Meanwhile, Mr. Hethersett, to whose thoughtful offices they owed a beverage well-known for its sobering quality, had suffered a check. Farley was unable to tell him where his master had gone when he had left the house earlier in the evening.
Mr. Hethersett eyed him. “Dashed discreet, ain’t you? Did he go off with Sir John Somerby?”
“No, sir, although I had understood that such was his intention. A meeting at the Daffy Club, sir, I fancy. But his lordship cried off.”
“Well, there’s no need to make a mystery of it!” said Mr. Hethersett, irritated. “Where did he go?”
“That, sir, I cannot say, his lordship not having informed me. He had his whisky brought round, but he didn’t take his groom with him, nor yet his Tiger, and when I ventured to ask him if he would wish supper to be prepared for him he said that he didn’t know when he should be returning. His lordship appeared, sir, to be in quite a fret, if I may say so. Not at all like himself.”
The mystery was now plain to Mr. Hethersett. In his experience it was a foolish waste of time to attempt to hoodwink one’s servants. He had not for a moment imagined that the supposed secret of Letty’s flight was not known to every member of the household, so he had no hesitation in saying bluntly: “Set off after Lady Letitia, did he? Oh, well, if that’s so, no need for me to find him!”
“No, sir,” replied Farley. “His lordship was not aware that her ladyship had not returned to the house. I was not myself aware of it, until Miss Sutton—my lady’s dresser, sir—informed me that Lady Letitia was gone to spend the night with Mrs. Thorne. His lordship did not enquire for Lady Letitia. It was my Lady Cardross which his lordship was anxious to find.” He coughed delicately. “No doubt some urgent matter which he wished to discuss with her ladyship,” he said, gazing limpidly at Mr. Hethersett. “Being as they were disturbed by Sir John Somerby, and her ladyship, in consequence, leaving the book-room rather hastily, sir.”
“Oh!” said Mr. Hethersett, looking at him very hard.
“Yes, sir. So, as soon as he was rid—as soon, I should say, as Sir John left the house, his lordship went upstairs to find her ladyship, which, not being able to do, vexed him a trifle. Quite put out, he was, which was not to be wondered at, because it seems her ladyship forgot to inform him she was obliged to go out quite suddenly. And, of course, his lordship couldn’t help but be in a fidget when he found that my lady’s carriage had not been sent for. Very understandable, I am sure, sir, that his lordship should have felt anxious, for it was going on towards dinner-time, and naturally he wouldn’t like to think of my lady’s going out in such a way. Particularly,” he added, in a disinterested voice, “if she was going on a journey.”
“Is that what he thought she was meaning to do?” demanded Mr. Hethersett.
“Well, sir, that is not for me to say,” replied Farley carefully. “But when his lordship questioned George, it came out that her ladyship had sent down to have her dressing-case taken up to her room. Just after she had parted from his lordship, that would have been.” He looked Mr. Hethersett firmly in the eye, and said: “What I thought, sir, was that very likely her ladyship had had word brought her that my Lord Pevensey was lying on his deathbed, perhaps—which would account for her going off like she did. Being quite distracted, which no one could wonder at.”
“Yes, well, you can stop pitching your gammon!” said Mr. Hethersett indignantly. “Dashed well ought to know better! Must know I ain’t such an easy cove to swallow all that humdudgeon! I know what you thought, and it was a bag of moonshine!”
“Yes, sir,” said Farley, bowing. “I am very glad of it. I apprehend that her ladyship went in search of Lady Letitia, but on that subject I shall not presume to open my lips.”
“Well, see you don’t!” recommended Mr. Hethersett.
He then repaired to the library, where the Viscount, intent upon throwing a difficult chance, did not at first notice him. Nell, seated on the sofa at the end of the room, was a good deal dismayed to see him come walking in, for she had supposed him to have gone in search of Cardross. It was evident, since he had shed his cloak, that he had no immediate intention of leaving the house, and she could not help looking reproachfully at him, as he came towards her.
