Eleven
From the Daffy Club to Limmer’s Hotel in Conduit Street was an inevitable step for any young gentleman interested in the Fancy to take.
Here were to be found all the Pets of the Ring, and the Corinthians who patronised them.
Bertram went there under the auspices of Mr Scunthorpe, who was anxious to turn his friend’s thoughts away from more dangerous haunts.
He had begun to acquire acquaintances in London, and was thus in the proud position of exchanging greetings with several of the men present.
He and Mr Scunthorpe sat down in one of the boxes, and Mr Scunthorpe painstakingly pointed out to him all the notabilities he could see, including a very down-the-road looking man who, he whispered, could be trusted to tip a man the office what to back in any race.
He then excused himself, and bore down upon this knowledgeable person, and became absorbed in conversation with him.
While he was thus engaged, Bertram saw Mr Beaumaris stroll in with a party of friends, but as he had by this time fully grasped the exalted position occupied by the Nonpareil he was flattered beyond measure when, after raising his glass and regarding him through it for a moment, Mr Beaumaris walked across the sanded floor, and sat down at his table, saying with a slight smile: ‘Did I not meet you in the Park the other day? Mr – er – Anstey, I believe?’
Bertram acknowledged it, flushing shyly; but when Mr Beaumaris added casually: ‘You are related to Miss Tallant, I collect?’ he made haste to deny any relationship, adding that Miss Tallant was quite above his touch.
Mr Beaumaris accepted this without comment, and asked him where he was putting up in town.
Bertram saw no harm in disclosing his direction, or even in telling Mr Beaumaris that this was his first visit to the Metropolis.
It was the expressed opinion of Mr Jack Carnaby that the Nonpareil was a haughty, disagreeable kind of man, but Bertram was unable to trace the least sign of haughtiness, or of reserve, in his manners.
Mr Beaumaris’s intimates could have informed Mr Tallant that while no one could be more snubbing, no one, on the other hand, could be – when he chose – more sympathetic.
In less than no time, Bertram, forgetting his bashfulness, was confiding far more to his grand new acquaintance than he had the least idea of.
Mr Beaumaris, himself a Melton man, complimented him on his seat on a horse, and any barrier Bertram might have raised between himself and the author of his sister’s predicament crumbled at this touch.
He was led on to describe the country over which he hunted, the exact locality of Heythram, and his own impossible ambitions, without having the smallest suspicion that all this information was being skilfully extracted from him.
He told Mr Beaumaris about Smalls, and his hopes of adorning the Home Office, and when Mr Beaumaris said, with a humorous lift to one eyebrow, that he should not have supposed him to have had parliamentary ambitions, he blurted out his real ambition, ending by saying wistfully: ‘But it can’t be, of course.
Only I would have liked of all things to have been able to have joined a cavalry regiment! ’
‘I think you would do very well in a cavalry regiment,’ agreed Mr Beaumaris, rising, as Mr Scunthorpe came back to the table.
‘Meanwhile, do not draw the bustle with too much of a vengeance during this visit of yours to London!’ He nodded to Mr Scunthorpe, and walked away, leaving that gentleman to explain to Bertram with the utmost earnestness just how greatly he had been honoured.
But Mr Beaumaris, quelling the ecstatic advances of his canine admirer, an hour or two later, said: ‘If you had any real regard for me, Ulysses, you would be greeting me with condolences rather than with these uncalled-for raptures.’
Ulysses, considerably plumper, and with his flying ear more rebellious than ever, and his tail even more tightly curled over his back, stretched worshipfully before the god of his idolatry, and uttered an encouraging bark.
After that he bustled to the door of the library, and plainly invited Mr Beaumaris to enter and partake of refreshment there.
Brough, tenderly relieving his master of his long cloak, and his hat and gloves, remarked that it was wonderful how knowing the little dog was.
‘It is wonderful what encouragement he has received from my staff to continue to burden me with his unwanted presence in my house!’ retorted Mr Beaumaris acidly.
Brough, who had dealt with Mr Beaumaris for many years, permitted himself to give what in a lesser personage would have been a grin, and to say; ‘Well, sir, if I had known you wanted him chased off, I’m sure I’d have done my best!
Not but what he’s so devoted to you that I doubt if he’d have gone, setting aside that it would go to my heart to chase off a dog that handles Alphonse like this one does. ’
‘If that misbegotten animal has been upsetting Alphonse, I’ll wring his neck!’ promised Mr Beaumaris.
