‘They are very well, but I am going to say a great deal to you about your father. I think I came for that very purpose. Yes, I am sure that I did!’
‘You have never given Uncle Lionel the bag?’ exclaimed Matthew.
‘Oh, no! He saw me off with his blessing, and an adjuration to visit the dentist. I have never yet succeeded in giving anyone the bag,’ said Gilly.
Gideon looked at him under his brows. ‘Hipped, Adolphus?’ he said gently.
‘Blue-devilled!’ replied the Duke, meeting his look.
‘What a complete hand you are, Gilly!’ said Matthew impatiently. ‘I only wish I stood in your shoes! There you are, your pockets never to let, everything made easy for you, all the toad-eaters in town ready to serve you, and you complain –’
‘Peace, halfling!’ interrupted Gideon. ‘Sit down, Gilly! Tell me all that is in your mind!’
‘Too much!’ said the Duke, sinking into a chair at the table. ‘Oh, that reminds me! Would you like to offer me your felicitations? You won’t be quite the first to do so, but – but you won’t care to be backward! I have this day fulfilled the expectations of my family – not to mention those of every busybody in town – and entered upon a very eligible engagement. You will see the notice in the Gazette, presently, and all the society journals. I do hope Scriven will not forget any of these!’
‘Oh!’ said Gideon. He pitched the butt of his cigar into the fire, and cast another of those shrewd, appraising looks at the Duke. ‘Well, that certainly calls for a bowl of punch,’ he said. ‘Harriet, eh?’
The Duke nodded.
‘I don’t wish to enrage you, my little one, but you have my felicitations. She will do very well for you.’
The Duke looked up quickly. ‘Yes, of course! What a fellow I am to be talking in such a fashion! Don’t regard it! She is everything that is amiable and obliging.’
‘Well, I’m sure I wish you very happy,’ said Matthew. ‘Of course we all knew that you were going to offer for her.’
‘Of course you did!’ agreed Gilly, with immense cordiality.
‘Charlotte has contracted an engagement too,’ observed Matthew. ‘Did you know it? It is to Alfred Thirsk.’
‘Certainly I knew it,’ replied Gilly. ‘In fact, I very nearly withheld my consent to the match.’
‘Very nearly withheld your consent!’ repeated Matthew, staring at him in the liveliest astonishment.
‘Well, I had the intention, but, like so many of my intentions, it came to nothing. Your father wrote me a very proper letter, expressing the hope that the alliance met with my approval. Only it does not: not at all!’
Matthew burst out laughing. ‘Much my father would care! Stop bamming, Gilly!’
‘Bamming? You forget yourself, Matt!’ Gilly retorted. ‘Let me tell you that I am the head of our family, and it is time that I learned to assert myself!’
Gideon smiled. ‘Have you been asserting yourself, Adolphus?’
‘No, no, I am not yet beyond the stage of learning! I am so birdwitted, you know, that I can never tell what is asserting myself, and what is putting myself forward in a very pert fashion that will not do at all.’
Gideon dropped a hand on his shoulder, and gripped it, but as Wragby came in just then, with a laden tray, he said nothing. The Duke lifted his own hand to clasp that larger one. ‘All gammon!’ he said jerkily. ‘I told you I was blue-devilled!’
Gideon smiled down at him in his lazy way, and shook him gently to and fro. ‘Wretched little snirp!’ he said.
‘Mackerel-backed dragoon!’ retorted the Duke, with an effort at liveliness. ‘Brew your punch!’
Matthew seized one of the lemons, and sliced it in half, chanting: ‘One sour, Two sweet; Four strong, And eight weak! Shall you add a dash of pink champagne to it, Gideon?’
‘I shall not,’ replied Gideon, releasing the Duke’s shoulder, and beginning to measure out the rum. ‘Arrack, my child, nothing but arrack!’
‘Only rustics use arrack instead of champagne,’ said Matthew, in a lofty way, which he instantly regretted.
‘Listen to our rasher-of-wind!’ Gideon recommended, with a nod at Gilly. ‘Proceed, Matt! Any more airs of the exquisite to play off?’
Young Mr Ware’s ready colour surged up again. ‘No, but it is so! Gilly, you go to all the ton parties! It should be pink champagne, shouldn’t it?’