“No use,” he said, in an undervoice. “Floored at all points. Farley don’t know where Cardross is. Seems to me he’s making a dashed cake of himself. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s gone off to Devonshire.”
“Gone off to Devonshire?” she echoed, in amazement. “Nonsense, why should he do such a thing?”
“Chasing after you,” he said. “Shouldn’t think he’d be such a gudgeon as to set off in a whisky, but he may have hired a chaise. Left the whisky at the posting-house.”
Quite bewildered, she said: “But why should he think I had gone to Devonshire? Oh, Felix, are you foxed too?”
“No, of course I ain’t! Been talking to Farley. No wish to pry into what don’t concern me, but collect you had a turn-up with Cardross.” He added hastily, as the colour rushed into her cheeks: “Not my business! The thing is, Giles found you wasn’t in the house. Couldn’t discover where you was gone, and, by what I can make out, was thrown into a rare taking. Silly gape-seed of a porter told him some farradiddle about taking your dressing-case up to your room. Sounds to me as if he was pitching it pretty rum, but can’t be surprised it put Cardross in the devil of a pucker.”
“Oh, good God!” she exclaimed guiltily. “That was only to draw George out of the hall! How could he suppose—?” She stopped, and turned apprehensive eyes towards him. “Did—did the servants think I had run away?”
“Lord, yes! Bound to!” he replied. “However, it don’t signify. What I mean is, you hadn’t.”
“No, indeed! But to have caused such a commotion—set them all gossiping—Oh, do you think he will be very angry with me?”
“No, no! Might be in a miff, I daresay, but he’ll come about,” he said soothingly. “Must see you meant it for the best. Not your fault you made a mull of it.”
This well-meant consolation caused her to spring up, wringing her hands. “Letty!” she uttered. “Felix, it is my fault! Oh, if I had but told him! He will never forgive me!”
The Viscount, his attention jerked from the bones by her unguarded movement and raised voice, looked round. “What the deuce—Well, by God, if that fellow Hethersett hasn’t come sneaking back!”
“What, are you still castaway?” said Mr. Hethersett disgustedly. “I wish you’d take yourself off!”
“Oh, you do, do you?” countered his lordship. “Well, I’m not going to stir from this house while you’re in it, my buck, and that you may depend on!”
Mr. Fancot, with a hazy recollection of earlier events, looked puzzled, and said: “But you don’t like him, Dy! You said you was going to throw him out.”
“Felix!” said Nell, too lost in agitated reflection to heed this interchange. “There is nothing for it but for me to go after them! It may not be too late!”
“Good God, cousin, you can’t do that!” said Mr. Hethersett, shocked.
“If I went in our own chaise, and you were so very obliging as to go with me?” she urged. “It may be hours before Giles returns, and then—”
“Well, upon my soul!” ejaculated the Viscount, rising with such hasty violence as to overset his chair. “If that don’t beat all hollow!” He seized his sister by the shoulders, and shook her. “Have you taken leave of your senses?” he demanded. “Go off in a chaise with that fellow? Not while I’m here to stop you!” He rounded suddenly on Mr. Hethersett, an ugly look on his face. “What damned cajolery have you been playing off on her?” he said fiercely.
“For the lord’s sake, Dysart, go and dip your head in a bucket!” begged Mr. Hethersett.
“Oh, listen!” Nell said sharply, her face turned towards the door.
A quick stride was heard approaching; the door was flung open, and Cardross stood on the threshold. There was a hard, anxious look on his face, and
he had not stayed to put off his long, many-caped driving coat. His eyes swept the room, and found his wife. He went quickly forward, totally ignoring the rest of the company, saying in a shaken voice which she hardly recognized: “Nell! Thank God! Oh, my darling, forgive me!”
“Giles! Oh, no! it was all my fault!” she cried, casting herself into his arms. “And it is much, much worse than you know! Letty has gone with Mr. Allandale!”
