CHAPTER LXIII.—LORD ALFRED SEVERS HIS LEADING STRINGS.
Lord Alfred Courtland and Horace D’Almayne were both members of the Pandemonium, at which notable club the latter, when he had no rich victim on whom to quarter himself, chiefly spent his days. The visit which Lord Alfred had paid to Coverdale Park, and his subsequent mission to Hazlehurst Grange, had impressed him deeply, and brought out all his best qualities. On his return to town, he took himself to task more seriously than he had yet done, for the careless and extravagant life he had been leading; and, warned by experience how futile such repentance might prove, unless followed by some practical efforts at self-reform, he set to work with his accustomed impetuosity, to remedy the evils resulting from his injudicious attempt to become a fast “man-about-town.” The Honourable Billy Whipcord relieved him of one difficulty, by purchasing Don Pasquale for the same amount which Lord Alfred had given Tirrett for the animal, and with the money thus obtained, together with his winnings on the steeple-chase, he, like an honest fellow, paid all his creditors. Feeling much happier for this step in the right direction, he determined to follow it up by another, and accordingly wrote to his father, saying that, his health being now re-established, it was his wish to return to Cambridge, and endeavour to make up for lost time. Having dispatched this letter, and ridden for a couple of hours in the Park, the necessity of dining occurred to him, and he turned his horse’s head towards the Pandemonium. As he rode thither, it struck him that he might possibly encounter Horace D’Almayne, and he bethought him of his promise to Harry Coverdale, to give up the acquaintance of the man whom he had so incautiously trusted, and who had abused that trust by leading him into evil whenever an opportunity presented itself for so doing.
Yes! disagreeable as it was, perhaps even dangerous (for D’Almayne was not a man to insult with impunity), he would redeem his pledged word—he would show his gratitude to Coverdale. If D’Almayne was at the club, he would cut him in a marked and unmistakeable manner! As these thoughts were passing through his brain, he became aware of a young man, flashily dressed, and mounted on a magnificent horse, who, as he passed, took off his hat to him. Confused for the moment by the idea that it must be some acquaintance whom he ought to recognise, he bowed stiffly, whereupon the horseman wheeled his steed, and rode up to Lord Alfred’s side—
“I beg your Lordship’s pardon,” he began, “but I wish to say a few words to you. Does not your Lordship remember me?”
“Your behaviour towards me, Mr. Tirrett, was of a nature neither easily to be forgotten, nor calculated to make me desirous of cultivating your further acquaintance. I have the honour of wishing you good morning.”
Saying this with the hauteur and dignity of the whole House of Peers combined, Lord Alfred turned his head away from his unwished-for acquaintance and rode on; but Tirrett had an object in view, and was, therefore, not to be so easily shaken off.
“I won’t deny,” he said coolly, “that your Lordship has good reason to be angry with me, for I played you a trick that, if I’d been a gentleman, and your Lordship’s equal, I should consider a very dirty one; but, if your Lordship will consider a minute, you’ll perceive the difference between us.”
Amused, in spite of his anger, at the fellow’s cool audacity, Lord Alfred replied, with a sarcastic laugh—
“I should scarcely imagine that would require any very deep thinking to discover!”
“Your Lordship is sharp upon me this afternoon,” observed Tirrett, in no way disconcerted, “but I was going to remark that horse-dealing, and horse-racing, which you gentlemen enter into for amusement, is the regular business by which such men as myself gain our livelihood; it’s a ticklish sort of trade at the best of times, for we’re liable to be deceived and cheated on all sides as well as other people; so a fellow’s obliged to look out, and never throw away a chance. Now your job was just this,—the Don was recovering from a bad sprain in the off-foreleg when I sold him to you.”
“Pleasant intelligence for the Honourable Billy!” murmured Lord Alfred.
“I thought he’d stand training, but expected he’d break down in the race, and as I never like to ride a losing horse if I can help it, I made my book to win on Black Eagle, but I was obliged to promise to ride Don Pasquale for you, or else you wouldn’t have bought him. I don’t say I acted right by you; but I mean to say that I didn’t act any worse than others that call themselves gentlemen, and your friends too!”
“Do you allude to any one in particular, may I ask?—it is as well to know one’s friends from one’s foes,” inquired Lord Alfred, his curiosity beginning to awaken.
“I allude to Horace D’Almayne. Your Lordship best knows whether you consider him your friend,” was the reply.
“I certainly did at one time, if I do not now; but what has he to do with the affair?” asked Lord Alfred, his attention now fully aroused.
