Part 37

"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."

"I am worried with work," he said, laughing slightly. "While others take their rest, I have to be up at my books and letters. Great wealth brings great care with it, Johnny Ludlow, and hard work as well. Good night, my lad."

Tod was pacing the room with his hands in his pockets. It was a terrible position for him to be in. Owing a hundred pounds--to put it in round numbers--for a debt of honour. No means of his own, not daring to tell his father. I mounted on the iron rail of my little bed opposite the window, and looked at him.

"Tod, what _is_ to be done?"

"For two pins I'd go and enlist in some African regiment," growled he. "Once over the seas, I should be lost to the world here, and my shame with me."

"Shame!"

"Well, and it is shame. An ordinary debt that you can't pay is bad enough; but a debt of honour----"

He stopped, and caught his breath with a sort of sob--as if there were no word strong enough to express the sense of shame.

"It will never do to tell the Pater."

"Tell _him_!" he exclaimed sharply. "Johnny, I'd cut off my right hand--I'd fling myself into the Thames, rather than bring such a blow on him."

"Well, and so I think would I."

"It would kill him as sure as we are here, Johnny. He would look upon it that I have become a confirmed gambler, and I believe the shock and grief would be such that he'd die of it. No: I have not been so particularly dutiful a son, that I should bring _that_ upon him."

I balanced myself on the bed-rail. Tod paced the carpet slowly.

"No, never," he repeated, as if there had not been any pause. "I would rather die myself."

"But what is to be done?"

"Heaven knows! I wish the Pells had been far enough before they had invited us up."

"I wish you had never consented to play with the lot at all, Tod. You might have stood out from the first."

"Ay. But one glides into these things unconsciously. Johnny, I begin to think Crayton is just a gambler, playing to win, and nothing better."

"Playing for his bread. That is, for the things that constitute it. His drink, and his smoke, and his lodgings, and his boots, and his rings. Old Brandon said it. As to his dinners, he generally gets them at friends' houses."

"Old Brandon said it, did he?"

"Why, I told you so the same day. And you bade me shut up."

"Do you know what they want me to do, Johnny? To sign a post-obit bond for two hundred, or so, to be paid after my father's death. It's true. Crayton will let me off then."

"And will you do it?" I cried, feeling that my eyes blazed as I leaped down.

"No, I _won't_: and I told them so to-night. That's what the quarrel was about. 'Every young fellow does it whose father lives too long and keeps him out of his property,' said that Temply. 'Maybe so; I won't,' I answered. Neither will I. I'd rather break stones on the road than speculate upon the good Pater's death, or anticipate his money in that manner to hide my sins."

"Gusty Pell ought to help you."

"Gusty says he can't. Fabian, I believe, really can't; he is in difficulties of his own: and sometimes, Johnny, I fancy Gus is. Crayton fleeces them both, unless I am mistaken. Yes, he's a sharper; I see through him now. I want him to take my I O U to pay him as soon as I can, and he knows I would do it, but he won't do that. There's two o'clock."

It was of no use sitting up, and I began to undress. The question reiterated itself again and again--what was to be done? I lay awake all night thinking, vainly wishing I was of age. Fanciful thoughts crossed my mind: of appealing to rich old Pell, and asking him to lend the money, not betraying Gusty and the rest by saying what it was wanted for; of carrying the story to Miss Deveen, and asking her; and lastly, of going to old Brandon, and getting _him_ to help. I grew to think that I _would_ do this, however much I disliked it, and try Brandon; that it lay in my duty to do so.

Worn and haggard enough looked Tod the next morning. He had sat up nearly all night. When breakfast was over, I started for the Tavistock, whispering a word to Tod first.

"Avoid the lot to-day, Tod. I'll try and help you out of the mess."

He burst out laughing in the midst of his perplexity. "_You_, Johnny! what next?"

"Remember the fable of the lion and the mouse."

"But you can never be the mouse in this, you mite of a boy! Thank you all the same, Johnny: you mean it well."

"Can I see Mr. Brandon?" I asked at the hotel, of a strange waiter.

"Mr. Brandon, sir? He is not staying here."

"Not staying here!"

"No, sir, he left some days ago."

"But I thought he was coming back again."

"So I believe he is, sir. But he has not come yet."

"Do you know where he is?"

"At Brighton, sir."

It was about as complete a floorer as I ever wished to get. All the way along, I had been planning which way to break it to him. I turned from the door, whistling and thinking. Should I go after him to Brighton? I had the money, and the time, why should I not do so? Heaven alone knew how much depended upon Tod's being released from trouble; Heaven alone knew what desperate course he might take in his shame, if not released from it.

Dropping a note to Tod, saying I should be out for the day, and getting a porter to take it up, I made the best of my way to the nearest Brighton station, and found a train just starting. Brighton was a large place, and they could not tell me at the Tavistock what hotel Mr. Brandon was staying at; except that one of the waiters "thought" it might be the Old Ship. And that's where I first went, on arrival.

No. No one of the name of Brandon was at the Old Ship. So there I was, like an owl in a desert, wondering where to go next.

And how many hotels and inns I tried before I found him, it would be impossible to remember now. One of the last was up Kemp Town way--the Royal Crescent Hotel.

"Is Mr. Brandon staying here?"

"Mr. Brandon of Warwickshire? Yes, sir."

