The Grand Sophy Read online

  Sophy, who had an excellent memory, instantly recognized the 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 always is unplaced,’ she observed. ‘He says also that if you game when your pockets are to let you will lose. It is only when you are very well-breeched that you may expect to win. Sir Horace is always right!’

  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 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 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!’

  ‘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 something 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 I daresay there would be the deuce of a kick-up, and I should be abused as though I were a pickpocket! Grandfather Stanton-Lacy left it to me: stupid sort of thing, I 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, but 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 money-lender: 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