Johnny Ludlow First Series Part 90

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 s.h.i.+rk 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, ecarte, loo, or what. Tod, as usual, had been losing frightfully: I could see that.

Gusty was smoking; Crayton, cool as a cuc.u.mber, 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 pa.s.sion. 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."