The Foundling

by Джорджетт Хейер

  She was verymuch shocked, and exclaimed in a faint voice. It was incomprehensible to her that anyone should be amused by such a circumstance, but both Gilly and Gideon plainly thought it excessively funny, so she smiled dutifully, realizing the truth of her mama’s dictum, that there was never any knowing what stupidities men would find diverting. But she could not forbear to implore the Duke not to keep such a dreadful person near him. “Indeed, he ought to be put in prison!” she said earnestly.

  “Undoubtedly he ought, my dear, but you must hold me excused from denouncing him, if you please! He is by far too amusing! Besides, he did me no harm, but, on the contrary, a great deal of good.”

  It was not to be supposed that Harriet could regard with anything but horror one who had cast her Gilly into a cellar, but she perceived that the Duke’s mind was made up, and said no more. Liversedge himself came back into the room a minute or two later, with an offer to escort her to the housekeeper, and so bland and respectful was his manner that she could almost have supposed the whole affair to have been a mistake. She rose from her chair, and said meekly that she would like to take off her hat.

  “I warn you, Harriet, you will not escape from Mrs. Kempsey for an hour at least!” Gideon told her, mocking his cousin. “She will tell you how weak a chest Adolphus always had, and what remedies were tried, and how she nursed him once when he had the measles. She nursed me too, but she won’t waste a moment on my sufferings, though I swear I was much more full of measles than Adolphus!”

  The Duke smiled. “But you brought them home from Eton and I took them from you!” he reminded his cousin. “How could you expect to be forgiven such shocking conduct? Don’t let her bore on for ever, Harry!”

  “Indeed, I shall not think it a bore!” she said. “I hope she will tell me what she likes, for I mean to get upon terms with all your people, Gilly.”

  He walked beside her to the door, handing her cloak to Liversedge, and saying, as he did so: “When you have taken her ladyship upstairs, come back to me: I must settle with you.”

  “I will certainly do so, your Grace,” Liversedge responded with a bow. “But possibly you will excuse me for a few minutes while I cast my eye over the kitchen. I fancy you will be pleased with my way of serving woodcocks a la Tartar, but the menial at present presiding in the kitchen is not to be trusted with rare dishes. There is, moreover, the question of a sweet, which the presence of a lady at the board makes indispensable. I doubt whether the individual aforementioned has a mind fit to rise above damson tart and jelly, but I hope to contrive a Chantilly Basket which will not disgust her ladyship.”

  He bowed again at the conclusion of this speech and sailed away without giving the Duke time to answer him. “If I must consort with rogues,” remarked Gideon, pouring out some sherry, “I own I like them to be in the grand manner. It’s my belief you’ll never be rid of this one, Adolphus.”

  He was mistaken. When Liversedge presently returned to the library, it soon became evident that he had no desire to remain at Cheyney. He found the life there too circumscribed.

  “Had it been your Grace’s principal residence, I might have been tempted to consider the propriety of establishing myself in some useful capacity,” he explained, with one of his airy gestures. “Although, I must add, servitude, however genteel in its nature, has little charm for me. It does not, if I may say so, offer sufficient scope for a man of my vision. Not that I would have your Grace think that it was with reluctance that I assumed the control of this establishment. On the contrary! I have the greatest regard for your Grace—indeed, I may say that I was much taken with you at the first moment of setting eyes on you!—and I have been happy to feel that I was being of service to you.”

  “Before you succumb to this eloquence, Adolphus,” drawled Gideon, “I would remind you that this admirer of yours would have murdered you for a paltry sum.”

  “There, sir,” instantly replied Liversedge, “I must join issue with you! For fifty thousand pounds I might have been able to overcome my natural repugnance to putting a period to his Grace’s life, but for a lesser sum I could not have brought myself to contemplate it. Those nobler instincts which even the basest of us have must have revolted.”

  The Duke regarded him curiously, his chin in his hand. “Would you really have murdered me?” he asked.

