Mr Ravenscar left Lady Bellingham’s house while his young relative was still engaged at the faro-table, having himself declined to hazard any of his winnings at his favourite game. As he was shrugging his shoulders into his drab overcoat, he was joined, rather to his surprise, by Lord Ormskirk, who came sauntering down the stairs, swinging his quizzing glass between his white fingers.
“Ah, my dear Ravenscar!” said his lordship, with a lift of his delicately pencilled brows. “So you too find it a trifle flat! Wantage; my cloak! If you are going in my direction, Ravenscar, I am sure you will bear me company. My cane, Wantage!”
“Yes, I’ll bear you company willingly,” said Mr Ravenscar. “So obliging of you, my dear fellow! Do you find the night air—ah, the morning air, is it not?—invigorating?”
“Immensely,” said Mr Ravenscar.
His lordship smiled, and passed out of the house, drawing on a pair of elegant, lavender gloves. A link-boy ran up with his flaring torch, with offers of a chair or a hackney.
“We’ll walk,” said Ravenscar.
It was past four o’clock and a ghostly grey light was already creeping over the sky. It lit the silent square sufficiently for the two men to see their way. They turned northwards, and began to traverse the square in the direction of York Street. A couple of sleepy chairmen roused themselves to proffer their services; a melancholy voice in the distance, proclaiming the hour, showed that the Watch was abroad; but there seemed to be no other signs of life in the streets.
“I recall a time,” remarked Ormskirk idly, “when it was positively dangerous to walk the town at night. One took one’s life in one’s hands.”
“Mohocks?” asked Mr Ravenscar.
“Such desperate, wild fellows!” sighed his lordship. “There is nothing like it nowadays, though they tell me the footpads are becoming a little tiresome. Have you ever been set upon, Ravenscar?”
“Once.”
“I am sure you gave a good account of yourself,” smiled Ormskirk. “You are such a formidable fellow with your fists. Now, that is a sport in which I have never been able to interest myself. I remember that I was once compelled to be present at a turn-up on some heath, or Down—really, I forget: it was abominably remote, and the mud only remains clearly imprinted on my memory! There was a greasy fellow with a nose, whom everyone seemed to be united in extolling. Yes, none other than the great Mendoza: you cannot conceive the depths of my indifference! He was matched with a fellow called Humphries, who bore, quite inexplicably, the title of Gentleman. I do not recollect the outcome; possibly I may have slept. It was very bloody, and crude, and the scent of the hoi polloi, in spite of all that a most disagreeable east wind could do, was all-pervading. But I am speaking, I believe, to one of Mendoza’s admirers!”
“I’ve taken lessons from him,” replied Mr Ravenscar. “I suppose you did not choose to walk home with me to discuss the Fancy. Let’s have it, my lord: what do you want of me?”
Ormskirk made a deprecating gesture. “But so abrupt, my dear Ravenscar! I am walking with you as a gesture of the purest friendliness!”
Mr Ravenscar laughed. “Your obliged servant, my lord!”
“Not at all,” murmured his lordship. “I was about to suggest to you—in proof of my friendly intentions, be it understood—that the removal of your—ah—impetuous young cousin would be timely. I am sure you understand me.”
“I do,” replied Ravenscar rather grimly.
“Now, don’t, I beg of you, take me amiss!” implored his lordship. “I am reasonably certain that your visit to Lady Bellingham’s hospitable house was made with just that intention. You have all my sympathy; indeed, it would be quite shocking to see a promising young gentleman so lamentably thrown away! For myself, I shall make no attempt to conceal from you, my dear fellow, that I find your cousin a trifle de trop.”
Mr Ravenscar nodded. “What’s the woman to you, Ormskirk?” he asked abruptly.
“Shall we say that I cherish not altogether unfounded hopes?” suggested his lordship blandly.
“Accept my best wishes for your success.”
“Thank you, Ravenscar, thank you! I felt sure that we should see eye to eye on this, if upon no other subject. I should be extremely reluctant, I give you my word, to be obliged to remove from my path so callow an obstacle.”
