and on edge, for when two or three are gathered together to gamble they
often generate spontaneously between them--this is a sober fact--a
little demon which hovers about and unsettles their nerves. Feltham
especially hardly spoke, except to name his stake, and sometimes to
swear when he lost it, and the Babe felt that they were all taking it
too seriously and quite spoiling his pleasure. For himself, he liked
a “little game” because it happened to amuse him, but the others were
behaving as if they cared whether they won money or lost money, and
this, to the Babe’s thinking, spoilt the whole thing. The point of
gambling, according to him, was not whether you won money or lost
money, but the moment when it was uncertain whether you were going to
win (in the abstract) or lose (in the abstract). The view is wholly
unreasonable, and so is the gambling instinct.
It was Broxton’s turn to deal. He dealt badly, holding the pack from
which he dealt nearly a foot above the table, so that if any of them
happened to be looking at the cards as they were dealt to him, the
chances were that he would get a glimpse or a hint of what the under
one was, and once before that evening the Babe had demanded a fresh
deal, because as his cards were dealt him, he could not help seeing
the corner of a picture card. This time, however, he was handing a
cigarette to Feltham, who sat on his right. But as Feltham’s cards were
dealt him the Babe saw him look up quickly, and he himself saw the
face of one of them, so far, at least, that he would have been ready
to swear it was a picture card in clubs. Feltham at the moment seemed
to him to open his mouth to speak, but said nothing and only glanced
hurriedly at the Babe, who did not look at him again during the game.
The turn-up card was the nine of clubs.
The first two players naturally enough, as there were only four cards
out of fifty-two which could beat the nine, staked a nominal stake
merely, and turned up their cards. One of them held the king of
clubs, and this would have won, leaving only three cards in the pack
which could win. He took a shilling, the amount of his stake, out of
the pool, and said he wished he had trusted to his instinct. It was
Feltham’s turn. He staked £20, which was madness. His hand contained
the queen of clubs and he won.
* * * * *
Very soon after, the Babe renewed his proposition that they should
limit the stakes, and this time there was no opposition, and as it was
already after one, they settled to stop as soon as the pool had been
emptied. The pool, seeing them change their tactics, also changed its
own, and instead of mounting continued to sink steadily. Every now and
then it would go up again by a couple of limit stakes, but the constant
tendency was to sink, and in three-quarters of an hour it was empty.
Broxton gathered up the cards and counters, and Feltham and two of the
others said “Good-night,” and left the room, but Anstruther and the
Babe sat down and waited. The Babe helped himself to whisky, tore up
his own I O U’s which he had paid for, and there was a long awkward
silence.
Broxton got up, closed the door, and came and stood in front of the
fire.
“That fellow cheated,” he said at last. “I saw him, twice. Did you
notice, Babe?”
“I thought he saw the cards which were dealt him once. The turn-up
was a nine of clubs and he staked £20. It struck me as unusual,
particularly as the king was already out.”
“Then he cheated twice, as Jim said,” answered Anstruther. “I am
convinced he saw his cards once before, both times when Jim was
dealing.”
“Jim, you damned fool,” said the Babe, “why can’t you manage to deal
properly?”
“We’re all damned fools, I think,” said Broxton. “What business have
we got to ask a fellow to play whom we don’t know, and who probably
can’t afford it.”
“Nor can I,” said Anstruther, “but I don’t cheat.”
“Are we quite sure he did cheat?” asked the Babe.
“Personally, I am,” said Broxton, “aren’t you, Anstruther?”
“Good Lord, yes.”
“Well, what’s to be done?” asked the Babe.
“The men who play with him ought to know,” said Anstruther.
The Babe got up, and threw his torn-up I O U’s into the fire.
“Rot,” he said. “We can’t possibly be certain. And I’m not going to ask
him to play again in order to watch him. That seems to me perhaps one
degree lower than cheating oneself. It’s our own fault, as Jim said,
for asking him.”
“My dear Babe, we can’t leave it as it is.”
“No, I don’t want to do that. I only meant that we couldn’t tell other
people what we suspected, unless we were certain, and not even then.
And we can’t be certain unless we play with him again, and that I don’t
mean to do.”
“What _do_ you propose to do then?”
“I propose that one of us tells him what we thought we saw.”
