Arabella
: Chapter 14

Not for three days did any news of the disasters which had overtaken Bertram reach his sister. She had written to beg him to meet by the Bath Gate in the Green Park, and had sent the letter by the Penny Post. When he neither appeared at the rendezvous, nor replied to her letter, she began to be seriously alarmed, and was trying to think of a way of visiting the Red Lion without her godmother’s knowledge when Mr Scunthorpe sent up his card, at three o’clock one afternoon. She desired the butler to show him into the drawing-room, and went down immediately from her bed-chamber to receive him.

It did not at once strike her that he was looking preternaturally solemn; she was too eager to learn tidings of Bertram, and went impetuously towards him with her hand held out, exclaiming: ‘I am so very glad you have called to see me, sir! I have been so much worried about my brother! Have you news of him? Oh, do not tell me he is ill?’

Mr Scunthorpe bowed, cleared his throat, and grasped her hand spasmodically. In a somewhat throaty voice he replied: ‘No, ma’am. Oh, no! Not ill, precisely!’

Her eyes eagerly scanned his face. She now perceived that his countenance wore an expression of deep melancholy, and felt immediately sick with apprehension. She managed to say: ‘Not – not – dead?’

‘Well, no, he ain’t dead,’ replied Mr Scunthorpe, but hardly in a reassuring tone. ‘I suppose you might say it ain’t as bad as that. Though, mind you, I wouldn’t say he won’t be dead, if we don’t take care, because when a fellow takes to – But never mind that!’

‘Never mind it?’ cried Arabella, pale with a alarm. ‘Oh, what can be the matter? Pray, pray tell me instantly!’

Mr Scunthorpe looked at her uneasily. ‘Better have some smelling-salts,’ he suggested. ‘No wish to upset a lady. Nasty shock. Daresay you’d like a glass of hartshorn and water. Ring for a servant!’

‘No, no, I need nothing! Pray do not! Only put me out of this agony of suspense!’ Arabella implored him, clinging with both hands to the back of a chair.

Mr Scunthorpe cleared his throat again. ‘Thought it best to come to you,’ he said. ‘Sister. Happy to be of service myself, but at a standstill. Temporary, of course, but there it is. Must tow poor Bertram out of the River Tick!’

‘River?’ gasped Arabella.

Mr Scunthorpe perceived that he had been misunderstood. He made haste to rectify this. ‘No, no, not drowned!’ he assured her. ‘Swallowed a spider!’

‘Bertram has swallowed a spider?’ Arabella repeated, in a dazed voice.

Mr Scunthorpe nodded. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Blown up at Point Non Plus. Poor fellow knocked into horse-nails!’

Arabella’s head was by this time in such a whirl that she was uncertain whether her unfortunate brother had fallen into the river, or had been injured in some explosion, or was more mildly, suffering from an internal disorder. Her pulse was tumultuous; the most agitating reflections made it impossible for her to speak above a whisper. She managed to utter: ‘Is he dreadfully hurt? Have they taken him to a hospital?’

‘Not a case for a hospital, ma’am,’ said Mr Scunthorpe. ‘More likely to be screwed up.’

This pronouncement, conjuring up the most horrid vision of a coffin, almost deprived Arabella of her senses. Her eyes started at Mr Scunthorpe in a look of painful enquiry. ‘Screwed up?’ she repeated faintly.

‘The Fleet,’ corroborated Mr Scunthorpe, sadly shaking his head. ‘Told him how it would be. Wouldn’t listen. Mind, if the thing had come off right, he could have paid down his dust, and no harm done. Trouble was, it didn’t. Very rarely does, if you ask me.’

The gist of this speech, gradually penetrating to Arabella’s understanding, brought some of the colour back to her face. She sank into a chair, her legs trembling violently, and said. ‘Do you mean he is in debt?’

Mr Scunthorpe looked at her in mild surprise. ‘Told you so, ma’am!’ he pointed out.

‘Good God, how could I possibly guess – ? Oh, I have been so afraid that something of the sort must happen! Thank you for coming to me, sir! You did very right!’

Mr Scunthorpe blushed. ‘Always happy to be of service!’