“Damn Letty!” he said, folding her close. “You have come back to me, and nothing else is of the smallest consequence!
Mr. Hethersett, averting his eyes with great delicacy from the passionate embrace being exchanged, began to polish his quizzing-glass; the Viscount stared in thunderstruck silence; and Mr. Fancot, after blinking at the extraordinary spectacle offered him, rose carefully to his feet, and twitched his friend’s sleeve. “Think we ought to be taking leave, Dy,” he said confidentially. “Not the sort of party I like, dear boy! Go for a toddle to the Mutton-walk!”
“Damned if I will!” replied Dysart. “I want a word with Cardross, and I’m going to have it!”
Recalled to a sense of his surroundings, Cardross looked up. Flushing a little, he let Nell go. “By all means, Dysart: what is it?”
“I’ll tell you in private,” said the Viscount, in whom the effects of his potations were beginning to wear off.
“Well, I don’t know why you should suddenly wish to be private!” said Nell, with unusual asperity. “When you have been saying the most abominable things without the least regard for anyone, even the hackney coachman! Besides trying to call poor Felix out in the most insulting way! Oh, Giles, pray tell him he must not do so!”
“But why in the world should he wish to?” asked Cardross, startled, and considerably amused.
“Silly clunch saw her ladyship coming away from Allandale’s lodging with me, and would have it that it was my lodging,” said Mr. Hethersett tersely, responding to the laughing question in his cousin’s eye.
“Oh, that’s the tale is it?” said the Viscount. “Well, it won’t fadge! Didn’t think to tell me that, did you? Why not? That’s what I want to know! Why not?”
“Because you were a dashed sight too ripe to attend to a word anyone said to you!” replied Mr. Hethersett, with brutal frankness.
“And in any event there was no need for you to behave in such an outrageous way, Dy,” interpolated Nell severely. “Even if it had been Felix’s house, which it might as well have been, because I had the intention of calling on him, on account of my not knowing the number of Mr. Allandale’s. Only, by good fortune, he chanced to be coming out just as I was paying off the hack.”
“Yes, you have that mighty pat, haven’t you, my girl?” said Dysart. “And I daresay you think it makes all right! Well, it don’t! Pretty conduct in a female of quality to be paying calls on every loose fish on the town, I must say! In a common hack, too! Well, that may suit your notions of propriety, Cardross, but it don’t suit mine, and so I’ll have you know!”
“Dy, how can you be so absurd?” protested Nell. “No one could possibly think poor Mr. Allandale a loose fish!”
“Dash it, cousin!” exclaimed Mr. Hethersett indignantly.
“My dear Dysart, do let me assure you that I honour you for such feelings, and enter into all your ideas on the subject!” said Cardross. “You may safely leave the matter in my hands.”
“That’s just what it seems to me I can’t do!” retorted Dysart. “Yes, and that puts me in mind of another thing I have to say to you! Why the devil don’t you take better care of Nell? Did you get her out of a silly scrape? No, you didn’t! I did! All you did was to put it into her head you thought she only married you for your fortune, when anyone but a gudgeon must have known she’s too big a pea-goose to have enough sense to do anything of the kind. So when she finds herself under the hatches she daren’t tell you: I have to pull her out of the River Tick! A pretty time I had of it! Why, I even had that fellow Hethersett hinting it was my fault she was being dunned for some curst dress or other!”
Mr. Hethersett blushed. “Misapprehension! Told you so at the time!”
“Well, it was my fault!” said Dysart furiously. “I daresay if I hadn’t borrowed three centuries from her you wouldn’t have had to snatch her off Jew King’s doorstep, but how was I to know it would put her in the basket? Besides, I’ve paid it back to her!”
“Nell, my poor child, how could you think—Did I frighten you as much as that?” Cardross said remorsefully.
“No, no, it was all my folly!” she said quickly. “I thought that shocking bill from Lavalle had been with those others, only it wasn’t, and when she sent it me again it seemed as though I couldn’t tell you! Oh, Dysart, pray don’t say any more!”
