The Palliser Novels (567 page)

On the next morning Lady Mary received her letters. There were two lying before her plate when she came into breakfast, one from her father and the other from Silverbridge. She read that from the Duke first while Mrs. Finn was watching her. “Papa will be home on Saturday,” she said. “He declares that the people in the borough are quite delighted with Silverbridge for a member. And he is quite jocose. ‘They used to be delighted with me once,’ he says, ‘but I suppose everybody changes.’” Then she began to pour out the tea before she opened her brother’s letter. Mrs. Finn’s eyes were still on her anxiously. “I wonder what Silverbridge has got to say about the Brake Hunt.” Then she opened her letter.

“Oh; — oh!” she exclaimed, — “Frank has killed himself.”

“Killed himself! Not that. It is not so bad as that.”

“You had heard it before?”

“How is he, Mary?”

“Oh, heavens! I cannot read it. Do you read it. Tell me all. Tell me the truth. What am I to do? Where shall I go?” Then she threw up her hands, and with a loud scream fell on her knees with her head upon the chair. In the next moment Mrs. Finn was down beside her on the floor. “Read it; why do you not read it? If you will not read it, give it to me.”

Mrs. Finn did read the letter, which was very short, but still giving by no means an unfavourable account of the patient. “I am sorry to say he has broken ever so many bones, and we were very much frightened about him.” Then the writer went into details, from which a reader who did not read the words carefully might well imagine that the man’s life was still in danger.

Mrs. Finn did read it all, and did her best to comfort her friend. “It has been a bad accident,” she said, “but it is clear that he is getting better. Men do so often break their bones, and then seem to think nothing of it afterwards.”

“Silverbridge says it was his fault. What does he mean?”

“I suppose he was riding too close to Mr. Tregear, and that they came down together. Of course it is distressing, but I do not think you need make yourself positively unhappy about it.”

“Would you not be unhappy if it were Mr. Finn?” said Mary, jumping up from her knees. “I shall go to him. I should go mad if I were to remain here and know nothing about it but what Silverbridge will tell me.”

“I will telegraph to Mr. Finn.”

“Mr. Finn won’t care. Men are so heartless. They write about each other just as though it did not signify in the least whether anybody were dead or alive. I shall go to him.”

“You cannot do that.”

“I don’t care now what anybody may think. I choose to be considered as belonging to him, and if papa were here I would say the same.” It was of course not difficult to make her understand that she could not go to Harrington, but it was by no means easy to keep her tranquil. She would send a telegram herself. This was debated for a long time, till at last Lady Mary insisted that she was not subject to Mrs. Finn’s authority. “If papa were here, even then I would send it.” And she did send it, in her own name, regardless of the fact pointed out to her by Mrs. Finn, that the people at the post-office would thus know her secret. “It is no secret,” she said. “I don’t want it to be a secret.” The telegram went in the following words: “I have heard it. I am so wretched. Send me one word to say how you are.” She got an answer back, with Tregear’s own name to it, on that afternoon. “Do not be unhappy. I am doing well. Silverbridge is with me.”

On the Thursday Gerald came home from Scotland. He had arranged his little affair with Lord Percival, not however without some difficulty. Lord Percival had declared he did not understand I.O.U.’s in an affair of that kind. He had always thought that gentlemen did not play for stakes which they could not pay at once. This was not said to Gerald himself; — or the result would have been calamitous. Nidderdale was the go-between, and at last arranged it, — not however till he had pointed out that Percival, having won so large a sum of money from a lad under twenty-one years of age, was very lucky in receiving substantial security for its payment.

Gerald had chosen the period of his father’s absence for his return. It was necessary that the story of the gambling debt should be told the Duke in February. Silverbridge had explained that to him, and he had quite understood it. He, indeed, would be up at Oxford in February, and, in that case, the first horror of the thing would be left to poor Silverbridge! Thinking of this, Gerald felt that he was bound to tell his father himself. He resolved that he would do so, but was anxious to postpone the evil day. He lingered therefore in Scotland till he knew that his father was in Barsetshire.

