‘What then?’
‘Yes, what then?’
Mr. Pomeroy grinned. ‘Why, then number two will try his luck with her, and if he fail, number three! There, my bully boy, that is settled. It seems simple enough, don’t it?’
‘But how long is each to have?’ the tutor asked in a low voice. The three were bending over the cards, their faces near one another. Lord Almeric’s eyes turned from one to the other of the speakers.
‘How long?’ Mr. Pomeroy answered, raising his eyebrows. ‘Ah. Well, let’s say — what do you think? Two days?’
‘And if the first fail, two days for the second?’
‘There will be no second if I am first,’ Pomeroy answered grimly.
‘But otherwise,’ the tutor persisted; ‘two days for the second?’
Bully Pomeroy nodded.
‘But then, the question is, can we keep her here?’
‘Four days?’
‘Yes.’
Mr. Pomeroy laughed harshly. ‘Ay,’ he said, ‘or six if needs be and I lose. You may leave that to me. We’ll shift her to the nursery to-morrow.’
‘The nursery?’ my lord said, and stared.
‘The windows are barred. Now do you understand?’
The tutor turned a shade paler, and his eyes sank slyly to the table. ‘There’ll — there’ll be no violence, of course,’ he said, his voice a trifle unsteady.
‘Violence? Oh, no, there will be no violence,’ Mr. Pomeroy answered with an unpleasant sneer. And they all laughed; Mr. Thomasson tremulously, Lord Almeric as if he scarcely entered into the other’s meaning and laughed that he might not seem outside it. Then, ‘There is another thing that must not be,’ Pomeroy continued, tapping softly on the table with his forefinger, as much to command attention as to emphasise his words, ‘and that is peaching! Peaching! We’ll have no Jeremy Twitcher here, if you please.’
‘No, no!’ Mr. Thomasson stammered. ‘Of course not.’
‘No, damme!’ said my lord grandly. ‘No peaching!’
‘No,’ Mr. Pomeroy said, glancing keenly from one to the other, ‘and by token I have a thought that will cure it. D’ye see here, my lord! What do you say to the losers taking five thousand each out of Madam’s money? That should bind all together if anything will — though I say it that will have to pay it,’ he continued boastfully.
My lord was full of admiration. ‘Uncommon handsome!’ he said. ‘Pom, that does you credit. You have a head! I always said you had a head!’
‘You are agreeable to that, my lord?’
‘Burn me, if I am not.’
‘Then shake hands upon it. And what say you, Parson?’
Mr. Thomasson proffered an assent fully as enthusiastic as Lord Almeric’s, but for a different reason. The tutor’s nerves, never strong, were none the better for the rough treatment he had undergone, his long drive, and his longer fast. He had taken enough wine to obscure remoter terrors, but not the image of Mr. Dunborough — impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer — Dunborough doubly and trebly offended! That image recurred when the glass was not at his lips; and behind it, sometimes the angry spectre of Sir George, sometimes the face of the girl, blazing with rage, slaying him with the lightning of her contempt.
He thought that it would not suit him ill, therefore, though it was a sacrifice, if Mr. Pomeroy took the fortune, the wife, and the risk — and five thousand only fell to him. True, the risk, apart from that of Mr. Dunborough’s vengeance, might be small; no one of the three had had act or part in the abduction of the girl. True, too, in the atmosphere of this unfamiliar house — into which he had been transported as suddenly as Bedreddin Hassan to the palace in the fairy tale — with the fumes of wine and the glamour of beauty in his head, he was in a mood to minimise even that risk. But under the jovial good-fellowship which Mr. Pomeroy affected, and strove to instil into the party, he discerned at odd moments a something sinister that turned his craven heart to water and loosened the joints of his knees.
The lights and cards and jests, the toasts and laughter were a mask that sometimes slipped and let him see the death’s head that grinned behind it. They were three men, alone with the girl in a country house, of which the reputation, Mr. Thomasson had a shrewd idea, was no better than its master’s. No one outside knew that she was there; as far as her friends were concerned, she had vanished from the earth. She was a woman, and she was in their power. What was to prevent them bending her to their purpose?
It is probable that had she been of their rank from the beginning, bred and trained, as well as born, a Soane, it would not have occurred even to a broken and desperate man to frame so audacious a plan. But scruples grew weak, and virtue — the virtue of Vauxhall and the masquerades — languished where it was a question of a woman who a month before had been fair game for undergraduate gallantry, and who now carried fifty thousand pounds in her hand.
