“Thank you.” said Hornblower taking the money.
Bush remembered what Hornblower had said about being able to afford to lose three rubbers if he won the first two.
“Damned small stakes in my opinion, my lord,” said the colonel. “Must we play as low as this?”
“That is for the company to decide,” replied Parry. “I myself have no objection. Half a crown instead of a shilling? Let us ask Mr Hornblower.”
Bush turned to look at Hornblower with renewed anxiety
“As you will, my lord,” said Hornblower, with the most elaborate indifference.
“Sir Richard?”
“I don’t mind at all,” said Lambert.
“Half a crown a trick, then,” said Parry. “Waiter, fresh cards, if you please.”
Bush had hurriedly to revise his estimate of the amount of losses Hornblower could endure. With the stakes nearly trebled it would be bad if he lost a single rubber.
“You and I again, Mr Hornblower,” said Parry, observing the cut. “You wish to retain your present seat?”
“I am indifferent, my lord.”
“I am not,” said Parry. “Nor am I yet so old as to decline to change my seat in accordance with the run of the cards. Our philosophers have not yet decided that it is a mere vulgar superstition. ”
He heaved himself out of his chair and moved opposite Hornblower, and play began again, with Bush watching more anxiously even than at the start. He watched each side in turn take the odd trick, and then three times running he saw Hornblower lay the majority of tricks in front of him. During the next couple of hands he lost count of the score, but finally he was relieved to see only two tricks before the colonel when the rubber ended.
“Excellent,” said Parry, “a profitable rubber, Mr Hornblower. I’m glad you decided to trump my knave of hearts. It must have been a difficult decision for you, but it was undoubtedly the right one.”
“It deprived me of a lead I could well have used,” said Lambert. “The opposition was indeed formidable, colonel.”
“Yes,” agreed the colonel, not quite as good-temperedly.
“And twice I held hands neither an ace nor a king, which helped the opposition to be formidable. Can you give me change, Mr Hornblower?”
There was a five-pound note among the money that the colonel handed over to Hornblower, and it went into the breast pocket of his coat.
“At least, colonel,” said Parry, when they cut again, “you have Mr Hornblower as your partner this time.”
As the rubber proceeded Bush was aware that the flag lieutenant beside him was watching with greater and greater interest.
“By the odd trick, by George.” said he when the last cards were played.
“That was a close shave, partner,” said the colonel, his good humour clearly restored. “I hoped you held that queen, but I couldn’t be sure.”
“Fortune was with us, sir,” said Hornblower.
The flag lieutenant glanced at Bush; it seemed as if the flag lieutenant was of opinion that the colonel should have been in no doubt, from the previous play, that Hornblower held the queen. Now that Bush’s attention was drawn to it, he decided that Hornblower must have thought just the same — the slightest inflection in his voice implied it — but was sensibly not saying so.
“I lose a rubber at five pounds ten and win one at fifteen shillings,” said the colonel, receiving his winnings from Lambert. “Who’d like to increase the stakes again?”
To the credit of the two admirals they both glanced at Hornblower without replying.
“As you gentlemen wish,” said Hornblower.
“In that case I’m quite agreeable,” said Parry.
“Five shillings a trick, then,” said the colonel. “That makes the game worth playing.”
“The game is always worth playing,” protested Parry.
“Of course, my lord,” said the colonel, but without suggesting that they should revert to the previous stakes.
Now the stakes were really serious; by Bush’s calculation a really disastrous rubber might cost Hornblower twenty pounds, and his further calculation told him that Hornblower could hardly have more than twenty pounds tucked away in his breast pocket. It was a relief to him when Hornblower and Lambert won the next rubber easily.
“This is a most enjoyable evening,” said Lambert, and he smiled with a glance down at the fistful of the colonel’s money he was holding; “nor am I referring to any monetary gains.”
“Instructive as well as amusing,” said Parry, paying out to Hornblower.
Play proceeded, silently as ever, the silence only broken by the brief interchanges of remarks between rubbers. Now that he could afford it, fortunately, Hornblower lost a rubber, but it was a cheap one, and he immediately won another profitable one. His gains mounted steadily with hardly a setback. It was growing late, and Bush was feeling weary, but the players showed few signs of fatigue, and the flag lieutenant stayed on with the limitless patience he must have acquired during his present appointment, philosophic and fatalistic since he could not possibly do anything to accelerate his admiral’s decision to go to bed. The other players drifted away from the room; later still the curtained door opened and the gamblers from the inner room came streaming out, some noisy, some silent, and the Marquis made his appearance, silent and unruffled, to watch the final rubbers with unobtrusive interest, seeing to it that the candles were snuffed and fresh ones brought, and new cards ready on demand. It was Parry who first glanced at the clock.
“Half past three,” he said. “Perhaps you gentlemen?”
“Too late to go to bed now, my lord,” said the colonel. “Sir Richard and I have to be up early, as you know.”
“My orders are all given,” said Lambert.
“So are mine,” said the colonel.
Bush was stupid with long late hours spent in a study atmosphere, but he thought he noticed an admonitory glance from Parry, directed at the two speakers. He wondered idly what orders Lambert and the colonel would have given, and still more idly why they should be orders that Parry did not wish to be mentioned. There seemed to be just the slightest trace of hurry, just the slightest hint of a desire to change the subject, in Parry’s manner when he spoke.
“Very well, then, we can play another rubber, if Mr Hornblower has no objection?”
“None at all, my lord.”
Hornblower was imperturbable; if he had noticed anything remarkable about the recent interchange he gave no sign of it. Probably he was weary, though — Bush was led to suspect that by his very imperturbability. Bush knew by now that Hornblower worked as hard to conceal his human weaknesses as some men worked to conceal ignoble birth.
Hornblower had the colonel as partner, and no one could be in the room without being aware that this final rubber was being played in an atmosphere of even fiercer competition than its predecessors. Not a word was spoken between the hands; the score was marked, the tricks swept up, the other pack proffered and cut in deadly silence. Each hand was desperately close, too. In nearly every case it was only a single trick that divided the victors and the vanquished, so that the rubber dragged on and on with painful slowness. Then a hand finished amid a climax of tension. The flag lieutenant and the Marquis had kept count of the score, and when Lambert took the last trick they uttered audible sighs, and the colonel was so moved that he broke the silence at last.
“Neck and neck, by God!” he said. “This next hand must settle it.”
But he was properly rebuked by the stony silence with which his remark was received. Parry merely took the cards from the colonel’s right side and passed them over to Hornblower to cut. Then Parry dealt, and turned up the king of diamonds as trump, and the colonel led. Trick succeeded trick. For a space, after losing a single trick, Lambert and Parry carried all before them. Six tricks lay before Parry, and only one before Hornblower. The colonel’s remark about being neck and neck was fresh in Bush’s ears. One more trick out of the next six would give the rubber to the two admirals. Five to one was long odds, and Bush uncomfortably resigned himself to his friend losing this final rubber. Then the colonel took a trick and the game was still alive. Hornblower took the next trick, so that there was still hope. Hornblower led the ace of diamonds, and before it could be played to he laid down his other three cards to claim the rest of the tricks; the queen and knave of diamonds lay conspicuously on the table.