The Castle Inn Part 36

'To hear was to obey, to obey was to fly! If it's Pitt's diamond you need, or Lady Mary's soap-box, or a new conundrum, or--hang it all! I cannot think of anything else, but command me! I'll forth and get it, stap me if I won't!'

'My lord, it is nothing of that kind,' Julia answered, her voice steady, though her cheeks burned.

'Eh? what? It's not!' he babbled. 'Then what is it? Command me, whatever it is.'

'I believe, my lord,' she said, smiling faintly, 'that a woman is always privileged to change her mind--once.'

My lord stared. Then, gathering her meaning as much from her heightened colour as from her words, 'What!' he screamed. 'Eh? O Lord! Do you mean that you will have me? Eh? Have you sent for me for that? Do you really mean that?' And he fumbled for his spy-gla.s.s that he might see her face more clearly.

'I mean,' Julia began; and then, more firmly, 'Yes, I do mean that,' she said, 'if you are of the same mind, my lord, as you were half an hour ago.'

'Crikey, but I am!' Lord Almeric cried, fairly skipping in his joy. 'By jingo! I am! Here's to you, my lady! Here's to you, ducky! Oh, Lord! but I was fit to kill myself five minutes ago, and those fellows would have done naught but roast me. And now I am in the seventh heaven. Ho! ho!'

he continued, with a comical pirouette of triumph, 'he laughs best who laughs last. But there, you are not afraid of me, pretty? You'll let me buss you?'

But Julia, with a face grown suddenly white, shrank back and held out her hand.

'Sakes! but to seal the bargain, child,' he remonstrated, trying to get near her.

She forced a faint smile, and, still retreating, gave him her hand to kiss. 'Seal it on that,' she said graciously. Then, 'Your lordship will pardon me, I am sure. I am not very well, and--and yesterday has shaken me. Will you be so good as to leave me now, until to-morrow?'

'To-morrow!' he cried. 'To-morrow! Why, it is an age! An eternity!'

But she was determined to have until to-morrow--G.o.d knows why. And, with a little firmness, she persuaded him, and he went.

CHAPTER XXVI

BOON COMPANIONS

Lord Almeric flew down the stairs on the wings of triumph, rehearsing at each corner the words in which he would announce his conquest. He found his host and the tutor sitting together in the parlour, in the middle of a game of shilling hazard; which they were playing, the former with as much enjoyment and the latter with as much good-humour as consisted with the fact that Mr. Pomeroy was losing, and Mr. Thoma.s.son played against his will. The weather had changed for the worse since morning. The sky was leaden, the trees were dripping, the rain hung in rows of drops along the rails that flanked the avenue. Mr. Pomeroy cursed the damp hole he owned and sighed for town and the Cocoa Tree. The tutor wished he were quit of the company--and his debts. And both were so far from suspecting what had happened upstairs, though the tutor had his hopes, that Mr. Pomeroy was offering three to one against his friend, when Lord Almeric danced in upon them.

'Give me joy!' he cried breathless. 'D'you hear, Pom? She'll take me, and I have bussed her! March could not have done it quicker! She's mine, and the pool! She is mine! Give me joy!'

Mr. Thoma.s.son lost not a minute in rising and shaking him by the hand.

'My dear lord,' he said, in a voice rendered unusually rich and mellow by the prospect of five thousand pounds, 'you make me infinitely happy.

You do indeed! I give your lordship joy! I a.s.sure you that it will ever be a matter of the deepest satisfaction to me that I was the cause under Providence of her presence here! A fine woman, my lord, and a--a commensurate fortune!'

'A fine woman? Gad! you'd say so if you had held her in your arms!'

cried my lord, strutting and lying.

'I am sure,' Mr. Thoma.s.son hastened to say, 'your lordship is every way to be congratulated.'

'Gad! you'd say so, Tommy!' the other repeated with a wink. He was in the seventh heaven of delight.