  “If,” said Mr. Liversedge, “I were to seek refuge in a lie, you, your Grace, would not believe me, and I should have debased myself to no purpose. I shall not seek to deceive you: for fifty thousand pounds I must have steeled myself, if not to perform the deed, at least to order its execution. I do not deny that it would have been a struggle, for I am not a man of violence, but I am inclined to think that the temptation would have been overmastering. A man of your wealth, sir, has no business to offer himself to be the prey of those less fortunately circumstanced, and that, you will allow, is precisely what you did. It was neither politic nor right, but I shall say no more on that head. Your Grace is young, and, when you came, incognito, into my orbit, you were—if I may say so without offence—shockingly green! I flatter myself that through my exertions you have gained in experience, and will not err again after that fashion.”

  “You had better reward the fellow!” interpolated Gideon.

  Mr. Liversedge was quite unabashed. “Captain Ware, though scarcely in sympathy with me, touches the very nub of the matter,” he said. “Consider, your Grace! If we are to balance our accounts, which of us is the gainer?”

  “I perceive that you are of the opinion that I stand in your debt,” replied the Duke, faintly smiling.

  “Certainly,” said Liversedge, inclining his head. “Can it be in doubt? You were, I fancy, in search of adventure: I gave it to you. You were green: I compelled you to put off the boy and to assume the man. Let us glance for a moment at the other side of the ledger! You snatched from me the letters which I had acquired from your young cousin; you stole from me the means whereby I might have hoped to have acquired other such letters—I refer to my adopted niece; you burned down the wretched hovel which was my sole shelter; you drove into miserable seclusion the individual who owned it, and is nearly related to me; and by these several acts—unthinkingly, I daresay, but none the less painful in their consequences—reduced me to a state of penury which makes it impossible for me to depart from this house.”

  “If I made it possible for you to leave this house, what would you do?” asked the Duke.

  “God grant me patience!” groaned Gideon.

  The Duke ignored him. “Well, Liversedge?”

  “It would depend,” replied Liversedge, “on the extent of your Grace’s generosity. My ambition has ever been to preside over a genteel establishment where those with a taste for gaming may be sure of select company, elegant surroundings, and fair play—for my experience has taught me that nothing could be more fatal to the ultimate success of such a venture than to make use of such shifts as the concave-suit, fuzzing, cogging, or in a word any of the Greeking transactions by which novices in this form of livelihood too often think to make their fortunes. That kind of thing may answer for a space, but can never lay the foundations of a permanent establishment of the refinement I have in mind. I attempted something of the sort in this country, but the difficulties are great, and the sordid precautions one is obliged to take against unwarrantable interference set too heavy a drain upon one’s resources. If the means lay within my grasp, I should repair to Strasbourg, a town where my talents could flourish, and one, moreover, where I own acquaintances who would count themselves fortunate to acquire my assistance in the management of their houses. A small beginning, you may think, but I do not doubt of rising swiftly from it.”

  “Strasbourg,” said the Duke meditatively. “I remember I disliked the place excessively. I was never more bored! I will revenge myself on Strasbourg, Liversedge, by sending you there to batten upon its citizens. But if any other peer should chance to come into your orbit again, do not kidnap him, for that might come to my ears,
you know, and I should feel that it was time to make an end of you.”

  He rose to his feet as he spoke, and walked towards the desk that stood in the window.

  “Sir,” said Liversedge, “I am not of those who do not profit by their mistakes. In departing from an occupation at which I excel I erred. Kidnapping is too crude a trade for any man of taste and sensibility.”

  “You are wise,” said the Duke. “If such a greenhorn as I could—”

  “Careful, Gilly!” Gideon said under his breath, his eyes on the doorway. “The fat, I fear, is now in the fire!”

  The Duke turned his head. Mr. Liversedge had neglected to shut the door securely upon his entrance into the library, and it now stood wide. Lord Lionel stood on the threshold, as though transfixed, an expression of such wrathful amazement in his face that any hope his nephew might have cherished that he had not overheard enough to make plain to him the whole died on the spot.

