Mr. Belton, for that was the name of the gentleman who took notice of George, was a rich carpet manufacturer. He had a country-house near Paddington; and the acquaintance which was thus begun became a source of great happiness to George. Mr. Belton lent him several entertaining books, and took him to see many curious things in London. Ellen was rejoiced to hear from him the praises of her son. All the pleasure of Ellen's life had, for some months past, depended upon this boy; for her husband was seldom at home, and the gloom that was spread over his countenance alarmed her, whenever she saw him. As for Mrs. Dolly, she was no companion for Ellen: her love of drinking had increased to such a degree that she could love nothing else; and when she was not half intoxicated, she was in such low spirits that she sat (either on the side of her bed, or in her arm-chair, wrapped in a shawl) sighing and crying, and see-sawing herself; and sometimes she complained to Maurice that Ellen did not care whether she was dead or alive; and at others that George had always something or other to do, and never liked to sit in her room and keep her company. Besides all this, she got into a hundred petty quarrels with the neighbours, who had a knack of remembering what she said when she was drunk, and appealing to her for satisfaction when she was sober. Mrs. Dolly regularly expected that Ellen should, as she called it, stand her friend in these altercations; to which Ellen could not always in justice consent. Ah! said Ellen to herself one night, as she was sitting up late waiting for her husband's return home, it is not the having five thousand pounds that makes people happy! When Maurice loved to come home after his day's work to our little cottage, and when our George was his delight, as he is mine, then I was light of heart; but now it is quite otherwise. However, there is no use in complaining, nor in sitting down to think upon melancholy things; and Ellen started up and went to work, to mend one of her husband's waistcoats.

Whilst she was at this employment, she listened continually for the return of Maurice. The clock struck twelve, and one, and no husband came! She heard no noise in the street when she opened her window, for every body but herself was in bed and asleep. At last she heard the sound of footsteps; but it was so dark that she could not see who the person was, who continued walking backwards and forwards, just underneath the window.

"Is it you, Maurice? Are you there, Maurice?" said Ellen. The noise of the footsteps ceased, and Ellen again said, "Is it you, Maurice? Are you there?"

"Yes," answered Maurice; "it is I. Why are you not abed and asleep, at this time of night?"

"I am waiting for you," replied Ellen. "You need not wait for me; I have the key of the house door in my pocket, and can let myself in whenever I choose it."

"And don't you choose it now?" said Ellen.

"No. Shut down the window."

Ellen shut the window, and went and sat down upon the side of her boy's bed. He was sleeping. Ellen, who could not sleep, took up her work again, and resolved to wait till her husband should come in. At last, the key turned in the house door, and presently she heard her husband's steps coming softly towards the room where she was sitting. He opened the door gently, as if he expected to find her asleep, and was afraid of awakening her. He started when he saw her; and slouching his hat over his face, threw himself into a chair without speaking a single word.

Something terrible has happened to him, surely! thought Ellen; and her hand trembled so that she could scarcely hold her needle, when she tried to go on working.

"What are you doing there, Ellen?" said he, suddenly pushing back his hat.

"I'm only mending your waistcoat, love," said Ellen, in a faltering voice.

"I am a wretch! a fool! a miserable wretch!" exclaimed Maurice, starting up and striking his forehead with violence as he walked up and down the room.

"What can be the matter?" said Ellen. "It is worse to me to see you in this way, than to hear whatever misfortune has befallen you. Don't turn away from me, husband! Who in the world loves you so well as I do?"

"Oh, Ellen," said he, letting her take his hand, but still turning away, "you will hate me when you know what I have done."

"I cannot hate you, I believe," said Ellen.

"We have not sixpence left in the world!" continued Maurice, vehemently.

"We must leave this house to-morrow; we must sell all we have; I must go to jail, Ellen! You must work all the rest of your days harder than ever you did; and so must that poor boy, who lies sleeping yonder. He little thinks that his father has made a beggar of him; and that, whilst his mother was the best of mothers to him, his father was ruining him, her, and himself, with a pack of rascals at the gaming-table. Ellen, I have lost every shilling of our money!"

"Is that all?" said Ellen. "That's bad; but I am glad that you have done nothing wicked. We can work hard, and be happy again. Only promise me now, dear husband, that you will never game any more."

