Friday's Child (39 page)

Miss Milborne, losing herself in the enormous mansion, being driven about the prosperous estate, dining off gold plate, and being waited on by armies of liveried servants, saw herself mistress of all this grandeur, and, since she was but human, was not unattracted by the vision. But at her side was the unromantic figure of her ducal suitor, a model of punctilious civility, treating her with pompous respect, bestowing his admiration on her rather as though it had been an accolade. His grace was as correct in his advances to the lady whom he designed to make his wife as in every other detail of his well-ordered life, the greatest display or ardour he permitted himself to indulge in being the fervent pressing of his lips to her hand. Miss Milborne doubted whether it would ever enter his head to seize her in a rough embrace, and to devour her with kisses as Lord Wrotham had shown lamentably little hesitation in doing. She knew that he would never rave and storm at her, make extravagant gestures, threaten to blow his brains out, or spend all his energy in procuring for her flowers that were out of season. She thought his notions of propriety would preclude his even quarrelling mildly with her, since whenever she displeased him a more than ordinarily stolid expression would descend upon his countenance, and he would withdraw from her vicinity, reappearing after a judicious lapse of time as though nothing whatever had happened to disturb the harmony of their intercourse. He disapproved of gaming, took no more than a fashionable interest in racing, chose his friends from amongst the more sedate of his contemporaries, and was prone to moralize upon such dismal subjects as the decay of modern manners, the frivolity of the younger set, and the lack of modest restraint observable in the damsels at present gracing Society.

And all at once, just as everything was in train for a brilliant betrothal, Miss Milborne knew that she could not marry Severn. Aghast at her own conduct in having encouraged his advances, wishing she had never allowed George to goad her into accepting the Duchess’s invitation to Severn Towers, she did what she could to prevent his grace’s coming to the point. Her manner towards him was retiring to the point of coldness. The Duchess, observing it, reiterated her opinion that she was a very pretty behaved girl, for such formal reserve exactly suited her own ideas of well-bred behavior. George might have been cast into despair by a tenth of such repulsive chilliness as was being shown to the Duke, but Severn, knowing himself to be the biggest matrimonial prize in the market, read it as admirable female modesty, and was not in the least discouraged. Miss Milborne felt hunted, and if Lord Wrotham had appeared at the Towers he might have ridden off with her across his saddle-bow with her very good will. But although his lordship would no doubt have obliged her had he had the least idea of her desire, he had no such idea, and the respectability of the Duke’s ancestral home was undisturbed by his romantic presence. The Duke declared himself; Miss Milborne declined his flattering offer; the Duchess was both staggered and affronted; and Mrs Milborne expressed her unshakable belief that her wretched daughter was out of her senses.

She brought her back to London, and it was in London that the full evils consequent upon the rejection of his grace’s hand were borne in upon Mrs Milborne. No one believed that his grace had come up to scratch. She read the truth in the discreetly veiled smiles which met any reference to the affair, and was mortified indeed. The Polite World had no doubt at all that his grace’s Mama had triumphed by subtle means, and that the return of the Milbornes to town betokened defeat.

Miss Milborne was quite as conscious as her parent of this disagreeable circumstance. She had foreseen it, and it had taken a considerable degree of resolution to make her refuse the Duke’s offer. What she had not foreseen was that Lord Wrotham should fall into vulgar error.

But this was precisely what that impetuous young man had done, and it apparently led him to suffer a revulsion of feeling. Instead of being relieved and gratified at the Beauty’s return, unbetrothed, to London, he laughed in a harsh and bitter way, and uttered some comments so caustic as to be almost insulting. These were naturally repeated, and came in due course to Miss Milborne’s ears. She experienced a strong desire to box George’s ears, but as he did not come near her she was unable to gratify it. A period of calm reflection made her acknowledge to herself that she might have been in some degree to blame for George’s abominable lack of faith in her, and instead of wishing any longer to box his ears she would have given much to have had the opportunity of explaining herself to him. Such signs of encouragement as might be bestowed on a gentleman by a modest female she bestowed on George, and he received them with a curling lip, and an eye sparkling with contempt. Miss Milborne, who had fallen into the way of thinking that he might be treated with impunity like a stray mongrel, suffered a severe shock, and was torn by indignation and a curious satisfaction that he could not, after all, be whistled back to heel at her pleasure.

