance to, was called "Paradise." Whether
that was only the Pells' or Crayton's name for it, we did not hear.
And a paradise it was when you were inside, if decorations and mirrors
can make one. Men and women in evening dress sang songs in a kind of
orchestra; to which you might listen sitting and smoking or lounging
about and talking: if you preferred a rubber at whist or a hand at
écarté in another room, there you had it. Never a thing was there,
apparently, that the Squire could reasonably have grumbled at, except
the risk of losing money at cards, and the sense of intoxicating
pleasure. But I don't think it was a good place to go to. The Pells
called all this "Seeing Life."
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 were 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 put 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.
"I saw your father yesterday," called out Pell down the table to Tod.
"He said he was glad to hear you were enjoying yourselves."
"Ah--yes--thank you," replied Tod, in a hesitating sort of way. I don't
know what _he_ was thinking of; but it flashed into my mind that the
Squire would have been anything but "glad," had he known about the
cards, and the billiards, and the twenty-five-pound debt.
Dinner came to an end at last, and we found a few evening guests in the
drawing-room--mostly young ladies. Some of the dinner people went away.
The railway man sat whispering with Pell in a corner: his wife nodded
asleep, and woke up to talk by fits and starts. The youngest girl, Rose,
who was in the drawing-room with Leonora and the governess, ran up to
me.
"Please let me be your partner, Mr. Ludlow! They are going to dance a
quadrille in the back drawing-room."
So I took her, and we had the quadrille. Then another, that I danced
with Constance. Tod was not to be seen anywhere.
"I wonder what has become of Todhetley?"
"He has gone out with Gusty and Mr. Crayton, I think," answered
Constance. "It is too bad of them."
By one o'clock all the people had left; the girls and Mrs. Pell said
good night and disappeared. In going up to bed, I met one of the
servants.
"Do you know what time Mr. Todhetley went out, Richard?"
"Mr. Todhetley, sir? He has not gone out. He is in the smoking-room
with Mr. Augustus and Mr. Crayton. I've just taken up some soda-water."
I went on to the smoking-room: a small den, built out on the leads of
the second floor, that no one presumed to enter except Gusty and Fabian.
The cards lay on the table in a heap, and the three round it were
talking hotly. I could see there had been a quarrel. Some stranger had
come in, and was standing with his back to the mantel-piece. They called
him Temply; a friend of Crayton's. Temply was speaking as I opened the
door.
"It is clearly a case of obligation to go on; of honour. No good in
trying to shirk it, Todhetley."
"I will not go on," said Tod, as he tossed back his hair from his hot
brow with a desperate hand. "If you increase the stakes without my
consent, I have a right to refuse to continue playing. As to honour; I
know what that is as well as any one here."
They saw me then: and none of them looked too well pleased. Gusty asked
me what I wanted; but he spoke quite civilly.
"I came to see after you all. Richard said you were here."
What they had been playing at, I don't know: whether whist, écarté, loo,
or what. Tod, as usual, had been losing frightfully: I could see that.
Gusty was smoking; Crayton, cool as a cucumber, drank hard at
brandy-and-soda. If that man had swallowed a barrel of cognac, he would
never have shown it. Temply and Crayton stared at me rudely. Perhaps
they thought I minded it.
"I wouldn't play again to-night, were I you," I said aloud to Tod.
"No, I won't; there," he cried, giving the cards an angry push. "I am
sick of the things--and tired to death. Good night to you all."
Crayton swiftly put his back against the door, barring Tod's exit. "You
cannot leave before the game's finished, Todhetley."
"We had not begun the game," rejoined Tod. "_You_ stopped it by trebling
the stakes. I tell you, Crayton, I'll not play again to-night."
"Then perhaps you'll pay me your losses."
"How much are they?" asked Tod, biting his lips.
"To-night?--or in all, do you mean?"
"Oh, let us have it all," was Tod's answer; and I saw that he had great
difficulty in suppressing his passion. All of them, except Crayton,
seemed tolerably heated. "You know that I have not the ready-money to
pay you; you've known that all along: but it's as well to ascertain how
we stand."
Crayton had been coolly turning over the leaves of a note-case, adding
up some figures there, below his breath.
"Eighty-five before, and seven to-night makes just ninety-two.
Ninety-two pounds, Todhetley."
I sprang up from the chair in terror. It was as if some blast had swept
over me, "Ninety-two pounds! Tod! do you owe _that_?"
"I suppose I do."
"_Ninety-two pounds!_ It cannot be. Why, it is close upon a hundred!"
Crayton laughed at my consternation, and Temply stared.
"If you'll go on playing, you may redeem some of it, Todhetley," said
Crayton. "Come, sit down."
"I will not touch another card to-night," said he, doggedly. "I have
said it: and I am not one to break my word: as Johnny Ludlow here can
testify to. I don't know that I shall play again after to-night."
Crayton was offended. Cool though he was, I think he was somewhat the
worse for what he had taken--perhaps they all were. "Then you'll make
arrangements for paying your debts," said he, in scornful tones.
"Yes, I'll do that," answered Tod. And he got away. So did I, after a
minute or two: Gusty kept me, talking.
In passing upstairs, for we slept on the third floor, Mr. Pell came
suddenly out of a room on the left; a candle in one hand and some papers
in the other, and a look on his face as of some great trouble.
"What! are you young men not in bed yet?" he exclaimed. "It is late."
"We are going up now. Is anything the matter, sir?" I could not help
asking.
"The matter?" he repeated.
"I thought you looked worried."