Mr. Pomeroy’s next words showed that this aspect of the case was in his mind. ‘Damme, she ought to be glad to marry any one of us!’ he said, as he packed the cards and handed them to the others that each might shuffle them. ‘If she is not, the worse for her! We’ll put her on bread and water until she sees reason!’
‘D’you think Dunborough knew, Tommy?’ said Lord Almeric, grinning at the thought of his friend’s disappointment. ‘That she had the money?’
Dunborough’s name turned the tutor grave. He shook his head.
‘He’ll be monstrous mad! Monstrous!’ Lord Almeric said with a chuckle; the wine he had drunk was beginning to affect him. ‘He has paid the postboys and we ride. Well, are you ready? Ready all? Hallo! Who is to draw first?’
‘Let’s draw for first,’ said Mr. Pomeroy. ‘All together!’
‘All together!’
‘For it’s hey, derry down, and it’s over the lea.
And it’s out with the fox in the dawning!’
sang my lord in an uncertain voice. And then, ‘Lord! I’ve a d —— d deuce! Tommy has it! Tommy’s Pam has it! No, by Gad! Pomeroy, you have won it! Your Queen takes!’
‘And I shall take the Queen!’ quoth Mr. Pomeroy. Then ceremoniously, ‘My first draw, I think?’
‘Yes,’ said Mr. Thomasson nervously.
‘Yes,’ said Lord Almeric, gloating with flushed face on the blind backs of the cards as they lay in a long row before him. ‘Draw away!’
‘Then here’s for a wife and five thousand a year!’ cried Pomeroy. ‘One, two, three — oh, hang and sink the cards!’ he continued with a violent execration, as he flung down the card he had drawn. ‘Seven’s the main! I have no luck! Now, Mr. Parson, get on! Can you do better?’
Mr. Thomasson, a damp flush on his brow, chose his card gingerly, and turned it with trembling fingers. Mr. Pomeroy greeted it with a savage oath, Lord Almeric with a yell of tipsy laughter. It was an eight.
‘It is bad to be crabbed, but to be crabbed by a smug like you!’ Mr. Pomeroy cried churlishly. Then, ‘Go on, man!’ he said to his lordship. ‘Don’t keep us all night.’
‘AND DRINK HER, YOU ENVIOUS BEGGARS! DRINK HER!’
Lord Almeric, thus adjured, turned a card with a flourish. It was a King!
‘Fal-lal-lal, lal-lal-la!’ he sang, rising with a sweep of the arm that brought down two candlesticks. Then, seizing a glass and filling it from the punch-bowl, ‘Here’s your health once more, my lady. And drink her, you envious beggars! Drink her! You shall throw the stocking for us. Lord, we’ll have a right royal wedding! And then—’
‘Don’t you forget the five thousand,’ said Pomeroy sulkily. He kept his seat, his hands thrust deep into his breeches pockets; he looked the picture of disappointment.
‘Not I, dear lad! Not I! Lord, it is as safe as if your banker had it. Just as safe!’
‘Umph! She has not taken you yet!’ Pomeroy muttered, watching him; and his face relaxed. ‘No, hang me! she has not!’ he continued in a tone but half audible. ‘And it is even betting she will not. She might take you drunk, but d — n me if she wil
l take you sober!’ And, cheered by the reflection, he pulled the bowl to him, and, filling a glass, ‘Here’s to her, my lord,’ he said, raising it to his lips. ‘But remember you have only two days.’
‘Two days!’ my lord cried, reeling slightly; the last glass had been too much for him. ‘We’ll be married in two days. See if we are not.’
‘The Act notwithstanding?’ Mr. Pomeroy said, with a sneer.
‘Oh, sink the Act!’ his lordship retorted. ‘But where’s — where’s the door? I shall go,’ he continued, gazing vacantly about him, ‘go to her at once, and tell her — tell her I shall marry her! You — you fellows are hiding the door! You are — you are all jealous! Oh, yes! Such a shape and such eyes! You are jealous, hang you!’
Mr. Pomeroy leaned forward and leered at the tutor. ‘Shall we let him go?’ he whispered. ‘It will mend somebody’s chance. What say you, Parson? You stand next. Make it six thousand instead of five, and I’ll see to it.’