  “So!” uttered his lordship terribly. “I am now in possession of the truth, am I? I might have doubted the fidelity of my ears had I not already had reason to suppose that you have taken leave of your senses, Sale! I came to find you, to request that you will give me an explanation—But that can wait! Give me a plain answer, yes or no! Is this the rascal who tried to hold you to ransom?”

  “You know it is, sir,” said the Duke.

  His lordship drew an audible breath. “If you have not actually lied to me, sir, you have practised the grossest form of deceit! I would not have believed you capable of it, for with all your faults—”

  “Shall we leave my faults for discussion at some more convenient time, sir?” interrupted the Duke.

  Lord Lionel was a just man. Even as he opened his mouth to blister his nephew he realized that the rebuke had been deserved, and shut it again. He said with strong restraint: “You are very right! You will not, however, expect me tamely to acquiesce in your extraordinary schemes! Don’t try to put me off, Sale! I came in time to hear more than enough! As well that I did so, since you have apparently succeeded in cajoling Gideon into permitting you to indulge your whimsicality in a manner—”

  “What, in the name of all that is wonderful, have my affairs to do with Gideon?” demanded the Duke. “Indeed, what have they to do with anyone save myself? I am not a child, sir!”

  “You are—” His lordship recollected himself, and stopped. He shut the door ungently, and strode into the middle of the room. “There has been enough of this nonsense!” he said. “If you cannot see what is the proper course to pursue, I can! This villain is to be handed over to those who will know how to deal with him! Either you will give orders for a constable to be fetched from Bath to take him in charge, or I will!”

  The Duke moved to the desk, and sat down at it, and drew a sheet of paper towards him. “I have no power, sir, to prevent you from sending for whom you wish,” he said, his soft voice even, and rather chilly. “I think it only right to warn you, however, that I am making no charge against Liversedge, and shall deny whatever allegation you might feel yourself compelled to utter.

  Gideon’s black brows went up, and one corner of his mouth too. He glanced at his thunderstruck parent, and said warningly: “’Ware riot, sir, ’ware riot, I do beseech you!”

  “Be silent!” Lord Lionel rapped out. “Gilly, why!”

  “I have already told you, sir,” the Duke replied, dipping a pen in the inkstand, and beginning to write. “I do not choose to advertise my own folly.”

  Mr. Liversedge, who had been listening with an expression of great interest to this animated dialogue, coughed in a deprecating way, and said: “If I may say so, sir, such a decision is a wise one, and does you credit. It would indeed be undesirable to apprise the vulgar world of this affair. Setting aside all consideration of your dignity—not that I would for an instant advocate anyone’s doing so!—one cannot but reflect that the knowledge of my failure might inspire some more fortunate conspirator to lay a plot against your Grace that would achieve success. And that,” he added earnestly, “is a thing I should deprecate as much as the most devoted of your relatives.”

  Lord Lionel brought his staring gaze to bear upon him. “Upon my soul!” he ejaculated. “This passes all bounds!”

  It was at this inopportune moment that Mr. Mamble came into the library, rubbing his hands together, and saying with a satisfaction unshared by his hosts: “I thought I should find you here! Well, your Grace! Eh, but you look different than when I saw you in that shabby old coat you was wearing when I had you arrested for a dangerous rogue!” He chuckled at the memory, and advanced into the room. “Well, his lordship and I have become a pair of downright cronies, as I daresay he has been telling you. He has his notions, and I have mine, and maybe we’ve both learned summat we didn’t know before. But I’m fairly put out by that young rascal of mine! It’s mercy it was no more than a sheep, and your Grace kind enough to pardon it, else I would have dusted his jacket rarely for him!”

  “How do you do?” murmured the Duke, half-rising, and extending one hand. “I beg you will forget the sheep! I stand so much in Tom’s debt that one sheep’s life seems a small price to be called upon to pay.”