In answer to this question, Tirrett entered into a full account of the plot connected with the white-bait dinner, his own acquaintance with Captain O’Brien, and other particulars, with which the reader is already acquainted, dwelling especially on D’Almayne’s advice to him, to throw over Lord Alfred and ride for Captain Annesley, for which D’Almayne bargained to receive a per-centage on his winnings.
“And now,” he continued, “if I can afford your Lordship proof of the truth of my statement, in D’Almayne’s own handwriting, and let you have that proof, so that you may, if you please, confront him with it; perhaps your Lordship will set that off against my refusal to ride the steeple-chase for you.”
“Let me see your proof, sir; I shall then be better able to judge of my amount of obligation to you,” was the curt reply.
Thus urged, Tirrett drew from his pocket the identical epistle which D’Almayne had written to him from Lord Alfred’s lodgings on the morning (as the date testified) before he started for the continent. Lord Alfred perfectly remembered his writing the note; but the authenticity of the document was established beyond a doubt by the paper, which was stamped with a coronet and the cypher A. C. As this proof of his Mentor’s treachery was brought before him, Lord Alfred coloured with anger, and drawing out his pocket-book, he said—
“You must permit me to keep this document, Mr. Tirrett but, as I consider it of value, I shall give you an equivalent for it.” Then handing him a ten-pound note, he continued, “Note for note is a fair exchange.”
Tirrett glanced at the money as if he had half a mind to return it; but a moment’s reflection served to dispel the romantic scruple, and adhering to his rule of never throwing a chance away, he pocketed the cash, and raising his hat, began—
“Really, your Lordship’s too liberal! I am off for Yorkshire to-morrow morning; but I shall be up again before the hunting season, with a lot of very first-rate horses; and as I hope I’ve now made all straight with your Lordship, I shall be highly honoured if your Lordship will look through the stable before I let the dealers see them.”
Then, with another low bow, he turned his horse’s head, and touching him with the spur, cantered off, leaving Lord Alfred to his own reflections, which ran somewhat after the following fashion—
“So much for there being honour amongst thieves! Tirrett coolly sacrifices his accomplice, in order to retain my custom! What an inconceivable scoundrel that Horace D’Almayne turns out! I’m about as easy-tempered a fellow as can be; too much so, I’m afraid; for I often say Yes, when I feel I ought to say No; but I’ll cut the swindler dead at the club, or wherever I meet him, and if he does not like it, I’ll show him his note to Tirrett, or better still, read it out at the club; such perfidy ought to be exposed, and I’ll not flinch from doing so. Coverdale shall see that his example of straightforward manliness is not quite thrown away upon me. I’ve followed a bad mode with tolerable success, and reaped the fruits of such folly, and now I’ll try whether I cannot imitate a good one. I’d do a great deal to reinstate myself in the good opinion of Harry and his wife; they’ve been very kind to me, too kind, for it overpowers me; but of course they must have lost all respect for me—Harry thinks me a soft, foolish boy, and Alice, a weak, sentimental puppy. Well, I’ll do my best to gain their esteem, and if I fail, I shall be none the worse for having tried. How pretty that little Emily is! prettier than her sister, I think! and she believes in me to a great extent, that’s some comfort!”
By the time his Lordship’s meditations had reached this point, his Lordship’s horse had reached the Pandemonium, which fact, forcing itself on his Lordship’s attention, he dismounted, and, consigning the animal to the care of his groom, entered the club-room, when, of course, the first person he encountered, was Horace D’Almayne! Owing to Lord Alfred’s absence from town, D’Almayne had not seen him since his return from the continent, he, therefore, advanced to meet him with the greatest empressement, greeting him with the usual “Ah! mon cher,” which he reserved for those of his associates whom he particularly delighted to honour. Great, therefore, was his astonishment and disgust, when Lord Alfred walked past him with his head in the air, and his eyes immovably fixed upon the cornice of the apartment.