“Yes, that’s all very well, but I am going to say something more! I’ve a pretty fair notion of what your opinion of me is, Cardross, but I’ll have you know that it was not I who prigged that damned necklace of yours!”
“Eh?” ejaculated Mr. Hethersett, startled.
“You have really no need to tell me that, Dysart,” Cardross replied, his colour heightened, and his eyes fixed on Nell’s face.
“Well, it’s what my own sister thought!” said Dysart.
“Good God, Giles, you’ve never lost the necklace?” Mr. Hethersett demanded.
“No,” answered Cardross, holding Nell’s hand rather tightly. “It isn’t lost. If it were, I should not imagine for one instant that you had taken it, Dysart.”
“Much obliged to you!”
“I must say, that’s the outside of enough,” observed Mr. Hethersett. “Whatever made you take a notion like that into your head, cousin?”
“It was very, very foolish of me!”
“Well, I call it a dashed insult!” declared the Viscount.
“Yes, Dysart: so do I!” said Cardross, raising Nell’s hand to his lips. “I hope you have begged his forgiveness, Nell—as I beg for yours!”
“Oh, Giles, pray hush!”
The Viscount, having frowned over this for a moment, exclaimed: “What, did you think she had sold the thing? If that don’t give you your own again, Nell!”
“That’s all very well,” objected Mr. Hethersett, “but you said it wasn’t lost, Cardross!”
“It was lost, but it has been restored to me. I suppose I now know who stole it—and should have known at the outset! Not your sister, Dysart, but mine! Was that it, Nell?”
“Well, yes, it was,” she confessed. “But you mustn’t be out of reason cross with her, because indeed I believe she would never have thought of doing such a thing, only that Dysart put it into her head!”
“What?” exclaimed Dysart. “No, by God, that’s too much! I never did so!”
“Yes, Dy, you did! Oh, I don’t mean to say that it was what you intended, but I have been thinking about it, and I am persuaded it was your holding me up that night, with Mr. Fancot—good gracious, where is Mr. Fancot?”
“Yes, by Jove! Where is he?” exclaimed Dysart.
“No need to worry about him,” said Mr. Hethersett, nodding to where Mr. Fancot was peacefully sleeping in a large wing-chair. “Wouldn’t have let you all talk in that dashed improper way if he’d been listening to you!”
“If ever I knew anyone like Corny for dropping asleep the instant he gets a trifle above oar!” remarked the Viscount, eyeing his friend with tolerant affection.
“Don’t wake him, I beg of you!” said Cardross. “What, my darling, had that hold-up to do with this affair?”
“Yes, what?” demanded Dysart.
“Well, you see, Giles, when I wouldn’t sell any of the jewels you gave me—and I still think it would have been the most odiously deceiving thing to have done, Dy, however tiresome you may have thought it of me!—Dysart hit upon the notion of pretending to be a highwayman, and taking them from me in that way. Only I recognized him, so it came to nothing. But the thing was that Letty thought it had been a famous notion, and I am very sure that that was what put i
t into her head to sell the Cardross necklace!” She broke off, as a thought occurred to her. “Good heavens, Letty! What are we about, wasting time in this way? Cardross, we discovered, Felix and I, that they set out with only a pair of horses! It is true that they have several hours start of you, but Felix seems to think that you might easily overtake them before they can reach the Border!”
“I daresay I might—if I were to make the attempt,” he agreed.
“But won’t you?” she asked anxiously.
“No. I have had my fill of driving this evening! Allandale is welcome to her!”
“Yes, but to be married in such a way! Giles, only think what the consequences must be! I shouldn’t wonder at it if it ruined him as well as her! Indeed, I was never more astonished in my life than when I learned he had yielded to her persuasions! I had not thought it of him! And for you, too, how disagreeable must it be! Oh, do, pray, go after them, and bring her back!”
April Lady Page 25