But to have lost in far too rapid succession three such notable suitors as my Lord Sheringham, his Grace of Severn, and my Lord Wrotham was a disaster hard indeed to bear. The most serious pretender to her hand was now a mere baronet, for she knew very well that such admirers as the Honourable Ferdy Fakenham paid court to her as a matter of fashion, and had no real intentions towards her. Sir Montagu Revesby’s increasingly assiduous attentions came as a slight balm to a wounded spirit, but when Mrs Milborne said that since all her undutiful child saw fit to do in London was to throw her future prosperity to the winds she would be better off in the country, she raised no demur. This retirement might savour of a retreat, but nothing could be more mortifying than to be obliged to face the sympathy or the amusement of the Polite World.

So Miss Milborne departed to recruit her spirits in Kent; and Lord Wrotham flung himself into the dogged pursuit of pleasure, behaving in a very reckless style; losing a great deal of money at the gaming tables; all but breaking his neck on the hunting-field; accepting any and every wager offered him without the smallest hesitation; indulging in orgies of drinking at Long’s, Limmer’s, the Daffy Club, and any other such haunts; flaunting a succession of Cyprians before the scandalized eyes of the world; being very short-tempered and aggressive towards his fellow-men; and causing thoughtful gentlemen to remove themselves from his vicinity by culping wafer after wafer at Manton’s Shooting Gallery.

Sherry, meanwhile, was no nearer to discovering his vanished wife’s whereabouts than he had been at the outset; and he was not finding that custom was making him grow any more reconciled to her absence. As day succeeded day he missed her increasingly, and the house they had chosen together became ever more unfriendly to him. He even missed the canary’s shrill song, which had so often exasperated him. He had chafed at the bonds which matrimony had imposed on him; he had groaned at the necessity of escorting Hero to balls and routs; he had fancied his comfort to have been ruined by her habit of getting into scrapes from which he was obliged to rescue her; he had even remembered nostalgically the days of his untrammelled bachelordom, and had thought that he would like to have them back again. Well, Hero had given them back to him, and they proved to be Dead Sea fruit. While she remained lost to him, he had no zest even for hunting; and when one of his associates challenged him to paint all the turnpikes from London to Barnet a beautiful scarlet he stunned this enterprising gentleman by replying curtly: “Folly!” and utterly refused to accept the challenge.

The news of Hero’s disappearance had of course reached the Dowager Lady Sheringham, and as she had the best of reasons for knowing that her daughter-in-law was not, as the world believed, recuperating at Sheringham Place, she wrote to demand an explanation of Sherry. After turning her letter over once or twice, Sherry drove down to Kent, and gave her the explanation in person. Mr Paulett, who was present, started to bemoan a marriage which he had always foreseen would end in just such a way, and was startled to find himself confronting a nephew he did not recognize. Sherry was neither boyishly sulky, nor violently threatening. He was icily and implacably civil, and he showed his uncle out of the room, holding the door open for him, and bowing with a cold formality Mr Paulett found singularly unnerving.

The Dowager, observing these signs of maturity in her son, then shed tears, and would have held his hand and condoled with him had he permitted it. She said that he must not mind her saying that she had never considered Hero Wantage to have been good enough for him. Unfortunately for the rest of the speech which she had been about to make, the Viscount replied that he minded it very much; that there was no truth in the statement; and that he must request his mother never to repeat it. He then took from her all power of saying anything at all by informing her that he proposed to make certain changes in his way of life, which would necessitate her removal—at her convenience, he added, with this new and quelling politeness—from Sheringham Place to the Dower House. He further announced his intention of taking up his residence in the house in Grosvenor Square as soon as he should be reunited with his wife, and begged her ladyship to remove from it any such articles of furniture as belonged to her, or for which she had a partiality. He had formed the immediate intention of redecorating the house, and he was going to put this in hand without loss of time.

