Sophy was able to restore to Hubert the scrap of paper which had fallen from his pocket before going down to dinner that evening. Until this moment she had not thought much about it, but his manner of receiving it from her was so strange that it set up in her head various speculations which he was far from desiring. He almost snatched it from her hand, exclaiming: ‘Where did you find this?’ and when she explained, in the most temperate manner, that she thought it must have fallen out of the pocket of the coat she had mended for him, he said: ‘Yes, it is mine, but I did not know I had put it there! I cannot tell you what it signifies, but pray do not mention it to anyone!’
She could only assure him that she had no intention of doing so, but he appeared to be so much discomposed that some inevitable reflections were set up in her brain. These did not come to fruition until she saw him upon his return from his visit to his friend Mr Harpenden, when his demeanour was so much that of a man who had received some stunning blow that she seized the earliest opportunity that offered of asking him ifanything were amiss. Mr Rivenhall, who had left London twenty-four hours earlier for Thorpe Grange, the estate in Leicestershire which he had inherited from his great-uncle, had not yet returned to London; but Hubert made it plain to his cousin that even had his elder brother been in London, not the direst necessity would have induced him to apply to him.
‘He has not minced matters! He told me in round terms that he would not – Oh well! no matter for that!’
‘I daresay,’ said Sophy, in her calm way, ‘that Charles might very likely say more than he meant. I wish you will tell me what has gone awry, Hubert! My conjecture is that you have lost perhaps a large sum at Newmarket?’
‘If that were all!’ he exclaimed unguardedly.
‘Well, if it is not all, I wish you will tell the full sum of it, Hubert!’ she said, with one of her friendly smiles. ‘I assure you, you are quite safe in my hands, for Sir Horace brought me up to think there was nothing more odious than to be the kind of person who blabbed secrets abroad. But I know that you are in trouble of some sort, and I do think I ought, if you will tell me nothing, to drop a hint in your brother’s ear, for ten to one you will make bad much worse if you go on in this way, with no one to advise you!’
He turned pale. ‘Sophy, you would not –!’
Her eyes twinkled. ‘No, of course I would not!’ she admitted. ‘You are soveryloth to tell me anything that I am quite forced to ask you. Is it anything to do with a woman? What Sir Horace would call a bit of muslin, perhaps?’
‘Sophy!Upon my word –! No! Nothing of that sort!’
‘Money, then?’
He did not answer, and after a moment she patted the sofa on which she sat invitingly, and said: ‘Do, pray, come and sit down! I don’t suppose it is by half as bad as you fear.’
He gave a short laugh, but after a little more persuasion sat down beside her, and sank his head in between his clenched fists. ‘I shall come about. If the worst comes to the worst, a man may always enlist!’
‘True,’ she agreed. ‘But I know something of the Army, and I do not think that life in the ranks would suit you at all. Besides, it would very much distress my aunt, you know!’
It was not to be supposed that a young gentleman of Hubert’s order would readily confide his difficulties into the ears of a female, and that female not quite as old as he was himself, but after a good deal of coaxing Sophy managed to extract his story from him. It was not a very coherent tale, and she was obliged to prompt him several times during its recital, but in the end she gathered that he had fallen into the clutches of a moneylender. There had been some trouble over debts contracted during the previous year at Oxford, the full sum of which he had not dared to disclose to his brother, hoping, in the immemorial way of youth, to be able to discharge them himself. He had knowing friends who knew all the gaming-houses in London; quite a brief run of luck at French hazard, or roulette, would have set all to rights; but when, during the Christmas vacation, he had sought this method of recuperating his fortunes only the most unprecedented bad luck had attended his efforts. He still shuddered whenever he recalled those ruinous, and, indeed, terrifying evenings, a circumstance which led his sapient cousin to infer that gaming held little attraction for him. Faced with large debts of honour, already in hot water with his formidable brother for far smaller debts, what else could he do but jump into the river, or go to the Jews? And even so, he assured Sophy, he would never have gone near a curst moneylender had he not felt certain of being able to pay the shark off within six months.
‘You mean, when you come of age next month?’ Sophy asked.
‘Well, no,’ he admitted, colouring. ‘Though I fancy that was what old Goldhanger thought, when he agreed to lend me the money. I never told him so, mind! All I said was that I was certain of coming into possession of a large sum, and Iwas, Sophy! I did not think it could possibly fail! Bob Gilmorton – he is a particular friend of mine! – knows the owner well, and he swore to me the horse could not lose!’
Sophy, who had an excellent memory, instantly recognizedthe name of Goldhanger as being the one she had read on the scrap of paper discovered in her bedroom, but she made no comment on this, merely enquiring whether the perfidious horse had lost his race.
‘Unplaced!’ said Hubert, with a groan.
She nodded wisely. ‘Sir Horace says that if ever you trust to a horse to set your fortune to rights he alwaysisunplaced,’ she observed. ‘He says also that if you game when your pockets are to let you will lose. It is only when you are verywell-breechedthat you may expect to win. Sir Horace isalwaysright!’
Declining to argue this point, Hubert spoke for several embittered minutes on the running of his horse, casting such grave aspersions upon the owner, the trainer, and the jockey as must have rendered him liable to prosecution for slander had they been uttered to anyone less discreet than his cousin. She let him run on, listening sympathetically, and only when he had talked himself to a standstill did she bring him back to what she thought a far more important point.
‘Hubert, you are not of age,’ she said. ‘And I know that it is quite illegal to lend money to minors, because when young Mr – well, never mind the name, but we knew him well! – when a young man of my acquaintance got into just such a fix, he came to Sir Horace for advice, and that is what Sir Horace said. I believe there are excessively heavy penalties for doing such a thing.’
‘Well, I know that,’ Hubert answered. ‘Most of ’em won’t do it, but – well, the thing is that a friend of mine knew of this fellow, Goldhanger, and gave me his direction, and – and told me what I should say, and the sort of interest I should have to pay – not that that seemed to matterthen, because I thought –’
‘Is it very heavy?’ Sophy interrupted.
He nodded. ‘Yes, because, though I lied about my age he knew, of course, that I’m not yet twenty-one, and – and he had me pretty well at his mercy. And I thought I should have been able to have paid it all off after that race.’
‘How much did you borrow, Hubert?’
‘Five hundred,’ he muttered.
‘Good gracious, did you lose all that at cards?’ she exclaimed.
‘No, but I wanted a hundred to lay on that curst screw, you see,’ he explained. ‘It was of no use only to borrow enough to pay my debts, because how was I to pay back Goldhanger?’
Sophy could not help laughing at this ingenious method of finance, but as Hubert looked rather hurt she begged pardon, and said: ‘It is evident to me that your Mr Goldhanger is an infamous rascal!’
‘Yes,’ Hubert said, looking a little haggard. ‘He’s an old devil, and I was a fool ever to go near him. I didn’t know as much about him then as I do now, of course, but still, as soon as I saw him – But it’s too late to be repining over that!’
