Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/319

Charles Dickens] bank, instead of getting a letter of credit on a London one. I wish, too, that you had adhered to the letter of my instructions, as the merchant reasonably complains of my raising the price I proposed. You will please to return him the difference at once, and I will give you a useful little business hint, which may be valuable. That insignificant rise in price which you squeezed out of him, may cost me the loss of thousands. Do you not see? And above all, I conjure you be most cautious about the gambling: I say this most seriously—for the moment I read the fine speeches and sentiments, in some diary or letter of yours, I will own to you I began to have misgivings. Get the letter of credit at once, and send it to me by this night's post,"

Now this is falling low indeed! So he suspects me; he does not trust me. How dare he be so insolent, because he assisted me with his few pounds? Restore my health indeed! He has destroyed it—ruined me for ever—I feel my heart and nerves worn away—weary and inflamed to a degree I shall never get over. A sword seems to have entered into me. O that I had never come here, and had sunk down, out of this vile world—as I was then. I must go into Frankfort, and take my load with me.

I just meet Grainger, who looks at me curiously, and with an air of insolent inquiry as it seems to me.

"Down in the mouth," he says: "I told you there was no beating the bank. Heavily hit, I see."

My humiliation and despair could not let me stand this, and I said, passing on,

"Nothing of the kind."

"Are you serious? What! Been winning on the system, eh?"

"Neither one nor the other," I said, angrily. "I am not well, and do not want to be catechised."

"My good friend," he said, "it is only the regular epidemic of the place. The losing sickness. Bless you, why keep up subterfuges with me? Surely I know it all. A croupier told me. You lost every halfpenny last night. You haven't anything to bring you back, you know you haven't."

Here was humiliation.

"Now don't," he said; "don't vent it on me; but let us see what is to be done. As for a pauper like me lending you the money——"

"Indeed, I should scorn to ask it——"

"It would be no use, I am telling you. So I tell you fairly. But I tell you what, I give you this valuable bit of advice. Leave by to-night's train, or by the four train, which is the earliest."

"I want no advice," I said; "and pray, if I have lost everything, how am I to go? O God help me, Grainger, what am I saying or doing? I am wretched—ruined—and death is the only thing to think of."

He looked at me steadily a moment.

"I once was precisely in that way, but no one pitied me, and I got over it, and saw what a ridiculous thing it would be to be talking of death. But, my good friend, you must do something. The banker will advance you the money on the strength of your connexion with Mr. Bernard."

"That would be robbery and gambling too; I have no right to borrow what I could not pay."

"Well, then I tell you seriously, there is only one other course; you will scout it, but it is the only rational one. You must get back some of your money."

"Get it back from them! Why they have no hearts—no pity."

"You talk like a child—I mean by play."

I recoiled.

"Go near that cursed board again? no, never! never! I shall die first."

"Die for sixty or seventy pounds! I tell you I am serious. Take five naps; you have lost so much, it will add five more to the lost. Those five may bring you thirty—I don't think more—but I tell you solemnly, it is the only chance, and it has happened again and again. I know it is a desperate chance; but you had better think of it."

He has left me, and I am thinking of it, and shall think of it as I am in the train. O, but there is but one devouring feeling at my heart, to fly at once—this moment—from this place. The very name "kursaal" makes my pulse go. The very look of their red palace is as the sight of a drop to a murderer.

Seven o'clock.—Returned from Frankfort. Alone in the carriage all the way—alone with a lump of lead laid on my heart, which yet went heaving and heaving wearily—alone with my hot damp wrists and galloping pulse. That imprisonment in a railway carriage, with a misery at your heart, is the greatest of agonies. I would have given worlds to get free, walk about, leave myself behind, but I seemed to be bound down by steel bands. It was hours long—no hope before me! How shall I tell her—