‘I must go to him!’ Arabella said. ‘Will you be so kind as to escort me? I do not care to take my maid on such an errand, and I think perhaps I should not go alone.’

‘No, wouldn’t do at all,’ Mr Scunthorpe agreed. ‘But better not go, ma’am! Not the thing for you. Delicate female – shabby neighbourhood! Take a message.’

‘Nonsense! Do you think I have never been to the City? Only wait until I have fetched a bonnet, and a shawl! We may take a hackney, and be there before Lady Bridlington comes downstairs.’

‘Yes, but – Fact is, ma’am, he ain’t at the Red Lion!’ said Mr Scunthorpe, much disturbed.

She had sprung up from her chair, but at this she paused. ‘Not? But how is this? Why has he left the inn?’

‘Couldn’t pay his shot,’ explained Mr Scunthorpe apologetically. ‘Left his watch. Silly thing to do. Might have come in useful.’

‘Oh!’ she cried out, horror in her voice. ‘Is it as bad as that?’

‘Worse!’ said Mr Scunthorpe gloomily. ‘Got queered sporting his blunt on the table. Only hadn’t enough blunt. Took to signing vowels, and ran aground.’

‘Gaming!’ Arabella breathed, in a shocked voice.

‘Faro,’ said Mr Scunthorpe. ‘Mind, no question of any Greeking transactions! No fuzzing, or handling the concavesuit! Not but what it makes it worse, because a fellow has to be dashed particular in all matters of play and pay, if he goes to the Nonesuch. All the go, I assure you: Corinthian club – best of good ton! They play devilish huge there – above my touch!’

‘Then it was not you who took him to such a place!’

‘Couldn’t have been,’ said Mr Scunthorpe simply. ‘Not a member. Chuffy Wivenhoe.’

‘Lord Wivenhoe! Oh, what a fool I have been!’ cried Arabella. ‘It was I who made him known to Lord Wivenhoe!’

‘Pity,’ said Mr Scunthorpe, shaking his head.

‘But how wicked of him to have led Bertram to such a place! Oh, how could he have done so? I had no suspicion – I thought him so agreeable, and gentlemanlike – !’

‘Polite to a point,’ agreed Mr Scunthorpe. ‘Very good sort of a man: very well-liked. Daresay he did it for the best.’

‘How could he think so?’ Arabella said hotly.

‘Very exclusive club,’ he pointed out.

She said impatiently. ‘It is of no use for us to argue on that head. Where is Bertram?’

‘Don’t think you’d know the place, ma’am. It’s – it’s near Westminster!’

‘Very well, let us go there at once!’

In considerable agitation, Mr Scunthorpe said: ‘No, dash it! Can’t take a lady to Willow Walk! You don’t quite understand, ma’am! Poor Bertram – couldn’t pay his shot – not a meg on him – duns in his pocket – tipstaffs after him – had to give ’em all the bag! Can’t quite make out exactly how it was, but think he must have gone back to the Red Lion when he left the Nonesuch, because he has his portmanteau with him. Seems to have bolted for it to Tothill Fields. Very low back-slum, ma’am. Silly fellow ought to have come and knocked me up – happy to have given him my sofa!’

‘Good God, why did he not?’

He coughed in an embarrassed way. ‘Might have been a little bit on the go,’ he said diffidently. ‘Scared of being pounded by the tipstaffs, too. Come to think of it, might easily be if he stayed with me. Dashed tradesmen know he’s a friend of mine! At all events, he ain’t with me – didn’t send me word where he was till this morning – feeling too blue-devilled, I daresay. Don’t blame him: would myself!’

‘Oh, poor Bertram, poor Bertram!’ she cried, wringing her hands. ‘I do not care where he is, see him I must, if I have to go to this Willow Walk alone!’

‘Good God, ma’am, mustn’t do that!’ he exclaimed, appalled. ‘Very rough set of coves in Willow Walk! Besides –’ He paused, looking acutely uncomfortable. ‘Not quite himself!’

‘Oh, he must be ill with worry, and despair! Nothing would keep me from him at a such a time! I will fetch my bonnet, and we may be off directly!’

