THE QUARREL WHICH HAD SPRUNG UP AT VAUXHALL Gardens between Miss Milborne and Lord Wrotham flourished longer than was expected, Wrotham’s temper having been worn thin, and Miss Milborne being so much incensed with him for choosing such a public spot for a quarrel that she refused to receive him when he called upon her next day to make his apologies. As the Duke of Severn ascended the steps of the Milbornes’ residence just as George came down them, and was instantly admitted into the house, it was not surprising that that fiery young man’s patience should there and then have deserted him. Encouraged by his long-suffering friends, he determined to relinquish his pretensions to the hand of the most hardened flirt in London, and for some time made great efforts to abide by this resolve, even allowing himself to forget his broken heart for long enough to enable him to challenge Sherry to a grand driving contest, in praiseworthy emulation of a feat once accomplished by Sir John Lade, who had driven his curricle twenty-two times in succession through a gateway only just wide enough to admit the vehicle. Neither young gentleman succeeded in bettering this performance, Sherry coming to grief at the fifth lap and George at the seventh. Sherry was quite unhurt, but George wrenched his shoulder, and went about for several days with his arm in a sling, looking even more romantic than usual, and causing ill-informed persons to spread the rumour that he had called someone out, and had himself sustained a wound. This story reached Isabella’s ears in due course, and she naturally supposed that she must have been the cause of the duel. She strongly disapproved of duelling, but she could not help feeling a little touched, as well as anxious; and as George did not come to see her she made an excuse to pay a morning call in Half Moon Street to discover what she could learn from Hero.
Hero, who had just come in from a ride in the park, and was wearing a saucy little hat, with a most provocative plume curling over its brim, which quite wrung Miss Milborne’s heart with envy, received her guest with her usual sunny good humour, accepted with thanks the marble-covered novel, straight from the Minerva Press, which was Miss Milborne’s excuse for the call, and begged her guest to be seated. Miss Milborne complimented her on the saucy hat, and confessed that if only she herself rode better, and were not so nervous of horses, she should be tempted to ride in the park too.
“Well, I don’t ride very well, you know,” said Hero frankly. “Sherry says I’m cow-handed. It isn’t true, because I drive my phaeton most creditably. Gil taught me, and he, you know, is quite a nonpareil. The thing is, my mare bolted with me yesterday, and there was such a commotion!” She gave a little gurgle. “Sherry was as mad as fire, but of course he could not scold me on account of that nonsensical match of his. And I was not thrown, and so there was nothing to be in a pucker over. In fact, George said I kept my seat admirably.”
This gave Miss Milborne her opportunity. She lowered her fine eyes to her lap and said gravely: “I hope Lord Wrotham has sustained no lasting injury?”
“Oh no, not the least in the world!”
“I was very much grieved when I heard — I hold such practices in abhorrence, as I am sure everyone must. Who — who was the other man?”
“Why Sherry, to be sure!” replied Hero. “Are you indeed shocked, Isabella? I did not think you would be so stuffy!”
“Sherry?” gasped Miss Milborne, looking up quickly. “Impossible! Oh, I would not have had such a thing happen for the world!”
“I declare you are as bad as Lady Sheringham!” Hero cried. “She actually came to call on me, only to tell me that if I were not such a wretched wife I should put an end to such pranks!”
“Hero, what happened?” asked Miss Milborne, a crease beginning to appear between her brows. “I collect that George’s injury was not sustained in a duel?”
“A duel? Good heavens, no!” cried Hero, laughing. “It was the most absurd start! Merely, George challenged Sherry to drive his curricle through a narrow gate, and back himself to beat him — which, indeed, he did, though he only contrived to scrape through seven times to Sherry’s five!”
A tide of colour rose to the very roots of Miss Milborne’s admirably cut and dressed copper locks. She said in a strictly controlled voice: “I had heard nothing of this. How — how absurd! Really, it is beyond everything! I do not wonder at Lady Sheringham’s displeasure.” She encountered a sparkling look from her hostess, and gave a little laugh. “Oh! do not eat me, my dear! I am sure it is no concern of mine. Shall you be at Almack’s tomorrow evening?”
Since Sherry, when tentatively approached on this subject, had said (with a groan) that he was willing to do his duty, Hero was able to say that she would certainly be there; and the remainder of the morning visit passed in the discussion of the ladies’ respective toilettes.
Unfortunately, it transpired, when Hero burst upon her husband on the following evening in all the glory of a new dress of Italian crape, lavishly trimmed with lace and floss-silk, that he had forgotten all about the engagement, and had made an assignation with a party of his intimates at Cribb’s Parlour. He looked extremely discontented, not to say sulky, supposed she would expect him to send a message round to Gil’s lodging, and wondered what she could possibly find to amuse her at Almack’s.