For a moment D’Almayne could scarcely believe the evidence of his senses, so much at variance was his late pupil’s conduct with Horace’s pre-conceived ideas of his gentle, yielding character; but a covert smile on the faces of Barrington and several of the usual club-loungers, was sufficient to convince him of the irritating fact, that in the presence of the very men, before whom he had often boasted of and paraded his intimacy with and influence over Lord Alfred Courtland, that young nobleman had most decidedly and unequivocally cut him. For some days past D’Almayne had perceived a change to have “come o’er the spirit” in which he had been received by society at large. Intimates had suddenly become slight acquaintances; slight acquaintances had grown strangely short-sighted; and when he forced himself upon their notice, appeared afflicted with a painful degree of stiffness in the “upper spine.” Still, until that moment, no one had ventured actually to cut him. Now the matter had come to a climax, Horace felt himself brought fairly to bay, and in such a frame of mind he was dangerous. After Lord Alfred had passed D’Almayne, he touched the Honourable William Barrington, alias Billy Whipcord, on the arm, and drawing him aside, said—
“I have just been let into a pleasant little secret; it seems that the reason my dis-honourable young acquaintance, Mr. Tirrett, set his face so determinately against riding Don Pasquale was that the notable quadruped had a screw loose in the back sinew of one of its inestimable fore-legs, and Tirrett was afraid he would break down in the race. Now as I have become aware of this only within the last half hour, I daresay I have asked, and you have given, too much for the brute. Caveat emptor may be a very good general maxim, but I never can see why a gentleman should act about selling a horse in a manner undeserving that title—so, if you find the creature unsound I shall be happy to hand you back a fifty-pound note, or more, if you require it. I’ve passed my ‘little go,’ as a patron of the turf, and wish to come out of it with clean hands ere I take my leave of that noble pastime.”
“Really, my dear Courtland, you’re too chivalrous,” was the reply; “but I’m quite content with my bargain; the Don is sound enough to answer my purpose” (he had sold him that morning, and pocketed a cool hundred by the transfer), “and if he were not, I have purchased him, and must abide the loss;—but, excuse me, are you aware that you have just cut Horace D’Almayne?”
“As he deserves to be cut by every honourable man,” interrupted Lord Alfred, “and, for reasons which I will explain here before every member of this club now present, if he has the audacity to—to venture to force himself upon me,” he continued angrily, as he perceived D’Almayne sauntering up to him, with his accustomed listless gait indeed, but with a sparkle in his eye, and a red spot on each cheek, which, to those who were well acquainted with him, showed that he was unusually excited.
“Has foreign travel, and the lapse of a fortnight, really altered me so much that your Lordship is unable to recognize an old friend; or to what other circumstance am I to attribute your singular failure of memory when I accosted you on your entrance?” he inquired in his most superciliously polite tone and accent.
“Attribute it to its right cause,” was the spirited reply; “that I desire to associate only with men of honour, an idiosyncracy which precludes my longer availing myself of the privilege of Mr. D’Almayne’s society.”
“In fact, that, having made use of me to convert a raw school-boy into a very tame specimen of a fast man, you fancy now you are able to run alone, and that it will add to your reputation for fastness to kick down the ladder by which you have mounted the social mole-hill you stand on,” was the sneering answer; “but you have mistaken your man, my Lord. Horace D’Almayne is not a puppet of which you hold the wires, to dance, or to be thrown aside, at your Lordship’s pleasure. Had you simply chosen to deny me your further acquaintance, I should have set the gain of valuable minutes against the loss of one of the social incubi my good-nature has entailed upon me, and overlooked the boyish impertinence; but as you have seen fit to insult me publicly, nothing short of an equally public apology will satisfy me. Should you be infatuated enough to refuse me this, I will for once flatter your Lordship’s vanity by supposing you man enough to be aware of the alternative.”
As D’Almayne spoke, he drew himself up with an expression of contemptuous superiority, half-pitying, half-defiant, which he imagined highly effective.
It certainly had one effect, that of rousing Lord Alfred’s temper to the utmost extent; and, with flashing eyes and quivering lips, he replied—
“If I could believe that you had one thought or feeling of a gentleman in your composition which my conduct could wound, I would accept one of the alternatives you propose; but to a man who can abuse the confidence of friendship by availing himself of it to swindle and betray the friend who trusted him,—to such a low, sordid black-leg, I will neither apologize, nor will I afford, him the satisfaction due to wounded honour.”
For a moment, as D’Almayne’s glance met that of the man he had wronged, his self-possession failed him; and, ignorant to what extent Lord Alfred might have become cognizant of his nefarious practices, he hesitated how far he dared provoke any disclosure. But it was too late to retract: his social position, on which depended his very means of existence, was at stake; and as the thought crossed his mind, the gambler spirit awoke within him. He would carry the matter with a high hand; a bold course was always the wisest; Fortune would favour those who trusted her. It was his only article of faith, and he clung to it with the pertinacity of a zealot.
“Highly melodramatic!” he said, with a sarcastic sneer. “Your Lordship has a real spécialité for juvenile tragedy. But may I be allowed to inquire what particular perfidy of mine has elicited the burst of virtuous indignation which you have selected for your histrionic début?”
