“Good gracious! Do you mean to do so?” said Miss Milborne. “I assure you I had not the smallest expectation of your being willing to go to the ball!”
“Well, I am willing, and what’s more I’ve paid for a subscription which gives me a couple of ladies’ tickets as well, so if you and my mother choose to go this evening, you may do so,” said his lordship gracefully.
“I must say that was very prettily done of you, Anthony!” approved his parent.
“I want to see my wife,” responded his lordship. “And I can tell how it will be if I call in Camden Place again!”
“She will surely not be present!” exclaimed Lady Sheringham. “She would not have the effrontery!”
“I know of no reason why she should not go anywhere she chooses!” retorted Sherry, firing up. “And as she has her name down to dance the minuet with some fellow of the name of Tarleton, and is engaged to George for the first cotillion, I assume that she certainly has the intention of being present!”
So indeed it proved. The jealous look in Sherry’s eye at the Pump room seemed to indicate that Lady Saltash’s advice had been sound. It had set Hero’s heart fluttering, until she remembered that she had seen that look in his eye once before, when she had kissed George, and it had not then appeared to betoken anything more than a dog-in-the-mangerish spirit. Between joy at seeing him again, hurt that he should have come to Bath in Isabella’s train, hope that he might be desirous of having his wife again, and fear lest he should not, she knew not what to think. To go to the ball, and perhaps to see Sherry gallanting Isabella there, must give her pain; to stay away, and so miss the dear sight of him, was unthinkable; and mixed up with all this was a wish, born of pride, to conceal her unhappiness from him, even to make him think that she did very well without him. So she had permitted Mr Tarleton to put her name down for the minuet, and had engaged herself to dance the first cotillion with George, and the second with Ferdy. To Mr Tarleton was to fall the privilege of taking her in to tea. She had not made up her mind about the country dances. Sherry never stood up for them, voting them a great bore, but if he should break his rule and solicit her hand, she did not think that she would be able to refuse him.
Those meaning to take their places in the minuet were obliged to present themselves in the ballroom not later than eight o’clock, so Lady Saltash’s party arrived at the Lower Assembly Rooms considerably in advance of Lady Sheringham’s. The minuet had started when Sherry escorted his ladies into the room, and installed his mother on one of the upper benches. Hero, gracefully performing her part in the dance, could not help reflecting that it was something new for the Incomparable to be obliged to sit at the side of the room while other, and much less dazzling, females took the floor. Then she scolded herself for such an ill-natured thought, acknowledging that the Incomparable was only sitting out because there had been no time for her to set her name down for the minuet. She was looking quite superb tonight, too, dressed in a cloud of primrose gauze, her tawny locks exquisitely cut and curled, her skin almost unbelievably white. As Hero watched her, she looked up at Sherry, standing beside her chair, smiling rather mischievously. Some quality of intimacy in that smile, something in the way Sherry bent to hear what was being said to him, stabbed Hero. He too smiled, and nodded, and uttered some remark which made Miss Milborne laugh, and lift an admonitory finger. Then the movement of the dance made it necessary for Hero to turn her back on them, and she took care not to glance in their direction again. Instead, she embarked on a playful flirtation with Mr Tarleton. This was not missed by Sherry, who no sooner saw who her partner was than he said, quite unreasonably, that he might have known that that fellow would turn out to be Tarleton.
As soon as the minuet ended, and while the couples were still moving slowly off the floor, a young gentleman came up to Hero to beg her to dance the first country dance with him. She accepted, people began to take their places for it, and by the time the Viscount, threading his way across the room, reached his wife’s side, her new partner was leading her into the set. He was so nettled that he went straight back to Isabella, reaching her a bare instant before Sir Montagu Revesby, and saying savagely: “Come and stand up with me, Bella! I’m dashed if I will give my little wretch the pleasure of seeing me propping the wall, as George does!”
“But you never stand up for the country dances!” Isabella reminded him.
“I’ll stand up for this if it kills me!” swore his lordship.
Hero’s set was already made up, and he was obliged to join the second set. This was not what he wanted, but Miss Milborne could only be thankful, since the prospect of standing up with a gentleman who was bent on catching the eye and ear of another lady in the same set was not one which she could view with anything but misgiving.