“And if he denies it?”
“The matter ends there. At the same time to make it clear to him that
three people separately thought they saw him.”
“Thought they saw him!” said Broxton.
“Certainly. Thought they saw him. I daresay he isn’t a bad chap. I
daresay he was playing for far more than he could afford. It is even
possible he will confess he did cheat, and it is quite possible that
we are all wrong and that he didn’t. Personally I certainly thought he
did, but I wouldn’t take my oath on it.”
“Who’s to ask him?”
There was a short silence. Then--
“I will, if you like,” said the Babe.
“Thanks, Babe,” said Jim, “you’d do it better than either of us.”
The Babe lit a cigarette, and finished his whisky.
“I’m off to bed,” he said, “I would sooner have played ‘old maid’ than
that this should have happened. Of course none of us say a word about
it? Good-night, you chaps.”
Anstruther and Broxton sat on for a bit after the Babe had gone.
“It’s a devilish business,” said the latter at length. “But I’m sure
the Babe will manage it as well as it can be managed.”
“The Babe isn’t half a bad chap,” said Anstruther.
“No, I don’t think he is. In fact, I don’t think I ever knew a better.
Are you off? Good-night.”
The Babe wrote a note to Feltham next morning asking him if he would be
in at seven that evening, and receiving an affirmative answer, it thus
came about that he tapped at his door at that hour.
XVIII.--THE CONFESSION.
Qui s’accuse, s’excuse.
FROM THE FRENCH.
The Babe’s supposition that Feltham “perhaps wasn’t a bad chap” was
perfectly correct. At the same time it is perfectly true that he had
cheated at cards, which, quite rightly, is one of the few social crimes
for which a man is ostracised.
He had cheated, and he knew it, and he was thoroughly, honestly, and
unreservedly ashamed of it. He did not try to console himself by the
fact that he had never done it before, and by the knowledge that he
would never do it again, because he knew that he would fail to find
the slightest consolation in that, though it was perfectly true. The
thing was done and it was past mending. Twice he had seen the cards, or
at any rate had a suspicion of one of them, when they were dealt him,
without saying anything. On one of these occasions what he had seen
did not help him, for he saw only a card of another suit, but once,
when he had seen the queen of clubs, he traded on it, and swindled the
company of £20.
How he had come to do it, he did not know. He thought the devil must
have taken possession of him, and he was probably quite right. The
temptation was the stronger because he had lost, as the Babe had
suggested, much more than he could afford, and the thing was done
almost before he meant to do it. He more than half suspected that the
Babe had noticed it, but to do him justice this suspicion weighed very
light in his mind, compared with the fact that he had cheated.
Next morning the Babe’s note came, and his suspicion that the Babe had
noticed it took definite form. It was no manner of use refusing to see
him, but what he could not make up his mind about, was what answer he
should give him. To confess it would not help him to make reparation,
and to return, as he honestly wanted to do, the £20 he had won and
besides it did not seem, in anticipation, particularly an easy thing to
do. And when the Babe knocked at his door, he was still as much in the
dark as ever, as to what, if the Babe’s errand was what he suspected,
he should say to him.
The Babe accepted a cigarette, and sat down rather elaborately. He had
determined not to remark upon the weather or the prospects of an early
dissolution, or make any foolish attempts to lead up to the subject,
and after a moment he spoke.
“I am awfully sorry,” he said, “to have to say what I am going to. In
two words it is this: Three men with whom you were playing last night
at Marmara, thought that once or twice you saw your cards, or one of
your cards, before you staked. I am one of them myself, and we decided
that the only fair and proper thing to do was to ask you whether this
was so. I am very sorry to have to say this.”
The Babe behaved like the gentleman he was, and instead of looking
at Feltham to see whether his face indicated anything, kept his eyes
steadily away from him.
Feltham stood a moment without answering and if the Babe had chosen
to look at him he would have seen that he paused because he could not
command his voice. But the Babe did not choose to do so. Feltham would
have given anything that moment to have been able to say “It is true,”
but it seemed to him a physical impossibility. On the other hand he
felt it equally impossible to take the high line, to threaten to kick
the Babe out of the room unless he went in double quick time etc.,
etc.,--to do any of those things which thorough-paced swindlers are
supposed to do when their honour is quite properly called in question.
