Ruggles of Red Gap | Page 7

fancy to you. Would have you to do for the
funny, sad beggar. So he's won you. Won you in a game of drawing
poker. Another man would have done as well, but the creature was
keen for you. Great strength of character. Determined sort. Hope you
won't think I didn't play soundly, but it's not a forthright game. Think
they're bluffing when they aren't. When they are you mayn't think it. So
far as hiding one's intentions, it's a most rottenly immoral game. Low,
animal cunning--that sort of thing."
"Do I understand I was the stake, sir?" I controlled myself to say. The
heavens seemed bursting about my head.
"Ultimately lost you were by the very trifling margin of superiority that
a hand known as a club flush bears over another hand consisting of
three of the eights--not quite all of them, you understand, only three,
and two other quite meaningless cards."
I could but stammer piteously, I fear. I heard myself make a wretched
failure of words that crowded to my lips.
"But it's quite simple, I tell you. I dare say I could show it you in a

moment if you've cards in your box."
"Thank you, sir, I'll not trouble you. I'm certain it was simple. But
would you mind telling me what exactly the game was played for?"
"Knew you'd not understand at once. My word, it was not too bally
simple. If I won I'd a hundred pounds. If I lost I'd to give you up to
them but still to receive a hundred pounds. I suspect the Johnny's
conscience pricked him. Thought you were worth a hundred pounds,
and guessed all the time he could do me awfully in the eye with his
poker. Quite set they were on having you. Eyebrow chap seemed to
think it a jolly good wheeze. She didn't, though. Quite off her head at
having you for that glum one who does himself so badly."
Dazed I was, to be sure, scarce comprehending the calamity that had
befallen us.
"Am I to understand, sir, that I am now in the service of the
Americans?"
"Stupid! Of course, of course! Explained clearly, haven't I, about the
club flush and the three eights. Only three of them, mind you. If the
other one had been in my hand, I'd have done him. As narrow a squeak
as that. But I lost. And you may be certain I lost gamely, as a
gentleman should. No laughing matter, but I laughed with them--except
the funny, sad one. He was worried and made no secret of it. They were
good enough to say I took my loss like a dead sport."
More of it followed, but always the same. Ever he came back to the
sickening, concise point that I was to go out to the American
wilderness with these grotesque folk who had but the most elementary
notions of what one does and what one does not do. Always he
concluded with his boast that he had taken his loss like a dead sport. He
became vexed at last by my painful efforts to understand how, precisely,
the dreadful thing had come about. But neither could I endure more. I
fled to my room. He had tried again to impress upon me that three
eights are but slightly inferior to the flush of clubs.

I faced my glass. My ordinary smooth, full face seemed to have
shrivelled. The marks of my anguish were upon me. Vainly had I
locked myself in. The gipsy's warning had borne its evil fruit. Sold, I'd
been; even as once the poor blackamoors were sold into American
bondage. I recalled one of their pathetic folk-songs in which the
wretches were wont to make light of their lamentable estate; a thing I
had often heard sung by a black with a banjo on the pier at Brighton;
not a genuine black, only dyed for the moment he was, but I had never
lost the plaintive quality of the verses:
"Away down South in Michigan, Where I was so happy and so gay,
'Twas there I mowed the cotton and the cane----"
How poignantly the simple words came back to me! A slave, day after
day mowing his owner's cotton and cane, plucking the maize from the
savannahs, yet happy and gay! Should I be equal to this spirit? The
Honourable George had lost; so I, his pawn, must also submit like a
dead sport.
How little I then dreamed what adventures, what adversities, what
ignominies--yes, and what triumphs were to be mine in those back
blocks of North America! I saw but a bleak wilderness, a distressing
contact with people who never for a moment would do with us. I
shuddered. I despaired.
And outside the windows gay Paris laughed