WHEN HERO PUT IN NO APPEARANCE AT THE breakfast table next morning, the Viscount was not much surprised, and he made no comment. He himself had passed an indifferent night. His visit to White’s, on the previous evening, had confirmed his worst fears. One tactless gentleman had actually had the effrontery to mention Hero’s projected race to him, and instead of landing this person a facer he had been obliged to treat the matter lightly, saying that it was all a hum, and that he wondered that anyone could have been green enough to have supposed that it could have been anything else. After that he had gone home, and had written a stiff note to Lady Royston, cancelling the meeting. That had taken him an hour to compose, and he had wasted a great many sheets of paper on it, and had not even the satisfaction of feeling that the final copy conveyed his sentiments to the lady. Unquiet dreams had disturbed his sleep, and he arose in the morning not in the least refreshed, but more determined than ever to remove Hero from London until such time as the Polite World had forgotten her lapse from grace. His lordship was not going to run the risk of his wife’s being refused a voucher for Almack’s; and, to do him justice, this caution was more on her behalf than on his own. He made up his mind to explain it all carefully to Hero on the way down to Kent, for although he had been extremely angry with her on the previous evening, he was not one to nurse rancour, and he was already sorry that he had left her room so precipitately, and without comforting her distress, or making any real attempt to alleviate her alarms. He did not like to think of his Hero in tears, and he was much afraid that she had cried herself to sleep. When she did not come down to breakfast, he was sure of it. So as soon as he had finished his own repast he went up to her room and knocked politely on the door. There was no answer, and, after waiting for a moment, he turned the handle and walked in. The room was in darkness. Surprised, he hesitated for an instant before speaking his wife’s name. There was again no answer. All at once the Viscount felt, without quite knowing why, that there was no one but himself in the room. He strode over to the window, and flung back the curtains, and turned. No erring wife lay sleeping in the silk-hung bedstead. The quilt had not even been removed from it, but on one pillow lay a sealed billet.
The Viscount picked it up with a hand that was not entirely steady. It was addressed to himself. He broke the seal and spread open the sheet of paper.
Sherry,
I have run away, because I will never go to your Mama, and I see now that it would be to no avail, even if I did, for you were right when you said you should not have married me, though I did not know it then, when I was so ignorant and stupid. It was all my fault, for I always knew that you did not love me, and you have been so patient with me, and so very kind, and I know I have been very troublesome, and quite spoilt your life, besides getting into debt, and obliging you to sell those horses, and not knowing how to contrive so that Mrs Bradgate should not order such expensive things, like that dreadful bill for candles, and a dozen others. So please, Sherry, will you divorce me, and forget all about me, and pray do not tease yourself with wondering what has become of me, because I shall do very well, and there is not the least occasion for you to do so. And also, Sherry, I hope you will not mind that I have taken the drawing-room clock, and my canary, for they were truly mine, like the earrings you gave me on my wedding day, and Ferdy’s bracelet.
— Your loving Kitten.
The Viscount’s lips quivered; he looked up from the letter, and stared about him at surroundings which seemed suddenly desolate. He found that he was not able to think very clearly, for when he tried to concentrate on the problem of Hero’s present whereabouts his brain seemed not to move at all, and the only thought which reiterated rather stupidly in his head was that she had gone.
He had left the door open when he had entered the room, and after a few minutes he became aware that someone was standing in the aperture. He looked round quickly, and saw his valet, gravely regarding him. They looked at one another in silence, the Viscount trying to think of something to say in explanation of his wife’s disappearance, and Bootle just waiting. Nothing occurred to the Viscount, and suddenly he knew that it would be useless to attempt any explanation. He said abruptly: “Bootle, when did her ladyship leave this house?”
The valet came in and closed the door. “I do not know, my lord, but I think last night.” He stepped over to the window, and methodically straightened the curtains which his master had pulled back so hastily. In a colourless voice, he added: “I fancy her ladyship took her abigail with her, my lord, for the chambermaid reports that Maria’s bed has not been slept in.”
He noticed with satisfaction that there was a perceptible lightening of the expression on his master’s face. He said, even more disinterestedly than before: “I have taken the liberty of informing the staff, my lord, that her ladyship was called away hurriedly, one of her ladyship’s relatives having been taken ill.”
The Viscount flushed. “Yes, very well! Thank you.” He folded the letter in his hand, and put it into his pocket. “They won’t believe it, I dare say.”
“Oh, yes, my lord!” replied Bootle tranquilly. “Your lordship may rely upon me. And, if I may be permitted to take the liberty, my lord, there is no occasion for your lordship to concern yourself over the Bradgates, them being related to me, and not ones to chatter about their betters.”
“I’m obliged to you,” the Viscount said, with an effort. “You do not know if her ladyship summoned a hackney, or — or a chair?”
