‘H’m! Vidal’s bank,’ grunted Carlisle. ‘Shouldn’t play if I were you!’
Mr Comyn perceived my Lord Vidal at the end of the table, a glass at his elbow. His cravat was loosened, and a strand of lightly-powdered hair had escaped the riband that tied it in his neck. He wore a coat of purple velvet, heavily laced, and a flowered waistcoat, one or two of the buttons of which had come undone. He looked pale in the candle-light, and rather more dissipated than usual. He glanced up as Mr Comyn drew near the table, but his eyes, which seemed unusually brilliant, betrayed no recognition.
Carlisle tugged at Mr Comyn’s sleeve. ‘Better play pharaoh,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Vidal’s in a wild humour by the look of it. See who’s at the table? Oh! you wouldn’t know! Fellow beside Jack Bowling – red-faced fellow in a bag-wig. His name’s Quarles. There’s something of a bone lies between him and the Cub. There’ll be trouble before the morning. Best out of it.’
Mr Comyn regarded the red-faced gentleman with interest. ‘But I hardly suppose, my lord, that I could be concerned in the trouble,’ he said precisely.
‘Oh lord, no! Just some pother over a wench that Vidal snapped from under Quarles’s nose.’
‘I apprehend,’ said Mr Comyn, ‘that most of my Lord Vidal’s quarrels owe their existence to a female.’
He returned to the contemplation of the table. At Vidal’s right hand, Mr Fox lolled in his chair, busy with a gold toothpick. He raised a languid hand in greeting to Carlisle. ‘Coming in, my lord? Take the bank?’
A heap of gold and paper lay before Vidal. Carlisle shook his head. ‘Not I, Fox.’
The Marquis tossed off what remained in his glass. ‘I’ll throw you for it,’ he offered.
‘I advise against it, my lard,’ one of the players said mincingly. ‘Vidal has had the devil’s luck all this week.’
‘I’m not dicing to-night,’ Carlisle replied. ‘If you have a place at the table, Mr Comyn here is of a mind to play.’
My lord paused in the act of refilling his glass, and again looked up at Mr Comyn. ‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ he said carelessly. ‘I thought I knew you. Do you want to throw for the bank?’
‘I thank your lordship, but I would prefer to throw against the bank,’ replied Mr Comyn, and sat down beside Lord Rupert Alastair.
Lord Carlisle, having done what he could to prevent his protégé from joining the table, shrugged fatalistically, and withdrew.
‘Raise you to a hundred, gentlemen,’ Vidal said, and lay back in his chair, feeling in his capacious coat-pocket for his snuff-box. He pulled it out, and opened it, and took a pinch, flashing a quick look round the table. A gentleman in puce satin, and a very large stock buckle, protested that fifty was deep enough.
Mr Fox lifted weary eyebrows, and stretched out his hand for Vidal’s snuff-box. He regarded it closely, and remarked with a sigh: ‘Le Sueur. Email en plain. Very pretty. A hundred, I think you said?’ He put it down and picked up the dice-box.
Someone at the other end of the table said that the game went too deep, but was overruled.
‘Standing out, Cholmondley?’ asked the Marquis.
‘By God, I’m not, then! You’ve too many of my notes under your hand, Vidal. Keep it at fifty.’
‘Raising you to a hundred,’ the Marquis repeated.
Mr Fox took the dice. ‘A hundred it is, and those afraid of it stand out,’ he drawled. He called a main of eight and threw fives. ‘Rot you, Vidal,’ he said good-humouredly, and scribbled his name on a slip of paper, and pushed it across the table.
The red-faced gentleman seated midway down the table opposite Lord Rupert Alastair looked under his brows at the Marquis, and said loud enough to be heard: ‘I’d say it was time another man held the bank. This is a damned one-sided game.’
His neighbour, Mr Bowling, saw the glitter in the Marquis’s eye, and nudged him warningly. ‘Easy, now, easy, Montague,’ he said quietly. ‘Ever known the luck to run evenly?’
Someone standing amongst the spectators said beneath his breath: ‘Vidal’s three parts drunk. There’ll be trouble soon.’
Drunk the Marquis might be, but his speech and intellect were unimpaired. He lay back in his chair, one hand in his breeches pocket, the other with its long fingers curled round the stem of his wineglass; and his hard stare challenged the dissatisfied player. ‘Had enough, Quarles?’
The tone was an insult. Mr Fox took snuff, and looked sideways under the incredible arch of his brows. Lord Rupert picked up the dice-box. ‘Ah, you’re wasting time. I’ll call seven.’ He threw and lost. ‘Rabbit it, I’ve called ’em for the last hour, and the cursed dice turn up aces and threes.’
Montague Quarles said with bitter distinctness: ‘Enough? No, by God, but let someone else hold the bank! What do you say, gentlemen?’ He looked round the table, but met with no response till Lord Cholmondley said gruffly: ‘I’m satisfied. Egad, I hope we know how to stand against a run of bad luck. Too much talk, is what I say.’
The Marquis was still looking at Montague Quarles. ‘There’s a matter of some four thousand pounds in the bank. Throw you for it.’
‘Come, that’s fair enough!’ declared a bluff man on the Marquis’s left.
Mr Quarles said angrily: ‘Damned if I will! Not against you, my lord!’