‘Ma’am, he won’t like it!’ Mr Scunthorpe said desperately. ‘Very likely be ready to murder me only for telling you! You can’t see him!’

‘Why can I not?’

‘He’s been in the sun a trifle! You see – very understandable thing to do! – shot the cat!’

‘Shot the cat?’

‘Can’t blame him!’ Mr Scunthorpe pleaded. ‘Wouldn’t have told you, if you hadn’t been so set on seeing him! Felt desperate – shot the cat – felt better – kept on swallowing balls of fire – result, looking as queer as Dick’s hatband, when I saw him!’

‘Do you mean that he has been drinking?’ demanded Arabella. ‘What, in heaven’s name, is a ball of fire?’

‘Brandy,’ said Mr Scunthorpe. ‘Devilish bad brandy too. Told him to make Blue Ruin the preferred suit. Safer.’

‘Every word you say makes me the more determined to go to him!’ declared Arabella.

‘Assure you much better to send him some blunt, ma’am!’

‘I will take him all I have, but oh, it is so little! I cannot think yet what is to be done!’

Mr Scunthorpe pointed significantly to the ceiling. ‘You don’t think the old lady – ?’ he suggested delicately.

She shook her head. ‘Oh, no, no! Impossible!’

Mr Scunthorpe looked a little thoughtful. ‘In that case, ma’am, better take you to him. Talking very wildly this morning. No saying what he might do.’

She almost ran to the door. ‘We have not a moment to waste, then!’

‘No, no!’ he assured her. ‘No need to be on the fret! Won’t cut his throat today! Told the girl to hide his razor.’

‘What girl?’

He became very much confused, blushed, and uttered: ‘Girl he sent to my lodging with a message. Been looking after him.’

‘Oh, God bless her!’ Arabella cried fervently. ‘What is her name? How much I must owe her!’

As the lady in question had introduced herself to Mr Scunthorpe as Leaky Peg, he was obliged to take refuge in prevarication, and to hope devoutly that they would not encounter her in Willow Walk. He said that he had not caught her name. Arabella seemed a little disappointed, but since this was no time for wasting over trifles she said no more, but ran out of the room to fetch her bonnet and shawl.

It was impossible for her to leave the house without the butler’s being aware of it, but although he looked surprised, he made no comment, and in a few minutes’ time she and Mr Scunthorpe were seated in a ramshackle hackney coach, which seemed as though, many years before, it had formed part of a nobleman’s equipage, but which had fallen into sad decay. The coverings to the seats and the squabs were tattered and dirty, and the vehicle smelled strongly of beer and old leather. These evils Arabella scarcely noticed, in such a turmoil was her mind. It was a struggle to support her spirits at all; she felt ready to sink; and was unable, while in such a state of agitation, to form any plan for Bertram’s relief. The only solution which had so far presented itself to her mind was an instinctive impulse, no sooner thought of than recoiled from, to send off an express to Heythram. Mr Scunthorpe’s suggestion of applying to Lady Bridlington she well knew to be useless, nor would her pride tolerate the putting of herself under such added obligation to her godmother. Wild notions of selling Mama’s diamonds, and the pearl necklet that had belong to Grandmama Tallant, could not, she knew, be entertained, for these trinkets were not hers to dispose of at will.

Beside her, Mr Scunthorpe, feeling vaguely that her spirits required support, tried to entertain her by pointing out, conscientiously, the various places of interest the hackney drove past. She scarcely heeded him, but when they reached Westminster, began to look about her a little, insensibly cheered by the respectability of the neighbourhood. But the hackney lumbered on, and in a surprisingly short space of time it was hard to realise that she must be within a stone’s throw of the Abbey, so squalid were her surroundings. An unlucky attempt made by Mr Scunthorpe to divert her, by pointing out an ugly brick structure which he said was the Tothill Fields Bridewell, made her shudder so alarmingly that he hastily informed her that it was so crammed to overflowing with felons that there was no room for another soul behind its walls. A row of squat, almshouses was the next object of interest to be seen. This was followed by a charity school, but the district seemed to Arabella to be largely composed of wretched hovels, ancient mansions, fallen into depressing decay, and a superfluity of taverns. Frowsy looking women stood in the doorways of some of the hovels; half-naked urchins turned cartwheels on the dirty cobbles, in the hope of gaining largesse from persons well-breeched enough to travel in hackney coaches; at one corner, a fat woman, seated behind an iron cauldron appeared to be dispensing tea to a curiously ill-assorted crowd of persons, ranging from bricklayers to bedizened young women; various street-cries echoed in the narrow streets, from offers of coal to entreaties for old iron; and the male population seemed to consist entirely of scavengers, sweeps, and unidentifiable persons with blue jowls, and mufflers round their necks in place of collars.