“No, my lord. But if your lordship desires me so to do I could make discreet inquiries.”
“Do so, if you please.”
“Very good, my lord. Will your lordship receive my Lord Wrotham, or shall I inform his lordship that you have stepped out?”
“Lord Wrotham!”
“Downstairs in your lordship’s library,” said Bootle.
“I’ll see him,” the Viscount said, and went swiftly out of the room.
Lord Wrotham, arrayed in the much-coveted insignia of that most exclusive of driving clubs, the F.H.C., with a drab greatcoat sporting no fewer than sixteen capes over all, was standing by the fireplace in the library, one top-booted foot resting on the fender. One glance at his host’s face, as he entered the room, his blue eyes bright and hard with something between hope and suspicion, made him speak before Sherry had had time to do more than utter his name.
“Hallo, Sherry!” he said. “When did you get back to town? Thought you was at Melton still.”
“No,” said Sherry. “No. George — ”
Lord Wrotham adjusted the monstrous nosegay he wore as a buttonhole. “Lady Sherry ready to drive out with me?” he asked. “Going to tool my curricle down to Richmond. Trying out my new pair. Prime bits of blood! Heard about Gil?”
“Gil ...” said Sherry. “What about Gil?”
George laughed. “Why, only that that old uncle of his looks like obliging him at last! Seems to be in a pretty bad way. Gil’s posted down to Hertfordshire to be in at the death. By God, I wish I had an uncle to leave me a handsome fortune!”
Sherry stared at him, a frown in his eyes. “George, are you sure of that?” he demanded.
“Saw him off not two hours ago. Why?” responded George.
“Nothing,” Sherry said, passing a hand across his brow. “I only wondered — No reason at all.”
Lord Wrotham, who was finding it increasingly difficult to meet his friend’s gaze, fell to contemplating the polish on one topboot. He had not expected to enjoy this interview, and he was not enjoying it. Sherry looked positively haggard, he thought; and if he had not promised Hero not to divulge her whereabouts to Sherry he would have felt extremely tempted to have told him the truth. But when he had seen the little party off from Stratton Street earlier in the morning he had given his word to Hero, and he was not the man to go back on that. He hoped that his confidence in Mr Ringwood’s judgment would not prove to have been misplaced, and said, as casually as he could: “Does Kitten mean to come with me, Sherry?”
The Viscount pulled himself together. “No. The fact is, she’s not feeling quite the thing. Asked me to make her apologies.”
“Good God, I trust nothing serious, Sherry?”
“No, no! — At least, I can hardly say yet. Dare say she has been doing rather too much. Not accustomed to town life, you know. I am — I shall be taking her into the country in a day or so. Needs rest and a change of air.”
“I am excessively sorry to hear it! You’ll be wishing me at the devil, no doubt: I’ll be off at once!”
Sherry, usually the most hospitable of hosts, made no effort to detain him, but accompanied him to the street door. As George descended the steps, he asked suddenly: “George, where’s my cousin Ferdy?”
“Lord, how should I know?” replied George, drawing on his gloves. “Said he was going to dine at Long’s last night, so he may be nursing his head in bed. You know what he is!”
“He did dine at Long’s? You’re sure of that?”
“He was certainly engaged to do so,” George said, with perfect truth.
“Oh! Then — No, he wouldn’t — ” Sherry broke off, flushing. “Fact of the matter is I’ve the devil of a head myself this morning, George!”
Lord Wrotham replied sympathetically, and left him. Sherry went back into his library, and sat down to think very hard indeed.
The result of this concentrated thought was to plunge him into quite the most horrid week of his life. His friends, daily expecting to see him at one of his usual haunts, looked for him in vain. His lordship was out of town, travelling first into Buckinghamshire, to Fakenham Manor, and thence all the way north to Lancashire, to Croxteth Hall, the Earl of Sefton’s country seat. He drew blank at both these establishments, but both his aunt and Lady Sefton inexorably dragged his story out of him, and then favoured him with their separate, but curiously similar, readings of his character. Lady Fakenham was a good deal more outspoken than Lady Sefton, told him that he had come by his deserts, and sped him on his way to Lancashire with the depressing reminder that he had only his abominable selfishness to thank for whatever disaster might befall his wife, adrift in a harsh world. When he had gone (and it had cost him all his resolution to take leave of his aunt with common civility), her ladyship said thoughtfully to her husband that this affair might well prove to be the making of Anthony.
“Yes, but what the deuce can have become of that poor little creature?” said Lord Fakenham, not particularly interested in Sherry’s possible redemption.
“Indeed I wish I knew! I wish too that she had come to me, but no doubt she would not think to cast herself upon Anthony’s relations.”
