“I don’t give a rush for what Desford thinks of me!” declared Nettlecombe, two hectic spots of colour burning in his cheeks. “Cocky young busy-head! Meddling in my affairs!”
“Oh, no!” Desford interposed. “Merely bringing your affairs to your notice, sir!”
Nettlecombe glared at him. “Wilfred’s daughter is no affair of mine! It seems to me she’s your affair, young man! Ay, and it seems to me there’s something very havey-cavey about this! How did you come to be with her when she called at my house? Tell me that! It’s my belief you ran off with her from her aunt’s house, and now you’re trying to be rid of her! Well, you’re blowing at a cold coal! No man has ever contrived to put the change on me!”
Desford turned white with anger, and for an instant such an ugly look blazed in his eyes that Nettlecombe shrank back in his chair, and his spouse rushed forward, and dramatically commanded the Viscount to remember her lord’s age and infirmities. It was unnecessary. The Viscount had already regained control over his temper, and although he was still pale with wrath, he was able to say in a level voice: “I do not forget it, ma’am. His lordship’s infirmities seem to have affected his brain, and God forbid I should call a lunatic to account! If I allowed myself to follow my own inclinations I should leave this house immediately, but I am not here for any purpose of .my own, but solely on behalf of an unfortunate child, who has no one but him to turn to, and so must suffer him to insult me with what patience I can muster!”
Nettlecombe, who had been scared out of his ungovernable fury, muttered something that might have been an apology, and added, in a querulous tone: “Well, it does sound havey-cavey to me—and so it would to anyone!”
“It is not, however. I did not run off with Miss Steane from her aunt’s house. Even if I were such a loose screw as to run off with any girl, you can hardly suppose that I could possibly do so after barely half-an-hour’s conversation with her! I encountered her, the day after my one meeting with her, trudging along the post-road to London, quite unattended, and carrying a heavy portmanteau. I pulled up my horses, of course, and tried to discover what had led her to take such an imprudent—indeed, such an improper step! I shall not weary you with what she was induced to tell me: I will merely say that she was in great distress, and by far too young and inexperienced to have the least idea of what might be the disastrous consequences of her rashness. Her one thought was to reach you, sir—believing in her innocence that you would help her! Since you haven’t hesitated to throw the grossest of insults at my head, I need not scruple to tell you that I didn’t share her belief! I did what I could to persuade her to let me drive her back to her aunt’s house, but I failed. She begged me instead to take her to London. We reached your house in the late afternoon, by which time I had seen enough of her to make me feel that no one, least of all a grandparent, could be hardhearted enough to turn her from his door. And in spite of the intemperate things you have said I still think that had you been at home, and had seen her, you must have taken pity on her. But you were not at home—which was almost as big a facer for me as it was for her! In the circumstances, I thought the best thing I could do was to take her to a very old friend of mine, and leave her in her charge until I could discover your whereabouts, and put her case before you. I trust I have now done so to your satisfaction.”
“There’s only one thing she can do. She must return to her aunt,” said Nettlecombe. “She took the girl away from school, so it’s her responsibility to look after her, not mine!”
“That’s just what I was thinking!” nodded the lady.
“It is a waste of time to think it, ma’am: she won’t go. I daresay she would liefer hire herself out as a cook-maid!”
“Well, and why shouldn’t she?” demanded her ladyship, bristling. “I’m sure it’s a very respectable calling, and there’s plenty of chances for her to rise higher, if she has her wits about her, and gives satisfaction!”
“What have you to say to that, sir?” asked the Viscount. “Could you stomach the knowledge that your granddaughter was earning her bread as a servant?”
Nettlecombe uttered a brutal laugh. “Why not? I married one!”
This declaration not unnaturally took Desford’s breath away. He found himself bereft of words; but on my lady it had quite another effect. She rounded on Nettlecombe, and said in a trembling voice: “I was never a servant of yours, and well you know it! I was your lady-housekeeper, and I’ll thank you to remember it! The idea of you casting nasty aspersions at me! Don’t you dare do so never no more, or you’ll hear some home-speaking from me, my lord, and so I warn you!”
