His face fell at that. “I—I—can’t refer to my people,” he said, “I shouldn’t like them to know what I was doing.”
I saw a little tear come into his eye as he spoke, and, knowing what I did, that nearly set me off. So I said, “Won’t you have a glass of wine?” And I poured out a big glass of port, and I put the bread and cheese before him on the bar.
It was the only way I could do it.
He knew what I meant, and the tears trickled right down his nose. “Thank you,” he said, and his voice was so husky he could scarcely speak.
It upset me so terribly that I had to go into the parlour, so that he shouldn’t see me cry. I am an awful goose in that way—anything that is pathetic or miserable brings a gulp into my throat and the tears into my eyes in a minute.
I left him alone with the bread and cheese for a good ten minutes, and then I went back. He was evidently all the better for the meal, for he had got back the old spirits and began to smile and chatter away quite pleasantly.
“I’ll speak to my husband when he comes back, Mr. Bright,” I said. “I’m sure, if he can, he will let you have the place.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Beckett,” he said; and then he told me his story. He was a young fellow, the son of a professional gentleman with a large family—gentlefolks, but not very well off. When he was eighteen he went into an office in the City, and after a time, being quick at figures and clever, he got two hundred pounds a year. Unfortunately, he spent his evenings in a billiard-room at the West-end, where there were a very fast set of men, and among them a lot of betting men. Charley Bright took to betting, but only in small sums, and he used to play billiards for money; and what with one thing and another, and stopping out late at night, he got to neglect his business, to be late in the morning, and to make mistakes, and all that sort of thing.
But what ruined him was winning a thousand pounds. There was a horse running for the Derby that had been a favourite at one time and had gone back to fifty to one, I think, or something like that. At any rate, Mr. Bright, who had won twenty pounds over a race, put it all on this horse at one thousand pounds to twenty pounds. This was long before the race was run, and after a time everybody thought this horse had gone wrong, and Bright thought he had lost his money.
He had settled down again to business, and was getting more careful and not going to the billiard-room so much, when Derby Day came and the horse won!