Lady Sefton, having reduced the unfortunate Viscount to the condition of speechless endurance to which she could, upon rare occasions, reduce her eldest born, my Lord Molyneux, relented towards him sufficiently to permit him a glimpse of two rays of sunlight. She thought it probable that Hero would presently return to Half Moon Street; and she engaged herself to smooth over any unpleasantness that might have arisen in influential quarters from the projected race.
The Viscount posted back to London. The house in Half Moon Street seemed desolate, almost as though someone had died there, he thought. He would have liked to have left it; but when he had made all his plans for shutting it up, and returning to his old lodgings, he changed his mind, and determined to stay there. To shut the house would give rise to much gossip and speculation; and if Hero came back to him it would be a shocking thing, he thought, for her to find the shutters up, and the knocker off the door.
Mr Ringwood was back in town again, saying, with perfect truth, that he saw no reason why his rich uncle should not survive for another ten years. Mr Ringwood said also that he was devilish sorry to hear from George that Lady Sherry was so indisposed as to have been obliged to retire into the country for a space.
Sherry, who had schooled himself to answer such remarks with mechanical civility, found a certain measure of relief in being able to throw off his mask before the friend whom he most trusted. He said abruptly: “It’s not true. Only the tale I’ve put about. She’s left me.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Ringwood.
Sherry gave a short laugh. “You heard me, Gil! She ran away, because I said she was to go down to my mother, at Sheringham Place. She took some absurd notion into her head — all nonsense, of course! — and she was gone before I’d time to explain why I — For naturally I meant to make it all clear to her, and there was no question of — But that’s a female all over!”
Mr Ringwood, helping himself, with extreme deliberation, to a pinch of snuff, said: “Don’t play off your tricks on me, Sherry! The truth is, I take it, that you quarrelled with her over that race?”
“Quarrelled! Gil, do you know what she meant to do? If it had been your wife — ! I was very angry! dash it, any man would have been! But there was not the least occasion for her to have run away from me, as though I had been some deuced brute, or — or — I know it was as much my fault as hers, and, what’s more, I said so. That was not why she ran away! I said she should go to my mother and she did not choose to. Talked some fustian about my mother’s thinking she had ruined my life — fiddle!”
“No wish to say a word against your mother, Sherry, dear boy, but that’s what she has been saying.”
Sherry stared at him. “It’s not possible! I never heard a word of this!”
“Not likely you would,” said Mr Ringwood. “True, for all you may not have heard it. Often thought you don’t pay enough heed to what’s dashed well under your nose, Sherry. Not surprised Kitten wouldn’t go to Sheringham Place. Don’t think her ladyship would have wanted her, either. If you don’t mind my saying so, my dear fellow, the odds are she’d have tried to bully Kitten.”
The Viscount’s eyes sparkled. “Oh, no, she would not!” he said. “She’d have had me to reckon with! And if I’d seen her, or anyone else, bullying my Kitten — ”
“Point is, you wouldn’t have been there to have seen it,” said Mr Ringwood dryly. “Don’t suppose you meant to stay at Sheringham Place, did you?”
“No, but — Well, naturally I should have gone down there from time to time, and — ” He stopped, looking sulky, and rather defensive. “So you think I was wrong to decide to take Kitten there, do you? Much you know about it!”
Mr Ringwood disregarded this rider, and answered frankly: “Yes, I do.”
“But, good God, man, what else could I have done?” Sherry burst out. “We could not have continued as we were! Dash it, we have not been married much above four months, and if you knew the half of the crazy things Kitten would have done had I not been at hand to prevent her — ”
“Ah!” interrupted Mr Ringwood. “Put your finger on it, Sherry, haven’t you? Didn’t do crazy things when you were at hand.”
“In the devil’s name, how could I always be at hand? Did you expect me to change my whole way of living, simply because I was married?”
“Expected you to settle down a trifle, dear boy. Never fancied the notion of it for myself, which is why I’ve stayed single. Seems to me a fellow can’t continue in the same way once he ties himself up. What do you mean to do now?”
“Find her, of course! I made sure she would have gone to my aunt Fakenham, or even to Lady Sefton, but she did not. I tell you I’m at my wits’ end, Gil! What with setting it about she’s indisposed, and fobbing people off, and trying to undo the harm that infernal race caused, and not knowing where to look for her — yes, and being obliged to continue living in this damned house — well, there are moments when I’d like to wring Kitten’s neck! I haven’t had a day’s hunting since she left home; I’ve had to career all over England in search of her; and I’m so worried I can’t sleep at night! Dash it, she’s no more fit to be fending for herself than that canary you gave her! And I don’t need you to tell me I’m responsible for her! I should never have been mad enough to have married a chit out of the schoolroom, and that’s the truth of it!”
