Friday's Child (42 page)

Upon leaving Grillon's Hotel, Sherry betook himself home to Half Moon Street, meeting on the way Lord Wrotham, who was driving his sulky down Piccadilly towards St James’s Street. The Viscount hailed him and he drew up. His restless, handsome countenance betrayed no pleasure in the encounter, however; and he greeted his friend with a scowl and a curt: “Well, what?”

“Oh, the devil! are you in the sullens again?” retorted Sherry. “What a fellow you are, George! I’ve a deuced good mind not to tell you something you’d give a deal to hear!”

George shrugged his shoulders. “Do as you please! I don’t know what should have happened to put you in spirits. When last I saw you—”

“Never mind that!” interrupted Sherry. “If you wanted to pick a quarrel with me, you should have done it then, for by God, I was in the humour to quarrel with anyone who offered! Change my mind now. Thought you’d like to know the Beauty is back in town.”

George made as if to give his horse the office to start. “If you have come to smash up to me merely to tell me that, you have wasted your time! She might be in Jericho for aught I care!”

“Point is she ain’t in Jericho. She’s on her way to Bath with my mother. I am escorting the pair of them there tomorrow.”

The rigid look was wiped suddenly from Lord Wrotham’s face. “What?” he ejaculated.

“True as I stand here! But that ain’t what I wanted to tell you. Severn did come up to scratch.”

George’s brilliant eyes were now fixed on his face, in an expression of painful eagerness. “Do you tell me she refused him?”

“That’s it. Said she had liked the notion of being a duchess, but when she thought of having to live with Severn all her life, she couldn’t stomach it. Can’t say I blame her.”

“I don’t believe it!”

“Well, you may do so. I’ve known Bella Milborne all my life. Very truthful girl—a dashed sight too truthful, I used to think, when we were youngsters! Besides, she told me not to repeat it. Thinks Severn wouldn’t wish to have it known he’d been rejected. Deuce take it, I never thought I should live to feel sorry for the Incomparable, but there’s no getting away from it: she’s looking downright peaky! Told me she was in disgrace with Mrs Milborne, and her father and my mother were the only people to have been kind to her. Told me something else, too, and I’ll swear she meant it!”

“What else did she tell you?” demanded George.

Sherry grinned up at him. “Wouldn’t you like to know? Think I’m going to betray a lady’s confidence? I’m not!”

George drew a deep breath and sat staring straight between his horse’s ears. After a moment he recollected the first of Sherry’s disclosures, and transferred his intent gaze to his face again. “You said she was on her way to Bath with your mother!”

“Well, why the devil shouldn’t she be?”

“But you said you was going there too!”

“So I am. My mother’s afraid of highwaymen, or some such flummery.”

George frowned at him. “She can hire outriders!”

“That’s what I told her, but nothing will do for her but to have me to go with her.”

George’s eyes were beginning to kindle. “Oh, indeed? It’s something new, by God it is! for you to be dancing attendance on your mother, Sherry! And let me tell you now that if you are meaning to have a touch at Isabella again—”

“Go and take a damper, you fool!” retorted Sherry. “I’m a married man! What’s more, if I did mean to have a touch at her, I wouldn’t tell you she was on her way to Bath!”

Mollified, George begged pardon, explaining that he was so worn down that he hardly knew what he was saying. Sherry accepted this, and would have taken his leave had not George detained him to say: “I wouldn’t go to Bath, if I was you, Sherry. You don’t like the place. If Lady Sheringham would allow me to take your—”

“Well, she wouldn’t,” interrupted Sherry. “Besides, I’ve got a fancy to go there.”

“Why?” demanded George suspiciously.

“What the deuce has it to do with you? Tired of London. Not been feeling quite the thing. Need a change.”

"Yes! You will drink the waters, no doubt!” said George sardonically.

“I might,” agreed Sherry. “No saying what I may not do—except one thing! Make yourself easy: I don’t mean to make love to the Incomparable!”

And with this, he strode on down Piccadilly, leaving George in a good deal of consternation.

George drove slowly on, turned down into St James’s Street, and had almost reached Ryder Street, where he lodged, when he bethought himself of Mr Ringwood. After all, it was Gil who had taken Kitten down to Bath, and it must be for Gil to decide what was now to be done. He turned his sulky and drove back in the direction of Stratton Street. Sherry had rounded the corner of Half Moon Street by this time, and was out of sight. George drove up to Mr Ringwood’s lodging called a loafer to hold his horse, and sprang down from the sulky.

The door of Mr Ringwood’s lodging was opened to him by the retired gentleman’s gentleman who owned the house, who conveyed to him the intelligence that Mr Ringwood was out of town.

