Arabella (30 page)

Ulysses, catching the note of severity in his voice, cocked an anxious eye at him. Mr. Beaumaris took his muzzle in his hand, and gently shook it. “What do you advise me to do?” he asked. “It appears to me that I have reached Point Non Plus. Should I—” He broke off, and rose suddenly to his feet, and took a turn about the room. “What a saphead I am!” he said. “Of course! Ulysses, your master is a fool!” Ulysses jumped up to place his forepaws against those elegant pantaloons, and uttered a protesting bark. All this walking about the room, when Mr. Beaumaris might have been better employed, was not at all to his taste. “Down!” commanded Mr. Beaumaris. “How many more times am I to request you not to sully the purity of my garments by scrabbling at them with your ignoble, and probably dirty, paws? Ulysses, I shall be leaving you for a space!”

Ulysses might find this a little beyond him, but he fully understood that his hour of bliss was at an end, and so lay down in an attitude of resignation. Mr. Beaumaris’s subsequent actions filled him with vague disquiet, for although he was unacquainted with the significance of portmanteaux, some instinct warned him that they boded no good to little dogs. But these inchoate fears were as nothing when compared to the astonishment, chagrin, and dismay suffered by that peerless gentleman’s gentleman, Mr. Painswick, when he apprehended that his employer proposed to leave town without the support and expert ministration of a valet whom every Tulip of Fashion had at one time or another attempted to suborn from his service. He had accepted with equanimity the information that his master was going out of town for perhaps as much as a week, and was already laying out, in his mind, the raiment suitable for a sojourn at Wigan Park, or Woburn Abbey, or Belvoir, or perhaps Cheveley, when the full horror of the event burst upon him. “Put up enough shirts and neckcloths to last me for seven days,” said Mr. Beaumaris. “I’ll travel in riding-dress, but you may as well pack the clothes I have on, in case I should need them. I shan’t take you with me.”

It took a full minute for the sense of this pronouncement to penetrate to the mind of his valet. He was shocked, and could only gaze at Mr. Beaumaris in stupefaction.

“Tell ’em to have my travelling-chaise, and the bays, at the door by six o’clock,” said Mr. Beaumaris. “Clayton can accompany me for the first couple of stages, and bring the horses home.”

Mr. Painswick found his voice. “Did I understand you to say, sir, that you would not be requiring Me?” he asked.

“You did,” responded Mr. Beaumaris.

“May I enquire, sir, who then is to wait upon you?” demanded Mr. Painswick, in a voice of ominous quiet.

“I am going to wait upon myself,” replied Mr. Beaumaris.

Mr. Painswick accorded this attempt at humour the perfunctory smile it deserved. “Indeed, sir? And who, if you please, will press your coat for you?”

““I suppose they are accustomed to pressing coats at the posting-houses,” said Mr. Beaumaris indifferently.

“If you can call it pressing,” said Mr. Painswick darkly. “Whether you will be pleased with the result, sir, is, if I may be permitted to say so, Another Matter.”

Mr. Beaumaris then said something so shocking that it gave his henchman, as he afterwards reported to Brough, a Very Nasty Spasm. “I daresay I shan’t,” he said, “but it won’t signify.”

Mr. Painswick looked searchingly at him. He did not bear the appearance of one bordering on delirium, but there could be little doubt that his case was serious. Mr. Painswick spoke in the tone of one soothing a refractory patient. “I think, sir, it will be best for me to accompany you.”

“I have already told you that I don’t need you. You may have a holiday.”

“I should not, sir, have the Heart to enjoy it,” returned Mr. Painswick, who invariably spent his holidays in indulging nightmareish visions of his understudy’s sending Mr. Beaumaris forth with his clothes improperly brushed, his boots dulled by neglect, or, worst of all, a speck of mud on the skirts of his driving-coat. “If I may say so without offence, sir, you cannot Go Alone!”

“And if
I
may say so without offence, Painswick,” retorted Mr. Beaumaris, “you are being foolish beyond permission! I will readily own that you keep my clothes in excellent order—I should not continue to bear with you, if you did not—and that the secret of imparting a gloss to my Hessians, which you so jealously guard, makes you not wholly undeserving of the extortionate wage I pay you; but if you imagine that I am unable to dress myself creditably without your assistance, your powers of self-deception must be greater than even I was aware of! Upon occasion—and merely to reward you!—I have permitted you to shave me; I allow you to help me into my coats, and to hand me my neckcloth. But at no time, Painswick, have I allowed you to dictate to me what I should wear, to brush my hair, or to utter a word—a sound!—while I am engaged in arranging that neckcloth! I shall do very well without you. But you must put up enough neckcloths to allow for some failures.”