“I was willing to have spared you the disgrace of a public exposure,” was Lord Alfred’s reply; “but since you choose thus to provoke your fate, I can have no reason for longer concealing the cause which has led me to consider you unfit for the society of honourable men.” Turning to Barrington, who happened to be standing next him, he continued, “You, sir, and other gentlemen present, may remember how, not many weeks since, a certain steeple-chase rider, named Tirrett, suddenly left me in the lurch, by refusing at the last minute to ride for me, by which rascality I was on the point of losing the race, upon which I had made an imprudently heavy book. Mr. D’Almayne was at that time abroad, and, I presume, imagined, owing to that circumstance, he might transact a little profitable black-leg business with impunity. He accordingly wrote a note to Tirrett, suggesting to him the scheme which he afterwards attempted to carry out; stipulating, in case of its success, to be paid fifty pounds and a percentage on Tirrett’s winnings.”
As Lord Alfred concluded, a murmur of disapprobation ran round the room, and all eyes were turned upon Horace D’Almayne.
“A cleverly devised tale!” he said, scornfully; “a mole-hill ingeniously inflated until it appears a mountain. I certainly betted on the race; I may have given the jockey Tirrett the benefit of my suggestions on the subject, as any other man who has ever been on the turf would have done; but that all this demonstrates anything, except Lord Alfred Courtland’s deplorable ignorance of that said art ‘of life about town,’ in which he appears to have striven in vain to become a proficient, I am at a loss to conceive.”
“Perhaps the simplest answer to Mr. D’Almayne’s statement will be to place the note, on which the foundations of my ‘molehill inflated into a mountain’ rest, in Mr. Barrington’s hands, asking him, for his own satisfaction, and for that of the other gentlemen present, to read it aloud.”
As he spoke, Lord Alfred drew from his pocket the note given him by Tirrett, and handed it to Barrington, who, after a moment’s hesitation, read aloud the following notable epistle, which the reader may remember was written by D’Almayne, with his usual cool audacity, in Lord Alfred Courtland’s lodgings:—
“Dear Tirrett,—Your game is clear: let A. C———— and O’B———n each believe that you will ride for him, and at the last minute throw both over. In this case, Captain Annesley’s Black Eagle is safe to win, as I daresay you know better than I do; thus you will perceive how to make a paying book. If I prove a true prophet, I shall expect a fifty pound note from you, as O’B———n will (before you quarrel with him) tell you I got up the whole affair myself, introducing him to A. C———, &c.
“I remain, yours faithfully,
“YOU’LL KNOW WHO WHEN I CLAIM THE TIN.”
“P.S.—If you make a heavy purse out of the business, I shall expect ten per cent, on all beyond five hundred pounds.”
As Barrington ceased reading, D’Almayne observed, coolly—
“Exactly as I expected—an anonymous letter, supposed to be mine on the word of a blackguard horsedealer (who probably wrote it himself to conceal his own rascality), and eagerly caught at by this fiery young gentleman, who, anxious to prove that he is out of leading-strings, gladly seeks any pretext for quarrelling with one to whom his Lordship has a painful consciousness that he appears no more a hero than to his valet-de-chambre. Tirrett declares that I wrote this letter, I say I did no such thing; there is no proof about the matter, it is simply a question of assertion—Tirrett’s word against mine. I leave it to the gentlemen present to say which is most worthy of credit.”
“Allow me to mention one small circumstance which may assist them to arrive at a just decision,” interposed Lord Alfred, quietly; “I have a perfect recollection of Mr. D’Almayne’s writing a note, much resembling the one in question, at my lodgings, on the morning before he left England. If I am right in my conjecture, the date would be the 5th of last month, and the postmark Pall Mall; may I trouble you to ascertain the point, Mr. Barrington?”
“Right in both respects,” was the unhesitating reply. “Moreover, here is a coronet and the initials A. C. stamped on the paper, a corroboration which quite satisfies my mind on the subject.”
L’Almayne glanced round, and read his sentence on the faces which surrounded him—faces of men, who, in the insolence of his false position, he had made to feel the lash of his covert sarcasm. Amongst the many there he could not discern one friend. But his self-possession did not forsake him.
“Of course, all against me,” he said; then turning to Lord Alfred, he continued—“Your Lordship once expressed a doubt as to the social value of a title, you now, I should imagine, perceive your error: for the rest, the letter is an impudent forgery, and the accusation false; but until I can prove the whole story the clumsy fabrication I know it to be, I shall leave the matter where it stands, unless”—and he glanced round the circle with a savage light in his cold, grey eyes, which no one cared to meet—“unless any gentleman feels inclined to make a personal affair of it, in which case I shall have much pleasure in affording him the satisfaction he requires.”
No one appearing desirous of improving the occasion as D’Almayne had suggested, the baffled intriguer stalked out of the room, with a look of scornful indifference on his features, and rage and hatred burning in his breast.