Christmas was 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 he _does_ go. 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.’
‘He _was_ thinking 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 to _me_,’ retorted the young countess, with a shrug.
‘Now, my darling, you know what I mean. You are all the world to me--a
part of myself--but you 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 lanes about
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 throw you 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.
‘I am--except you. But they are so jolly--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 old chum--I have seen that from the beginning--but to say
that dear old Jack wins all the stakes, night after night, is as good
as saying--oh, I am sure you cannot mean it--you cannot 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 little woman 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
answer should 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 all my 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 a
_vaurien_--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 a fluctuating 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 my intentions--the
disinterestedness 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. You _dare_ not. 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 of _you_.’
‘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
Ilfracombe so 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 you promised--you _promised_,’ 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 price is--your silence.’
‘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, I mean 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--’
‘_You_ like, 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 as _bons 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 consolation under
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, Mr Portland--Jack,’ she
stammered, ‘for God’s sake--for the 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 man meant--that he
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 did _not_ join 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, it might have been
different, but not for _you_. 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 now when 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.’