After passing the entrances to several noisome alleys, the hackney turned into Willow Walk, and proceeded down it for some way before drawing up outside a dingy house, whose windows showed, besides fluttering oddments of washing hung out to dry, several broken panes of glass. In the open doorway, an old woman sat in a rocking-chair, puffing at a clay pipe, and engaged in conversation with a younger female, who held a squalling infant on one arm, which she from time to time shook, or refreshed from a black bottle, from which she herself took frequent pulls. Arabella had no positive knowledge of what was in that black bottle, but that it must contain strong liquor she felt convinced. The thought of Bertram was momentarily banished from her head; as Mr Scunthorpe handed her down from the hackney, and punctiliously brushed off the straws that clung to the flounce of her simple cambric dress, she opened her reticule, hunted in it for a shilling, and astonished the mother of the infant by pressing it into her hand, and saying earnestly: ‘Pray buy the baby some milk! Oh, pray do not give it that horrid stuff!’

Both women stared at her with fallen jaws. The old Irishwoman, the first to regain command over her faculties, burst into a cackle of mirth, and informed her that she was talking to no less a personage than Quartern Sue. This conveyed little to Arabella, but while she was still puzzling over the appellation, Quartern Sue, recovering from her stupefaction, had launched forth into a catalogue of her embarrassments, and was holding her hand cupped suggestively. Mr Scunthorpe, beads of sweat standing upon his brow, took it upon himself to hustle his charge into the house, whispering to her that she must not get into talk with such ill-famed women. Quartern Sue, never one to let slip an opportunity, followed them, her beggar’s whine rising to a crescendo, but was repulsed at the foot of a rickety, uncarpeted stairway by a strapping young woman, with a tousle of greasy yellow hair, a countenance which not all the ravages of gin had entirely deprived of comeliness, and a tawdry dress, stained in various places, and with the bodice cut so low as to reveal glimpses of dirty shift. This lady, having driven Quartern Sue forth by a series of remarks, not one of which was intelligible to Arabella, turned and confronted the genteel visitors with a belligerent look on her face, and her arms set widely akimbo. She demanded of Mr Scunthorpe, with whom she appeared to be acquainted, what he meant by brining a flash mort to the ken. Mr Scunthorpe uttered the one word, Sister! in strangled accents, upon which the blonde beauty turned a pair of fierce, bloodshot eyes upon Arabella, and ejaculated: ‘Ho! Sister, is it?’

‘Girl who brought me the message!’ explained Mr Scunthorpe in a blushful aside to Arabella.

The blonde beauty needed no other passport to Arabella’s favour. If she was conscious – as she could hardly have failed to have been – of the strong aroma of daffy which hung about the person of Leaky Peg, she gave no sign of it, but started forward, with her hands held out, and impulsive words on her lips. ‘Oh, are you the girl who has been kind to my brother? You must let me thank you! I can never, never repay you! Mr Scunthorpe here has been telling me that it was you who took care of him when he – when he came to this place!’

Leaky Peg stared very hard at her for a moment, and then pugnaciously: ‘I found the covey on the mop, blue as megrim, see? And him no more than a mouth! Half flash and half foolish, that’s him. Strike me, I don’t know what I see in the hick!’

‘Miss Tallant, better come upstairs!’ said the anguished Mr Scunthorpe, to whom Leaky Peg’s vocabulary was rather more intelligible than to Arabella.

