Ainslee's Magazine/Lady Pam's Bridge Debts

by Alice Muriel Williamson

LADY PAM'S BRIDGE DEBTS

By MRS. C. N. WILLIAMSON*

JACK ADRIANCE admired Pamela Sylvain more than any girl he had ever seen, but he did not know her, and, though he had thought of several very clever ways of making her acquaintance, so far he had never been able, as he would have said himself, to “bring any of them off.”

He was in a Swiss hotel, and she was in the same hotel; so that on the face of it the matter looked simple enough; but appearances were in this case deceitful, although Jack Adriance was an American, with all the fertile-mindedness of his countrymen.

Perhaps the difficulty lay in the fact that she was not American. She was Lady Pamela Sylvain; and by dint of discreet questioning—Burke not being obtainable at Löwenfels—and unflagging observation, Adriance had discovered a great deal that was interesting about her.

Answers to inquiries had told him that she was the daughter of the late Earl of Revel, famous as having been the poorest peer in England; that her father had died when Lady Pamela was twelve; that she was now twenty; that she and her mother were the poor relations of a great many very distinguished but not particularly sympathetic people; that her relatives would doubtless suddenly remember how pretty and sweet she was, if she happened by any extraordinary stroke of fortune to make a good marriage; that the present Lord Revel, a distant cousin, was already very much married, thus there was nothing to hope or fear from that direction; that Pamela’s mother was saving money by paying a visit—she was said never to pay anything else—to a friend of her girlhood, who was frumpish and not in society, and could do nothing for Pamela; that no one knew why on earth Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell had asked Pamela to travel with her for the summer, though every one would very much like to know, as the lady hated girls, and there must be some reason.

This was all that three old maids and one middle-aged bachelor could tell Jack Adriance. But that indefatigable observation of his put him in possession of numerous other facts: that Lady Pamela was the prettiest creature on earth; that he was not the only male being who thought so; that a beast of a man, called Sir Thomas Potterson, was one of the others; that Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell was a great friend of Sir Thomas’; and that between them they scarcely gave any one else a chance to get within staring distance of Lady Pamela Sylvain.

Sir Thomas was very rich. If he had not been he would not have been called Sir Thomas, for there was the tache of a ready-made clothing business upon him, which had had to be erased as far as possible by an application of a hundred thousand charity-dinner turkeys and a huge check for a hospital.

Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell was youngish, and was still living on the reputation of great beauty, which now was perhaps only paint-deep, but kept her smart and popular. After Cowes was over, she usually disappeared for a month and buried herself in the youth-renewing mud of some German Bad, to appear again in Scotland invigorated and ready for conquests; but it was August, and here she was at Löwenfels, where hardly anybody in her set ever came—quite a tourists’ place—and she was chaperoning a girl for the first time in her life.

Jack Adriance was “doing Europe.” He was too young, and too good-looking, people thought, to be an American millionaire. He had no motor-car, no airs, no valet, and did not appear even to have dyspepsia, so his fellow guests in the best hotel of Löwenfels allowed him to amuse himself as he pleased without bothering themselves about him; and it amused him to watch Lady Pamela Sylvain. At least, it amused him at first; but very soon it passed beyond that stage. He thought of Pamela continually, and wondered how everything was going to end.

Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell made a point of not knowing any one stopping in her hotel, or any other hotel, except Sir Thomas Potterson, who was evidently an old acquaintance; so it seemed impossible for Adriance to be properly introduced; and Pamela never dropped her handkerchief or her book, or needed to have her life saved.

For a time Adriance hoped that Sir Thomas Potterson had come to Lowenfels for Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell. They walked up and down the wide hotel balcony in the moonlight together for several evenings running, after his arrival, talking in low voices and looking as if the world outside had no existence for them. Meanwhile, Pamela read a novel in Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell’s private sitting-room, where she could be seen dimly behind the thin curtains and between half-closed persiennes.

But on the third evening Adriance was smoking in an arbor which commanded a glorious view of lake and snow mountains, and was called the Minnie Haukrühe. Even there he was thinking about Lady Pamela, and how it would be possible to meet her in a way not too appallingly unconventional, when suddenly he heard her name spoken. “I say, Lady Pam, you’re the hardest girl to get on with I ever saw,” remarked a man’s voice just outside the arbor. “Isn’t she, Mrs. Leff?”