“It is a damned lie,” he said at length, quite quietly and without
conviction.
The Babe got up at once, and stepped across to where Feltham was
standing.
“Then I wish to apologise most sincerely both for myself and the
other two fellows,” he said, “and if you would like to knock me down,
you may. I shall of course tell them at once we were mistaken, and I
believe what you say entirely. Will you shake hands?”
Feltham let the Babe take his hand, and as the latter turned to leave
the room, sat limply down in the chair from which the Babe had got up.
But the Babe had hardly got half-way across the room, when Feltham
spoke again.
The Babe’s utter frankness had suddenly made it impossible for Feltham
to let him go without telling him, but to tell him now was not made
easier by having lied about it.
“Please wait a minute,” he said.
The Babe’s cigarette had gone out, and he lit it again over the lamp.
Then he sat down in the window seat and waited. Outside, the grass
was sparkling with frost and the clock chimed a quarter past seven.
Simultaneously Feltham spoke:
“I have lied to you as well,” he said. “What you saw was perfectly
true. I cheated twice, at least I saw one of the cards dealt me twice,
and said nothing about it. Once the card happened to be immaterial, and
once I staked £20 knowing I should win. I have told you all.”
The Babe was a person of infinite variety, and if those who knew him
best had seen him now, they would hardly have believed it was he. He
sat down on the arm of the chair where Feltham was sitting, and to
himself cursed the whole pack of cards from ace to king, and above all
Jim Broxton. Then aloud--
“My poor dear fellow,” he said. “I’m devilish sorry for you.”
Feltham, who had been expecting to hear a few biting remarks or else
merely the door slam behind the Babe, looked up. The Babe was looking
at him, quite kindly, quite naturally, as if he was condoling with him
on some misfortune.
Feltham began, “Damn it all--” then stopped, and without a moment’s
warning burst out crying.
The Babe got up, went to the door and sported it. Then he sat down
again on the arm of the chair.
“Poor chap,” he said. “It’s beastly hard lines, and I fully expect it’s
as much our fault as yours. You needn’t trouble to tell me you never
did it before: of course you didn’t. I fully believe that. People who
would confess that sort of thing don’t do that sort of thing twice.
It was like this perhaps--we were playing for far more than you could
afford, and you didn’t mean to do it, until somehow it was done. Money
is a devilish contrivance.”
“Yes, it was just like that,” said Feltham. “As I told you, the first
time I saw a card, it didn’t make any difference, though of course I
ought to have said so. But the second time it did, and before I knew
what I had done, I had cheated. Why don’t you call me a swindler and
tell me I’m not fit to associate with gentlemen? It’s God’s truth.”
The corners of the Babe’s mouth twitched.
“It’s not my concern then. What would be the good of saying that?”
He paused a moment, hoping that Feltham would make a certain
suggestion, and he was not disappointed.
“Look here, there’s the twenty pounds: what can I do with it? Can you
help me?”
The Babe thought a moment.
“Yes, give it me. I’ll see that the other fellows get it somehow, if
you’ll leave it to my discretion. And, you know, it sounds absurd for a
fool like me to give advice, but if I were you I shouldn’t play cards
for money again. It’s no use running one’s head into danger. If it’s
not rude, what is your allowance?”
“Two hundred and fifty.”
“You bally ass! Yet I don’t know. It’s our fault. You couldn’t tell
that the pool would behave in that manner, and I know, personally, I
should find it out of the question to say one was playing for more than
one could afford. Some people call it moral cowardice, it seems to me a
perfectly natural reticence.”
“Of course I won’t play again,” said Feltham. “Why have you been so
awfully good to me?”
“I haven’t. What else was I to do? Oh, yes, and I think I respected
you for telling the truth. Most fellows would have lied like George
Washington.”
Feltham smiled feebly.
“All that remains is this,” said the Babe. “Of course I must tell those
other two fellows about it, the two I mean with whom I talked, but you
can trust them absolutely. It is impossible that anyone else should
ever know about it.”
“You don’t think--oughtn’t I to tell them all?” stammered Feltham.
The Babe frowned.
“Of course you ought not. Why the deuce should you? About the money--it
must be divided up between us all. Six into twenty, about three pound
ten each. Rather an awkward sum.”