“I can understand that,” said Mr Ravenscar, a somewhat unpleasant note entering his level voice. “Let me make myself plain, Ormskirk! You might have my cousin whipped with my good will, if that would serve either of our ends, but when you call him out you will have run your course! There are no lengths to which I will not go to bring you to utter ruin. Believe me, for I was never more serious in my life!”
There was a short silence. Both men had come to a standstill, and were facing each other. There was not light enough for Mr Ravenscar to be able to read his lordship’s face, but he thought that that slim figure stiffened under its shrouding cloak. Then Ormskirk broke the silence with a soft laugh. “But, my dear Ravenscar!” he protested. “One would say that you were trying to force a quarrel on to me!”
“If you choose to read it so, my lord-?”
“No, no!” said his lordship gently. “That would not serve either of our ends, my dear fellow. I fear you are a fire-eater. Now, I am quite the mildest of creatures, I do assure you! Let us have done with this—I fear we shall have to call it bickering! We are agreed that we both desire the same end. Are you, I wonder, aware that your impulsive cousin has offered the lady in question matrimony?”
“I am. That is why I came to see the charmer for myself.”
Lord Ormskirk sighed. “You have the mot juste, my dear Ravenscar, as always. Enchanting, is she not? There is—you will have noticed—a freshness, excessively grateful to a jaded palate.”
“She will do very well for the role you design for her,” said Mr Ravenscar, with a curl of his lip.
“Precisely. But these young men have such romantic notions! And marriage, you will allow, is a bait, Ravenscar. One cannot deny that it is a bait!”
“Especially when it carries with it a title and a fortune,” agreed Ravenscar dryly.
“I felt sure we should understand one another tolerably well,” said his lordship. “I am persuaded that the affair can be adjusted to our mutual satisfaction. Had the pretty creature’s affections been engaged it would have been another matter. There would, I suppose, have been nothing left for me to do than to retire from the lists—ah—discomfited! One has one’s pride: it is inconvenient, but one has one’s pride. But this, I fancy, is by no means the case.”
“Good God, there’s no love there!” Ravenscar said scornfully. “There is a deal of ambition, I will grant.”
“And who shall blame her?” said his lordship affably. “I feel for her in this dilemma. What a pity it is that I am not young, and single, and a fool! I was once both young and single, but never, to the best of my recollection, a fool.”
“Adrian is all three,” said Mr Ravenscar, not mincing matters. “I, on the other hand, am single, but neither young nor a fool. For which reason, Ormskirk, I do not propose either to discuss the matter with my cousin, or to attempt to remove him from the lady’s vicinity. The rantings of a youth in the throes of his first love-affair are wholly without the power of interesting me, and although I do not pique myself upon my imagination, it is sufficiently acute to enable me to picture the result of any well-meant interference on my part.
The coup de grace must be delivered by Miss Grantham herself.”
“Admirable!” murmured his lordship. “I am struck by the similitude of our ideas, Ravenscar. You must not suppose that this had not already occurred to me. Now, to be plain with you, I regard your entrance upon our little stage as providential—positively providential! It will, I trust, relieve me of the necessity of resorting to the use of a distasteful weapon. Instinct prompts me to believe that you have formed the intention of offering the divine Deborah money to relinquish her pretensions to the hand of your cousin.”
“Judging from the style of the establishment, her notions of an adequate recompense are not likely to jump with mine,” said Mr Ravenscar.
“But appearances are so often deceptive,” said his lordship sweetly. “The aunt—an admirable woman, of course!—is not, alas, blessed with those qualities which distinguish other ladies in the same profession. Her ideas, which are charmingly lavish, preclude the possibility of the house’s being run at a profit, in the vulgar phrase. In a word, my dear Ravenscar, her ladyship is badly dipped.”
“No doubt you are in a position to know?” said Mr Ravenscar.
“None better,” replied Ormskirk. “I hold a mortgage or the house, you see. And in one of those moments of generosity, with which you are doubtless familiar, I—ah—acquired some of the more pressing of her ladyship’s debts.”
“That,” said Mr Ravenscar, “is not a form of generosity with which I have ever yet been afflicted.”