He looked a little ashamed, and more than a little apprehensive, and said hastily: “There, don’t take a pet, Maria! I didn’t mean it! The thing is that Desford has nettled me into such a flame that I hardly know what I’m saying. Not but what—However, let it rest! I’ll give you a new bonnet!”
This offer led to an instant reconciliation, my lady even going so far as to embrace him, exclaiming: “That’s more like my dear old Nettle!”
“Yes, but I’ll go with you to choose it, mind!” said his lordship warily. “And as for Wilfred’s brat, if you think you can palaver me into taking her into my house, Desford, I’ll tell you once and for all I won’t do it!”
“I don’t think it. What I beg leave to suggest to you, sir, is that you should make her an allowance: enough to enable her to maintain herself respectably. Not a fortune, but an independence.”
But this proposal made Nettlecombe’s eyes start alarmingly in their sockets, with as much incredulity as dismay. He said in a choked voice: “Squander my money on that little gypsy? Do you take me for a cabbage-head?”
He received prompt support from his bride, who advised him strongly not to let himself be choused out of his blunt. She added, with great frankness, that for her part she had no notion of raking and scraping to save his blunt for him only to see it thrown away on a hurly-burly girl who had no claim on him. “It’s bad enough for you to be obliged to grease Jonas’s wheels,” she said, “and when I think of the way he’s behaved to me, trying to get you to turn me off, let alone coming the nob over me, it turns me downright queasy to think of him, and that niffy-naffy wife of his, living as high as coach-horses at our expense!”
The Viscount picked up his hat and gloves, and said contemptuously: “Very well, sir. If money means more to you than reputation there is nothing further to be said, and I’ll take my leave of you.”
“It does!” snapped Nettlecombe. “I care nothing for what anyone says of me—never have cared! And the sooner you take yourself off the better pleased I shall be!”
But the Viscount’s words had made the bride look sharply at him, a shade of uneasiness in her face. She said, in a blustering manner: “I’m sure there’s no reason why anyone should blame my lord! No one ever blamed him for disowning the girl’s father, and he was his son!”
The Viscount, who had not missed that swift, faint look of uneasiness, replied, slightly raising his brows: “Well, that is not quite true, ma’am. It was acknowledged that he had been given great provocation, but a number of people considered that he had acted in a—let us say, in a way that was unbecoming in one who was not only a father, but a man of rank.”
“Balderdash!” ejaculated Nettlecombe, flushing. “How do you know what anyone thought? You were in the schoolroom!”
“You must have forgotten, sir, that my father was one of those who did blame you,” said the Viscount gently. “And—er—made no secret of his disapproval!”
As Lord Wroxton’s disapproval had found expression in giving Nettlecombe the cut direct in full view of some dozen members of the ton, it was not surprising that the angry flush on Nettlecombe’s face deepened to a purple hue. He snarled: “Much I cared for Wroxton’s opinion!” but his fingers curled themselves into claws, and he glared at Desford as though he would have liked to fix those claws round his throat.
“Furthermore,” pursued Desford relentlessly, “w
hatever excuses might be found for your treatment of your son, none can be found for your behaviour towards his orphaned daughter, who is innocent of any fault, but is to become not only the victim of her father’s improvidence but also of her grandfather’s rancour!”
“Let ‘em say what they choose! I don’t care a button what they say!”
“They won’t know anything about it!” said my lady.
“My lord don’t go about much nowadays, so—” She stopped, staring at Desford, who was smiling in a very disquieting way.
“Oh, yes, they will know, ma’am!” he said. “I pledge you my word the story will be all over town within a sennight!”
“Jackanapes! Rush-buckler!” Nettlecombe spat at him.
