Mr. Beaumaris turned up the Carte Anglaise, and laid it down to the left of the pack. The Queen of Diamonds danced before Bertram’s eyes. For a dizzy moment he could only stare at the card; then he looked up, and met Mr. Beaumaris’s cool gaze, and smiled waveringly. That smile told Mr. Beaumaris quite as much as he had need to know, and did nothing to increase his enjoyment of the evening ahead of him. He picked up the rake beside him, and pushed two twenty-guinea rouleaus across the table. Lord Wivenhoe called for wine for himself and his friend, and settled down to plunge with his usual recklessness.
For half-an-hour the luck ran decidedly in Bertram’s favour, and Mr. Beaumaris was encouraged to hope that he would rise from the table a winner. He was drinking fairly steadily, a flush of excitement in his cheeks, his eyes, glittering a little in the candlelight, fixed on the cards. Lord Wivenhoe sat cheerfully losing beside him. He was soon punting on tick, scrawling his vowels, and tossing them over to the bank. Other men, Bertram noticed, did the same. There was quite a pile of paper before Mr. Beaumaris.
The luck veered. Three times did Bertram bet heavily on the bank’s card. He was left with only two rouleaus, and staked them both, sure that the bank could not win his money four times in succession. It could. To his own annoyance, Mr. Beaumaris turned up the identical card.
From then on, he accepted, with an unmoved countenance, vowel upon vowel from Bertram. It was quite impossible to tell the boy either that he would not take his vouchers, or that he would be well-advised to go home. It was even doubtful whether Bertram would have listened to him. He was in the grip of a gamester’s madness, betting recklessly, persuaded by one lucky chance that the luck smiled upon him again, convinced when he lost that ill-fortune could not last. That he had the least idea of the sum he already owed the bank, Mr. Beaumaris cynically doubted.
The evening broke up rather earlier than usual, Mr. Beaumaris having warned the company that he did not sit after two o’clock, and Lord Petersham sighing that he did not think he should take the bank over tonight. Wivenhoe, undaunted by his losses, said cheerfully: “In the basket again! What do I owe, Beaumaris?”
Mr. Beaumaris silently handed his vowels to him. While his lordship did rapid sums in mental addition, Bertram, the flush dying out of his cheeks, sat staring at the paper still lying in front of Mr. Beaumaris. He said jerkily: “And I?” and stretched out his hand.
“Dipped, badly dipped!” said Wivenhoe, shaking his head. “I’ll send you a draught on my bank, Beaumaris. The devil was in it tonight!”
Other men were totting up their losses; there was a noise of lighthearted conversation dinning in Bertram’s ears; he found that his vowels totalled six hundred pounds, a sum that seemed vast to him, almost incredible. He pulled himself together, pride coming to his rescue, and rose. He looked very white now, and ridiculously boyish, but he held his head well up, and spoke to Mr. Beaumaris perfectly calmly. “I may have to keep you waiting for a few days, sir,” he said. “I—I have no banking accommodation in London, and must send to Yorkshire for funds!”
What do I do now? wondered Mr. Beaumaris. Tell the boy the only use I have for his vowels is as shaving-papers? No: he would enact me a Cheltenham tragedy. Besides, the fright may do him a world of good. He said: “There is no hurry, Mr. Anstey. I am going out of town tomorrow for a week, or five days. Come and see me at my house—let us say, next Thursday. Anyone will tell you my direction. Where are you putting up?”
Bertram replied mechanically: “At the Red Lion, in the City, sir.”