‘Isabella!’ pronounced Lord Sheringham, in boding accents, ‘don’t try me too far! If you love Another – You know, Bella, if it’s Severn you mean to have, I can tell you now you won’t get him. You don’t know the Duchess! Can’t call his soul his own, poor old Severn, and she’ll never let him marry you, take my word for it!’
Miss Milborne rose from her chair abruptly. ‘I think you are the most odious, abominable creature in the world!’ she said angrily. ‘I never – Oh, I wish you will go away!’
‘If you send me away, I shall go straight to the devil!’ threatened his lordship.
Miss Milborne tittered. ‘I dare say you will find yourself mightily at home, my lord!’
The Viscount ground his teeth. ‘You will be sorry for your cruelty, ma’am, when it is too late!’
‘Really, my lord, if we are to talk of play-acting – !’
‘Who’s talking of play-acting?’ demanded the Viscount.
‘You did.’
‘Never talked of any such thing! You’re enough to drive a man out of his senses, Isabella!’
She shrugged and turned away from him. The Viscount, feeling that he had perhaps not shown that lover-like ardour which, he was persuaded, consumed him, took two strides towards her and tried to take her in his arms. He received a box on the ear which made his eyes water, and for an instant was in danger of forgetting that he was no longer a schoolboy confronting a tiresome little girl. Miss Milborne, reading retaliation in his face, strategically retired behind a small table, and said tragically:‘Go!’
The Viscount regarded her with a measuring eye.‘By God, if I could get my hands on you, Bella, I’d –’ He broke off as his incensed gaze absorbed her undeniable beauty. His face softened. ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t hurt a hair of your head! Now, Bella, won’t you –’
‘No!’ almost shrieked Miss Milborne. ‘And I wish you will not call me Bella!’
‘Oh, very well, Isabella, then!’ said his lordship, willing to make concessions.‘But won’t you –’
‘No!’ reiterated Miss Milborne.‘Go away! I hate you!’
‘No, you don’t,’ said his lordship. ‘At least, you never did, and damme if I can see why you should suddenly change your mind!’
‘Yes, I do! You are a gamester, and a libertine, and a –’
‘If you say another word, I will box your ears!’ said the Viscount furiously. ‘Libertine be damned! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Bella!’
Miss Milborne, aware of having been betrayed into unmaidenly behaviour, burst into tears. Before the greatly discomposed Viscount could take appropriate action the door opened and Mrs Milborne came into the room.
Mrs Milborne’s eye took in the situation at a glance, and she lost no time in hustling the discomfited young man out of the house. His protestations fell on inattentive ears. She said: ‘Yes, yes,Anthony, but you must go away, indeed you must! Isabella is not well enough to receive guests! I cannot imagine who can have let you into the house! It is most obliging in you to have called, and pray convey my respects to your dear Mama, but at this present we are not receiving visitors!’
She put his hat and his gloves into his hands and inexorably showed him out of the front door. By the time she had returned to the drawing-room, Isabella had dried her eyes and recovered her composure. Her mother looked at her with raised brows. ‘Did he make you an offer, my love?’
‘Yes, he did,’ replied Isabella, sniffing into her handkerchief.
‘Well, I see nothing to cry about in that,’ said Mrs Milborne briskly.‘You should bear in mind, my love, that the shedding of tears has the very disagreeable effect of reddening a female’s eyes. I suppose that you refused him?’
Her daughter nodded, sniffing rather more convulsively.‘Yes, of course I did, Mama. And I said I could never marry anyone with so little d-delicacy of principle, or –’
‘Quite unnecessary,’ said Mrs Milborne.‘I wonder you should show so little delicacy yourself, Isabella, as to refer to those aspects of a gentleman’s life which no well-bred female should know anything about.’
‘Well, but, Mama, I don’t see how one is to help knowing about Sherry’s excesses, when all the town is talking of them!’
‘Nonsense! In any event, there is not the least need for you to mention such matters. Not that I blame you for refusing Sherry. At least, I own that in some ways it would be an ideal match, for he is extremely wealthy, and we have always been particular friends of – But if Severn were to offer for you, of course there could be no comparison between them!’
