Arabella (33 page)

“No, indeed!” Arabella said. “You must not talk of it any more, Bertram. You know how wicked it would be!”

“Well, I suppose I shan’t kill myself,” Bertram said, a shade sulkily. “Only, I can tell you this: I’ll never face my father with
this!
”

“No, no!” she agreed. “Seven hundred pounds! Bertram, how has it been possible?”

“I lost six hundred at faro,” he said, dropping his head in his hands. “The rest—Well, there was the tailor, and the horse I hired, and what I owe at Tatt’s, and my shot at the inn—oh, a dozen things! Bella, what am I to do?”

He sounded much more like the younger brother she knew when he spoke like that, a scared look in his face, and in his voice an unreasoning dependence on her ability to help him out of a scrape.

“Bills don’t signify,” pronounced Mr. Scunthorpe. “Leave town: won’t be followed. Not been living under your own name. Gaining debts another matter. Got to raise the wind for that. Debt of honour.”

“I know it, curse you!”

“But all debts are debts of honour!” Arabella said. “Indeed, you should pay your bills first of all!”

A glance passed between the two gentleman, indicative of their mutual agreement not to waste breath in arguing with a female on a subject she would clearly never understand. Bertram passed his hand over his brow, heaving a short sigh, and saying: “There’s only one thing to be done. I have thought it all over, Bella, and I mean to enlist, under a false name. If they won’t have me as a trooper, I’ll join a line regiment. I should have done it yesterday, when I first thought of it, only that there’s something I must do first. Affair of honour. I shall write to my father, of course, and I daresay he will utterly cast me off, but that can’t be helped!”

“How can you think so?” Arabella cried hotly. “Grieved he must be—oh, I dare not even think of it!—but you must know that never, never would he do such an unchristian thing as to cast you off! Oh, do not write to him yet! Only give me tune to think what I can do! If Papa knew that you owed all that money, I am very sure he would pay every penny of it, though it ruined him!”

“How can you suppose I would be such a gudgeon as to tell him
that?
No! I shall tell him that my whole mind is set on the army, and I had as lief start in the ranks as not!”

This speech struck far more dismay into Arabella’s heart than his previous talk of committing suicide, for to take the King’s shilling seemed to her a likely thing for him to do. She uttered, hardly above a whisper: “No, no!”

“It must be, Bella,” he said, “I’m sure the army is all I’m fit for, and I cannot show my face again with a load of debt hanging over me. Particularly a debt of honour! O God, I think I must have been mad!” His voice broke, and he could not speak for a moment. In the end he contrived to summon up the travesty of a smile, and to say: “Pretty pair, ain’t we? Not that
you
did anything as wrong as I have.”

“Oh, I have behaved so dreadfully!” she exclaimed. “It is even my fault that you are reduced to these straits! Had I never presented you to Lord Wivenhoe—”

“That’s fudge!” he said quickly. “I had been to gaminghouses before I met him. He was not to know I wasn’t as well-blunted as that set of his! I ought not to have gone with him to the Nonesuch. Only I had lost money on a race, and I thought—I hoped Oh, talking pays no toll! But to say it was your fault is all gammon!”

“Bertram, who won your money at the Nonesuch?” she asked.

“The bank. It was faro.”

“Yes, but someone holds the bank!”

“The Nonpareil.”

She stared at him. “Mr. Beaumaris?” she gasped. He nodded. “Oh, no, do not say so! How could he have let you—No, no, Bertram!”

She sounded so much distressed that he was puzzled. “Why the devil shouldn’t he?”

“You are only a boy! He must have known! And to accept notes of hand from you! Surely he might have refused to do so much at least!”

“You don’t understand!” he said impatiently. “I went there with Chuffy, so why should he refuse to let me play?”

Mr. Scunthorpe nodded. “Very awkward situation, ma’am. Devilish insulting to refuse a man’s vowels.”

She could not appreciate the niceties of the code evidently shared by both gentlemen, but she could accept that they must obtain in male circles. “I must think it wrong of him,” she said. “But never mind! The thing is that he is—that I am particularly acquainted with him! Don’t be in despair, Bertram! I am persuaded that if I were to go to him, explain that you are not of age, and not a rich man’s son, he will forgive the debt!”

She broke off, for there was no mistaking the expressions of shocked disapprobation in both Bertram’s and Mr. Scunthorpe’s faces.

“Good God, Bella, what will you say next!”