When the dowager had recovered her breath she attempted, though feebly, to expostulate. The Viscount cut her short. “My mind is made up, ma’am. It is time I was thinking of settling down. I should have done all this at the outset. It may be too late: I don’t know that. But if—when—my wife returns to me we will contrive better, I hope.”

“I am sure I am the last person alive to wish to keep you out of your house,” quavered Lady Sheringham. “But I do not know why you should suppose your wife will return to you, for ten to one she has run off with another man!”

“No,” said his lordship, turning his back upon her, and staring out of the window at the bleak gardens. “That is something else I desire you will not repeat, ma’am. It is untrue.”

“You cannot know that, Anthony, my poor boy! She never cared for you! It was all vanity, and the wish of becoming a person of consequence!”

He shook his head. “She never thought of that. I didn’t know it—never stopped to think, or—or consider it, but she did care for me. Much more than I cared for her—then. But if I could only find her—I’ve racked my brains, and I can’t think where she can have gone, or to whom! She
must
have sought shelter with someone! Good God, ma’am, it keeps me awake at night, the fear that she may be alone, without money, or friends, or—No, no, she must be with some friend I know nothing of!”

“Very likely she went to that vulgar cousin of hers,” said his mother waspishly.

He wheeled round, rather pale. “Mrs Hoby!” he ejaculated. “How did I come to forget her? Good God, what a fool I have been! I am obliged to you, ma’am!”

He set off for town again that very day, and repaired to the Hobys’ house. A rather slatternly servant opened the door to him, when he had knocked on it for the third time, and informed him that her master and mistress were away from London. A few inquiries elicited the further information that the Hobys had left for a visit to Ireland the day following Hero’s departure from Half Moon Street. With a darkening brow, the Viscount asked if this had been a long-standing engagement. The servant thought not; they had packed up and gone in a hurry; she thought a letter had arrived which made them take this course. But when he asked if they had gone alone, or had taken a friend with them, she shook her head and replied that she couldn’t say, not having witnessed the actual departure, but she believed they had been alone.

The Viscount went home to think this over. The more he thought, the more convinced he became that Hero had indeed flown to her cousin, and was now being concealed by this lady. He had never liked Theresa Hoby; her husband he barely knew, but had little hesitation in condemning as bad
ton
; and gradually there grew up in his breast a feeling of indignation that Hero should have fled to the very people above all others whom he most disliked. He remembered that he had forbidden her to hold any close intercourse with Mrs Hoby; remembered also that she had largely ignored this prohibition; and conveniently forgot that it had been uttered in the heat of the moment, and never seriously repeated. He began to be angry, and from picturing Hero in all manner of appalling plights passed to imagining herself amongst a set of people of whom her husband disapproved. A cynical remark let fall by his Uncle Prosper, that no doubt the minx was bent on giving him the fright of his life, took root in Sherry’s mind, and drove him to throw himself, without the slightest enjoyment, into much the same kind of excesses which were being indulged in by Lord Wrotham. There was a good deal of bravado about this, a suggestion of gritted teeth, and more than a suggestion of obstinacy; but it made Mr Ringwood pull down the corners of his mouth and shake a despondent head.

Six weeks after Hero’s disappearance, the Hobys came back to London. Sherry heard of their arrival, and grimly awaited the return of his wife. She did not come; but her cousin did—to call upon her. The Viscount received her, and ten minutes in her company were enough to convince him that she knew nothing of Hero’s whereabouts, had not the smallest notion of her being away from home, and had journeyed into Ireland for the purpose of attending her mother-in-law’s sickbed.

The Viscount’s brain reeled under the shock. Remorse, anxiety, and despair played havoc with him; and he seriously disquieted Bootle by spending the entire night in the back room, called his library, alternately striding up and down the floor and sitting with his head in his hands over the fire. He consumed a considerable quantity of liquor during this session, but he was not drunk when Bootle ventured to enter the room early the following morning; and this, the valet said darkly to Bradgate, was a very bad sign.