‘You dub your mummer, you death’s head on a mopstick!’ Leaky Peg advised him. ‘Leave me and the swell mort be!’ She turned back to Arabella, and said roughly: ‘Lurched, ain’t he? He tells me there’s a fastener out after him. He hadn’t so much as a meg in his truss when I come up with him in the boozing-ken. I took him along with me – strike me if I know why!’ She jerked her thumb towards the stairs. ‘You want to take him away: this ain’t his lay, nor it ain’t mine neither! Spouting a kid’s mish all to buy him mutton and smash, which he don’t eat! Me! You take him off; you’re welcome!’

Gathering from these words that Leaky Peg had been keeping Bertram supplied with food, Arabella, tears standing in her eyes, seized one of her hands, and pressed it fervently between both her own, saying: ‘How good you are! Indeed, I thank you! He is only a boy, you know, and what must have become of him without you I dare not think!’

‘Well, it’s little enough I got from it!’ remarked Leaky Peg caustically. ‘You and him with your breakteeth words! You get up them dancers, you and that moulder alongside you that looks like a toothdrawer! First door on the right: stale-drunk, he is, but he ain’t backt yet!’

With these heartening words she turned on her heel, and strode out of the house, driving before her Quartern Sue, who had had the temerity to venture on to the threshold again. Mr Scunthorpe made haste to usher Arabella up the stairs, saying reproachfully: ‘Shouldn’t talk to her, ma’am! Not at all the thing! Assure you!’

‘The thing!’ she exclaimed scornfully. ‘She has a kind heart, sir!’

Abashed, Mr Scunthorpe begged pardon, and tapped at a door at the head of the stairs.

Bertram’s voice sounded from within the room, and without waiting for her escort to usher her in Arabella lifted the latch and quickly entered.

The apartment, which looked out on to a filthy yard, where lean cats prowled amongst garbage-heaps, was small, rather dark, and furnished with a sagging bed pushed up against one wall, a deal table, two wooden chairs, and a strip of threadbare carpet. The remains of a loaf of bread, a heel of cheese, together with a glass, a jug, and an empty bottle stood on the table; and on the mantelshelf, presumably placed there by Leaky Peg, was a cracked mug containing a wilting bunch of flowers. Bertram, who was stretched on the bed, raised himself on his elbow as the door opened, an apprehensive look in his face. He was fully dressed, but was wearing a handkerchief knotted round his neck, and looked both ill and unkempt. When he saw Arabella, he uttered something like a sob, and struggled up, and to his feet. ‘Bella!’

She was in his arms on the word, unable to prevent herself from bursting into tears, but passionately clasping him to her. His breath reeked of spirits, but although this shocked her, she did not recoil from him, but hugged him more tightly still. ‘You should not have come!’ he said unsteadily. ‘Felix, how could you have brought her here?’

‘Warned her she wouldn’t like it,’ Mr Scunthorpe excused himself. ‘Very set on seeing you!’

Bertram gave a groan. ‘I did not mean you to know!’

She disengaged herself, wiped her tears away, and sat down on one of the chairs. ‘Bertram, you know that is nonsense!’ she said. ‘Whom should you turn to if not to me? I am so sorry! What you must have suffered in this dreadful house!’

‘Pretty, ain’t it?’ he said jeeringly. ‘I don’t know how I came here: Leaky Peg brought me. You may as well know, Bella, I was so foxed I don’t remember anything that happened after I bolted from the Red Lion!’

‘No, I quite see,’ she said. ‘But, Bertram, pray do not go on drinking! It is all so bad, and that makes it worse! You look sadly out of sorts, and no wonder! Have you a sore throat, dearest?’

He flushed, his hand going instinctively to the handkerchief round his neck. ‘This! Oh, no! Gammoning the draper, my dear!’ He saw her look of bewilderment, and added, with a short laugh: ‘You would be surprised at the cant I have learnt from my hosts here! I’ve become a spouter – at least Peg manages the business for me! Pawned, Bella, pawned! Shan’t have a rag to my back soon – not that that will signify!’

Mr Scunthorpe, seated on the edge of the bed, exchanged a meaning look with Arabella. She said briskly: ‘It would signify very much! We must think what is to be done. Only tell me what you owe!’

