CHAPTER V.
AT THE PANDEMONIUM CLUB.
It was Wednesday night; over forty men sat down to the house-dinner at the Pandemonium Club. As usual the dinner was recherché, for the Pandemonium chef enjoyed a world-wide reputation. It is to be feared that the attractions of the house-dinner were not the sole inducement to many of those sitting there. A house-dinner always secured a large party in the card-room afterwards, and though the Pandemonium was a celebrated dining club, it was notoriously also a gambling one. Though the Pandemonium was a gambler's paradise, and many scandals had occurred there, yet the dirty linen had been always washed at home, and the exact details of these affairs had never leaked out. Young Spooner, of the Foreign Office, Sir John Spooner's, the Warwickshire baronet, eldest son, had certainly left London as fourth secretary to the Teheran Embassy, where he still remained; while Rolls, a briefless barrister, who was fond of backing himself at the whist table, had taken his name off the books, though he had honourably paid his losses, and suddenly accepted the not over-brilliant position of an Assistant-Judgeship on the Gold Coast: pay there was high and promotion rapid, but no one had ever been known to live long enough to take a pension.
Magnums of the driest and most expensive champagne seemed to be the favourite beverage. But the whisters as a rule drank claret, in anticipation of the more serious business that was sure to follow the weekly house-dinner. Captains Spotstroke and Pool were equally careful; the rest of those present drank freely. The elaborate dessert was followed by a general move. Old Sir Peter Growler and Canon Drivel, D.D., retired to the smoke-room, where they retailed their old, but exceedingly improper anecdotes, to a select circle of the very youngest men. In the billiard-room, pool at half sovereign lives, was commenced, and promised to run into the small hours—a sure harvest for Captains Spotstroke and Pool. In confidence it may be said that Spotstroke's little place in the south of Ireland only existed in his own imagination, his rents being entirely derived from his skill with his cue, and the certain income that he extracted from the very safe little book that he made on most of the great events of the year. A small contingent of the members hurried off to applaud the successful comic opera of the hour.
The card-room attracted its usual habitués, these sat down to whist; and if an unskilled unfortunate joined the fatal tables, he soon had reason to regret his temerity. Pound points were habitually played at the Pandemonium, and as the evening went on, though the points never varied, betting among the players and the "gallery" usually became extremely heavy. Discussions never arose at the whist tables of this rather fast club, for the players had Cavendish and Pole at their fingers' ends. General Pepper, C.B., had raised his eyes in unfeigned astonishment and horror, when an old Worcestershire baronet, his partner, once made a reference to Hoyle, and professed himself unacquainted with "the Peter." Needless to say, the Worcestershire baronet had returned to his ancestral acres a sadder but a wiser man. He showed his wisdom in giving the Pandemonium card-room a very wide berth for the rest of his days. He subsequently had the good sense to join the comic opera division, and to finish his evenings with the undeniable oysters, for which the Pandemonium is so celebrated. No one was ever seen at this well-known club after lunch time or before dinner, save a few miserable veterans, to whom perpetual whist was a necessity. The bulk of the servants even, only commenced their daily duties at dusk, while the steward never appeared till the dinner hour; but then he, poor man, had to be to the fore all night, for it was a stern rule in the card-room that I O U's were never seen, the play being always for ready money, in notes and gold. Mr. Levison, the amiable steward (originally from Hamburg), had a very Pactolus ready for the accommodation, for a consideration, of his numerous masters, in his iron safe. Levison's relations think he will cut up well at his death; Levison's relations are right.
