CHAPTERVIII.
Christmaswas over; the Countess Dowager and the Ladies Devenish had taken their departure from Thistlemere; the weather was inclement, and a great deal of time had to be spent indoors; which made Nora often wish that she and her husband were alone. One day she expressed something of the kind to him. She said,—
‘I thought people usually kept their country seats for the purposes of retirement, but we have never been alone since we came here.’
Ilfracombe laughed.
‘Why, my darling, what do you call us at the present moment? We couldn’t well be much more alone.’
‘Mr Portland is here,’ replied the countess.
‘Old Jack! You don’t call him anybody, surely? He’s as much at home at Thistlemere as we are. I wish he would live here altogether. I don’t know what I shall do when hedoesgo. I shall be lost without my old chum to smoke with and talk to.’
‘I don’t think you need anticipate any such calamity,’ said Nora, with something of her old, sharp manner. ‘Mr Portland does not appear to have the slightest intention of moving.’
‘Hewasthinking of it, though. He had a letter yesterday, which he said obliged him to return to town, but I persuaded him to write instead. It would be awfully dull for me if he went away, just at this time when there is nothing going on.’
‘Complimentary tome,’ retorted the young countess, with a shrug.
‘Now, my darling, you know what I mean. You are all the world to me—a part ofmyself—butyou can’t sit up till the small hours playing billiards and smoking cigars with me.’
‘No. I draw the line at cigars, Ilfracombe.’
‘And then, how many rainy and dirty days there are, when you only feel inclined to sit over the fire and toast your pretty little feet. What would become of me then, if Jack were not here to go potting rabbits, or turning the rats out of the barns with the terriers. The country is so frightfully dull at this time of year, you would be bored to death with only me to talk to.’
‘Do you think so, Ilfracombe?’
‘I feel sure of it, and how should we pass the evenings without our whist? Babbage is the only man within hail of us who thinks it worth his while to come over for a game; so if Jack were not good enough to exile himself for the pleasure of our company, we should be obliged to import someone else, who would probably not play half so well.’
Lord and Lady Ilfracombe were riding together at the time of this conversation, walking their horses slowly round the lanesabout Thistlemere, for Nora was not an experienced horsewoman. She had had no opportunity of either riding or driving in Malta, and her husband was employing his leisure by teaching her something of both arts. She was a pupil to be proud of; plucky in the extreme, and only a little reckless and disposed to imagine she could do it all at once, which kept the earl on constant tenter-hooks about her. As he finished speaking to her now, she exclaimed rather impatiently,—
‘Oh, very well, let us say no more about it,’ and struck the spirited little mare she was riding sharply across the neck with her whip.
The animal started and set off suddenly at a hard gallop, nearly unseating her rider by the rapidity of her action. The earl followed, in an access of alarm until he saw that the mare had settled down into a moderate canter again.
‘Nora, my darling!’ he exclaimed, as he came up with her, ‘you mustn’t do that. Leila won’t stand it. She will throwyou some day to a dead certainty. You gave me a pretty fright, I can tell you. What should I do if you were thrown.’
‘Pick me up again, I hope,’ replied the countess, laughing, as if it were an excellent joke.
‘Yes, but with a broken limb perhaps, and fancy what my remorse would be if that happened. I should never forgive myself for having mounted you on the beast. But she really is a good-tempered thing if you know how to take her.’
‘Just like her mistress,’ said Nora, smiling. ‘But, seriously, Ilfracombe, I will be more careful. I don’t want to break my leg before I am presented at Court.’
‘Nor after it, I hope, my darling. But walk Leila now, there’s a good child, and let her simmer down a little. You’ve made me feel just as I do when I think I’ve missed the odd trick.’
‘I believe you are fonder of playing cards than anything, Ilfracombe,’ said Nora slowly.
‘Iam—exceptyou. But they are sojolly—there’s so much excitement about cards. They keep a man alive.’
‘But, Ilfracombe, why need we always play for such high stakes? Do you know I lost thirty pounds at “Sandown” yesterday evening?’
‘Did you, dearest? Are you cleaned out? I will let you have some more as soon as we reach home.’
