The door opened into a passage that ran from the hall to the back of the house. It was not locked, and the Earl led Peregrine through it to his book-room, a square apartment with windows on to St James’s Street. The room was furnished in a somewhat sombre style, and the net blinds that hung across the window while preventing the curious from looking in also obscured a good deal of light.
The Earl tossed his gloves on to the table and turned to see Peregrine glancing about him rather disparagingly. He smiled, and said: ‘Yes, you are really better off on the Marine Parade, are you not?’
Peregrine looked quickly across at him. ‘Then this was the house my sister wanted!’
‘Why, of course! Had you not guessed as much?’
‘Well, I did not think a great deal about it,’ confessed Peregrine. ‘It was Judith who was so set on –’ He stopped, and laughed ruefully. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t know which of the two she did want!’ he said.
‘She very naturally wanted the one I told her she was not to have,’ replied the Earl, moving over to a console-table where a decanter of wine and two glasses had been placed. ‘Fortunately I was able to read her intention just in time to retrieve my own mistake in ever mentioning this house.’
‘Ay, and devilish cross you made her,’ said Peregrine.
‘There is nothing very new in that,’ said the Earl in his driest voice.
‘Oh, she had not been disliking you for a long time then, you know,’ said Peregrine, inspecting a round table snuff-box with a loose lid that stood on the Earl’s desk. ‘In fact, quite the reverse.’
The Earl was standing with his back to the room, but he glanced over his shoulder, holding the decanter poised for a moment over one of the glasses. ‘Indeed! What may that mean?’
‘Lord, nothing in particular!’ said Peregrine. ‘What should it mean?’
‘I wish I knew,’ said the Earl, and returned to his task of filling the glasses.
Peregrine looked at him rather sharply, and after fidgeting with the lid of the snuff-box for a moment blurted out: ‘May I ask you a question, sir?’
‘Certainly,’ said the Earl, replacing the stopper in the decanter. ‘What is it?’
‘I daresay you won’t like it, and of course I may be wrong,’ said Peregrine, ‘but I am Judith’s brother, and I did think at one time, when my cousin hinted at it, that you might be – well, what I wish to ask you is – is, in short –’
‘I know exactly what you wish to ask me,’ said the Earl, handing him one of the glasses.
‘Oh!’ Peregrine accepted the glass, and looked at him doubtfully.
‘I can appreciate your anxiety,’ continued the Earl, a trifle maliciously. ‘The thought of being saddled with me as a brother-in-law must be extremely unnerving.’
‘I did not mean that!’ said Peregrine hastily. ‘Moreover, I don’t believe there is the least fear – I mean, chance – of it coming to pass.’
‘Possibly not,’ said the Earl. ‘But “fear” was probably the right word. Would you like to continue this conversation, or shall we turn to your own affairs?’
‘I thought you would not like it,’ said Peregrine, not without a certain satisfaction. ‘Ay, let us by all means settle the business. I am ready.’
‘Well, sit down,’ said the Earl, opening one of the drawers in his desk. ‘This is the deed of settlement I want you to sign.’ He took out an official-looking document and gave it to Peregrine.
Peregrine reached out his hand for a pen, but was checked by the Earl’s raised brows.
‘I am flattered by this blind trust in my integrity,’ Worth said, ‘but I beg you won’t sign papers without first reading them.’
‘Of course I should not do so in the ordinary way! But you are my guardian, ain’t you? Oh Lord, what stuff it is! There’s no making head or tail of it!’ With which pessimistic utterance Peregrine fortified himself with a gulp of wine, and leaned back in his chair to peruse the document. ‘I knew what it would be! Aforesaid and hereinafter until there is no sense to be made of it!’ He raised his glass to his lips again and sipped. Then he lowered it and looked at the Earl. ‘What is this?’ he asked.
The Earl had seated himself at his desk, and was glancing over another of the documents that awaited Peregrine’s signature. ‘That, my dear Peregrine, is what Brummell would describe as the hot, intoxicating liquor so much drunk by the lower orders. In a word, it is port.’
‘Well, I thought it was, but it seems to me to taste very odd.’
‘I am sorry that you should think so,’ replied the Earl politely. ‘You have the distinction of being alone in that opinion.’
