THE CARD ROOM
When Molly's chair was carried away, Lord Fylingdale returned to the
assembly. The music had begun another moving and merry tune--that
called "Richmond Ball"--the couples were taking their places, the
young fellows dancing already as they stood waiting, with hands and
feet and even shoulders all together, their partners laughing at them,
and, with hands upon their frocks, pretending to set in the joy and
the merriment of their hearts. And I believe that the withdrawal of
Molly made them all much happier.
Two or three of the ladies standing apart were discussing the public
rebuke just administered. They were angry, being ladies who conceited
themselves on the score of manners, and were proud of their families.
"Not the whole House of Lords," said one, loud enough for his lordship
to hear, "shall make me give my hand to a sailor's wench. Let her
stick to her tar and her pitch. A pretty thing, indeed!"
"I hope," said another, agitating her fan violently, "that his
lordship does not put the ladies of Norfolk on the same level as the
girls of King's Lynn."
"Dear madam," said a third, "Lord Fylingdale called her an
heiress--the heiress of Lynn. An heiress does not carry all her
fortune on her back. Do you not think--some of us have sons--that we
might, perhaps, receive this person with kindness?"
"No, madam. I will not be on any terms with this creature. In my
family we consort with none but gentlefolk."
"Indeed, madam! But a hundred years ago your family, if I mistake not,
were ploughing and ditching on the farms of my family."
Molly seemed like to prove a firebrand indeed. Lord Fylingdale,
however, passed through them without any sign of hearing a word. He
looked round; he observed that the next dance had begun, and that
every lady was touching the hands of those who were not of her own
exalted family. So that his admonition was bearing fruit. He then left
the long room and went into the card room. Here he found the Lady
Anastasia sitting at a table, surrounded by a little crowd of players.
She held the bank. In the excitement of the play her eyes sparkled;
her bosom heaved; her colour went and came visibly beneath the paint
on her cheeks; her lips became pale and then returned to their proper
colour; she rapped the table with her fingers. She was enjoying, in
fact, the rapture which fills the heart of the gambler and makes play
the only thing desirable in life. Perhaps the preacher could imagine
no greater misery for the gamester than a heaven in which there were
no cards.
The game which the Lady Anastasia introduced to these country
gentlemen and the company generally was one called hazard, which is, I
believe, commonly played by gamesters of fashion. Indeed, as was
afterwards learned, this very lady had been by name presented by the
grand jury of Middlesex for keeping a bank at the game of hazard on
Sundays against all comers. At Lynn she kept the bank every evening
except Sunday. It is a game which, more than any other, is said to
lure on the player, so that a man who, out of simple curiosity, sets a
guinea and calls a main, finds himself, after a few evenings of
alternating fortune, winning and losing in turn, so much attracted by
the game that he is only happy when he is playing. I know not how many
gamblers for life were made during the short time when this lady held
the bank. Wonderful to relate, no one seemed to consider that she was
doing anything wrong. She was seen at morning prayers every day; she
drank the waters of the spa; she walked in the gardens, taking tea and
talking scandal with the greatest affability; and in the evenings,
when she kept the bank, it was with a face so full of smiles, with so
much appearance of rejoicing when a player won, and so much kindness
and sympathy when a player lost, that no one asked whether she herself
won or lost.
For my own part, I do not understand how the bank can be held without
great risks and losses. But I have been assured, by one who knows,
that the chances are greatly in favour of the bank, and that this
lady, so highly placed, and of such charming manners, was simply
playing to win, and did win very largely, if not every evening, then
in the course of a week or a month.
"We are all friends here," she said, taking her place and dividing the
pile of money, which constituted her bank, into two heaps, right and
left. At her right hand stood a man of cold and harsh appearance, who
took no interest in the game, but, like a machine, cried the main and
the chance, and gave or took the odds, and, with a rake, either swept
the stakes into the bank when the player lost, or pushed out the
amount won by the player to his seat. They called him the _croupier_,
which is, I believe, a French word. He came from London.
"Since we are all friends here," Lady Anastasia went on, "we need not
observe the precautions that are necessary in London, where players
have been known to withdraw part of their stakes when they have lost,
and to add more when they have won."
Among the players seated at the table--there were many others
standing, who ventured a guinea or so, and, having won or lost, went
away--was the ancient youth of fashion, Sir Harry, who had now
exchanged the dance for the card room. There was also the gentleman of
loud voice and boisterous manners, called Colonel Lanyon.
Sir Harry was the first to call for the dice box, and the dice.
