THE VISCOUNT HAD NOT BEEN MISTAKEN IN thinking that the letter announcing his marriage to Hero Wantage would have the effect of bringing his Mama hotfoot to London. The news of Hero’s mysterious disappearance had naturally reached her some days before the arrival of Sherry’s missive: she had, in fact, sustained a morning call from Mrs Bagshot, who had enumerated all the kindnesses she had for years shown her ungrateful young relative, and had confided in the bored matron’s ear the intelligence that she had always expected the wretched girl to disgrace her. It occurred to neither lady to connect Hero’s flight with the recent visit of the Viscount to his home. Not unnaturally, it did not occur to Miss Milborne either. Miss Milborne said roundly that she was sure she did not blame poor little Hero, and only trusted that she had sought refuge with some member of her family who might treat her with more consideration than had ever been shown her in the Bagshot household.
When the Viscount’s letter arrived, its effect was stunning. Unable at first to believe the evidence of her eyes, his mother had sat staring at it as one in a trance. As the dreadful tidings penetrated to her intelligence, she gave vent to a shriek which made her brother, who was in the act of mending a pen, cut his finger with his pocket-knife. “Read that!” uttered the shattered lady, holding out the letter with a trembling hand. “Read that!”
To say that Mr Paulett was put out by the news of his nephew’s marriage would be grossly to understate his reactions. He had not believed that Sherry would tie himself up in the bonds of matrimony to any other than Miss Milborne, and was almost inclined to think the letter a hoax, designed merely to alarm him. A second perusal of the objectionable letter, however, put this hope to flight. There was, he did not pause to consider why, a ring of the authentic about St George’s, Hanover Square, and more than a ring of the authentic in the information that the family lawyer would shortly be communicating with himself. Mr Paulett saw the end in sight, and gave a groan. A gleam of hope shot through his despondency; he said: “Hero Wantage? She is a minor — it may yet be put a stop to! She had not the consent of her guardian!”
The dowager rose tottering from her couch. “Desire them to send the carriage round to the door immediately!” she said. “Heaven knows I do not expect the least show of good feeling from Jane Bagshot, whom I dare say contrived the whole miserable business, designing woman that she is! but I will leave no stone unturned to rescue my son from so ruinous an entanglement, and I will drive round to call upon her this instant!”
The same post which had brought the Viscount’s letter to his mother had also brought one, a much briefer one, to Mrs Bagshot. The Viscount had enjoyed writing it, and had read it aloud to Hero before fixing the wafer to it.
Dear Madam, [it ran] it is my duty to inform you that your cousin, Miss Wantage, has done me the honour to accept my hand in marriage. Should you be wishful of addressing your felicitations to her, a letter to The Viscountess Sheringham, care of Fenton’s Hotel, will find her. Believe me, etc., Sheringham.
Mrs Bagshot, reading with starting eyes this curt note, suffered all the rage and the chagrin the Viscount had desired her to feel when he gleefully penned it. She declared at once that the marriage was illegal, and should be instantly set aside; she said that she had always known Hero to be a minx and a baggage; she said that if Cassy had only made more regular use of the Denmark Lotion she had procured for her to eradicate the spots on her face this would never have happened. Cassy then fell into a fit of hysterics which brought her father into the room to inquire testily what the devil was amiss. Leaving Cassy to her sisters’ ministrations, Mrs Bagshot thrust the Viscount’s note into her husband’s hands, and commanded him to do something about it at once! Mr Bagshot, having calmly affixed his spectacles over his ears, read the note with maddening deliberation, and then desired his wife to inform him what she expected him to do about it.
Mrs Bagshot told him. He heard her out in patient silence, and, when she paused for breath, enunciated one word: “Rubbish!”
She glared at him, quite taken aback. Perceiving that she was momentarily bereft of speech, Mr Bagshot said: “Pray, why should you desire to have so advantageous a marriage set aside? I wish you will put yourself to the trouble of considering a little before flying into these odd humours, my dear. To be sure, I do not understand why young Sheringham must needs elope with Hero, for there can have been not the least reason for him to fear that you would not give your consent to the match.”
“I?” gasped Mrs Bagshot. “I consent to the penniless beggar’s marrying Sheringham? I would die rather!”
Her husband looked her over coolly. “Indeed! Then no doubt Sheringham knew what he was about when he carried her off in this improper fashion.”
“I shall have it put a stop to!”
“You will do no such thing,” he replied. “Unless you wish to appear a greater fool than I take you for, you will accept this highly flattering alliance with the appearance at least of complaisance.” He added dryly: “I imagine you are not desirous of giving the world cause to say that you are jealous because his lordship would not throw his handkerchief in Cassy’s direction. For my part, I am happy to think that Hero, who I have always considered to be a nice little thing, has had the good fortune to become so creditably established.”
