“He has not minced matters! He told me in round terms that he would not — Oh well! No matter for that!”
“I daresay,” said Sophy, in her calm way, “that Charles might very likely say more than he meant. I wish you will tell me what has gone awry, Hubert! My conjecture is that you have lost perhaps a large sum at Newmarket?”
“If that were all!” he exclaimed unguardedly.
“Well, if it is not all, I wish you will tell me the full sum of it, Hubert!” she said, with one of her friendly smiled. “I assure you, you are quite safe in my hands, for Sir Horace brought me up to think there was nothing more odious than to be the kind of person who babbled secrets abroad. But I know that you are in trouble of some sort, and I do think I ought, if you will tell me nothing, to drop a hint in your brother’s ear, for ten to one you will make bad much worse if you go on in this way, with no one to advise you!”
He turned pale. “Sophy, you would not — ”
Her eyes twinkled. “No, of course I would not!” she admitted. “You are so very loath to tell me anything that I am quite forced to ask you. Is it anything to do with a woman — what Sir Horace would call a bit of muslin, perhaps?”
“Sophy! Upon my word! No! Nothing of the sort!”
“Money, then?”
He did not answer, and after a moment she patted invitingly the sofa on which she sat, and said, “Do, pray, come and sit down! I don’t suppose it is by half so bad as you fear.”
He gave a short laugh, but after a little more persuasion sat down beside her, and sank his head in between his clenched fists. “I shall come about. If the worst comes to the worst, a man may always enlist!”
“True,” she agreed. “But I know something of the army, and I do not think that life in the ranks would suit you at all. Besides, it would very much distress my aunt, you know!”
It was not to be supposed that a young gentleman of Hubert’s order would readily confide his difficulties into the ears of a female, and that female not quite as old as he was himself; but after a good deal of coaxing Sophy managed to extract his story from him. It was not a very coherent tale, and she was obliged to prompt him several times during its recital, but in the end she gathered that he had fallen into the clutches of a moneylender.
There had been some trouble over debts contracted during the previous year at Oxford, the full sum of which he had not dared to disclose to his brother, hoping, in the immemorial way of youth, to be able to discharge them himself. He had knowing friends who knew all the gaming houses in London; quite a brief run of luck at French Hazard, or roulette, would have set all to rights; but when, during the Christmas vacation, he had sought this method of recuperating his fortunes, only the most unprecedented bad luck had attended his efforts.
He still shuddered whenever he recalled those ruinous, and, indeed, terrifying evenings, a circumstance which led his sapient cousin to infer that gaming held little attraction for him. Faced with large debts of honor, already in hot water with his formidable brother for far smaller debts, what could he do but jump into the river, or go to a moneylender? And even so, he assured Sophy, he would never have gone near a curst moneylender had he not felt certain of being able to pay the shark off within six months.
“You mean, when you come of age next month?” Sophy asked.
“Well, no,” he admitted, coloring. “Though I fancy that was what old Goldhanger thought, when he agreed to lend me the money. I never told him so, mind! All I said was that I was certain of coming into possession of a large sum — and I was, Sophy! I did not think it could possibly fail! Bob Gilmorton — he is a particular friend of mine — knows the owner well, and he swore to me the horse could not lose!”
Sophy, who had an excellent memory, instantly recognized the name of Goldhanger as being the one she had read on the scrap of paper discovered in her bedroom, but she made no comment on this, merely inquiring whether the perfidious horse had lost his race.
“Unplaced!” said Hubert, with a groan.
She nodded wisely. “Sir Horace says that if ever you trust to a horse to set your fortune to rights he always is unplaced,” she observed. “He says also that if you game when your pockets are to let you will lose. It is only when you are very well breeched that you may expect to win. Sir Horace is always right!”
Declining to argue this point, Hubert spoke for several embittered minutes on the running of his horse, casting such grave aspersions upon the owner, the trainer, and the jockey as must have rendered him liable to prosecution for slander had they been uttered to anyone less discreet than his cousin. She let him run on, listening sympathetically, and only when he had talked himself to a standstill did she bring him back to what she thought a far more important point.
“Hubert, you are not of age,” she said. “And I know that it is quite illegal to lend money to minors, because when young Mr. — well, never mind the name, but we knew him well — when a young man of my acquaintance got into just such a fix, he came to Sir Horace for advice, and what Sir Horace said. I believe there are excessively penalties for doing such a thing.”
“Well, I know that,” Hubert answered. “Most of ’em do it, but — well, the thing is that a friend of mine knew this fellow, Goldhanger, and gave me his direction, and — and told me what I should say, and the sort of interest I should have to pay — not that that seemed to matter then, because I thought — ”
“Is it very heavy?” Sophy interrupted.
He nodded. “Yes, because, though I lied about my age he knew, of course, that I’m not yet twenty-one, and — and he had me pretty well at his mercy. And I thought I should have been able to have paid it all off after that race.”
“How much did you borrow, Hubert?”
“Five hundred,” he muttered.
“Good gracious, did you lose all that at cards?” she exclaimed.
“No, but I wanted a hundred to lay on that curst screw, you see,” he explained. “It was of no use only to borrow enough to pay my debts, because how was I to pay back Goldhanger?”
Sophy could not help laughing at this ingenious method of finance, but as Hubert looked rather hurt she begged pardon, and said, “It is evident to me that your Mr. Goldhanger is an infamous rascal!”
“Yes,” Hubert said, looking a little haggard. “He’s an old devil, and I was a fool even to go near him. I didn’t know as much about him then as I do now, of course, but still, as soon as I saw him — But it’s too late now to be repining over that!”
“Yes, much too late. Besides, there is no need to be in despair! I am certain that you have nothing to fear, because he must know he cannot recover his money from a minor, and would never dare to sue you for it.”
“Dash it, Sophy, I must pay the fellow back what I owe him! Besides, there’s worse. He insisted on my giving him a pledge, and — and I did!”
He sounded so guilty that several hair-raising possibilities flashed through Sophy’s mind. “Hubert, you did not pledge a family heirloom, or — or anything of that nature, did you?”
“Good God, no! I’m not as bad as that!” he cried indignantly. “It was mine, and I shouldn’t call it an heirloom, precisely, though if ever it was discovered that I had lost it I daresay there would be the deuce of a kickup, and I should be abused as though I were a pickpocket! Grandfather Stanton-Lacy left it to me — stupid sort of thing, think, because men don’t wear ’em nowadays. He did, of course, and my mother says the sight of it brings him back to her as nothing else could, because she never saw him without it on his hand — so you may judge what would happen if she knew I had pledged it! It’s a ring, you know, a great, square emerald, with diamonds all round it. Fancy wearing such a thing as that! Why, one would look like Romeo Coates, or some wealthy Cit trying to lionize! Mama always kept it, and I never knew it had been left to me until I went to a masquerade last year, and she gave it to me to wear and told me it was mine. And when Goldhanger demanded I should give him a pledge, I — I couldn’t think of anything else, and — well, I knew where Mama kept it, and I took it! And don’t tell me I stole it from her, because it was no such thing, and she only kept it because I had no use for it!”