It was so very unexpected an answer after all the failures, that I hardly believed my own ears. Mr. Brandon was not well, the waiter added: suffering from cold and sore throat--but he supposed I could see him. I answered that I must see him; I had come all the way from London on purpose.

Old Brandon was sitting in a long room, with a bow-window looking out on the sea; some broth at his elbow, and a yellow silk handkerchief resting cornerwise on his head.

"Mr. Ludlow, sir," said the waiter. And he dropped the spoon into the broth, and stared at me as if I were an escaped lunatic.

"Why!--you! What on earth brings _you_ here, Johnny Ludlow?"

To tell him what, was the hardest task I'd ever had in my life. And I did it badly. Sipping spoonfuls of broth and looking hard at me whilst he listened, did not help the process. I don't know how I got it out, or how confused was the way I told him that I wanted a hundred pounds of my own money.

"A hundred pounds, eh?" said he. "You are a nice gentleman, Johnny Ludlow!"

"I am very sorry, sir, to have to ask it. The need is very urgent, or I should not do so."

"What's it for?" questioned he.

"I--it is to pay a debt, sir," I answered, feeling my face flush hot.

"Whose debt?"

By the way he looked at me, I could see that he knew as plainly as though I had told him, that it was not my debt. And yet--but for letting him think it was mine, he might turn a deaf ear to me. Old Brandon finished up his broth, and put the basin down.

"You are a clever fellow, Johnny Ludlow, but not quite clever enough to deceive me. You'd no more get into such debt yourself, than I should. I have a better opinion of you than that. Who has sent you here?"

"Indeed, sir, I came of my own free will. No one knows, even, that I have come. Mr. Brandon, I hope you will help me: it is almost a matter of life or death."

"You are wasting words and time, Johnny Ludlow."

And I felt I was. Felt it hopelessly.

"There's an old saying, and a very good one, Johnny--Tell the whole truth to your lawyer and doctor. I am neither a lawyer nor a doctor: but I promise you this much, that unless you tell me the truth of the matter, every word of it, and explain your request fully and clearly, you may go marching back to London."

There was no help for it. I spoke a few words, and they were quite enough. He seemed to grasp the situation as by magic, and turned me, as may be said, inside out. In five minutes he knew by heart as much of it as I did.

"So!" said he, in his squeaky voice--ten times more squeaky when he was vexed. "Good! A nice nest you have got amongst. Want him to give post-obit bonds, do they! Which _is_ Todhetley--a knave or a fool?"

"He has refused to give the bonds, I said, sir."

"Bonds, who's talking of bonds?" he retorted. "For playing, _I_ mean. He must have been either a knave or a fool, to play till he owed a hundred pounds when he knew he had not the means to pay."

"But I have explained how it was, sir. He lost, and then played on, hoping to redeem his losses. I think Crayton had him fast, and would not let him escape."

"Ay. Got him, and kept him. That's your grand friend, the Honourable, Johnny Ludlow. There: give me the newspaper."

"But you will let me have the money, sir?"

"Not if I know it."

It was a woeful check. I set on and begged as if I had been begging for life: saying I hardly knew what. That it might save Tod from a downhill course--and spare grief to the poor old Squire--and pain to me. Pain that would lie on my mind always, knowing that I possessed the money, yet might not use it to save him.

"It's of no use, Johnny. I have been a faithful guardian to you, and done well by your property. Could your dead father look back on this world and see the income you'll come into when you are of age, he would know I speak the truth. You cannot suppose I should waste any portion of it, I don't care how slight a one, in paying young men's wicked gambling debts."

I prayed him still. I asked him to put himself in my place and see if he would not feel as I felt. I said that I should never--as I truly believed--have an opportunity of spending money that would give me half the pleasure of this, or do half the good. Besides, it was only a loan: Tod was sure to repay it when he could. No: old Brandon was hard as flint. He got up and rang the bell.

"We'll drop it, Johnny. What will you take? Have you had anything since breakfast?"

"No, sir. But I don't want anything."

"Bring up dinner for this young gentleman," he said, when the waiter appeared. "Anything you have that's _good_. And be quick about it, please."

They brought up a hastily prepared dinner: and very good it was. But I could scarcely eat for sorrow. Old Brandon, nursing himself at the opposite end of the table, the yellow handkerchief on his head, looked at me all the while.

"Johnny Ludlow, do you know what I think--that you'd give away your head if it were loose. It's a good thing you have me to take care of you."

"No, sir, I should not. If you would let me have this hundred pounds--it is really only ninety-two, though--I would repay it with two hundred when I came of age."

"Like the simpleton you are."

"I think I would give half my money, Mr. Brandon, to serve Todhetley in this strait. We are as brothers."

"No doubt you would: but you've not got it to give, Johnny. You can let him fight his own battles."

"And I would if he were able to fight them: but he is not able; it's an exceptional case. I must go back to London, and try there."

Old Brandon opened his eyes. "How?"

"I think perhaps Miss Deveen would let me have the money. She is rich and generous--and I will tell her the whole truth. It is a turning-point in Todhetley's life, sir: help would save him."

"How do you know but he'd return to the mire? Let him have this money, and he might go on gambling and lose another hundred. Perhaps hundreds at the back of it."

"No, sir, that he never would. He may go deeper into the mire if he does not get it. Enlist, or something."

"Are you going already, Johnny?"