ARTHUR FINDS HIMSELF DONE.
The letter produced, after five minutes’ delay, by the faithful Lydia,
ran as follows:
“MY DEAR VAVASOUR,--You will be surprised to find that I have
_absquattulated_. Beggars mustn’t be choosers, and I should have
been only too glad if circumstances had allowed of my remaining in
England; but the fact is, I made a bad business of my book--hedged,
and that kind of thing; so, having no chance left but to sell Rough
Diamond, I did it on the nail. My beastly creditors have made
London too hot to hold me, and as debts are transferable in these
days, and be hanged to them! I must keep dark for the present, or
they’ll have me in _quod_ in some confounded foreign place or
other. Of course you are an exception; and when I am settled
anywhere you shall hear from me. The missus desires to be kindly
remembered. Nothing new about Honor--the man is a brute. Ta-ta, old
fellow, and believe me yours truly,
“F. NORCOTT.”
Arthur, after making himself master of the contents of this flippant
epistle, stood for a moment like one turned, after the manner of Lot’s
wife of old, into a statue.
“When did they go?” he said at last. “I came by appointment; this must
have been quite a sudden start. G--! I can’t understand it! Gone, do you
say? Impossible!”
Miss Lydia sniggered conceitedly at this assertion.
“The Colonel never came back at all,” she said; “he sent for Mrs.
Norcott--or else they’d settled it between them afore, which missus she
thinks they did. Any way, Mrs. Norcott she packed up, and paid all that
was owing the first thing this morning, and by two o’clock she was off,
and missus, she had the bill put up at onst.”
To this short but lucid explanation Arthur listened as one who heareth
not. The melancholy truth that he had--in vulgar parlance--been _done_
was beginning to dawn upon his mind. That Fred Norcott--base and
unprincipled as he suspected him to be--could have the unparalleled
audacity to deny and ignore the fact of his (Arthur’s) ownership of the
Derby winner was, however, almost too wonderful to be true. His estimate
of Honor Beacham’s father, though about as low a one as it is possible
for one person to entertain about another, did nevertheless fall short
of believing this man capable of actual felony. That he had trusted him
so completely--had confided so entirely in the honour of his associate,
was alone a sufficient proof that he did not consider Fred Norcott to be
capable of an act of fraud. The transfer of Rough Diamond from Arthur’s
ownership to the nominal possession of the quondam cavalry officer had
been made in a decidedly loose and unbusiness-like manner--the very
nature of the transaction necessitating to a certain extent this
unsatisfactory mode of proceeding. There was a secret to be kept--a
secret which was of vital importance to the well-being of one of the
contracting parties--and therefore it followed that “all things” were
not, on this occasion, “done decently and in order.”
The suspicion, that was destined gradually to become a settled belief in
Arthur’s mind, that the man in whose power he knew himself to be was a
villain of the least creditable die, was anything but agreeable.
Pondering on this certainty, he, as he sauntered with lingering steps
towards the splendid home which, in right of his wife, he called his
own, felt about as unhappy a young aristocrat as ever trod the broad
flagstones of the Tyburnian pavement. His furious indignation against
the rascal by whom he had been deceived passes the bounds of
description. Had Fred Norcott chanced at that moment to present himself
within his reach, there is no saying to what lengths the passion of the
younger man might have led him. But happily the Colonel--his faithful
wife by his side, his ill-gotten gains in his pocket, and his unrepented
sins upon his head--was far away by that time--far away to the land
where roguery is at a premium, and cheating is dignified by the
agreeable name of “smartness”--to the land where to be a villain is no
disgrace, and where every sin save that of failure is condoned and
pardoned.
* * * * *
“Now, Atty, let me look at you again--I am sure that something is the
matter--_quite_ sure. Daddy dear, doesn’t Arthur look worried? And he
_will_ go out so early. I thought you _would_ stay just a tiny half-hour
till I have had my arrowroot, but--”
“Stay, dear--of course I will, if you wish it,” Arthur replied in answer
to his wife’s appeal, spoken in the low and feeble voice which made her
faintest wish a law.
“I _was_ going out on business, but I can put it off till the
afternoon,” and he tried to speak as if the sacrifice were no sacrifice,
and as if acting the part of deputy sick-nurse was quite in the usual
course of events for a young man about town, who had but lately
completed his twenty-second year.
