Mr. Painswick gave a groan. “With greasy hands, sir! And only I know what it means to get a thumb-mark off your Hessians!”
“He shall handle them through gloves,” promised Mr. Beaumaris. “You need not lay out my knee-breeches: I am going to the Nonesuch Club tonight” He added, possibly to atone for his harshness: “Don’t wait up for me, but call me at five o’clock tomorrow morning!”
Mr. Painswick responded in a voice trembling with suppressed passion: “If, sir, you choose to dispense with my services upon your journey, I am sure it is not for me to utter a word of criticism, nor would I so far demean myself as to remonstrate with you, whatever my feelings may be. But retire from my post before I have put you to bed, sir, and removed your raiment for proper attention, nothing will prevail upon me to do!”
“As you please,” said Mr. Beaumaris, unmoved. “Far be it from me to interfere in your determination to become a martyr in my cause!”
Mr. Painswick could only throw him a look of searing reproach, being, as he afterwards confided to Brough, unable to trust himself to say more. It had been Touch and Go with him, he said, whether he remained another day in the service of one so lost to the sense of what was due to himself and his valet. Brough, who was perfectly well aware that wild horses would not have parted Ms colleague from Mr. Beaumaris, sympathized in suitable terms, and produced a bottle of Mr. Beaumaris’s second-best port. The healing properties of port, when mixed with a judicious quantity of gin, soon exercised a beneficial effect upon Mr. Painswick’s wounded feelings, and remarking that there was nothing like a glass of flesh-and-blood for setting a man up, he settled down to discuss with his crony and rival all the possible reasons that might be supposed to underlie Mr. Beaumaris’s rash and unbecoming conduct.
Mr. Beaumaris, meanwhile, after dining at Brooks’s, strolled across St. James’s Street towards Ryder Street, where the Nonesuch Club was established. Thus it was that when, rather later in the evening, Bertram Tallant entered the faro-room under the protective chaperonage of Lord Wivenhoe, Mr. Beaumaris was afforded an excellent opportunity of estimating in just what manner Miss Tallant’s enterprising young relative had been spending his time in London.
Two circumstances had decided Bertram in favour of visiting the Nonesuch Club. The first was the news that that sure winner, Fear-not-Victorious, had been unplaced in his race; the second the discovery of a twenty-pound bill amongst the tangle of accounts in the dressing-table. Bertram had sat staring at it quite numbly for some minutes, not even wondering how he had come to mislay it. He had suffered a terrible shock, for he had argued himself into believing that Fear-not-Victorious was bound to win, and had not seriously considered how he was to meet his creditor at Tattersall’s on Monday if the animal were unplaced. The utter impossibility of meeting him at all burst upon him with shattering effect, so that he felt sick with apprehension, and could see nothing but a hideous vision of the Fleet Prison, where he would no doubt languish for the rest of his days, since it did not appear to him that his father could be expected to do more for so depraved a son than to expunge his name from the family tree, and forbid all mention of him at the Vicarage.
Rendered reckless by this last and most crushing blow, he rang the bell for the waiter, and demanded a bottle of brandy. It was then borne in upon him that orders had been issued in the tap not to supply him with any liquor for which he did not put down his blunt. Flushing darkly, he drove his hand into his breeches’ pocket, and dragged out his last remaining handful of coins. Throwing one of these on the table, he said: “Fetch it, damn you!—and you may keep the change!”
This gesture a little relieved his feelings, and the first glass of brandy, tossed at one gulp down his throat, had a still more heartening effect upon him. He looked again at the twenty-pound bill, still clasped between his fingers. He remembered that Chuffy had named twenty pounds as the minimum stake permitted to punters at the Nonesuch. Such a coincidence was surely too marked to be ignored. The second glass of brandy convinced him that here in his hand lay his last chance of saving himself from irretrievable ruin and disgrace.
Not being accustomed to drinking neat brandy, he was obliged before setting out for Long’s Hotel to swallow a damper in the form of a glass of porter. This had a sobering effect, and the walk through the streets to Long’s put him in tolerable shape to do justice to maintenon cutlets, and the hotel’s famed Queensbury hock. He had made up his mind to be guided by Fate. He would lay down his twenty guineas upon a card chosen at random from the livret: if it turned up, he would take it for a sign that his luck had changed at last, and play on until he had covered all his debts; if it lost, he would be very little worse off than he was already, and could, at the worst, cut his throat, he supposed.