These words of calm good sense did not fail of their effect. By the time the Dowager Lady Sheringham’s landaulet was at the door, Mrs Bagshot had had time to think the matter over. Nothing would serve to abate the strong sense of chagrin that possessed her, but she was intelligent enough to realize that to attempt to overset the marriage would only serve to make her look extremely foolish. The dowager, therefore, found Mrs Bagshot unresponsive. Mrs Bagshot was certainly much shocked, but although she was lavish in her expressions of sympathy for her dearest Lady Sheringham, she made it quite plain that she had no intention of interfering in the marriage. When Lady Sheringham said that she had quite counted on having that sweet Isabella for her daughter-in-law, the thought crossed her mind that however infuriating it might be to find one’s despised poor relation suddenly a great way above one in the social scale, it would not have afforded her the smallest gratification to have seen the Viscount married to Miss Milborne.
As for the Incomparable Isabella herself, the news came to her as an undeniable and not very welcome shock. Sherry was the first of her suitors to have found consolation elsewhere, and she would have been more than human had she not experienced a strong sensation of pique. However, she had a good deal of pride, and was a good-natured girl, and she told Lady Sheringham that she had always known Sherry to be uncommonly fond of Hero, and she was sure she wished them both very happy.
This dignified way of receiving the news met with Mrs Milborne’s shrewd approval. “Very prettily done of you, indeed, my love!” she said, as soon as the dowager had left them. “But it is a shocking thing, to be sure! To marry a wretched little nobody like Hero Wantage, without a penny to her name, when the whole town has known him to have been at your feet this age past!”
“You are forgetting, Mama, that he offered for me, and I refused him.”
“To be sure you did. I wish you had not been so vehement in your refusal, I must own, my love. It cannot add to your consequence to have him running off straight away to wed another. I dare say he did it from mortification, and I only hope he may not live to rue the day. All things considered, my dear, I think we will return to London. And it will be a good scheme for you to send Hero your felicitations.”
“I have the intention of doing so, Mama.”
“Viscountess Sheringham!” said Mrs Milborne, in a disgruntled tone. “Well, I am sure I did not think to see that chit married before you, my love, with all the splendid chances you have had!”
The dowager, meanwhile, had taken the momentous decision of travelling to London, with what purpose she would have been unable to state with any clarity. She said in a vague but impressive way that Anthony must at least listen to the words of his Mother, though upon what grounds she based this conviction no one could imagine. She commanded her brother to escort and support her on her pilgrimage, and set forth in an enormous travelling chariot, attended by her abigail, a coachman, a footman, and outriders, and preceded by a similar (but less magnificent) vehicle, containing her trunks, and as many servants as she considered necessary to ensure her comfort in the house in Grosvenor Square for a few days. This put her in mind of a fresh injury, and she told her brother that she had little doubt that her undutiful son would throw her into the street, and install his wretched bride in the house his sainted Papa had brought her home to twenty-four years ago. Mr Paulett, appreciating at least the spirit of this, forbore to remind her that the late Viscount had, in fact, brought her home to Sheringham Place.
But when the afflicted lady reached town, and dispatched a peremptory note to Fenton’s Hotel, a civil message was conveyed to her that my Lord Sheringham had gone out of town with his lady. The clerk of Fenton’s Hotel obligingly added the information that his lordship could be found at Melton Mowbray.
Herein the Viscount had made a grave mistake. Had he but remained in London, had he but shown a dutiful penitence, had his bride but placed herself in her mother-in-law’s hands, craving forgiveness and instruction, that lady might have been brought to realize all the advantages of the marriage, and would have needed little persuasion to sponsor her son’s wife into the Polite World. But nothing could have alienated her more than Sherry’s craven retreat, which she had no hesitation in ascribing to Hero’s influence. That her own conduct over the past ten years might have had something to do with it, she naturally did not consider. She sent first for Prosper Verelst, and upon learning from him that he had had nothing to do with the elopement, but that Gilbert Ringwood and young Ferdy Fakenham knew all about it, she sent for Mr Ringwood. She parted on very cool terms with her brother-in-law, that gentleman having had the temerity to say that he thought Sherry’s bride a pretty little creature, and — with a roll of his eye in the direction of Mr Paulett — that he was devilish glad to see the boy assume control of his affairs.
Upon learning that Mr Ringwood too was out of town, the dowager lost no time in sending a summons to Mr Ferdy Fakenham. But as she made the mistake of stating her reason for wishing to see him, she defeated her own ends, Mr Fakenham, with rare presence of mind, instructing his servants to inform her that he was out of town, cancelling all his engagements, and retreating, like a hare startled from its form, to join the bridal couple (and his friend Mr Ringwood) in Leicestershire.
