The Castle Inn: Chapter 23

Chapter 23

BULLY POMEROY

The man held a candle in a hand that wavered and strewed tallow
broadcast; the light from this for a moment dazzled the visitors. Then
the draught of air extinguished it, and looking over the servant's
shoulder--he was short and squat--Mr. Thomasson's anxious eyes had a
glimpse of a spacious old-fashioned hall, panelled and furnished in oak,
with here a blazon, and there antlers or a stuffed head. At the farther
end of the hall a wide easy staircase rose, to branch at the first
landing into two flights, that returning formed a gallery round the
apartment. Between the door and the foot of the staircase, in the warm
glow of an unseen fire, stood a small heavily-carved oak table, with
Jacobean legs, like stuffed trunk-hose. This was strewn with cards,
liquors, glasses, and a china punch-bowl; but especially with cards,
which lay everywhere, not only on the table, but in heaps and batches
beneath and around it, where the careless hands of the players had
flung them.

Yet, for all these cards, the players were only two. One, a man
something under forty, in a peach coat and black satin breeches, sat on
the edge of the table, his eyes on the door and his chair lying at his
feet. It was his voice that had shouted for Jarvey and that now saluted
the arrivals with a boisterous 'Two to one in guineas, it's a catchpoll!
D'ye take me, my lord?'--the while he drummed merrily with his heels on
a leg of the table. His companion, an exhausted young man, thin and
pale, remained in his chair, which he had tilted on its hinder feet; and
contented himself with staring at the doorway.

The latter was our old friend, Lord Almeric Doyley; but neither he nor
Mr. Thomasson knew one another, until the tutor had advanced some paces
into the room. Then, as the gentleman in the peach coat cried, 'Curse
me, if it isn't a parson! The bet's off! Off!' Lord Almeric dropped his
hand of cards on the table, and opening his mouth gasped in a paroxysm
of dismay.

'Oh, Lord,' he exclaimed, at last. 'Hold me, some one! If it isn't
Tommy! Oh, I say,' he continued, rising and speaking in a tone of
querulous remonstrance, 'you have not come to tell me the old man's
gone! And I'd pitted him against Bedford to live to--to--but it's like
him! It is like him, and monstrous unfeeling. I vow and protest it is!
Eh! oh, it is not that! Hal--loa!'

He paused there, his astonishment greater even than that which he had
felt on recognising the tutor. His eye had lighted on Julia, whose
figure was now visible on the threshold.

His companion did not notice this. He was busy identifying the tutor.
'Gad! it is old Thomasson!' he cried, for he too had been at Pembroke.
'_And_ a petticoat! _And_ a petticoat!' he repeated. 'Well, I am spun!'

The tutor raised his hands in astonishment. 'Lord!' he said, with a fair
show of enthusiasm, 'do I really see my old friend and pupil, Mr.
Pomeroy of Bastwick?'

'Who put the cat in your valise? When you got to London--kittens? You
do, Tommy.'

'I thought so!' Mr. Thomasson answered effusively. 'I was sure of it! I
never forget a face when my--my heart has once gone out to it! And you,
my dear, my very dear Lord Almeric, there is no danger I shall ever--'

'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.

'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!'

Back to chapter list of: The Castle Inn