Mr Ringwood looked at him under his brows. “Wishing you hadn’t, Sherry?”
“I wish I hadn’t married anyone!” Sherry said petulantly. “Don’t you, Gil! There’s nothing but trouble, and anxiety; and the devil of it is that you can’t alter it, and — no, you don’t even want to! The thing is, I suppose a fellow grows used to having a wife, for all he may not think it, and then — Damnation, I miss her like the devil, Gil!”
“Dare say she’ll come back to you,” said Mr Ringwood, at his most phlegmatic.
“Yes, that’s what I tell myself, and sometimes I believe it. It’s possible she’s playing a trick on me, for she was always the naughtiest chit imaginable! And then I think she ain’t, and when I start wondering what kind of a scrape she may have got herself into by now — well, it ain’t surprising I can’t sleep! If only I had the least notion where to look for her!” He ran a hand through his fair locks. “Isabella is back in town, or so they tell me. She may be able to help me, for she’s known Kitten since they were children. I’ve sent round a note, asking her if she will see me privately. I don’t know if I can trust her not to spread the truth round town, but if Kitten don’t come back soon it will be bound to leak out, so I dare say it makes no odds.”
Mr Ringwood, retiring from this interview in due course, was not ill-satisfied with what he had heard. He told Lord Wrotham that he fancied the business would work out tolerably well, and strongly vetoed his lordship’s suggestion that it was time they told Sherry the truth.
“Damn it, Gil, I don’t like it!” George said. “You don’t know what a man can suffer when the woman he loves — ”
“No reason to think Sherry loves Kitten.”
“I believe he does. He looks dashed ill, and he don’t hunt, or go to the races, or even look in at Watier’s!”
“Won’t do him any harm,” said Mr Ringwood, unmoved by this pathetic picture. “Matter of fact, I think you’re right, and he does love her. But he don’t know it yet, and he’d best find out. Talked of wringing her neck today. Got to go a long way beyond that, George.”
George was so indignant at the thought of anyone’s wanting to wring Hero’s neck that he made no further attempt to persuade Mr Ringwood to relent towards Sherry. The only circumstance which still worried him, he said, was the unhappiness Hero must be suffering. Mr Ringwood agreed to it, but said that it would be better for the poor little soul to be unhappy for a short space now than to grow estranged from Sherry, which was what he feared might have happened had the strange marriage continued along its unsatisfactory course. Moreover, he was able to assure George that Lady Saltash had taken an instant liking to Hero, and, having heard the whole story of the marriage, had accorded her grandson’s intervention her unqualified approval.
What her ladyship had actually said was: “You’re not such a fool as I had thought, Gilbert. Don’t tell me what Anthony said and did! I’ve known that boy since before he was breeched. An engaging scamp, that’s what he is! Go back to London, and take that silly creature, Ferdy Fakenham, with you, for if ever anyone gave me the fidgets it’s he!”
When Sherry visited Miss Milborne, he found her not in quite her usual looks or spirits, but as his mind was wholly occupied by his own troubles, and he was not, in any event an observant young gentleman, he noticed nothing amiss, but plunged immediately into the object of his visit.
She was very much shocked. Unlike his aunt, and Lady Sefton, and Mr Ringwood, she neither said nor believed that Sherry was to blame for Hero’s flight. Never having felt the smallest desire to depart from the strictly conventional herself, the story of the racing engagement quite dismayed her. She could not imagine how any female with the least pretension to elegance of mind, or propriety of taste, could have even listened to such a proposal without a blush of mortification. She could not find it in herself to blame Sherry for having been very much provoked; and she would have extended her warmest sympathy towards him would he but have accepted it. But such was his perversity that no sooner did he find himself in the company of a partisan than he spared no pains to assure her that the fault had been his from start to finish, and that if his Hero had erred in judgment it was through innocence and his own neglect. Miss Milborne thought that such sentiments did him honour, and said so, to which his lordship replied shortly: “Fudge!”
She would have lent him any aid that lay in her power, but with the best will in the world there was nothing she could do, since she had no more idea than he where Hero might have hidden herself. For several years they had not been intimate. Only one idea, and that a painful one, occurred to her. She asked, with a little difficulty, if Sherry had spoken to Lord Wrotham.
“He didn’t know anything,” Sherry replied impatiently. “Thinks she’s in the country, indisposed.”
Miss Milborne rather carefully smoothed out her handkerchief. “I only thought ... It has sometimes seemed to me that — that George displays a marked partiality for Hero, Sherry.”
“Oh, there’s nothing in that!” he said. “Good God, you should know George don’t give a button for any female but yourself!”