He was reluctant to divulge the sum, but she insisted, and after a little while he blurted out: ‘It comes to more than seven hundred pounds! There is no possibility of my being able to get clear!’

She was aghast for she had not supposed that he could owe nearly so much. The sum seemed vast beyond belief, so that she could not be surprised when Bertram, casting himself into the other chair, began to talk in a wild way of putting a period to his existence. She let him run on, guessing that his despair needed the relief of just such mad outpourings, and having no very real fear that he would put his violent threats into execution. While he talked she cudgelled her brains for a solution to his difficulties, only lending half an ear to him, but patting his hand soothingly from time to time. Mr Scunthorpe intervened at last, saying with great commonsense: ‘Don’t think you ought to jump into the river, dear old boy. Sister wouldn’t like it. Bound to leak out. Your governor might not like it either: never can tell!’

‘No, indeed!’ Arabella said. ‘You must not talk of it any more, Bertram. You know how wicked it would be!’

‘Well, I suppose I shan’t kill myself,’ Bertram said, a shade sulkily. ‘Only, I can tell you this: I’ll never face my father with this!’

‘No, no!’ she agreed. ‘Seven hundred pounds! Bertram how has it been possible?’

‘I lost six hundred at faro,’ he said, dropping his head in his hands. ‘The rest – Well, there was the tailor, and the horse I hired, and what I owe at Tatt’s, and my shot at the inn – oh, a dozen things! Bella, what am I to do?’

He sounded much more like the younger brother she knew when he spoke like that, a scared look in his face, and in his voice an unreasoning dependence on her ability to help him out of a scrape.

‘Bills don’t signify,’ pronounced Mr Scunthorpe. ‘Leave town: won’t be followed. Not been living under your own name. Gaming debts another matter. Got to raise the wind for that. Debt of honour.’

‘I know it, curse you!’

‘But all debts are debts of honour!’ Arabella said. ‘Indeed, you should pay your bills first of all!’

A glance passed between the two gentlemen, indicative of their mutual agreement not to waste breath in arguing with a female on a subject she would clearly never understand. Bertram passed his hand over his brow, heaving a short sigh, and saying: ‘There’s only one thing to be done. I have thought it all over, Bella, and I mean to enlist, under a false name. If they won’t have me as a trooper, I’ll join a line regiment. I should have done it yesterday, when I first thought of it, only that there’s something I must do first. Affair of honour. I shall write to my father, of course, and I daresay he will utterly cast me off, but that can’t be helped!’

‘How can you think so?’ Arabella cried hotly. ‘Grieved he must be – oh, I dare not even think of it! – but you must know that never, never would he do such an unchristian thing as to cast you off! Oh, do not write to him yet! Only give me time to think what I can do! If Papa knew that you owed all that money, I am very sure he would pay every penny of it, though it ruined him!’

‘How can you suppose I would be such a gudgeon as to tell him that? No! I shall tell him that my whole mind is set on the army, and I had as lief start in the ranks as not!’

This speech struck far more dismay into Arabella’s heart than his previous talk of committing suicide, for to take the King’s shilling seemed to her a likely thing for him to do. She uttered, hardly above a whisper: ‘No, no!’

‘It must be, Bella,’ he said. ‘I’m sure the army is all I’m fit for, and I cannot show my face again with a load of debt hanging over me. Particularly a debt of honour! O God, I think I must have been mad!’ His voice broke, and he could not speak for a moment. In the end he contrived to summon up the travesty of a smile, and to say: ‘Pretty pair, ain’t we? Not that you did anything as wrong as I have.’

‘Oh, I have behaved so dreadfully!’ she exclaimed. ‘It is even my fault that you are reduced to these straits! Had I never presented you to Lord Wivenhoe –’

‘That’s fudge!’ he said quickly. ‘I had been to gaming-houses before I met him. He was not to know I wasn’t as well-blunted as that set of his! I ought not to have gone with him to the Nonesuch. Only I had lost money on a race, and I thought – I hoped – Oh, talking pays no toll! But to say it was your fault is all gammon!’

‘Bertram, who won your money at the Nonesuch?’ she asked.