Hero, of course, saw his lordship lead out Miss Milborne, and she at once felt that her cup was full. She would have liked to have fled from the ballroom to indulge in a hearty bout of tears, but since she could not do this she became extremely animated instead, and laughed and talked, and presented all the appearance of a young lady who was enjoying herself prodigiously. The Viscount, marking this callous behaviour, promptly imitated it; and as Miss Milborne had just seen Lord Wrotham’s striking figure in the doorway she had no hesitation in encouraging her childhood’s friend to flirt with her as much as he liked. Since his more extravagant sallies were interspersed by comments, delivered in a furious undervoice, on his wife’s shameless conduct, she was in no danger of overestimating the worth of the compliments he paid her.
Whatever might have been the Viscount’s intentions when the dance ended, they were frustrated by the descent upon him of Mr Guynette, the Master of Ceremonies. Mr Guynette was well accustomed to handling reluctant gentlemen, and before his victim was aware of what was happening, he had presented him to quite the plainest damsel in the room, a circumstance which should have brought home to his lordship the unwisdom of neglecting to write his name in the Master’s subscription book. Common civility obliged Sherry to ask the plain young lady to stand up with him, and as she had no hesitation in accepting the invitation, he was condemned to another half-hour of purgatory. The first cotillion followed, which Hero danced with George; and then everyone went in to tea. Isabella had by this time collected the usual court round herself, of which the most prominent member seemed to be Sir Montagu; Hero and Mr Tarleton were seated at a table which had no vacant place when the Viscount succeeded in edging his way into the crowded tea-room; so the end of it was that his lordship was forced to join several unpartnered gentlemen by the buffet. Here he found Lord Wrotham, who was wearing his well-known thundercloud aspect; and such was the state of his mind that he forgot that he had parted from Wrotham on the worst of bad terms, and hailed him thankfully as a kindred spirit.
“Of all the abominably stupid evenings!” he ejaculated. “It is ten times worse than Almack’s!”
“I should like to know,” said George, eyeing him broodingly, “what the devil you meant by telling me it was I who had engaged Miss Milborne’s affections?”
“Never told you any such thing!” replied the Viscount. “Not but what she as good as told me so. What’s put you in a miff?”
“I begged to be allowed to take her in to tea, and she said she was promised to Monty. I stood up with her for the second country dance, and she behaved as though she had never met me before in her life!”
“Well, let that be a lesson to you not to dance attendance on my wife!” said Sherry, with asperity.
“She cannot think that there is anything beyond common friendship between Kitten and me!” George said.
“Who asked you to call my wife Kitten?” demanded the Viscount belligerently.
“You did,” replied George.
“Oh!” said Sherry, dashed.
“I will not believe the Incomparable could credit such nonsense!” George declared, flushing. “Why, what reason have I ever given her to think that I would so much look at another female?”
&n
bsp; “Well, upon my word!” exclaimed Sherry. “If that don’t beat all! If kissing my wife at the Fakenhams’ ball isn’t reason enough — ”
“She knew nothing of that!”
“Oh yes, she did! Kitten tried to persuade her to beg you not to meet me!”
“Good God!” George uttered, turning pale. “Then was that why — I must speak with her!”
“You won’t do it here,” said Sherry, with gloomy satisfaction. “Come to think of it, a pretty pair of cakes we must look, you and I, running after a couple of females who won’t have anything to do with us! And nothing to drink but this curst tea!”
“She will have Monty!” George said heavily.
“Not she!”
“She is going in his curricle on some damned expedition tomorrow. She told me so. I will not waste my time here any longer. I shall go back to the White Hart. They have a very tolerable Chambertin there.”
“Dashed if I won’t come with you!” said Sherry.
“You cannot. You are escorting Lady Sheringham and Miss Milborne.”
“I’ll come back in time to take ’em home,” said Sherry, “unless — By Jove, I might force Ferdy to give up his place in the cotillion to me!”
“What’s the use of that?” George said. “I’ve done much the same thing before now, but the fact of the matter is a ball is no place for private conversation. You are for ever being separated by the movement of the dance, and it all ends in a quarrel.”
