Arabella Read online

‘That’s fudge!’ he said quickly. ‘I had been to gaming-houses 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 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.

  Fifteen

  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 galvanise 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 his 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.

  Mr Beaumaris, who had picked Ulysses up, paid no heed to all these attempts at self-justification, but addressed himself to his adorer. ‘What a fool you are!’ he observed. ‘No, I have the greatest dislike of having my face licked, and must request you to refrain. Quiet, Ulysses! quiet! I am grateful to you for your solicitude, but you must perceive that I am in the enjoyment of my customary good health. I would I could say the same of you. You have once more reduced yourself to skin and bone, my friend, a process which I shall take leave to inform you I consider as unjust as it is ridiculous. Anyone setting eyes on you would suppose that I grudged you even the scraps from my table!’ He added, without the slightest change of voice, and without raising his eyes from the creature in his arms: ‘You would also appear to have bereft my household of its senses, so that the greater part of it, instead of providing me with the breakfast I stand in need of, is engaged in excusing itself from any suspicion of blame and – I may add – doing itself no good thereby.’

  Ulysses, to whom the mere sound of Mr Beaumaris’s voice was ecstasy, looked adoringly up into his face, and contrived to lick the hand that was caressing him. On his servants, Mr Beaumaris’s voice operated in quite another fashion: they dispersed rapidly, Painswick to lay out a complete change of raiment; Brough to set the table in the breakfast-parlour; Alphonse to carve at lightning speed several slices of a fine York ham, and to cast eggs and herbs into a pan; and various underlings to grind coffee-beans, cut bread, and set kettles on to boil. Mr Beaumaris tucked Ulysses under one arm, picked up the pile of letters from the table in the hall, and strolled with them into his library. To the zealous young footman who hastened to fling open the door for him, he said: ‘Food for this abominable animal!’ – a command which, relayed swiftly to the kitchen, caused M. Alphonse to command his chief assistant instantly to abandon his allotted task, and to prepare a dish calculated to revive the flagging appetite of a Cambacérès.

  Mr Beaumaris, tossing a pile of invitations and bills aside, came upon a billet which had not been delivered through the medium of the Penny Post, and which was superscribed, urgent. The writing, certainly feminine, was unknown to him. ‘Now, what have we here, Ulysses?’ he said, breaking the wafer.

  They had not very much. ‘Dear Mr Beaumaris,’ ran the missive, ‘I should be very much obliged to you if you would do me the honour of calling in Park Street as soon as may be convenient to you, and requesting the butler to inform me of the event. I remain, Ever yours most sincerely, Arabella Tallant.’

  This model of the epistolary art, which had caused Miss Tallant so much heart-searching, and so many ruined sheets of hot-pressed notepaper, did not fail of its effect. Mr Beaumaris cast aside the rest of his correspondence, set Ulysses down on the floor, and bent his powerful mind to the correct interpretation of these few, heavily underlined, words. He was still engaged on this task when Brough entered the room to announce that his breakfast awaited him. He carried the letter into the parlour, and propped it against the coffee-pot, feeling that he had not yet got to the bottom of it. At his feet, Ulysses, repairing with enthusiasm the ravages of his protracted fast, was rapidly consuming a meal which might have been judged excessive for the satisfaction of the appetite of a boa-constrictor.

  ‘This,’ said Mr Beaumaris, ‘was delivered here three days ago, Ulysses!’

  Ulysses, whose keen olfactory sense had discovered the chicken giblets cunningly hidden in the middle of his plate, could spare no more than a perfunctory wag of the tail for this speech; and to Mr Beaumaris’s subsequent demand to know what could be in the wind he returned no answer at all. Mr Beaumaris pushed away the remains of his breakfast, a gesture which was shortly to operate alarmingly on the sensibilities of the artist below stairs, and waved aside his valet, who had just entered the room. ‘My town dress!’ he said.

  ‘I have it ready, sir,’ responded Painswick, with dignity. ‘There was just one matter which I should perhaps mention.’

  ‘Not now,’ said Mr Beaumaris, his eyes still bent upon Miss Tallant’s tantalising communication.

  Painswick bowed, and withdrew. The matter was not, in his fastidious estimation of sufficient importance to justify him in intruding upon his employer’s evident preoccupation; nor did he broach it when Mr Beaumaris presently came upstairs to change his riding-dress for the blue coat, yellow pantaloons, chaste waistcoat, and gleaming Hessians with which he was w
ont to gratify the eyes of beholders in the Metropolis. This further abstention was due, however, more to the sense of irretrievable loss which had invaded his soul on the discovery that a shirt was missing from Mr Beaumaris’s execrably packed portmanteau than from a respect for his master’s abstraction. He confined his conversation to bitter animadversions on the morals of inn-servants, and the depths of depravity to which some unknown boots had sunk in treating Mr Beaumaris’s second-best pair of Hessians with a blacking fit only to be used on the footwear of country squires. He could hardly flatter himself that Mr Beaumaris, swiftly and skilfully arranging the folds of his neckcloth in the mirror, or delicately paring his well-cared-for finger-nails, paid the least heed to his discourse, but it served in some measure to relieve his lacerated feelings.

  Leaving his valet to repair the damage to his wardrobe, and his faithful admirer to sleep off the effects of a Gargantuan meal, Mr Beaumaris left the house, and walked to Park Street. Here he was met by the intelligence that my lord, my lady, and Miss Tallant had gone out in the barouche to the British Museum, where Lord Elgin’s much disputed marbles were now being exhibited, in a wooden shed built for their accommodation. Mr Beaumaris thanked the butler for this information, called up a passing hackney, and directed the jarvey to drive him to Great Russell Street.

  He found Miss Tallant, her disinterested gaze fixed upon a sculptured slab from the Temple of Nike Apteros, enduring a lecture from Lord Bridlington, quite in his element. It was Lady Bridlington who first perceived his tall, graceful figure advancing across the saloon, for since she had naturally seen the collection of antiquities when it was on view at Lord Elgin’s residence in Park Lane, and again when it was removed to Burlington House, she felt herself to be under no obligation to look at it a third time, and was more profitably engaged in keeping a weather eye cocked for any of her acquaintances who might have elected to visit the British Museum that morning. Upon perceiving Mr Beaumaris, she exclaimed in accents of delight: ‘Mr Beaumaris! What a lucky chance, to be sure! How do you do? How came you not to be at Kirkmichael’s Venetian Breakfast yesterday? Such a charming party! I am persuaded you must have enjoyed it! Six hundred guests – only fancy!’