‘The bank. It was faro.’

‘Yes, but someone holds the bank!’

‘The Nonpareil.’

She stared at him. ‘Mr Beaumaris?’ she gasped. He nodded. ‘Oh, no, do not say so! How could he have let you – No, no, Bertram!’

She sounded so much distressed that he was puzzled. ‘Why the devil shouldn’t he?’

‘You are only a boy! He must have known! And to accept notes of hand from you! Surely he might have refused to do so much at least!’

‘You don’t understand!’ he said impatiently. ‘I went there with Chuffy, so why should he refuse to let me play?’

Mr Scunthorpe nodded. ‘Very awkward situation, ma’am. Devilish insulting to refuse a man’s vowels.’

She could not appreciate the niceties of the code evidently shared by both gentlemen, but she could accept that they must obtain in male circles. ‘I must think it wrong of him,’ she said. ‘But never mind! The thing is that he is – that I am particularly acquainted with him! Don’t be in despair, Bertram! I am persuaded that if I were to go to him, explain that you are not of age, and not a rich man’s son, he will forgive the debt!’

She broke off, for there was no mistaking the expressions of shocked disapprobation in both Bertram’s and Mr Scunthorpe’s faces.

‘Good God, Bella, what will you say next!’

‘But, Bertram, indeed he is not proud and disagreeable, as so many people think him! I – I have found him particularly kind, and obliging!’

‘Bella, this is a debt of honour! If it takes my life long to do it, I must pay it, and so I shall tell him!’

Mr Scunthorpe nodded judicial approval of this decision.

‘Spend your life paying six hundred pounds to a man who is so wealthy that I daresay he regards it no more than you would a shilling?’ cried Arabella. ‘Why, it is absurd!’

Bertram looked despairingly at his friend. Mr Scunthorpe said painstakingly: ‘Nothing to do with it, ma’am. Debt of honour is a debt of honour. No getting away from that.’

‘I cannot agree! I own, I do not like to do it, but I could do it, and I know he would never refuse me!’

Bertram grasped her wrist. ‘Listen, Bella! I daresay you don’t understand – in fact, I can see that you don’t! – but if you dared to do such a thing I swear you’d never see my face again! Besides, even if he did tear up my vowels I should still think myself under an obligation to redeem them! Next you will be suggesting that you should ask him to pay those damned tradesmen’s bills for me!’

She coloured guiltily, for some such idea had just crossed her mind. Suddenly, Mr Scunthorpe, whose face a moment before had assumed a cataleptic expression, uttered three pregnant words. ‘Got a notion!’

The Tallants looked anxiously at him, Bertram with hope, his sister more than a little doubtfully.

‘Know what they say?’ Mr Scunthorpe demanded. ‘Bank always wins!’

‘I know that,’ said Bertram bitterly. ‘If that’s all you have to say –’

‘Wait!’ said Mr Scunthorpe. ‘Start one!’ He saw blank bewilderment in the two faces confronting him, and added, with a touch of impatience: ‘Faro!’

‘Start a faro-bank?’ said Bertram incredulously. ‘You must be mad! Why, even if it were not the craziest thing I ever heard of, you can’t run a faro-bank without capital!’

‘Thought of that,’ said Mr Scunthorpe, not without pride. ‘Go to my trustees. Go at once. Not a moment to be lost.’

‘Good God, you don’t suppose they would let you touch your capital for such a cause as that?’

‘Don’t see why not!’ argued Mr Scunthorpe. ‘Always trying to add to it. Preaching at me for ever about improving the estate! Very good way of doing it: wonder they haven’t thought of it for themselves. Better go and see my uncle at once.’

‘Felix, you’re a gudgeon!’ said Bertram irritably. ‘No trustee would let you do such a thing! And even if they would, good God, we neither of us want to spend our lives running a faro-bank!’

‘Shouldn’t have to,’ said Mr Scunthorpe, sticking obstinately by his guns. ‘Only want to clear you of debt! One good night’s run would do it. Close the bank then.’

