Arabella (25 page)

“Know what my uncle says?” Mr. Scunthorpe demanded. They always let a flat win the first time he goes to a hell. Hedge off, dear boy! they’ll queer you on that suit!”

“Oh, fudge!” retorted Bertram. “I hope I’m not such a gudgeon as to dip too deeply! I’ll tell you what, Felix, I
would
like to play just once at Watier’s, if you could contrive it for me!”

“What?” gasped Mr. Scunthorpe. “Dear old boy, they would never let you set foot inside the Great-Go, upon my honour they would not! Why, I’ve never played there myself! Much better go to Vauxhall! Might meet your sister there! See the Grand Cascade! Listen to the Pandean band! All the crack, you know!”

“Oh, dull work, when I might be trying my luck at faro!” said Bertram.

XI

from the Daffy Club to Limmer’s Hotel in Conduit Street was an inevitable step for any young gentleman interested in the Fancy to take. Here were to be found all the Pets of the Ring, and the Corinthians who patronized them. Bertram went there under the auspices of Mr. Scunthorpe, who was anxious to turn his friend’s thoughts away from more dangerous haunts. He had begun to acquire acquaintances in London, and was thus in the proud position of exchanging greetings with several of the men present. He and Mr. Scunthorpe sat down in one of the boxes, and Mr. Scunthorpe painstakingly pointed out to him all the notabilities he could see, including a very down-the-road looking man who, he whispered, could be trusted to tip a man the office what to back in any race. He then excused himself, and bore down upon this knowledgeable person, and became absorbed in conversation with him. While he was thus engaged, Bertram saw Mr. Beaumaris stroll in with a party of friends, but as he had by this time fully grasped the exalted position occupied by the Nonpareil he was flattered beyond measure when, after raising his glass and regarding him through it for a moment, Mr. Beaumaris walked across the sanded floor, and sat down at his table, saying with a slight smile: “Did I not meet you in the Park the other day? Mr.—er—Anstey, I believe?”

Bertram acknowledged it, flushing shyly; but when Mr. Beaumaris added casually: “You are related to Miss Tallant, I collect?” he made haste to deny any relationship, adding that Miss Tallant was quite above his touch. Mr. Beaumaris accepted this without comment, and asked him where he was putting up in town. Bertram saw no harm in disclosing his direction, or even in telling Mr. Beaumaris that this was his first visit to the Metropolis.

It was the expressed opinion of Mr. Jack Carnaby that the Nonpareil was a haughty, disagreeable kind of man, but Bertram was unable to trace the least sign of haughtiness, or of reserve, in his manners. Mr. Beaumaris
’s
intimates could have informed Mr. Tallant that while no one could be more snubbing, no one, on the other hand, could be—when he chose—more sympathetic. In less than no time, Bertram, forgetting his bashfulness, was confiding far more to his grand new acquaintance than he had the least idea of. Mr. Beaumaris, himself a Melton man, complimented him on his seat of a horse, and any barrier Bertram might have raised between himself and the author of his sister’s predicament crumbled at this touch. He was led on to describe the country over which he hunted, the exact locality of Heythram, and his own impossible ambitions, without having the smallest suspicion that all this information was being skilfully extracted from him. He told Mr. Beaumaris about Smalls, and his hopes of adorning the Home Office, and when Mr. Beaumaris said, with a humorous lift to one eyebrow, that he should not have supposed him to have had parliamentary ambitions, he blurted out his real ambition, ending by saying wistfully: “But it can’t be, of course. Only I would have liked of all things to have been able to have
joined a cavalry regiment!”

“I think you would do very well in a cavalry regiment,” agreed Mr. Beaumaris, rising, as Mr. Scunthorpe came back to the table. “Meanwhile, do not draw the bustle with too much of a vengeance during this visit of yours to London!” He nodded to Mr. Scunthorpe, and walked away, leaving that gentleman to explain to Bertram with the utmost earnestness just how greatly he had been honoured.

But Mr. Beaumaris, quelling the ecstatic advances of his canine admirer, an hour or two later, said: “If you had any real regard for me, Ulysses, you would be greeting me with condolences rather than with these uncalled-for raptures.”