“Should you prefer not to go, Sherry?” Hero asked, trying very hard not to let a wistful note creep into her voice.
“Oh! I suppose you have set your heart on it, and there is nothing for it!” he responded. “Only I shall be obliged to change my clothes, and I must say I think it is a great bore. However, it don’t signify.”
She could not agree to this. It would be a shocking thing if he had to forgo his pleasure on her account, and the knowledge that he had done so would most effectively destroy her own pleasure. She instantly said: “But I do not at all care to go, Sherry. Indeed, I have the headache a little, and if you are engaged with your friends I should be quite glad to stay at home!”
His face cleared at once. “Should you indeed?” he asked eagerly. “You know, I am prepared to take you if you really wish to go, only I dare say you would find it pretty flat.”
“Oh yes!”
“And if you are dull, why, you may send a note round to invite your cousin to spend the evening with you!” suggested Sherry, forgetting that he had censured her intimacy with Mrs Hoby. “Besides, I do not go until after I have dined. I dashed off a billet to ask George to go along with us all, and he will be calling here to join me.”
But when Lord Wrotham presented himself, towards the end of dinner, he was seen to be in knee-breeches, a circumstance which made Sherry exclaim: “Good God, we’re not going to a ball, old fellow! What the deuce are you about? Knee-breeches for Cribb’s Parlour!”
“Cribb’s Parlour?” repeated George, shaking hands with Hero. “But I thought we were to go to Almack’s!”
“Oh!” Hero cried, in a little confusion. “I had quite forgot that you said you would go with us! Indeed, I am very sorry, George, and I cannot think how I came to be so stupid!”
“Well, it’s of no account,” said Sherry, pouring a glass of wine for his friend. “Hero don’t care to go to the Assembly, and I have made up a snug little party to meet at Cribb’s Parlour.”
Lord Wrotham looked inquiringly at Hero. The significance of her ball dress was not lost on him; he said: “Is this so indeed? Are you sure you do not care to go?
“No, truly I had as lief stay at home,” she assured him. “I have the headache, you know, and Sherry thinks I should very likely find it quite flat.”
“Oh!” said Wrotham, frowning over it. He glanced from one to the other, and said that he supposed he had best return home to change into raiment more suited to Cribb’s Parlour. This, however, Sherry would not permit him to do, saying that they were late already, and must be on their way. He gave Hero a careless pat on the shoulder recommended her to go early to bed, and swept his friend off with him to Mr Ringwood’s lodging. Here they took up Mr Ringwood into their hackney, and all drove off to the tavern owned by the ex-champion of the Ring. Lord Wrotham’s doubts were still troubling him, and when Mr Ringwood expressed surprise at Sherry’s having selected one of the Assembly nights for this meeting, he said abruptly: “She did not look to me as though she had the headache.”
“Lord, how do you know?” responded Sherry. “She did not wish to go to Almack’s, I tell you! She said so herself. I told her I would go if she had set her heart on it, and she replied at once that she would be glad not to be obliged to go.” He added naïvely: “I must say I was deuced happy to hear it, for it is not in my line at all.”
The hackney stopping in Jermyn Street at this moment, to take up Sir Montagu Revesby, the subject was allowed to drop, and the rest of the journey was beguiled in discussing the rival merits of two promising young heavyweights, now in training for an early encounter. Lord Wrotham bore little part in this, but sat lost in a fit of brooding which outlasted his first glass of daffy at the Parlour. He was just about to embark on a second glass when he came to a sudden decision, and startled his friends by saying in accents of strong conviction: “She did want to go!”
Mr Ringwood eyed him with some misgiving. “Go where?” he asked.
“Almack’s, of course!” Wrotham said impatiently.
“Who did?”
“Kitten — Lady Sherry!”
“Nonsense!” said Sherry. “What a fellow you are, George! Once put a notion into your head, and, damme, there’s no getting it out again! Fill up his glass, Monty!”
“No!” said George. “I tell you she was dressed for it. I’d lay a monkey it was all your doing, Sherry! I shall return to Half Moon Street and offer to be her escort!”
“But I keep on telling you she did not wish to go!” Sherry said, quite tired of the subject.
“Well, I think she did. And, damme, I never wanted to come here, now I think of it! I’m going back.”