Miss Milborne coloured faintly, and looked up as though she would have liked to have said more. But Sherry, having no interest outside his own pressing problem, was already on his feet, and wishing to take his leave. She did not detain him; upon consideration, she did not even know what it was that she wanted to say to him. As she shook hands, she informed him, a little consciously, that she was going into Kent for a time. He accepted this without surprise or interest, and so they parted. Miss Milborne did her best not to fell ill-used, but could not help reflecting that his lordship was a singularly impercipient young man.
For Miss Milborne, for the first time in her life, had behaved in a manner contrary to her own interests, thus disobliging her Mama, and leading that redoubtable dame to prophesy a single existence for her, attended by all the ills that were commonly supposed to wait on spinsters. Miss Milborne, travelling to Severn Towers with the dutiful intention of fulfilling her Mama’s expectations, had been received by the Duchess with every mark of distinguishing attention. There had been a number of other, and certainly more exalted, guests, but she had known herself to be the guest of honour, and had had no difficulty in interpreting her hostess’s benign manner to signify approval of Severn’s suit. She had been shown all over the vast pile, even down to the linen and stillrooms; obviously interested family retainers had bobbed curtsies to her; the housekeeper had initiated her into the mysteries of domestic arrangement; and the Duchess had talked in a casual way of her own plans when her son should bring home a bride. Nothing could have been more gratifying, and why Miss Milborne should suddenly have taken fright was a matter passing the comprehension of her parent. Miss Milborne found herself unable to advance any reasonable explanation for her behaviour. All she would say was that she did not love the Duke, and this was too frivolous an utterance to be accepted by Mama.
Miss Milborne, losing herself in the enormous mansion, being driven about the prosperous estate, dining off gold plate, and being waited on by armies of liveried servants, saw herself mistress of all this grandeur, and, since she was but human, was not unattracted by the vision. But at her side was the unromantic figure of her ducal suitor, a model of punctilious civility, treating her with pompous respect, bestowing his admiration on her rather as though it had been an accolade. His grace was as correct in his advances to the lady whom he designed to make his wife as in every other detail of his well-ordered life, the greatest display or ardour he permitted himself to indulge in being the fervent pressing of his lips to her hand. Miss Milborne doubted whether it would ever enter his head to seize her in a rough embrace, and to devour her with kisses as Lord Wrotham had shown lamentably little hesitation in doing. She knew that he would never rave and storm at her, make extravagant gestures, threaten to blow his brains out, or spend all his energy in procuring for her flowers that were out of season. She thought his notions of propriety would preclude his even quarrelling mildly with her, since whenever she displeased him a more than ordinarily stolid expression would descend upon his countenance, and he would withdraw from her vicinity, reappearing after a judicious lapse of time as though nothing whatever had happened to disturb the harmony of their intercourse. He disapproved of gaming, took no more than a fashionable interest in racing, chose his friends from amongst the more sedate of his contemporaries, and was prone to moralize upon such dismal subjects as the decay of modern manners, the frivolity of the younger set, and the lack of modest restraint observable in the damsels at present gracing Society.
And all at once, just as everything was in train for a brilliant betrothal, Miss Milborne knew that she could not marry Severn. Aghast at her own conduct in having encouraged his advances, wishing she had never allowed George to goad her into accepting the Duchess’s invitation to Severn Towers, she did what she could to prevent his grace’s coming to the point. Her manner towards him was retiring to the point of coldness. The Duchess, observing it, reiterated her opinion that she was a very pretty behaved girl, for such formal reserve exactly suited her own ideas of well-bred behavior. George might have been cast into despair by a tenth of such repulsive chilliness as was being shown to the Duke, but Severn, knowing himself to be the biggest matrimonial prize in the market, read it as admirable female modesty, and was not in the least discouraged. Miss Milborne felt hunted, and if Lord Wrotham had appeared at the Towers he might have ridden off with her across his saddle-bow with her very good will. But although his lordship would no doubt have obliged her had he had the least idea of her desire, he had no such idea, and the respectability of the Duke’s ancestral home was undisturbed by his romantic presence. The Duke declared himself; Miss Milborne declined his flattering offer; the Duchess was both staggered and affronted; and Mrs Milborne expressed her unshakable belief that her wretched daughter was out of her senses.
She brought her back to London, and it was in London that the full evils consequent upon the rejection of his grace’s hand were borne in upon Mrs Milborne. No one believed that his grace had come up to scratch. She read the truth in the discreetly veiled smiles which met any reference to the affair, and was mortified indeed. The Polite World had no doubt at all that his grace’s Mama had triumphed by subtle means, and that the return of the Milbornes to town betokened defeat.
Miss Milborne was quite as conscious as her parent of this disagreeable circumstance. She had foreseen it, and it had taken a considerable degree of resolution to make her refuse the Duke’s offer. What she had not foreseen was that Lord Wrotham should fall into vulgar error.