But at this point my lady quickly intervened, begging him not to fret himself into a fever. “It won’t do to act hasty!” she urged. “You may not care for what people say of you, but it’s my belief it’s me as will be blamed! Even your friends have behaved very stiff to me, and I don’t doubt but what they’d say it was my doing you wouldn’t have anything to do with this girl, and that won’t suit me, my lord, and no amount of argufying will make me say different!”
“And it won’t suit me to waste my money on the girl! Next you’ll be telling me it’s my duty to buy her an annuity!”
“No, I shan’t. It isn’t to be expected that you should, nor that you should pay her an allowance, for who’s to say when you might find it inconvenient to be obliged to shell out the ready—pay the allowance, I mean? I don’t hold with allowances: it makes anyone fidgety to have a thing like that coming due every quarter. No, I’ve got a better notion in my noddle—better for the girl too! What she wants, poor little thing, is a home, and that’s what you can give her, and without being purse-pinched. So why don’t you write to her, and offer to take her into the family? I’ll see to it she don’t worrit you, and she won’t worrit me either. In fact, the more I think of it the more I feel I should like to have her. She’ll be company for me.”
“Take Wilfred’s brat into the family?” he repeated, almost stunned.
She patted his hand. “Well, my lord here is in the right of it when he says it ain’t her fault she’s Wilfred’s brat. I declare I feel downright sorry for her! And if it’s expense you’re thinking of, Nettle, I shouldn’t wonder at it if she turned out to be an economy, because it wouldn’t be an extra mouth to feed, for you know I paid off Betty before we left London, thinking it was a sinful waste of money to keep a girl just to mend the linen, and wash the chandeliers, and the best china, and lend old Lattiford a hand with the silver, and that. Mind you, it’s a bigger waste of money keeping a butler that’s as old and infirm as what he is, but you’d have to pension him off if you sent him packing, so while he can work it’s best for us to keep him.”
Nettlecombe, who had listened to her in gathering exasperation, said explosively: “No, I tell you! I won’t have her in my house!”
“Allow me to set your mind at rest!” said Desford. “You will most certainly not have her in your house, sir! I didn’t help her to escape from one slavery only to pitchfork her into another!”
He strode towards the door, ignoring a plea from my lady to wait. She followed him into the corridor, begging him not to take her lord’s tetchiness amiss, and assuring him that he might rely on her to bring him round. “The thing is,” she said earnestly, “that he’s out of sorts, poor dear gentleman, and no wonder, with all the kick-up there’s been, thinking he was going to lose me, because that shabster, Jonas, had the impudence to set it about that I was setting my cap at him, which I never did, nor thought of! All I thought of was to make him comfortable, which I promise you I did! What’s more, I was the most saving housekeeper he’d ever had! But when that Jonas took to saying I was a man-trap, and warning his pa against me—well! I was obliged to tell his lordship I must leave at the term, because I’ve got my good name to think about, haven’t I? So his lordship made me an Offer, which is all the good Master Jonas got out of trying to be rid of me!” She ended on a triumphant note, but as the Viscount was wholly unresponsive, tightened her hold on his sleeve, and said ingratiatingly: “And as for making his granddaughter a slave, you quite mistook my meaning, my lord! I’m sure I wouldn’t ask her to do anything I wouldn’t do myself—yes, and have done, times out of mind! Not that I was born to it, mind you! Oh, dear me, no! I often think my poor father would have turned in his grave if he’d lived to see the straits I was reduced to, him having been cheated out of his inheritance, like he was, and my First losing his fortune, and leaving me without a souse, which is why I was forced to earn my own bread as best I could. No one knows better than me what it means to step down from one’s rightful station, so if you was thinking Miss Steane would be a servant in her grandpa’s house you’re quite beside the bridge, my lord! She’ll have a good home, and not be asked to do anything any genteel girl wouldn’t be expected to do to help her ma!”
“You are wasting your breath, ma’am,” he replied, inexorably removing her hand from his sleeve, and continuing his progress towards the stairs.