On his arrival he was told of Tregear’s accident. “Oh, Gerald; have you heard?” said his sister. He had not as yet heard, and then the history was repeated to him. Mary did not attempt to conceal her own feelings. She was as open with her brother as she had been with Mrs. Finn.

“I suppose he’ll get over it,” said Gerald.

“Is that all you say?” she asked.

“What can I say better? I suppose he will. Fellows always do get over that kind of thing. Herbert de Burgh smashed both his thighs, and now he can move about again, — of course with crutches.”

“Gerald! How can you be so unfeeling!”

“I don’t know what you mean. I always liked Tregear, and I am very sorry for him. If you would take it a little quieter, I think it would be better.”

“I could not take it quietly. How can I take it quietly when he is more than all the world to me?”

“You should keep that to yourself.”

“Yes, — and so let people think that I didn’t care, till I broke my heart! I shall say just the same to papa when he comes home.” After that the brother and sister were not on very good terms with each other for the remainder of the day.

On the Saturday there was a letter from Silverbridge to Mrs. Finn. Tregear was better; but was unhappy because it had been decided that he could not be moved for the next month. This entailed two misfortunes on him; — first that of being the enforced guest of persons who were not, — or, hitherto had not been, his own friends, — and then his absence from the first meeting of Parliament. When a gentleman has been in Parliament some years he may be able to reconcile himself to an obligatory vacation with a calm mind. But when the honours and glory are new, and the tedium of the benches has not yet been experienced, then such an accident is felt to be a grievance. But the young member was out of danger, and was, as Silverbridge declared, in the very best quarters which could be provided for a man in such a position.

Phineas Finn told him all the politics; Mrs. Spooner related to him, on Sundays and Wednesdays, all the hunting details; while Lady Chiltern read to him light literature, because he was not allowed to hold a book in his hand. “I wish it were me,” said Gerald. “I wish I were there to read to him,” said Mary.

Then the Duke came home. “Mary,” said he, “I have been distressed to hear of this accident.” This seemed to her to be the kindest word she had heard from him for a long time. “I believe him to be a worthy young man. I am sorry that he should be the cause of so much sorrow to you — and to me.”

“Of course I was sorry for his accident,” she replied, after pausing awhile; “but now that he is better I will not call him a cause of sorrow — to me.” Then the Duke said nothing further about Tregear; nor did she.

“So you have come at last,” he said to Gerald. That was the first greeting, — to which the son responded by an awkward smile. But in the course of the evening he walked straight up to his father — “I have something to tell you, sir,” said he.

“Something to tell me?”

“Something that will make you very angry.”

Gerald told his story, standing bolt upright, and looking his father full in the face as he told it. “You lost three thousand four hundred pounds at one sitting to Lord Percival — at cards!”

“Yes, sir.”

“In Lord Nidderdale’s house?”

“Yes, sir. Nidderdale wasn’t playing. It wasn’t his fault.”

“Who were playing?”

“Percival, and Dolly Longstaff, and Jack Hindes, — and I. Popplecourt was playing at first.”

“Lord Popplecourt!”

“Yes, sir. But he went away when he began to lose.”

“Three thousand four hundred pounds! How old are you?”

“I am just twenty-one.”

“You are beginning the world well, Gerald! What is the engagement which Silverbridge has made with Lord Percival?”

“To pay him the money at the end of next month.”

“What had Silverbridge to do with it?”

“Nothing, sir. I wrote to Silverbridge because I didn’t know what to do. I knew he would stand to me.”

“Who is to stand to either of you if you go on thus I do not know.” To this Gerald of course made no reply, but an idea came across his mind that he knew who would stand both to himself and his brother. “How did Silverbridge mean to get the money?”

“He said he would ask you. But I thought that I ought to tell you.”

“Is that all?”

“All what, sir?”

“Are there other debts?” To this Gerald made no reply. “Other gambling debts.”

“No, sir; — not a shilling of that kind. I have never played before.”