He was so much enamoured of this scheme that it was some time before he could be dissuaded from trying to promote it. Arabella, paying very little heed to the argument, sat wrapped in her own thoughts. That these were by no means pleasant would have been apparent, even to Mr Scunthorpe, had he been less engrossed in the championing of his own plans, for not only did her hands clench and unclench in her lap, but her face, always very expressive, betrayed her. But by the time Bertram had convinced Mr Scunthorpe that a faro-bank would not answer, she was sufficiently mistress of herself again to excite no suspicion in either gentleman’s breast.

She turned her eyes towards Bertram, who had sunk back, after his animated argument, into a state of hopeless gloom. ‘I shall think of something,’ she said. ‘I know I shall contrive to help you! Only please, please do not enlist, Bertram! Not yet! Only if I should fail!’

‘What do you mean to do?’ he demanded. ‘I shan’t enlist until I have seen Mr Beaumaris, and – and explained to him how it is! That I must do. I – I told him I had no funds in London, and should be obliged to send into Yorkshire for them, so he asked me to call at his house on Thursday. It is of no use to look at me like that, Bella! I couldn’t tell him I was done-up, and had no means of paying him, with them all there, listening to what we were saying! I would have died rather! Bella, have you any money? Could you spare me enough to get my shirt back? I can’t go to see the Nonpareil like this!’

She thrust her purse into his hand. ‘Yes, yes of course! If only I had not bought those gloves, and the shoes, and the new scarf! There are only ten guineas left, but it will be enough to make you more comfortable until I have thought how to help you, won’t it? Do, do remove from this dreadful house! I saw quite a number of inns on our way, and one or two of them looked to be respectable!’

It was plain that Bertram would be only too ready to change his quarters, and after a brief dispute, in which he was very glad to be worsted, he took the purse, gave her a hug, and said that she was the best sister in the world. He asked wistfully whether she thought Lady Bridlington might be induced to advance him seven hundred pounds, on a promise of repayment over a protracted period, but although she replied cheerfully that she had no doubt that she could arrange something of the sort, he could not deceive himself into thinking it possible, and sighed. Mr Scunthorpe, prefixing his remark with one of his deprecating coughs, suggested that as the hackney had been told to wait for them, he and Miss Tallant ought, perhaps, to be taking their leave. Arabella was much inclined to go at once in search of a suitable hostelry for Bertram, but was earnestly dissuaded, Mr Scunthorpe promising to attend to this matter himself, and also to redeem Bertram’s raiment from the pawnbroker’s shop. The brother and sister then parted, clinging to one another in such a moving way that Mr Scunthorpe was much affected by the sight, and had to blow his nose with great violence.

Arabella’s first action on reaching Park Street again was to run up to her bedchamber, and without pausing to remove her bonnet to sit down at the little table in the window, and prepare to write a letter. But in spite of the evident urgency of the matter she had no sooner written her opening words than all inspiration appeared to desert her, and she sat staring out of the window, while the ink dried on her pen. At last she drew a breath, dipped the pen in the standish again, and resolutely wrote two lines. Then she stopped, read them over, tore up the paper, and drew a fresh sheet towards her.

It was some time before she had achieved a result that satisfied her, but it was done at last, and the letter sealed up with a wafer. She then rang the bell-pull, and upon a housemaid’s coming in answer to the summons desired the girl to send Becky to her, if she could be spared from her duties. When Becky presently appeared, shyly smiling and twisting her hands together in her apron, Arabella held out the letter, and said: ‘If you please, Becky, do you think you could contrive to slip out, and – and carry that to Mr Beaumaris’s house? You might say that I have asked you to go on an errand for me, but – but I shall be very much obliged to you if you will not disclose to anyone what it is!’

‘Oh, miss!’ breathed the handmaid, scenting a romance. ‘As though I would say a word to a living soul!’

‘Thank you! If – if Mr Beaumaris should be at home, I should be glad if you would wait for an answer to the letter!’

Becky nodded her profound understanding of this, assured Arabella that she might trust her through fire and water, and departed.

Nothing could have been more conspiratorial than her manner of entering Arabella’s room half-an-hour later, but she brought bad news: Mr Beaumaris had gone into the country three days ago, and had said that he might be away from London for a week.