MRS. WINGHAM AND TEDDY PARSONS—HE FOOLISHLY CONFIDES IN HER—I MAKE A SIMILAR MISTAKE

Now there was staying at our hotel, among other quiet people, a quiet old lady, whom, from her accent and the way she occasionally stumbled over an h, I took to be the widow of a well-to-do tradesman, a suburban bon marchÉ, or stores. She played regularly every afternoon till dinner-time, dressed in black, with a veil down just below the tip of her nose, and worn black kid gloves, staking mostly on the pair or impair at roulette; and every evening she sat in the hotel over a bit of wood-fire, reading either Le Petit NiÇois or an odd volume of Sartor Resartus, which, with some ancient torn Graphics, formed the library of the “MonopÔle.” Her name I discovered afterwards to be Mrs. Wingham.

It was only the third evening after our arrival that, going into the reading-room to write my daily loving letter to Lucy, there I found Mrs. Wingham and Teddy Parsons seated each side of the fire, talking away as confidentially as if they had known each other all their lives. Bob Hines, who had taken to gambling and couldn’t be kept away from the rooms, and Brentin had gone down to the Casino.

Few things I know more difficult than to write a letter and at the same time listen to a conversation, and I soon found myself writing down scraps of Teddy’s inflated talk, working it, in spite of myself, into my letter to Lucy—talk all the more inflated as I had come into the room quietly at his back, and he didn’t know I was there.

He was telling the old lady all about his father, the colonel, and how he had fought through the Crimea without a scratch. Yes, he was in the army himself—at least, the auxiliary portion of it: the second line. He lived most of the year at Southport, when he wasn’t out with his regiment, or hunting and shooting with friends, and always came up to London for the Derby and stayed in Duke Street. He was very fond of a bit of racing, and, in fact, owned some race horses—or, rather, “a chaser”—

“A what, sir?” asked the old woman, who was listening to him with her mouth open.

“A chaser—a steeple-chaser, don’t you know—‘Tenderloin,’ which was entered for the Grand National, and would be sure to be heavily backed.”

No, he didn’t care much about gambling; a man didn’t get a fair run for his money at Monte Carlo, the bank reserved too many odds in their own favor; to say nothing, as I knew, of his being kept very short of pocket-money by the colonel. And then he was actually fool enough to say, with a self-satisfied laugh, that he’d a notion the right way to treat the bank was to raid it.

“Raid it, sir?” cried the old woman.

“Yes, certainly, raid it; go into the rooms with a pistol and shout ‘Hands up, everybody!’ and carry off all the money on board a yacht, and be off, full speed.” Did Mrs. Wingham know if it had ever been tried?

From that to confiding our whole plan would have been only one step; but just at that moment in came Mrs. Sellars and Miss Marter, the only two other English ladies in the hotel, and Teddy and Mrs. Wingham fell to talking in whispers.

Mrs. Sellars, who was a stout, comfortable-looking person, with a large nose, a high color, and an expansive figure, generally attired in a blouse and a green velveteen skirt, was given to walking up and down the reading-room, moaning in theatrical agony over the disquieting news from South Africa. If she didn’t get a letter from her husband in the morning, she didn’t know what she should do; it was weeks since she had heard from him; something told her he was dead—and so on. Every distressed turn she took brought her nearer the ramshackle piano; so at last Miss Marter, mainly to stop her (for old maids don’t take much interest in other women’s husbands, alive or dead), with some asperity remarked, “Sing us something, dear; it will calm you.”

Then she came to me and said, excitedly, “Do you mind if I bring down my little dog? I always ask, as people sometimes object. It is the dearest little dog, and always sits in my lap.”

Teddy gave a violent start when he heard me answer, and knew he was detected. He got up, and, pretending to hum, immediately left the room. I didn’t like to follow at once, as I felt inclined; it would look as though Mrs. Sellars’s threatened singing drove me away. But the moment she finished I meant to go and give the wind-bag a good blowing-up, and meantime went on with my letter.

Mrs. Sellars hooted “’Tis I!” and “In the Gloaming,” and was beginning “Twickenham Ferry” when she broke down over the accompaniment, rose, and came to the fire. Miss Marter was sitting one side of it, stroking her torpid little terrier, and Mrs. Wingham (who was focussing Sartor Resartus through her glasses) on the other.

“Thank you, dear,” said Miss Marter. “I hope you feel calmer.”

“I shall never be calmer,” Mrs. Sellars moaned, “till George is home again at my side.”

“Well, dear,” Miss Marter maliciously replied, looking down her long nose, “you know you insisted on his going.”

So I left the two ladies to squabble as to who was mainly responsible for George’s being in South Africa in such ticklish times, and went in search of Teddy.

He was neither in the fumoir nor his bedroom, so down I went to the rooms.

There I found Bob Hines punting on the middle dozen and the last six at roulette, with a pile of five-franc pieces before him.

