Friday's Child (10 page)

Not only Sherry was awaiting them in the Church porch, but the Honourable Ferdy Fakenham as well, whom he had brought along to support him on this momentous occasion. Both gentlemen were very nattily attired in blue coats, pale pantaloons, gleaming Hessians, uncomfortably high shirt collars, and exquisitely arranged cravats, the Honourable Ferdy sporting, besides (for he was a very Tulip of Fashion), a long ebony cane, lavender gloves, and a most elegant buttonhole of clove pinks. It was Ferdy who had procured a nosegay for the bride to carry, and the bow with which he presented it to her had made him famous in Polite Circles.

“Hallo, Kitten, that’s a devilish fetching bonnet!” said the Viscount, by way of greeting. “But what the deuce made you late? You had best pay off the hack, Gil: no saying how long we shall be here.”

“No, Sherry. Keep the hack!” said Mr Ringwood firmly.

“Why? If we want a hack, we can call up another, can’t we?”

“The thing is, Sherry, there are one or two packages in it,” explained Mr Ringwood, a little guiltily.

The Viscount stared at him, and then took a look inside the vehicle. “One or two packages!” he exclaimed. “Good God! What the deuce possessed you to bring a lot of bandboxes to a wedding?”

“Oh, Sherry, they are things I bought at the Pantheon Bazaar!” said Miss Wantage. “And we had not time to take them to your lodging, and I am very sorry if you do not like it, but I didn’t buy the canary which I wanted!”

“My God!” said the Viscount, realizing his narrow escape.

“Told her you wouldn’t like a canary,” explained Mr Ringwood, with a deprecatory cough.

“I should think you might well!” replied his lordship. “Oh, well, it can’t be helped: the hack had best wait for us! Lord, if I hadn’t forgotten to present you, Ferdy! It’s Ferdy Fakenham, Kitten. He’s some sort of a cousin of mine, so you may as well call him Ferdy, like the rest of us. You’ re bound to see a lot of him. George Wrotham would have come along too, but we couldn’t bring him up to scratch. Sent you his compliments, and wished us both happy, or some such flummery.”

“Couldn’t face a wedding,” Ferdy said, shaking his head. “Comes too near the bone. Shook him badly, poor old boy, the mere sight of the licence! Gone off in the dumps again.”

Mr Ringwood fetched a sigh, but the Viscount was disinclined to dwell upon Lord Wrotham’s troubles, and proposed that they should stop dawdling about for all the fools of London to gape at, step into the Church, and settle the business. They all went in, therefore, and the business was, in fact, soon settled, without any other hitch than the discovery by the bridegroom, midway through the ceremony, that he had forgotten to purchase a ring. He rolled a frantically inquiring eye upon his cousin Ferdy, who merely gazed at him with dropped jaw, and the eyes of a startled fawn; and then, rendered resourceful through alarm, tugged off the signet ring on his own finger, and handed it over to the waiting cleric. It was much too large for Hero’s finger, but the glowing look she cast up at him seemed to indicate that she did not in the least resent his lack of foresight. It fell to Mr Ringwood’s lot to give the bride away, which he did with a somewhat self-conscious blush. Everyone signed the register; the Honourable Ferdy saluted the bride’s cheek with rare grace; Mr Ringwood kissed her hand; and the bridegroom confided in a relieved aside to his supporters that he thought they had brushed through it pretty well.

Once outside the Church again, the Viscount handed his wife into the hackney, and turned to consult his friends on the best way in which to spend the evening. Mr Ringwood stared at him very hard, and even Ferdy, who was not much given to the processes of reasoned thought, goggled a little at a suggestion that they should all foregather at Fenton’s for an early dinner, pay a visit to the theatre, and wind up an eventful day by partaking of a snug little supper at the Piazza.

“But, Sherry, dear boy! Lady Sheringham—wedding night—won’t want a party!” stammered Ferdy.

“Fudge! What the devil should we do, pray? Can’t spend the whole evening looking at one another!” said the Viscount. “Kitten, you’d like to go to the play with us, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, yes, do let us!” cried Hero at once. “I would like it of all things!”

“I knew you would. And you would like Gil and Ferdy to go along with us too, I dare say?”

“Yes,” agreed Hero, smiling warmly upon these gentlemen.

“Then that’s settled,” said the Viscount, getting into the hackney. “Fenton’s Hotel, coachman! Don’t be late, Gil!”