“Why six?”
“Because there were six of us.”
“I can’t take any.”
“Your feelings have nothing to do with it,” remarked the Babe. “The
money in the pool of course belongs to everyone. You return the others’
shares of that £20 and keep your own. Well, I’ll manage it somehow. I
will make absurd bets, seventy to one in shillings. That will surprise
nobody: I often do it. Good Lord, it’s a quarter to eight. If you’re
going into Hall, you’ll be very late, and so shall I for my dinner. I
must go. Oh, by the way, did you lose much altogether?”
“About twenty-five pounds.”
“Is it, is it”--began the Babe. “I mean, are you in a hole? If so, I
wish you’d let me lend you some money. Why shouldn’t you? No? Are you
sure you don’t want some? It’s no use receiving unpleasant letters from
one’s father, when there’s no need. Well as you like. Good-night. Come
round and look me up some time: I’m on the next stair-case.”
Feltham followed him to the door.
“I can’t tell you what I feel,” he said huskily, “but I am not
ungrateful. Half an hour ago you asked me to shake hands with you. Will
you shake hands with me?”
“Why, surely,” said the Babe.
XIX.--IN THE FIFTIES.
He sailed his little paper boats,
And when the folk thought scorn of that,
He spudded up the waiting worm
And yearned towards the master’s hat.
HOTCH-POTCH VERSES.
The Babe went off to dress for dinner much relieved in mind. Now that
it was over he confessed to himself that he had been quite certain
that Feltham had cheated, but that he should own up to it, was fine,
and the Babe who considered himself totally devoid of anything which
could possibly be construed into moral courage, respected him for it.
He also registered a vow that never to the crack of doom--which cracked
three days afterwards--would he play unlimited Marmara again, and told
himself that he was not cut out for the sort of thing that he had just
been through, and that he was glad it was over. He went round at once
to tell Broxton and Anstruther what had happened, and after that shook
the whole
[Illustration: CLARE COLLEGE AND BRIDGE.]
affair from his mind, as a puppy shakes itself after being in the water.
He was, naturally, late for dinner, and Mr. Stewart who knew the value
of soup and also the habits of the Babe, had not waited. When he did
appear, he was, of course, perfectly unabashed, and took the bottom of
the table with unassuming grace.
“The psychology of punctuality,” he remarked, “is a most interesting
study. Some day I mean to study it, and I shall write a little
monograph on the subject uniform with those which Sherlock Holmes wrote
on tobacco ash and the tails of cart horses. I think there must be a
punctuality bacillus, something like a death-watch, always ticking, and
if there isn’t one, I shall invent it. It doesn’t take to me. I am too
healthy.”
“My dear Babe,” said the Stewart, “you have disappointed me. I always
hoped that you were the one person I have been looking for so long, who
has never been punctual; But you have been punctual to my knowledge
twice, once on an occasion in the Long----”
“When was that?” interrupted the Babe. “I don’t believe it.”
“On a memorable occasion. At lunch in your own rooms.”
The Babe caught Reggie’s eye, and looked away.
“Oh, yes.”
“And as Clytemnestra, you always killed Agamemnon with ruthless
punctuality. I was always hoping to hear him scream during the next
Chorus but one.”
“I did the screaming for him,” said the Babe complacently, “except on
the first night. He could only scream like an empty syphon.”
“There is nothing more tragic or blood-curdling than the scream of an
empty syphon,” said Stewart. “It shrieks to you, like a banshee of all
the whisky and soda you have drunk. The only thing that could shriek
worse would be an empty whisky bottle, and that can’t shriek at all.
If he really could scream like that, you robbed him of a chance of
greatness by screaming for him, although you screamed very well.”
“There are syphons and syphons,” said the Babe, “he screamed like an
empty but undervitalised one, which had never really been full.”
“Babe, if you talk about undervitalised syphons during fish,” said
Reggie, “you will drive us all mad, before the end of dinner.”
“Going mad,” said Mr. Stewart, “is an effort of will. I could go mad
in a minute if I wished, and the Babe certainly determined to go mad
when he was yet a boy. No offence meant, Babe. I can confidently state
that during the three years I have known him, he has never for a moment
seemed to be really sane.”
“I was perfectly sane when I settled to go in for the tripos,” said the
Babe.
