Very briefly and clearly, Molly had broken off the engagement. She
“thought it best.” She was “afraid it could make neither of us
happy.” All very true, thought his lordship miserably. His
sentiments to a T. At the proper time, he would have liked nothing
better. But why seize for this declaration the precise moment when
he was intending, on the strength of the engagement, to separate his
uncle from twenty pounds? That was what rankled. That Molly could
have no knowledge of his sad condition did not occur to him. He had
a sort of feeling that she ought to have known by instinct. Nature,
as has been pointed out, had equipped Hildebrand Spencer Poynt de
Burgh with one of those cheap-substitute minds. What passed for
brain in him was to genuine gray matter as just-as-good imitation
coffee is to real Mocha. In moments of emotion and mental stress,
consequently, his reasoning, like Spike’s, was apt to be in a class
of its own.
He read the letter for the third time, and a gentle perspiration
began to form on his forehead. This was awful. The presumable
jubilation of Katie, the penniless ripper of the Savoy, when he
should present himself to her a free man, did not enter into the
mental picture that was unfolding before him. She was too remote.
Between him and her lay the fearsome figure of Sir Thomas, rampant,
filling the entire horizon. Nor is this to be wondered at. There was
probably a brief space during which Perseus, concentrating his gaze
upon the monster, did not see Andromeda; and a knight of the Middle
Ages, jousting in the Gentlemen’s Singles for a smile from his lady,
rarely allowed the thought of that smile to occupy his whole mind at
the moment when his boiler-plated antagonist was descending upon him
in the wake of a sharp spear.
So with Spennie Dreever. Bright eyes might shine for him when all
was over, but in the meantime what seemed to him more important was
that bulging eyes would glare.
If only this had happened later–even a day later! The reckless
impulsiveness of the modern girl had undone him. How was he to pay
Hargate the money? Hargate must be paid. That was certain. No other
course was possible. Lord Dreever’s was not one of those natures
that fret restlessly under debt. During his early career at college,
he had endeared himself to the local tradesmen by the magnitude of
the liabilities he had contracted with them. It was not the being in
debt that he minded. It was the consequences. Hargate, he felt
instinctively, was of a revengeful nature. He had given Hargate
twenty pounds’ worth of snubbing, and the latter had presented the
bills. If it were not paid, things would happen. Hargate and he were
members of the same club, and a member of a club who loses money at
cards to a fellow member, and fails to settle up, does not make
himself popular with the committee.
He must get the money. There was no avoiding that conclusion. But
how?
Financially, his lordship was like a fallen country with a glorious
history. There had been a time, during his first two years at
college, when he had reveled in the luxury of a handsome allowance.
This was the golden age, when Sir Thomas Blunt, being, so to speak,
new to the job, and feeling that, having reached the best circles,
he must live up to them, had scattered largesse lavishly. For two
years after his marriage with Lady Julia, he had maintained this
admirable standard, crushing his natural parsimony. He had regarded
the money so spent as capital sunk in an investment. By the end of
the second year, he had found his feet, and began to look about him
for ways of retrenchment. His lordship’s allowance was an obvious
way. He had not to wait long for an excuse for annihilating it.
There is a game called poker, at which a man without much control
over his features may exceed the limits of the handsomest allowance.
His lordship’s face during a game of poker was like the surface of
some quiet pond, ruffled by every breeze. The blank despair of his