“Dysart!” Nell cried, springing up from her chair.
“Hallo, Nell!” he responded, with cheerful nonchalance. “I hoped I should find you at home.” He looked critically at Letty, and enquired in a brotherly fashion: “What’s put you in a miff?”
“If nothing else had you would!” retorted Letty, with spirit, but a distressing want of civility. “No doubt, dearest Nell, you would like to be private with your detestable brother! I would as lief converse with the muffin-man, so I will go and sit in the library until he has gone away again!”
“Well, if ever I saw such a spitfire!” remarked the Viscount, mildly surprised. “What have I done to set you up on the high ropes?”
Deigning no other answer than a withering look of scorn, Letty swept out of the room with her head in the air. He shut the door behind her, saying: “Too hot at hand by half!”
“Oh, Dy, thank God you are here at last!” Nell uttered, with suppressed agitation. “I have been in such distress-such agony of mind!”
“Lord, you’re as bad as that silly chit!” said Dysart, diving a hand into his pocket, and bringing forth a roll of bank-notes. “There you are, you goose! Didn’t I promise you I wouldn’t make a mull of it this time?”
She would not take the roll, almost recoiling from it, and crying with bitter reproach: “How could you? Oh, Dy, Dy, what have you done? You cannot have supposed that I would accept money obtained in such a way!”
“I might have known it!” ejaculated Dysart disgustedly. “In fact, I did know it, and I took dashed good care not to tell you what I meant to do! When it comes to flying into distempered freaks, damme if there’s a penny to choose between you and Mama!”
“Distempered freaks!” she repeated, gazing at him in dismay. “You call it that? Oh, Dysart!”
“Yes, I dashed well do call it that!” replied his lordship, his eye kindling. “And let me tell you, my girl, that these Methody airs don’t become you! Besides, it’s all slum! I may have to listen to that sort of flummery from Mama, but I’ll be damned if I will from you! What’s more, it’s coming it a trifle too strong! Let me tell you, my pious little sister, that if Felix Hethersett hadn’t thrown a rub in your way you’d have borrowed the blunt from that Old Pope in Clarges Street!”
“But, Dy—!” she stammered. “The cases are not comparable! Perhaps it was wrong of me—indeed, I know it was wrong!—but it was not—it was not wicked!”
“Oh, stop acting the dunce!” he said, exasperated. “Of all the fustian nonsense I ever heard in my life—! What the devil’s come over you, Nell? You were never used to raise such a breeze for nothing at all!”
“I can’t think it nothing! Surely you do not?” she said imploringly. “I had rather have done anything than lead you into this! I never dreamed—Oh, if I had but told Cardross the truth!”
“Well, if you meant to kick up such a dust as this I’m dashed sorry you didn’t tell him!” said Dysart. “I always knew you had more hair than wit, but it seems to me it’s worse than that! Queer in your attic, that’s what you are, Nell! First you plague the life out of me to raise the recruits for you—and where you thought I could lay my hand on three centuries the lord knows! Then when I hit on a way of doing the thing neatly you’ve no more sense in your cockloft than to cry rope on me; and now, when I hand you a roll of soft you ain’t even grateful, but start reading me a damned sermon! And when I think that I came posting back to town the instant the thing came off right because I knew you’d fall into a fit of the dismals, or go off on some totty-headed start, if I didn’t, I have a dashed good mind to let you get yourself out of your fix as best you can!”
“It is all my fault!” she said mournfully, wringing her hands. “I was in such desperate straits, and begged you so foolishly to help me—”
“Now, don’t put yourself in a taking over that!” he interrupted. “I don’t say I was best pleased at the time—and now that all’s right I don’t mind owning to you that there was a moment when I thought I was at a stand—but I’m not complaining. There’s no saying but what if you hadn’t kept on teasing me to dub up the possibles I mightn’t be standing here today pretty well able to buy an abbey!”
“Dysart, no!”