Baulked of even such minor prey as Ferdy, the dowager lost what little common sense she possessed, and proceeded to make known her wrongs. They lost nothing in the telling, nor was the injured Mr Paulette slow to add his mite to the whole. The town began to hum with the story of Sherry’s amazing marriage, and the most coldly correct of Almack’s patronesses, Mrs Drummond Burrell, remarked casually to one of her fellow-patronesses, Lady Jersey, that no voucher of admission to that most exclusive of clubs could, of course, be granted to young Lady Sheringham.
“Good gracious, why not?” asked Lady Jersey lightly.
“I have been in Grosvenor Square, visiting Valeria Sheringham.”
“Oh, that tedious creature!”
Mrs Burrell smiled lightly. “Very true, but in this instance I believe her to have been shamefully used. That wild young man, Sheringham, has made a shocking mesalliance. To make matters the more insupportable, he seems actually to have eloped with the young female.”
Lady Jersey, who was drinking morning chocolate with her friend, selected an angel cake from the dish before her, and bit into it. “Yes, I believe he did elope with her,” she admitted. Her mischievous smile dawned. “But Prosper Verelst assures me that Sherry otherwise behaved towards the girl with the greatest propriety! Only figure to yourself! — Sherry considering the proprieties!”
“I shall not allow Mr Verelst to be a judge. Valeria has told me the whole. The girl is the veriest Nobody — actually a governess, or some such thing!”
“ No such thing! She is one of the Wantages, and I am sure nothing could be more respectable. It is by no means a brilliant match, but only such a goose as Valeria Sheringham would make so great a piece of work over it.”
Her hostess turned a calm, cold gaze upon her. “Pray, my love, have you met the young person?”
“No, but I have been with Maria Sefton, and she has met her, and what is more, she says she is quite unexceptionable — very young, of course; hardly out of the schoolroom, but unquestionably a lady! You must know that she has been under the guardianship of Mrs Bagshot — the same who is for ever thrusting her shockingly plain daughters into the arms of all our eligible bachelors!”
“I do not find it a recommendation. Where, pray, did Lady Sefton encounter her?”
“Oh, down at Melton Mowbray! You must know that the Seftons have been staying with Assheton Smith, at Quorndon House. Maria tells me that they were driving out there when they came upon Sherry and his bride. She tells me it was quite pretty to see Sherry — he was teaching her to ride, it seems — taking such pains over the child.”
“I imagine he might, since he married her.”
“Certainly, but I confess I am agog with curiosity to discover why he married her, since we know him to have been a pretender to Miss Milborne’s hand not a fortnight ago!”
“It is very true. Lady Sheringham told me that he had actually offered for the Milborne girl, and had been rejected. He married the Nobody from pique. There can be no other explanation.”
“Did she tell you that? Upon my word, she is a great fool, then, to be spreading such a story about! I declare it gives me a feeling of strong compassion for the poor little bride, and I shall certainly give her .vouchers for Almack’s, if Maria Sefton has not already done so!”
“Of course, if you are to take the girl up, there is no more to be said,” shrugged Mrs Burrell.
Lady Jersey gave a trill of laughter. “What, in granting her vouchers for the club? How absurd!”
“I wish you may not be taken in.”
“If I am, I shall be in Maria Sefton’s company, and I am sure I do not desire to be in better.”
“Both Lord and Lady Sefton’s good nature is too well-known to occasion remark. I believe it leads them to bestow their favours indiscriminately rather frequently. Valeria Sheringham assures me the girl is quite farouche, no ton, no accomplishments, her looks no more than passable, her fortune non-existent.”
“It will be time enough to deny her the right to come to Almack’s if we find that for once in her life Valeria Sheringham has been speaking the truth.”
“Valeria does not advise us to relax our rules in her favour.”
Lady Jersey’s eyes sparkled. “What, did she say so? Of all the spiteful creatures! No, that is the outside of enough, my dear, and makes me perfectly determined to give the girl a chance to prove herself!”
Mrs Burrell was silent for a moment. She said presently: “You are very right. We shall see how she conducts herself. It is plain, however, that Sheringham is ashamed to show her in town.”
“Nonsense!” replied Lady Jersey. “Prosper Verelst says they have gone upon their honeymoon.”
“Into Leicestershire?” said Mrs Burrell, raising her brows.
“So it seems. The truth is, of course, that Sherry has gone off because he doesn’t care to run the gauntlet of Valeria’s vapours. He would have done better to have stayed, but it is all of a piece! He is a charming young man, I grant, but the most selfish and careless imaginable. I am sorry for his poor little wife.”