When Lady Bellingham, sipping her early chocolate in bed on the following morning, was informed by her niece that she had brought home a guest to stay, she not unnaturally demanded to know who the visitor might be. When she learned that she was none other than the Honourable Phoebe Laxton, and that her visit would be for an indefinite time, she laid down her cup and saucer and regarded Deborah with real concern.
“Deb, my love, are you feeling quite the thing?” she asked anxiously. “You never told me that you were acquainted with the Laxtons, and why in heaven’s name should one of them wish to come and stay here, when they have a very good house of their own?”
“I am not acquainted with the Laxtons,” replied Miss Grantham, with a twinkle. “I never saw this child in my life until yesterday. I am helping her to escape from gross persecution, you must know.”
“Oh dear, as though we had not trouble enough!” groaned her aunt. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, you unnatural girl!”
Deborah laughed, and, sitting down beside the bed, gave Lady Bellingham an account of the events of the evening. Her ladyship was quite horrified, and told her that she was little better than a kidnapper. She then begged her to consider the danger she courted in offending a man of Filey’s standing in the world, not to mention Miss Laxton’s parents, and expressed herself as being fully satisfied now that she was out of her mind.
“Besides, Deb, what are we to do with the girl if her parents don’t relent?” she asked reasonably.
Miss Grantham’s eyes danced. “Well, dear ma’am, I have a little plan of my own for Phoebe’s future,” she said.
Lady Bellingham looked at her uneasily. “I don’t trust you, Deb. I know you have some dreadful scheme in your head when you look like that! What am I to say if Lady Laxton comes here demanding her daughter?”
“Dearest Aunt Lizzie, this must surely be the last house in London where Lady Laxton would think of looking for her daughter! While she remains with us, by the way, she is to be known as Miss Smith, in case the servants should talk.”
“Yes, but how long is she to remain with us?” asked her ladyship. “If it is not just like you, Deb, to fill the house with guests when there is no money to pay the coal-bill! And poor Kit is coming next week besides! We shall be ruined! And I must tell you that Ormskirk was here last night, and when he asked me where you were I declare I hardly knew how to answer him. But I dare say he guessed, for he said in a very dry voice that he saw Mablethorpe was absent too. Oh dear, what a tangle we are in, my love, and you making it so much the worse with all this nonsense about Miss Laxton, let alone enraging Ravenscar, and behaving so abominably at Vauxhall that I declare I feel quite ashamed to own you! Where is this girl?”
Miss Grantham then offered to fetch Phoebe for inspection. Lady Bellingham said that she had no wish to see her, but if she were to be compelled to house her for the rest of her life, as she had little doubt would turn out to be the case, she supposed she had better make her acquaintance. So Miss Laxton was brought into her hostess’s room, clutching one of Deborah’s wrappers round her small person, and Lady Bellingham said that she understood nothing, but Deborah had better put on her hat at once, and go out to buy the poor child something to wear and, as for Filey’s thinking that he would be permitted to gobble up such a morsel as that, it would give her much pleasure to be able to bestow a piece of her mind upon him, which she very likely would do, one fine day, for she was sure he was a disagreeable creature with a bad heart, and she had never liked him, no, not from the start!
This rambling speech gave Miss Grantham to understand that her aunt was resigned to the unexpected addition to her household, so she kissed that long-suffering lady’s cheek, and went off to replenish Phoebe’s wardrobe. By noon, Phoebe, dressed in pale blue muslin, was able to emerge from the seclusion of her bedchamber; and when Lord Mablethorpe arrived to pay his promised call, she was sitting with Deborah in the small back-parlour half-way up the stairs.
Lord Mablethorpe heartily approved of Deborah’s plan to keep Phoebe in St James’s Square, and he could not help feeling rather flattered by her dependence on his judgement. She made him feel quite old, and responsible, and by the time he had endorsed all his Deborah’s suggestions, he was in a fair way to believing that he had thought of them for himself. He helped to draft a suitable letter to Lord and Lady Laxton, which Phoebe copied out in her best copyplate handwriting, and he said that he would give a monkey to see their faces when they received it. This made their undutiful daughter giggle. His lordship then asked if it were true that the Honourable Arnold Laxton had been rolled-up at Epsom, and Miss Laxton said, yes, it was all so dreadful because Arnold always backed horses which fell down, or crossed their legs, and that was why it was so important that she should make a good match. This exchange led to others and, since both lived in the same circle, and knew very much the same people, it was not many minutes before they were on the most comfortable terms, pulling most of their relatives’ characters to shreds, and laughing a great deal over the business.