Ulysses, considerably plumper, and with his flying ear more rebellious than ever, and his tail even more tightly curled over his back, stretched worshipfully before the god of his idolatry, and uttered an encouraging bark. After that he bustled to the door of the library, and plainly invited Mr. Beaumaris to enter, and partake of refreshment there. Brough, tenderly relieving his master of his long cloak, and his hat and gloves, remarked that it was wonderful how knowing the little dog was.

“It is wonderful what encouragement he has received from my staff to continue to burden me with his unwanted presence in my house!” retorted Mr. Beaumaris acidly.

Brough, who had dealt with Mr. Beaumaris for many years, permitted himself to give what in a lesser personage would have been a grin, and to say: “Well, sir, if I had
known
you wanted him chased off, I’m sure I’d have done my best! Not but what he’s so devoted to you that I doubt if he’d have gone, setting aside that it would go to my heart to chase off a dog that handles Alphonse like this one does.”

“If that misbegotten animal has been upsetting Alphonse, I’ll wring his neck!” promised Mr. Beaumaris.

“Oh, no, sir, nothing of that sort! When you’re out, and Ulysses comes downstairs (as come he does), he behaves to Alphonse as though he hadn’t had a bite to eat in a month, nor wouldn’t think of touching so much as a scrap of meat he found on the kitchen floor. Well, as I said to Mrs. Preston, if ever a dog could speak, that one does, telling Alphonse as plain as a Christian that he’s the only friend he’s got in the world. Quite won Alphonse over, he has. In fact, when two nice loin chops was found to be missing, Alphonse would have it the undercook was accusing the dog of having stolen them only to cover up his own carelessness, and Ulysses sitting there looking as if he didn’t know what a chop tasted like. He buried the bones under the rug in your study, sir, but I have removed them.”

“You are not only an ill-favoured specimen,” Mr. Beaumaris informed Ulysses severely, “but you have all the faults of the under-bred: toadeating, duplicity, and impudence!”

Ulysses sat down to relieve the irritation of a healing wound by a hearty scratch. He was rebuked, and since he had heard that note in Mr. Beaumaris’s voice before—as when he had expressed a vociferous desire to share his bedchamber with him—he stopped scratching, and flattened his ears placatingly.

Mr. Beaumaris poured himself out a glass of wine, and sat down with it in his favourite chair. Ulysses sat before him, and sighed deeply. “Yes, I daresay,” said Mr. Beaumaris, “but I have something better to do than to spend my time spreading ointment on your sores. You should remember, moreover, that you cannot be permitted to meet your benefactress again until you are entirely healed.” Ulysses yawned at him, and lay down with his head on his paws, as one who found the conversation tedious. Mr. Beaumaris stirred him with one foot. “I wonder if you are right?” he mused. “A month ago I should have been sure of it. Yet I let her saddle me with a foundling-brat, and a mongrel-cur—you will forgive my plain speaking, Ulysses!—and I am now reasonably certain that neither of you is destined to be the most tiresome of my responsibilities. Do you suppose that that wretched youth is masquerading under a false name for reasons of his own, or in support of her pretensions? Do not look at me like that! You may consider that experience should have taught me wisdom, but I do not believe that it was all a clever plot to inveigle me into declaring myself. I am not even sure that she regards me with more than tolerance. In fact, Ulysses, I am not very sure of anything—and I think I will pay my grandmother a long overdue visit.”

In pursuance of this resolve, Mr. Beaumaris sent for his curricle next morning. Ulysses, who had shared his breakfast, bundled ahead of him down the steps of his house, leaped into the curricle, and disposed himself on the passenger’s seat with all the air of a dog born into the purple.

“
No!
”
said Mr. Beaumaris forcibly. Ulysses descended miserably from the curricle, and prostrated himself on the flagway. “Let me tell you, my friend,” said Mr. Beaumaris, “that I have a certain reputation to maintain, which your disreputable appearance would seriously jeopardize! Do not be alarmed!—I am not, alas, going out of your life for ever!” He climbed into the curricle, and said: “You may stop grinning, Clayton, and let ’em go!”

“Yes, sir!” said his groom, obeying both these behests, and swinging himself expertly up on to the curricle as it passed him. After a minute or two, having twice glanced over his shoulder, he ventured to inform Mr. Beaumaris that the little dog was following him.

