Friday's Child (43 page)

The composition of such a literary effort naturally made it necessary for the Honourable Ferdy to seek a little stimulant. Fortunately, there was some brandy in one of the decanters on the sideboard. Ferdy poured it into a rummer, drank it off, and then, for he was very meticulous in all matters of good
ton,
added a second postscript:
Took a glass of brandy
.

He departed from Mr Ringwood’s lodging, feeling that no action befitting a man of honour had been left undone; and, the brandy having made him pot-valiant, betook himself to Half Moon Street. The house was in darkness, and it was some time before he could obtain a response to his insistent knocking. It seemed to him a very peculiar circumstance that no one should answer the door in Sherry’s house, and he was just wondering whether he could have made a mistake in the number when a window was flung up on the second floor, and Sherry’s voice, rather sleepy and extremely irate, asked who the devil was there.

Ferdy gazed up at the vague outline of his cousin’s head and said: “Hallo, Sherry, dear boy! What the deuce are you doing up there?”

“Is that you, Ferdy?” demanded Sherry wrathfully. “What the deuce are
you
doing down there, waking me up at this hour of night?”

“What, you ain’t asleep, Sherry, surely?” said Ferdy incredulously. “Night’s young! Come to have a chat with you. Very important.”

“Oh, the devil! Dead-beat again! What a curst nuisance you are, Ferdy!” said Sherry, exasperated.

He withdrew his head from the window, and in a few minutes had opened the front door to admit his cousin. Ferdy walked in, smiling affably, but declined an offer of the spare bedchamber. “Going back to White’s when I’ve had a word with you, Sherry,” he said. “Engaged with some friends. What made you go to bed?”

“Dash it, it’s past one o’clock!” replied Sherry. “Besides, I’m going to Bath tomorrow.”

“Nothing in that,” said Ferdy. “I’m going to Bath too, but I don’t go to bed at one o’clock. Why should I?”

“You’re foxed. You ain’t going to Bath.”

“Yes, I am. Came to tell you. Taken a fancy to go with you.”

Sherry stared at him narrowly, holding up the candle he was carrying. “Why?” he asked.

“Fond of you, Sherry. Don’t know why, but there it is. Always was. If you go to Bath, I’ll go to Bath.”

“Now I know you’re foxed!” said Sherry, quite disgusted.

“No, I ain’t. Fond of Gil too. Not the kind of fellow to leave my friends in the lurch. You driving down?”

“Yes, but—”

“Take me up in Cavendish Square. Ready for you any time.”

“I don’t mind taking you up if you really mean it,” said Sherry. “In fact, I’d as soon have company on the way as not, but it’s my belief you’ll take the best part of tomorrow to sleep this off! If you won’t go to bed, I wish you’d go home!”

“Not going home: going back to White’s,” said Ferdy. “Care to join us, dear old fellow?”

“No, I would not!” replied Sherry, opening the door for him.

“Quite right! Not dressed for it!” Ferdy agreed. “See you tomorrow!”

Contrary to Sherry’s expectations, when he drew up in Cavendish Square at noon that day he found his cousin not only perfectly wide awake, but prepared for a journey. Ferdy had had time to think of several reasons to account for his desiring to go to Bath, and although his cousin believed none of them, he was far from guessing what the true reason was. He had a suspicion that Ferdy’s activities in London might have made it expedient for him to withdraw from the metropolis for a time, but as he took only the most cursory interest in Ferdy’s affairs, he forbore to question him very strictly.

The winter being unusually mild, no particular discomfort was suffered during the journey, which, as Sherry had prophesied, took them two days to accomplish. The cavalcade, consisting as it did of one large travelling coach, two chaises, bearing servants and baggage, and one sporting curricle, was imposing enough to procure for the dowager the most flattering degree of attention at every halt made on the road. Landlords bowed till their noses almost touched their knees; waiters ran out with offers of cordials; chambermaids dropped curtsies; and ostlers fell over one another in their anxiety to be the first to serve a cortege the style of which promised unusually handsome gratuities.