Miss Milborne flushed. ‘Mama! How can you talk so? I am not so mercenary! It is just that I do not love Sherry, and I am persuaded he does not love me either, for all his protestations!’
‘Well, I dare say it will do him no harm to have had a setdown,’ replied Mrs Milborne comfortably.‘Ten to one, it will bring him to a sense of his position. But if you are thinking of George Wrotham,my love, I hope you will consider carefully before you cast yourself away upon a mere baron, and one whose estates, from all I can discover, are much encumbered. Besides, there is a lack of stability about Wrotham which I cannot like.’
In the face of the marked lack of stability which characterised Viscount Sheringham, this remark seemed unjust to Miss Milborne, and she said so, adding that poor Wrotham had not committed the half of Sherry’s follies.
Mrs Milborne did not deny it. She said that there was no need for Isabella to be in a hurry to make her choice, and recommended her to take a turn in the garden with a view to calming her spirits and cooling her reddened cheeks.
The Viscount, meanwhile, was riding back to Sheringham Place in high dudgeon. His self-esteem smarted intolerably; and, since he had been in the habit, during the past twelve-month, of considering himself to be desperately enamoured of the Incomparable Isabella, and was not a young gentleman who was given to soul-searching, it was not long before he was in a fair way to thinking that his life had been blighted past curing. He entered the portals of his ancestral home in anything but a conciliatory mood, therefore, and was not in the least soothed by being informed by the butler that her ladyship, who was in the Blue Saloon, was desirous of seeing him. He felt strongly inclined to tell old Romsey to go to perdition, but as he supposed he would be obliged to visit his mother before returning to London, he refrained from uttering this natural retort, contenting himself with throwing the butler a darkling glance before striding off in the direction of the Blue Saloon.
Here he discovered not only his parent, a valetudinarian of quite amazing stamina, but also his uncle, Horace Paulett.
Since Mr Paulett had taken up his residence at Sheringham Place some years previously, upon the death of the late Lord Sheringham, there was nothing in this circumstance to astonish the Viscount. He had, in fact, expected to find his uncle there, but this did not prevent his ejaculating in a goaded voice:‘Good God, you here, uncle?’
Mr Paulett, who was a plump gentleman with an invincible smile and very soft white hands, never permitted himself to be annoyed by his nephew’s patent dislike and frequent incivility.He merely smiled more broadly than ever, and replied:‘Yes, my boy, yes! As you see, I am here, at my post beside your dear mother.’
Lady Sheringham, having provided herself with a smelling-bottle to fortify her nerves during an interview with her only child, removed the stopper and inhaled feebly. ‘I am sure I do not know what would become of me if I had not my good brother to support me in my lonely state,’ she said, in the faint, complaining tone which so admirably concealed a constitution of iron and a strong determination to have her own way.
Her son, who was quite as obstinate as his parent, and a good deal more forthright, replied with paralysing candour:‘From what I know of you,ma’am,you would have done excellent well. What’s more, I might have stayed at home every now and then. I don’t say I would have, because I don’t like the place, but I might have.’
So far from evincing any gratification at
this handsome admission, Lady Sheringham sought in her reticule for a handkerchief, and applied this wisp of lace and muslin to the corners of her eyes.‘Oh, Horace!’ she said.‘I knew how it would be! So like his father!’
The Viscount did not fall into the error of reading any complimentary meaning into this remark. He said:‘Well, dash it, ma’am, there’s no harm in that! Come to think of it, who else should I be like?’
‘Whom,my boy, whom!’ corrected his uncle gently.‘We must not forget our grammar!’
‘Never knew any,’ retorted the Viscount. ‘And don’t keep on calling me your boy! I may have a lot of faults, but at least that’s one thing no one can throw in my face!’
‘Anthony, have you no consideration for my poor nerves?’ quavered his mother, bringing the vinaigrette into play again.
‘Well, tell that platter-faced old fidget to take himself off !’ said the Viscount irritably. ‘Never can see when he’s not wanted, and the lord knows I’ve given him a hint times without number!’
