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The Castle Inn by Stanley John Weyman

S >> Stanley John Weyman >> The Castle Inn




'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!'



CHAPTER XXIV

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.



CHAPTER XXV

LORD ALMERIC'S SUIT

When Julia awoke in the morning, without start or shock, to the dreary
consciousness of all she had lost, she was still under the influence of
the despair which had settled on her spirits overnight, and had run like
a dark stain through her troubled dreams. Fatigue of body and lassitude
of mind, the natural consequences of the passion and excitement of her
adventure, combined to deaden her faculties. She rose aching in all her
limbs--yet most at heart--and wearily dressed herself; but neither saw
nor heeded the objects round her. The room to which poor puzzled Mrs.
Olney had hastily consigned her looked over a sunny stretch of park,
sprinkled with gnarled thorn-trees that poorly filled the places of the
oaks and chestnuts which the gaming-table had consumed. Still, the
outlook pleased the eye, nor was the chamber itself lacking in
liveliness. The panels on the walls, wherein needlework cockatoos and
flamingoes, wrought under Queen Anne, strutted in the care of needlework
black-boys, were faded and dull; but the pleasant white dimity with
which the bed was hung relieved and lightened them.

To Julia it was all one. Wrapped in bitter thoughts and reminiscences,
her bosom heaving from time to time with ill-restrained grief, she gave
no thought to such things, or even to her position, until Mrs. Olney
appeared and informed her that breakfast awaited her in another room.

Then, 'Can I not take it here?' she asked, shrinking painfully from the
prospect of meeting any one.

'Here?' Mrs. Olney repeated. The housekeeper never closed her mouth,
except when she spoke; for which reason, perhaps, her face faithfully
mirrored the weakness of her mind.

'Yes,' said Julia. 'Can I not take it here, if you please? I suppose--we
shall have to start by-and-by?' she added, shivering.

'By-and-by, ma'am?' Mrs. Olney answered. 'Oh, yes.'

'Then I can have it here.'

'Oh, yes, if you please to follow me, ma'am.' And she held the door
open.

Julia shrugged her shoulders, and, contesting the matter no further,
followed the good woman along a corridor and through a door which shut
off a second and shorter passage. From this three doors opened,
apparently into as many apartments. Mrs. Olney threw one wide and
ushered her into a room damp-smelling, and hung with drab, but of good
size and otherwise comfortable. The windows looked over a neglected
Dutch garden, which was so rankly overgrown that the box hedges scarce
rose above the wilderness of parterres. Beyond this, and divided from it
by a deep-sunk fence, a pool fringed with sedges and marsh-weeds carried
the eye to an alder thicket that closed the prospect.

Julia, in her relief on finding that the table was laid for one only,
paid no heed to the outlook or to the bars that crossed the windows, but
sank into a chair and mechanically ate and drank. Apprised after a while
that Mrs. Olney had returned and was watching her with fatuous
good-nature, she asked her if she knew at what hour she was to leave.

'To leave?' said the housekeeper, whose almost invariable custom it was
to repeat the last words addressed to her. 'Oh, yes, to leave.
Of course.'

'But at what time?' Julia asked, wondering whether the woman was as dull
as she seemed.

'Yes, at what time?' Then after a pause and with a phenomenal effort, 'I
will go and see--if you please.'

She returned presently. 'There are no horses,' she said. 'When they are
ready the gentleman will let you know.'

'They have sent for some?'

'Sent for some,' repeated Mrs. Olney, and nodded, but whether in assent
or imbecility it was hard to say.

After that Julia troubled her no more, but rising from her meal had
recourse to the window and her own thoughts. These were in unison with
the neglected garden and the sullen pool, which even the sunshine failed
to enliven. Her heart was torn between the sense of Sir George's
treachery--which now benumbed her brain and now awoke it to a fury of
resentment--and fond memories of words and looks and gestures, that
shook her very frame and left her sick--love-sick and trembling. She did
not look forward or form plans; nor, in the dull lethargy in which she
was for the most part sunk, was she aware of the passage of time until
Mrs. Olney came in with mouth and eyes a little wider than usual, and
announced that the gentleman was coming up.

Julia supposed that the woman referred to Mr. Thomasson; and, recalled
to the necessity of returning to Marlborough, she gave a reluctant
permission. Great was her astonishment when, a moment later, not the
tutor, but Lord Almeric, fanning himself with a laced handkerchief and
carrying his little French hat under his arm, appeared on the threshold,
and entered simpering and bowing. He was extravagantly dressed in a
mixed silk coat, pink satin waistcoat, and a mushroom stock, with
breeches of silver net and white silk stockings; and had a large pearl
pin thrust through his wig. Unhappily, his splendour, designed to
captivate the porter's daughter, only served to exhibit more plainly the
nerveless hand and sickly cheeks which he owed to last night's debauch.