"Marriage?" repeated Barnabas, staring.
"Marriage!" nodded his Lordship, airily, "matrimony, Bev,—wedlock, my dear fellow?"
"I—indeed I have never had occasion to think of it."
"Fortunate fellow!" sighed his companion.
"Until—this morning!" added Barnabas, as his fingers encountered a small, soft, lacy bundle in his pocket.
"Un-fortunate fellow!" sighed the Viscount, shaking his head. "So you are haunted by the grim spectre, are you? Well, that should be an added bond between us. Not that I quarrel with matrimony, mark you, Bev; in the abstract it is a very excellent institution, though—mark me again!—when a man begins to think of marriage it is generally the beginning of the end. Ah, my dear fellow! many a bright and promising career has been blighted—sapped—snapped off—and—er—ruthlessly devoured by the ravenous maw of marriage. There was young Egerton with a natural gift for boxing, and one of the best whips I ever knew—we raced our coaches to Brighton and back for a thousand a side and he beat me by six yards—a splendid all round sportsman—ruined by matrimony! He's buried somewhere in the country and passing his days in the humdrum pursuit of being husband and father. Oh, bruise and blister me! it's all very pitiful, and yet"—here the Viscount sighed again—"I do not quarrel with the state, for marriage has often proved a—er—very present help in the time of trouble, Bev."
"Trouble?" repeated Barnabas.
"Money-troubles, my dear Bev, pecuniary unpleasantnesses, debts, and duns, and devilish things of that kind."
"But surely," said Barnabas, "no man—no honorable man would marry and burden a woman with debts of his own contracting?"
At this, the Viscount looked at Barnabas, somewhat askance, and fell to scratching his chin. "Of course," he continued, somewhat hurriedly, "I shall have all the money I need—more than I shall need some day."
"You mean," inquired Barnabas, "when your father dies?"
Here the Viscount's smooth brow clouded suddenly.
"Sir," said he, "we will not mention that contingency. My father is a great Roman, I'll admit, but, 'twixt you and me,—I—I'm devilish fond of him, and, strangely enough, I prefer to have him Romanly alive and my purse empty—than to possess his money and have him dea—Oh damn it! let's talk of something else,—Carnaby for instance."
"Yes," nodded Barnabas, "your friend, Carnaby."
"Well, then, in the first place, I think I hinted to you that I owe him five thousand pounds?"
"Five thousand! indeed, no, it was only one, when you mentioned it to me last."
"Was it so? but then, d'ye see, Bev, we were a good two miles nearer my honored Roman when I mentioned the matter before, and trees sometimes have ears, consequently I—er—kept it down a bit, my dear Bev, I kept it down a bit; but the fact remains that it's five, and I won't be sure but that there's an odd hundred or two hanging on to it somewhere, beside."
"You led your father to believe it was only one thousand, then?"
"I did, Bev; you see money seems to make him so infernally Roman, and I've been going the pace a bit these last six months. There's another thousand to Jerningham, but he can wait, then there's six hundred to my tailor, deuce take him!"
"Six hundred!" exclaimed Barnabas, aghast.
"Though I won't swear it isn't seven."
"To be sure he is a very excellent tailor," Barnabas added.
"Gad, yes! and the fellow knows it! Then, let's see, there's another three hundred and fifty to the coach builders, how much does that make, Bev?"
"Six thousand, nine hundred and fifty pounds!"
"So much—deuce take it! And that's not all, you know."
"Not?"
"No, Bev, I dare say I could make you up another three or four hundred or so if I were to rake about a bit, but six thousand is enough to go on with, thank you!"
"Six thousand pounds is a deal of money to owe!" said Barnabas.
"Yes," answered the Viscount, scratching his chin again, "though, mark me, Bev, it might be worse! Slingsby, a friend of mine, got plucked for fifteen thousand in a single night last year. Oh! it might be worse. As it is, Bev, the case lies thus: unless I win the race some three weeks from now—I've backed myself heavily, you'll understand—unless I win, I am between the deep sea of matrimony and the devil of old Jasper Gaunt."