"Seven's the main," he cried, laying as many guineas on the table. He
then rattled the dice and threw. "Five!" he cried.
"Five!" repeated the croupier. "Seven's the main, five is the chance."
The rule of the game is that the player throws again and continues to
throw. If he throws seven first, he loses; if he throws five first, he
wins. But there are introduced certain other rules, so that the game
is not so easy and simple as it seems. Some throws are called "nicks,"
and some are called "crabs." If a nick is thrown, the caster pays to
the bank one main. If crabs, the dice box goes to another player. But
any bystander may bet on the odds. I know not myself what the odds
are, but the regular player knows, and the croupier calls them; in
some cases the bystanders may not bet against the bank, but I do not
know these cases. I know only the simple rules, having seen it played
in the card room.
Lord Fylingdale looked on with an air of cold indifference. He saw, if
he observed anything, that Colonel Lanyon and Sir Harry were playing
high, but that the rest of the company were timidly venturing single
guineas at each cast. Some of them were women, and these were the
fiercest and the most intent upon the game. Most of them were young
men, those who commonly spent their days in all those kinds of sport
which allow of bets and the winning and losing of money. We have heard
of gaming tables in London at which whole fortunes are sometimes lost
at a single sitting; of young men who sit down rich and rise up
poor--even destitute. The young men of Norfolk certainly do not gamble
away their estates in this blind fashion; but it must be owned that
their chief pleasures are those on which they can place a wager, and
that the pastimes which do not allow of a bet are not regarded with
favour. For the ladies of the towns a game of quadrille or whist is
the amusement whenever two or three can be got together. It must,
however, be confessed that the gentlemen are fonder of drinking away
their evenings than of playing cards. The games of ombre, hazard,
basset, faro, and others in which large sums of money are staked, are
commonly played by the people of the town, not of the country.
Lord Fylingdale stood for a while looking over the table. Then he
pulled out his purse--a long and well-filled purse--and laid down
twenty guineas, calling the main "Nine." He threw. "Nick," cried the
croupier in his hard, monotonous note. His lordship had lost. He took
out another handful of guineas and laid them on the table. Again he
lost. The players looked up, expectant. They wanted to see how a noble
lord would receive this reverse of fortune. In their own case it would
have been met with curses on their luck, deep and loud and repeated.
To their astonishment he showed no sign of interest in the event. He
only put up his purse and resumed his attitude of looking on.
At eleven o'clock the music stopped; the dancing was over. Nothing
remained but the punch with which some of the company concluded the
evening. It was provided at the expense of the gentlemen.
The players began to recount their experiences. Fortune, which had
smiled on a few, seemed to have frowned on most.
Then Lord Fylingdale offered another surprise.
"Ladies," he said, "I venture to offer you the refreshment of a glass
of punch. Gentlemen, may I hope that you will join the ladies in this
conclusion to the evening? I would willingly, if you will allow me,
drink to your good luck at the card table. Let the county of Norfolk
show that Fortune which has favoured this part of the country so
signally in other respects has also been as generous in this. I am not
myself a Norfolk, but a Gloucestershire man. I come from the other
side of the country. Let me, however, in this gathering of all that is
polite and of good family in the county be regarded as no stranger,
but a friend."
By this time the punch was brought in, two steaming great bowls. The
gentlemen ladled it out for the ladies and for themselves and all
stood expectant.
"I give you a toast," said his lordship. "We are entertained by the
ancient and venerable borough of Lynn; we must show our gratitude to
our entertainers. I am informed that these rooms, these gardens, the
music and the singers, together with the pump room, have all been
designed, built, collected, and arranged for the company, namely,
ourselves. Let us thank the good people of Lynn. And, since the town
has sent to our assembly to-night its loveliest flower, the young
heiress whom I shall call the Lady of Lynn, let us drink to her as the
representative of her native place. Gentlemen, I offer you as a toast,
'Sweet Molly, the Lady of Lynn!'"
The gentlemen drank it with enthusiasm, the ladies looked at each
other doubtfully. They had not come to Lynn expecting to hear the
beauty of a girl of the place, the town of sailors, ships, quays,
cargoes, casks, cranes, and merchants, the town of winding streets and
narrow courts where the deserted houses were falling to pieces. The
county families went sometimes to Norwich, where there is very good
society; and sometimes to Bury, where there are assemblies in the
winter; but no ladies ever came to Lynn, where there were no
assemblies, no card parties, and no society.
After this toast, the Lady Anastasia withdrew with the other ladies.
Lord Fylingdale led her to her chair and then called for his own.