“I regarded it in the light of an investment,” explained his lordship. “Speculative, of course, but not, I thought, without promise of a rich return.”
“If you hold bills of Lady Bellingham’s, you don’t appear to me to stand in need of any assistance from me,” said Mr Ravenscar bluntly. “Use ’em!”
A note of pain crept into his lordship’s smooth voice. “My dear fellow! I fear we are no longer seeing eye to eye Consider, if you please, for an instant! You will appreciate, am sure, the vast difference that lies between the surrender: from—shall we say gratitude?—and the surrender to—we shall be obliged to say force majeure.”
“In either event you stand in the position of a scoundrel,” retorted Mr Ravenscar. “I prefer the more direct approach.”
“But one is, unhappily for oneself, a gentleman,” Ormskirk pointed out. “It is unfortunate, and occasionally tiresome, but one is bound to remember that one is a gentleman.”
“Let me understand you, Ormskirk!” said Mr Ravenscar. “Your sense of honour being too nice to permit of your holding the girl’s debts over her by way of threat, or bribe, or what you will, it yet appears to you expedient that someone else—myself, for example—should turn the thumbscrew for you?”
Lord Ormskirk walked on several paces beside Mr Ravenscar before replying austerely: “I have frequently deplored a tendency in these days to employ in polite conversation a certain crudity, a violence, which is offensive to persons of my generation. You, Ravenscar, prefer the fists to the sword. With me it is otherwise. Believe me, it is always a mistake to put too much into words.”
“It doesn’t sound well in plain English, does it?” retorted Ravenscar. “Let me set your mind at rest! My cousin will not marry Miss Grantham.”
His lordship sighed. “I feel sure I can rely on you, my dear fellow. There is positively no need for us to pursue the subject further. So you played a hand or two at piquet with the divine Deborah! They tell me your skill at the game is remarkable. But you play at Brooks’s, I fancy. Such a mausoleum! I wonder you will go there. You must do me the honour of dining at my house one evening, and of giving me the opportunity to test your skill. I am considered not inexpert myself, you know.”
They had reached Grosvenor Square by this time, where his lordship’s house was also situated. Outside it, Ormskirk halted, and said pensively: “By the way, my dear Ravenscar, did you know that Filey has acquired the prettiest pair of blood-chestnuts it has ever been my lot to clap eyes on?”
“No,” said Mr Ravenscar indifferently. “I supposed him to have bought a better pair than he set up against my greys six months ago.”
“What admirable sang-froid you have!” remarked his lordship. “I find it delightful, quite delightful! So you actually backed yourself to win without having seen the pair you were to be matched with!”
“I know nothing of Filey’s horses,” Ravenscar responded. “It was quite enough to have driven against him once, however, to know him for a damnably cow-handed driver.”
His lordship laughed gently. “Almost you persuade me to bet on you, my dear Ravenscar! I recall that your father was a notable whip.”
“He was, wasn’t he?” said Mr Ravenscar. “If Filey’s pair are all you say, you will no doubt be offered very good odds.” He raised his hat as he spoke, nodded a brief farewell, and passed on towards his own house, at the other end of the square.
He was finishing his breakfast, several hours later, when Lord Mablethorpe was announced. Coffee, small-ale, the remains of a sirloin, and a ham still stood upon the table, and bore mute witness to the fact that Mr Ravenscar was a good trencherman. Lord Mablethorpe, who was looking a trifle heavy-eyed, grimaced at the array, and said: “How you can, Max-! And you ate supper at one o’clock!”
Mr Ravenscar, who was dressed only in his shirt and breeches, with a barbaric-looking brocade dressing-gown over all, waved a hand towards a chair opposite to him. “Sit down and have some ale, or some coffee, or whatever it is you drink at this hour.” He transferred his attention to his major-domo who was standing beside his chair. “Mrs Ravenscar’s room to be prepared, then, and you had better tell Mrs Dove to make the Blue Room ready for Miss Arabella. I believe she took, fancy to it when she was last here. And take the dustsheets of the chairs in the drawing-room! If there is anything else, you will probably know of it better than I”
“Oh, are Aunt Olivia and Arabella coming to town?” asked Adrian. “That’s famous! I haven’t seen Arabella for months. When do they arrive?”