“Well, I dare say you may be right,” Sherry said. “And if I bore Kitten off — ”
“You can’t do that!” George said, shocked. “Devilish strict at these balls! What’s more, if she refused to go with you, you’d look a bigger cake than you do now.”
“Yes, my God, so I should!” agreed Sherry. “I was a fool to have come! Let us go, George!”
So the two ladies who had spared no pains to demonstrate their indifference to their lordships had the doubtful pleasure of seeing them withdraw from the festivities. They should have been gratified to find their hints so well understood, but gratification was not the emotion uppermost in either swelling bosom.
After seeking a certain amount of relief in pointedly ignoring one another for the next hour, each lady developed the headache, and discovered in herself an ardent desire to go home.
Chapter Twenty-Four
HERO, WHO HAD PASSED A SLEEPLESS NIGHT, arose next morning with a headache indeed, and with suspiciously swollen eyes. Lady Saltash took one look at her, and sent her back to bed, recommending her to glance in her mirror, and decide for herself whether she wished to show her husband, or anyone else, that woebegone face.
“Oh, ma’am, do you think he will come this morning?” Hero asked. “I am persuaded he is thinking only of Isabella! When I saw him stand up with her for the country dance — Sherry! — I felt ready to sink!”
Her ladyship laughed. “Why, what else should a man of spirit do, pray, when you was flirting so scandalously with that boy out of the nursery? Silly puss! The affair is going on famously! Sheringham scarcely took his eyes off you the whole time he was in the Rooms!”
Hero’s lips trembled. “He left while we were having tea. I thought — I wondered if perhaps he would come up to me after tea, and make me dance with him, but — but — ”
“I dare say! And carry you off willy-nilly, perhaps? At a Bath Assembly! Unheard of!”
Hero smiled faintly. “I don’t think he would care for that. It would be just the sort of thing Sherry would do, if he wanted to. Only he didn’t want to. If — if he should come here this morning, ma’am, would you perhaps be so very obliging as to see him, and — and discover, if you are able, what his sentiments truly are?”
“Make yourself easy, my love: I will see him,” promised Lady Saltash.
But her ladyship was not called upon to see him. He did not come to Camden Place that morning, for Mr Ringwood had arrived in Bath by the night mail.
The mail coach having run punctually, he was set down at the White Hart a few minutes after ten o’clock, and found Lord Wrotham breakfasting. He joined him at this meal, as soon as he had shaved, and changed his travelling dress; and listened in stolid silence to the slightly disjointed account his lordship gave him of the imbroglio, which seemed hourly to be growing more complicated. A considerable part of George’s recital was naturally concerned with the behaviour of the Incomparable, but Mr Ringwood paid little heed to this. When he had heard George out, he grunted, and said: “Pack of gudgeons!”
“Who?” demanded George.
“You, and Sherry, and Ferdy,” replied Mr Ringwood. “Dashed if I don’t think Ferdy’s the worst of you! Take a look at that!”
He handed over Mr Fakenham’s letter to him, which George perused in gathering amazement. “Bosky, I dare say,” he remarked. “Who’s this fellow he believes to be at the bottom of Sherry’s coming to Bath? That’s all a hum! I don’t know why he came, but there wasn’t any plot about it. And how the devil does Duke come into it?”
“Lord, I don’t know!” said Mr Ringwood scornfully. “You don’t suppose I wasted my time asking him for the name of a fellow I’m not interested in, do you?”
“No, but I’d give something to know why Ferdy thinks someone is behind it all,” said George, pondering the problem. “Hasn’t said a word to me about it. Couldn’t be Revesby, could it? Don’t see how Ferdy came to forget his name, if it was. I’ll ask him.”
“You may do as you please: I’m going off to see Sherry,” said Mr Ringwood. “Where is he lodging?”
“In the Royal Crescent. He’s in the devil’s own temper, I warn you, Gil!”
“There ain’t the least need to warn me,” said Mr Ringwood. “If you haven’t been able in five years to call me out, it ain’t likely Sherry will!”
