Friday's Child (15 page)

When Mr Fakenham joined the party, his presence was felt to be an advantage, as he was able to make a fourth at whist. Some convivial evenings were spent at the hunting-box, under the auspices of a hostess who, however little she might know of the uses of Polite Society, was learning to admiration how to become excessively popular with a party of young bloods. Formality very soon went by the board; she became Kitten to them all; and so accustomed did they grow to her presence at their sessions that they often forgot that she was in the room at all. But they usually remembered her before the party became too convivial for propriety, and then the Viscount would send her up to bed, informing her frankly that they were getting a trifle boosey. Upon one occasion, when he omitted to perform this ritual, she horrified Mr Ringwood by casting a knowledgeable eye over Mr Fakenham, and saying innocently: “Must I go now? I think Ferdy is quite disguised, don’t you?”

The Viscount shouted with laughter, but Mr Ringwood not only begged his hostess never to use such vulgar language, but later made representations to Sherry that they really must all of them be careful what they said in front of her.

A letter from Isabella, written from London, and conveying her felicitations to her dearest Hero, had the effect of breaking up the party. George was no sooner apprised of the Beauty’s return to the haunts of men than he left the greater part of the business which had brought him into the country undone, and posted back to town with the fiercely expressed intention of thrusting a spoke in his Grace of Severn’s wheel. Ferdy and Mr Ringwood took their departure a few days later, and the hunting-box felt sadly empty. The young couple received a morning call from kind Lord and Lady Sefton, during the course of which her ladyship promised Hero the entré to Almack’s when she should take up her residence in London. Sherry informed his wife that this connaissance was the greatest piece of good luck that could have befallen her, since (although he himself might find such company a trifle flat) there was no doubt that the approval of Lady Sefton would be of the greatest value to a lady making her debut in fashionable circles.

“Ten to one,” said Sherry carelessly, “she will have them all leaving their cards in Half Moon Street—Lady Jersey, Lady Cowper, Countess Lieven, Princess Esterhazy, and all their set, you know—and then you will be fixed all right and tight.”

By the time Mr Stoke wrote to apprise him that his new house stood ready to receive him, Sherry had had enough of the country, and not even the annoying intelligence, conveyed to him in a brief scrawl from his uncle Prosper, that his mother was still to be found in Grosvenor Square, availed to keep him longer away from the metropolis. He was under the obligation, too, of returning his watch to the Honourable Ferdy, this young gentleman having written to him from London that since this handsome timepiece was missing from his effects he would be glad if his cousin would recover it from his damned Tiger. Why Ferdy’s watch should exercise such a fascination over Jason no one knew. The Viscount was extremely incensed over his backsliding, and was not in the least mollified by Jason’s tearful explanation that to have the watch within his reach for days together was more than flesh and blood could stand. Matters would have gone ill indeed for Jason had not Hero intervened on his behalf. She had the happy thought of promising to bestow a timepiece upon him as a Christmas gift if he would but refrain, in the interim, from stealing Ferdy’s.

“Or anything else!” said Sherry sternly.

Jason sniffed, wiped his nose on his coat sleeve, and promised to behave impeccably. He further pronounced his guv’nor’s lady to be bang-up, which piece of elegant language Sherry assured her, masked a compliment of no mean order.

When the Sheringhams were set down at dusk one evening in Half Moon Street, they found that Mr Stoke had done his work well. Nothing could have been more charming or more tasteful than the disposition of the furniture in the little house. Hero was enchanted and ran from room to room, exclaiming how well the writing table looked, how pretty was the wallpaper in the drawing-room, how glad she was she had chosen the blue brocade instead of the green, and did not Sherry think that Ferdy had selected precisely the right furniture for his library? Both Ferdy and Mr Ringwood had called in Half Moon Street earlier in the day, Ferdy to leave a bouquet of flowers with the butler, and Mr Ringwood a canary in a gilded cage. Hero was so touched by this piece of thoughtfulness that she sat down at the tambour-top writing table before she had even removed her hat, and dashed off her first note, on the very elegant, gilt-edged paper provided by the competent Mr Stoke, and had it carried round immediately to Stratton Street by the pageboy.