"And who is Jasper Gaunt?"
"Oh, delicious innocence! Ah, Bev! it's evident you are new to London. Gaunt is an outcome of the City, as harsh and dingy as its bricks, as flinty and hard as its pavements. Gad! most of our set know Jasper Gaunt—to their cost! Who is Jasper Gaunt, you ask; well, my dear fellow, question Slingsby of the Guards, he's getting deeper every day, poor old Sling! Ask it, but in a whisper, at Almack's, or White's, or Brooke's, and my Lord this, that, or t'other shall tell you pat and to the point in no measured terms. Ask it of wretched debtors in the prisons, of haggard toilers in the streets, of pale-faced women and lonely widows, and they'll tell you, one and all, that Jasper Gaunt is the harshest, most merciless bloodsucker that ever battened and grew rich on the poverty and suffering of his fellow men, and—oh here we are!"
Saying which, his Lordship abruptly turned down an unexpected and very narrow side lane, where, screened behind three great trees, was a small inn, or hedge tavern with a horse-trough before the door and a sign whereon was the legend, "The Spotted Cow," with a representation of that quadruped below, surely the very spottiest of spotted cows that ever adorned an inn sign.
"Not much to look at, my dear Bev," said the Viscount, with a wave of his hand towards the inn, "but it's kept by an old sailor, a shipmate of the Bo'sun's. I can at least promise you a good breakfast, and the ale you will find excellent. But first I want to show you a very small demon of mine, a particularly diminutive fiend; follow me, my dear fellow."
So, by devious ways, the Viscount led Barnabas round to the back of the inn, and across a yard to where, beyond a gate, was a rick-yard, and beyond that again, a small field or paddock. Now, within this paddock, the admired of a group of gaping rustics, was the very smallest groom Barnabas had ever beheld, for, from the crown of his leather postilion's hat to the soles of his small top boots, he could not have measured more than four feet at the very most.
"There he is, Bev, behold him!" said the Viscount, with his whimsical smile, "the very smallest fiend, the most diminutive demon that ever wore top boots!"
The small groom was engaged in walking a fine blood horse up and down the paddock, or rather the horse was walking the groom, for the animal being very tall and powerful and much given to divers startings, snortings, and tossings of the head, it thus befell that to every step the diminutive groom marched on terra firma, he took one in mid-air, at which times, swinging pendulum-like, he poured forth a stream of invective that the most experienced ostler, guard, or coachman might well have envied, and all in a voice so gruff, so hoarse and guttural, despite his tender years, as filled the listening rustics with much apparent awe and wonder.
"And he can't be a day older than fourteen, my dear Bev," said the Viscount, with a complacent nod, as they halted in the perfumed shade of an adjacent rick; "that's his stable voice assumed for the occasion, and, between you and me, I can't think how he does it. Egad! he's the most remarkable boy that ever wore livery, the sharpest, the gamest. I picked him up in London, a ragged urchin—caught him picking my pocket, Been with me ever since, and I wouldn't part with him for his weight in gold."
"Picking your pocket!" said Barnabas, "hum!"
The Viscount looked a trifle uncomfortable. "Why you see, my dear fellow," he explained, "he was so—so deuced—small, Bev, a wretched little pale-faced, shivering atomy, peeping up at me over a ragged elbow waiting to be thrashed, and I liked him because he didn't snivel, and he was too insignificant for prison, so, when he told me how hungry he was, I forgot to cuff his shrinking, dirty little head, and suggested a plate of beef at one of the à la mode shops. 'Beef?' says he. 'Yes, beef,' says I, 'could you eat any?' 'Beef?' says he again, 'couldn't I? why, I could eat a ox whole, I could!' So I naturally dubbed him Milo of Crotona on the spot."
"And has he ever tried to pick your pocket since?"
