Charles Lever - Jack Hinton - The Guardsman

‘No, sir!’ cried Upton passionately. ‘I pay my own wagers; and if you still insist – ’

‘No, no, no!’ cried several voices; while, at the same time, to put an end at once to any further dispute, the party suddenly rose to repair to the drawing-room.

On passing through the hall, chance, or perhaps design, on Lord Dudley’s part, brought him beside Upton. ‘I wish you to understand, once more,’ said he, in a low whisper, ‘that I consider this bet to hold.’

‘Be it so,’ was the brief reply, and they separated.

O’Grady and myself, having dined that day in the country, only arrived in the Rooneys’ drawing-room as the dinner-party was entering it. Contrary to their wont, there was less of loud talking, less of uproarious and boisterous mirth, as they came up the stairs, than usual O’Grady remarked this to me afterwards. At the time, however, I paid but little attention to it. The fact was, my thoughts were principally running in another channel Certain innuendoes of Lord Dudley de Vere, certain broad hints he had ventured upon even before Mrs. Rooney, had left upon my mind a kind of vague, undecided impression that, somehow or other, I was regarded as their dupe. Miss Bellow’s manner was certainly more cordial, more kind to me than to any of the others who visited the house. The Rooneys themselves omitted nothing to humour my caprices, and indulge my fancies, affording me, at all times, opportunities of being alone with Louisa, joining in her walks, and accompanying her on horseback. Could there be anything in all this? Was this the quarter in which the mine was to explode? This painful doubt hanging upon my mind I entered the drawing-room.

The drawing-room of 42 Stephen’s Green had often afforded me an amusing study. Its strange confusion of ranks and classes; its mélange of lordly loungers and city beauties; the discordant tone of conversation, where each person discussed the very thing he knew least of; the blooming daughters of a lady mayoress talking ‘fashion and the musical glasses’; while the witless scion of a noble house was endeavouring to pass himself as a sayer of good things. These now, however, afforded me neither interest nor pleasure; bent solely upon one thought, eager alone to ascertain how far Louisa Bellow’s manner towards me was the fruit of artifice, or the offspring of an artless and unsuspecting mind, I left O’Grady to entertain a whole circle of turbaned ladies, while I directed my course towards the little boudoir where Louisa usually sat.

In a house where laxity of etiquette and a freedom of manner prevailed to the extent I have mentioned, Miss Bellow’s more cautious and reserved demeanour was anything but popular; and, as there was no lack of beauty, men found it more suitable to their lounging and indolent habits to engage those in conversation who were less exigeante in their demands for amusement, and were equally merry themselves, as mercifully disposed when the mirth became not only easy but free.

Miss Bellew, therefore, was permitted to indulge many of her tastes unmolested; and as one of these was to work at embroidery in the small room in question, few persons intruded themselves upon her – and even they but for a short time, as if merely paying their required homage to a member of the family.

As I approached the door of the boudoir, my surprise was not a little to hear Lord Dudley de Vere’s voice, the tones of which, though evidently subdued by design, had a clear distinctness that made them perfectly audible where I stood.

‘Eh! you can’t mean it, though. ‘Pon my soul, it is too bad! You know I shall lose my money if you persist.’

‘I trust Lord Dudley de Vere is too much of a gentleman to make my unprotected position in this house the subject of an insolent wager. I’m sure nothing in my manner could ever have given encouragement to such a liberty.’

‘There, now, I knew you didn’t understand it. The whole thing was a chance; the odds were at least eighteen to one against you – ha, ha! I mean in your favour. Devilish good mistake that of mine. They were all shaken up in a hat. You see there was no collusion – could be none.’

‘My lord, this impertinence becomes past enduring; and if you persist – ’

‘Well, then, why not enter into the joke? It’ll be a devilish expensive one to me if you don’t; that I promise you. What a confounded fool I was not to draw out when Upton wished it! D – n it! I ought to have known there is no trusting to a woman.’ As he said this, he walked twice or thrice hurriedly to and fro, muttering as he went, with ill-suppressed passion: ‘Laughed at, d – n me! that I shall be, all over the kingdom. To lose the money is bad enough; but the ridicule of the thing, that’s the devil! Stay, Miss Bellew, stop one minute; I have another proposition to make. Begad, I see nothing else for it. This, you know, was all a humbug – mere joke, nothing more. Now, I can’t stand the way I shall be quizzed about it at all. So, here goes! hang me, if I don’t make the proposition in real earnest! There, now, say yes at once, and we ‘ll see if I can’t turn the laugh against them.’

There was a pause for an instant, and then Miss Bellew spoke. I would have given worlds to have seen her at that moment; but the tone of her voice, firm and unshaken, sank deep into my heart.

‘My lord,’ said she, ‘this must now cease; but, as your lordship is fond of a wager, I have one for your acceptance. The sum shall be your own choosing. Whatever it be, I stake it freely, that, as I walk from this room, the first gentleman I meet – you like a chance, my lord, and you shall have one – will chastise you before the world for your unworthy, unmanly insult to a weak and unoffending girl.’

As she spoke, she sprang from the room, her eyes flashing with indignant fire, while her cheek, pale as death, and her heaving bosom, attested how deep was her passion. As she turned the corner of the door, her eyes met mine. In an instant the truth flashed upon her mind. She knew I had overheard all that passed. She gasped painfully for breath; her lips moved with scarce a sound; a violent trembling shook her from head to foot, and she fell fainting to the ground.

I followed her with my eyes as they bore her from the room; and then, without a thought for anything around me, I hurriedly left the room, dashed downstairs, and hastened to my quarters in the Castle.

Until the moment when I reached the room and threw myself into a chair, my course respecting Lord Dudley de Vere seemed to present not a single difficulty. The appeal so unconsciously made to me by Miss Bellew, not less than my own ardent inclination, decided me on calling him out. No sooner, however, did calm reflection succeed to the passionate excitement of the moment, than at once I perceived the nicety of my position. Under what possible pretext could I avow myself as her champion, not as of her own choosing? for I knew perfectly well that the words she uttered were merely intended as a menace, without the slightest idea of being acted on. To suffer her name, therefore, to transpire in the affair would be to compromise her in the face of the world. Again, the confusion and terror she evinced when she beheld me at the door proved to me that, perhaps of all others, I was the last person she would have wished to have been a witness to the interview.

What was to be done? The very difficulty of the affair only made my determination to go through with it the stronger. I have already said my inclination also prompted me to this course. Lord Dudley’s manner to me, without being such as I could make a plea for resenting, had ever been of a supercilious and almost offensive character. If there be anything which more deeply than another wounds our self-esteem, it is the assumed superiority of those whom we heartily despise. More than once he ventured upon hinting at the plans of the Rooneys respecting me, suggesting that their civilities only concealed a deeper object; and all this he did with a tone of half insolence that irritated me ten times more than an open affront. Often and often had I promised myself that a day of retribution must come. Again and again did I lay this comfort to my heart – that, one time or other, his habitual prudence would desert him; that his transgression would exceed the narrow line that separates an impertinent freedom from an insult, and then – Now this time had come at last. Such a chance might not again present itself, and must not be thrown away.