Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  ‘But, crib me, Tommy,’ Lord Almeric shrieked, cutting him short without ceremony, so great was his astonishment, ‘it’s the Little Masterson!’

  ‘You old fox!’ Mr. Pomeroy chimed in, shaking his finger at the tutor with leering solemnity; he, belonging to an older generation at the College, did not know her. Then, ‘The Little Masterson, is it?’ he continued, advancing to the girl, and saluting her with mock ceremony. ‘Among friends, I suppose? Well, my dear, for the future be pleased to count me among them. Welcome to my poor house! And here’s to bettering your taste — for, fie, my love, old men are naughty. Have naught to do with them!’ And he laughed wickedly. He was a tall, heavy man, with a hard, bullying, sneering face; a Dunborough grown older.

  ‘Hush! my good sir. Hush!’ Mr. Thomasson cried anxiously, after making more than one futile effort to stop him. Between his respect for his companion, and the deference in which he held a lord, the tutor was in agony. ‘My good sir, my dear Lord Almeric, you are in error,’ he continued strenuously. ‘You mistake, I assure you, you mistake—’

  ‘Do we, by Gad!’ Mr. Pomeroy cried, winking at Julia.’ Well, you and I, my dear, don’t, do we? We understand one another very well.’

  The girl only answered by a fierce look of contempt. But Mr. Thomasson was in despair. ‘You do not, indeed!’ he cried, almost wringing his hands. ‘This lady has lately come into a — a fortune, and to-night was carried off by some villains from the Castle Inn at Marlborough in a — in a post-chaise. I was fortunately on the spot to give her such protection as I could, but the villains overpowered me, and to prevent my giving the alarm, as I take it, bundled me into the chaise with her.’

  ‘Oh, come,’ said Mr. Pomeroy, grinning. ‘You don’t expect us to swallow that?’

  ‘It is true, as I live,’ the tutor protested. ‘Every word of it.’

  ‘Then how come you here?’

  ‘Not far from your gate, for no reason that I can understand, they turned us out, and made off.’

  ‘Honest Abraham?’ Lord Almeric asked; he had listened open-mouthed.

  ‘Every word of it,’ the tutor answered.

  ‘Then, my dear, if you have a fortune, sit down,’ cried Mr. Pomeroy; and seizing a chair he handed it with exaggerated gallantry to Julia, who still remained near the door, frowning darkly at the trio; neither ashamed nor abashed, but proudly and coldly contemptuous. ‘Make yourself at home, my pretty,’ he continued familiarly, ‘for if you have a fortune it is the only one in this house, and a monstrous uncommon thing. Is it not, my lord?’

  ‘Lord! I vow it is!’ the other drawled; and then, taking advantage of the moment when Julia’s attention was engaged elsewhere — she dumbly refused to sit, ‘Where is Dunborough?’ my lord muttered.

  ‘Heaven knows,’ Mr. Thomasson whispered, with a wink that postponed inquiry. ‘What is more to the purpose,’ he continued aloud, ‘if I may venture to make the suggestion to your lordship and Mr. Pomeroy, Miss Masterson has been much distressed and fatigued this evening. If there is a respectable elderly woman in the house, therefore, to whose care you could entrust her for the night, it were well.’

  ‘There is old Mother Olney,’ Mr. Pomeroy answered, assenting with a readier grace than the tutor expected, ‘who locked herself up an hour ago for fear of us young bloods. She should be old and ugly enough! Here you, Jarvey, go and kick in her outworks, and bid her come down.’

  ‘Better still, if I may suggest it,’ said the tutor, who was above all things anxious to be rid of the girl before too much was said— ‘Might not your servant take Miss above stairs to this good woman — who will doubtless see to her comfort? Miss Masterson has gone through some surprising adventures this evening, and I think it were better if you allowed her to withdraw at once, Mr. Pomeroy.’

  ‘Jarvey, take the lady,’ Mr. Pomeroy cried. ‘A sweet pretty toad she is. Here’s to your eyes and fortune, child!’ he continued with an impudent grin; and filling his glass he pledged her as she passed.

  After that he stood watching while Mr. Thomasson opened the door and bowed her out; and this done and the door closed after her, ‘Lord, what ceremony!’ he said, with an ugly sneer. ‘Is’t real, man, or are you bubbling her? And what is this Cock-lane story of a chaise and the rest? Out with it, unless you want to be tossed in a blanket.’

  ‘True, upon my honour!’ Mr. Thomasson asseverated.