Baffled, she delivered a Parthian shot. “At any hand,” she said shrilly, “you can’t say it was me that wouldn’t offer the girl a home!”
Chapter 10
For several minutes after he left Lord Nettlecombe’s lodging the Viscount seethed with anger, but by the time he was half-way to the High town this had diminished, and the comical side of the late interview struck him, so forcibly that the sparkling look of wrath in his eyes vanished, and the hardened lines about his mouth relaxed. As he recalled some of the things which had been said he began to chuckle; and when he pictured the scenes which must have goaded Nettlecombe to marry the most economical housekeeper he had ever employed he found that he was within ames-ace of positively liking the vulgar creature.
He wished very much that there was someone with him to share the joke: Hetta, for instance, whose sense of the ridiculous was as lively as his own. He would tell her all about it, of course, but recounting an absurd experience was not the same as sharing it. It was to be hoped she didn’t make the mistake of marrying that prosy fellow whom he had found dangling after her at Inglehurst, for he wouldn’t suit her at all: he was just the kind of slow-top to ask her in a puzzled voice what she meant when she made a joke. Come to think of it, none of Hetta’s suitors—and, lord, how many of them there had been!—had ever seemed to him worthy of her: queer that such an intelligent girl should be unable to recognize at a glance men who were quite beneath her touch! Recalling her numerous suitors he could not bring to mind one whom he had liked. There had been several dead bores amongst them; at least two bladders, who never stopped gabbing; and any number of men who were, in his opinion, very poor sticks indeed.
These reflections had led his mind away from the immediate problem confronting him, but the recollection of it soon recurred, and put an end to any desire in him to laugh at the failure of his mission, or to speculate on the strange vagaries of females. A less determined man might have felt that he had been tipped a settler, and have thrown his towel into the ring, but the Viscount had a streak of strong determination running through his easy-going nature, and he had no intention of being beaten on this, or any other, suit. He had certainly suffered a set-back, so what he must now do was to think of some other way of providing for Cherry’s future well-being. None immediately occurred to him. He wondered what she was doing, whether she was happy at Inglehurst, or whether she was too anxious to be happy; and realized with a slight sense of shock that it was now nine days since he had left her there.
Had he but known it, Cherry was blissfully happy, and only now and then thought about her future. She had fitted into her surroundings as though she had lived at Inglehurst all her life; and she seemed to take as much pleasure in making herself useful to her hostesses as in the small parties Lady Silverdale gave to her neighbours. Indeed, Henrietta thought that she took more, for her disposition was retiring, and her shyness tied her tongue,
so that when she was seated at the dinner-table beside a stranger her conversation was inclined to be monosyllabic. Henrietta ascribed this to Lady Bugle’s treatment. She had relegated the poor child to the background, and had so systematically impressed upon her that she was far less important than her cousins, and must never put herself forward as though she thought herself their equal, that it had become second nature to her. Henrietta hoped that she would overcome her almost morbid shrinking from strangers for such excessive shyness was, in her view, a handicap to any penniless female obliged to make her own way in the world. It was unfortunate, too, that she was noticeably more ill-at-ease with the various young gentlemen who visited the house than with their fathers. However, once she became acquainted with them she grew less self-conscious, and chatted to them quite naturally. With Sir Charles, and young Mr Beckenham, she was soon on friendly terms; but she treated Tom Ellerdine, who showed a disposition to make her the object of his youthful gallantry, with marked reserve. Henrietta could not help feeling that it was a pity.
Lady Silverdale did not agree.. “For my part,” she said, “I think her a very pretty-behaved girl. I own, my love, it quite astonishes me that she is not in the least pert, or coming, as so many girls are nowadays, for one never expected a Steane to be so well-conducted, and her mama was not at all the thing. Not that I ever knew her, because she eloped with Wilfred Steane out of the schoolroom, you know, which shows the most shocking want of delicacy, and just what one would expect in any sister of that Bugle woman!”
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