Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/176

166[January 16, 1869] Grainger was delighted. I don't set up to be a Puritan, as you know, Dora, and I always think of that saint with admiration, who used to play cards with a swearing and abandoned crew, and thus gradually acquired an influence over them. There again the complacency peeps out—an almost sacerdotal complacency. Precisely like a saint, am I not? But, again and again I repeat, this is all for your pretty eyes and my own ugly ones.

I went with them. I often say to myself, "On this day or on this night, let us have a little festival," when I have been good and deserve it; when I have been otherwise, I assure you I can be very stern and severe to myself. So we sat down and counted the gold, which was close on nine hundred napoleons. I own to a certain wrench and a yearning as I looked at it, and I think the amount of unconscious greediness—for we are all animals—in the three faces must have been overpowering. Two waiters afar off heard the chink—every ear learns that. They sniffed the dear metal as a vulture does carrion. Hungry gamblers looked up from their drink with ferocious envy. The owner alone was unconcerned.

"Confound the beggars! if I didn't think they'd swindle me, I'd have been as glad to have bank notes."

Here was the supper. D'Eyncourt—who to his other vices added that of gourmandise—spoke little and eat heartily. I confess to doing the same, and most gratefully do I owe my thanks to the Providence who has so restored me as to give me the power of enjoying moderately such things. What have I done to deserve these mercies, and not become like one of the worn-out beings who come here and drink with a faint hope of miraculously recovering their lost stomachs? We were very merry, Grainger specially so, and I suspected that the honest lad had helped his friend with a handful of what he had carried off. But D'Eyncourt's cat-like eyes fell on me several times, as if he was about to say something. He began, in his drawl:

"The more I see of you, Mr. Austen, the more you become a mystery to me."

I have put down some people before now, so I thought I would settle him before he went further.

"Curious," I said, "the more I see of you, the less you are a mystery; in fact, the first day I read you like a book."

Pollock laughed loud. "Hit you on the sternum, my boy, and right, too, though not flattering."

"Austen's mauleys come down hard when they do come down," said Grainger.

"What I was saying," said D'Eyncourt, in his slow impressive way (which I do envy him), as though he had not heard, as if he had stopped speaking to light his cigar, which was now all right—"what I say is, I don't quite understand your rôle—I mean the attitude you have to this bank. If you disapprove it, I should keep away—turn my back on Jericho—let the fiery sword do its work; but I certainly wouldn't shelter myself under their gorgeous roof, sit on their luxurious sofas, read their English newspapers, with such strong convictions. I'd be almost inclined to go to M. Blanc, the head of the thing, and tell him so boldly."

I was not sorry that he had begun in this fashion, and really wished to "tackle" him before them.

"I think," said I, smiling, "we can all imagine M. Blanc's polite and pleasant repartee, if any such well-meaning remonstrant were to present himself. But the fact is, I do not use their Times or their luxurious sofas and chairs; and as for their roof—well, I own to taking that barren advantage of them."

"Had you again—on the nob this time, D'Eyncourt," said the youth, who had already taken more wine than fitted him to be a nice judge of such effects.

"Do leave those low boxing metaphors aside, Mr. Pollock—at least among gentlemen. You mayn't be in such spirits to-morrow night. But"—turning to me—"you are not quixotic enough to expect that a still small voice like yours—I mean your conscience's—could make itself heard in this Babel? Have you such a sense of comical self-delusion that you can place yourself at that large doorway and turn back the mob of scoundrels, blackguards, roughs, cheats, jailbirds, lorettes—aye, and even decent men and women—with your faint expostulation? Do you tell us that?"

"No," I said, firmly; and then, as politely as I could, "but, first of all, suppose it was my whim; I am as much entitled to have that as any one here."

"Scarcely," he said. "As a rule, the gamblers never make themselves ridiculous."

"That's like having you, my friend," said the boy to me.

"But, apart from mere verbal