It is one in the morning. Though it is in the height of summer the Pandemonium card-room is cool; they burn wax candles here, and gas is absolutely banished from this particular chamber of the club, where fortunes are sometimes lost and won. In most club card-rooms smoking is not permitted, but at the Pandemonium it is the fashion to smoke everywhere. One whist table only is at work; General Pepper and three old hands of the same kidney are hard at it. The four old men rub their blear old eyes at the conclusion of each deal, and then pull down their faultless cuffs over their eager and bony old hands. The card table profitably occupies some six to eight hours daily of these old fellows' attention. There is not much harm in it after all. Probably none of them are very much the better or very much the worse at the end of the year; their sole ambition is the saving of a game, particularly when there is a good "gallery" to admire their efforts. One dreaded Nemesis awaits these men—the inevitable day when memory will begin to fail, and they shall trump their partner's best card. Or the still more horrible apprehension of dimness of sight; for a pair of wicked old eyes will not last for ever; then the unhappy old player will begin to revoke, and find himself perforce relegated to "bumble-puppy," or to whiskey-and-water and solemn slumbers in the smoke -room, or, more horrible still, the prolonged society of Sir Peter Growler and Canon Drivel, D.D.
Rule XXXV. of the club states that "Cards, chess and billiards may be played. The sum played for shall not exceed one pound points; no play is permitted after two a.m." Rule XXXVI. says, "No game of hazard shall on any account be played in the club-house." Rule XXXVII. sternly goes on to assert that "any deviation from the last two rules shall be attended with expulsion." Truly good and moral regulations. But these Draconic laws are, unfortunately, a dead letter. Nothing is said in them about bets. As in all clubs, only members enter the card-room; and most of the members come to "flutter," as they term it, and to "flutter" heavily.
In the centre of the room is an oval table; some dozen men are sitting at it; as many more stand behind their chairs. Two many-branched candelabra, holding wax lights, brilliantly illuminate the game. Young Lamb, who six months ago ran a "tick" for "tuck" at Eton, and trembled coram pædagogo, sits, his eyes bloodshot, as, with nails driven into his palms, he watches, in an anguish of excitement, the movements of the dealer. Young Lamb's big cigar has been out long ago; but he pulls hard at it, wholly unaware of the fact. It is easy enough to distinguish, among those who smoke at least, the more innocent from the habitual gamblers; the cigars of these latter, even at the most exciting crises, are steadily smoked at a uniform rate, while the new hand is continually taking a light, as often blowing sudden vast clouds, or his cigar all unknown to him goes out, as has been described. Your young player, too, sits with his feet tucked tightly under his chair; he never moves them, and consequently suffers much from that hitherto undescribed disease—that awful pain across the knees, which, for want of a better name, may be called "gamblers' rheumatism." Are you quite sure you have never suffered from this rather common disorder, gentle reader, at least, if you be of the male sex? Perhaps you may remember having occasionally walked home through the rain, utterly cleared out, without even the needful silver for a cab, with a dry throat, and finding out for the first time what "gamblers' rheumatism" really means. If so, it is to be hoped that, wise man as you are, the first attack of this disorder was also your last. But at the Pandemonium matters never went to the extremity of a member suffering the degradation of having to walk home in the rain. Was not kind Mr. Levison ever to the fore, with his neat little rouleaux of sovereigns, and his fat pocket-book full of new and crisp bank-notes? Levison, as he sat at the little table in the corner, on which were writing materials and many packs of new cards, never refused a loan in so many words. "I wouldn't go on if I were you, sir; the luck's dead against you to-night; I wouldn't go on, indeed I wouldn't." This was his invariable formula. It meant that the astute Hebrew declined to do business on any terms. No one ever argued with Levison; all understood that this particular phrase was final. The unhappy applicant was naturally obliged to temporarily retire from the game, at all events for that night. No man would have been idiot enough to have asked a loan from a fellow player; that would have been quite contrary to the unwritten code of ethics of the Pandemonium Club: fathers have flinty hearts, but no fathers are so proverbially flinty-hearted as the fathers of the card-room.
Among the players were the usual club habitués. They are much the same everywhere, the only difference being their clothes. The viveurs at the Pandemonium, in their faultless evening dress; the gommeux at Monte Carlo, in their tall collars and their shiny boots; the Bohemians, in their tobacco-scented and eccentric garments; or the thieves playing at sixpenny loo in St. Luke's—all these people are at heart the same. But we must not class in this unclean category Lord Spunyarn and his friend Haggard, who were both playing at the big table. Haggard merely played for the excitement, and Spunyarn because it was a lesser bore to play than to look on.