“No, sir,” said he; “I think not. All that I possessed in the world was depending upon the result of a certain game at écarté. If I had lost it, I should have been a beggar. If I won it, I resolutely resolved never to touch a card again—never to run the risk of experiencing a second time the mental agony I was then undergoing. I am not ashamed to confess, sir, that in such a strait I prayed to win; and I did win.”
“All I have to say, sir,” replied I, “is this: that it was uncommonly hard upon the other man.”
Good resolutions are indeed by no means uncommon among tolerably young persons in positions of pecuniary peril, such as that of Captain Lisgard. They vow their candles to this and that patron saint if they should but escape shipwreck upon the green baize this once. Master Walter's bid was confined to a few “dips,” if one may use so humble a metaphor, of which about fifty went to the pound, and even those were not offered in a penitent spirit. He would never play whist with the Landrails any more. He would never lay the long odds beyond “couters”—a foolish word he and his set used for sovereigns. He would never back himself at all when playing with “that fool Pompus”—his present partner. He would become, in short, exceedingly wise and prudent, if he should only “pull off” this present rubber. There was “life in the Mussel” yet. They were at “three all” when Pompus led his knave instead of his ten, from ten, knave, king, and only got the trick when he should have got the game.
“We shall never have another chance now,” sighed Walter, as his left-hand adversary turned up the queen. But privately he thought that fortune would not be quite so cruel as all that came to; moreover, he had an excellent hand. His fingers trembled as he arranged the long suit of clubs, headed by tierce major, and saw that he had four trumps to bring them in with.
As the game went on, however, Pompus exhibited his usual feebleness, and things began to look very black indeed. In the third round of trumps, Master Walter's memory left him sudden as an extinguished taper. It is sad to have to say it of so excellent a player, but he recollected nothing whatever, except that, if he lost that rubber, it would be an addition of three hundred pounds to the sum he already owed Captain Wobegon. It was his turn to play, and he was third hand. He had the king and ten of trumps. The ace had been played; ay, he remembered that after a struggle, and the knave too. Yes, his left-hand adversary had played the knave. Should he finesse his ten or not? That was the question, upon the decision of which depended some five hundred pounds. Whist is not always a game of pleasure. Master Walter finessed the ten. “Thousand devils!” cried Derrick with a tremendous imprecation, “why, the queen was turned up on your left, lad: you have thrown away the game.” And it was so. Walter Lisgard did not speak a word; but having compared his note-book with that of Captain Wobegon, retired into a little office out of the back drawing-room, where the secretary of the Landrails entered the members' somewhat complicated little accounts with one another in a very business-like-looking ledger. “You have had a bad night of it for you, sir,” remarked this gentleman quietly; “you generally hold your own.”
“Yes. What is the cursed total?”
“Eighteen hundred.”
“Ralph Derrick,” said Walter Lisgard, as the two walked up St James's Street towards their lodgings for bath and breakfasts, but scarcely for bed, since the morning was already far advanced—“if any horse but Menelaus wins the race, I am a ruined man.”