But this was precisely what that impetuous young man had done, and it apparently led him to suffer a revulsion of feeling. Instead of being relieved and gratified at the Beauty’s return, unbetrothed, to London, he laughed in a harsh and bitter way, and uttered some comments so caustic as to be almost insulting. These were naturally repeated, and came in due course to Miss Milborne’s ears. She experienced a strong desire to box George’s ears, but as he did not come near her she was unable to gratify it. A period of calm reflection made her acknowledge to herself that she might have been in some degree to blame for George’s abominable lack of faith in her, and instead of wishing any longer to box his ears she would have given much to have had the opportunity of explaining herself to him. Such signs of encouragement as might be bestowed on a gentleman by a modest female she bestowed on George, and he received them with a curling lip, and an eye sparkling with contempt. Miss Milborne, who had fallen into the way of thinking that he might be treated with impunity like a stray mongrel, suffered a severe shock, and was torn by indignation and a curious satisfaction that he could not, after all, be whistled back to heel at her pleasure.
But to have lost in far too rapid succession three such notable suitors as my Lord Sheringham, his Grace of Severn, and my Lord Wrotham was a disaster hard indeed to bear. The most serious pretender to her hand was now a mere baronet, for she knew very well that such admirers as the Honourable Ferdy Fakenham paid court to her as a matter of fashion, and had no real intentions towards her. Sir Montagu Revesby’s increasingly assiduous attentions came as a slight balm to a wounded spirit, but when Mrs Milborne said that since all her undutiful child saw fit to do in London was to throw her future prosperity to the winds she would be better off in the country, she raised no demur. This retirement might savour of a retreat, but nothing could be more mortifying than to be obliged to face the sympathy or the amusement of the Polite World.
So Miss Milborne departed to recruit her spirits in Kent; and Lord Wrotham flung himself into the dogged pursuit of pleasure, behaving in a very reckless style; losing a great deal of money at the gaming tables; all but breaking his neck on the hunting-field; accepting any and every wager offered him without the smallest hesitation; indulging in orgies of drinking at Long’s, Limmer’s, the Daffy Club, and any other such haunts; flaunting a succession of Cyprians before the scandalized eyes of the world; being very short-tempered and aggressive towards his fellow-men; and causing thoughtful gentlemen to remove themselves from his vicinity by culping wafer after wafer at Manton’s Shooting Gallery.
Sherry, meanwhile, was no nearer to discovering his vanished wife’s whereabouts than he had been at the outset; and he was not finding that custom was making him grow any more reconciled to her absence. As day succeeded day he missed her increasingly, and the house they had chosen together became ever more unfriendly to him. He even missed the canary’s shrill song, which had so often exasperated him. He had chafed at the bonds which matrimony had imposed on him; he had groaned at the necessity of escorting Hero to balls and routs; he had fancied his comfort to have been ruined by her habit of getting into scrapes from which he was obliged to rescue her; he had even remembered nostalgically the days of his untrammelled bachelordom, and had thought that he would like to have them back again. Well, Hero had given them back to him, and they proved to be Dead Sea fruit. While she remained lost to him, he had no zest even for hunting; and when one of his associates challenged him to paint all the turnpikes from London to Barnet a beautiful scarlet he stunned this enterprising gentleman by replying curtly: “Folly!” and utterly refused to accept the challenge.
The news of Hero’s disappearance had of course reached the Dowager Lady Sheringham, and as she had the best of reasons for knowing that her daughter-in-law was not, as the world believed, recuperating at Sheringham Place, she wrote to demand an explanation of Sherry. After turning her letter over once or twice, Sherry drove down to Kent, and gave her the explanation in person. Mr Paulett, who was present, started to bemoan a marriage which he had always foreseen would end in just such a way, and was startled to find himself confronting a nephew he did not recognize. Sherry was neither boyishly sulky, nor violently threatening. He was icily and implacably civil, and he showed his uncle out of the room, holding the door open for him, and bowing with a cold formality Mr Paulett found singularly unnerving.
The Dowager, observing these signs of maturity in her son, then shed tears, and would have held his hand and condoled with him had he permitted it. She said that he must not mind her saying that she had never considered Hero Wantage to have been good enough for him. Unfortunately for the rest of the speech which she had been about to make, the Viscount replied that he minded it very much; that there was no truth in the statement; and that he must request his mother never to repeat it. He then took from her all power of saying anything at all by informing her that he proposed to make certain changes in his way of life, which would necessitate her removal — at her convenience, he added, with this new and quelling politeness — from Sheringham Place to the Dower House. He further announced his intention of taking up his residence in the house in Grosvenor Square as soon as he should be reunited with his wife, and begged her ladyship to remove from it any such articles of furniture as belonged to her, or for which she had a partiality. He had formed the immediate intention of redecorating the house, and he was going to put this in hand without loss of time.
