"Don't badger me, Liz, for God's sake I am almost torn to pieces as it is. You ought to comfort me, and try and make things better for me."
"Ah, if I could! If I knew how to, how gladly would I! Why not confide entirely in me, Alf? Who can have a better right to your confidence that the girl that loves you with all her heart and soul?--as I do, Alf, my dear! Come now, tell me all. Who knows? Something good may come of it. What's your trouble?"
"Money."
"Yes, I know that; and that you owe Mr. Sheldrake more than you can pay. Tell me how it all came about, dear."
So by many little endearing ways she coaxed him to tell her the whole of his miserable story. How, excited by the glowing accounts in the papers of the easy manner in which fortunes could be made on the turf, he had commenced to bet, a few shillings at the time at first; how he attended races, and how one unfortunate day he won a few pounds, and came home flushed with the idea that he had found the philosopher's stone; how little by little he had been led on, with the inevitable result of losing more than he could afford; how on one important race, when the prophets and tipsters in every one of the papers declared--in such glowing and confident terms that it was impossible to resist the temptation of making a bold plunge for fortune--that a certain horse could not possibly lose, he had used money which did not belong to him; and how the horse came in last instead of first.
"I had to make up that money, of course," he continued; "I had to get it somehow; and I did get it--never mind in what manner. You can imagine what I suffered, Liz! I thought I had fortune in my hands; and I had, but I was tricked out of it--for the whole affair was a swindle. The horse was never intended to win; and they swore it couldn't lose."
He derived comfort from the confession he was making; he took no blame to himself; and he did not, when he reached this point, tell her the story of the theft from the iron box. Then he went on to narrate how he had made Mr. Sheldrake's acquaintance, and how that gentleman had lent him money from time to time, and how misfortune continued to pursue him. He would have had his pockets filled with money over and over again if it had not been that things invariably went wrong with him just at the critical moment.
"It was from no want of judgment on my part, Liz. I had got to learn as much as any of the prophets and tipsters, and yet I could never manage to turn up trumps. I saw other fellows, who didn't know in their whole bodies as much as I knew in my little finger, make hundreds and hundreds of pounds. It only wants sticking to, Liz. I'll make all our fortunes yet; you see if I don't! There's the City and Suburban coming on; and I know something that'll open their eyes. And when I pay Mr. Sheldrake the money I owe him, I'll cut with him, if it's only to please you."
By the time he had reached the end of his recital he had recovered some of his good spirits. Lizzie listened in silence, and interrupted him only once, to ask whether he ever made any bets with Mr. Sheldrake.
"O, no," was the reply; "Sheldrake will never bet with me, Liz. Why, sometimes he tries to persuade me not to back a horse that I'm sweet on, and even tries to persuade me not to bet on races at all. 'It's a bad game, Alf,' he has said to me more than once, 'it's a bad game, unless you've got a strong bank at your back, and unless you can hold out for a long time.' Well, then, I ask him how it was he had managed to make his money; and he can't help telling me the truth. He was dead broke, Liz, in a worse fix than I'm in now--ay, a thousand times worse--he has told me so lots of times; but he stuck to it until on one race he had taken a bet of a thousand pounds to ten, and his horse won. There he was, all right in a minute. He was a made man directly the horse passed the winning-post. He told me how he threw his hat in the air, and how he almost danced for joy. Then the money began to roll in. That's how it is, Liz. You've only got to stick to it long enough, and keep your heart up."