‘Let me go to her!’ my lord hiccoughed. He was standing, holding by the back of a chair. ‘I tell you — I — where is she? You are jealous! That’s what you are! Jealous! She is fond of me — pretty charmer — and I shall go to her!’
But Mr. Thomasson shook his head; not so much because he shrank from the outrage which the other contemplated with a grin, as because he now wished Lord Almeric to succeed. He thought it possible and even likely that the girl, dazzled by his title, would be willing to take the young sprig of nobility. And the influence of the Doyley family was great.
He shook his head therefore, and Mr. Pomeroy rebuffed, solaced himself with a couple of glasses of punch. After that, Mr. Thomasson pleaded fatigue as his reason for declining to take a hand at any game whatever, and my lord continuing to maunder and flourish and stagger, the host reluctantly suggested bed; and going to the door bawled for Jarvey and his lordship’s man. They came, but were found to be incapable of standing when apart. The tutor and Mr. Pomeroy, therefore, took my lord by the arms and partly shoved and partly supported him to his room.
There was a second bed in the chamber. ‘You had better tumble in there, Parson,’ said Mr. Pomeroy. ‘What say you? Will’t do?’
‘Finely,’ Tommy answered. ‘I am obliged to you.’ And when they had jointly loosened his lordship’s cravat, and removed his wig and set the cool jug of small beer within his reach, Mr. Pomeroy bade the other a curt good-night, and took himself off.
Mr. Thomasson waited until his footsteps ceased to echo in the gallery, and then, he scarcely knew why, he furtively opened the door and peeped out. All was dark; and save for the regular tick of the pendulum on the stairs, the house was still. Mr. Thomasson, wondering which way Julia’s room lay, stood listening until a stair creaked; and then, retiring precipitately, locked his door. Lord Almeric, in the gloom of the green moreen curtains that draped his huge four-poster, had fallen into a drunken slumber. The shadow of his wig, which Pomeroy had clapped on the wig-stand by the bed, nodded on the wall, as the draught moved the tails. Mr. Thomasson shivered, and, removing the candle — as was his prudent habit of nights — to the hearth, muttered that a goose was walking over his grave, undressed quickly, and jumped into bed.
CHAPTER XXV
LORD ALMERIC’S SUIT
When Julia awoke in the morning, without start or shock, to the dreary consciousness of all she had lost, she was still under the influence of the despair which had settled on her spirits overnight, and had run like a dark stain through her troubled dreams. Fatigue of body and lassitude of mind, the natural consequences of the passion and excitement of her adventure, combined to deaden her faculties. She rose aching in all her limbs — yet most at heart — and wearily dressed herself; but neither saw nor heeded the objects round her. The room to which poor puzzled Mrs. Olney had hastily consigned her looked over a sunny stretch of park, sprinkled with gnarled thorn-trees that poorly filled the places of the oaks and chestnuts which the gaming-table had consumed. Still, the outlook pleased the eye, nor was the chamber itself lacking in liveliness. The panels on the walls, wherein needlework cockatoos and flamingoes, wrought under Queen Anne, strutted in the care of needlework black-boys, were faded and dull; but the pleasant white dimity with which the bed was hung relieved and lightened them.
To Julia it was all one. Wrapped in bitter thoughts and reminiscences, her bosom heaving from time to time with ill-restrained grief, she gave no thought to such things, or even to her position, until Mrs. Olney appeared and informed her that breakfast awaited her in another room.
Then, ‘Can I not take it here?’ she asked, shrinking painfully from the prospect of meeting any one.
‘Here?’ Mrs. Olney repeated. The housekeeper never closed her mouth, except when she spoke; for which reason, perhaps, her face faithfully mirrored the weakness of her mind.
‘Yes,’ said Julia. ‘Can I not take it here, if you please? I suppose — we shall have to start by-and-by?’ she added, shivering.
‘By-and-by, ma’am?’ Mrs. Olney answered. ‘Oh, yes.’
‘Then I can have it here.’
‘Oh, yes, if you please to follow me, ma’am.’ And she held the door open.