Lady Bellingham, coming into the room presently, and seeing her niece sewing quietly by the window, while, on the sofa, Lord Mablethorpe and Miss Laxton had their heads close together, was quite dismayed. She seized the earliest opportunity of warning her niece that if she did not take care she would lose Mablethorpe as well as the twenty thousand pounds she had so recklessly refused.
“Well, I don’t want Mablethorpe,” said Miss Grantham, maddeningly placid. “I think it would be a charming thing if he were to fall out of love with me, and into love with Phoebe.”
“It might be a very charming thing if we had twenty thousand pounds,” said Lady Bellingham, with strong common sense. “When we have nothing but debts, it is a disaster! Do you know, my love, I have been trying to add up my accounts, and do what I will I cannot alter the truth! We lost seven thousand pounds last year by bad debts!”
“I dare say we might have,” said Miss Grantham. “It all comes of letting people run upon tick at the faro-table. I knew we ought not to do it.”
“Everything is so difficult!” sighed her ladyship. “No one can feel more conscious of the awkwardness of your situation than I, Deb, but if Ravenscar were to make his offer again, which I dare say he will, if you behaved as badly as you tell me you did, do you think you might—”
“No,” said Miss Grantham resolutely. “Nothing would induce me to accept a farthing from that man! Besides, he assured me his offer was no longer open to my acceptance, and I am convinced he meant it. I think he is going to try to worst me by some other means.”
“Good heavens!” cried her ladyship, aghast. “Never say so, my love! He might set about to ruin us! He would be the most dangerous enemy!”
“So am I a dangerous enemy,” retorted Miss Grantham. “He will soon find that out! Whatever he does, I shall counter with something worse.”
Lady Bellingham moaned, and tottered to her dressing table to fortify herself with hartshorn-and-water. Her hand shook quite pitiably as she poured the drops into her glass, and she again gave it as her opinion that her niece was mad. “Some dreadful fate will befall us!” she prophesied. “I know it. It is flying in the face of Providence to throw everything to the winds, as you are bent on doing! And I will tell you something else, Deb, though I dare say you won’t care for that any more than for the rest. It is all over town that Ormskirk is done-up. Beverley told me last night that he had had some deep doings these last months, and the cards running against him five nights out of seven. And we know how badly that odious horse of his did at Newmarket! Ten to one, he will call in that mortgage, for you know his estates are entailed! And all you will do is to talk of countering Ravenscar! The very man you should have made a push to turn into a friend instead of an enemy!”
“I make a friend of that man?” exclaimed Miss Grantham, flushing hotly. “I will starve rather!”
“Very well, my love, I am sure I do not wish to interfere with you, but I don’t want to starve!” said her ladyship indignantly.
“I won’t let you, ma’am. If we were to be faced with that, I would—I would make a bargain with Ormskirk! I would do anything rather than be beholden to Ravenscar!”
“Well, if you would do anything, you had better send that Laxton child home, and make sure of Mablethorpe.”
“Oh, poor Adrian, no!” said Miss Grantham quickly.
Lady Bellingham sank into a chair, and closed her eyes. “Go away!” she begged faintly. “I shall have the vapours in a minute!”
Miss Grantham laughed. “Oh, there are a dozen things we might do to be saved! Lucius was talking of going to Hanover the other day, and trying his fortune there. What do you say to our closing this house, and running off with him?”
“Now I am going to have the vapours!” said Lady Bellingham, with conviction.
“Only I won’t leave England until I have settled my score with Ravenscar,” said Miss Grantham, a sparkle in her eyes. “I wish I knew what he means to do next!”
“If it would bring you to your senses, I wish you might know!” said her aunt. “I dare say it would kill me, but you will not care for that!”
But a knowledge of Mr Ravenscar’s activities that morning would scarcely have occasioned Lady Bellingham any great discomfort of mind. Mr Ravenscar had gone to White’s Club.
He was a member of several clubs, but Brooks’s was known to be his favourite, so that some surprise was felt at his appearance at White’s. The porter told him that he had become quite a stranger to the place; and an acquaintance whom he encountered on the stairs said: “Why, Ravenscar, don’t tell me you’ve abandoned Brooks’s at last! We thought you was wholly lost to us!”
“No, not wholly,” Ravenscar replied. “Who’s upstairs?”
“Oh, the usual set!” said his friend airily. “I must tell you the odds are shortening on your race, by the way! Beverley’s seen Filey’s pair in action, and he says they are rare steppers.”
“Yes, so I hear,” Ravenscar said, unperturbed.
