“Lord, man, the debts! Can’t remember the half of ’em. No, it’s no use arguing. I’ve tried to add ’em up a score of times. You think you’ve done it and then some damned bill you forgot years ago crops up. Never come to the end of it. Wiser to leave it alone. Pay as you go, that’s my motto.”
“Is it?” said Rule, mildly surprised. “I shouldn’t have thought it.”
“What I mean,” explained the Viscount, “is, when a fellow puts the bailiffs on to you, so to speak, then it’s time to settle with him. But as for paying all my bills—damme, I never heard of such a thing! Wouldn’t do at all.”
“Nevertheless,” said Rule, moving over to his desk, “I believe you must oblige me in this. Your arrest for debt, perhaps even in the act of bestowing your sister’s hand on me in marriage, would quite unnerve me.”
The Viscount grinned. “Would it so? Well, they can’t clap up a peer yet, y’know. Just as you please, of course, but I warn you, I’m in pretty deep.”
Rule dipped a quill in the standish. “If I were to give you a draft on my bankers for five thousand? Or shall we say ten, as a rounder sum?”
The Viscount was moved to sit up. “Five,” he said firmly. “Since you’re making a point of it, I don’t mind settling up to five thousand, but give away ten thousand pounds to a lot of tradesmen I can’t and I won’t do. Damme, flesh and blood won’t stand it!”
He watched Rule’s quill move across the paper, and shook his head. “Seems wicked to me,” he said. “I’ve nothing to say against spending money, but blister it, I don’t like to see it thrown away!” He sighed. “You know, I could put it to better use, Rule,” he suggested.
Rule shook the sand off the paper and handed it to him. “But somehow I feel sure you won’t, Pelham,” he said.
The Viscount cocked an eyebrow intelligently. “Like that, is it?” he said. “Oh, very well! But I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”