Friday's Child (14 page)

These words of calm good sense did not fail of their effect. By the time the Dowager Lady Sheringham’s landaulet was at the door, Mrs Bagshot had had time to think the matter over. Nothing would serve to abate the strong sense of chagrin that possessed her, but she was intelligent enough to realize that to attempt to overset the marriage would only serve to make her look extremely foolish. The dowager, therefore, found Mrs Bagshot unresponsive. Mrs Bagshot was certainly much shocked, but although she was lavish in her expressions of sympathy for her dearest Lady Sheringham, she made it quite plain that she had no intention of interfering in the marriage. When Lady Sheringham said that she had quite counted on having that sweet Isabella for her daughter-in-law, the thought crossed her mind that however infuriating it might be to find one’s despised poor relation suddenly a great way above one in the social scale, it would not have afforded her the smallest gratification to have seen the Viscount married to Miss Milborne.

As for the Incomparable Isabella herself, the news came to her as an undeniable and not very welcome shock. Sherry was the first of her suitors to have found consolation elsewhere, and she would have been more than human had she not experienced a strong sensation of pique. However, she had a good deal of pride, and was a good-natured girl, and she told Lady Sheringham that she had always known Sherry to be uncommonly fond of Hero, and she was sure she wished them both very happy.

This dignified way of receiving the news met with Mrs Milborne’s shrewd approval. “Very prettily done of you, indeed, my love!” she said, as soon as the dowager had left them. “But it is a shocking thing, to be sure! To marry a wretched little nobody like Hero Wantage, without a penny to her name, when the whole town has known him to have been at your feet this age past!”

“You are forgetting, Mama, that he offered for me, and I refused him.”

“To be sure you did. I wish you had not been so vehement in your refusal, I must own, my love. It cannot add to your consequence to have him running off straight away to wed another. I dare say he did it from mortification, and I only hope he may not live to rue the day. All things considered, my dear, I think we will return to London. And it will be a good scheme for you to send Hero your felicitations.”

“I have the intention of doing so, Mama.”

“Viscountess Sheringham!” said Mrs Milborne, in a disgruntled tone. “Well, I am sure I did not think to see that chit married before you, my love, with all the splendid chances you have had!”

The dowager, meanwhile, had taken the momentous decision of travelling to London, with what purpose she would have been unable to state with any clarity. She said in a vague but impressive way that Anthony must at least listen to the words of his Mother, though upon what grounds she based this conviction no one could imagine. She commanded her brother to escort and support her on her pilgrimage, and set forth in an enormous travelling chariot, attended by her abigail, a coachman, a footman, and outriders, and preceded by a similar (but less magnificent) vehicle, containing her trunks, and as many servants as she considered necessary to ensure her comfort in the house in Grosvenor Square for a few days. This put her in mind of a fresh injury, and she told her brother that she had little doubt that her undutiful son would throw her into the street, and install his wretched bride in the house his sainted Papa had brought her home to twenty-four years ago. Mr Paulett, appreciating at least the spirit of this, forbore to remind her that the late Viscount had, in fact, brought her home to Sheringham Place.

But when the afflicted lady reached town, and dispatched a peremptory note to Fenton’s Hotel, a civil message was conveyed to her that my Lord Sheringham had gone out of town with his lady. The clerk of Fenton’s Hotel obligingly added the information that his lordship could be found at Melton Mowbray.

Herein the Viscount had made a grave mistake. Had he but remained in London, had he but shown a dutiful penitence, had his bride but placed herself in her mother-in-law’s hands, craving forgiveness and instruction, that lady might have been brought to realize all the advantages of the marriage, and would have needed little persuasion to sponsor her son’s wife into the Polite World. But nothing could have alienated her more than Sherry’s craven retreat, which she had no hesitation in ascribing to Hero’s influence. That her own conduct over the past ten years might have had something to do with it, she naturally did not consider. She sent first for Prosper Verelst, and upon learning from him that he had had nothing to do with the elopement, but that Gilbert Ringwood and young Ferdy Fakenham knew all about it, she sent for Mr Ringwood. She parted on very cool terms with her brother-in-law, that gentleman having had the temerity to say that he thought Sherry’s bride a pretty little creature, and—with a roll of his eye in the direction of Mr Paulett—that he was devilish glad to see the boy assume control of his affairs.