‘No, it is not that. It would not signify once in a way perhaps, but it is the same thing every night. It seems an awful waste of money.’
‘Not if you enjoy it, dear. We must pay for our whistle, you know. Cards would be no fun without the stakes. And somebody must lose.’
‘Yes, and somebody must win. Only, as it happens, it is always the same somebody, which doesn’t seem fair.’
‘Nora, what do you mean?’
‘Just what I say, Ilfracombe. I lose every night; so do you; so does Lord Babbage; and the only person who wins is Mr Portland. All the money seems to go into his pocket.’
‘Oh, Nora, my darling, this is not fair of you. You are prejudiced against my oldchum—Ihave seen that from the beginning—but to say that dear old Jack wins all the stakes, night after night, is as good assaying—oh, I am sure you cannot meanit—youcannot think of the meaning of what you say.’
‘My dear Ilfracombe, there is no meaning about it. I am only speaking the plain truth. I’ve seen it for a long time. Doubtless, Mr Portland is the best player of the four, and that is the reason, but it has struck me as rather remarkable. And it seems so strange, too, that friends should want, or like to pocket each other’s money. Why can’t we play for the love of the game? It would be quite as interesting, surely.’
‘No, no, child, it wouldn’t. Whoever heard of such a thing as grown men sitting down seriously to play for love?’ cried the earl merrily; ‘that’s only schoolgirl’s games. And I wonder to hear you, Nora, who are such a littlewoman of the world, suggesting such a thing. I should have thought you liked staking your money as well as anyone.’
‘Perhaps it is because I am a woman of the world that I don’t like to see my husband’s money wasted. No income, however large, can stand such a strain long. Besides, I know it is not only cards on which you bet with Mr Portland. You go to races with him, and lose a lot of money there. Mr Castelton told me so!’
‘It is not true, Nora, and Castelton had better mind his own business. Everybody must lose occasionally; but I always follow Jack’s lead, and he’s as safe as the church clock. And, after all, my dear girl, I’d as soon the tin went into old Jack’s pocket as my own. He’s awfully hard up sometimes, and if one can’t share some of one’s good things with one’s best friend, I don’t know what’s the use of them.’
‘Well, leave a little for me,’ cried Nora gaily, and her husband’s answershould have at least satisfied her that she would always be his first care. But she was not satisfied with regard to the nightly games of cards. She watched the players more closely after this conversation than before, and decided within herself that she had been correct, and Jack Portland was by far the heaviest and most frequent winner. One day, when they were alone together, she could not help congratulating him, in a sarcastic manner, on his continual run of good luck. He guessed at her meaning in a minute.
‘Do you mean to infer that I cheat?’ he asked her abruptly.
Then Nora felt a little ashamed of herself and did not know what to reply.
‘Oh, no, of course not. How could you think of such a thing? Only it is evident that you are a far better player than Lord Babbage or Ilfracombe, and, to my mind, the odds are very much against them. As for poor me, you have ruined me already. I have lost allmy pin-money for the next three months.’
‘Nonsense!’ he said rudely (Mr Portland could be exceedingly rude to her when they were alone), ‘you know you can get as much money out of Ilfracombe as you can possibly want. The man is infatuated with you. More fool he. But he’ll find out how much your love is worth some day.’
‘Perhaps you intend to enlighten him?’ said her ladyship.
She could not resist letting fly her little shafts at him, whatever the consequences might be.
‘Perhaps I do, if you egg me on to it,’ was Mr Portland’s reply. ‘But, seriously, my lady, don’t you attempt to come between his lordship and myself, or you may rue the day you did it. I am avaurien—adventurer—swindler—what you like. I’m not afraid of you or your tongue, because I hold the trump card and should have no hesitation in playing it. But my income, though tolerably expansive, is afluctuating one, and I am compelled to eke it out as best I can. I amuse my friends, and I live chiefly at their expense. Lord Ilfracombe is, luckily for me, one of my best and greatest of chums, so I cling to him like a double-sweet pea. Until you came in the way there has never been a suspicion cast on the honour of myintentions—thedisinterestedness of my friendship. See that you don’t do it, that’s all.’