There was something in the tone which made Jack Adriance understand all at once that it was not for “Mrs. Leff” that Potterson had come to Switzerland. He would have liked very much to stay where he was; but, of course, he got up and walked out of Minnie Haukrühe at once.

In the path were Sir Thomas Potterson, Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell, and Lady Pamela Sylvain. As he passed, throwing away his cigarette, the girl looked up at him in the moonlight.

It was rather an impersonal sort of glance, but there was an appeal in it—the wistful, almost unconscious, appeal of lonely and helpless girlhood to something strong, which might be kind. She did not know what was in her eyes, Jack was sure, but he was instantly aware that she was not happy.

“Perhaps she’s homesick, poor child,” he thought; but if he could believe gossip, she had no home, and her mother was not the sort of woman for whom a young girl would yearn with heart-burnings.

He began to feel from this moment that—as he expressed it—there was “a game of some sort on between those two.”

“Those two” were Sir Thomas Potterson and Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell; and the more Jack saw of the party, the more he grew convinced that the woman had invited Lady Pamela Sylvain to visit her at Löwenfels with a special object.

After the two or three evenings of promenades on the balcony, Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell changed her tactics. She did everything to throw the man and the girl together, and clearly she was not the sort of person to give up for unselfish reasons a valuable admirer. She was a widow, therefore marriageable; she was extravagant, and the thousand or two a year with which she was credited would weigh next to nothing in the scales of her expenditure; therefore, if the millionaire had been within her own reach, she would not have deliberately handed him over to a younger and prettier woman.

In Jack Adriance’s mind a definite theory took form, founded on the steely glitter in Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell’s blue eyes, the hard lines round her Cupid’s bow mouth, and the quick frown of her dark brows whenever Lady Pamela snubbed Sir Thomas.

The young man believed that “Mrs. Leff” had been particularly hard up, and that the millionaire had offered to help her out of her difficulties if she gave him a chance to win this beautiful and high-bred girl, whose husband—whatever his own antecedents—would be connected with some of the best families in England.

Pamela Sylvain, if she were nothing but herself, would be a bride for any man to be proud of, Jack thought; but the daughter of an earl, too poor to choose as she would, was exactly the sort of wife a coarse-minded, ambitious parvenu like the retired clothes merchant would be likely to look for. He must know that he was physically unattractive, that he had an unconqueraably swaggering manner, that in moments of excitement his “h’s” trembled on their pedestal, and that it would take all his money to sweeten him as a dose in the mouth of such a girl as Pamela. His success would depend, he must see, and Jack could not help knowing, on the girl’s bringing up and disposition. If she loved the good things of the world better than she loved the real things of life, she would accept him by and by, and perhaps be contented. But Jack Adriance, standing afar off, and watching the game in which he had no chance to take a hand, felt it would be unbearable to him if he had to see it end in that way.

For some days “Lady Pam”—as he hated to hear Potterson call her—was apparently amenable to the plans being made for her. She played croquet with Sir Thomas, sat with him on the balcony after lunch, when Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell had excused herself, and even drove with him once or twice in his automobile. “She’s going to do it,” Jack said gloomily to himself; “that beast!”

But one evening Lady Pam did not come to dinner.

Jack Adriance, at his little table not far from Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell’s, in the great white dining-room, saw the lady raise her eyebrows and shrug her shoulders ever so slightly to Potterson, at a distance, then saw Potterson rise from his table and go to hers. A place was laid for him there, and he and “Mrs. Leff” talked earnestly to each other.

She appeared to be asking questions, which the big man answered sulkily, after which, it seemed—or Jack imagined it—that she was attempting consolation. Then it was the man’s turn to ask questions, the woman’s to answer, but she was gay and sportive, not sulky.

The next day Sir Thomas Potterson drove away in his motor-car, and did not return to dinner. Whether it was because of his absence or for some other reason, instead of going to her private sitting-room, as she usually did after taking coffee on the balcony, Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell remained there.