They entered Bath towards evening on the second day, the dowager’s coach bowling along considerably ahead of the curricle, which had stopped for an unseasonable length of time at a certain hostelry a few miles outside the town. Lady Sheringham had hired a palatial suite of apartments on the Royal Crescent, so Sherry, sweeping into Belmont from Guinea Lane, bore sharp right into Bennet Street, which led into the Circus, past the New Assembly Rooms. It was in the middle of this crowded thoroughfare, just as the nicest precision of eye was required to negotiate the passage between a hackney carriage, drawn up on the left of the road, and a perch phaeton being driven towards him by a down-the-road looking man in a many-caped greatcoat, that Sherry caught sight of his wife, walking along with her hand on Lord Wrotham’s arm.

A violent expletive broke from him, and an equally violent start. He jerked his head round, heedless of the phaeton, and the next instant the wheels of both vehicles were locked, and much more violent expletives were issuing from the lips of the down-the-road man.

Since all the horses were plunging in sudden fright, and there was an ominous sound of splintering wood, Sherry was obliged to give his attention where it was most urgently required. By the time the carriages had been disengaged, thanks largely to the efforts of Jason, who had lost not a moment in leaping down from his perch, and running to the heads of his master’s pair, Hero and George had disappeared into Russell Street. Sherry, paying no heed at all to the justifiably incensed remarks being addressed to him by the phaeton’s owner, thrust the reins into his cousin’s hands, and, with a brief admonition to him to “settle with this fellow”, sprang down from the curricle, narrowly avoided being knocked down by a tilbury, fell foul of a couple of chairmen whose load was impeding his passage, reached the other side of the street, and set off with great strides towards Russell Street. He was too late. When he reached the turning there was no sign of his quarry, and after taking a few paces up the street he paused, realizing the futility of hunting through all the roads in the vicinity. He turned and went back, becoming aware on the way that his singular behavior had attracted no little attention to himself. He found, too, that he was still carrying his driving-whip, and had the sight of Lord Wrotham, bending solicitously over Hero, not filled him with murderous rage he must have grinned to think of the comic spectacle he presented.

He found Ferdy making his apologies with winning grace, and offering, on his behalf, to pay for the necessary repairs to the phaeton. The phaeton’s owner was already a little mollified, and everything might have been settled comfortably over a third of daffy, as Ferdy was on the point of suggesting, had not the Viscount nipped such friendly overtures in the bud by scowling upon his victim, offering him the curtest of apologies, handing him his card, climbing into his curricle, and driving off without another word.

“Really, Sherry, dear old boy!” expostulated Ferdy. “No need to go off like this! Very pleasant fellow!”

“Did you see who that was?” Sherry demanded.

The late accident had temporarily put everything else out of Ferdy’s head, but these words recalled him to a sense of his own surprise. “Yes, by Jove!” he exclaimed. “Dashed if I could believe my eyes! George! You see him too, Sherry?”

Sherry audibly ground his teeth. “Do you think I’m blind? I saw him, and what’s more I saw who was walking on his arm! My wife!”

“Lady Sheringham?” said Ferdy cautiously.

“Yes, you fool!”

“Now you come to mention it, Sherry, dear boy, I saw her too,” said Ferdy. “Didn’t care to draw your attention to it.”

They had by this time traversed the Circus and were halfway down Brock Street. “So
that
was why—!” Sherry muttered. “It is George I have to thank for—! By God, let me but get my hands on George!”

Ferdy, perceiving that it could only be a matter of minutes before a most unwelcome question would be hurled at him, said in a desperate attempt to avert suspicion: “No wish to pry into your affairs, Sherry! Take it you wasn’t expecting to see Lady Sherry? Very extraordinary business!”

Fortunately for him, the Viscount’s mind was so taken up with the thought of George’s duplicity that he paid no heed to this. The curricle swept into the Royal Crescent and drew up outside one of the houses, behind the chaises, which were being unloaded by a bevy of hirelings. Jason jumped down and went to the horses’ heads. As his master descended into the road, he said in a stupefied tone: “So help me bob, guv’nor! That were the Missus!”

“Jason, hold your tongue!” the Viscount said angrily.

“Chaffer and daylights close as a oyster, me lord!” promptly replied the Tiger, his sharp countenance alive with curiosity.

The Viscount strode into the house, leaving his cousin to follow at his leisure. The entrance hall was a litter of trunks and bandboxes; his lordship picked his way none too carefully through them and ran up the stairs to the parlour on the first floor. Here he found Miss Milborne directing a couple of abigails where to take various packages that strewed the room. She smiled at Sherry, and said: “Your Mama has the headache, and has gone to lie down on her bed before it is time to dress for dinner. I am sorry we are still in such a pickle, but I will have all in order—Why, what is the matter, Sherry?”

