CAPTAIN VIGNOLLES ENTERTAINS HIS FRIENDS.

Mountjoy, when he reached Captain Vignolles’s rooms, was received apparently with great indifference.  “I didn’t feel at all sure you would come.  But there is a bit of supper, if you like to stay.  I saw Moody this morning, and he said he would look in if he was passing this way.  Now sit down and tell me what you have been doing since you disappeared in that remarkable manner.”  This was not at all what Mountjoy had expected, but he could only sit down and say that he had done nothing in particular.  Of all club men, Captain Vignolles would be the worst with whom to play alone during the entire evening.  And Mountjoy remembered now that he had never been inside four walls with Vignolles except at a club.  Vignolles regarded him simply as a piece of prey whom chance had thrown up on the shore.  And Moody, who would no doubt show himself before long, was another bird of the same covey, though less rapacious.  Mountjoy put his hand up to his breast-pocket, and knew that the fifty pounds was there, but he knew also that it would soon be gone.

Even to him it seemed to be expedient to get up and at once to go.  What delight would there be to him in playing piquet with such a face opposite to him as that of Captain Vignolles, or with such a one as that of old Moody?  There could be none of the brilliance of the room, no pleasant hum of the voices of companions, no sense of his own equality with others.  There would be none to sympathize with him when he cursed his ill-luck, there would be no chance of contending with an innocent who would be as reckless as was he himself.  He looked round.  The room was gloomy and uncomfortable.  Captain Vignolles watched him, and was afraid that his prey was about to escape.  “Won’t you light a cigar?” Mountjoy took the cigar, and then felt that he could not go quite at once.  “I suppose you went to Monaco?”

“I was there for a short time.”

“Monaco isn’t bad, ­though there is, of course, the pull which the tables have against you.  But it’s a grand thing to think that skill can be of no avail.  I often think that I ought to play nothing but rouge et noir.”

“You?”

“Yes; I. I don’t deny that I’m the luckiest fellow going; but I never can remember cards.  Of course I know my trade.  Every fellow knows his trade, and I’m up pretty nearly in all that the books tell you.”

“That’s a great deal.”

“Not when you come to play with men who know what play is.  Look at Grossengrannel.  I’d sooner bet on him than any man in London.  Grossengrannel never forgets a card.  I’ll bet a hundred pounds that he knows the best card in every suit throughout the entire day’s play.  That’s his secret.  He gives his mind to it, ­which I can’t.  Hang it!  I’m always thinking of something quite different, ­of what I’m going to eat, or that sort of thing.  Grossengrannel is always looking at the cards, and he wins the odd rubber out of every eleven by his attention.  Shall we have a game of piquet?”

Now on the moment, in spite of all that he had felt during the entire day, in the teeth of all his longings, in opposition to all his thirst, Mountjoy for a minute or two did think that he could rise and go.  His father was about to put him on his legs again, ­if only he would abstain.  But Vignolles had the card-table open, with clean packs, and chairs at the corners, before he could decide.  “What is it to be?  Twos on the game I suppose.”  But Mountjoy would not play piquet.  He named écarte, and asked that it might be only ten shillings a game.  It was many months now since he had played a game of écarte.  “Oh, hang it!” said Vignolles, still holding the pack in his hands.  When thus appealed to Mountjoy relented, and agreed that a pound should be staked on each game.  When they had played seven games Vignolles had won but one pound, and expressed an opinion that that kind of thing wouldn’t suit them at all.  “School-girls would do better,” he said.  Then Mountjoy pushed back his chair as though to go, when the door opened and Major Moody entered the room.  “Now we’ll have a rubber at dummy,” said Captain Vignolles.