“Today, according to my latest information. Come and dine.”
“I can’t tonight,” Adrian said, his ready blush betraying him. “But tell Arabella I shall pay her a morning-call immediately!”
Mr Ravenscar gave a grunt, nodded dismissal to his major domo, and poured himself out another tankard of ale. With this in his hand, he lay back in his chair, looking down the table at his cousin’s ingenuous countenance. “Well, if you won’t come to dine tonight, come to Vauxhall Gardens tomorrow,” he suggested. “I shall be escorting Arabella and Olivia there. There’s a ridotto, or some such foolery.”
“Oh, thank you! Yes, indeed I should like it of all things That is, if—but I don’t suppose—” He stopped, looking a little, self-conscious. “I am glad I have found you at home,” he said. “I particularly wanted to see you!”
“What is it?” Ravenscar asked.
“As a matter of fact, I came to ask your advice!” replied Adrian, in a rush. “At least, no, not that exactly,—for my mind is quite made up! But the thing is that my mother depends a good deal upon your judgement; and you’ve always been devilish good to me, so I thought I would tell you how things stand.”
There was nothing Mr Ravenscar wanted less than to hear his cousin explain his passion for Miss Grantham, but he said: “By all means! Are you coming to watch my race, by the way?”
This question succeeded in diverting Lord Mablethorpe for the moment, and he replied, with his face lighting up: “Oh, by Jove, I should think I am! But what a complete hand you are, Max! I never heard you make such a bet in your life! I suppose you will win. There is no one like you when it comes to handling the ribbons! Where will it be run?”
“Oh, down at Epsom, I imagine! I left it to Filey to settle the locality.”
“I hate that fellow!” said Lord Mablethorpe, frowning. “I hope you will beat him.”
“Well, I shall do my best. Do you go to Newmarket next month?”
“Yes. No. That is, I am not sure. But I didn’t come to talk of that!”
Mr Ravenscar resigned himself to the inevitable, made himself comfortable in his chair, and said: “What did you come to talk of?”
Lord Mablethorpe picked up a fork, and began to trace patterns with it upon the table. “I hadn’t the intention of telling you about it,” he confessed. “It is not as though you were my guardian, after all! Of course, I know you are one of my trustees, but that is quite a different thing, isn’t it?”
“Oh, quite!” agreed Ravenscar.
“I mean, you are not responsible for anything I may do,” said Adrian, pressing home his point with a little anxiety.
“Not a bit.”
“In any event, I shall come of age in a couple of months. It is really no concern of anyone.”
“None at all,” said Ravenscar, betraying no trace of the uneasiness his relative evidently expected him to feel. “In fact, you may just as well keep your own counsel, and have some ale.”
“No, I don’t want any,” said Adrian, rather impatiently. “As I said, I had no intention of telling you. Only you happened to visit—to visit Lady Bel’s house last night, and—and you met Her.”
“I did not exchange more than half a dozen words with Lady Bellingham, however.”
“Not Lady Bellingham!” said Adrian, irritated by such stupidity. “I mean Miss Grantham!”
“Oh, Miss Grantham! Yes, I played piquet with her, certainly. What of it?”
“What did you think of her, Max?” asked his lordship shyly.
“Really, I don’t remember that I thought about her at all. Why?”
Adrian looked up indignantly. “Good God, you surely must at least have seen how—how very beautiful she is!”
“Why, yes, I suppose she is tolerably handsome!” conceded Ravenscar.
“Tolerably handsome!” ejaculated Adrian, in dumbfounded accents.
“Yes, certainly, for one who is not in the first blush of youth A little too strapping for my taste, and will probably put or flesh in middle age, but I will allow her to be a well-looking woman.”
Adrian laid down the fork, and said, with a considerable heightened colour: “I had better make it plain to you at once Max, that—that I mean to marry her!”
“Marry Miss Grantham?” said Ravenscar, raising his brows. “My dear boy, why?”