“Does it ever occur to you that going on at that rate you may very soon lose all the fortune that will ever come to you? You were not yet of age and you lost three thousand four hundred pounds at cards to a man whom you probably knew to be a professed gambler!” The Duke seemed to wait for a reply, but poor Gerald had not a word to say. “Can you explain to me what benefit you proposed to yourself when you played for such stakes as that?”

“I hoped to win back what I had lost.”

“Facilis descensus Averni!” said the Duke, shaking his head. “Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis.” No doubt, he thought, that as his son was at Oxford, admonitions in Latin would serve him better than in his native tongue. But Gerald, when he heard the grand hexameter rolled out in his father’s grandest tone, entertained a comfortable feeling that the worst of the interview was over. “Win back what you had lost! Do you think that that is the common fortune of young gamblers when they fall among those who are more experienced than themselves?”

“One goes on, sir, without reflecting.”

“Go on without reflecting! Yes; and where to? where to? Oh Gerald, where to? Whither will such progress without reflection take you?” “He means — to the devil,” the lad said inwardly to himself, without moving his lips. “There is but one goal for such going on as that. I can pay three thousand four hundred pounds for you certainly. I think it hard that I should have to do so; but I can do it, — and I will do it.”

“Thank you, sir,” murmured Gerald.

“But how can I wash your young mind clean from the foul stain which has already defiled it? Why did you sit down to play? Was it to win the money which these men had in their pockets?”

“Not particularly.”

“It cannot be that a rational being should consent to risk the money he has himself, — to risk even the money which he has not himself, — without a desire to win that which as yet belongs to his opponents. You desired to win.”

“I suppose I did hope to win.”

“And why? Why did you want to extract their property from their pockets, and to put it into your own? That the footpad on the road should have such desire when, with his pistol, he stops the traveller on his journey we all understand. And we know what we think of the footpad, — and what we do to him. He is a poor creature, who from his youth upwards has had no good thing done for him, uneducated, an outcast, whom we should pity more than we despise him. We take him as a pest which we cannot endure, and lock him up where he can harm us no more. On my word, Gerald, I think that the so-called gentleman who sits down with the deliberate intention of extracting money from the pockets of his antagonists, who lays out for himself that way of repairing the shortcomings of fortune, who looks to that resource as an aid to his means, — is worse, much worse, than the public robber! He is meaner, more cowardly, and has I think in his bosom less of the feelings of an honest man. And he probably has been educated, — as you have been. He calls himself a gentleman. He should know black from white. It is considered terrible to cheat at cards.”

“There was nothing of that, sir.”

“The man who plays and cheats has fallen low indeed.”

“I understand that, sir.”

“He who plays that he may make an income, but does not cheat, has fallen nearly as low. Do you ever think what money is?”

The Duke paused so long, collecting his own thoughts and thinking of his own words, that Gerald found himself obliged to answer. “Cheques, and sovereigns, and bank-notes,” he replied with much hesitation.

“Money is the reward of labour,” said the Duke, “or rather, in the shape it reaches you, it is your representation of that reward. You may earn it yourself, or, as is, I am afraid, more likely to be the case with you, you may possess it honestly as prepared for you by the labour of others who have stored it up for you. But it is a commodity of which you are bound to see that the source is not only clean but noble. You would not let Lord Percival give you money.”

“He wouldn’t do that, sir, I am sure.”

“Nor would you take it. There is nothing so comfortable as money, — but nothing so defiling if it be come by unworthily; nothing so comfortable, but nothing so noxious if the mind be allowed to dwell upon it constantly. If a man have enough, let him spend it freely. If he wants it, let him earn it honestly. Let him do something for it, so that the man who pays it to him may get its value. But to think that it may be got by gambling, to hope to live after that fashion, to sit down with your fingers almost in your neighbour’s pockets, with your eye on his purse, trusting that you may know better than he some studied calculations as to the pips concealed in your hands, praying to the only god you worship that some special card may be vouchsafed to you, — that I say is to have left far, far behind you, all nobility, all gentleness, all manhood! Write me down Lord Percival’s address and I will send him the money.”