“Those your winnings?” I whispered; to which he gave the not over-polite reply, “How can you be such a fool?”

So I knew he was losing, and went off in search of Brentin.

I found him in an excited circle watching a common-looking Englishman at the trente-et-quarante tables, who with great coolness was staking the maximum of twelve thousand francs, two at a time, one on couleur and one on black. In front of him the notes were piled so high that, being a little man, he had to press them down with his elbows before he could use his rake. Sometimes he won one bundle of notes, neatly pinned together and representing the maximum; sometimes both, as couleur and black turned out alike. Rarely he lost both. Others were staking, but mostly only paltry louis, or the broad, shining five-louis pieces one only sees at Monte Carlo. There was the usual church-like silence, broken only by the dry, sharp tones of the croupier’s harsh voice, “Le jeu est fait!” and then, sharper still, “Rien ne va plus!”

Once the tension was broken by a titter of laughter, as a withered little Italian with a frightened air threw a five-franc piece down on the board and the croupier pushed it back. The poor devil apparently didn’t know that gold only may be staked at trente-et-quarante.

I plucked Brentin by the sleeve and drew him to a side seat against the wall. “I hope that gentleman may be staking here this day week,” he chuckled. “Notes are easy to carry, and I myself have seen him win sixty thousand francs.”

When he heard about Teddy he was furious. It was all I could do to prevent him from going off at once to the hotel and insisting on his leaving Monte Carlo by the next train.

“I allow,” he said, “I was precipitate with Bailey Thompson, but at least we drew something out of him in the way of information. But to confide in a blathering old woman, who has nothing to do but eat and talk—”

I went back to the hotel, only to find Teddy’s bedroom door locked, and to have my knocking greeted with a loud, sham snore. Mrs. Wingham I found still in the reading-room, alone, still focussing Sartor Resartus with her shocked and puzzled expression.

“Your friend has just gone up to bed,” she remarked, “if you are looking for him.”

I thanked her, and, sitting the other side of the fire, proceeded to draw her out. She soon told me Teddy was so like a nephew of hers she had recently lost she had felt obliged to speak to him. She noticed him at once, she said, the first evening at dinner, and felt drawn to him immediately. What a fine, manly young feller he was, and how full of sperrit.

Yes, I said, he was, and often had very ingenious ideas—for instance, that notion of his to raid the tables I had overheard him discussing with her. But, then, there was all the difference in the world between having an idea and the carrying it out, wasn’t there? Merely as a matter of curiosity, what did she think of the notion—she, who doubtless knew the place so well?

The artful old woman—Bailey Thompson’s sister, if you please, and spy, as it afterwards turned out; hence his recommending us the “MonopÔle,” so that she might keep an eye on us and report—the artful old woman looked puzzled, as though she were trying to remember what it was Teddy had said on the subject. Then she began to laugh. “Oh, I didn’t think much of that. Why, look at all the people there are about! Why, you’d need a ridgiment!”

Now, will it be believed that I, who had just been so righteously indignant with Parsons for his talkative folly, did myself (feeling uncommonly piqued at her scornful tone) immediately set out to prove to her the thing was perfectly possible, and then and there explain in detail how it could all be successfully done, and with how small a force. I did, indeed, so true as I am sitting writing here now, in our flat in Victoria Street.

Mrs. Wingham listened to me attentively, laughing to herself and saying, “Dear! dear! so it might!” as she rubbed her knuckled old hands between her black silk knees. When I had done, I felt so vexed with myself I could have bitten my tongue out.

I rose, however, and, observing, “Of course, it is an idea and nothing else, and never will be realized,” bade her good-night and left the room, feeling uncommonly weak and foolish. She murmured, “Oh, of course!” as I closed the noisy glass door behind me and went up-stairs to bed.

A few minutes later, remembering I had left my book on the table where I had been writing to Lucy, I went down-stairs again to fetch it. Mrs. Wingham was still there, sitting at the table writing a letter. The envelope, already written, was lying close by my book, and I couldn’t help reading it.

It was positively addressed to “Jas. B. Thompson, Esq., 3 Aldrich Road Villas, Brixton Rise, S. E. London.”

I felt so faint I could scarcely get out of the room again and up the stairs.

But such is our insane confidence, where we ourselves and our own doings are concerned—such, at any rate, was mine in my lucky star—that I really felt no difficulty in persuading myself the whole thing was merely a coincidence, and that the writing of the letter had nothing whatever to do with either my or Teddy Parsons’s divulgations; more especially as the Bailey, on which Thompson evidently piqued himself, was omitted.

And I determined to say nothing about it to Brentin, partly because I didn’t care about being blackguarded by an American, and partly because I felt convinced it was all an accident, and nothing would come of it. Nor, in my generosity, did I do more to Teddy Parsons than temperately point out the folly he had been guilty of, and beg him to be more careful in future, which he very cheerfully promised, and for which magnanimity of mine he was, as I meant he should be, really uncommonly grateful.