Upon learning that Mr Ringwood too was out of town, the dowager lost no time in sending a summons to Mr Ferdy Fakenham. But as she made the mistake of stating her reason for wishing to see him, she defeated her own ends, Mr Fakenham, with rare presence of mind, instructing his servants to inform her that he was out of town, cancelling all his engagements, and retreating, like a hare startled from its form, to join the bridal couple (and his friend Mr Ringwood) in Leicestershire.

Baulked of even such minor prey as Ferdy, the dowager lost what little common sense she possessed, and proceeded to make known her wrongs. They lost nothing in the telling, nor was the injured Mr Paulette slow to add his mite to the whole. The town began to hum with the story of Sherry’s amazing marriage, and the most coldly correct of Almack’s patronesses, Mrs Drummond Burrell, remarked casually to one of her fellow-patronesses, Lady Jersey, that no voucher of admission to that most exclusive of clubs could, of course, be granted to young Lady Sheringham.

“Good gracious, why not?” asked Lady Jersey lightly.

“I have been in Grosvenor Square, visiting Valeria Sheringham.”

“Oh, that
tedious
creature!”

Mrs Burrell smiled lightly. “Very true, but in this instance I believe her to have been shamefully used. That wild young man, Sheringham, has made a shocking mesalliance. To make matters the more insupportable, he seems actually to have eloped with the young female.”

Lady Jersey, who was drinking morning chocolate with her friend, selected an angel cake from the dish before her, and bit into it. “Yes, I believe he did elope with her,” she admitted. Her mischievous smile dawned. “But Prosper Verelst assures me that Sherry otherwise behaved towards the girl with the greatest propriety! Only figure to yourself!—Sherry considering the proprieties!”

“I shall not allow Mr Verelst to be a judge. Valeria has told me the whole. The girl is the veriest Nobody—actually a governess, or some such thing!”

"No
such thing! She is one of the Wantages, and I am sure nothing could be more respectable. It is by no means a brilliant match, but only such a goose as Valeria Sheringham would make so great a piece of work over it.”

Her hostess turned a calm, cold gaze upon her. “Pray, my love, have you met the young person?”

“No, but I have been with Maria Sefton, and she has met her, and what is more, she says she is quite unexceptionable—very young, of course; hardly out of the schoolroom, but unquestionably a lady! You must know that she has been under the guardianship of Mrs Bagshot—the same who is for ever thrusting her shockingly plain daughters into the arms of all our eligible bachelors!”

“I do not find it a recommendation. Where, pray, did Lady Sefton encounter her?”

“Oh, down at Melton Mowbray! You must know that the Seftons have been staying with Assheton Smith, at Quorndon House. Maria tells me that they were driving out there when they came upon Sherry and his bride. She tells me it was quite pretty to see Sherry—he was teaching her to ride, it seems—taking such pains over the child.”

“I imagine he might, since he married her.”

“Certainly, but I confess I am agog with curiosity to discover
why
he married her, since we know him to have been a pretender to Miss Milborne’s hand not a fortnight ago!”

“It is very true. Lady Sheringham told me that he had actually offered for the Milborne girl, and had been rejected. He married the Nobody from pique. There can be no other explanation.”

“Did she tell you that? Upon my word, she is a great fool, then, to be spreading such a story about! I declare it gives me a feeling of strong compassion for the poor little bride, and I shall certainly give her .vouchers for Almack’s, if Maria Sefton has not already done so!”

“Of course, if you are to take the girl up, there is no more to be said,” shrugged Mrs Burrell.

Lady Jersey gave a trill of laughter. “What, in granting her vouchers for the club? How absurd!”

“I wish you may not be taken in.”

“If I am, I shall be in Maria Sefton’s company, and I am sure I do not desire to be in better.”