He then pulled on his Hessians, which his man had lovingly treated with Spanish Blue King Polish, shrugged himself into his greatcoat, tucked a malacca cane under his arm, and set off for the Royal Crescent. He found Sherry just about to leave the house, to pay a morning call in Camden Place; but at the sight of him Sherry abandoned this immediate intention, and pounced on him with something of the growl of an infuriated tiger.
“The very man above all others I wish to see!” Sherry said menacingly. “You have the devil of a lot of explaining to do, let me tell you! Come upstairs!”
“I’m going to,” replied Mr Ringwood. “But as for explaining, seems to me you have some of that to do!”
“I like your curst impudence!” gasped Sherry. “What in hades have I to explain?”
“Well, you may begin by explaining what the deuce brought you to Bath,” said Mr Ringwood, following him up to the parlour. “If Lady Sheringham is at home — ”
“She ain’t,” interrupted Sherry. “Gone off to see some curst doctor or other. And the Incomparable set out for Wells a couple of hours ago, so you needn’t fear you’ll be obliged to do the civil to either of ’em!” He flung open the parlour door and ushered his friend into the room. “Now, then, Gil! A pretty way you have dealt with me all these weeks! What in thunder possessed you to hide my wife from me, and bam me into thinking you knew no more than I did where she was? By God, if I were not so well acquainted with you, I might have a very fair notion of what your intentions were towards her, so I might.”
“You’d have to be uncommonly disguised to fancy I should take your wife to live with my grandmother if I’d any dishonourable intentions!” retorted Mr Ringwood.
“There is that, of course,” Sherry admitted. “All the same, Gil, I don’t understand what game you are playing; and when I think of your gammoning me when you knew I was half out of my mind with anxiety over Kitten — ”
“Point is, I didn’t know it,” said Mr Ringwood. “Come to think of it, I still don’t know it.”
Sherry stared at him. “Are you mad?” he demanded. “What kind of a fellow do you take me for, in God’s name? My wife leaves me, and you don’t know whether I’m anxious?”
/> “Thought you would have been glad to know she was in good hands,” said Mr Ringwood painstakingly, “but didn’t know whether you cared much that she wasn’t living with you any more.”
“Not care!” Sherry exclaimed. “She’s my wife!”
Mr Ringwood polished his quizzing-glass, paying the greatest attention to the operation. “Going to be frank with you, Sherry,” he said.
“By God, I shall be glad of it!”
“Don’t fancy you will, dear boy, when it comes to it. Very delicate matter: wouldn’t mention it if I hadn’t got to. I know she’s your wife: came to the wedding. Point is, that was a devilish queer business, your marriage, Sherry. Never pretended you was in love with Kitten, did you?”
Sherry flushed, tried to speak, and failed.
“Good as told us all you wasn’t,” pursued his friend. “Not that there was any need: plain as a pikestaff! Something else plain as a pikestaff, too, but whether you saw it is what I don’t know, and never did. Tried several times to give you a hint, but it didn’t seem to me you took it up. Thought the world of you, did Kitten. Wouldn’t hear a word against you: wouldn’t even admit you can’t drive well enough for the F.H.C. That shows you! Always seemed to me she only thought of pleasing you. If she took a fancy to do something she shouldn’t, only had to tell her you wouldn’t like it, and she’d abandon it on the instant. Used to put me in mind of that rhyme, or whatever it was, I learned when I was a youngster. Something about loving and giving: that was Kitten! Mind you, I don’t say you wasn’t generous to her, encouraged her to spend what money she liked, and — ” He stopped, for Sherry had flung up a hand. “Well, no sense in going into that. Dare say you know what I mean. Dashed if I knew what to make of it all! Then you had that turn-up with her over the race she meant to engage in, and she came to me, because there was no one else she could turn to. Sat in my room, with that curst canary I once gave her, and the drawing-room clock, and cried as though her poor little heart was breaking. Don’t mind telling you, I was dashed near calling you out for that, Sherry! Seemed to me you’d been a curst brute to the poor little soul! But she never blamed you: stuck to it everything had been her fault from the outset. Said something which made me think a trifle, said you had never loved her, and it was the Incomparable you had really wished to marry.”
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