It was a wide balcony; nevertheless, as Jack Adriance paced up and down with a cigarette, he could hear snatches of conversation while passing the various groups of hotel guests. He heard Lady Pam ask Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell if she might not go in and finish her book; he heard the elder woman beg her to remain; and, coming back to their side of the balcony after a stroll, he was surprised to see Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell chatting very pleasantly with two ladies who, for ten days, had been visibly and vainly dying to know her.

He had curiosity enough to wish that he had been near to see how the acquaintance had come about; but he had stopped to speak with a man he knew slightly, and had been out of the way perhaps for half-an-hour. By the time that he had appeared on the scene again, the friendship had progressed far enough for talk of bridge, and Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell was saying that she missed her favorite pastime dreadfully. “Lady Pamela and I are so bored,” she remarked.

“But I don’t play bridge,” Lady Pam said.

“We will teach you—won’t we?” returned Mrs. Leff.

When Jack made his next round they had all vanished, and a bright light streaming through the lace curtains of Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell’s private sitting-room suggested that the two “climbers” had been raised to the seventh heaven by an invitation to an impromptu bridge party in distinguished society.

Jack, as it happened, had been nice to the elder and less interesting of the pair, and now his quick eye saw a chance for virtue’s reward. She might introduce him to Lady Pam. Several days passed, however, before he found an opportunity of inducing the lady to do so—it cost him a large bunch of roses, a box of chocolates, and four volumes of Tauchnitz—but all this time Sir Thomas Potterson and his motor-car had been missing, and Jack’s mind had been comparatively at ease.

It was after the gift of the two latest Tauchnitz that Miss Benson said: “Perhaps I could introduce you to Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell and that sweet little Lady Pamela if you are fairly decent at bridge. You see, my friend, Miss Miller, is going away, and dear Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell is so wedded to the game that I dare say she'll be glad of another hand.”

So it had been bridge, Jack said to himself. He could play well enough, though he liked poker better; but when he had been introduced to Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell on the balcony, where she and Lady Pam were having iced coffee, he could accept an invitation to play after dinner, without fear that he would be disgraced in the eyes of the divinity.

Lady Pam paid little attention to him at first, though he was a very good-looking young man. But he was her partner that night, and as they lost a good deal, their misfortunes drew them together. Lady Pam gave Jack several glances which, though merely expressive of an innocent fellow feeling, almost made the young man lose his head as well as his money.

The next afternoon Sir Thomas came back, and not only was there no more bridge, but Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell seemed somewhat inclined to forget the existence of the other players. Her bow to poor Miss Benson and to Jack Adriance on the way to lunch might better have been no bow at all. She even got between him and Pamela, so that the girl could not see him as they passed.

“We were stop-gaps,” Adriance said to himself angrily. “But I’m not going to be thrown over that way, like a used glove.”

There was a pine forest behind the hotel, which commanded a glorious view and was provided with several seats and summer-houses; but as a steep hill must be climbed to reach it, very few people went there. It seemed to Jack that the music of the wind among the trees would suit his mood that day, and after luncheon, when almost every one else was taking a siesta or reading a novel, he strode up to the woods, making vaguely furious plans for the punishment of Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell.

He had visited the place two or three times before, and remembered a rustic summer-house, walled in by great pine-trees and almost overhanging the edge of a cliff. If he chose to “grizzle” for half-an-hour in that seclusion, he could do so undisturbed.

One climbed a curious knoll, and then descended suddenly upon the summer-house. Jack plunged in, down a narrow path slippery with pine-needles, and came face to face with Lady Pam.

If only she had been looking at the view, she would have had her back to him as he entered, and then he would not have known that she was crying. But she was past caring for views, and was making use of the summer-house as a refuge. She had her head on her arms, flung out across the rickety rustic table, and was sobbing wofully.

If it had been any other girl, probably Jack Adriance would have gone out again faster than he came in, but this girl’s grief was more to him than the united wailing of all the other women on earth would have been. He could not endure to go quietly out and leave her to bear it alone. How thankful he was now that, at least in a sort of way, he knew her.

“Why, Lady Pamela!” he stammered. “Do forgive me. But—can’t I do something?”

The girl looked up, startled, her cheeks flushed, her beautiful auburn hair tumbled. “No—no, thank you,” she choked, trying to be polite. “It’s nothing. Please go.”