Mr. Painswick swallowed these insults, but tried one last, desperate throw. “Your Boots, sir! You will never use a
jack!
”

“Certainly not,” said Mr. Beaumaris. “Some menial shall pull them off for me.”

Mr. Painswick gave a groan. “With greasy hands, sir! And only I know what it means to get a thumb-mark off your Hessians!”

“He shall handle them through gloves,” promised Mr. Beaumaris. “You need not lay out my knee-breeches: I am going to the Nonesuch Club tonight” He added, possibly to atone for his harshness: “Don’t wait up for me, but call me at five o’clock tomorrow morning!”

Mr. Painswick responded in a voice trembling with suppressed passion: “If, sir, you choose to dispense with my services upon your journey, I am sure it is not for me to utter a word of criticism, nor would I so far demean myself as to remonstrate with you, whatever my feelings may be. But retire from my post before I have put you to bed, sir, and removed your raiment for proper attention, nothing will prevail upon me to do!”

“As you please,” said Mr. Beaumaris, unmoved. “Far be it from me to interfere in your determination to become a martyr in my cause!”

Mr. Painswick could only throw him a look of searing reproach, being, as he afterwards confided to Brough, unable to trust himself to say more. It had been Touch and Go with him, he said, whether he remained another day in the service of one so lost to the sense of what was due to himself and his valet. Brough, who was perfectly well aware that wild horses would not have parted Ms colleague from Mr. Beaumaris, sympathized in suitable terms, and produced a bottle of Mr. Beaumaris’s second-best port. The healing properties of port, when mixed with a judicious quantity of gin, soon exercised a beneficial effect upon Mr. Painswick’s wounded feelings, and remarking that there was nothing like a glass of flesh-and-blood for setting a man up, he settled down to discuss with his crony and rival all the possible reasons that might be supposed to underlie Mr. Beaumaris’s rash and unbecoming conduct.

Mr. Beaumaris, meanwhile, after dining at Brooks’s, strolled across St. James’s Street towards Ryder Street, where the Nonesuch Club was established. Thus it was that when, rather later in the evening, Bertram Tallant entered the faro-room under the protective chaperonage of Lord Wivenhoe, Mr. Beaumaris was afforded an excellent opportunity of estimating in just what manner Miss Tallant’s enterprising young relative had been spending his time in London.

Two circumstances had decided Bertram in favour of visiting the Nonesuch Club. The first was the news that that sure winner, Fear-not-Victorious, had been unplaced in his race; the second the discovery of a twenty-pound bill amongst the tangle of accounts in the dressing-table. Bertram had sat staring at it quite numbly for some minutes, not even wondering how he had come to mislay it. He had suffered a terrible shock, for he had argued himself into believing that Fear-not-Victorious was bound to win, and had not seriously considered how he was to meet his creditor at Tattersall’s on Monday if the animal were unplaced. The utter impossibility of meeting him at all burst upon him with shattering effect, so that he felt sick with apprehension, and could see nothing but a hideous vision of the Fleet Prison, where he would no doubt languish for the rest of his days, since it did not appear to him that his father could be expected to do more for so depraved a son than to expunge his name from the family tree, and forbid all mention of him at the Vicarage.

Rendered reckless by this last and most crushing blow, he rang the bell for the waiter, and demanded a bottle of brandy. It was then borne in upon him that orders had been issued in the tap not to supply him with any liquor for which he did not put down his blunt. Flushing darkly, he drove his hand into his breeches’ pocket, and dragged out his last remaining handful of coins. Throwing one of these on the table, he said: “Fetch it, damn you!—and you may keep the change!”

This gesture a little relieved his feelings, and the first glass of brandy, tossed at one gulp down his throat, had a still more heartening effect upon him. He looked again at the twenty-pound bill, still clasped between his fingers. He remembered that Chuffy had named twenty pounds as the minimum stake permitted to punters at the Nonesuch. Such a coincidence was surely too marked to be ignored. The second glass of brandy convinced him that here in his hand lay his last chance of saving himself from irretrievable ruin and disgrace.