Maurice threw himself upon his knees, and swore that he never, to the last hour of his life, would go to any gaming-table again, or play at any game of chance. Ellen then said all she could to soothe and console him; she persuaded him to take some rest, of which he was much in need, for his looks were haggard, and he seemed quite exhausted. He declared that he had not had a night's good sleep for many months, since he had got into these difficulties by gaming. His mind had been kept in a continual flurry, and he seemed as if he had been living in a fever.

"The worst of it was, Ellen," said he, "I could not bear to see you or the boy when I had been losing; so I went on, gaming deeper and deeper, in hopes of winning back what I had lost; and I now and then won, and they coaxed me and told me I was getting a run of luck, and it would be a sin to turn my back on good fortune. This way I was 'ticed to go on playing, till, when I betted higher and higher, my luck left me; or, as I shrewdly suspect, the rascals did not play fair, and they won stake after stake, till they made me half mad, and I risked all I had left upon one throw, and lost it! And when I found I had lost all, and thought of coming home to you and our boy, I was ready to hang myself.

Oh, Ellen, if you knew all I have felt! I would not live over again the last two years for this room full of gold!"

Such are the miserable feelings, and such the life, of a gamester!

Maurice slept for a few hours, or rather dozed, starting now and then, and talking of cards and dice, and sometimes grinding his teeth and clenching his hand, till he wakened himself by the violence with which he struck the side of the bed.

"I have had a terrible dream, wife," said he, when he opened his eyes, and saw Ellen sitting beside him on the bed. At first he did not recollect what had really happened; but as Ellen looked at him with sorrow and compa.s.sion in her countenance, he gradually remembered all the truth; and, hiding his head under the bed-clothes, he said he wished he could sleep again, if it could be without dreaming such dreadful things.

It was in vain that he tried to sleep; so he got up, resolving to try whether he could borrow twenty guineas from any of his friends, to pay the most pressing of his gaming companions. The first person he asked was Mrs. Dolly: she fell into an hysteric fit when she heard of his losses; and it was not till after she had swallowed a double dram of brandy that she was able to speak, and to tell him that she was the worst person in the world he could have applied to; for that she was in the greatest distress herself, and all her dependance in this world was upon him.

Maurice stood in silent astonishment. "Why, cousin," said he, "I thought, and always believed, that you had a power of money! You know, when you came to live with us, you told me so."

"No matter what I told you," said Mrs. Dolly. "Folks can't live upon air. Yesterday the landlady of the public-house at the bowling-green, whom I'm sure I looked upon as my friend,--but there's no knowing one's friends,--sent me in a bill as long as my arm; and the apothecary here has another against me worse again; and the man at the livery-stables, for one-horse chays, and jobs that I'm sure I forgot ever having, comes and charges me the Lord knows what! and then the grocer for tea and sugar, which I have been giving to folks from whom I have got no thanks.

And then I have an account with the linen-draper of I don't know how much! hut he has over-charged me, I know, scandalously, for my last three shawls. And then I have never paid for my set of tea china; and half of the cups are broke, and the silver spoons, and I can't tell what besides."

In short, Mrs. Dolly, who had never kept any account of what she spent, had no idea how far she was getting into a tradesman's debt till his bill was brought home: and was in great astonishment to find, when all her bills were sent in, that she had spent four hundred and fifty pounds in her private expenses, drinking included, in the course of three years and eight months. She had now nothing left to live upon but one hundred pounds, so that she was more likely to be a burden to Maurice than any a.s.sistance. He, however, was determined to go to a friend, who had frequently offered to lend him any sum of money he might want, and who had often been his partner at the gaming-table.

In his absence, Ellen and George began to take a list of all the furniture in the house, that it might be ready for a sale, and Mrs.

Dolly sat in her arm-chair, weeping and wailing.

"Oh! laud! laud! that I should live to see all this!" cried she. "Ah, lack-a-daisy! lack-a-daisy! lack-a-day! what will become of me? Oh, la!

la! la! la!" Her lamentations were interrupted by a knock at the door.

"Hark! a knock, a double knock at the door," cried Mrs. Dolly. "Who is it? Ah, lack-a-day, when people come to know what has happened, it will be long enough before we have any more visitors; long enough before we hear any more double knocks at the door. Oh, laud! laud! See who it is, George."

It was Mr. Belton, who was come to ask George to go with him and his little nephew to see some wild beasts at Exeter-'change: he was much surprised at the sorrowful faces of George and Ellen, whom he had always been used to see so cheerful, and inquired what misfortune had befallen them? Mrs. Dolly thought she could tell the story best, so she detailed the whole, with many piteous e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns; but the silent resignation of Ellen's countenance had much more effect upon Mr. Belton. "George," said he, "must stay to finish the inventory he is writing for his mother."

