Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/322

312 . This gambling makes us eat all kinds of dirt; and I give you my honour, if I was to insult you in the most degrading way, we would have you returning when you had lost the last coin, with a 'Grainger, do let me have that money I returned to you to-day.' No, my poor man, I wouldn't like to see you so low as that. So just keep it, at least for a few hours."

That happy hour may come; for surely there are not special victims selected whom the world shall persecute from beginning to the end. Now, to go to bed, and get some soft sleep, which I sigh for, and yet—it is too early. After all, there is nothing so much to elevate me, a few wretched louis got back out of the vast total all melted away. The luck may turn to-morrow. But it is really like being elated at surmounting a small hill, with the Alps, and Mont Blanc itself, rising beyond. Ah! I should have stayed on, as Grainger said, and backed my luck. If we do not back our luck, it will not back us. I am getting restless, and shall go out for a stroll in the cool air.

What was I to do? Yes, what was I to do? I could not live on, under this horrible, restless, undecided condition of existence. If I could but tear myself from the fatal edge of the precipice—but what would be before me then? Return to disgrace and certain ruin—strange to say, there was one thing I shrank from, the terrible suspense, the journey between—the flutter and impatience of that would be worse than death, worse than what was to come in the end. At the bottom of the gardens and outside the terrace—those gardens which are kept up by these infernal decorators, and in which some of my lost gold will furnish wages for gardeners and flowers—I say, at the bottom of this devilish pasture runs the road, and on the other side of that, larger more retired walks and grounds, with the great view of the hills and the broad open country, opening out fresh and innocent, as if they did not, with the air, benefit by man's crimes and villanies. But this hypocrisy would not pass upon me, and I knew that the vile, devilishly got gambler's money had cleared away the trees, had planted others, and had cut artfully winding walks up the sides of the hills. Nature indeed! Was not that the last touch of satanic craft? . . .. There was here a sort of retirement; oh! would to Heaven it had been utter loneliness and desolation, cut off from the gangs of smooth and idle chatterers, who come smirking by, and in their mean cowardly way get vile and sinful benefits out of what their pitiful hearts have not courage, or are ashamed of their fellow Grundys, to face or touch. What a miserably contemptible crew! So sneaking and cowardly! Mrs. This, Mr. That, so genteelly good, and yet when judgment comes to be nicely determined, more responsible for this mean compounding, than poor struggling wretches who make no pretence, but who would do right had they strength. Surely they and the band of swindlers, who hold this place, are the guilty ones. Never fear, never fear, they will be reckoned with in good time and to the last farthing—I pledge my poor tortured soul for that. Their gathering up of skirts and complacent interchange of suitable reprobation over the tumbler, and on the steps of the wells, with officially pious lords, aye, and even bishops and clergymen, shall not save them. Health, indeed! Ordered the waters! Must come! I thought the good and the officially pious were to sacrifice health, strength, wealth, life itself, in the holy cause of principle, but that is their concern, as they will find out one of these fine morning, or perhaps when the dark, never-ending night is closing in about them. Now they will go back to their country-houses, town-houses, and at some dinner party tell what they think dramatic things, about so many notes down, so many heaps of gold "raked in by the croupier," and then, to a chorus of "Really now;" "How dreadful!" or "How exciting!" return to sip their champagne or sherry, quite pleased with their own powers of touching off a picture.

What do they care, if some agonised wrench of the heart followed that "raking in" of the croupier? What do they care, if with that heap of notes rustled away hope and happiness? From those satanic fingers came in return the hellish present of ruin, disgrace, remorse, something that would drag down home and house, and maybe death itself. That would be only too much of a blessing.  