“I can’t. I simply can't,” he said, standing still in the doorway. “Look here, Lady Pamela, don’t think me a presumptuous beast for staying here when you tell me to go; but you know it isn’t as if I were a stranger.”

“I’ve only known you since yesterday,” murmured the girl, trying to dry her eyes with a soaked handkerchief.

“But I’ve known you for a fortnight-ever since I’ve been here; and there hasn’t been a day when I wouldn’t have given all I had just to meet you. But I won’t talk of that. It’s got nothing to do with this. Lady Pamela, perhaps we Americans are made differently from other men. I don't know; but I do know we just can’t see a woman cry without wanting to cut off our right hands to help her.”

She promptly began to cry again, and hid her face, which gave Jack courage.

“Perhaps I could help, you know,” he went on. “I guess you're alone here, aren't you, except for your friend, Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell, and——”

“My friend!” Lady Pam echoed bitterly. And Jack caught at the cue.

“Well, you might let me be your friend, then. Girls always let us be their friends in our country. Has anybody been treating you badly? Because if they have——”

“No,” she broke in, with a little miserable, babyish gurgle. “I’ve been dreadfully foolish, and I’ve got to pay for it, that’s all. Oh—oh, such a price!”

“You sha’n’t pay,” exclaimed Jack, almost fiercely.

She looked up surprised, her gray eyes swimming.

“Oh, but I shall have to—somehow. It’s a debt of honor.” She would have snatched back her own impulsive answer if she could, but Adriance was too quick for her—and his mind leaped ahead of his words.

“Is it bridge?” he asked.

“You—you have no right——” she began miserably; but he cut her short.

“I have a right, because you’re a young girl, and I’m a man, and can’t stand by to see you—cheated.”

“There’s no question of cheating. But—oh, well, since you are so kind, and take an interest, I—I wonder if it would be very bad for me to talk to you about it, and ask your advice. You see, I’ve nobody else. And—and Americans are different, aren't they? I’ve always heard they are.”

“Of course we are,” said Jack stoutly.

“Well, Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell has been teaching me to play bridge the last few days. I'd never played before. Mother hadn’t cared for me to learn. And oh, I’ve lost such a lot of money! I didn’t realize how much till to-day. And I thought, at least, she would give me time. There’s a little jewelry I could sell. That would go toward it. And I might have saved it somehow. But she says debts like this must be paid at once, and she can’t wait, because she is hard up. And if I don’t pay she'll telegraph to my mother. Oh, it’s all so dreadful! It’s like a bad dream. But I can’t wake up.”

“It’s only a bad dream, and you will wake up,” said Jack, carefully feeling his way. “You——”

“I shall wake to worse things.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I oughtn’t to tell you. But—but it’s the only way out of it, and that seems the worst of all. I can’t tell you what it is.”

“You don’t need to tell me,” said Jack, with a sudden flash of enlightenment. “I see the whole game. It’s Potterson. Potterson wants to pay for you.”

“He wants to marry me,” amended Pamela, somewhat indignantly.

“Of course. Who wouldn't? I mean, the whole thing is a—what one calls a ‘put up job.’ They’ve arranged it between them, Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell and Potterson.”

“Oh, how dreadful! If I thought so, I—I’d run away from Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell this very minute. But—I’m afraid I oughtn’t to be talking to you of such things.”

“I’m sure you ought; I shouldn’t wonder if I’d been created for this very purpose, and nothing else. It would be quite worth while to have been born for it—if I can help you. And I know I can, if you'll be kind, and let me.”

“Would you call that being kind? Only, I don’t see how you could help me.”

“I do. Lots of ways.”

“Oh, I hope you’re not going to offer—I can’t even say it. That would spoil everything in a moment.”

“I know what you're thinking about, of course. No, I won't offer that. There are other means.”

“I can’t see them. Everything is black before my eyes.’

“Everything is red before mine when I think of—Potterson. You will trust me, and let me be your friend, won’t you? You see, knowing people doesn’t depend on how long ago you were introduced.”

“No, I suppose not. I do trust you. There’s something about you so—so dependable, I can’t help it.”

“Thank you. That’s the best compliment I ever had. Now, will you answer me a few questions, and believe that I don’t ask ’em because I’m curious or pushing, but because I want to know just how to work at—perhaps—blocking somebody’s game?”