“Out of town!” exclaimed George indignantly. “What the devil ails him to be out of town, I should like to know?”

The owner of the house, being accustomed to the vagaries of the Quality, and knowing this particular member of the Quality of old, showed no surprise at this unreasonable explosion, but said civilly that Mr Ringwood had gone into Leicestershire for a day’s hunting, and was not expected to return until the morrow.

“Confound him!” muttered George. “Taken his man with him, I suppose?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“He would!” said George savagely. “Now what am I to do?”

Mr Ford, not deeming that any answer was expected of him, discreetly held his peace. George stood glowering for a few minutes, and then said, with all the air of a man who has taken a momentous decision: “I’ll leave a note for him!”

Mr Ford bowed, and at once ushered him into Mr Ringwood’s parlour. George sat down at the desk in the window, cast Cocker, the
Racing Chronicle,
and several copies of the
Weekly Dispatch
on to the floor, drew forward the ink-well, found, after considerable search amongst a litter of bills and invitations, a sheet of notepaper, and dashed off a hurried letter.

"Dear Gil,"
he wrote,
"The devil’s in it now, and no mistake, for Sherry’s off to Bath tomorrow with his mother and Miss Milborne. I see nothing for it but to post down there ahead of him, to warn Lady Sherry, in case she does not desire to see him. I shall leave town tonight. Yours, etc., Wrotham."

His lordship then folded this missive, affixed a wafer to it, wrote Mr Ringwood’s name on it in arresting characters, propped it up against the clock on the mantelpiece, and departed. He felt that in going to apprise Hero of her husband’s approaching visit to Bath, he would be acting with extreme propriety; and the circumstance of this particular deed of friendship’s happening to coincide with his own paramount desire to repair to Bath was nothing more (he told himself) than a happy chance.

While George was making these arrangements, Sherry had astonished his man, Bootle, by commanding him to have everything in readiness for a journey to Bath by an early hour on the following morning. He was rather vague about the probable length of his stay in this watering-place, and from never having been obliged to pack for himself, he could not conceive why Bootle should think this a matter of even trifling interest. He decided to drive himself down in his curricle, since this would frustrate at the outset any attempt on his parent’s part to force him into sitting with her in the family travelling coach. So Jason and his groom had immediately to be warned, and by the time this had been done, and the groom given his orders to arrange for suitable changes of horses at the various stages, it was going on for eight o’clock, and the Viscount began to think of his dinner. Since Hero’s disappearance it had become increasingly rare for him to dine at home. On this evening, so firmly persuaded was he that he at last had the clue to Hero’s whereabouts, he felt cheerful enough to have eaten his dinner in Half Moon Street, had Mrs Bradgate made any preparation to meet so unexpected an eventuality. As she had not, he was obliged to go out again. He walked down to White’s and ordered the most sustaining meal he had been able to fancy for many weeks. He was finishing it when his cousin Ferdy strolled into the coffee-room. Ferdy was engaged with a party of friends, but as they had not yet put in an appearance, he sat down beside Sherry and joined him in a glass of burgundy.

“Care to see a little cocking tomorrow night, Sherry, dear old boy?” he asked, sipping his wine.

“Can’t,” responded Sherry briefly. “I’m off to Bath.”

Ferdy choked. It took a great deal of backslapping to restore him, and when he was at last able to catch his breath again, his eyes were watering, and his countenance was alarmingly flushed.

“Well, what the deuce!” exclaimed Sherry, eyeing him in surprise.

“Crumb!” gasped Ferdy.

“Crumb? You weren’t eating anything!”

“Must have been,” said Ferdy feebly. “What takes you to Bath, Sherry?”

“My mother. She’s putting up at Grillon’s with the Incomparable. Both going to Bath to drink the waters. I’m to escort ’em.”

Ferdy gazed at him in dismay. “I wouldn’t do it, Sherry,” he said. “You won’t like it there!”

“Well, if I don’t like it, I can come back, can’t I?”

“Much better not go at all,” said Ferdy. “Very dull sort of a place these days. Don’t even waltz there. Won’t like the waters either.”

“Good God, I ain’t going to drink “em!”

“Pity to miss the cocking! Very good match!” Ferdy said, faint but pursuing.

“I tell you I’m going to escort my mother to Bath!” Sherry said impatiently. “What the deuce ails you, Ferdy? Why shouldn’t I go to Bath?”

“Just thought you might not care for it, dear boy! No offence! Did you say the Incomparable was going too?”

“Going to bear my mother company.”

“Oh!” said Ferdy, thinking this over painstakingly. “Well, that settles it: much better not go, Sherry! If the Incomparable goes, Revesby will, and you won’t like that.”