He passed on up the stairs to the room overlooking the street. Here he found several friends gathered, but after staying for a few minutes with them, he strolled over to the window, where Ormskirk was seated, glancing through the
Morning Post.
Ormskirk lowered the paper. “So you have decided not to desert the club!” he remarked. “And how—may I ask?—are your plans for your ingenuous cousin’s rescue progressing, my dear Ravenscar?”
“So far, the honours go to the lady,” answered Ravenscar.
“Ah,” said his lordship, gently polishing his quizzing-glass. “Somehow, I apprehended that your efforts had not been attended by success. Am I, I wonder, correct in assuming that the lady was in your cousin’s company last night?”
“You are. They were at Vauxhall together.”
His lordship looked pensive. “At Vauxhall, were they? That seems a rather public spot, does it not? One might almost infer that the die was cast.”
“Don’t disturb yourself! I have reason to think Miss Grantham has little or no intention of marrying my cousin. Unless I am much mistaken, she is playing deep.”
Ormskirk sighed. “But how sordid!” he complained. “I hope you may not have misjudged your powers of—persuasion, my dear fellow.”
“I don’t despair because the dice fall against me in the first throw,” responded Ravenscar.
“I am sure you are a hardened gamester,” agreed Ormskirk, smiling.
“Talking of gaming,” said Ravenscar, “when do you mean to permit me to measure my skill against yours at the game which, I confess, I regard as peculiarly my own?”
“Peculiarly your own?” murmured Ormskirk, raising his brows. “Can you mean piquet, my dear Ravenscar?”
“Why, yes!” acknowledged Ravenscar. “You threw a most delicate challenge in my way the other night. I must confess my curiosity and my self-esteem were stirred. I did not think I had my match, but I fancy you think otherwise, my lord.”
“To be sure,” sighed his lordship, “I have not been used to consider my own skill contemptible.”
“Come and dine at my house, and let us discover which of us has met his match!”
Ormskirk did not answer immediately. The bored smile still lingered on his lips, but seemed to have grown a little rigid. He went on polishing his glass with his lace-edged handkerchief, his eyes veiled.
“No?” Ravenscar said, the faintest suggestion of mockery in his voice.
Ormskirk lifted his eyes, and also his quizzing-glass. “My dear Ravenscar! My very dear Ravenscar! I never refuse a challenge. By all means let us measure our skill! But my recollection is that I invited you to come to nay house. Give me the pleasure of your company at dinner tonight, I beg of you!”
Mr Ravenscar accepted this invitation, stayed for a few moments in idle conversation, and presently withdrew, perfectly satisfied with the results of his visit to the club.
He dined tête-à-tête with his lordship, the faded sister who presided over the establishment having gone to spend the evening with friends, his lordship explained. Ravenscar guessed that she had had orders to absent herself, for it was well known that she never received anything but the most cavalier treatment from her brother. Dinner was good, and the wine excellent. Mr Ravenscar, calmly drinking glass for glass with his host, was glad to think that he had a hard head. He might almost have suspected Ormskirk of trying to fuddle his brain a little, so assiduous was he in keeping his guest’s glass filled.
A card-table had been set out in a comfortable saloon on the ground-floor of the house. Several unbroken packs stood ready to hand, and it was not long before the butler carried into the room a tray loaded with bottles and decanters, which he placed upon a side-table. Lord Ormskirk directed him to move a branch of candles nearer to the card-table, and with a smile, and a slight movement of one white hand, invited Ravenscar to be seated.
“What stakes do you care to play for, my dear Ravenscar?” he inquired, breaking open two of the packs at his elbow, and beginning to shuffle the cards.
“It is immaterial to me,” Ravenscar replied. “Let the stakes be what you choose, my lord: I shall be satisfied.”
Lady Bellingham had been correct in saying that his lordship had been having deep doings during the past weeks. He had a bout of ill-luck which had pursued him even into the racing-field, and had gone down to the tune of several thousands. Ravenscar’s challenge could not have been worse timed, but it was not in his lordship’s character to draw back, particularly from an adversary towards whom he felt a profound animosity. It was this animosity, coupled with a gamester’s recklessness, which prompted him to reply: “Shall we say pound points, then?”
“Yes, certainly,” Ravenscar answered.
Ormskirk pushed the pack across to him; he cut for the deal, and lost it. “I hope not an ill-omen!” Ormskirk smiled.
“I hope not, indeed.”
The game opened quietly, no big hands being scored for some little time, and each man bent more upon summing up his opponent than upon the actual winning of points. The rubber went to Ormskirk, but the luck seemed to be running fairly evenly, and there was not much more than the hundred points for the game in it. Ormskirk was inclined to think Ravenscar an over-cautious player: an impression Mr Ravenscar had been at some pains to give him.