When the dowager had recovered her breath she attempted, though feebly, to expostulate. The Viscount cut her short. “My mind is made up, ma’am. It is time I was thinking of settling down. I should have done all this at the outset. It may be too late: I don’t know that. But if — when — my wife returns to me we will contrive better, I hope.”
“I am sure I am the last person alive to wish to keep you out of your house,” quavered Lady Sheringham. “But I do not know why you should suppose your wife will return to you, for ten to one she has run off with another man!”
“No,” said his lordship, turning his back upon her, and staring out of the window at the bleak gardens. “That is something else I desire you will not repeat, ma’am. It is untrue.”
“You cannot know that, Anthony, my poor boy! She never cared for you! It was all vanity, and the wish of becoming a person of consequence!”
He shook his head. “She never thought of that. I didn’t know it — never stopped to think, or — or consider it, but she did care for me. Much more than I cared for her — then. But if I could only find her — I’ve racked my brains, and I can’t think where she can have gone, or to whom! She must have sought shelter with someone! Good God, ma’am, it keeps me awake at night, the fear that she may be alone, without money, or friends, or — No, no, she must be with some friend I know nothing of!”
“Very likely she went to that vulgar cousin of hers,” said his mother waspishly.
He wheeled round, rather pale. “Mrs Hoby!” he ejaculated. “How did I come to forget her? Good God, what a fool I have been! I am obliged to you, ma’am!”
He set off for town again that very day, and repaired to the Hobys’ house. A rather slatternly servant opened the door to him, when he had knocked on it for the third time, and informed him that her master and mistress were away from London. A few inquiries elicited the further information that the Hobys had left for a visit to Ireland the day following Hero’s departure from Half Moon Street. With a darkening brow, the Viscount asked if this had been a long-standing engagement. The servant thought not; they had packed up and gone in a hurry; she thought a letter had arrived which made them take this course. But when he asked if they had gone alone, or had taken a friend with them, she shook her head and replied that she couldn’t say, not having witnessed the actual departure, but she believed they had been alone.
The Viscount went home to think this over. The more he thought, the more convinced he became that Hero had indeed flown to her cousin, and was now being concealed by this lady. He had never liked Theresa Hoby; her husband he barely knew, but had little hesitation in condemning as bad ton; and gradually there grew up in his breast a feeling of indignation that Hero should have fled to the very people above all others whom he most disliked. He remembered that he had forbidden her to hold any close intercourse with Mrs Hoby; remembered also that she had largely ignored this prohibition; and conveniently forgot that it had been uttered in the heat of the moment, and never seriously repeated. He began to be angry, and from picturing Hero in all manner of appalling plights passed to imagining herself amongst a set of people of whom her husband disapproved. A cynical remark let fall by his Uncle Prosper, that no doubt the minx was bent on giving him the fright of his life, took root in Sherry’s mind, and drove him to throw himself, without the slightest enjoyment, into much the same kind of excesses which were being indulged in by Lord Wrotham. There was a good deal of bravado about this, a suggestion of gritted teeth, and more than a suggestion of obstinacy; but it made Mr Ringwood pull down the corners of his mouth and shake a despondent head.
Six weeks after Hero’s disappearance, the Hobys came back to London. Sherry heard of their arrival, and grimly awaited the return of his wife. She did not come; but her cousin did — to call upon her. The Viscount received her, and ten minutes in her company were enough to convince him that she knew nothing of Hero’s whereabouts, had not the smallest notion of her being away from home, and had journeyed into Ireland for the purpose of attending her mother-in-law’s sickbed.
The Viscount’s brain reeled under the shock. Remorse, anxiety, and despair played havoc with him; and he seriously disquieted Bootle by spending the entire night in the back room, called his library, alternately striding up and down the floor and sitting with his head in his hands over the fire. He consumed a considerable quantity of liquor during this session, but he was not drunk when Bootle ventured to enter the room early the following morning; and this, the valet said darkly to Bradgate, was a very bad sign.
The Viscount looked at him unseeingly for a moment, and then passed a hand through his tumbled locks, and said curtly: “Send round to Stoke, and tell him I desire to see him immediately!”
Mr Stoke, when he arrived, was shocked by his patron’s haggard appearance. He listened in silence to the blunt story the Viscount related, and received, without visible discomposure, a command to set every possible means in motion to discover Lady Sheringham’s whereabouts. He asked the Viscount one or two searching questions, did his best to hide his own absence of hope, and went away promising to strain every nerve to find her ladyship.