The Viscount shrugged, casting an expressive glance at Mr Ringwood, and Lord Wrotham took his impetuous departure. He had not appeared to be in a convivial mood, but his going threw an unaccountable damper over the party. The Viscount’s countenance wore something very like a scowl, and he drank off his second glass of daffy rather defiantly. Upon some acquaintances coming up to exchange salutations and bets, he roused himself from his abstraction and entered pretty readily into the transactions. But when these friends moved away, he sat down again at his table, looking moody, and drinking his third glass in unbroken silence. An attempt by Mr Ringwood to rouse him failed; and a rallying jest from Revesby only drew a perfunctory smile from him. The third glass seemed to help him to come to a decision. He set it down empty upon the bare table and suddenly demanded: “What right has George Wrotham to take my wife to Almack’s?”
Mr Ringwood considered this carefully. “Don’t see any harm in it,” he pronounced at last. “Quite the thing.”
“Well, I won’t have it!” said his lordship belligerently.
“My dear Sherry, let me call for another glass!” smiled Revesby.
His lordship ignored this. “He comes here, don’t say a word, hardly blows a cloud, and then what does he do? Without so much as a by your leave, too!”
“Don’t see that,” objected Mr Ringwood, shaking his head. “Told you what he was going to do, didn’t he? If you didn’t like it, ought to have told him so. Too late now. Call for another glass!”
“I don’t want another glass, and I won’t have George taking my wife off under my very nose!”
“Sherry, Sherry!” Sir Montagu remonstrated, laying a hand on the Viscount’s arm.
It was shaken off. “Don’t keep saying Sherry at me!” said his lordship irritably. “If she wanted to go to the damned Assembly, why the devil did she say she didn’t? Tell me that!”
“I am sure she did not wish to go, and she will send Wrotham about his business,” Revesby said soothingly.
Mr Ringwood, rendered percipient by a judicious quantity of gin, said wisely: “Wouldn’t say she wished to go if you didn’t, Sherry. Noticed it often. Always does what you wish. Mistake, if you ask me.” He recruited himself with another pull at his glass. “Selfish!” he produced.
“Who is?” demanded his lordship.
“You are,” said Mr Ringwood simply.
“I am no such thing!” Sherry retorted, stung. “How the devil was I to know she wanted to go when she said she didn’t?”
“My dear Sherry, poor Ringwood is a trifle disguised! Why put yourself in a pucker?” Revesby said.
“No, I ain’t!” Mr Ringwood contradicted, eyeing the elegant Sir Montagu with dislike. “Sherry’s a fool. Always was. George knew she wanted to go. George ain’t a fool.” He thought this over. “At least, not as big a fool as Sherry,” he amended.
“You’re as full as you can hold!” said Sherry furiously. “And George had no right to walk off like that! What’s more, he shan’t take my wife to Almack’s, because I’ll take her myself!”
Revesby caught his sleeve as he sprang up. “No, no, my dear fellow, you’re too late now! Consider! George has been gone these twenty minutes, and more!”
“I shall go straight to Almack’s and give him a set-down!” promised Sherry, a martial light in his eye.
Mr Ringwood sat up. “You’re not going to call George out, Sherry! Mind, now!”
“Who said anything about calling him out? Merely, if my wife goes to Almack’s, I’m going to Almack’s too!”
“Really, Sherry, you are making a great to-do about nothing,” said Revesby gently. “There is no impropriety in Wrotham’s escorting Lady Sheringham, I assure you!”
“Are you accusing my wife of impropriety?” said Sherry, whose pugnacity was fast reaching alarming proportions.
“Certainly not!” replied Revesby. “Such a notion never entered by head, my dear boy! I wish you will sit down and forget these crotchets.”
“Well, I won’t!” Sherry returned. “I’m going to Almack’s.”
Mr Ringwood groped for his quizzing-glass, and through it scrutinized his friend’s person. He let it fall again and lay back in his chair. “Not in pantaloons,” he said. “Can’t be done, Sherry.”
The Viscount looked very much put out for a moment, but having taken a resolve he was not one easily to relinquish it. He said, with immense dignity, that he was going off home to change his dress, and stalked out of the Parlour before either Revesby or Ringwood could think of an answer.
When he reached Half Moon Street it was to hear from his butler that her ladyship had gone out with Lord Wrotham. Sherry said grandly that he knew all about that, and demanded his valet. This gentleman was not immediately to be found, and by the time he had been fetched by a breathless page from the select tavern which he patronized in his leisure moments, the Viscount was in a worse temper than ever, and had ruined no fewer than five neckcloths in some fumbling attempts to achieve a Waterfall style. It was more than half an hour later when he was at last correctly attired for the Assembly, and five minutes after eleven when he arrived at Almack’s. Nothing could have been more unfortunate, for the rules laid down by Almack’s despotic patronesses were not even relaxed for the Duke of Wellington himself; and although the civility of Willis, who presided over the club, could scarcely have been exceeded, not all the Viscount’s stormings or blandishments availed to get him beyond the portals. He was obliged to return home, since he had no longer any desire to spend the night at Cribb’s Parlour, and to while away the time in flicking over the pages of a library book, casting the dice, right hand against left, and brooding over his injuries. Whatever he might do when amongst his cronies, he was not one who took pleasure in drinking alone, so that when Lord Wrotham brought his fair charge back to the house, shortly before two o’clock, the door was opened to them by a sober but awe-inspiringly stiff young man, who bowed to his friend, thanked him in frigid terms for his kind offices, and expressed the hope — bleakly — that he and my lady had been tolerably well amused.
