The Castle Inn: Chapter 24

Chapter 24

CUTTING FOR THE QUEEN

It was a suggestion so purely in the spirit of a day when men betted on
every contingency, public or private, decorous or the reverse, from the
fecundity of a sister to the longevity of a sire, that it sounded less
indecent in the cars of Lord Almeric's companions than it does in ours.
Mr. Thomasson indeed, who was only so far a gamester as every man who
had pretensions to be a gentleman was one at that time, and who had
seldom, since the days of Lady Harrington's faro bank, staked more than
he could afford, hesitated and looked dubious. But Mr. Pomeroy, a
reckless and hardened gambler, gave a boisterous assent, and in the face
of that the tutor's objections went for nothing. In a trice, all the
cards and half the glasses were swept pell mell to the floor, a new pack
was torn open, the candles were snuffed, and Mr. Pomeroy, smacking him
on the back, was bidding him draw up.

'Sit down, man! Sit down!' cried that gentleman, who had regained his
jovial humour as quickly as he had lost it, and whom the prospect of the
stake appeared to intoxicate. 'May I burn if I ever played for a girl
before! Hang it! man, look cheerful, We'll toast her first--and a
daintier bit never swam in a bowl--and play for her afterwards! Come, no
heel-taps, my lord. Drink her! Drink her! Here's to the Mistress of
Bastwick!'

'Lady Almeric Doyley!' my lord cried, rising, and bowing with his hand
to his heart, while he ogled the door through which she had disappeared.
'I drink you! Here's to your pretty face, my dear!'

'Mrs. Thomasson!' cried the tutor, 'I drink to you. But--'

'But what shall it be, you mean?' Pomeroy cried briskly. 'Loo, Quinze,
Faro, Lansquenet? Or cribbage, all-fours, put, Mr. Parson, if you like!
It's all one to me. Name your game and I am your man!'

'Then let us shuffle and cut, and the highest takes,' said the tutor.

'Sho! man, where is the sport in that?' Pomeroy cried, receiving the
suggestion with disgust.

'It is what Lord Almeric proposed,' Mr. Thomasson answered. The two
glasses of wine he had taken had given him courage. 'I am no player, and
at games of skill I am no match for you.'

A shadow crossed Mr. Pomeroy's face; but he recovered himself
immediately. 'As you please,' he said, shrugging his shoulders with a
show of carelessness. 'I'll match any man at anything. Let's to it!'

But the tutor kept his hands on the cards, which lay in a heap face
downwards on the table. 'There is a thing to be settled,' he said,
hesitating somewhat, 'before we draw. If she will not take the
winner--what then?'

'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.'

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 will 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.

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