The Lake of Wine — Edition Insights

me in June of the year 1800 (as privately chronicled) there came a famous evening at Whitelaw’s Club in St. James’s Street, off Piccadilly, London. There and then--according to the unattested evidence of an eyewitness--Mr. Ladislaw lost his head, Lord Dunlone his mistress, Sir Robert Linne his fortune, and Major Dalrymple his life. Thus it appears these four were all losers, and each of a material property, save the first, who, alone of the quartette, commuted his self-possession for a very real equivalent in hard cash.

“Whitelaw’s” in those days ran, of a host of gambling clubs, the deepest. It was there all heavy potations and long stakes (at which many a self-martyr burned); but the first of these were put down and the second up with an accepted solemnity of decorum that was traditional to the place and the sign of its moral endowment. Fox, in his heavier moments, had been known to hazard in its glooms occasionally, and to lose, of course; and--equally of course--to find immediate balm for his scorched fingers in the inevitable “Herodotus.” Selwyn, also, and Topham Beauclerc, and many another Georgium sidus, had played and hiccupped within its pregnant walls; but always with gravity and a weight of personal responsibility towards the foundation. “Brookes’s” might have held in its time more showy revelry; “Almack’s” have gambled in broad-brimmed straw hats, bedecked with flowers, and masks to hide the play of emotions. “Whitelaw’s” would have none of these. It had ever stood coldly aloof from flash and notoriety, accepting Todd’s definition of a club as “An association of persons subjected to particular rules,” rather than that of Johnson (the rendering has a warm personal flavour), who calls it “An assembly of good fellows, meeting under certain conditions.” From first to last it remained ponderous in self-importance and rigid in exacting the observance of its unwritten codes of conduct. If its gaming operations were large, it desired the company of no feather-brain “plungers”; but rather of players of substance, to whom cards were a market, not a raffle.

Therefore, when on this particular night no fewer than four of its members--like those in the fable--suddenly revolted against the central system, and, for a space of minutes, made havoc of its respectable traditions, it is no wonder that “Whitelaw’s” rose at the outrage like one man, and, in the upshot, pronounced sentence of club ostracism upon the delinquents. This, as it affected three, is matter of private history. The fourth escaped the distinction there and then through the interposition of “the man with the scythe.”

Faro was the game, and the stakes were swingeing The four had played from three o’clock of a Thursday afternoon to six of the Friday morning. In the white spread of day their eyes showed up blood-shot, their cheeks grimy with candle soot, their hair slack and unstrung. My lord Dunlone, who was a slipslop youth, colourless and jejune, with stains of wine on his chin and high cravat, brooded in fathomless sulkiness, the only pronounced expression he was ever real master of. His neighbour, Sir Robert Linne, had the look of a fine tormented devil, desperate and at bay.

These were the losers. Of the winners, Mr. Ladislaw was a perspiring cabbage of a man, stunted and over-headed; and he seemed drunk and amazed with his good fortune; and the major presented a lean and hungry appearance, as if his passions were devouring worms--which indeed I believe they were.

About six of the clock there came a pause in the game--the lull before the crash. Mr. Ladislaw, twinkling prosperity, bent obsequiously to the baronet, his cards clumped together in one hand.

“The stakes as before, Sir Robert?” he said in a small, confidential voice.

The other gave a hollow laugh, checking it frowningly in mid-career.

“I think so,” he said. “If there happens a margin, why--we must make it a broad one, on paper.”

“As you please, sir.”

Major Dalrymple, with his thick lips dropped apart, was gazing breathingly at his sulky neighbour. The latter, conscious of the inquiring scrutiny, pulled himself erect--a cub of ill-temper.

“Curse it!” he muttered, with a surly sidelong glance. “What am I being stared at for, curse it?”

“Your pardon, my lord,” said the major, in a high, stiff voice. “I looked only to inquire your stake.”

“I can settle it myself, sir, without your help”--and, with a very meaning action, he held his cards face-downwards upon his breast.

The major went back in his chair, his corded hands thrust out rigidly before him on the table.

“My lord Dunlone,” he said, “impugns not only my judgment, but my honour!”

“Oh, curse it!” cried the Viscount. “What have I said?”

“It was your action spoke, sir.”