The Viscount waited until the two abigails had loaded themselves with impedimenta, and then firmly shut them out of the room. With his hand still on the doorknob, he said grimly: “Do you know whom I saw in Bennet Street?” She looked a startled inquiry.

“George!” said the Viscount, flinging the name at her.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, blushing a little. “Oh, indeed!”

“Yes!” returned his lordship. “But you need not look so smug, Bella, for he has not come to Bath on your account! He was strolling along, as bold as brass, with my wife hanging on his arm!”

"Oh
!” gasped Miss Milborne, in quite another voice. “Oh, Sherry, no!”

“He was, I tell you!” said the Viscount, taking a few hasty paces about the room and kicking an offending bandbox out of his path.

Miss Milborne clasped her hands together, and said in a strictly controlled tone: “I told you—I
told
you, Sherry, that he had a marked partiality for Hero! It was the first thing that sprang to my mind when I learned of her having left you. But that he could have—all this time—Oh, it is too base!”

“Only wait until I come upon him face to face!” Sherry said through his locked teeth.

She covered her eyes with one hand. “I was never more shocked in my life! I do not know what to say! You do not think—might it not be possible that he met Hero in Bath by chance?”

“No doubt that is what he will try to make us believe!” Sherry said, with a savage little laugh. “But it is doing it a trifle too brown! Now I know why he was so urgent with me not to come to Bath! Now I see it all! Why, he must have posted here ahead of me the instant he was apprised of my having taken the resolve of coming with my mother!”

“And she!” Miss Milborne said throbbingly. “Oh, I had not thought it of her!”

“Yes, you had!” retorted the Viscount, rounding on her. “It is precisely what you did think, Bella! And there’s not a word of truth in it, and if you dare to say it again I’ll choke you!”

“Pray do not be thinking you can talk to
me
like that!” said Miss Milborne, bristling. “
I
am not your unfortunate wife, thank heaven!”

“If you are thanking heaven for that, then at last we are of one mind!” the Viscount threw at her. “This is your fault! If you had not played fast and loose with Wrotham, this would never have happened! By God, whenever I think of the way he did his possible to dissuade me from coming here, and—” He stopped short. “Yes, by Jupiter!” he said. “And Ferdy too!
Ferdy!
He knew! Well, that’s one of them at least I can get my hands on! Cousin Ferdy has a trifle of explaining to do!”

He left the room precipitately as he spoke, and went down the stairs in several perilous bounds. But although his cousin Ferdy was not generally held to be quick-witted, he had a lively sense of self-preservation, and he had not waited for this inevitable moment. There was no sign of him in the house, or even outside it, and a furious inquiry of Bootle elicited the information that Mr Fakenham had bethought himself of some urgent shopping that must be done without the least loss of time, and had gone off some ten minutes earlier. Sherry knew that he had formed the intention of putting up at the York Hotel, and instantly betook himself to this hostelry. He drew blank. Mr Fakenham’s man and Mr Fakenham’s baggage had certainly arrived there, but Mr Fakenham had as yet put in no appearance. The Viscount, growing steadily more wrathful, waited for some time in the coffee-room, but when it became apparent that his cousin had no immediate intention of emerging from whatever place of hiding he had found, he went back to the Royal Crescent, leaving a message with Ferdy’s valet, which was calculated to terrify Ferdy into an instant flight for London.

The first thing which met the Viscount’s eyes upon his return to his parent’s lodging was a neat oblong of pasteboard lying on the table in the hall. He glanced cursorily at this, and his temper was by no means improved by the discovery that it bore Sir Montagu Revesby’s name, in flowing copperplate characters. He passed on upstairs to—change his travelling dress for raiment more suited to his mother’s dinner-table. His sense of filial duty fell short, however, of the stockings and knee breeches which she was old-fashioned enough to consider
de rigueur
; he compromised with a pair of exquisitely fitting pantaloons, strapped tightly under his feet; and one of Stultz’s best coats of superfine cloth. His parent, who seemed to be in excellent spirits, welcomed him into the dining-room with a fond smile, and, when he offered a curt apology for his tardiness, said that it did not signify. He took his place at the end of the table, saying disagreeably, as he did so: “I saw that that fellow has wasted no time in calling upon you, Bella!”