‘Ah, my b – But I must not call you that, must I? Then let it be Sherry, for that, I collect, is what your cronies, your boon companions, call you, is it not?’
‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with it,’ responded his nephew.‘If you hadn’t taken it into your head to come and live here, you wouldn’t have to call me anything, and that would suit me to a cow’s thumb!’
Mr Paulett shook a finger at him. ‘Sherry, Sherry, I fear your suit cannot have prospered! But never mind, dear boy! Persevere, and you will see how she will come about!’
The Viscount’s cerulean eyes lit with sudden wrath, and a tide of red coloured his cheeks. ‘Hell and the devil confound it!’ he exclaimed furiously.‘So you’re at that, are you? I’ll thank you to be a little less busy about my affairs!’
Lady Sheringham abandoned tactics which appeared unlikely to succeed, and contrived to possess herself of one of his lordship’s hands. This she held between both of hers, squeezing it eloquently, and saying in a low tone: ‘Dearest Anthony, remember I am your Mother, and do not keep me in suspense! Have you seen dear Isabella?’
‘Yes, I have,’ growled the Viscount.
‘Sit down, my love, beside me. Did you – did you make her an offer?’
‘Yes, I did! She won’t have me.’
‘Alas! The dearest wish of my heart!’ sighed Lady Sheringham. ‘If I could but see you married to Isabella, I could go in peace!’
Her son looked at her in a bewildered way. ‘Go where?’ he demanded. ‘If it’s the Dower House you’re thinking of, there’s nothing that I know of to stop you going there any day you choose. What’s more, you may take my uncle along with you, and I won’t say a word against it,’ he added generously.
‘Sometimes I think you wilfully misunderstand me!’ complained Lady Sheringham. ‘You cannot be ignorant of the enfeebled state of my health!’
‘What, you don’t mean that you’re going to die, do you?’ said the Viscount incredulously. ‘No, no, you won’t do that! Why, I remember you used to say the same to my father, but nothing came of it. Ten to one, it’s having my uncle always hanging about the place that wears you down. Give you my word, it would kill me in a week, and there’s never been a thing the matter with my nerves.’
‘Anthony, if you have no consideration for me, at least you might consider your uncle’s sensibility!’
‘Well, if he don’t like it he can go away,’ replied his lordship incorrigibly.
‘No, no, I am too old a hand to be offended by a young man crossed in love!’ Mr Paulett assured him.‘I know too well the feelings of mortification you are labouring under. It is very distressing indeed. A sad disappointment to us all, I may say.’
‘In every way so eligible!’ mourned Lady Sheringham.‘The estate would round off yours so delightfully, Anthony, and dearest Isabella is so precisely the girl out of all others whom I would have chosen for my only son! Her father’s sole heir, and although it cannot compare with yours, her fortune will not be contemptible!’
‘Damme, ma’am, I don’t want her fortune! All I want is my own fortune!’ said his lordship.
‘If she had accepted your hand you would have had it, and I am sure I should have been glad to see it in your hands, though heaven knows you would squander the entire principal before one had time to look about one! Oh, Anthony, if I could but prevail upon you to relinquish a way of life which fills my poor heart with terror for your future!’
His lordship disengaged himself hurriedly.‘For the lord’s sake, ma’am, don’t put yourself in a taking over me!’ he begged.
‘I knew she would reject you!’ said Lady Sheringham. ‘What delicately nurtured female, I ask of you,my son, would consent to marry one whose footsteps are set upon the path of Vice? Must she not shrink from those libertine propensities which –’
‘Here, I say, ma’am!’ protested the startled Viscount.‘It’s not as bad as that, ’pon my soul it’s not!’
His uncle heaved a sigh. ‘You will allow, dear boy, that there is scarcely an extravagant folly you have not committed since you came of age.’
‘No, I won’t,’ retorted the Viscount.‘Dash it, a man can’t be on the Town without kicking up a lark or so every now and then!’