“You never settled to do anything of the kind. You think you did and it
is one of your wildest delusions.”
“Secondly I was sane,” said the Babe, “when I--”
“No you weren’t,” put in Reggie.
“Reggie, don’t be like Longridge. But you are quite right. I wasn’t
sane then, though I thought I was for the moment.”
“Longridge is better, though he still has a large piece of sticking
plaster over his nose,” said Mr. Stewart. “He came to see me to-day.
He insisted on arguing with me in spite of my expostulations. When
he talks, I always want to cover him up, as one covers up a chirping
canary.”
“I wish you would do it some day. With a piece of green baize you know,
and a hole in it where the handle of the cage comes out.”
“He would continue to make confused noises within,” said Reggie.
“He always makes confused noises,” said Mr. Stewart wearily. “Confused,
ingenious, noises. Babe, tell me if that champagne is drinkable.”
The Babe drank off his glass.
“Obviously,” he said. “But it’s no use asking me: all champagne seems
to me delicious. I drink Miller’s cheapest for choice.”
A small withered don who was sitting next the Babe, and had not
previously spoken, here looked up.
“A nice, dry, light wine,” he said.
The Babe started violently, and if he had not just emptied his glass of
champagne, he would certainly have spilled it. He explained afterwards
that he really had forgotten that anyone was occupying the chair on the
right.
This curious old gentlemen, one of the few surviving specimens of this
particular type of elderly don had the classical name of Moffat, and
Mr. Stewart at once introduced him to the Babe, a ceremony which had
escaped his memory before, and Mr. Moffat who had been shivering on the
brink of conversation all dinner, decided to plunge in.
“I saw your performance of the _Agamemnon_ last week,” he said.
“I hope you enjoyed it,” said the Babe politely.
“The stage is not what it was in me young days,” said Mr. Moffat.
The Babe looked interested and waited for further criticisms, but
the old gentleman returned to his dinner without offering any. His
face looked as if it was made of cast iron, painted with Aspinall’s
buff-coloured enamel.
There was a short silence, and Mr. Stewart, looking up, saw that the
Babe was fighting like a man against an inward convulsion of laughter.
His face changed from pink to red, and a vein stood out on his usually
unwrinkled brow. Stewart knew that when the Babe had a fit of the
giggles it was, so to speak, no laughing matter, and he made things
worse by asking Mr. Moffat how his sister was. At this point the Babe
left the room with a rapid, uneven step, and he was heard to plunge
violently into the dishes outside. Stewart had been particularly
unfortunate in his choice of a subject, because what had started the
Babe off, was the very thought that Mr. Moffat’s sister was no doubt
the original Miss Moffat, and he had been rashly indulging in wild
conjectures as to what would happen if he said suddenly:
“I believe your sister doesn’t like spiders.”
Mr. Moffat had resumed the subject of the Greek play when the Babe
returned--he seemed not to have noticed his ill-mannered exit--and was
finding fault with the chorus, particularly with the leader, who, in
the person of Reggie, was sitting opposite him. Of this, however, he
had not the slightest idea.
“I call them a dowdy crew,” he said. “They were dressed like old baize
doors. Not me idea of a chorus at all. But it was all very creditable,
very creditable indeed, and we have to thank me young friend here for
a very fine performance of Clytemnestra. Why, me sister”--here the
Babe gasped for a moment like a drowning man, but recovered himself
bravely--“me sister came down next morning at breakfast, and said
she’d hardly been able to sleep a wink, hardly a wink, for thinking of
Clytemnestra.”
The Babe made a violent effort and checked himself.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, with his most engaging manner. “I hope you
will apologise to her for me.”
“Not at all, not at all,” said Mr. Moffat. “It’s me own opinion she
slept far more than she knew. But she was always nervous,”--the Babe
bit his tongue--“easily upset. A very good pheasant, Mr. Stewart, a
very good pheasant. Thank ye, yes, a glass of champagne. A glass of
wine with you, heh, heh, Clytemnestra.”
Mr. Moffat, as the Babe allowed afterwards, was a very pleasant old
gentleman. When dinner was over and he had settled himself into an
arm-chair by the fire, smoking one of Stewart’s strongest cigars, he
told several stories about the old generation of dons whom he had known.