“But, Bertram, indeed he is not proud and disagreeable, as so many people think him! I—I have found him particularly kind, and obliging!”

“Bella, this is a
debt of honour!
If it takes me my life long to do it, I must pay it, and so I shall tell him!”

Mr. Scunthorpe nodded judicial approval of this decision.

“Spend your life paying six hundred pounds to a man who is so wealthy that I daresay he regards it no more than you would a shilling?” cried Arabella. “Why, it is absurd!”

Bertram looked despairingly at his friend. Mr. Scunthorpe said painstakingly: “Nothing to do with it, ma’am. Debt of honour is a debt of honour. No getting away from that.”

“I cannot agree! I own, I do not like to do it, but I
could
do it, and I know he would never refuse me!”

Bertram grasped her wrist. “Listen, Bella! I daresay you don’t understand—in fact, I can see that you don’t!—but if you dared to do such a thing I swear you’d never see my face again! Besides, even if he did tear up my vowels I should still think myself under an obligation to redeem them! Next you will be suggesting that you should ask him to pay those damned tradesmen’s bills for me!”

She coloured guiltily, for some such idea had just crossed her mind. Suddenly, Mr. Scunthorpe, whose face a moment before had assumed a cataleptic expression, uttered three pregnant words. “Got a notion!”

The Tallants looked anxiously at him, Bertram with hope, his sister more than a little doubtfully.

“Know what they say?” Mr. Scunthorpe demanded. “Bank always wins!”

“I know that,” said Bertram bitterly. “If that’s all you have to say—”

“Wait!” said Mr. Scunthorpe. “Start one!” He saw blank bewilderment in the two faces confronting him, and added, with a touch of impatience: “Faro!”

“Start a faro-bank?” said Bertram incredulously. “You must be mad! Why, even if it were not the craziest thing I ever heard of, you can’t run a faro-bank without capital!”

“Thought of that,” said Mr. Scunthorpe, not without pride. “Go to my trustees. Go at once. Not a moment to be lost.”

“Good God, you don’t suppose they would let you touch your capital for such a cause as that?”

“Don’t see why not!” argued Mr. Scunthorpe. “Always trying to add to it. Preaching at me for ever about improving the estate! Very good way of doing it: wonder they haven’t thought of it for themselves. Better go and see my uncle at once.”

“Felix, you’re a gudgeon!” said Bertram irritably. “No trustee would let you do such a thing! And even if they would, good God, we neither of us want to spend our lives running a faro-bank!”

“Shouldn’t have to,” said Mr. Scunthorpe, sticking obstinately by his guns. “Only want to clear you of debt! One good night’s run would do it Close the bank then.”

He was so much enamoured of this scheme that it was some time before he could be dissuaded from trying to promote it. Arabella, paying very little heed to the argument, sat wrapped in her own thoughts. That these were by no means pleasant would have been apparent, even to Mr. Scunthorpe, had he been less engrossed in the championing of his own plans, for not only did her hands clench and unclench in her lap, but her face, always very expressive, betrayed her. But by the time Bertram had convinced Mr. Scunthorpe that a faro-bank would not answer, she was sufficiently mistress of herself again to excite no suspicion in either gentleman’s breast.

She turned her eyes towards Bertram, who had sunk back, after his animated argument, into a state of hopeless gloom. I shall think of something,” she said. “I
know
I shall contrive to help you! Only please, please do not enlist, Bertram! Not yet! Only if I should fail!”

“What do you mean to do?” he demanded. “I shan’t enlist until I have seen Mr. Beaumaris, and—and explained to him how it is! That I
must
do. I—I told him I had no funds in London, and should be obliged to send into Yorkshire for them, so he asked me to call at his house on Thursday. It is of no use to look at me like that, Bella! I couldn’t tell him. I was done-up, and had no means of paying him, with them all there, listening to what we were saying! I would have died rather! Bella, have you any money? Could you spare me enough to get my shirt back? I can’t go to see the Nonpareil like this!”

She thrust her purse into his hand. “Yes, yes, of course! If only I had not bought those gloves, and the shoes, and the new scarf! There are only ten guineas left, but it will be enough to make you more comfortable until I have thought how to help you, won’t it? Do, do remove from this dreadful house! I saw quite a number of inns on our way, and one or two of them looked to be respectable!”