George somewhat astonished by his reception, said that he had passed a charming evening. Hero, on whom the Viscount’s punctilious manner was thrown away, said vivaciously: “Was it not kind of George to take me after all, Sherry? It was so pleasant, too! I wish you had been with us. Everyone was there tonight! Your uncle Prosper came with the Cowpers, and only fancy, Sherry! he complimented me on my gown, and he said I had an air of decided fashion! Oh, and Cousin Jane was there, with Cassy and Eudora, and Cousin Jane was most civil, because I had that instant been dancing the waltz — dear Lady Sefton said I might do so now that I have been approved, so do not be thinking that I am in a scrape! — dancing the waltz with Duke Fakenham, and she most particularly desired to have him presented to her. Oh, Sherry, only to think of my being able to oblige Cousin Jane! And I wish it might have answered, but it did not, I am afraid, for Duke only bowed and talked the merest commonplace for a few minutes, and never asked Cassy to dance at all.” She turned and held out her hand to Lord Wrotham. “Thank you, George! It was so comfortable, and very pretty in you to have gallanted me to the party.”
He took her hand and pressed it, assuring her warmly that the obligation was on his side, that he had done delightfully, never wished to spend a more pleasant evening. Then, as the Viscount offered him no encouragement to linger, he said goodnight and departed.
“I did not expect to find you at home so soon, Sherry,” Hero said innocently. “Was it flat, after all, your party?”
“If I had known — though to be sure I do not know how I could have done so! — that you had a desire to go to the Assembly, I would have taken you myself,” said his lordship stiffly. “I do not know why you should tell me that you had the headache, and then, when you had fobbed me off, have gone to it with Wrotham!”
“Fobbed you off?” exclaimed Hero, quite dismayed. “Oh, Sherry, no! I thought you did not wish to go! Oh, don’t say you did wish to go! I would so much, much rather have had you with me than George!”
“I am flattered!” said his lordship. “I had thought you dealt delightfully with George!”
“Yes, indeed I did, but I had rather be with you than with anyone. Sherry, why did you not join us? It would have been beyond anything!”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I did think I might do so,” said Sherry, thawing. “Only it was after eleven when I reached the curst place, and nothing would prevail upon Willis to let me enter.”
“Oh, Sherry!” Hero cried, flushing in distress. “Had I known that, all my pleasure would have been destroyed! Oh, how vexatious! how sorry I am! It is all my fault for having been so stupid as to fancy you did not wish to go!”
“I must own that considering I was perfectly ready to escort you,” began his lordship in an injured tone, “I do not know why — ” He stopped, meeting her anxious, uncritical gaze. “No, it wasn’t your fault, and you know it wasn’t!” he said. “I didn’t wish to go, but you are not to be giving up your amusements for any such cause as that. Dash it, Gil was right!”
“Gil? Why, what has he to do with it, pray?”
“Oh, nothing! Only he would have it I was a fool, and curst selfish, and I dare say I may be, but I tell you, this, Kitten — ”
“How dared Gil say such a thing?” interrupted Hero hotly. “It is the wickedest untruth! You are no such thing! I should think he must have been quite foxed to have said it!”
“No, no, only slightly disguised!” the Viscount assured her. “Anyway, it don’t signify, only I wish I had taken you, and I’m sorry, Kitten. There!”
She took his outstretched hand and carried it to her cheek. “Oh, Sherry, how silly! I think you must be slightly disguised, to be offering me an apology for such an absurdity!”
“Sober as a judge!” the Viscount asserted. “I don’t say I wasn’t a trifle bosky when I left Cribb’s, but that’s long since. Damme, I’ve been waiting for you to come home these three hours, with nothing to do but read some dashed book or other!”
Hero found the thought of his spending an evening at home with a book so droll that she broke into a peal of laughter, which was so infectious that his lordship was obliged to join in. They went upstairs together in excellent accord, and when they parted outside Hero’s door, Sherry did her the honour of informing her that she was a good little puss, and that he had always had a fondness for her.