'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