The gentlemen remained sitting over their punch and talking.
"Who," said one, "is this sweet Molly? Who is this great heiress? Who
is the Lady of Lynn?"
"I never knew," said another, "that there was a lady in Lynn at all."
"You have been in the card room all the evening," said another. "She
danced the last minuet. Where can she be hidden that no one has seen
her before? Gentlemen, 'twas a vision of Venus herself, or the fair
Diana, in a silk frock and a flounced petticoat, with pearls and
diamonds, and precious stones. An heiress? An heiress in Lynn?"
The poet, Sam Semple, who was present, pricked up his ears. The punch
had begun to loosen his tongue.
"Gentlemen," he said, "by your leave. You are all strangers at Lynn
Regis. Norwich you know, and Bury and Swaffham, and perhaps other
towns in the county. But, with submission, Lynn you do not know."
"Why, sir, as for not knowing Lynn, what can a body learn of the place
that is worth knowing?"
"You think that it is a poor place, with a few colliers and fishing
smacks, and a population of sailors and vintners." The poet took
another glass of punch and drank it off to clear his head. "Well, sir,
you are mistaken. From Lynn goes forth every year a noble fleet of
ships. Whither do they go? To all the ports of Europe. From Lynn they
go out; to Lynn they return. To whom do these ships belong? Is a ship
worth nothing? To whom do their cargoes belong? Is the cargo of a tall
three-master worth nothing? Now, gentlemen, if most of these ships
belong to one girl; if they are freighted for one girl; if half the
trade of Lynn is in the hands of this girl's guardian; if for twenty
years the revenues from the trade have been rolling up--what is that
girl but a great heiress?"
"Is that the case with--with sweet Molly?" asked a young fellow who
had been drinking before the punch appeared, and now spoke with a
thick voice. "Is she the heiress and the Lady of Lynn?"
"She is nothing less," Sam Semple replied. "As for her fortune, I
believe, if she wished it, she could buy up half this county."
"And she is unmarried.... Egad!" it was the same young fellow who
spoke, "he will be a lucky man who gets her."
"A lucky man indeed," said Sam, "but she is above your reach, let me
tell you," he added, impudently, because the other was a gentleman.
"Above my reach? Take that," he threw the glass of punch in the poet's
face. "Above my reach? Mine? Who the devil is this fellow? The owner
of a ship, or a dozen ships, with their stinking cargoes and their
cheating trade, above my reach? Why----" Here he would have fallen
upon the offender, but was restrained by his friends.
Sam stood open-mouthed, looking about him dumfoundered, the punch
streaming over his cheeks.
"You'd best go, sir," said one of them. "I know not who you are. But,
if you are a gentleman you can send your friend to-morrow. If not"--he
laughed--"in our country if a gentleman falls out with one whom he
cannot fight with swords, he is not too proud to meet him with stick
or fist. In any case you had better go--and that without delay."
The poet turned and ran. No hostile meeting followed. Sam could not
send a challenge, being no gentleman, and, as you have already seen,
he was not naturally inclined for the ordeal by battle in any other
form.
The young man was one Tom Rising, whose estates lay near Swaffham. He
was well known as the best and most fearless rider in the whole
county; he was the keenest sportsman; he knew where to find fox, hare,
badger, ferret, stoat, or weasel; he knew where to put up a pheasant
or a cover of partridges; he could play at all manly sports; he was a
wild, fearless, reckless, deboshed young fellow, whom everybody loved
and everybody feared; always ready with a blow or an oath; afraid of
nothing if he set his heart upon anything. You shall see presently
that he set his heart upon one thing and that he failed. For the rest,
a comely, tall, and proper young man of four-and-twenty or so, whose
careless dress, disordered necktie, and neglected head sufficiently
indicated his habits, even if his wanton rolling eyes, loose lip, and
cheeks always flushed with wine, did not loudly proclaim the manner of
his life and the train of his thoughts.
When Sam was gone he turned again to the bowl.
In the morning it was reported that there had been wagers, and that a
great deal of money had been won and lost. Some said that Colonel
Lanyon, one of the gentlemen from London, had lost a great sum; others
said that Tom Rising was the heaviest loser. I judge from what I now
know that Tom Rising lost, that evening, more than his estates would
bring him in a whole quarter. And I am further of opinion that Colonel
Lanyon did not lose anything except a piece of paper with some figures
on it, which he handed, ostentatiously proclaiming the amount, which
was very large, to his honourable friend, Sir Harry Malyus, Baronet.