Major Moody was a gray-headed old man of about sixty, who played his cards with great attention, and never spoke a word, ­either then or at any other period of his life.  He was the most taciturn of men, and was known not at all to any of his companions.  It was rumored of him that he had a wife at home, whom he kept in moderate comfort on his winnings.  It seemed to be the sole desire of his heart to play with reckless, foolish young men, who up to a certain point did not care what they lost.  He was popular, as being always ready to oblige every one, and, as was frequently said of him, was the very soul of honor.  He certainly got no amusement from the play, working at it very hard, ­and very constantly.  No one ever saw him anywhere but at the club.  At eight o’clock he went home to dinner, let us hope to the wife of his bosom, and at eleven he returned, and remained as long as there were men to play with.  A tedious and unsatisfactory life he had, and it would have been well for him could his friends have procured on his behoof the comparative ease of a stool in a counting-house.  But, as no such Elysium was opened to him, the major went on accepting the smaller profits and the harder work of club life.  In what regiment he had been a major no one knew or cared to inquire.  He had been received as Major Moody for twenty years or more, and twenty years is surely time enough to settle a man’s claim to a majority without reference to the Army List.

“How are you, Major Moody?” asked Mountjoy.

“Not much to boast of.  I hope you’re pretty well, Captain Scarborough.”  Beyond that there was no word of salutation, and no reference to Mountjoy’s wonderful absence.

“What’s it to be: ­twos and tens?” said Captain Vignolles, arranging the cards and the chairs.

“Not for me,” said Mountjoy, who seemed to have been enveloped by a most unusual prudence.

“What! are you afraid, ­you who used to fear neither man nor devil?”

“There is so much in not being accustomed to it,” said Mountjoy.  “I haven’t played a game of whist since I don’t knew when.”

“Twos and tens is heavy against dummy,” said Major Moody.

“I’ll take dummy, if you like it,” said Vignolles.  Moody only looked at him.

“We’ll each have our own dummy, of course,” said Mountjoy.

“Just as you please,” said Vignolles.  “I’m host here, and of course will give way to anything you may propose.  What’s it to be, Scarborough?”

“Pounds and fives.  I shan’t play higher than that.”  There came across Mountjoy’s mind, as he stated the stakes for which he consented to play, a remembrance that in the old days he had always been called Captain Scarborough by this man who now left out the captain.  Of course he had fallen since that, ­fallen very low.  He ought to feel obliged to any man, who had in the old days been a member of the same club with him, who would now greet him with the familiarity of his unadorned name.  But the remembrance of the old sounds came back upon his ear; and the consciousness that, before his father’s treatment of him, he had been known to the world at large as Captain Scarborough, of Tretton.

“Well, well; pounds and fives,” said Vignolles.  “It’s better than pottering away at écarte at a pound a game.  Of course a man could win something if the games were to run all one way; but where they alternate so quickly it amounts to nothing.  You’ve got the first dummy, Scarborough.  Where will you sit?  Which cards will you take?  I do believe that at whist everything depends upon the cards, ­or else on the hinges.  I’ve known eleven rubbers running to follow the hinges.  People laugh at me because I believe in luck.  I speak as I find it; that’s all.  You’ve turned up an honor already.  When a man begins with an honor he’ll always go on with honors; that’s my observation.  I know you’re pretty good at this game, Moody, so I’ll leave it to you to arrange the play, and will follow up as well as I can.  You lead up to the weak, of course.”  This was not said till the card was out of his partner’s hand.  “But when your adversary has got ace, king, queen in his own hand there is no weak.  Well, we’ve saved that, and it’s as much as we can expect.  If I’d begun by leading a trump it would have been all over with us.  Won’t you light a cigar, Moody?”

“I never smoke at cards.”

“That’s all very well for the club, but you might relax a little here.  Scarborough will take another cigar.”  But even Mountjoy was too prudent.  He did not take the cigar, but he did win the rubber.  “You’re in for a good thing to-night, I feel as certain of it as though the money were in your pocket.”

Mountjoy, though he would not smoke, did drink.  What would they have, asked Vignolles.  There was champagne, and whiskey, and brandy.  He was afraid there was no other wine.  He opened a bottle of champagne, and Mountjoy took the tumbler that was filled for him.  He always drank whiskey-and-water himself, ­so he said, and filled for himself a glass in which he poured a very small allowance of alcohol.  Major Moody asked for barley-water.  As there was none, he contented himself with sipping Apollinaris.