‘Yes, of course, only Gideon has such nip-cheese ways!’ responded the Duke, lifting a spoonful of well-pounded sugar from the bowl, and letting it shower back again. ‘Does Charlotte really wish to marry Thirsk, Matt?’
‘Lord, yes, she’s in high gig!’ replied Matthew cheerfully.
‘Good God!’
‘Well, she will have a very creditable establishment, you know! Oh, you are thinking that Thirsk is a bit of a loose-screw! She won’t care for that as long as he don’t spy too closely after her, and I dare swear he won’t, for he’s got a mistress in keeping, and has had for years. At least that’s one of the on-dits of town, and I should think it would be true, would not you?’
‘But what a charming match!’ said the Duke.
‘Oh, well!’ said Matthew charitably, ‘no one could blame my father for nabbling Thirsk, after all! Devilish plump in the pocket, you know, and there’s the title besides, and four more of my sisters to be provided for! As for Charlotte, it’s all very well for you to cavil, Gilly, but you are your own master, and may do as you please. You don’t have to live at Croylake, dangling after my mother, and having to pour tea for a parcel of humbugging Methodies five evenings out of the seven! I can tell you, there’s no bearing it!’
The kettle had boiled by this time; Gideon lifted it from the hob, and poured the sherbet he had brewed in it on to his spirit. A fragrant aroma rose from the bowl. He stirred the mixture, his attention fixed on it. But the Duke, catching the note of bitterness in Matthew’s voice, looked at him rather searchingly. Matthew averted his eyes with a little laugh, and began to boast of Oxford larks.
Gideon, who rarely paid the least heed to him, interrupted his chatter without ceremony. ‘How long do you mean to stay in town, Adolphus?’
‘I don’t know. As long as I am permitted, I daresay!’
‘No time at all, in fact.’ He began to ladle the punch into three glasses. ‘Did you tell me you had Belper toad-eating you? What the devil made you advise him you were in London?’
‘Don’t be so bacon-brained, Gideon!’ Gilly implored. ‘Of course I never did so! That was left for my uncle to do. And he did it. I found Belper awaiting me on my doorstep.’
‘If you had as much sense as a pullet you would have kicked him off your doorstep!’ commented the Captain.
‘I would I had thy inches!’ retorted the Duke ruefully.
‘Resolution is all you stand in need of, my child.’
‘I know. But I fancy he’s none too well-breeched, and when a man is so damned pleased to see one – well, what can one do?’
‘What, indeed?’ said Gideon sardonically. ‘I suppose if all the scaff and raff of London were to show pleasure at the sight of you, you would throw your doors open to them!’
‘I daresay I should,’ said Gilly, with a short sigh. ‘How like my uncle you will be one day, when those beautiful whiskers of yours are no longer so black or so glossy! How right he was to warn me against seeking your company! And how little he knew how right he was!’
‘What?’ ejaculated Gideon. ‘He never did so!’
‘Well, no!’ admitted Gilly. ‘But he did warn me against letting myself be drawn into the sort of company you keep. Very justly, I daresay. You Lifeguards – Hyde Park soldiers, Belper calls you: did you know? – you’re such a fast set of fellows, and one never knows where military society may lead one, does one? He warned me against Gaywood, too. He said he might lead
me into gaming-hells, and that is precisely where he did try to lead me, only I was mindful of my orders, and I didn’t go with him.’
‘Humdudgeon, Adolphus! You didn’t go with him because gaming don’t amuse you. No playing off your tricks to me, little cousin!’
The Duke ladled more punch into his glass. ‘Don’t interrupt the head of the family, Gideon! Remember what is due to my position!’
‘A little more, and that will be head downwards in my wine-cooler!’ said Gideon.
‘I warn you, it will be two to one against you, for Matt – if not too castaway – will stand my friend.’
Matthew, who had been sitting in a brown study, started. ‘I’m not castaway!’ he said. ‘A fellow can’t be talking all the time!’
‘You cannot know Belper, or you would not say so. Gideon, I shall be of full age next year, and my uncle says I must learn to manage for myself. I have a thousand amiable qualities, but I lack resolution. So I thought I would interest myself a little in my estates, but my notions were so nonsensical they made Scriven smile, and put my uncle out of all patience with me. I wish – oh, how much I wish! – that my guardian had been a villain, and my agent a fool, and that the pair of them had tried to ruin me!’