The vehicle drove off, leaving the Honourable Ferdy and Mr Ringwood to look fixedly at each other.

“Know what I think, Gil?” Ferdy asked portentously.

“No,” replied Mr Ringwood. “Damned if I know what
I
think!”

“Just what I was going to say!” said Ferdy. “Damned if I know
what
I think!”

Pleased to find themselves in such harmonious agreement, they linked arms in a friendly fashion, and proceeded down the road in the direction of Conduit Street.

“Dear little soul, you know,” presently remarked Mr Ringwood. “Seems to think the devil of a lot of Sherry.”

The slight uneasiness in his voice penetrated to Ferdy’s intelligence. He stopped suddenly and said: “I’ll tell you what, Gil!”

“Well, what?” asked Mr Ringwood.

Ferdy considered the matter. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “Better look in at Limmer’s, since we’re so close, and have a third of daffy!”

The bridal couple, meanwhile, were rattling over the cobbles in the direction of St James’s Street. The groom put his arm round the bride’s waist and said: “Devilish sorry I forgot the ring, Kitten! Buy you one tomorrow.”

“I like this one,” Hero said, looking down at it. “I like to have it because it is your very own.”

He laughed. “You wouldn’t keep it long! In fact, you’ll very likely lose it before the night’s out.”

“Oh no! I shall hold my finger crooked, so that it can’t drop off. Sherry, when your cousin said ‘Lady Sheringham’—did he mean
me
?”

“Of course he did. Though to tell you the truth, it sounded very odd to me too,” admitted his lordship.

Hero turned wide eyes upon him. “Sherry, I know I
am
Lady Sheringham, but it doesn’t seem possible! I have the horridest feeling that I shall suddenly wake up and find that it has been all a dream!”

“I know what you mean,” nodded his lordship, “though when I think of all the things I’ve had to do today it seems to me more like a nightmare.” He encountered a dismayed look, and said hastily: “No, no, not being married! I didn’t mean that! I dare say I shall like that very tolerably once I’ve grown used to it. But that Bishop of George’s! Do you know I had to swear an oath, or whatever they call it, that you had the consent of your guardians, Kitten?”

“But, Sherry, I haven’t!”

“No, I know that, but you wouldn’t have had me let a trifling circumstance like that stop me, would you? Besides, there’s no harm done: your precious Cousin Jane ain’t going to kick up a dust, you mark my words! She’ll be thankful to be so well rid of you, I dare say.”

Hero agreed to it, but a little doubtfully. The Viscount said in a bracing tone that what they both needed was a bottle of something to set them up.

They arrived presently at Fenton’s Hotel, to find that Bootle was already installed there, and had not only unpacked his master’s trunks, but had loftily instructed a chambermaid to perform the same office for my lady. As much to preserve his own dignity as Hero’s, he let drop, in the most casual way possible, the information that her ladyship’s maid had been smitten with the jaundice, leaving her mistress temporarily unattended. His grand manners, the slightly contemptuous glance he cast round the best suite of apartments in the hotel, and the nicety of taste which led him to rearrange the ornaments on the mantelpiece of the sitting-room which separated my lord’s from my lady’s bedchamber, quite overawed the chambermaid and the boots, and inspired them with a belief in the propriety of Lord and Lady Sheringham which only the appearance upon the scene of this erratic couple would dispel.

His lordship’s first act, on his arrival, was to ring for a waiter to bring up a bottle of burgundy, and another of ratafia; his second was to produce from one pocket a small package, which he handed over to his bride, saying as he did so: “Almost slipped my mind! There’s a wedding gift for you, brat: frippery things, but I’ll buy you better ones, once the blunt’s my own.”

"Oh!"
gasped Hero, gazing in incredulous delight at her first pair of diamond earrings. “Anthony, Anthony!”

“Good God, Kitten, they’re only trifles,” he expostulated, as she cast herself on his chest. “My dear girl, do have a care to my neckcloth! You’ve no notion how long it took me to get it to set just so!”

“Oh, I am so sorry, but how could I help it? Sherry, will you pierce my ears for me at once, so that I may wear them tonight?”

This, however, the Viscount did not feel himself competent to do. Hero’s face fell so ludicrously that he suggested that the ear-rings might very well be tied on with a piece of silk for the time being. She cheered up immediately, and by the time the waiter came back with the required refreshment, had achieved a result which her husband assured her would defy any but the narrowest scrutiny. They then toasted one another, and the Viscount was moved to declare that he was dashed if he didn’t believe that he had done a very good day’s work.