‘And what if I did?’ asked Nora, defiantly, with her head well up in the air.
Mr Portland moved a few steps closer to her.
‘I would deliver those letters of yours into Ilfracombe’s hands within the hour,’ he said, between his teeth.
Nora quailed before his glance, but her voice was steady as she replied,—
‘You would not. Youdarenot. You would ruin yourself for ever, and be pointed at in Society as a scoundrel and a black-mailer.’
‘Never mind what the world would say of me. Think only of what it would say ofyou.’
‘It could not say anything,’ she retorted, with the boldness of despair; ‘there would be nothing for it to say. There is no harm in those letters. I should not mind if my husband read them to-morrow.’
‘Wouldn’t you?’ said Jack Portland, with open eyes. ‘Then I’ll show them to him before he is twelve hours older.’
‘No, no,’ said Nora quickly, ‘you would not do so mean an act, surely. You must have some instincts of a gentleman left in you. Remember under what circumstances they were written, and that I thought at the time I loved you.’
‘I suppose you did,’ replied Mr Portland; ‘but they are delicious reading all the same. I read passages from them once to a select party of my men friends, and they said they would never have guessed they were the productions of a young lady. They voted they would have been warm even from a barmaid.’
‘You did not! You cannot have been such a blackguard!’ exclaimed Lady Ilfracombeso shrilly, that he laid his hand upon her arms to caution her she might be overheard. ‘You have promised to give me those letters back, over and over again, and you have not kept your word. I will wait no longer, but have them at once. I insist upon it. Do you hear me? I will stand this treatment from you no longer.’
‘Oh, I hear, fast enough, and I’m very much afraid that everybody else in the house, including Lord Ilfracombe, will hear also, if your ladyship is not a little more guarded.’
‘But youpromised—youpromised,’ she continued vehemently, ‘and now you threaten to break your promise. You are no gentleman, Mr Portland. The lowest man on earth would degrade himself by such vile conduct.’
‘I daresay,’ he answered coolly; ‘perhaps he would. But your behaviour is enough to make a saint forget his natural instincts. You remind me that I promised to return your letters. I know I did,and if you had treated me decently since coming here, I might have kept my promise. But I won’t give them to you now. I will only sell them.’
‘What can you possibly mean?’ exclaimed the countess. ‘Am I to buy back my own letters? Well, I will. What price do you ask for them?’
She was standing in the oriel window of the drawing-room, most becomingly dressed in a gown of brown velvet, that seemed to match her eyes and set off the pearly whiteness of her skin, and as she put the above question she curled her upper lip and threw such an air of disdain into her expression that she looked more charming than usual.
‘Don’t look like that,’ said Portland, coming nearer to her, ‘or you will aggravate me to kiss you.’
The indignant blood rushed in a flood of crimson to Nora’s face and forehead, until it nearly forced tears from her eyes.
‘How dare you! How dare you!’ she panted, as she retreated as far as she could from him.
‘How dare I?’ he repeated. ‘That wasn’t the way your ladyship used to receive the same proposition when we sat together under the shade of the orange-trees in Malta a couple of years ago. Was it now?’
‘I do not know. I cannot remember. I only know that your presence now is hateful to me. What sum do you require for those letters? If it was half our fortune I would give it you, sooner than be subjected to further insult. Tell me how much at once. I will sell all my jewels if I cannot raise the money otherwise!’
‘No, no, I’m not going to press you quite so hard as all that, Nora. I don’t want your jewels, my dear,’ replied Jack Portland, with offensive familiarity. ‘My priceis—yoursilence.’
‘Silence about what? Do you imagine I am likely to talk about a matter which I would expunge with my lifeblood if I could.’
‘You mistake me. By your silence, Imean that you must no longer interfere, as you seem inclined to do, between your husband and myself. You must not try to separate us in any way; not in our friendship, nor our pursuits, nor our sports; we like to play cards together—’
‘Youlike, you mean,’ she interposed sarcastically.