Mr. Beaumaris uttered an oath, and reined in his reluctant pair. The faithful hound, plodding valiantly along, with heaving ribs, and several inches of tongue hanging from his parted jaws, came up with the curricle, and once more abased himself in the road. “Damn you!” said Mr. Beaumaris. “I suppose you are capable of following me all the way to Wimbledon! It now remains to be seen whether my credit is good enough to enable me to carry you off. Get up!”

Ulysses was very much out of breath, but at these words he mustered up enough strength to scramble into the curricle once more. He wagged a grateful tail, climbed on to the seat beside Mr. Beaumaris, and sat there panting blissfully. Mr. Beaumaris read him a short lecture on the evils of blackmail, which sorely tried the self-control of his groom, discouraged him peremptorily from hurling a challenge at a mere pedestrian dog in the gutter, and proceeded on his way to Wimbledon.

The Dowager Duchess of Wigan, who was the terror of four sons, three surviving daughters, numerous grandchildren, her man of business, her lawyer, her physician, and a host of dependants, greeted her favourite grandson characteristically. He found her imbibing nourishment in the form of slices of toast dipped in tea, and bullying the unmarried daughter who lived with her. She had been a great belle in her day, and the ravages of her former beauty were still discernible in the delicate bones of her face. She had a way of looking at her visitors with an eagle-like stare, had never been known to waste politeness on anyone, and was scathingly contemptuous of everything modern. Her children were inordinately proud of her, and lived in dread of her periodical commands to them to present themselves at her house. Upon her butler’s ushering Mr. Beaumaris into her morning-room, she directed one of her piercing looks at him, and said: “Oh! So it’s you, is it? Why haven’t you been to see me since I don’t know when?”

Mr. Beaumaris, bowing deeply over her hand, replied imperturbably: “On the occasion of my last visit, ma’am, you told me you did not wish to see me again until I had mended my ways.”

“Well, have you?” said the Duchess, conveying another slip of soaked toast to her mouth.

“Certainly, ma’am: I am in a fair way to becoming a philanthropist,” he replied, turning to greet his aunt.

“I don’t want any more of
them
about me,” said her grace. “It turns my stomach enough already to have to sit here watching Caroline at her everlasting knitting for the poor. In
my
day, we gave ’em vails, and there was an end to it. Not that I believe you. Here, take this pap away, Caroline, and ring the bell! Maudling one’s inside with tea never did any good to anyone yet, and never will. I’ll tell Hadleigh to fetch up a bottle of Madeira—the lot your grandfather laid down, not that rubbish Wigan sent me t’other day!”

Lady Caroline removed the tray, but asked her parent in a shrinking tone if she thought that Dr. Sudbury would approve.

“Sudbury’s an old woman, and you’re a fool, Caroline!” replied the Duchess. “You go away, and leave me to talk to Robert! I never could abide a pack of females hangin’ round me!” She added, as Lady Caroline gathered up her knitting: “Tell Hadleigh the
good
Madeira! He knows. Well, sir, what have you to say for yourself now you
have
had the impudence to show your face here again?”

Mr. Beaumaris, closing the door behind his aunt, came back into the room, and said with deceptive meekness that he was happy to find his grandmother in such excellent health and spirits.

“Graceless jackanapes!” retorted the Duchess with relish. She ran her eye over his handsome person. “You look very well—at least, you would if you didn’t make such a figure of yourself in that rig! When I was a girl, no gentleman would have dreamed of paying a social call without powder, let me tell you! Enough to make your grandfather turn in his grave to see what you’ve all come to, with your skimpy coats, and your starched collars, and not a bit of lace to your neckcloth, or your wristbands! If you can sit down in those skin-tight breeches, or pantaloons, or whatever you call ’em, do so!”

“Oh, yes, I can sit down!” said Mr. Beaumaris, disposing himself in a chair opposite to hers. “My pantaloons, like Aunt Caroline’s gifts to the poor, are knitted, and so adapt themselves reasonably well to my wishes.”

“Ha! Then I’ll tell Caroline to knit you a pair for Christmas. That’ll send her into hysterics, for a bigger prude I never met!”

“Very likely, ma’am, but as I am sure that my aunt would obey you, however much her modesty was offended, I must ask you to refrain. The embroidered slippers which reached me last Christmas tried me high enough. I wonder what she thought I should do with them?”

The Duchess gave a cackle of laughter. “Lord bless you, she don’t
think!
You shouldn’t send her handsome gifts.”