This unemotional way of receiving startling tidings was damping in the extreme to a young gentleman who had braced himself to encounter violent opposition, and for a moment Adrian seemed to be at a loss to know what to say. After a slight pause, he said with immense dignity: “I love her.”
“How very odd!” said Ravenscar, apparently puzzled.
“I see nothing odd in it!”
“No, of course not. How should you, indeed? But surely someone nearer your own age-?”
“The difference in our ages doesn’t signify in the least. You talk as though Deb were in her thirties!”
“I beg pardon.”
Adrian eyed him with considerable resentment. “My mind is irrevocably made up, Max. I shall never love another woman I knew as soon as I saw her that she was the only one in the world for me! Of course, I don’t expect you to understand that, because you are the coldest fellow—well, I mean, you have never been in love!”
Ravenscar laughed.
“Well, not in the way I mean,” amended his lordship.
“Evidently not. But what has all this to do with me?”
“Nothing at all!” replied Adrian, with emphasis. “Only that since you have met Deb I thought I would tell you. I do not wish to do anything secretly. I am not in the least ashamed of loving Deb!”
“It would be very odd if you were,” commented Ravenscar. “I apprehend that Miss Grantham has accepted your offer??
“Well, not precisely,” Adrian confessed. “That is, she will marry me, I know, but she is the most delightfully teasing creature-! Oh, I can’t tell you, but when you know her better you will see for yourself!”
Ravenscar set down his tankard. “When you say “not precisely”, what do you mean?”
“Oh, she says I must wait until I come of age before I make up my mind—as though I could ever change it! She did not wish me to say anything about it yet, but someone told my mother that I was entangled—entangled!—by her and so it all came out. And that is “in part” why I have come to you, Max.”
“Oh?”
“My mother will listen to you,” said Adrian confidently. “You see, she has taken an absurd notion into her head that Deb is not good enough for me. Of course, I know that her being in Lady Bel’s house is a most unfortunate circumstance, but she is not in the least the sort of girl you might imagine, Max, upon my word she is not! She don’t even like cards above a little! It is all to help her aunt.”
“Did she tell you so?”
“Oh no, it was Kennet who told me! He has known her since her childhood. Really, Max, she is the dearest, sweetest—oh, there are no words to describe her!”
Mr Ravenscar could have found several, but refrained.
“She is not like any other woman I have ever met,” pursued his lordship. “I wonder that you were not struck by it!”
“Well, I have met rather more women than you have as yet had time to,” said Ravenscar apologetically. “That might account for it.”
“Yes, but I should have thought that even you—however, that’s neither here nor there! What I want you to understand, Max, is that I mean to marry Deb, whatever anyone may choose to say about it!”
“Very well; and now that I understand that, what do you expect me to do about it?”
“Well, Max, I thought I could talk to you so much more easily than to my mother. You know how it is with her. Just because Deb has been in the habit of presiding in a gaminghouse, she will not listen to a word I say! It is monstrously unjust! It is not Deb’s fault that she is obliged to be friendly towards men like Filey and Ormskirk: she cannot help herself! Oh, I can scarcely wait to take her away from it all!”
“I see,” said Ravenscar. “I must own that you have taken me by surprise. No doubt I quite mistook the matter, but I should have said that it was Ormskirk’s suit which the lady favoured, rather than yours.”
Adrian looked troubled. “No, no, you don’t understand! It is that which makes me so anxious—in short, Lady Bel is under an obligation to Ormskirk—a monetary obligation, you know—and Deb dare not offend him. It is an intolerable position for her! If only I had control of my fortune now, I would put an end to it on the instant!”
Mr Ravenscar experienced no difficulty at all in believing this, and could only be thankful that there were still two months to run of his cousin’s minority. “May I ask if the source of your information is again Mr Kennet?” he inquired
“Oh, yes! Deb will not say a word about it! But Kennet, knows all the circumstances.”
“Miss Grantham is happy in the possession of so devoted friend,” remarked Ravenscar ironically.
“Well, yes, I suppose—except that—Well, he is not quite the sort of fellow who—But that will all be changed when we are married!”