‘Oh, I did not mean to say that it was not good port!’ said Peregrine, blushing furiously. ‘I am not a judge. I’ve no doubt of it being capital stuff!’ He took another sip, and returned to the task of mastering the deed of settlement. The Earl sat with his elbow on the desk, and his chin resting on his hand, watching him.
The words began to move queerly under Peregrine’s eyes. He blinked, and was conscious all at once of a strong feeling of lassitude. Something in his head was making a buzzing sound; his ears felt thick, as though wool had been stuffed in them. He looked up, pressing a hand to his forehead. ‘I beg pardon – don’t feel quite the thing. A sudden dizziness – can’t understand it.’ He lifted his half-empty wine-glass to his lips, but paused before he drank, staring at Worth with a look of frightened suspicion in his eyes.
The Earl was sitting quite still, impassively regarding him. One of the cut-steel buttons on his coat attracted and held Peregrine’s cloudy gaze until he forced himself to look away from it. His brain felt a little stupid; he found himself speculating on the snowy folds of Worth’s cravat. He himself had tried so often to achieve a Water-fall, and always failed. ‘I can’t tie mine like that,’ he said. ‘Water-fall.’
‘You will one day,’ answered the Earl.
‘My head feels so queer,’ Peregrine muttered.
‘The room is a trifle hot. I will open the window in a minute. Go on reading.’
Peregrine dragged his eyes away from that fascinating cravat and tried to focus them on the Earl’s face. He made an effort to collect his wandering wits. The paper he was holding slipped from his fingers to the ground. ‘No!’ he said. ‘It’s not the room!’
He staggered to his feet and stood swaying. ‘Why do you look at me like that? The wine! What have you put in the wine? By God, you sh-shall answer me!’
He stared at his glass in a kind of bemused horror, and in that instant Worth was on his feet, and in one swift movement had got behind him, and seized him, gripping the boy’s right hand from over his shoulder in a cruel hold that clenched Peregrine’s fingers tightly round the wine-glass. His left arm was round Peregrine, forcing the boy back against his shoulder.
Peregrine struggled like a madman, but the dreadful lassitude was stealing over him. He panted: ‘No, no, I won’t! I won’t! You devil, let me go! What have you done to me? What –’ His own hand, with that other grasping it, tilted the rest of the wine down his throat. He seemed to have no power to resist; he choked, spluttered, and saw the room begin to spin round like a kaleidoscope. ‘The wine!’ he said thickly. ‘The wine!’
He heard Worth’s voice say as from a long way off: ‘I am sorry, Peregrine, but there was no alternative. There is nothing to be afraid of.’
He tried to speak, but could not; he was dimly aware of being lifted bodily from the ground; he saw Worth’s face above him, and then he slid into unconsciousness.
The Earl laid him down on the couch against one wall and loosened the folds of his cravat. He stood frowning down at him for a minute, his fingers lightly clasping one slack wrist, his eyes watchfully intent on Peregrine’s face. Then he moved away to where the empty wine-glass lay on the carpet, picked it up, and put it on the table, and went out of the room, locking the door behind him.
There was no one in the hall. The Earl let himself out through the back door on to the iron st
eps, and went down them into the yard. The tiger met him, and grinned impishly. The Earl looked him over. ‘Well, Henry?’
‘Shapley’s not back yet from wherever it was you sent him off to, guv’nor, and you know werry well you let the under-groom go off for the day.’
‘I had not forgotten it. Did you do what I told you?’
‘O’ course I did what you told me!’ answered Henry, aggrieved. ‘Don’t I always? I knew he wouldn’t say no to anything out of a bottle. “Flesh-and-blood this is,” I says to him, but Lord love yer, guv’nor, he wouldn’t have known different if I’d said it was daffy! He tosses it off, and smacks his lips, and I’m blessed if he didn’t sit down right there under my werry nose, and drop off to sleep! I never seen anything like it in all my puff !’
‘The sooner you forget that you saw it at all, the better,’ commented the Earl. ‘Where is Hinkson?’
‘Oh, him!’ Henry sniffed disparagingly and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Putting the horses to, he is, which is about all he’s good for, and not so werry good at that either, if you was to ask me.’
‘Don’t be jealous, Henry. You have done your part very well, but you cannot do everything,’ said the Earl, and walked across the yard to the stables just as Hinkson led out Peregrine’s two horses. ‘Get those horses put to, Ned. Any trouble?’