  ‘Oh, but Tommy, the fortune?’ Lord Almeric protested seriously. ‘I vow you are sharping us.’

  ‘True too, my lord, as I hope to be saved!’

  ‘True? Oh, but it is too monstrous absurd,’ my lord wailed. ‘The Little Masterson? As pretty a little tit as was to be found in all Oxford. The Little Masterson a fortune?’

  ‘She has eyes and a shape,’ Mr. Pomeroy admitted generously. ‘For the rest, what is the figure, Mr. Thomasson?’ he continued. ‘There are fortunes and fortunes.’

  Mr. Thomasson looked at the gallery above, and thence, and slyly, to his companions and back again to the gallery; and swallowed something that rose in his throat. At length he seemed to make up his mind to speak the truth, though when he did so it was in a voice little above a whisper. ‘Fifty thousand,’ he said, and looked guiltily round him.

  Lord Almeric rose from his chair as if on springs. ‘Oh, I protest!’ he said. ‘You are roasting us. Fifty thousand! It’s a bite?’

  But Mr. Thomasson nodded. ‘Fifty thousand,’ he repeated softly. ‘Fifty thousand.’

  ‘Pounds?’ gasped my lord. ‘The Little Masterson?’

  The tutor nodded again; and without asking leave, with a dogged air unlike his ordinary bearing when he was in the company of those above him, he drew a decanter towards him, and filling a glass with a shaking hand raised it to his lips and emptied it. The three were on their feet round the table, on which several candles, luridly lighting up their faces, still burned; while others had flickered down, and smoked in the guttering sockets, among the empty bottles and the litter of cards. In one corner of the table the lees of wine had run upon the oak, and dripped to the floor, and formed a pool, in which a broken glass lay in fragments beside the overturned chair. An observant eye might have found on the panels below the gallery the vacant nails and dusty lines whence Lelys and Knellers, Cuyps and Hondekoeters had looked down on two generations of Pomeroys. But in the main the disorder of the scene centred in the small table and the three men standing round it; a lighted group, islanded in the shadows of the hall.

  Mr. Pomeroy waited with impatience until Mr. Thomasson lowered his glass. Then, ‘Let us have the story,’ he said. ‘A guinea to a China orange the fool is tricking us.’

  The tutor shook his head, and turned to Lord Almeric. ‘You know Sir George Soane,’ he said. ‘Well, my lord, she is his cousin.’

  ‘Oh, tally, tally!’ my lord cried. ‘You — you are romancing, Tommy!’

  ‘And under the will of Sir George’s grandfather she takes fifty thousand pounds, if she make good her claim within a certain time from to-day.’

  ‘Oh, I say, you are romancing!’ my lord repeated, more feebly. ‘You know, you really should not! It is too uncommon absurd, Tommy.’

  ‘It’s true!’ said Mr. Thomasson.

  ‘What? That this porter’s wench at Pembroke has fifty thousand pounds?’ cried Mr. Pomeroy. ‘She is the porter’s wench, isn’t she?’ he continued. Something had sobered him. His eyes shone, and the veins stood out on his forehead. But his manner was concise and harsh, and to the point.

  Mr. Thomasson. glanced at him stealthily, as one gamester scrutinises another over the cards. ‘She is Masterson, the porter’s, foster-child,’ he said.

  ‘But is it certain that she has the money?’ the other cried rudely. ‘Is it true, man? How do you know? Is it public property?’

  ‘No,’ Mr. Thomasson answered, ‘it is not public property. But it is certain and it is true!’ Then, after a moment’s hesitation, ‘I saw some papers — by accident,’ he said, his eyes on the gallery.
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br />   ‘Oh, d — n your accident!’ Mr. Pomeroy cried brutally. ‘You are very fine to-night. You were not used to be a Methodist! Hang it, man, we know you,’ he continued violently, ‘and this is not all! This does not bring you and the girl tramping the country, knocking at doors at midnight with Cock-lane stories of chaises and abductions. Come to it, man, or—’

  ‘Oh, I say,’ Lord Almeric protested weakly. ‘Tommy is an honest man in his way, and you are too stiff with him.’

  ‘D — n him! my lord; let him come to the point then,’ Mr. Pomeroy retorted savagely. ‘Is she in the way to get the money?’

  ‘She is,’ said the tutor sullenly.

  ‘Then what brings her here — with you, of all people?’

  ‘I will tell you if you will give me time, Mr. Pomeroy,’ the tutor said plaintively. And he proceeded to describe in some detail all that had happened, from the fons et origo mali — Mr. Dunborough’s passion for the girl — to the stay at the Castle Inn, the abduction at Manton Corner, the strange night journey in the chaise, and the stranger release.