Later, when she appeared before him in the sea-green gauze, he stared at her in great surprise, and said: By Jove, he had never thought she could look so well! Encouraged by this tribute, Hero showed him a cloak of green sarsnet trimmed with swansdown, which she had purchased that morning, and upon his expressing his unqualified approval of this garment, confided, a little nervously, that she feared he might, when he came to see the bill, think it a trifle dear. The Viscount waved aside such mundane considerations; and they then went downstairs in perfect amity to receive their dinner guests.

It was evident from the expressions on their countenances that Mr Ringwood and the Honourable Ferdy thought that their friend’s bride did him credit. Each of these gentlemen had brought with him a wedding gift, the result of an earnest discussion which had taken place between them over two glasses of daffy at Limmer’s Hotel. The Honourable Ferdy had selected a charming bracelet for the bride; Mr Ringwood had chosen an ormolu clock, which he thought might come in useful. Hero accepted both offerings with unaffected delight, clasping the bracelet round her arm immediately, and promising the clock an honourable position on her drawing-room mantelpiece. This put the Viscount in mind of the chief problem at present besetting him, and as they all took their seats round the table in the dining-room, he again raised the question of his future establishment.

Mr Ringwood was firm in holding to it that the family mansion in Grosvenor Square was a good address, a circumstance by which he seemed to set great store; but Ferdy, while concurring in this pronouncement, gave it as his opinion that Sherry would have to throw all the existing furniture out into the road before embarking on the task of making the house fit to live in.

“Yes, by God, so I should!” exclaimed Sherry. “Most of the stuff has been there ever since Queen Anne, and I dare say longer, if we only knew. Oh, well! Hero will like choosing some new furnishings, so it don’t really signify.”

The Honourable Ferdy, who had been pondering at intervals all day how his cousin’s wife came by such a peculiar name, now introduced a new note into the conversation by saying suddenly: “Can’t make it out at all! You’re sure you’ve got that right, Sherry?”

“Got what right?”

“Hero,” said Ferdy frowning. “Look at it which way you like, it don’t make sense. For one thing, a hero ain’t a female, and for another it ain’t a
name
. At least,” he added cautiously, “it ain’t one I’ve ever heard of. Ten to one you’ve made one of your muffs, Sherry.”

“Oh no, I truly am called Hero!” the lady assured him. “It’s out of Shakespeare.”

“Oh, out of
Shakespeare,
is it?” said Ferdy. “That accounts for my not having heard it before!”

“You’re out of Shakespeare too,” said Hero, helping herself liberally from a dish of green peas.

“I am?” Ferdy exclaimed, much struck.

“Yes, in the
Tempest,
I think.”

“Well, if that don’t beat all!” Ferdy said, looking round at his friends. “She says I’m out of Shakespeare! Must tell my father that. Shouldn’t think he knows.”

“Yes, and now I come to think of it, Sherry’s out of Shakespeare too,” said Hero, smiling warmly upon her spouse.

“No, I’m not,” replied the Viscount, refusing to be dragged into these deep waters. “Named after my grandfather.”

“Well, perhaps
he
was out of Shakespeare, and that would account for it.”

“He might have been,” said Ferdy fair-mindedly, “but I shouldn’t think he was. Mind you, I never knew the old gentleman myself, but from what I’ve heard about him I don’t think he ever had anything to do with Shakespeare.”

“Very bad
ton,
my grandfather,” remarked the Viscount dispassionately. “Regular loose screw.
None
of the Verelsts ever had anything to do with Shakespeare.”

“Well, dare say you must know best, Sherry, but only think of
Anthony and Cleopatra!"
argued Hero.

“Anthony and who?” asked Ferdy anxiously.

“Cleopatra. You must know Cleopatra! She was a Queen of Egypt. At least, I
think
it was Egypt.”

“Never been to Egypt,” said Ferdy. “Accounts for it. But I know a fellow who was in Egypt once. Said it was a sad, rubbishing sort of a place. Wouldn’t suit me at all.”

Hero giggled. “Silly! Cleopatra is hundreds and hundreds of years old!”

“Hundreds of years old?” said Ferdy, astonished.

“Good God, you know what she means!” interpolated the Viscount.

Mr Ringwood nodded. “She’s a mummy,” he said. “They have ’em in Egypt.” He felt that this piece of erudition called for some explanation, and added: “Read about ’em somewhere.”