“Both Lord and Lady Sefton’s good nature is too well-known to occasion remark. I believe it leads them to bestow their favours indiscriminately rather frequently. Valeria Sheringham assures me the girl is
quite farouche,
no
ton,
no accomplishments, her looks no more than passable, her fortune non-existent.”

“It will be time enough to deny her the right to come to Almack’s if we find that for once in her life Valeria Sheringham has been speaking the truth.”

“Valeria does not advise us to relax our rules in her favour.”

Lady Jersey’s eyes sparkled. “What, did she say so? Of all the spiteful creatures! No, that is the outside of enough, my dear, and makes me perfectly determined to give the girl a chance to prove herself!”

Mrs Burrell was silent for a moment. She said presently: “You are very right. We shall see how she conducts herself. It is plain, however, that Sheringham is ashamed to show her in town.”

“Nonsense!” replied Lady Jersey. “Prosper Verelst says they have gone upon their honeymoon.”

“Into Leicestershire?” said Mrs Burrell, raising her brows.

“So it seems. The truth is, of course, that Sherry has gone off because he doesn’t care to run the gauntlet of Valeria’s vapours. He would have done better to have stayed, but it is all of a piece! He is a charming young man, I grant, but the most selfish and careless imaginable. I am sorry for his poor little wife.”

Chapter 8

Hero would have been astonished, and, indeed, indignant, had she been aware that she was the object of Lady Jersey’s sympathy. For she had never been so happy in her life. Sherry had been quite right in thinking that his hunting-box at Melton Mowbray would be just the thing for her. She was delighted with it; and the happy-go-lucky way of life pursued by Sherry when sojourning there could not but appeal to a young lady who had been irked all her own short life by shibboleths and restrictions.

The hunting-box, which was not large, was kept by a married couple who, from having had things very much their own way under their casual master, at first looked upon Hero with suspicious hostility. But as she showed no disposition to interfere in the management of the house, and never dreamed of levelling criticisms where they would certainly be resented, it was not long before Goring and his wife accepted her in much the same spirit as they accepted Mr Ringwood, or any other of the Viscount’s cronies.

It might have been supposed that a very few days spent at Melton Mowbray at the fag-end of the summer would have sufficed to have sent his lordship hotfoot back to town, but thanks to the amusement afforded him by teaching his wife to ride her mare creditably; taking her to Six Hills, and showing her the pick of the best coverts; initiating her into the mysteries of hazard, faro, deep basset, and several other games of chance; playing picquet with Mr Ringwood; trying out his young stock; and attending a cockfight held in the district, he contrived to while away the time very tolerably. Before these simple pursuits had palled upon him, a diversion was created by the arrival in the district of Lord Wrotham, who had come down on a visit to his encumbered estates. Since these were situated only a few miles from Melton, he naturally spent a good deal of his time with his friends, and was delighted to discover in Hero a sympathetic listener. It was not long before he had confided to her his hopeless passion for the Incomparable Isabella, and although an unthinking reference to the complaint which had necessitated the Beauty’s withdrawal from the Polite World seriously endangered, for a few moments, this promising new friendship, the rift was speedily healed by Hero’s assurance that the rash had by no means disfigured Isabella. George rode with Hero to Wartnaby Stone-pits, and, being a very keen rider to hounds, was able to forget his troubles in describing some classic runs to Hero, passing strictures on Assheton Smith, who hunted his own hounds, and often drew his coverts so quickly that he drew over his fox, besides failing sometimes to lift his hounds, which, if you wanted runs in Leicestershire, said George, you must do. Hero, fired with the spirit of emulation after listening to George’s heroic tales, attempted to jump what George called a regular stitcher, and came to grief. Fortunately she was only bruised by her tumble, but the mare strained a tendon, and Sherry, who had been a helpless spectator of the enterprise, no sooner ascertained that his bride was unhurt than he soundly boxed her ears, and swore he would never bring her out with him again. His two friends, though deprecating this violence, endorsed his strictures, having by this time fallen very much into the way of treating Hero as though she had been one of their own young sisters.