No such agreeable surprise awaited the master of the house. The imposing kneehole desk in the room which his wife insisted on calling his library bore a collection of staggering bills. The Viscount was a trifle startled, not so much by his own expenditure as by Hero’s. He could not for the life of him see how she could have contrived to squander such sums merely upon furniture, but he handsomely made up his mind to level no reproach at her. Sundry accounts presented by milliners and mantua-makers made him whistle thoughtfully, but his previous experiences of such establishments precluded his feeling any extraordinary astonishment at the cost of a simple gown, or of a wisp of net and feathers fashioned into the semblance of a hat. He stuffed all the bills into a drawer, resolving to hand them over presently to his man of business for settlement. Anyone having an intimate knowledge of the Viscount’s career would have recognized at once that the sobering influence of marriage was already making itself felt, since a month ago he would have consigned them to the fire.

The young couple dined
tête-a-tête
at the fashionable late hour of eight o’clock on their first evening in their new home, sitting opposite one another in their smart dining-room, and waited on by a butler whose spare frame and pallid countenance seemed to indicate that he was of a suitably abstemious character. The dinner, which consisted of a broiled fowl with mushrooms, preceded by a dressed lobster and a delicacy of cockscombs served in a wine sauce, and followed by a pupton of pears, in the old style, and a trifle, was excellently cooked, and earned the Viscount’s praise. Hero, who had already been obliged to receive a stately visit from the superior being who presided over the kitchen, said in a very housewifely way that she was glad they had decided to take away the old fireplace from the kitchen, and to install a closed stove in its place.

The Viscount rather spoiled the effect of this utterance by grinning across the table at her, and demanding what the devil she knew about kitchen stoves. Hero twinkled merrily back at him, and replied: “Well, not very much, but Mrs Groombridge says that they are excellent contrivances, and there is a
great
saving of coal.”

“Well, that’s something, at all events,” said Sherry, putting up his glass to inspect the bottle the butler was exhibiting at his elbow. “No, not that. Bring up a bottle of sparkling champagne. You’ll like that, Kitten.” As the Viscount liked his wine to be very dry, Hero had to school her features to an expression of appreciation she was some way from feeling. That made his lordship laugh, but he told her that he could not permit her to be everlastingly maudling her inside with such stuff as ratafia, and bade her drink it up like a good girl. “A glass of wine with you, my lady!” he said, raising his glass. “Damme, we must drink to our first home, so we must!”

Under his instruction, Hero very correctly left him at the end of dinner, and withdrew to the drawing-room abovestairs, while he drank his port in solitary state. Since this was dull work, he soon joined her, dropping into one of the straw-coloured chairs, and stretching out his long legs towards the grate, where a small fire had been kindled, and saying, with a yawn, that there was a deal to be said for a fellow’s getting married after all.

“At least,” he added, “there would be, if you hadn’t bought such an uncomfortable set of chairs! What the deuce was Ferdy about to countenance it?”

“Oh, don’t you remember, Sherry? We bought these together, on that first day, when you went with me to choose our furniture.”

“Good God, I must have been foxed!”

“Well, perhaps you are sitting in the wrong one,” said Hero. “I wish you will try this one instead: indeed, it is very comfortable!”

The Viscount made no objection to changing places with her, and as he pronounced this second chair to be tolerably easy, she was perfectly satisfied.

Before the Viscount had had time to find an evening spent at his own fireside very flat, a knock sounded on the street door, and in a few minutes Sir Montagu Revesby’s card was brought up to Sherry. He commanded Groombridge to beg this late caller to step upstairs, and himself went out on to the landing to welcome him.

Sir Montagu came in, full of graceful apologies for intruding upon her ladyship so soon after her arrival in town. He had been imperfectly informed: would have left his card at the house that morning: trusted she would forgive such informality: he had come only to discover if Sherry liked to accompany him to a little meeting of a few friends in a house nearby.

“Brockenhurst begged I would prevail upon you to join us, if you should have returned to London, my dear Sherry, but I fear”—with a bow, and one of his ironic smiles in Hero’s direction—“I have come on a fruitless errand.”

“Oh, lord, no, nothing of the sort!” Sherry said. “You won’t mind my leaving you, will you, Kitten?”

