The Grand Sophy (26 page)

“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 what Sir Horace said. I believe there are excessively penalties for doing such a thing.”

“Well, I know that,” Hubert answered. “Most of ‘em do it, but—well, the thing is that a friend of mine knew 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 matter then, 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 even 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 now to be repining over that!”

“Yes, much too late. Besides, there is no need to be in despair! I am certain that you have nothing to fear, because he must know he cannot recover his money from a minor, and would never dare to sue you for it.”

“Dash it, Sophy, I must pay the fellow back what I owe him! Besides, there’s worse. He insisted on my giving him a pledge, and—and I did!”

He sounded so guilty that several hair-raising possibilities flashed through Sophy’s mind. “Hubert, you did not pledge a family heirloom, or—or anything of that nature, did you?”

“Good God, no! I’m not as bad as that!” he cried indignantly. “It was mine, and I shouldn’t call it an heirloom, precisely, though if ever it was discovered that I had lost it R daresay there would be the deuce of a kickup, and I should be abused as though I were a pickpocket! Grandfather Stanton-Lacy left it to me—stupid sort of thing, think, because men don’t wear ‘em nowadays. He did, of course, and my mother says the sight of it brings him back to her as nothing else could, because she never saw him without it on his hand—so you may judge what would happen if she knew I had pledged it! It’s a ring, you know, a great, square emerald, with diamonds all round it. Fancy wearing such a thing as that! Why, one would look like Romeo Coates, or some wealthy Cit trying to lionize! Mama always kept it, and I never knew it had been left to me until I went to a masquerade last year, and she gave it to me to wear and told me it was mine. And when Goldhanger demanded I should give him a pledge, I—I couldn’t think of anything else, and—well, I knew where Mama kept it, and I took it! And don’t tell me I stole it from her, because it was no such thing, and she only kept it because I had no use for it!”

“No, no, of course I know you would not steal anything!” Sophy said hastily.

He studied his knuckles with rapt interest. “No. Mind, I don’t say I ought to have taken it from my mother’s case, but—it was my own!”

“Well, naturally you ought not!” said Sophy. “I daresay she would be vexed with you, so we must recover it at once.”

“I wish I might, but there’s no chance of that now! I don’t know what to do! When that horse failed, I was ready to blow my brains out! I shan’t do so, because I don’t suppose it would mend matters, besides creating a dashed scandal.”

“What a good thing you told me the whole! I know exactly what you should do. Make a clean breast of the business to your brother! He will very likely give you a tremendous scold but you may depend upon his helping you out of this fix.”

“You don’t know him! Scold, indeed! Depend upon it, he would make me come down from Oxford, and thrust me into the army, or some such thing! I’ll try everything before I apply to him!”

“Very well, I will lend you five hundred pounds,” said Sophy.

He flushed. “You’re a great gun, Sophy—no, I don’t mean that—a capital girl! I’m devilish grateful, but of course I could not borrow money from you! No, no, pray don’t say any more! It is out of the question! Besides, you don’t understand! The old bloodsucker made me sign a bond to pay him fifteen per cent interest a month!”

“Good God, you never agreed to such an iniquitous thing?”

“What else could I do? I had to have the money to pay my gaming debts, and I knew it was useless to go to Howard and Gibbs, or any .of those fellows, for they would have shown me the door.”

“Hubert, I am persuaded there is nothing he can do to extort one penny of interest from you! Why, in law he could not even recover the principal! Only let me lend you five hundred pounds, and take it to him, and insist upon his restoring to you the bond you signed, and your ring! Tell him that if he does not choose to accept the principal he may do his worst!”

“And have him inform at Oxford against me! I tell you, Sophy, he is an out-and-out villain! He would do me all the harm that lay in his power! He is not a regular moneylender: in fact, I’m pretty certain he’s what they call a lock, or a fence, a receiver, you know. What’s more, he would refuse to give me back the ring, and even if I brought him to book he would have sold it, I expect.”

Nothing that Sophy could urge had the power to move him. He was plainly in considerable dread of Mr. Goldhanger, and since she found this incomprehensible she could only suppose that some darker threat than had been disclosed to her was being held over his head. She made no attempt to discover what this might be, for she felt reasonably certain that it would not have impressed her. Instead, she asked him what he intended to do to extricate himself from his difficulties, if he would neither apply to his brother nor accept a loan from her. The answer was not very definite, Hubert being young enough still to cherish youth’s ineradicable belief in timely miracles. He said several times that he had a month left to him before he need do anything desperate, and while agreeing reluctantly that he might in the end be forced to go to his brother, evidently felt that something would happen to make this unnecessary. With an attempt at lightheartedness, he begged Sophy not to trouble her head over it, and as she perceived that it would be useless to continue arguing with him she said no more.

But when he had left her she sat for some time with her chin in her hand, pondering the matter. Her first impulse, which was to place the whole affair in the hands of Sir Horace’s lawyer, she regretfully discarded. She was well enough acquainted with Mr. Meriden to know that he would most strenuously resist her determination to pay five hundred pounds into a moneylender’s hands. Any advice he might be expected to give her could only lead to the disclosure of Hubert’s folly, which was naturally unthinkable. Her mind flitted through the ranks of her friends, but they too had to be discarded for the same reason. But since she was not one to abandon any project she had once decided on, she did not for as much as an instant entertain the idea of leaving her young cousin to settle his difficulties for himself. There seemed to be no other course open to her but to confront the villainous Mr. Goldhanger herself. This decision was not reached without careful consideration, for although she was not in the least afraid of Mr. Goldhanger, she was perfectly well aware that young ladies did not visit usurers and that such conduct would be thought outrageous by any person of breeding. However, since she could perceive no reason why anyone, except, perhaps, Hubert, should ever know anything at all about it, she came to the conclusion that to hang back from missish scruples would be stupid and spiritless—not the sort of behavior to be expected of Sir Horace Stanton-Lacy’s daughter.

