第48章 A GAMBLER'S DEATH(4)

Flapper, who had joined us, was the first to propose this visit: he said he did not mind the fifteen francs which Jack owed him for billiards, but he was anxious to GET BACK HIS PISTOL.Accordingly, we sallied forth, and speedily arrived at the hotel which Attwood inhabited still.He had occupied, for a time, very fine apartments in this house: and it was only on arriving there that day that we found he had been gradually driven from his magnificent suite of rooms au premier, to a little chamber in the fifth story:--we mounted, and found him.It was a little shabby room, with a few articles of rickety furniture, and a bed in an alcove; the light from the one window was falling full upon the bed and the body.

Jack was dressed in a fine lawn shirt; he had kept it, poor fellow, TO DIE IN; for in all his drawers and cupboards there was not a single article of clothing; he had pawned everything by which he could raise a penny--desk, books, dressing-case, and clothes; and not a single halfpenny was found in his possession. In order to account for these trivial details, the reader must be told that the story is, for the chief part, a fact; and that the little sketch in this page was TAKEN FROM NATURE.The latter was likewise a copy from one found in the manner described.

He was lying as I have drawn him, one hand on his breast, the other falling towards the ground.There was an expression of perfect calm on the face, and no mark of blood to stain the side towards the light.On the other side, however, there was a great pool of black blood, and in it the pistol; it looked more like a toy than a weapon to take away the life of this vigorous young man.

In his forehead, at the side, was a small black wound; Jack's life had passed through it; it was little bigger than a mole.

This refers to an illustrated edition of the work.

"Regardez un peu," said the landlady, "messieurs, il m'a gate trois matelas, et il me doit quarante quatre francs."This was all his epitaph: he had spoiled three mattresses, and owed the landlady four-and-forty francs.In the whole world there was not a soul to love him or lament him.We, his friends, were looking at his body more as an object of curiosity, watching it with a kind of interest with which one follows the fifth act of a tragedy, and leaving it with the same feeling with which one leaves the theatre when the play is over and the curtain is down.

Beside Jack's bed, on his little "table de nuit," lay the remains of his last meal, and an open letter, which we read.It was from one of his suspicious acquaintances of former days, and ran thus:--"Ou es tu, cher Jack? why you not come and see me--tu me dois de l'argent, entends tu?--un chapeau, une cachemire, a box of the Play.Viens demain soir, je t'attendrai at eight o'clock, Passage des Panoramas.My Sir is at his country.

"Adieu a demain.

"Fifine.

"Samedi."

I shuddered as I walked through this very Passage des Panoramas, in the evening.The girl was there, pacing to and fro, and looking in the countenance of every passer-by, to recognize Attwood."ADIEU ADEMAIN!"--there was a dreadful meaning in the words, which the writer of them little knew."Adieu a demain!"--the morrow was come, and the soul of the poor suicide was now in the presence of God.I dare not think of his fate; for, except in the fact of his poverty and desperation, was he worse than any of us, his companions, who had shared his debauches, and marched with him up to the very brink of the grave?

There is but one more circumstance to relate regarding poor Jack--his burial; it was of a piece with his death.

He was nailed into a paltry coffin and buried, at the expense of the arrondissement, in a nook of the burial-place beyond the Barriere de l'Etoile.They buried him at six o'clock, of a bitter winter's morning, and it was with difficulty that an English clergyman could be found to read a service over his grave.The three men who have figured in this history acted as Jack's mourners; and as the ceremony was to take place so early in the morning, these men sat up the night through, AND WERE ALMOST DRUNKas they followed his coffin to its resting-place.

MORAL.

"When we turned out in our great-coats," said one of them afterwards, "reeking of cigars and brandy-and-water, d--e, sir, we quite frightened the old buck of a parson; he did not much like our company." After the ceremony was concluded, these gentlemen were very happy to get home to a warm and comfortable breakfast, and finished the day royally at Frascati's.