The Viscount was still waiting for his man of business to justify his existence when the dowager arrived in London, and summoned him to visit her at Grillon’s Hotel, where she was putting up. He found her with Miss Milborne in her train, and learned from her that the unusually damp winter had so aggravated her numerous rheumatic disorders that nothing short of a visit to Bath was likely to be of benefit to her. Miss Milborne, too, she said, had been sickly for some weeks. So she had had the idea of inviting the sweet girl to accompany her to Bath, to try what the waters would do for her, and to fill the place of Mr Paulett, who was employed in making the Dower House habitable. She desired the Viscount to perform the filial duty of escorting them on their perilous journey.
The Viscount refused with wholly unfilial promptness. He said that nothing would prevail upon him to leave London; and that if his Mama thought herself in danger of being held up by highwaymen, she would find a couple of outriders of more practical use than himself. The dowager smiled wanly, rose up from her chair, saying that perhaps Someone Else would have the power to make him change his mind, and drifted out of the room, leaving him alone with Miss Milborne.
The Viscount stared at the shut door, and then at the Beauty, incredulity struggling with wrath in his countenance. “What the deuce — ?” he demanded explosively.
Miss Milborne got up and took his hand, saying with a good deal of feeling: “My poor Sherry, you look so wretchedly! Have you had no word from Hero?”
He shook his head. “Not one. I’ve set my man of business on to it. Told him to call in the Runners if need be, though God knows I don’t want — But what else can I do? And then my mother comes here teasing me to take her to Bath, of all places! And let me tell you, Bella, that while I have no wish to offend you, if her ladyship meant that you have the power to persuade me into going, she was never more mistaken in her life!”
She smiled. “Indeed, I know it! You never cared a button for me, Sherry. I believe it must always have been Hero, though perhaps you did not know it until you lost her.”
He stood looking down at her. “You said something of the sort the day I offered for you, and I told you Severn would never come up to scratch. We’re an unlucky pair, ain’t we?”
She withdrew her hand, flushing. “Sherry, you have known me since we were children, and if you are to believe that I am wearing the willow for Severn, I cannot bear it! Oh, I don’t deny I was flattered by his making me the object of his attention! and, yes, perhaps I did a little like the notion of being a duchess! But when I thought how it would be to be married to him, to be obliged to live with him for the rest of my life — oh, I could not!”
“What, you don’t mean that he really did come up to scratch, and you refused him?” he exclaimed.
She nodded. “Yes, I could not prevent him. My going to Severn Towers at Christmas was fatal! But do not speak of this, Sherry, if you please! It would be so unbecoming in me to boast of having made such a conquest, and Severn would very much dislike to have it known!”
“Well, by God!” said Sherry, quite thunderstruck.
She tried to smile. “How odious you are! You may imagine how deeply I am in disgrace with Mama. The only person, except poor Papa, who has been kind is your mother, and that is in part why I am going with her to Bath. To be open with you, Sherry, I believe she has taken a foolish notion into her head that you may divorce poor little Hero, and end by marrying me after all.”
“Well, I shan’t,” said his lordship, with an entire absence of gallantry.
“Don’t flatter yourself I would accept you!” retorted Miss Milborne. “I care no more for you than I cared for Severn! Well, yes, perhaps a little more, but not very much!”
“I wish I knew who it is you do care for!” said Sherry.
She turned her face away. “I had thought you did know. If you do not, I am glad.”
“George?” Then, as she made no answer, he said: “Of all the stupid coils! George took such a pet over you that there’s no doing a thing with him these days. Riding as hard as he can to the devil. You’d best stay in London, Bella!”
“No,” she replied. “I should not dream of doing so. George may think me what he wills: I shall go to Bath with Lady Sheringham.”
“Don’t you! It’s a rubbishing place: can’t stand it myself!” He stopped abruptly, his brows snapping together, his eyes holding an arrested expression. “Bath! When was I talking of the place last? Said I should be obliged to go there if — Great God, why did I never think of that before? Bath — school — governess! That’s what she’s done, the little fool, the little wretch! My Kitten! Some damned Queen’s Square seminary, you may lay your life, and very likely turned into a drudge for a parcel of — Tell my mother I’ll escort her to Bath with the greatest pleasure on earth, but she must be ready to start tomorrow!”
“Sherry!” she gasped. “You think Hero may be there?”
“Think! I’m sure of it! If I weren’t a rattle-pated gudgeon I should have thought of it weeks ago! Tell you what, Bella, if we mean to keep my mother in a good humour, we’d best say nothing about this. Let her suppose you persuaded me: it don’t make a ha’porth of odds to me, but she can be deuced unpleasant if things don’t go the way she wants, and if you’re to be cooped up in a coach with her for two days — for she’ll never consent to do the journey in one! — you’ll get a trifle tired of the vapours!”
And with this piece of sound, if undutiful, advice, his lordship caught up his coat and hat and strode off to make his arrangements for an instant departure from town.