Having made up her mind to intervene in Hubert’s affairs, it was characteristic of her that she wasted no time in further heartburnings. It was also characteristic of her that she made no attempt to persuade herself that she might with propriety draw upon Sir Horace’s funds to defray Hubert’s debt. In her view, which he would undoubtedly have shared, it was one thing to spend five hundred pounds on a ball to launch herself into London society and quite another to force him into an act of generosity toward a nephew of whose very existence he was in all probability oblivious. Instead, she unlocked her jewel case, and, after turning over its contents, abstracted from it the diamond earrings Sir Horace had bought for her at Rundell and Bridge only a year earlier. They were singularly fine stones, and it cost her a slight pang to part with them, but the rest of her more valuable jewelry had been left to her by her mother, and although she had not the smallest recollection of this lady, her scruples forbade her to part with her trinkets.

Upon the following day, she contrived to excuse herself from accompanying Lady Ombersley and Cecilia to a silk warehouse in the Strand, and instead sallied forth quite unaccompanied to those noted jewelers, Rundell and Bridge. The shop was empty of customers when she arrived, but the sight of a young lady of commanding height and presence, and dressed, moreover, in the first style of elegance, brought the head salesman hurrying forward, all eagerness to oblige. He was an excellent man of business, who prided himself on never forgetting the face of a valued customer.

He recognized Miss Stanton-Lacy at a glance, set a chair for her with his own august hands, and begged to be told what he might have the honor of showing her. When he discovered the true nature of her business he looked thunderstruck, but swiftly concealed his amazement, and, by a flicker of the eyelids, conveyed to an intelligent underling an order to summon on to the scene Mr. Bridge himself. Mr. Bridge, gliding into the shop and bowing politely to the daughter of a patron who had bought many expensive trinkets of him (though mostly for quite a different class of female), begged Sophy to go with him into his private office at the back of the showroom. Whatever he may have thought of her wish to dispose of earrings carefully chosen by herself only a year before he kept to himself.

A civil inquiry for Sir Horace having elicited the information that he was at present in Brazil, Mr. Bridge, putting two and two together, instantly resolved to buy the earrings back at a handsome figure, instead of resorting, as had been his first intention, to the time-honored custom of explaining to his client just why the price of diamonds had fallen so low. He had no intention of selling the earrings again; he would put them by until the return of Sir Horace from Brazil. Sir Horace, he shrewdly suspected, would repurchase them; and his gratification at being able to do so reasonably would no doubt find expression, in the future, in buying a great many more expensive trifles from the jewelers who had behaved in so gentlemanly a way toward his only daughter. The transaction, therefore, between Miss Stanton-Lacy and Mr. Bridge was conducted on the most genteel lines possible, each party being perfectly satisfied with the bargain. Mr. Bridge, the soul of discretion, kept Miss Stanton-Lacy in his private office until two other customers had left the shop. He fancied that Sir Horace might not wish it to be known that his daughter had been reduced to selling her jewelry. Without a blink he agreed to pay Sophy five hundred pounds in bills; without a blink he counted them out on the table before her; and without the least diminution in respect did he presently bow her out of the shop.

The bills stuffed into her muff, Sophy next hailed a hackney and desired the coachman to drive her to Bear Alley. The vehicle she selected was by no means the first or the smartest which lumbered past her, but it was driven by the most prepossessing jarvey. He was a burly, middle-aged man, with a rubicund and jovial countenance, in whom Sophy felt that she might repose a certain degree of confidence, this belief being strengthened by the manner in which he received her order. After eyeing her shrewdly and stroking his chin with one mittened hand, he gave it as his opinion that she had mistaken the direction, Bear Alley not being, to his way of thinking, the sort of locality to which a lady of her quality would wish to be taken. “No, is it a back slum?” asked Sophy.

“It ain’t the place for a young lady,” repeated the jarvey, declining to commit himself on this point. He added that he had daughters of his own, begging her pardon. “Well, back slum or not, that is where I wish to go,” said Sophy. “I have business with a Mr. Goldhanger there, who, I daresay, is a great rogue; and you look to me just the sort of man I may trust not to drive off and leave me there.”

She then got up into the hackney; the jarvey shut the door upon her, climbed back on to the box, and, after expressing to the ambient air his desire to be floored if ever he should be so betwattled again, besought his horse to get up.

Bear Alley, which led eastward from the Fleet Market, was a narrow and malodorous lane, where filth of every description lay moldering between the uneven cobbles. The shadow of the great prison seemed to brood over the whole district, and even the people who trod the streets or lounged on doorsteps, had a depressed look not entirely attributable to their circumstances. The coachman inquired of a man in a greasy muffler whether he knew Mr. Goldhanger’s abode, and was directed to a house halfway up the alley, his informant hesitating palpably before answering and seeming disinclined to enter into any sort of conversation.