‘Oh, no, sir, nothing of that sort! When you’re out, and Ulysses comes downstairs (as come he does), he behaves to Alphonse as though he hadn’t had a bite to eat in a month, nor wouldn’t think of touching so much as a scrap of meat he found on the kitchen floor.
Well, as I said to Mrs Preston, if ever a dog could speak, that one does, telling Alphonse as plain as a Christian that he’s the only friend he’s got in the world.
Quite won Alphonse over, he has. In fact, when two nice loin chops was found to be missing, Alphonse would have it the under-cook was accusing the dog of having stolen them only to cover up his own carelessness, and Ulysses sitting there looking as if he didn’t know what a chop tasted like.
He buried the bones under the rug in your study, sir, but I have removed them. ’
‘You are not only an ill-favoured specimen,’ Mr Beaumaris informed Ulysses severely, ‘but you have all the faults of the under-bred: toadeating, duplicity, and impudence!’
Ulysses sat down to relieve the irritation of a healing wound by a hearty scratch.
He was rebuked, and since he had heard that note in Mr Beaumaris’s voice before – as when he had expressed a vociferous desire to share his bedchamber with him – he stopped scratching, and flattened his ears placatingly.
Mr Beaumaris poured himself out a glass of wine, and sat down with it in his favourite chair.
Ulysses sat before him, and sighed deeply.
‘Yes, I daresay,’ said Mr Beaumaris, ‘but I have something better to do than to spend my time spreading ointment on your sores. You should remember, moreover, that you cannot be permitted to meet your benefactress again until you are entirely healed.’ Ulysses yawned at him, and lay down with his head on his paws, as one who found the conversation tedious.
Mr Beaumaris stirred him with one foot. ‘I wonder if you are right?’ he mused.
‘A month ago I should have been sure of it. Yet I let her saddle me with a foundling-brat, and a mongrel-cur – you will forgive my plain speaking, Ulysses! – and I am now reasonably certain that neither of you is destined to be the most tiresome of my responsibilities. Do you suppose that that wretched youth is masquerading under a false name for reasons of his own, or in support of her pretensions? Do not look at me like that! You may consider that experience should have taught me wisdom, but I do not believe that it was all a clever plot to inveigle me into declaring myself. I am not even sure that she regards me with more than tolerance. In fact, Ulysses, I am not very sure of anything – and I think I will pay my grandmother a long overdue visit.’
In pursuance of this resolve, Mr Beaumaris sent for his curricle next morning. Ulysses, who had shared his breakfast, bundled ahead of him down the steps of his house, leaped into the curricle, and disposed himself on the passenger’s seat with all the air of a dog born into the purple.
‘ No! ’ said Mr Beaumaris forcibly. Ulysses descended miserably from the curricle, and prostrated himself on the flag-way.
‘Let me tell you, my friend,’ said Mr Beaumaris, ‘that I have a certain reputation to maintain, which your disreputable appearance would seriously jeopardise! Do not be alarmed! – I am not, alas, going out of your life for ever!’ He climbed into the curricle, and said: ‘You may stop grinning, Clayton, and let ’em go! ’
‘Yes, sir!’ said his groom, obeying both these behests, and swinging himself expertly up onto the curricle as it passed him. After a minute to two, having twice glanced over his shoulder, he ventured to inform Mr Beaumaris that the little dog was following him.
Mr Beaumaris uttered an oath, and reined in his reluctant pair.
The faithful hound, plodding valiantly along, with heaving ribs, and several inches of tongue hanging from his parted jaws, came up with the curricle, and once more abased himself in the road.
‘Damn you!’ said Mr Beaumaris. ‘I suppose you are capable of following me all the way to Wimbledon! It now remains to be seen whether my credit is good enough to enable me to carry you off. Get up!’
Ulysses was very much out of breath, but at these words he mustered up enough strength to scramble into the curricle once more.
He wagged a grateful tail, climbed onto the seat beside Mr Beaumaris, and sat there panting blissfully.
Mr Beaumaris read him a short lecture on the evils of blackmail, which sorely tried the self-control of his groom, discouraged him peremptorily from hurling a challenge at a mere pedestrian dog in the gutter, and proceeded on his way to Wimbledon.