  When he had done, ‘Sir George was the girl’s fancy-man, then?’ Pomeroy said, in the harsh overbearing tone he had suddenly adopted.

  The tutor nodded.

  ‘And she thinks he has tricked her?’

  ‘But for that and the humour she is in,’ Mr. Thomasson answered, with a subtle glance at the other’s face, ‘you and I might talk here till Doomsday, and be none the better, Mr. Pomeroy.’

  His frankness provoked Mr. Pomeroy to greater frankness. ‘Consume your impertinence!’ he cried. ‘Speak for yourself.’

  ‘She is not that kind of woman,’ said Mr. Thomasson firmly.

  ‘Kind of woman?’ cried Mr. Pomeroy furiously. ‘I am this kind of man. Oh, d — n you! If you want plain speaking you shall have it! She has fifty thousand, and she is in my house; well, I am this kind of man! I’ll not let that money go out of the house without having a fling at it! It is the devil’s luck has sent her here, and it will be my folly will send her away — if she goes. Which she does not if I am the kind of man I think I am. So there for you! There’s plain speaking.’

  ‘You don’t know her,’ Mr. Thomasson answered doggedly. ‘Mr. Dunborough is a gentleman of mettle, and he could not bend her.’

  ‘She was not in his house!’ the other retorted, with a grim laugh. Then, in a lower, if not more amicable tone, ‘Look here, man,’ he continued, ‘d’ye mean to say that you had not something of this kind in your mind when you knocked at this door?’

  ‘I!’ Mr. Thomasson cried, virtuously indignant.

  ‘Ay, you! Do you mean to say you did not see that here was a chance in a hundred? In a thousand? Ay, in a million? Fifty thousand pounds is not found in the road any day?’

  Mr. Thomasson grinned in a sickly fashion. ‘I know that,’ he said.

  ‘Well, what is your idea? What do you want?’

  The tutor did not answer on the instant, but after stealing one or two furtive glances at Lord Almeric, looked down at the table, a nervous smile distorting his mouth. At length, ‘I want — her,’ he said; and passed his tongue furtively over his lips.

  ‘The girl?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh Lord!’ said Mr. Pomeroy, in a voice of disgust.

  But the ice broken, Mr. Thomasson had more to say. ‘Why not?’ he said plaintively. ‘I brought her here — with all submission. I know her, and — and am a friend of hers. If she is fair game for any one, she is fair game for me. I have run a risk for her,’ he continued pathetically, and touched his brow, where the slight cut he had received in the struggle with Dunborough’s men showed below the border of his wig, ‘and — and for that matter, Mr. Pomeroy is not the only man who has bailiffs to avoid.’

  ‘Stuff me, Tommy, if I am not of your opinion!’ cried Lord Almeric. And he struck the table with unusual energy.

  Pomeroy turned on him in surprise as great as his disgust. ‘What?’ he cried. ‘You would give the girl and her money — fifty thousand — to this old hunks!’

  ‘I? Not I! I would have her myself!’ his lordship answered stoutly. ‘Come, Pomeroy, you have won three hundred of me, and if I am not to take a hand at this, I shall think it low! Monstrous low I shall think it!’ he repeated in the tone of an injured person. ‘You know. Pom, I want money as well as another — want it devilish bad—’

  ‘You have not been a Sabbatarian, as I was for two months last year,’ Mr. Pomeroy retorted, somewhat cooled by this wholesale rising among his allies, ‘and walked out Sundays only for fear of the catchpolls.’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘But I am not now, either. Is that it? Why, d’ye think, because I pouched six hundred of Flitney’s, and three of yours, and set the mare going again, it will last for ever?’

  ‘No, but fair’s fair, and if I am not in this, it is low. It is low, Pom,’ Lord Almeric continued, sticking to his point with abnormal spirit. ‘And here is Tommy will tell you the same. You have had three hundred of me—’

  ‘At cards, dear lad; at cards,’ Mr. Pomeroy answered easily. ‘But this is not cards. Besides,’ he continued, shrugging his shoulders and pouncing on the argument, ‘we cannot all marry the girl!’

  ‘I don’t know,’ my lord answered, passing his fingers tenderly through his wig. ‘I — I don’t commit myself to that.’

  ‘Well, at any rate, we cannot all have the money!’ Pomeroy replied, with sufficient impatience.

  ‘But we can all try! Can’t we, Tommy?’