‘I don’t see any sense in that!’ objected Matthew, blinking.
‘And I wish,’ continued Gilly, disregarding the interruption, ‘that no one about me wished me well, or cared for my interests, or had a particle of affection for me! But they have! God knows why, but they have! Do you know what Borrowdale, and Chigwell, and Nettlebed, and my footman – no, not my footman! Heaven reward him, for he did not know me in my cradle, and does not care a fig what may become of me! He is a splendid fellow! I wonder what wage I pay him? It must be doubled! – But the rest of them – oh, yes, and Turvey, too! how came I to forget him? – the rest of them are waiting for me to come home, and fretting themselves to flinders because I would not have my carriage ordered, and so may have been set-upon by footpads, or taken a chill! They will all be sitting up for me, you know. Borrowdale will offer me a hot posset, I daresay, and I am quite sure that Nettlebed will give me a scold!’ He jumped up, and began to stride restlessly about the room. ‘Gideon, I have been wondering what it would be like to be plain Mr Dash, of Nowhere in Particular!’
‘Try it!’ recommended his cousin.
‘How can I? We are not living between the covers of a romance, but in this dead bore of a Polite World! And I am going to be married! Give me some more punch! Or had you better perhaps warn me that my digestion was never of the strongest, and it may very likely set up some disorder, for which it will be necessary to summon Dr Baillie?’
‘Go to the devil!’ said Gideon, refilling his glass. ‘You may be as ill as you please, as long as you are not ill in my chambers. I shall bundle you into a chair, and tell ’em to carry you home.’
‘I like you so much,’ sighed the Duke, ‘and there is no virtue in you! You lie, Gideon, you lie! You would have half the Faculty here within an hour of my collapse!’
‘Not I!’
‘I wish you will stop twaddling for ever!’ suddenly exclaimed Matthew, sitting up with a jerk. ‘I can tell you this, Gilly! It would do you a deal of good not to be a Duke, and not to have all the money you need, and scores of servants to wait on you, and not to have a stable full of blood-cattle, or a pair of sixty-guinea Mantons, or people to manage your affairs, or – or any of the things you have got, and don’t so much as think about!’
‘Yes, I think it would,’ agreed Gilly, arrested by this outburst. ‘Would you like to change places with me?’
‘By God I would!’
‘Well, you can’t,’ said Gilly, sitting down again. ‘I’ve suddenly bethought me that if we changed places I should have Uncle Henry for my father, and although I don’t wish to offend you, Matt, I don’t want him.’
‘Adolphus, you are three parts disguised!’ said Gideon severely.
The Duke smiled at him, but shook his head. ‘No, I am quite sober. But Matt is right! I have twaddled enough! Matt, escort me home through our perilous streets! Where are you putting up?’
‘Reddish’s, but I don’t mind going along with you,’ replied Matthew, draining his glass.
The Duke went out into the hall to pick up his coat. Gideon accompanied him, and helped him to put it on. ‘Come and dine with me to-morrow, Adolphus,’ he said. ‘I’ll have none of our cousins to meet you.’
‘Yes, I wanted to find you alone,’ said Gilly.
‘You shall, my little one. Eight o’clock. Do not cut your throat before then!’
‘Gideon, Gideon, you don’t suppose that I shave myself, do you?’ riposted Gilly, much shocked.
Six
For some few minutes after he and Gilly had left Albany, Matthew kept up a flow of alarmingly light-hearted conversation. It did not deceive his cousin, and at the first opportunity he broke in on the chatter, and said: ‘Are you troubled about anything, Matt?’
The flow ceased abruptly. After a moment, Matthew said: ‘Troubled? Why should I be?’
‘Well, I don’t know, but if you are I think you might tell me.’
‘Oh! Now you are back at that Head-of-the-House stuff!’ replied Matthew, with an unconvincing laugh.
‘I hadn’t thought of that, but now you put me in mind of it I might as well justify my position. Are you under a cloud, Matt?’
‘Oh, lord, yes, but that ain’t it! At least, in a way it is, but not as you think. My snyder is one of the faithful, thank God!’