“Well, no, it ain’t as much as that,” he acknowledged. “As a matter of fact I had thought it would be more. Still, it’s enough to keep me living as high as a coach-horse for a while, and that will be a pleasant change, I can tell you! Lord, Nell, I was so monstrously in the wind that I’d not much more than white wool left to play with! Six thousand and seven hundred pounds is what I’ve made out of it! And that’s not counting my debt to you, and the monkey I owed Corny!”
She grasped the back of a chair for support, for her knees were shaking under her. From out a white face her eyes stared up at her beloved brother in horror; she felt as though she were suffocating, and could only just manage to say: “Don’t! Dy—oh, Dy, you could not! Not money gained in such a way!”
The thought of his sudden affluence had banished the frown from his brow, but at this it descended again. “Oh?” he said ominously. “And why could I not?”
“Dysart, you must know why you cannot!” she cried hotly.
“That’s where you’re out, my girl, because I don’t know! And there’s something else I don’t know!” he said grimly. “Perhaps you’ll be so obliging, my lady, as to tell me what you did with the blunt you won at Doncaster last year? Very pretty talking this is from a chit who backed three winners in a row! You weren’t blue-devilled then, were you? Oh, no! you were in high croak!” He shot out an accusing finger at her. “And don’t you try to tell me you didn’t go to Doncaster, because I was there myself! Cardross took you to stay at Castle Howard, with the Morpeths, and you drove over from there with a whole party of people! It’s no use denying it: why, I remember how you told me that the only thing you didn’t like at Castle Howard was the old Earl, because there was so much starch in him that he frightened you to death! Now, then! How do you mean to answer that, pray?”
Utterly bewildered, she stammered: “But—but—I don’t understand! What has that to say to anything? I remember perfectly! But—” She broke off suddenly, and gave a gasp. “Oh, can it be possible that—? Oh, Dy, dearest, dearest Dy—did you win that money?”
“Well, of course I did!” he replied, in the liveliest astonishment. “How the devil else was I to do the trick?”
She sank down on the sofa, wavering between tears and laughter. “Oh, how stupid I have been! I thought—Oh, never mind that! Dy, has the luck changed at last? Tell me how it was! Where have you been? How—Oh, tell me everything!”
“Chester, for the King’s Plate,” he replied, eyeing her uneasily. She seemed to him to be in queer stirrups, and he was just about to ask her if she felt quite the thing when a happy explanation occurred to him. “I say, Nell, you haven’t sprained your ankle, have you?” he demanded, grinning at her.
“Sprained my ankle? No!” she answered, a good deal surprised.
“What I mean is—in the family way?”
She shook her head, colouring. “No,” she said sadly.
“Oh! Thought that must be it.” He saw that her face was downcast, and said bracingly: “No need to be moped! Plenty of time yet before you need think of setting up your nursery. I shouldn’t wonder at it if you were like Mama.”
“Yes, that is what she thinks, but—Oh, never mind that! Tell me how this all came about!”
He sat down beside her. “Lord, it was the oddest thing! A fifteen to one chance, Nell! And I’d no more notion of laying my blunt on it than the man in the moon! Well, I didn’t know the horse existed, and as for backing it—! Anyone would have laid you odds there was only one horse entered that could beat Firebrand, and that was Milksop. But what do you think happened to me?” She shook her head wonderingly, and he gave a chuckle. “Sort of thing that only comes to a man once in a lifetime. It was on Saturday night that it started. I thought I might take a look-in at the—well
, it don’t signify telling you the name of the place: you wouldn’t know it! It’s a club I go to now and again. Anyway, I called for a tankard there, drank it off, and damme if there wasn’t a great cockroach in the pot!”
“Ugh!” exclaiming Nell, shuddering.
“Yes, I didn’t like it above half myself,” agreed the Viscount. “But the queer thing about it was that it wasn’t dead! Seemed a bit lushy when I tipped it out on to the table, but, dash it, what could you expect? It got quite lively after a while, and so we matched it against a spider that—a friend of mine—picked off its web.”
“Cockroaches and spiders?” interrupted Nell, aghast.
“Oh, lord, yes: dozens of ‘em! The place is full of them!”