Julia shrugged her shoulders, and, contesting the matter no further, followed the good woman along a corridor and through a door which shut off a second and shorter passage. From this three doors opened, apparently into as many apartments. Mrs. Olney threw one wide and ushered her into a room damp-smelling, and hung with drab, but of good size and otherwise comfortable. The windows looked over a neglected Dutch garden, which was so rankly overgrown that the box hedges scarce rose above the wilderness of parterres. Beyond this, and divided from it by a deep-sunk fence, a pool fringed with sedges and marsh-weeds carried the eye to an alder thicket that closed the prospect.
Julia, in her relief on finding that the table was laid for one only, paid no heed to the outlook or to the bars that crossed the windows, but sank into a chair and mechanically ate and drank. Apprised after a while that Mrs. Olney had returned and was watching her with fatuous good-nature, she asked her if she knew at what hour she was to leave.
‘To leave?’ said the housekeeper, whose almost invariable custom it was to repeat the last words addressed to her. ‘Oh, yes, to leave. Of course.’
‘But at what time?’ Julia asked, wondering whether the woman was as dull as she seemed.
‘Yes, at what time?’ Then after a pause and with a phenomenal effort, ‘I will go and see — if you please.’
She returned presently. ‘There are no horses,’ she said. ‘When they are ready the gentleman will let you know.’
‘They have sent for some?’
‘Sent for some,’ repeated Mrs. Olney, and nodded, but whether in assent or imbecility it was hard to say.
After that Julia troubled her no more, but rising from her meal had recourse to the window and her own thoughts. These were in unison with the neglected garden and the sullen pool, which even the sunshine failed to enliven. Her heart was torn between the sense of Sir George’s treachery — which now benumbed her brain and now awoke it to a fury of resentment — and fond memories of words and looks and gestures, that shook her very frame and left her sick — love-sick and trembling. She did not look forward or form plans; nor, in the dull lethargy in which she was for the most part sunk, was she aware of the passage of time until Mrs. Olney came in with mouth and eyes a little wider than usual, and announced that the gentleman was coming up.
Julia supposed that the woman referred to Mr. Thomasson; and, recalled to the necessity of returning to Marlborough, she gave a reluctant permission. Great was her astonishment when, a moment later, not the tutor, but Lord Almeric, fanning himself with a laced handkerchief and carrying his little French hat under his arm, appeared on the threshold, and entered simpering and bowing. He was extravagantly dressed in a mixed silk coat, pink satin waistcoat, and a mushroom stock, with breeches of silver net and white silk stockings; and had a large pearl pin thrust through his wig. Unhappily, his
splendour, designed to captivate the porter’s daughter, only served to exhibit more plainly the nerveless hand and sickly cheeks which he owed to last night’s debauch.
Apparently he was aware of this, for his first words were, ‘Oh, Lord! What a twitter I am in! I vow and protest, ma’am, I don’t know where you get your roses of a morning. But I wish you would give me the secret.’
‘Sir!’ she said, interrupting him, surprise in her face. ‘Or’ — with a momentary flush of confusion— ‘I should say, my lord, surely there must be some mistake here.’
‘None, I dare swear,’ Lord Almeric answered, bowing gallantly. ‘But I am in such a twitter’ — he dropped his hat and picked it up again— ‘I hardly know what I am saying. To be sure, I was devilish cut last night! I hope nothing was said to — to — oh, Lord! I mean I hope you were not much incommoded by the night air, ma’am.’
‘The night air has not hurt me, I thank you,’ said Julia, who did not take the trouble to hide her impatience.
However, my lord, nothing daunted, expressed himself monstrously glad to hear it; monstrously glad. And after looking about him and humming and hawing, ‘Won’t you sit?’ he said, with a killing glance.
‘I am leaving immediately,’ Julia answered, and declined with coldness the chair which he pushed forward. At another time his foppish dress might have moved her to smiles, or his feebleness and vapid oaths to pity. This morning she needed her pity for herself, and was in no smiling mood. Her world had crashed around her; she would sit and weep among the ruins, and this butterfly insect flitted between. After a moment, as he did not speak, ‘I will not detain your lordship,’ she continued, curtseying frigidly.
‘Cruel beauty!’ my lord answered, dropping his hat and clasping his hands in an attitude. And then, to her astonishment, ‘Look, ma’am,’ he cried with animation, ‘look, I beseech you, on the least worthy of your admirers and deign to listen to him. Listen to him while — and don’t, oh, I say, don’t stare at me like that,’ he continued hurriedly, plaintiveness suddenly taking the place of grandiloquence. ‘I vow and protest I am in earnest.’
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 315