‘No, my lord, not at my end of the business – not yet, that is. But Tyler’s been getting smoky about me. I gammoned him I was boozy, and he thought he’d left me safe under the table. But I’m scared of this, my lord; properly scared I am. Broad daylight!’
‘There you are, what did I tell you, guv’nor?’ demanded Henry scornfully. ‘Him a prize-fighter! You’d have done better to let me handle the whole job.You’ll have that chicken-hearted shifter handing Jem Tyler over to a beak if you ain’t careful.’
Hinkson turned on him wrathfully, but upon the tiger saying at once: ‘Yes, you pop in a hit at me, and see what you get from my guv’nor!’ a slow grin spread over his unprepossessing countenance, and with an apologetic look at the Earl he went on harnessing the horses to the tilbury. Henry cast a professional eye over the buckles, and watched with considerable interest his master and Hinkson hoist the inanimate form of Jem Tyler into the tilbury, and cover it with a rug.
Hinkson gathered up the reins and said gruffly: ‘I won’t fail you, my lord.’
‘No, because if you did you’d lose a fatter purse than you’ve ever fought for, or ever will!’ retorted Henry.
‘And when all’s clear,’ said Hinkson, settling himself on the box-seat, and addressing the tiger, ‘I shall come back into this yard and wring your skinny neck, my lad!’ With which he jerked the reins, and drove out of the yard into the alley.
The Earl watched him go, and turned to look down at his tiger. ‘You know me, don’t you, Henry? One word of this on your tongue and it is I who will wring your neck, long before Hinkson has the chance of doing it. Off with you now!’
‘And I’d let you, guv’nor, which is more than what I would that lump o’ lard!’ replied Henry, unabashed.
An hour later Captain Audley went softly into the book-room and shut the door behind him. The Earl was writing at his desk, but he looked up and smiled faintly. Captain Audley glanced across at Peregrine’s still form. ‘Julian, are you quite sure – ?’
‘Perfectly.’
Captain Audley walked to the couch and bent over it. ‘It seems a damned shame,’ he said, and straightened himself. ‘What have you done with the groom?’
‘The groom,’ said Worth, picking up a wafer and sealing his letter, ‘has been taken to a spot somewhere near Lancing, and shipped aboard a certain highly suspicious vessel bound for the West Indies. Whether he ever reaches his destination is extremely problematical, I imagine.’
‘Good God, Worth, you can’t do that!’
‘I have done it – or, rather, Hinkson has done it for me,’ replied the Earl calmly.
‘But Julian, the risk! What if Hinkson turns on you?’
‘He won’t.’
‘You’re mad!’ Captain Audley exclaimed.‘What should stop him?’
‘You must think I choose my tools badly,’ commented the Earl.
The Captain glanced towards Peregrine again. ‘I think you’re a damned cold-blooded devil,’ he said.
‘Possibly,’ said Worth. ‘Nevertheless, I am sorry for the boy. But the date of his marriage being fixed was his death-warrant. He must be put out of the way, and really I think I have chosen quite as kind a way of doing it as I could.’
‘Yes, I know, and I see it had to be, but – well, I don’t like it, Julian, and there you have it! How I’m to face Judith Taverner with this on my conscience –’ ‘You can comfort yourself with the reflection that it is not on your conscience at all, but on mine,’ interrupted the Earl.
‘She is going to the Pavilion to-night,’ said Captain Audley inconsequently.
‘Yes, and so am I,’ replied the Earl. ‘Do you go too, or do you propose to sit and mourn over Peregrine’s plight?’
‘Oh, be quiet, Julian! I suppose I must go, but I tell you frankly I feel little better than a murderer!’
‘In that case you would be wise to order dinner to be put forward,’ recommended the Earl. ‘You will feel better when you have eaten and drunk.’
‘How are you going to get him out of the house?’ asked the Captain, looking towards the couch again.
‘Very simply. Evans will come in by the back way and I shall give the boy over to him. He will do the rest.’
‘Well, I hope to God it does not all fail!’ said Captain Audley devoutly.
But no hitch occurred in the Earl’s plans. At eleven o’clock a plain coach drove unobtrusively into the alley, and a couple of sturdy-looking men got out, and softly entered the yard through the unlocked gate. No one was stirring above the stables, and the men made no sound as they went up the iron steps to the back door. It was opened to them by the Earl, who had changed his cloth coat and pale yellow pantaloons for knee-breeches, and a satin coat. He pointed silently to the book-room. Five minutes later he had seen Peregrine’s limp body, wrapped round in a frieze cloak, put into the coach, and had returned to the house, and locked the back door. Then he examined the set of his cravat in the mirror that hung in the hall, picked up his hat and gloves and walked out of the house, across the Steyne to the Pavilion.