At the end of an hour, a glance at the score by his elbow showed his lordship that Ravenscar was steadily creeping ahead. He was too good a card-player not to know when he had met his match, and he recognized in the younger man one who combined his own flair for cards with a greater degree of cool caution. Lord Ormskirk, always playing for the highest prize, too often failed to defeat the major hand by the retention of some small card; again and again, Ravenscar, holding the minor hand, sacrificed a reasonable chance of scoring to spoil a pique which his lordship had felt sure of winning.
In temperament, Ravenscar had the advantage over his opponent. Trying, as a gamester must, to put all thought of his losses out of mind, Ormskirk was yet bitterly conscious of a tightening of the nerves, and still more bitterly aware of Ravenscar’s imperturbable calm. It mattered nothing to a man of his wealth, Ormskirk reflected, whether he won or lost; he could have cursed the misfortune that had caused Ravenscar to challenge him to this meeting at a moment when his own affairs stood in such confusion. The knowledge that he was in a tight corner, and might find himself facing ruin if the evening’s play went heavily against him, could not but affect his nerves, and, through them, his skill. He knew his judgement to be impaired by his desperate need, allowed Ravenscar to win a capotte through a miscalculation, and got up to pour himself out some brandy.
Ravenscar’s eyes flickered towards him, and then dropped again to the pack he was shuffling.
“Brandy?” his lordship said, holding the decanter poised. Ravenscar pushed his empty Burgundy glass a little away from him. “Thank you.”
“You should not have had that capotte,” Ormskirk said abruptly.
“No.”
“I must be out of practice,” Ormskirk said, with a light laugh. “A stupid error to have made! Do not hope for another like it.”
Ravenscar smiled. “I don’t. Such things rarely happen twice in an evening, I find. It is your deal, my lord.”
Ormskirk came back to his chair, and the game proceeded. Once the butler came into the room, to make up the fire. His master, his attention distracted from the play of his cards by the man’s movements, looked up, and said sharply: “That is all. I shall not need you again!”
Outside, in the square, an occasional carriage rumbled over the cobbles, footsteps passed the house, and link-boys could be heard exchanging personalities with chairmen; but as the night wore on the noise of traffic ceased, and only the voice of the Watch was heard from time to time, calling the hour.
“One of the clock, and a fair night!”
It was not a fair night for his lordship, plunging deeper and ever deeper into Ravenscar’s debt. Under his maquillage, his thin face was pale, and looked strained in the candlelight. He knew now that his ill-luck was still dogging him; the cards had been running against him for the past two hours. Only a fool chased his own luck, yet this was what he had been doing, hoping for a change each rubber, risking all on the chance of the big coup which maddeningly eluded him.
A half-consumed log fell out on to the hearth, and lay smouldering there. “I make that fifteen hundred points,” said Ravenscar, adding up the last rubber. He rose, and walked over to the fire to replace the log. “Your luck is quite out: you held wretched cards, until the very last hand.”
“You are a better player than I am,” his lordship said, with a twisted smile. “I am done-up.”
“Oh, nonsense! Play on, my lord; your cards were better at the end. I dare say you will soon have your revenge on me.”
“Nothing would give me more pleasure, I assure you,” said Ormskirk. “But, unhappily, my estates are entailed.”
“Is it as bad as that?” Ravenscar asked, as though in jest.
“Another hour such as the last, and it certainly would be,” replied Ormskirk frankly. “I don’t play if I cannot pay.”
Ravenscar came back to the table, and sat down, idly running the cards through his hands. “If you choose to call a halt, I am very willing. But you hold certain assets I would be glad to buy from you.”
Ormskirk’s thin brows drew together. “Yes?”
Mr Ravenscar’s hard grey eyes lifted from the cards, and looked directly into his. “Certain bills,” he said. “How many and what are they worth?”
“Good God!” said Ormskirk softly. He leaned back in his chair, wryly smiling. “And how came you by that knowledge, my dear Ravenscar?”
“You yourself told me of them, when we walked away from St James’s Square together the other night.”
“Did I? I had forgotten.”
Silence fell. Ormskirk’s eyes were veiled; one of his white hands rhythmically swung his quizzing-glass to and fro on the end of its ribbon. Mr Ravenscar went on shuffling the cards.
“I have a handful of Lady Bellingham’s bills,” his lordship said at last. “Candour, however, compels me to say that they would not fetch quite their face-value in the market.”
“And that is?”
“Fifteen hundred,” said his lordship.
“I am ready to buy them from you at that figure.”