So far all went swimmingly, neither of them remarking that Mr. Pomeroy kept silence. But at this point the tutor, whose temper it was to be uneasy unless all were on his side, happened to turn, saw that he kept his seat, and was struck with the blackness of his look. Anxious to smooth over any unpleasantness, and to recall him to the requirements of the occasion, 'Come, Mr. Pomeroy,' he cried jestingly, 'shall we drink her ladyship, or is it too early in the day?'

Bully Pomeroy thrust his hands deep into his breeches pockets and did not budge. ''Twill be time to drink her when the ring is on!' he said, with an ugly sneer.

'Oh, I vow and protest that's ungenteel,' my lord complained. 'I vow and protest it is!' he repeated querulously. 'See here, Pom, if you had won her I'd not treat you like this!'

'Your lordship has not won her yet,' was the churlish answer.

'But she has said it, I tell you. She said she'd have me.'

'She won't be the first woman has altered her mind, nor the last,' Mr.

Pomeroy retorted with an oath. 'You may be amazing sure of that, my lord.' And muttering something about a woman and a fool being near akin, he spurned a dog out of his way, overset a chair, and strode cursing from the room.

Lord Almeric stared after him, his face a queer mixture of vanity and dismay. At last, 'Strikes me, Tommy, he's uncommon hard hit,' he said, with a simper. 'He must have made surprising sure of her. Ah!' he continued with a chuckle, as he pa.s.sed his hand delicately over his well-curled wig, and glanced at a narrow black-framed mirror that stood between the windows. 'He is a bit too old for the women, is Pom. They run to something lighter in hand. Besides, there's a--a way with the pretty creatures, if you take me, and Pom has not got it. Now I flatter myself I have, Tommy, and Julia--it is a sweet name, Julia, don't you think?--Julia is of that way of thinking. Lord! I know women,' his lordship continued, beaming the happier the longer he talked. 'It is not what a man has, or what he has done, or even his taste in a coat or a wig--though, mind you, a French friseur does a deal to help men to _bonnes fortunes_--but it is a sort of a way one has. The silly creatures cannot stand against it.'

Mr. Thoma.s.son hastened to agree, and to vouch her future ladyship's flame in proof of my lord's prowess. But the tutor was a timid man; and the more perfect the contentment with which he viewed the turn things had taken, and the more nearly within his grasp seemed his five thousand, the graver was the misgiving with which he regarded Mr.

Pomeroy's att.i.tude. He had no notion what shape that gentleman's hostility might take, nor how far his truculence might aspire. But he guessed that Lord Almeric's victory had convinced the elder man that his task would have been easy had the cards favoured him; and when a little later in the day he saw Pomeroy walking in the park in the drenching rain, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his wrap-rascal and his chin bent on his breast, he trembled. He knew that when men of Mr.

Pomeroy's cla.s.s take to thinking, some one is likely to lose.

At dinner the tutor's fears were temporarily lulled. Mr. Pomeroy put in a sulky appearance, but his gloom, it was presently manifest, was due to the burden of an apology; which, being lamely offered and readily accepted, he relapsed into his ordinary brusque and reckless mood, swearing that they would have the lady down and drink her, or if that were not pleasing, 'Damme, we'll drink her any way!' he continued. 'I was a toad this morning. No offence meant, my lord. Lover's license, you know. You can afford to be generous, having won the pool.'

'And the maid,' my lord said with a simper. 'Burn me! you are a good fellow, Pom. Give me your hand. You shall see her after dinner. She said to-morrow; but, hang me! I'll to her this evening.'

Mr. Pomeroy expressed himself properly gratified, adding demurely that he would play no tricks.

'No, hang me! no tricks!' my lord cried somewhat alarmed. 'Not that--'

'Not that I am likely to displace your lordship, her affections once gained,' said Mr. Pomeroy.

He lowered his face to hide a smile of bitter derision, but he might have spared his pains; for Lord Almeric, never very wise, was blinded by vanity. 'No, I should think not,' he said, with a conceit which came near to deserving the other's contempt. 'I should think not, Tommy. Give me twenty minutes of a start, as Jack Wilkes says, and you may follow as you please. I rather fancy I brought down the bird at the first shot?'