A close record of the events of that evening would make but a tedious tale for readers.  Mountjoy of course lost his fifty pounds.  Alas! he lost much more than his fifty pounds.  The old spirit soon came upon him, and the remembrance of what his father was to do for him passed away from him, and all thoughts of his adversaries, ­who and what they were.  The major pertinaciously refused to increase his stakes, and, worse again, refused to play for anything but ready money.  “It’s a kind of thing I never do.  You may think me very odd, but it’s a kind of thing I never do.”  It was the longest speech he made through the entire evening.  Vignolles reminded him that he did in fact play on credit at the club.  “The committee look to that,” he murmured, and shook his head.  Then Vignolles offered again to take the dummy, so that there should be no necessity for Moody and Scarborough to play against each other, and offered to give one point every other rubber as the price to be paid for the advantage.  But Moody, whose success for the night was assured by the thirty pounds which he had in his pocket, would come to no terms.  “You mean to say you’re going to break us up,” said Vignolles.  “That’ll be hard on Scarborough.”

“I’ll go on for money,” said the immovable major.

“I suppose you won’t have it out with me at double dummy?” said Vignolles to his victim.  “But double dummy is a terrible grind at this time of night.”  And he pushed all the cards up together, so as to show that the amusement for the night was over.  He too saw the difficulty which Moody so pertinaciously avoided.  He had been told wondrous things of the old squire’s intentions toward his eldest son, but he had been told them only by that eldest son himself.  No doubt he could go on winning.  Unless in the teeth of a most obstinate run of cards, he would be sure to win against Scarborough’s apparent forgetfulness of all rules, and ignorance of the peculiarities of the game he was playing.  But he would more probably obtain payment of the two hundred and thirty pounds now due to him, ­that or nearly that, ­than of a larger sum.  He already had in his possession the other twenty pounds which poor Mountjoy had brought with him.  So he let the victim go.  Moody went first, and Vignolles then demanded the performance of a small ceremony.  “Just put your name to that,” said Vignolles.  It was a written promise to pay to Captain Vignolles the exact sum of two hundred and twenty-seven pounds on or before that day week.  “You’ll be punctual, won’t you?”

“Of course I’ll be punctual,” said Mountjoy, scowling.

“Well, yes; no doubt.  But there have been mistakes.”

“I tell you you’ll be paid.  Why the devil did you win it of me if you doubt it?”

“I saw you just roaming about, and I meant to be good-natured.”

“You know as well as any man what chances you should run, and when to hold your hand.  If you tell me about mistakes, I shall make it personal.”

“I didn’t say anything, Scarborough, that ought to be taken up in that way.”

“Hang your Scarborough!  When one gentleman talks another about mistakes he means something.”  Then he smashed down his hat upon his head and left the room.

Vignolles emptied the bottle of champagne, in which one glass was left, and sat himself down with the document in his hand.  “Just the same fellow,” he said to himself; “overbearing, reckless, pig-headed, and a bully.  He’d lose the Bank of England if he had it.  But then he don’t pay!  He hasn’t a scruple about that.  If I lose I have to pay.  By Jove, yes!  Never didn’t pay a shilling I lost in my life!  It’s deuced hard, when a fellow is on the square like that, to make two ends meet when he comes across defaulters.  Those fellows should be hung.  They’re the very scum of the earth.  Talk of welchers!  They’re worse than any welcher.  Welcher is a thing you needn’t have to do with if you’re careful.  But when a fellow turns round upon you as a defaulter at cards, there is no getting rid of him.  Where the play is all straightforward and honorable, a defaulter when he shows himself ought to be well-nigh murdered.”

Such were Captain Vignolles’s plaints to himself, as he sat there looking at the suspicious document which Mountjoy had left in his hands.  To him it was a fact that he had been cruelly used in having such a bit of paper thrust upon him instead of being paid by a check which on the morning would be honored.  And as he thought of his own career; his ready-money payments; his obedience to certain rules of the game, ­rules, I mean, against cheating; as he thought of his hands, which in his own estimation were beautifully clean; his diligence in his profession, which to him was honorable; his hard work; his late hours; his devotion to a task which was often tedious; his many periods of heart-rending loss, which when they occurred would drive him nearly mad; his small customary gains; his inability to put by anything for old age; of the narrow edge by which he himself was occasionally divided from defalcation, he spoke to himself of himself as of an honest, hard-working professional man upon whom the world was peculiarly hard.

But Major Moody went home to his wife quite content with the thirty pounds which he had won.