But the second night’s play was even more disastrous than the first; and some warning instinct in Hero told her that a third would be no more successful. Thoroughly frightened, shivering at the thought of the vast sums she had lost, and not knowing which way to turn in her extremity, she spent what was left of the night tossing about in her bed, and racking her brains to find a way out of her difficulties. To present Sherry with the sum of her obligations seemed to her unthinkable, for poor Sherry had his own obligations, and had said only a week earlier that they must really try to practice economy. Hero wept into her pillow with grief to think that she should have added to Sherry’s embarrassments; and thought that her mother-in-law had spoken no less than the truth when she had accused her of having wrecked his life.
He came home from Newmarket that day, to find a heavy-eyed wife, who explained nervously that she had the headache. He said that he had one himself, and had no hesitation in ascribing it to the malignant behaviour of four out of five of the horses he had backed. Hero turned pale, and faltered: “Was your luck so very bad, Sherry?”
“Devilish!” he replied. “If it goes on like this I shall find myself in the hands of some curst cent-per-cent, I can tell you!” He broke the wafer of one of the letters which had been awaiting him, and ejaculated: “Bills! nothing but bills! There’s no end to it! What a damned homecoming for a man!”
“What — what is a cent-per-cent, Sherry?” asked his wife in a small voice.
“Moneylender,” he replied, consigning another bill to the fire, and breaking open a more promising-looking billet.
“Do people lend one money?” she asked anxiously.
“Usurers do — at a devilish rate of interest, too! I know ’em all too well! Used to be for ever at Howard and Gibbs before the Trust was wound up.”
“Howard and Gibbs, did you say, Sherry?”
“Yes, they’re about the best of the bloodsuckers, and that ain’t saying much.” He looked up from his letter. “What the deuce do you want to know about moneylenders for, Kitten?”
“I — only that I did not perfectly understand what a cent-per-cent is!” she said quickly.
“Well, don’t go talking of ’em!” he warned her. “It ain’t a genteel expression!”
That highly successful firm of philanthropists, Messrs Howard and Gibbs, received upon the following morning a visit from a closely-veiled lady, who drove up in a hackney, and was plainly ignorant of the principles which governed the particular form of finance practised by the firm. The respectable gentleman who interviewed this lady seemed at first strangely disinclined to accommodate her. He bewildered her by talking suavely of securities and credentials, but when she disclosed to him her identity his manner underwent a gratifying change, and he not only explained the terms on which the firm would be ready to advance a loan, but expressed his willingness to serve her in any way possible. He seemed to have no difficulty in understanding how it came about that she had lost such a sum in only two nights’ play, and showed himself in general to be so sympathetic that his client presently left the building with a high opinion of the whole race of moneylenders.
But while his wife was happily redeeming vowels with the money so generously advanced to her by Messrs Howard and Gibbs, Sherry had received a billet on gilt-edged, scented notepaper from a lady with whom he had had no dealings since his marriage. He frowned over this missive, for he was not in the mood to embark on the kind of intrigue its mysterious wording seemed to promise. The writer said that she did not like to ask him to visit her, but she had something to say to him which was of vast importance, and which he would regret not hearing. Sherry read this through twice, decided that Nancy had never been one to play tricks on a fellow, and took himself off to the street in which she had her lodging.
He found her at home, and was received by her with her merriest smile and most welcoming manner.
“Sherry, I hoped you would come!” she said. “I oughtn’t to ask it of you, I dare say, but give me a kiss for old times’ sake!”
He obeyed this behest willingly enough, for if she was growing to be a little faded she was still a cosy armful, and he had a fondness for her quite apart from his amorous dealings with her. “Yes, this is all very well, Nancy, but I’m a married man now! Turned over a new leaf!” he said, giving her plump shoulders a hug.
“Lord bless you, Sherry, don’t I know that? And you need not be thinking that I’ve sent for you to make trouble, for that’s what I would never do, and so you should know! It’s because we had some delightful times together, and I always liked you, that I asked you to come. Yes, and I like the look of that little wife of yours, Sherry — and that’s the root of the matter!”
“What the deuce has my wife to do with it?” he demanded.
“Sit down, my dear, and take that ugly frown off your face, do! You’ve been at Newmarket, haven’t you?”
“Yes, but — ”
“Well, now, Sherry, if I’m telling you something you don’t care to hear from me, just you remember that I wouldn’t breathe a word if I weren’t fond of you, and if I didn’t happen to have heard — never mind where! that that little wife of yours is only a baby who ain’t up to snuff like half the fine ladies that hold their noses so high in the air!”
The Viscount’s blue eyes were fixed intently on her face. “Go on!” he said briefly.
She smiled at him. “Well, my dearie, I saw your wife where she’d no business to be, and how she came there is what I can’t tell you, for try as I will I can’t discover who put her in the way of meeting Charlotte Gillingham.”
“What?” exclaimed his lordship incredulously.
“Yes, my dear, that’s where I saw her, and mighty ill-at-ease she looked, poor little creature, not knowing a soul, and wishing she had not come, if I know anything of the matter! And the long and short of it is, Sherry, that there were some deep doings, and your wife was badly dipped. Now, maybe I wouldn’t have said anything about it to you if I hadn’t discovered that she went again, the very next night, but she did, and you know as well as I do that if she gets into the hands of that set she will be ruined in more ways than one.”
“My God!” Sherry said. “Oh, my God, what next will she do?”
Nancy patted his hand. “Now, don’t put yourself in a pucker, for there’s very little harm done yet! And don’t fly into one of your tantrums with the poor child, for she looked frightened to death when I saw her, and I don’t doubt she’s had her lesson without your scaring her worse than ever.”
“No,” he said. “No, I won’t. Charlotte Gillingham! Who in the devil’s name — ” He broke off, and got up abruptly. “By God, if I thought — Nancy, I’m off! You’re a deuced good friend, my girl, and I’m devilish grateful to you!”
“Well, give me another kiss, then!” she said, laughing.
The Viscount reached home again to find that his wife had gone out driving in the Park. It said much for his newfound sense of responsibility that, after a glance at the ormolu clock on the drawing-room mantelpiece, he sent round a note to Stratton Street, briefly excusing himself from accompanying Mr Ringwood on an expedition to Richmond.
When Hero presently returned to the house, she ran lightly upstairs, and the Viscount heard her moving about in the room behind the drawing-room. She did not sound to be in dejected spirits, which surprised him a little, and when she at last entered the drawing-room the start she gave upon seeing him there was one of unadulterated gladness. “Sherry! I had not thought you were at home! Do you not go with Gil, after all?”