Correctly interpreting this mystic phrase to mean that Mr Ware’s tailor gave him long credit, the Duke said: ‘What’s the figure?’
There was a long silence. Mr Ware broke it. ‘If you want to know, I need five thousand pounds!’
‘Oh!’ said the Duke. ‘I haven’t such a sum on me at the moment, but I daresay I could find it.’
Matthew began to laugh. ‘Gilly, you fool! As though my uncle would let you!’
‘He has never kept me short of money. In any event, since I was twenty-one I have been at liberty to draw what I please. It is only my principal I may not tamper with.’
‘Well, if he would let you I would not! I am not such a sponge! I was only bamming!’
‘Matt, what is it?’
Another long silence followed this question, but the sympathy in his cousin’s voice won Matthew’s confidence. ‘Gilly, I am run off my legs – all to pieces!’ he said, sounding very much more like a scared schoolboy than a young gentleman about to enter on his third year at the University.
The Duke tucked a hand in his arm. ‘We’ll raise the wind, Matt, never fear! But what is it? You are not scorched to that figure!’
‘Oh, no, it’s not debt! But I don’t know what to do! It’s breach of promise!’
The Duke was somewhat staggered by this revelation. ‘Breach of promise! Matt, I don’t know what you have been doing, but who the devil could be suing you for such a sum as that?’
‘Not me! Suing you! Through my father, I daresay. To keep our name out of court! Everyone knows how rich you are!’
‘What a fool I am!’ said Gilly slowly. ‘Of course! But did you make an offer of marriage to this female?’
‘Well, yes, I suppose I did,’ said Matthew wretchedly. ‘You know how it is when one writes a letter!’
‘Did you write her letters?’
‘Yes, I did, but I never thought – And she did not answer one of them!’ said Matthew, on a note of ill-usage.
‘Matt, has she many of your letters?’
‘It isn’t she: it’s a fellow who says he is her guardian. He says he has half a dozen of my letters. I do not know how I came to write so many, for in general, you know, I am not much of a dab in that line! But she was so excessively beautiful – ! You can have no notion, Gilly!’
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‘Where did you meet her? Not in London?’
‘Oh, no! In the High! She was looking in at a shop-window, and there was a lady with her – well, I thought she was a lady, but when I came to know her better of course I saw that she was not quite the thing, but that didn’t signify, and she said she was her aunt, and her name was Mrs Dovercourt, but I daresay it was not. Anyway, Belinda dropped her reticule, and of course I picked it up, and – and that is how it all began!’
The Duke, feeling a trifle bewildered by this not very clear account of his cousin’s entanglement, suggested that they should thrash the matter out in the privacy of his library at Sale House. Matthew agreed to this, but said with a heavy sigh that he did not see what could be done about it. ‘I won’t let you pay, Gilly, and that’s an end to it! It’s all very well to say you may draw what money you please, but what a flutter there would be if you drew such a sum as that! It would be bound to come to my uncle’s ears, and he would tell my father, and then I should have nothing to do but to jump into the river, and that would not answer, because I am a pretty strong swimmer, and I daresay I shouldn’t drown at all! Of course, if I were like you, and could afford to keep my own phaeton, or curricle, or some such thing, I could drive to the devil, and break my neck, but I should like to see anyone driving a job-horse and gig to the devil! Why, you couldn’t do it! Job-horses are all slugs! I suppose I could blow my brains out, but it would mean purchasing a good pistol, and I’m not too well-blunted at this present, and to tell you the truth, Gilly, I don’t above half fancy the idea.’
The Duke, realising that Captain Ware’s punch had something to do with this despairing utterance, replied in soothing terms, agreeing that among his own many advantages must be ranked the means of putting a period to his life in an expensive way, and drew his young relative on towards Curzon Street. The walk did much to clear Mr Ware’s clouded intellect, but nothing to lift his depression. When he entered Sale House in Gilly’s wake, he made an effort to appear sprightly and at his ease, but achieved such an alarming result that had the Duke’s upper servants had eyes to spare for anyone but their master they must have noticed it, and have wondered what could be in the wind. But in the event Borrowdale, Chigwell, and Nettlebed were far too much taken-up with conveying to his Grace by innuendo a sense of the anxiety he had caused them to labour under all the evening to have any attention to spare for Mr Matthew.