She nodded, smiling faintly. And her faintest smile had a hint of dimples in it.

“Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell has thrown you a good deal with Sir Thomas, hasn’t she?”

“Yes,”

“She wanted to give him a chance with you.”

“Perhaps. She seems to like him. She was always saying nice things to me about him.”

“And she was angry when you refused him?”

“Oh, how did you know he had—that I——”

“I guessed.”

“Well, she thought I was very stupid, and tried to persuade me, but I said I couldn’t do it. I’d rather be a governess—or anything.”

“Then he went away, as a part of the game, to make himself of more importance when he came back; and she picked up some people, and you played bridge. And Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell has let you in for a lot of money. And you don’t see how you can pay; and now Sir Thomas has appeared, and proposed again, and——”

“Yes. That's exactly how everything happened.”

“Well, if you'll excuse my saying so, I believe the whole business was planned, and Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell has been paid, and will be paid more if she can bring this thing off. I wouldn't shock you by making such an accusation against a person once a friend of yours if I didn’t want you to see that these people aren't playing fair. They deserve anything. That’s to begin with: what comes next is to get you out of the scrape.”

“Oh, but how is it to be done, unless I promise to mar——”

“Just sit tight and watch me do it all, if you please, Lady Pamela.”

She asked no more questions, but dried her eyes, shook hands with her champion, and thought about him constantly. Though she obeyed his directions and watched, nothing much seemed to happen, except that the rumor began to run around the hotel that the young American who seemed so unassuming was a millionaire, after all. Pam wondered if the rumor were part of the plot; for he seemed much too nice to be a real millionaire.

But Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell remained blissfully ignorant that there was a plot; therefore she had no difficulty in believing the rumor; and decided—though he was no longer wanted to take a hand at bridge—that she would not drop Mr. Adriance, after all; if he were rich, there was no knowing when he might not be useful.

Therefore, when he proposed teaching her his national game of poker, she accepted with pretty enthusiasm. They played, and she was so lucky that she loved the game. She often held threes, flushes, and fours; when there was a jack-pot she was almost sure to win it.

But just at this point fortune turned, not a cold shoulder, but an uncompromising back. Before she knew “where she was,” Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell owed Mr. Jack Adriance two hundred pounds.

What to do she did not know. Pam had not yet been forced into accepting Sir Thomas Potterson, by way of paying her bridge debts—though her decision could not be postponed for long—therefore, until all was settled, the man would neither give more nor lend. He was hard as nails. So Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell laughed, and said to Jack Adriance: “What a good thing for me that I was just learning—that we weren’t playing for money!”

“But you took mine this afternoon,” said he.

“That—-that was different,” Mrs. Leff brazened it out.

“I don’t see it. I’m afraid you'll have to pay, Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell.”

“What nonsense! I tell you we were playing for chips.”

“Those chips may prove expensive.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that if you don’t pay me, I mean to make things disagreeable for you. I can, you know. In a few days I'm due at the Duke of Northmoorland’s place, in Dumbartonshire——”

“What, you know them?”

“The duke and duchess visited me at Newport.”

“You wouldn’t injure a woman?”

“You don’t mind injuring a young girl.

“Pam has——”

“Told me nothing. I guessed. Tell her you were only joking about the money, send Sir Thomas Potterson about his business—you see, I’ve guessed that, too—and this evening’s wiped off the slate. Otherwise——”

“You are cruel.”

“Anyhow, I’m obstinate. The duchess hates——”

“Oh, Pam shall know I was only joking.”

In Mrs. Fox-Leffingwell’s opinion, Jack Adriance was a blackmailer. In Lady Pamela Sylvain’s, he was a knight of chivalry—almost uncomfortably chivalrous, indeed, for he did not propose until he was as certain as a man can ever be of such matters that there was no danger the girl would accept him out of sheer gratitude.

He was in doubt about this for so long that poor Pam grew pale and thin; for it was not until she had been at home with her mother some time that he dared to speak. But then it came right in the end, even with Lady Revel; for he did not need to play poker for a living. In spite of his youth, his good looks, and his good health, he was a real millionaire. His wife could play bridge for five guinea points and lose every day, if she liked; but for some reason or other Lady Pamela Adriance has never been fond of bridge.

• Alice Muriel Williamson