'Certainly, my lord.'

'I did, didn't I?'

'Most certainly, your lordship did,' repeated the obsequious tutor; who, basking in the smiles of his host's good-humour, began to think that things would run smoothly after all. So the lady was toasted, and toasted again. Nay, so great was Mr. Pomeroy's complaisance and so easy his mood, he must needs have up three or four bottles of Brooks and h.e.l.lier that had lain in the cellar half a century--the last of a batch--and give her a third time in b.u.mpers and no heel-taps.

But that opened Mr. Thoma.s.son's eyes. He saw that Pomeroy had reverted to his idea of the night before, and was bent on making the young fop drunk, and exposing him in that state to his mistress; perhaps had the notion of pushing him on some rudeness that, unless she proved very compliant indeed, must ruin him for ever with her. Three was their dinner hour; it was not yet four, yet already the young lord was flushed and a little fl.u.s.tered, talked fast, swore at Jarvey, and bragged of the girl lightly and without reserve. By six o'clock, if something were not done, he would be unmanageable.

The tutor stood in no little awe of his host. He had tremors down his back when he thought of his violence; nor was this dogged persistence in a design, as cruel as it was cunning, calculated to lessen the feeling.

But he had five thousand pounds at stake, a fortune on which he had been pluming himself since noon; it was no time for hesitation. They were dining in the hall at the table at which they had played cards the night before, Jarvey and Lord Almeric's servant attending them. Between the table and the staircase was a screen. The next time Lord Almeric's gla.s.s was filled, the tutor, in reaching something, upset the gla.s.s and its contents over his own breeches, and amid the laughter of the other two retired behind the screen to be wiped. There he slipped a crown into the servant's hand, and whispered him to keep his master sober and he should have another.

Mr. Pomeroy saw nothing and heard nothing, and for a time suspected nothing. The servant was a crafty fellow, a London rascal, deft at whipping away full bottles. He was an age finding a clean gla.s.s, and slow in drawing the next cork. He filled the host's b.u.mper, and Mr.

Thoma.s.son's, and had but half a gla.s.s for his master. The next bottle he impudently p.r.o.nounced corked, and when Pomeroy cursed him for a liar, brought him some in an unwashed gla.s.s that had been used for Bordeaux.

The wine was condemned, and went out; and though Pomeroy, with unflagging spirits, roared to Jarvey to open the other bottles, the butler had got the office, and was slow to bring them. The cheese came and went, and left Lord Almeric cooler than it found him. The tutor was overjoyed at the success of his tactics.

But when the board was cleared, and the bottles were set on, and the men withdrawn, Bully Pomeroy began to push what remained of the Brooks and h.e.l.lier after a fashion that boded an early defeat to the tutor's precautions. It was in vain Thoma.s.son clung to the bottle and sometimes returned it Hertfordshire fashion. The only result was that Mr. Pomeroy smelt a rat, gave Lord Almeric a back-hander, and sent the bottle on again, with a grin that told the tutor he was understood.

After that Mr. Thoma.s.son had the choice between sitting still and taking his own part. It was neck or nothing. Lord Almeric was already hiccoughing and would soon be talking thickly. The next time the bottle came round, the tutor retained it, and when Lord Almeric reached, for it, 'No, my lord,' he said, laughing; 'Venus first and Bacchus afterwards. Your lordship has to wait on the lady. When you come down, with Mr. Pomeroy's leave, we'll crack another bottle.'

My lord withdrew his hand more readily than the other had hoped. 'Right, Tommy,' he said. 'I'll wait till I come down. What's that song, "Rich the treasure, sweet the pleasure, sweet is pleasure after pain"? Oh, no, damme! I don't mean that,' he continued. 'No. How does it go?'

Mr. Pomeroy thrust the bottle into his hands, looking daggers the while at the tutor. 'Take another gla.s.s,' he cried boisterously. ''Swounds, the girl will like you the better for it.'