  “Well, I don’t know how that may be,” responded Mr. Mamble, shaking the hand, “but it wasn’t as bad as that! What’s o’clock? I’m beginning to feel sharp-set, I can tell you, and ready for my dinner. Ay, there’s the Captain pouring out the sherry, I see, and right he is! A glass of sherry is the very thing I was needing, for I’ve been riding out with your good uncle, your Grace, looking over your estate. It’s not so large as mine, by Kettering, but he tells me it ain’t more than a tithe of what you’re possessed of.”

  Mr. Liversedge rose nobly to this as to every other occasion. He bowed politely to Mr. Mamble, sweeping him in some irresistible fashion known only to himself towards the door, and saying in a voice in which authority and civility were nicely blended: “I shall have a bottle of sherry sent up to your room, sir, on the instant. You will be desirous of changing your raiment before sitting down to dine with his Grace. The hour is already far advanced, but have no fear! Dinner will be held until you are ready to partake of it.”

  Mr. Mamble might fancy himself to have achieved habits of easy intercourse with Lord Lionel, but he was not of the stature to compete with Mr. Liversedge, and he knew it. He allowed himself to be bowed out of the room, saying that he had not known it was so late, and must certainly change his dress.

  Lord Lionel’s exacerbated feelings found relief as soon as the door was fairly shut behind him. “Intolerable upstart!”

  Mr. Liversedge said soothingly: “I beg your lordship will not trouble your head over him! A good man in his way, but vulgar! One cannot but feel that his Grace was misguided in extending the hospitality of Cheyney towards him, but old heads, as your lordship well knows, are not found upon young shoulders.”

  Lord Lionel found himself so much in sympathy with this observation that he was almost betrayed into applauding it. He stopped himself in time, and was just about to scarify Liversedge for daring to open his mouth, when the Duke spoke.

  “Liversedge!” he said, shaking the sand from the few lines he had written.

  “Your Grace?” responded Liversedge, turning deferentially towards him.

  “You will accompany me to Bath this evening. I will furnish you with the means to buy yourself a seat upon the mail-coach to London. When you reach London, go to Sale House, and give this note to Scriven, my agent, whom you will find there. He will comply exactly with its instructions. I have requested him to advance you the sum stated in whatever coinage may be most convenient to you. Don’t delay to quit this country! I assure you it might yet become unfriendly to you.”

  “Sir,” said Mr. Liversedge, taking the letter from the Duke’s outstretched hand, “no poor words of mine could convey to your Grace the sense of the deep obligation I feel towards you! I venture to prophesy that you will live to become an Ornament to the Peerage, and if—with my hand on my heart
I say it!—I should not again have the felicity of setting eyes upon your face, I shall cherish the memory of my all too brief association with you to the day of my demise! And now,” he continued, tucking the Duke’s letter into his pocket, “I will, with your Grace’s permission, repair to the kitchens, where I dare not hope that my surveillance is not long overdue.”

  With these words, the magnificence of which apparently made Lord Lionel feel that any attempt at expostulation must come as an anticlimax, he bowed again, and left the room with an unhurried and a stately gait.

  “I am far from approving of your conduct, Adolphus, but I will own that I should be sorry to see your enterprising acquaintance in Newgate,” said Gideon. “He comes off with the honours!”

  His father rounded on him. “How many more times am I to tell you not to call him by that name?” he demanded, venting an irritation of spirit that had no relation at all to anything Gideon had said.

  “I must leave that to yourself to decide, sir,” replied Gideon, willing to draw his parent’s fire.

  But the Duke intervened. “Oh, no, sir, don’t forbid him to call me Adolphus! He is the only person who does so, and how much I should miss it if he ceased!”

  He rose from the desk, and came to the fire. Lord Lionel said angrily: “How could you be such a fool as to reward that fellow? If you wished to let him to free—well, I have nothing to say to that! Certainly we can none of us desire this lamentable episode to be made public! An episode, I would remind you, that sprang solely from your own thoughtless and ill-judged behaviour! But to reward the villain, as though he had rendered you some signal service, makes me fear for your reason!”