Sophy was, as I have said, the least selfish of human beings--she would
at all times have been ready to make any sacrifice for those she loved;
but a young heiress smiling over her first-born babe may be pardoned if
for once in her life she failed to see that her exacting wishes
militated against those of her husband, and if, while she rejoiced over
the happy consciousness of his devotion, she forgot that he might have
other duties to perform and other interests at stake than the one to
which her entreaty had devoted him.
It was late in the afternoon before Arthur Vavasour, seizing the
opportunity of a sound sleep into which the invalid had fallen, stole
from the pretty morning-room adjoining that where his wife lay, stepping
softly; for old Duberly--who dearly loved, after the fashion of the
aged, to _talk_--might, had he heard his step upon the stairs, have
intercepted his departure, and, slipping his bald head out of the
half-opened study-door, have chained him--an unwilling listener--for an
hour at least, in the close and stuffy atmosphere of his private
sanctum.
At that moment, with his brain positively whirling with suppressed
excitement, and with the fever caused by anxiety and suspense boiling
in his veins, Arthur felt that, had he been stopped by his respected
father on his outward way, he would have been capable of laying violent
hands upon that well-meaning but officious personage. To rush into the
fresh air--to throw himself into a passing hansom--to be carried as fast
as wheels could bear him to the first emporium of sporting news where he
was likely to obtain authentic intelligence regarding the respective
fates of Rough Diamond and the Colonel--were the ends that Arthur
Vavasour had in view while stepping on tiptoe down the broad stone
staircase, with a flushed face, and a heart that beat fast with
long-controlled emotion. The heaviness that had endured through the
night (for, for the first time in his life, Arthur had been kept awake
by care) was not succeeded by the joy which “cometh in the morning,”
and--during the weary hours that he had passed, book in hand, on the
luxurious sofa, among the pretty and expensive nicknacks which adorned
his wife’s boudoir--the heir to countless thousands had given himself up
to the most disastrous convictions regarding his future fate. To his
then thinking--and he too soon discovered that his forebodings had not
overstepped the truth--it seemed the most probable of misfortunes that
Frederick Norcott, taking advantage of the carelessly-effected contract
regarding the Derby colt, had shamelessly appropriated to his own use
the proceeds of the sale of that invaluable animal. That the man who had
sunk so deep in the mire of infamy would hesitate a moment to make
merchandise of the secret which he was well aware his dupe and victim
was keenly desirous to preserve, Arthur could neither hope nor believe.
He was in the power--poor young fellow!--(and miserably did he shudder
under the disgraceful yoke)--of one of the most unprincipled genteel
villains that ever walked about in well-made boots and broadcloth,
and--a grievance for the moment still more keenly felt--his debts of
honour--those debts which he had hoped and intended by the sale of the
Derby winner to discharge--would still remain unpaid, whilst he, under
the cloud which his own folly had gathered above his head, must endure,
with such patience as he could muster, the consequences of a bad man’s
guilt.
It took but little time, and a very few inquiries, to make sure of the
fact that Colonel Norcott, with whom no respectable sporting man (a
degradation of which Arthur was ignorant, so blind had his passion for
Honor made him) would bet--it took but little time, I say, to make sure
of the, at first, only floating news, to wit, that the nominal owner of
Rough Diamond, after securing the amount paid by Lord Penshanger for
that illustrious animal, had left England for foreign parts. Where he
had gone, no one appeared able to divulge; nor did the ascertaining of
the chosen spot to which he had betaken himself appear a matter of
importance to the greatest sufferer by Colonel Norcott’s disappearance.
Arthur knew enough of law to be convinced that, even were it possible
for him to brave the consequences of irritating Fred’s not-over-placable
disposition, the law could in this case do little or nothing towards the
recovery of the stolen cash. It was horribly provoking--annoying to a
scarcely endurable extent, and the more unendurable from the
circumstance that to no human being could he venture to pour forth the
history of his wrongs; but there was, alas, no help for it. If it should
ever chance that his lucky stars might place him within arm’s-reach of
the “swindler,” whose real character was now laid bare before him, why,
then--and Arthur (who was the man to keep such an oath both to the
letter and in the spirit) swore a vow between his clenched teeth, that
if Frederick Norcott left his hands alive, it was about as much as that
ignoble personage could reasonably expect.