“This was Thursday, and I was going to pay the four notes that were due at once, when it suddenly occurred to me that Saturday’s game with Dean College might win me some more money if I could get several bets. Accordingly I saved the money, and took it over to Dean. I succeeded in staking it all, and I felt confident of the result, for we had never been beaten by Dean. To my amazement we lost the game, and my case was utterly hopeless. Every cent was gone, and I had no means of gaining more.
“Every resource had been exhausted, and I had only to wait for the crash that was sure to come. I was dazed and benumbed at the prospect. There was nothing for me to do. Every vestige of hope had left me. I was simply ruined. When I came back I started for my room with no special purpose in mind, when I saw your door ajar. As I told you, Ridley was in the hall. He was filling your pitcher at the back of the building and did not see me. I scarcely knew why I came in. When Ridley closed the door, I began to look about. I did not expect your return, for I supposed you were still living in town. I took my time, therefore, and was examining the contents of your desk when I heard you in the hall.”
CHAPTER XXII
AN UNEXPECTED FRIEND
Howard paused and looked up at Ray with a dazed, hopeless expression of face. Neither Ray nor I spoke a word for several minutes. We had listened to Howard’s narrative with mingled feelings of horror and pity. Neither of us had known him except as a college mate; and while we had never been attracted to him, we had not, until recently, found any cause to dislike him. We knew him to be one of a fast crowd, and had always avoided a chance of close companionship. Of his gambling proclivities we had known a little and suspected more.
Rumors had reached us of the card playing that was carried on in his room during Junior year; but we had supposed that this was broken up, and knew nothing of his joining a crowd of town men. His confession was therefore a terrible shock to us, revealing as it did a far greater familiarity with vicious habits than we ever suspected him of, and showing to what depths he had sunk. We could scarcely believe our ears, and only the convicting circumstances under which we had found him in Ray’s room made the story credible.
Ray was looking at him fixedly, his face clearly indicating the strange feelings that filled his breast.
“But, Howard,” he said at length, “I am still unable to understand this last act of yours. Your case is desperate, I own, but what could have brought you in here? To steal, you say. Yet, it is hard to believe that you have sunk so low.”
“Understand it! Of course you can’t understand it,” burst out Howard. “You must go through all that I have to understand it. You must yield first to one temptation and then to another, and so on down, down, down, till there seems to be nothing left to stand on; till you have lost all pride, all self respect, and care for nothing, till you are perfectly hopeless, and ruin and wretchedness stare you in the face; till you tremble instinctively at every footstep, fearing that exposure is on your track, till everybody seems to point you out as a guilty, contemptible wretch, and you grow reckless, desperate, and don’t care where you go or what you do; then, then you will understand this mad act, and then you will understand what I feel now.”