affair will have cleared the air of sleuth-hounds a little."
CHAPTER XXIII
FAMILY JARS
Hildebrand Spencer Poynt de Burgh John Hannasyde Coombe-Crombie,
twelfth Earl of Dreever, was feeling like a toad under the harrow.
He read the letter again, but a second perusal made it no better.
Very briefly and clearly, Molly had broken off the engagement. She
"thought it best." She was "afraid it could make neither of us
happy." All very true, thought his lordship miserably. His
sentiments to a T. At the proper time, he would have liked nothing
better. But why seize for this declaration the precise moment when
he was intending, on the strength of the engagement, to separate his
uncle from twenty pounds? That was what rankled. That Molly could
have no knowledge of his sad condition did not occur to him. He had
a sort of feeling that she ought to have known by instinct. Nature,
as has been pointed out, had equipped Hildebrand Spencer Poynt de
Burgh with one of those cheap-substitute minds. What passed for
brain in him was to genuine gray matter as just-as-good imitation
coffee is to real Mocha. In moments of emotion and mental stress,
consequently, his reasoning, like Spike's, was apt to be in a class
of its own.
He read the letter for the third time, and a gentle perspiration
began to form on his forehead. This was awful. The presumable
jubilation of Katie, the penniless ripper of the Savoy, when he
should present himself to her a free man, did not enter into the
mental picture that was unfolding before him. She was too remote.
Between him and her lay the fearsome figure of Sir Thomas, rampant,
filling the entire horizon. Nor is this to be wondered at. There was
probably a brief space during which Perseus, concentrating his gaze
upon the monster, did not see Andromeda; and a knight of the Middle
Ages, jousting in the Gentlemen's Singles for a smile from his lady,
rarely allowed the thought of that smile to occupy his whole mind at
the moment when his boiler-plated antagonist was descending upon him
in the wake of a sharp spear.
So with Spennie Dreever. Bright eyes might shine for him when all
was over, but in the meantime what seemed to him more important was
that bulging eyes would glare.
If only this had happened later--even a day later! The reckless
impulsiveness of the modern girl had undone him. How was he to pay
Hargate the money? Hargate must be paid. That was certain. No other
course was possible. Lord Dreever's was not one of those natures
that fret restlessly under debt. During his early career at college,
he had endeared himself to the local tradesmen by the magnitude of
the liabilities he had contracted with them. It was not the being in
debt that he minded. It was the consequences. Hargate, he felt
instinctively, was of a revengeful nature. He had given Hargate
twenty pounds' worth of snubbing, and the latter had presented the
bills. If it were not paid, things would happen. Hargate and he were
members of the same club, and a member of a club who loses money at
cards to a fellow member, and fails to settle up, does not make
himself popular with the committee.
He must get the money. There was no avoiding that conclusion. But
how?
Financially, his lordship was like a fallen country with a glorious
history. There had been a time, during his first two years at
college, when he had reveled in the luxury of a handsome allowance.
This was the golden age, when Sir Thomas Blunt, being, so to speak,
new to the job, and feeling that, having reached the best circles,
he must live up to them, had scattered largesse lavishly. For two
years after his marriage with Lady Julia, he had maintained this
admirable standard, crushing his natural parsimony. He had regarded
the money so spent as capital sunk in an investment. By the end of
the second year, he had found his feet, and began to look about him
for ways of retrenchment. His lordship's allowance was an obvious
way. He had not to wait long for an excuse for annihilating it.
There is a game called poker, at which a man without much control
over his features may exceed the limits of the handsomest allowance.
His lordship's face during a game of poker was like the surface of
some quiet pond, ruffled by every breeze. The blank despair of his
expression when he held bad cards made bluffing expensive. The
honest joy that bubbled over in his eyes when his hand was good
acted as an efficient danger-signal to his grateful opponents. Two
weeks of poker had led to his writing to his uncle a distressed, but
confident, request for more funds; and the avuncular foot had come
down with a joyous bang. Taking his stand on the evils of gambling,
Sir Thomas had changed the conditions of the money-market for his
nephew with a thoroughness that effectually prevented the
possibility of the youth's being again caught by the fascinations of
poker. The allowance vanished absolutely; and in its place there
came into being an arrangement. By this, his lordship was to have
whatever money he wished, but he must ask for it, and state why it
was needed. If the request were reasonable, the cash would be
forthcoming; if preposterous, it would not. The flaw in the scheme,
from his lordship's point of view, was the difference of opinion
that can exist in the minds of two men as to what the words
reasonable and preposterous may be taken to mean.
Twenty pounds, for instance, would, in the lexicon of Sir Thomas
Blunt, be perfectly reasonable for the current expenses of a man
engaged to Molly McEachern, but preposterous for one to whom she had
declined to remain engaged. It is these subtle shades of meaning
that make the English language so full of pitfalls for the
foreigner.
So engrossed was his lordship in his meditations that a voice spoke
at his elbow ere he became aware of Sir Thomas himself, standing by
his side.
"Well, Spennie, my boy," said the knight. "Time to dress for dinner,
I think. Eh? Eh?"
He was plainly in high good humor. The thought of the distinguished
company he was to entertain that night had changed him temporarily,
as with some wave of a fairy wand, into a thing of joviality and
benevolence. One could almost hear the milk of human kindness
gurgling and splashing within him. The irony of fate! Tonight, such
was his mood, a dutiful nephew could have come and felt in his
pockets and helped himself--if circumstances had been different. Oh,
woman, woman, how you bar us from paradise!
His lordship gurgled a wordless reply, thrusting the fateful letter
hastily into his pocket. He would break the news anon. Soon--not
yet--later on--in fact, anon!
"Up in your part, my boy?" continued Sir Thomas. "You mustn't spoil
the play by forgetting your lines. That wouldn't do!"
His eye was caught by the envelope that Spennie had dropped. A
momentary lapse from the jovial and benevolent was the result. His
fussy little soul abhorred small untidinesses.
"Dear me," he said, stooping, "I wish people would not drop paper
about the house. I cannot endure a litter." He spoke as if somebody
had been playing hare-and-hounds, and scattering the scent on the
stairs. This sort of thing sometimes made him regret the old days.
In Blunt's Stores, Rule Sixty-seven imposed a fine of half-a-crown
on employees convicted of paper-dropping.
"I--" began his lordship.
"Why"--Sir Thomas straightened himself--"it's addressed to you."
"I was just going to pick it up. It's--er--there was a note in it."