“But, Dysart, how very shocking! It must be a sadly dirty house!”
“Yes, I expect it is,” he agreed. “In fact, I know it is, but that don’t signify! The thing is, most of the company fancied the spider. Well, I did myself, to tell you the truth, for it was a stout-looking runner, with a set of capital legs to it. I didn’t back it, of course, because the cockroach was my entry, but I never thought to see the cockroach win.”
“And it did?” Nell asked anxiously.
“Won by half the length of the course!” said the Viscount. “That was the table. We had ‘em lined up, and I must say I thought my entry was still a trifle bosky, and I daresay he was, but no sooner did I give him the office—with a fork—than off he went, in a fine burst, straight down the course for the winning-post! Mind you, the spider had it in him to beat him: devilish good mover, I give you my word! The trouble with him was that he was a refuser. If he didn’t fold his legs up under him, he went dashing off in circles. Now, young Johnny Cockroach jibbed a trifle, but every time I used my persuader on him, off he went again at a slapping pace, and always straight ahead! You wouldn’t have thought, to look at him, that he was such a good mover. A daisy-cutter, is what I thought, and so he was, but a regular Trojan, for all that!”
“Oh, Dy, how absurd you are!” Nell exclaimed, laughing. “And you won all that money on the creature?”
“No, no, of course I didn’t! That was only funning! I didn’t win much more than a pony on him.”
“What happened to him?” Nell could not help asking.
“How should I know? Went back to his stable, I daresay: I wasn’t paying much heed to him. Or to any of it, if it comes to that. Well, what I mean is, never thought another thing about it, once the race was won. There wasn’t any reason why I should. But, Nell, when I went to bed on Sunday night, I pulled back the clothes, and damme if there wasn’t a cockroach right in the middle of the bed! How I came to be such a gudgeon as not to see then what it meant still has me in a puzzle. I didn’t. It wasn’t till Monday that it fairly burst on me. I went just to see how they were betting their money at Tatt’s, and who should be there but old Jerry Stowe? No, you don’t know him—not the kind of fellow you would know, but he’s a mighty safe man at the Corner, I can tell you. Did him a trifling service once: no great matter, but to hear him you’d think I’d saved his life! Well, the long and short of it was that he told me in my ear to put all my blunt on Cockroach for the King’s Plate at Chester! That fairly sent me to grass, I can tell you! I hadn’t even heard of the tit: didn’t mean to bet on the race at all, because I’ve no fancy for an odds-on chance, and to my mind there wasn’t a horse entered, barring Milksop, that could beat Firebrand. But, of course, as soon as Jerry tipped me the office that settled it: taking one thing with another, I could see Cockroach was a certainty. The only trouble was, how the deuce was I to raise enough mint-sauce to make the thing worth while?” He paused, frowning. The amusement was quenched in Nell’s eyes, which were fixed on his face in painful enquiry. “Did something I’ve never done before, and never thought I should do,” he said, shaking his head. “Too damned ramshackle by half! Mind, if I hadn’t known the horse couldn’t lose I wouldn’t have done it!”
She smiled faintly: “What did you do, Dy? Tell me—pray!”
“Borrowed a monkey from Corny,” he replied briefly.
“O-h-h!” It was a long sigh of unutterable relief. “Is that all? I thought you meant you had done something—something shocking!”
“Well, if you don’t know that it’s shocking to go breaking shins amongst your friends it’s time someone told you!” said the Viscount severely. “What if the horse hadn’t won? A pretty Captain Sharp I should have looked!”
“Yes, yes, but I am persuaded Mr. Fancot wouldn’t have thought so, or cared a jot!”
“No, of course he wouldn’t, but that don’t make it any better! Worse, in fact. I don’t mind owing blunt to the regular brags, or to a parcel of tradesmen, but I’m not the sort of rum ‘un that sponges on my friends, I’ll have you know!”
She was abashed, and docilely begged his pardon. He regarded her frowningly, and suddenly said: “If you didn’t kick up all that dust because you knew I’d won the money at Chester races, how did you think I’d come by it?”