‘Anthony, can you tell your Mother that there is not a – a Creature (for I cannot bring myself to call her a Female!) with whom you are not ashamed to be seen in the most public of places? Hanging upon your arm, and caressing you in a manner which fills me with repugnance?’
‘No, I can’t,’ replied the Viscount. ‘But I’d give a monkey to know who told you about that little ladybird!’
He rolled a choleric eye towards his uncle as he spoke, but that gentleman’s attention was fixed upon the opposite wall, and his thoughts appeared to be far removed from earthly considerations.
‘You will break my heart!’ declared Lady Sheringham, applying her handkerchief to her eyes again.
‘No, I shan’t, ma’am,’ said her son frankly. ‘You didn’t break your heart over any of Father’s fancies that ever I heard of ! Or if you did you can’t do it again. Stands to reason! Besides, when I’m married I shall hedge off, never fear!’
‘But you are not going to be married!’ Lady Sheringham pointed out. ‘And that is not all! Never in my life have I been so mortified as when I was obliged to apologise to General Ware for your abominable behaviour on the road to Kensington last month! I was ready to sink! Of course you were intoxicated!’
‘I was no such thing!’ cried his lordship, stung on the raw. ‘Good God, ma’am, you don’t think I could graze the wheel of five coaches if I’d shot the cat, do you?’
His mother let her handkerchief drop from a suddenly nerveless hand.‘Graze the wheels of five coaches?’ she faltered, looking at him as though she feared for his sanity.
‘Five of ’em, all in a row, and never checked!’ asserted the Viscount. ‘Sheerest piece of curst ill-fortune that I overturned old Ware’s phaeton! Must have misjudged it. Cost me the wager, too. Backed myself to graze the wheels of the first seven vehicles I met past the Hyde Park turnpike without oversetting any of ’em. Can’t think how I came to bungle it. Must have been old Ware’s driving. He never could keep the line: a mere whipster! No precision of eye at all!’
‘Unhappy boy!’ exclaimed his mother in throbbing accents. ‘Are you dead to all sense of shame? Horace, speak to him!’
‘If he does,’ said the Viscount, his chin jutting dangerously, ‘he’ll go out through that window, uncle or no uncle!’
‘Oh!’ moaned his afflicted parent, sinking back on her couch and putting a hand to her brow. ‘What, what, I ask of you, brother, have I done to deserve this?’
‘Hush,my dearValeria! Calm yourself, I beg!’ said Mr Paulett, clasping her other hand.
‘No wonder poor Isabella rejected his suit! I cannot find it in me to blame her!’
‘Alas, one cannot but feel that for the sake of the estate it may be for the best!’ said M
r Paulett, strategically retaining his clasp on that frail but protective hand.‘Loth as I am to say it, I cannot consider poor Sherry fit to assume the control of his fortune. Well for him that it is held in trust for him!’
‘Oh, is it well for me?’ interjected poor Sherry wrathfully. ‘Much you know about it! And why my father ever took it into his head to make you a trustee beats me! I don’t mind Uncle Prosper – at least, I dare say I could handle him, if it weren’t for you, for ever putting a spoke in my wheel! And don’t stand there bamming me that you’re mighty sorry Bella wouldn’t have me, because I know you’re not! Once I get the confounded Trust wound up, out you’ll go, and well you know it! If my mother chooses to let you batten upon her, she may do it, but you won’t batten on me any longer, by Jupiter you won’t!’
‘Ah!’ said Mr Paulett, smiling in a maddening way.‘But there are two years to run before the Trust comes to an end, my dear boy, and we must hope that by that time you will have seen the error of your ways.’
‘Unless I get married!’ the Viscount reminded him, his eyes very bright and sparkling.
‘Certainly! But you are not, after all, going to get married, dear boy,’ his uncle pointed out.
‘Oh, aren’t I?’ retorted his lordship, striding towards the door.
‘Anthony!’ shrieked Lady Sheringham. ‘What in heaven’s name are you going to do?’ she released her brother’s hand, and sat up.‘Where are you going? Answer me, I command you!’
‘I’m going back to London!’ answered the Viscount.‘And I’m going to marry the first woman I see!’