It was plain that Bertram would be only too ready to change his quarters, and after a brief dispute, in which he was very glad to be worsted, he took the purse, gave her a hug, and said that she was the best sister in the world. He asked wistfully whether she thought Lady Bridlington might be induced to advance him seven hundred pounds, on a promise of repayment over a protracted period, but although she replied cheerfully that she had no doubt that she could arrange something of the sort, he could not deceive himself into thinking it possible, and sighed. Mr. Scunthorpe, prefixing his remark with one of his deprecating coughs, suggested that as the hackney had been told to wait for them, he and Miss Tallant, ought, perhaps, to be taking their leave. Arabella was much inclined to go at once in search of a suitable hostelry for Bertram, but was earnestly dissuaded, Mr. Scunthorpe promising to attend to this matter himself, and also to redeem Bertram’s raiment from the pawnbroker’s shop. The brother and sister then parted, clinging to one another in such a moving way that Mr. Scunthorpe was much affected by the sight, and had to blow his nose with great violence.

Arabella’s first action on reaching Park Street again was to run up to her bedchamber, and without pausing to remove her bonnet to sit down at the little table in the window, and prepare to write a letter. But in spite of the evident urgency of the matter she had no sooner written her opening words than all inspiration appeared to desert her, and she sat staring out of the window, while the ink dried on her pen. At last she drew a breath, dipped the pen in the standish again, and resolutely wrote two lines. Then she stopped, read them over, tore up the paper, and drew a fresh sheet towards her.

It was some time before she had achieved a result that satisfied her, but it was done at last, and the letter sealed up with a wafer. She then rang the bell-pull, and upon a housemaid’s coming in answer to the summons desired the girl to send Becky to her, if she could be spared from her duties. When Becky presently appeared, shyly smiling and twisting her hands together in her apron, Arabella held out the letter, and said: “If you please, Becky, do you think you could contrive to slip out, and—and carry that to Mr. Beaumaris’s house? You might say that I have asked you to go on an errand for me, but—but I shall be very much obliged to you if you will not disclose to anyone what it is!”

“Oh, miss!” breathed the handmaid, scenting a romance. “As though I would say a word to a living soul!”

“Thank you! If—if Mr. Beaumaris should be at home, I should be glad if you would wait for an answer to the letter!”

Becky nodded her profound understanding of this, assured Arabella that she might trust her through fire and water, and departed.

Nothing could have been more conspiratorial than her manner of entering Arabella’s room half-an-hour later, but she brought bad news: Mr. Beaumaris had gone into the country three days ago, and had said that he might be away from London for a week.

XV

mr. beaumaris returned to his London house in time to partake of a late breakfast on Tuesday morning, having been absent for six days. It had been considered probable by his dependants that he would be away for a full week, but as he rarely gave any positive information on his movements, counted no cost, and had accustomed his highly-paid servants to live in a constant state of expectation of being obliged, at a moment’s notice, to provide suitable entertainment for himself, or for a score of guests, his premature arrival caused no one any dismay. It caused one member of his household a degree of joy bordering on delirium. A ragged little mongrel, whose jauntily curled tail had been clipped unhappily between his legs for six interminable days, and who had spent the major part of this time curled into a ball on the rug outside his master’s door, refusing all sustenance, including plates of choice viands prepared by the hands of the great M. Alphonse himself, came tumbling down the stairs, uttering canine shrieks, and summoned up enough strength to career madly round in circles before collapsing in an exhausted, panting heap at Mr. Beaumaris’s feet. It spoke volumes for the light in which Mr. Beaumaris’s whims were regarded by his retainers that the condition to which his disreputable protégé had wilfully reduced himself brought every member of the household who might have been considered in some way responsible into the hall to exonerate himself from all blame. Even M. Alphonse mounted the stairs from his basement kingdom to describe to Mr. Beaumaris in detail the chicken-broth, the ragout of rabbit, the shin of beef, and the marrow-bone with, which he had tried to tempt Ulysses’ vanished appetite. Brough broke in on his Gallic monologue to assure Mr. Beaumaris that he for one had left nothing undone to restore Ulysses’ interest in life, even going to the lengths of importing a stray cat into the house, in the hope that this outrage would galvanize one notoriously unsympathetic towards all felines to activity. Painswick, with a smug air that rendered him instantly odious to his colleagues, drew attention to the fact that it had been his superior understanding of Ulysses’ processes of thought which Mr. Beaumaris had to thank for him finding himself still in possession of his low-born companion: he had conceived the happy notion of giving Ulysses one of Mr. Beaumaris’s gloves to guard.