“I suppose Bath is big enough to hold us both. In fact, if he means to hang about Bella’s apron strings, it’s as well I should go!”

Ferdy gave it up. He withdrew a few minutes later to join his friends, and Sherry went home. But Ferdy’s friends found him preoccupied that evening. He sat in a brown study over dinner, followed the party in a trancelike fashion to the card-room, and there paid so little attention to the game that his brother accused him of being castaway. Their host, considering the question dispassionately, shook his head. “Not castaway, Duke. Very affectionate as soon as he’s a trifle disguised. Not affectionate tonight. You quite well, Ferdy, old fellow?”

“Had a shock,” Ferdy said. “Saw Sherry tonight.”

“Sherry?” said the Honourable Marmaduke.

“My cousin Sherry,” explained Ferdy.

“Dash it, he’s my cousin too, ain’t he?” said Marmaduke. “You’re as dead as a house, Ferdy!”

“He may be your cousin too,” said Ferdy, not prepared to dispute this, “but it wouldn’t have given you a shock. No reason why it should. Sherry’s going to Bath.”

Marmaduke stared at him. “Why?” he asked.

“Just what I’ve been wondering all the evening, Duke. You know what I think? Fate! That’s what it is: fate! There’s a thing that comes after a fellow: got a name, but I forget what it is. Creeps up behind him, and puts him in the basket when he ain’t expecting it.”

“What sort of a thing?” inquired his host uneasily.

“I don’t know,” replied Ferdy. “It ain’t a thing you can see.”

“If it’s a ghost, I don’t believe in ’em!” said his host, recovering his composure.

Ferdy shook his head. “Worse than that, Jack, dear boy! I’ll think of its name in a minute. Met it at Eton.”

“Dash it, Ferdy, I was at Eton the same time as you were, and you never said a word about anything creeping up behind you!”

“I may not have said anything, but it did. Crept up behind me when I broke that window in chapel.”

“Old Horley?” Mr Westgate said. “You don’t mean to tell me he’s come up to London? What’s he creeping up behind you for?”

“No, no!” replied Ferdy, irritated by his friend’s poverty of intellect. “Not old Horley! Thing that made him suspect me when I thought my tracks were covered. Not sure it ain’t a Greek thing. Might have been Latin, though, now I come to think of it.”

“I know what he means!” said Marmaduke. “What’s more, it proves he’s castaway, or he wouldn’t be thinking of such things. Nemesis! That’s it, ain’t it, Ferdy?”

“Nemesis!” repeated Ferdy, pleased to find himself understood at last. “That’s it! Dash it, it all goes to show, don’t it? Never thought the stuff they used to teach us at school would come in useful, but if I hadn’t had to learn a lot of Greek and Latin I shouldn’t have known about that thingummy. Forgotten its name again, but it don’t signify now.”

He seemed inclined to brood over the advantages of a classical education, but his brother brought him back to the point. “What the deuce has Nemesis to do with Sherry’s going to Bath?” he demanded.

“You wouldn’t understand,” said Ferdy. “Think I’ll go and see Gil.”

“Dash it, Ferdy, you can’t go off like that!” expostulated Mr Westgate.

“Yes, I can,” replied Ferdy. “Got a fancy to see Gil. Very knowing fellow. Come back again later.”

“You know what, Duke?” said Mr Westgate, watching Ferdy wend his way to the door. “I’ve never seen poor Ferdy so bosky in all my life! He’ll be taken up by the Watch, that’s what’ll happen to him!”

This ignominious fate did not, however, overtake Ferdy. He reached Stratton Street unmolested, to be met by the same intelligence which had greeted Lord Wrotham earlier in the day. He was even more dashed than his lordship had been, but he reached the same decision. For the second time that day Mr Ford ushered one of Mr Ringwood’s cronies into his parlour for the purpose of writing a note to him.

It cost Ferdy time and profound thought to achieve a letter that should explain the whole situation to Mr Ringwood; but when he presently read the elegantly phrased document over to himself he was not ill-pleased with it. To his mind it contrived both to impress Mr Ringwood with a sense of the urgency of the situation and to reassure him on the question of the writer’s selfless loyalty to the cause at stake. It stated clearly that Ferdy would accompany his cousin to Bath, but it became a trifle involved after that, a dark reference to the possible need of a second leaving Mr Ringwood to infer that Ferdy felt there was a strong likelihood of Sherry’s calling him out: a contingency which he explained as being due to the machinations of a mysterious agency whose name might be discovered on application to the Honourable Marmaduke Fakenham. It struck Ferdy, when he came to this portion of the missive, that it would be highly undesirable for Mr Ringwood to make any such application, so he appended a terse postscript:
Better not
.