“Miss Grantham’s parentage, I need hardly ask, is respectable?” said Ravenscar, in a matter-of-fact voice.
“Oh, yes! The Granthams are related to Amberley, I believe they are some sort of cousins: I am not precisely informed Deb’s father was a military man, but he sold out.” Lord Mablethorpe looked up with a disarming smile. “Well, the truth is, he was a gamester, I suppose. His birth was respectable but from all I can discover he was not quite the thing. But he is dead, after all, and his sins are not to be visited upon Deb There is also a brother. I have not met him yet, but there is talk of his getting leave: he is stationed somewhere in the south. He is a military man too, and was at Harrow, so you see there is nothing to take exception to there.” He paused, waiting for his cousin to make some comment. Ravenscar, however, said nothing. His lordship drew a breath. “And now that I have explained it to you, Max, I wish—that is, I should be very much obliged to you if you would speak to my mother I...”
“I?” said Ravenscar. “What would you have me say to her?”
“Well, I thought you could make her understand that it is not such a bad match after all!”
“No, I don’t think I could do that,” replied Ravenscar. “I doubt if anyone could.”
“But, Max—”
“I should wait until I had come of age, if I were you.”
“But if Mama could only be brought to consent, I should not have to wait! And there is that fellow, Ormskirk, to be thought of! I want Mama to give her consent, so that Deb need have no scruples. Then the engagement could be announced, and I daresay there would be no trouble about advancing me some of my fortune.”
“Impossible!”
“But, Max, if you and Uncle Julius both agreed to it—”
“What makes you think that we should?”
“But I have explained it all to you!” said his lordship impatiently.
Mr Ravenscar got up, and stretched his long limbs. “Wait until you are of age,” he said. “You may then do as you please.”
“I did not think you would behave so shabbily!” exclaimed Adrian.
Ravenscar smiled. “But surely you know that I am abominably close-fisted?”
“It is not your money,” Adrian muttered. “I suppose the truth is that you are as bad as Mama, and don’t wish me to marry Deb!”
“I won’t conceal from you that I am not enthusiastic over the match. You had better approach your Uncle Julius.”
“You know very well he is as bad as Mama! I made sure you would help me to talk Mama over! I have always depended upon you! I did not think you would fail me in the most important thing in my life!”
Ravenscar walked round the table, and dropped a hand on to Adrian’s shoulder, gripping it for an instant. “Believe me, I don’t mean to fail you,” he said. “But you must wait! Now I am going to exercise those greys of mine. Come with me!”
It spoke volumes for the love-sick state of Adrian’s mind that he shook his head, saying disconsolately: “No, I think I won’t. I have no heart for it now. I must be going. If you knew Deb better you would soon change your mind!”
“Then you must hope for a closer acquaintanceship between us,” said Ravenscar, moving to the fireplace, and jerking the bell-pull beside it.
Adrian rose. “Anyway, I shall marry her!” he said defiantly.
Ravenscar accompanied him out into the hall. “By all means, if you are still of the same mind in two months’ time,” he agreed. “My compliments to my aunt, by the way.”
“I don’t suppose I shall tell her that I have been with you,” replied Adrian, sounding much like a thwarted schoolboy.
“That will teach me a lesson,” said his cousin.
Adrian was never sulky for many minutes at a time. A reluctant grin put his scowl to flight. “Oh, damn you, Max!” he said, and departed.
Mr Ravenscar returned to his breakfast-parlour, and stood for a moment or two, leaning his arm on the mantelpiece, and looking fixedly out of the window. His thoughts were not kindly towards Miss Grantham, and as they dwelled upon her his expression grew a little ugly. Very clever of the wench to set the convenient Mr Kennet to tell her pathetic story to Adrian! So she would not have him announce his betrothal to her until he came of age? Well, that was clever too, but not quite clever enough. Miss Grantham should have the honour of trying a fall with one Max Ravenscar, and maybe she would learn something from that encounter.
“You rang, sir?”
Mr Ravenscar turned his head. “Yes, I rang. Send word to the stables, please, that I want the greys brought round in half an hour.”