Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/129

 gaming-room. I daresay, M. D——, the superintendent, finds it suits his lungs better than the most bracing mountain atmosphere, and I suppose goes to Baden or Spa for his holiday. However, here I see the whole garden lit up with these trumpery illuminated gas arches and stars, and meagre hearts, and such things, and the crowd amused and delighted like children, as they are. Qu'il est beau! Vraiment c'est magnifique! and how generous and liberal this administration! All for nothing; says old paterfamilias—the same who sits on the Times, while he reads the Daily News, and little dreams that his eldest, Charles, has already paid this generous board some five-and-twenty napoleons "on the red," which alone would defray the cost of several of these festivities. But when the band begins the last galop with éclat and animation, and some half a dozen cheap Bengal lights are stuck in the trees, poor innocent trees! and made to fizz and blaze, then the enthusiasm bursts out; a perfect roar of childish delight rises, and we hear again how "beau," how "magnifique," this conduct is on the part of the administration. I am far from joining in these praises; I think them shabby and contemptible to a degree, with their few jets of gas, and their newspapers, and their chairs, for which nearly every one has to pay more or less handsomely. Nay, I have discovered that there is not a young girl, the most blushing, blooming, and innocent, who comes here, that does not coax papa for three florins or so, "just to try my luck, my dear," and which is swept into the hands of these monsters. Now, even Thomas, the valet, and poor Cox, the ladies' maid, they have stolen up and contributed their two hard earned gulden. Ah, M. D, with the pinched nose and the drum-tight skin, decent and respectable as you are, gérant en chef of the company, or what you call yourself, do you think that if we had you in England, you would not be committed for trial summarily, and your correct demeanour would only go to influence the verdict of the jury. This fellow, I can see, observes the look of dislike with which I measure him—there is a rapport in these things as well as in likings—and I can see he is thinking, "You are coming into our net, my boy; we shall strip you, and that will teach you not to be offensive to the administration. You want a lesson."

Talking to Grainger last night, on the only subject on which he can talk fluently, a short stumpy man with a jet, glossy, hair-dresser beard and moustache, a little hat, and coat very short, also comes up and says languidly, "How do, Grainger?" He then sat down in front of us, leant back, drawing at his cigar with half-closed eyes, and moving his cane up and down between his knees in a sort of slow dance.

"Well, D'Eyncourt," said Grainger, "I went back to those infernal tables, in spite of the advice of my good friend, which I had determined to follow."

"Pretended to determine to follow," he answered, with a slow drawl. "Tell the truth always, and shame—our friends inside yonder."

I never saw a face I disliked more, it was so tallowy, and then the little eyes were quite flat and oval, and exactly of the pattern we see in a pig. I was going to say "cat;" but the head had not the character which a cat has. He had a sort of Turkish air, and I had often remarked him as he looked at ladies passing by, with an inert blinking, as though he were saying, "I bring you to me; if I chose to exert myself, you could not resist, but you are not worth it." He was a solitary man, though sometimes I saw him seated with a family of girls about him, his head back, his pig's eyes blinking at them, the words dropping languidly from his mouth, as who should say, "I just serve you out a few marbles, you are not worth more, and mind—I am doing this to amuse myself."

He had been a traveller, and the glossy locks were said to take a good deal of time to keep in that rich and glossy state.

"You say very queer things," said Grainger. "Only that we know you."

"No you don't; I want no excuse of that sort. I say what I like."

"Then some one will be punishing you one of these days."

The only answer was a sleepy look of contempt, which seemed to make Grainger uneasy.

"My friend here," he said, "believes in systems; my friend Austen, who has come here for his health."

The other never looked at me a second, or seemed to acknowledge this ambiguous introduction. "You have always played on a system," he drawled out, "and with such success!"

"I never lost, but when I did. Curse them all! They are the devil's own mousetraps and spring-guns."

"You know best about him," said the other. "But you have stumbled on a truth for once—of course too late. You point a moral here; the good show you to their sons as a warning. If I was the