Twenty
MISS TAVERNER’S FIRST VISIT TO THE PAVILION HAD SOON been followed by others, for the Regent, while at Brighton, liked to hold informal parties in his summer-palace, and was always very easy of access, and affable to the humblest of his guests. It was not to be supposed that he should feel as much interest in Peregrine as in his sister, but even Peregrine had been invited to dine at the Pavilion once, and had gone there in a state of considerable awe, and returned home dazzled by the magnificence of the state apartments, and slightly fuddled by the Regent’s famous Diabolino brandy. He had tried to describe the Banqueting-room to his sister, but he had retained so confused an impression of it that he could only say that he had sat at an immensely long table, under a thirty-foot lustre, all glass pearls, and rubies, and tassels of brilliants, which hung from a dome painted like an eastern sky, with the foliage of a giant plantain tree spreading over it. He had thought no chains had been strong enough to hold such a lustre; he had not been able to take his eyes from it. For the rest he dimly remembered golden pillars, and silver chequer-work, huge Chinese paintings on a groundwork of inlaid pearl, mirrors flashing back the lights of the lustres, crimson draperies and chairs, and piers between the windows covered with fluted silks of pale blue. He had counted five rosewood sideboards, and four doors of rich japan-work. He had never been in such a room in his life. As for the entertainment he had had, nothing was ever like it! Such a very handsome dinner, with he dared not say how many wines to drink, and no less than a dozen sorts of snuff placed on the table as soon as the covers were removed!
The Regent did not invite lad
ies to his dinner-parties, because there was no hostess to receive them, but they flocked to his concerts, and his receptions. Mrs Scattergood, remembering pleasant evenings spent at the Pavilion when Mrs Fitzherbert received guests there, shook her head, and said: ‘Ah, poor soul! People may say what they please, but I shall always hold that she was his true wife. And so, I hear, does the Princess of Wales, though it is an odd thing for her to say, to be sure!’
‘Yet you would have had me accept Clarence’s offer,’ remarked Miss Taverner.
‘No, indeed, I would not. That was nothing but a notion that just entered my head. These morganatic marriages are not at all the thing, though for my part I could never find it in me to blame Mrs Fitzherbert for marrying the Prince. He was so extremely handsome! He is a little stout now, but I shall always think of him as I first saw him, in a pink satin coat sewn with pearls, and a complexion any female would have given her eyes to possess!’
‘His complexion is very sallow now,’ observed Miss Taverner. ‘I am afraid he has a sickly constitution.’
But although Mrs Scattergood would allow that the Regent did not enjoy the best of health, she could not be brought to see that time and self-indulgence had coarsened his features. He was the fairy-prince of her girlhood, and she would listen to nothing said in his disparagement. Miss Taverner was sorry for it, since the frequent visits to the Pavilion were not entirely to her taste. The Regent was fifty years old, but he had an eye to a pretty woman, and although there was nothing in his manner to alarm her, Miss Taverner could not be at her ease with him. Mrs Scattergood, whose native shrewdness was overset by the distinguishing notice the Regent bestowed on her, spoke of his attitude to her charge as fatherly, and said that Judith should consider herself honoured by his kindness. She wondered that Judith should not care to go to the Pavilion, and reminded her that Royal invitations were tantamount to commands. So Miss Taverner allowed herself to be taken there two or three times a week, until the glories of the Gallery, and the Music Room, and the Saloon became so well known to her that they no longer seemed at all out of the common. She had the treat of hearing Viotti play the violin there, and Wiepart the harp; she had been present at a very select and convivial party, when the Regent, after listening to several glees, was prevailed upon to sing By the gaily flowing glass, for the edification of the company; she had been shown such objects of vertu as the tortoiseshell table in the Green Drawing-room, and the pagodas in the Saloon; and she had had the doubtful honour of receiving the advances of the Duke of Cumberland. She could not feel that the Pavilion held any further surprises for her, and when she set out with Mrs Scattergood for Thursday’s party there, quite shocked that good lady by announcing that she had rather have been going to the ball at the Old Ship.
Regency Buck Page 31