‘Plait-il,’ acquiesced Jack Portland, with an expressive shrug; ‘at anyrate, we have been used to play cards and attend races and generally enjoy ourselves asbons camarades, and your ladyship will be good enough not to attempt to put an end to these things, not to remark in that delicately sarcastic way of yours that it is always your humble servant who appears to win. Do I make myself perfectly understood?’
‘Perfectly,’ said Nora, ‘and if I consent to this, what then?’
‘Why, that packet of charming letters—twenty-five in all, if I remember rightly—which have afforded me so much consolationunder our cruel separation, and which would prove, I feel sure, such very interesting reading for Lord Ilfracombe, shall remain in my custody, safe from all prying eyes except mine.’
‘But you promised to return them to me,’ argued Nora, and then with the greatness of the stake at issue before her eyes, and forgetting everything but that she was at the mercy of the man before her, the unhappy girl condescended to entreaty. ‘Oh, MrPortland—Jack,’ she stammered, ‘for God’ssake—forthe sake of the past, give me back those letters.’
‘How nice it is to hear you call me “Jack,”’ said Mr Portland, gazing boldly at her. ‘It almost reconciles me to the great loss I experienced in you. When you call me “Jack” I feel as if I could refuse you nothing.’
‘Then will you give them to me?’
‘Certainly,ma chère, haven’t I said so a dozen times? Only you must positively wait until I return to town. You women are so terribly unreasonable.And you, for your part, promise never to interfere between my old friend Ilfracombe and myself, and sometimes, to call me “Jack” for the sake of the past.’
Lady Ilfracombe was shivering now as if she had received a cold-water douche. She realised what being in the power of this manmeant—thathe would torture her, as a cat tortures a mouse, until he had bent her in every way to do his will.
‘I promise,’ she said in a low voice; ‘but if you gentlemen will play for such high stakes, you must not expect me to join your game. You would ruin me in no time; as it is, I am regularly “cleaned out.”’
‘I would much rather you didnotjoin it,’ replied Mr Portland seriously. ‘Ladies are seldom any good at whist, and I would rather play dummy any day. I suppose Ilfracombe will take you to Newmarket and Epsom with him, but you will understand nothing of the races,so I make no objection to that. By the way, have you yet mentioned this matter of our playing high to him?
‘I told him I thought the stakes were high for a private game, but he contradicted me, and said it was no fun playing except for money.’
‘I should think not. However, don’t speak to him of such a thing again please. Besides, it is ridiculous. He has an ample fortune, and can afford to do as he pleases. I can’t see myself why you sit in the card-room in the evenings, the drawing-room is the proper place for a lady.’
‘You would like to separate me from my husband altogether, I daresay,’ cried Nora heatedly.
‘By no manner of means. You quite mistake my meaning. Such a proceeding would distress me beyond measure. But I don’t intend to give up any of the privileges which I enjoyed from Ilfracombe’s intimacy before his marriage for you. Had he married anybody else, itmight have been different, but not foryou. It would be too bad to ask me to give up both my lady-love and my friend at one stroke. You will acknowledge the justice of that yourself, won’t you?’
‘Don’t ask me, I don’t know anything,’ replied the Countess, wearily, as she moved away, ‘You have come into my life again to make it miserable, and if you have no honour nor generosity there is nothing left that I can see to appeal to.’ And in her heart Nora added, ‘And if I could stretch you dead at my feet this moment, I would do it without a single pang.’
She was more cautious in what she said to the earl, however, after that, and occasionally he rallied her on having got over her objection to too high play. Once when they were quite alone, she ventured to answer him.
‘No, Ilfracombe, I cannot say that you are right. You must have observed that I seldom stay in the room nowwhen you are playing, I do not approve of such high stakes, but I do not like to interfere with your enjoyment, or to appear to know better than yourself. But you won’t tell Mr Portland I said so,’ she added in a wistful tone. Lord Ilfracombe looked surprised.
‘Tell Jack, my darling? Why, of course not. All that passes between you and me is sacred. I don’t think you’ve been looking quite up to the mark lately, Nora. I’m afraid you must find Thistlemere rather dull. I shall be glad when the time comes for us to go up to town. Then we’ll see some life together, won’t we?’
And Nora smiled faintly, and answered ‘Yes.’