“There’s many a slip, you know. The duke’s not so old, only fifty odd, and marvellous cures are worked these days. Some mother is always tracking him with a good-looking girl. As for France, his debts are about all he has to live on —”
“The President just told me that he has an income independent of his allowance from the head of his house, and I have knowledge that his expectations are founded upon certainty.”
The Captain, not long enough in port to have heard aught of Mrs. Edis’s dark reputation, glanced at her with a puzzled expression, then gave it up and answered lightly, “His income is good enough, yes, but nothing to his debts, which he never pays.”
“If he doesn’t pay his debts, what do they matter?” asked the old aristocrat, whose husband had never paid his, and whose son, having sold the last of his acres, was drinking himself into Fig Tree churchyard.
The Captain laughed. “I know your creed, madam. And I must admit that France is a true blood. He never arrives in port without being showered with writs, and he brushes them off as he would these damned mosquitoes—beg pardon, ma’am. But all the same, it wouldn’t be pleasant for your little girl. Fancy being served with a writ every morning at breakfast.”
The contempt in those sharp, unflinching eyes almost froze the words in their exit. “My daughter would never know what they were. Of money matters she knows as little as of Life itself. Writs would not disturb her youthful joyousness and serenity for an instant.”
“Damn these aristocrats!” thought the old sailor. “And what a hole this must be!” He continued aloud, “But after the luxury of her old home —”
“Luxury? We are as poor as mice. If my father had not put a portion of his estate in trust for me, as soon as he discovered that my husband was a spendthrift, we should have been on the parish long ago.”
The Captain opened his blue eyes, eyes that looked oddly soft and young (when not on duty) in his battered visage. “And you mean to say, that having married a spendthrift—Was he also dissipated?”
“Drank himself to death.”