Mindful of his warning that once they were settled in London they would not interfere with each other’s pursuits, Hero swallowed her disappointment, and assured him that she was on the point of retiring to bed.

“That’s right,” said his lordship. “I knew you would be tired after the journey.” He picked up one of her hands, dropped a kiss on her wrist, and took himself off with Sir Montagu.

Hero lifted her wrist to her cheek, and held it there for some moments after he had gone. She felt a strong inclination to cry, and concluded that she must indeed be tired, since she knew very well that she had nothing whatsoever to cry about, but, on the contrary, everything in the world to make her happy. On this elevating thought she retired to her bedchamber, and talked in a very cheerful way to her abigail while she was undressed and put to bed.

Sherry, who did not return to the house until the small hours, put in no appearance at the breakfast table. When he did emerge from his bedchamber, it was past eleven o’clock, and not only was he clad in a dressing-gown, but he still looked remarkably heavy-eyed. He said simply that they had had a pretty batch of it at Brockenhurst’s, and also that he was dipped a little at hazard. Altogether, Hero did not think that it would be wise to remind him that they had planned to wait upon his mother at noon. He retired again to his room, irritably demanding why the devil Bootle had not brought up the water for his shave; and Hero was just deciding that it would be pleasant to go for an airing in Hyde Park in her barouche, when the first of her morning callers knocked on the door.

It was Mrs Bagshot, bringing her two elder daughters in her train. She came sailing into the drawing-room, almost before Groombridge had had time to announce her, paused in the middle of the floor, and, after throwing an appraising glance round, uttered the one word: “Well!”

Hero rose from her chair in some confusion, and came forward, blushing faintly, and stammering: “C-cousin J-Jane! C-Cassy! Eudora! How do you do?”

“I wonder you can look me in the face!” said Mrs Bagshot. Her eyes ran over Hero’s high-necked gown of worked French muslin, with its double flounce and rows of tucks. “Upon my word!” she said. “I dare say you have never worn such a dress in your life!”

This was an unfortunate observation, since it gave Hero the opportunity to retort: “You must know that I have not, cousin!”

“Whatever have you done to your hair?” demanded Cassandra. “You look so strange! I should—scarcely have known you.”

“It is the very latest fashion,” replied Hero. “My maid did it.”

Mrs Bagshot gave a short laugh. “Fine feathers make fine birds! I see that you have set yourself up in the very latest mode. I suppose we shall have you setting up your carriage, and renting your box at the opera, in imitation of your betters. When I consider—However, I did not come to quarrel with you, and heaven knows I am thankful to see you creditably established, even though you may have had to accept an offer made to you in a fit of pique to do it. I am sure it would not surprise me to find that you are now too grand to recognize the humble cousins who gave you a home when you were left destitute upon the world.”

“No,” said Hero seriously. “Indeed, I am not so ungrateful! And I would be glad to try to find husbands for my cousins, if I could, only Sherry says—” She broke off short, colouring to the roots of her hair, the most comical expression of dismay on her face.

“And pray what may your husband say?” demanded Mrs Bagshot in menacing accents.

“I’ve forgotten!” said Hero desperately.

“I abhor prevarication,” remarked Eudora. “I am sure you need not fear to repeat what he said, for it does not matter a fig to us what such a rackety young man may say!”

Stung by this criticism of her idol, Hero retorted without hesitation: “Well, he said he wouldn’t have you in the house, because he doesn’t like you!”

Mrs Bagshot turned quite purple, and struggled in vain for words. Before she could find any at all adequate to the situation, Hero had said penitently: “Oh, I beg your pardon! But Eudora should not have said that about Sherry! Do, pray, sit down, Cousin Jane, and—and let me ring for Groombridge to bring some fruit, and a glass of wine!”

Mrs Bagshot coldly refused this offer of refreshment, but she condescended to seat herself on the sofa, remarking as she did so that she was sorry to see that her exalted position had not led Hero to mend her manners. Her daughters wandered about the room, inspecting the furniture, criticizing the colour of the hangings, and wondering how Hero could bear to have a canary deafening her with its odious noise. Hero replied to their strictures and exclamations with what patience she could muster, and tried to counter Mrs Bagshot’s extremely searching questions with dignity and civility.