  Mr. Thomasson’s face, when the question was put to him in that form, was a curious study. Mr. Pomeroy had spoken aright when he called it a chance in a hundred, in a thousand, in a million. It was a chance, at any rate, that was not likely to come in Mr. Thomasson’s way again. True, he appreciated more correctly than the others the obstacles in the way of success — the girl’s strong will and wayward temper; but he knew also the humour which had now taken hold of her, and how likely it was that it might lead her to strange lengths if the right man spoke at the right moment.

  The very fact that Mr. Pomeroy had seen the chance and gauged the possibilities, gave them a more solid aspect and a greater reality in the tutor’s mind. Each moment that passed left him less willing to resign pretensions which were no longer the shadowy creatures of the brain, but had acquired the aspect of solid claims — claims made his by skill and exertion.

  But if he defied Mr. Pomeroy, how would he stand? The girl’s position in this solitary house, apart from her friends, was half the battle; in a sneaking way, though he shrank from facing the fact, he knew that she was at their mercy; as much at their mercy as if they had planned the abduction from the first. Without Mr. Pomeroy, therefore, the master of the house and the strongest spirit of the three —

  He got no farther, for at this point Lord Almeric repeated his question; and the tutor, meeting Pomeroy’s bullying eye, found it necessary to say something. ‘Certainly,’ he stammered at a venture, ‘we can all try, my lord. Why not?’

  ‘Ay, why not?’ said Lord Almeric. ‘Why not try?’

  ‘Try? But how are you going to try?’ Mr. Pomeroy responded with a jeering laugh. ‘I tell you, we cannot all marry the girl.’

  Lord Almeric burst in a sudden fit of chuckling. ‘I vow and protest I have it!’ he cried. ‘We’ll play for her! Don’t you see, Pom? We’ll cut for her! Ha! Ha! That is surprising clever of me; don’t you think? We’ll play for her!’

  CHAPTER XXIV

  CUTTING FOR THE QUEEN

  It was a suggestion so purely in the spirit of a day when men betted on every contingency, public or private, decorous or the reverse, from the fecundity of a sister to the longevity of a sire, that it sounded less indecent in the cars of Lord Almeric’s companions than it does in ours. Mr. Thomasson indeed, who was only so far a gamester as every man who had pretensions to be a gentleman was one at that time, and who had seldom, since the days of Lady Harrington’s faro bank, staked more than he could afford, hesitated
and looked dubious. But Mr. Pomeroy, a reckless and hardened gambler, gave a boisterous assent, and in the face of that the tutor’s objections went for nothing. In a trice, all the cards and half the glasses were swept pell mell to the floor, a new pack was torn open, the candles were snuffed, and Mr. Pomeroy, smacking him on the back, was bidding him draw up.

  ‘Sit down, man! Sit down!’ cried that gentleman, who had regained his jovial humour as quickly as he had lost it, and whom the prospect of the stake appeared to intoxicate. ‘May I burn if I ever played for a girl before! Hang it! man, look cheerful, We’ll toast her first — and a daintier bit never swam in a bowl — and play for her afterwards! Come, no heel-taps, my lord. Drink her! Drink her! Here’s to the Mistress of Bastwick!’

  ‘Lady Almeric Doyley!’ my lord cried, rising, and bowing with his hand to his heart, while he ogled the door through which she had disappeared. ‘I drink you! Here’s to your pretty face, my dear!’

  ‘Mrs. Thomasson!’ cried the tutor, ‘I drink to you. But—’

  ‘But what shall it be, you mean?’ Pomeroy cried briskly. ‘Loo, Quinze, Faro, Lansquenet? Or cribbage, all-fours, put, Mr. Parson, if you like! It’s all one to me. Name your game and I am your man!’

  ‘Then let us shuffle and cut, and the highest takes,’ said the tutor.

  ‘Sho! man, where is the sport in that?’ Pomeroy cried, receiving the suggestion with disgust.

  ‘It is what Lord Almeric proposed,’ Mr. Thomasson answered. The two glasses of wine he had taken had given him courage. ‘I am no player, and at games of skill I am no match for you.’

  A shadow crossed Mr. Pomeroy’s face; but he recovered himself immediately. ‘As you please,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders with a show of carelessness. ‘I’ll match any man at anything. Let’s to it!’

  But the tutor kept his hands on the cards, which lay in a heap face downwards on the table. ‘There is a thing to be settled,’ he said, hesitating somewhat, ‘before we draw. If she will not take the winner — what then?’