Mr. Belton was inquiring more particularly into the amount of Maurice's debts, and the names of the persons to whom he had lost his money at the gaming-table, when the unfortunate man himself came home. "No hope, Ellen!" cried he. "No hope from any of those rascals that I thought my friends. No hope!"

He stopped short, seeing a stranger in the room, for Mr. Belton was a stranger to him. "My husband can tell you the names of all the people,"

said Ellen, "who have been the ruin of us." Mr. Belton then wrote them down from Maurice's information; and learned from him that he had lost to these sharpers upwards of three thousand eight hundred pounds in the course of three years; that the last night he played, he had staked the goods in his shop, valued at 350_l_, and lost them; that afterwards he staked the furniture of his house, valued at 160_l_.; this also he lost; and so left the gaming-table without a farthing in the world.

"It is not my intention," said Mr. Belton, "to add to your present suffering, Mr. Robinson, by pointing out that it has arisen entirely from your own imprudence. Nor yet can I say that I feel much compa.s.sion for you; for I have always considered a gamester as a most selfish being, who should be suffered to feel the terrible consequences of his own avaricious folly, as a warning to others."

"Oh, sir! Oh, Mr. Belton!" cried Ellen, bursting now, for the first time, into tears, "do not speak so harshly to Maurice."

"To you I shall not speak harshly," said Mr. Belton, his voice and looks changing; "for I have the greatest compa.s.sion for such an excellent wife and mother. And I shall take care that neither you nor your son, whom you have taken such successful pains to educate, shall suffer by the folly and imprudence in which you had no share. As to the ready money which your husband has lost and paid to these sharpers, it is, I fear, irrecoverable; but the goods in your shop, and the furniture in your house, I will take care shall not be touched. I will go immediately to my attorney, and direct him to inquire into the truth of all I have been told, and to prosecute these villains for keeping a gaming-table, and playing at unlawful games. Finish that inventory which you are making out, George, and give it to me; I will have the furniture in your house, Ellen, valued by an appraiser, and will advance you money to the amount, on which you may continue to live in comfort and credit, trusting to your industry and integrity to repay me in small sums, as you find it convenient, out of the profits of your shop."

"Oh, sir!" cried Maurice, clasping his hands with a strong expression of joy, "thank you! thank you from the bottom of my soul! Save her from misery, save the boy, and let me suffer as I ought for my folly."

Mr. Belton, in spite of his contempt for gamesters, was touched by Maurice's repentance; but, keeping a steady countenance, replied in a firm tone, "Suffering for folly does n.o.body any good, unless it makes them wiser in future."

CHAPTER III.

Mrs. Dolly, who had been unaccountably awed to silence by Mr. Belton's manner of speaking and looking, broke forth the moment he had left the house. "Very genteel, indeed; though he might have taken more notice of me. See what, it is, George, to have the luck of meeting with good friends."

"See what it is to deserve good friends, George," said Ellen.

"You'll all remember, I hope," said Mrs. Dolly, raising her voice, "that it was I who was the first and foremost cause of all this, by taking George along with me to the tea-drinking at the bowling-green, where he first got acquainted with Mr. Belton."

"Mr. Belton would never have troubled his head about such a little boy as George," said Ellen, "if it had not been for--you know what I mean, Mrs. Dolly. All I wish to say is, that George's own good behaviour was the cause of our getting acquainted with this good friend."

"And I am sure you were the cause, mother," said George, "of what you call my good behaviour."

Mrs. Dolly, somewhat vexed at this turn, changed the conversation saying, "Well, 'tis no matter how we made such a good acquaintance; let us make the most of him, and drink his health, as becomes us, after dinner. And now, I suppose, all will go on as usual: none of our acquaintance in Paddington need know any thing of what has happened."

Ellen, who was very little solicitous about what Mrs. Dolly's acquaintance in Paddington might think, observed that, so far from going on as usual, now they were living on borrowed money, it was fit they should retrench all their expenses, and give up the drawing-room and parlour of the house to lodgers.

"So, then, we are to live like shabby wretches for the rest of our days!" cried Mrs. Dolly. "Better live like what we are, poor but industrious people," replied Ellen, "and then we shall never be forced to do any thing shabby."