She hung her head, blushing. “Oh, Dysart, I have been so foolish!”
“I daresay, but that don’t tell me anything! What made you fly into that odd rage? You aren’t going to tell me you thought I’d held up a coach and robbed some stranger?”
“No—worse!” she whispered, pressing a hand to one hot cheek.
“Don’t be such sapskull! I should like to know what you imagine would be worse than that!” he said impatiently.
“Oh, Dysart, forgive me! I thought you had taken the necklace!”
“No, you didn’t. I particularly told you I hadn’t made off with your precious jewels, so stop bamming me!”
“Not my jewels—the Cardross necklace!”
“What?”
She quailed involuntarily.
“You—thought—I—had—stolen—the Cardross necklace?” said the Viscount, with awful deliberation. “Are you run quite mad, girl?”
“I think I m-must have run m-mad,” she confessed. “It was because you held me up! I never should have thought it if you hadn’t meant to seize my jewels, and sell them for me! I thought—”
“I want to hear no more of what you thought!” interrupted Dysart terribly. “Good God, are you going to sit there telling me you believed me capable of making off with something that don’t belong to either of us?”
“No, no! I mean—I wondered if perhaps you thought it was mine! And you knew I didn’t care for it, so—”
“—so I prigged it while you were out of the way—a thing worth the lord only knows how many thousands of pounds!” he cut in wrathfully. “Just to pay your trumpery debt, too! Oh, no! I was forgetting! Not just to pay your debt, was it? I gave you three centuries—devilish handsome of me, by God!—and pouched over seven thousand! Do you happen to know what I did with the thing? Did I sell it to some fence or other, or did I lodge it with a spouter? I don’t wonder at it that I found you in such a grand fuss! The only thing that I wonder at is how I’ve contrived to keep out of Newgate!”
He had sprung up from the sofa, and was striding about the room, in a black rage that made her quake. She dared not approach him, but she said imploringly: “It was very bad of me, and indeed, I beg your pardon, but if you knew how it was—oh, Dysart, don’t be so angry with me! Everything has been so dreadful, and I fear my mind is less strong than I had believed it! I knew how much I had teased you, and when I read your letter my first thought was that you had backed yourself to win some reckless wager. I didn’t entertain the least suspicion then! It was when I knew the necklace had gone—and you had written the letter in the very room where it was hidden, and I remembered that I had shown you once—Oh, it was unpardonable of me, but—”
He had stopped his pacing, and was standing staring down at her, an arrested expression in his eyes. “Just a moment!” he interrupted sharply. “You don’t mean that, do you? That the necklace has gone?”
“Yes, I do mean it. That was what overthrew my mind, Dy!”
“My God!” he ejaculated, turning a little pale. “When did you discover this?”
“The next day—on Tuesday. It wasn’t I, but my dresser who discovered it. She told me immediately, and that was when it flashed into my mind that—If I had had time to think, perhaps I should not—But I hadn’t, I hadn’t!”
“Never mind that!” What did you say to your woman?”
“That I had taken the necklace to Jeffreys to have the clasp mended. She assured me she hadn’t spoken of the loss to a soul, and I told her not to do so, and I am persuaded she has not.”
“Cardross doesn’t know?”
“No, no! How could you think I would tell him when I thought it was you who had taken the necklace?”
He drew an audible breath. “That’s the dandy, isn’t it?” he said with blighting sarcasm. “It’s been missing for three days, and your damned dresser knows it, and you haven’t seen fit to tell Cardross or to make the least push to recover it! Famous! And now what do you mean to do, my girl?”
Chapter Twelve
For perhaps half a minute Nell sat staring up at the Viscount, the colour slowly draining from her face. In the flood of relief that had swept over her her only thoughts had been of thankfulness that Dysart had not taken the necklace, and of remorse for having so misjudged him. But his words brought her back to earth with a jarring thud. She lifted a hand to her brow. “Oh, heavens!” she said, in the thread of a voice. “I hadn’t considered—Dysart, what must I do?”
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