Ormskirk put up his quizzing-glass. “So!” he said. “But I do not think I wish to sell, my dear Ravenscar.”
“You had much better do so, however.”
“Indeed! May I know why?”
“Put brutally, my lord, since your sense of propriety is too nice to allow of your using these bills to obtain your ends, it will be convenient to you, I imagine, to put them into my hands. I shall use them to extricate my cousin from his entanglement. Once that is accomplished, I cannot suppose that Miss Grantham will continue to reject your offer.”
“There is much in what you say,” acknowledged his lordship. “And yet, my dear Ravenscar, and yet I am loath to part with them!”
“Then let us say good night,” Ravenscar replied, rising to his feet.
Ormskirk hesitated, looking at the scattered cards on the table. He was a gambler to the heart’s core, and it irked him unbearably to end the night thus. Ill-luck could not last for ever; it might be that it was already on the turn: indeed, he had held appreciably better cards in that last hand, as Ravenscar had noticed. He hated having to acknowledge Ravenscar to be his superior, too. He could conceive of few things more pleasing than to reverse their present positions. It might well be within his power to do so. He raised his hand. “Wait! After all, why not?” He got up, picked up one of the branches of candles, and carried it over to his writing-table at the end of the room. Setting it down there, he felt in his pocket for a key, and unlocked one of the drawers in the table, and pulled it out. He lifted a slim bundle of papers out, and brought it back to the table, tossing it down on top of the spilled cards. “There you are,” he said. “How fortunate it is that you are less squeamish than I!”
Ravenscar picked up the papers, and slipped them into the wide pocket of his coat. “Very fortunate,” he agreed. “You are fifteen hundred pounds in hand, my lord. Do you care to continue the game?”
Ormskirk raised his brows mockingly. “Had you not better count them? You will find there are six in all, for varying sums.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” replied Ravenscar. “Shall we continue?”
“By all means!” Ormskirk said, and sat down again. “We'll find that this—ah, transaction—has changed my luck.”
“We may,” agreed Ravenscar, cutting the cards towards him.
It seemed, in the next rubber, that the luck had indeed veered in his lordship’s favour. He played cautiously for while, grew bolder presently, won a little, lost a large rubber refilled his glass, and allowed all other considerations than the overmastering desire to get the better of Ravenscar too far from his mind. As the fumes of the brandy mounted to his brain, not clouding it, but exciting him, he ceased to keen an eye on the sum of his losses.
It was three o’clock when Ravenscar said: “It is growing late. I make it four thousand, my lord.”
“Four thousand,” Ormskirk repeated blankly. He looked at Ravenscar, not seeing him, wondering which of his horses he would be obliged to sell, knowing if he sold all he would be unable to extricate himself from his embarrassment. Mechanically he opened his delicate Sevres snuff box, and took a pinch. “You will have to give me time,” he said, hating the need to speak these words.
“Certainly,” Ravenscar replied. One of the candles was guttering; he snuffed it. “Or you might prefer to let me purchase from you the mortgage on Lady Bellingham’s house,” he said coolly.
Ormskirk stared at him for a moment. His eyes narrowed suspiciously. He said with an edge to his smooth voice, “What’s your object, Ravenscar?”
“I have told you.”
“The mortgage is for five thousand: it may be worth some thing over four.”
“We need not haggle over the figure, I suppose. I will give you five thousand for it.”
“You would appear to cherish an unusual degree of affection for your young relative,” Ormskirk said, his lips curling in faint sneer.
Ravenscar shrugged. “The boy is in some sort my responsibility.”
“It is gratifying to meet with such a sense of duty in these days. Yet it seems to me that you are paying high for hi salvation, my dear Ravenscar!”
“You are mistaken: I am acting for Lady Mablethorpe.”
“Do you know,” said Ormskirk softly, “I have the oddest idea in my head? I cannot rid myself of the notion that you have some other motive in acquiring this hold over Deb Grantham.”
“It is not love, if that is what you mean, my lord.”
“Indeed? Then what may it be?”
A smile flickered in Ravenscar’s eyes. “A strong dislike of being worsted in a fight.”
Ormskirk regarded him fixedly for a few moments, tapping the lid of his snuff box with one polished finger-nail. A short laugh broke from him; he rose from his chair, and once more trod over to his writing-table. “After all, why not?” he said, with one of his airy gestures. He pulled open the drawer, took from it a folded document, and tossed it to his guest. “Take it! You have it all now, have you not? I suppose you meant to have it from the start. Do not think me unkind if I say that I hope she worsts you again, my dear Ravenscar: it would do you so much good!”