Not being accustomed to drinking neat brandy, he was obliged before setting out for Long’s Hotel to swallow a damper in the form of a glass of porter. This had a sobering effect, and the walk through the streets to Long’s put him in tolerable shape to do justice to
maintenon
cutlets, and the hotel’s famed Queensbury hock. He had made up his mind to be guided by Fate. He would lay down his twenty guineas upon a card chosen at random from the livret: if it turned up, he would take it for a sign that his luck had changed at last, and play on until he had covered all his debts; if it lost, he would be very little worse off than he was already, and could, at the worst, cut his throat, he supposed.

When he and Lord Wivenhoe entered the faro-room at the Nonesuch, Mr. Beaumaris, holding the bank, had just completed a deal, and had tossed the pack on to the floor. He raised his eyes, as a waiter laid a fresh pack before him, and looked straight across to the door. The lure of hazard had drawn all but one other of the club’s doyens from the room, and that one, Lord Petersham, was lost in one of his fits of deep abstraction.

Damn Petersham! thought Mr. Beaumaris, on the horns of a dilemma. Why must he choose this of all moments to dream of tea?

That amiable but vague peer, perceiving Lord Wivenhoe, smiled upon him with the doubtful air of one who seemed to recollect seeing his face before. If he took notice of a youthful stranger within the sacred precincts of the club, he gave no sign of it. Mr. Warkworth stared very hard at Bertram, and then glanced towards the head of the table. Lord Fleetwood, filling his glass, frowned, and also looked to the Nonpareil.

Mr. Beaumaris gave an order to the waiter to bring him another bottle of burgundy. One blighting word from him, and the stranger would have nothing to do but bow himself out with what dignity he could muster. There was the rub: the boy would be unbearably humiliated, and one could not trust that young fool, Wivenhoe, to smooth over the rebuff. He would be far more likely to kick up a dust over the exclusion of one of his friends, placing the unhappy Bertram in a still more intolerable position.

Lord Wivenhoe, finding places for himself and Bertram at the table, was casually making Bertram known to his neighbours. One of these was Fleetwood, who favoured Bertram with a curt nod, and again looked under his brows at the Nonpareil; the other, like most of the men in the room, was content to accept any friend of Chuffy’s without question. One of the older men said something under his breath about babes and sucklings, but not loudly enough to be overheard.

Mr. Beaumaris glanced round the table. “Stakes, gentlemen,” he said calmly.

Bertram, who had changed his bill for one modest rouleau, thrust it in a quick movement towards the queen in the livrat. Other men were placing their bets; someone said something which made his neighbour laugh; Lord Petersham sighed deeply, and deliberately pushed forward several large rouleaus, and ranged them about his chosen cards; then he drew a delicately enamelled snuff-box from his pocket, and helped himself to a pinch of his latest blend. A pulse was beating so hard in Bertram’s throat that it almost hurt him; he swallowed, and fixed his eyes on Mr. Beaumaris’s hand, poised above the pack before him.

The boy has been having some deep doings, thought Mr. Beaumaris. Shouldn’t wonder if he’s rolled-up! What the devil possessed Chuffy Wivenhoe to bring him here?

The bets were all placed; Mr. Beaumaris turned up the first card, and placed it to the right of the pack.

“Scorched again!” remarked Fleetwood, one of whose bets stood by the card’s counterpart.

Mr. Beaumaris turned up the Carte Anglaise, and laid it down to the left of the pack. The Queen of Diamonds danced before Bertram’s eyes. For a dizzy moment he could only stare at the card; then he looked up, and met Mr. Beaumaris’s cool gaze, and smiled waveringly. That smile told Mr. Beaumaris quite as much as he had need to know, and did nothing to increase his enjoyment of the evening ahead of him. He picked up the rake beside him, and pushed two twenty-guinea rouleaus across the table. Lord Wivenhoe called for wine for himself and his friend, and settled down to plunge with his usual recklessness.

For half-an-hour the luck ran decidedly in Bertram’s favour, and Mr. Beaumaris was encouraged to hope that he would rise from the table a winner. He was drinking fairly steadily, a flush of excitement in his cheeks, his eyes, glittering a little in the candlelight, fixed on the cards. Lord Wivenhoe sat cheerfully losing beside him. He was soon punting on tick, scrawling his vowels, and tossing them over to the bank. Other men, Bertram noticed, did the same. There was quite a pile of paper before Mr. Beaumaris.