There was a billiard-room he used to go to for a long time, where he had first met the company that had been his ruin; but, though he had spent plenty of money there once, the landlord came to him one day and said, “Look here, Bright, I don’t want to hurt your feelings; but a lot of the gentlemen that come here don’t like to see you always hanging about the room. It annoys them. I’ll give you a sovereign to stop away.”
The landlord meant it kindly, perhaps; but the young fellow told me that it hurt him dreadfully. Of course it wasn’t nice for these people to see a seedy fellow, who had lost all his money through their bad example, hanging about the place. He didn’t take the sovereign, but he never went near the place again, and the people who knew him lost sight of him altogether.
He came down to our village and took a room, and tried to make a little money in a very curious way. He still thought that he was a good judge of racing, and knew a good deal about the turf. So, being desperate, he hit on a scheme.
He put an advertisement in a sporting paper, and called himself by a false name, and said that he was in a great stable secret, and for thirteen stamps he would send the absolute winner of a certain race. He told me that he had the letters sent to the post office, and he got over sixty answers, with thirteen stamps in them, and he sent in reply the name of the horse he thought was sure to win. Unfortunately, the very day after he had sent his horse off it was scratched, which he told me meant being struck out of the list of runners, so that while his customers were reading his letter, which gave them the certain winner, they would see in the paper that the horse would not even run.
He said that settled him for giving tips from that address, and he didn’t know where else to go, for he had paid his landlady nearly all his money, and bought a pair of boots, which he wanted badly, and so he hadn’t even the money to pay his railway fare anywhere else, and he didn’t know whatever he should do, for he was now absolutely starving.
“Why don’t you write to your father?” I said. “Surely he wouldn’t let you starve.”
“No,” he said, “I will starve; but I won’t ask him for help again, after what he said to me. I will go back home when I am earning my own living and am independent, and not before.”
When Harry came back, I told him about Charley Bright, and Harry was as sorry as I was. He said that it was a very sad tale, and no doubt the young fellow had had a lesson, and if he could give him a helping hand he would.
So it was settled that Charley Bright was to come and be our first billiard-marker. We couldn’t afford to give him much salary, of course, because really it was more for the convenience of the gentlemen staying in the house and visitors than anything, and we couldn’t hope to do very much at first. But he was quite satisfied, and, I think, what he looked forward to were the regular meals. You may be sure that when I sent up his dinner, I cut him as much meat as I could put on his plate, and I let him know if he wanted any more he was to send down for it.
I don’t think I had enjoyed my own dinner so much for many a long day, as I did the day that I knew that poor fellow was enjoying his upstairs. Oh, he was so dreadfully thin and delicate-looking! He wore a light grey overcoat—a relic of his old racing days, he said—and it hung on him like a sack. He had no undercoat on; he had parted with that weeks before, he told me.